How can I promote a product?

There are dozens of ways to promote your product on the internet. Many of them are free, some cost a little money and others cost a lot. We are going to concentrate on free promotion and the least costly methods. As you gain experience, you may want to explore some of the other methods available that cost a little more, but have a more far reaching effect.

Some of the most common methods of free promotion are by using email signatures, forum signatures, article marketing, using free blogs, free website builders or page builders, social networking sites, social bookmarking and free classifieds. When using any of these methods, make sure you read the terms of service, especially in forums and on free classified sites. Some of them don’t allow affiliate links – a link to a product you promote but don’t own – and you will risk getting yourself banned if you don’t follow their terms. Your plea of “I didn’t know” will almost always fall on deaf ears, especially with some of the larger sites.

The next step up from the free methods is to build your own website or blog and use the free methods listed above to promote your website. There are huge benefits to this. The first and perhaps most important is that you own and control the content.

Other options are to use PPC or pay-per-click advertising. PPC ads are the ones you see highlighted at the top of a search engine results page or down the right hand side. You also see them on almost every website you visit these days. I don’t recommend this method for beginners as it can be very costly with minimal results until you have a good idea of what you are doing.