How to Use Free Adveritsing to Increase Sales in Your Direct Sales Business

While paid advertising can and does work, it’s also possible to use many forms of free advertising to increase sales.

Here is a list of many free advertising ideas:

1. Offer a contest. Whenever I offer a no purchase required contest, I see hundreds of additional hits to my website. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that not all traffic received in this manner is targeted traffic; however for the price of one product as my prize, I do indeed find some new customers. I usually give away a scrapbook kit as my prize. The cost to me is about $25. If I can get just 5 new customers from this contest I’m a very happy camper.

2. Write an ebook and give it away. If you write an ebook not only can you give it away to those who visit your site, but if the book is of value, meaning it contains great information you will get others who also want to give away your ebook.

3. Participate on message boards. I visit and participate in about 8 communities daily. I then have another dozen or so communities that I visit on a weekly basis. Most communities offer an assortment of message boards. One of my favorite boards is a current events board. I was so active on that board, I soon became a moderator. If a participant in this community wants what I sell, who do you think they will buy from?

4. Interview someone in your field. If you interview someone in your field, you’ll have the opportunity to advertise using their name and they in return will be sending folks to your site to read the interview. Very recently, I read two interviews that Chris Knight from ezinearticles.com wrote about. These interviews allowed Chris to promote the sites of the folks that interviewed him and it also allowed the two interviewers to promote Chris’s site. I personally visited two sites I would not have visited if Chris had not promoted them.

5. Create a newsletter. I subscribe to a few really wonderful newsletters. The folks who publish these newsletters have their own sites, and are selling something. Every week, or every month, by offering quality content, these newsletter owners generate traffic to their website. The folks who subscribe are interested in what is being sold, or they would not have opted in to receive this newsletter. Provide them with great content and they’ll stay subscribed. How wonderful to have several hundred or several thousand people asking to read your newsletter and every one of them has an interest in what you sell.

Try a few of these forms of free advertising and watch both your web hits and your sales go up.

About the author:
Audrey Okaneko has been in business since 1983. She can be reached at audreyoka@cox.net or visited at http://www.scrapping-made-simple.com