Being the newbie that I am

[I.Q. bandit]

It seems like I'm surrounded by people who have been promoting websites for years in this forum. I myself have been involved with this website stuff for about 1 1/2 months. So I guess I'm going to be the guy with all the questions, and no answers. :p What is the most effective way of promoting in everyones opinion?

Also I've been wanting to make fliers to promote some of my "get-paid" programs around my town. I was wondering if there was a nifty program that makes fliers? "I.Q. bandit is too lazy to make is own"

[ihelpyou]

Well, I am only into the search engines.. obviously. This is why I recruited others here to handle all the other promotion stuff including Junior, WebWitch, Blue, Mel, Hope, and who else??

I think a few of them will have some good answers for you.

[Blue]

I can only give my personal opinion on the promotion stuff but I think that most would agree that the most effective way would be to hire a professional: an SEO in conjunction with a copywriter and maybe a marketing specialist would seem to me to be ideal (though most likely, rather costly).

One other method I feel is worth the money it would cost is the old tried and true traditional (read: non-Internet) printed medium ~ the good 'ole Yellow Pages. Obviously, both of these would entail spending money, so if that's not an option, one other method which you've already touched upon, can be a very cost effective solution: Flyers! And one of my favorites, that has gotten me a lot of good results is 3x5 printed postcards (in bright colors & printed on both sides). You don't even have to mail them. Just find the local business centers and hand deliver them straight to their mail slots. These work very well in conjunction with special promotions, especially if you advertise them as being "local promotion only" or "special introductory offer" or "limited time offer".

I know that these forums are geared towards SEO and ONline promotion so I'll defer to those more qualified than me at this point.

Oh, and as to the nifty programs.....MS Publisher can create both flyers and 3x5 postcards, or even MS Word or MS Wordpad. There's also Adobe Illustrator. I think any desktop publishing program would do the job. Here's a few links:

DTP solutions:
click here (http://desktoppublishing.com/layoutappsinexp.html)
zdnet DTP page (http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/search.html)
CNET DTP page (http://shopper.cnet.com/shopping/0-4773327-301-0-0.html?tag=st.sh.4773325-301-0.lst.list_4773327)

There's many other sites to search so I'm sure you'll find something, or someone here will know just the program you're looking for.

[I.Q. bandit]

Alright man good shot! That's what I've been looking for. Thanks also for the suggestions on how I should present them. ex."limited time offer", "special introductory offer"

[Mel]

Hi IQ Bandit:

Lets get some terminology that we can agree on. "Internet marketing" is a term I use to cover all aspects of promoting a website. Included in that topic is the very big one of SEO, on which you'll find a lot of info on this forum, so I'll bypass that one for now.

A recent survey indicates that website promoters feel the most effective ways of marketing a site are:

SEO.
Opt-in email campaigns
Traditional promotion such as Newspaper, TV, Radio, Flyers, Yellow pages etc

The big difference here is what your target market is. Since the Web can reach worldwide the first two can handle vast areas at a relatively modest cost, but traditional advertising tends to be limited more by local area and your budget.

If you are say in a business that can only cater to a limited region (say a restaurant ) then you only need your traditional advertising to cover that region which has customers you can service, and your website will help bring in those customers also.

By contrast if you are selling something such as downloadable software, then you can sell to the entire world if you can take payment online, and traditional advertising would not likely be very cost effective.

So what you are selling and where you are selling it will have a big impact on which methods you use.

[I.Q. bandit]

Well I plan on tearing down my current site. Freerupees. :)
It was ok for my first attempt at a webpage, but I need to add MUCH more content as I think junior mentioned to me some time ago.

Hopefully my target market will be everyone. I plan on selling free stuff :D



I was wondering. Would having a translator on your site increase the probability that non-english speaking people will visit it too?

I'm also curious as to what percentage of the world speakays the engwish. If anyone knows.

[ihelpyou]

I translation is pretty much useless unless you spend LOTS of monies for a professional to do it by hand.

The automated ones out there do NOT translate properly.

Many in other countries know English very well. I would not worry about it much.

[Mel]

Hi I.Q. Bandit

As an overseas webmaster I think I can assure you that much if not most of the world surfers are competent in English.

There are a few areas where much of the surfing is done in othere languages such as:
France
Germany
Scandanavia
China

But even then most of them also understand English. The problem is that they may be using search terms in their own language and so are not finding sites that use English keywords.

A trick for helping to solve this problem is to use the AV translator and translate your keyphrases into whatever languages you wish, then use some of these foreign language keywords in that otherwise useless keywords metatags, which many engines do index.

[I.Q. bandit]

lol yeah I tend to forget that china holds 1/6 of the world's population. Might be more now. :confused:



Mel says-------A trick for helping to solve this problem is to use the AV translator and translate your keyphrases into whatever languages you wish, then use some of these foreign language keywords in that otherwise useless keywords metatags, which many engines do index.------

Great information Mel! I'm unsure of this though. When people translate sites maually they make 2 duplicate websites that are identical only differing with the languages?


I might have to consider brushing up on my French! :D

[ihelpyou]

I think Mel was referring to using the translation service to just find your keyword phrases. Not to actually use it to translate your site.

[I.Q. bandit]

Yeah I understood what he was saying Doug. I was asking if having 2 identical sites in different languages is how people have multi-lang websites.

[Mel]

There are several sites here in the Far East which have done just that - i.e. build seperate websites in a different languages.
For examples look at the large computer and component manufacturers in Taiwan. Most have both English and Chinese sites.