Internet Advertising for Pennies

Don't pay through the nose for banner ads? Many cheap and successful ways to advertise online.

(Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, October, 1998)

Some companies are paying tens of thousands of dollars a month to advertise on the Internet. Here are two better strategies.

The first was suggested by David Beroff , writing in the Internet Advertising Discussion List a few months back:

1) Find sites whose contact is a very good fit for your offer but that currently have NO ads, and not even a rate card—in other words, sites that haven't thought about taking ads so far
2) Approach the site owner and see if they'd like a bit of free money for running your ad
3) Offer a nominal amount of money (say, $20) to link to your banner
4) Keep your banner on your site, and track the results
5) If the results are good, repeat—and if the site owner wants more money, give it: it's still a bargain!

Using this approach, he paid about $300 to get 300,000 targeted impressions per month, versus about $10,000 through more conventional channels. A man after my own heart!

Second, for those who are daunted by the technological issues involving banners—or who just find them obtrusive and don't want to inflict them on others: a low-tech, low-budget solution is to advertise in e-mail publications (such as this and thousands of others). Ads for e-mail newsletters are text only, and thus a cinch to set up. Many have absurdly low points of entry, yet deliver a far more targeted and eager audience than the average web site. Too, if the publication is archived, your ad goes permanently on the Web at no extra charge (and can be found by search engine spiders, etc.)

NOTE: All five of our e-mail and Web publications here at http://www.frugalfun.com accept advertising.

You'll find more on ad bargains in my book, Marketing Without Megabucks: How to Sell Anything on a Shoestring. Preview it at http://www.frugalfun.com/mwmtoc.html. It's 384 pages of useful information to save you money on every imaginable marketing method. To order, phone: 877-FRUGALFUN in the US, 413-586-2388 elsewhere; http://www.frugalfun.com, or by fax at 617-249-0153.

Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.


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