Value of Exchange: Trading with Content Providers

Trade audiences with your colleagues to get targeted, quality exposure.

(Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, December, 1997)

Recently, Jeffrey Lant ran the following blurb for me:

<<< Publisher's Choice: Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips--sign up for FREE subscription (and read back issues) at (please make sure to type your e-address accurately!). Author of the classic Marketing Without Megabucks: How to Sell Anything on a Shoestring (he interviewed me for that book), Shel is an expert on marketing cheaply but effectively, as well as the world's leading authority on Frugal Fun, the subject of his latest book, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty with a Peasant's Pocketbook. His Web site of over 130 pages cost him no money to set up. Contact him at < email > >>>

Over 20 of you joined this list because of that blurb.

Those of you who know Jeffrey — one of the smartest and most relentless marketers in America, author of several excellent books and a millionaire many times over — know he doesn't act out of altruism. Everything he does is done out of self-interest.

He did it because I agreed to run *this* blurb in return:

<<< Publisher's Choice. If you're not familiar with Dr. Jeffrey Lant, you should be. drjlant@worldprofit.com to get a FREE subscription to his "Marketing Hot Tips" Newsletter, packed w/ info on how to build a more profitable business now, on and off the Web. Check out his 10 Malls at http://www.worldprofit.com and see why they're visited by over 5 MILLION people yearly. This is one guy it really pays to keep up with! >>>

So now, I have not only run it, but am actually building this tipsheet issue around this exchange. In effect, we are getting FREE advertising to each other's lists. And since we both write about cost-effective marketing, this is a very good fit.

Others among you came to my Web site after reading an article of mine, in All About Business, Marketing Tip of the Day, Electronic Money Tree, or a number of other publications. And others of you know me from my frequent contributions to various on-line mailing lists. I didn't get paid for any of these — but all of them ran with contact information. I have a whole bunch of articles that I let editors use for free, on a non-exclusive basis, in return for letting people know how they can find out about my books and services. Many of these articles either were taken directly from my book, Marketing Without Megabucks, or were written originally for this tipsheet. (If I'm writing a new original article for a publication, I expect to get paid for it.)

And in the future, when you start to see sponsorship ads on this tipsheet, you'll know that some of them are free exchanges of mutual benefit.

Is this a fabulous way to grow a business? You bet!

I'm willing to bet that at least 3/4 of you subscribed to this tipsheet after reading something of mine in some publication or a blurb exchanged with another publisher; only about 1/4 of you came to my site through a search engine or ordinary cross-link.

Oh, and by the way — I've arranged to get you some of Jeffrey's densely packed marketing books at a significant discount. If you're interested, please send me private email to shel@frugalfun.com with the subject line, "Lant's Books". Please DON'T hit reply, as I have now contracted out the management of this mailing list to oaknetpub.com, and I won't even receive your mail.

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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