Debating the merits and challenges of online advertising.
Since 1997 I've had an Internet presence of some sort that required online advertising. An online children's clothing store, columnist for several different online magazines, blogging my life stories, and now running my own copywriting business have all required some form of marketing or advertising to gain readers, clients or customers.
I'll admit though: ten years ago online advertising was a lot easier than it is now. Then, all I had to do was carefully target my content, then submit my pages to the search engines and voila! I had 60,000 unique visitors a month. Now, I can spend hours and hours learning search engine algorithms or tweaking keyphrases and still have little to show for it.
As one of my new years resolutions, I've decided that I need to target my online advertising methods more to gain better results for my time. This means learning more about what works, removing the things that don't, and spending as little as I can financially on getting there, while still understanding I'll have to pay something or other to get results (time, money, effort...).
I've decided my first try at free online advertising will be Craigslist, using the ideas suggested in an article by Entrepreneur Magazine writer Shannon Lewis (article reproduced in the Online Advertising discussion group). I'll post soon and let you know just how well Craigslist ads work for the small business owner.
