Ask The Electron Plumber begins!
James Taylor writes:
Hi, what other wayes(sic) are there to advertise on the internet without putting together a full blown web site via a web hoster?
Well James, first off, I’ve always been a big fan of your music. Seriously though, it really depends on what you are trying to advertise and why and how long you expect the product or service you are advertising to last.
If you just want to advertise another persons product as a pure affiliate, there are tons of ways you can advertise.
Google Adwords, Yahoo Advertising Center, Bing, Adsonar, Chitika and many others allow you to place advertising for whatever you want. Most of them though, have some protections against direct affiliate marketing without an intervening website. For example, if you try to make Adwords ads directly to Clickbank offer pages, you will likely end up with a quality score of 1 and effectively be shut off.
Any such direct advertising can make you some money, but it’s a short term proposition. Every dollar you spend on advertising has to return sales right away or you’ll be throwing away your money.
You can also go with all the “free” web page creations out there. WordPress.com, Blogger, Squidoo, Hubpages and many others let you put up a webpage very quickly. However they have the same general problem, certain type of content (especially affiliate stuff) will get you banned and your page shut down. Also, you have less control over your pages and long term your stuff doesn’t belong to you and can never be resold to someone else. Free isn’t always free. Check out my article on why free websites are a waste of time and money.
By advertising your own website linking to an affiliate program, every dollar you spend on advertising also has a chance of getting you a repeat visitor and a better long term return on investment. Not to mention how links back to your site drive search engine traffic in the long term.
It may seem daunting, but putting together a hosted WordPress website doesn’t take major computer skills, costs less than $10 a month to host. It’s really not hard at all. Sign up for Godaddy or Hostgator, use their automated install to put WordPress on there, type in some stuff, and away you go.
If there is enough call for it, I’ll put together a complete beginner step by step tutorial to setting up your own WordPress website with one of the big hosting vendors. Anyone interested? Throw a comment below if you are and I’ll get it started.
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