Fees for pay-per-click are normally well under one dollar. But these small fees quickly combine to represent a lot of money. This happens more rapidly when the keywords that are used are very popular and general and create higher than average false leads. This method is a gamble and like casino gambling it is very easy to eat up a large advertising budget.

Fortunately, contrary to popular belief AdWords is not the only means of advertising on the internet; as a matter of fact, it is not even the most commonly used technique. There are many ways with which to skin a cat, and the internet marketer intelligent enough to step beyond the boundaries of AdWords will quickly find their profits growing without the continual draining of their budget.

The simplest and least expensive method of advertising without AdWords is to utilize the powers of social networking through blogs and forums. Each of these is a community feature, which allows web surfers to come together to discuss topics that are of great interest to them, and the exposure is unbelievable.

By posting a blog to a topic related to their product and including a link to the website in question an advertiser can exponentially increase the number of viewers their site receives without having to pay a penny.

Advertising on some other businesses website is another great marketing method. The trick comes in choosing the site to advertise on. The most important thing is to analyze with care his desired audience and find the sites they visit the most.

There are three ways you can go about advertising on someone else’s site.

For an advertisement you can create a text or banner ad for the site then pay them to post the ad. Use caution though, this might not be better then the ppc method; except if they will charge a normal fee based on the amount of time your ad is displayed.

Good web content is the basis for the other two methods. In the one way a writer is paid to write articles full of information on a specified topic, that ties in to the advertisers website, to post on the advertisers site to raise his sites credibility with search engines and thereby increase his traffic.

Instead of charging a fee the savvy advertiser will create an article in this manner and approach the creator of said website, offering to allow them to absorb the article into their website in exchange for including their name and site information on the bottom. This is what is known as link building.

Actually, link building works best when the reader in reality finishes the article completely. They also have to enjoy the article enough to want to see if the author has anything else available. But with how limited the attention span of the majority of internet users, the likelihood is low.

Instead, the author can write an article which will have links to key information locations on their own website scattered throughout the article. If the reader comes to a point where they wish to explore an idea more thoroughly or they cannot grasp what is going on they can select the link and it will instantly transport them to the other site.

This is called hosted web content and the majority of sites charge some kind of fee in exchange for displaying your article because a visitor can be taken away from their site.

With strategic use of these ideas you can be profitable and limit your use of the, sometimes dangerous attractions of AdWords. You can walk away with pride and wallet undamaged.

Advertising is no longer such a powerful force in the contemporary marketplace. Consumers are more skeptical than ever of advertisers’ self-serving messages, and the sheer volume of advertising messages has resulted in a drastic decline in advertising’s effectiveness. We spend more and more on advertising, but get less and less return on that investment.

What is the alternative to advertising (and the basis of branding)? Publicity or PR. With publicity, you tell your story through third-party outlets, primarily the media. Rightly or wrongly, people believe what they read in newspapers and magazines, as well as what they hear on the radio, on TV, or from their neighbors. So PR is inherently more credible and persuasive than advertising. It’s also a whole lot cheaper!

But how exactly do you make your business memorable, and get the kind of publicity that will result in new business? Here are a dozen simple things you can try to create good word-of-mouth about your business and increase your profits:

1. Submit regular Press Releases to trade publications, the business section of local newspapers, online newswires, etc. to announce the launch or relocation of your business, new clients/projects, new hires, promotions, etc. (You’d be surprised how many people read these announcements!)

2. Pitch a pre-written feature story to local papers (emphasizing the uniqueness of your business model, your unique personal history, your involvement in the local community, or the uniqueness of a particular project). Also consider pitching story ideas to lifestyle magazines which target your ideal client’s demographic.

3. Offer to write a regular column for a local publication that features your professional expertise.

4. Develop an “elevator speech” explaining in a single sentence what makes your firm unique. Don’t be afraid to focus attention on a specific client or consumer; the narrower the focus of your brand, the more powerful it will become.

5. Write a quarterly email/print newsletter for your clients/potential clients with tips for effective use of your product or service.

6. Give a talk/seminar to your local Chamber of Commerce or other community group about issues relating to your area of expertise. (I recently gave a lunchtime talk about branding to the my local Chamber and made several great contacts.)

7. Become active not only in trade groups (which are not in fact the best place to find a new client), but also in more general networking organizations such as your Chamber of Commerce, City or County committees, neighborhood associations, etc., but only if you intend to be an active participant. Also do everything you can to get support from your existing social network. Everyone prefers to work with a person they know and trust.

8. Join a professional networking/referral group which meets weekly (such as BNI).

9. Use testimonials/success stories in all of your marketing materials.

10. Purchase an intriguing vanity license plate which alludes to your business.

11. Introduce yourself to administrators of potential referring organizations: i.e., people in allied fields who regularly come into contact with people who will need an architect. Finding a friend in one of these organizations may mean multiple referrals.

12. Troll for listservs, chat groups or other online communities where you can offer your services or simply hold forth as an authority on relevant issues.

Try these simple guerrilla marketing tricks, and the results will astound you!

There are several things that you can do to make your blog marketing a success, and we are going to cover some of them right here. The first thing that you should know is that you should have your blog URL pointing to your market. For example, if you are trying to promote and sell sunglasses from your blog, you want your URL to say sunglasses.YourBlogWebsite.com. Doing so will give you an extra advantage.

The next step would be to customize your blog. Rather than having the same old blog interface like everyone else has, make your unique and interesting to look at. This will also help anyone from getting your blog confused with others that look just like it. There are so many types of blog software on the market that having your own look should not be that difficult to accomplish.

Keyword research is another very important part of blog marketing. If you are not using the keywords that people search on, then chances are no one is going to find your blog. Have a variety of keywords in your blog as well. Not just the same one over and over. Not everyone just uses the term ’sunglasses’ when they are searching for shades to keep the sun out of their eyes. Keyword research is an important factor to remember.

Using SEO on your blog, which stands for search engine optimization is a great idea as well. SEO will help get your blog out there and read, and will also help you get a better ranking with Google. Being as high as you can be in the Google search engine results is something that you want.

Find other sites and blogs that are in the same market as yours, but not in direct competition with you to exchange links with. This will help you out a lot as well, especially if you can get some good exchanges with high authority sites. The higher the page rank of your link exchange, the better for your blog.

Many people do not realize this, but having a different title tag in the HTML code on each page makes a big difference. If you have given the first page on your blog the title of ’sunglasses’, you need to be sure that none of your other pages are named this. Doing so will make Google think that you are spamming that keyword, and that will result in them punishing your blog URL.

Once you have done your keyword research, you will want to write content based on the research you have done. Using one or two keywords, make entries into your blog using the keywords will make it easy for your blog to be indexed under those terms. That will also result in people searching on those particular terms able to find your blog.

Pinging your blog frequently is another good way to get your blog seen. Every time that you update it, use the ping tools to ping it. This will let all of the blog directories know that you have added something new to your blog. This also brings you in some more traffic.

Blog marketing is pretty much the same as website marketing. However, if you have never had a website, and are not familiar with marketing these great tips will help you get started. Be sure that you put new entries into your blog on a regular basis as well. This will help keep you up to date and current and also will keep your readers coming back for more.