How to promote yourself without intruding
by Lynda
Archard
©: June 10th
2000
I know there is a lot of advice on how to do this already but there are some ways that you might not have considered yet. First you must ask yourself if you are prepared. I say this because I once offered free trial psychic readings; the idea was to promote myself while giving a taster before a paid reading. Nearly everyone that applied lived too far across the world to come for a reading and I ended up sitting here nearly all day answering questions. I had 80 emails per day until I changed my ISP and my email address!
If you are promoting a business that you can only do locally to where you live then you should only advertise on a local database. Yahoo and Excite both have separate search engines for the country that you live in. Aol and other on-line services have sections for some individual towns that might be more useful. If your service is worldwide then the Internet is an ideal selling machine.
Personally I don't know of anything more irritating than the hard sell approach and advise that your advertising should be done in a subtle way. Your links or name should be everywhere that it can be seen easily without being intrusive.
Try a search engine for topics that suit your interests and join any groups or email lists that you like the sound of. You could add a link to your own site at the bottom of each email and hope that someone will be curious enough to click it.
Better still, and if you have time and a good working knowledge of your topic, go to www.egroups.com and start your own newsletter. I run a UK writers newsletter covering markets and short how-to articles. I have then rewritten some of my articles for a longer article and placed it here on my website. A link is provided on the next newsletter for those who want to know more. The newsletter is free but I get paid if an editor wants to put the article on their pages too.
To promote my articles today I typed 'writers notice-boards' into a search engine. The next step was to trawl through the most suitable that offered free links to suitable URL's. I found that sites such as "Painted Rock.com" have notice boards specifically for the promotion of authors' works and they invite you to promote your site for free.
When you find the sites that relate to what you are promoting please keep it simple. I just left a message entitled. 'Do you write for nothing but enjoyment?' and in the message box I added, 'before you do anything read this article entitled 'A writers right' or go to other articles, many of which are writing related and added the URL for my website.
To add your website to search engines use the links below to submit free. First click make sure you have meta tags at the start of your HTML code of every page that you submit. You can either click 'View' then 'Source code' to see mine, copy and paste then change the words for my site to words that suit yours. Most of which should be on the page so that search engines can match it easily. This stops fraud after several web designers have been taken to court for using famous trade names to boost ratings. You can also find the codes on a website that provides coding from my 'Computers' page.
You might want to check how many hits you get by going to Extreme tracking and get a link for your site.
You can also apply for web site awards if you have your own website, which will also link your page to the person or company that awards it to you. If you have created your own website using original graphics and articles then you can apply for my web design award at my award page. Or contact me for a reasonable quote to design and promote a website for you using the link below.
Notice that I started with a question. Everyone will have an answer and they are now free to choose if they want to know mine. Go and try it, or email a comment and tell me if this information is useful to you.
Thinking of getting a website of your own? For expert writing, web design and exclusive graphics designed by Lynda Archard click the banner above to email your requirements for a reasonable quote.
To get a live telephone psychic reading and see how your writing career is progressing, help or advice, now from anywhere in the world please click the link below. You get 4 minutes free then you will need to add to your account with a valid credit card. You will also be asked to rate the advice given:
If this article has been useful to you please subscribe to my email group for new writers and those wanting to write for UK markets
© Lynda Archard
