Some people considering how to profit from selling information products online may be intimidated at the thought of spending hundreds, or even thousands of dollars on an advertising budget to garner high doses of traffic to their domain.
But selling information products doesn't mean you have to spend a penny on promotions, if you don't want to. There are four fast and easy ways to market your wares on the 'net for absolutely nothing.
Traditionally, in the offline world, whenever a company or business needs to get the word out about their product launch, they use a press release to distribute to the media. You can do the same thing for your information product by going to a site like http://www.free-press-release.com/, where you can submit free press releases that online media outlets will be able to view and publish.
Make sure that your press release is newsworthy and not similar to your online hyped-up sales copy. You can get more traffic delivered to your information product site by genuinely conveying the benefits of the item without it sounding like it was written by a used car salesman.
Another free option for you traffic needs is to utilize the article directories on the 'net. There are two big ones: www.EzineArticles.com and www.GoArticles.com and both allow you to submit free articles that other site owners and publishers can pick up and use as their own. The only catch is, they have to keep your hyperlinks and Bio Box intact, so your readers can click through and land on your information product pages.
One of the best ways to leverage the power of the World Wide Web is to immerse yourself in what web 2.0 is all about - social networking. You can participate in online forums and groups and with every post you make, drive customers to your site using a hyperlink in your signature file.
You can even cloak your links to see which forums are generating more visitors to your domain and even which threads within each forum got a better response! Cloaking software is generally inexpensive but can help you profit from your information products because it eliminates the guesswork.
A powerful method to get free traffic to your information product is by creating a viral freebie that others can pass along over the 'net. You can write a short five-page report for your niche, fill it with hyperlinks back to your information product site, and set it loose with free distribution rights to it. Although you're giving something away for nothing, chances are you'll see many visitors flooding to your site if your freebie is able to piqué their curiosity.