Tips for Promoting your Home Business Idea or Opportunity

From the beginning of commerce, businesses have been promoting the ideas and products of other businesses as a way to make their own business a successful one. For example, you may see that a tax consulting company may promote a particular tax lawyer in order to get more business while that tax lawyer will also promote that consulting company in his firm.

Everyone has heard of the term, barter system, and may have thought this system is outdated and not used anymore. However, with modern technology, the barter system is still alive. People still trade services and items rather than using money. The business of Internet marketing is proof that the barter system is still alive.

In the Internet Marketing world, we call this new form of the barter system, cross promoting. This system is in place to trade advertising space between websites on the Internet. Advertising companies in the past have charged top dollar for premium advertising space on the most prominent bill boards or radio stations with millions of listeners.

Now, with the availability of the Internet, instead of paying for advertising space in this way, you would place the ad for your own home based business idea or opportunity on another website while the other website places their ad on your website. Cross promoting can be done in many ways and can be a very cost effective way for you to advertise your Internet business.

Reciprocal linking is one major way that webmasters help each other to advertise their products, services and opportunities. Exchanging links with other similar websites as your own, is a very effective method, but you should be aware of who your direct competition is and avoid promoting products and services that are exactly the same as yours.

One of the best things about exchanging links, or ads, with other similar websites is that each website benefits from becoming more popular in the eyes of the search engines. Search engines look at the number of links into a website from other websites throughout the Internet and determines the importance of each website based on these factors. For example, if you are able to exchange links with another website that has a higher search engine ranking than your own, you will benefit greatly from the popularity of that website.

Based on this premise, reciprocal linking to a more popular site can not only help increase your advertising ability and website traffic, but will also increase the popularity of your own website by getting your website rated higher in search engine rankings.

Reciprocal linking leads into more opportunities to promote more of your ideas to your customers. When customers or prospects subscribe to your ezine, or newsletter, you can use this as an opportunity to cross promote your other ideas and opportunities.

Along the same lines as reciprocal linking, you can also exchange ads in your publication. You can do this by offering the opportunity to subscribe to another similar company's publication on the same page you advertise your own business opportunity.

The same as renting space on a prominent bill board, you can even exchange ad space in ezines, providing recommendations for those products, services, and opportunities of which you have agreements with other publishers to exchange. You may even want to exchange an entire column of ad space in each other's publication.

Another way to promote your idea or opportunity is by writing free articles that inform your customers or prospects with useful and accurate information. This can help you build a solid reputation for you and your Internet business. After a short while, readers will begin to know you as an expert on the subject you are writing about. When authors write articles, they use what is called a byline, or author's resource box, or bio box, to help promote their site. This is a way to use this modern form of the barter system by providing valuable content to the site that publishes the article and advertising your own opportunity at the same time. You can even use part of the space in your bio box to recommend another's product. The possibilities are endless.

Lastly, if you write an eBook or are thinking of writing one, launching a joint venture with another company could translate into increased profits for yourself and the person you are partnering with. Trading promotions through eBooks is another excellent way to expand the topic of your eBook and promote both your business and your partner's business. The information you include in your eBook will benefit both businesses and will still be helpful and informative to the reader.

Here's one example among many of using eBooks to exchange advertising with another online business. Suppose a site that is selling DVDs at wholesale prices is partnering with a site selling DVD players. These are two subjects that would interest the same reader and most likely guide the reader to both sites. This is beneficial to both of the partnering businesses by being able to provide the best information or service to the reader of the eBook.

When partnering with another site, you should consider that when you recommend another product, it is a direct reflection of you. You should choose your bartering partners very carefully and keep the customer in mind as well by making it easier able to link from one site to another as a way to shop around. Again, as with all forms of exchanging advertising space, it is generally not beneficial to recommend or link to sites that are in direct competition with each other. You should always search for and select only similar synergistic relationships with other businesses.
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Eugene Rivera is an internet marketing protégé. He is the webmaster of Secrets of Online Success. Learn about all the money making techniques to achieve success on the Internet. Click on our webpage at http://www.secretsofonlinesuccess.info