Monday, December 1, 2008

The Advantages Of Free Vs Paid Online Advertising

By Kylon Trower

The fact that you are wondering which type of advertising is better leads me to believe that you understand marketing is clearly the life blood of your online business. The large majority of your time should be spent advertising and promoting in some form or another. Let's talk about which is better between paid vs free marketing methods.

Before we move forward and for the record, I don't believe free advertising exists. There is always a cost associated with advertising. It will either be cold hard cash paid upfront or your time. Neither of these is free and the reality is you need to determine what price are you willing to pay.

Now that you understand that there is no free lunch you must make careful decisions as to how you will either spend you time or your money. The first question is how much is your time worth. The next question is how comfortable are you with doing certain things on your own.

There are upsides and downsides to any form of advertising that you do which is why your main focus should be on effectiveness. By this I mean it must work and produce the desired result. Advertising for advertising sake is a recipe for disaster and will leave you burned out and broke.

The advantages of manual (free) advertising based on my experience is it allows you to test your marketing strategies without losing your shirt. There are also many free advertising sources that provide a long term effect like article and video marketing. When considering free methods I would strongly recommend opportunities that are leveraged and provide long term benefits like viral or search engine marketing.

When it comes to paid advertising you can definitely benefit there as well. The ability to consult with marketing companies that will run your campaigns will give you a broader view of the marketplace based on their experience. It also saves you a good amount of time which allows you to reap returns in other areas of your business too.

That brings me to my last point which is tracking. Regardless of the type of advertising you are doing, make sure you are using some type of tracking system to measure your results. Without tracking it is almost impossible to know what's working and what's not in your ad campaigns. You could end up spending good money on bad ads and not spending enough on your good ads.

At the end of the day you must determine which method (paid or free) is right for you. I recommend trying out a few types of both advertising methods and master them before moving on. Spreading yourself too thin will ultimately have an impact on your results as well. Find an advertising method you feel comfortable pursuing and become very proficient is the best way to move forward.

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