how do you advertise a business with no advertising budget?

I draw portraits of people and pets, and take orders through my website or email. I have tried ideas like fliers, google adwords, and eBay. I am open to as many suggestions as possible. My goal is to get a steady flow on the average of 3 orders per day.

tapnet12007-12-07T19:31:25Z

Favorite Answer

Start an affiliate program. Get affiliates to sign up and send traffic to your website. Offer them a % of flat rate for every sale they generate.

Eventually if you get busy enough, you hire someone else to do the portraits and you can just focus on counting the money.

show2016-09-05T15:30:39Z

Find one purchaser and lead them to very completely happy. Then ask them in the event that they might endorse one character that may use your carrier. See in the event that they could name forward for you and introduce your carrier to them. Then comply with-up with this new prospect- repeat the identical degree of carrier. Send a handwritten thanks be aware, with a stamp and handwritten cope with on your first purchaser. It takes a even as- however networking, repeat buyers and purchaser referrals are your great and least high priced method of constructing your enterprise. When you might have base of buyers and recognise who buys your carrier, then you'll department out and spot what's going to paintings. Maybe flyers on the YMCA or a poster on the neighborhood grocery retailer. It relatively relies on in which those buyers re coming from. Look at zip codes, neighborhoods, the way you bought referrals- any piece of knowledge will let you know who your marketplace is. Right now you are taking pictures ants with an elephant gun along with your flyer process. Read "Guerrilla Marketing" through J. Levinson. Not all of his suggestions will paintings- however there's a kernel of knowledge that you'll use from each and every illustration.

Anonymous2007-12-10T02:43:48Z

The following article will prove helpful to you in streamlining your SEO metatags in order to attract more Net traffic by higher search engine placement.

The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is
to first set up a website and publish its domain name
on major search directories such as Google.com,
Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?...... and
MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these
search directories to provide them with goods and
services. In a sense, these search directories are a
very large Internet Yellow Pages.

Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage
fail to contain "generic" keywords, then anyone using
such "generic" queries will not be able to discover
your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website,
in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable.

You may want to consider some simple algorithms which,
when observed and committed in designing of a website
with placement of various critical metatags that can
surely achieve a high search engine presence and
increase Internet traffic to your website. These
metatag strategies work well with published webpages
at Google and Yahoo.

Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based
website, make sure to fill-in the property entries
such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing
to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can
be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the
Internet audience and their incoming setup. For
example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages
take too long to load up and therefore analog users
will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the
Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL
lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So
before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple
question, "Who's my end user - is he on dialup or
DSL?" And if you had to choose between these two users
for maximum marketability, then select analog users
since 80% of most resident users are still analog
Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages
is best for them.

A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text,
is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit
the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a
graphic, they are not indexable by search robots.

Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots
are unable to properly classify textual material.

Placement of Metatags:

A ranking or search order does take place with Google
and Yahoo and it begins with the "Title" metag which
should consist of no more than 60 characters separated
by commas. The "Title" should describe in generic terms, the goods and services, followed by a location from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state. The placement of a domain name which is not generic within the "Title" is not appropriate, unless your
domain name is a major recognizable brand name.

The second metatag is the "Description" which is
usually up to 41 words to form a complete paragraph which
best describes one's goods and services. It is not merely a list.

And the very last category - "Keywords" are also
somewhat limited to 15 words which can be plural
and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries
which could be mistaken as "spamdexed entries" which
is defined as the loading, and submission of
repetitive words into a particular metatag category.
"Spamdexing" when discovered on a webpage and reported
to Google's spamreport.com can result in the
elimination of your website from their search
directory.

Here's an example of a very highly-placed website on
Google.com: Begin with the very "generic" search query
"sandwiches downtown los angeles," taking note to not
abbreviate Los Angeles to "LA" and of course, leave
out the parentheses ("). It will bring up some 2.4
million+ search results. Check out where "Nazos.net"
is ranked. It's on the FIRST FRONT PAGE [ranked #5]!
Again, Nazos.net's high web presence was achieved by
proper web design and placement of relevant metatags
according to Google's publication guidelines.

Good luck!

Angie2007-12-07T20:32:51Z

WWW.CRAIGSLIST.COM

This is a *free* website!! There is one for every major town in the USA and several foreign countries - people can list things to buy and things they want, and there is a whole section for services offered - I'd list that service in " and also in "household" or "creative." Stay away from the "sm biz. ads" that seems to be all the work at home scams.

Good luck! Your business sounds cool!

Anonymous2007-12-07T19:50:35Z

If you have a bit of time to spare, try this one: http://www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?711006
It's totally free, and you can target your prospects.

After that, get yourself a lense on Squidoo at: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/aussiegold
Also you could try FaceBook and MySpace. Design your profile around your product, and make it interesting and informative. Do it right and the traffic will come. Good luck!

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