You may not have realized this, but there are truly only three types of online promotion. Now you are probably saying to yourself that this can�t be possible, but in general it is true.
Before I go any further let me explain:
The 3 types of online promotions I am talking about are Junk, Active, and Passive
JUNK PROMOTIONS ARE MONEY GRABBERS
Junk promotions are those types that appear to work, but work so well that it almost seems too good to be true- AND IT IS
For example, a thousand of targeted opt-in mailing list clients that are guaranteed spam free. WOW! A thousand people interested in what you have (something fishy). The truth is the people are only interested in promoting their product. They signed up for the same reason you did. They wanted on this opt in list in order to receive the same deal you did- A thousand targeted opt-in emails. The trouble with this is the people you are mailing your information to are probably not even opening your emails. They only signed up to receive them in the first place because they believed that it would allow them to promote their business. So you see those thousand emails are useless.
Another example of this is the Free For All Pages (FFA) which are used when someone claims to be submitting your links to tens of thousands of search engine. This is simply untrue. If you check the Open Directory website they have only included 1705 search engines and directories in their database. The search engines allowed in this database have their links human tested by hand for things such as honesty used in site description. Many other databases have fewer ten 1705 search engines registered because a lot them are just useless (I am sure you have come across a few of those). In reality when you submit your URL to an FFA your link will get posted but the trick is that FFA pages can only post 100 or 1000 links on the page at any one time. This means if only 15000 people submit their link to an FFA page at any one time your link will probably last any where from 10 minutes to a couple of hours. Another downfall to FFA pages is that not many people use them to look for information and why would they when they can go to google or even yahoo. Now you see why the chances of your page receiving any real viewers is practically nil.
ACTIVE PROMOTIONS
Active promotions unlike junk promotions are an effective way to promote your online site. They also require quite a bit of work and knowledge. Active promotions require you to go out on a daily or weekly basis and advertise your service. If you do not place your advertisements then you will not sell your service- Simple as That. Active promotions include such things as Pay-Per-Click search engines, Direct Email, Classified Ads, Site Sponsorship, and Banner Ads. These are good methods of promotion and work very well for some and not so well for others.
PASSIVE PROMOTION
Passive promotions are the ones that keep providing results over and over again. The investment was the initial amount of work required to produce the item. The return on a passive promotion far outweighs the initial investment. Some examples of Passive Promotions are E-books, Articles, and Testimonials for others. As a matter of fact this article that I have written write here is an example of passive promotion. I have offered you this information to promote my business. In ten years from now it may still be worth the investment of today.
David McAnulty
http://www.triplethought.com