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It's not hard to feel with all the hype around that you may be missing out on increasing your market share by not using the Internet as a marketing channel. The Internet can be a very effective way of promoting your business but at the same time it can also be very expensive.

In part one of this article feature I explained in detail one out of the two most effective ways to promote your web site for free on the Internet. In this article I will explain the second most effective way for promoting your web site which is to submit articles to web

sites around your area of expertise. I will also cover a new service that maybe of interest to you for promoting your web site.

Submit articles around your area of expertise
Another effective way of promoting your business without the hard sell is to write articles that have topics of interest and then submit them to web sites that focus or include that topic in their content.

In our example from part 1 of our article feature we located http://www.dogchat.co.nz/ during the research stage. Looking at the web site again we can see that they don't provide a section where articles can be displayed. That's no big deal because they may not have thought about it yet so now it's your chance to highlight to them the benefits of having topical articles on their web site.

Proving articles is a win/win/win situation. The web site profits because articles add value to their web site. The more relevant content the more value the web site visitor places on the web site and the longer they stay. The author of the article wins because their experience and knowledge is there for all to see. People can read the article without feeling pressured by the hard sell. The reader wins because they get relevant content that will help them learn more about their topic of interest.

If you would like another example just think about this article! I spent my time sharing my knowledge and experience with you. I submitted the article for free to HomebizBuzz and they published it on their web site and now you are reading it! You may benefit from this article if you are interested in free promotion of your business on the Internet. HomebizBuzz benefits because they have more content and I benefit because someone might want to contact me for further discussion.

Free Advertising Networks
A new development within the online advertising sector is geo (based on a local like a country) or industry based advertising networks. How these networks normally work is web site owners join an advertising network that suits their business. They create an ad for their business and release the ad into the advertising network. In return every web site owner within the network displays 2 or 3 ads from other network participants on their own web site. The networks are normally free to join because the system works by using every participant's web site traffic as a channel for displaying the ads.

An example of this great concept is the Ad Partner Network (see below) which is a New Zealand geo based advertising network. What I mean by geo is that only New Zealand owned companies can join the network. The service is free and uses text based ads instead of banner ads.