Before you begin, you'll need
to determine what approach you're going to take for this. There
are two ways to generate traffic through Yahoo Groups: 1) by
submitting your ad to groups that are specifically looking for
ADS; or 2) by providing a free service, such as a business advice
article, a free ebook, or anything else you can think of that
might help someone in you shoes - and then adding your resource
box at the bottom, giving a link to your website or product. I
personally would suggest doing both if you want to get the best
results. There aren't that many groups that allow shameless
promotions - and the ones that do are generally saturated with
them.
Your next step is to get a text-editor/writing
program that allows you to format your documents by
characters-per-line (I would suggest getting the free trial
version of textpad- http://www.textpad.com).
Once you have
this text-editor setup, type or copy-and- paste your ad, article,
or whatever else you're going to use into the text-editor and then
format it for 55 characters-per-line (most submission forms
require you to use 55-60 characters-per-line; if you do not,
they'll reject your submission out-right).
Once you have
done this, you'll want to sign up for a Yahoo email account if you
do not have one already. This is free and you can do it easily by
going to Yahoo.com and filling in your information. 6000 Yahoo Groups
Next you'll want to head to
http://groups.yahoo.com , where you'll find a directory of Yahoo
Groups. You will want to find groups that coincide with whatever
product or service you are selling. For instance, I sell marketing
and business-building tools. When I go to Yahoo Groups, I go to
Business & Finance and then to Marketing.
You should
have a pretty good selection for whatever you plan to market.
There are hundreds of groups and--as I mentioned earlier--some of
them have over 10,000 members currently. Sign up for as many of
these groups as possible.
Just click on the group. Click
to sign up - and then fill in your information. Make sure you have
all of the boxes filled in and then submit the form. For most of
the groups, you will receive an email in your inbox immediately.
Others will take a few days.
Your next step is to read all
of the new emails in your inbox. Check out the rules list for all
of the new groups you just signed up for. Make sure your article,
service, or whatever you're posting conforms to all of the rules.
Now go back to your groups. You should see a list of groups you're
in with "Post" next to the group name. Begin posting it to each
individual group, making sure you follow the rules. Also make sure
it includes your resource box.
Now you wait. The submission
process can take a while. Most posts have to be manually reviewed
by group editors/moderators, while others will go up immediately.
Sometimes you'll receive a letter from the editor, saying whether
it was posted or rejected and sometimes you wont. Once you start
receving the submission responses, that means people can now read
your article or ad.
Congratulations - you just advertised
to an ENORMOUS group of targeted potential leads for no cost
whatsoever.
Now sit back, relax, and watch the hits
accumulate on your website. 6000 Yahoo Groups
