With the Holiday Season running full speed ahead, I’ve noticed a rise in people looking for design work so they can either revamp their sites for the new year, or give the gift of a new template for their friends blog. Either way I’ve been pretty busy but I know for sure that this isn’t going to last so I’ve been looking into a few different options to get my name out there a bit more. I’ve always taken the free advertising route, I’ve also spent quite a bit of money advertising with different outside companies as well. And personal advertising never really hurt anyone either. I’m starting to rebuild a database of people on one of my myspace accounts so I can get this domain out there again. Thanks to Google I’m down to a PR3 and that upsets me considering how much work I’ve put into this domain over the years. Either way I still have the business I’ve always wanted, I just need a bit more of it in order to buy that house of my dreams, you know?
So as usual I’ve been poking around some new and interesting ideas. The one that stood out in my mind (almost instantly) was junk mail. Millions of people get little notes and postcards in their snail mail and believe it or not, many people do actually READ the mail. Naturally the bulk of them throw things away before or even after reading it, but for those who did read it and are actually pretty interested, they’ll take it to the next step – this would mean typing in the URL or calling the phone number listed under the contact section in order to request more information.
I always wondered where to go with something like this. There has to be a huge jump in sales when you take this route, so I’ve gone ahead and began looking into consumer mailing lists. There are a few companies out there but based on statistics alone I’m considering WholeSaleLists because they seem to have their act together. They’ve been in business for over 10 years and while that may not seem like much to many people when it comes to the Internet world that means you’ve been around for quite some time. I’m just unsure of whether or not they’re only snail-mail based, or if they have any email marketing strategies. I’m sure I’ll figure it out at some point. I just wonder how much they charge.