When someone offers you free web space to promote your business – how do you react? Do you say “Yippee” – another bit of free advertising? Or do you go pale and wobbly at the thought of yet another series of pages to maintain and keep up to date?
On the other hand you may think – what’s the catch? Or – it can’t be wurf nuffink if it’s fa nuffink – cun it?
There may be many reasons why someone offers free webspace and of course there are various forms of free space. Some publishers just want content on their site for which they don’t pay a penny – hmmm – questionable motives perhaps. Some just want to use you, your name, your brand and your reputation to get their site attention to the market they want to target for themselves. Some of course offer free web space to get you on the hook before they reel you in for the really expensive listings. Hmmm – clever tactics – may be!
However many of us are getting wise to these ploys and quite frankly free space is not necessarily worth the non-existent paper it is written on. But what if there are worth while sites out there that could do you good whilst doing them good? How do we recognise them? What do we want to see to prove that they are worth spending time organising relevant content?
From my point of view – I am one of those offering free webspace – but for a very specific reason.My site is a niche market site and I want to look after my members. I want to give them value for money by having access to a variety of experts who are going to help them succeed in business. In time I may well change this but for the next year or so – but for the moment good contacts on my site is a far more important concern to me than generating loads of cash for one off advertising fees that may never be repeated.
Perhaps my package is not much different to what you might find elsewhere but perhaps you can tell me how you would respond.
Essentially I am offering:-
- Free business profile page – on which you can publish as much as you like about your business and what you do.
- Free article space – for publishing educational articles about what you do, typical case studies, and examples of various scenarios which help to educate potential clients how you may be able to help them.
- Email contact form – All pages will have a clickable link to an email form with your contact details and a paragraph about you and the products/services you offer. This information can be downloaded to a VCard so people can save your details to their own database for future reference.
And the people I hope will take me up on this offer – are those who have an interest in the arts, provide products and services to people who are in arts businesses, and/or provide something of value to businesses who are connected with arts in some way. I have taken a holistic view for the site – so anything that an individual or business might need to succeed will be considered. Health and well-being, Lifestyle, Design, Books, Business supplies and services, Marketing, PR, Managing finance – both business and personal, and so on.
Is this an offer that you would consider looking at? Would you be more tempted if it was put in some other way? Do you believe that it is the interests of the artists that I am more concerned about rather than trying to squeeze extra money from the site?