Since the year is over, I need to spend some money as business expenses. Id like to spend $1-2,000 on marketing for a blog. If you were going to spend $1-2k to market a blog, where would you spend it? I already am in the Yahoo directory so thats done. Would you throw it all into PPC? Would you throw it all for short span ads on BIG BIG sites? Would you put it all into advertising on many smaller blogs?
I don't really understand your approach: you need to spend some money as business expense and so you want to spend it on advertising? Is that for tax purposes only? I take it your blog doesn't really need advertising - which is weird - so I would use that burning money on method of marketing which I haven't tried yet and seriously track their performance to give me an idea of what works and what doesn't... Explore viral marketing if you can.
If you can learn to convert properly, ppc (adwords specifically) can be a great investment. With that said, many people lose a ton because they aren't experienced and don't do enough a/b split testing to see what works.
To be honest, I'd invest that kind of money into something that could trigger a serious viral effect. Find something that's truly unique and that can capture the attention of your audience and go for it. Good luck
I agree, any suggestions? Because I dont know what would cause a serious viral effect and exactly where to spend it.
That question is difficult to answer without knowing exactly what you are trying to market. You could spend the cash and create a funny youtube vid in the hope that it'll spread. If you run out of time to do anything fancy with it, I'd just bump it onto your Adwords account, at least its there for you to use as needed then.
If that is the case, PPC may not be your best route. Depending on your niche, perhaps get a humorous/controversial video created that can go viral with your website tag on it - it works wonders in the current internet world :] I personally believe you need to do bolder things that will make you stand out from the rest; there is just too much competition to expect great success going traditional routes. edit: person above me said the same thing, so ditto to that.
Creating a viral marketing effect can be pretty tricky, and requires a bit of market research. I just finished watching a video where somebody at a conference put a rake into a blender - that seemed to work pretty well for him, and the crowd appeared to love it. It's all about doing something to get people talking, whether it be controversial, outrageous or humorous. I'm currently working on a viral marketing campaign for my blog, and it's been pretty difficult to come up with something. I think the best thing you can do is to checkout some previous viral marketing campaigns that have worked well for companies and/or websites in your niche, for some ideas you can study. It's best to attempt to understand why the campaigns received the response they did. Looks like I've just thought of a blog post I can construct. Good luck.
Learn PPC the right way and you'll see some great results with programs such as AdWords. But also work on SEO as well as Article Marketing.