Yes, I do not like free advertising.  I would rather pay for my advertising than relying on something as small and unpredictable as free advertising.

There is no Such Thing as a Free Lunch

The problem I have with “free advertising” is that it rarely is.  Very rarely can you get a truly viral and lasting advertising campaign.  Instead, free advertising takes a lot of time and effort.

Remember - I don’t measure results in dollars only.  I’m just as interested in measuring time spent.  If something is very inexpensive (or free) but costs me hours and hours of my time, it’s far from free.  If anything, it could be even more expensive given the opportunity costs of spending all of my time on the “free advertising”. 

Marketing LazyOwner.com

I write for LazyOwner because I enjoy it.  I realize that it’s not going to ever bring in a full-time income but I like putting these ideas down to share with others.  I do want people to read it and it’s my goal everyday to increase the readership - so I advertise.

The advice for most blog writers is to go out and work to build up the readership - comment on related blogs, reach out to other bloggers, form a network. 

I’ve done a lot of that, but only when I thought it made sense for what I was writing about at the time.  I have gotten some positive results at time but nothing at a level that I would consider to be worthwhile.

Writing this blog already takes up more time than I really should spare for it, but like I said, I enjoy doing it.  But I could never regularly invest the time required to get “free advertising”.  I don’t have much interest in it and the time would be too valuable and served better elsewhere.

I Want to Pay for My Advertising

So instead of paying with my time, I pay with my dollars.

I run small campaigns from time to time to

• Bring more visitors to this blog, which hopefully means . . .
• A more regular readership, who will . . .
• Create more exposure for the blog, which should . . .
• Increase the number of organic visitors

What I like about this is that it’s much more of a predictable form of advertising.  I spend just a small amount of time setting up a campaign with an advertising network and my future readers are directed right to my web site.

The Ability to Measure Results

I’m very much a “manage by numbers” person.  I believe that if you can’t measure it, you shouldn’t do it.  So I want to know if I get a positive return on $X spent on a particular campaign.  I can spend just a small time examining these numbers instead of hours upon hours trying to get free advertising, all the while, hoping that it makes some difference in the end. 

Of course I would love it if some major magazine or industry publication wrote a feature story on my business - I’m not naive to think that wouldn’t be good for business (see “The Sideways Effect”).  But I’m not going to waste my valuable time hunting down not-so- “free advertising”.