Never Turn Down Free Advertising
This week I’m in Huaraz, Peru and I’m happy to share with you a small article that was published about me, my bicycle touring business, and my travels around the world.
Now, I’m smart enough to know that this one article isn’t going to bring me a huge amount of new customers right away, nor is it going to get me coverage in some larger press or media outlet right away. But an article like this (any article like this) is a good thing to have out there on the Web.
An article like this, where they’ve linked back to my website, gives my website yet another positive link from a high-ranking website. This alone can improve my rankings in the search engines and boost my profile overall.
An article like this is also just another way for people to find out about me and my business. The more articles there are like this on the web, the greater my chances of being discovered when people perform searches for “bicycle touring” or “bicycle traveler”, etc.
Plus, I can use an article like this (and others like it) to get more press in the future. If I ever want to contact a larger media outlet, I can collect all the press and media articles that have already been written about me and use this large collection of articles to prove to a bigger network that I’m worth talking about.
That said, I was shocked this week when I strolled into Huaraz, Peru and talked to the owner of local bike touring company located here in the city. I told him about my bicycle touring website, how I have nearly 40,000 monthly readers from all over the world reading my site, and how my site is currently ranked #2 on Google for the keyword “bicycle touring” and #1 for hundreds of other search terms.
I told the owner of this particular bike touring company that I was in town for a couple days and that if he’d let me, I’d like to tag along on one of his day tours, take some photos, and publish a FREE article on my website about his business (I normally charge between $250 and $500 USD for this sort of review on my website). All I asked was that he not charge me the $60 fee to participate in the tour.
Incredibly, the man refused my offer. He wasn’t willing to give up $60 worth of money right now in order to get $500 of free advertising and a potentially huge amount of press for his business. I couldn’t believe it!
What I’m continuing to realize is that very few people truly understand the power of the Internet.
If this one business owner had simply let me tag along on one of his tours, the total cost to him would be very, very little. Probably less than $10 USD. Plus, I could have written an article about his business that would likely rank in the #1 or #2 positions on Google for the key phrase “bicycle touring in huaraz peru” or something like that.
Even an article of this kind with photos and a detailed description of the tours he offered, coming from a high-ranking site like mine, would be worth thousands of dollars over the long run for his particular business. But he turned it all down because he wasn’t willing to give up his $50 profit and let me tag along to write a free article about his business.
The lesson this week is this: If you are given a chance to receive free advertising for your business… take it! You’re an idiot if you turn that stuff down.