Internet Marketing With Free Incentives: Custom Wallpapers and Backgrounds
Ever since the dawn of a publicly accessible Internet, free stuff has been a staple in drawing traffic to web sites of all interests.
People love free stuff, and the internet delivers. Remembering the 90’s when I was heavily involved in embroidery digitizing, the popular strategy for getting qualified traffic to my web site was to offer free embroidery design downloads. It wasn’t my idea, in fact I was following the lead of punchers and stock embroidery design web sites that had already executed the strategy.
I asked myself a simple question; “What other things would dart players search for online besides shirts?” After the success of images I followed through with tournament brackets and other freebies. The benefits are interesting to follow.
I applied this strategy to my dart shirts web site several years ago and found the same success, offering unique downloads for dart players in the form of desktop and mobile wallpapers and backgrounds. I asked myself a simple question; “What other things would dart players search for online besides shirts?” After the success of images I followed through with tournament brackets and other freebies. The benefits are interesting to follow:
Free Stuff is a Traffic Generator
If you were an avid darts player and decided to search for an interesting desktop wallpaper or mobile background, you’d likely go type something along the lines of “darts wallpapers” or “free darts backgrounds” into a search engine. Naturally, sites offering them will be returned by the search engine. Image search comes into play as well, what better way to find the image you want than to search for the images themselves?
The free darts images I offered have long provided my site with qualified, targeted traffic. Leading to social media fans and followers, the sharing of my content over social media, subscribers to my newsletter and of course many, many completed sales over the years.
Free Stuff is Appreciated
Users arriving to your site to receive anything for free are generally grateful you did them such a favor. I noticed that when users were sharing links to my free downloads, there was always a nice comment or gesture such as “Cool dart shirts too! check it out!” Free stuff also gives users the incentive to bookmark your page for checking in on new developments, or added freebies.
Provide a Lasting Image
The subtle watermark within the skull darts design provides a source without distraction from the image itself.
You can also take the time to upload your images to free wallpaper and background web sites that allow user contributions, spreading your watermarked image to an even wider audience that may not be finding your site due to using other keywords.
Provide a variety of sizes to be compatible with multiple monitors and devices
Size Matters
To make everyone in the free download world happy, remember to include a variety of sizes to make sure you can cover several mobile devices and monitor resolutions. I found the best method of addressing this was to create blank templates for each size, start my original design at the largest size and then resize the original to copy and paste into each template accordingly.
Here are the most popular for desktop monitors, tablets and mobile devices, I’ve taken the time to give YOU a freebie and provide a download of the blank templates:
Screen Resolutions Guide
Become a Free Tee Shirt Cannon
If you decide to give the free wallpaper downloads a try, be sure to toss them out wherever images are welcome. Users of those sites are an audience to be discovered, and enjoy sharing with their connections. I can remember the smile it always gave me to upload a new set of wallpapers to Pinterest and discover so many likes and shares within hours. Link to your web site from your sharing whenever possible, and promote yourself through the happiness of giving away freebies on the Internet.
Keywords are critical, when you upload your images to other sites use as many relevant keywords as they will allow. This will trigger the search engines which is your primary goal. Keyword friendly file names will give you even more of a boost.
Target Niche Markets
Targeting niche markets is a key element for this marketing strategy. Using the example “darts wallpapers”, clearly the user is looking for a specific, darts related image.
Continued below this example image…
Note the web site address is included in the image, yet not taking away from this pin-up girls appeal.
Simple terms and keywords such as mobile wallpaper, iPhone background etc. will yield too many results for this to make an impact or even find its way into the vast number of search results. Consider breaking your niche markets down to categories such as sports or lifestyle. For maximum results be specific with niches like golf or auto racing. You know your products and services well, make the freebies relate to each target market and draw them in with their particular interest.
