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problem with these old firms like Nokia and RIM is they couldn't give up their own platforms and go with android. This is their downfall. New comers like HTC and Samsung had nothing of their own so quickly adapted the android.

Nokia has the financial muscle to do what Samsung did but sympian messed them up. when they finally decided to give it up, they hung themselves by tying exclusively to the windows platform. Sure they got a billion dollars from the deal but they will burn through that quickly and then they are done.

They should've done what samsung did which is to make phones on both windows and android platforms.

Start with all the free ways to advertise your business.

Once you've maximized the results from these free channels, boost your campaign with some paid marketing efforts: outsource telesales, CPM display banners, CPC adword campaigns etc.

The matrix of free channels I'd recommend are as follow. Pick the ones suitable for the type of product/service you offer and try to use as many of them as possible, as regularly as possible.

1. Classifieds ads
Try: craigslist, gumtree, targro.. there are many others.. try more if you have the time
Try picking a few different categories suitable for your business
Try creating a few different ad templates so you can post a different ad every other day
Take some enticing pictures of your products or previous work you've done and include them in the ads
Classifieds ads is a good way to establish a local presence. I personally know a lot of people who 'shop' on gumtree instead of ebay.

2. Business platforms
Put your business on websites like alibaba, lacartes. You can create a dedicated page with information on your business, photos and prices of your products/services. You will also be able to engage and interact directly with customers.

The biggest advantage with these sites is your dedicated business page will also appear on all search engines, so you will be getting direct exposure to high quality highly targeted search engine traffic - people who are actually searching for your products/services. This is the best kind of exposure you can get online.

3. business directories
There are many niche directories specialised in different business sectors. the benefit of these directories is that many potential clients could be using them to shortlist their service providers.

4. review blogs and local blogs
many blogs are devoted to product/service review. try finding a few blogs about your products/services and contact the blogger about writing a piece about you. You can also try blog comments.

5. press releases
write your own press releases and submit them to article/PR distribution websites like ezine. each article should be between 500 - 1000 words, which should take just a couple of hours to produce. You can write and submit one article every other week, over time the results will build up. These articles will generate awareness for your business/products/services and create backlinks to your website

I recently bought a number of things off ebay, which turned out to be sold and shipped by sellers from China. I was amazed I was able to buy batteries for

Subprime lenders were giving bad borrowers double what the house they were gonna buy was worth, just to create a lot of mortgages for wall street to 'repackage'. The lenders didn't lose any money since the loans were sold onto investors.

Wall street and investors were left holding the bags when the market collapsed. You gotta be an idiot to buy a loan issued to someone who can't repay it, secured on a house worth less than the loan.

there is a huge hype around building backlinks, which is more about SEO, which is just a single component of the overall concept of internet 'marketing'

I think online marketing and offline marketing share the same fundamental idea - to help a product/service reach the right audience and maximise sales.

offline marketing such as print ads and tv ads are ways to get maximum exposure for a product/service.

the objective of online marketing is the same - to maximise exposure. search engines are a major source of exposure for any online business. they are capable of potentially channeling millions of potential customers to a particular business. in order to get traffic from search engines, a website must rank highly in search results, this is where backlinks come in and why there is so much hype around it.

However, it is just one form of online marketing. consider classified ads (craigslist, gumtree, targro), business platforms (alibaba, lacartes), online marketplace (amazon, ebay), online articles/press releases (ezine), online product reviews (blogs, yelp, lacartes) and more... and you get a better idea of online marketing as a whole.

Building backlinks is a rat race because while you are doing it, your competitors are doing the same so the net effect could be zero. but the other forms of online marketing: classifieds, business platform, marketplace can produce direct results since they connect the seller directly to buyers.

I hope you find this helpful and will feel better about online marketing.

i guess only google knows what the real figure is