It was interesting to delve into the world of online advertising this week. Nearly all the options that will generate traffic for STEMLinks involve significant upfront expenses. While Google, Yahoo and Bing claim that I can spend as little as I want, I found that if I set my daily spending limit to $10, my ad loses out to other higher bids for the same keywords. The story is the same with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Online directories like DEX, Yellowpages etc required me to purchase a membership before I could place my ad. The other option that will generate relevant website traffic would be websites and online magazine related to educational products/programs/information. These also required me to purchase adspace. Free advertising options were limited to webrings and reciprocal links. The challenge with both was that the webmasters prefer to link to websites that have well developed content, and the STEMLinks website is not fully developed as yet. However, it was good to learn the various options I have for promoting STEMLinks online.