Advertising Your Site

[denialrenae]

What are some good ways to advertise my site on the web. I am just getting started so have a very limited cash flow. Thanks for the help!

Denial Renae
Petal Pins by Denial
www.petalpinsbydenial.com

[Kathy Ann]

I think you have come to the right place! If there is an overriding premise around here it's that we don't like to give up our hard earned money for marketing.

Advertising is just putting your message where people can see it. On the internet, that means search engines. First, make sure your site is located on a server that is reachable by search engines. Then write lots of content that contains keywords and key phrases your customers might use when searching for you. Bear in mind it takes up to 3 months for your site to start showing up. There is another thread somewhere on the boards here that describes linking and how that can make your site more visible.

I use Ebay, Overstock.com and Auctionfire to drive traffic to my site. Overstock auctions doesn't have many customers but they are cheap and the listings show up on Google. Auctionfire is free. They don't have customers yet but your listings will show up on Froogle. Froogle is a branch of Google that's just for shopping. It hasn't become popular yet but I think it will, and it's free to use.

I have used Google adwords. I got some sales from it, but I have so much competition that my ads don't show up often enough for it to be worth the money. Also I was uncomfortable with the fact that you don't get a heads-up when they are about to take money out of your bank account, and I never could understand their pricing formula. I was supposed to be paying a dollar a day, yet I seemed to be paying more dollars than days in the month. It was valuable though, because for the months I bought it, I was able to see which keywords the customers were using in their searches, and plan my content accordingly. That was also helpful for my Froogle listings because on Froogle, you only get to choose one keyword.

Don't forget to look around at other websites of people who sell the same thing as you. See if you can improve on what they are doing as far as your customer's shopping experience and the quality of the product.

Whenever I launch a new product, I show it to family and friends. Usually they will start thinking out loud as to how or why they would use it, and that becomes my site content. I try to get them to be honest as to whether they would pay money for it. Sometimes the truth hurts. I've abandoned product lines because it is either something that people can make themselves, or they can get one cheaper in a store.

Never pay retail for supplies!

[denialrenae]

Can you give me some examples of the search engine? :confused:

Denial
www.petalpinsbydenial.com

[Kathy Ann]

A search engine is the yellow pages of the internet. Type in any word or words and you'll get a long list of pages containing those words. A popular one right now is http://www.google.com but they are by no means the only one. There's Yahoo, AltaVista, HotBot, Mamma, Dogpile, Excite, Lycos, MSN Search, Netscape Search, Ask, and others.

If your page is searchable, it will automatically appear on search engines. After your site has been online for 3 months, go to any search engine and type in a phrase that exists only on your webpage. If your web page does not appear, then your web host has it buried in a such a way that the search engines can't find it. You can work around this by going to each search engine and clicking on their "submit" link to manually submit your website.