| Building your Web storefront is one thing; having customers actually find it is another. If you want people to visit your new site, you just can't post a few Web pages and hope that someone stumbles across them. To generate real traffic ”and real sales ”you have to actively do something to drive users to your site. Search Submittal Services The easiest way to market your site is to make sure that you're included in the search results at all the major Web search sites. While you could hope that the search engines' spiders would find your site automatically, chances are they won't ”or if they do, it might take them months to get to you. A far better approach is to manually submit your site to all the search engines ”which, unfortunately , is very time-consuming . For that reason, a number of search-site submittal services have sprung up, that ”for a fee ”will submit your site to literally hundreds of major and minor search engines and directories. Among the most popular of these search submittal sites are -
Add Me! (www.addme.com) -
Submit Express (www.submitexpress.com) -
Submit It! (www.submitit.com) -
Submit-Pro (www.submit-pro.com) -
SubmitWizard (submitwizard.superstats.com) Banner Exchanges A low-cost way to tell the world about your new site is via a Web banner exchange. In a banner exchange, you agree to put banner ads on your site for other participating sites; in exchange, those sites will display banner ads for your site. It's a good deal, and very popular among smaller Web sites. To participate in a banner exchange, you have to join a banner exchange network. Here are some of the most popular: -
bCentral Banner Network (www. bcentral .com/products/bn/) -
Home Banner Exchange (www.home-banner-exchange.com) -
NEObanners (www.neobanners.com) -
SlideInExchange.com (www.slideinexchange.com) Web Site Marketing Real businesses attract new customers by advertising. If you're running a real online business, you'll need to attract customers with online advertising.  | Linking from other sites to your eBay auctions is so important as to warrant a section in a separate chapter. Learn more in Chapter 24, "Promoting Your eBay Auctions." |
How do you advertise on the Internet? There's no need to reinvent the wheel; there are a variety of companies that provide marketing and promotional services to Web retailers. These sites include -
fastclick (www.fastclick.com) -
iLOVEclicks Network (www.iloveclicks.com) -
Marcap Group (www.marcap.com) -
Promotion World (www.promotionworld.com) -
WebPromote (www.webpromote.com) Linking From Your eBay Auctions Just because you have a separate Web storefront doesn't mean you should forget your eBay auctions. In fact, you can use your eBay auctions to advertise your storefront, and vice versa. The problem, however, is that eBay forbids you link to other sites in your item listings. So you can't just include a link to your non-eBay storefront in your item descriptions; eBay will either block the link or cancel your auction. If you want to promote your non-eBay storefront, then, you'll need to be creative ”and devise a bit of a workaround. The least clumsy workaround involves your eBay About Me page, which you learned about way back in Chapter 2, "Using eBay's Advanced Features." You see, eBay does let you include third-party links in your About Me page, which makes it the ideal place to promote your outside storefront. Just construct your About Me page as normal, and make sure to include information about your Web storefront. Definitely include a link to the storefront. Then, in each of your individual item descriptions, add a paragraph that talks about your new Web storefront, with a line of text that says something like "Read more about my storefront on my About Me page." Then include a separate link to your About Me page in your item description (in addition to the automatic name next to your user ID), and you're in business ”with a roundabout promotional link. The Absolute Minimum When an eBay Store isn't good enough, it's time to build your own Web storefront. Keep these points in mind: -
The easiest way to create your own storefront is to use a prepackaged storefront service from ndale, Zoovy, or other similar sites. -
To create a more fully featured storefront, you'll need to build your own Web site from scratch. -
To build a professional Web site, you'll need to find a Web hosting service, register your domain name, and either hire a Web design firm or teach yourself how to use a professional site building tool, such as Microsoft FrontPage. -
Once your site is up and running, you'll need to promote it ”via search engines, online advertising, and links from your eBay auctions. |
|
