What are realistic goals (for you) for an amount of unique, targeted traffic if you are starting a new site from scratch?
I am starting up a new site and would like to get 2000-5000 daily uniques (of non paid advertising). How realistic is this if I'm relying on search engine traffic and link trades alone (let's say all web pages are optimized well).
What other means of traffic building should I look into?
My site is an e-commerce site but currently only w/ Paypal shopping cart and I do not want spend alot of money on advertising since many potential customers will turn down buying something because Paypal is the only method of payment.
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Suzanne posted this at 18:40 — 7th November 2003.
She has: 5,512 posts
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It's ludicrous to think in terms of daily uniques.
You need to think in terms of benefit -- what do you want your users to do? What do you want them to see? What are you giving them that will bring them back and get them to pass on your url?
Site goals are like business objectives, you don't just want warm bodies, you want specific types of users doing specific things. What are those things?
Counting eyeballs and uniques is useless if those particular eyeballs and uniques are not targeted populations.
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wackythings posted this at 18:42 — 7th November 2003.
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True, but I need to start from somewhere. Any other ideas on getting quality traffic other than direct link trades and hopes of getting good placement in Google?
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Suzanne posted this at 18:52 — 7th November 2003.
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Well, see, you're not thinking -- what are your user goals? What is your site about? What is your content? What are you giving your users?
All that information will determine what you can do to get people to view your site in the first place.
First steps first. It's all very nice to think about abstract concepts like building traffic, but there is no way to determine what reasonable or how to go about it if you don't have something concrete to start with, like, you know, CONTENT and PURPOSE.
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wackythings posted this at 18:56 — 7th November 2003.
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Well my store sells products. My audience is general in a sense as I sell mostly gift items.
I'm just wondering what other ways I can attract this audience.
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Wayne Luke posted this at 15:02 — 28th November 2003.
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Your target isn't "general". Your target is teens and tweens by looking at your site. This in general means a target range of 14-25 both male and female. You will have more luck in targetting 18-25 year olds who are moving out for the first time and either decorating an apartment or a dormroom. Unfortunately for you, this age group has limited expendable cash, but they do have family with money.
Your competition is also pretty entrenched like Spencer's Gifts. Luckily for you, they seem to be focusing on the tradition retail model without online sales still.
What you are going to need to do, is to focus on this group. Find out what makes them buy things. Luckily for you most in the group don't need much motivation to buy. However, you have to get into their mind. Many think the world is over advertised as it is and are more likely to use popup blockers and advertising blockers anyway.
One way that I can think off to advertise to them is to make up some stickers that match your products and targetted towards your group. Then hand them out in shopping malls, clubs and even around college campuses. Costs a little more than search engines but will probably have a longer lasting effect on your bottom line.
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Suzanne posted this at 19:04 — 7th November 2003.
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Better, but not far enough -- gift items like what? What quality? What age range? What type? What categories do they fall into? What's your niche, your area of expertise? Your schtick?
"General" is not a good description of your audience. Think harder!
Then go back and think about why on earth anyone would buy these things from you. That addresses three things.
1. Why would someone spend money.
2. Why would someone want this item.
3. Why would someone trust you.
What is the need you are filling?
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wackythings posted this at 19:17 — 7th November 2003.
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novelty gift items (novelty lamps, gifts, etc) ($20-$50 range)
very good quality
age range for products 12-40+
age range for shoppers 18-60+
although most items are $20-$50, they could be considered POP items because of the novelty they have
1. great gift ideas - products that people double take, products that catch peoples eyes
great office/home accessory
2. again, great gift idea, makes everyone happy - not normal "boring gifts"
self gratification
3. if all goes well, I would setup easy, secure shopping w/ tech support (phone, email, and live support online)
don't eat animals.
druagord posted this at 21:31 — 13th November 2003.
He has: 335 posts
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From what i see your main keyword are probably gift and novelty. Did you try to search google for those words in order to see who youre up against.
Like susan said don't count number of hits or uniques a returning costumer in youre case his probably a better chance of selling something then a new visitor. an e-commerce is not different then a normal shop the number of people who come in is not necesarly link to the number of sells.
that should be your first step most internet user don't trust internet transactions you have to build a trust relationship with your costumers.
IF , ELSE , WHILE isn't that what life is all about
mustardplaster posted this at 14:00 — 17th November 2003.
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That is good advise and directly related to business off the internet. There is no use spending your time drawing visitors that will not buy. Or that are not your targeted market. An affiliation with a similar online identity would be more beneficial. Feed off each other so to speak.
As the post above states look at your competition maybe draw some ideas off them. Make yourself unique and interesting.
Work out how much you would get from an average sale and then break it down as to how much it would cost to gain a sale. Work out from there how many people you have to draw to your site to gain a sale. Cost versus sale equation.
In the end it really comes down to keep working at it. It takes time.
Ohh you may want to play with google pay per click advertising. If you do that right sometimes the benefit out way the cost, you might be lucky.
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Bob Johnson posted this at 03:30 — 26th November 2003.
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For real?
Thats a nice chunk of hits a day for non paid advertising, You gotta give yourself alot of time and also be active. I've found the old fashion way works....spam like a mad men.... just kidding!
Heres some more questions to answer
1. Why would they want to visit your site?
2. Anything special for them if they visit your site? : Free samples, check out weekly specials? Sign up for newsletters, etc.
3. Why would they want to re-visit your site again and again?
Good luck!
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shiv posted this at 07:17 — 28th November 2003.
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wackythings
To get more traffic, why spend more money and pay per click is not good to get lot traffic or even if you get it they want give you business my idea is to list your site in as many as search engine and directory you can, because every body don't use google only or it is not for sure that you site will be list at top of google.
there is list of search engines and directories listed by GLOBLE SEARCH and BY COUNTIRY at http://www.bhanvad.com/searchengines.html
Wayne Luke posted this at 16:30 — 28th November 2003.
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I should as a realistic goal for traffic, you should be marketing to get sales, not traffic. If you have 30 uniques a day and they each spend $50.00, you will be much better off in the long run than if you have 1000 uniques a day and the average sell across uniques is $1.50...
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wackythings posted this at 18:22 — 28th November 2003.
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HI all,
Thanks for all the feedback but my main concern which maybe I didn't address correctly is WHERE to start getting traffic (I have an idea of what my general audience is) but I'm trying to figure out where to sart out and advertise/get traffic.
Google adwords, PPC haven't done too well.
don't eat animals.
Bob Johnson posted this at 18:53 — 28th November 2003.
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Start trying to get customers where your customers are.... if you sell sporting goods online, check some sports forums talk it up be helpful and get some hits. Network in your area join a sports network to get support and help, trade resources, suppliers, etc. Go to sports events and rent a booth, etc.
Doesnt matter where you start.....Just START. Period.
But start at the right places.
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jackc posted this at 21:43 — 28th November 2003.
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I agree with Bob Johnson. Forum is the good place to make the connection with other people.
billion posted this at 23:14 — 28th December 2003.
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You can always run affiliate program and add it to as many
affiliate networks as possible. At some networks you only have
to pay a percentage of sales. It's risk free.
I beleive it will take you a lot of work and money to get your site
to the level of traffic you wish. It's never easy when you sell stuff.
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scouchman2 posted this at 05:53 — 1st December 2003.
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Try marketing towards the age group of customers you would like to attract. I believe marketing is a case by case operation, in your case maybe its for a 18-28 age group, so market towards them, do things that would appeal to them. Hope that Helps.
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wackythings posted this at 15:51 — 1st December 2003.
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Hello.
I know what my target audience is but I gues sthe point of this post was to try to find ideas on how to market the site exactly.
Any ideas besides SE traffic?
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LeeRyder posted this at 22:06 — 18th December 2003.
They have: 15 posts
Joined: Dec 2003
Hi
Although I own and run a very heavy website.. I do not yet consider myself a webmaster.. just.. I dont "feel" it yet.
But, one thing I have been good at is getting visitors. When I began in July, up until October (when I re-designed the site) I was pulling in roughly 30-500 hits per day. Now, I am achieving on avg 4,000 hits per day (with a peak one day of 17,000!). Here is what I did that I think made this possible.
Firstly Meta tags. I have google search my site about once a week. But that is fruitless if you have "members only areas" where the spider can't read. If you do, then I suggest you, somehow.. add a page on your site for the spiders to crawl that lists content. be sure to link that page from your main page.
next, I went to three different forums where I knew they would enjoysome of my material. My content is video based stuff... so..knowing other motorcycle riders like bike vids.. I posted links to a few of my streaming videos at 2 motorcycle sites.. then a couple of funny vids on forums more aimed at children/teens (et al).
Once that happened my stats went to about 1,000 per day for about a month. then something spectacular happened... People began using my site for other things too.. (wont say.. youll have to find your own niche in this regard) so from their..once i would update that portion, I would add a re-direct from my page not found page that took them to my main page. this allowed more people to find out about my website. so how does it break down for me now..2 whole months (to the day) since Ive re-designed and made an effort at bringing in people? How does an avg of 4,000 visitors a day sound? After only 2 months! here are the stats:
Google stats December:
# Hits Search String
1 426 50.53% banned commercials
2 76 9.02% banned commercial tits and *** beer
3 45 5.34% loading_a_bike.mpg
4 17 2.02% minogue banned commercial
5 13 1.54% banned commercials mpg
6 11 1.30% funny banned commercials
7 10 1.19% budwieser tv commercials
8 10 1.19% picture uploader
9 8 0.95% *edited by poster*
10 6 0.71% *edited by poster*
11 5 0.59% moron.wmv
12 5 0.59% nigga please cereal
13 5 0.59% video beer commercials
14 4 0.47% banned commercial mpeg
15 4 0.47% bloopers sports wmv
16 4 0.47% commercial mpg
17 4 0.47% computerboy.mov
18 4 0.47% mentos mpg
19 4 0.47% minogue agent provocateur wmv
20 4 0.47% wmv uploader
and for my weblogs December:
Total Hits 1700990
Total Files 1078066
Total Pages 190647
Total Visits 51249
Total KBytes 198947672
Suzanne posted this at 23:22 — 18th December 2003.
She has: 5,512 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
Ideas other than SE traffic, esp. for this sort of thing, would be text ads, print ads, yellow pages, radio ads, et cetera. As in not-just-the-web advertising/marketing.
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visionary posted this at 16:02 — 23rd December 2003.
They have: 42 posts
Joined: Oct 2003
For every link you get on another site, if that site has appropriate content and you use the right key words you can drive traffic.
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