Shopping site

Advertising/promotion takes up a big part of my online time. But it's a necessary evil.

Anyone who tells you "If you build it they will come" is either living in a fantasy world or doesn't know what they're talking about.

(ps - I love that UPS commercial that shows an e-commerce site just openning and in the span of a few secodns they have 1000+ orders! Oh, I wish it was so!!!!)

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ArtsNFlies.com
Original art, hand tied flies, unique books and gifts, free sweepstakes and MORE!
Come see what everyone is talking about!

What is the most effective advertising you have used to attract customers? Do you concentrate on one or two keywords to get the best positions on search engines and have you found that holidays are the biggest time for people shopping? Thanks

jili - I don't think there's any one magical way or Excaliber Sword that's going to bring in droves of customers to your site. IMHO it's a combination of many things that produce a few hits from here and a few hits from there etc. (if there is a magical way I haven't found it yet)

Search engines, FFA's, reciprocal links, advertising/sponsorship, newsletters, articles, some non-internet marketing, etc. Yes, it's definately work. That's why I find it so funny when you see commercials that show someone opening a web site and just sitting back while the checks roll in.

I'm not trying to be discouraging but this is business. Just because we're on the net doesn't mean we have it easier.

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ArtsNFlies.com
Original art, hand tied flies, unique books and gifts, free sweepstakes and MORE!
Come see what everyone is talking about!

Thanks for the advice and you have a great-looking site!

Guys,
I'll give you golden sentence in online marketing..."Targeted Email". Use it wisely and it by far the best marketing method available.
JP

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What Next?
"Easing you onto the Internet"
http://www.what-next.com

what do you mean by targeted email? Jill what kind of site are you working on? I am working on a fully e-commerce site that will be launched within a month.

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Adam
adamlee@mediaone.net

I have a shopping site through a host that I am not too pleased with and I can only do so much with it, the targeted email is obtaining a list of people who have given their permission to receive email about the products you offer. My site is holiday/home decorating accents blah blah, I am on burn out but I am seeing some results
ddjames.giftworldnet.com

JP is right.

Targeted email is incredibly effective because you are mailing to a list of people who have signed up to receive information about your product/service.

Keyword buying is also very effective. That's because the potential customer is looking for that product/service at that exact moment. Consider a customer shopping for shoes. They put "shoes" into the search engine and the first thing they see, as they wait for the results to come up, is a banner telling them where they can go to find out more about shoes.

These are probably the two most effective forms of online advertising.

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MOUNTAIN WORLDWIDE
• Search Engine Optimization
  
• Banner Advertising
  
• Opt-In Email Advertising
  
• Media Planning & Buying
  
• and much more...
  

Not to re-open an old can of worms, but how is "targeted email" different from spam email? Even if you are limiting your email recipients to those who show an interest in your product or service (as opposed to just a long list of any email addresses) if they didn't specifically opt-in then that could be considered spam. And even if they did opt-in they could still call it spam.

I'm not trying to be difficult, just that I've had experience with these issues and it's very fustrating!!

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ArtsNFlies.com
Original art, hand tied flies, unique books and gifts, free sweepstakes and MORE!
Come see what everyone is talking about!