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I am trying to get into the e-commerce business with an e-commerce website and I just have a question or two that I am not positive about.

My website is going to be in the IM niche selling products that IMers would be interested in. So my first question is whether or not it is smarter to have a niche specific estore or a general estore like amazon.

Also how many products in each category would be a good number before launch? Once I launch I am planning on adding new products regularly, but I don't want to launch with too little products as that may stop conversions for my initial traffic.

Another question I have is promotional methods. So far I know for a fact that I will be using articles and backlink building to drive free traffic. I will also be doing forum posts and blog posts in the IM niche and getting some traffic from twitter and facebook marketing. Eventually I will be doing PPC marketing once I confirm that this is a workable idea and once I am done with testing. However I am not entirely sure how to go about doing SEO on the website for an estore.

My final question is simply about the ecommerce idea. Has anyone here had success with an estore? Is it a good idea for me to focus on building this estore in hopes of getting fast conversions without spending months and months getting in the google standings? Or is it better for me to find another method and spend my time on that.

Any ideas would be great and I appreciate all answers to any of these questions.
#ecommerce #question
  • Profile picture of the author Jeff Bronson
    Originally Posted by Gclunis View Post

    I am trying to get into the e-commerce business with an e-commerce website and I just have a question or two that I am not positive about.

    My website is going to be in the IM niche selling products that IMers would be interested in. So my first question is whether or not it is smarter to have a niche specific estore or a general estore like amazon.
    As you mentioned, your site is going to be in the IM products niche..so why would you want a general store with other, unrelated products? This would confuse people , and certainly hamper conversion. Best to make it simply about your niche, so you can build a specific value proposition as to why people should buy from you. If you had a "general estore like Amazon", could you compete on price? Probably not. Selection? Probably not... see my point....

    Also how many products in each category would be a good number before launch? Once I launch I am planning on adding new products regularly, but I don't want to launch with too little products as that may stop conversions for my initial traffic.
    There isn't really a solid number to give you, as I don't know how many different categories you will have... of course you don't want the categories to be bare with only one product in each.

    Another question I have is promotional methods. So far I know for a fact that I will be using articles and backlink building to drive free traffic. I will also be doing forum posts and blog posts in the IM niche and getting some traffic from twitter and facebook marketing. Eventually I will be doing PPC marketing once I confirm that this is a workable idea and once I am done with testing. However I am not entirely sure how to go about doing SEO on the website for an estore.
    You would do onsite SEO just like any other site you build. Which shopping cart platform will you be using?

    1. Most shopping carts have ways to create search engine friendly url's... so instead of something like:
    mysite.com/productid=784&pageaction=....blah blah
    you could have a keyword rich url like:
    mysite.com/mykeyword/mykeywordproductname.html

    2. Also make sure you can customize your individual product/category page title tags, and make proper use of H1, H2 tags in your templates.
    3. Make sure to use some keyword rich anchor text somewhere in your category page descriptions.


    Those are just a short few ideas, but SEO is no different for this type of site, other than paying attention to not creating duplicate pages per product and having ugly query string variables stripped from your url's.

    My final question is simply about the ecommerce idea. Has anyone here had success with an estore? Is it a good idea for me to focus on building this estore in hopes of getting fast conversions without spending months and months getting in the google standings? Or is it better for me to find another method and spend my time on that.

    Any ideas would be great and I appreciate all answers to any of these questions.
    Ecommerce is a great idea, providing you have the time, money and support structure to work at it until it pays off. The biggest thing I could recommend is doing the proper keyword research at the very beginning and making sure can approach your niche market with a product mix that is viable. Yes, I've had success with an estore, which has about 500 products. However I stock physical products in my niche, and drop ship also. Some of my products are custom made and I'm the only one in the world who has them, or have exclusive rights in the U.S..(and others are available to anyone). I know my niche since it corresponds to a "lifestyle" as I also setup at conventions, and other niche/sub culture related events. Without too much detail, I got the idea in 2004......launched in 2006 and have now been running the site for 4 years. If I had only done the proper keyword research years ago I could have greatly shortened the time it took to succeed. For the most part it pays the bills, but I still take jobs occasionally to improve cash flow and for expansion money.
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