Driving traffic to a small sales site

maybe some squido lens, hub pages and some forum posting in that niche. article marketing press realses

Steve

Write some articles and submit to ezinearticles.com A great traffic source.

Of course there's the old standby of submitting articles.

Free ads

adwords etc...

Bait and switch.

Create a report/tool or something that is useful to your target market now. Create a 1 page mini site that gives this useful tool away. Trick is it has to be something people will talk about and link to.

When you're ready to launch your site move the tool to a different section of your site and switch in your new revenue generating content into the traffic.

You've got endless opportunities to drive traffic which CONVERTS.

Vital info: on a sales site, people want to know who they're buying from; the site must have credibility.

Therefore, start promoting yourself, or someone else, or a persona you've created, as the spokesperson of the site. This "face" of the site needs to get visible everywhere: in forums, on blogs (commenting), on Twitter, YouTube, etc.

Create a list asap to develop fans of your site. You need to give them goodies and information to keep them reading your email, so think about what you're going to give them so that they reciprocate. Some small sites do this exceptionally well.

I love press releases, so start a PR campaign NOW. Yes, even before you launch the site.

Vital: work out how you're going to track your activities, and track everything, so you know what's working, and what isn't.

Re "Do you guys just resort to paid traffic for that kind of site which is lacking in content?" No -- I create content; either on the site, or on other sites (which I own) which feed that site. Use Squidoo, HubPages etc.

Re "My readers don't seem to buy very much heh". That's a common problem. You need to set up your blog from Day One as a sales vehicle. If you don't (and I know how easy this is to do), you end up with lots of traffic and zero sales.

I always say it takes three months to get constant traffic which converts, so good luck with it. It sounds like lots of fun, and it will be very exciting as your traffic grows.

Hope this helps you. :-)

Cheers

Angela

Update: You're from the UK, so you know Kate Middleton's family. Take a look at the family's site. They sell party ware or similar -- they did start to use Kate as a "face" at one point, but they seem to have backed away from this. However, it gives you an idea of how important it is that people know who they're buying from on a sales site.

Hey Caroline,

You have a nice blog,

I guess "Sales site" means that you are creating a product?

You can use:

PPC,
Article marketing,
Press release
SEO

A combination of these as a system (and not using each of them just to make some money) will work.

If you want to multiply this by ten fold, learn how to recruit affiliates, or get an affiliate manager.

About your nice blog: I see that you are offering a lot of free stuff. Make sure that you insert your product links in your free ebooks...

And creating a viral marketing campaign would be a great idea.

Franck

I would def say look into a press release. They will get your site all over the web quickly and bring in targeted traffic. And they are alot cheaper than adwords or offline ads

Hi Caroline,

Nice to see you here! Didn't see you at Ed's do this year in Starbucks :-)

Consider affiliates as a good source - so work on building a network of those instead of seo.


Rob.

Not in my experience no. It might be because my blog tends to market to the newcomers who don't have money to spend. Most of the money I have made so far has been from a free ebook that promoted Bluehost. I've had relatively low sales with my paid products so I'm not convinced that my blog will be a good source of traffic for the new site.

Caroline