Tips or strategies to sell pet sports apparel

For free traffic you don't want to miss Pinterest. Your site's topic is a great match and studies show Pinterest members are often shoppers.

Pinterest is like a bookmark tool where the member organizes images into categories (boards) instead of just bookmarking the URL. Most images are tied to the URL where the image was found. This helps members quickly get back to things like a product they wanted to buy, a recipe they wanted to try, or a craft they wanted to complete.

You would need to create a business account at Pinterest (free), connect your Pinterest profile to your site, and create your own boards (think of them as categories).

Pin your product posts to Pinterest but don't just pin your own stuff. I find I have better success when I have boards that have collected information from more than just my own sites.

There are lots of businesses on Pinterest and seeing how some of them have organized their boards should give you some good ideas on how to organize your own. Pinterest has a pretty good blog where they share case studies and suggestions, too.

Then you need to get followers so more people will see your pins and share them. When they're shared (repinned) then even more people may see your pins. There are lots of posts on WF about how to get followers (along with loads of them on the internet).

Since images are an important part of Pinterest you can get creative in how you use them to get more attention to your pins. Instead of just a product image, try sharing a funny image of a dog wearing one of the items on your site and add text like "Five most popular team jerseys for dogs" (something like that - basically a catchy title on your image that includes a call to action) and then link to a post about that subject on your site.

A press release about your new business could do well - a good one done with a well known PR site.

There may be FB fan page owners who would be willing to share a link to your store if you asked. Look for sports fan pages and pet fan pages.

You've got a blog section on your site. Start adding posts that would be of interest to your target audience - list of the top selling pet jerseys, best NYY gear for dogs, tips for taking your pet to a sporting event, etc.

Maybe you do a "Monday Night Recap" written from a dog's perspective. Build up a persona for the dog, assign him some favorite teams, make it funny but informative. Use social media to spread links to the posts and attract a following.

Just throwing out some ideas.

So for Pinterest, you recommend using a separate account from my personal Pinterest? When you pin images to the board, are you referring to when you post a pin you just paste your sites url and it grabs the image from the site? So for example when I create my categories, I should label one named Pet Jerseys? And place all of my sports jersey products inside there?

Google ads COULD work great for you. I know a guy with a similar style website (not animal related) that is making a killing with Google. He has a Google PPC guy running the traffic for him though.

Is that professional to use google adsense with your online store?

I would definitely read up on how to optimize your Pintrest account as it is a perfect fit for what you offer.

You could start a blog about including pets in sports celebrations. Or maybe tell stories about pets who insert themselves into the celebrations. Like dogs who bark when you cheer. There have to be plenty of memes out there that you can post/share on social media.

Additionally, start a contest for a free jersey or something for the best pet celebrating football season pictures/stories. Make it so their friends have to like your page and then like their comment or something. People are crazy about getting their pets in the sport light - just look at the grumpy cat!

Thinking of creative ways to blog about the pets is my weakness. I'm going to be searching about optimizing my pinterest all night tonight.

The contest isn't a problem to start.... Getting enough people to engage is.

I converted my pinterest account to a business. I added a html tag to my store so now if you hover over an image it says PIN IT. My Instagram gets lots of attention. Every picture I post gets 50 likes or more just about but for example I post a pinterest logo and I say please follow us on Pinterest, I get likes but no followers on Pinterest.

I finished optimizing my pinterest account. Adding keywords into the business name, description etc. Found some good articles on google... Now let the pinning begin!!! While I sleep I will try and come up with some creative ideas to blog!