Marketing a new office supplies business

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Hi All,

I am new to this forum or any forum for that matter. I am really hoping that I can get some help on how to move forward with my store. I built an online store a few years ago and never done any kind of marketing because I did not know what my next move would be. I have no money for a sensible ad campaign so I left it alone. Can anybody advise me on how to get into the various marketplaces. I have about 75,000 products and would like to have something like commission based where as I pay a percentage of the profits. If there are market places that I can get into that will allow me to pay a commission on the sale as I have no money to market the website.

Desperately looking for any help on this. I just need to put the website out there. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks everyone
#business #marketing #office #supplies
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  • Profile picture of the author Kristjan Link
    Hi
    I'm no expert on that matter and I'am still learning it my self, but as I understand pay per sales or cost per sales is the campign type you are looking for. There are tons of cpa networks out there but only few of them run cost per sale campaigns because that kind of campaign uses tracking pixel or cookies that must be placed in your website code. there might be another way. it is that if you engage your platform specific addon/plugin for affiliate marketing and those networks will sign up as affiliates with subaffiliates. Other reason why CPS campaigns are not very popular in majority of cpa networks, is that its hard work and expensive for affiliates if they are not authoroty bloggers with 100k+ readers. Most of the bloggers work with amazon, ebay and other big brands affiliate schemes. its just so much easier for them. I'm trying to set up and run my own cpa network for authorothy bloggers and just discovered that my genius plan has dropbacks just because the pixel thing has to be in customer side and it needs additional work from their side to make it work. There might be possibilities in geographical regions where amazon haven't reached its hands on affiliates. maybe you should target your campaigns to lesser markets with less competition.

    what is your site's adress?
    what platform?
    is it dropshipping?
    what geographical region/markets you serve (where u provide shipping) .
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    • Profile picture of the author Lamon Mangal
      Hi Kristjan,

      Thank you so much for your message, I greatly appreciate this information. When it comes to marketing, I haven't a clue, working with such small budget is also a pain for me. I have had somebody working on the site to finalize everything maybe by next week so am trying to get everything in order so that I can launch it..

      My website's address is http://office.mangaldirect.com
      Yes it is a dropshipping website
      I am targeting only the US markets, only US based customers for orders and shipping.

      Any market places that I can get it and pay per sale would be great.

      Thanks again for your input,
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  • Profile picture of the author Kristjan Link
    You are welcome.

    well your only way to compete with amazon in terms of affiliate marketing is to offer better terms for affiliates. The terms what affiliates are looking for are commission rate, and cookie lifetime. Amazon offers 3-15% commision and cookie lifetime is 24h. It means that if somebody clicks an affiliate link theres only 24h window when its possible to get commission for this customer's purchase. You should aim higher payouts and/or longer cookie lifetime a lot longer like 3 months or even more at least in the beginning. So your next step would be contacting some cpa networks. In no way I'm an expert so this is informational purpouses only. If I would be an expert I would ask you to join my network as an advertiser (then I would be your first tier affiliate) and then I would use my integrated API service to send your offer to all my partnering networks who have thousands of affiliates working in US market.
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    • Profile picture of the author Lamon Mangal
      Hi Kristjan,

      You really have some great insight, I can certainly do better than that in terms of commission payout and cookie life. Because I haven't made any money as yet, I can pay my first set of affiliates very well. I wish you all the best with your network. I just want to get things going, it has been there for too many years not making any money. I just do not know where people go to get good traffic. I only just learned about the shopping marketplaces. I will seek to contact some of the CPA networks to see if I can gain some traction in the US market.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEOptimization@1
    Hi Lamon:

    These days, you will hardly find anybody who will work on this model "Pay Per Sales".

    Good luck in your search.

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author Lamon Mangal
      Hi Steve,

      Thanks for the advice, so an affiliate marketing program would not be the best model to go with? Should I then focus on just driving traffic there or try and get into one of the major shopping market places. The thing is I do not know who they are and how to get into one. In your experience what would be the best model to go with. If you have a suggestion, can you provide a road map.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kristjan Link
      Originally Posted by SEOptimization@1 View Post

      Hi Lamon:

      These days, you will hardly find anybody who will work on this model "Pay Per Sales".

      Good luck in your search.

      Steve
      why nobody will work with cps? you mean affiliates or networks?
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  • Profile picture of the author Lamon Mangal
    Your advice was noted, I tried to reply to your message but I don't see my reply
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  • Profile picture of the author smartechno
    Hii Check these platforms ShareAsale , CJ and others
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    If your profit is especially high, you could also sign up to one of the many dropship directories. Your retail business customers do not need to know that you are dropshipping, yourself. More than half the companies you see listed in the big dropship directories are middlemen dropshippers who never touch the product. They simply took the time to make arrangements with the manufacturers to have their orders dropshipped. They are getting true wholesale prices, marking those up and selling them to other websites for less than retail but not true wholesale.

    Customer orders from third party website > Third party website orders from you (their "supplier") > You contact your supplier and dropship it to the original customer.
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