Outsource Marketing and Advertising Budget?

by kite6w
9 replies
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Hello all,

I am in the process of creating a store. I have a question on the budget for outsourcing marketing my products via many different channels (social, ppc, etc...) by hiring either through elance or odesk (I have moderate experience in SEO, but not other types of marketing). My site has less than 100 products since I just started off, so the site is obviously small. What is the average budget to hire a contractor to start off for my site? and if you have hired a company on elance or odesk that did a good job, it would be great if you can give me a recommendation of that company.

Big thanks for reading and feedbacks!

Kite
#advertising #budget #marketing #outsource
  • Profile picture of the author MelanieandMiles
    How much do you have to spend? Can you afford $150 per week or $600 per mo?

    You could get 20 hours per week from a $7.50/hr outsourcer on oDesk and there is quality help there in that price range. 15 hours per week for a $10/hr outsourcer and you can get amazing quality work at that price range, from the right outsourcers.

    The fact that your store only has 100 products makes me think you should hire someone for keyword research and product listing as well as WordPress content creation and backlinking.

    Focus on getting you store up to 1000 products and your wordpress blog up to 100 posts with basic focus on keywords (through Google's Keyword Tool) before adding each product and every post.

    Make sure the outsourcer can find and get the keywords into the URLS, titles, meta descriptions, etc. as they go.

    We have a dropship store that we built on ZenCart with a WordPress blog attached to it. This setup and mostly the content marketing via the blog helps us connect with ~100-150 new visitors each day...

    It's working for us, so I can only assume that with enough persistence, it can work for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author bernsancog
    I am a linkbuilder and worked with several SEO companies for 7 years. I charge $500 on a month-to-month basis with 40 hours per week. I also have a team that can rank your site if you prefer. SEO is my passion and I like the challenge.
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  • Profile picture of the author kite6w
    Thank you for your feedback. I want to explain a little bit about my plan. lI have a $2000 budget to launch an ecommerce store and I want to use it wisely. I plan to add products listing manually first to know what I am capable of before I outsource them as I add more products later on. I am also pretty decent at keyword research (I once had a site on google page 1, but since I don't have time to update it, ranking just free falling from there). I plan to use Bigcommerce for my store using the cheapest plan ($25/mo) and upgrade it later accordingly. Hosting is probably about $100/year. So give or take, I will roughly have $1800 to work with. The thing I am not really good at is marketing using PPC, social, etc... beside SEO which I believe I can do by myself. I want to focus on customer services and outsource marketing tasks. So I really need experts' feedback on how would you allocate this budget for maximum quality and cost-effective.

    Thanks!!!
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Alden
      "I want to focus on customer services and outsource marketing tasks"

      Good plan if you can afford it, focusing on value is always a great way to do business in the long and short term.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kayster13
    What are the best options if you have a low budget? Where do you start? What would you recommend?
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  • Hello, we are an outsourcing company in the Philippines who specializes in e-commerce, eBay, and Amazon. We can get you on all sales channels and get you maximum exposure for your products, we have over 10+ years of experience doing this. PM me for details.
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    Helping your business grow 1 day at a time! We are a Internet/E-commerce outsourcing firm based in the Philippines. Visit our site for more information on how we can save you up to 70% on labor costs. 2ndoffice.co

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  • Profile picture of the author Cobaki
    With regards to the quality of people from Phils. regarding of the work they provide, most of them are good and negative ones are rare. If you are tight on budget, you can find those that offer at reasonable rates. Make sure to check their work history and reviews first.
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    • Profile picture of the author Silas Hart
      You are in for an adventure.

      Find an established company within your own country that can offer a guarantee or can help you write up one in your benefit. SEO and marketing companies are a dime a dozen, and 99% of them have 0 experience and even less have experience in eCommerce... and even LESS have experience in managing a budget.

      A company with a good track record will be confident in the fact that they can bring people to your page and will optimize your traffic and convert them into sales. If anyone says "Oh, well your prices might be too high" or "it depends on your page layout" then just Walk Away.

      Companies with a good track record are not out there looking for clients, instead you will be competing with their current clients for their attention, time, and experience. I promise you.

      This is what happens. Some guy overseas has a laptop and wants a lavish lifestyle working from his laptop from home with no monetary investment hears
      you can do a couple tricks (which are mostly all outdated and will not gain traffic to your items) and they will start making the money they want. So they read a couple eBooks they downloaded from the pirate bay or found through forums, and they create profiles on oDesk, Freelancer, etc. They eventually get a job by promising the moon for just $200. Then they spam links on forums and on your end, you see a small spike in traffic and you are thinking "wow, this is amazing!" and maybe you make a sale or two and you think your off. If you are new to this whole process, then you will probably leave them a positive feedback on their profile and assume the traffic will continue and it doesn't. It flat lines, and eventually you notice you cant find your own items by typing in keywords into the SE's, while they have moved on to their 2nd or 3rd customer by now, who are most likely just like you. At this point, you will hire someone else and say "Hey, do this for $300 a month, and I have a $500 monthly budget" so your new guy, which is the exact same as your last guy, takes your monthly budget and invests $200 in Google Adwords and then pockets the rest... and again, you see a small spike in traffic and think you've figured things out. Then the guy says you need a bigger budget and he can promise you that you will make many more sales. You pay, he pockets half of it, and disappears after a month or two before you realize there is no increase in your traffic, conversion rates, opt in's, etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author kofys2011
    I agree with "Silas" to an extent. However to blame the whole outsourcing fraternity is not justified. There are people who do legitimate work and can deliver rankings but hard to judge .
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