thomarv29

I have a website that im launching around the 17th and its a unique shopping platform, however i need a good way to reach out to online merchants in a quick way. Doesn't have to be cheap either, i just need to reach out to a massive number of them easily. I will give the best answer $1,000 through paypal if you can give me a genuinely great idea. The website is Tappocity if you watch the video you will see what the concept is. I am already planning on doing the following:

1. LinkedIn Ads
2. Full page ad in online retailer magazine and online marketing
3. YouTube in stream ads optimizing on keywords like "How to sell online" and so on.
4. Direct Calls

Please give me more... Thanks

Im president of White Label Links Inc. A leading SEO and Internet marketing company based out of Jacksonville FL

thomarv29

Right now i have 130K but have a few venture capital firms and Twitter interested in investing

Im president of White Label Links Inc. A leading SEO and Internet marketing company based out of Jacksonville FL

RSMarketing

Hey how about JVNotifyPro 2.0 · Joint Venture (JV) Lists, Announcements, Blogs, And Community Forums.

Or talk to hosting companies, adn ask them to send an email to all of their hosting clients, or hosting clients that currently have a "shopping cart" installed ?

Hope that helps,

Rich

FredJones

Let me PM you something - there's a good source that may help you.

Get funded up to US $2 Million for your business as a JV (not a loan). Keep 80% of the profits.

thomarv29

Great idea, you may very well have won... have you ever used anything like this?

Im president of White Label Links Inc. A leading SEO and Internet marketing company based out of Jacksonville FL

highper

Are you going to be posting the winning answer here?

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thomarv29

Yeah I sure will, thanks

Im president of White Label Links Inc. A leading SEO and Internet marketing company based out of Jacksonville FL

Adam X

Perhaps purchaseing en email list of merchants from a reputable firm. You will be able to reach tens of thousands of merchants and its fast.

rosetrees

Are the merchant you are after the smaller companies that tend to sell via Ebay and Amazon? If so, I'd buy sponsored advertising on those networks, aimed at current and potential merchants.

Edit: Which makes me wonder if either network has a vendor's newsletter that you can get an advertising slot in?

thomarv29

Thats exactly who I'm targeting. I tried finding the link to do that but couldnt find it. Any idea how to get to the right webpage to get that started?

Im president of White Label Links Inc. A leading SEO and Internet marketing company based out of Jacksonville FL

rooze

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KarlWarren

Can I just be the first to say...

WOW!

Great video, great concept - and something I can see taking off VERY VERY well.

Here's what you need to do...

Press release, everywhere you can - talk to the newspapers. This site is a story waiting to happen - it's in the consumer's best interests that this site goes live.

Then Facebook the hell out of this, especially that video - you're going to get likes all over the place, which is going to:

1) Build your list
2) Start a snowball effect of likes and subscribers
3) Get the press interested

If you do the above, you probably won't have to contact other businesses (although, I'd recommend doing so, because every bit of promotion helps), they'll come to you.

Commission Junction might be a good way to get a huge number of affiliates fast for this.

Kindest regards,
Karl.

David Keith

First, cool concept. Here is my thought.

This is going to "sell" much better to consumers than it will to merchants. Not saying merchants won't like it, just saying it forces them to compete on price. Not something most merchants really want to do unless they have to.

In today's ultra fast social media world, consumers can drive the marketplace to do what they want more than ever before.

I personal would probably spend a good bit of effort to reach lots of consumers via social media. Then ask those consumers to apply pressure to merchants.

Of course you need to do what you can to deal with merchants directly yourself, but I think a big part of your angle should be to get consumers to pressure merchants to get involved.

I could see how that could spread like wildfire on social media and then it will be very hard for merchants to ignore a place with lots of eager buyers.

Along those same lines, this site has great potential to catch some traditional media via press releases.

Just a Little War Room Gift.

ToneyCr

I added you to skype. Acept me so we can speak there.

David Keith

I should probably warn you that your contest is pretty much dead now that it has been moved to the contest section of the site. The traffic numbers were removed a couple months back, but typically the main room had 1-2k people in it. The contest thread usually showed under 5 people in it at any time.

Just a Little War Room Gift.

Venturetothetop

IF I'm honest you will not find many affiliates because your business model makes no sense.

No one or any company is going to be spending £170 for a $250 purchase. I know they only pay $3 each but if 50 odd merchants compete, and they all get one sale each, then it works out as i said. If merchants drop out then obviously the cost drops too.

I could give you ideas on where to find affiliates for this if you got the business model right. I would even promote it to my own network if the model was right, but as it stands it has no chance of success, the figures do not work.

Before affiliates you need a business consultant to get the basics right. Trust me affiliates will pick holes in your model all day long so it is very important to get that right before promoting it.

I am a business coach so sent you a PM about this.

[B]

thomarv29

Thanks for the feedback, ill kind of clarify the business model because the video is to explain it in a very simplified manner. The price merchants pay to make a bid is dependent on a few factors... the first is the cost of the item, the second is the number of merchants who have placed an offer. The fee scales to keep the Cost per Sale pretty even no matter how many merchants are competing. Another great thing for merchants is that if the customer they have made an offer to never makes a purchase, all the merchants who paid to make an offer are refunded in full. This makes it even more attractive to Merchants. In addition to that, there are no "Transaction Fees", or "processing fees". The only thing they pay for is the offer. We have also created very complex algorithms to control the average Cost Per Sale, and keep the conversion rates pretty even. I wanted to design it to be very attractive to merchants. Amazon and eBay charge 9-13% Transaction fees so this will really save them quite a bit of money. Hope that explains the business a little better. Thanks for your help and feedback!

Im president of White Label Links Inc. A leading SEO and Internet marketing company based out of Jacksonville FL

gbarrows31

Video Response: Click for Video

Learn Just How I Do It!

David Keith

You have a chicken and egg type of problem.

It is not going to be easy to get many merchants to signup to compete for sales based almost entirely on price without an good sized customer base of willing buyers.

What you need to do is go into a "beta" "pre-launch" and get yourself a whole bunch of buyers. Then you have leverage to talk to merchants.

When you call up and say "I have 1 million buyers on my site, I would like to see if we can work together" they are going to at least hear you out.

You try calling any retailers of any significance without a set of buyers and they are going to just thank you for calling and decline. What's in it for them. What you claim to offer them is buyers. You have to overcome the what's in it for me(them) objection right off the bat.

So go into a beta and get the social engine cranked up to get a list of buyers together. Then you have leverage to deal with the merchants. Right now, you need them, they don't NEED you. 1 million or so registered users changes the whole conversation.

Obviously the more user the better.

Just a Little War Room Gift.

crazybeing

Print out flyers and start distributing them ... place them in newspapers which would make your market wide open.

Approach successful local businesses with floating customers on any given time in a day ... place banners or offer discount coupons in addition to being part of a monthly contest which rewards something good to go for!Say you pick one amongst the ones who bought through your site in regards with the contest.

Offer daily deals,it attracts folks like crazy.Promote through shopping malls ... handover flyers with discounts or advantages over shopping through your site!

I'd then move onto mobile marketing,there are many texting services being offered which can help you out to reach to huge volumes.

Though stupid,i'd hire one SEO professional and make them optimize my website for major brands!It pays off on a long run and too worthy to ignore at this point of time.

And then,promote your site through FB ads ... come with up with a nice fanpage and update it with recent offers or contests!Heck lot of targeted customers you know!

Why not tie up with LOCKERZ ... they've targeted users and best thing is their users hang in around almost all day either for good deals or points

Airing commercials in TV channels can cost you fortune .... thereby i'd go for radio stations!Not to mention many are hooked onto radio stations whilst driving back to home or office!Nice way to make a mark!

Hire an outsourcer to post craiglist ads ... 1000's go through these ads daily!

LOL nothing else strikes my mind right now ... i'll be back with few more ideas!

Thanks and all the best for your venture

thomarv29

We did a pre-launch and only spent $300 but got 1080 people signed up. We are planning another consumer pre-launch with a $70K budget... that will give us a great value ad for new merchants.

Im president of White Label Links Inc. A leading SEO and Internet marketing company based out of Jacksonville FL

David Keith

I am speaking from experience having been involved in launching a couple somewhat similar type platforms. Without a whole pile of customers in your system very few merchants are going to be very interested in dealing with you on this.

Just a Little War Room Gift.

thomarv29

We should be able to hit over 100,000 consumers in the next month with the conversion rates we have obtained so far and our budget.

Im president of White Label Links Inc. A leading SEO and Internet marketing company based out of Jacksonville FL

David Keith

That is going to be the entire key to making this work. When you go to merchants, you have to have something to sell them. Selling them advertising options to a bunch of non-existent customers is not a very enticing pitch.

I would delay your main launch, and focus on getting more customers faster. That's the only thing that will make advertisers/merchants want to talk to you seriously.

Even if I could give you the names and addresses of all the merchants online right now, you really don't have anything to sell them. All you have is a pay for performance advertising system with no customers.

I think the idea can work, but it all revolves around a beta launch to get a bunch of customers.

Your approach to get advertisers before you have customers is the flaw in your current approach. What you are calling merchants are really just advertisers in this business relationship.

You need customers before advertisers are interested in talking to you.

Just a Little War Room Gift.

David Keith

sorry for the double post, but for some reason I was thinking about this site during my workout. It sure beat thinking about how out of shape i am

Until this gets big, you are going to have a much easier time attracting smallish merchants. There are 3 main places those guys sell online.

Yahoo stores
ebay stores
amazon

I am sure there are others, but those just come to mind real quickly.

I would be looking to see if I might could work out something with them to do some advertising. Also, if you can't those are still places with lots of merchants that are looking for new customers. A good VA (virtual assistant) could help you manually contact those merchants pretty cheap.

also, I would really be looking to get in touch with a group like shareasale or cj.com. Those are affiliate management systems where merchants signup to have them manage and recruit affiliates for them. That means there are a lot of merchants within their systems. Again, I would look to reach them through the parent company, but you could always resort to good old fashion work to get it done.

third. This is going to go over really well with consumers. Use their leverage and greed to your advantage. Setup an affiliate type system of your own that rewards users for referring you a merchant. You could pay maybe $200 or something like that. If you are only paying for merchants you come out well. Consumers would love to get merchants on this deal, so use that to your advantage.

A nice bonus of this is they will be talking it up and help you get the word out.

Just a Little War Room Gift.

l@ttemonarck

So, Is there a winner? or who won?

Nuno

First of all you need to create confidence around your brand, without that you will always be loosing a good part of the money you spend promoting.

How to signup more merchants and users by not loosing the ones that are reaching you right now:

1º Your twitter account was suspended, so everyone that clicks on that highly visible homepage link will become wary.

2º Merchants that want to contact you through your Whois email, will notice that it doesn't work. Why? Because comergentgroup.com is on redemptionPeriod ! You need to change the whois email of Tappocity.com ASAP or you even risk loosing the domain !

3º I think you should get a better name. Changing from buyerstap.com to tappocity.com isn't a big difference. It isn't easy to remember and you'll loose traffic for tapocity.com, that isn't yours...

These 3 things should be your priority. In case I win this I can give more advice.

I have 15+ years of experience & millions of visitors (I'm also a warrior since 2002)!
NunoAlex.com explains how I can help. I'm looking for a limited number of serious partners.

Smalls91

Hire some people to do active viral marketing on social media sites. It's fast, gets great exposure, builds up your links, likes, tweets, plus ones, and list quickly. It is also low cost because you will only be paying those directed to create profiles promoting your site. Pay them a set fee for a set amount of work, such as friends per day. This can become massive quickly and easily, with little more work than sending money to a few people. It also provides you with the hungry customers needed to get merchants on board.

farizalfa

Hey,
what about making SEO contest or SEO article ?

SEO contest is the best way to get your costumer in short day. maybe, with seo contest that you hold, you can get the Massive Costumer just in few day with your targeted keyword. And.... Hmmmm. . . it's really cheap and really simple to do as I know.

farizalfa

Build your relationship with the people who have a marchant product that you want sell in your marketplace.
Did you know? Relationship is important if you want to be success man. ^^

tgmo09

i would think comission junction they are linked to almost every fortune 500 i can think of and their competitors
and then you can contact each company on an individiual basis

profitwriter

Hire a Virtual Assistant,

using bestjobs.ph.

You should get someone in the phillipines for a few
hundred dollars per month.

Ask them to complile a list of the top Wholesalers
(inc. contact details)
supplying your target regions, eg. America, U.K, Canada
etc.

Then hire a copy writer to put together an email,
to contact these wholesalers, with a view to
getting them to send an email to all the merchants these
wholesalers are supplying.

The hook for the wholesaler is that they can offer more
value to their customers, as there customers
(ie the merchants) will be able to sell
there goods whilst incuring smaller fee's.
If that doesnt work, pay them for a solo mailing.

Get a copywriter to script the email (the solo ad).
Drive that traffic to your site, either via a squeeze
page, or at least have an email capture come
accross the screen.

The follow up email sequence should be written by a copywritter
as well.

Obviously, the site needs many customers before
you can go down the route of attracting hoards of
merchants.

You could also hire a VA to contact
all power sellers on ebay.

all the best with this!

tgmo09

one thought instead of dealing direcly with each company
deal with the advertisers/publishers already advertising for those companies/products
i will pay $3 a month for you to put my link up on your site especially if i make a commission greater than $3 on the low end 10% commission on $200 =$20
you would find more people with companies way faster that way

GregsMarketingSvc

Checkout http://RxSEO.net

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profitwriter

another thing you mite want to look at,
is how shopify launched and became
successful.

they had a competition, offering a cash
prize (100k) for the merchant that made the
most money.

you can read about this here...

“The Start-up’s Secret Weapon: Contests” or “How to Turn $100K into $12,000,000″

diana206

Are the merchant you are after the smaller companies that tend to sell via Ebay and Amazon? If so, I'd buy sponsored advertising on those networks, aimed at current and potential merchants.

Edit: Which makes me wonder if either network has a vendor's newsletter that you can get an advertising slot in?

Fallen_Angel

hire a few va to contact small merchant websites, ebay sellers, small retail shops, big name supplier chains. This can be a an ongoing process forever. The more signups you have the more interested the big name retailers will want come on board.
Contact lead sellers and pitch them.
Contact various affiliate program owners and pitch them on pitching their merchants, ie, shareasale,commission junction etc.


Some companies and industries pay big bucks for buyer leads such as this.

Nuno

The OP last reply was more than 2 weeks ago, is this still going?

I have 15+ years of experience & millions of visitors (I'm also a warrior since 2002)!
NunoAlex.com explains how I can help. I'm looking for a limited number of serious partners.

Fallen_Angel

Also good luck on your venture.

Andreas24

Our online web directory is allowing you to reach merchants in a quick way worldwide.

Nuno

The OP started other threads and didn't even reply here so I guess we just lost our time (as I suspected, but it's a pity).

I have 15+ years of experience & millions of visitors (I'm also a warrior since 2002)!
NunoAlex.com explains how I can help. I'm looking for a limited number of serious partners.

davidbalogun

make use of google trader

john-7665

1 - the best place to find all online merchants is the place where they all go to find promoters , to get more sales ,one place is CJ - Your Performance Marketing Partner because merchants promote their products at CJ - Your Performance Marketing Partner , another place is clickbank . so when ever you want to get a full list of online merchants just find websites that enlist/recruit affiliates and promoters (websites such as cj.com , clickbank ....etc)
now how to contact them :-
either you browse the cj.com, , clickbank .((.sites that are similar to clickbank........sites that are similar to cj.com )) by categories and pick up the merchants you want to contact ,or you do email harvesting (but you do not contact them using your every day email , you should create new email special for this job )
2- you can search in yellow pages such as www.yellowpagesworld.com ,
www.yellowpages.com ............ etc , this is the place where merchants add their websites & services to make their services easier to be found by customers .
3- directories such as yahoo directory , dmoz.org ..........etc because all of them submit their websites & services to directories , but not all of them are in paid directories , most of them are listed in free directory services
4-software merchants can be found at softpedia.com and websites that are similar to it (free downloads encyclopedia)
5- so you can find merchants in places where they need , merchants need affiliates and referrals in order to get maximum sales& profits, merchants need cash out buttons or buy now button (find merchants in websites that give this services),merchants need their services to be found by customers that why they list their services at yellow pages and directories, merchants need to be found in search engines , merchants might sell on famous websites such as ebay.com , amazon.com ... and all websites that are similar to ebay & amazon ,merchants might be in froogle .
these are basics needs of each merchant (affiliates and referrals , get found,,get listed,put buy now& cashout buttons,famous online stores),
6- merchants need methods to receive payments from customers (such methods provided by ebanks ,paypal & websites similar to paypal ..., Bank to bank wire transfer,....etc)


so either you collect their contact infos manually or via a software or hire freelancer to do it for you manually
or you contact cj.com website , clickbank ,ebay.amazon ....etc asking them to give you a list of their merchants .

Free stuff the guide

tubieso

You should use social media as facebook , twitter for adversite your site

Social Media News
Cover Facebook Photo

Brady Partridge

I think your best bet is to advertise your site and what you have to offer on merchant forums such as Website Help - Online Merchant Forum. In this electronic age, word of mouth via sms, facebook, tweets, and forum posts is the fastest way to promote a worthwhile concept or product. Your site and marketing concept is excellent. Once merchants know about it, they're going to let other merchants know about it, and the word will spread exponentially as a result. You cannot get better and faster publicity than that.

flyingeagle

it seems more like converting a traditional market to online market .. and the store rent convert in to payment to the buyer ant your website right ?

i dont tend to join the quiz but i agree to advise :
advertise
merchant forum
wholesaleforum may be ..

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webpeon

First off nice product, and perfect timing with xmas less than half a year away.

Have you considered affiliate options for this product and pushing that angle, this will allow you to target both merchants and consumers simultaneously.. it will also give you the opportunity to convert already trusted buyers right off another merchants website.


Consider the following campaign

Advertising Site - Posts an advert to your affiliate system something like "Looking to get the highest returns from your eccomerce store this xmas, expand your product line instantly with xyz affiliates" - if you are going to be advertising why not advertise to advertisers

Merchant - Posts affiliate advert link on their site something along the lines of "Dont want to play dodgeball with your xmas shopping this year but still want access to those great bargain prices.. let xyz bring the best deals to you" - you'll obviously need to factor in a cut for the affiliate but depending on how far into the model you already are you could resplit the profits on a 1:1:1 (xyz: affiliate : consumer) - By giving the merchant an option to make a profit they'd also be more open to supporting your model as a contributing merchant

Ongoing marketing
Something which I dont see much of surprisingly is platform specific modules/plugins. you could look at having a series of plugins and modules built to easily incorporate your affiliate advertising into someone elses site ie xyz plugin for wordpress, xyz module for prestashop or whatever other eccomerce platforms there may be and by doing this you can have eccomerce platforms advertise your product just by advertising your plugin.


and then theres social marketing which you just cant ignore with a project of this type but since theres been some good advice in that area already I wont go into that

WhiteLighter

Wow $1000 for an is some seriously good money. Back to the drawing board to come up with something that will blow you away. Nice looking site by the way. Simple and effective!

Tsnyder

Just curious...

This thread started 8 months ago... March 11, 2011... with a projected
launch date of "around the 17th." Did anyone win the $1000? Did the OP
find the info he was looking for? Is the site actually in business yet?

hodgeemory

I guess you need to have the right approach, get customers, merchants will follow everywhere.