Online Business Marketing Advice

This post is in response to an Ask Liz Ryan Yahoo! Groups question about how to market a business with a shopping cart online  . . .

Feel free to comment and add in your own suggestions/recommendations.

Marketing a business online takes time and expertise. If you’re serious about learning what works for the top marketers, study their sites and consider joining an inner circle. I’m a member of Ken McCarthy’s The System Club. And, I’ve also been a member of Armand Morin’s AM2.0 program.

Here are a few observations . . .

Shopping Carts

Yahoo Stores
Web designers like this one for its easy plug-in features; about $40 per month

One Shopping Cart – the system we use; not an affiliate link
Integrates list management, email broadcasting, affiliate marketing and orders, good for basic operations, easy to set up products and pricing, some recent concerns about affiliate sales management – may be resolved with the upgraded version, ranges from $29 to $79 per month, check out the free trial

X-cart
No experience with this one, except a website critique of a site selling hundreds of products using this software platform, more advanced and feature-rich, two versions – one at $199 and one at $499

Ebay
Met a man at an Internet marketing conference who had just sold a 1 million dollar business selling mens clothing on ebay – too much work. This contact told me ebay and Craig’s List were good options for my marketing/PR information products. Now I have two choices: try and learn it on my own or buy an information product that will cut the learning curve.

Sites that Sell
Recently consulted for an online PR project for a site that sells $500,000 per year in party favors. Keywords and Google AdWords drive traffic to their site. It also helps that they’re developing a recognized brand presence. Check out My Wedding Favors for an example of a site that’s often used as an Internet marketing case study.

Promoting the Store
To grab more Internet real estate and rise up in the page rankings, send out a weekly news release about your products. Go to Technorati and search for blogs with authority that match your market. Then, comment on posts with a link back to your site. Hosting a blog about your topic builds your community – and your client base.

One last thought . . . be persistent and stay in the game. Choose one route and stay on it. If you’re serious about being an Ebay power seller, find out all you can – check Power Sellers Unite, keep testing and talk to other sellers. Trying to run on 3 or more tracks at once will slow your progress to a crawl.

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