Selling products online is not only for big businesses. Small businesses and individuals also have the opportunity to make money in the world of e-commerce, which has continued to grow in recent years.

If you have your own online store, you probably know that one of the biggest challenges is to get people to visit the site. In many cases, converting those visitors to sales is much easier than just getting the visitors in the first place.

Hopefully the information presented in this article will help you by demonstrating a few ways that anyone can market an e-commerce site, even on a tight budget.

1. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click marketing is a great way to get visitors to your site that can be extremely cost-effective if done properly. All of the most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) have PPC programs where advertisers can bid on ad placements that will be shown when certain searches are performed.

With PPC you can use optimized ads that will market to people who are searching for what you have to offer. Because you can control who sees your ads and how much you want to spend, it’s very possible to get a good bang for your buck with PPC.

Also, PPC is an option regardless of your budget. You can set a limit of $25 per month, or you can even spend thousands of dollars in a day if you want to. PPC campaigns can work with any budget and so there are few people that cannot benefit.

2. Banners

Banners are one of the most popular kinds of online ads. If you are using banners to market your sites you may not have as much control over who sees your ads as you would with PPC, but you may get exposure to a larger audience.

Pricing on banner ads will depend on a lot of factors. The site you are advertising on will charge a fee (often monthly) based on the amount of traffic they receive, the reputation of the site, location and size of the ad, and other related factors.

3. Start an Affiliate Program

Affiliate programs can be a great way to boost sales by leveraging the efforts of others. With an affiliate program other website owners can send traffic to your site, and if that person makes a purchase the affiliate will be paid a commission on the sale. There are a lot of options for setting up an affiliate program and it is not as complex as it sounds.

Affiliate programs can bring visitors and sales to your site, and can help others to make money for their efforts promoting your products. If affiliates aren’t making sales, you’re not paying them any money, so it is a low risk way to promote your site.

4. Add a Blog to the Site

Adding a blog to a website is a popular method for marketing just about any type of website. Blogs are great because they help to keep your site up-to-date, and over time you will build up the amount of content on the site and have a chance to attract more search engine visitors.

In addition to adding a blog to your own website, you can also write articles for other blogs to promote your site. Many blogs are open to receiving guest posts, and as a guest author you will generally be able to include a brief bio of yourself with a link to your own site. This link can help for bringing click-through traffic and for improving your search engine rankings.

5. Email List

If there are people who are interested in what you sell, chances are they would be interested in an email newsletter that alerts them to sales and special promotions, as well as new products announcements. Newsletters and mailing lists are great for keeping customers up-to-date and for getting more sales from your existing customers.

Steven Snell is a web designer from New Jersey. He runs CartFrenzy, a gallery site that showcases the best ecommerce web design.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • •

Filed under: e commerce

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!