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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Subscribe to Wired PR Works by Barbara Rozgonyi by Email

Connect with CoryWest Media

Turn on easy, cool video marketing tools

Advertisement

Memorial Day | Soldier Archives Open

Today is Memorial Day. 
Is there a veteran in your family – who served from 1607 to 1975?

From now until June 6, 2007 – the anniversary of D-Day, ancestry.com is putting 90 million war records online with free access. After that, you’ll have to pay about $155/year to get into the database. 

From Time Magazine . . .

Ancestry.com is unveiling more than 90 million U.S. war records from the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 through the Vietnam War’s end in 1975. The site also has the names of 3.5 million U.S. soldiers killed in action, including 2,000 who died in Iraq.

“The history of our families is intertwined with the history of our country,” Tim Sullivan, chief executive of Ancestry.com, said in a telephone interview. “Almost every family has a family member or a loved one that has served their country in the military.”

Our family’s story . . .  

Robert L. Cory was my youngest uncle on my mother’s side. But, I never met him. Still, I knew him.

Growing up in a house with his shadow in the corners and his life coming alive at night in stories familiarized me with the image of the young man with white blonde hair. When Uncle Bob went off to serve in World War II, he  didn’t know he would be my uncle.

What young man would think about such things when there was a war calling . . .

With every one of his brothers serving overseas, Uncle Bob couldn’t wait to see the action himself. So, he enlisted – the story goes that somehow he got in before his sixteenth birthday. He was gone before he turned 17 . . .

My uncles Herman, Merlin, Hiram, Frank and Frank served in World War II, as did my father-in-law, Tony. Uncle Marylon served in the Korean War and was an a founding member of the Vermilion County War Museum in Danville, Illinois.

Stories . . . some so powerful they become legend. What’s yours?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Subscribe to Wired PR Works by Barbara Rozgonyi by Email

Connect with CoryWest Media

Turn on easy, cool video marketing tools

Memorial Day | Soldier Archives Open

Today is Memorial Day. 
Is there a veteran in your family – who served from 1607 to 1975?

From now until June 6, 2007 – the anniversary of D-Day, ancestry.com is putting 90 million war records online with free access. After that, you’ll have to pay about $155/year to get into the database. 

From Time Magazine . . .

Ancestry.com is unveiling more than 90 million U.S. war records from the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 through the Vietnam War’s end in 1975. The site also has the names of 3.5 million U.S. soldiers killed in action, including 2,000 who died in Iraq.

“The history of our families is intertwined with the history of our country,” Tim Sullivan, chief executive of Ancestry.com, said in a telephone interview. “Almost every family has a family member or a loved one that has served their country in the military.”

Our family’s story . . .  

Robert L. Cory was my youngest uncle on my mother’s side. But, I never met him. Still, I knew him.

Growing up in a house with his shadow in the corners and his life coming alive at night in stories familiarized me with the image of the young man with white blonde hair. When Uncle Bob went off to serve in World War II, he  didn’t know he would be my uncle.

What young man would think about such things when there was a war calling . . .

With every one of his brothers serving overseas, Uncle Bob couldn’t wait to see the action himself. So, he enlisted – the story goes that somehow he got in before his sixteenth birthday. He was gone before he turned 17 . . .

My uncles Herman, Merlin, Hiram, Frank and Frank served in World War II, as did my father-in-law, Tony. Uncle Marylon served in the Korean War and was an a founding member of the Vermilion County War Museum in Danville, Illinois.

Stories . . . some so powerful they become legend. What’s yours?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Subscribe to Wired PR Works by Barbara Rozgonyi by Email

Connect with CoryWest Media

Turn on easy, cool video marketing tools