Marketing Your Website
How to market your website these days can be very hard with all the new search engine rules. Where years ago you would just fill out a form in all these places and boom within a few weeks your site would be in the search engines. It now takes a lot of work and sometimes it can put a big dent in your pocketbook.
Here are a few ways to market your website for FREE and PAY it does take a lot of time on your part to do this but it does help to get your site known.
FREE Marketing ....
A ) Visit websites and post in their guest books leave your website name or URL to your site.
B ) Join Arts and Crafts related forums and be active in these forums so people can get to know you and about your website and product.
C ) Banner exchange with website is great but a short text description about your site in rich text is much better.
D ) Some forums offer "Prim Packs" this is were craft sites snail mail each other with small samples of product with a business card or flyer's with monthly specials. The other person then mails these out with every order they receive and you would do the same for them with their Prim Pack.
E ) You can find self submit areas on the net for free where you would enter all your info once your site is open and has keywords and meta tags. You would then go down the list they offer and hand type all your site info and submit to smaller search engines, directories, FFA's. This could take hours of work and a very long time in some places to have your site added.
F ) Join as many Top 100 sites or Webrings
G ) Do weekly or monthly news letters with updates about your website.
H ) Bloging with your website with craft related articles
Marketing that cost money....
A ) Join places like www.Crafterspeddlervillage.com who dedicate their website in advertising in arts-n-crafts and wham website all over the internet. They are set up to help your site get known through out the internet.
B ) Join forums who offer advertising with rotating banners on there forum pages such as www.primmart.com
C ) Advertise with talk radio channels on the internet such as www.primtalkradio.com
D ) Join an Co-Op Ad with a group of sites related to arts and crafts in major magazines.
E ) Join news letters who offer advertising to add your banner or text to advertise your site.
F ) Buy a promotion package from places like www.craftsitemedic.com they focus totally on craft related sites with submitting in search engines.
G ) Pay larger search engines per click advertising.
H ) Pay to place an Ad in craft related magazines.
I ) Always own your Domain this is very importune your domain will be picked up easier with search engines instead of having a sub-domain name.
J ) Join Internet Craft Shows that advertise a lot about the craft shows they hold.
All of these suggestions we have made does not guarantee that your site will be on page 1 of Google or Yahoo but these are ways to help bring in more traffic , possible sales and getting your website on search engines. You need to make a few days a month on just doing some of these suggestions to better your website in being in more traffic.
I hate to say this but when you open your website your site is 1 in a few thousand out there selling the same product doing the same crafting related items in the internet. It is up to you on how much time you want to spend submitting or paying for advertising with your site. It can take 3 months, 6 months or even a year even before you receive any sales from your site. But the more you get your website name out there the higher traffic you will have which means good chance you will have sales from your website.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Merchant Accounts
Merchant Acct.
New website who are open or people who are thinking of opening a new website that sell product should not have to go pay high dollar amounts for merchant set up in your websites such as using your local bank for a merchant account system.
I would go with www.paypal.com to start off with just opening because this account does not require you to go apply for a DBA or Tax ID these fund can go directly into your personal checking account.
Once your sales reach $1000.00 per month then I would go set up an merchant account with www.ProPay.com or some other company such as Total Merchants apply for your DBA ( Doing Business As) and Tax ID then set up a new bank account for these sales from your website. TIP - (make sure your bank knows you have an outside merchant system. Sometimes they will try to sell you what they offer this does cost more money.) ProPay is also great because you can use this in your website, ebay sales, craft shows.
For Craft Shows - You can get the old fashion knuckle buster pay slips as a copy for your sales at the craft show and you can call in every card used with your cell phone with the sale right then to make sure the card is good and this will give you an Authorized # once it has gone through. The best part is you will have the card holders signature on the sales slip. This helps from getting a chargeback from the credit card company if this person called in to there credit card company saying they never did this charge at this craft show. Then you have the signature to prove you did this sale with this person.
Large Orders - Like Wholesales $100.00 or more in one sale with using a service like Propay they can call in, email you, mail in orders, fax orders, or from your merchant cart system from your website. Before mailing the order for the first few time you should require that they sign a sales slip (knuckle buster sales slip) that you mail to them and have it returned back to you before shipping. This is another way of getting a Chargeback if you have nothing signed with that charge.
This also helps you with your terms of service within your website on returns and refund policy which every website should have that does sales from. The merchant accounts and bank cards are on the credit card holders side if you do not have a sales slip signed by this person. If you have this signed slip then you can win this battle if there is a chargeback because you have there signature on a sales slip. Another bad thing is on any chargebacks it does count against you. Then sometimes the person you sold to may not send your product back if you have that signed slip for this sale it will protect you on these problems by proving the sale was signed for. This also protects you from fraud and stolen credit cards by calling in or going to the propay website and enter the sale in right then it will let you know if the card is accepted. By doing all of this it protects the card holder and also your self from all these problems.
New website who are open or people who are thinking of opening a new website that sell product should not have to go pay high dollar amounts for merchant set up in your websites such as using your local bank for a merchant account system.
I would go with www.paypal.com to start off with just opening because this account does not require you to go apply for a DBA or Tax ID these fund can go directly into your personal checking account.
Once your sales reach $1000.00 per month then I would go set up an merchant account with www.ProPay.com or some other company such as Total Merchants apply for your DBA ( Doing Business As) and Tax ID then set up a new bank account for these sales from your website. TIP - (make sure your bank knows you have an outside merchant system. Sometimes they will try to sell you what they offer this does cost more money.) ProPay is also great because you can use this in your website, ebay sales, craft shows.
For Craft Shows - You can get the old fashion knuckle buster pay slips as a copy for your sales at the craft show and you can call in every card used with your cell phone with the sale right then to make sure the card is good and this will give you an Authorized # once it has gone through. The best part is you will have the card holders signature on the sales slip. This helps from getting a chargeback from the credit card company if this person called in to there credit card company saying they never did this charge at this craft show. Then you have the signature to prove you did this sale with this person.
Large Orders - Like Wholesales $100.00 or more in one sale with using a service like Propay they can call in, email you, mail in orders, fax orders, or from your merchant cart system from your website. Before mailing the order for the first few time you should require that they sign a sales slip (knuckle buster sales slip) that you mail to them and have it returned back to you before shipping. This is another way of getting a Chargeback if you have nothing signed with that charge.
This also helps you with your terms of service within your website on returns and refund policy which every website should have that does sales from. The merchant accounts and bank cards are on the credit card holders side if you do not have a sales slip signed by this person. If you have this signed slip then you can win this battle if there is a chargeback because you have there signature on a sales slip. Another bad thing is on any chargebacks it does count against you. Then sometimes the person you sold to may not send your product back if you have that signed slip for this sale it will protect you on these problems by proving the sale was signed for. This also protects you from fraud and stolen credit cards by calling in or going to the propay website and enter the sale in right then it will let you know if the card is accepted. By doing all of this it protects the card holder and also your self from all these problems.
Opening Your New Website
Owning your own domain is EZ you can buy domains at places like godaddy.com for as little 8.00 a year then find a website hosting company like www.primmart.com to host your domain with for as little as 20.00 a month. The DIY sites offer very easy to use building tools for you to learn on how to build your site with no knowledge of using HTML. If you opened your site with someone it is a #1 big NO NO to have them buy and own the domain name your going to use. Years ago I did this not knowing that if I decided to move my website they may keep the domain, site graphics and email as there own and then I would no longer be able to use that name, graphics and email. This was very upsetting because I had worked so hard with building this site and submitted my site to as many places found in the internet I had steady sales and was stuck in this hosting place or had to start all over again. So if you want your own site and OWN your domain name you need to go and set this all up then your ready to move to the next step of building your new site.
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