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Website Promotion on a Shoestring Budget
Marketing your products online doesnt have to cost a fortune. This article outlines a cost-saving approach that helps attract buyers but doesnt sacrifice function or design. First, here are some tips to save money creating your website.
Website design options
You have two choices when it comes to designing your site. You can hire someone, either a professional web designer or a hobbyist designer who enjoys making sites as a sideline. The other choice is to learn the skills and layout your own site.
If you choose to hire someone else to compose and upload your web pages, you must then rely on that person for making future changes, unless you learn how to update pages yourself. Not only will the hired designer work on his own schedule (not yours), you will probably be charged a fee whenever you need the designer to edit pages or images.
A cheaper and more satisfying alternative is to learn the basics of creating web sites and do it yourself. Putting up your website can be fun and creative as well as cost free. Plus, when you know the basics of making web pages, you can always hire a designer for the overall look of the site and later go in and make updates yourself without paying additional fees.
Two free resources for learning basic web design are www.htmlgoodies.com and www.webmonkey.com If you want to gain more technical skills, like mastering Photoshop, Dreamweaver, CSS or any other useful computer programs, see www.lynda.com . For $25 a month at lynda.com, you can take all the online courses you need to become proficient in web design.
Saving on web hosting
Web hosting has become such a huge business, that it really is a buyers market when it comes to finding a low-cost host. Before you start shopping for a host, make a list of your needs. Will you require a shopping cart, autoresponders, database functions, newsletter delivery, etc? A site like www.tophosts.com can give you an overview of providers which match your needs and your budget.
Handling transactions
When making sales from your own website, youll need a shopping cart and a merchant account provider to handle credit card payments, both of which incur monthly fees. Or, you can save the fees by using PayPal ( www.paypal.com ) as your provider and pay a small commission on each sale as its made. If you are selling on eBay, its almost a necessity to offer PayPal since so many users of eBay have PayPal accounts.
Getting search engine traffic
How do prospective customers find your site? At no cost to you, you can send visitors to your site through including your web address on all your order forms and promotional material.
Get your customers to promote your website for free by offering customers who buy over a certain dollar amount a tote bag with your domain name printed on the side.
Other ways of getting visitors to your site include organic search engine results, pay-per-click ads, incoming links, blogs that mention and link to you, discussion groups, social networking sites, posting a video on the growing number of video sites, and podcasting.
Except for pay-per-click ads, most of the above methods cost you little or nothing but your time. If you have a budget for pay-per-click advertising, proceed with caution. It takes time and money to learn how to select and bid on popular search terms used by customers most likely to buy your items.
Selling your products on eBay
eBay is an online world of its own, attracting millions of shoppers daily. When you have a shoestring budget, eBay may be a good option to explore because listing fees are relatively cheap and you pay only a small commission to eBay when items sell. For a small monthly fee, you can choose to have an eBay store, where you can list all the items you make. In your other eBay auction listings, you can mention your store and even link to several other items customers might like to see.
eBay provides detailed help instructions for setting up to sell. They also offer professional auction selling tools, some for no or little cost.
Getting mentioned in the news
One of the most far-reaching ways to promote your website is to get your domain name mentioned in newspapers, magazines, and on TV and radio. Have you ever wondered how it is that there is always just enough news to fit in the current issue of Time magazine or in your daily paper? Experts say that approximately 75% of everything we read in magazines and newspapers is placed PR. Busy editors need stories and news. Learn how to write a news release by studying other news releases. Submit yours to sites like www.prweb.com and www.prnewswire.com. If you are a craft artist looking for publicity to attract shoppers who buy handmade online, www.Craftsu.com occasionally lists PR opportunities.
Magazines like Family Circle regularly feature interviews. Even The Wall Street Journal features innovative businesses marketing online, like people who sell crafts online. Send your news release or story idea to the editor of the department that best matches your product and the story you want to tell the world about.
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