How to Market Your Online Shop

by Steven Snell
In recent years the amount of money that is made through online purchases has continued to increase. More and more people turn to the internet when they shop as opposed to going to stores.
This has created an opportunity to make money through the sale of products from your own website.Despite the fact that e-commerce presents so many opportunities for businesses and website owners, getting people to visit the site and to know what you offer is offer a major challenge. Obviously, without any visitors you won't be able to make any sales.

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 AdvertisingIf you are looking for a cost-effective way to get exposure to your site, you should consider pay-per-click (PPC) ads. With PPC you can determine how much money you want to spend and what types of visitors you want to attract.
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. Banner AdvertisingAnother type of popular online advertising is banner ads. Banners are generally not as highly targeted as PPC ads, but if you carefully place your ads on the right sites you can reach a rather targeted 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. Affiliate ProgramOne way to get more people to your site without making much of an investment in advertising is to be willing to share the revenue with others who help you to make sales. With an affiliate program, other website owners can sign up and start sending visitors to your site. If one of those visitors makes a purchase at your site it will be tracked and recorded automatically and the affiliate will get a specified portion of the sale.A good affiliate program will produce monetary results for you and for those who are promoting your products. The percentage of revenue that is paid out to affiliates will vary greatly, but generally electronic products that can be downloaded will have the highest commissions (sometimes as much as 50% - 75% of the sale will go to the affiliate).

4. Start a BlogIf you are struggling to get people to visit your e-commerce site, consider adding a blog to the site. Blogs are great for marketing and traffic generation because they keep fresh content on the site, they gradually add to the number of pages on the site, and they can help to produce search engine traffic as well as repeat traffic.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 ListPeople who are interested in buying your products are also likely to have an interest in being notified about sales, specials, new products, and things like that. If you have an email list you can quickly reach a targeted audience with your message.
About the Author: Steven Snell is a web designer from New Jersey. He runs http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=">CartFrenzy, a gallery site that showcases the best http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=">e-commerce websites.