February 15, 2008 – 6:44 pm
I've mentioned before about before the launch of a new site, what about once you've set the site live and are then looking for your first flurry of visitors? These days, first port of call is getting the site index in the search engines. Usually a link to the site from an already indexed site does the trick. If your site is quite complex then it may be a good idea to create an XML Sitemap and submit that to the search engines too. Don't forget your own visitors though. A standard sitemap is a must for any site that goes more than one link deep from the front page, or has more than about 10 pages.
The next step is social media. StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us are my two favourites. StumbleUpon will get you a fair bit of instant traffic (depending on the subject this can be maybe 100 visitors up to 1000), but it will also continue to send a few visitors every once in a while. Delicious can also work well if the right tags are used and all it takes is one bookmark to potentially get a few more visitors through as I've mentioned in the past. This is where you get cheeky and ask online contacts to help you out too. Providing you're happy to give the same help back when it's needed, then it doesn't cost anyone 
Blogging is a great method of marketing, especially if you have a reasonable amount of visitors and feed subscribers. Although make sure you're not pushing a new product or site to them too often, else you'll find your regular visitors will stop visiting so often. I recently used this method to announce the launch of DIY covers, my latest product selling site. In turn a couple of fellow bloggers have mentioned my post on their site which I'm indeed greatful for. Asking fellow bloggers for reviews or mentions of your new product is also a good way to get some traffic. If you offer a cut down version of the product in return, or a free version depending on its worth, and just ask for an honest review, then you can potentially get a lot of traffic and potential buyers from sources you would never get to otherwise. Some bloggers may require a fee for their time, or an incentive to do the review, such as an affiliate option (see further down).
Forums are also a great place to target, especially if you're already known within the 'community' and again, you don't mention a new product every other day. Some forums may get more reaction that others, again it depends on the type of product, the audience there, and if they are not the type to buy then perhaps what else they can do. On the forums that I regularly use, I posted about DIY Covers but also asked for stumbles off anyone who fancied it. A little additional exposure for free is great, again, be prepared to return the same favour one day.
We then have advertising. Paying for advertising can be risky business as you need to be sure you'll get your return on investment (ROI). A lot of the pay per click advertising options are usually quite good as you can control who the advert is shown to, targeting the right people, and you only pay per visitor. For my latest site I've used WordLinx, run by an acquaintance, where I've built up around 1000 visitors worth of credit. I cannot control who I target on this, if you upgrade you can control which continents you target, however for this product I didn't need that option. WordLinx is another way of getting a sudden rush of traffic, hopefully converting to a couple of sales or even a bookmark of the site for potential future sales. For a niche site, such as another product site I run which sells Tattoo flashes, this requires a lot more targeting than I can get on WordLinx, and this is where a PPC campaign with one of the search engines would be more suitable. Often, if you search around, you can find an offer of a free voucher which could equate to a few thousand visitors if you can work it out right.
Finally, one of the best advertising methods a site can use is an affiliate system (in my opinion!). First off you're getting other people to advertise for you, for free. You only pay out if that affiliate makes a sale, a sale that you may not have got otherwise, so whilst you've had to pay out, you're still making some money, and some is better than nothing. There are plenty of affiliate services out there, or you can quite easily code this up yourself if you have the know-how. This is something I've not tried yet from a seller's point of view, but as an affiliate I know that this can be a great way of earning some easy cash.
I've used a few of these methods on my latest business - DIY Covers so far, with a few more jobs to do for it. Response has been good and, well I've just had to up the bandwidth limit on the site, so visitors are quite high too!
What other methods of promotion are there to try?
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 are finally happy to announce the launch of DIY Covers, a suite of Photoshop Actions (Photoshop 6+ required) that allow you to easily create graphical covers for eBooks, software boxes, CDs, CD Jewel cases, DVD boxes, eZines, reports and more. You can create up to 49 different shapes and angles of these covers in literally seconds.</p>
<p>Now, I think it's obvious that I'm not a designer (hence the continued use of free wordpress themes here, don't even ask to see my business website!). I know how to use Photoshop but never could I create what this suite can create, well I wouldn't have the patience for a start <img src='http://www.stuffbysarah.net/ais/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> Yet after deciding what I was going to do examples of (that took the longest time!) I created an eBook graphic and a CD in the space of just a few minutes (watch the <a href=){kind=link}