Updated 11/2/2007
So what exactly is "Web Marketing?... Let's break that term down, shall we?
"Marketing" is the act of buying and selling.
In more detail, it's what you do to induce customers to buy your products.
This includes all kinds of advertising and promotion, such as television, radio, newspapers, signs, and direct mail.
No surprise that all those methods above work for promoting a web store; some like newspapers and signs work quite well.
However those methods tend to cost more than "web marketing".
True to the name, "web marketing" is the act of promoting and advertising your web store via the internet.
So how do we do that?
Here are some avenues you can pursue:
- Email Marketing
- Web Directories
- Vertical Search engines
- Pay per click
- Online Forums
- Web Logs (aka "Blogs")
This is a large subject just by itself,
discussed in detail in another "Dropshipping 101" page located here.
Ever see comparison shopping search sites on the internet? Listing your products there is usually
low cost, and relatively simple.
Where you list your products depends on what category of products you're selling.
You wouldn't want to list cosmetics on a site geared to selling electronics for example.
Yes that's obvious, but you'd be amazed how many people overlook it...
So let's discuss some of the major shopping directories:
Froogle
- the name should give you a clue to the owner of this site, which is of course Google.
I mention it first because it's free to list products
there, and because Google itself is so popular. What can you sell on Froogle?... just about anything from
cosmetics to
heavy machinery!
The search site Shopping.com
also provides results for the directories Dealtime,
and MySimon. These sites are general
purpose shopping sites, covering items like Books, Electronics, Health & Beauty, Sports, Home & Garden, etc.
Did you know you can sell on Amazon.com?
Just go there and search for "sell your stuff" to see how to list your own products on their site!
Yahoo "Product Submit" lets you do much
the same on Yahoo's shopping site
A normal web shopping directory is considered a "horizontal" search site. Many products across a broad range of subjects.
If you're selling only one category of products, like pet supplies, that's where a "vertical" (narrowly
focussed) site comes in! If you find and list your products on such a web site or search engine, you'll have a
better chance of getting people to your web store that are interested in what you're selling.
You may have see ads of this sort; they generally appear across the top and the right hand side of search results
pages on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, for example. The advertising sites feeding ads to their respective search sites
are Yahoo Search Marketing,
Google AdWords, and
Microsoft adCenter (MSN).
Search marketing can be as cheap or expensive as you like; you have full control of how
much you spend. Discussing this in detail will be the
subject of a future "Dropshipping 101" article.
Many forums, aka "discussion groups" have sprung up on the world wide web for discussing subjects as diverse
as tv shows, computers, and travel. One method to get your web store noticed to add the address of your
store to the "signature" of your profile on the forums your participate in. That way, whenever you post
a message to that forum, a link to your store is posted as well.
It's not recommended to post a message to a forum that is an out-and-out advertisement for your website,
since such postings are usually replied to with open hostility.
Web logs can be used in much the same manner as "web forums" above, by adding the address of your web store
into the links page on your web log, the links in your profile, etc. But it is recommended that the content of
any web logs NOT be about your products, or store. Many online stores have been posting "new product" notices
to web logs; this practise has become less effective recently, being assigned the derogatory term of "Splog"
(spam weblog).
