Advertising

When you have your online business set up, how will people know you're there and ready to sell? In a B&M you can hang banners on the front of the store, open the doors, and people will see them. How do you attract customers online? You advertise. Depending on your budget, there are a variety of places you can advertise your new online store and website.

Look towards advertising to a national or worldwide audience to get the most out of your advertising dollars. You may be surprised where you end up finding your customer base. In informal observation, I've noticed more customers come from areas under serviced by local retail stores, which makes sense. Why drive 30 miles to go to a store when you can do it from the comfort of your home?

A good place to start is Google Adwords or Yahoo Small Business. You can start advertising with them for as little as a few dollars a day. The actual price per ad varies based on where you want your ad to appear and the popularity of the keyword you want to advertise. A keyword is what a visitor who's looking for what you have to offer might type into a search engine.

A more expensive place to advertise, but one that can get you good results if you are selling to a niche crowd, is in a magazine or periodical devoted to the type of hobbies or audience you are looking to attract.

Other websites are also good places to advertise, particularly if they are geared towards your target audience. Visit websites and forums associated with what you are selling and look for advertising opportunities on these sites.

A completely free way to advertise, particularly if you are selling niche products, is to join forums and communities online with an interest in that area, and present yourself to them. It's not suggested that you join purely to advertise, as this is considered spam and may offend the people there. Join and become part of the community and present what you have to offer to that community. Just be honest about who you are. If you join a forum or community and try to pretend that you are not associated with your store, but recommend it at every opportunity, you will be discovered eventually and that too may offend the people there.

Another free means of advertising your site is exchanging links with other sites. We'll talk more about this in The Website section.

A bad idea is to send out mass emails to strangers advertising your store. This is called spam and is more likely to turn people against you and anything you are selling than attract them to your store.