Marketing new web-site

onway

I am currently setting up a new buy and sell web-site and would appreciate any advice re marketing.I have been delivering flyers but this is taking a lot of time for little return.

cossworxenergy

maybe you could use google adds. Radio campaign. newspaper local

conolan

That one is hard. Takes lots of time and lots of money. If you've very little money, will take lots more time. There's one set up a few years ago by a guy in Wexford. donedeal or dealdone. Seems he accidently found himself with a little niche, animals.

Suggest you need either a good nighe market, or a regional niche.
Worked for buyandsell once, so I learned a few things.

CallieO

This download - not dear at £1.00 - gives you all the information on how to market and promote online. Its simply written with screenshots and backed up by online support.

http://www.lulu.com/content/6141415

ClaireyBee

Hi Onway,
I do my own marketing for a couple of websites me and my partner are running and I feel your pain! One of my sites has been doing really well and all I've been doing is advertising with adwords and I recently sed up ads on facebook which are pretty good value, our last boost of visitors came from simply adding a facebook share button to some of the pages...when it's an online business ppl using ur site and word of mouth is the best way to go...
Our other website (a recipe website) has just taken off after a year, since we've asked colleges to include us on their circulars about healthy eating and such.
Leaflet drops are hardwork and don't give a huge pay off when your business is online, think outside the box. I've done all our marketing for little or no money, it's hard work, mainly because I work fulltime and do these businesses in what little spare time I have but it's worth it when you start to see results!
Also could you pm me your website address? I'm trying to sell our fish tank!

Thanks!

onway

How do I use facebook to advertise??????????

ClaireyBee

if you go to facebook.com on the bottom of the page just click on 'advertising' , works pretty much the same as google adwords, also you can add the share on facebook button to your site and ppl who like ur site will add it onto their profile and it's like advertising for free! I have it on our site for the last week, getting a fair few visits from it 'http://myweddingplanner.ie/?p=129' you'll see what I mean on that page, it's just a little link on the bottom.

oli26

The most effective way to promote a site is to work on the natural ranking in the search engines. It is not an overnight thing and can take several months, particularly for a new site and is complex to achieve, best left done by professionals as you could get penalties along the way if you do not do it right.

Personaly, I think a buy and sell is nothing new and unless you have found a real niche you are looking at a saturated market, you are going head to head with the big guys, buyandsell.ie, Ebay etc.

ClaireyBee

oli26 wrote: »

The most effective way to promote a site is to work on the natural ranking in the search engines. It is not an overnight thing and can take several months, particularly for a new site and is complex to achieve, best left done by professionals as you could get penalties along the way if you do not do it right.

Personaly, I think a buy and sell is nothing new and unless you have found a real niche you are looking at a saturated market, you are going head to head with the big guys, buyandsell.ie, Ebay etc.

Buy and sell nationwide is but I think onway has picked a good area to focus on. People want to deal with locals so as long as it based in that town it's fine. Also I'm sure whoever helped you with your website can help you with google rankings, if not I know someone really good that will help you out.

John Smurf

word of mouth is the cheapest and still very affective!

The Apprentice

Possibly a signature under your posts on a forum like this might generate 1000 plus click in the space of a month..
We are regular Internet users and might have a general interest in buying and selling.
This is an option how i marketed my website a few years ago and it did gain considerable hits because of it.
Best of all it was Free Also ask your friends to do it also !

D.W

If you are offering a FREE service consider looking for some free publicity on local radio, newspapers and even paying for a few small ads on some of your competitors websites-people always like a freebie.

Would also suggest making the site easy on the eye, easy to navigate and SEO (search engine friendly) Donedeal.ie does extremly well-its easy to use, easy to search for what you want, payment via phone if you want so you don't "really" feel you are paying as such. However the technology behind it is pretty serious...so have no idea if you have the abailities or budget to go this route.

Good luck with it!

fiscalstudent

Ideally you will want a high google page rank. This comes under SEO, search engine optimisation and has to do with the way your website is created. Whoever created your site should of mentioned this to you as the way a website is coded can be crucial. Google for SEO tips etc. and you should find loads of help, however if you are not tech savvy, then you can hire someone cheaply to do some work at www.rentacoder.com or www.elance.com






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itexpert

Hey Onway,

Just joined this forum today and got to your post, I would say best way to market a website online is via organic listing on google. There are few key principles your website need to obey and stear away from all the "black marketing stuff" google bots do not like 'em.

Anyways, back to topic - see marketing shouldn't be after thought - your website need to be coded keeping SEO principles in mind. There are loads of articles online to help you with these do's n dont's.

WOM - Word of Mouth always plays a big role and top of all catchy website domain. Well, therer are loadz of elements - if you still need assistance shoot a reply here n will do my best to help you out.

Regards,
Rohab S. Brar

andywozhere

SEO is what your looking for. For a start you could:

• Submit your site to search engines such as Google, Yahoo and the directory DMOZ (although be patient as they might take months to list you).
• You could also submit you site to Irish directories such as browseireland.com, gimmedat.ie etc.
• You may also want to submit your site to other international search engines.
• Use a signature on forums!

This article on SEO isn't bad....

A lot of Irish SEO companies also do a free 30 mins consultation over the phone, which may be worth checking out.

What is the site URL anyway? By coincidence I'm thinking of launching a classified in the next few weeks.

and no I don't work for any of the above links.