Marketing Your Website Easy as 1-2-3

So you have a website, now what?

Step two in running an online business once you have built your website is to get people to it. Contrary to popular belief, people will not just show up and buy from you, that will take some serious effort.

If anyone could open a website for $20 and start making loads of cash then everyone would do it and nobody would be working jobs anywhere. It's just not that easy but it is not impossible either.

Like any business you need customers. You need to identify your customer base. If you sell widgets, then define the people that buy widgets.

Once you have defined your customer base, define where that customer base resides, plays and buys other products. That is your theater of operations. You will want the most successful targeted advertising possible.

If your product is a watch that shows altitude and air speed then you know your market is pilots. don't go to the scrap booking forum looking for buyers, look for pilot forums, discussions and websites that would have interest to pilots.

You don't have to spend cash to market your product, but you will have to spend resources, time and effort which can cost money if you are not doing it yourself. Evaluate how much your time is worth. If your return on time invested is less than you can make working a job then you need to reconsider how you spend your time.

Use places like craigslist and ebay to advertise products for sale. Look for discussion forums where people are interested in talking about your product and have details discussions all th time linking back to your website where they can buy the item for sale.

Remember, you are not necessarily targeting the people you are talking to in the forum but anyone that reads the forum or happens on the forum from a search engine. That means that your discussion will attract website visitors for years. If you spent just part of one day on that discussion it could be a big producer for you in the next few years.

Yes, years! This is not an overnight deal. You will have to work, and work and work some more and eventually you will have an Internet presence that can sustain heavy sales and keep you solvent with cash flow.

Of course you are never limited to Internet marketing for your website. All of the traditional advertising mediums are very good options, but some are pricey.

Newspaper advertising has become weak and readers are way down with many people using the Internet. Make sure you get the value you need from the ads. Many papers are charging high rates but have low reader bases on insincere readers that may have the paper delivered but have no interest in reading it.

The best action is to do a sampling of the ad, a small inexpensive run to see if you get a return then expand your campaign.

TV advertising is also one of the casualties of technology. With most people having access to 200 channels or more and less time to watch TV the numbers of viewers is very low per ad spot. Also consider that DVRs and TiVo have viewers watching shows without the commercials. Don't look away from TV ads, but don't over pay for ads when they viewers are not engaged in the commercials or just not there at all.

Which ever form of advertising you use to market your website you can be successful. Evaluate who, what when and where and target your market and don't look to get rich overnight. If you follow that philosophy and work hard you should have success marking your website.