Previously, we have seen some good approaches to promoting your new web store. As an online entrepreneur, your next question would probably be: how do I make this all happen? Well, the concept of local promotion is not that difficult at all. It all starts with you, the owner. You would first promote to your friends and other people you know closely, then the promotion would spread to their friends, and then finally you would promote to the public in your area. After this, you can start promoting regionally, nationally and then globally.

• Leveraging the Power of Social Media

If you are like billions of people around the world, then you probably have an account on Facebook and maybe one on Twitter. Here, you would start by creating a social media page on Facebook and Twitter for your website. You would then contact your friends by posting your business Facebook page on their wall. It is also possible to create a graphic ad featuring your website, upload it to your personal account and then tag your friends in the photo. Some of your friends may Like your page, or even make a purchase on your site if they need something that you are selling. Since your post will be on their wall, it is possible that their friends will see it and Like it too. The goal here is to create a viral effect that will spread to people.

• Don’t Forget “Personal” Marketing

Even though we live in a world where many of our communications take place online and ads are often seen as impersonal and targeting a wide audience, you can also market your website to people that you know and that you think may benefit from your products. It would be a good idea to print out some business cards with your website and info about your business. These can be ordered cheaply online, or you can just print them yourself with business card paper that you can find for $1 at the Discount Dollar store and a cheap ink jet printer. Pass these around to your friends and people that you know. If you know of someone that would especially benefit from the products that you are selling, then promote your site to them in priority. For example, if you sell smart phones online and you have a friend who just accidentally dropped their iPhone in the toilet, then now would be a good time to market your products to them. If you maintain the stock yourself as opposed to drop shipping, you could just give them the item in person for a cash sale, saving them time on shipping the item and also saving you on shipping costs as well as on payment processor fees.

But running an e-commerce site isn’t like running some sleazy MLM program, is it? So you don’t have to promote only to the people you directly know. There are also some great local marketing methods that you can employ as well, which we will see tomorrow.

When you are promoting any type of product or service online, advertising is obviously a must. After all, you need to get people to your offer if you want to see profits accumulating in your account. With so many ways to advertise online out there, it is normal to sometimes get lost and confused as to which method you should truly implement.

Many people also ask which one is the “best” method to advertise on the internet. In reality, there is no clear winner out there. Each method has its own unique advantages and drawbacks. So it truly is in your best interest to learn about all the advertising methods out there and to pick one that you will find the most appropriate. Remember that knowledge is power! Let’s take a look at some of these methods:

Video Marketing.

This consists of uploading short videos to popular video sharing sites such as YouTube and including your website‘s URL in the video itself or in the description. Its main advantage is that it is free, it costs nothing for you to upload your video. You also have the potential of receiving thousands of views to your video, as sites such as YouTube have a very large user base and receive millions of hits from around the world every day.

When creating your video, don’t make it look too much like an advertisement. People watch online videos for two main reasons: to be entertained or to acquire information/knowledge. Very few people will want to watch commercials.

There are two main types of videos you can create: either a review of a specific product that you are promoting or an informational video related to your niche.

A review will basically consist of someone talking about how the product that you are promoting works and why the viewer needs it. You can either record it yourself, or outsource it and have someone else record themselves doing a video review of it.

An informational video will not be based directly on the product that you are promoting, but will rather give some general advice related to your niche. For example, if you are promoting a dog training guide on Clickbank, you might want to make a video of yourself teaching a dog on how to be obedient. You could also include a short mention at the end of the products that you would recommend for someone to use in order to train their dog.

Remember to make the videos as interesting and captivating for the viewers as possible. This will help your video become more popular and will also increase the clickthroughs to your affiliate link significantly. Success with video marketing is a gradual thing. You would need to hone your skills by uploading a few videos and see what works best for you. Don’t just post up a video on YouTube and expect thousands of visitors to come flocking to your site overnight, because chances are it simply won’t happen that way.

If you would like to change or add a new featured article to post to the featured gallery on your home page this is what you need to do:

1) login to your blog and you will see the default wordpress dashboard.  Down the left side are different options and at the bottom you will see “Gazette Edition Options“.  Click on this and under the “Front Page Layout” section change the number of “Featured Entries” to display how many articles you would like displayed in your featured gallery as shown in the pic below:

Then go to “Posts / Add New” and start writing out your article.  Make sure to place the article in the “Featured” category as this is where the main gallery picks up the articles from as shown below:

To add an image to be displayed in the gallery, simply upload a pic and make sure you copy the URL of where the image is and paste this into the following section at the bottom of the articles options as shown below. Also make sure the image dimensions are 595x270px

When your finished hit Publish and it should now be displayed.

Social networks are now becoming a vital method to drive traffic to your websites as Twitter in particular is used as a search tool by some users to look for information.

If you have a website that needs more traffic then you should take advantage of the free media that is out there.  One way to get more traffic is to

1) Setup a wordpress blog and link this to your website. 

2) Sign up to Twitter and create an account.

3) Follow as many people as you can that are related to your niche, just run a search for your main keywords

4) Download the wordpress twitter plugin and upload it and active it on your blog.  Fill in your twitter details and set it up so everytime you create a new post, it automatically submits a link on your twitter account

5) Setup a facebook account and become friends with as many people as you can related to your niche.

6) Install the Twitter facebook application and link in your twitter account to your facebook account.  Everytime you create a new tweet via your blog, twitter will also update your facebook status with a link to your article automatically.  So you will get traffic from both Twitter and Facebook automatically when you create new posts in your blog.

To get more followers on Twitter CLICK HERE

To make money from Twitter CLICK HERE