Hello there,
First, after analyzing your situation, I'd like to say that the best
solution seems to be implementing an affiliate program.
An affiliate program will allow anyone to be a retailer while you
supply the goods and you can pay them based on performance. The
affiliates can range anywhere from individual webmasters to online
retail companies. An affiliate/associate program allows you to use
these people as a workforce to promote/sell your product at no cost to
you, since you only pay based on their sales. It is no doubt the most
cost effective way of promoting your business on the Internet today.
For more information on affiliate/associate program and how to start
it, visit:
http://www.marketingtips.com/assoctrac/index.html?special=offer
The Internet Marketing Centre (www.marketingtips.com) also has vast
amount of articles and resources that you can use to promote your
presence on the Internet. Many other sites are shameless copies of
this one so going straight to the original should save some time.
Example tips: Feature seasonal specials in the first fold of your
homepage; Send out holiday email promotion; Launch a "win your holiday
purchase" contest; offer fast flexible shipping (ie direct shipping to
recipient); offer online gift certificates; offer "book now and save"
promotion, etc
Once you start an affiliate program, you can use the free tools
provided to submit yours into numerous database of affiliate programs
for other webmasters to find, as well as using your current traffic to
increase your sales.
First starting an affiliate system, then use publication/resources to
advertise if necessary; it will compound on top of the existing
affiliate system and bring in maximum results.
The publications/resources that you can use to promote new product
lines cost effectively are:
Google Adwords (Adwords.google.com)
Overture (www.overture.com)
You can use both services to target your customers successfully.
While other sites might offer cheap "catchy" advertising deals, they
do not have the sheer number of hits/visitors as Google or Overture to
sell your products effectively. Following the steps of the successful
e-businesses I have dealt with, I would strongly recommend first
starting an affiliate program, reading the marketing articles, then
using Google and Overture to promote your site/products rather than
going for a relatively unknown company to accept your product line at
cost. Such companies will charge a starting fee to cover their risk
and the odds of them selling satisfactory amounts of your product line
is minimal. Once these things are set up, contacting various
pug/pet/clothing themed giant sites for promotion purposes are a good
idea (such as www.mcphee.com as omnivorous mentioned).
If you requrie any additional information, please feel free to ask for
clarification.
Thank you,
Tox-ga |
