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Do it yourself traffic generation?

hakrjak

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If you own an E-Biz, is it worth your time to try to "do it yourself" when it comes to advertising or traffic generation -- or should you just hire a qualified marketing company to handle this aspect for you?

Example -- I am using prostores.com to host my online store, and they have several marketing packages available that I am considering purchasing. Before I decide to use them, I'd like to hear some tips from do it yourselfers out there, to see if it's worth my time to try to go it alone -- As these packages are very expensive... Some are $1500 per month.

Cheers,

- Hakrjak

:smx7:
 
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biophase

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Well, my store isnt up and running yet... Still working on the payment backend. However, I don't plan on spending $1500/mo to get traffic. I'm probably going to do a combo of adwords type advertising, free article submissions and blogs to generate some traffic. I have to get my URL on the Google map first. It just got indexed last week so at least it shows up on page 1,000,000. :)
 

hakrjak

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My URL has been around for awhile -- As I've been using it for my Ebay store for about 4-5 years, and just repointed it at my prostore, so it's showing up in google and stuff. I'm not really getting many hits on my site though, even though I've been established for awhile -- So that's why I was looking at some kind of service that might help me get towards the top of the search engines when people search for some of my various products.

I started one of the original web design firms back in the 90's, and after a couple of years we decided to hang it up and move on to something else. Since then I've had zero involvement in web marketing or HTML, so I feel like the times have really left me behind. Need to give myself a crash course to see if it's even possible for something like this to work.

If a $1500 service delivered me $10k a month in sales, it would be absolutely worth it. Just not sure what to expect from a service like that, etc

- Hakrjak
 

Satpoint

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If a $1500 service delivered me $10k a month in sales, it would be absolutely worth it. Just not sure what to expect from a service like that, etc

- Hakrjak

If you think there is a possiblity to reach that number in profits- its well worth the 1.5k especaily if you make 2k you;re still ahead.
I say try it out and let us know how it goes. :)
 
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Luke12321

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hakrjak, read reviews on the services of the company you are thinking about going, talk to other website owners. Do the due dilgence before throwing your money away. You might even find a better service while researching the one you are considering right now!
 

Yankees338

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hakrjak, read reviews on the services of the company you are thinking about going, talk to other website owners. Do the due dilgence before throwing your money away. You might even find a better service while researching the one you are considering right now!
Good points. I would recommend that as well. Talking with people never hurts!
 

biophase

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With our Traffic Generation service, you are assigned a personal marketing consultant who will analyze your website to create text ads specifically designed for your business. Your consultant will help bring targeted traffic to your ProStores web store by placing ads within pay-per-click sections of online search engines, managing the campaign, then tracking the performance. All tiers include basic cost-per-click and click-thru-rate reporting, while Traffic Generation 1000 and above also includes conversion tracking.

Ad Campaign Tier Setup Fee Merchant's Total Monthly Investment Merchant's Monthly Pay-Per-Click Spend Merchant's Monthly Management Fee
Traffic Generation 250 $150 $250 $200 25% ($50)
Traffic Generation 500 $150 $500 $400 25% ($100)
Traffic Generation 750 $150 $750 $600 20% ($150)
Traffic Generation 1000 $150 $1000 $800 20% ($200)
Traffic Generation 1250 $150 $1250 $1000 20% ($250)
Traffic Generation 1500 $150 $1500 $1200 20% ($300)


This sounds like all they do is help you create pay-per-click ads and manage your keywords and ad campaign. They are charging you a 25% management fee.

You can do this yourself and save the setup and management fee. The bulk of your costs is your pay-per-click. If you spent $1200 above and you paid $0.05 per click, you'd have 24,000 clicks. The question is, how well do you convert? If you convert 1%, you'd get 240 sales. What would be your average profit per sale. You would need $5 in the above case to breakeven.

Based on this, you can make your own decisions.
 
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Luke12321

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When I was reading your post biophase, I was thinking Adwords. You get all of this info on google adwords. It will take time and I am learning the basics right now of Adwords. I have been reading (asking questions) at WebMasterWorld and everything has been answered for me so far. As MJ as said before, forums are the place to go for info!
 

John Stafford

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Re: Use

Get a copy of Perry Marshalls Adwords guide before you do any serious work with google. It's more of an advanced PPC compared to Yahoo. You can lose serious money fast if you do it incorrectly. Yahoo allows you to put money in your account and it stops your ads when you run out of money so you don't overspend.

You have to specificially ask them for this setup though.


John
 
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lucas

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I have about 45 websites currently, and I do all my own online marketing. There are SO many ways to advertise for free online, that it seems to me like a waste to pay someone. The point at which it would become cost effective is the point at which you find the upper bound of your own abilities to market online. I haven't reached that point yet.
 
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hakrjak

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I've been trying adsense this week, and one of the things I've noticed already is that all of my ads keep getting disabled. Something about the phrases not being unique enough (Are you kidding me? They're pretty f'iong unique!) -- or one of my ads was censored for unknown reasons!?!

Talk about a major PITA... Google really isn't maximizing their income at all -- because I've been charged .05 cents for 1 click through in the past week, due to the fact that their system isn't accepting any of my adwords. LOL.... Sheesh.... Well atleast I still have Ebay to peddle my warez in the meantime -- but this going your own way stuff is a lot harder than I thought it would be!

- Hakrjak
 

michael515

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IMO, marketing is too important to NOT learn. It's not like creating elaborate pic ad's for newspapers, text ad's are simple. I'd do Google Adwords and free article publishing to start. Free article publishing is great. Self-educate yourself on the how yo both of these areas. If you're spending $$ test small and evaluate your results.
 

Andrew

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I've been trying adsense this week, and one of the things I've noticed already is that all of my ads keep getting disabled. Something about the phrases not being unique enough (Are you kidding me? They're pretty f'iong unique!) -- or one of my ads was censored for unknown reasons!?!

Talk about a major PITA... Google really isn't maximizing their income at all -- because I've been charged .05 cents for 1 click through in the past week, due to the fact that their system isn't accepting any of my adwords. LOL.... Sheesh.... Well atleast I still have Ebay to peddle my warez in the meantime -- but this going your own way stuff is a lot harder than I thought it would be!

- Hakrjak

Paid search is becoming extremely complex. It isn't an even playing field, Google uses lots of different variables to determine what you bid and what position your ads are placed in.

You want to figure it out? Sit down and do it. Do be prepared to burn through several thousand dollars in the process.

Even beyond paid search, with other areas of online advertising and marketing, its a full time job. Either you do it yourself full time or your employees do it full time. Several of my friends have teams of employees working just on paid search. Granted, they are working in the most competitive markets; in some cases a "lazier" approach can still be taken.
 
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thenewguy25

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I personally do not like adwords. I like to first write articles and submit them to one of the top 3 article directories. This will get 1way back links to your site from other people posting your article on their site. Second i will join a link exchange program to build keyword targeted backlinks to your website. I prefer to stick to free methods. They take a little more time but they work just as well.
 
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biophase

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I personally do not like adwords. I like to first write articles and submit them to one of the top 3 article directories. This will get 1way back links to your site from other people posting your article on their site. Second i will join a link exchange program to build keyword targeted backlinks to your website. I prefer to stick to free methods. They take a little more time but they work just as well.

Just curious, which 3 are you referring to?
 

Andrew

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I personally do not like adwords. I like to first write articles and submit them to one of the top 3 article directories. This will get 1way back links to your site from other people posting your article on their site. Second i will join a link exchange program to build keyword targeted backlinks to your website. I prefer to stick to free methods. They take a little more time but they work just as well.

Good luck scaling that into the 7 figure revenue range...
 
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thenewguy25

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I am talking about ezinarticles.com, goarticles.com and article city. This could eventually scale to 7 figures. My income has grown exponentially. With the articles gaining free 1 way links and I also use 3waylinks to build my backlinks up. This gets my site on the first page of google with very little work. Once i set one of these up, I set up another one (for affiliate programs and for Adsense. If you would like more info, Johnathan Leger has a complete case study over this subject on his blog at: http://www.jonathanleger.com/
 

M-M

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After looking through that site and the links contained within (and skipping over the pitching for software) I've got a few questions.
When they talk about articles, do they mean writing content for a site, putting it online and leaving it there without updating it periodically? Then simply repeating the process?
How simple and profitable is it really?
 

thenewguy25

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I use the article sites mostly for adsense. The articles I write, I can update them, but I don't unless the site doesn't approve them. Article publishers or people with content sites will often post your article on their site. This gives you free one way links. When visitors to their site or the article site click the link in your bio, they are taken to your site.
From here the options are endless. You can do black hat marketing (low quality site with adsense links on top), or you can have a high quality adsense site that encourages visitors to come back.
I have 30 adsense sites that make me about $325 a month. I also have a few squeeze pages that I market using articles and 3 way links. I make affiliate commissions as well as mlm commission. The ROI is big considering it is free to submit an article. You can pay a free lancer to write articles for you. Your profit depends directly on how much time you put into it. It usually takes me 5-15 hours to set up a site, write the articles and submit them. I do use some tools to make this easier. I set this up then I just monitor the progress.
Most of the sites I have set up are in various Niches's and most of them have a PR of 2 or 3. Each new site I add takes about 5 weeks to become profitable (cover cost of hosting for 1 month). The profit grows over time.
This works very well.:)
 
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M-M

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I'm still a little confused. Do you put the articles on your own site or somewhere else? If so, where?
 

biophase

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I'm still a little confused. Do you put the articles on your own site or somewhere else? If so, where?

He's talking about posting articles at places like these:

  • ezinarticles.com
  • goarticles.com
  • article city
 

thenewguy25

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No, the articles I write for submission will only be put on the article site by me. The site the article links to will often have other articles on it, but not the same ones. I also put amazon widget, and maybe a ebay widget if they have products that relate to the site.
Over time, the links you get from 3way links, and the links from people posting your article on their site, your PR will rise for the keywords you selected. The steps to make this work are easy. I will list all of the steps I take here here:
1 research Niche
2 Hire ghost writer. ($35-150)
3 Build site (purchase domain name, and build it up)
4 write 3-6 more articles
5 Post these articles on the article sites for traffic
6 set up 3 way links
7 monitor starting 10 days later (if you are new to ezine articles you have to wait a week to be approved.
8 (optional) build a squidoo and/or hub page with relevant content and backlinks to your site


Keep in mind you will not get rich quick. You will make passive income that will grow over time with each site you build.
 
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mglshark

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I done this on a small scale. You write 2 articles on one subject - one to article site, other to your site. Article gets posted driving traffic to your site for ad sense / affiliate programs. Look at article sites and follow the links, not to tough. One guy is a machine does one / day over 2 years (1000 articles to date) goal $5 - 10 / month / site. He hit 10k / month level income.

I just make $11 so far so I have a way to go!

Mgl
 

thenewguy25

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My adsense income just went up a little, now the sites make enough for me to outsource the work. It cost a little more than $625 per person I hire per month. On person can put up 8-16 sites (40 hour work week). I will post my results month by month if anyone is interested.
 

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