Build an Online Store and They Will Come - Not
Dr Ken Evoy, an e-commerce expert, points out that in the
offline world a store will thrive if it's located in a high
traffic area.
However, in the online world every store starts in the exact
same location. It's up to the business owner to drive traffic to
an online store.
Amazon.com and Ebay.com are two of the largest online stores on
the internet. Two of their highest traffic sources are from
affiliates and search engine rankings.
Hundreds of thousands of website owners have signed up for
amazon and ebay's affiliate programs.
Affiliates receive a uniquely coded affiliate link which they
post on their website. A site visitor clicks on the link, visits
amazon or ebay and if she makes a purchase the affiliate earns a
commission.
This whole process requires powerful affiliate management
software that can manage thousands of affiliates.
Dr Evoy, who manages one of the fastest growing affiliate
programs on the internet, reviews a number of affiliate
management software programs in his comprehensive internet
marketing manual Make Your Site Sell.($29-95)
Evoy sold a million dollars worth of expensive penny stock
software which was the inspiration for Make Your Site Sell.
Amazon and Ebay's other high source of traffic comes from
search engine rankings. If you type in the title of your
favorite book at google.com, I'm willing to bet that one of the
top ten results will be from amazon.com.
Dr Evoy's approach to search engine optimization is to give the
search engines exactly what they want - relevant, useful and
high value content. Make Your Content Presell explains the
entire process.
Evoy has a number of case studies at his website that describe
how his clients have built successful internet businesses.
In September 2002, Marney Makridakis had an idea to start an
online magazine for writers and artists.
As at December 2005, she earns a full time living from her
online business. (ArtellaWordsAndArt.com). Her store sells 700
products, has 12 online discussion groups, 2 blogs and six fully
paid staff members.
In March 2002, Jim Nelson started jugglenow.com. 5 months later
he was receiving 1,053 visitors a month from the search engines.
He then started selling juggling supplies.
A year later he was receiving over 3,000 unique visitors a
month and selling over 100 products in 4 different countries. He
has sold juggling supplies in all 50 states and every continent
except Antarctica.
In summary, if you want to start a thriving online business you
will need to drive traffic to your store. To do this you should
copy amazon and ebay.com and drive traffic through affiliates
and search engine optimization. You can learn how to do this
from Dr Evoy's comprehensive manual Make Your Site Sell and from
case studies from his successful clients.