where's your traffic coming from?

search engines, direct links, ads? ...

[urameatball]

Well I just completed my ecommerce site after 2 months of hard work. My friends say it looks pretty professional but I'm not sure what I do to get traffic onto my site?

Since I'm selling clothing for extreme sports enthusiasts (skateboarders, inline skaters, BMX bikers, Motorcyclists), I've tried letting people in their respective chat forums know of my site but it's getting minimal attention.

Just started submitting my site onto all the free search engines I can find but I read it'll take at LEAST 6 months for the search engines give me any help.

I'm also just starting to build new sections to the site with news articles and multimedia pertaining to these sports enthusiasts and engines such as googlebot keeps checking for updates, which is a good sign... but once again, it's a waiting game.
I also just spent $3000 on a camera to take some free professional pictures of the local kids at skater parks and post them onto my site to hopefully gain some more traffic. There's been a lot of kids interested in downloading pictures of themselves but I'm spending LOTS of time and effort developing this portion of the site and I'm not sure if it's worth it in the long run in terms of profitability. Right now it's working because I'm doing this with all the free time I have available, seeing how my site is getting one order a week. But if my site gets busier, I don't know if I can handle so many 'extra-curricular' activities alongside of managing an ecommerce site.

Lastly, advertising... I'm really unsure about internet advertising because I've never paid attention to internet ads before. Somehow your eyes just mentally block ads.

Any ideas? I have time right now and I'm willing to put in the effort. But investing more money into the site isn't a very viable option at the moment :(.

[Shak]

Lastly, advertising... I'm really unsure about internet advertising because I've never paid attention to internet ads before. Somehow your eyes just mentally block ads.

NOT Joe Publics eyes, he is looking and clicking and buying.

(imo) Google Adwords and Overture are the way forward for someone in your position, and drop the free photo stuff, more headache than its worth...

Shak

[Essex_boy]

YeahI agreee with shak drop the pics.

make sure your site is SEO well youll be ok in the end but Id give overture a try well worth it in my book.

[andy_boyd]

Most traffic will come from Google and / or MSN but if you can manage to grab a few good directory listings (think of places like ColdSwell.com) you will get very targetted, qualified traffic who will spend.

Use a service like PositionTech's to submit your page to Inktomi, Fast, Ask and MSN amongst others, you'll usually get included in 2 or 3 days. For places to submit to you could go to Google, or even AllTheWeb.com for that matter, and search for backlinks on similar companies. Type in *link:http://www.surfline.com* for example, I know it's surfing related but there should be similarities between you and them in terms of linking from sites.

AdWords has proved successful for me across a number of sites, and Overture is worth the investment. Also, you could submit to places like DMOZ.org, JoeAnt.com, Galaxy.com, GoGuides.com and Gimpsy.com for added exposure. It might not provide lots of traffic, but it will ensure Googlebot comes for a visit.

I agree with Shak and Essex_boy, the pictures are too time consuming. If it was bringing in visitors and helping to spread the word, therefore resulting in sales it would be worth it. But if not you should think about dumping it, or automating the process by getting them to submit their own pictures to the site.

[onlineleben]

Get into Yahoo. Although its about 300$ per year, you probably get more back from it than from the pictures.

Then also try Adwords. There is lots of information here in the adwords forum on how to setup your campaign and choose the right keywords.

Finally, get links to your site from other related sites. Even the manufacturers you promote could place links to their partners on their websites.

Have a sitemap ready that guides spiders and bots deep into your site.

[trillianjedi]

Sorry for yet another "I agree" post (almost as bad as a "me too"!) but:-

Have a sitemap ready that guides spiders and bots deep into your site.

Have to second that 100% - putting up a site map has made a huge difference to the depth that google crawls. Also a great opportunity to have some nice chunky anchor text links.

TJ

[dmorison]

Look at print advertising - got to be extreme sports magazines out there (I mean, there's a TV channel!), and you can probably pick up a classified in the back pages for a lot less than you paid for that camera...

[onlineleben]

> Look at print advertising <
I have done this once. They also had an onlineversion listing the ads. The clickthrough was awful, although the media data told of 200k uniques per month and the print distribution was around 2.5 Million copies every two weeks. Maybe it helped a little bit in branding.

Anway, depending on your niche, give it a try.

[mattglet]

see if you can find a manufacturer site that offers banner advertising. something related to your field. probably sites of skateboard manufacturing, bmx retailers, etc. at some sites you might be competing with them, but at least you'll get your name on the screen.

-Matt

[skiguide]

good tips so far, but i'm not so sure I agree about dumping the picture part. Action sports pictures are a HUGE draw of traffic - and terrific for building community too among that audience, they'll talk about your site and you'll definitely benefit from word of mouth.

BUT, that said, if you are taking professional quality pics with a camera that you invested money in, I'd try to find a way to monetize the pictures for sure. Only give away a limited amount of images for free, and perhaps try to figure out how to license some of the other photography for media, publication, stock photo use etc for manufacturers in the industry, that could be pretty lucrative if you do it right.