You have just finished building your website and it’s up and running.  Now you’re ready for people to start pouring in and making purchases, right? If only it were that easy. Bringing traffic to your website can require a lot of patience. However there are many strategies that can be utilized to assist you in directing traffic to your website so that you can start making those sales.

Ebay is inarguably the largest e-commerce auction/retail site there is.  The marketing strategy here is to sell your products on an eBay auction.  In your description explain that you have many quality products available and advise potential buyers to view your ‘about me’ section of your eBay account.  This is where you can provide a link to your actual website.

Another way to do bring traffic to your website is by Blogging.  A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.” (Wikipedia)

Blogs are a great way to get your business out there for the world to see.  Whether you already have a blog or are just starting one for the first time you can tailor your blog around the product sold on your site.  For example, if your site centers around sports you can choose a template related to sports, add a link to your website or maybe a sports news site (like ESPN), videos, slide shows etc.  You can write posts about recent or upcoming sporting events, a product(s) of the week that may be featured from your website, or your own knowledge, expirence or expertise on the products.  If you look at it from your future customers point of view, they will be buying a product from you out of trust.  They aren’t able to see or handle the actual, physical product until it arrives on their doorstep unless they’ve owned that product before.  You can help them feel more comfortable in purchasing the product by giving them as much information and personal opinion or knowledge about the product as possible.  This will aid in completing the sale as well as establishing a relationship of confidence between you and your new customer.  Establishing this relationship will make your customer more likely to return for additional purchases and possibly refer their friends and family to your site as well.

The best thing about blogging is that it can be FREE advertising.  I say can be because some blogging sites do charge a fee to set up a blog or to add certain features.  However, most blogging sites are 100% free with all the tools included.  They’re easy to find too.  All you need to do is visit a search engine like www.google.com and type in ‘free blogs’.  This will bring up pages and pages of different sites that are free for you.  You will want to read through the tools that they come with because some sites, like www.thoughts.com will put your blog into a search engine as well.  If you feel like having multiple blogs this won’t be too much of a hastle as you can create a blog through a few different sites.  Here is a list of the most common free blog sites I’ve seen recently.

www.thoughts.com

www.vox.com

www.blogspot.com

www.livejournal.com

www.soulcast.com

Have you ever heard of Myspace?  What about Facebook?  These are social networking sites and they can also aid in leading future customers to your website.  You can post a link to your website on your social networking profile and even write a blurb about it in the usual ‘About Me’ section of the profile.  Also, most social networking sites have a section where you can pay to advertise on their site as well.

Lastly, another great way to bring traffic to your website is to create a business card, flyer, or email of some sort with the information about your website and distribute it to your family and friends.  Spread the word about your great new business!