So, here I am 4 o'clock in the morning, moving through the web looking to promote a new online ecommerce Balms Shop - Beautiful Balms. Then it comes to me, I may as well blog about the experience :).
The site has been live now for a few days, emails have been sent out to friends, the 'overworked' developer has been linking a few of his sites to me, and is working on a link system for others to use if they wish, and now it is up to me to do some promoting. Producing the creams & balms is more my forteé, but I wanted to experience this side of the business myself as well.
From my understanding of how the web works, it would appear the best way to promote a site is to build content in the hope others will link to, or to supply content with a link back to the site. Directories also appear to be a good way to generate one way links to the site, though some seem to want a Google page ranking, mental note to work out what that is all about.
I have joined a few forums, and popped my site link into my signature, and am looking to contribute to a few online communities - the chatting can be quite addictive.
In some ways I have a little trepidation about generating a stampede, my balm shop is a fledgling business & all the balms are made by hand, would I be able to keep up with demand. I spoke with the developer; he smiled and told me, 'the web is a big place, sales will grow but you will have to work at promoting the business.'
My initial thoughts were to find my niché on the web; get in contact with people whose businesses or interests were similar to Beautiful Balms & see if they wished to do, what I later discovered is called, reciprocal linking. I sent out some emails, & pleasantly found people eager to do this, I am still waiting on a few replies, but was informed that is 'par for the course'.
The developer added the balms into Google Shopping thru' some type of data feed he created from the database. We are using Google Checkout as the payment facility, to this seemed to come together well.
I love my web shop and enjoy all this modern way of doing this, but deep down I suppose I am also an old fashioned girl, and really want to do promotion both online in the digital world, and offline in the real world. I have designed a few posters and leaflets, and will be off down to the local shops in the area this weekend to do some old style promoting.
I am actually looking forward to the experience. Before the site went commerce live, I dropped off some leaflets at local shops, and I saw traffic increase just to the holding site. I was selling the balms at local trade fairs, one of the more fun ones was the Glastonbury Goddess Conference, the balms all smell so lovely, they are great to sell face to face, so I will still be going to local fairs even now I am 'high teched up', the personal touch goes a long way I think. Though, now people will be able to get hold of the balms from the comfort of their computer screens as well, this tech stuff is a real blessing.
So, for me & Beautiful Balms promoting is going to be a two world exercise, I will endeavour to network online, and build up relationships between www.beautifulbalms.com and other sites, creating more content for the site, & creating more balms, and I will also get out there & bring the balms to the people.
I feel like my electronic adventure has probably only just begun, but the first few steps are behind me now. It was quite a lot of work, and I am sure there will always be something to do, but the trepidation has eased, it is actually becoming quite good fun.
Now I wonder if that developer is up, so he can make the Blog look all beautiful :)
Oh, and not sure if I can take comments, but if I can and someone reads this, what would they suggest as a feature to add to Beautiful Balms, the fancy pants developer said I could have what I liked within reason, as, and these are his words, he is a 'coding machine, no algorithm too big or too small'. So, think of something that would work, please drop me a comment :).
