Author: Travis Marziani

How to Get Free Website Traffic Using Spotlight Marketing

When you’re in the world of e-commerce, marketing is important. Across all niches, competition is high, so you want to make sure you’re doing things that will bring customers to your site. Unfortunately, there are as many ways to market an online business as there are online businesses, so it can be hard to figure out which methods of marketing to use.

Based on my experiences, spotlight marketing has to be one of the most if not the most effective ways to market an e-commerce store. Spotlight marketing has proven to bring in customers from other websites and to make people eager to tell their friends and family members about my online store. Best of all, most online stores aren’t using spotlight marketing, so you’ll get a competitive advantage if you do.


The Power of Spotlight Marketing

Spotlight marketing is the only form of marketing that I use to get traffic to my blog. How well is it working? Well, I get roughly 10,000 to 35,000 unique visitors to my site every month.

Basically, spotlight marketing involves interviewing customers and industry influencers. Interviewing encourages sharing and also allows you to network. By giving shoppers and important people in your industry attention, you can build relationships that can be beneficial to you in the future.

Benefits of Spotlight Marketing

Spotlight marketing has a number of benefits, including:

  1. Easy content creation for your site. Interviews are an easy way to get unique content for your sight.
  1. Guaranteed sharing. Interviewees will go out and share the interview in order to promote themselves, driving traffic to your site.
  1. Backlinks. Backlinks can help to improve your standing with the search engines if they’re of good quality. There is a good chance that your interviewees will include links to your interview on their blogs or websites, giving you good quality (more…)

Advertising on Pinterest For Your Ecommerce Business

When you’re developing a marketing plan for your e-commerce business, social media marketing is an important part of any strategy, and most business owners should be using Facebook and Twitter to engage current customers and attract new ones. Still, Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only social media sites out there.

Pinterest is a thriving social media site used by millions of people and has proven to be a profitable way to advertise online stores. The website allows people to “pin” items to boards to come back and look at later. For example, my sister is getting married, and she has a board that she saves wedding ideas to. Other people can follow boards to view the pins and then re-pin them to their own boards.

Here are some important things that every e-commerce business should know about Pinterest:

  1. Pinterest is widely used by women. The majority of people using Pinterest are women, specifically women between the ages of 25 and 50. Any online business that caters to this demographic can do well advertising their e-commerce stores on the platform. Some types of stores that cater to men may also do well on Pinterest. Hair care, beard care grooming products and fashion are examples. Men’s gifts also do well on the site because women can see them and purchase them for their husbands and boyfriends.
  1. Pinterest is perfect for promoting products. The pin format lends itself nicely to showcasing products. Nearly all types of products can fit into the categories for boards on Pinterest.
  1. DIY products do especially well on Pinterest. Many people come to Pinterest looking for ideas for projects that they can do themselves. If you sell something that can be used for do-it-yourself projects like arts, crafts, cooking, home beauty treatments, sewing, home decorating or home improvements, Pinterest will be very (more…)

Ecommerce Course Training Part 3 of 7 On Page and Off Page SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO is vital to the success of any online business. Why? Well, without a well optimized website you won’t be able to get free traffic directed to your site from search engines like Google and Bing. When your site is properly optimized, you have a better chance of appearing high up on the list of results that are displayed when people search for keywords that are related to the products that you carry. This guide will tell you the things that you need to know to make sure that your site is well optimized.

What Is SEO?

How did SEO get started? The story begins with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. They made an algorithm that could figure out which websites were the most relevant for any term. Search engine optimization or SEO means using techniques that increase the chances of Google’s algorithm placing a priority on your site above others for specific keyword search terms.  SEO involves the following:

– On-Page SEO. On-page SEO refers to the actual text, images and other content on your website. For example, my website uses the words dance clothing frequently, so Google would recognize that fact and show my site when people search for dance clothing. The on-page SEO is the easiest for you as a store owner for you to control.

– Off-Page SEO. Off-page SEO is also sometimes called link building. Google can track how many other websites refer traffic to websites. Ones with more links are thought by Google to be more popular or better quality, giving them a priority over other sites.

On-Page SEO Basics

A successful on-page SEO strategy must include:

– Meta Title and Meta Description. The meta title is the name that appears at the top of a product page, and the meta description is the (more…)

Ecommerce Course Training Part 2 of 7 Branding

An e commerce store can give you a continuous source of side income to help you save for special purchases or to use in case of emergency and can even grow to become your primary source of income over time.

If being your own boss and working full-time at your own business is your ultimate goal, it’s important that you get your e commerce store off to the best possible start. That’s why you need to do some careful work long before you even begin to build your site. You need to start off by deciding just what you plan to sell, what you’ll call your online store and how you’ll create a brand. This guide will teach you how to do just that step by step.

Step 1: Narrow Your Niche

A successful e commerce store needs to have a distinct focus, which is also sometimes referred to as a niche. You can’t expect to be all things to all people and to sell something for everyone like Amazon.com or Walmart.com. As a small business, you need to have a clear area of specialty that is obvious to your customers. The most successful entrepreneurs select a very specific target market to cater to with their online stores and then gradually expand it.

Take me for a sample. I sell dance clothing, something that I myself would never purchase. My site only features dance apparel. You won’t find workout clothing or yoga clothing or athletic gear in my inventory. Instead, dancers, dance moms and dance teachers can find everything that they need for their needs at my website.

Spend a little time thinking about the kind of niche you’d like to sell to. You may want to choose one that’s related to your interests and experience, but I’m proof that it’s not necessary to do so (more…)

Ecommerce Course Starting an Online Store Part 1 of 7

E-commerce stores can be incredibly profitable online businesses, but they don’t make money all by themselves. To succeed with an online store, you need to manage the business well and market it wisely. I know from experience how many well intentioned decisions can have disastrous results. When I first got into e-commerce I had to learn as I went and make a number of mistakes as a result. The good news is that you can learn from my mistakes and avoid making them entirely.

Before you do anything to get your e commerce store running, you need to decide which platform you’re going to host it on. There are many of them out there, but Shopify is the one that I recommend the most. While the platform has a number of advantages, the biggest reason to opt for Shopify over the competition is that it is really simple to use. You won’t end up wasting time trying to master the platform, so you can focus on your business.

Now that we have that out of the way, it’s time to reveal the biggest mistake that you need to avoid making if you want your store to work well. What is it?

Not making a store that converts!

I talk to people who are getting ready to launch e-commerce stores all the time who want to know how they can make their site look cool or how to add fancy features. Right away, I stop them and ask “how is this going to help you get sales?”

In the end, it doesn’t matter how pretty or fancy your site is if no one buys. The most important thing for you to think about when you’re creating your store is “What can I do to get people who come to this website to buy?”

To get started designing a (more…)

Make an Online Store Using WordPress With The Shopify Plugin

If you already have a blog using a wordpress site, but you are looking to start an online store don’t worry Shopify has a new plugin to help you out!

I recommend for anyone looking to start a website or a blog to go with wordpress, and I recommend for anyone and everyone looking to start an online store to go with Shopify. Now normally if you are looking to start an online store, I would recommend using Shopify and not using WordPress. However, this new plugin let’s people who already have an existing WordPress site convert it into an online store.

The biggest benefit of this, is that you do not need to start a whole new site! That means no having to worry about creating a new site, changing your domain name, 301 redirects and losing that all important google juice.

If you already have a WordPress site and you are looking for an easy way to convert your blog into a eCommerce store then click here to get started with your free trial (and as a bonus if you use this link I will give you a free 1 on 1 consultation to help you turn your WordPress Site into an online store).

How to Create a Mobile Only Adwords Campaign

The majority of adults in the United States now own smartphones and an increasing number of people are using their mobile phones to shop online. As an e-commerce store owner, you want to be sure that you’re marketing to people who are shopping on smartphones, so that you don’t miss out on the chance to get new business. Experts predict that shopping on smartphones will only increase in popularity over the next decade, making it a good idea to begin marketing to mobile users now, especially because your competitors may not be.

 
So yes, you should be using Adwords campaigns for mobile customers, but there is a catch–you’re likely not going to make as much from marketing to mobile users as you will to people who are shopping on tablets and computers. In my business, I’ve found that only a very small portion of my sales comes from mobile users and that the average dollar amount of the sales that I do have is significantly less than the average total for a tablet or computer users. People who are shopping on smartphones are simply more likely to tap on the one product they need and check out, while shoppers on other devices are more likely to browse and purchase more.

While there may be some exceptions, for most people who own e-commerce stores, Adwords marketing on smartphones isn’t going to be as profitable. This means that you don’t want to invest as much on your campaigns, and it is possible to minimize your cost of advertising by setting up a separate Adwords campaign specifically for mobile users. This way, you can set your bids at a lower cost and pay less when your ads are displayed.

Setting up a mobile only Adwords campaign is very easy. Just follow these steps to get the job (more…)

How to Remove Your Adwords Ads from Smartphone Searches

It doesn’t matter what your line of business is–as a small e-commerce business, you always want to keep costs to a minimum. Internet marketing costs are one of the biggest expenses for e-commerce stores, and if you’re anything like me, you’re always on the lookout for ways to slash costs without compromising the effectiveness of your efforts to promote your products.

One thing that I have found to be beneficial was to eliminate my Adwords Ads from mobile phone search results. This is sort of a controversial topic. If you read the marketing information from Google, you’ll see big claims that displaying Adwords Ads on smartphones will increase your profits, but based on my experience and what other e-commerce business owners have told me, this seems to be greatly overstated. I have found that mobile users rarely buy from sites, and when they do, the average sale amount is significantly lower than what customers shopping on computers pay. After eliminating mobile advertising from my Adwords Ad campaigns, I’m now getting a better return on my investment in marketing and haven’t noticed any decline in sales.

Before you read on, I suggest taking a look at Google Analytics to see how many site clicks you’ve actually received from Adwords Ads displaying in mobile results. If this number is low or non-existent, then I would strongly recommend that you do the following to keep your ads off of mobile device screens.  This way, you won’t be paying money for extra views that aren’t bringing you any benefit.

To remove the mobile optin from your Adwords Ads, follow these steps:

  1. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and select Campaign Management from the menu at the top of the page.
  1. You’ll be taken to a list of all of your current Adwords Ad campaigns. Click on the Campaign that you (more…)

4 Ways to Increase Clicks on Product Listing Ads

Pay per click advertising is one form of Internet marketing that can help e-commerce businesses get new traffic to their sites to increase sales. Over the years, I’ve tried a number of types of pay per click advertising methods with mixed results. I’ve found that some simply aren’t worth either the high cost that you pay per click or that they take too much time out of your day when you consider how much you actually make with them.

That doesn’t mean that all pay per click advertising isn’t worthwhile. I’ve had great success with Product Listing Ads, which are also sometimes called Google Shopping Ads. In my experience, they work incredibly well, and my site has gotten a lot of business through them. Still, you can’t expect to just put up any Product Listing Ad and end up with clicks and sales. You need to be smart about how you create your ads and structure your campaigns. Here are some tips for success that I’ve used to make Product Listing Ads profitable:

  1. Increase the Amount of Your Bid.

If you’re looking for the simplest, most surefire way to get more clicks on Product Listing Ads, you can simply increase the amount of your bid. When your bid size is higher, you’re more likely to rank in first place for your chosen keywords. That means that your product will be displayed more often, and you’ll have more of an opportunity to get clicks. Of course, not even small e-commerce business can afford to pay more per click for their Product Listing Ads, so you may need to try one of the other methods that I’m about to explain.

  1. Incorporate More Products.

A lot of e-commerce store owners try to start with just one or two Product Listing Ads because they want to see how (more…)

Top Tax Tips for E-Commerce Businesses

Tax season isn’t something that any small business owner looks forward to whether you’re planning to prepare your taxes yourself or have an accountant do them for you. As an e-commerce business owner, tax season can be particularly difficult. Even though you have to pay taxes like any other business, the unique characteristics of e-commerce businesses can lead to some challenges when it comes time to prepare a tax return.

I know that personally I found it hard to get my tax return ready the first couple of years that I owned my e-commerce business, but along the way, I learned some tips that have greatly simplified the process and that are sure to help make tax time a little easier for you, too.

  1. Don’t Miss Money-Saving Expenses.

Why should you pay more taxes than you have to? As an e-commerce business, you’re less likely to have some of the types of expenses that other types of companies have, such as depreciation on large amounts of equipment; however, there are still many expenses that you can deduct. Many e-commerce business owners make the mistake of overlooking some of the expenses that they can use to lower their tax liability. Go back through all of your receipts and make sure that you haven’t missed any business-related meals or trips this tax season. Going forward, you can make things much easier by separating your finances. Use a credit card specifically for your business and keep a separate bank account for writing checks for expenses. This way, you can simply use the statements at tax time to crunch the numbers and guarantee that you never miss a single expense.

  1. Familiarize Yourself With and Take Advantage of All Expenses.

My first year as an e-commerce small business owner, I ended up missing out on over $2000 of expenses (more…)