Incredible Ways to Getting Trafic to Your Online Store

Apr 23, 2016

In terms of money spent, there are two types of traffic: paid traffic and free traffic. Paid traffic is a
good source of potential buyers if it is done correctly, but I think that online stores should focus more
on the free traffic because it is free, usually its effects last longer than the paid traffic, and it is very
abundant (if you know where and how to get it). Paid traffic is for fast results on short term while
free traffic is for slow results, but on long term.

Paid traffic

Paid traffic may be used when the online store is new and does not have sales and/or reputation, or
when there are some ongoing promotions or discounts available, but in the long term, it is better to
focus on the free traffic. Paid traffic can be classified in CPM advertising (Cost per Mille or
Thousand Views), PPC advertising (Pay per click, also called Cost per Click), CPA advertising (Cost
per Acquisition or Action) or in fixed cost for some banner advertising. Depending on what type of
advertising model you choose, your ad may show on other websites, on search engine results pages,
on emails, videos, various online groups, etc. Some good online advertising networks are listed
below, in Table 3.

Table 3. Online advertising networks

Name URL

Google AdWords http://www.google.com/adwords

Chitika http://chitika.com/

Bidvertiser http://www.bidvertiser.com

AdBrite http://www.adbrite.com/

Facebook Advertising http://www.facebook.com/advertising/

Yahoo! Advertising http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/

Microsoft Advertising http://advertising.microsoft.com/

Baidu Phoenix Next (for Chinese market) http://e.baidu.com/pro/

Yandex.Direct (for Russian and CIS market) http://direct.yandex.com/

Casale Media http://www.casalemedia.com

Zanox (for German, Italian and European
market)
http://www.zanox.com/en/

ValueClick Media http://www.valueclickmedia.com/
Burst Media http://www.burstmedia.com/
Chapter 3: Getting traffic to your online store

CPX Interactive http://www.cpxinteractive.com/

Mail.Ru Advertising (for Russian and CIS
market)

http://corp.mail.ru/adv/

Tribal Fusion http://www.tribalfusion.com/

Text Link Ads http://www.text-link-ads.com/

AdChina (for Chinese market) http://www.adchina.com/

Ad Magnet (for Indian market) http://www.admagnet.com/

Blogads http://web.blogads.com/

ExoClick http://www.exoclick.com/

Hi-media (for French and European market) http://www.hi-media.com/

Kontera http://www.kontera.com

Hi-Mídia (for Brazilian market) http://www.hi-midia.com/

Adknowledge http://www.adknowledge.com/

Advertising.com http://www.advertising.com/

Ikoo (for Arabian market) http://www.ikoo.com/

D.A.Consortium (for Japanese market) http://www.dac.co.jp/

Clickbooth http://www.clickbooth.com/

Free traffic

Free traffic is a good source of potential buyers to your store. If done correctly, this can be a stable
long-term traffic source. This is why it is imperative that online store owners focus more on the free
traffic rather than on the paid one.

Paid traffic is also good — it brings fast results; but as fast as it
comes, as fast it goes. On the other hand, free traffic brings slow results in the beginning, but in the
long term, it brings much more traffic and profit than the paid one. So let us review some of the best
free traffic sources for an online store.

VISIT For Free Advertising Ebooks

1. Search Engines — Clearly, search engines are the best source of free traffic for any website,
including online stores. However, in order to receive high amounts of stable and targeted traffic from
the search engines, there is some work that needs to be done and to be more precise — SEO or Search
Engine Optimization. More about SEO we will talk in the next chapter.
If you have a standalone online store on your own website, then it would be beneficial if you would
create a sitemap of your online store and submit it to all major search engines like Google, Bing,
Yahoo (for English speaking and most international market), Baidu (for Chinese market), Yandex,
Mail.Ru, Rambler (for Russian and former USSR market), Naver, Daum (for South Korean market),
etc. You may submit the URL of your homepage and sitemap to each search engine manually, or you
may use a free search engine submitter (e.g. SubmitExpress) that will submit your online store URL
automatically to all search engines.

2. Video Marketing — Video marketing refers to the process of promoting your products or services
using videos. You just create a video and upload it to a popular video hosting website. You get traffic
from these videos by putting the URL of your online store in the beginning and the end or in the right
or left corner of the video. You may also put a link to a specific product from your store in the
description of the video.
Chapter 3: Getting traffic to your online store

Video marketing is a very good source of targeted traffic. An old saying states that a picture is worth
a thousand words, but in the case of video… it’s worth a lot more. For instance, if you create a video
of your product, and you get 10.000 views (which is not that hard if you use right title and tags), you
get 10.000 potential buyers for that product, so this is a method worth trying. To get the maximum
out of this method, it would be good to create videos with all the products you sell. However, if you
have thousands of products, then creating videos of the most popular ones will be enough to get some
good traffic to your store. You may film the product without saying anything, or you may film it
while commenting in the background of the video. If your ecommerce business is based on
dropshipping and you do not have the products physically, then you can create a short video using the
photos of the products.

A good service that you can use for this is onetruemedia.com. You just
upload your photos on that website, add a soundtrack from the sample list and the video is ready. It
will be like a small 45 seconds presentation video. After this, you upload the video to some video
hosting websites and enjoy the traffic. Probably the best video hosting website is Youtube, so you
should focus more on it.

To get more views of your videos, don’t forget to put your keywords and
product name in the title, description, and in the tags of the videos. The thumbnail of the video has a
big influence on the number of views so try to choose the best thumbnail. This way you will get more
views on Youtube. You may also submit your videos to other websites like Metacafe, Vimeo,
Dailymotion, etc., but don’t expect to receive much traffic from them. In my opinion, for video
marketing, Youtube is the best.

A good list of video hosting websites where you can submit your
videos, is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_hosting_services.

3. Price Comparison Websites — These websites are gold mines for online stores. They are used by
millions of people and bring huge traffic to the online stores listed in them so it is imperative that you
do you’re best to list your store into these price comparison services.

Price comparison websites can bring even more traffic than the search engines or video marketing. In order to get your store listed,
you must create a feed of the products you sell, usually in the .xml or .txt format, and submit that
feed to the price comparison websites where you want your products to appear. Some of the shopping
cart software we discussed in the second chapter allow to generate this feed automatically for some
price comparison websites.

There are paid and free price comparison services. Some marketplaces
submit your product data feed automatically to the most popular free price comparison websites.
Almost all price comparison services require registration, which is usually free. Below is a list with
some of the most widely used price comparison websites.

Popular price comparison websites

Google
Product
http://www.google.com/shopping

http://support.google.com/merchants/
bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=18849

other Free Bing Shopping

http://www.bing.com/shopping http://advertising.microsoft.com/small-business/search-advertising/bingshoppingFree

TheFind http://www.thefind.com/ http://merchantblog.thefind.com/2011/01/merchantnewsletter/demystifying-productFree

Slando http://www.slando.ru/ Very popular in Russia and CIS.
Iz ruk v ruki http://irr.ru/ Popular in Russia.

Classifieds Giant http://classifiedsgiant.com/ Popular in Russia, Estonia,
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and
Uzbekistan.

6. Question and Answers websites — Q&A websites can be a good long-term traffic source. You get
traffic by answering questions related to the products you sell, and specify your online store as the
source. This is a very effective method of getting targeted traffic, and potential buyers to your online
store. Since your answers will be visible on the Internet for years, these websites are considered longterm
traffic source.

It is good to note that self-promotion is penalized very hard on these websites, so
try to answer only to questions related to the products you sell and try to format the answer in a
helpful way, rather than as an advertisement of your store or products. Do not spam on this websites
and use them accordingly to their terms of service. Some good Q&A websites are listed in the table
below.

Question and Answers websites

Yahoo Answers http://answers.yahoo.com/ One of the most popular Q&A
website, which also brings a lot of traffic. Popular worldwide.

Quora http://www.quora.com/ Has a very intelligent community.
It is intermediate between an
expert Q&A website and a general
public Q&A website.

LinkedIn Answers http://www.linkedin.com/answers

Ask Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/

SocialAnswers http://www.socialanswers.com/

Answers.com http://www.answers.com/

Rediff Q&A http://qna.rediff.com/ Popular in India

Formspring http://www.formspring.me/ Social Q&A website

Ask MetaFilter http://ask.metafilter.com/

Google Baraza Q&A http://www.google.com/baraza/en/

Amazon Askville http://askville.amazon.com/