Learning internet marketing the hard way.

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Okay, so after reading many articles o­n internet marketing I decided to take the plunge and started my own website, and decided that url should be something that by itself would bring the shoppers to the website in droves. Ok, so after reading many articles o­n internet marketing I decided to take the plunge and started my own website, and decided that url should be something that by itself would bring the shoppers to the website in droves. The url chosen was www.shopshopshop.org , that was pretty easy compare to what was to come, I remember reading in some ezine that getting the affiliates was the easy part. That may have been true at o­ne time but no more. I decide to apply to the best names in retailing thinking they would be happy to have o­ne more site out there peddling their goods, but not so, I started getting rejections from the likes of Dell, Hp and a few other big names. But in reality that was a blessing in disguise since the big boys pay the lowest commission rate, and are the most stringent and demanding. So how do you get people to come to your website? first step in the process was to develop a strategy that would not o­nly get people to shop but to come back. So we needed some recognizable names to complement those higher paying lesser names, o­nce we had some better known retailera o­n the site some of the bigger o­ne started to reevaluate the site and decided to approve us. By the time they came back, we said thanks but no thanks, we do not need you. We decided to allow shoppers to be able to post their o­nline shopping experiences o­n the site and to create new shopping experience by visiting the stores available o­n our site. I remembered reading that you needed to build links and that ezine were good candidates for link building, here again reality was totally different from what I had read. Most ezines wanted a link from our site to theirs but nothing coming back in our direction, and the few that posted links were not accepting any more. Granted the I haven’t yet tried all of them but I have tried enough to give up o­n the idea. So what is left for me to do? But to try some old fashion marketing since pay per click is not always the cheapest and must effective way to market a site. First we have mailing campaign ready to start in the near future, we also began letting those people we come in contact with know that the website is there. A lot of people know about o­nline shopping but do not avail themselves of the convenience, so I see it as my responsibility to inform them by all the means available to me. Moving along to the next step in generating visitor to the website who will stay and be loyal to shopshopshop.org, and will tell others about the site and the benefit of shopping there we decided to offer businesses an incentive to use the website for all their needs, since businesses have to get supplies and other necessary products o­n regular basis. We decided to offer businesses a percentage of the amount they spend back to them. Some people do not agree with this since some of the affiliates don’t pay a big percentage. But even if you break even o­n some of the lower paying affiliate we hope to make money o­n the higher paying o­nes , not to mention the traffic that they will provide. Also a smaller percentage is better than no percentage at all, and hopefully it can be made up by the increase in volume that businesses recruited will provide. And as the businesses instruct their employees to shop at www.shopshopshop.org it will begin to get their employees in the habit of shopping at our site. After all we are creature of habits and are sometime control by our habits. The most common excuse that I get against o­nline shopping is the cost of shipping so I try to display the ads promoting free shipping. As I continue to learn both by reading and by experimenting with the various different strategies I will pass it o­n to you. If any of you readers have any suggestions please visit our website: www.shopshopshop.org and click o­n email to send them to me. All suggestions are welcome and appreciated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Linda Quinones spent several years in the Financial industry prior to getting involved in the internet marketing Business. www.shopshopshop.org