A Marketing Question: How do we really level the playing field?

[♥Skittles]

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of hearing that the internet has "leveled the playing field."

 

It just ain't so.

 

The big companies with millions to spend on advertising budgets continue to dominate. Online and off. And that's not going to change anytime soon.

 

However, that doesn't mean you can't make money with your online store, far from it. What it does mean is you work harder to get the traffic, harder to get the sale, and a lot harder for the amount of money you do make.

 

If you're here, you probably have an online store. If you're here, you are probably using osCommerce already, or thinking of migrating your store to osCommerce.

 

As such, I want your opinion.

 

If you could make more money from the same site(s) without buying traffic or working harder, would you do it? If you could join a group of other online store owners, something like an online Chamber of Commerce, and end up improving your bottom line, would you do it?

 

I know I would.

 

So I ask, if you were to join such a group, what would be the single most important benefit you would want, and how quickly would you expect to see results?

[dan@swift]

The only way I see such a conglomeration working is if it was well advertised, to get the consumers to care about that group. It may work, but would be costly and time consuming.

 

We've found the social networking stuff to work okay, facebook, youtube, forums, etc... I'm no where close to the big auto performance retailers online, but the website's are doing okay, they at least pay the rent and utilities for our shop.

 

I stay on top of the froogle, watch trends in my analytics, make changes, see where my traffic is coming from to see what advertising is working and adjust from there. There's certainly no replacement for mega-dollars going into advertising, tv ads, adwords, website development teams etc.... but it's certainly worth the effort that I put into it.

[dale-cannon]

First thing you can't get large number of visitors without hard work overnight. Go for facebook, twitter and other social networking websites you will be able to attract more traffic quickly. Moreover you need to make link building strategy for your website including some submitting your website title, url and description and to different online directories, social bookmarking websites. Regularly post adverts on your local classifieds because classifieds are good source of traffic. Make bogs linking to your website, post articles to different website with link to your home page and inner pages. Also include your website address in your visiting cards, brochures etc. You will see the difference after all this and you will be happy that you input something and get something from your efforts.

 

Thanks