The major bugbear of any webmaster is that no matter how stylish, how well written or how downright beautiful their site is – it all counts for nothing unless you have traffic.
There are many articles (just like this one) that can describe the varying ways of getting eager visitors to gaze upon the marvels of your site.
You could use reciprocal links to get visitors from other websites – although there is talk that the value of these is slowly diminishing.
You could write articles to get back links to your site – write a particularly good one and you'll be surprised how many times it gets duplicated over the net, all the while with your website address in the author bio!
There are other avenues to explore such as viral e-books, forum signatures and so on, but what if you could harness the power of a site that already has billions of visitors?
Heard of ebay? Thought so, you're probably already a buyer or seller on there. But it's time to start seeing auction listings as something other than a way to sell off unwanted tat.
I'll let you know what I do and then you can adjust the method to suit your own needs.
I have a newsletter which I publish at least once a month – I struggled for a long time with how to get subscribers whilst also selling a lot of e-books on ebay. Then it hit me – time to combine the two!
Now, it's a great idea to include links to your site within the ebook, providing you've written it yourself obviously. The buyer will read the book and hopefully click on the link to whichever of your sites you've chosen. You could even have them sign up to your newsletter before they can receive the book.
On ebay however, you're going to get a lot of visitors who read your auction and decide not to buy for whatever reason. You may only sell 4 or 5 books per one hundred visitors.
This is where the "about me" page comes in to play. Make the most of this underused tool!
Ebay gives you the opportunity to write a quick description about yourself, your interests and a list of your feedback. Use this space to give yourself a short bio and then a link to your latest website. Be careful though – ebay doesn't allow direct links to sales pages. Instead link to your newsletter course, a page on one of your content sites or anywhere that doesn't obviously look like you're taking sales away from ebay.
The killer tip is to include a link to your about me page on your auction listing. I usually place a short paragraph above and below my listing pointing out the benefits of my free newsletter.
It helps also to make the product you're selling compatible with what you are offering through the "backend" of ebay. Don't sell a mint condition Barbie doll and then put in an advertisment for your bonsai gardening auto-responder course for example.
I tend to offer a resell rights ebook or (preferably) a short guide I have written myself about one aspect of Internet Marketing.
That way you will no only get sales for your listed product (provided you do your listing in the correct manner, but that's a whole other article) but also subscribers or visitors and therefore future sales for your off-ebay business.
Give it a try and use some of eBay's billion dollar power for yourself!
About The Author
Matt O'Connor is owner of
www.the-complete-guide.com. Join the newsletter now and get your FREE guide to flooding your website with traffic.
matt@the-complete-guide.com
