The Wholesale Forums

[bananaharmer]

Hi,
I am in the midst of thinking about starting a website selling goods. this forum is great, but the more i look into it the more confused i get! this is how i see it:

1. I need to find a product, for this it should be something quite 'nichey' as everyone seems to be selling clothes/MP3/PSPs etc.
2. I need to find a dropshipper who deals in the product, and get a good price sorted
3. build a website (I run a graphic deisgn business, so I should be OK here)
4. This is the bit that worries me - surely the way to drive traffic to the site is with SEO and PPC. In my experience this is a very costly affair, competing with other sites etc.

I'd be interested in other member's opinions on this, am i missing something?

Cheers

[PT]

SEO can be done yourself, If your a Graphic Designer I imagine your able to use HTML, PHP, etc. Just read up on the Internet there is so much useful information out there you can learn a lot! There are also companies that will provide SEO training as well.

[bananaharmer]

Yeah, the SEO is the easier side in terms of it can be done for free, but IMO the real benefit will be the PPC, which can be a heavy cost if you're detetrmined to get noticed.

[PT]

I have used PPC for about a month and did get a reasonable amount of traffic. However, the SEO provided better results. Maybe run a few PPC campaigns for a few months this should help your natural positions as well. If its not working out then don't do it.

[BillyA]

PPC, imo, should be used to gain traffic until your SEO efforts kick in and traffic starts flowing organically. Once you are getting high enough rankings in the SERPS, scale back on PPC - or only use it to advertise new products, specials, sales, etc.

Don't forget about Ebay as a way of gaining traffic to your site as well.

[andy]

I am also thinking about website promotion, can I have some price ranges?

If i opend a new site and wanted it to get a decent amount of traffic and to show high on se's how much do I need as a decent budget?

[BillyA]

SEO really doesn't cost anything (unless you hire someone to do it for you). PPC costs can vary depending on what you sell. Sometimes you pay 5 pence per click, other time 6 pounds.

Some people spend 100 per month on PPC, others spend 100K per month.

[MustHaveMobiles]

If you are looking to utilise PPC I would recommend doing so in $'s as the exchange rates are currently favourable to make this a reduced cost, PPC is worthwhile as long as the product you are selling is desirable to the surfer that has clicked through. By desirable I mean that your sales copy, product offer and service are such that it encourages a high conversion rate.

For example a $1 PPC advert per click could get 10000 clicks a month but have a conversion rate of 0% due to poor targeting, whereas a thought out campaign with a 5c PPC advert per click could get 100 clicks a month but have a conversion rate of 80%+

Organic SEO is not that hard to be honest, it just needs a structured approach and an ability to develop niche target markets/keywords to supplement what may be super competitive keywords. For example, Google "Ebay Forum", "Ebay Templates" and "Free Ebay Templates" and you will see that these are all super competitive key phrases (Ebay Forum has over 43million results) and you will see my site in the no1 (Ebay Forum) and No2/3 (Ebay Templates and Free Ebay Templates) positions and I have done all that work myself. In all honesty the site hasn't really got that many back-links compared to some but there are other factors which come into play that people simple do not follow.

The message is don't be afraid of either process but be prepared to have to do some research and structuring to make either work properly.

[PT]

MustHaveMobiles really impressed by what you've done to your forum. Good Stuff.

If anyone's looking for a good list of non-reciprocal directories click here. I'm working my way through it now. Does take a few hours.

I usually do this to get a real number of the competitors on Google. When typing in your keyword type "intitle: keyword" the advantage of this is that it only shows the sites which are actually targeting that keyword.

Likewise, another great tip to choosing other keywords relevant to the one you have is to type "~keyword" this will show other keywords that Google see as the same or similar. For example if my keyword was 'wholesale' then it might return 'wholesaler' 'distributor' and so on.

For checking how many back links your competitors have use Yahoo Site Explorer I was using Google for this but Yahoo tends to be more detailed. This is also a good way of picking up links yourself.

You should always choose your keywords carefully, things like 'wholesale' 'mortgages' 'free games' are all very broad keywords and very competitive. With a new site you should aim for keywords like 'wholesale video games'. There is no where near as many competitors. Although this does have a rather good monthly search rate. You can get a lot of stats on keywords here.

There are many good resources for webmasters. Some of which are offered by Google free of charge. I use both Google Analytics and Google Webmasters. These are very good tools to have and there both Free.

If you are considering PPC then its good idea, even if its only to get an actual estimate of the traffic you would receive from those rankings once achieved organically.

Here's a few other resources:

Niche Bot Classic
Variety of Video SEO tutorials
HitTail
Digital Point - Free Keyword Suggestion tool

[MustHaveMobiles]

A good place to start for any SEO work is:

http://www.iwebtool.com/

Don't just limit it to your own site, look at your competitors.


A thread I have on my forum is also of some use:

http://onlineauctiontrader.com/phpBB...opic.php?t=457


Understanding the inter connectivity of the engines is also important:

http://onlineauctiontrader.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=12


There are also some interesting reads on this page:

http://www.onlineauctiontrader.com/buildawebsite.htm


One of the key considerations when developing any linking strategy to generate organic search engine traffic is getting the understanding that quality far out-ways quantity in links terms, mainly relevance and weighting. The key thing to remember is to ignore the PR weighting of the page, PR is NOT and indicator of traffic.

One way links are by far the best in terms of SERP rankings and PR but reciprocal links can generate the important traffic, lots of people become obsessed with PR which leads them to generating a strategy that is focus on the engines and positioning and not necessarily the traffic equation.