Hi, We are planning to launch a graphics stock site which will offer its customers to buy & sell rare stock media. Though we don't intend to compete with any big giants, also our products are bit rare but still theres no escape. We need regular traffic to our site (approx. 3000 unique visitors/day) so that atleast we can survive at 'no profit - no loss' for 6 to 8 months, thereafter we'll start generating revenue. Now, we understand that nothing comes for free & for that matter we just want to know how much monthly budget we require to promote & market our site well. Assuming that we'll go for Search engine paid inclusions, Google Adwords, Yahoo Overture, e-stores, Social Networking Sites, Forums & Blogs..etc. We would request all experienced internet marketing experts to pls advice & suggest us some 'minimum budget per month' for this kind of project so that we can further plan our project effectively.
It's a very specialised product - so identify the keywords your clients are going to search for and then set-up an Adwords campaign. If it's as rare as you mention, there should be limited competition so the campaign should not be too expensive.
You really can market effectively for free if you have the right knowledge on how to do it. Plus yes you really can compete with the big boys on google and even do it all for free and is pretty easy to do as well. If you still need help on this I will tell you tons of great ways on how to market for 100% Free and get tons of traffic to your site. You can private message me if you need help on it. I eat, sleep, and crap marketing every day. I enjoy it. In fact even when I am taking a day off of doing any marketing I am so much in a habit of it, I still am doing it anyways..I will help ya with it.
You say that you need 3,000 Uniques per day. During your keyword research did you find that the search volume is enough to get that kind of traffic?
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Ya it seems to be a gud step. High commisions! Thnx u for you comment, any place where i can find afiilaites.?
Still waiting for the answer. Anyone who can guess approx budget. Atleast come up with sum figure. Ok lets see if you have to guess one amount ?
Currently we are not serving world-wide. We are serving India, South East Asia and Middle East, where we can help you to get the required traffic and can give you estimates on budgets. The estimates are based on your goals. A lot depends on what you want to achive, sales or visitors or leads or branding etc etc. Once you were able to define your goals clearly, we can comeup with estimates. You can read about us at Ohana Media : Emerging markets Ad Network
I don't really know of how cramped the stock photo market is. You said you will be in a niche, which may really help you in getting organic search traffic. However, if you are too niche, they may never find you. So do some keyword research, that will be important. I do believe that every website being released probably needs at least some marketing budget of some kind. It can really help drive traffic and can help you explore areas that might really boost your website into a new level that you didn't think you could reach. I'm not saying $100 per month, but even $20.00 can help a ton. Good luck!
Here's the deal: Visitor count does not equal Sales. I wouldn't worry about getting 3,000 visitors per day, not at first, not ever really since visitor count really doesn't amount to anything. Sales is what matters. I'd worry about converting the visitors, no matter how few, into buyers. At 3,000 visits per day, what is your expected conversion rate? It seems very, very LOW if you don't expect to make a profit for at least six months. Personally I wouldn't go into a business that takes that long to make a profit. But to try to answer your question with a definite figure, it really depends on your market. Currently I have a client in a hyper-competitive field. The budget for this client is $20k per month and they get 200 or less visitors per day. But their conversion rate is about 15%, which as I'm sure you'll agree is huge. They make between $300 - $1,000 per conversion so for them it's totally worth it to spend that much on marketing. I have a past client that spent less than $500 per month to get about 700 visits per day. Their conversion was less than 1%, but because of their low overhead they were still able to generate $8k per month. Not a lot by most standards, but their first month in business they profited close to $2k and they definitely didn't have close to 3,000 visits, not even for a monthly total. So honestly a bit more information is needed before anyone can spit out a number, unless of course they've been in your exact industry, but even then, I'm sure they'd tell you it isn't about the visitor count. And of course, you website would be different and have a different conversion rate because of it. I'd focus on website usability and conversion. If you really, really want 3,000 visitors per day though, without regard to anything else, it will cost you. Your site will need to be heavily promoted. Blog posts, links, articles, etc are all relatively cheap. Tradition marketing, like television commercials and billboards tend to cost more but are way more affordable now than they were even 5 years ago. Starting out you'll need to be aggressive to get that many visitors, quality visitors that is. I can send 3,000 visitors to your site before the end of the day, but they'll be trash visitors that don't buy anything. Again, I'd suggest tackling this problem a bit differently and looking at all aspects of what will make or break your business instead of just focusing on a hard number of required visits per day.
Well thx rbaker for your very valuable response. Yes, you are right at end of the day all we want is conversions. That is why I said 'genuine traffic' traffic that is related to same interest, potential buyers, visitors from competetive websites. My products' average pricing is $50-60. At the rate of 20% I make $10-12 profit per sale. So If I acheive 10 sales per day then it turns out to be $110/day, that means $2500 per month (calculated by excluding weekends). So what i meant was that even if i can make half of this amt i.e $1200 (5 sales) i'm ready to invest $1000 for promotion & marketing of my site for 6 more months without making profits. Which will progressively increase my sales. Now all i was wondering as in how much money do i need for marketing & promotion so as to get atleast 4-5 sales per day. As you know the cost price & rates can u guess some initial budget i'll be needing to achieve min sales target. And how to go about marketing plans. ? Thank you so much for your kind response.
Hello andy55, Here are some thoughts. Sorry this is kind of a long post but I hope this is helpful to you and to others. I really like what rbaker had to say, and he's right about the visitor count. If that was really all you wanted, you could just sign up for targeted traffic at $45 per 10,000 visitors to your URL. But in reality, you are trying to achieve a business goal of at least 10 sales per day from any number of visitors that happen to browse your website. I know you mentioned 4-5 sales, but I would keep 10 as your goal so you have a built-in buffer between five and ten sales per day. Think about ways to raise awareness of your product in the minds of your ideal customer. Where are those customers, and how can you reach them? Costs will vary depending on what you decide to do. - paid blog posts where you (the advertiser) pay for a review of your product on a popular blog with a lot of readers who seem interested and a good match as a potential buyer, of course your paid review is an advertisement that goes back to your URL or a product page, check out reviewme.com and payperpost.com and similar services that offer a marketplace of eager bloggers, expect to pay $100 per review or more depending on the popularity of the blogger. - buying advertising spots on several other stock image websites or related websites (RSS feed, 468x60 banners, text ads, 125x125 small blocks, a large intersertial ad, etc), expect to pay $200-$1,000 per month or more based on the stats and demographics of that particular website. - sponsorships for specific content, specific promotion, or sponsor a single web page on related websites, expect to pay $200-$1,000 per month or more based on the stats and demographics of that particular website. - designing a landing page to direct pay per click (PPC) traffic campaigns, you can narrow down the audience who can see your ad by bidding on relevant keywords and setting parameters such as cities and zip codes, check out Microsoft adCenter, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Google Adwords, expect to pay anywhere from $100 per month or more based on a preset account funding and responses to your ad. - putting your advertisement into a pool of other ad serving networks like Adbrite, Adwords, etc. - article marketing by typing up a few helpful paragraphs about certain topics, just search for any number of free article publishing services including free press releases, your URL will be included in the article itself or in the byline. - posting classified ads to promote one or more of your products, this is free on kijiji.com and craigslist.org and similar services, in addition to using text in your classified you might consider using an image that contains your message and perhaps a few samples. - sell individual products at auction, this will cost per listing but it could serve you well with a lot of exposure if you use a site like ebay.com, the main idea is not the auction but the promotion of the listing that includes your URL and company description. - select a few images from your collection that can be given away for free, then promote these free images as a lead into your paid collection, either design your own website for free images or add to an existing site that promotes free images. - partner with a few web design firms or graphic design firms to exclusively use your stock images for their ongoing projects. - consider entering into a licensing agreement to add your stock images to an existing collection, this would give you more exposure and add another revenue stream between 10% and 40%, see hxxp://imagery.gettyimages.com/AboutGettyImages/contributors/ or another similar service. There's a lot more to cover such as search engine optimization (SEO), and other methods of running ads besides PPC. But this was a good start and should help you to start crafting your own ad budget as you are writing your marketing plan. Good luck.
I'm a big fan of low cost press releases that get syndicated. It's good for SEO, but even better -- if you really have something newsworthy you might actually get calls from reporters. You mention rare stock. Well, if it's rare, it might have a good news hook, especially if your USP is really different from those of your competitors. If you can get a reporter from a traditional media outlet to write about you, it can take you a lot further than advertising, although a combination of both is best. My opinion.