Good morning, My husband and I run an internet business with the main objective to sell Islamic based music, poetry, lectures, etc as downloads. Grant it, the downloads are cheap compared with having to go out to the stores, search for this type of entertainment and buy it off the shelves in CD format. The visitors are slim pickings, last month we only had 2105 visitors. What we are doing is building an industry that is much needed for Muslims and making it accessible across the world. Right now we both have Facebook pages setup that we use daily; he is constantly on it talking with artists and getting them to send their information over to the site for upload. We are word of mouth to all Muslims we see. I have registered with many Islamic forums to get people to see the link, because with most of them no promotional language is tolerated. So, my big question is how do I get the word out in a tremendous way?! Do I need to buy and place ads all over the place? (that would be difficult considering we don't have a significant advertising budget) I was thinking I need to get access to other countries that have access to the internet and computers, but don't have the Islamic entertainment we have here. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks! Jenell
Masha-Allah ! Its a good thing that youre already on forums and now here is some further advice .. My advice is that you focus on big sites to draw it in ... > Make videos and have them on youtube. > Go on social networking sites and get the word out. > Do bookmarking such as digg , stumble upon and propeller. If possible go on google keyword tool and find related keywords and work on them to bring traffic. Also buying good traffic sometime helps also, but the best many would say is to focus on seo and find keywords related. Hope that helps and the best of luck.
Thanks so much Traffic Outlet, for the advice. I will check your site out and see what it's about. Salaam
No matter what you have been told and or read, having signatures (posting on boards and blogs) and using social networks, like Facebook, simply does not work. As you are already finding out. You should be getting that "2,105" visitors every day, not every month, and, on a consistent basis. And even that number is too low for each day. The only way to do this is with advertising. It does not have to cost that much in the beginning. Start small, and then build yourself up to where you are eventually advertising in many, many sites. See if you and your husband can put together a line of nice ads and then place them in sites its traffic may like. Before you advertise, though, get others to not only critique your ads but also your site. Both have to be appealing to potential customers. Otherwise you will not only be wasting your money but your time. Use compete.com to see, ROUGHLY, how many hits they get. You do not want to advertise in a site with very little traffic. It is not accurate, of course, but it gives you an idea. Sorry, but I am afraid advertising is the only real way to go if you want a lot of consistent traffic. Others who preach free methods, like signatures and social networks, have the same amount of traffic as you do, if not less.
Go to youtube and find the channel for TigerDirect - they are a computer outlet store. Watch some of their videos and how they review the items they sale. Take their example, and start making your own videos.
You can have your website link on your signatures at different forums. You really dont need to dump links or unrelated stuffs. Try these: - classified ads - join related groups - PPC ads - video marketing You need to run your marketing efforts in a routine. Then have patience and you will get there as long as your products are something people want.
Hi Jenell, Since your budget is limited your best bet is to get the word out in free ways. Like others have suggested videos could be a great way, but also finding people with similar interests. Here is an example of a google search you could use to find bloggers that write about Islamic topics with the ability to post a comment. http://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...+a+comment"&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=c90d25a82fe90176 You can modify it and add keywords of course.
Thanks everyone for your advice. If anyone has any other helpful tips, please continue to give. Hopefully soon I will be able to return the favor. Thank you again. Jenell
Good mate give some gift and conduct contest, add poll. and those that make the user to interact with your site. In simple term make the user 2 move.
You don't need to be buying a lot of ads all over the place, but you do need to increase you internet footprint dramatically to get the traffic you'll need. First you need a place to send all of this traffic, which cannot be Facebook. You need your own blog, or website geared to selling your merchandise. Articles discussing Islamic music and poetry posted in Article Directories, pointing back to your primary site. Creating Squidoo lenses, HubPages, a Facebook Page, Blogger Blogs, Wordpress.com Blogs, YouTube Videos, and anywhere else you can leave tracks back to your primary site. If there are specific social networks which are popular in Islamic circles, make sure you have content on them. As you are producing all of this content to create traffic, make sure to social bookmark all of it to increase the ranking and find-ability of everything. On Facebook, it sounds like you need to get a Facebook Page going, instead of Facebook profiles. You can do more promotional talk on a Facebook Page. Good Luck on your market.
I think it all depends on how you use facebook. If you have a website you really should create a 'Facebook Page' for it. Put a widget on the site to show the fans of the page and tell all of your facebook contacts about it and ask them to become fans too. The benefit of this is that it quickly becomes viral. When you post a news flash on your facebook wall, it will appear on the walls of all the fans. My guess is that these people will also have people of similar interests as facebook friends. They are attracted then to becoming fans too. All of the news flashes and updates you do on the wall should be designed to drive the traffic to your site. After a while you get a balance of how often you do this so people don't feel spammed yet will be pleased to be kept informed. You can even run inexpensive ads on face book on a pay per fan basis. One very small niche site of mine got nearly 700 fans in a little over a month recently, so it does work.