Generating Quality Traffic for an online store

I'm looking to drive some Quality Traffic to my site. My niche is my surrounding area. Im trying to start a local website store with all kinds of items. What is the best way to target people around me and draw them into my site. I'm already using craigslist to promote, but looking for other methods. I really dont have any money to spend on ads for this is my first real first site to generate money. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

 

social networking based groups in your city, facebook, myspace

 

Link building, article submissions, directory subs would work well.

GD

 

I think the best way to get quality traffic through organic search engine listing.

 

Go to facebook and get more friends in your local area. Start a blog over there and start posting more frequently. The more friends you have, the better your chance.

 

Maybe adwords would work for you since you doing a local thing. Adwords didn't work for me because I'm selling internationally. You can use adwords to target your local area. I would use adwords to gather leads for an email marketing program. Later I would use a newsletter to sell to your local customers.

Of course my experience with adwords is terrible. But you can try it and see if it works. Hopefully it won't run you dry.

 

That's a difficult niche - selling different products to people... Have you explored the demographics of your neighbourhood? The most straightforward way for you is to advertise in a local newspaper.

Also add your business to Google Maps http://www.google.com/local/add/splashPage?hl=en-US&gl=US

I agree with folks advising Facebook... I just don't think it is exactly quality traffic...

 

Can you be more specific? What exactly happened? (sorry to hijack the tread lol )

 

How big is your local area? If it is not too big you should go around to local stores and ask for permission to advertise there.(not the competitors of course) And further more add every person you can on msn/facebook and go to social gatherings(Christian, islamic, jewish ones especially)

 

The first thing you should try is using social networking and the other thing is ppc advertising as you laser target your ads .

 

Local search is usually pretty easy to dominate, just do some link building yourself, and then get some paid directory / blog / social networking links.

 

did you try PPC?

 

i'd recommend to focus your efforts with SEO.
Target the top 5-10 keyword terms of searches your hoping to catch.
Focus on them and you will get the traffic you are looking for.

Of course though, you'll want to be able to bring in financial dollars to advertise (in time if needed)