Hi all, I am fairly new but have read a lot on the subject of marketing. It seems that every time you read something the next day you read something contradicting. Ok I used to own a traffic exchange and that started to make money. Not a lot but some. Since then I had to sell that site due to personal problems and didn't think I would have time to do anything on line. Well now I have built an Affiliated Dating site. I thought I would get out of that rat race of traffic exchanges and try a nich site. With traffic exchanges it was easy to start. You post in other traffic exchanges. With a dating site however I was wondering where do I start posting to get traffic. I was going to spend a little on adwords (free adwords from hosting company) Submit to search engines. Do some social bookmarking like facebook and such but where else. My site has some aspects of internet marketing on it as well but don't want it to be overran by marketers and not single people. The site has a store that you can upload digital products to and sell with money going into your paypal. Place ads. List sites, Video chat, Video messenger, video sharing, file sharing, interactive white boards, and of course all the normal social site stuff like forums, creat groups and such. So what do you think. Where should I start.
I would say its tough with a dating site - thats pretty "non-traditional" at least with my experience. One principal that spans all niches is organic is king. Do some solid keyword research and do some laser-beam focus on your top 2 or 3, then expand from there. Also, get in touch with those who know specifically about social/dating sites. Not up my alley, but I hope that helped a little.
You shouldn't worry so much about the contradicting part of those marketing strategies.. some work for others some just don't. Best thing you can do with SEO and keyword is to write a few article a day for your site and start promoting on blog comments, forum posts and those chat online. Good luck!
I would suggest grabbing a big piece of paper and nutting out a strategy ( very non online I know) write down areas such as press releases, blog comments, blog articles, article submissions, bookmarking those to at least 20 bookmarking sites. Follow the subject #brokenhearted or #lonely on twitter and offer a few people free memberships, they will help spread the word. Then also look at offline marketing, postcards, small classified ads etc. You can see why I said get a big piece of paper! Then figure out the consistency in which you are going to market these avenues, I'd suggest daily or every two days in order to really get the organic searches rising. For a better outline of online marketing strategies download my free 9 dvd video series at know2growcash.com
it is really difficult with dating sites unless you have some unique concept. but to start with i think SEO and blog commenting on similar niche blogs is good. You can also try with forum posts in dating niche.
Thanks for all the sugestions. It's a lot different marketing a dating site than a traffic exchange. Traffic exchanges you just go to other traffic exchanges and post there and work deals with other traffic exchanges. With dating sites you can't post your dating site in other dating sites. And I havent tried yet but I doubt if I will find one that would want to partner up like in traffic exchanges. I am however writing these things down and making a list llike know2grow sugested. And I am woking on the SEO for my site right now while I iron out a couple more things on my site. Thanks again for all the good advice
i would also suggest using the social media sites like twitter and facebook. there are many tools out there to automate their growth and the traffic from them is free, not to mention the seo benefit.
Article marketing is an extremely effective way to generate traffic. Once submitted to the right sights you can expect direct traffic from readers who link through your bio and you will also increase your page ranking through the backlinks spread across the web.