For ecommerce sites, which of google's tools would be most cost effective: adwords, adsense, etc..? Or is linking to other sites the best way to generate traffic ?
uhm. isnt adwords and adsense the opposite of eachother? to be no1 on many search terms is obviously the best effective.
I would say most cost effective is get high position in normal results. Yes it need lot of work and time but cool
Short term it's definitely AdWords. Visitors in minutes. Long term you have to invest in ranking well. AdSense won't get you any visitors. Just money if you already have visitors but it sounds like you need traffic.
I think Adwords looks cooler than it is. Of course, visitors for only cents is interesting for many sites, but personally I think the amount of visitors you get this way can be equal to advertising on many other sites with good texts (advertorials and the like) and that way you get good backlinks and visitors in minutes too. In the end that will result in good normal links. I wouldnt do adwords right away but save the money to try normal results first... and once that is working and you know visitors actually spend money on ur site, you can go and also invest a little in adwords for a few extra visitors.
I agree with TOPS30 If you want traffic straight away use adwords. Look for longer tail keywords and try and pick up some bargains. Then build up your SEO over time with quality content which is well optimised for your targeted keywords. This isn't hard to do and can then start to take over from your adwords campaign. Adsense is a way to monitize a content site rather than an e-commerce site, though some e-commerce both sell things and have ads (I think it dilutes the selling side of it though) Hope this helps