You may have the best product to offer or the coolest website out there, but if no one knows your business exists apart from a couple of family members and a few of your friends, how long do you think it will take? get at least that first successful sale?
Doing business online is very similar to running a business offline. The only big difference between these 2 is that an online business is much easier and more convenient to run. Taking a physical business like a fruit stand for example, in order for you to make as many sales as possible, you need to make sure that your fruit stand is strategically located. If it’s located on an isolated corner, then you’d obviously be lucky if even a stray passerby noticed your stall and bought from you.
So what is the effective solution to that? Well of course you need to find a place where there is a large crowd constantly in attendance and actively looking for what you have to offer. In other words, there is a large and constant traffic of potential buyers to take notice of you and what you are selling. The same applies when doing business on the Internet. The big question though is, how and where do you find potential buyers and consistent online traffic?
Internet is really like a big market. You just need to know how to handle it. Think of a market, you have to find out in which place or alley a large number of customers pass regularly. Now, when you figure out which places draw a lot of traffic or passers-by, obviously, that’s exactly where your business should be located, right?
Here are some of those places online you really should be hanging out more often to attract customers:
-Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN
-Article directories such as EzineArticles, goarticles, search warp, idea marketers
-Social bookmarking sites like digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon
-Social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster, Facebook
-Famous websites that offer ad placements
-Famous blog sites
-Famous forums and discussion boards