Best way to advertise free service

[vstore]

Hi all,

I was wondering what is the best way to advertise a free service ? For paid services it makes sense to use pay per click or affiliate techniques since you have the potential to make sales thearby allowing you to fund future advertising initiatives but with a free service you don't have that steady revenue stream.

Any creative ideas on how I could market my free service ? It is a free ecommerce website design and hosting service (http://www.vstore.ca) targeted to small business owners. I tired SEO techniques but all the paid services always come up first even if I include the term free in the search engine query since a lot of them offer free trials.

I tried setting up an affiliate program but I can only afford to offer $.30 per lead which is low relative to other paid services.

Thanks for your help :)

[beitahan]

Congratulations, you're doing great. I believe posting in a forum like this will do your site some publicity. It is really relevant for you to try other promotion techniques since any method that requires money is out of the question.

However, i'd like to ask, after viewing your web site... "What do you get out of it?"

If you notice, people who don't see what the other party is getting out of a deal feels rather defensive and doesn't understand.

If you could share some of your organizations' intentions for the general public, and for yourself. more of an introduction.. in various forums.

You might get some feedback.

Personally, i find your service very interesting and rather motivated to set up an account, however, i have some reservations when i don't see what you are getting out of all of this free services. There's always a "catch". If you can surface it, potential customers may turn into customers who willingly spread the word without additional costs!

All the best

[vstore]

Hi,

Thanks for looking at my site and your question. The service is advertiser funded . I display google text ads on my webpage and on the users store pages and the admin page. I made sure ads on the store pages match the site theme and are small and off to one side as to not reduce the value of the online store and not effect its professional look.

I make money when a store owner or store customer clicks on the ads. I don't make much on ads but I am hoping with increased traffic that this business could be sustainable. A lot of users do not even notice the store ads which makes the service more appealing to entrepreneurs.

Thanks,

Sherif

[beitahan]

Thanks, that's very helpful and clearing my doubts.

It's a wonderful service, however, doesn't store owners or viewers get mixed up by the multiple frames with all the adverts?

I realised when opening the featured store, your advertisements were about on top and at the sides and the site seemed to be in between. is it just that shop or all the shops have such a crowded bit of info?

The whole site looks so crowded, i almost got lost.

But all in all, i managed to find the style and felt like buying.

Was that site part of your package? i mean the design template and the shopping carts everything.

Thanks

[vstore]

Hi,

We don't use frames and we don't display any adverts on top of the stores. Our ads are very small and not noticable. Please check out a sample store at:

http://canadasscrapbookattic.vstore.ca/

The reason you had frames is because you were in preview mode. Your customers would not even know about VSTORE.ca at all and would access your store directly and only see the small side ad. The rest of the ads are to be seen by store owners and not visiting customers.

Thanks,

Sherif,

[beitahan]

Good, i just realised it was my mistake, i take it back. It was in preview mode as you said and when i looked through the page with your link, it was great.

You offer in your sites, links to wholesalers. How can these guys help us with our business?

I will appreciate you explaining a little about them.. For the sake of the readers.

Thank you.

[Steve Windhaus]

Sherif, I have not conducted any detailed examination of your source code or your site content. However, I just went to Google's advanced search option and typed in "free ecommerce website". Guess what? Your site is the number one listing. It doesn't like too much is wrong with that.

However, I do notice your html is limited only to <title>. I do not see any meta tags for page description or keywords. That may be a matter warranting attention.

Steve Windhaus

[vstore]

Hi,

I used to be first for that keyword but not anymore. Any ideas why my ranking would have dropped so much so fast after climing so much so fast ?

Google is really taking my site on a roller coster ride :)

Thanks,

Sherif

[vstore]

Hi,

Thanks for these kind words. The wholesalers section is just some advice for small business owners who want to open an online store but do not have any products to sell. You can simply open a wholesale account and re-sell those products. Sometimes the wholesaler will even ship the product to your customer in your company name (called drop shipping). Please let me know if you need any more information.

Thanks,

Sheirf


Originally posted by beitahan
Good, i just realised it was my mistake, i take it back. It was in preview mode as you said and when i looked through the page with your link, it was great.

You offer in your sites, links to wholesalers. How can these guys help us with our business?

I will appreciate you explaining a little about them.. For the sake of the readers.

Thank you.

[Steve Windhaus]

Sherif, in August I wrote a column on SEO (search engine optimization). In short, this is a do-it-yourself primer on how to improve search engine rankings. You can view it at http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/biztools/article.php/3389651. It may or may not help you, but do remember, rankings shift constantly from one day to the next. Being #1 is the absolute best anybody could ask for, but, depending on the keyword or keyword phrase, you may or may not have many competitive contenders for that ranking. The more pages and websites that build up in that keyword category will correspondingly demand greater time, effort, and maybe soem money on your part to hold on to a high ranking. I know this from experience.

Honestly, I would say that as long as you remain on that first page, in the top 10, do not feel panic. Just hold your positioning as much as possible. There are many ezines that come out daily and weekly addressing the matter of SEO, search engine priorities, and so much more related to ranking, content and all the other matters related to how a search engine prioritizes and spiders websites. It is a fulltime job for those of us who rely on the Net to generate sales.

Steve Windhaus

[Optimmius]

Sherif, I've taken a quick look at your Google back links (and you have an impressive number I might add) and notice that most of the anchor text is not the same as the first 3 words of your title tag.

If the first 3 words of your title tag is your main keyword phrase, then gaining a bunch of back links with this same anchor text will help. Also note that "Website" and "Web Site" are seen by the search engines as not being the same so you will need to make a decision on which term to go with.