When you are a small online business owner you have to think about the promotion of your site sooner or later. To my mind, the most effective way to do it invented so far is the email campaign.

What are your options?

In fact, you have 3 choices of software types for the campaign:

1. Desktop software
2. Web server software
3. ASP hosted service

The third option has one significant competitive edge over its opponents – you are not responsible for the delivery of e-letters. Subscribing to this type of service you get a certain number of email for a monthly fee.

Dr. Ralph Wilson, Wilson Internet Services, says:

“With desktop or web server software, basically you’re responsible to get them delivered… Whereas if you’re paying someone else for that service, it’s their job, and many of them take it very seriously.”

A desktop server has another advantage – its cost.

Follow the tips:

If you decide on a desktop or server solution here are a couple of tips that will help you get the mail delivered to the users:

1. Don’t be spam. How not to be spam? Here are some pieces of advice that will help you avoid spamming:

• Don’t use all caps.
• Don’t use HTML messages that are primarily graphics.
• Don’t try to trick filters by replacing letters with asterisks or breaking words up with punctuation marks. Filters are getting smarter, and you could end up on a black list.
• Don’t use sloppy HTML.
• Don’t use large or small fonts. Stick with H1, H2, or H3 heading tags

2. Use sender certification

There are companies like Habeas.com and BondedSender.com that certify your small business. Once you get your company certified you can be sure that you can get through spam filters right to the hearts of your potential clients.

Issues with a Hosted Server

If you decide to sign up to a hosted server here are a number of things you should keep in mind:

• What precautions do they take to prevent spammers from enrolling? A good host company will have measures in place, such as confirmed opt-in, to make sure that they’re not allowing spammers to join.
• Do they take any precautions to prevent spammers from signing with the service?
• Does the service offer any tracking system? Nowadays a number of hosted servers allow you to see how many email recipients have opened your letters and visited your site through the links provided by the letters
• Is their customer service good? In order to tell a good one from a bad one you can simply see if it takes a long time for them to respond to your inquiries.

I have recently noticed the trend in the online business forums – more and more internet entrepreneurs who were previously involved into development content based websites and promoting affiliate programs (sample: dropship affiliate programs) turn to starting their own e-commerce ventures. And most those ventures are drop ship type businesses.

It is a sign that the competition is likely to get tougher in the limited online space for dropship businesses. The winners will be those with established and reputable dropship stores with a long list of regular customers, having close relations with merchants, also those who will offer new hot products and stay on the edge of latest technologies and marketing developments.

Another sign in the dropship industry – dropship business owners find more and more ways to drive traffic and promote their online ventures. A few years back 90% dropship sellers got their traffic through eBay.

Now I see dropship sites:

• promoted in shopping comparison engines,
• drive traffic with pay-per-click engines,
• accepted to top online directories like DMOZ and
• even achieving top Google rankings for competitive retail products…

Just a few of my observations.

And now another case study for beginners and advanced dropship entrepreneurs. Our never ending show of providing you with the samples of dropship businesses, how they get promoted and what they really sell and earn.

• URL: www.mysunshades.com
• Established: Sun Feb 12 2006
• Uniques/Month: 4,000
• Page views/month: 22,000
• Monthly Revenue: $3,500 – $4,000
• Google Pagerank: 2
• Min Bid: $15 000
• BIN: $20 000

Description:

This auction is for a total Sunglasses E-Commerce package just in time for the peak Spring & Summer Season!

MySunShades.com deals with “single” pair sunglasses targeting your average consumer.

iWholeSaleSunglasses.com is a”wholesaler” targeting vendors and corporate functions.

About MySunShades.com:
Created On: 13-Feb-05
Length in Business: 3 Years
Yearly Revenues: 35-40K
Profit Margin: 85%
Item Sale Price: $15.95
Item Purshase Price: $2.00-2.50

Inventory: 8K Worth of inventory is included with this sale.

Note: MysunShades.com purchases its sunglasses from an exclusive wholesaler at great rate. The site has been submitted to all the top online directories for 3 years now, which give the site it’s great first page google keyword ranks (see images). Also, We have been added to a lot of affiliate coupon sites. There not much to say then the site is very successful in it’s “niche”.

About iWholesalesSunglasses.com:
Created On: 01-May-06
Length in Business: 2 Years
Yearly Revenues: 15-20K
Profit Margin: 25%
Item Sale Price: $34.95
Item Purshase Price: $25-27
Dmoz listed

Inventory: NONE, this site is all dropship you DO NOT carry any inventory.

Note: iWholeSaleSunglasses.com is a DropShip site, and also has been submitted to all the top online directories such as DMOZ (approved), which give the site it’s great first page google keyword ranks (see images). Also, there is not much to say then the site is very successful in it’s “niche”.

Reason For Sale:

Its been 3 years since i was in this business, its time for new ownership to step in and add their own fresh touch to these successful websites.

Revenue Details:

Check Description for Details.

Traffic Details:

All Search Engine NO advertising!

Affiliate marketing is advertising for someone else in exchange for a cut of the sales you generate. You’re sharing your traffic for a price. It’s a great way to capitalize on the traffic your website’s already producing.

So let us find out what people mean when they say “Affiliate marketing.”

It is high time Wikipedia entered the game:

“Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.”

Being an Affiliate

What does it require being an Affiliate?

If you possess a small home-based Internet business you can become an affiliate partner of other merchants and get money for sharing your traffic with other online sellers. You need to find a site that deals in the goods which are complementary to yours without overlapping

Before you join this or that affiliate program there are things you should consider:

1. Find out if the site has an affiliate earnings history
2. Get to know if they have an affiliate manager you can contact in case you have problems
3. Is the affiliate marketing program of the site well-established?

You role in any Affiliate Marketing program is to make your clients to want to buy the products from your partner’s site. Simply placing a link to this site is obviously not enough. You have to promote and advertise the products by proving that they are somehow better than those of the competitors.

Jonathan Miller, Team-Affiliate.com, says:

“The sites that do better are the ones that select one or two offers, tell people why they recommend these particular offers, and then provide them with a link.”

Making use of affiliate partners

You yourself can use affiliates to increase your traffic. But you should be very choosy about whom to trust in the issue. Keep in mind that you are attaching your brand to their businesses. You have to find the sellers the collaboration with whom will make you benefit. Moreover, you affiliates must be relevant to your target market in order to get the right kind of traffic.

There are software programs that track visitors when they leave an affiliate’s website and click through to the merchant’s site. If they convert to a sale, the affiliate that referred them gets paid a commission. You can track your visitors in two different ways, and each has its own advantages:

There are apps that help Affiliate marketing partners track the traffic. This software tracks a user that clicks on a link at an affiliate’s site. If the user buys something from the final site, the affiliate get a commission. This monitoring can be done in two different ways:

1. You buy a stand alone tracking app and integrate it into your web-page. In this case you yourself establish the commission.
2. You can join an affiliate network (for instance, LinkShare or Kolimbo). The network establishes the commission but it also gives you access to their pool of affiliates.