If I Had $10,000 And 40 Hours/week - How Would I Promote My Website? Options

[RisaBB]

Hello,

In September, Rand Fishkin wrote a blog post, Time Distribution for Effective Online Marketing and broke the time down as follows for a 40 hour work week:

10% - keyword, industry and competitive research
10% - participating in online communities
10% - Testing/refining based on visitor data
5% - manual link building
25% - developing new features/designs
40% - building viral-worthy, authoritative content

I'm curious about feedback on this. Is this how successful website owners allocate their time? What about the time to update the website and track the statistics and manage a PPC campaign?

If I want to launch a new site with a bang, where do I allocate the marketing money? I can't do it all, so do I pay a few thousand for link-building? Do I hire a SEO copywriter to help with the content and to write a PR? Do I spend it on submitting to directories? Should I spend a few thousand on PPC (the costs per click are scary)? What kind of consultants do I need to work with to help "launch with a media and online marketing blitz" (Rand's advice on launching a new domain).

Thanks.

Risa

[EGOL]

What type of site is this? Info? Product Sales? Affiliate?

Also, is this a new domain or one that has been around a while?

This post has been edited by EGOL: Feb 14 2007, 05:58 AM

[A.N.Onym]

Well, the most efficient paid methods in my opinion are:
- research keywords from a full WordTracker database
- define various viral ideas for research articles, tools, audios, videos, etc
- hiring an expert copywriter to research and write
- hire a developer to get tools
- get a digicam and make a funny/entertaining/very, very useful video
- get a microphone and make an audio (podcast) or two

You can also consider:
- buying reviews from ReviewMe, SponsoredReview(spelling), PayPerPost
- mentioning yourself to editors of popular industry websites (this one is free, but necessary, once you have all the stuff ready)

Now, the 'why didn't you tell this me earlier part'.

You can do this all by yourself (except for tools, maybe). If you are the expert in the field, you just ought to write content/guest post/communicate yourself and this includes talking to bloggers in the industry, building relationships with them by writing a guest post for them (not about you, about the industry) and then asking them to review the product.

If your target audience read newspapers (not teens, more sophisticated), then perhaps a PR about a really, really world-shaking news may work. If you don't have one, it is not worth it.

I know you asked about promotion. There are other ways to spend $10k on, including website usability and accessibility. I'd say that usability should be of high priority, too.

If you still have money left after all of the above (including usability/accessibility), then repeat with content, tools, keyword research, reviews and then hire another consultant to look at usability (because they won't say the same things).

This post has been edited by A.N.Onym: Feb 14 2007, 02:41 AM

[RisaBB]

It's a new, e-commerce website.

Risa

[Ruud]

If I want to launch a new site with a bang, where do I allocate the marketing money?

To me the question is: if I were the person interested in this type of e-commerce site which launched with a bang, where would I have noticed the bang?

Let's say that I develop a project manager script aimed at executives. "Get the control back where it belongs; with you. One-click project management, offering full, failsafe control and overview of your ongoing projects, ensuring things keep moving forward and your desk and time stay clear for the type of focussed decisions you, as the executive, need to make."

I offer them a way to get back understanding. No more Gantt charts. No more whiteboard meetings with project leaders.

Where do I allocate my budget? Blog reviews? Does my target audience read these blogs? Who would? Would those people have enough influence to get this information to management?

Maybe my target audience uses the web but doesn't browse it? In that case my money would be best spend crafting emails, a few at a time, to CEO's of companies. I could be very polite, explain how their executive mastery is just what I need to understand if my tool offers value for a professional of their caliber. Maybe they could take a few moments somewhere and log on, click around and tell me if it is OK? No strings attached of course; completely free.

It is not about the where or why or how -- it's about who.

A company launching baby skin products:

"The doctors got a few of their patients and friends involved in the creation. Knowing that they were part of it, they couldn’t wait to spread the word,” said Daina Nadler, the company’s director for marketing and sales. “By the time we launched we had a built-in client base. We hit our Year 1 distribution goal by the end of the first month.”

A company wanting to push customers to ordering pizza online:

They came up with an e-mail newsletter that contained links to an online game. Another prominent feature was a forward-to-a-friend button. The e-mail message went to more than 60,000 people, and more than 25,000 played the game, Mr. Buscani said, which asked players to catch falling pizzas.

While the e-mail reach was impressive, even more important was that it helped LaRosa’s Pizza attract more than 4,900 new customers in December 2005 alone. In addition, the company increased its online order volume this year to about 10 percent of its total business, from just 1 percent.

Online Chat Is a Grapevine That Yields Precious Fruit, New York Times (premium)

Who benefits from your site?
Who is the customer?
Who has an interest?
Who is eager to talk about this?

[EGOL]

If I was going to put 40 hours a week into the site, starting right now, I would go shopping for an established domain that has been indexed for a few years and that gets a little ranking in the SERPs right now. Any money left over I would put into professional design (because a pro can make it look a lot better than I can).

I would then get right to work on the content and do most of that myself, targeting link bait stuff first and not touching the ecommerce part until I had kickass content to support it and attract links. I would work on this very hard. Once I had a quantity and quality of content that would knock the socks off of a visitor I would then start the linkbuilding.

After the links start accumulating and traffic flow begins I would then put some time into the ecommerce and start using analytics right away to see how visitors respond to my pages and products.

In my opinion, sequence of work and how you attack it is more important than how you divide the labor.

This post has been edited by EGOL: Feb 14 2007, 10:16 AM

[Ruud]

I would go shopping for an established domain that has been indexed for a few years and that gets a little ranking in the SERPs right now

If you have the time I wouldn't mind hearing a bit more about that.

How would you shop, for example? And how would you try to find a name that more or less goes with what your own site will be about? How do you appraise the value of the domain?

[EGOL]

One reason why I would do this... explained best by Jim Boykin here...
http://www.jimboykin.com/seo-new-site/

Another reason (more important IMO)... if you are selling and building content for red widgets then getting RedWidgets.com would be a great idea. It gives you authority even if undeserved plus it is very easy to remember. It makes you more linkable and the linktext will likely be "Red Widgets", boosting you for those rankings. If you have content about red widgets and you ask for a link related to them my bet is that you will have a 50% higher chance of getting the link.

Selecting the domain.... pick your best keyword that is on the short memorable side (and also has high search traffic) and that accurately describes your biz.

How much to pay. I would be willing to pay a nice piece of dough for the right domain just based upon what I wrote above. I would also consider content on the site right now that I could use as part of my plan and the backlinks to that content that will remain in place after the deal is done. $10,000 might not be enough but in my mind this is no different than buying a building to operate a store.

This post has been edited by EGOL: Feb 14 2007, 10:28 AM

[RisaBB]

Egol,

So you think getting the products, then writing the content is backwards? You're saying, create a site that's all about information and articles, and then add the products? I thought that there were two kinds of visitors: the kind who are looking for information, and the kind who want to buy. Or, are they not mutually exclusive?

If I want to buy a North Face winter jacket, or a silk scarf, or wooden train tracks for my kid, do I really want to read a whole story? I know what I want - I just want to see pictures of the item with a description. Or, are you saying, products are on one part of the site, articles are an another?

I see that Ruud just asked my next question: Where do you find this established domain that's for sale and is low in the SERP's?

Thanks for your input. You're scaring me with the huge disadvantage of a new domain.

Risa

[EGOL]

So you think getting the products, then writing the content is backwards?

Yep. If you don't have links you don't have traffic (unless your traffic will come from other sources.) IMO links are more valuable than income and content is what drives that, along with traffic. I would hold off on making inventory investment until I was whipping everyone in the SERPs, making a little dough from adsense until then.

[RisaBB]

What if I'm excited, and want to hit the ground running, and don't want to wait 2 years to build up content and then start trying to sell my stuff?

Surely there are consultants to pay like link-builders, and copywriters, and marketing-blitz makers to help me speed this up.

Or I guess, as you said, buy an old domain.

Thanks, Egol.

Risa

[EGOL]

You can do PPC or other forms of marketing that do not require search rankings. My reply was based upon organic search driving most of the traffic. You can also get affiliates to promote your site.

[GeoffreyF67]

With a budget of less than $1,000 and hours of your time, you could create an info product that would be selling and making you money.

If you already have the product then you could still do this with a budget of less than $1,000 and start making money now rather than later.

G-Man

[A.N.Onym]

G-Man, perhaps you could list some articles that speak about doing what you propose or share some advice here?

Thanks

[GeoffreyF67]

There's a pretty good course that walks you through everything that you need to do to get an infoproduct out the door done by James Brausch. You can go to Jamesbraush.com to find it. It's decent if you don't want to spend a lot of money.

The best bang for your buck and something that will make you far more in the long run is Jeff Walker's course Product Launch Formula but that'll run you about $1000.

Second one is FAR better than the first but the first can get you started cheaply so you can afford the second

The first deals with infoproducts. The second does as well but the formula is workable in any niche.

G-Man

[RisaBB]

Egol,

You wrote:

How much to pay. I would be willing to pay a nice piece of dough for the right domain just based upon what I wrote above. I would also consider content on the site right now that I could use as part of my plan and the backlinks to that content that will remain in place after the deal is done. $10,000 might not be enough but in my mind this is no different than buying a building to operate a store.

I'm curious, what do you call "a nice piece of dough" for a great domain name that's been online since 1999, very few inbound links (~ 15), and a #5 rank in Google for the most important keyword phrase that has 162,030 searches in Keyword Discovery (which is the highest # of searches of the 180 words found doing keyword research)?

Just trying to make a good decision, since I do have the opportunity to buy a website in my niche but can't spend a fortune on it.

Thanks.

Risa

[EGOL]

I can't answer that because I don't know the value of the niche. Some KWs cost 5 cents for top position in PPC others the top position can't be bought for 5 dollars. If this domain is the KW.com tied to a nice commercial product or niche I would spend $10,000 or more without blinking.

I would be careful not to buy a trademark problem, and I would be careful in how the transaction is done...
I authored a post on this subject at SEOmoz but their site seems to be down at the moment.

This post has been edited by EGOL: Feb 15 2007, 03:34 PM

[GeoffreyF67]

You'll also want to make sure it's a memorable, easy to type in domain. There is some research that suggests that shorter url's fare better as far as ranking in the search engines.

G-Man