How do you drive traffic to your site? www.candlejules.com?

Question

I've been working really hard on my website. I don't know Java Script or much HTML. Seriously, I'm just a girl who has been working really hard making candles for the last 8 years and I've put off making a website because I was afraid of trying to build a site due to my lack of skills. I guess I just want to know if this is a site worthy of people looking at. I'm not trying to sell anything - I posted a question about which what were people favorite candles on my site and it got deleted. I really didn't intend for it to try and sell anything...just trying to get opinions. So, to conclude - does my site look okay and what can I do to get traffic? www.candlejules.com Thank you so much for your time!!!! (And I WILL award points for best answer!)

Answer 1

Write articles about your website or ideas.

Submit your website for users to review, free!

Post Free Classifieds.

Go to Famous Pages

http://famouspages.info

Answer 2

You have a beautiful website.  Now you need to do the MARKETING it takes to drive people to your website!

If you do not have marketing experience, it would be wise to read 2 or 3 books on marketing.  Amazon will have hundreds of choices.  Anything from the Guerrilla marketing series (by Jay Conrad Levinson) will be very helpful.  Also, many of the small but powerful books by Seth Godin may be helpful.

Craft fairs can be another great way to sell candles and develop a customer base for your website.

Connecting with local charities and offering your candles at a discount (you provide them 'wholesale' and the charity sells them at full retail) for selling in fundraisers is another way to get your candles and website promoted.  Connecting with local charities can be a powerful tool for developing a strong community image for your business.

Home-based businesses are a 'hot-topic' with the media.  Your home business enables you to be a stay-at-home mom AND an entrepreneur!  This is great stuff!  If you contact your local newspapers, radio, and television stations (talk to the 'business editor'), they may be very interested in doing an interview with you!  This is a great source of FREE publicity!

Best wishes and good luck.

Answer 3

Your site needs a real traffic so dont go for artificial traffic strategies like buying visitors unless you are worried about traffic rank . You should plan for traffic through search engines so you need to work on SERPs (search engines results page/ranking position). You should keep in mind what keywords a normal user will use in search engines to find such artworks (candles in your case) and accordingly promote that keyword by using it many times in your writtings and using it as anchor text whenever you post  your link somewhere.

You can also go for google adwords (advertising) as your ad will be shown on related websites and you can find interested people coming to your website. You will be charged only for the no. of clicks on your ads.

You can also try other free advertising strategies, read it here :

http://www.cool-blogger.com/2008/03/new-...

Good artwork.. keep it up.. hoping for your success

Answer 4

Hi

Beautiful candles!  I really liked the answer to your question about the PR for stay at home moms and charities if you choose a consumer marketing route.  Another way to go with your business is to hone in on "custom".

I have two custom ideas:

1.  You mentioned wedding gifts on your site.  There are 1000's of people getting married and many local plus national wedding associations.   The idea of custom candles for this industry could be very niched and you can get articles written about you in wedding publications. Candles could be a  be a nice elegant  wedding gift!

2. Another way to go is corporate gifts,  for awards,business gifts, recognition , premiums, incentives, fund raisers ect.  The corporate gift industry is a billion dollar industry, there are several trade assocations for this as well i.e PPAI (check out the website)  

Better not to spread yourself too thin.  Get  niched and go deeper into an industry.  I think you would have success rather than competing with the many candle people on a retail level. I really like the custom angle.

With both of these two ideas your website can be linked in with association and search engine sites within these industries, so it reinforces the Niche.  Of course this does not preclude the more traditional Search Engine and SEO techniques.  When I am looking for premiums for my clients, I go to  2-3 industry search engine sites to find products, because I know the factories understand the industry, clientele, how the business works.   In both industries their are many subtle (and not subtle) ways people are doing business that you will not discover untill you get more involved on a deeper level.   Good Luck!

Answer 5

wow what beautiful candles! i feel the site is layed out nicely. im no computer buff or marketing buff, but i personally like it. i think one way is to actually (face to face) tell ppl about ur website and hand out business cards or something like that.

Answer 6

Are you kidding ? how can you design such a beautiful site without knowing any computer languages ? Its just awesome..

However, to drive traffic to your site, you need a lil effort on seo . add your site to many directories.. they get your site indexed in google, and thus traffic!! identify what are the main keywords used by your customers and place them in the source page of your site. When you are linking the site to out side world, use those keywords...

some of the sites are :

Directories:

http://www.portal.eatonweb.com PR 7

http://dir.yahoo.com/ PR 8

http://www.stpt.com/ PR 8

http://www.open-site.org PR 8

Article sites:

http://ezinearticles.com/ PR 6

http://www.articleclick.com/ PR 6

http://www.1888articles.com/ PR 5

press releases:

http://www.clickpress.com PR 6

http://www.pressbox.co.uk PR 6

http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com PR 5

http://www.prfree.com/ PR 5

Social bookmarking:

http://www.delicious.com

http://www.digg.com

http://www.orkut.com

do a search in google for similar sites.. and add your site to all of them.

I wish I will see your site on the top ranks of google.

Google luck!!

Sri

Answer 7

There are plenty of ways to promote your site.

1)Article Marketing

Really a powerful method in getting audience. Write a good article based on your niche topic and submit it in article directories. Just go to google or yahoo and search for "free article directories". It will suggest you a host of directories that you can easily submit your writings. When people surf in that certain directory, they might stumble into your article and you got all the fame needed to be successful in Internet Marketing.

2)Blogging

This method is just like the article writing. You write what you want but good contents for your audience in blogs. The better you got, the more audience you get. You can also submit the same contents that you wrote in blogs in article directories. You get instant viewers if your article is in top 10 within your niche

3)Offer free stuffs

It's always good to get free stuffs. Everyone likes it.So offer some free stuffs such as e-books or software for your audience. You will get a good, loyal and repeating audience. If you are looking for FREE e-books to market it in your site, check out this link.

www.abc-netmarketing.blogspot.com.It provides a host of e-books on internet marketing. The e-books will be updated weekly. So hurry up and get your best one soon.

4)E-mail Marketing

It's as easy as ABC. Just promote your site to all your online contacts using e-mail.Write a good email that will attract your audience. If you got the contents right and able to convince your contacts , you are on your way to success.

5)SEO-Search Engine Optimization

Check out

www.ezinerticles.com for HOT tips on s****.>
6)You Tube Videos

Use free videos from you tube and paste the links in your site. People like video tutorials better than articles or e-books.

7)Google Adsense

I strongly suggest you to visit www.abc-netmarketing.blogspot.com and learn about google adsense.If it's not the best, atleast one of the best income generator for your websites. Visit the link and watch the video tutorials for FREE.

Answer 8

try to make a good blog using blogger

its a very easy source to make website as we like.

here step by step instructions

Answer 9

you need to work on the SEO (search engine optimization) and get all your keywords and phrases set up for them, also I would make the pictures a little smaller so people don't have to side scroll to look at the pages, you also have what is called a cookie cutter template web page, it looks real nice so it might not be a problem. You just need to do some small changes to make big headway with your site, and you make really nice candles. I have worked SEO before let me know if you need help.

Answer 10

Your site is very good looking. :) Advertising via Adwords is a good option. ;) You can advertise your site via Google Adwords, but adding your campaign in Adwords is not free and they charge money for showing your ads. But I know a great site for you which tells you a *magic code*, When the *magic code* is Added To Any Site's Campaign It Makes Google Pay-Per-Click Ads Costs Go To Zero and you can get free advertising! Cool, huh? :)

The url is: http://tinyurl.com/3pg9u5

Also there is one more program, you can signup for it as an advertiser(they give $20 free advertising for new advertisers) and then advertise your site in those $20. :)

URL : http://tinyurl.com/69q6nz

If you use both Adwords and the other program I mentioned, you can advertise your site for free and get loads of targeted traffic. :)