Here are my suggestions as to the top 10 ways you can market your store online. Some are free, some have costs.

1. PPC (AdWords, YPN etc)
Probably the most effective way to market your site is through contextual PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. Programs such as Google AdWords and Yahoo Publisher Network. With PPC advertising you pay a certain amount for every click on your link, but because it is contextual it is targetted to people actively searching for your keywords. The amount you pay depends greatly on how competitive your market is, but if you make your targetted keywords more specific (maybe regional or specific products) you'll find the cost might come down. I'll be covering these programs in more detail in a future article.

2. Price Comparison Sites
Price comparison website such as shopping.com and Shopzila (off the top of my head - there are a lot of them out there) is another option. Again with these services you are usually paying per click and attracting people actively searching for your products. You have to be careful with your pricing down this route however as if you're more expensive than competitors you won't get many clickthroughs.

3. Regular Advertising
In some cases other online advertising methods may be quite successful. Banner advertising sees a low percentage of clicks these days, but there are other options such as text link advertising or even video ads.

4. Search Engine Optimisation
This one should go without saying, but it goes unnoticed a lot. Optimising your pages and writing your content carefully considering the keywords you want to be targetting is a step that costs little or nothing at all, and if you get it right you'll see hundreds of visitors coming from search engines every day. At the end of the day "Content is King" - you should have as much information about each product as you can write, and you could even consider including other pages offering articles that a rich in keywords and linking through to products or sections.

5. Affiliate System
Having an affiliate system is one of the best ways to get selling products. People join and become an affiliate for your products, you provide them with banners and links for them to put on their websites, and for ever sale they bring you give them a percentage of the cost. With an affiliate system you are effectively getting other people to do the selling for you and providing you with customers, and you don't have to pay them anything until you have the money from their sales. There are many sites that will let you run an affiliate program, although some will come with a cost. There is no harm in setting one up yourself however, and many eCommerce packages come with the functionality built in.

6. Mailing List
Having a mailing list or newsletter on your website is a good marketing tool. The recipients will either be previous customers, or visitors who have joined up willingly. You know the recipients will be interested in your products as they have asked you to send them information about them. A well constructed newsletter can be very effective in bringing more sales. There are some services out there that will let you send newletters for next to nothing, my recommendation would be Mail Chimp. Equally, many eCommerce packages will come with a newsletter feature.

7. Word of Mouth
Word of Mouth can be underestimated. There is common thinking that if someone likes your product, they'll tell their friends and colleagues about them. While this might be true sometimes, its worth giving them a helping hand. Having an "Email to Friend" feature is one example of this, it's right there in front of them to quickly send information about a product to someone before they forget about it. Other ways could include using branded eCards on special occasions or running competitions.

8. Blogs
Blogs are all the rage (heck you're reading one now!) and it is likely there is a blog out there talking about your market. Getting such bloggers to post about your products, maybe reviewing them, is a surefire way to get their readers directed to your online store.

9. Signatures
This is an old favourite. Signatures in emails, forum posts and anywhere else you may be posting information. Generally, if you have something genuinely interesting and valuable to say people are likely to click on your signature links.

10. Freebies
Finally, this is common with software these days, offering a free version of your product(s) with reduced features, or free trials of them that expire after a set time limit will get more people interested. It may also open up other avenues to market (in the case of software there are a number of directories just listing free software downloads).

Well there we have it, my top 10 suggestions. It is by no means a definitive list, if you have any suggestions or think I've missed something feel free to post a comment letting me know.

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