To those who know about e-commerce (or businesses)

Is it true that people who own a business on the internet received
most of the leads or sales from other forms of promotion like direct
mail, flyers, or faxing? Somebody told me that submitting your site
to search engines (even the most popular ones) will probably account for only 2 to 5 percent of your sales. They said putting a ad in the paper or a popular magazine would get more pull. Is that true?
You would think that submitting to search engines creates a lot more
exposure.

1. RE: To those who know about e-commerce (or businesses)
lbyard Jun-20-02 07:44 PM
In response to message 0

>They said putting a ad in the paper or a popular magazine would get more pull. Is that true?
That might be true, but it is awfully expensive. If you think putting an ad in one magazine or in the local paper is going to generate web traffic, forget it. You would be wasting money. You need at least a thousand visitors a day to make any money and you will still be "starving" with 10,000. Search engines are cheap and they do bring noticeably more than 5% of my visitors. But don't waste time trying to tweak them or money to pay someone else to play games with them. If you have what people want, they will beat a path to your door. The search engines will follow. So, instead asking what can I do to promote/sell something people may not really want much, ask yourself, "What do people want?" And read http://duxcw.com/faq/webmastr/index.html. Larry

2. RE: To those who know about e-commerce (or businesses)
Rod Jul-31-02 05:25 AM
In response to message 0

Yes it's true, submitting to search engines is your number one choice, but you don't just submit once, you must at least submit every month.
There is still search engines that will add your site for free, but more and more are now taking fees to give you better exposure.
I always submit to search engines and it has worked for my site.
Never waster your time submitting to FFA sites as they will bomb you with plenty of unwanted emails trying to sell their products, which most of them are crap telling you how to make a million over night etc. Don't submit with them.
Rod

3. RE: To those who know about e-commerce (or businesses)
lbyard Jul-31-02 10:04 AM
In response to message 2

I haven't sumitted my site to search engines in years. Larry