Hi all, I'm after abit of advice about getting visitors to my site.

OK so I wanna sell Prints of Crystals to the world.
Im short on cash. I have a CafePress shop & a Flickr gallery also. (see sig if needed). Im an active member on a popular Crystal/Meditation type Forum, but not really active anywhere else.

As CafePress is really about TShirts im in the wrong place to sell prints BUT its cheap to hope a shop for a year.

I have a nice website BUT cannot aford the hosting i need (if i do sell any prints, any profit will pay for propper business hosting with 1&1. Ive had alot of hits from LFS which is good. But most come from Flickr.

I think i need to try and get in a big Poster company like allposters.com or something but when i try to email them about adding my pictures i get no reply.

So anyway - if anyone has any ideas at all about finding my little niche market on the internet it would be great. All feedback greatly appreciated.

Im not looking for sales realy just to slowly gain some exposure & get the ball rolling!

Peace

Myspace?

officelive.microsoft.com

EDIT: myspace isnt really the place to sell stuff, its more of a blog.

Not sure about myspace really bro. All ive heard is bad stories BUT im sure it would generate alot of traffic, but will they buy Crystal Prints? Someone mentioned Craigslist but im not sure how all that works.

Could i sell on Ebay? Could i buy my own producs on the cheap from my own Cafepress shop and try sell them on at a profit? ermm.

Also I was thinking I need to kinda target Health Places like Fitness clubs & also the Meditation type places like the colour therapy & reiki stuff. I spose i should just try everything abit at least once then see the results. I dont wanna get rich or anything just wanna sell at an afordable price for a small profit. I just need to do it on the cheap. How about Digg? im not sure the digg comunity is interested in Crystal Prints but u never know. Is all exposure good exposure?

Cheers

What you actually sell? Pictures of pretty stones or pretty stones?

1) Find out how much search engine traffic is looking for your product.
2) Either:

a) Pay for a Google per-click promotion and make tonnes of money.
b) Build a search-engine friendly website around the best keywords and make a trickle of money.
c) Decide there isn't enough business in it and do something else instead.

yep - all good ideas. Its Prints & Posters of Pretty Crystals, If it takes of though I wanna offer Crystals later. Ive also got an ebook with some embedded flash crystal movie things & dont know weather to sell it or give it away for the traffic. Its early days yet - not sure to go the corporate ad route or the slow trickle with integrity intact. Just shooting the breeze atm & trying to find the right market.

Thanks every one.

crystal meth?

If you're looking to do this on the cheap;

Try putting some up on ebay (for sale) and posting links within the descriptions to your website - always good to get yourself noticed this way. May even be worth running the storefront via ebay.

Also you might want to check out the links exchanges - somewhat old school, but they can still work.

No thanks. I prefer to make my own.

Quote from neilmichaelcasey :

Hi all, I'm after abit of advice about getting visitors to my site.

Add a lot of Porn content. That'll get 'em flocking to your site.

www.boards.ie ( <<--- 40,000 active members poer day so atleast 1 will buy your product )

www.bebo.com ( you gonna get noticed somehow)

simple sites/forums like that cant boost ya income rather easily

getting noticed means getting top hits to your website. you can do this by paying people the pharm or farm. this involves making thousands of websites all containing links to your webpage. these then auto link to your website and give you instant hits. also a small ebay store is never a bad idea. besides you make them pay shipping and handling.

and what you charge for the "handle" of the part is upto you most of the time. but never rip someone off. just add a 1$ or something like that. maybe a gallon of gas lol!

Nice - Some great stuff comming from you guys (even the funny stuff). Ill look into the Ebay Thingy (so i can make a Ebay Storefront link to Cafepress so i dont have to buy my own stuff first?).

Cheers everyone - what a great community we have here!

Peace & ill loook into Bebo & the Boards aswell

I dont wanna do the Office live thing yet because its abit official & i wanna stay under the big brother radar atm

Ill let you guys know how it goes - peace FB

try www.iStockphoto.com
members can upload photos and other members buy them, you get a fairly high percentage of the purchase price.

Quote from The Moose :

Add a lot of Porn content. That'll get 'em flocking to your site.

Sounds like a good plan, now to wait 2.5 years until I'm 18.

Quote :

Add a lot of Porn content. That'll get 'em flocking to your site.

A guy I worked with ran a SNES site and he put a picture of Alicia Silverstone with her pet dog under the search indexable title "Alicia Silverstone does it doggy style".

His site viewership went from 100 month to over 25,000 a day.

Hmmm, is the LFS forum search indexable? I think it is... Now i've gone and done it

hehehehhe - your mad you r m8! BUT i need to find a porn star called Crystal or something - lol

ill try that istockphoto thing - cheers NIKI

Quote from neilmichaelcasey :

hehehehhe - your mad you r m8! BUT i need to find a porn star called Crystal or something -I

Crystal Peaks?

(oops...er.......not that I would know anything about THAT sort of thing, of course! )

Quote from nikimere :

try www.iStockphoto.com
members can upload photos and other members buy them, you get a fairly high percentage of the purchase price.

Royalty-free stock photo repositories are typically used by designers though, rather than consumers. I think it would produce very low volume for photos of crystals.

Quote from neilmichaelcasey :

i need to find a porn star called Crystal or something

Crystal Jones
Crystal Knight
Crystal Klein
Crystal White
Crystal Kerrington
Crystal Gold
Crystal Lynn
Crystal Storm
Crystal Wilder
Crystal Breeze
Crystal Ray
Ivy Crystal
Angela Crystal

i could go on...but im exhausted

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Royalty-free stock photo repositories are typically used by designers though, rather than consumers. I think it would produce very low volume for photos of crystals.

I wasn't suggesting it be his only source, but it will help.
I've bought one or two nice images off there that i have gotten framed.