[colinmcmahon]

So I've got my store set-up www.1337electronics.com and I need some input. What do you think I should do? How should I go about doing things? What should I do next?

I've had the site up for about a week now, only about 400 hits, and even less sales infact, I've only had 1 sale. Is this normal? Might there be something wrong?

Also, what sort of products are hot items online? What other items should I add?

Any input helps. Thanks.

[kendall]

You definitly need to promote. Get out on the boards and get your link out there for starters

[colinmcmahon]

I'm doin my best right now. My friend is in marketing at the university though. She's gotta do some free work so shes taking care of all my marketing shit soon.

[websage]

Am I right - your 1337etc.com domain name redirects to an ecrater shop?

I'm impressed you've had 400 hits in the first week if you just launched and have done that with no more than drop a few forum posts!!! But if this is the promotion you have done so far you'll be getting more rubberneckers than serious punters probably.

If you 'launch' a site it can take ages to get good consistent traffic that is actually out to buy and not just to 'mooch'.

If I was you. I think it would be a stronger position to host your .com domain name properly and then link to your shop from your website rather than the way you have it. As a subdomain for ecrater you'll never really 'own' your traffic. PLUS it is off-putting for potential customers to click your URL and then read 'been moved' and feel as if they might have been 'scammed' by some sort of cloaked link. Negative psychology for any possible buyers I think. (Well I found myself thinking 'oh yes here we go to a rubbishy spammy site' when it happened to me...but maybe I'm just jaded )

Traffic and passing sales are only the thin end of the wedge though. You need to set up your domain so that you include a page or something that 'sqeezes' folks email out of them at least...using a squeeze page to build a list of folks looking to buy cheap electronic goods is critical to your long term success.

You also need to know that your sales pitch on page is a good as it can be (If your 'marketing' contact is not also your 'marketing' copywriter - I just posted a review on HappyToRecommend.com (see sig file) of some copy optimizing software I've been very impressed with that can be a good low-cost investment for small businesses that NEED their copy to sell effectively - even if it is just to persuade people to sign up for a newsletter or freebie to harvest their name & email )

Your biz might well suit AdWords campaigns too - but read all the ins and outs - if you get your daily budget wrong you can end up spending loads IF you write some good pulling ads...and don't also then have some good converting sales pages!!

I hoppe these observations are some help. If you need a good cheap host you could do a lot worse than the one I use (I also review them and some other options on HappyToRecommend home page - sorry about the look&feel the 'graphics' are a 'work in progress' on this new project ) - certainly worth checking out if you are 'comparing prices'!

Good luck

websage