Marketing Help Needed Urgently!

[shyguy0507]

Hiya all,

Can anybody help me with a marketing issue. My website is an incentive website that rewards users with credits which can be exchanged for free DVDs, CDs, Games and Cash. Cash can be paid out via PayPal (min £10) Cheque (min £20). But all other rewards can be paid out after £5 (equivilant to 500 credits). 275 credits (worth £2.75) are added automatically to a new users account as a welcome bonus. Rewards are requested using a request list system and when users have enough credits the first item on their request list is ordered for them and paid for by us using the funds provided using affiliate programs. That about sums it up lol :lol:

Anyway we have very few members at the moment (current account number is 81 but I know that due to the number of test accounts that I have created whilst testing the system the actual number of users is probaly more like 50.

I was wondering if anybody could give me some advice as to how to market / promote emtigo. I have an affiliate program starting with Ocean affiliates soon as they only take commission and don't charge a monthly fee and I am looking at using adwords but is there any other method that I could use - I need help!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Best Wishes

Jesse Owen

[JustOneUK]

i would say your homepage needs a makeover and you need to entice the 50 people you already have into your forum, to make that a more interesting place.
1 registered user is no fun 8)
If you start using adwords you will be wasting your money, save it until you have built up your forum a little.

(Just my personal opinion)
James

[ebonybailey]

work with similair people ad have ads or links to eachothers sites, get a handful of them and your laughing. dont spend money on adwords not for low value products and services you will be pissing it up the wall.

[anyamoo]

Hi there

I would also work on the site, it took me a while to work out how on earth I could get free credits! And many people do not have the patience to take a look around, if they don't get it within the first few seconds.... they leave.

The homepage could be far more enticing in my opinion.

How is your SEO? I couldn't see any metatags (keywords or content description) in your source, and these are key to getting good ranking on search engines, I am not an expert in this area and there are others here who are, but I would suggest looking into your SEO in more detail.

Do you have a newsletter for members? This is a great way to keep in touch with your members and remind them that you exist! You can fill it with tips, advice, plus updates on new ways to earn the credits. Send it monthly, or even bi-weekly, this is a great way to encourage repeat visits.

Encourage word of mouth, is there a tell a friend function? OR a reward for telling a friend (some kind of offer whereby you get x credits if a friend you tell signs up?)

Without knowing more about the different ways of getting the credits it is difficult to go about providing a complete marketing plan, however targeting other websites that have a similar market to yours and joining their forum is a good way to get your site seen... obviously don't spam, but join in (with your link in your sig - providing they allow it)...

Good luck

[shyguy0507]

Hiya all,

Thanks for your advice so far.

I am certainly going to redesign the website - I already have a few ideas!

With regards to word of mouth, I have a kind of referal program in the pipeline paying something like 50 free credits when a members referal leads to a registration - is this about right or too much (or little).

Thanks for the advice about SEO - my website always comes up top for emtigo.co.uk on google - but never on the first page for things like free DVDs etc - I may check out what meta tags greasy palm uses as they operate in a similar fashion :lol:

I will also check out fellow sites forums.

Thanks for your help all - I'll let you know how I get on

Best Wishes

Jesse Owen
Emtigo

[shyguy0507]

Hello me again!

I have just started to put together the new version of the website as mentioned above - but before I get too carried away I wondered if anyone would like to look at the template I have started on and give me some feedback as to if I'm on the right tracks (no links work by the way!) and it is not completely finished yet. I think that the colour scheme is much better!! :lol:

The address for the template is:
http://beta.emtigo.co.uk/template.html

Any comments would be appreciated

Best Wishes

Jesse

[freecybermag]

Hi there

I think it looks much better but I would use a different font for your sentence "Welcome to rewarding shopping from emtigo"

Cheers

Chris

[Dave83]

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www.after9.co.uk/freeadvertising.php

:D