How to advertise my small online business?

Pearla*Merle

Oh - if you're selling your work through other shops etc, try and make some packaging for your items that shows your name &/or website. I'm terrible for remembering to do that, but it really does make a difference. People love to find out about where things come from!

PS. Just noticed you didn't say if you made things (I somehow read it that way!), or sold wholesale items - sorry if there's stuff in there that won't apply to you!

simplydevine05

Folksy and Etsy are for selling handmade items only. The main thing is time. Spend time telling every person you can find about your business and just when you think you've spent enough time you do it all again. I use Ebay mainly and having set up my site in April, to date I have had two sales through it. I spend a good four hours a day, every day, on networking. Every social networking site has a piece of my business on it. People won't buy from you if they don't know you exist and from the sounds of it, your product base is sold by thousands of other people too, so what makes you any different to them? What is unique about you? Ask yourself that, research your competitors, and tell the whole world why they should buy from you and not the others. The sales will come, but building a successful business takes years not weeks. Hope that helps.

Chai_2

use Facebook ads instead of google ads as they are far cheaper and much better value as you can consistently engage with potential customers and not just when they remember to look in google.

Create a niche. You say you sell gifts so is there a specific theme? weddings, birthdays. As soon as you have a niche marketing becomes easier as you can target people specifically. If your more general they draw up a promotional calendar with all of the holidays you can think of then look at how your products can add value and be a special gift. Then connect with FB and twitter groups who may have any connection with that holiday and tactfully engage with them.

Add a blog to your website and write articles related to your gifts i.e top 10 father day gifts ... the submit those to article directories..

Make youtube vids as mini adverts of ur products and put the holiday and product description in the title and details of the value and usage in the description area.. if you group them by holiday, sex and occasions you will have tons of vids as 1 gift can relate to many areas and then you put your web address in the beginning of the youtube description box of ya video.... (you can make the vids as a ppt and use something like animoto if your not sure how to do a vid.)

Phew, so that will give you a good few visitors and you can re-purpose things such as using the video on your ebay pg which few do and use your blog posts to engage with the twitter and FB fans.

Good luck