Joining Topsites To Promote Your Business By Kim of Craftisan

Many of you have heard the word, seen them while browsing the web and perhaps even joined one or two to promote your business. But do you really know how to truly get the most benefit from joining one?

Topsites are not necessarily new anymore. While browsing around the web you will see them popping up everywhere. It almost seems as if everyone is starting one these days. Especially in the crafting world.

Why is everyone jumping on the topsite bandwagon? Website traffic is probably the number one reason. People visit your site, and either join your topsite which results in traffic, or browse your topsite looking for other websites which results in more traffic. So it makes sense that any smart website owner who knows the merit of generating traffic to their site would want to jump on this bandwagon. However, we come to the question every small business website owner wants to know… Should I join every topsite I see? In a word… No!

Why you ask? Well, the short answer is if you want buyers to come to your site then you need to be sure that topsite is targeting the visits that want to buy what you have to sell. These are called “niche topsites”. Consider this scenario:

ABC Wood Signs has a website that sells custom signs and joins 25 topsites including graphics, candles and sewing topsites. A potential customer wants to buy a custom sign. The customer decides to browse online. She goes to google and types in the keywords: custom wood sign. Now she starts scrolling through the results. She is probably not going to see the topsites for Graphics, Candles, and Sewing which is where the store owner listed. The store owner thought that listing on as many topsites would bring them lots of visitors. The customer will only see sites that have custom + wood + signs in their description, keywords and site content. The customer clicks on a competitor’s site and decides to purchase through them because they have custom signs.

Remember, you want visitors coming to your site that are potential buyers who are looking for the products your store sells. In a nutshell, advertising on a Candle, Sewing or Graphics topsite when you sell woodcrafts will not generate potential buyers for your product only visitors to your site.

Copyright © 2006 Craftisan aka Kim is the owner-designer of Craftisan Graphics ~ providing affordable, professional and unique web and print media for small business.