i wouldn't add general ads. they are going to contribute negligible revenue, and your ebay affiliate links will obviously be very targeted. the difference between a useful site with no ads and one with even one or two on each page is big.

Also, just to inform why I developed this.... I use ebay and search 2 searches every day. I look for deals to come up. I wanted to focus on Buy It Now listings at great prices. So I search ABC at a price range of 1500-1800. Now the average sales price of ABC is 2500 but someone lists a buy it now at 1750. Well that item is going to be sold ASAP! I never have a shot at it unless I am in front of my computer at that time its listed. Well now I do with an alert from clerts.

I realize that others will use it different ways. We have a user who is searching "watch" with no price range. Well that is going to return millions of results so we need to address that and limit the search results. Its a learning process but this is the start of it.

I also realize that people will just use this a an ebay search tool. That was never my intention during building it but its something we have to address. Of course we can do that but we need to fix some things for scalability in that case.

Not general ads. Ads based on search criteria. Remember, we have the important data. What you want and what you want to pay!

You mentioned that you have money for advertising and marketing. Don't do this yet.

Your goal is to get as much early feedback as possible - for 6 months you've been developing in a vaccuum and now you need to see what your early adopters are asking for, before you try to get more mainstream customers.

There was a great article on hackernews a few days ago talking about how it was the CEO's responsibility to personally email the first 1000 users of a site and introduce him/herself by name. Not some spammy auto-reply but a genuine hand-typed email.

These first 1000 customers can give you amazing feedback and will help you to refine your initial design and will serve as evangelists if you treat them well. Until you are sure (based on objective data) that you have product/market fit, paying for advertising is probably going to be wasteful.

If you DO want to spend some money right now, look at adwords keyword advertising and make sure you can track conversions before you begin. If you do it right, you'll quickly find out which keywords lead to the highest conversion % and then you can just do the math to see if it's worth it. You should do something like the following:

Keep all keywords where:

cost per click of a keyword * conversion % after clicking < lifetime value of converted customer

i.e. if you are paying $0.15 per click for people searching for "easy way to bid on ebay" and 1.5% of those clicks convert into someone signing up for the service and you make roughly $1 per month for each customer you have and a typical customer refers an average of 0.5 friends and a typical customer stays for around 1 year, you can do this:

lifetime value of customer = $1x12=$12 plus referral value of 0.5x$12=6 plus (you can go on as you like here, but lets just say the referred customer doesn't refer anyone else for simplicity) = $18 per customer

$0.15 per click * (1/0.015) = $10 in customer acquisition costs.

$18-$10 = +$8. Therefore this is a profitable keyword and you should keep it!

You can build a spreadsheet with the above and tweak the values as you get more data. If you want, I can should you how to do a sensitivity analysis in excel to see how sensitive your model is to slight changes in assumptions. For a basic model like this it's easy to eyeball it but more complex models can benefit from deeper analysis.

Just remember - get actual data and validate your assumptions - don't just assume you know what the customer wants.

hope this helps.

Great advice. I didnt want to spend a major part of my budget yet. I want to get users and see where this goes and how it works. Then after tweaking the site and getting it right, advertise more. I just have to get users right away to sign up and use the site. I guess thats where I am at as of today. Nobody is going to search CLERTS so how will I get traffic?

As for the email... Great idea and I will look into doing something like that.

Sensitivity analysis-I will take you up on that probably. I have experience w modeling and excel but have done real estate development cash flow finance and underwriting. I will PM you in the future when I start getting data and assumptions for input.

Thanks

if you mean something like "ebay auctions we recommend" w/ your ebay affiliate link then yeah that sounds cool . but id move away from ads or anything that isnt using your ebay affiliate

You have so little content that I don't really have any on page SEO advice other than adding relevant keywords to your page title.

Something like "Custom, instant alerts for eBay items - Clerts".

You can probably come up with something better than that though. I just took that from your page content.

I'd definitely wait until you have integrated ebay affiliate links before spending money on advertising.


EDIT:
Normally, I'm not a fan of the Adwords Display Network. In your case though, you might want to look into running a CPM "branding" campaign using animated image ads.

Add a blog and make posts on that targeting ebay keywords

c-lerts

It was established as c lerts but one word. We started saying clerts (klerts) and when we had the logo done the designer saw clerts as custom alerts and used clerts as an action or a thing. So it is what it is. When choosing a name and a site it is very hard. Everything has been taken and trademarked. Thus just all worked out... honestly the name doesn't matter much to me. It has caught on quicker than I could have imagined.

I am in the process of adding content. We are finishing an FAQ, How It Works, Privacy Policy, Blog or some sort of content page, and Most searched Clerts.

I think these will add some content. Not sure how to use the newswire or blog page bc its just going to be nonsense but I guess its needed.

As for what have I been doing?

Adwords-I started a $100/day budget and it has been running a week. I get most hits from "ebay search" and "eby" I do get some from direct matches like "ebay alert" "ebay email alerts" but those dont get many impressions. I use the whole budget every day.

Microsoft Adcenter-Same as above but I have 2 clicks! I dont even get many impressions. So I have spent $2 for about 5 days so far.

Facebook ads-This one is great. I just started it and I dont have much info on it but they charge per click or per 1,000 impressions. I choose per click and I have 0 clicks so far! But I have an average of 1.9 impressions per user. Its based on a target audience. So I have about 995,000 targeted audience based on #ebay, #sales, and something else. I only had a reach of 1,500 so far. Must be that people dont sign in all the time. Anyways, I have only been seen by 1,500 users and they have seen my ad about 2x each. And I have 0 clicks so it cost me $0 so far. But I have people who "LIKE" my page and that doesnt cost anything. So its working out I guess.

Twitter-Just kind of spaming and getting the word out. Not sure if its working though. But its not hurting us for sure! Our followers are growing.

Adsense-We have made about $15 in ads over 5 days maybe. This is based of very low traffic. I only average about 35 visitors a day right now.



So this is just an update of what has been going on with www.clerts.com I am trying to do more. Any input helps!

All of this makes sense to me (well kind of), but how do I find out what keyword or what traffic source actually led to a new user signing up?

Site looked good until I got too bottom of page and you have that massive Ad banner. Yuck. Too make it worse the Ad runnin at the time had two massive buttoms "Download now" "Play now" so when I first visited your page I had too do a double take on whether or not your service must be downloaded. Think about all the people who accidently click scams/viruses on facebook, GET RID of that ad!

I agree, that ad on the bottom of the page is terrible. The ad makes your site look cheap, tacky and low quality. Get rid of the ad.

the site doesnt need ads , the monetization of the site should be your ebay affiliate link on all the items that come out in the search result .