Chanced upon the ComeToMarket.com website, which is maintained by Renato Palabasan. It is an eMarket, where people can get together online and discuss ideas, and perhaps even engage in buying/selling or trade both locally and globally.
When you visit ComeToMarket.com, you will sense that the site owner is based in Canada, is interested in blogging, CMS, financial services, and technology.
You’ll also find the carpool forums, which will be useful for those in Ottawa, because this will help save on gas.
Over time, the carpool’s benefit will extend to even more people. The key is to get the word out, so that more folks will become aware of ComeToMarket.com, visit it, and actively participate in the forums.
One way of attracting more traffic to the website is by offering free ad placements. Since there are merchants or entrepreneurs who want to tap the internet for their marketing campaigns, they will consider posting a free ad in that web site.
Here are additional tips on how to make an emarketplace succeed
1. Add more content. This will help bring in more organic or search engine traffic. With the increased number of visitors comes the higher possibility of people participating in the forums.
2. Publish in other places. You can also promote your emarketplace by creating your own presence in other web properties such as Twitter, Facebook, Friendster, Multiply, Plurk, and various online discussion boards. Do a bit of article marketing by submitting to places like EzineArticles.
3. Publish in multimedia. You can also add a podcast to your site, which will give you more exposure once you’re listed in numerous podcast directories. You can also post videos in YouTube (with your URL displayed at the bottom of your vids), or even start a vlog.
4. Host webinars. Think of a topic that your visitors will be interested in, then organize a webinar and invite people to your highly interactive audio/video presentation. Yes, real-time interaction will work wonders for you and your site.
5. Attend blogger events. Touch base with local bloggers in your area. They will help get the word out about your site especially in your local community.
With so many watering holes on the web today, your emarketplace needs to stand out. This entails a fair amount of multimedia publishing, coupled with a social media strategy that connects you with influential people both online and offline.
And once the traffic starts pounding your webservers, I hope your webhost provider is ready to help you deliver the needed bandwidth.
