eCommerce Tycoon

**tripy** · 07:46 AM

I have finished most of the part of my last site www.web-screenshots.com last week.
The service itself is there to provide a way of realising screnshots of a web page.
It's working well, I've completed nearly everything I wanted to do, but now what ?

How would you do to promote your service ?
I admit I'm kinda lost there. My strong ground is on programming, not selling.

I started it 1 year ago, because I had a request as a freelancer.
I extended it through time, and thought I could try to run it as a service, and I saw requests coming from this place and another too, but that alone is not what makes a service alive.

I'm now thinking about integrating my service into a firefox extention.
I'm exploring the XUL language, but it still is a bit blur to me how to integrate everything smoothly, but I think that this could lead some peoples to try or integrate my service.

I refuse to spam anything like stumble upon or digg, and I truly beleive that link exchange won't do any good.
Same thing about the directories...
For now, I've setup an adsense campaign, but I see little to now hits with the keywords I've setup.

So, beside paid advertising, what would be the way you would follow to promote your service ?

**benjimit** · 09-15-2007, 10:26 AM

i can help u get good adsense returns as a package... if ur interested please pm me

**CSS4Life** · 09-15-2007, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by benjimit

i can help u get good adsense returns as a package... if ur interested please pm me

If he wants promotion, isn't is Google Adwords? I wouldn't trust someone who can't tell the difference between them

**tripy** · 09-15-2007, 12:43 PM

Quote:

I wouldn't trust someone who can't tell the difference between them

exactly...

And I already run an adword campaign. What I'm asking is what other steps you would take to promote your services...

**pealo86** · 09-15-2007, 12:53 PM

This might sound a little cheesy, but Myspace can be quite useful. I promote my online portfolio through a Myspace profile that has a link to my site, and use a friend adder to add people that meet a certain criteria.

You could always try that?

**ADAM Web Design** · 09-15-2007, 02:42 PM

tripy, I think the biggest problem with your service is that...well...I don't get it, and I'm not an easy guy to confuse. Are you offering up something along the same lines as BrowserCam? Are you offering instantaneous screenshots that can go into a Flickr photo album? It's a muddled thought that I'm sure makes complete sense to you, but I'm lost.

And if I'm lost, then customers almost certainly will be as well. So what I would suggest you do first is to fix up your copy. Make it clear. Show an example on the home page. I don't know what else to suggest, but do something to make it idiotically obvious.

Then you can figure out the promotional end from there.

**tripy** · 02:52 PM

Quote:

I think the biggest problem with your service is that...well...I don't get it

Ok, that's a bit of a blast to me, but I understand...
Basically, the service is that you can call a specific url, and get back an picture of the url you passed to the script.

On the site itself, I've integrated it a bit like snap did, with an javascript overlay that preview the page behind the link you hover.

I must have get too deep into my thoughts, and forgot the user point of vieww.
I'll reformulate the pages. If it's not clear for you, it won't be for anyone...
I'll just let some days past, to get some clearer thoughts.

Thanks Adam.

**ADAM Web Design** · 09-15-2007, 03:27 PM

Good thinking, dude. If you try to do it now, you won't be as effective as you will when you clear your mind and look at it freshly.

Having said that, the one thing I think might help is some sort Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 thing with some screen caps to show how easy whatever you're doing is (assuming it is easy).