Success depends upon getting people to view our website. Simply by getting a visitor to ACME PARTS, we make an advertising sale. By providing useful content to our visitors we increase the amount of that advertising sale by increasing the number of pages, and thus impressions a visitor sees. By linking sales offers for products to the content of each article we make it easy to convert the visit into a product sale as well. Therefore, the generation of traffic is of paramount importance.

There are a number of ways to market a website, press releases, banner ads, radio, television, magazines & journals, event sponsoring, listing in search engines, reviews in web, magazine and television articles (such as on CNET).

The initial roll out of ACME PARTS (the "Live" phase) will contain three categories, with additional categories being added continually. While we want to generate traffic, we want visitors to see as complete of a site as possible. If advertising expense peaks too early, we will have brought traffic but not delivered the best impression to our visitors. Therefore, several of the more costly, less directed advertising methods (such as magazine, radio, television and event sponsorship) will be held back until Grand Opening phase of the site is initiated.

Because of the importance of publicizing our existence, every opportunity must be exhausted to exploit no cost and low cost options. Furthermore, adequate funding should be sought to support an extensive media campaign to put name ACME PART.COM in everyone's ear.

The following enumerates these advertising options, their cost and schedule for implementation.

• Press Releases - Press releases should sent out to all relevant media outlets for each milestone event.

Cost: In house labor.

Time Frame: Beginning with Beta phase and subsequently for each milestone event.

• Search Engine Listing - List the site with popular search engines and directories including AltaVista, Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, Northern Light and Google. List all content articles individually to increase the hit rate generated by search engines.

Cost: In house labor.

Time Frame: Implement for beta site

• Banner Ads - Banner ads at search engines and/or directories. For directories such as Yahoo, ads can be purchased either in specific directory categories (such as "computer parts"), or by keywords. We prefer the former, as the ads are more likely to be seen by people who are our target customers.

• Magazine ads - Purchase ad space in specialty magazines related to the categories of parts that we sell, such as Automotive ("Car & Driver") and Computer ("PC Week") magazines.

• Television and radio ads - Purchase commercial time on "How-To" television and/or radio shows, such as "This Old House", "HomeTime" and "Car Talk".

Cost: Cost varies greatly depending on the popularity of the show

Time Frame: Implement for Grand Opening.

• E-Mail bulletins – By maintaining a client and visitor list we can offer content oriented bulletins to be sent out. These bulletins will contain short blurbs that are designed to pique interest and will provide a link to get more information. These links bring the client to our content pages, which consequently generate ad sales through "impressions".

• Event Sponsorship - Event sponsorship allows us to make a "splash" impression by connecting a "party" atmosphere with company icons and logos. It allows us to shape our image as a fun company. It also benefits us in attracting employees and investors.