So you find yourself sitting with a well developed, sophisticated piece of online retail software, which is fully capable of selling to hundreds of thousands of customers all over the world. You have a great product, which you just know is going to be popular if only everyone out there knew about it—but nobody does. Your main consolation in this situation is that you are not alone. In the US, each year thousands of new Internet startups fail because they simply cannot generate enough revenue from their online sites. The reasons for this can be varied, but whatever they may be, you can be quite sure that one of the main factors is the site not gaining enough exposure.
The difference between success and failure is really a numbers game, when it comes to dealing with e-commerce. Unless you already have a select, loyal client base from which you can draw enough sales to keep you going, you are going to have to market and advertise and do just about anything...