Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Four Internet Marketing Lessons from 2005
Oh, well. It seems that as 2005 winds down, the urge to look back on it has bitten me, too, just as it has so many other writers.

This was a big year as I finally acted on my desire to share my marketing experience with others. And, of course, doing so has provided some valuable lessons along the way. So here goes.

You don't get anywhere without taking action
Pretty obvious, but important nonetheless. I actually started toying with setting up a site in 2003 and set up a small site early in 2004. But then the lure of steady, billable work sapped my desire to build my own website and I continued to take the predictable income route.

It took a serious dry spell in the billable work to get me going again and now I'm glad I finally threw off my hesitency and made the necessary decisions to get started. When I look at the site, I'm amazed at how much it—and the business as a whole—has grown over the year.

Now, as billable work looks to pick up, I find myself not wanting that to interfere with the time I've been putting into One Stop Web Support. Sometimes it just takes overcoming that inertia and taking action.

Be focused
One thing I wish I had done differently was being more focused in growing One Stop Web Support. I kind of threw it together initially out of random notes I had taken on different Internet marketing topics. And I grew it largely off the top of my head, adding articles on whatever happened to be on my mind at the moment.

The result? I ended up overloaded with articles on some subjects and sparse on articles in others. And in some cases I unknowingly ended up with articles that covered almost the same ground, just in slightly different words.

I plan to enter 2006 with a much more intentional approach to growing the site. I'm working on identifying the gaps I need to fill and filling them.

Diversify
I know. This may seem to contradict my previous lesson about keeping a tight focus. But it's really about a totally different thing. Just as I had previously grown too comfortable relying on my billable work for others, I grew too comfortable with growing traffic to One Stop Web Support on nothing more than organic search engine results.

Those free search engine results were growing my traffic at a slow, but steady pace. So I did nothing to grow them by other methods. Big mistake. In October, suddenly my traffic dropped off the face of the earth as the beginning of Google's Jagger update wiped my Google rankings out completely.

Eventually, my rankings came back stronger than ever, but in the meantime I had diversified to add other sources of traffic to my site. The result of adding these other sources of traffic? I'm way further along than I would have been with just the growth the search engine traffic was giving me. Yet I'm not nearly as far along as I would have been if I had been more conscientious about diversifying my traffic sources from the start.

As for 2006, I'm working toward diversifying my traffic sources even more.

Being personal isn't the same as being unprofessional
Another trap I fell into when I started, was one of being too impersonal. The articles I wrote were very detail oriented and dispassionate as I tried to lay out the facts and leave it to my readers to sort things out for themselves.

But in doing so, I ignored a primary tenet of human nature: people are attracted to passion. People want a spark of life, not a cold recitation of facts.

So I've been slowly reworking my site section by section to bring a little more personality to bear in them. After all, how can I expect anyone to get excited about starting their business if I'm not giving them a little enthusiasm to catch from me?

Overall, 2005 has been an exciting year in many ways and I look forward to continuing the exploration in 2006. And who knows what lessons this next year will bring?
Jeff

SiteBuildIt! Christmas Offer Extension
I found out today from Ken Evoy that he has decided to extend his special Christmas promotion on SiteBuildIt! complete online business planning/building/promotion system until January 3.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the many Internet marketers who place a javascript script on their site that adjusts every promotion deadline so that whatever day you visit the site "just happens" to be the deadline for whatever special price they offer. But Ken isn't like that. I've seen him offer a number of specials over the past year and this is the first time I've seen him extend one.

It's certainly a great offer—buy one, get one free—on what I consider to be the tool I would unhesitatingly recommend to someone who planned to buy one tool and one tool only to help them build a successful business online.

It walks you through every step of building a successful online business, from finding the best theme for your site, through determining how best to monetize it, through building it, promoting it—absolutely everything you need to build a successful site.

And it doesn't just tell you what to do. It actually provides all the tools you need to do the tasks it tells you to do—and that includes hosting, domain name—everything!

I know of no better way to set yourself (or a friend) up with two complete websites for a cost that is a fraction of what it would cost you to buy separately all the tools that come as part of SiteBuildIt!

I urge you to check it out. Click on the Christmas special banner on the SiteBuildIt! site to find out all about this offer.
Jeff

Struggling at Getting Back to Normal
It seems that it's taking more than I expected to get back to normal. I've been playing catch-up the past couple of days, paying for my days off for Christmas. Plus, I've been finding one loose end after another to tie up on the family side of things from Christmas.

But in all, I'm starting to get back in the swing of business. I got a bit of a surprise when I sat down with my main client to plan out 2006. He offered me more autonomy on maintaining and promoting his websites, even to the point of making decisions on hiring additional vendors. And he discussed more of a partnership arrangement on the website part of his business, with us sharing more in both the risk and the reward.

It's tempting. I was actually looking to ween myself away from his business next year. And I'm still not sure if I want to increase my role in his business rather than focusing more on my own. But, as I say, it does hold a certain appeal.

Well, enough diary. Now back to work.
Jeff

Back to Work Again
Well, Christmas is over, three of my six children who visited for Christmas have gone back to their respective homes and careers, and it's time to get back to work. I can't say my mind is 100% back into it yet (overwise I'd have something more business-related to say), but it was a great time.

Now I get back into the work at hand.
Jeff