Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Where Do I Start Getting Traffic?
I got a question today that struck me as a good one to share with others. It's a common position that many new business owners have. It's one of "Help, I have a business but I don't know how to get customers."

Since the questioner seemed to be pretty much at ground zero in his business, that's where I answered it from. Hope it helps

"This may sound like a cop-out, but the best place to market what you have to offer is to go where the people who are most likely to want it are.

"What problem does what you're selling solve for people? Figure that out and you can start narrowing down where to find them.

"Oh, and saying, "Well, everybody could probably use what I'm selling." Figure out who would benefit from it most and then start looking for places that they would go looking for answers.

"Craigslist is good for selling physical products, but it has its limitations for things that are less tangible. And it limits you severely when it comes to where on the site you can post your ad. But I've had success with some things on there.

"For physical products, eBay can be a good way to start. You have plenty of traffic coming there looking for solutions. That means you don't have to go look for them. It's cheap to set up, your risk is a lot lower than going out and buying advertising for a website. I have a few tips for auction selling on my website if you're interested: http://www.onestopwebsupport.com/dir-auctions.htm

"If you have a website already and are looking for ways to drive traffic to it for free, you might also want to look at forums. Find the forums that people who are most likely to be interested in your solutions are looking for answers. Don't go in there spamming the threads with nothing but "Buy my stuff!"

"Be genuinely helpful to people. Answer their questions, even if they don't apply to your solutions. When you get a question where your product is related to the question, drop in a link to your site with a comment that they might find what you have there useful. Be careful, though, that you don't violate any forum terms of service about links. Check that out before you start posting on a forum.

"If you build a reputation on the forums for being helpful (and not just pushing your product). You'll start getting traffic from there. No, it's not going to send you millions of visitors a day. And it will take some effort on your part. But once you start getting income, you can start reinvesting it back into your business with strategies that cost a little.

"Business never works as a big explosion -- from no income to riches immediately. It's a matter of building momentum, slowly at first, but if you keep building it steadily, it will eventually become an avalanche."
Jeff

Labels: start business

Are You Building the Right Traps?
Here's a favorite quote from Gil Bailie:

"No lions are ever caught in mousetraps. To catch lions you must think in terms of lions, not in terms of mice. Your mind is always creating traps of one kind or another, and what you catch depends on the thinking you do. It is your thinking that attracts to you what you receive."

It's easy to think too small. Oh, sure, we all have big dreams of what we WISH we could accomplish. But we find those dreams challenging and never get around to WORKING for them.

What work we do toward them is usually on a pretty small scale. We may set out to build financial security for ourselves, but we content ourselves working toward something that, at best, will bring us a little extra side income.

It's easier to build a mousetrap than a lion trap. It takes more time, more effort, more materials to catch lions.

If we never venture beyond the easy little things on which we focus our time, though, we never accomplish the big ones.

That's where I find myself right now. I've been in Internet marketing for over seven years now. I've made enough to pay the bills regularly -- until the recession hit and I experienced some major bumps in revenues.

I was satisfied with getting by. Now, simply getting by was never the big dream I started my business to accomplish. That dream was much broader, much wider, much grander.

Along the way, though, I became willing to settle for trapping mice instead of lions. I'm back to where I was before the recession. I'm getting by well enough.

But I'm a bit shaken by how vulnerable "just getting by" can make me. The dreams of something grander are still there, and perhaps more tangible than ever. I'm far better equipped to reach those dreams now than I was when I first started.

I'm going to have to focus, though, on building bigger than I have in the past. As I consider how to build beyond my present position, I see many things I'll have to do that I have never done before.

In many ways, I'll need to abandon the familiarity of my present business and build it in new and different directions. It seems like every direction I turn, I find something new and unfamiliar facing me, challenging me to master it.

That's all part of what Bailie is saying, though. The bigger and more dangerous the dreams you're trying to catch, the more effort it will take to pursue them.

Where are you right now in pursuing the big dreams that started you on your present journey? Are you still pursuing the lions? Or have you settled for simply catching mice?
Jeff

Labels: inspirational quotes

A New Blog
I've been experimenting, the past month with something a little different. I've set up my first WordPress blog for Marketing Secrets Decoded, on which I'll focus specifically on Internet marketing strategies.

I'll also be opening that one up to some specially invited guest bloggers. I've worked with Blogger for five years now, but it's time to also familiarize myself with "the competition."

So check it out for some more of my marketing tips, as well as tips from other marketing writers.
Jeff

Labels: blogging, news