eComm Tips

If you aren’t using some type of tracking program for your site, you really need to start using one! How else are you going to know how many hits you have, where they’re coming from, and all the other good details that you’ll want to know in order to get a good idea of how your site is really doing out there?

Here are two very good (and free!) statistic programs that you can easily implement into your site and use:

StatCounter: I’ve been using this one for years and I personally really like it. They have a very easy to use interface with lots of good information. Not the prettiest site, but they keep everything you need to know right at your finger tips.

Google Analytics: Until their most recent update, I felt that Analytics was sort of hard to work with. Recently Google gave this program a bit of an overhaul and I’m liking it a lot better now since I’ve been playing with it the last few weeks. They have some really good graphical representations of the information, and the information is overall very easy to read. The one down side is that you can’t see today’s information until tomorrow.

Either of these programs are great to use. Personally I’d recommend you use both of them for a while to find out which one you really do like the best. Then stick with that one and you’ll have a great way to track how your site is doing!

• Comments (1)

Let’s face it - a lot of the work you’re going to do for link-building is flat out BORING! Submitting to directories, writing articles, finding blogs to comment on etc. is not something that most of us would choose to do for fun on a Friday night. But here’s the thing - it needs to be done!

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people burn out before they reach their potential online mainly because they don’t with the simple things. The ‘easiness’ of it misleads them and then they think that there must be something more and that they must be missing something. If you’re consistently submitting to directories, writing articles, and all other things you can do to build links than you’re doing what you need to do. Just keep going! Remember that the search engines do not cater to the brand new site on the block. They want to list the most relevant results at the top, and so far you haven’t proven you deserve that spot if you’re a new site. So put in the work, keep building links, and over time you will start to see your rankings climb.

So what do you do if you need traffic sooner? Well, for starters you could do some PPC advertising until your regular rankings catch up. Just make sure you aren’t spending too much on your advertising budget that you’re losing money. You could start some type of an email campaign. You could list products on other sites like eBay, Craigslist.org, and some shopping sites (Amazon, Shopzilla, etc.). These are all great ways to get some additional traffic and sales until your search engine rankings kick in. Really, they are good things to be doing anyway to maximize your earning potential!

My whole goal with this post is to motivate those of you who have found that you have lost hope in this whole ‘internet thing’. Give it time! Keep working at it! Make your link building activities funner somehow! Personally, I always have some good music going when I’m doing my link building. It makes it seem less like ‘work’. Find something that works for you, but develop the determination to do these ’simple’ things that will really make a difference.

• Comments (2)

Is it a good idea to mix dropshipping and affiliate marketing on the same site? For some reason this is a question that I’ve been getting quite a bit lately from people that I work with. The answer really is “it depends”. Of course that’s not the best answer, but let me explain.

You have to decide on what the main focus of your site is. Are you focused on selling the physical products on your site (dropship etc.) or are you more of an information site that is planning on making money from affiliate? In some ways you could say that these two ideas are strategically opposed to each other.

Let me explain.

With dropshipping/retailing, you want people to stick around on the website and actually buy something. That’s how you make money is when people actually buy from you. With affiliate marketing, you make money when people leave your site. Whether you get paid on a per-click basis (adSense for example) or on an action basis (affiliate commissions from sales), you don’t make money when people stay on your website. So, with one idea you want people to stay, with the other you want people to leave. Are you seeing the difference here?

If you have a dropshipping website and you are also placing affiliate ads all over your site, then you have a mixed focus. You also need to look at how much you make on a sale. Let’s say for example you make $10 on a sale but you also have some adSense ads with which you average $0.50 a click (this varies per industry and ad). What you have just done is sold a lead for $0.50. But if that lead had actually purchased something or taken another action you would have made $10. In my opinion that isn’t a very good trade-off if you have a good conversion rate. Now do that same example with a $20 margin. You can see that the more you make per sale, the more important each lead is to you. Don’t sell your leads cheap!

So to make it short, I don’t normally recommend mixing affiliate ads on a dropshipping/retailing website. You could possibly get away with it if you were offering some type of complimentary service through an affiliate link, just make sure you still keep the main focus the main focus.

• Comments (0)

For those of you that are interested in getting involved in the world of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) I have some helps for you. A colleague of mine, newspapergrl, referred me to some videos that will teach you how to set up an account with Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN adCenter. These are the three big ad networks that you’d want to consider. Of the 3, Google adWords is probably the most important. Also, MSN is the newest.

Anyway, here’s the link to the videos if you need helping setting up a PPC account:

Search Marketing Videos

• Comments (2)

A friend and mentor of mine, Mat Siltala, recently launched a new SEO Toolbar for Firefox users. I’ve been playing around with it and there are a lot of good shortcuts and resources that you might find useful with this toolbar.

Here’s the link so you can get the toolbar if you want: SEO Toolbar. Mat gives all the instructions on how to download it and install it so it shows up in your browser.

• Comments (0)

Making sales or any type of income from a website is really all about the traffic. If you’re going to make a sustainable cash flow from any site we have to be able to get that site in front of as many people as possible. Just like in real estate they say “location, location, location”, for a website you could replace that with “traffic!”

It’s really just a numbers game. Here’s an example: Let’s say you make $20 average per sale, but you notice over time that you only convert about 3% of your visitors. Let’s also say that your goal for your site is to make $1000 a week. First of all, you need to make 50 sales a week to make that profit. And at a 3% conversion, you’ll have to get your site in front of 1,667+ people each week for that to happen. That’s the numbers game.

So how do we get the traffic? Well, there are a variety of methods that you’ll want to consider and I’m hoping that the information on this blog - over time of course - will help you to achieve that. But here are some of the basic things that you’ll want to consider:

Natural Search Engine Traffic
In other words doing the SEO work to get your site picked up by the search engines and ranked well. It takes a lot of work and will take some time to happen, but if you do things right you’ll see some really good traffic results from being ranked well on the search engines. Most people find the sites their looking for from search engines, so this one is very important.

Pay-Per-Click
If you do a search on most search engines they have two different types of results: the ‘Sponsored Links’ and the regular links. Sponsored links are the people that are paying for the traffic that they get. This is usually done on a per click basis. So whenever you click on one of those sponsored links you just charged that company whatever they’re bidding for that location. There are effective ways of doing this and it is another way that you could get traffic to your site.

Classified Ads and Shopping Sites
Classified sites include sites like CraigsList.org where you can list a free classified for your products to get some extra exposure. Another great way to get some extra exposure would be to list your products on some of the big shopping sites out there like Amazon, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Google Base, etc. People already trust these sites and by listing your products on them you can bank off their credibility to sell your own product.

Email Campaigns and Newsletters
One of the best ways to do email campaigns is to only email to people that have already requested information from your site. Yes, you can go out there and purchase names from other opt-in lists but its best to market to people that you already know are interested in your product and your site. Start a newsletter for the site and over time you’ll start to build up a good following that you can send mailings to from time to time. Make sure you stick to a consistent schedule for this so people know what to expect from you. Also, its nice when you can throw your newsletter subscribers little bonuses like 5% off an order just for being a member of the newsletter, etc.

There are some other ways of generating traffic out there, but these are the basics that you should be considering first. I know that I didn’t go into a lot of details here. Each week I’ll be giving more and more tips to help you out with different aspects of these, also tips for when you’re building your site, etc. If you have any specific questions on any of these feel free to let me know!

• Comments (0)