- Joined
- Jun 6, 2013
- Messages
- 75
Hey all,
Just wanted to do a quick introduction and share some of my thoughts on E-Commerce, SEO, and some other topics.
I started my first business in late 2011, an E-Commerce store.
Since then I've started 7 more stores
I've been lurking around here for a while, and I wanted to start contributing. So here are a few thoughts that will hopefully help someone out!
E-Commerce: bring on affiliates.
-Bring on affiliates, and pay them well. I think it's crazy that many E-commerce stores are still overlooking a solid affiliate program. Many affiliates are extremely good at what they do - when I started using affiliate programs on my stores it was a game changer.
Be generous with your commissions, give them a phone number to call and a personal-contact e-mail address for any questions they have, pay out on-time always, pay fast, offer them a ton of promotional material.
Give your affiliates a ton of value and they will BRING IT for you.
A side note: It's also important to screen your affiliates. There are a lot of good ones but there are also affiliates that WILL try and scam you.
Hunt down affiliates in your niche. If you're selling premium dog food, PERSONALLY e-mail every webmaster in the dog/dog food/dog training/etc niches. Use Google to find these sites & bloggers. Have an offer that's better than your competitors, don't be afraid to work out a deal, do what it takes to get them on board.
E-Commerce: Build a brand.
Sell your own branded products as soon as possible, Charge more not less than your competitors. You'd be surprised with the amount of people that are simply too lazy to shop around for the best deal - make sure they land on your site first, convert them, and keep them.
Have a product & brand that people are willing to pay more for. Charging more will also increase your margin which will enable you to offer your affiliates more %.
E-Commerce: Dominate your niche.
If you're having success in a niche, own it! If you sell dog houses and you have a premium dog house store, charge a fortune. The customers who don't want to buy the premium dog house can leave and purchase from your base model dog house store
Build your own blogs, review sites, own your niche!
E-Commerce: Don't be afraid to enter a competitive market.
On a lot of forums these days there is a lot of emphasis on being super-niche. I think this is a good thing, it's good to have an angle, it's good to start off super-targeted. However I've noticed that a lot of people starting out seem to take this to the extreme..
What I mean is: Sell organic high end dog food for golden retrievers. Don't sell organic high end dog food for golden retriever puppies that have blue eyes - That's just my opinion, don't think too small.
A big, competitive market means big spending, big demand. It may be hard to compete for PPC clicks, and search rankings, but use the tools that you have to your advantage:
- Make kick-a$$ BRANDED product/products
- Have a unique Angle
- Make the kick-a$$ product/products look kick-a$$
- Have a kick-a$$ site
- Have kick-a$$ customer support
- Use social media, be active on forums, use affiliates to get traffic - but above all have a great product that people will talk about. Do what the big guys aren't doing. Big companies often aren't dynamic, they don't react quickly, and they avoid risk. Take risks, be dynamic.
E-Commerce: Have multiple merchant accounts.
Have multiple ways to accept payments. Have multiple merchant accounts, or at least a merchant account + Paypal. The last thing that you want to have happen is not being able to accept purchases.
SEO: Overview.
If you aren't doing any SEO, traffic is being left on the table. I know there are a lot of discussions about white hat, grey hat, and black hat, they all have positives and negatives. I won't dig too far into it right now, but feel free to ask me anything specific.
Your competitors are likely doing SEO. Natural linking & Whitehat SEO sometimes just aren't realistic. If you sell industrial equipment, medical supplies, etc, chances are you aren't going to get many natural inbound links, social shares, etc.
Here are a couple of methods I use to minimize risk on my main site, while still using aggressive SEO tactics.
1) Build your own review sites: Not only is this protecting your brand, but you can use aggressive SEO tactics to rank your own review sites and get click-throughs to your store/site.
For example if JimmysFishFoodDirect.com is your main store, focus on building a social media presence, getting high quality links, be conservative. You don't want your main store hit with any penalties.
However you can still build JimmysFishFoodDirectReviews.com, JimmysFishFoodInformation.com, FishFoodReviews.com, FishFoodBlog.com, etc and be more aggressive in your SEO approach.
In my experience I also find it much easier to rank a Wordpress style site than an E-Commerce site.
2) The core of SEO hasn't changed: High PR links with anchor text still work the best for building fast rankings. The Google penalties seem to mostly be link related and the best way to avoid them is to diversify your anchor text.
So for JimmysFishFood*****.com I would use something like
Anchor Text 1: Fish Food
Anchor Text 2: Jimmys Fish Food
Anchor Text3: Jimmys Fish Food - Jimmy's has the best fish food
Anchor Text4: Great fish food
Anchor Text 5: Jimmy's
Etc, Just keep diversifying but keep relevance at the same time.
If 99% of your Inbound links have the anchor text "Fish Food", It's extremely likely that you will end up hit with a penalty from Google.
How I Test Before Actually Manufacturing or Purchasing Inventory.
This process has likely been outlined here before in some way or another.
1) Find a niche
2) Think of a brand name, register a domain
3) Sign up with a cart (Bigcommerce, Volusion, Shopify, etc), or simply use a Wordpress E-Commerce theme (Woocommerce is easy to customize)
4) Get a basic design done (Don't spend too much $$) If you don't have any contacts, post the job on Elance or Odesk.
5) Add products to the store - Depending on whether or not you plan on selling an existing product or getting something manufactured, you may have to have a designer develop product images for you. If you're planning on selling existing products, reverse-engineer your competition by checking out what brands they carry, contact those brands directly, or search for similar products.
6) Set up an opt-in mailing list form offering a discount code, or a waiting list. Have the site set up so that the "add to cart" or "buy it now" button initiates the opt-in form. (Aweber, MailCheat(Chimp), Getresponse, etc all work for this - Have a graphic designer make a nice looking opt-in form)
7) Drive some PPC traffic to the site, do some testing.
8) How many sign ups did you get? Is this niche worth pursuing? Is there anything that you can improve?
You should know by then if you have a winner or a loser. Ditch the losers fast, and cut your loss (It's not a loss).
Just wanted to do a quick introduction and share some of my thoughts on E-Commerce, SEO, and some other topics.
I started my first business in late 2011, an E-Commerce store.
Since then I've started 7 more stores
I've been lurking around here for a while, and I wanted to start contributing. So here are a few thoughts that will hopefully help someone out!
E-Commerce: bring on affiliates.
-Bring on affiliates, and pay them well. I think it's crazy that many E-commerce stores are still overlooking a solid affiliate program. Many affiliates are extremely good at what they do - when I started using affiliate programs on my stores it was a game changer.
Be generous with your commissions, give them a phone number to call and a personal-contact e-mail address for any questions they have, pay out on-time always, pay fast, offer them a ton of promotional material.
Give your affiliates a ton of value and they will BRING IT for you.
A side note: It's also important to screen your affiliates. There are a lot of good ones but there are also affiliates that WILL try and scam you.
Hunt down affiliates in your niche. If you're selling premium dog food, PERSONALLY e-mail every webmaster in the dog/dog food/dog training/etc niches. Use Google to find these sites & bloggers. Have an offer that's better than your competitors, don't be afraid to work out a deal, do what it takes to get them on board.
E-Commerce: Build a brand.
Sell your own branded products as soon as possible, Charge more not less than your competitors. You'd be surprised with the amount of people that are simply too lazy to shop around for the best deal - make sure they land on your site first, convert them, and keep them.
Have a product & brand that people are willing to pay more for. Charging more will also increase your margin which will enable you to offer your affiliates more %.
E-Commerce: Dominate your niche.
If you're having success in a niche, own it! If you sell dog houses and you have a premium dog house store, charge a fortune. The customers who don't want to buy the premium dog house can leave and purchase from your base model dog house store
Build your own blogs, review sites, own your niche!E-Commerce: Don't be afraid to enter a competitive market.
On a lot of forums these days there is a lot of emphasis on being super-niche. I think this is a good thing, it's good to have an angle, it's good to start off super-targeted. However I've noticed that a lot of people starting out seem to take this to the extreme..
What I mean is: Sell organic high end dog food for golden retrievers. Don't sell organic high end dog food for golden retriever puppies that have blue eyes - That's just my opinion, don't think too small.
A big, competitive market means big spending, big demand. It may be hard to compete for PPC clicks, and search rankings, but use the tools that you have to your advantage:
- Make kick-a$$ BRANDED product/products
- Have a unique Angle
- Make the kick-a$$ product/products look kick-a$$
- Have a kick-a$$ site
- Have kick-a$$ customer support
- Use social media, be active on forums, use affiliates to get traffic - but above all have a great product that people will talk about. Do what the big guys aren't doing. Big companies often aren't dynamic, they don't react quickly, and they avoid risk. Take risks, be dynamic.
E-Commerce: Have multiple merchant accounts.
Have multiple ways to accept payments. Have multiple merchant accounts, or at least a merchant account + Paypal. The last thing that you want to have happen is not being able to accept purchases.
SEO: Overview.
If you aren't doing any SEO, traffic is being left on the table. I know there are a lot of discussions about white hat, grey hat, and black hat, they all have positives and negatives. I won't dig too far into it right now, but feel free to ask me anything specific.
Your competitors are likely doing SEO. Natural linking & Whitehat SEO sometimes just aren't realistic. If you sell industrial equipment, medical supplies, etc, chances are you aren't going to get many natural inbound links, social shares, etc.
Here are a couple of methods I use to minimize risk on my main site, while still using aggressive SEO tactics.
1) Build your own review sites: Not only is this protecting your brand, but you can use aggressive SEO tactics to rank your own review sites and get click-throughs to your store/site.
For example if JimmysFishFoodDirect.com is your main store, focus on building a social media presence, getting high quality links, be conservative. You don't want your main store hit with any penalties.
However you can still build JimmysFishFoodDirectReviews.com, JimmysFishFoodInformation.com, FishFoodReviews.com, FishFoodBlog.com, etc and be more aggressive in your SEO approach.
In my experience I also find it much easier to rank a Wordpress style site than an E-Commerce site.
2) The core of SEO hasn't changed: High PR links with anchor text still work the best for building fast rankings. The Google penalties seem to mostly be link related and the best way to avoid them is to diversify your anchor text.
So for JimmysFishFood*****.com I would use something like
Anchor Text 1: Fish Food
Anchor Text 2: Jimmys Fish Food
Anchor Text3: Jimmys Fish Food - Jimmy's has the best fish food
Anchor Text4: Great fish food
Anchor Text 5: Jimmy's
Etc, Just keep diversifying but keep relevance at the same time.
If 99% of your Inbound links have the anchor text "Fish Food", It's extremely likely that you will end up hit with a penalty from Google.
How I Test Before Actually Manufacturing or Purchasing Inventory.
This process has likely been outlined here before in some way or another.
1) Find a niche
2) Think of a brand name, register a domain
3) Sign up with a cart (Bigcommerce, Volusion, Shopify, etc), or simply use a Wordpress E-Commerce theme (Woocommerce is easy to customize)
4) Get a basic design done (Don't spend too much $$) If you don't have any contacts, post the job on Elance or Odesk.
5) Add products to the store - Depending on whether or not you plan on selling an existing product or getting something manufactured, you may have to have a designer develop product images for you. If you're planning on selling existing products, reverse-engineer your competition by checking out what brands they carry, contact those brands directly, or search for similar products.
6) Set up an opt-in mailing list form offering a discount code, or a waiting list. Have the site set up so that the "add to cart" or "buy it now" button initiates the opt-in form. (Aweber, MailCheat(Chimp), Getresponse, etc all work for this - Have a graphic designer make a nice looking opt-in form)
7) Drive some PPC traffic to the site, do some testing.
8) How many sign ups did you get? Is this niche worth pursuing? Is there anything that you can improve?
You should know by then if you have a winner or a loser. Ditch the losers fast, and cut your loss (It's not a loss).
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