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I currently have a couple of successful online businesses and I'm am going to track my progress on my newest venture here.
I've done computer graphics since 1988 and currently work for a fortune 10 company as a Sr. Graphic Designer until October when I will resign to work for myself full-time.
As I start this thread I am in the process of developing my new site. So the first thing is the idea and what I like about it. My site will sell downloadable vector and PowerPoint maps for business people and graphic designers.
What I Like About Arena:
- Obviously this is an area I'm quite familiar with as a graphic designer but even if I wasn't there are still plenty of things to like about it
- It's an evergreen market, this market has been around since the beginning of computer graphics and will remain a product in need for the foreseeable future.
- I'm not a pioneer, many people have the notion that if there is no competition that's a good thing. Most likely there's no competition for a reason - competition doesn't scare me.
- Build it once, sell it forever. The time and money I put into having maps made has infinite returns. Unless state/country borders and names change once a map is built it needs no future revisions.
- All digital baby. Well mostly, I will offer bundles available on CD but I will completely outsource this to a vendor and have it shipped directly to the customer.
- Huge profits. Outside of customer acquisition cost, minimal customer support and suppoert system fees like shopping cart this is almost all profit. Even the CD bundles will not be made till it is purchased so there is zero inventory and nothing for me to ship.
- I know the market, I think I have a pretty good handle on what this buyer wants but I'm not dumb enough not to pay attention to feedback and results and tool the sales process to what my customers want.
- The completion in this area seems like they have more of a technical background than a design background and that's my in. Most of their sites are just plain ugly and don't look like they've been updated in years
What I don't like:
- Obviously I won't be the first one here to offer similar products and getting my site ranked well is going to take considerable time and effort. Fortunately I have a pretty good track record of ranking my sites well and and after reviewing the competition I'm confident I can do the same here.
- Acquisition cost, I believe these could be substantial at first but given the fact that the products are digital the profit margins are near 100%. I can afford to buy customers at nearly the cost of the products.
Getting Things Going
So the first step in any area I look at is research. My original thought was that the big market would be in maps for PowerPoint. Using Market Samurai for keyword research shows that according to Google they receive 2,975 searches for vector maps and only 891 daily searches for PowerPoint maps. (LESSON) Often research will take you to a different place than where you thought you were going - be willing to adjust your ideas.
Domain Names
So originally I thought my main term was going to be PowerPoint maps. In a perfect world I could get PowerPointMaps.com. 2 things work against this desire:
1. The domain is already taken
2. Even if it wasn't I wouldn't use that as my main site but a redirect to another site. Why? Because Microsoft has a record of protecting it's trademarks in URLS so it would be risky to do this.
3. Vector maps has more searches
So after a lot of thought and searching I purchased the domain mapvectors.com. The reason I chose this name is:
- it was available and I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for it
- there are no trademark issues with the name
- It's keyword rich for the search term I want and history has proven to me time and time again Google loves urls that have keywords that match searches
- it's a .com. It's still the premium extension and using anything else can lead to giving competitors with the .com extension free traffic.
The Foundation
With a site like this which will have hundreds of products and needs to have the right functionality the decision on which cart to use from the begining is critical.
Some history on carts - when I opened my first online business I used a very simple cart (still do for some of my sites) but when one of my sites took off it became apparent that I needed a lot more capabilities than what I had. So I began my quest and after doing short test on several I ended up buying x-cart. Well what looked like a good fit at first soon turned into a disaster. I had major issues with payment processors. I spent more on tech support and add-ons that were supposed to correct the issues to no avail.
Now I consider myself pretty tech savvy but I couldn't make it work and spending more money wasn't helping. After well over a thousand dollars and months of frustration I pulled the plug. Let me tell you for someone who can be pretty cheap telling my wife the last couple of months of work and all the money I put in was a waste wasn't easy.
I had pity party for about a day and then I picked myself up and started my search over. I ended up going with a hosted cart with BigCommerce (BC). Our business would have collapsed under the demand if I hadn't found a new cart and while BC has some serious issues with new roll-outs they've done recently for my needs it works pretty well.
So with my new site I considered BC but the restrictions they have on bandwidth or the ability to host files on an outside host completely take them out of consideration for digital products. Currently I'm testing a cart by AmeriCommerce and initial testing looks good but I am going to dig in it a lot more before I make a final decision.
The Frickin Maps
You may have noticed that I haven't even talked really about the maps. I think one advantages I have over most online marketers is I don't become enamored with my products. Hey it's a map. It will be a great product that will exceed specific needs of my customer but for me personally - it's a fricken map. I won't dream about them, or get a t-shirt that says "I Love Maps" or even join any Facebook Map group. The reason why this is an advantage is I'm not married to any way of making maps. I'll listen to what my customers want and just assume they know what they need and I don't - and that's really how all business should be.
So for the actual maps that's easy - kind of. All maps generated by the US government are in the public domain. That means you can do what ever want with them including selling them as long as you acknowledge the source. The problem is:
- no one is going to buy a map in pdf format that they can get for free
- they cant edit a pdf
So after playing around with several graphic programs I figured out how to turn those maps into editable maps you could use for example in PowerPoint.
Now this is no one button click to transform them. However the process is very repetitive once your figured the recipe out. Now as I said above this is something I could easily have done myself, however the trade-off would be my time.
Que Up oDesk
Another thing I've learned over the last couple of years is I don't have to do it all. I'm a technician by heart and a couple of years ago I realized that using other people gave me leverage.
I posted a job on oDesk. oDesk is a place you can outsourse jobs. I've had good luck for the most part finding people to do stuff I don't want to do or shouldn't do because it's not a good use of my time. I stated in the job posting this was a test. I hired 3 people to all do the conversion on the same map. All 3 completed the task successfully (which was the 1st part of the test) and then asked them to bid for all 50 of the US states. The winning person did them all for $375 and had them completed in a week.
Now let me mention that the maps I'm making sell on other sites for $49.95 each in this format so you can see I don't need to sell many to be cash positive and by outsourcing I could focus on the tough decisions no one else can do.
So that's where I'm at. Still lots to do before the doors open but I'm making progress every day. I can promise that the site will be far from perfect when it does go live. Another advantage I have as a marketer is get it out the door - fix it later. Most people will tweak an idea forever till it's perfect and nothing is ever really perfect. The sooner I start getting feedback the closer I get to what my customers want.
I've done computer graphics since 1988 and currently work for a fortune 10 company as a Sr. Graphic Designer until October when I will resign to work for myself full-time.
As I start this thread I am in the process of developing my new site. So the first thing is the idea and what I like about it. My site will sell downloadable vector and PowerPoint maps for business people and graphic designers.
What I Like About Arena:
- Obviously this is an area I'm quite familiar with as a graphic designer but even if I wasn't there are still plenty of things to like about it
- It's an evergreen market, this market has been around since the beginning of computer graphics and will remain a product in need for the foreseeable future.
- I'm not a pioneer, many people have the notion that if there is no competition that's a good thing. Most likely there's no competition for a reason - competition doesn't scare me.
- Build it once, sell it forever. The time and money I put into having maps made has infinite returns. Unless state/country borders and names change once a map is built it needs no future revisions.
- All digital baby. Well mostly, I will offer bundles available on CD but I will completely outsource this to a vendor and have it shipped directly to the customer.
- Huge profits. Outside of customer acquisition cost, minimal customer support and suppoert system fees like shopping cart this is almost all profit. Even the CD bundles will not be made till it is purchased so there is zero inventory and nothing for me to ship.
- I know the market, I think I have a pretty good handle on what this buyer wants but I'm not dumb enough not to pay attention to feedback and results and tool the sales process to what my customers want.
- The completion in this area seems like they have more of a technical background than a design background and that's my in. Most of their sites are just plain ugly and don't look like they've been updated in years
What I don't like:
- Obviously I won't be the first one here to offer similar products and getting my site ranked well is going to take considerable time and effort. Fortunately I have a pretty good track record of ranking my sites well and and after reviewing the competition I'm confident I can do the same here.
- Acquisition cost, I believe these could be substantial at first but given the fact that the products are digital the profit margins are near 100%. I can afford to buy customers at nearly the cost of the products.
Getting Things Going
So the first step in any area I look at is research. My original thought was that the big market would be in maps for PowerPoint. Using Market Samurai for keyword research shows that according to Google they receive 2,975 searches for vector maps and only 891 daily searches for PowerPoint maps. (LESSON) Often research will take you to a different place than where you thought you were going - be willing to adjust your ideas.
Domain Names
So originally I thought my main term was going to be PowerPoint maps. In a perfect world I could get PowerPointMaps.com. 2 things work against this desire:
1. The domain is already taken
2. Even if it wasn't I wouldn't use that as my main site but a redirect to another site. Why? Because Microsoft has a record of protecting it's trademarks in URLS so it would be risky to do this.
3. Vector maps has more searches
So after a lot of thought and searching I purchased the domain mapvectors.com. The reason I chose this name is:
- it was available and I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for it
- there are no trademark issues with the name
- It's keyword rich for the search term I want and history has proven to me time and time again Google loves urls that have keywords that match searches
- it's a .com. It's still the premium extension and using anything else can lead to giving competitors with the .com extension free traffic.
The Foundation
With a site like this which will have hundreds of products and needs to have the right functionality the decision on which cart to use from the begining is critical.
Some history on carts - when I opened my first online business I used a very simple cart (still do for some of my sites) but when one of my sites took off it became apparent that I needed a lot more capabilities than what I had. So I began my quest and after doing short test on several I ended up buying x-cart. Well what looked like a good fit at first soon turned into a disaster. I had major issues with payment processors. I spent more on tech support and add-ons that were supposed to correct the issues to no avail.
Now I consider myself pretty tech savvy but I couldn't make it work and spending more money wasn't helping. After well over a thousand dollars and months of frustration I pulled the plug. Let me tell you for someone who can be pretty cheap telling my wife the last couple of months of work and all the money I put in was a waste wasn't easy.
I had pity party for about a day and then I picked myself up and started my search over. I ended up going with a hosted cart with BigCommerce (BC). Our business would have collapsed under the demand if I hadn't found a new cart and while BC has some serious issues with new roll-outs they've done recently for my needs it works pretty well.
So with my new site I considered BC but the restrictions they have on bandwidth or the ability to host files on an outside host completely take them out of consideration for digital products. Currently I'm testing a cart by AmeriCommerce and initial testing looks good but I am going to dig in it a lot more before I make a final decision.
The Frickin Maps
You may have noticed that I haven't even talked really about the maps. I think one advantages I have over most online marketers is I don't become enamored with my products. Hey it's a map. It will be a great product that will exceed specific needs of my customer but for me personally - it's a fricken map. I won't dream about them, or get a t-shirt that says "I Love Maps" or even join any Facebook Map group. The reason why this is an advantage is I'm not married to any way of making maps. I'll listen to what my customers want and just assume they know what they need and I don't - and that's really how all business should be.
So for the actual maps that's easy - kind of. All maps generated by the US government are in the public domain. That means you can do what ever want with them including selling them as long as you acknowledge the source. The problem is:
- no one is going to buy a map in pdf format that they can get for free
- they cant edit a pdf
So after playing around with several graphic programs I figured out how to turn those maps into editable maps you could use for example in PowerPoint.
Now this is no one button click to transform them. However the process is very repetitive once your figured the recipe out. Now as I said above this is something I could easily have done myself, however the trade-off would be my time.
Que Up oDesk
Another thing I've learned over the last couple of years is I don't have to do it all. I'm a technician by heart and a couple of years ago I realized that using other people gave me leverage.
I posted a job on oDesk. oDesk is a place you can outsourse jobs. I've had good luck for the most part finding people to do stuff I don't want to do or shouldn't do because it's not a good use of my time. I stated in the job posting this was a test. I hired 3 people to all do the conversion on the same map. All 3 completed the task successfully (which was the 1st part of the test) and then asked them to bid for all 50 of the US states. The winning person did them all for $375 and had them completed in a week.
Now let me mention that the maps I'm making sell on other sites for $49.95 each in this format so you can see I don't need to sell many to be cash positive and by outsourcing I could focus on the tough decisions no one else can do.
So that's where I'm at. Still lots to do before the doors open but I'm making progress every day. I can promise that the site will be far from perfect when it does go live. Another advantage I have as a marketer is get it out the door - fix it later. Most people will tweak an idea forever till it's perfect and nothing is ever really perfect. The sooner I start getting feedback the closer I get to what my customers want.
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