Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Step by step
Today was a day of promoting, submitting to a number of directories. Now, for many beginning webmasters, this batch of submissions would be reason to sit back and wait for the avalance of traffic to pour in.

But that's not the way it works. Each batch of submissions will have a negligible effect on traffic and sales. One day's worth of submissions—or any other promotion—is not enough to have a noticeable effect. The power is in persistence and consistency—promoting it again and again in any way you can.

Each promotion is like a single snowflake. By itself, it doesn't have much of an effect. But once you build them up into a big enough mass, they can have a huge effect. So keep building that snowball. Eventually, it will become big enough to surprise you with how great of an effect it can have.
Jeff

Reconsideration
I had to rethink a position of mine today. I always encourage people to choose a niche for their business from the activities and things they love. Like many, I encourage them to list their hobbies, their interests, their existing passions.

But maybe there's more to it than that.

I got a newsletter today that challenged that position. The writer, James Jones, told of a woman who wrote to him, frustrated because she had done the whole list thing and found that whatever potential business niches she put on her list were either hopelessly oversaturated or not in enough demand to make a viable niche business.

Jones scolded her for buying into what he called the "myth of passion," the idea that a person's niche business must be something that they have an existing passion for. He pointed out how one of his first successful niche businesses was in selling videos on how to make purses out of cigar boxes.

He didn't even know that such a hobby existed until he stumbled across it while researching another possible niche. But when he saw how many searches there were for it and how few resources there were to feed this growing demand, he developed a passion for meeting this unmet need.

I guess that the whole list thing is an attempt to get people looking at their own backgrounds, the knowledge and resources they already have, and use those things to give them a head start on their own business. Too often, when we try to change the direction of our lives, we diminish the value of what we have to offer others and mistakenly feel that anything we have or know or love won't be "good enough" to satisfy others. Deep down, we fear that in order to be successful, we must make ourselves appear to be something totally different than what we are. And in doing so, we fail to use the unique talents that we are on this earth to use for the benefit of others.

I still disagree with Jones' argument that you should first find a niche that needs to be filled and then develop a passion for it. Neither the list-builders nor those who find a passion in filling a need that no one else was filling hold the "right" answer.

Because the answer of "what kind of business should I start" lies neither in finding a niche that fits our passions nor in finding a passion to fit some arbitrary niche. It lies in finding where your unique background, knowledge, and skills intersect with what others want and need. You may find that by searching your existing passions. Or you may find that by stumbling upon a quirky and previously unknown niche.

But whatever direction you approach it from, one thing remains the same: you sell the best what comes from who you are.
Jeff

Looking for shortcuts, Part 2
A couple of nights ago, I lamented the way that so many new business owners on the web demonstrate an attitude of looking for shortcuts, looking for a magic formula that will bring them unlimited revenues with little or no effort.

I got to thinking about that again as I did some keyword research today. You'll find thousands of searches for keywords related to these magic formulas and to no-risk, no effort fantasies of success. But look up keywords related to the ways to work your way to success, such as ones related to keyword research, niche marketing, copywriting, opt-in newsletters, and such, and the numbers of searches pales in comparison.

Maybe it's due to the fact that so many searchers never look deeper than their fantasies allow them to look. So you get thousands of beginning level, unrealistic searches and only a handful who get far enough to recognize what they need to search for to succeed.

But it's sad to see that so many people—who easily could start a successful side business, or even a successful career—stop short at merely dreaming of what could be.
Jeff

Newsletter sent today
My blog was not the only thing interrupted by my son Joel's college orientation. My newsletter was, too. It was scheduled to go out on Sunday, but ended up going out this morning instead.

This issue has the third in my four-part series on improving your sales by improving your conversions of visitors to customers, as well as reviews of the free ebook Make Your Links Work! (which describes a new way of approaching seo and reciprocal linking that avoids the problems with the search engines' ever-changing algorithms) and the auction ebook Garage Sale Strategies (which reveals numerous items that you can pick up at garage sales for under $5 and resell on eBay for $20 or more). And Worldwide Brands founder Chris Malta contributed an article on how to price items when their shipping price would otherwise make them hard to sell.

I plan to add this newsletter to my website by the end of the week. And if you're interested in seeing these newsletters right when they come out—or if $60 worth of free gifts for subscribing interests you—subscribe to the One Stop Web Support newsletter now and you'll get all this info every two weeks.
Jeff

Looking for shortcuts
Once again on the day of the week I spend in my client's office, he had me check out someone who had been calling him, offering his business' "services." This "service" was a link-building company that claimed it would add "25 permanent, one-way incoming links per month from relevant sites" to my client's link popularity for "the bargain price of only $625 per month."

It didn't take long to unmask this scammer. All I had to do was look at the link-building site's testimonials. Half of them were from small-time seo "specialists" who wrote testimonials so vague that it sounded like they didn't even know what the site's core business was. And the rest of the testimonials raised similar questions about whether the writers really had experienced improved rankings or were writing testimonials just to get the incoming link in return for writing it.

Testimonials ranged from, "Wow, these guys are really easy to work with," to "When you ask them a question, they give you an answer."

Yep, that's the kind of results I want for my $625 a month: the assurance that they'll answer any question I ask them. But distinctly missing were any comments about the link-builder's service actually increasing search engine rankings or contributing to increased sales.

Hmm. If I was going to use a third-party link-building service, those are the kind of results I'd be looking for—not just an assurance that somebody at the company will be willing to talk to me.

There were lots of other indications that the business didn't offer more than a black hole into which unwary businesses could throw $625 a month. Almost all of the customer sites had almost no backlinks show up on Google, that the backlinks that showed up were almost entirely internal links. And the "highly relevant sites" that were linking to these businesses were largely drugs, gambling, or porn. Hey, I guess they're relevant if you're willing to switch your site over to either drugs, gambling or porn.

Well, the point behind this rant is that when you're looking for shortcuts, there are plenty of scammers willing to spin you a fantasy of a no-effort route from where you are to where you want to be. And it takes no effort to find them. They'll wear out your phone cold-calling you with their scams.
Jeff

Favorite links - free trials
Here are some more in my Sunday night feature of favorite links for online business webmasters, this time with some favorite free trials. They may be limited in time or in features, but can give you some good information for free.

SearchIt!
You hear me talk about SearchIt! a lot because it's a really great all-purpose research tool. And it's one where the free trial is more like a simply free tool. You can research all sorts of things on SearchIt!

• Keyword demand
• Competition from other sites for your keywords
• Info about your competitors
• Niche directories that you can get links from
• Domain name availability
• Domain name brainstorming
• Sources for content for your site

And these are just the ones that come most readily to mind. I've counted over 100 useful research tools you can use from this one, simple webpage.

Well, maybe I shouldn't use the word "simple" so freely with SearchIt! Having so many tools packed into one interface, you definitely need to read the instructions to get the feel of how to use it. And you need to click on the link under steps one and two to understand what to enter in step three and what kind of information you'll get from it.

It has a version that comes with the paid SiteBuildIt! package that gives you the option of skipping the tutorials that appear with each search and explain how to interpret the results you get, but otherwise the free, public version packs just as much punch as the version that comes with the full, paid SiteBuildIt! package.

Try it out. I think you'll find that you'll soon use it for much of your research needs.

aWeber autoresponder system

aWeber is perhaps the biggest name in autoresponders, and it gives you a great autoresponder system that provides unlimited autoresponders and an excellent opt-in system to use with your customers. And aWeber is a big enough name that they can work closely with the ISPs to make sure that your emails don't wind up in spam filters.

Your free trial lasts 30 days, so you have a good opportunity to put it through its paces and see how much it can do for you.

James Martell's Affiliate Buzz

James Martell is one of the biggest names in affiliate marketing. And he's made such a big name for himself by sharing what he's learned about the field. His Affiliate Buzz audio newsletter, twice a month, shares his latest tips about successfully running an affiliate marketing website.

The newsletter costs, but he lets you listen to his ten most popular shows from 2004 for free so you can get an idea of whether you'll find his tips worthwhile. Listen to them and get ideas from them. And if they help you, sign up for the audio newsletter and get the most up-to-date info twice a month.

ClickTracks

I debated whether to include ClickTracks in the free trials. It has a free trial version. I've been using ClickTracks for years, though, so I don't remember exactly how long the trial version runs. The reason I hesitated to include it here is that while the trial version gives you a great feel for the kind of information ClickTracks can give you, it's set up so you really can't sit down and do a complete analysis of your website with the trial version. It randomly blacks out data to keep you from using trial copies to get the results you need without ever paying.

But, as I say, it gives you a great feel for the tool and gives you highly valuable information on how people are navigating your site for at least selected parts of your pages. Definitely worth checking into if you're at the point where you realize the importance of understanding what your visitors like on your site and what leads them to leave.

Jeff

Back from college orientation
Sorry for missing the last couple of days. I took my son to college and have been away longer than expected. But I'm back again and the blog will return to normal.
Jeff