IGOR SOSHKIN, Founder and CEO - MY SEO SECRETS
Source: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/wayfairs-road-1-billion-040000543.html
I’ll make this short.
2 guys + 200 niches + 5000 suppliers + 90% dropship = MEGA SUPER STORE = 1 BILLION IN SALES.
How did WayFair do it? After comparing the technology and the website of WayFair vs Shopping Cart Elite I found something critically important that many drop ship clients are missing. That is Live Inventory from the Drop Ship suppliers!
How are you suppose to succeed and streamline your operation if you are selling products that are out of stock. You can’t do anything, you can’t list on paid marketing channels such as eBay or Amazon. You can’t sell using Google Adwords or Shopping Comparison engines. Unless you know what is in stock the business simply can not scale. If you try to list something on eBay or Amazon that is out of stock you’ll shut down your account within a month, paying for traffic and not making sales due to no inventory will leave you bankrupt. YOU MUST KNOW YOUR INVENTORY LEVELS TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS.
So to counter this invisible roadblock that our clients were and are facing today, we have hired a new consultant to specifically to counter this problem. If you need live inventory from your supplier, and your supplier happens to have an online ordering system showing the live inventory, we have a solution on how to synchronize that inventory with your online store.
We will start in the auto parts industry. Look for an internal Shopping Cart Elite announcement for more information on this.
I am closely monitoring the sales for eCommerce websites on www.flippa.com. The latest one that sold was an eCommerce website specializing in Travel Gear for $16,000.
Now there are two reasons for this blog post. One is if you are looking for an exit strategy to get out of the business and make a good return, you can consider selling on Flippa. However more importantly if you are thinking about getting into business, or starting a new website, looking at the sale prices on Flippa can be great indicators of the health of the niche. I mean seriously, wouldn’t it be great to invest $6,000 today, then within 12 months you can the $6,000 back and as a New Years gift you bring home $16,000 bonus.
For example, let’s say I am looking to start a new niche website. Here is a few reasons why I would consider looking on Flippa, and I will use the Travel Gear website as an example:
1) The SEO campaign on that website would cost no more than $5,000 or less. (Majestic SEO results)
2) The traffic on the website is claimed to be 10,000 unique visitors which is very realistic to get with a $5,000 SEO campaign.
3) They did no PPC while still earning $4,000 in net profits. (http://www.spyfu.com/Domain.aspx?d=-8732385087325082649)
4) According to Compete their traffic dived down after the Panada update. Which means once this website goes on SCE and SEO campaign is launched this problem will be solved and the traffic will sky rocket to 30,000 unique visitors or more from 10,000 they currently get.
5) I can easily take a random product or part number from that website, and Google it using an additional keyword next to the part number such as wholesale or drop ship.
Doing so I was able to find a number of wholesalers selling the product
In addition you can see the brand of the products on their website product page. You can then Google and then call those manufacturers and see if they drop ship or can refer you to a drop shipper.
Finally, this is a niche I would want to start for two reasons.
1) It seems that it can make a decent income. As a result I will get a return on my investment after one year. (Yes break even on the SEO and SCE). But then my plan would be to sell it at the end of the year.
2) At the end of the year I would sell it for $10,000 - $15,000 on Flippa because it has already proven to sell itself (2/14/2012).
If you want to make a $100k bonus by only investing $10k-$25k or
$25k-50k bonus by only investing $5k-$10k, you need to check on Flippa and see what is in demand. What niche website are people willing to pay $10k - $20k for once it is in business.
UPDATE: If you find a niche and do not have $5k-$10k to invest, but would like to do a partnership with me where we go half-half towards that website that recently sold on Flippa and build one just like it, and then sell it at the end of the year, email [email protected] to discuss it.
Are you ready for a new law that Congress is trying to pass that will allow someone like Magnaflow (product manufacturer) who never gave you permission to use their product images, take ownership of your website without notice and/or de-list your website from Google and/or forbid any merchant processor to deal with you including Paypal and Credit Card companies?
It’s about to happen with the SOPA Bill that the music and TV industry has lobbied congress to try to pass it.
This is the most ridiculous proposed law I have ever heard in my life.
The reason they want to pass it is to be able to shut down the owner of pirated websites. But since they are unable to do it as 99% of them are overseas, they want to hold Google responsible. However this law goes beyond pirated content and if you are in eCommerce you will have to get a legal document from every one of your suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to allow you to sell their products and use their photos on your website without risking to lose your business.
This law says that in addition to taking your business away, anyone with repeat offences of trying to honestly sell products online can go to jail.
There is so many open loop holes in this law that it will be abused the day it is passed.
Congressmen who are trying to pass the law admit-tingly say they don’t even understand how it works, but they are still in favor of the law just to get some bucks they were promised.
Here is a Cheat Sheet called SOPA for Dummies explaining in SIMPLE ENGLISH what this new law is about to do.
http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2011/12/21/confused-by-the-stop-online-piracy-act-heres-sopa-for-dummies/
YOU MUST CONTACT YOUR SENATORS AND TELL THEM TO VOTE AGAINST THIS BILL!!!
MORE SIMPLE ENGLISH DETAILS ABOUT SOPA
P.S. In addition GoDaddy has sold out and started to support SOPA. After losing thousands of domains from protesters, they withdrew their support for SOPA. However they showed their true colors and we no longer recommending them. You should not do business with a company who directly attack their customers for a profit. We suggest that you transfer your domains out of Godaddy and to another ICANN approved registrar.
We will be migrating our thousands of domains out of Godaddy and into a new registrar shortly. I will announce who it will be.
How to use Shopping Cart Elite as a sales tool instead of an eCommerce website
I also updated the chart on how to use it for eCommerce and the type of Marketing Plan you should consider.
You are trying to start an online drop shipping business to sell auto parts. You are passionate about cars and all you need is a good functional car parts website, accurate car parts data and a great drop ship supplier that can offer you competitive prices.
Does this sound like you? Well that is not all that you need. In fact even if you were to get all of that right (website, data, and discounts), you will still hit some major frustrating, time consuming and pricey road blocks ahead. You even risk failing altogether if you don’t know about everything else that you need to do.
Here is a bigger picture of what you need.
Now the chances are you had no idea that you needed to do extensive marketing on your website to even smell any kind of success. When I say extensive I am talking about a few thousand dollars per month in advertising on top of all the other work. If you can comprehend the image I shared with you above you will realize that it is impossible to start an online business by yourself with no help and little capital and actually succeed in the first year. You will be spinning your wheels for the next two years minimum before you realize the big picture for yourself and take action.
So here are your options on how to start your online business:
OPTION A: Starting a Self-Sustained Online Business
You need to budget a minimum of $1000 per month plus 10 hours each day of your time for the next six months to see something happen. When I say something, I am talking about having the profits pay for the expenses for the company (instead of your own pocket) while the company continues to grow.
You need to be prepared to hire and invest even more than $1,000 into the operations and marketing as soon as you can understand the full picture and create a marketing plan that you will feel confident about. It is not a coincidence that all successful companies have very high advertising budgets each month. These companies went from a startup to where they are today, and it wasn’t irony, luck or coincidence. You will not get where you want to be by dreaming or wishing for it to happen. You will also not get there by thinking you know everything without actually knowing much. You will have to take risks and EXECUTE them.
If you think this is for you, than let’s talk. You can visit www.shoppingcartelite.com to see what our platform is all about and I will be more than happy to consult with you on how to go about and succeed with your online business. My email is igor at shoppingcartelite.com
OPTION B: GO TO EBAY / AMAZON / CRAIGSLIST, etc.
You can solve all your traffic problems and website problems by selling on eBay. Sure they are expensive but you know what? Traffic is expensive and you will pay for it one way or another. The only problem is that when you sell on eBay, you are competing with some heavy players in the same arena. This is like having your own website with other competitors showcasing their low price right next to yours, except their price happens to be much lower than yours. This is why many new eBay sellers have such a hard time selling on eBay unless they become the #1 seller.
Can a business make money on eBay? Absolutely. The question is can you make money on eBay? If you are relying on drop shipping, I will probably say the odds are against you. You see out of 100 sellers that sell the same item as you on eBay, only three of them will do well and capture 90% of the sales because of their prices, availability, feedback and sales copy. Then 10% of the remaining sales will be the left over for you and the other 97 eBay sellers that you will be fighting over. I have three videos for you to watch if you are interested in selling on eBay.
All I can say is Good Luck.
OPTION C: CREATE A JOINT VENTURE PARTNERSHIP WITH ANOTHER BUSINESS AND BUILD UP YOUR STARTUP CAPTIAL TO FUND YOUR OWN OPERATION
After building a three million dollar a year retail online business and working with new startups for the past three years, I finally have a solution for a startup entrepreneur that only has $200 per month to invest and can be on the right path to building his own successful online business. The program below is a description of how this joint venture would work.
OVERVIEW
I’ve asked the current owner of Auto Accessory Store, Tom Schenk to participate in this program with his website www.autoaccessorystore.com. Auto Accessory Store invests $150,000 plus per year in advertising. Now you can have a small piece of the pie.
There are eight turn-key eCommerce independent stores available to start. What makes these sites different from others is they are sub-domains of a multi-million dollar retail operation Auto Accessory Store (Ex meganracing.autoaccessorystore.com which specializes in the Megan Racing brand).
This means that you get to tap into the Auto Accessory Store traffic from all the advertising and marketing they do by being a part of their parent domain name. If you have no idea what I just said, here is a good blog post on what Authority Domain means.
Here is how this joint venture deal will work, since these online stores are sub-domains of AutoAccessoryStore.com they are independent from one another even though they share the same domain name. These sub domains have all the benefits of the marketing campaign that Auto Accessory Store does on a monthly basis.
The most important fact that you need to realize is you have the option to actually utilize Auto Accessory Store resources
Suppliers
Discounts
Merchant Accounts
Customer Service Staff
Sales Staff
Marketing
And more.
Depending on your availability if you are doing this part time or full time, you can either run the whole thing yourself and if you took more than you can handle or you realize that you can’t do all of it yourself, Tom will be right there at your rescue to help you with traffic, marketing, customer service, sales and more.
Will Auto Accessory Store sell the same products as you do? NO! … Any products on the main website will actually have redirects to your sub domain if you are selling them. If you decide to sell a specific brand, then there will be no other sub domain competing against you and that includes the main Auto Accessory Store domain as well.
Since each subdomain targets a specific niche you really don’t have a whole lot of work to make this website profitable. Tom took additional steps to make sure this succeeds by extensively researching the niches for you and he chose eight of the most lucrative niches in the automotive industry and already created the independent sub domain stores for you to choose. He even added the product data and got the drop ship suppliers into this deal.
OPPORTUNITY
This is an amazing opportunity for:
ENTREPENEURS WHO WORK FULL TIME
ENTREPENEURS WHO ARE INTERNATIONAL (outside of US)
ENTREPRENEURS WHO ARE BEGINNERS TO ECOMMERCE
ENTREPENEURS LOOKING FOR SIDE INCOME
NOTE: You will not get rich from having one subdomain store. The goal is to either make enough to fund your own online business that will be separate from Auto Accessory Store or make enough profits to pay your personal expenses such as your car, mortgage, etc. You should also consider this venture more of a learning opportunity while making side cash which can eventually take you to the next level of having your own successful online business.
PROFITS
Gross Monthly Sales will range from $1500 - $10,000 depending on the niche you choose. The NET Profit Margins range between 20% - 40%.
JOINT VENTURE DEAL
-More Work, More Profits- You can completely run the business under full control and keep all the profits. This requires your own merchant account to process credit card payments as well as all of the customer service and sales perks that come along with running an online business. There is a 2.5% royalty charge on all sales (excluding shipping fee) if you will do this deal. Auto Accessory Store will cover the organic marketing that will send you traffic to your new website.
-Minimal Work, Less Profits- Partner with Auto Accessory Store to split the daily tasks and split the net profits 50/50. Auto Accessory Store will handle all customer services, sales, accounting day-to-day tasks (customer services/sales/order process). You won’t need a merchant account or even a business to do this as Auto Accessory Store will be using its own company bank account and company name to process everything.
If you are unable to answer phone calls during business hours, or simply want to avoid having more overhead this is an ideal solution. This is PRICELESS for entrepreneurs who are outside of the US. Auto Accessory Store will cover the organic marketing that will send you traffic to your new website.
RISK FREE CONSULTATION
These will not last long. There are literally eight available online sub domain stores available on first come first serve basis.
-Shopping Cart Elite Software Suite Included
-Hosting for the website Included
-Graphic Design / Logo Design Included
-Niche Brand Research Included
-Drop ship Supplier with discount Included
-Sell the same products on eBay / Amazon without royalty
-No contracts or Commitments
-Merchant Account, Customer Service, Sales Staff Included
-Traffic is included
The price for this joint venture deal is only $200 per month which is billed quarterly ($200x3) and it includes everything above. Depending on the deal you will negotiate with Tom Schenk there will be a 2.5% royalty fee or 50/50 net profit split on any successful sale.
COMES WITH A SIX MONTH GUARANTEE
If the online store does not cover itself by the 6th month, your monthly payments will be frozen while you keep running the online store until the profits start to cover the $200 per month.
Reach More Holiday Shoppers
Standing out during the holiday season is critical to the success of many online businesses. Savvy retailers need to be on top of their game to capture their slice of the holiday pie, which reached record-breaking sales in 2010. And, if the past two years are any indication, with ecommerce sales in the fourth quarter totaling $39 billion in 2009 and $43 billion in 2010, then this year should be a happy one for online retailers.
In fact, Forrester research group predicts that US ecommerce should reach $278.9 billion by 2015. To empower online retailers to strengthen their online presence, get found on the comparison shopping channels and attract more qualified holiday shoppers.
Holiday Guide Overview
• Top 2010 Holiday Spending Days Reviewing last year’s record-breaking year
• 2011’s Big Shopping Days Mark your calendar
• Top Holiday Strategies for Q4 2011 Month-by-Month Tactics
• Reach More Shoppers top channel & ecommerce service picks
Top 2010 Holiday Spending Days
With an increasing number of shoppers preferring the web over physical retail stores, together with high gasoline prices, the outlook is a bright one for online retailers. As the 2011 holiday season approaches, data from comScore’s Q2 2011 found that ecommerce sales in 2010 reached $43 billion; a 12% increase from 2009 and an all-time record for online retail.
Looking back at last year’s trends, below are the top holiday spending days, with Cyber Monday coming in at number one:
2011’s Big Shopping Days- Mark Your Calendar
• Halloween Oct. 31st
• Thanksgiving Nov 24th
• Black Friday Nov 25th
• Cyber Monday Nov 28th
• Peak-Week Dec 5th-12th
• Free Shipping Cut-off Dec 12th-20th
• Chanukah Dec 21st
• Christmas Dec 25th
• New Year’s Day Jan 1st
Top Holiday Strategies for 2011
September
• Review 2010 Holiday Sales. Now is the time to review historical sales data, gain insight from last year’s successes and avoid its mistakes. Evaluate at your overall revenue, cost and conversion rates and determine which shopping channel brought you the most quality traffic.
Also, review last holiday season’s product winners and losers and use that feedback to help decide which unprofitable product lines to exclude this year.
• Analyze, Optimize to see how you’re performing on each shopping channel, down to the SKU level, throughout the holidays.
• Prepare 2011 Holiday Promotions Now- The earlier you start planning your holiday promotions, the better, keeping in mind that you want the sales/discounts in your datafeed to mirror your website’s holiday sales promotions.
• Review Your Feeds in mid-September- Make sure to include any seasonal holiday products and/or exclude non-holiday items, to avoid higher holiday click rates. Also, review your feeds to make sure you are maximizing all your product attributes and that your products are in best category for each channel.
October
• Expand to More Shopping Channels- October is a good time to start increasing your visibility on additional shopping channels to gain traction for the holidays; sites like Amazon Product Ads or Nextag.
• Check your Status on All Channels- make sure your feeds are valid, error-free and live on all shopping channels and that all your accounts are fully funded throughout the holidays.
• Bid & Analyze your Top Categories- consider bidding higher for your best-selling product categories on the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) channels and routinely review your analytics to exclude unprofitable products.
• Promote Free Shipping, Promotions & Coupons- include any free shipping, holiday discounts or coupons through each channel’s shipping, promo-text or coupon fields, where applicable.
• Add Holiday Promotional Content- In late October, start getting your feeds ‘holiday-ready’ by adding holiday-related search terms to your feeds. You can gain insight by reviewing last year’s top-performing keywords and including them in your descriptions; this is most relevant for your holiday-related products and best-sellers.
• Get Ready for Black Friday & Cyber Monday- by late October you should start preparing your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. Keep in mind that the Cyber Monday last year was retail’s top selling day, coming in at a record-breaking $1.028 billion in the U.S.; that’s a 16% increase from 2009.
November
• Anticipate Rate Card Increases- many pay per click channels, like Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Nextag and PriceGrabber, increase their rate-cards up to 20% during early to mid November, so leave enough room in your fourth quarter budget to maintain your most popular holidays categories.
• Launch Black Friday & Cyber Monday promotions – Finalize these promotions by mid November and have them up running the week of Black Friday. Make sure all your feeds are upto-date and test any promotional links to ensure they’re pointing to the correct Black Friday & Cyber Monday landing pages. Remember, it can take comparison shopping channels anywhere from a few minutes to 72 hours to process your feed, so plan your feed launches accordingly.
• Monitor your Feeds Regularly - keep an eye on your performance and login to your shopping channel merchant accounts often to verify that the feeds are processing correctly and your accounts are fully funded.
• Manage Merchant Ratings– many shoppers rely on shopping channel merchant reviews when deciding which store to buy from so keep your merchant ratings as high as possible by providing excellent customer service and swiftly responding to any negative customer reviews.
• Exclude non-performing items- avoid wasting your holiday marketing budget by routinely reviewing your analytics to remove products that are gaining many clicks, but little or no conversions. You can also maximize your holiday budget by removing any non-holiday related items from your feed and avoiding the elevated holiday click-rates.
Expand your Reach
Now is the ideal time to expand your marketing strategy to include popular channels including Nextag, Amazon Product Ads, Become or Pronto.com as well as marketplaces like Amazon, or Sears’ new ‘Sell on Sears,’ platform. Also, make sure you’re taking advantage of all free listing opportunities on the shopping channels, like Google Product Search, TheFind and Bing Shopping, which has been on boarding new online retailers lately.
Marketplaces
• Amazon when selling on the Web’s largest Marketplace during the holidays, make sure you’re submitting only the most complete, fresh feed and updating your stock status often enough (daily) to keep your Seller Performance and ‘Order Defect Rate’ in good standing. Your images should meet Amazon’s requirements, which include a 500 x 500 (recommended) pixels .jpg or .gif photo of the product on a white or clear background only.
Amazon Search Terms
Also, you can enhance your visibility with up to five -strategic ‘Search Terms’- these are phrases that buyers use to search for your products. For search terms, don’t repeat title, brand, manufacturer terms, since Amazon will already pick up that data from your feed. Instead, look at the relevant data within your descriptions. You should also take advantage of Amazon’s Product Features/Bullet Points which highlight product details.
• Sears one of America’s most trusted brands and number 7 in the Internet Retailers’ Top 500
Guide (2011), offers merchants a cost-per-action online marketplace to reach millions of Sears Shoppers.
Pay-per-Click Channels
• Amazon Product Ads One of the highest converting pay-per-click sites, Amazon Product Ads takes Amazon’s shoppers directly to your site. Plus, to help you get started, they are offering a limited-time $75 in Free Clicks offer for select categories.
• Nextag A sure bet for many online retailers, Nextag is a solid choice for PPC campaigns.
• Become this up-and-coming channel is offering great promotions for the holidays, including incentives to install their ROI tracker as well as free logo and promo text values for new and existing merchants.
• Pronto If you’re looking for more value for your online marketing dollar, listing your products with Pronto’s fast-growing channel offers specialty-branded ‘micro sites’ ProntoStyle, ProntoTech.com, ProntoHome.com, ProntoKids and BabyPronto, creating a unique retail experience with easy-to-access categories, brands and sale items.
• FindGift a gift-specialty shopping channel, FindGift is a gift-giving channel that helps shoppers find unique gift ideas, making it a great place to list your gift-centric products.
Free Shopping Channels
• Google Product Search the Web’s #1 shopping channel.
• Bing Shopping Since Bing released its Shopping Program, which helps merchants reach morethan 83 million unique users for free, their team is constantly making improvements to intelligently match shoppers’ queries with the most relevant search results. This free-listingengine is consistently ranked among the top in conversion rates.
• TheFind connects shoppers with more than 500,000 merchants and claims 48 million searches a month. To succeed, TheFind strongly recommend joining their UpFront Program and submitting only optimized, updated feeds.
As a start-up the biggest killer that you have to look out for is NOT TO RUN DRY ON CASH.
I am going to start this off with a short story about how an certain niche can get very little traffic and stay proftiable…
Shopping Cart Elite is planning to launch a program in the Motorsports Industry (motorcycles, atv, etc. ex: www.motorcycle-superstore.com)
Guess what we are estimating the monthly fee for this niche will be?
$299, $399, $999 per month? Nope.
We are currently debating on a number which will range between $1995 - $2995 PER MONTH.
You are probably thinking ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Who is going to afford this and how long do you expect them to stay on board?
Believe me it took me a long time to digest the amount myself. In addition I couldn’t figure out how to target the right companies and how to deliver value for this price.
We knew the Motorsports industry was HOT! because no one had the data and no one wanted to deal with it. Anytime I asked a Motorsport entrepreneur how is business, he would reply “Better than EVER”.
I didn’t really buy it, I couldnt imagine it being that great in this economy. That was up until I attended the IREC show and stumpled upon a vendor who sold a feature to a company called www.motorcycle-superstore.com.
This Vendor said he charges them six thousand dollars per month for this one feature alone. SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A FEATURE! PER MONTH! He also bragged how great Motorcycle Superstore is doing. He said last year was their best year ever closing several hundred million dollars in sales.
I thought he was kidding … NOT ONLY AM I SELLING THE SAME FEATURE THEY HAVE IN SHOPPING CART ELITE, but I am selling our whole platform with SEO MARKETING for the whole year for less than they charge per month.
I was curious how Motorcycle Superstore can afford this so I looked up their SpyFu report. I realized their Paid Traffic VS Free Traffic was extremely healthly.
5:1 FREE TRAFFIC VS PAID - WINNER!
They they were also getting over a million dollars worth of organic traffic per month, indicating that the market can have more competitors.
I was hyped to get into the Motorsports industry and went on a search to find a data partner. Ironically a month later I got a phone call from a web developer who is deeply involved in Motorsports industry and was trying to develop a Shopping Cart Elite type of platform with the Motorsports data. - PERFECT MATCH!!!!
He gave me a breakdown on what’s going on in the industry, technology wise.
There is two companies who do eCommerce, who charge $10,000 - $15,000 per year. They dont come even close feature wise to Shopping Cart Elite. There is also a data company who feeds the whole industry with the data, their fee is $12,000 - $30,000 per year plus royalty! Besides being expensive implementing their data is a nightmare.
This means that before we can even selling Shopping Cart Elite and doing any kind of marketing service we would need to pay for data, sales team and managers.
If we were to offer something valuable to the client, I would need to give them our domination package which is $999 and up. This is how we add up to $2000 - $3000 per month for a store in this niche.
At first I was puzzled. How can a start-up survive in the beginning by paying this much per month. How long would they last? After some more research it finally made sense.
Most of these start-ups who can afford to pay $10,000 - $15,000 per year, actually have a physical location SELLING Bikes, motorcycles, atv etc. This was their core business and the parts was just a side business.
So if the website which doesn’t get a lot of traffic but brings at least 1 customer per month who ends up buying a bike, the website did it’s job. Since the profit margins on a motorcycle can range between $3,000 - $10,000 per sale they can easily afford this website on a monthly basis. All they need to do is sell ONE BIKE PER MONTH.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS:
LESSON ONE: Research your Target Market and Industry before getting involved. You just might be wrong… (At least I was about the motorsports industry)
Now back to my original post in my Title, LITTLE KNOWN WAY TO MONETIZE 100% OF YOUR VISITORS AND MAKE AN ADDITIONAL $500 + PER MONTH TO HELP YOU GROW.
The reason I told you this story is to bring a point that you need to find YOUR CORE BUSINESS! Such as the motorcycle shops core business is to sell motorcycles not parts.
What is going to bring you money? NO GUESSING! … You have to find PROOF. Terapeak, SpyFu, Research (by Calling Competitors and brain storming them), Googling, Tradeshows (helped me), etc.
Now let me give you a few tips on what your CORE SHOULD BE… if you are too deeply involved in your current niche and you just can’t turn a healthy profit to expand. If you are spending 8 hours plus per day on your website, you have competitive prices, traffic, and customer service but still no sales.
You have two options:
1) Get More Traffic and let your visitors pay for it
2) Turn the website into one big advertisement and move on to the next niche
HOW DO YOU GET VISITORS TO PAY FOR YOUR GET MORE TRAFFIC?
First you need to come up with how much traffic you need and how much it will cost:
- How much traffic do you need (look up a successful competitor)
- How much traffic needs to come from Organic SEO
- How will you pay for the getting that Organic traffic ranked
- How much traffic will come from PPC (pay per click)
- How will you pay for it (USE FREE COUPONS TO GET TO THE BUDGET IF NECESSARY)
Now that you have your marketing plan on how to get traffic. You need to switch your CORE product which might be something other than selling products to build up the revenue to expand your traffic.
What are you talking about Igor? ….
I am talking about making an additional $500 per month aside from selling products so you can afford to expand your online business.
Your core focus should be to create another Vertical Market within your website.
MY RECOMMENDATION - ADS!!!!!!!!!!
I love Ads, this is the most stable, worry-free, hassle-free, no-brainer way of making money. You get traffic right? Do you monetize 100% of it? I bet the answer is NO … well did you know that you can force an AD impression on your visitor which will pay you for every impression!
Yep… for every Visitor that comes to your website, you can make $0.04 - $0.25 just for them being there and checking out an ad that you forced upon them. 200 visitors = $20 per day = $140 per week!
HERE IS PROOF… I just started promoting eBay PPC Publisher program
UPDATED - few days later
KEEP IN MIND. THESE ARE NOT ACTUAL CLICKS. I TRIGGERED A POPUP WITHIN THE WEBSITE TO COME UP 40 SECONDS INTO THE VISITOR SESSION WHICH MADE A VISITOR COUNT AS A CLICK.
YES IT IS A LITTLE INTRUDING BUT THESE ARE INACTIVE STORES IN MY CASE. EVEN IF YOUR STORE IS ACTIVE … WELL TOO BAD, YOU NEED TO MONETIZE TO SURVIVE SO THE ADS WILL SHOW UP. NO BIG DEAL.
Here are some ideas on what else you should consider selling:
- SELL PRODUCTS THROUGH EFFILIATE MARKETING - Products can include Used Vehicles, New Vehicles, or other parts from other website using Viglink to collect commissions.
- SELL PRODUCTS SPONSOR ADS - Just ASK! … there is a ton of people looking to place text link ads and text banners on your homepage. You can easily bill $50 - $200 per ad per MONTH!
- SELL EMAIL BLASTS - For example I would not mind having Tom Schenk with AutoAccessoryStore pay you 10 cents per email for sending your list a promotion to promote DASH KITS from AAS store.
- SELL PAY PER IMPRESSION - This is what I am doing with eBay promotions through Viglink. I am still in the research phase on what will work best and how can this be implemented.
Bottom line is, if you want to monetize 100% of your traffic you need to focus selling Advertisements and media along side of selling your products.
We are working on a few different things that will help you monetize your website
- Google Adsense - AVAILABLE NOW
- Effiliate Marketing (through Viglink, Amazon, eBay) - AVAILABLE NOW
- Amazon Search Results (if nothing found, Amazon will recommend something) - AVAILABLE NOW
- Pay Per Impression Popup - COMING SOON
- Footer Text Link Ads - COMING SOON
- Sidemenu Text Link Ads - COMING SOON
Google closes BILLIONS each month in gross Ad revenue, this is a much healthier market than the one you are in combined with all Top 1000 retailers.
You can also consider signing up with Ad Facade, if you want to create a website that ONLY SELLS ADS and generate a side income to fund your business. Ad Facade has no recurring revenue (its profit sharing) and you do not have to worry too much about the user experience.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO NOW?
- Can you afford $500 - $1000 per month to expand your business?
- If the answer is No, then … Evaluate your traffic and see if it is worth to put ads in exchange for getting extra revenue to expand your business. You would evaluate this based on how much traffic you have and how much conversions you have. If you can’t compete and your visitors are leaving, its time to monetize them with ads.
- Start with Google Adsense and Effiliate Marketing (watch the tutorial on Effiliate marketing inside Shopping Cart Elite)… then standby for my announcement for the other ways that I mentioned in the bullets above.
If you can afford $500 - $1000 for at least 6 months to pay out of your pocket, before the business can pay for its own pocket, then email me or call me. Let’s talk.
P.S. If you are currently using any kind of methods I didn’t mention to monetize your website or can recommend some other affiliate networks.
Post a comment :)
I pride myself to have gone through the extreme cases of Migrating an old eCommerce website to a new Shopping Cart (specifically Shopping Cart Elite). The results? You will want to read this post if you want to save A LOT OF TIME and MAKE A LOT OF EXTRA MONEY.
IN ADDITION WHILE WRITING THIS POST … (IRONIC) I DISCOVERED A WHOLE NEW BUSINESS MODEL THAT WILL MAKE YOU MONEY! … YOU’LL WANT TO READ THIS, BELIEVE ME!
Just so we are on the same page here is what my Shopping Cart Migration experience is:
- I’ve hard switched at least (5) of my own HIGH TRAFFIC website to a new Shopping Cart platform.
- I’ve hard switched at least a dozen Medium Traffic websites to a new Shopping Cart platform.
- I’ve helped at least a hundred clients Migrate to a new eCommerce platform successfully.
- I’ve created funnels from an old domain to a new domain while slowly migrating the website.
- I’ve created sub domains for new websites on existing old domains while keeping the old website.
So now that we are clear on my expertise, let’s talk about Pros, Cons, Nightmares, Tips, How Tos, etc.
WHAT KIND OF ADVICE CAN YOU GIVE ME IF I WANT TO MIGRATE MY OLD SHOPPING CART WEBSITE TO A NEW ONE?
If your current website makes you money (regardless of the amount)… you should consider the options in this post. Even if the website doesn’t make any money but has at least 1000 unique visitors per month you should also consider your options.
My first take is if the website makes money or has high traffic just leave it alone and make a new website on a new domain or a subdomain. You can also decide if you want to turn off the ADD TO CART on the old website and start funneling the traffic to the new website if their are no to little sales on the old one.
WHEN WOULD YOU CONSIDER KEEPING YOUR OLD AND NEW WEBSITE?
If you REALLY HATE your old website because you want to renew your brand, change the look and feel of your company, and you really care about taking the old website down then you should consider the Pros and Cons of it:
- PROS: Switch and your Done
- CONS: You Can Lose some Old Traffic
- CONS: Even if you don’t lose old traffic, you would not gain new traffic (I will explain later)
Having done all possible variations here is my experience and what I would have done differently.
FIRST EXPERIENCE - HARD SWITCH WITH NO 301 REDIRECTS
When I switched my first website (which you are probably planning to do) I literally killed it. It wasn’t a big deal because it was my personal Adsense website but still, I blame Google for misleading me. According to Google you can simply change your website address in webmaster tools and they will find all of your new content …. WRONG!
The only possible way they would migrate the old content with the new content is if only your domain name changed and not your complete URLs which typically do when you switch Shopping Carts. So I thought they would find the new URLs… and deindex the old URLs pretty quick.
Nope…. not only did it take 3 months for them to deindex the old URLs, which completely killed the traffic because the traffic would reach a 404 page not found.
But after the new URLs were found, all of the old rankings dropped and never came back. I had to start ranking it all over again even though the content was 100% the same from both websites… ANNOYING!
PROS: NONE! DO NOT DO THIS
CONS: KILL YOUR WEBSITE
SECOND EXPERIENCE - HARD SWITCH WITH 301 REDIRECTS
When we switched our first HIGH TRAFFIC website, we had developed a module called 301/404 REDIRECT in Shopping Cart Elite which would automatically funnel the traffic from the old URLs into the new URLs.
(Note: In addition if you ever change the product URL, or any URL in Shopping Cart Elite it automatically stores the old URLs and maps them to new ones to avoid Search Engine Traffic reaching error pages)
If your curious how that module in Shopping Cart Elite works here are two videos:
Risks you Face by Migrating Shopping Cart Website Video
How to Set up 301 Redirect App within Shopping Cart Elite
After this switch, what initially happened is the traffic actually grew in the first few months, we went from 1,500 daily unique visitors to 3,000 daily unique visitors. The problem was that whatever products we no longer carried, we mapped those URLs to the homepage. In the beginning those URLs would get traffic which would be funneled the homepage and it was great. But several months later Google deindexed those old urls that were mapped to the homepage and the traffic for those pages dropped off. Once everything was said and done, we were left with about 1,200 daily unique visitors due to the old URLs no longer indexing and since we removed products and didn’t add new products it is perfectly understandable why this happened. Still sucks though in my opinion since those visitors may have bought something else.
PROS: Having one New Website
PROS: Save your Old Traffic as long as every single URL is mapped
CONS: Takes forever to map the URLs properly
CONS: You may lose traffic if you dont map all the URLs to new URLs
CONS: If you have an old website, you lose years of work which otherwise could have been saved if you had kept both websites
THIRD EXPERIENCE - LEAVE THE OLD WEBSITE & START A NEW WEBSITE ON A BRAND NEW DOMAIN
A client of mine said he wants ZERO RISK when it comes to losing old traffic and current search engine ranking. Even though I knew the 301 Redirect is Safe, there is still risk involved if he doesnt map all of the old URLs to the new ones or the old web pages may have slightly more unique content than the new one and the rank drops.
In addition some clients told me that their visitors love their (bad looking) old website and they didn’t want to risk doing a hard switch to a new look and possibly losing business.
The first client we worked with that had this concern, I advised him to start a new website and funnel the old website traffic to the new website. Ultimately this worked very well for him and he was happy with the results. But there are Pros and Cons to this and I found an ever more ideal way to handle this.
Ex: thechromepros.com - OLD
Ex: thechromeprosfitment.com - NEW
PROS: NO Risk that your Old Website will lose anythingCONS: The new website has no ranking and you don’t benefit from your SEO on the old domain
FOURTH EXPERIENCE - LEAVE THE OLD WEBSITE & START A NEW WEBSITE ON A SUBDOMAIN ** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED **
Honestly I have no idea why I didn’t think of this before. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE to simply start a sub domain on your existing HIGH TRAFFIC, OLD DOMAIN that has GOOGLE AUTHORITY and benefit from years of work plus the new content from the new website.
Think about it, you worked hard for years to build the new content, generate sales and generate traffic to your old domain name. Few years later your features and the look and feel of your website is outdated but you still have all this work that you completed. Why bother spending time thinking how to migrate, mapping URLs or risking losing all this work when you can keep it AND HAVE MORE NEW CONTENT on your HIGH TRAFFIC, HIGHLY SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZED DOMAIN NAME?
If I was to take this approach in my second experience, I would have left everything as is and continued to get 1500 unique visitors. Then I would add all this new content, and instantly add another 500 - 1000 unique visitors JUST BECAUSE OF THE NEW CONTENT.
Then it would only grow from there… I would have risked nothing for losing old business or old traffic and I would only gain.
Since I did not want the ADD TO CART on my old domain, I would simply create links from the product pages to my new website and strictly use the old website as a content library to funnel visitors to my new website as well as selling Advertising through Adsense. (I am planning to go back and sync the old content)
Sure it doesn’t look as professional as it can be this way, but if you care less about your look and feel, and branding then do this option. If you rather make more money and get more traffic, this is an ideal solution. The best part is you can add a new store on a sub domain instantly and slowly work on funneling the traffic from your old website without affecting your daily operations.
THE MAIN BENEFIT YOU GET FROM ALL OF THIS IS ALL THE SEO WORK YOU’VE DONE ON YOUR OLD WEBSITE, IS NOW TRANSFERRED TO THE NEW SUB DOMAIN BECAUSE YOU ARE STILL USING THE SAME DOMAIN NAME.
Ex: diamondhotrimz.com - OLD
Ex: store.diamondhotrimz.com - NEW
PROS: KEEP YOUR OLD TRAFFIC, AND YOUR OLD SALES
PROS: SUPER EASY, NO HASSLE, NO HEADACHE SWITCH
PROS: GAIN NEW SALES AND NEW VISITORS
CONS: HAVE TWO WEBSITES
CONS: Create banner advertisements or links to funnel traffic to your new domain
I JUST DISCOVERED A NEW BUSINESS MODEL (LITERALLY) WHILE WRITING THIS BLOG POST - (I amaze myself sometimes. This is why I love to write a blog… it opens my mind as I speak to myself :)…)
My partner Tom has many Nissan Vehicle related niches. I am going to advise him publicly on this blog to take the parent company domain name (www.customenterprise.com) and create subdomains for each vehicle
nissanmaxima.customenterprise.com
or
maxima.customenterprise.com (to avoid trademark infringemene)
altima.customenterprise.com
sentra.customenterprise.com
etc.
NOTE: The beauty behind about sub domains, is if Nissan decides to file a trademark infringement on a subdomain, you can easily change the subdomain and keep your SEO ranking that you built up on the main domain (We can also map the old subdomain to a new one). However if they file the infringement on your domain name (because you used Nissan in the name), you will lose that domain name along with all your work that you put into it. In addition if you decide to start another store on the subdomain, you are already ranked for “NISSAN” and “MAXIMA” so you benefit for the “NISSAN” term and you simply need to do a few backlinks for “ALTIMA”.
TIPS: Shopping Cart Elite has an app called Data Sharing allowing you to have a master database on one website and sync the product data to any other Shopping Cart Elite website. So you can have CustomMaxima.com as the master database and leave the operations of it as is, add maxina.customenterprise.com and this will only benefit you from the additionally ranking and sales that customenterprise.com will provide.
In addition Tom can concentrate on the ranking of CustomEnterprise.com and fund a full SEO effort to gain its authority which will automatically pass it down to all the sub domains.
We may even experiment doing something like maxima.autoaccessorystore.com (On the other high authority domain Tom operates) and syncing the CustomMaxima.com data to that store AS WELL (It will be interesting to see what kind of results can be achieved using this method). I will keep this blog post updated with the results.
How about starting a NICHE BRAND WEBSITE for AEM or INJEN
aem.autoaccessorystore.com
injen.autoaccessorystore.com
etc.
AND ONLY HAVING THOSE NICHES ON THOSE SUB DOMAINS!
Realize that it would take $150 (one month of SEO that we provide) to rank injen.autoaccessorystore.com for the term Injen because of the thousands of the authority backlinks that already exist on AutoAccessoryStore domain versus creating a brand new domain which would take 6-12 months to get the same results.
Tom can also consider licensing out the virtual real estate space of his subdomain on AutoAccessoryStore.com for others to run their niche stores and use his ranking to get fast results. Its like buying a land and building a community around it where everyone has a house in their land, while you keep maintaining the land (via SEO).
Genius or What? - I think if Zac (coopscustoms.com) is reading this right now and experiencing an extreme A.D.D - Overdose with potential ideas of how he will create his empire… and you should too.
Yes Shopping Cart Elite can handle the sub domain names for brand new standalone stores on your existing domain name and you can start your new store immediately with a discounted price if you already have one website with us.
MORE TIPS: Tom can also start a whole new vertical business model, by starting new niches on a subdomain and give them out to his Affiliates to operate and create good unique onpage content (since they are standalone stores) and with no effort these stores will rank very well.
To make a long story SHORT… this is another GAME CHANGER by SHOPPING CART ELITE and about to change everything once again. It is time to join forces with someone who has a powerful, highly ranked domain name and really do some damage in Google.
IN CONCLUSION
If you have an opportunity like our Wheels clients do, to add another store on a sub domain of your website, you should do it RIGHT NOW! You risk nothing but you can benefit a whole lot. Since we start the website with full TURNKEY DATA, why would you not add all that additional content? Especially IF YOU ALREADY HAVE TRAFFIC and RANKING!
If you have any kind of opportunity to add a whole new store with data to your existing domain name, you should do it asap because you can only benefit from the increased traffic and sales.
If you want to learn more about Shopping Cart Elite visit our website.
UPDATES: 9/29/11
Found another way.
- Leave your old web pages as is so they can still be located according to Google. Disable add to cart and direct people to the new sub domain store.
- Add a sub domain for the new store
- Change the homepage completely to make it a portal for a social website like ning.com, blog, and the store on the sub domain
What you will achieve is
- Your old pages are on still indexed and driving traffic
- Your homepage is re-branded to point to the new store and make your website more social / branded
- Your new store pages are online
- You keep the branding and don’t lose the traffic.
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