Starting an online shop to make money? Do your homework first
So I was thinking the other day just how many people I see on a daily basis starting out ecommerce sites with just the hope that they will make money (just because they are there). I suppose this attitude stems from the offline world where if you open a shop you will get a certain amount of foot traffic (and thus sales) from people who are just walking by. Thing is people just don’t stumble across your website (well not usually) as we don’t just go around typing random we addresses in with the hope that one will eventually work.
Back to the point, it’s amazing how much people will spend on the creation of a new website when it comes to design and programming compared to how little is set aside for promotion. In my opinion your promotional budget should always be a couple of times what your building costs are.
This also brings me to another very important point. If you’re hoping to be making money with this ecommerce thing for a while to come then surely you’re going to want to have this skill in house? After all SEO is a full time job do you really want to be paying money to an outside agency for the rest of your internet career? The way I see it if you are starting an online shop you have a few options when it comes to increasing your earnings with SEO.
- Go with a marketing agency. They should have a number of employees in different specialities from social media to link building, this avoids being stuck with a “jack of all trades” character. There will usually be different plans available but most people go for monthly “pay as you go” type option as its ideal for a small start-up business. The main downside that I can see is there’s no real investment going on from your own knowledge or training point of view.
- You can hire a wiz-kid SEO to work for you. Sounds simple as you could have someone working for you on a full time basis who will probably be cheaper than a marketing agency. However finding them might not be easy and they might not have as much reputation as you would like so the safety net might not be there. Also since they have to be good at everything they do need to be bit special as it takes a lot of skill (and organisation) to pull off all the aspects of net marketing.
- Learn it yourself? Sounds daunting as internet marketing is a constantly shifting landscape, do you have the time to stay up to date? If you have some IT experience then it may not be too hard to learn but others from a completely different field could struggle. Of course even if you do pay someone else to do the work it always helps to know the basics.
As you can see there’s 3 main options when it comes to increasing your sales (and hopefully money) via internet marketing but they do all have their downsides and plus points. Still internet marketing is never an overnight thing so you will probably have time to (and have to) go with all 3 methods at some point. Until next time.
Find that secret niche to make millions online
One mistake that I see new people to this business making again and again is picking the wrong niche to enter into for their new website or blog. You see one of the main thought processes that people have is that you should write about what you know and/or are interested in. It’s a good idea in principle but the problem is that so many affiliate marketers are of the same demographic i.e. male between 18 – 35. So what you end up with is a million thin affiliate sites all trying to sell iphone accessories or sports equipment. If you do start your business around one of these “traditionally” male tech/sports products you’re going to be competing with all these other people who also failed to think outside the box and 99 times out of a 100 you’re going to fail.
Now I know trying to think completely out of your own experience’s can be very difficult but trust me that the time spent are the start trying to find that untapped market can be recouped many times over down the line. Another big plus of the untapped market that no-one else is noticing is you can be completely under the radar for months (and even years) before people realise just how much money you are making. Indeed it is some of these more “boring” industries that often allow their owners to earn the most over a short period of time. So i suppose you are thinking just what kind of markets/sectors these might be? Well of course I’m not going to give away the farm in one post but here are a few sectors to think about.
- Make-up
- Clothes
- Shoes
- Office equipment
- Packaging
Ok so as you can see not very exciting but when it comes to earning an income online it’s the more boring the better in my opinion. So your also probably thinking at this point what kind of niches should you stay away from? Here are a few sectors that have ruined many an affiliate marketers dreams 
- Iphones (or anything apple)
- Electronics in general
- Books (you know amazon does this right?)
- CDs (heard of mp3s?)
- Poker
- Loans
- Personal injury
Yes some of those niches are worth huge amounts of money, ie ranking on Google for something like “Personal injury claims” could be worth over £1000 a day just in commission. However most people get blinded by these kind of numbers and just forge ahead without evaluating the situation. Most of the sites in the niches above will literally have teams of people working full time on every aspect of SEO and not just to get the site to the top of the serps but to make sure it stays there. This doesn’t mean there isn’t huge amounts of cash in other sectors too (there is) it’s just not as glamorous and in most cases harder to find.
So how to you find this new niche that’s going to make you millions? Well the two keys are both patience and awareness. Anytime you’re searching the net for something (especially if it’s a gift for someone else) you should have seoquake on and have a quick glance at the competition in this market. After a while this will just become an automatic thing and before you know it you’ll be accessing the competition every time you fire up google, it can become a bit time consuming I have to admit but it will be worth it.
I must also mention that it’s not just markets that have little or no competition that you may want to start in, you also want to enter a market were you can offer something way better than everyone else. One of my favourite bloggers is Allyn Hane over at blogger illustrated who talks in some of his (slightly crazy) videos how he started a blog in the DIY niche. The thing about his blog was that he could offer real reviews on DIY hardware and not just the generic product descriptions that you get on most ecommerce sites. The best thing about his blog though is that he sold it for $30,000 to a venture capital firm, now that’s some serious cash!
So there you have it my advice on how to think outside the box (a little bit) in order to earn some real money on the internet. Until next time my digital peeps