Hobby & Craft Forums

This is a post I wrote back in November 2006 in response to someone asking about selling online - I've posted the original question for info. This isn't exactly and article, but someone else asked about this and, raather than type it all out I searched for my original answer to cut and paste - HTH

This is the original thread - it has some useful info on it - http://groups.google.com/group/base-help-basics/browse_thread/thread/abcb68b5cae71a64/57be4c36f72866f3#57be4c36f72866f3

Hello - I am brand new to this site and to online retailing! My site
just went live a couple of weeks ago and I have had a little traffic,
no purchases...is this normal when you just go live or what can I do
without spending any more money (or not much more!) to get the
traffic/sales?

Any Adivice is GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!!
Thanks, Tulie

Hi,

I sympathise greatly but might be able to offer some help.

There is a myth that online retailing is 'easy' and that all you need
do is select your products, build your site and the money will come
rolling in. I started my first site in April of this year with that
plan - but the reality is very different.

Here's how it really works:

PRODUCTS - if you have something that no one else (or few) are selling
then you're ahead of the game from the start - if you have something
that lots of people are selling then you have to imagine that, from
your customers point of view he/she is walking into the biggest
department store in the world and being bombarded by sellers competing
for his business - the biggest sellers with the highest profile are
likely to get his business. If you're stuck at the back of the store
with a little table and no profile it's a one in a billion chance
people will find you there.

ADVERTISING - there's no getting away from it - you have to spend,
spend, SPEND or take advantage of any free advertising you can (Like
FROOGLE OR GOOGLE BASE). As well as that you will probably need an
adwords campaign (or 2 or 3) and you'll need to choose your keywords
carefully so that the people that end up on your site don't give up
within 3 seconds of opening your home page and finding that the Bath
(tubs) they thought they were going to find turned out to be (bird)
Baths. That cost you money and was a waste of everyone's time.

NATURAL LISTINGS - getting on search engines without paying takes a
long time (up to 3 months) because the search engines send bots out to
crawl the sites - if the text in your site is relevant and useful
they'll begin to list you - if it's jumbled and muddled and doesn't
adequately describe your products then you won't get listed and you'll
have to keep paying for adwords campaigns and advertising.

RAISING YOUR PROFILE - Every new business has to do this - and it
often involves sending out free stuff. In my case I was approached by
BIG BROTHER the TV series - I sent about £80 of free bath products (in
exchange for a free link on their suppliers microsite) to them and
waited for the orders to roll in - In week 8 a soap of mine was
featured in the show - but I still await the mass of expected orders.
You can send out press releases, free products (depending on your
product of course) to magazines and make sure anyone that does buy from
you wants to come back. Get your products on shopping sites like
shopping.com or edirectory - they usually have more than one site and
you'll see some traffic generated if not huge sales.

LINKS - Get other sites to link to you in return for linking to them -
this makes your site more popular in terms of listings/search engines -
but don't spend too much money on it - Bakcward links companies are a
bit of a scam and they don't make any guarantees (I learnt that the
hard way and I'm £350 worse off).

My original site still only generates sales of about £50 per month -
but sometimes you get lucky - I set up a site 3 weeks ago selling Bath
Bomb & Soap Kits - there aren't many people doing it and sales in the
first month have topped £500. I'm appearing in the natural listings on
Yahoo and I'm not having to spend vast amounts of cash on advertising.

I'm a complete novice and I offer the above advice only from my own
experiences - someone else on here may contradict me and have better
advice to offer.

Good luck and I hope all goes well.


And, just because I'm a big fat showoffski - this is the first response to my musings:

Judi, that's one of the most beautiful posts I've seen on this subject,
and I agree with everything you've said, ESPECIALLY about how online
retailing isn't easy in the least.

Thank you for posting that, great article

Thanks Shane - really worth having a look at the original thread as other (more expert) people alos posted...oh and you can see me having a little spat with someone - I was soooo rude in those days

judivenn wrote:Thanks Shane - really worth having a look at the original thread as other (more expert) people alos posted...oh and you can see me having a little spat with someone - I was soooo rude in those days

What saying they were basically spamming, , yes I read the lot

A very intelligent and comprehensive post.. from a marketing perspective, regardless of on or offline..!

One thing you can add to that is data capture - potential clients need to see you, your site, your company logo etc at least three times on average before they commit to the idea and potentially buy.. As others have said, going to fairs/events, giving out business cards, having logos on cars and vans all helps towards that total, but you can take positive steps towards it too by actively capturing data on individuals/potential clients.

This may take the form of twitter followers, blog followers, or plain and simple "direct mail".. but to do it, you need to find a decent hook to bring them in.. make it impossible for someone to leave your fledgling site without giving you some contact info.. offer incentives - discounts, promotions, competitions, whatever is relevant to your business.

Once you have that data, use it. the more times you mail/email these people, the quicker you get them to be potential customers, and the easier it is to convert a sale.

As an example, I made enquiries about a therapy course (massage) - since the enquiry I have had an invite to sit in on a training session, an invite to go to a taster session, news about a vacancy within the organisation, and a letter thanking me for my enquiry, as well as a follow up asking if I had received the information I first asked for and whether it met my needs.. all in 3 weeks.. It may sound like overkill, but then you are not interested in doing the courses they offer.. to someone inclined to buy the product, this kind of contact is manna, and it generally makes people feel involved and valued even before the customer relationship is established.

It really pays dividends to have your data capture mechanism in place before you do anything else, that includes monitoring whether folk give their consent to being contacted, and how you ensure a request to be removed from mailings is handled effectively - surprisingly, even handling a request to be removed from a list can add value to your image!!

I ran an exploratory mailing when working for a charity. the list we used was a bought list, and topped up with all the charities contacts. We had a relatively small number of people ask where we got their details, or why we were asking them for money.. most had called up to ask to be removed from the list, but about half subsequently made a donation.. and thus put themselves back on that list.. because even a negative contact if handled well is a positive impact on peoples perception of you and your company.

Oh, and there are cheeky ways to develop a large list quite quickly.. but Im not supposed to talk about marketing ideas in case it is something in the Forum "beginners guide to" which is being produced at the moment!

Another area to look at is strategic selling - whether on or off line.

Or, once you have customers, keeping them is a whole new area, by default some customers we will lose, but by keeping them loyal is just as hard hard work.