Ranking and Link Building

          My strategy is to link with bloggers. Shoes are extremely popular, so I wanted to link with articles about different lines coming out as well as with people who are just fanatics about them. I also need to create my own blog of shorts to reinforce the keywords I'm using for my ads. What's great about shoes though is that everybody needs them and their are so many different forms - it's a universal thing. So when I do the research this week looking for links, I'll want to look for specifically where my target market is looking or reading about them. 

 

          I'll be doing all the linking with this on-going process because my page needs to deliver relevant, up-dated content almost weekly.

         I'm going to try and get people that I know that are currently blogging and start from there. Then I'm going to also try and get people who have had some success with vial articles related to my products - shoes, shopping, etc. I also need to re-focus the keywords I use to increase traffic. 

         I'll need to gather the links on my own blog on my website. I'm not really looking forward to keeping the content relevant - just because I know how much work I've already put in, and how much more there is to go. 

 

End of Lesson 10

         This week we worked on page optimization and other key statistics to get our pages more traffic. I noticed a significant differences when I gave a sneak-peak to my friends and family on my social networking site. They offered some great suggestions and gave some much needed encouragement. If I get to produce a page for Sandy and Twice as Nice, I'll hopefully be able to get her some more informed contacts and (again hopefully) more regular customers. My goal is to get her daily profit up by 20% - which is $25 a day. That probably equals one or two more sales per day.

        We also talked about SEO's. I listed a few things I would be able to do for my site that would make it more "searchable". Most of it has to do with the most clicked words on Google.

1. Get in touch with my customers and know their needs better. I'll know how to reach them if I know what more of them want. 

2. Use different tag words.

3. Test different ads - see which wording attracts more customers.

4. Use keywords or phrases in my ad title or title on my page

5. Use keywords in specific wording on my pages (in the text)

ROI & Conversion Tracking

         This week I learned about how to interpret and improve the numbers that Google Analytics and tracking information gives me about my site. I've had about 84 people come to my site through my campaign. I need to add some more words that will get the right people to my site. Also, I'll need to pause it to make some minor adjustments, but I am pretty happy about being positioned 4.3 on searches.

        I'm going to put my site up on my personal Facebook page next week and see how that affects things too. I know that lots of people will either help me out with suggestions, or at least go look at the page. Getting in contact with my drop shipper is easy, but it look like it would take forever to actually ship product - so I don't know if I'll be making any sales during this semester.

        I also figured out that as proud as I am about my website, there is a reason why some people do this for a living. The creative part is the worst. I know how I want to see things run, but I don't have that knowledge or skill set yet. More than likely I'll need to learn how to code, or at least get better at designing a webpage.

Lesson 8

Relevance and Quality Score
         We learned about Google analytics and how they help us understand our customers and potential customers traffic. We learn what links they go to, how long they stay, and what our turnaround is for the ad campaigns that we made last week. Learning about relevance; we want whatever is in our ad campaigns to be what people are searching for so that our product or service is the best match for their search. This hopefully leads to better sales or higher customer awareness.
         As a class we tried to help each other with the best key words to use in our campaigns and how the right words can increase traffic. It was interesting to note that worked for me was being generic, but my click through rate was really high, so I need to be more specific. Other students, on the other hand, were very specific and it was difficult for their ads to gain any sort of momentum.

Ads and Ad Groups

Week #7

I came up with a Google Ad campaign this week:

shoes, Shoes, SHOES!
Size 4 - Size 12
A new place for you to drool
www.shoecomplex.com

I was given the suggestion, multiple times, to include something about having a sale or up my prices ridiculously high and claim some obnoxious percentage off. While I understand their points about attracting large volumes of customers, I don't necessarily want to attract large amounts of people and then get no sales and little margins on the sales I do get.

Just being another shoe website - I've got nothing unique and a swarm of competition, so that's why everyone is competing over price. Seeing as how this is my first webpage, I'm keeping my expectations pretty low. If I can get my money back for my business application fee, I'll consider myself fortunate.

One thing that I had to adjust was my idea about donating to a charity of choice. I initially wanted each purchase to have a "round up" (to the nearest dollar) button so that each purchase could donate change to a charity of choice. I wasn't able to find the code for that - so instead I told everyone on the homepage that 20% of their purchase is going to charity, and if they emailed me their charity of choice, 10% of that 20% would go to a foundation they were fond of.

Week 6

This week was all about our ad-words campaign. Mine is fairly simple, because I'm selling one generic product; but fellow students of mine had a somewhat difficult time picking the right top 20 words for their campaigns. Mine seemed to all be derived from the word shoe.

Good news: I got my official Idaho Business License in the mail!!! Wahoo!

Also this week, I finished my third book about business. It's called Visionary Business by Marc Allen. After each chapter it summarizes the main points in bullets. I wanted to share one of those bullets because it hit something close to home.

           "The more you give, the more you receive -- and not just financially. You receive far more important                things as well: satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, and love." (p.114)

In the scriptures, we read in Malachi 3: 8-12,

          "8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes               and offerings.
           9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation
          10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now              herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a                blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
          11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground;                  neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts.
          12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts."

Some people may call it karma; but the golden rule still stands, do unto others what you'd like done unto you. Those who have been blessed to prosper have an opportunity, however great or small, to help our brothers and sisters {human kind} be their best selves.

End of Week 5

          This week was a monster. I have yet to finalize a drop shipper which then means that I have no products to sell. If I don't have products to sell then I can't finish my website; oh, and did I mention that it's due tomorrow? I'm beginning now to understand how timelines could be easily pushed back when starting a business. There are so many things that sometimes you just don't think about until you get there. That's also not including delays that you can't control. There's this website, for example, that I'm looking to order from, but the fastest shipping they service is nine days...yikes! Plus it's almost double your order = not cost effective.

          In class we also discussed licensing and registering our business. Luckily, where I live is fairly business friendly. So if you combine that with the friendly people; it all adds up to people who are willing to help you through whatever process.

          I am starting to get excited though about reveling what I've been working on. That's probably why I'm getting so worked up because I wanted to be farther along on it than I am!

Lesson 4 Weekly Reflection

         This week I felt like a total tech newb. Building a website and having that website accept credit card payments and copying html and a small bit of coding...let's just say it was hard (for me). That and every time I see a new website theme I want to change it - thus erasing the work that I have already done and then trying to push on and do more feels like I'm not progressing as fast as I should be. Talking with my fellow classmates, I learned that there are so many different host sites, and templates, and just businesses in general that allow you do what you thought there really was only one way of doing. That opened up all sorts of possibilities for me.

          I also had my first minor set-back this week. I built my business plan around the idea that the large manufacturers would sell me just the large sizes; this was a false reality. Because of that, now I'm wondering if I should just have a "normal" shoe store. It might be a little bit easier to tackle for my first web-based business. Hopefully by the end I will have mastered the skills a little bit and have a better idea for the next brilliant idea. 

         The past part that I wanted to blog about was my little side project. Instead of just ordering shoes from somewhere, I also wanted to go to the big box stores and buy shoes and have them on inventory. I recognize that there would be more of a risk there since I'm using capital, but I think that it could still work. The other shoes I still think I'm going to use a drop-shipper for. Then the questions comes up, do I then only offer shoes, or do I build a brand and offer other types of clothing and/or accessories?

          

Site Builders, Hosts, and Coding - Oh My!

          So this week I narrowed down my business ideas and chose a host and site builder. Using Excel, our class was given a matrix of sorts to input our ideas and calculate all of the information we found on our topics from Google Analytic and Keyword Planner tools. Sometimes I don't think about that kind of information being out there - but it is.

          I compared three different sites: Yola, Webstarts, and Wix. Because I was brand new to this process, I didn't know too much about them at first - but then I figured out what I wanted and needed for my up-and-coming business and these three seemed to have a lot of great benefits like bandwidth, storage space, phone and online help etc.

          I started messing around with Webstarts, and ended up buying a ton of ad-on's that I'll need later on in my development. So I called their customer support staff and THEY BLEW ME AWAY! They were so thorough and made sure everything was handled, and better. Just because of that one experience, I'm a fan. Plus it has all these great features like credits to start advertising campaigns, free custom domain names, unlimited webpages, and was very search engine friendly.

          For my business readings, I finished The E Myth Revisited. The way that Michael Gerber re-engineered the way I thought about small businesses was truly impressive. His focus is to create a massive system that generates the results you want and then replicate it. From the vision to the manifestation, the advice and examples in it were very thorough. I don't think I've ever ear-marked a book so much. Gerber gave an example on page 180 that struck a cord with me. "...no longer interested in working in their business. They are now focused on developing a business that works." Basically creating a model of ideas, efficiency, and work - and then you have a business.

Week #2 Reflection

     This week I learned about drop-shipping and it basically opened a whole new world for me. First off, I had no clue what it was; secondly, knowing the companies and what to look for will really help me when it comes time to start a business. I think what is most appealing is the fact that you can order in small quantities and still get a good price, they handle the inventory, and they handle shipping. It's fantastic.

    Next week we'll be creating our websites. It's a little scary just because it's new - but I'm hoping to juice next week for all it has, because I have a feeling I'll need it again.

This week I also finished reading The E-Myth Revisited. What I'm learning most from this is that I need to set up a business that can be directly replicated and function all by itself. Entrepreneurs need to start by laying out the blue print and plans and filling in all the blanks. Once you start adding employees that fill in specific duties, then you slowly start "backing out" and letting the business run on its own.

Week One

         This week I had to learn how to identify correct business models and choose a start-up, online business. The most common is the merchant model where the company has a stockpile of products it wants to sell either with a brick-and-mortar, or a web store front. Selling ad space is a good idea if you can promote your website or store front to gain additional revenue and gain more exposure. 

         One of the most important things I've learned how to do this week is use the tools that Google has set up through ad-words and keyword planner. It's incredible the amount of information you can find out through internet searches. When it comes to my business though, I wonder if it's wise to start in something that's already competitive as far as the traffic goes, or try and create a new category (or product or service) and build demand and traffic through promotion and advertising. 

         This video helped me understand the information best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ToN1Tw7io

          I've been reading a few books to help me understand what I'm doing (or about to do). The One Minute Entrepreneur - The E Myth Revisited - Start-up Weekend - & Visionary Business. So far I've read the first two and the tidbits of wisdom that I'm absorbing is encouraging me to re-read them because I'm sure there's more in them that I've missed.