As an added measure of information, I decided to do a part two on what things to avoid when you are trying to figure out your ideal niche market. Although some of these points might simply be the opposite of the things you should do when finding a niche in the previous post, sometimes people have an easier time seeing what not to do than a list of what you should do.

Avoiding Common Niche Mistakes

1. Becoming Infatuated With Your Product

If you have a hobby or an interest and one day think, this would be an awesome product to sell! I should start selling it! thus spending the next few weeks completely insterested in selling this product that you just love only to find out there’s absolutely no market for it. You need to make sure that if you love your product, that others actually love it too and there’s a market for it.

2. Not Doing Your Research

Like mentioned in the previous article, it’s very important to do keyword searches to see if there are people actually typing in what you want to sell. If people simply don’t have any interest in what you want to sell, they won’t be typing it in, and it won’t show up. A product with a consistent amount of hits is something worth considering.

Another aspect of not doing research is trying to sell something that people could easily get for free. This example is most common with recipe books and some sheet music. If you want to sell your cookbook online, you have to have something additional to convince your potential customers that your book is so much better than what they can get for free from the five websites surrounding yours on Google.

3. Selling Just Products

It’s important to remember to have a niche market / idea like bathroom soaps and supplies and then have various sub-categories in your niche like custom soap molds, cute toothbrush holders, etc. If you are only selling one product like bath rugs and people aren’t interested in bath rugs, it won’t matter if you have fifteen different colors, textures, and shapes, they won’t buy your product.

4. Competing With The Big Dogs

Like mentioned in the previous post, it’s important to go where the customers are, but don’t think it’s a good idea to compete with big name suppliers. Like our example with Bath and Body Works, The Body Shop, and Bed Bath and Beyond, if you don’t have something unique or different about your product, customers will most likely just stick to their big department stores.

5. Selling What You Don’t Know

Yesterday, I commented on how it’s important to know what you’re selling about, not only for the customer’s sake, but also for the sake of building content. If you were selling makeup for example and didn’t know the first thing about it, you wouldn’t be able to make interesting video tutorials about how to create a certain look – and especially in the case of makeup, people with a lot of experience will most likely buy their stuff online and might not trust the quality of your products if they think you don’t know what you’re selling.

6. No Passion For Your Niche

It’s important that you find something that you not only know about but that you have a passion with. Just because you know a lot about lawn supplies doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re interested in things related to the outdoors. You’re going to be spending a lot of time, effort, and money building up your business so it’s a good idea to be passionate about your products.

Education, Uncategorized, home based business, internet marketing, make money online, product research

In yesterday’s post, we went over how a blog could benefit your business, and today we’re going to touch the design and details of your blog that will make it the most effective at the goal you’re trying to achieve. There are only a couple of things to worry about because with templates and a mired of choices nowadays, it’s hard to address every single aspect of a blog, so here are some key points.

Starting & Designing Your Dropship Blog

1. Pick A Domain Name

The very first thing you will do when you sign up for your blog is create a domain name. The same kind of tips apply to creating a blog domain name as creating a website domain name. You want to keep it short, relevant, easy to remember, and avoid any trademarks. Let’s think of an example: if your website is devoted to selling fancy aprons and your storefront is named Adorable Aprons, you could try to see if that name was available, or adorableapronsblog – something that will have connection to your storefront. If you picked something completely different than your business name, people might be confused at how the two are connected. Keep in mind that if your first choice domain name is taken, you shouldn’t simply alter the spelling of the name to make it work, like making it adorablapronz. Not only does that look unprofessional, your customers aren’t going to make it to your blog because most likely they will forget you dropped the e and added a z.

Making a website name easy to remember doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the most bare minimum thing you could write in the domain name to make it applicable. You could get away with having a slightly larger name by putting blog at the end of it, but it goes back to things like numbers, spellings, sometimes dashes, etc. that make it difficult to remember.

2. Keep It Clean

As you can see on our blog, we like to keep things nice and organized with headers. When people scan the website page they’re on, bigger font is going to catch their eye a lot faster than smaller font is. By using headers with key words, like thesis sentences, people who might not have a lot of time to spend on your blog can read the information they want and keep on going. It’s always a good practice to remember not to write novels in your blog posts. Think of these entries more like a newspaper article than like one of those essays you had to write in school.

When it comes to all your sidebars, footers, and anything else surrounding your information, make sure they too are nice and clean. You don’t want to have huge icons, banners (unless it’s your headline icon), moving clipart, and other things that could distract your customers from the information in the middle. It’s always good to check their font weight (boldness, font, and size) against your text to make sure it doesn’t overpower your blog entries. Your customers should be able to easily see what you’re writing and not have to dig through your sidebars that managed to steal the limelight.

3.  Add some gadgets

If you take a look at our blog on the right hand side, one of the first “gadgets” you can see is the location where you can join our blog via e-mail. This is a really nice item to include so your customers can get all the information they’re looking for without having to check your blog once a day individually. Another good idea is to add RSS (really simple syndication) feeds in appropriate locations to other blogs or news stories that could interest your readers, and show how connected you are with the subject you’re writing about. For example, if you have a computer store, you might have a RSS feed to technology news from the New York Times if it’s applicable to what you’re trying to sell. It wouldn’t hurt to include a link to your Facebook site, which you notice is right under our subscription area, and it shows actual pictures of real people so people can see how many people are actually interested in your blog, so they don’t feel like a lone ranger. Try to keep from adding gadgets that are pointless to your site – always have a professional mindset.

Uncategorized, dropshipping, internet marketing, make money online, online business

As e-tail becomes ever more competitive, marketing becomes ever more essential.  You should be formatting and launching new marketing campaigns for your online business on a regular basis.  Below are 8 tips for marketing your online business.

How To Market Your Online Business:

1. Don’t try to advertise like a big business

People always tell me that they’re “building their brand” or “getting their name out there”.  Becoming a recognizable brand-name is the goal of many businesses, but unless your name is Beyonce or you have $20 million in advertising funds stashed under your mattress, you will probably have to start with smaller-scale marketing.  You don’t have the resources to become a serious competitor to Wal-Mart or Toys R Us right off the bat.  Advertise to produce immediate sales, not simply to put your name out there.  Each marketing campaign should include a specific call to action, a specific promotion for a specific product.

2. Rotate your promotions

If you give a kid a piece of candy, he’s going to get super excited and run all over the living room.  But if you give him a piece of candy every day, he’s going to come to expect it, and he won’t get excited anymore.  Marketing works the same way.  I love to buy t-shirts from www.threadless.com.  Two or three times a year, they put all their t-shirts on sale for $10.  Whenever they do that, they send out an email, and I immediately click the link, head to their site, and buy 4 or 5 shirts.  However, if their t-shirts were always $10, that’s the price I would expect and I wouldn’t make any special effort to visit their site.

It’s totally okay to continually have some kind of sale or promotion going on, but make sure you rotate your promotions.  One week you might have your purses on sale, another week your summer sandals.   One week you might offer 10% off any order, another week free shipping.  The other benefit of rotating your promotions is that you catch a lot of fish in your net.  Some people get excited at a blanket discount, other people prefer the free shipping.  You will please all your customers by switching up your offers.

3. Set up an affiliate program

Another way to garner extra traffic and boost sales is to offer an affiliate program.  Affiliate programs work like this: retailers and bloggers post links to your website and products.  When someone clicks on those links and makes a purchase, you pay the affiliate a percentage of the purchase price (say 10%).  The nice thing about an affiliate program is that it doesn’t cost you any money unless it’s successful.  You don’t pay for those links unless they actually result in sales.

4. Use customer testimonials to boost your credibility

If you’re receiving plenty of traffic but not enough sales, you probably have one of two problems: either your products are too expensive, or your customers don’t feel comfortable actually making a purchase from your website.  There are plenty of ways to make your business look more professional, from improving your website design to adding free educational articles to posting a privacy policy and security icons.  I like to use customer testimonials.  When done correctly, customer testimonials can be a convincing proof of your professionalism and security.  An easy way to solicit testimonials from your customers is to offer some kind of prize for the best one.

5. Offer both cheap and premium versions of your product

Some people want luxury, others want a bargain.  To appeal to the widest variety of people, try to sell a cheap and premium version of your products or services.  For instance, if you are selling corporate gift baskets, make sure that you offer a blow-out-the-stops gourmet fancy-pants basket for the elite crowd, but also an affordable gift basket option as well.

6. Recruit your customers to the cause

Presumably your customers like your company, and won’t need much of a push to recommend you to their friends.  By offering a simple prize like $20 off their next order or a free t-shirt, you can easily convince them to recommend your products or services to their 5 closest friends.  (This usually works the best if the prize is awarded after their friend makes their first purchase).

internet marketing

I’ve often talked about the importance of improving your dropshipping website’s SEO.  Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your website so it will be favorably ranked on search engine pages.  If your dropshipping website is not the first one that pops up when someone googles “moccasins” or “gluten-free cake mixes”, then you won’t get a lot of organic traffic to your site.  One way to improve your SEO and bring in traffic is Social Media Marketing.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing is promoting your website on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.  As I mentioned in the last news post, 48% of Americans age 12 or older are part of a social media group.  Thus, SMM can be a very effective way to raise the profile of your online business.  However, it can also be complex and time-consuming, so businesses often pay SMM gurus to assist in the process.  The problem is, Social Media Marketing is fairly amorphous.  How do you know if your company is being successfully marketed?  How do you know if you are getting your money’s worth from the people you hire?

How can you monitor Social Media Marketing?

1. Never hire someone to market your online business who will not commit to acheiving concrete goals

Potential candidates may say that it’s impossible to track “word of mouth” or “buzz”, but this just isn’t true.  You and your social media marketer should work together to set goals for how many Facebook fans and Twitter followers you attract, and how many article Diggs, webpage hits, and keyword rankings you garner.

2. Monitor your progress personally

You don’t hire the cat to watch the canary.  Neither should you rely on the word of your marketers to know how well your online business is doing.  Each week you should personally check the statistics on how many new Facebook fans you’ve attracted, how many blog comments you’re recieved, and how much traffic each one of your webpages has gotten.

3. Isolate the real source of your success

Whenever possible, you want to track the success of specific campaigns.  Thus, you may want to use trackers like a “How did you hear about us?” button, or a webpage monitor that tells you exactly where your traffic is coming from (Google, Pay-Per-Click ads, a guest blog post link, etc.).

Social Media Marketing, internet marketing

Let’s pretend you are operating a dropshipping business selling mittens and scarves.  You are probably going to market your business as an e-tail company, in competition with the likes of Target, Kohl’s, and other retail clothing stores with an online presence.  However, the e-tail category of the internet amounts to only about 23% of total internet sales.  Where is the rest of the revenue going?

The internet actually has about 7 distinct sales channels, each operating in its own unique way, with its own methods of promotion and its own buyers.  There is nothing wrong with marketing your mitten website in the e-tail channel.  However, you can also use the other 6 channels of the internet to bring business to your dropshipping website.

What are the 7 channels of the internet?

1. E-Tail

As previously mentioned, most dropshipping websites automatically market themselves in the e-tail channel.  Marketing in this channel will likely involve improving your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and purchasing banner ads or Pay-Per-Click advertising.

2. Auction Sites

Auction sites include anywhere that multiple sellers post their wares in a mix of fixed-price and auction-style listings.  Auction sites include eBay, Bonanzle, and Etsy.  Even if you have a website for your mittens and scarves, you would be well advised to also sell them on an auction site like eBay or Bonanzle.  These auctions can be used to draw traffic to your website, and you can take advantage of intermediary platforms like an eBay store.

3. Direct Manufacturers’ Sites

A direct manufacturer’s site is one where you can buy the product directly from the manufacturer.  If you were the actual maker of your mitts and scarves, you could market your website as a direct manufacturer’s site.  In this case, you would use keywords like “wholesale prices” and “direct from the source” or focus on the fact that your products are “hand-made” and “one-of-a-kind”.  In a sense, Etsy is a direct manufacturer site, though it is also an auction site, because most of the products sold on Etsy are handmade by artisans and craftsmen.

4. Supply Chain Engines

A Supply Chain is a series of interconnected businesses that cooperate in the distribution of products and services to the end customer.  Again, if you were the manufacturer of your mittens and scarves, you could consider participating in a supply chain by allowing someone else to sell your mittens – you would become a wholesaler or dropshipper.  If you import your mittens and scarves, you could become a distributor to other retail businesses.  You could be a wholesaler, dropshipper, or distributor, and still continue to sell your mittens and scarves yourself.  It’s just another avenue for generating income.

5. Referral Systems

Traditional referrals are given spontaneously by word of mouth, but nowadays there are entire referral systems constructed for savvy online shoppers to do a little research before making a purchase.  There are a lot of ways to promote your online business through referral systems:

• Write and submit reviews and articles about your own products.

• Build a referral section on your dropshipping website

By allowing your customers to submit reviews and rate your products, you create customer engagement and a situation where other customers are more informed and more likely to be happy with their purchases.  For instance, if your mittens only get 4 out of 5 stars because the customer thought they were more teal than “sky blue”, you have a valuable piece of information (your mitten’s color may not be showing up properly on people’s browsers), and you are less likely to have to refund the next customer who really wanted sky blue mittens.

• Offer a referral incentive program

You could offer your customers 25% off their next order when they refer a friend to your site.

6. Knowlege Sites

The internet is loaded with knowledge sites, and some of the most useful for e-tail businesses like your fictional mitten store are the how-to sites.  A series of how-to videos or articles (how to make a winter scarf, how to knit baby mittens, how to use a scarf to accessorize any outfit, etc.) can bring a lot of traffic to your website.  You can post videos on YouTube and your Facebook page, and write articles for Mahalo, all with inbound links to your website.  The links will help your SEO and the how-to information will help to build your customer’s confidence in you.

7. Social Networking

Social Media Marketing has become an increasingly necessary part of promoting online businesses.  You can promote your business on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Ning, and on blogs.

I think two of the most successful platforms are Facebook and blogs.  Every online business should have a Facebook page and a blog.  The blog is particularly important as a place to post fresh content with plenty of keywords, and to showcase your personality.  This helps your customers make a connection to you.  The most important element of your content is that it be informative and useful to your customers.  So again, include plenty of articles, reviews, and how-to videos.

Guest posting on other people’s blogs is a great way to earn a quality inbound link.  Find blogs relevant to your industry, and offer to write a guest blog post on a hot topic.  In return, the blogger will likely allow you to include a link to your dropshipping website or eBay store.

internet marketing

Marketing is a huge part of retail, particularly in online sales.  Anytime you can convince your customer to buy and buy immediately, that’s a good thing.  The following are three types of promotions that can help increase the sales of your dropshipping products.  You can use these promotions on a personal website, eBay store, on Bonanzle, or virtually anywhere else you can sell products.

3 Ways To Promote Dropship Products:

1. Run A Limited-Time Sale

A limited-time sale helps push your customer to purchase immediately.  It functions as a call to action.  If there is no urgency, and your customer thinks, “Oh, I’ll come back and buy this after I take the kids to soccer practice,” they probably will never return.  Limited-time sales have a proven track record of increasing sales volumes.  You can run a 3 day sale (Easter weekend), 1 day sale (Oscar night) or even a 2 hour sale (lunchtime).

2. Market To An Oft-Neglected Segment Of Society

Promotions often target common groups like moms or teenagers going back to school.  Consider marketing to a smaller demographic like teachers, secretaries, or grandfathers (senior citizen’s discount).  Obviously you have to choose something that works with your particular dropship product, but this can be a way to make a particular group of people feel special.  Since your niche market will likely be fairly small, you can also make your promotion open to other people, while keeping the focus on your target demographic.

3. Add A Gift Finder To Your Dropshipping Website

A Gift Finder helps shoppers find presents for a particular type of person.  For instance, they should be able to select mother, sister, brother, teacher, daughter, friend, aquaintance, etc., from a drop-down menu.  The Gift Finder will then suggest a few of your dropship products that might make an appropriate present.  Fiona Dias, Executive Vice President of GSI Commerce Inc., states that her company saw average order values rise by 20% when they added a Gift Finder to their site.

dropshipping, internet marketing

In designing and maintaining your dropshipping website, your goal is always to convince customers to buy your products, buy more of your products, and return again to buy even more of your products.  One way to increase your online sales is to add a Hot Products section to your website.

What is a Hot Products section?

A Hot Products section is a group of featured products that rotates regularly.  You would usually display your Hot Products in a prominent place, like on your homepage.

How do I choose my Hot Products?

Your Hot Products may be:

1. Your most popular / best selling products

2. Your newest products

3. Your best reviewed products

4. Seasonal / Holiday products

Is there any downside to adding a Hot Products section to my dropshipping website?

1. You should display your Hot Products in a classy way, otherwise they can make your website look a little gimmicky or trashy (aka no flashing red prices).

2. You don’t want to crowd your homepage or dilute the elite status of the Hot Products, so limit yourself to around 10 featured items, and rotate them on occasion.

3. You will also have to give special attention to the inventory levels of your Hot Products, because if all goes according to plan they will sell out quickly.

internet marketing, online business, website design / help

If your online business is doing well in your home country, one way to massively expand your sales is to start selling internationally.  Opening your business to customers from other countries can reap huge financial rewards.  However, each new market needs to be researched thoroughly before you take the plunge.  For each prospective country, ask yourself the following questions:

Questions to ask when considering a new market:

1. Is online shopping common in my target region?

Some countries have limited access to internet, or online shopping simply isn’t popular yet.  It would be difficult for you to garner much business from a country like that.  On the other hand, countries like France and Finland have just passed legislature that states that internet access is a human right, so virtually every citizen has access to the net.

2. Is online shopping likely to grow in my target region?

Many countries do not currently have a huge e-commerce base, but are growing fast.  For instance, some of the Eastern European countries like Poland are expected to increase their online shopping by 30-40% in 2010.

3. Are the products / brands I’m selling already popular in my target country?

People are more likely to buy your products online if they are already familiar with them from magazines, tv ads, and brick-and-mortar stores in your area.  There is no point trying to sell Nike shoes to people from Mongolia if the brand Nike has no cache or value in Mongolia.  If you are Canadian / American, you have an advantage because most countries consume American media and thus are familiar with many American brand names.

4. What is the competition like in my target country?

If your product is already popular in your target country, you may have some heavy competition.  Check whether other online retailers are already selling your product / brand, or whether there are other similar products / brands being sold online and in stores.  The presence of competition doesn’t mean you can’t enter the market, but you will have to develop a point of difference, a reason why people should come to you instead of the previously entrenched retailer.

Once you have chosen a target market, how will you attract customers to your website?

How to make your website user-friendly for international visitors:

1. Hire a multi-lingual web designer to design a site specifically for your target country

Many brands choose to build a site for each country they sell to.  For instance, if you visit the website for H&M, you are automatically directed to the site for the country you are located in.  But you can also choose to visit the sites for 35 other countries, from the Netherlands to Saudi Arabia.  Each site is in the correct language and characters.

2. Make your single website as clear and simple as possible

If you don’t want to build multiple sites or use multiple languages, make sure your English site is clear and straightforward so that international visitors with a limited knowledge of English will be able to use it.  For guidelines, check out the Plain English Campaign at http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/.

One caveat:

Cross-border sales are becoming far more common in e-tail, and expanding your sales internationally is a great way to make money.  However, international sales continue to have a slightly higher incidence of fraud, so ensure that your payment system, delivery, and website in general are as secure as possible.

internet marketing, online business, selling products online

The claims of FFA sites are some of the most hyper-inflated on the internet: “Retire in 6 months!”, “Bring thousands of visitors to your website!”, “Turn water into wine!”  (Okay, I made that last one up.)  I’m here to tell you that advertising on FFA sites and even owning one yourself is pretty much a phenomenal waste of time.

What is FFA advertising?

FFA stands for Free For All.  Basically, an FFA site allows you to advertise your online business for free.  Sounds good, right?  Well, read on.

Why is advertising on FFA sites a waste of time?

Unfortunately your ad is one of hundreds on a website purely devoted to advertising.  When is the last time you visited an FFA site to thoughtfully read all the ads and choose something to buy?  Probably never.  The same maxim holds true for the rest of humanity.  Even if people did visit FFA sites and read the ads, yours is usually removed after about an hour to make room for the next batch.  Even if you are foolish enough to pay for premium placement, the chance of anyone seeing your ad and actually visiting your site is nil.

What if I actually own the FFA site?  Can I make money then?

Probably not.  The point of owning an FFA site is to collect email addresses or “leads”.  Everyone who posts a free ad needs to provide you with their email address.  However, most people submitting to FFA sites now use an automated system and/or second email account so they can instantly delete all the spam email that comes from the hundreds of FFA sites they’ve posted their ads on.  So most of the “leads” you collect will be worthless.

Can I earn commission by signing other people up for FFA sites?

This is the newest dimension of FFA advertising.  If you think you will make money this way, I have some Tahitian Noni Juice I want to sell you.

There are legitimate ways to advertise cheaply or for free online.  Some banner ad exchanges, classified sites, and inexpensive Pay-Per-Click services will bring traffic to your website.  But unfortuantely FFA sites won’t.

internet marketing, online business

In online business, a large amount of your marketing efforts are directed at bringing traffic into your dropshipping website.  One way that you can do this is through a Direct Domain Navigation marketing strategy.

What is Direct Domain Navigation?

Instead of performing a Google search, many people looking for a specific product simply type a generic word into the URL field of their browser.  For instance, if I was looking for mittens, I might type www.mittens.com into my browsers instead of doing an actual search for mittens.

How can you use Direct Domain Navigation to bring traffic to your dropshipping website?

By registering multiple generic domain names that all feed into your dropshipping website, you can capture traffic from Direct Domain Navigation.  The point is to bring traffic from multiple addresses into one website.

If I type www.mittens.com into my web browser, where will that take me?  Hopefully to your website.  Your main URL might actually be www.themittenshop.com, but because you’ve registered other similar addresses, you get traffic from Direct Domain Navigation.

Other reasons why registering multiple domain names is important:

• Though it’s preferable that your main URL be a .com address, you will want to register the .net, .ca, etc. addresses so your traffic won’t accidentally go to somebody else’s site.

• Registering common misspellings of your domain name can also prevent lost traffic.  Wal-Mart lost a huge amount of visitors until they registered www.walmart.com as well as www.wal-mart.com.

• Some major brand names also use the multiple-domain strategy to build websites for a specific promotional event.

What is the downside of Direct Domain Navigation?

Many of the most common generic domain names will already be owned by someone else.  However, with the advent of domain marketplaces, you can often purchase URLs from current owners for reasonable prices.

internet marketing, website design / help