Create an online store to earn money:
So I was thinking the other day about how many people I see on a daily basis starting ecommerce sites with just the hope of making money (just because they’re there). I guess this attitude comes from the offline world where if you open a store you will get some foot traffic (and therefore sales) from people just passing by. The point is, people don’t stumble upon your website (and usually don’t) because we don’t just randomly type in our addresses in the hopes that eventually it will work.
Getting back to this point, it’s amazing how much people will spend on creating a new website in terms of design and programming compared to the little money set aside for promotion. In my opinion, your promotional budget should always be twice your construction costs.
This also brings me to another very important point. If you are hoping to make money with this ecommerce business for a while, surely you want to have this skill in-house? SEO is a full time job after all, do you really want to pay an outside agency money for the rest of your internet career? The way I see it if you are starting an online store, you have a few options to increase your income with SEO.
Go with a marketing agency. They should have a number of employees in different specialties ranging 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 a monthly “pay as you go” type option, which is ideal for a small business start-up. The main downside that I can see is that there is no real investment from your own point of view of knowledge or training.
You can hire an SEO wiz-kid to work for you. It sounds simple because you could have someone working for you full time who will likely be cheaper than a marketing agency. However, finding them might not be easy and they might not have as much of a reputation as you would like, so the safety net might not be there. Plus, since they have to be good at whatever they do, they have to be a little bit special, as it takes a lot of skill (and organization) to take advantage of all aspects of net marketing.
Learn it yourself? It sounds intimidating because internet marketing is an ever changing landscape, do you have the time to stay up to date? If you have some computer background it might not be too hard to learn, but other people from a completely different field might struggle. Of course, even if you’re paying someone else to do the job, knowing the basics still helps.
As you can see, there are 3 main options for increasing your sales (and hopefully your money) through internet marketing, but they all have their downsides and advantages. Yet internet marketing is never an overnight thing, so you’ll likely have the time (and need) to use all 3 methods at some point. Until next time.