The Internet Entrepreneur Diary

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Do you have e-commerce online stores? Do you sell goods for profit? How do you market your site in your niche? Do communicate your customers without interact with them on the phone or face to face?

If you are running e-commerce online store and are having some troubles to reach your customers, you need a blog to rescue your online store. Personally, I am a believer about marketing and branding. I am also a believer of my e-commerce golden rule. I believe that spending time marketing is somehow more important than spending time make perfect products. You can read my golden rule at How to succeed in the e-commerce world? Follow the 30/70 golden rule. You can also join my discussion about your thoughts on that.

What can a blog do for your e-commerce online store?

Have you even nailed a piece of wood on the wall? Do you remember that your teacher told you to put at least two nails on the wood to make sure it’s done right? Personally, your online store and blog are the two nails to your online e-commerce business.

If you have an online store, you have a niche. Without a niche, you will get lost in the Internet jungle. As an online store owner myself, I build my store front-end first. I have all my store elements ready before starting my blog. Once my store is ready to lunch, I did the following tasks to ensure that my store will be seen on the Internet.

• Register domain name to all Search Engines.
• Register my store URL to free web directory in your niche.

Now You are ready to start your blog for you online store. The goals are to use your blog or blogs to promote your online stores to achieve the following in very short time. I mean less than three months.

• Get good Google Page Ranking - PR3+
• Drive traffic to your online store
• Get a good Alexa traffic ranking
• A great branding and exposure to the public
• To interact with your potential customer
• To compete with your competitors
• To show your customer that your are serious about your business
• Be the number one blog in your niche
• Make extra money off your blog

Let’s take a look at each goal and see how we can achieve that.

Get good Google Page Ranking - PR3+

In the past few months, I have implement a way to get a huge amount of quality backlinks back to your blog and online store, in order to get a better Google Page Ranking. It’s simply a DIY strategy by using RSS FEED between your niche blog for your online store. You can find out how I did that at Increase Google Page Ranking with RSS FEED - No buying, selling and bribing and DIY - Build quality backlinks with RSS Feed on blogger and wordpress. With the RSS backlinks to your blogs, it increases your page ranking in less than three months.

Drive traffic to your online store

It’s your blog. It’s your choice to link and direct your traffic to your online store. I post my hot deals, discount coupon, new products, news, announcement and industry news on my primary blog, which send traffic to my online store. Ideally, you will need to have your own unique domain name for both your online store and blog. For example, my fashion jewelry online store is at www.profashionjewelry.com and my primary blog can be found as subdirectory of my online store at www.profashionjewelry.com/blog/. It’s very important to your success. I will mention that later.

Get a good Alexa traffic ranking

Why you need a blog under your subdirectory, but not your subdomain like blog.your_domain.com? A subdomain is a totally separate identity and site. In other words, Alexa count those two URL as two different sites. When you send traffic from your subdomain blog to your online store, Your traffic is divided into two sites. It gives you no benefit to gain Alexa Traffic Ranking.

Why is Alexa Traffic Ranking important? It simply represents how much traffic goes to your store. The lower number means the topper position your store at in the huge Internet jungle. If you have better Alexa traffic ranking, it will give your store more credit. That’s why you need to have your blog or any other sub-application for your store under the same primary domain. For example, you can have your forum, Wiki and FAQ under the same domain with different subdirectory. Alexa will combine all your traffic into one.

A great branding and exposure to the public

With your blog, you have a greater chance to be known by million people who search on the Internet. Especially for people who search on Google Search Engine. Google has recently implemented Universal Search, which includes blog post. In many case, you blog post is searchable or on the top search result in your niche one hour after you post your article. It gives your reader a strong message that you are active site and store.

Just to make sure that you register your blog with FeedBurner and add your store site map and blog site map on Google WebMaster Tools. Now, you just need to update your blog post at least once a day. It will make your blog expose to million potential readers and customers.

To interact with your potential customer

Two best article topics to post in your niche to attract your potential and interact with them are the HOW-TO and FAQ articles. Regardless what you are selling, people are looking for solutions. If you are selling cell phone, you post topic about how to fix iphone, clean iphone DIY tips and trick. You give your potential customers a sense of your care. They will come back for more.

To compete with your competitors

A blog is a great way to show your competitor that you are making progress while they are not. You can also show your competitors why you are better than they are. One good suggestion is not to write anything crappy or bad mouth about your competitors. It will destroy all your hard working to build your business.

To show your customer that your are serious about your business

Just like I mentioned above, your frequent blog posts will show your customers that you are updating your site and you are serious about your online business. Blog is also a place to answer your customers question and knowing what they are looking for. Keep eyes on your most searchable keywords and make them a blog post or FAQ entry. Your will notify your customer that you have answer for them on your blog. They will come back and give you some love.

Be the number one blog in your niche

Be the number one blog in your niche is very difficult, but very possible. It takes time to get you there, but will pay backs the big time. It’s basically branding your business with a corporation image. That is where my Golden rule becomes the reality. Your brand and market your blog to the top of the world and business opportunities come after that.

Make extra money off your blog

OK. This is not the original intention about your online business. When your e-commerce online store becomes so popular, you will find people coming and go. They search a lot of stuff and get to your site, and they found out that you don’t sell the stuff they are looking for. It’s your chance to fulfill their desire by offering your customer something you don’t sell. For example, I don’t sell really diamond on my store. So I re-direct my customer to a really diamond store for their need. What I am getting is the commission from the sites I list on my blog.

Just to make sure that you do NOT sell any other items on your store. Only do that on your BLOGs.

You want people to buy your stuff, which should be the primary source of your business income.

Do you have an e-commerce online store? Do you have a blog to support your store and nailed down your business?

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