Image Source: dubai airport Courtesy of babasteve

In the past few weeks, gas price went up so much. I am so glad that I am working from home. Don’t need to spend a lot of dollar on my SUV. I started thinking about how I can survive when the economic is slowing down. It’s time to have another weekend confession. Few days ago, I posted a thought about conversion rate, the most important key fact to make profit online. I was working on generate more traffic to my online stores, which I did a good job. I was shocked about the traffic I was getting to my online store, when I promote them on some of the social networking sites. My traffic went up three times higher and the bounce rate went down to as low as 20%. It means 20% visitors stay longer on my online store.

However, most of the traffic came from countries that I don’t do business with. It means that my conversion rate went down dramatically. Was I wrong about what I did? Actually not. I actually see a big picture because of that.

I have been reading posts about Internet marketing and communicating with some big gun online retailers. I have also done some research on how to make quick money online in the past months. Everyone knows that there are so many ways to make money online. The newest hot thing is about “Build a Niche Store (BANS).” You simply build a niche store with eBay affiliate partner network. Yes. I believe many people have succeeded in that business and make a lot of money with so many niche sites. As far as I can tell, the BANS are already over crowded. You still face the same issues to increase your conversion rate. Spend too much time on BANS without a big picture of your business model will eventually make you a loser.

Personally, I still believe that selling something people need from once a while to everyday will make real long term money. There is no long term success with short and quick money. It doesn’t matter you are selling physical goods or services; you need to have a big picture.

How big is too big? Is my big picture too big?

When I asked myself the question, I realize that the big pictures is not something you just popup in your brain and call it big picture. It came from the facts around you. The big picture is composed with many small pieces of facts. You put them together and you realize what the whole thing is all about. I realized that my big picture is never too big.

I have made the following confession.

1. I have to admit that doing online retail business was not my original intention.

2. I also admit that I have no idea about the stuff I am selling. Really;

3. I have no idea about what women wants in my past 30+ years, but I can totally see the buying power from women and the paying power from man.

I have also discovered one very important fact about myself.

Many successful business men always told you that you should something you can do the best. Stick with it and you will be able to success. I think it depends on your personality. If you have passion about something, you pretty much can do it very well. However, you may be very good at what you do, but you are in the crowded niche or market. There are so many people who can do even better than you do.

I have to admit that I have no passion on one thing. I have passion on too many things. My monkey personality makes me interested in many things. I realize that I actually do much better job on new things that I discovered than on the thing I am really good at (programming).

What is my big picture?

I realized that I was targeting the crowded market in the USA and Canada. I also realized that there are other countries that I can do better and get better chance to survive and to grow, because not many people is willing to do it over there. I felt exciting when people from other countries asking me how they can get products that they could not get in their countries. That’s opportunities of new business. Isn’t it?