Image Source: My Ghost Courtesy of piccadillywilson

Few days ago, I posted “The key to turn your traffic into cash – Conversion rate.” I realized that conversion rate is the key to identify your success of online business. Web site traffic is important, but it doesn’t bring your profit until the conversion rate kick in.

I have been misled by so-call marketing experts. They promised to generate traffic and increase SERP, but none of them can actually bring me the good conversion rate. Of course, there are many facts that will make your conversion rate up and down. So I decided to learn it the hard way. I truly believe that an e-commerce store can sell anything and still become success, if you know how to find your customers and make them pay. You can read my E-Commerce Golden Rules.

Why those marketing experts failed to bring me a good conversion rate?

First of all, I have to admit that I am no expert in marketing, but I have the basic common senses to identify “Working” and “Not Working.” It’s all about cash flow. If your ROI (return of investment) is negative for 3 months, you need to re-think about your investment strategies. Running small business like mine, I don’t have a lot of money to invest. 3 months is long enough for me to change my strategies.

Here is the list of things that stop me from paying marketing companies.

1. Too expensive and zero conversion rate!

2. Zero understanding about my niche and the products I am selling.

3. Can’t identify my true competitors. I get a list of 100 competitor web sites. Most of them have lower traffic and SERP than mine. Few of them are selling different type of products.

4. Sub-contracting to other marketing companies for viral marketing, web directory, link building and article marketing.

5. Drag me to sign up marketing network, marketing tools, so they can get affiliate commission.

6. I can do better job analyze my Google Analytic data then they do.

7. Told me my site is not working, because I don’t have free shipping, buy one get one free deal, free e-book, and long text landing page for marketing.

8. Ask me to deposit at least $200 at front for Google AdWords. It turns out they bid every key phrases for $0.80+, which is much higher than the average rate for my keywords. No wonder they promise me to get at least 250 unique visitors a day. Yeah. Right. I only get 250 unique visitors a day and I have to deposit another $200 for tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and so on?

9. Recommend me to sign-up StumbleUpOn, Digg, Mixx, Entrecard and so on. I have done that way before they started their marketing business.

After all this hassle and painful experience, I lost the trust to marketing companies. I may be treated better and getting better results, if I have million dollars to spent and redesign my online stores. I just don’t believe that I have to have million dollars to make my marketing effort working, otherwise, there won’t be so many small businesses running in the USA. Just like Zappos CEO – Tony told me on Twitter.

It doesn’t have to cost a lot of $.

You can read that at Start Last – Finish First – Are you the next Zappos?

What should I do next?

I know this is going to be hard for me to do all these by myself, but I am very exciting to make it works. I will put together my marketing plan one step at a time. I am going to do it the hard way and earn my own victory. The idea is this.

If I can figure out the tips and tricks about Internet Marketing, I can sell anything at anywhere I want on the Internet.

To be continuing…