That Way

Image Source: Lt. General Rochambeau Courtesy of dbking

I can’t believe the time goes by so fast. I need another weekend confession. Since my last weekend confession about How big is too big? Is my big picture too big? Working on increasing my e-commerce store conversion rate is my top priority. I have spent time review my current status and progress of my online business. I decided not to bother paying huge money to just increase my business profit. Doing Internet Marketing on my own will not just make sure it works for my niche but also increase my knowledge how to replicate that to the next one.

I need to make sure I am on the right track and heading to the right direction.

The past few weeks were not very profitable. I can only confess that I have spent too much time on building my social profiles. I truly believe building a social image is as important as building your reputation. It takes time to build up your corporation image and reputation.

With social network, I am actually learning more about communication and how people act in the virtual social world. The most important part to join social network is to help me realize who is telling the truth and who is just a fake social entrepreneur.

Based on my observation, at least 30% of social entrepreneurs are not doing as good as they claim. They are just someone like me, who is trying to get their foot wet in the social world. The positive side of the fact is that I have chance to learn from the rest of 70% social entrepreneurs.

What have I done in the last weeks?

  1. I joints Sphinn.com - The Internet Marketing News and Discussion Forum. I have heard about this web site that many marketing experts are posting their articles. It’s going to be a great source for me to search the answers of my Internet Marketing challenges.
  2. I also was very active on few micro blogging platforms. Twitter and Plurk. I was having so much fun with friends and strangers. It’s very time consuming, but it’s very interesting ways to communicate with others and see what people are talking about.
  3. Reading more and more marketing materials on how to do Internet Marketing and to increase conversion rate. There is one articles that written by Yahoo and is worth to give it a read. It’s about Improve Your Conversion Rates.

What challenges I am facing?

  1. Find a good quality manufactures to sell their products is difficult. So I will have a different approach to find my suppliers.
  2. Need to optimize my online stores for a better user experience and conversion rate. The disadvantage of using open source shopping cart is the lacking of features. Although it’s free, you get what you pay for. Investing on a better commercial shopping cart and better design is inevitable.
  3. Collecting emails for potential customers without looking too much like a spammer is difficult. You can buy email address from third party, but I am sure 99% of them will not be a pre-qualified buyers. I will just waste money on email marketing.
  4. Build up a brand is much difficult than I thought. A brand is not just a domain name, a fancy logo or easy to remember name. It’s about building the trust between your company and you customers. It’s difficult to build that trust when you don’t have a lot of customers. The good things are that you only have few customers to deal with.

Things have to be done!

  1. Start the new approach to find the quality suppliers. Learning more about what I sell from the local companies is a must.
  2. Online store Make over. This may take a while, but this is the only way to ensure the growth of the business.
  3. DIY marketing strategies. This is the toughest challenge for me, but it doesn’t look that tough.
  4. Research on price. Knowing what price other competitors are selling is important for me to compete with them. I don’t think I need to lower the price, if I can provide a better quality products and services.

My mind is set. My direction is pointed. It’s time to enjoy life and spend some quality weekend with my lovely other half.

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