The Internet Entrepreneur Diary

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Where have I been lately?

This is the question I got from my friends, since my last blog post at Weekend Confession 11 - Where I was? Where will I be?

I know my readers tend to spend less time on reading my blog post. I know. I know. There are many reasons that people don’t tend to spend too much time on reading blog post. One of the reasons is that there are too many blog posts to read. I am one of them. I read hundreds blog posts a day. I scan the keywords and decide to stay or to leave. I also spent time on forums and social networking sites as well. Time is so limited.

In the past two weeks, I have tried many ways to boost my online business. I researched, practiced, discovered and made some conclusion about what I have found and done.

1. Internet Marketing Bubbles - I smell and felt the DOT COM Bubbles of Internet Marketing. If you are a blogger, you pretty much sense the trend of Internet Marketing crap out there. There are too many so-called Internet Marketing experts out there selling their service with single landing page. They want you to buy into their non-sense program to boost your sales. What exactly they teach you? They teach you how to do SEO, generate web site traffic and sell your own marketing crap.

2. MLM - I have heard this over and over again. I used to work for company selling herbs supplements with MLM (Multi-layer-Marketing). You get paid by commission. Now the MLM is invading the Internet Marketing industry. There is no physical product. You …

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While reading the blog post on Google Reader, I realized that I have posted “Increase page ranking with DIY marketing strategies” in the past. It was one of my top visited blog posts. Looking at that post again, I felt that I was drawing on the white paper like a young child. It’s nothing but a kid’s play.

Doing serious business requires serious marketing strategies. If I don’t seriously plan my marketing strategies, I will not get anywhere I want my business to be. I have spent two days reading the book I just bought about marketing toolkit for small business. So let’s play like an adult in the business world.

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This afternoon, I spent 6 hours in the book store and tried to pickup a marketing book that will help me boost my online business. I pick one from the 16 marketing books. The book is written by Beth Goldstein, founder of Marketing Edge Consulting Group, LLC. The book name is The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Toolkit: All the Tips, Forms, and Strategies You’ll Ever Need!

I have a lot of reading home work to do. I may come back to pick few of the rest 15 marketing books.

If you read my blog post in the past few days, you probably feel my anger about the marketing company. I have decided to fire my marketing companies and do Internet Marketing on my own. The goal is to lower the marketing cost and boost the sales.

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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.

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After wrestling with the marketing companies, I have decided to go with low cost or zero cost DIY Internet marketing strategies on my own. Regardless what you are doing on your sites, you need to have marketing strategies. I will be recording everything I have learned on my entrepreneur journey diary. I am hoping to help other entrepreneurs learning what I have learned and to avoid making the same mistakes that I have made.

Again, I am not marketing expert. I would love to get real suggestions from real marketing experts. Let me start from scratch and find the brutal facts.

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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.

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First of all, I have to admit that I forgot to post my weekend confession last week. I don’t quite remember what I was busy for. I did spent time on the Internet promoting my online business. It turns out that my online stores have getting more traffic everyday. The shopping season is official started.

In the past week, I have been working extremely aggressively to increase the traffic to my online store. I know the economy is down, but I still believe that people are buying stuff online. According to my conversion with one of the Zappos staff, Zappos is still going strong this year. They must done something right to drive their business forward. You can read my blog post about that at Start Last - Finish First - Are you the next Zappos?

Now I have generated traffic to my stores, how do I turn that into cash? We all know that conversion rate is the key to make good profit and the key of the online business success. I want to turn the red light into a green light for my business.

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I was reading some news about the success story of Zappos.com. - The number one online footwear store. If you don’t know anything about Zappos, You can read the following news on CNN. Shoe In - Zappos has become the No. 1 footwear retailer on the Web by making customer service a competitive weapon.

Personally, I am also a satisfied Zappos customer, but I am not here to promote Zappos. I was amazed by how a start-up company growing so fast in so little time. I don’t want to repeat their success story here. What I really like to do is to think how the rest of us can learn from Zappos.

While reading the news, I decided to follow Zappos CEO Tony on Twitter.

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