Well. From Google’s perspective, my business sucks! It’s time to look back and give my self a serious examination.

Plenty of competitions

My online stores are at the idle mode. The income doesn’t really cover my cost to bring new customers in.  There are few reasons that I don’t consider e-commerce store my dream maker.

• Too much hassle to deal with customer service, inventory and drop shippers
• Too many competitions in the industry
• No proprietary technology to stand out from the crowd.
• Too easy to get in, but hard to get out!

I am not saying e-commerce is not possible to make fortune on the Internet. It’s primary due to the industry I am in and I don’t have my own brand and products. I have NO control!

My main project to promote local businesses is growing slowly. Revenue is tripled compare to 2009, but it’s not good enough to be proud of. I am far from becoming a $6B company like Groupon. The main power to drive the business rely heavily on search engine optimization (SEO). However, the biggest risk also came from SEO. The following diagram shows the search engine traffic since I launch the site in March 2009. The search engine traffic was going very well and becomes flat. I don’t know where I will be going with SEO, because the ROI is way down.

Not to mention that there was 17 competitions in just Phoenix area when I started in 2009. Now some of them went under and some of them are now behind me. Most of them are no where to be found on the major search engines, but they are doing great on social network and building viral relationship with end users. Some of them were brought out by Groupon clones. Now, there are more new comers trying to do what I do or become Groupon clones. So I’d better move faster.

Start from scratch or become a clone?

I have this debate for a while. There are about 20 Groupon clones in just Phoenix area. Every TV station and newspaper now have their own daily deals site to catch the social buying and group buying train. Where am I in the game? Should I follow the crowd and become Groupon clone too?

The fact is that almost every Groupon clone is making some money. Have I made that much?

I really suck at sales and marketing!

I truly believe that I can write the best code in the world. Some of the program I wrote years ago are still running in many International companies. I am just not good at sales and marketing.

Even I have a friend helping me out on sales and marketing, He is not much better than I am. This situation need to be changed.

Right direction with right vehicle!

Google obviously knows where the money goes. Local is the next biggest things since DOT COM era. I am in the right industry on the right direction, but I need the right vehicle. So I have a new idea that is extended from my current project and Groupon’s success.

I can’t really reveal the idea, because a good idea is just an assumption. It has no meaning until it is executed. However there are characteristics in the project.

• No front cost or low cost to local business owners
• Unique user driven content
• Create a sense of emergency
• A self-motivated sales force
• Easy to use
• No inventory and No Shipping
• Forget about SEO.
• Forget about economy
• Forget about supporting local businesses

Am I crazy? Isn’t that violate my own purpose of creating this project, if I don’t support local businesses?

To be honest, I have tried my best to support local businesses and realized that most local businesses I support don’t even care about what I do. That really really pissed me off. All they want is to get everything FREE and go cheap while I am trying to help them?

Does Groupon support local businesses? They may say so in their press release, but what they did is nothing but making good fortune off local businesses. Local business is the biggest loser.

Really. Business is a brutal world. If you are too nice and too naive, you will be eaten alive.

I can still talk about support local businesses for a great cause, but it will just be part of the Marketing strategies.

Building the team!

Really. The biggest mistake I have made in the past 2 years is working alone and working with the wrong people. I should re-read the Good To Great book again. It basically says that the most important key to make a good company a great company is people. It’s always WHO first.

I have learned the lesson. The lesson is not about learning sales and marketing. It’s about learning how to run a company like real entrepreneur. If I want to achieve my goal as Lifestyle Entrepreneur, It’s about time to make that happen!

2011 is going to be a dramatic year. It’s not the year for Mr. Nice guy or the guy who take every crap dumped on him.

Goodbye 2010.

Is your business listed and verified on Google Map?

Recently, I was asked to help a local computer repair shop to get their Google map listing back, because their competitor took over their unverified business listing and reviews. They lost all the phone calls and customers. That’s how important Google map can impact a local business.

Now the company got their listing back and the phone starts ringing again. With some optimization and clean up done, the company are currently the #1 computer repair shop on Google Map in the regular search result and Google Map search in their City. How wonderful that is!

I also helped a local nail salon claim and optimize their Google places listing. In matter of few months, they are on top of Google search result as well. Now there is a “We’re a Favorite Place on Google” window sticker on their front door window.

Would you like to have one for your company?

If you look around, there are not million but thousands web sites using Google map to display address, business, restaurants and in many unbelievable awesome application. Now Google is even offering Google AdWords in the Google Map. Local business can now also pay a flat fee to advertise their business on the Google map with a little icon. I am not sure what the click through rate is, but Google will try everything to use all the possible space on landscape in the Google map.

So local search marketing becomes a new trend!

Other than the above two examples. Google Places listing can definitely help local business out perform their competitors. I gave one of my neighborhood business friend a helping hand to claim their business listing on Google and helped them optimize their information. The result is great! They are on top 7 spot with almost every service they offer. For a small local businesses like this one, it’s a huge improvement!

Here are the improvement in the past 60 days.

To be honest, optimize your Google Places Listing is not very difficult. You just need to do it right. I got my own listing flagged twice, because some keywords was used in the information, which automatically raise the warning.

From Google’s eyes, there are certain words that will raise the flag and get your listing banned. Especially for those companies doing nothing but SEO, link building and PPC.

Is your local business verified on Google Map? How dose your listing ranked on the search result?

Just to give you few truly honest advices when optimizing your listing on Google Places.

• Follow the Google quality content guideline.
• Don’t Spam!
• Don’t Manipulate Keywords

Still need help? Contact me!