Small Business Information

Who wouldn’t like to increase their sales by 500%? Well there have been some reports of some very creative use of video that have achieved increases just like that but … and there’s always a but …

It’s not simply a case of shooting some video and uploading it to your site … there’s more to it than that and here is an interesting place to start if you’re thinking of including some video on your website. Be sure top watch the video but don’t try it at home … your wife might kill you.

So you’re thinking of selling your products to Baby Boomers and you’re going to give it a try using social networking?

Well … you could be missing most of your target audience. A study conducted in the United States last month found that only 22% of the baby boomers who were surveyed used social networking sites.

A further 26% of respondents said that they didn’t use social networking sites but they might at some time in the future. A whopping 53% of those surveyed said that they don’t use social networking sites at all.

Many respondents said that they just don’t see the point of social networking sites. Of course these figures are likely to change in the future.

Some of us have come into this industry and built our online businesses from the ground up. Others prefer to take the shortest possible route to what they see as success and so they buy an existing website that’s already making money.

But are those websites really making as much money as you think? Here’s an interesting story about a website that looked as though it was making a heap of money but a large cashflow was quite deceiving.

Our web design team have just completed an interesting project for a client who wanted to gently encourage people to come into his business rather than get in their face and almost demand that people do business with him.

It was also a project that’s aimed at a relatively small town full of retirees … it will be interesting to see how things go as we slowly introduce the site to the community. The pharmacy in Hervey Bay website was … and will be … something of a challenge.

If you haven’t heard of Twitter before … and you’re involved in marketing … then you’re missing something very important. Twitter isn’t just a place to stay in touch with people … it’s a place to market your products and a place to learn too.

There are some very cluey marketers over there doing business every day and it has a reach like you wouldn’t believe … and it’s getting bigger every day. Even Nasa spacecraft have a presence on Twitter.

But getting out there into the Twitter world isn’t just a case of joining up and then having contact with everyone. You actually have to choose which individuals you will follow and some of those will then elect to follow you … that’s when you can have a real dialogue with those people and begin to learn as well.

So how do you get started? The first thing is to head over to Twitter and sign up. Then come back here so that you can follow this link to my Twitter page. Once you’re on my Twitter page you will be able to see who I’m following and you’ll be able to join those that interest you.

But take a tip … before you begin to start trying to market on Twitter spend a lot of time getting to know how it really works and learning from the guys who are already doing well over there - otherwise you’ll end up wasting your time.

If you’re involved in affiliate marketing and you have the misfortune to live in New York State then this post that outlines the message sent out to merchants from LinkConnector is definitely worth reading.

If you’re an affiliate marketer and you don’t live in New York State then I don’t think you have any cause to feel smug. Once one state makes a grab for extra revenue by imposing a tax on Internet sales then every state … and every country for that matter … will want join in.

I’ve been talking recently with another website owner just up the coast from us about advertising on websites. We’re acting for a couple of clients who want to buy some advertising space on his celebrity website and we’ve been interested to hear of his thoughts on where he wants advertising on his site to go.

We’re also interested because we’re thinking of taking advertising on some of our sites beyond the usual Adsense and CPA ads. Don’t get me wrong, those forms of advertising were fine when we were building the sites up but now that they’re getting decent page views, but now that the sites are really starting to hum we want more.

That’s why we found this post over on Shoemoney’s blog so interesting.

There’s an interesting article on geotargeting over on ClickZ today where the author claims that Geotargeting has come of age in e-commerce. Well maybe it has in the United States but if you’re marketing to places outside of the US then don’t believe the hype it’s not very accurate just yet.

Here in Australia a geotargeted ad can be so wrong that it can make you laugh instead of buy. Not only can a geotargeted ad be out by hundreds of kilometres but, because of the way our system is set up here, locality names can be used that are basically meaningless to consumers.

One day things might change but we’re not there yet.

In the United States Hitwise has found that traffic to Google Checkout is dwindling by quite a substanial amount - 34% down for the week ending December 8 compared with the same time last year. (That report is here)

Yet in the United Kingdom traffic to Google Checkout is slightly above the traffic levels that are headed PayPal’s way. So if you’re an online merchant which billing option should you choose?

Here is a quote taken from a comment in the Hitwise report on traffic to PayPal and Google Checkout in the UK

“… they told me that as a dog breeder, I am in violation of their policies on acceptable products. It took Google checkout a year to figure that out. I went back to Paypal several weeks ago and have not looked back. Google checkout customer service stinks.”

You can read the Hitwise post and all of the comments here.

Christmas can be a very busy time if you’re selling online and, while Christmas is just about over for this year, it’s never too late to get some great tips that will help improve your sales next Christmas.

You’ll find 50 of them here and now is the perfect time to start preparing for next Christmas.