Should You Monetise Your Business Website?
October 9, 2007
Do you have a business website which targets a local area market? If so, you may have considered finding other ways to monetise it.
I did this with our Kwik Fix site. We’re happy with the results the site has brought us in the first few months. But, we noticed we had a lot of “wasted traffic”. That is, we had many people arriving at our site that weren’t within our target market, because they didn’t live in our area of the country. So we decided to add some affiliate products to the site.
We’ve only just began adding other money making channels to the site over the last month, so it’s still early days. But here’s what we discovered so far, and I hope our findings may help you, when you’re deciding on additional profit centres for your business website:
Some products don’t sell well online: These are usually the higher cost purchases that people prefer to see in real life before buying. For us, bathrooms come into this category. We should have realised this, as most of our customers call us first then visit our suppliers showroom before making a decision. So, when you’re deciding what additional products to sell, consider whether they’re the type of thing people will buy online.
Target customers who are searching for specific items: We decided that if we were going to add more profit centres to our site, it would be worthwhile advertising them. We ran a test on Google Adwords for our bathroom accessories section and uploaded about a thousand keywords to Adwords using Wordtracker.
Although we made some sales we didn’t break even. This is because we were sending everyone to the same landing page. We’re now amending this so that if someone is looking for something like “black and white shower curtains” we send them straight to the product they are looking for. Obviously these type of campaigns take a while to set up properly, but targeting specific keywords definitely pays off.
Don’t Go Overboard: Don’t overwhelm yourself by joining heaps of different affiliate programs to begin with. Google the type of products you are looking for and find out which affiliate management program the supplier belongs to. Or join one of the following large management programs such as Commission Junction, Trade Doubler, Share a Sale, or Link Share.
Compare Commissions Carefully: The commission rates that some merchants offer are just not worth it. And I’m not suggesting you refer people to rubbish, but if you have to choose between an excellent product with lousy commission rates and a good product with excellent commission rates, recommend the good product. If you’re forking out for advertising, you need to make a profit.
Run Small Low Cost Tests: If you’re running a pay per click campaign such as Adwords, run small low cost tests first. It takes a lot of patience, but it saves you wasting a heap of cash.
Check Your Links: Before you begin your pay per click campaign, check all your affiliate links carefully to ensure they work. I forgot to do this once, and lost £75 on Adwords in a couple of hours. Also, check that the merchant’s site isn’t down, and also that their pages are loading fast enough.
Check How Quickly You’ll Get Paid: Check when you will be paid, and also what the minimum payout is. And be aware that some items, such as hotel stays don’t pay out until the customer takes their trip. Obviously, this is incase they cancel. But, you could have a long wait to get paid if they’ve booked well ahead.
If you’ve never tried affiliate marketing before, the Super Affiliate Handbook is a great resource.
Have You Failed as Many Times as These Success Stories?
October 8, 2007
Mistakes are a great tool for helping you achieve your goals. I should know - I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve “failed”.
In fact, almost 14 years ago, I hit rock bottom and I didn’t even believe I’d live another decade, let alone achieve anything worthwhile. If you want to know what went wrong, check out my updated “about me” page.
Nowadays, I don’t dwell on things, because I realise that mistakes are just stepping stones on the path to success. And if you don’t believe me, you might want to consider these famous failures:
This company who went bankrupt 3 times. Their first failure was due to gambling on the price of sugar. And now they make billions in net profits every year. Their name is Pepsi Cola.
A famous politician had a life full of failures, including several political failures, two bankrupt businesses, and a nervous breakdown His name was Abraham Lincoln, and the rest is history.
You would expect that forgetting to put a reverse gear in their first car would lead to the kiss of death for a car manufacturer. So, it’s not surprising that Henry Ford went bankrupt twice before getting it right.
The woman who turned up at the bank wearing jeans and without a business plan was turned down for a loan. But that didn’t stop Anita Roddick from going on to build The Body Shop.
And if they can do it, so can you.
Don’t Allow Your Business To Be Ruined By Scum
October 6, 2007
Who are the scum who could ruin your business? Well, whilst several things can go wrong - the biggest enemy of small businesses are bad payers. And you need to avoid working for these a..holes at all costs, because they could bankrupt you.
Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with bad payers. In fact, I’m owed so much money from the business I sold last November, that it has had a detrimental effect on my plumbing business. And, in truth, many businesses who were owed as much as I was in my last business would have gone under. But, I was lucky that I had a huge volume of work coming in, so money from people who did pay kept me ticking over.
But, you may not be so lucky. So, I want to make sure that your business doesn’t suffer at the hands of bad payers. I also intend to name a few of them - because they deserve it. And I’ll begin with the insurance industry.
If your business does any work for the insurance industry, or if you have business or home insurance, you might want to read this post on Royal Sun Alliance - RSA - The Insurers Who Don’t Like To Pay.
And if you live in a country where Arab German Insurance operate (they pulled out of the UK market), you’ll definitely want to read this: Make Sure You’re Not Scammed By This Insurance Company.
Now, it’s not just insurers who are bad payers. And while many large companies are despicable when it comes to paying on time, often individuals are just as bad. In fact, I recently read an article in the national press which suggested that as many as 20% of individuals deliberately try to avoid paying businesses like yours.
So, in the coming days, I’ll be writing a few posts on how to avoid being ripped off by the scum that don’t pay. And even if you’ve just launched your business, and don’t have many customers yet, it is really worthwhile paying attention to this series of posts. Then you know what to look out for, and don’t get stung right at the very start.
10 Interview Tips to Avoid Hiring An Idiot
October 5, 2007
Interviewing potential staff does not come naturally for most. In fact, I completely f…ed up the whole recruitment process several times, and I’m still learning. But, making the wrong recruitment decisions can be fatal for a new business and you don’t want to hire complete f…wits. So here’s a few interview tips to help you avoid screwing up:
1) Practise on Your Dog: Interviewing can be just as nerve racking for the interviewer as it is for the interviewee. Practise on someone else first - family, friends, existing staff, your dog - anyone who is willing to help.
2) Don’t Interview Idiots: When you’re sifting through application forms - don’t be tempted to interview any “maybe’s”. There is no point wasting time interviewing people who don’t even sound right on their application. I have done this many times before, and whilst you sometimes get to hear interesting stories in these situations, it’s no fun interviewing someone who is quite obviously as high as a kite.
3) Plan Like MI5: Plan your interviews carefully - write down questions in advance, and stick to those same questions for each person you interview. And if you can, have someone in the interview with you to take notes. If this isn’t possible - take notes yourself.
4) Set the Eggtimer: Before the interview begins - tell the candidate how long it will take. Also explain that you have set questions you wish to ask, and if he/she has any questions - they may ask them when you’re done.
5) Tell Them To Shut Up: Sometimes a candidate will chatter a little mindlessly at the start of the interview, because they’re nervous. However, if they won’t shut up, and take over the interview, preventing you from asking questions, politely terminate the interview early. Don’t feel bad about doing this. I’ve sat there for over 2 hours listening to someone who wouldn’t shut up. If you employed someone like that, you’d wind up strangling them anyway, so there is no point in allowing the interview to continue. It just wastes time.
6) Don’t Expose Yourself: Be careful not to ask too many questions on the same topic. We were obsessed with recruiting someone honest, and asked too many questions about honesty during one interview. And obviously, any candidate with half a brain will get an idea of what you’re digging for and give you the answers you want to hear.
7) Dig Up The Dirt Ask specific open ended questions. Eg: Don’t ask “Do you think it’s important to go the extra mile for customers?” Say, “Give me an example of a time when you went the extra mile for customers.”
And don’t ask “Do you enjoy your current job? And how do you get on with your boss?” Instead say, “What do you like least about your current job? And tell me about your boss’s weaknesses.” Believe me, these type of questions will help you find out a whole heap more about a potential candidate than the softly softly approach.
Don’t Get Ripped Off: Don’t use an agency to find permanent staff for you, unless you are absolutely certain that they offer a top notch service. I’ve paid thousands to agencies before, only to discover that they didn’t even interview the candidates, never mind vet them.
9) No Buts: If you’ve interviewed your shortlist and nobody seems suitable - don’t recruit out of desperation. Keep interviewing until you get the right applicant. I’ve interviewed people before and said things after the interview like - “They’re ok - but they talk far too much, so they’ll probably do that when they’re meant to be working”, “Or they’re ok, but I don’t think they’ll work well unsupervised and we really need someone who can do that” etc etc. And you can guarantee - if you give them a job, you will prove yourself right about one thing - the “but” will become a reality.
10) Listen to Yourself: Go with your gut instinct. If you have a bad feeling about a candidate, no matter how well the interview seemed to go otherwise, you’re probably right.
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