50 ways to make your first online sale from Shopify

SALE
50 Ways
to MakeYour
First Sale
–SEAN WORK
MARK HAYES
A high-impact guide written for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.

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Contents
CHAPTER 1
Make Friends on Facebook
CHAPTER 2
Network on LinkedIn
CHAPTER 3
Get Busy on YouTube
CHAPTER 4
Spark Conversations on Twitter
CHAPTER 5
Inspire with Pinterest
CHAPTER 6
Work It on Instagram
CHAPTER 7
Tap Into Tumblr
CHAPTER 8
Comparison Shopping Engines
CHAPTER 9
Get On Google Places
CHAPTER 10
The Yahoo! Bing Network
CHAPTER 11
Get Search Engine Optimized
CHAPTER 12
Learn from Web Analytics
CHAPTER 13
Be Accessible on Mobile Devices
CHAPTER 14
Get Product Reviews
CHAPTER 15
Write a Press Release
CHAPTER 16
Pull a PR Stunt
CHAPTER 17
Sell a Unique Product
CHAPTER 18
Interview an Industry Influencer
CHAPTER 19
Write a Guest Post
CHAPTER 20
Create a Viral Video
CHAPTER 21
Start Your Own Blog
CHAPTER 22
Write a Controversial Blog Post
CHAPTER 23
Create a YouTube Channel
CHAPTER 24
Build Your Email List
CHAPTER 25
Advertise on Facebook
CHAPTER 26
Pay for Google Adwords

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CHAPTER 27
Buy Banner Ads
CHAPTER 28
Promote Your Tweets
CHAPTER 29
Get a Booth at a Market
CHAPTER 30
Local Business Networks
CHAPTER 31
Go to a Meetup
CHAPTER 32
Sell Wholesale to Other Retailers
CHAPTER 33
Take Your Business On the Road
CHAPTER 34
Deploy a Sales Team
CHAPTER 35
Get Going with Tradeshows
CHAPTER 36
Go Door to Door
CHAPTER 37
Use Print Ads
CHAPTER 38
Sponsor an Event
CHAPTER 39
Distribute Flyers
CHAPTER 40
Advertise Outdoors
CHAPTER 41
Tell Family and Friends
CHAPTER 42
Participate on Forums
CHAPTER 43
List on Craigslist
CHAPTER 44
Give Out Coupon Codes
CHAPTER 45
Do Affiliate Marketing
CHAPTER 46
Build Relationships with Suppliers
CHAPTER 47
Demonstrate Trust and Security
CHAPTER 48
Think Global
CHAPTER 49
Get Things Done
CHAPTER 50
Be Persistent
GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Chapter 1 Make Friends on Facebook
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CHAPTER 1
Make Friends
on Facebook
One of the easiest and fastest ways to make your first online sale is by
leveraging the power of Facebook. This social media powerhouse has two
separate mechanisms for you to launch your brand. They are:
Your Personal Facebook Profile.
Your Brand’s Facebook Page.
You’re probably familiar with your own Facebook profile. However,
Facebook Brand Pages are a totally different beast and should be operated
in a different way. Lets get into how you should operate both your personal
profile and your brand page during the early stages of your new online store.

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Your Personal Facebook Profile
This will be your best friend during your first months of starting up.
However, you have to treat your Facebook profile with a lot of respect.
Otherwise you will lose friends and potentially lose your account.
There is nothing wrong with doing a little self-promotion on your personal
Facebook profile. Your friends and family will likely love to see what you’re
up to as long as you don’t overdo it. Sharing products with your personal
Facebook profile is very effective, in fact, studies show that upwards of 62
percent of people read such posts.
Source: Sociable Labs
A good rule of thumb is to update your profile about once a day with either a
link to a product from your online store or website.

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You can also share a press mention about your business.
Or a link to a tweet from a fan, friend or family member.

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Another idea is you can post a survey or ask a question.
Also, maybe about once a month share your “about us” or “story” webpage.
The story about your business is a great form of social currency, so spend
time crafting a good story. From time to time you might also want to paste
in the text about your story from your website instead of just pasting the
link. The reason for this is that more of the text will show up on your friend’s
feed, thereby delivering more of the story right off the bat.
Now it’s still possible that once a day is too much for your friends and family.
You will have to be the judge of how much is too much. If you need to tone
down your posting frequency because of complaints or loss of friends, then
consider scaling it back a notch.
Finally, remember to keep using your personal Facebook profile for what it’s
meant for. Continue to share photos, news articles, liking people’s posts and
being a normal user. Don’t switch over to “business only” mode. All you are

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going to do differently is occasionally posting something relevant about your
new business.
Your Business’ Facebook Page
Facebook Pages are designed for businesses, brands, and other types of
organizations. Facebook only wants you to promote your business through
your Facebook page. That’s why we stress that you should keep business
promotion through your personal Facebook profile to a minimum.
With Facebook Pages, only people who have Liked your Facebook page
will see your updates. In a sense, these people have given you permission
to advertise to them. This is a very key point about online marketing these
days – permission marketing is much more effective than the old days of
spamming everyone under the sun. The good news is that with a Facebook
page, you’re in good company, with over 70 perfect of B2C companies
acquiring a customers through the social platform.
Source: Hubspot
You will promote on your Facebook page exactly like how you do it on
your Facebook profile with posts and links to products, PR mentions, and
stories about your business. However, a better way to get deeper engagement
on Facebook is to post updates on things that are not directly related to
purchasing one of your products.

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A great way to get more Facebook page engagement is to post:
• Industry trends and news
• Funny, cute, and high-quality photos (that you have a legal right
to publish)
• Uplifting stories
• Inspirational Quotes
• Fun polls or surveys
Although some of these updates won’t have anything to do with your brand
per se, they will bond a stronger relationship between your brand and
those that have “Liked” your Facebook page. What you are doing here is
strengthening your fan base, which generally pays dividends down the line.
Here’s the key: Do not overly promote your brand and your products - only
post a couple times every day. Most importantly, be sure to respond to
comments and keep the conversations going.
Since a portion of your Facebook friends will also be fans, be sure that you
don’t post the same content on both your profile and page on the same day.
Always change up what you’re posting to keep your Facebook campaign
fresh from every angle.
At first, there is a large likelihood that your Facebook page won’t have
as much as an effect as your profile. But the important thing is to keep it
updated often. Years down the road, this effort will pay off. The reason for
this is because you will be nurturing a marketing list – a powerful marketing
strategy that we’ll talk about extensively in this book.
Now that we have gone over the difference between profiles and pages, lets
get into some actionable stuff you can do right now:
1 Create a list of all your family and friends. Go through your Facebook
page and email contacts one by one. We suggest putting their names
and email addresses in a spreadsheet.
2 Reach out to each person with a personalized email or Facebook
message. You don’t have to ask them to buy your product, but simply
ask for their feedback. Even ask if they will write a testimonial.
3 A few days later, ask each friend and family member to Like your
Facebook page. You may not want to send a spammy all-inclusive

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email to everyone, but actually take the time to message each person
individually.
4 At a later date, ask them to post a message about what you are doing
on their Facebook feed. Don’t forget to give them information on
where they can purchase your products.
Check out 10 more Facebook Pages optimization strategies here.
Now if you are incredibly lucky, this initial marketing campaign might be
enough to ignite your business into an overnight success story. However,
chances are it will simply be a good introduction to a wide audience of
people, and it will likely cause you to make your first sale.

Chapter 2 Network on LinkedIn
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CHAPTER 2
Network on
LinkedIn
Think of LinkedIn as your professional Facebook profile. Depending
on what you’re selling, you may find yourself spending as much time on
LinkedIn developing your business as Facebook.
Now the advantage of LinkedIn isn’t necessarily just making direct sales.
It’s also about expanding your network and creating a wide array of
opportunities.
Hopefully, you already have a LinkedIn profile and have been managing it
over the years. If not, no worries, go ahead and sign up for one now.

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How to Make Connections on LinkedIn
Like Facebook, LinkedIn is a social network, but instead of “friending”
people, you simply “make a connection”. Obviously, the more connections
you have, the larger audience you can broadcast to. Ecommerce merchants
should expand their network as much as possible. Here are some ways you
can increase the number of connections:
1 Use LinkedIn’s “Add Connections” feature – When you are logged
into your LinkedIn account, you can click on “Contacts” and then “Add
Connections”. This feature will scour your email contacts and make
suggestions of people you may want to connect with on LinkedIn.
2 Go through your old business cards – If you’re like us, you probably
have collected hundreds (if not thousands) of business cards over the
years. LinkedIn is a great place to put those business cards to use.
3 Add your friends and family members from Facebook – Doubling
up on people from multiple networks may seem counterintuitive. But
when you’re marketing your product or service, it’s the number of
“touches” that count before someone decides to do business with you.
By having some of your Facebook friends as LinkedIn connections, the
familiarity of your message will become more prominent with them.
4 Every time you meet someone new add them to LinkedIn – In
your day to day operations, you’ll likely be emailing people that you
do business with. If you have established a good rapport with them,
search for them on LinkedIn and try to make a connection. If you feel
comfortable doing this with certain customers, you may want to add

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them as well. Having them see your accolades, awards and credibility
may strengthen their trust in you and your business.
It’s really important to only make connections with people you know or have
met in the past. Don’t add people you don’t know or have no connection to
at all. Not only does LinkedIn frown upon adding people you don’t know, it
also lessens the effect for when you broadcast your messages.
How to Complete Your Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is basically an online resume. You’re going to want to
fill out your past job experiences and of course, what you are up to now.
A lot of people will read your “summary”. So spend time crafting something
engaging about your new business venture. Here are some things you can do
to spice it up:
• Tell a story– Stories are much more fun to read than your typical
resume jargon. Humans have evolved to remember things via story
telling.
• Clearly express your unique selling proposition – It’s vitally
important to clearly convey to people why your online business is
different and stands out from the rest.
• Tell people how they can help you – At first this advice may sound
a little self-serving. But in a networking environment it’s perfectly
acceptable to let know people know what kind of customers you’re
looking for. Doing this actually increases the power for other people
to conduct effective networking with you. They will know who to

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send your way, and you’ll likely want to know who to send their
way. For example, if you ran an online skateboard store you could
say “The ideal customers for me are teenagers looking for their first
skateboard setup”.
A QUICK NOTE ABOUT POSTING UPDATES
The one thing that differentiates LinkedIn updates from Facebook updates
is that they are seen as professional messages. On Facebook, people post
whatever is on their mind, so an update doesn’t always hold much weight.
When someone sees your update on LinkedIn, generally your network will
take it much more seriously.
The Three Things You Should Post on LinkedIn:
1 Links to your product web pages – Since you’re in the business of
selling something, feel free to post links to your products. It’s totally
acceptable to do this because this is business and that’s what LinkedIn
is all about. Like Facebook, you probably want to keep your updating
to some sort of a minimum. Don’t get into the habit of spamming
your network.
2 Content that your network will find valuable – LinkedIn is a great
place to share useful content that your network will like. This can be
from any online website or blog. Spend some time collecting good
articles, infographics and videos that your network will appreciate.
3 Your own content – As you build your online presence, a smart
thing to do is to create digital guides to inform and educate online
visitors. Buyer’s guides, infographics and instructional videos are
forms of marketing material that you can share on LinkedIn.
Finally, when you’re posting updates be sure to write a description in
addition to including links to your website. Conversional blurbs tend to
get more engagement from your network than sales pitches or boring
product descriptions.

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How to Get Started with LinkedIn Groups
Browse LinkedIn’s suggestions for “Groups You May Like” and join groups
that are very active. If you’re like us, as soon as you join a group and peer
through the latest discussion, you’ll be eager to put in a couple of words.
And that’s exactly what you’re going to do here. You’re going to educate
people as unbiasedly as possible.
Here are a couple tips to make LinkedIn Groups go the extra mile for you:
• Don’t Spam – To remain a long standing member of a group, you’re
going to have to fit in. Generally groups don’t like people who come
in and overly promote their business. Over time, your group will
bring and refer business to you (that’s the point of networking).
• Join Discussions Frequently – Spend time every day adding your
thoughts to a current discussion. Show that you are the expert in your
area and always remain unbiased.
Depending on the groups you join and the nature of your products – you
might unearth gold mines of future customers or at the very least your first
one. For example, if you run an online shop that sells kayaking equipment,
find a few kayak enthusiast groups and share some knowledge. It’s really that
easy. Treat these groups and connections with the utmost respect to yield

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years of return in the form of customers and referrals, out of which you
might just get your first sale.
Networking On LinkedIn 101
You’ve probably heard that networking is an important thing to do at some
point in your life. While of course that’s true, there are a few things you need
to know about networking to make it effective. Here are 4 tips to help you
network on LinkedIn:
1 Find the best groups that work for you and stick with them.
As you go out and interact with groups in real life or online – some
groups are going to create synergy and some aren’t. Figure out what
groups work for you and ditch the ones that get you nowhere.
2 Continuously meet with the same people so they remember you.
The more people see you on a repeated basis and know what it is you
do, the easier you come to mind if the opportunity for them to refer
you arises. It may sound incredibly obvious – but we can’t stress how
important and powerful familiarity is when it comes to networking.
3 Don’t network sporadically. It’s easy for people who are beginning
to network to go out and try a gazillion different groups. Don’t do
this. Find a few groups and stick to them. This will conserve your
energy and again help out with the familiarity factor mentioned
above. And above all, ask other long-time networkers what groups
work well for them.
4 For networking to become effective, it takes time. After your
first couple weeks of networking, you may feel that it’s not worth it.
You need to stick with it for at least a few months. Be sure to follow
up with people and continue to meet with your groups. Professional
networkers will tell you that networking is the only form of
advertising or marketing they ever do.
These rules apply for both the offline and online world. The important thing
to remember is that you should only network with online groups that are
active online. Don’t waste your time with people who have just joined up
once and haven’t visited in months.

Chapter 3 Get Busy on Youtube
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CHAPTER 3
Get Busy
on YouTube
YouTube usually ranks around the second or third most popular search
engine on earth. It provides a powerful tool for business owners and has an
unlimited amount of creative ways in which you can drive traffic and sales to
your ecommerce store.
One of the main advantages of YouTube, is that your video will be included
in Google and YouTube search results. Each video you create is a piece of
inbound marketing content that will help you sell for years to come. You
can also use YouTube videos on your own website to help communicate the
benefits of your products.

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How a YouTube Video Helps You Sell
It’s all about product videos. Let’s say you sell jewelry online. Create a short
video showing off a unique piece that you carry. For example, let’s say you
sell a piece of jewelry called “heart within a heart.” To help drive online sales
of this item, you could create a video showcasing the design, material and
luster of this piece of jewelry.
When you upload your videos to YouTube, there are three things you need
to pay close attention to:
1 The Title – The title of your video is what will bring the targeted
customers in. So be very mindful of how you title your video.

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Think of keywords your target customers may be searching for to find
your products.
2 Link Back to Your Product Pages – In the description of the video,
be sure to link back to your product pages. That’s how you can get the
casual YouTube video viewer to become a customer.
3 Your Tags – Tags are a good way to attract YouTube users by interest.
They also act as keywords that help people find your video. The
important thing to remember with tags is to list your most important
tags first.
How to Make YouTube Videos
The number one road block to starting with YouTube comes from people’s
fear of video editing. Lucky for you, video editing has never been easier.
Here are some simple ways to create your own videos with no experience or
big upfront costs.
IPHONE EDITING
Honestly, you can go to town and shoot pretty decent video with your iPhone,
edit the video and upload it to YouTube without ever having to use a computer.
• iMovie – We recommend trying this app first. iMovie’s learning curve
is really easy. It puts out great looking video and gets you on your way
quickly. The app is currently priced at $4.99 - which honestly is a joke,
considering how powerful a tool like this is.
• Reel Director – Just as easy to use as iMovie and at $1.99 – it’s worth
having a back-up video editing app.
If you are an Android user, there are plenty of video editing apps out there.
Magisto and VidTrim are some of the popular apps on the market.
ONLINE VIDEO EDITING
If you want to avoid dealing with apps and downloading software altogether,
you can edit video entirely in the cloud these days.

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• YouTube Editor – Good old YouTube has a simple online video editor
that allows you to do transitions and text.
• WeVideo – Another online option that works on any browser and it
excels at collaborating with other people who may be working with you.
DESKTOP VIDEO EDITING
If you’re a Mac user, again we suggest using iMovie (but not the iPhone app
version). It’s a free application that makes video editing a breeze. If you’re
a PC user - we’ve personally always been a huge fan of Camtasia. Not only
is it video editing software, it does screen recording as well. It’s similar to
iMovie in that it has an easy learning curve.
What Kind of Content Should You Produce?
This is where you can really open up the creative floodgates. The most boring
thing you can do is simply film your product and talk over the video. “We
have this widget in red, blue and black. Please click the link below to buy it.”
But we understand that it will come down to a battle of creativity vs. how
much time you have to make videos.
If you decide to really invest time into making an awesome YouTube channel
and dedicate a lot of time and energy into it (and yes, it will take a lot of time
and energy), you may find this will be your go to marketing source for years
to come. In our opinion a YouTube channel is as powerful as having your
own Cable television channel.
Trust us though, it’s all well worth the effort. For example, Luxy Hair who
sells hair extensions online has built a million dollar business built primarily
off the back of providing helpful and engaging content on YouTube.

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In general, some categories of content for you to consider are:
• Educate – Chances are you know a lot about your products and
the world surrounding them. Produce videos such as visual buyer’s
guides, compare and contrast demonstrations, and “how-to” videos.
• Solve Problems – One of the main reasons people conduct searches
on YouTube is to find a solution to a problem. Instructional videos
always make great video content. You could probably go on for years
showing your customers how to solve problems through videos.
• Interview Professionals – In some cases, great content can be
created by interviewing professionals in your industry. If you’re in a
sporting goods industry, usually interviewing professional or even
amateur athletes can make great content. But even professionals in
woodworking or cosmetic industries have very valuable things to say
to your audience.
• Describe Phenomenal Products – If you have some truly
newsworthy products in your inventory, then go ahead and create
videos explaining the amazing features of these products.

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YouTube Power Tips
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR FREE LINKS
Be sure to link to your product or category webpage inside your YouTube
description.
Not only does this help direct YouTube traffic to where people can buy your
products, it also helps with your search engine optimization efforts.
TRACK YOUR VIDEO PERFORMANCE WITH
YOUTUBE ANALYTICS
With YouTube analytics, not only can you monitor your views over time,
but you can also get to the bottom of things like the source of traffic, your
audience demographic, as well as your how well your video retains attention.

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KEEP YOUR INTRODUCTIONS SHORT AND GET TO THE POINT
It’s a common newbie mistake to produce long and dramatic branded video
introductions. By all means brand your introductions by displaying your
logo within the first few seconds on your video. But get straight to the point.
Get to your message quickly - no longer than 3 seconds into the video.
Studies have found that people’s attention spans drop off very quickly when
watching videos. So don’t have really long videos. Try to keep them below
two minutes in length unless you are producing an educational video. Either
way, video content is one sure way to rake in that first sale.

Chapter 4 Spark Conversations on Twitter
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CHAPTER 4
Spark
Conversations
on Twitter
Twitter can be a powerful tool to help online store owners grow their
business. Without investing too much time or money, you can easily drive
traffic to your ecommerce store. It’s also a great way to engage with your
customers once your business is up and running.
But before we get into how you can use Twitter to make some sales, let’s first
talk about some important account setup housekeeping.

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Setting Up Your Account the Right Way
PROFILE PHOTO
You should make your profile avatar your business logo. When it comes to
branding, it’s important to be consistent across all your online properties to
avoid confusion.
YOUR BIO
This is the perfect location for your company tagline or value proposition.
Keep it short and sweet and don’t be afraid to have some fun.
Black Milk Clothing uses the tagline of “Give me nylon or give me death.”
It’s fun, concise, and quickly describes the company’s vision statement while
connecting their community with a single anthem that unites them.
YOUR WEBSITE
Always link to your homepage in your Twitter bio section.
YOUR BACKGROUND
Backgrounds can be used in many useful ways. You can either choose to use
large branded artwork or provide an image that displays contact or support

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information. If you have design resources, go nuts and create something
beautiful. But if you’re running on a budget or time constraints just keep it
simple. A plain background is just fine, or you can add some information
about your business.
In this example, we’re showing some basic contact information placed in the
upper left hand corner of a Twitter background.
Direct Engagement
Twitter has an amazing real time search feature. You can listen to anyone’s
Twitter conversation - a feature that can help you increase sales. Here’s an
example, let’s see who is talking about Supra shoes:
Simply type “Supra Shoes” into Twitter’s search field:

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The result will be a real-time result of people that have mentioned the word
“Supra Shoes” in their Twitter conversation(s).
This will display almost everyone that has tweeted about Supra Shoes. At this
point you can scour the results and pick someone to have a conversation with.
Here are some things you can approach them with:
• Offer coupons – If you find someone who has just purchased a
similar product that you sell, you can offer them a coupon for the
next time they are in the market for a similar product.
• Ask them about their purchase – If they have just purchased an
item you sell, you might want to ask them about their experience to
learn why they bought from your competitor. If they bought it from
you - thank them and see how they’re enjoying the product.
• Send them links to your products – if you discover someone
discussing their interest in a particular product, feel free to send them
a link to what you have to offer.

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You might want to include a hashtag of the product brand name in your
tweets. This will allow people who search for the hashtag to find you among
results easier. For example:
You only want to do direct engagement a few times a day. It can be
considered spam if you do it too much. As a matter of fact, we highly
encourage that you read through Twitter’s spam policies here.
Whatever you do, don’t spam every person that mentions one of your
products on Twitter with links to your product pages. That’s a gross misuse
of Twitter and is considered spam. It will make you an awful human being.
LISTEN AND CONVERSE
If you read almost any blog post about how to use Twitter effectively for
your business, the most common advice is that you need to “listen”. Most of
these articles write about how to listen if you’re an established brand.
The idea is to engage people on Twitter who are talking about your brand
and respond to them appropriately to build customer loyalty.
For someone just starting out you want to listen in a different way. Chances
are no one is talking about your online store just yet.
SO WHAT DO YOU LISTEN FOR?
Use Twitter as a public platform to show that you are an authority and
genuinely help people.
Solve problems and lend help – Listen in on people who might be having
problems that you can help out with. Think of keywords that might indicate

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that someone is having a problem that you can solve, and type them in the
search field. By helping people solve problems, you can build your follower
count with people who are active in your industry. This will make them
more susceptible to becoming future customers.
Discuss the current state of your industry – By joining in on
conversations surrounding industry events, changes and news, you can
establish yourself in the “who’s who” of your niche. This will open the doors
for partnerships, networking and as a business that happily accepts referrals.
Show brands that you like – If you sell multiple brands, you can always
show off brands you like and give the brand a little mention by using the @
and # characters. Not only does this publicly announce that you carry these
brands, you’ll also strengthen your relationship with them.
Share Interesting and Useful Content
The single most powerful thing Twitter is good for is to disseminate valuable
or interesting information. Based on your niche you should tweet out
articles, pictures and videos that your audience will enjoy. This is a great way
to start up conversations with other Twitter users who are interested in the
same type of things your online store offers.
For example, if you operate an online surfing shop, you would want to tweet
out links to videos of amazing surfing clips a few times a day as well as
amazing surf photographs.
Occasionally throw in a tweet about some of your most enticing offers with
links to the product page. And as always, throw in a hashtag representing the
keyword or brand name.

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Finally, you may want to tweet out coupon codes. They may get picked up by
Twitter searchers and spread like wildfire.
To further amplify your tweets and go viral these tips will definitely come
in handy.
How To Behave on Twitter
The general rule of thumb in the world of social media is to not overly
promote your business. Think of communities like Twitter and Facebook
as online cocktail parties. You wouldn’t bust into the middle of an ongoing
conversation with an opening like:
“Visit Hi-Top Heaven for the best deals on hard to find hi-tops, sneakers and
today’s most fashionable trends!”
Instead, you would gradually start a conversation and let what you do
unfold naturally. As you start to build a following you’ll experience the
profitable benefits of followers first hand. In fact, a follower is 72 percent
more likely to purchase from you. One more reason to keep your eyes
peeled to your newsfeed.

Chapter 5 Inspire with Pinterest
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CHAPTER 5
Inspire with
Pinterest
Pinterest is a great new visual social platform that is increasingly
becoming a powerful source of customers for online store owners.
Since it’s primarily a visual experience, it’s a great place for your product
photos to shine. However, you must have a few creative bones in your body
to get it to work. The effort is well worth it though, especially considering
that visitors referred from Pinterest are 10 percent more likely to make a
purchase from you.

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Use The Pinterest Button On Your Website
The easiest thing you can do to drive brand awareness and eventually sales
to your website is to let your visitors do the “pinning” for you. By installing
the Pinterest pin button to your product pages, your website visitors can
post images from your online store to Pinterest. This is a great strategy since
you’re getting a third party endorsement from outside your company. You
can get the code to add the button here.
Creating An Account For Yourself
And Your Business
This is an important distinction and you’re going to want to do both. As the
founder of your company your social network will be interested in what
you have to pin. Additionally, you should create a Pinterest account for your
company here.
The goal here is you can double down on your Pinterest activities by
being both an individual user and business on Pinterest. You’ll quickly
find the limitations of both and surely will want to take advantage of both
account types.

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Creating “Smart” Boards
When you pin an image in Pinterest, you can assign it to a “board.” It’s better
to create boards that focus on a specific theme. For instance, if you run an
online surfing shop, you might want to create one specific board on “1960’s
Longboards” and another called “Classic Fishes” (fishes being specific retro
surfboard shape).
It turns out that when you assign themes to your boards, you tend to attract
more interest. To give you some ideas for your online store, you could create
boards representing:
• Holiday gift ideas (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day etc.)
• Back to school
• Specific themed vacations
• Clothing ensemble themes
• Gifts for your boyfriend

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When you get really popular you can let your customers contribute to
your boards.
ADDING PRICES TO PINNED IMAGES
For certain items that are always in stock, you might want to add a price to
your pin of that image. To add a price simply add the price with a “$” sign
and corresponding value in the description.

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We want to reiterate that it’s important that you only add prices to pinned
products that are regularly in stock. The last thing you want to do is have
people coming from Pinterest disappointed that the items they so excitedly
saw on your board is out of stock.
Your Strategy Should Be To Inspire
The power of Pinterest lies in its ability to get people to discover amazing
images, videos and products. Instead of just plastering your Pinterest boards
with product images, your goal should be to inspire potential customers with
the products you sell.
If you’re an online fashion boutique, it’s all about presenting your clothing
in a way that gives potential customers an idea for an ensemble they would
want to create.

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The above ensemble was designed to give fashion ideas to Pinterest visitors.
Try creating groups of products that can inspire potential customers. If
you’re good at creating these groups, you’ll strengthen your brand’s authority
in your niche.
Other Crafty Things You Can Do with Pinterest
• Create a testimonial board – If you receive hand written
testimonials from customers, snap a photo of them and pin them to a
dedicated board for testimonials.
• Use hashtags – Just like Twitter, Pinterest allows hashtags. For
specific subjects, be sure to use hashtags. For example, if you run an
online store specializing in women’s dresses you might use hashtags
like: #formalwear, #prom, #fallfashion.
• Host a contest – You can promote a contest where your fans and
followers can create boards about your brand or around the products
you sell. This is a great way to generate interest in your brand and get
other Pinterest users involved.

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There are probably a thousand or more ways to spin your Pinterest marketing
to generate online sales. However, the best way to find out is to get your
hands dirty and start pinning, start generating traffic, and the more visitors
you get, the more likely one of them is bound to give you your first sale.

Chapter 6 Work It on Instagram
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CHAPTER 6
Work It on
Instagram
What makes Instagram so popular is that it’s basically Facebook boiled
down to its single most engaging function: sharing photos. Throw in
some brilliant photo filters and you’ve got one of the fastest growing online
communities to date. And of course, Instagram is also a great marketing tool
for your business with a lot of potential for getting you that first sale. So, let’s
discuss just how you and your business can benefit from Instagram.

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Delight the World with Your Photos
The whole point of “Instagraming” is to take photos that will generate some
sort of positive and viral reaction. The worst thing you can do on Instagram
as an online retailer is to upload thousands of white-background product
pictures and hope to get tons of traffic.
Boring!
No one will follow, like or comment on an account that does that.
This is an upload from Sharpie, a photo that is both motivating and has
smart product placement. Motivating and positive are great themes for
Instagram content.
Here is another great use of Instagram – Active Mailorder (and online
action sport retailer), uses Instagram in this upload to advertise an
upcoming video premier at one of their shops. The artful and comedic
execution is something to take away.

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How to #Hashtag
Knowing how to “hashtag” is key to getting more exposure on Instagram. It’s
a great way to attract people from all over the world to your account page.
The key to “hashtagging” though is to use a mixture of broad and specific
terms for your hashtags.
For example, say you posted a photo of your best-selling limited edition
Air Jordan basketball hi-tops, you might want to use the hashtags: #kicks
#sneakerheads #jordans #airjordan #ballin #hi-tops #sneakers #nike.
If you ran an online kayaking store, and you posted a photo one of your
sponsored kayakers doing some amazing whitewater kayaking you could
use the hashtags: #kayaking #extremekayaking #snakeriver #kayak #rapids
#whitewater #class5. You would also include the name of your sponsored
athlete as a hashtag.
Keep using 5 - 10 appropriate hashtags and you’ll notice people increasingly
liking your photos.
Photo Tips
Instagram doesn’t let you link to your online store from individual posts
(they only allow you to link in your bio). So you have to be clever about how
you get people to know what you do.

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One way to get people to your store is to watermark your images with your
domain name:
One thing to keep in mind about Instagram is that it will crop your images
into a square. So if you are going to watermark your images, be sure that
you don’t put your domain name in any corner of your photo. Take a look at
what happens to the photo above once it’s cropped into a square:
The next thing you may consider testing is to put in coupon codes on
your photos.

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Frequency
You should be conscious of how often you post on Instagram. The general
rule of thumb is to only post a few times a day. However, some people
are very successful posting once an hour. In these cases, these posters are
successful because they have exceptionally good image content.
You’ll have to test to see what works best with your audience. Keep track of
your follower count closely. If too many people start unfollowing you, then
it’s probably a good idea to tone down your posting frequency a bit.
Run a Contest with Instagram
Instagram is a great tool to build buzz around your product which not only
can help your brand go viral, but also lead to that holy grail of that first
sale you’re after. Getting started with running a contest on Instagram is
pretty simple:
• Choose an incentive (prize)
• Pick a campaign hashtag
• Create a contest “theme”
• Aggregate and display the photos online

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Not to worry if you don’t have the know-how to grab your contest photos
from Instagram’s API, luckily there are plenty of tools out there that do just
that for you. A few we recommend that you get to know are:
• TINT
• PIXLEE
• Statigram
• Olapic
• Venueseen
Incentivizing your Instagram account through contests is a fantastic way
to build engagement and build a loyal following who’ll have no problem
spreading the word about your products for you.
A Final Word About the Secret to Instagram
Though it may appear to be just a mobile photo sharing app, Instagram is
being used by small and large brands alike to generate enormous amounts
of sales. For example, Black Milk Clothing uses Instagram to create user-
generated content it then adds to its product pages.

41
Use Instagram with the intent to engage your followers with something fun,
entertaining, and eye-catching. Otherwise, you’ll end up putting mediocre
content out there that won’t attract interest from others, much less their
hard-earned cash for your goods.

Chapter 7 Tap Into Tumblr
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CHAPTER 7
Tap Into Tumblr
Marketing with Tumblr is a lot like marketing with Instagram. The idea
is to wow people with your images and attract a large and loyal following
who’ll not only purchase your products but become evangelists for your
brand. And just like with all social media communities, what you don’t want
to do is overly promote all the time. To be successful on Tumblr means you
have to master the art of posting creative and inspiring content that makes
an emotional connection with people.
Here’s how to use Tumblr to bring sales to your ecommerce store.

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Creating a Tumblr Name and Picking
a Specific Theme
Before you blindly sign up for your Tumblr account, spend some time
strategizing your marketing angle. You should really make your Tumblr
blog ultra-specific and highly thematic. This will help make your Tumblr
blog resonate more with people which will create more viral shares,
backlinks and followers.
There is no point in rebuilding your own company blog on Tumblr – you
should use Tumblr as a very creative offshoot for your brand. This will keep
the content unique and attract die-hard followers.
Plan ahead by writing down 10 to 20 posts that can solidify your theme. Ask
yourself: “Will I be able to consistently come up with content that fits with
my theme?” If the answer is “yes”, then you’re ready to create your account. If
not, ask some trusted peers – they might have some great ideas.
When you create a Tumblr account, you’re going to do something a little out
of the ordinary. You’re going to want to name your Tumblr blog something
creative, most likely without including the name of your business in it.
For example some popular Tumblr blogs have names like:
• OCD: Obsessive Corgi Disorder. A blog of corgi dogs.
• Awwccupy Wall Street: A Tumblr blog that showcases the Occupy
Movement’s cutest protesters.
• Oscar PR Girl: A Tumblr blog that takes you behinds the scenes of
the Oscar de la Renta fashion brand.

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Oscar PR Girl is a Tumblr blog that shows a behind-the-scenes look into the
Oscar de la Renta designer brand.
Again spend time thinking of a fitting name before you rush into creating
your account. The payoff might be several-fold if you’re somewhat patient.
Adding Content and Tagging on Tumblr
As a micro-blogging platform, Tumblr is a lightweight platform that let’s you
add content almost as quickly and seamlessly as writing a tweet on Twitter.
Simply select the icon describing the type of content you want to add and
you’re good to go.
Like Instagram, you can attract more people to your Tumblr blog by using
tags effectively. You should pick tags that not only describe what your

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picture is about, but also think about categories and themes your photo
may be associated with. For example, if you upload a stunning photo of a
dog catching a Frisbee at the beach (let’s say you operate a pet toy store),
you might want to use tags with the names of: pet toys, super dogs, dogs,
summertime, jumping dogs, Frisbee.
There is a loose rule of thumb that you shouldn’t use more than 7 to 12 tags
on Tumblr. Not only does it seem to bring in the most optimal number of
traffic to your blog, but any more is considered spamming.
How Tumblr Fits in Your SEO Strategy
One great reason to use Tumblr is that you can strategically try to rank on
the first page of search engine results by creating keyword rich titles for
your Tumblr posts. Say you already rank on the first page of Google for
“Neon Green Tennis Shoes,” you could try to claim more first page real
estate by creating a Tumblr post called “A Collage of Neon Green Tennis
Shoes”. However, you wouldn’t duplicate the content that’s on your original
blog post. You would instead create an entire new post, but have the same
keyword in your Tumblr title (Neon Green Tennis Shoes).
You can use this same strategy for many of your social media and blogging
accounts that you may be using across the Internet.
Tumblr also allows you to create meta descriptions and image alt tags.
Remember, meta descriptions are the little snippets on search engine results
pages that live under your page titles. It’s a good idea to craft a couple engaging
sentences to try to entice search engine users to click on your results.
Be sure to fill out your image descriptions (alt tags) for your Tumblr photos.
These image descriptions are what search engines use to understand what
your images are about. By filling out these descriptions, your images will
appear in image search results like Google Images and Bing Images.
Getting the Cool Kids to Buy
The majority of Tumblr users fall under the category of 18-34 years in age,
which means it’s a young crowd that’s too cool for Facebook, Pinterest, and
Twitter. So if you want to capture their attention and get them to visit your

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store in hopes of turning them into customer, create content that resonates
with them and popular culture. If you can do that and crack the code for
going viral, you’re sure to generate enough buzz to not just get your first sale,
but ultimately build that business of your dreams.

Chapter 8 Stand Out on Comparison Engines
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CHAPTER 8
Comparison
Shopping Engines
As an online retailer, comparison shopping engines are obvious places
to get your products in front of the masses and see who bites first
for that glorious first sale. Sites like Google Shopping, Shopzilla, Bing
Shopping, Nextag and Pricegrabber have millions of shoppers searching for
the best prices on online products – so surely you’re going to want to get
some of those shoppers over to your online store.

48
Having your products listed in these engines can have a very quick response
in terms of immediate business. Almost all of these shopping engines
require you to “pay to play”. Regardless, we want to discuss these channels as
something you should look into early on to get some business momentum.
How They Work
Generally, most comparison shopping engines work the same: you upload a
CSV (Comma-Separated Value) file to their website feed – and they will put
your products in their engine. This can be done by putting your products
in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (or any spreadsheet for that matter) and
saving it as a CSV file.
In these files you will specify typical product information such as:
• Product tile
• Price
• Description
• Image location

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Depending on which shopping engine you are submitting to, they will have
different requirements for how you should format your CSV file. It’s pretty
easy, and you will get the hang of it in no time.
Once your product data is submitted and processed by the comparison
engines, they will display your product on their website to a huge online
audience of shoppers! Generally, when a shopper clicks on your listing, you
are charged for the click and the shopper is sent to your website to hopefully
make a purchase.
So yes – you are basically paying for window shoppers. But think of it as a
highly targeted advertising campaign, where people have been filtered before
clicking on your ad. And because they have been filtered, it’s a much better
place to put your money than say in an untargeted website banner ad.
The Problem with Comparison Search Engines
Depending on your business strategy, comparison shopping engines might
force you to do something you really don’t want to do, lower your prices.
This gets into a really dicey world and it’s important to understand three
critical things before you ever go down this road:
1 If you decide that you want to be the “low price leader” in your
industry, you generally end up fighting a war racing to the bottom.

50
The bottom being rock bottom prices. You can really hurt your
business by restricting much needed cash flow.
2 Your brand tends to highlight your unique selling proposition as the
“cheap website”. And the problem with that is you will have many
other competitors who are doing the exact same thing (having low
prices) – resulting in a position where you don’t stand out.
3 If you think about the type of users that use these shopping engines,
they are typically bargain hunters, who are not always the best
customers to have. All they tend to care about is who has the lowest
price – and will jump ship to another competitor as soon as a “better
deal” comes up elsewhere.
Is There a Way Around This?
In order to get the benefit of comparison shopping engines and still not
go down the “cheap road” is to select certain products to be “fed” to these
engines. There are two types of products you can do this with:
1 If you sell something completely unique, that no other online shop
sells – well then you’re in luck. Obviously add those items to your
product feed, and don’t bother lowering the price on them.
2 Select a few items that you don’t mind slashing prices on. Not all your
items – just a handful. And every few months rotate them with new
items. This way you can attract new customers that hopefully they will
stay loyal for years to come.
Which Engines are Free and Which Ones
Cost Money?
FREE COMPARISON SHOPPING ENGINES
1 The Find - In addition to showing product and price comparisons,
The Find can help shoppers discover new products with
personalized results.

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PAY-TO-PLAY COMPARISON SHOPPING ENGINES
1 Google Shopping - Google Shopping is probably the largest and best
known comparison shopping engine. Products submitted to Google
Shopping will also be displayed on standard Google search results and
are integrated with Google’s pay-per-click platform, Adwords.
2 Next Tag - Nextag has been in operation since 1999 and has as
many as 30 million visitors each month. Nextag is consistently a top
performer for traffic and conversions on CPC Strategy’s quarterly
review of leading CSE’s. You can list products, event tickets, real
estate, and even travel bookings.
3 Price Grabber - In addition to presenting products on its site,
PriceGrabber has a market research tool, Market Report, that allows
retailers to track consumer purchase and product pricing trends.
When you list your products on PriceGrabber, you’ll also be listed on
Yahoo Shopping which is a nice added bonus.
4 Shopping.com - Shopping.com is part of eBay’s family of
companies and is another great channel for merchants to put their
products in front of perspective buyers. Shopping.com also partners
with The Find, another CSE on this list.
5 Shopzilla - With about 40 million monthly visitors and a pedigree
dating back to 1996, Shopzilla is one of the best choices for
ecommerce merchants looking for some extra sales. This comparison
shopping engine has an impressive 100+ million products listed.
6 Become.com - Become is another leader in the CSE space, allowing
thrifty shoppers to compare prices, read or write product reviews, and
simply search for the best possible online shopping deals.
7 Pronto.com - With about 70 million product listings sorted into
various retail verticals and millions of visitors monthly, Pronto
certainly merits consideration for any retailer’s 2013 CSE campaigns.
8 Amazon Product Ads - Amazon isn’t technically a comparison
shopping engine, but they work in a similar fashion. When you
register for Product Ads you can upload your products manually
or via FTP. Amazon will then create ads for your products using the

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information provided in your product file. When you set your budget,
your ads will go live and you’ll pay-per-click.
Which Engine Should You Choose?
Certain comparison shopping engines will have a better ROI (return on
investment) for your business than others. The only way to know which ones
will yield the best return is to try each one.
Certain sites will work better for the types of products that you sell over
others. For example if one engine has a lot of competitors then you have a
good idea that the targeted traffic you need is there. On the other hand, if
there are no competitors there might not be the traffic you need, but you’ll
get all the sales if there are any.
One thing to keep in mind is to not pull out early. It will take time and focus
to understand these marketplaces. As you get more comfortable working
with these engines, you will hone your skills on how to market and price
your products.
Finally, realize that online shoppers may click on your listing, come to your
site, leave and come back another day. So it’s important to understand that
you might get charged a few times for the same customer to finally make a
purchase which is why you should stick around for a while. Chances are they
will come back to the same engine to find your website when they are ready
to make a purchase.

Chapter 9 Get on Google Places
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CHAPTER 9
Get On
Google Places
Google Places is Google’s answer to the good old yellow pages, and
yes even if you haven’t made a dime, you’re going to want to be found
on Google Places. Somewhere along the way Google realized that a lot of
mom-n-pop shops really don’t have time (or knowhow) to build a strong
web presence. Yet they deserve an easy way to be found in their search
engine. That is, after all, what Google’s #1 job is: to make sure people easily
find what they are looking for. And of course people look for local businesses
and organizations on the Internet.

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You can only have a Google Places account if “you make in-person
contact with customers” according to their guidelines. So if you are
running a 100% online business where you never meet with customers, then
we suggest you go to another chapter.
So What is Google Places Exactly?
Google Places is simply a Google account any business can sign up for. It’s
completely free. Once you sign up, you will be asked to fill out your business
information such as address, business description, and contact info.
When someone uses Google and performs a geographical based search,
Google will display results of local businesses that match the intention of the
searcher’s query.
Here is an example:
Google Places: The telephone book of the 21st Century
Google Places can deliver amazing results for business owners that have a
local place of business.

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Disadvantages of Google Places
There is one issue that you need to be keenly aware of: spam, spamming
and spammers. You see, spammers have realized the power and potential of
Google Places. They quickly learned that exploiting it can bring in wonderful
free traffic from multiple entry points.
The way they did this was they would create fake addresses all over the
geographical territory they wanted to cover to gain multiple spots in
the search result. Google has since made Google Places very difficult for
spammers and has probably gone overboard with who can and can’t show up
in the results. This brings us to Google Rule #1:
Rule #1: Don’t ever think you can pull a fast one over Google. Just play by
the rules and you’ll usually end up better off.
How to Sign Up for Google Places
The first thing you’re going to want to do is sign into your Google account
(Gmail, Google Plus, etc.) and then go here.
Go ahead and fill in all the pertinent information about your business. Be
sure that you are accurate. A good tip is to copy and paste the information
from your website so that you don’t make any entry errors.

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Really Important Details that You Need
to be Aware Of!
Google Places is a great thing for business owners, but you have to be very
cautious and play by their rules. Here are some important tips you need to
be aware of:
Use your actual business name as the name of your business. We know
this sounds very obvious, but certain people are going to try to sneak in
keywords in this field which will just get you banned from Google Places.
• Do not use a P.O. Box or virtual address as your business address.
• Don’t make more than one Google Places account for your business.
What if I am running my business out
of my house?
This is okay, but you have to be very careful here. If you don’t allow people to
visit your residential address for business, you must hide your address.
If you don’t conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select
“Yes, this business serves customers at their locations” under the “Service
Areas and Location Settings” section of your dashboard, and then select the
“Do not show my business address on my Maps listing” option.

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We really emphasize that you follow these specific instructions laid down by
Google. It will determine whether or not you show up.
We also highly recommend that you read through Google’s guidelines on
Google Places – just to be sure you’re not planning on doing something that
will get you banned from their results.
Now here is the most important part: Your Category.
Before you begin, don’t fill out just any category, make a list of your top three
most important categories that describe your business. Then prioritize that
list and enter your first and most important category into this field.
Your category might not auto-complete, so spend a good amount of time
trying to find the category that best describes your business. We can’t stress
enough how important this step is to get right. It will determine what kind of
customers Google will send you, essentially, you’re telling Google who you
want to visit your website or call you.
Finally, Google would like to know if you drive or deliver items to people in
multiple geographical locations.
It is really important for Google to know if you are a business on wheels.
This checkbox is their way of knowing if your business is in compliance
with their guidelines. So if this fits your business, then check it. Remember,
if you’re running a home-based business and you don’t allow customers
to come to your home, then you will have to check this box. Otherwise, you
can’t have a Google Places listing.
Soon you will get to a step that asks you to verify your business.

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The easy way out is to verify by phone. But, don’t do that. We highly
recommend verifying by postcard because it signifies to Google that your
business actually exists at the location you say it does. That’s really important
for them to get right, and so if you do the mail verification, we have this
belief (and other search engine professionals do too) that you’ll be rewarded
for this extra wait.
Getting More Traffic from your Google
Places Listing
Finally, here are some tips to optimize your listing so that you can open the
floodgates to local traffic giving you more visitors to turn into prospective
and ultimately paying customers.
1 Spend the time to fill out your Google Places profile to completeness.
2 Add photos and videos of your business.
3 Write lengthy descriptions.
4 Encourage customer reviews and feedback.
5 Integrate with Google+

Chapter 10 Leverage the Yahoo! Bing Network
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CHAPTER 10
The Yahoo! Bing
Network
Since you’re running an online store, buying ads on the Internet must
seem like a pretty obvious way to make your first sales. And this is true
– it’s just that depending on your industry, online advertising has become
hyper-competitive.
Now, if we had written this guide in the 1980’s – we would have told you to
put a small ad in some magazines, do a few trade shows and call it a day. But
boy, how things have changed.

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Nowadays, the obvious places to buy ads can take you for a wild ride, leaving
you penniless at the end of the ride. And that obvious place we’re talking
about is Google.
Google revolutionized advertising by providing the first 100 percent
measurable (well almost) advertising platform known to humankind
with Google Adwords. Combining the fact that you can know your exact
ROI (return on investment) and Google’s massive search volume, Google
Adwords has become a very competitive place for online businesses to spend
their advertising dollars.
And that’s why we’re pointing you in the direction of a slightly less
competitive, cheaper and friendlier network: The Yahoo! Bing Network.
We’re hoping by opening up this as an alternative, it’ll let you get started and
get sales results far more quickly.
Why is it Called The Yahoo! Bing Network?
At one time, each of these search engines / online mega-communities
had their own individual advertising networks. And from our personal
experiences, we really liked Yahoo!’s advertising platform. It wasn’t that
competitive and had very reasonable CPCs (cost-per-click).
The only problem with Yahoo! (and especially Bing), was that they just
couldn’t drive the volume of traffic that Google Adwords did. And that was

61
a problem for people who had found a better return with these networks.
Because if you’re getting a better bang for your buck, wouldn’t you advertise
with them more?
At some point Bing and Yahoo! decided to join forces to battle it out against
Google. And that’s why it has the hybrid name.
What is this Cost-Per-Click Business?
Most search engines use the cost-per-click advertising model (also called
pay-per-click). It’s as simple as it sound, every time someone clicks on your
ad, you are charged for the click.
You start your CPC advertising campaign by choosing keywords that
search engine users will potentially search for. When they do, your ad
will be displayed somewhere on the results page. If you wrote compelling
advertising copy, chances are someone will click on your ad and will be
taken to your online store.
The cost of the click is determined by a few factors:
• Your Specified Maximum Bid – For every keyword you select
to return your advertisements, you are allowed to set a maximum
amount you will pay for a click. That way, you can keep your costs
under control when things get competitive.
• Your Quality Score – Google Adwords was the first to introduce
the concept of quality score. Generally, the longer you stay on the
network as a paying customer and the better you are at improving
your click-through rate (the number of clicks on an ad divided by the
number of times the ad is shown), the lower price you will pay per
click.
• The Keywords You’re Bidding On – Some keywords are very
expensive per click. Phrases like “DUI attorney” and “real estate” can
have double digit CPCs. The niche and industry you’re dealing with
will determine what price range you’re looking at.
Hopefully this doesn’t sound too overwhelming. This advertising system is
really a beautiful thing for businesses. It allows you to thoroughly test your

62
advertising copy, landing page design, and advertising concepts – because 30
years ago advertising was no different than throwing darts at a board.
How to Get Started
Before getting started, here’s a look at some demographic data to give you
insight into what people are searching for on the Yahoo! Bing network.
Now the Yahoo! Bing Network make it pretty easy for you to get going
because they want your money. However, we have provided some steps to
help you get the most out of your advertising dollars:
STEP 1 – SIGNING UP
To sign up for the Yahoo! Bing Network, go to this link. You’re going to
need to have a credit card on hand. You might want to do a quick Google
search for some “Bing Advertising” or “Yahoo Advertising” starter credit
first. Sometimes your web hosting company will have provided you with a
discount code or coupon that you might still have access to.
STEP 2 – CHOOSING KEYWORDS
The first thing you’re most likely going to do is come up with a list of
hundreds of keywords that you want to bid on. We don’t suggest doing this
for your first time out. Instead, pick about 5 keywords that reflect the most
popular products you sell, and also pick 5 keywords for more obscure items.

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For example, let’s say you sell iPhone cases. You might sort your list like so:
POPULAR KEYWORDS AND PHRASES:
1 Pink Hello Kitty iPhone Case
2 Pink iPhone Case
3 Strong iPhone Case
4 Unbreakable iPhone Case
5 Scratch-Proof iPhone Case
OBSCURE KEYWORDS AND PHRASES:
1 Otter Box iPhone Case
2 Otter Box
3 Banana iPhone Case
4 Mr. Potato Head iPhone Case
5 iFoam Case
The reasons we think it’s a good idea to make these two types of groups are:
• It will keep your introductory campaign manageable. Too many
keywords the first time out will most likely cause you to throw in the
towel early. Costs can run up and meager returns will probably be the
result.
• You can see what works for you better: A) highly competitive
keywords that yield lots of clicks (which are more expensive, but
produce more sales). Or B) Less volume, but highly specific clicks that
might produce better ROI.
• Testing and analyzing different advertisements later on is much easier
when you are only dealing with ten keywords.
STEP 3 – CREATING YOUR ADS
A common mistake is to make one generic ad to serve all your keywords.
Instead make specific ads for each keyword you are going to bid on. In
general, the more specific your ad is to the searcher’s intention, the higher
the click-through rate will be.

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There are some important things to remember when crafting your headline
and copy:
• Your headline (the first line of the ad), should include the keyword
you’re bidding on. This generally converts visitors into customers
much better because it matches the searcher’s intention.
• For your ad copy you might want to consider your unique selling
proposition or see what the other advertisers are not saying. You
might be able to attract clicks because of what they are lacking.
STEP 4 – CHOOSING WHERE YOU WANT TO SEND THEM
Most people the first time out will send their CPC traffic to the home page of
their website. As an online merchant, we recommend you send them directly
to the product page related to the keyword they searched for.
Let’s use the “Pink Hello Kitty iPhone Case” as an example. Instead of
sending them to http://mymobilephonecase.com you should send them to:
http://mymobilephonecase.com/pink-hello-kitty-iPhone-case. The purpose
of doing this is that the less clicks it takes the person to arrive at a purchase
point, the higher your website conversion rate will be.
You can specify where you want your CPC visitors to go by pasting the URL
of your choice into the “destination URL” field.
STEP 5 – TEST
Testing can be fairly tough for people who are not too analytical and
nerdy. If you can figure it out, we highly recommend that you implement
conversion tracking (sometimes referred to as goal tracking). Basically, this
means every time someone from a Yahoo! Bing advertisement purchases a
product from your website, Yahoo! Bing is attributed with that sale. This is
how you accurately measure your ROI.
Conversion tracking also allows you to know what keywords make the
most sales, which ads drive the most customers, what products people like
the most…the list goes on. Conversion tracking completes this knowledge
circuit so you can hone your campaigns and can earn more profit.

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If you have the ability to paste in HTML code on your “Thank You” page,
the page customer go to after they complete a sale, then you can implement
conversion tracking.
A Final Important Word of Advice
CPC advertising requires your full attention. Most serious online businesses
are running ads 24/7 – 365 days a year (and 366 on leap years). So you need
to login to your account at least once a day to monitor the progress of your
campaign. If you’re the type of person that “sets it and forgets it”, then you’re
going to be in for quite a surprise.
But it’s worth it, CPC advertising will sharpen your business chops and make
you that numbers person that you were meant to be. It will force you to be
analytical about how your business works and will ignite new ideas for you
to test and try out until you get in front of the right person for that first sale
and then grow exponentially from there.

Chapter 11 Get Search Engine Optimized
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CHAPTER 11
Get Search Engine
Optimized
Search engine optimization (SEO) is considered by some as the holy
grail of Internet marketing. If you’re lucky and your website appears for
all sorts of searches in Google (and other search engines), then you are the
blessed receiver of free Internet traffic, which hopefully will bless you with a
great deal of sales.
People who come to your online store because of a search query generally
want to see what you have to offer. You didn’t interrupt their day to get in
front of them, they sought you out. That’s a huge difference in the kind of

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traffic you can get, and because of the gravitational nature of search traffic, it
generally converts into business better.
That’s why so many businesses obsess over search engine optimization. It
provides a really good return on investment and it has a lasting effect. A pay-
per-click advertising will only last as long as you can afford to have the ad
up, whereas your search results listing will generally stay up as long as your
website is operational.
What is SEO?
How Does Google Determine Who Shows
Up First?
The ability for your online store to appear high in Google’s results depends
on many factors. A study by Search Metrics ranked various factors that
contribute to Google’s ranking algorithm:

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However, as you’re probably just starting out in an effort to nab that first sale,
here’s a general list of ranking factors in some order of importance:
• How many “natural” links point to your website from other sites
• The authority your site has in its niche
• The trustworthiness of your website
• The age of your domain name
• How your website is optimized in terms of site structure and “on-
page” elements
Let’s go over the ranking factors so you understand how it works.

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Natural Links
When another website links to your website, it’s a huge event in search
engine optimization. It’s such a big deal that people will pay for links. But we
don’t recommend you buy links. Doing so can get you banned from Google
and other search engines.
But since it’s such a huge driver in terms of ranking, many businesses fiercely
fight for links to their website. There are two ways to get links:
1 Seek out backlinks opportunities. Find places that let you link back
to your site and form relationships with other websites so you can
effectively ask for a link back.
2 Create a website that naturally gets linked to.
It’s much more worth your time to build a website that stands out so much,
that people all over the world naturally link to it. By making a unique and
a remarkable experience, people will want to tell others about it, and that
usually means people will link to it.
Better yet, Google’s algorithm is tailored to sniff out this type of natural
linking and rewards sites that appear more “organically” popular than
sites that seem to have been manipulated with links that seem like false
endorsements.
So how do you get these natural links? Here’s how:
• Get online press coverage – News websites and online journals
tend to have some of the most valuable backlinks in the eyes of the
search engines. You’ll need to hunt down relevant websites and ask
how you can submit a press release.
• Be unique in every way – Whether it’s product differentiation,
remarkable customer service, or awesome return policies. Strive to
build a better business than your competitors by offering a more
unforgettable experience.
• Create valuable and buzzworthy content – Whether it’s your
product descriptions, your buyer’s guides, or your blog, good content
gets linked to.

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• Keep doing steps 1 through 3 continually –This activity is not a
“set it and forget” task, rather It’s part of your marketing machine that
needs to keep humming 365 days a year.
Authority
The easy thing about building authority is if you perform the steps in the last
section, you’re most likely building authority. Authority means your website
knows what it’s talking about. You are the expert in your niche. There is no
better way to do this than to run an unbiased blog, with useful information
that isn’t trying to sell all the time.
Here are a few ways to build authority for your website:
• Explain how to do something – Any activity related to your product
can have “how-to” content created around it. Solve your customer’s
problems and you’ll get more customers.
• Be the expert, not the salesperson – In order to become an
authority, you need to come from a genuine place. You have to stop
for a second and communicate to your audience without trying to
make a buck. This makes you more credible and trustworthy.
• Build a strategy to get all the research traffic – Internet searchers
are usually researching something. Think of everything that can be
researched in your niche or industry and provide amazing content
on it. It’s really not that hard to do, it just takes some time to write it
down.
Trust
Building trust is pretty straightforward. We’re going to assume you’re not in
business for malicious reasons and you’re not planning on bait and switching
people. So, obviously when people arrive on your website, their spam
software doesn’t blow up with alarms and warnings. There are also a few
other things you can do to build trust:

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• Add testimonials – You can think outside the box when it comes to
testimonials. For example you can embed tweets from customers and
get testimonials from well-respected people in your industry.
• Show security badges – This can be a really to implement. Often
times, your web host will provide you with SSL certificates (which
adds the “s” for “secure” in front of http), and other security features
that you can display on your site to show your customers that your
site is secure.
• Provide guarantees – To show people you mean business, consider
devoting a lot of real estate on every page of your site to show a
guarantee. Usually, this tells the customer that you’re confident in
your service to a point that you will go the extra mile for them if
anything goes wrong with their order.
The Age Of Your Domain Name
The longer your domain name has been around and up, the more history
it has with the various search engines. And because of a longer established
history, and assuming you’ve been providing a good user experience for
those years, search engines tend to reward websites for good behavior.
Site Structure and On-Page Optimization
This was originally all that was involved when it came to SEO. It had to
do with how easy search engines can “crawl” and index your website, and
whether you have logically created pages and sections that follow some
sort of hierarchy (meaning categories and sub-sections). Here’s the order in
which you should conduct on-page optimization:
• Make sure all your title tags have unique content. Do not duplicate
title tag content.
• Make sure that you have a way to navigate by text links only. This is
incredibly important.
• Make sure you are using H1 heading tags in your source code. The
content wrapped by the H1 tags should match your title tag content
for the page in question.

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• Use original images and describe what the images are about with alt
tags.
• Keep iframes to a minimum
• Have your content live on your domain
The above list is all you really need to hone in on, especially when you need
to focus your time and resources early on. Also, there are tons of resources
on this topic if you want to learn more about how to check your on-page
optimization yourself.

Chapter 12 Learn From Web Analytics
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CHAPTER 12
Learn from
Web Analytics
Knowing why visitors on your site are purchasing or not purchasing
your products could literally mean the difference between staying
alive as a business and growing, or dying an early death with no sales
to your name. Analytics (for short) will show you what your customers are
doing on your site, on which web pages they leave your site, and in some
cases how long they have been a customer.

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Measuring Website Traffic
The most common “barometer” that analytics provides is that it can measure
how much daily, monthly or yearly traffic your website has. Many website
owners tend to focus on this macroscopic metric to determine how well
their site is performing. This can be a deceptive metric to focus on because
it doesn’t necessarily tell you if your site is increasing revenue, average order
size, or returning customers – which tend to be more important metrics to
watch when running an ecommerce business.
You can easily build more website traffic simply by paying for Google
AdWords traffic and send it to your home page, or by posting lots of
engaging blog posts. This doesn’t necessarily mean it will translate into sales.
The beauty of good website analytics is that it can clue you into what does
and does not work in terms of growing your online business.
Basic Analytics and Web Stat Software
Almost all websites will come with a default “website statistic” software
package that is already installed. Usually you can access these statistics
through your website control panel. The two most common web statistics
packages are Webalizer and AWStats.
Both of these web statistic packages are pretty bare bones. They will tell
you the number of visits and what the top entry pages are. They also go
into some basic geographic demographics and what websites are your top
referring sources.
The one major advantage of both Webalizer and AWStats is that is reads
your website’s log file - so it counts every visit. Other analytics packages use
a JavaScript snippet that you place on your webpages to detect traffic. These
programs only detect traffic of visitors that have JavaScript enabled – which
is approximately 95% of the internet browsing population.
Google Analytics is the most popular free JavaScript based web analytics
solutions. It provides a lot more depth and clarity as to what visitors are
doing on your website. It can detect:
• What city your visitors are from.
• Virtually unlimited amount of entry pages and exit pages.

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• The average duration visitors spend on your site. How many people
“bounce” away without ever looking at another page of your site.
• You can find out where nearly all your website traffic comes from.
There is no limit on the number of referring websites, search engines
or social media sources.
Landing Pages
A very useful report to look at in Google Analytics is your top landing pages.
For ecommerce it’s a great way to see your most popular entry pages and
also to learn how visitors found those pages. For your top landing pages, ask
yourself:
• Was it because the webpage naturally ranks high on Google?
• Are you driving most of your PPC (pay-per-click) traffic to that page?
• Is another website linking to it?
To find out this information go to Behavior > Site Content > Landing
Pages and be sure to click on the “Secondary Dimension” button and select
“Source”.
• With this information, you can make decisions like:
• Improving the SEO of pages that create more profit per order.

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• Reaching out to other websites to link to certain webpages.
• Change the page copy to “sell” better – assuming they are not
performing up to your expectations.
Be sure to also check your top content to simply see what pages on your
website get the most views. They may not necessarily be your top landing
pages.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate measures how many visitors come to your site and immediately
leave. If you have a high bounce rate, that usually means visitors are not
finding what they are looking for or your offer just isn’t for them.
For ecommerce this can be a tricky metric to understand. A high bounce
rate may mean that you have a lot of shoppers comparing prices and
leaving, or perhaps you’re not providing enough information for the visitors
to purchase. However, if you have an enormous inventory, then chances
are you’re naturally going to have a high bounce rate since you might be
attracting a lot of visits from search engines.
One trick you can try is to employ live chat software to ask visitors if there is
anything they need help with during their visit. This may clue you into what
is causing visitors to bounce.

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Customer Tracking and Advanced Metrics
There are analytics packages available that do more comprehensive customer
analytics for ecommerce retailers. For example, KISSmetrics provides special
ecommerce tracking that can help you with:
• Conversion Funnel Analysis – For instance your checkout process
can be seen as a conversion funnel. Customers enter the first checkout
page with their shopping cart full and a certain percentage of them
leave your site as paying customers. Conversion funnels help you
identify which step of the checkout process seems to cause the most
friction for your customers. By knowing this, you can fix possible
issues that hopefully make checkout easier or less confusing for your
customers, thus yielding more sales.
• Average Order Value – Being able to quickly see how your average
order value varies over time is very helpful for etailers. Ideally, you
want to increase your average order value as you continue to grow
your business.
• Lifetime Value Calculations – As you grow and you become more
invested in retaining customers, it’s very helpful to calculate the
lifetime value of your customers. That is: how much does the average
customer spend with your business during the entire lifetime they are
a customer? Knowing this value helps you calculate how much you
can spend on marketing and advertising.
• Real Time Analytics – Having a viewport to see how individual
customers navigate and take actions on your site in real time is an
extremely helpful tool. This bird’s eye view helps you quickly identify
any trouble zones visitors may have navigating your site or during
checkout.
Spend Time with Your Analytics Software
Analytics gives you a record of what’s going on your site 24 hours a day. By
spending time in your analytics account you can make great gains in terms
of how to fix your website and grow your business. So the more time you
devote to digging into your analytics, the more insights you’ll come to. In the
analytics world there is a saying that says without analytics, “You’re driving

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blind”. So don’t crash, do your due diligence and keep at it, who knows how
quickly those insights will translate into real-time sales to get your business
off the ground.

Chapter 13 Be Accessible on Mobile Devices
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CHAPTER 13
Be Accessible on
Mobile Devices
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, the amount of people
browsing the web on mobile devices (tablets and smartphones) is
increasing at an incredibly fast rate. Unfortunately, many ecommerce
websites and platforms were built with only the desktop browsing experience
in mind, and if you’re one of them, you can kiss a fair deal of new sales
good-bye.
One way to gain an edge on your competition and be accessible by
consumers on whatever device they decide to use is to make sure your
current website is mobile friendly or create a separate mobile site. If your

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mobile presence is optimized well, you may pick up many more sales for
simply being convenient to visitors and returning customers.
First, Check Your Current Ecommerce Site
on Mobile Devices
You may be in luck and your current ecommerce store is already optimized
for mobile web browsing. In order to be sure of this, make sure you check
your site on the following devices:
• Apple iPhone
• Apple iPad
• Various Android Smartphones – Android makes up approximately
half of the smartphone market. However, the mix of different phones
and operating system versions makes Android a very inconsistent
browsing experience - so check thoroughly.
• Finally, try a couple different android tablets
And when we say check your site, we mean really go through every possible
path. Do the following:
• Conduct a multiple product purchase.
• Conduct a multiple product purchase and test a coupon code.
• Test your contact page. See if it sends out a message and check to see
if you get it.

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• See how your product images zoom and pop out (if you have pop-out
functionality installed).
• And repeat all of these tests on different mobile browsers (Chrome,
Safari and any default mobile browser that may come preinstalled on
the device you’re testing).
How to Make a Mobile Site
If for whatever reason your current ecommerce site doesn’t work well with
the mobile web, there are a couple routes you can take.
REBUILD YOUR WEBSITE WITH RESPONSIVE DESIGN IN MIND
Responsive design is simply web design that expands and contracts nicely
for different devices, whether you view the websites on a desktop computer,
smartphone or tablet. A good web developer can usually tweak your website
code to make this happen. In some cases your site might be coded in such a
way that responsive design isn’t really possible.
You’re also going to want to take a closer look at how your buttons, forms
and other interactive elements work with your mobile users. In most cases if

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you optimize these elements for mobile users, it will work fine with desktops
users as well.
This would also be a great time to simplify your checkout process to make it’s
easier for both mobile and desktop users. Generally, making your checkout
process painless results in more sales.
REDIRECT YOUR MOBILE VISITORS TO A SUBDOMAIN
If you can’t build a “one-size fits all” responsive website, you can build
another website structure that resides in a separate subdomain. For example
if your website is hi-topheaven.com, you can make a mobile friendly website
that resides in m.hi-topheaven.com.
By inserting a simple redirect statement in the <head> of your home page,
you can redirect anyone on a mobile device to your mobile websites.
The goal would not be to build a completely new website where you would
have to reinsert all your copy and images. Instead you would build a new
mobile friendly website structure that can “call” the same images and
copy that you keep current on your main website. That way you won’t be
responsible for managing two different websites every time you need to
update your inventory.
Depending on what ecommerce platform you’re using, check Google to see
what other “etailers” are doing for their mobile solutions. Plenty of other
business owners have already gone down this path and have most likely
vetted good solutions for your store.
The important thing here being that it’s no secret that consumers are
increasingly turning to anything but their desktop to browse the web,
which means if they stumble upon your site, it better satisfy their need to
browse through touch and make a purchase on their tablet or mobile device,
otherwise, you’ll be missing out on a lot of sales. Something that can’t be
good when you’re trying to make that first crucial sale, so make it a priority.

Chapter 14 Get Product Reviews
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CHAPTER 14
Get Product
Reviews
This is the online guerrilla marketing method of PR. There is a unique
benefit of getting product reviews from other websites that helps increase
brand credibility and trustworthiness in addition to word-of-mouth
marketing.
Here’s how to start.

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Start by Creating a List
You’re going to want to spend a lot of time on Google searching for all the
sites that would be a good fit for reviewing your product. Chances are your
initial searches will lead you into more searches, so prepare to devote a good
chunk of your day to this.
Perform Google searches like (but, replace “widget” with your product):
• widget blog
• widget reviews
• submit my product for review
• widget intitle: “product review”
replace the word “widget” with a word that describes your product
As you are performing these searches, list the URLs of all the websites you
come across that might give you a review. Depending on how you like to
work, you may want to contact them as you come across them, or simply
list all the ones you can find first. We think it’s a good habit to go ahead and
contact them as soon as possible so you can quickly gauge a return on your
efforts.
One important thing that can happen as a result of doing this work is
that you will make relationships with bloggers in your industry. These
relationships can be very important and beneficial for years to come. When
you approach a blogger be sure to be very genuine and treat the conversation
as you would a real-life business or networking relationship.
For starters, don’t send out long canned emails. Start your first email out
short and conversational. For example:
Hi I’m Sean Work and I invented an espresso machine that can grind and
brews fresh espresso drinks in your car so you can have uber-fresh lattes on the
way to work. I would like to send you my mini machine so you can try it out.
Sometimes we even like to take an even simpler approach. We just start with
a very simple subject line in our email message:
RE: Question
And then we go on to write a very simple email:

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I wanted to ask about having a really cool product reviewed. Just curious about
the steps involved. Thanks!
- Sean
People who run busy websites love short emails from people. Long emails
equate to more work. Breaking up the conversation into bite size chunks
goes a long way.
A List of Review Sites
Below is a list of sites that review products. By no means is it comprehensive.
Depending on what you are selling, some of these sites might be in the
wrong niche. The point here is really to show you the type of sites to look for,
just so you get a feel for it.
• makeuseof.com
• newmommymedia.com
• mylittlereviewcorner.wordpress.com
• 2wired2tired
• mommypr.com
• thanksmailcarrier.com
• thereviewbroads.com
• daddoes.com
If you are selling electronics or software, then consider submitting your
product to CNET.com.
We suggest trying hard to find blogs that are related to what you are selling
that normally don’t do reviews. There are a few reasons why:
1 They probably won’t charge you to review your product.
2 Review sites can have a bad rap with Google. Anytime you pay for a
review and a link is given – there’s a chance Google will penalize you.
3 A lot of review sites usually don’t focus on a niche which means there
really isn’t a dedicated audience learning about your product.
We really do wish we could give you an awesome list of sites where you
could just plug away at asking for reviews. But the point is that this just takes
digging. Every product is different and every online world surrounding a

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product type is vastly different. To see what we mean, have a look at the
example below where a maternal clothing brand is being reviewed on
mamablog.com.
How Reviews Can Help With SEO
One of the major factors that determine how high your website ranks on
search engines like Google is the number of other websites that link back to
your website. Getting bloggers or other websites to review your products is
a great way to “build links” back to your website. And of course the benefit
of this is that it will increase the amount of free traffic your website receives
from search engines.
There are a few tips you should be aware of when you go on your product
review quest to make sure you get the most bang from both a SEO and PR
perspective. Chances are you will be able to discuss how you want your links
to look in the review. If you get the opportunity to specify your links and
link text then keep these tips in mind:

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• Choose your link text wisely – It’s normal for people to link back
to your website with link text that is simply your domain name (ex:
http://mywebsite.com ). You should ask them to occasionally change
the link text to the keywords that you want to rank for on the search
engines. For example if you want to rank for “cheap widget” then your
link text should be “cheap widget”.
• For more targeted marketing, link to your product pages – An often
overlooked practice is not linking to specific product pages. For
example you might sell a “green widget” and have a specific webpage
for “green widget” located at http://mywebsite.com/green-widget.
Having reviewers link to these specific product pages will help these
pages rank higher for specific searches.
So give this exercise a bit of elbow grease and see where it gets you. The best
way to manage this is to spend a good 15 minutes a day contacting websites
and blogs on your list. You’ll get through it in no time.
Reach Out to Video Bloggers
Video blogging is at an all-time high right now. As you’re conducting your
searches, you’ll probably come across some video reviews.
Take note at who are the most popular video reviewers out there for your
product type. Simply look at the view count on their videos to gauge how
influential they are.

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Usually video bloggers and reviewers make it pretty easy to find out how to
contact them. Look for links to their website or just skip to the end of their
video to find out how to reach them.
At some point in your dialogue with the video blogger or reviewer, ask if
they will link to your product page in their video description. They may say
no, but it’s worth a shot.
Once the News Gets Spread
One thing you’ll want to keep in mind is to take note that when a review gets
published that you’ve replenished your stock or have a plan in mind to fulfill
the orders coming from all that extra traffic. Always be ready to capitalize
on publicity and satisfy customer demand. All you need is that one product
review and you’re well on your way to your first sale and beyond.

Chapter 15 Write A Press Release
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CHAPTER 15
Write a
Press Release
There is a lot of debate whether or not press releases are worthwhile
for new and upcoming ecommerce merchants anymore. We have heard
good arguments on both sides, and to be perfectly honest, for most online
store owners it’s one of those tactics that could be a hit or miss, but if it
hits, it could result in a major press launch for your brand. For example,
BeardBrand launched their store and never looked back literally the day an
article about beard grooming for men mentioned them and was published in
the New York Times.

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Companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola can send a news release
and two seconds after it hits the wire, there are headlines in every paper and
on every TV station in the world. Sadly, this isn’t the case for you and your
online store. You can spend $500 to send a press release to tens of thousands
of news outlets and be ignored by every single one of them. Crickets. But
even if a press release doesn’t generate coverage, there are benefits, including
backlinks and showing up in Google when someone researches your
company. There is also the possibility of getting coverage and sales, so for
some merchants it’s worth a shot. Here’s what you need to know.
Be Newsworthy
This is a little obvious, but you need something newsworthy to issue a press
release, otherwise who cares? Have a look at Canadian ecommerce company
Well.ca and their impressive list of awards for which they’ve garnered
significant media attention:
To help you get your creative juices flowing, here are some potential press-
worthy topics you can consider:

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• Ecommerce store launch
• New product or service
• Contest, competition, survey or poll
• Changes to shipping and delivery policies
• Free samples
• Sponsorship of a charity
• Major sales
• Receiving an award
• Customer success stories
Elements of a Good Press Release
• Heading: This needs to be strong. People are interested in how a
business expands, who it sells to, and how much money it makes.
Craft your headline with a strong title that grabs a reader’s attention
right away.
• Sub-heading: A single sentence summarizes the entire content of
the press release. It can be just as important as the heading because it
gives readers a taste of the content to follow.
• Opening paragraph: The opening paragraph has to be strong and
include pertinent information, namely what the press release is about,
who it affects, and why they should read or act upon it. If you talk of
an event or launch, you also need to mention when it will take place.
• Middle paragraph (/s): These add weight to the article and can
include testimonials, statistics, research details, and case study
excerpts.
• Conclusion: This is a summary of the article and must include either
a call to action or details of where more information on the subject
matter could be found.
• Boilerplate: Include a brief company profile and contact information.
It’s important to include your company logo or a relevant image with every
press release. The better the image, the more real estate it might get in print
or online. Also, traditional press releases always conclude with # symbols
underneath the last line to signify the end of the release.

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Sample Press Release
<INSERT LOGO>
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Opportunity Knocks on Laser Shooting Robot’s Door
Luxury hand-made laser shooting robot specialists expand their business to
Europe.
San Francisco, California – January, 2012
Lasershootingrobots.com, the leading manufacturer of luxury hand-made
laser shooting robots in North America today announced it would be
expanding to Europe. The company, which prides itself on crafting unique
one-of-a-kind laser shooting robots for residential and commercial projects,
will tie up with Chuck Norris Metal Workers (CNMW) to manufacture and
ship its products to Europe.
“We are thrilled to partner with CNMW and showcase our products in the
leading laser and robot regions of the world”, says owner and CEO of Laser
Shooting Robots, Brad Lambert. “Their passion and dedication to making
quality robots is already well known. It’s an honor to be able to design
alongside their team.”
Laser Shooting Robots has been producing hand-crafted robots for North
American clientele since 2003. The company revealed that CNMW has
already integrated the company’s software and sales tools as of October of
this year, and while the robots will be manufactured locally, the designs will
continue to be developed in San Francisco.
Yves Rochard, president of CNMW had this to say, “We are delighted
with our partnership with Laser Shooting Robots and look forward to
introducing their product to the European market. There is a synergy
between our two brands that we feel will result in a profitable relationship
for both of us. We have already integrated their sales tools into our website
and will begin manufacturing, and shipping Laser Shooting Robots as of
February 2012.”

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To learn more about the merger, expansion plans, or to book an interview,
contact Jackie Mason at 1.234.5678 or email, jackiem@lasershootingrobots.
com, or visit the website at www.lasershootingrobots.com.
About Laser Shooting Robots
1 or 2 paragraphs about the company
About Chuck Norris Metal Workers
1 or 2 paragraphs about the company
# # #
How To Submit A Press Release
Many businesses choose to hire a local public relations firm or a PR
freelancer. They will know the ins-and-outs of your local press outlets as well
as the online ones. Here is how you can find these professionals:
• Your business networking groups – If you have been attending local
business networking groups, chances are some of the members work
in the local PR scene. If not, ask some of your group members if they
know of any PR agents.
• Craigslist – Post a “Gig” in the Craigslist Gig section and title your
post “Looking for a Local PR Professional”. Chances are you will
receive a dozen replies by the end of the day.
• Google search – Obviously if you do a local Google search by typing
your city and “PR” or “Press Release” you will find some professionals
ranking on the first page.
If you want to get started without professional help, there are plenty of
services that offer easy and inexpensive distribution. PRweb.com is a
popular option, and they have many options for releasing online press
releases.

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From Press Release To Orbit
If you’re starting an online retail business that is truly remarkable, a good
press release can be all the spark you need to blast your business into outer
space, where you won’t find martians, but could potentially get that first
sale (and many more) you’re thirsting for. This is why we keep reiterating
that you should focus on being different, newsworthy and exceptional from
your competition, that is the key “secret sauce” in all of these strategies and
tactics.

Chapter 16 Pull a PR Stunt
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CHAPTER 16
Pull a PR Stunt
As an online retailer you have two choices to go about your day-to-day
operation:
• You can sell stuff.
• You can build a fun and unforgettable brand with cult followers - and
sell a lot more merchandise.
Which would you rather do?
PR stunts are the ancient version of the viral video. They are loads of fun
and help bring tons of attention to your brand if executed well. And best of
all, they drive tons of links from authority news sources – which is great for
SEO.

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Now you may not have the nerve to do a PR stunt, but if you think you do,
then read on.
The Buttons of Buzz
In his book Buzz Marketing, author Mark Hughes lists the six buttons of
buzz as:
• The Taboo
• Unusual
• Outrageous
• Hilarious
• Remarkable
• Secrets
When pushed, these buttons get people talking about your brand. You don’t
have to push all the buttons at once for a PR stunt to work. You just have to
nail one of them.
There is no better way to explain these buttons than to go over some
examples:
CHANGE THE NAME OF A CITY
Half.com was able to change the name of Halfway, Oregon to Half.com for
one year. This publicity stunt got the startup business publicity from the
New York Times and even the attention of Katie Couric. Changing the name

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of a city to your brand name would be an example of a remarkable stunt.
Remarkable in the sense that people will remark about it to their peers, and
it will be remarkably expensive.
VOMIT AND SNOT FLAVORED JELLY BEANS
A classic PR stunt done by Jelly Belly was to create outrageous flavored
jelly beans during a certain time of the year. Not only did people actually
eat them but even more people told everyone around them about these
weird jelly bean flavors.
GET NAKED

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Italian entrepreneur, Enrico Frare put a full page ad in a Milan newspaper
where he posed nearly nude. His message was that every day in Italy an
entrepreneur almost loses his shirt. This was his economic commentary
pertaining to the difficulty of businesses getting credit from Italian banks
during current times. Posing nude is obviously taboo, and when combined
with an underlying message, it will always attract attention and more
importantly, press coverage.
INVITATION ONLY
Some publicity stunts can run a couple of years and still be highly effective.
Facebook and Gmail started off by invite only. In each case, by creating
scarcity and a great product – they were able to make outsiders want in.
Making secret clubs can be a genius way to create unrivaled amounts of
demand. Nike also does this with their SB (Skateboarding) shoes by creating
very limited releases that sell for hundreds of dollars a pair.

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WHY HAVE BORING ICE CUBES?
And when it comes to hilarious PR stunts, no brand does it better than
Virgin. For years the team at Virgin has been pulling stunts like putting
Richard Branson looking ice cubes in airline beverages. It’s worth spending
an evening reading over everything Virgin has come up with – it’s a course
in itself!
Always Perform a Sanity Check First
If you think you have the world’s greatest publicity stunt idea, be sure to run
it by some of your trusted friends first. Some publicity stunts can go terribly
wrong and end your business instead of boosting it.
Back in 1896, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway wanted to attract
some attention by having two steam trains go head on with each other on
the same track. From a publicity point of view it worked like magic – more
than 40,000 people showed up to watch the collision. Unfortunately, when
the trains collided the boilers exploded sending debris at the crowd - killing
three people.

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But Aren’t PR Stunts Pricey?
Sure, the examples above are from relatively large brands with big marketing
budgets. But that doesn’t mean you can’t come up with some remarkable
publicity on a low budget. Remember the good old New York City subway
flash mob (Frozen Grand Central)? That just took a couple hundred willing
participants and a video camera.
Finally - Keep Going
If you find that your brand has the knack for publicity stunts, well then keep
doing them. You’ll find that when you keep the momentum of good PR up,
the rewards are just too good to pass up. Not only will you garner plenty
of attention and public curiosity, but hopefully you’ll get people who are
interested in purchasing your products to pay attention.

Chapter 17 Sell a Unique and Newsworthy Product
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CHAPTER 17
Sell a Unique
Product
Standing out from the crowd is one of the best ways to move
merchandise. Especially if you’re in a crowded space where your
competitors sell similar, if not the exact same products.
Sell Purple Cows
Seth Godin, a famous contemporary marketer, wrote a book called Purple
Cow. The basic premise of the book is that you do something so unique and
different that people will naturally have to tell others about it.

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Let’s say you sell something that gets a lot of attention and people start
purchasing it. For instance, we can go back to our example of the neon
yellow tennis ball textured sneakers.
As people start buying these shoes – their peers will naturally ask:
“Where did you get those?”
And of course, they will refer them to your online store. It will be a word of
mouth referral from a third party that is not affiliated with your business –
the best form of marketing there is.
Some Purple Cow Product Examples
If you’ve ever spent time lounging around a beach, you know that the perfect
complement for relaxation is a nice cold beverage. A company called Reef,
makes this genius sandals with a bottle opener in the sole.

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When these sandals came out, every college frat boy in North America
mentioned these flip-flops at the first party of the year.
Think Geek is an online retailer that specializes in Purple Cow merchandise.
Their entire brand is dedicated to the niche market of “Geekdom” – so you
might not “get it” when you see some of their products. But that’s actually
perfect because they are only trying to target a very specific group of people.
For instance, you might not understand why you would want a “Useless Box
Kit” – a box that when you turn it on, it closes and it turns itself off.
A ridiculous product like this happens to be one of their best sellers. Go
figure. Naturally the words “Think Geek” will get muttered when anyone
sees this box and that good old word of mouth magic will happen once
again.
Now Purple Cow products don’t have to be gimmicky either. This shovel by
Bosse Tools is a great example of a simple tool that has been reinvented and
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They re-created the shovel, with a rotating handle in the middle to make
back breaking work much more ergonomic and easier.
What If You Don’t Make Your Own Products?
If you don’t make your own products –that’s okay. You’ll just have to source
specialized items for resale. And there is a smart way to do this. Instead
of buying specialized inventory outright and hope it sells, simply place
these products on your site and allow visitors to pre-order or request more
information about them. This will let you gauge how much demand there is
for these products.
You can also start creating your own line of products. You might have some
really good ideas for new products that are innovative and remarkable.
Introducing new products like these can not only increase your profit
margins but it will give your brand more social currency. With that you
always want to be giving your fans and customers something to talk about,
breaking out of the clutter, especially when you’re first starting out is most of
the battle. So if you can do that, that first sale won’t be too big of a problem.

Chapter 18 Interview an Industry Influencer
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CHAPTER 18
Interview an
Industry Influencer
Blogging is a secret weapon for any online business because it brings
in longtail search engine traffic for years to come. The funny thing is a
lot of business owners never get around to this low hanging fruit because it
takes a few hours of focus to write a post.
A great way to produce easy and very exceptional blog content is to
interview someone important and well known in your industry. For those of
you who are running an outdoorsy or sporting goods related online shop –
this can be a gold mine.

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Most vendors sponsor professionals and amateurs to help endorse their
product. Interviewing these people is a win-win, because it gives the
interviewee more exposure and you get to give the inside scoop to your
audience. Imagine selling sneakers online and getting the opportunity to
interview the reigning king Lebron James himself.
Questions You Can Ask:
The hard part of doing an interview post is coming up with good questions.
Here are a few questions of interview questions segments by industry:
SPORTING GOODS
Obviously you might have a hard time getting the attention of a NBA
basketball star, but reaching out to up-and-comers like promising high
school athletes and amateur sports stars can do wonders for your blog.
Especially if any of them ever make it to the pros.
• What has been the biggest challenge thus far in your career?
• Where do you see the future of this industry / sport / hobby heading?
• What advice do you have for young people who hope to make a living
in this sport?

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COSMETICS AND FASHION
Right now there are a lot of super popular cosmetic and fashion bloggers on
YouTube. Simply type in “cosmetic tutorial” or “fashion tutorial” and you’ll
immediately see them. These are great people to interview because many of
them have become quite popular over the past year.
• What styles do you see coming back in style?
• What are some timeless articles / accessories / pieces that will always
work?
• What’s the future of this industry / world?
ELECTRONICS, GADGETRY AND TECHNOLOGY
If you operate an online store in this genre, it may seem tough to find people
to interview – but it’s not! Again, there might be a few YouTube personalities
that your niche adores. Additionally, you may want to reach out to vendors
and conduct interviews with some of the top designers.
• What are some of the coolest inventions you’ve come across?
• What are some exciting technologies for the future that you’ve had a
glimpse of?
• Ask about cool modifications, tips and techniques.
The trick with coming up with interview questions is to just start writing.
Once you get a few questions down, you’ll naturally think of more questions.
Finally, you can always copy questions from other interviews that have been
done in your industry. Chances are they will work for the people who you
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Step It Up with Video
If you have the resources, take interviewing to the next level by doing video
interviews. Not only will they be potentially more viral, you can always
transcribe the audio into text and create a blog post that will help with your
website SEO. Obviously, you would want to embed the video at the top of the
blog post so people can still watch the interview.
Finally, remember to post your videos to YouTube. YouTube is another
search engine and you can link to your website from the video for extra SEO
power.

Chapter 19 Write a Guest Post
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CHAPTER 19
Write a Guest Post
One of the easiest ways to get some internet buzz is to write guest
blog posts for various websites that are relevant to your niche. The
beauty of guest blogging is that most blogs gladly accept guest posts because
it helps them keep their content fresh.
The only condition is that you write them a really good post without flat out
advertising your own business. We use guest bloggers at KISSmetrics and
Shopify to regularly publish content that’s fresh, relevant, and exciting for
our readers.
Here’s an example from KISSmetrics:

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Here’s an example from Shopify:
The Benefits of Guest Blogging
When you write a guest post, you’re able to leave a short bio at the end
of your post that mentions who you are and what you do. This is the
appropriate place to plug your business. So here’s the first important tip, If
you write an amazing and incredibly engaging post, most readers will want
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With that said, guest blogging is only beneficial to those who put 110% effort
into their article. If you’re just going to gloss over a topic and not provide any
real value to the readers, then you’ll be wasting your time.
Now, the most obvious benefit is that you’ll get to explain to new prospects
what it is that you do in your bio. The bigger the blog, the more prospects
will get to learn about your business.
There is also a secondary benefit that really helps with driving online traffic
and that is the backlink you get to leave in your signature. As we have
discussed in previous chapters, search engines use the number of links that
point to your website as an indication of how popular your website is and
also how relevant it is for certain keywords. In general, the more backlinks
you have pointing to your website, the higher you can rank for certain
keywords.
Here’s an example of a signature:
John Smith is the owner and operator of hi-topheaven.com – rare & vintage
hi-tops. He is a basketball fan, freak and fanatic and happens to know
EVERYTHING about hi-tops.
What Kind of Blogs Should I Approach?
The first thing to do is to create a document or a spreadsheet to keep track of
all the blogs that you want to target. We recommend something like this:
Do a Google search of blogs that are related to your niche or industry. As
you come across these blogs, list them in your spreadsheet or document.
One very important thing to keep an eye on is how often the blog posts guest
written articles, and when the last post was published. If the blog hasn’t been
updated with new content within the past couple of months, then that’s a
good indication that the blog isn’t very popular. A blog that is updated very

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frequently usually means the blog is working for their business and thus a
valuable asset – these are the type of blogs you want your content on.
You also want to primarily guest post on blogs related to your niche. The
reason being that not only will the audience be more targeted, but it will
help search engines look for linking relationships based on relevant niche
groupings. So if your website fits nicely into the same niche as the blog
you’re posting on, the search engines will generally boost the links to your
site with more “umph”.
Some search engine professionals will tell you to look at the “page rank”
of a blog. That’s not necessary. If you can gauge that the blog is frequently
updated, and there are a lot of comments – then you know you have found a
healthy online community that you should probably get in front of.
Finally, you may want to sign up for an account on myblogguest.com. This
website will match you up with blogs that are looking for guest posts.
How to Write a Good Guest Blog Post
There are a few tricks to writing a good guest blog post that will resonate
with readers. Let’s go over some of them now.
Write Conversationally – a lot of people will jump into “school” mode
when they attempt to write their first guest posts. And the problem with this
is it creates the “term paper effect”. Basically your article is going to read like
an essay and it will just be boring.
When you switch to a writing style that “talks” to the reader, then you can
create more engagement with your words. Use words like “you” and “your”,
and pretend that you are talking in front of an engaged group of real people.
Your post will come off much more interesting.
Use Visual Aids – All text and no pictures makes you a boring guest author.
Anytime you can use an image or a video to substantiate what you are
talking about, you’ll add a ton of value to your article.
• Diagrams – Communicating visually is by all means a great way to
increase the value of your article. Anytime you can use a diagram to

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make explaining what you’re talking about easier to digest – then do
it!
• Video – Just about any video you find on the internet is able to be
embedded into a blog post. You don’t necessarily need to know how
to embed a video into a blog post, but simply copy the link to the
video in your article and let the blog editor know that you want them
to embed that video.
• Don’t use stock photography unless you have a reason to –
It’s very easy to start plastering your article with images of stock
photography. Pictures of corporate people smiling and giving hi-fives,
we’ve all seen it and it just looks cheesy. Occasionally, there is a good
reason to use a stock image, but unless you’re using the stock image to
help explain something – you’re better off leaving them out.
Give Actionable Information – The greatest sin you can make when
writing a guest post is to simply gloss over a topic. You know, dancing
around the details and just giving brief overviews. Your number one priority
when creating a guest post is to give the readers as much value as possible.
That’s why it’s always easiest to write “how-to” and “recipe” posts – they
always provide value and you don’t have to worry if it will work.
Details – The devil’s in the details. Details are a great way to build your
credibility with the reader. The more detailed information you can provide,
the more they will appreciate your effort.
Leave an Impression, Don’t Forget
Your Signature
After you burn yourself out writing your first guest post, you’ll probably
forget to focus on your signature. It’s a common mistake. But this is a huge
disservice to your business. Follow these tips to get the most out of guest
blogging:
• Change your links and keywords once in a while – A lot of guest
bloggers will use the same signature over and over again. It’s a good
idea to link to different parts of your website using keywords that best

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match what those webpages are about. This will help build the SEO up
for different parts of your website.
• Create a Google Authorship Profile – You will want to get a Google
Plus account and learn how to create a Google Authorship link for
your signature. This will insert a picture of you in the Google search
results when web surfers stumble upon your guest post. Experts have
found that results with Google Authorship images next to them get
clicked on more often.
• Give your readers a discount – You can leave a coupon code in your
signature for a special deal. This will help you test the effectiveness of
your guest blogging and hopefully drive some extra sales.
Some Final Words on Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is hard at first, but as soon as you get into the groove of it –
you’ll find that it’s an excellent form of online marketing. It builds powerful
relationships, boosts your website SEO and builds authority for your brand.
Don’t overlook this strategy because it has helped many online businesses
rise in popularity very fas resulting in a surge in sales that any business
would welcome.

Chapter 20 Create a Viral Video
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CHAPTER 20
Create a
Viral Video
Creating a viral video that works is no easy task. However, they are fun
and worth doing if you have the budget or skill-set. Nothing will get you
more creatively in touch with your brand – and nothing will unveil the true
voice of your brand more than a great viral video. That’s why you should try
them. Anytime you spend energy unlocking the boring out of your brand,
it’s always well worth it.
Watch this video that Dollar Shave Club created and you’ll instantly
understand how this video has shaped the culture, values and voice of this
company:

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How to Be Viral
There are a few ways to make a video viral – and it doesn’t always mean
you have to be funny. Of course, humor works really well. Below are five
characteristics that viral videos can fall under:
1 Surprising (unexpected)
2 Interesting
3 Intense
4 Positive
5 Actionable (practically useful)
Let’s go over each one of these characteristics with real videos that worked.
Blendtec is a company that makes very robust blenders. For their viral videos
they blend unusual items like mobile and tablet devices. Their first video
now has millions of views on YouTube. The beauty of these videos is that
promoting the product in a surprising and unexpected way works for them.
However, sometimes being too promotionally direct about your product will
make your viral effort backfire.

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National Geographic did a very simple video discussing the world’s
population, using interesting comparisons to show how big that number “7
billion” really is. This video has clocked over 2 million views.
GoPro is a company that has used their product to produce very intense
videos. Each video they put out gets their customers and prospects excited.
From being right in the middle of a wave barrel, to seeing what it’s like in

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the first person to do backflips on a snowboard - GoPro videos keep people
glued for hours. Most of their videos have each gotten several millions of
views.
Finally, wendylookbook.com created a very actionable video called “25 Ways
to Wear a Scarf in 4.5 Minutes!” If you’re a fashion ecommerce merchants,
you need to watch and learn from this masterpiece - and note it doesn’t have
super high production value.

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What it Takes to Go Viral
Just having a funny video or all the right components in your video to make
it go viral, doesn’t mean anything will happen. YouTube’s Trends manager,
Kevin Allocca, says it takes two groups of people to make a video go viral:
1 Tastemakers – People of influence who take new, interesting or
funny things and share them with a larger audience. The most
common example of this is when a well-known celebrity Tweets or
shares a link to a viral video. For example when high school senior
Jake Davidson created a video attempting to woo Kate Upton and
ask her to the prom, it blew up all over the media when she replied
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2 Participators – These are people who incorporate or do something
new with your video, like make a parody of it. For example, everyone
loved the hit and catchy song “Somebody that I Used to Know” by
Gotye, but the YouTube community took it to a whole other level with
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These groups of people are the catalyst that makes videos spread like
wildfire. You should find tactful ways to get your content in front of the right
influencers in your industry, so that your video has the fuel to take off.
Don’t Forget to Have a Clear Value Proposition
Now, if you’re lucky you may come up with the funniest video of all time,
but if you don’t incorporate a clear message of what your value proposition
is, then it may be all for nothing. So basically, viewers of your video need to
know the single most important benefit of what you have to offer.
Don’t just slap your logo and website address on your video and call it a day.
Think through your video and see if you have clearly expressed your value
proposition. Then, survey people to see if they can determine what your
value proposition is. Try to get around 40 responses.
Be Prepared for Ideas to Come at Any Time
Often times, your idea for a great viral video will come when you least
expect it. The best way to handle these disruptive situations is to simply grab
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Be sure to thoroughly examine your vision and write down every detail that
you see in your mind. Whatever you do – don’t gloss over the idea by writing
down a few incomprehensible notes. It’s the small nuances of your vision
that might really put the polishing touches on your video.
Then email it to yourself for review later. Try to come back to it a few hours
later when you have time to devote to the idea. Setting aside time to review
your idea is worth it. If the video does well, you’ll be glad you invested those
fifteen minute to look at it.
If at First You Don’t Succeed…
Chances are you’re not going to hit a grand slam the first time out. So make
it a company effort to put out a good video every quarter or bi-annually. It’s
great for building brand culture and deconstructing what your company is
really about, on top of it all, it’s a great deal of fun. The best thing about this
strategy is that with relatively low risk and investment, you can be playing on
the same playing field as the big boys both in terms of exposure and if you’re
lucky, sales..

Chapter 21 Start Your Own Blog
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CHAPTER 21
Start Your
Own Blog
Starting a successful blog can be the easiest and cheapest way to
attract thousands of new customers. All it comes down to is how well
you can create valuable content for your readers. If you put the time and
creative energy into blogging, it can pay dividends for years to come.
The beauty of blogging is that once you’ve created a great piece of timeless
content, the search engines will bring you traffic to that page for the lifetime
that page exists. So it’s a worthwhile endeavor since it’s really a way of
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Creating Exceptional Content
Many corporate business blogs will usually pump out very boring content
that doesn’t get much attention. So don’t look to them for examples. Articles
like “XYZ company’s fifth birthday office party” and “A day in the life of an
XYZ employee” just doesn’t do much for attracting new customers. However,
creating exceptional blog post topics is quite easy. Let’s go into how you can
create a list of topics that will win you traffic and new customers.
WHAT ARE SOME COMMON QUESTIONS YOUR
CUSTOMERS ASK?
Answering common questions in the form of long detailed blog post
always makes great content. Look through old emails to see what recurring
questions arise. You can also survey your customer using surveymonkey.
com to help fish for content ideas.
CREATE “HOW-TO” CONTENT
If you want to jump right into making content, then the easiest type of
content to tackle is “How-To” posts. Just explain how to do something
that’s a common task for your customers. For example, Lowe’s does
an exceptional job at providing “how-to” content that helps its target
customers maintain and beautify their homes. When you visit, you’ll find
posts like:
• How to Install a Toilet
• How to Operate a Chain Saw
• How to Make a Poinsettia Bloom Year After Year

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In the end, what you are trying to achieve is to be the online authority of
your subject matter. The beauty of this is it builds trust with online visitors.
This helps to convert them into lifelong paying customers.
Be sure to use a lot of clean photos, images and diagrams to help
communicate within your blog posts. And if you feel up for the challenge,
give video blogging a shot to up the ante.
Make Sure Your Blog is SEO Optimized
Before you get too far into blogging, you’re going to want to make sure that
your blog is optimized for the search engines. Here are the few things you
need to look out for:
• Title Tags – Title tags are the holy grail of on-page SEO. First, you’re
going to want to make sure that they are present on every page of
your blog. Simply look for the title tag in your source code. View the
source code of all your webpages and look for “<title>, that’s the title
tag code. If it’s in your source code that’s a good thing. The next thing
is to make sure the title of your post is inside <title> and the </title>
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• Meta Descriptions – The meta description is used in search engine
results to give extra descriptions for each result. Look for the code:
<meta name=”description” content=” in your source code. Again,
this means you have meta descriptions present on your web pages.
The next thing is to see is if there is a description present within the
content=“” part of your meta description. Hopefully you see a couple
of sentences describing what the page is about. If you don’t, you’re
going to want to make sure you fill those out.
• Block Duplicate Content – The golden rule when it comes to on-
page SEO is to make sure that you limit repeating the same textual
content on multiple URLs. The way to do this on a blog is to make
sure your blog home page isn’t posting the entire textual content
of each post. So make sure your settings are only showing snippets
from the posts on the blog home page. Also, make sure you block
your comments pages in your robots.txt file because they are usually
duplicates of your blog posts.
• Check Your Text Navigation – Search engines find their way to
content by following hyperlinks. Make sure you can navigate to your
blog from your main website home page via text links. If you can do
that, then so can the search engines.
Frequency
Blogging is something that you should commit to on a regular basis. As a
matter of fact, the more you blog, the more the search engines will crawl
your website. Additionally it can raise the importance and authority of your
website in the eyes of the search engines. This leads to increased traffic and
obviously more business.
The number one mistake most entrepreneurs who engage in blogging make
is that they start off strong and then completely stop. It’s important to keep
the show going as it will be a main source of free internet traffic after a few
months. Unfortunately, a lot of business owners are too impatient to wait for
the effects to kick in.
One way to solve this problem is to look at your blog as a resource rather
than a burden. If you create content that solves your customer’s problems,

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you can use your blog content as a solution resource that you can send to
customers or employees that have questions.
Promotion
The best way to promote your blog content is through your marketing lists
which you build through a simple sign-up box prominently displayed on
your blog. If you’ve been building your marketing lists, you probably have a
decent audience to help spread your content to the masses.
Be sure to post your content to Facebook , Twitter and LinkedIn the day
your content is published. Keep tabs on what time of the day most of your
social media followers are logged into their accounts so you can increase the
likelihood of them seeing the content in their own feeds.
Another little trick to help promote your content is to link to other articles
when references or citing information. You can reach out to the authors
that you linked to and ask them if they can share your content with their
audience. You’ll find that often times; they will have no problem giving your
content a tweet or Facebook share. And of course, this is another great way
to build business relationships.
We highly recommend blogging if you have the knack for it. It’s one of
those marketing strategies that can potentially brings in the biggest share of
customers, not only can you build authority and genuinely help people with
content they appreciate, but you’ll see how quickly they reciprocate with a
purchase or two.

Chapter 22 Write a Controversial Blog Post
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CHAPTER 22
Write a
Controversial
Blog Post
Creating controversy is one way to get your brand to race out in front
of the masses and garner some serious consumer attention. But it
has to be done carefully and artfully. Shooting from the hip and making
outlandish statements will most likely do more harm than good. But if you’re
up for it, let’s look into how you can successfully pull off this publicity.

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First Let’s Talk About Your Audience
Very few businesses have the ability to please everybody. Popular soda
companies even have a group of people who loathe their brand – health food
fanatics. So taking a side is quite alright. In some cases it’s a great strategy to
build a cult following for your brand.
If we go back to the early 1980’s, there was a computer company that fiercely
looked down upon the enormous and well-established IBM computers. That
company was Apple Computers. By picking a fight with the “Goliath” in
their industry, they were able to garner support from an audience who felt
for them through their highly controversial Super Bowl ad in the year 1984.
The point is: picking a side and really showing that you’re different
than the competition can arm you with very loyal followers that make
great customers for life. And a relatively easy way to do this is to write
controversial blog posts.
We’re going to go over some angles of attack you can use when writing
controversial posts:

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The Basic Recipe
Target something in your niche that is obviously headed in the wrong
direction and discuss its flaws and what a better solution might be. You
might want to have a “pow-wow” with other industry heads first to sanity
check your idea.
The beauty of these types of blog posts is they get emotional for you the
author and in-turn strike emotion in other people. That’s how you make real
connections and thus create a cult following.
An Example: The Internet Challenge
In 2007 Jason Calacanis, a well-respected and successful internet
entrepreneur, made a statement saying that he felt SEO was, well to put it
nicely, “malarkey”. His statement didn’t look favorably on the SEO marketing
industry.
A young SEO marketer named Neil Patel (photo show above) wrote a
famous blog post called “Open Challenge to Jason Calacanis” where he
made a simple bet:
“So to you Jason, I offer the following challenge: I can take your blog and
increase your daily search traffic by a minimum of 10 to 20% after 30 days
of putting my changes into effect. I will NOT be doing anything “shady” or
unethical and will even point out all the changes that will be made to your
blog. You can even have your own designer/programmer make the changes

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to your blog; I will even layout everything for them using step-by-step
instructions.
As well as increasing your traffic I would like to educate you about SEO
and what it is really about. There are tons of great and ethical SEOs that
help companies increase their traffic without doing anything against the
guidelines of search engines.”
As you can see, Neil played an angle where he rallied his entire industry on
his side. This got people talking – which is the essence of buzz marketing
and great PR. He goes on to say:
“If you win, I can post about the fact that SEO is really an over-rated science
and actually have proof to back it up. If I win, you post that SEO is awesome,
and again with the proof to back it up.”
Jason accepted. Sure enough within a few months Neil was able to lift Jason’s
blog traffic. This publicity stunt through a simple blog post, helped make
Neil famous and he has since done quite well for himself.
Strategy 1: Compare and Contrast
If you know something is downright ugly in your niche or notice a great
disparity between two things, you can always write and compare and
contrast post to prove your point.
This approach is almost full-proof because you’re going to have to cite your
reasoning for each point. In essence it will sanity check your post for you
since you’ll have to look through all the evidence, rather than writing a
purely opinionated post straight from the gut.
If you don’t have the stomach for more intense controversy, you can stick
with compare and contrast posts as a regular form of controversial blogging.
Strategy 2: Pick a Fight
One angle is to take a stab at a bigger and well-established competitor. If you
can identify some of their short-comings, you can expose this in a blog post.

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A great way to find some shortcomings is to check Google and Twitter for
unhappy customers and interview them.
In Google simply search using the terms “Expletive + Company Name”. With
Twitter, use their advanced search page and spend time trying to find
something negative about the company. Notice at the bottom of the Twitter
search you can select the “unhappy face” parameter which actually does a
good job of finding people who are upset in their tweets.
Strategy 3: Dispel Myths
Uncovering myths in any subject matter always gets attention and backlinks.
If you’re knowledgeable enough to disprove a common misconception, then
definitely start doing it. In these cases, you want to be the first publication
to unveil these crucial findings. What will happen is that you’ll be the main
article everyone links to when they start arriving at similar conclusions.
Here are some example “Myth-busting” blog post titles for various niches:
• Skateboarding: Why the Notion That WD-40 Destroys Your
Bearings is a Myth
• Basketball: Basketball Shoes Actually Lower Your Vertical Leap
• Running: Throw Away all Those Old Running Shoes – They’ve Been
Ruining Your Body for Years
Be Prepared
If you get good at writing controversial posts, you may find this as a regular
tool to boost your brand awareness and attract powerful backlinks for SEO
resulting in major traffic and if you’re website is optimized for conversion,
tons of sales. It’s actually a very easy publicity stunt because you can do it
from behind your computer in your pajamas. But beware; you’ll most likely
attract counter-attacks. So be prepared to fight.

Chapter 23 Create a Youtube Channel
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CHAPTER 23
Create a
YouTube Channel
Having a YouTube channel can be one of the strongest marketing and
sales tools you’ll ever own. If you think about it, it’s like having your own
cable channel with your programming promoting your business playing on
it 24/7 and the best part is that it’s completely free.
But the barrier for most business owners is simply the ability to produce
videos and really having the time to make them. But that’s what we want to
get out of your head. So don’t think: “Well if I have some free time, I’ll try to
make some videos.”

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Thinking that way will never get your channel going. You need to set aside
time to produce video. And the way you really need to shape your mind is to
think of these videos as your bread and butter. If they become instrumental
towards driving your business growth, you’re going to make sure you get
them done.
Think Like You Run a Cable TV Channel
Your YouTube channel is basically a free cable TV network. You can
produce and air as many shows as you want, whenever you want. It’s really
an awesome marketing tool if you devote time and energy to it. The trick is
to keep producing videos consistently without ever stopping. There are just
too many added benefits for you to not keep your YouTube channel up and
running.
Here are some ideas on what kind of video content you can produce on a
regular basis:
• Weekly educational videos – The most obvious way for any online
business is to produce weekly (or daily if you can swing it) videos that
educate your niche. Whatever it is that you sell, you’re most likely
an expert on the subject and you have a lot of inside information to
give your audience. If you sell skateboards, explain how to do certain
skateboarding tricks. If you sell jewelry, explain how to properly clean
rings and necklaces. If you sell art, explain how to frame pictures or
keep art safe from degradation from ultraviolet light. You know you
can go on forever when you get to talk about your business’s subject
matter. All you need to document all this content that already resides
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• Testimonials from customers – Every once in a while you can
throw in a video testimonial from a happy customer. These are really
powerful because it’s so easy to fake a written testimonial. Plus as you
collect this video content, you can embed them on different pages
of your website to help increase conversions. Imagine seeing really
powerful testimonials during your checkout process? Feel free to
incentivize happy customers and try to persuade them to send you a
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• Product reviews – This is another easy kill. You can do
comprehensive video reviews of products you sell and embed them
on your product pages. Your efforts will pay double because you’ll
also get search engine traffic to your YouTube videos.

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CREATE A PROGRAM SCHEDULE
A really important technique for maintaining your broadcasting frequency is
to create a program schedule. What it does is keep you accountable to make
sure you keep producing video content in a consistent manner. You may
want to display your program schedule publicly to put that extra pressure on
yourself to keep your viewers happy.
Finally, a great way to make sure you get video produced every week without
fail is to delegate this work out to someone else. If you have employees or
are willing to pay youngsters in your area, it’s a great idea to try to build a
process that someone else can follow to easily make videos for your channel.
6 YouTube Channel Tips
• Branding – One thing you should take advantage of when you create
your YouTube channel are the branding options they provide.
• Channel icon – This is basically your profile picture. Generally the
best thing to do is to use your logo to keep your branding consistent.
• Channel art – Not as necessary, but it would be wise to upload
artwork or photographs that works well with your overall brand
strategy.
• Create a Trailer – Trailers are fun ways to introduce your channel to
people. One of the easiest things to do is to create a montage of video
clips that shows some of the “best-of” moments from your channel’s
previous videos. Try to entice people into subscribing to your
channels with a great trailer video.
• Link Overlays – You are allowed to overlay four links to social media
websites and one to your own web property. The best thing to do is to

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only link to your own website and leave out the social links because
they will be an added distraction.
• Create Custom Thumbnails – You should create custom thumbnails
to help advertise your channel videos. Create artwork that is
consistent with your brand and that draw attention. Otherwise, you’ll
end up with default thumbnails provided by YouTube that will add
random visual noise to your channel.
Promoting Your Channel and Your Videos
By default the search engines will start indexing your videos and they will
bring you a little bit of traffic at first. But you can do some extra pushing to
get your videos circulating and your channel popular:
• Incorporate videos in your email newsletter – The beauty of
creating video content is that it becomes easy filler for your other
marketing channels. You’ll definitely want to promote each video for
certain days of your newsletter mailings.
• Incorporate videos into your blog – You can use your video as a
single blog post and transcribe the audio of the video into text for
your blog article.
• Attach videos to your email signature – If you make videos that
you are extremely proud of, attach them to your email signature. This
is an overlooked marketing opportunity, because the one-on-one
emailing you do as a business owner provides a lot more engagement
for the recipient. And since you most likely email several times a day,
you’ll rack up hundreds if not thousands of video views before you
know it.
• Promote your videos through your social media outlets – Each
time you product a video, be sure to promote it on your Facebook,
Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. Make sure to use hashtags to denote
any product types or brands you mention in your video.
The benefits of video can take a while to kick in. But when they start kicking
in, they are a game changer for your business. So put in the effort and try

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your best to produce quality and beneficial videos. Your business will thank
you for it.

Chapter 24 Build Your Email List
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CHAPTER 24
Build Your
Email List
There’s no question how important email marketing is when it comes
to adding to your bottom line, in fact, research shows that for every
dollar spent on email marketing, companies made on average $40
back. When compared to other channels, email subscribers are more
responsive, they have a stronger connection with your business, and they
buy more of your products.
And every subscriber counts. Whether you’re gaining one per week, one per
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But how to you go about getting people to join yet another newsletter - not
to mention actually buying your stuff once they’ve signed up?
At the end of the day you need the right mix of incentives, sign-up forms
and high quality, valuable content.
Let’s take a look at how to put all these ingredients together so you can drive
more sign-ups and sales.
Choose the Right Sign Up Incentive
The first stage of building your mailing list is choosing the right incentive, or
‘ethical bribe’, to offer people in exchange for joining your list. For example,
Holstee offers customers $5.00 of their purchase when they sign up.
This step is all about getting permission to follow up with your potential
customers over time.
There are lots of options you can choose from - the key is to make sure it’s
something that’s compelling. For most ecommerce businesses, this is usually
an immediate discount or the promise of getting future discounts and
information about special, members-only sales delivered by email.
There are also a number of email marketing and incentive focused apps
and services you can use to help make this step easier like Incentivibe and
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Another good incentive is a free piece of content that your target customer
would find valuable and would put your subscriber into a buying frame of
mind. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started.
• A women’s clothing store could create seasonal fashion guides to
help women learn the latest trends and how to coordinate outfits and
accessories - specifically, outfits and accessories they sell.
• A bookseller could offer sample chapters of their latest / best sellers.
• A musician could offer a free MP3 download of their new song.
• A photographer could offer a free high-resolution wallpaper
download.
• No matter what industry you’re in, coming up with a compelling
incentive is an effective way to kick start your list building efforts.
Create High Converting Landing Pages
Once you’ve decided on your incentive, your next job is to create a landing
page - sometimes called a squeeze page. A squeeze page is simply a page on
your website that is 100% focused on getting people to subscribe to your
mailing list. Here’s what we mean:

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Why do you need a landing page? You can use it in a variety of ways to help
build your list.
• Add it as a link in your social profiles.
• Advertise it using Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.
• Link to it in blog posts.
• Link to it in emails (within the body or email signatures).
• Essentially, it’s just an easy to reference page that you can get people
to and convince them to subscribe. It has no distractions - no other
objectives.
Your landing page content should include a persuasive headline, some text
or a video about your incentive and the benefits of joining your mailing list,
and an opt-in form.
Everything else - like your sidebar - should be removed.
Place Strategic Opt-in Forms
Aside from your landing page, the most important element for driving opt-
ins on your website is strategically placed opt-in forms. Opt-in forms are just
a fancy word for the email sign-up boxes.
Popular email marketing software solutions will have handy opt-in form
generators that will provide you with a snippet of code that you can just drag
and drop into various places around your site.
Here are some of the more popular services:

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• Mailchimp
• Aweber
• Constant Contact
• Campaign Monitor
While it may sound excessive to add multiple opt-in forms to your website,
it’s really not. If you had eye-tracking analytics on every visitor to your
website, you would find that they do not look at every part of your website,
from header to footer.
They may just look at the content on a blog post or your about page, your
navigation menu, or your sidebar. Hence, you need to make sure that any
one spot they look at has a conversion point for your mailing list - an opt-in
form.
So where should you place an opt-in? Here are good places to consider.
• Your header / navigation bar. This can be an email field with
simple text like ‘join’, ‘subscribe’, ‘sign up’, ‘get updates’, ‘get exclusive
discounts’, ‘get our free fashion guide’, etc.
• Your sidebar. This can be just an email field or name and address field
with a sentence about your free incentive and what your mailing list
has to offer.
• Your About Page. After you tell visitors about your business and the
benefits of your products, get them to connect and learn more by
subscribing. This can be just an email field or name and address field
with a few sentences about why people should subscribe.
• At the bottom of your blog posts. If people make it to the end of your
blog post, chances are they enjoyed your content and are ready to
take action. Having a strategically placed form here gives them a clear
option for what to do next.
• Your website footer. Let’s say your visitor bypasses all of the above
fields. If they do make it to your website footer, they’re still interested.
Capture them as subscribers.
• Your checkout page. One of the best ways to build your list is
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integrations, whether it’s their own or a third party app, that will allow
you to add customers to your email list after they make a purchase.
Most visitors will be blind to a few of these spots so having multiple forms is
important.
Also, if you run a brick and mortar store, don’t forget about offline
opportunities. Email service providers provide apps that allow you to
capture subscribers in-person. One such app is Chimpadeedoo from
MailChimp which lets subscribers enter their email address on your iPad or
Android tablet. Even if you’re offline, it will collect the email addresses and
import them into your MailChimp account the next time you’re online.
Stay in Touch
As you start growing your mailing list, you need to make sure you’re staying
in touch with your subscribers. The last thing you want is to build up a great
list, not email them for months, and then have them either not open your
emails or unsubscribe because they’ve forgotten all about you and why they
joined in the first place.
You have two options for keeping your subscribers interested in your
business. The first is to send regular, manual updates, such as newsletters,
information about your industry that your customers would want to keep
up-to-date about, or links to your latest pieces of content. Preferably this
would be high quality content that has independent value but that also has
sales and conversions in mind. This option is best for businesses who have
new things to talk about on a consistent basis.
The second option is to put your customers in an autoresponder series. This
is a series of emails that you set up in advance and scheduled to send to new
subscribers within a specific timeframe as they join your list.
Your first email to your subscriber would have the incentive you promised -
the discount, free guide, link to a download, etc. The next email, sent a few
days later, would follow up with the subscriber, asking how they liked the
incentive. The next email, sent a few days later, would let subscribers know
about some products and services that will be of interest based on the free
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This option is best for businesses who have pretty static products or simply
those who want to automate their sales funnel in a set it and (almost) forget
it kind of way. I say almost because if you do have updates to your products
and services, you’ll want to update your autoresponder accordingly for
future subscribers.
Bring it All Together
When it comes down to it, building your list is all about getting permission
and providing value. To get permission, think about what incentives or high
quality content you can create in order to drive sign-ups. Once you’ve got
people joining your list, focus on sending your subscribers a balanced mix of
more high quality content with occasional sales and promotional messages
mixed in.
Delight people in their inbox and their sure to repay the favour by delighting
you through purchasing your products.

Chapter 25 Advertise on Facebook
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CHAPTER 25
Advertise
on Facebook
This is where the power of your Facebook page will become more
apparent, especially when it comes to helping you generate sales.
Facebook advertising has a unique advantage over almost all of the other
internet advertising channels, which is that is you can target your ads by:
• Age
• Gender
• Interest

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Currently pay-per-click advertising networks like Google Adwords and The
Yahoo! Bing Network can’t target this type of demographic and interest level.
For an ecommerce business this is incredibly powerful in terms of direct
targeting.
But before you get overly-excited and decide to throw your entire advertising
budget into Facebook, you must understand that people on Facebook are
there to interact with their friends, not necessarily to buy products.
When you’re advertising and marketing, always consider the intention of
the target audience with regards to the website your prospects are on. For
instance, people using Google are a good advertising fit because they are on
Google actively searching for something. Therefore it’s a perfect venue to
grab their attention.
The 4 Types of Facebook Ads
Over the years, Facebook has gone on to experiment and release a variety of
different advertising options. The four that have worked the best for them
have continued to stick around. They are:
• Marketplace Ads: These are the most standard Facebook ad type
and are usually the starting point for many small and medium sized
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• Page Posts Ads: These ads show up on a user’s news feed. Known as
native advertising, the ads appear and blend seamlessly into a news
feed like any regular status post.
• Sponsored Stories: These ads help people engage with brands that
their friends like, and only show up in a user’s news feed if a friend
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• Promoted Posts: The funny thing with Facebook is that even when
you post an update, it doesn’t necessarily reach your entire fan base. If
you want to reach everyone, you need to boost the percentage of the
audience you reach - which of course costs money.
How To Build Your Facebook Ads
The Right Way
There is a chance that your product will sell like hot-cakes using Facebook
advertising. The best thing to do is to start out by attempting direct sales.
This will get you used to the Facebook advertising platform.
Below, we’re going to go through the steps in which you should think about
creating Facebook advertisements. They’ll guide you through a strategic way
of thinking about your target customers and corresponding advertisements
so that you build a better suited campaign.
STEP 1 – DETERMINE WHAT YOU WANT TO SELL
Do you want to focus selling one particular item? Or let people select from
a category of items? Because you can create more than one ad and you can
send them to specific pages on your website. Remember, you probably want
to send them to the page where they can buy the item without making them
have to click through unnecessary steps.
For introductory purposes it’s probably best to focus on selling one
particular item -probably a product that you have the largest margin on.
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STEP 2 – WHO IS THIS PRODUCT FOR?
Let’s think about your target market. Who is this product for? Teenagers?
Male teens? Does location matter? What are their interests? What products
would they be interested in? Jot down these characteristics for all your
possible personas.
STEP 3 – SELECT AN IMAGE
When you create your Facebook Ad, you’re allowed to include a small
image. We suggest not just using your brand logo as your advertising image,
however, you can always test this. Simply start by using a clean image of the
product.
Consider picking out a product that is an attention getter. For instance,
products that have vibrant colors or products that tend to sell well are good
candidates for your first ad.
The image of these neon felt tennis shoes is an example of a vibrant, eye-
catching product that may convert a bit better than more generic products.
STEP 4 – CREATE COMPELLING COPY
Creating your Facebook ad is much like creating a PPC (pay-per-click) ad
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Again, this is the time to think about your personas. Reflect back and think
about what language your target customers use. If you have been taking
notes on how your customers talk about your products, go back to them and
see if you can use any of that language in your copy. Remember, you want to
speak like them.
STEP 5 – LET YOUR AD RUN FOR A WEEK OR TWO
The interesting thing about Facebook Ads is that they “wear out” fast. That’s
because they are presented to the same group of people continually. Every
time someone from your target group logs into Facebook, they are probably
seeing your ad.
A good rule of thumb is to change up your ads every one or two weeks.
Set a reminder on your phone or in your calendar to check back on your
Facebook ads once a week. Be sure to record their performance in a
spreadsheet or in a text file so that you can review which ads work.
What If Direct Sales Don’t Work?
This is to be expected. Again, people are on Facebook to interact with their
friends. If you’re selling and making a return, then that’s great! You should
double down on Facebook advertising by creating more ads for different
products.
However, the power of Facebook ads is that they are really good for
generating demand, and there are a couple ways to do this with the platform.
The first way is to simply use Facebook advertising to get people to Like

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your Facebook page. There is a genius reason for this; by getting them to
Like your page, you can remarket to them for a much longer period of time
(because people who will Like your Facebook page will see your updates),
which can be a more effective use of your advertising budget.
The second way is to have them sign up for your email newsletter. As we
said in previous chapters, email marketing is a safer bet when it comes to
building your marketing list. Chances are your email list will out-live any
social networking list years down the road.
Now the trick with getting people to sign up for your newsletter is to only
find people who really want to hear what you have to say. There is no point
in trying to lure people into signing up for your newsletter if they don’t
really want to read it. All that will happen is that you’ll waste advertising
budget on people who don’t care about your brand and they ruin your email
subscription performance.
You need to create a value packed newsletter that really benefits your target
audience. What’s compelling about it? Why would people want to read it? If
you’re newsletter doesn’t have an angle yet, something unique that makes it
attractive, then consider getting them to Like your Facebook page for now.
For example, let’s say you own an online kayaking store. You could run
an ad to get people to receive your “Advanced Guide to Sea Kayaking.”
The ad could have them Like your Facebook page to receive the guide or
alternatively you can get them to sign up for your email newsletter to get the
guide. Either way, they will probably be interested in your Facebook updates
or email subscription because it will include more advanced practices
when it comes to kayaking. And of course you would highlight that your
newsletter will continue to have more advanced tips, articles and must have
information in future mailings.
This is a great method to keep these customers and evangelists on the
forefront of their minds when it comes to your brand and their interests.

Chapter 26 Pay for Google Adwords
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CHAPTER 26
Pay for Google
Adwords
Adwords is Google’s advertising network that allows online retailers
to place advertisements on nearly every Google search results page,
YouTube video and partner website.
No other advertising network will give you faster sales results than Adwords.
The reason for this is that your ad can be on the first page of a Google search
query in less than five minutes after signing up.
Below are typical locations for Google Adwords units on a search results
page:

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Your advertisements can also show up on Google’s content network which
places your ads on websites wishing to monetize with Google Adsense.

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The way it works is very simple. You tell Google what ads you want to show
up on their results page based on keyword searches from their users. Every
time someone clicks on your Adwords advertisement, Google will charge
you for that click. The costs of clicks vary on your bid amount and the price
other advertisers are willing to pay for the same keywords.
The Basics
To start advertising, go to adwords.google.com. They are quite helpful
at getting you started and whisking you into the world of pay-per-click
advertising.
The anatomy of an Adwords advertisement is very simple, but it’s also very
important that you understand the components that make up an ad and how
they play a role towards converting business.
• The headline is probably the most important text. It’s the first line
in your advertisement that is colored blue like a hypertext link. A
good headline will determine if a searcher will click on your ad or
not. You’re going to want to test a lot of headlines to hone in on what
works best for increasing click-throughs on your ads.
• The description plays a slightly minor role compared to the headline.
You can also test different descriptions to help increase interest in
your offering.
• The display URL is simply your website address. It can be different
than your destination URL, which is the webpage you send your ad
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The headline, description and keywords are your testing “levers.” You’re
going to spend a lot of time adjusting them to see which combinations bring
you the most profit.
Let’s get into how you can use Google Adwords intelligently, so that your
budget turns into profit.
Start Small
There’s no reward for wasteful spending.
Before you choose 1,000 keywords and a budget bigger than you can handle,
it’s best to start with a small and manageable campaign. The key with
Adwords is to hone your skills before scaling. You need to learn what works
and what doesn’t work for your business.
So, start by choosing a few items that you know will probably move without
much persuasion. Next, select a handful of keywords and create a couple of
different ads for each item.
1 Make an ad group for each type of product you sell – The more
specific, the better. For example, if you sell shovels, make an ad group
for “snow shovels” and one for “gardening shovels”.
2 Create at least two ads for each ad group – You are going to want
to test these ads out against each other. This will be critical for scaling
and improving your profit later. We will discuss this more further
along in this chapter.
By starting with a few ad groups and a few keywords, managing and testing
your campaigns will be much easier. If you try to test too many ad groups at
once, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and make poor decisions.
Choosing Smart Keywords
Once you feel you have Adwords down, think about setting up some smart
ad groups that may convert better for you.

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YOUR BRAND NAME
If you have a somewhat popular brand name by now, and your brand name
is closely tied to your main product – or is actually your product (like the
Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, for example), then you should create a
specific ad group around keywords related to that name. Here are some
keywords that you might want to group into a branded ad group:
• Roomba
• Roomba Vacuum
• Roomba Robot
• Roomba Vacuum Cleaner
Branded keywords generally convert the best and provide the highest return
on investment of any keywords you can choose.
SURVEY YOUR CUSTOMERS
Every time you convert a prospective customer to a paying customer,
ask them: “Why did you choose to do business with us?” The goal of this
question is to find out what made these new customers decide to trust your
business with their hard earned currency. Hopefully, you’ll collect a wide
array of answers over a long period of time. You’ll begin to notice some
recurring patterns in the answers you get. Use the language your customers
use as your keywords and advertising copy.
The reason for this is that this language is unique to your online store and
how you do business. Chances are it will convert really high and there will be
less competition for these keywords.
For example, let’s say you run an online coffee bean store. And from
surveying your customers you find out that a lot of customers came to you
because they heard you sell “non-bitter espresso”. This would be a unique
keyword finding and could be a great ad campaign to get more customers
looking for this style of espresso beans.

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In the example above, using the language your customers use makes for
great Adwords campaigns. Be sure to send them directly to the buy-now
page related to your ad.
ADVERTISE LOCALLY
You can take advantage of your geographical location by advertising to
local customers exclusively. Not only can you tailor your ad copy to target a
specific geographic area, you can also set your Adwords preferences to target
customers in a certain radius.
In the example above we’re targeting kayaking enthusiasts in Ely, Nevada
To adjust your geographical settings, go to Campaigns and then to Locations
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Additionally, you can advertise locally and choose specific keywords like:
• Specific products with serial numbers
• Specific brands that are high in demand
You may end up cornering your local market on these products and even
unseating large retailers. Spend time testing a locally targeted ad group. You
may find a lot of ways to exploit your local presence.
A Note About Choosing
Competitive Keywords
In every industry, there are a group of keywords that drive a lot of traffic and
cost a lot of money to bid on when it comes to Adwords advertising.
These keywords are usually a race to the bottom.
Unless you have a really big budget and are masterful at Adwords, it’s best
to pick a smarter strategy to gain a positive ROI (return of investment).
Otherwise, what will happen is you’ll blow through your advertising budget
and make the worst mistake possible when it comes to advertising on
Adwords, quitting altogether.
The problem with stopping and starting Adwords advertising is that you’ll
ruin your quality score. Quality score is a metric Google gives advertisers
and generally, the better your quality score, the better position and rates
you’ll get for your ads. Google likes to reward advertisers that stick with
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What if You Sell Something Unique
and Relatively Unknown?
Having your own product that is new and hopefully revolutionary is the best
marketing position to be in. Ironically, it can be more difficult to market on
Google Adwords since the Adwords audience already knows what they are
searching for. And if they don’t know about your products, they aren’t going
to be searching for it.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t get any success from Adwords. You just need
to approach it a little differently.
1 Survey your existing customers – Ask them why they like your
product and try to find out what problems it solves for them. Those
answers will likely contain useful language that will help you craft
your Google Adwords advertisements. For instance, if you’re selling
fuzzy neon-green tennis ball material shoes, your customer might tell
you that they like their “feet to stand out”.
2 Determine the benefit of these products – Similar to surveying
your customers, determining the benefits of your unique product
can help you craft keywords and specific campaigns to help solve
problems.
Content marketing is another great tool to help raise awareness of products
with no active sales volume. Here’s the first video of a series of 15 that goes
in-depth into content marketing for beginners, with a heavy focus to help
merchants selling items with no search volume.

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Tracking Conversions
This is an extremely important part of doing pay-per-click advertising
correctly. A conversion means that someone clicked on your Adwords
advertisement, came to your online store and actually purchased from you.
Conversions are the most important metric that governs what keywords you
choose and what advertising copy you run with.
Let’s say you’re running an ad group for shovels:
By tracking conversions, you see that even though the keywords “Heavy
Duty Shovel” has the highest click-through rate (CTR), it actually has a
lower conversion rate than the keyword “Shovel”.
After doing some math, you realize that you’re actually losing money on the
keyword “Heavy Duty Shovel”. In this case you have a few options:

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1 Wait – Be sure enough time has elapsed before you know that the
keyword isn’t profitable. If you make your decision too soon (say
within 24 hours), you’re not getting enough data to support your
decision.
2 Pause the keyword – Let’s say a couple weeks have passed and your
keyword just isn’t performing – then it’s probably time to pause it.
This will put a stop to your ad from being served when someone on
Google is searching for the keyword “Heavy Duty Shovel”.
3 Create a new ad group and ad – Maybe you know this is a great
item that should sell well. Perhaps it just needs more attention and
refinement. In that case, create a new ad group for this specific
merchandise and craft a more specific ad. In most cases, using the
specific merchandise name as a keyword and as the headline results
for better ad performance.
As you can see, without knowing the conversion rate of your keywords and
advertisements, you won’t know your return on investment. Therefore it’s
vitally important that you set up conversion tracking.
Testing
The beauty of conversion tracking is that it allows you to test new keywords
idea and advertising copy. The general goal of your Adwords campaign
should be to iterate on new ads and keywords that outperform your old
“guesses”.
For example, for a particular ad group, you can have two ads running
simultaneously for the exact same keywords. Over time you’ll notice that
one ad will lead to higher conversions than the other. When this happens,
you may want to consider pausing the lower performing ad and switching to
a new ad that hopefully outperforms the current winning ad.
For example, let’s go back to our shovel example. Let’s say you have been
using the same generic ad in all your ad groups:

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You can run a competing ad to try to ascertain which one results in more
conversions. You then decide to craft a more specific ad for your “snow
shovel” ad group:
After a week you find that this second ad has a much better conversion rate
than the generic ad. What you would do is pause the generic ad and run a
new competing ad like:
The idea is to keep running this competition amongst your ads so that you
continually get better and better conversions and thus profit. This entire
world is about honing your campaigns for maximum profit.

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The Entire World at Your Fingertips
The truth about Adwords is that it gives you access to the entire world’s
search audience (because you can place yourself on any Google search
results page). It’s just a matter of how intelligently you craft your campaigns
so that you can make it profitable.
Our advice is to start out slow and careful, but don’t quit. Stick with it and
keep testing new ideas. And don’t forget that you’re not only advertising to
sell your products, your gaining new customers, some of them for life!

Chapter 27 Buy Banner Ads
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CHAPTER 27
Buy Banner Ads
Banner ads can work magic when it comes to selling products online,
but like every form of marketing, they have to be done right. First, lets
look at one of the most well known issues with buying banner ads.
The Problem with Banner Ads
Once you understand what the problems are with banner ads, you can more
creatively make ones that will work.
The inherent problem with banner ads is that in order for someone to click
on an ad, you have to disrupt what the visitor was doing in the first place.
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target. If you think about it, web surfers are most likely doing one of three
things:
1 Engaging in social networking
2 Researching something
3 Trying to enjoy a video
Most ads don’t help web surfers with any of those three things listed above.
That’s why the new age of internet marketers avoid disruptive marketing and
focus on “inbound” marketing instead.
The second problem with banner ads is that they slow down website and
computer performance, which make them another drag for the web surfer.
That’s why so many people have now installed ad blocking software.
3 Easy Tips For Successful Banner Ads
The key to making banner ads that work is to understand the problems we
mentioned above and to really think about how you can get attention or help
the web surfer out with your ads. Here are a few ideas on how to do just that:
1 Only put your banner ads on relevant websites – If you plaster
your ads everywhere possible on the Internet, you’re going to be
paying a high price for poor ad performance. Therefore, only choose
websites where your target audience hangs out. The more niche the
website, the better.
2 Be creative while addressing the web visitor’s problems – It
sounds obvious, but plenty of retailers put the bare minimum of
creativity into their ad artwork. What’s going to get someone’s
attention? What will your target audience care about? This ad from
Volkswagen is both fun and creative:

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3 Test – The first banner ad you ever put up should be the only case
where you see if it sticks. From there you need to iterate on your
message, destination pages and artwork. You need to measure and
keep track of what ads have the best effect with your web analytics.
It’s not only a video game, it helps drive home their message that the Golf can
make it through an unexpected route.
Banner Ad Placement
Now that you understand that creative ads often perform better than boring
ads, the next ingredient to banner ad success is determining what websites to
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Before you ever make an ad, the first thing you should do is create a list of
10 to 20 websites and blogs where you would love to see your ad displayed.
You’ll probably target websites where your “ideal” customer hangs out.
Some of these sites may let you advertise with them directly. Look for links
near the bottom of these sites that say “advertising”. Contact the website
owner and ask them what their rates are – even if they are already posted.
The idea is that you want to start a slow and natural conversation with them.
These people are most likely key influencers in your niche, and it’s much
more important to develop a great business relationship with them – then
just getting a great deal.
The F Shaped Pattern
Most web surfers scan webpages in an “F” shaped pattern. They read from
left to right usually scanning the very top of the webpage first, return to
the left column and scan the middle – again from left to right. They finally
return back to the left column and scroll down from there.
So naturally, based off this behavioral pattern, the best place for your banner
ad is probably in the top left corner or simply the top of any website. This is a
good rule of thumb, but the truth is that every website will have its own ideal
location based on the layout, colors and other calls to action on the site. Find
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Landing Pages
You should give some thought as to where you send your banner ad traffic.
Depending on what your banner ad message is you can send them to:
• Your home page – We rarely recommend sending traffic to your
home page. If your advertisements are more about your brand in
general, then sending traffic to your home page is acceptable. But
don’t expect it to convert into sales!
• A category page – If your advertisement has to do with one of your
categories of products then send the traffic to your category page. You
might want to pre-sort your products on your category pages to either
show the lowest priced items first or the most popular items first.
• A product page – If you’re advertising a specific product, then
definitely send them directly to the product page. 99% of the time this
will result in higher conversions.
• A promotional page – In some cases you may be giving something
away or having people enter a contest. In these cases, don’t make them
do work to find the promotion, just send them to it directly.
How to Buy Banner Ads
There are two primary ways to buy banner ads. You can deal directly with
the website, or work with an ad network. Here’s a rundown on each option:
ONE-OFF BANNER ADS
Depending on your industry, you may know of some niche websites that are
very popular and have an advertising program. Reach out to the operators of
those sites and find out what their advertising rates are. In some cases, these
sites can be the best bang for the buck when it comes to banner ads.
Another thing to think about is how you can become a resident advertiser
on these sites. The longer you advertise on these sites, the deeper the
relationship you can build with their loyal visitors. This is when you need
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to run with. If you can freshen up your ads every month, and make their
visitors smile, then you’re going to strengthen your brand with those visitors.
AD NETWORKS
For more of a shotgun spread approach, you can join an ad network. Ad
networks are middlemen between you and the websites your ads reside on.
The benefit is that you’ll have access to more websites with less work. The
downside is that you might not get the best rates, and you don’t get to build a
close relationship with the website operators.
Here is a list of some popular website advertising networks:
• buysellads.com
• web.blogads.com
• chitika.com
• infolinks.com
• zedo.com
We recommend exhausting the first approach of building close relationships
with publishers directly. If you still need more advertising spread, begin by
contacting ad networks and find out which network is the most suitable for
your needs.

Chapter 28 Promote Your Tweets
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CHAPTER 28
Promote
Your Tweets
What if we were to tell you that a follower on Twitter was 72 percent
more likely to make a purchase from you? You’d probably do anything to
figure out how to get as many followers as possible. However, the reality is
that growing a large Twitter following can be a formidable task to take on. It
can sometimes even take years to build a large and loyal following. However,
luckily for you, there is a way to pay to get in front of more Twitter users –
and that’s through the Twitter advertising platform. Here’s a quick video that
Twitter put together that gives a brief overview of how Twitter Ads can help
small businesses:

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Getting Started With Twitter Ads
What makes Twitter Ads quite interesting is their targeting options. It’s best
to sign up for an account and investigate all the targeting options yourself,
as there’s a lot to check out. Before you do that, here’s a rundown:
Twitter is similar to Facebook advertising in that you can target users by:
• Interest
• Gender
• Geography
However, one major difference is that Twitter allows you to also target by:
• Keywords in the timeline
• Keywords in the search results
Twitter has a unique cost-per-action model: You pay only when users follow
your Promoted Account or when they retweet, favorite, reply or click on a
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There are three types of Twitter advertising promotions you can choose to
partake in:
1 Promoted Accounts – Twitter will suggest accounts to follow to its
users. One way to squeeze onto this list is to pay to be a promoted
account.
2 Promoted Tweets – You can also wedge your tweets into the
timelines of Twitter users by paying for this targeting option.
3 Promoted Trends – Twitter will list the top trends in their user’s
geographical area and interest domain. You can also pay to be in this
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Promoted tweets probably have the most useful effect for smaller online
retailers out of the three options listed above. Tweets have a lot of flexibility
in terms of how you can create engagement, excitement and curiosity,
ultimately having prospective customers visit your landing page and
converting. You really can draw a lot of power from tweets alone.
Since you can have a far greater reach with a promoted Tweet over tweeting
normally, you might want to try these tactics:
• Ask a question – Great for market research, starting conversations
and exposing your brand to new potential followers. Think of
engaging questions that are both fun to answer and target your niche.
Say for instance you sell sporting goods memorabilia. You can start
a conversation about what professional sports star should be traded
to a specific team this year. That way you get the attention of highly
devoted fans and their dreams for the season.
• Tweet a coupon code for a highly demanded product – If you
have a supply of a rare, but highly demanded product, a sponsored
Tweet with a coupon code is a great way to bring more attention to
your store since you can advertise to a much larger audience. Not only
will you increase your follower count, you can engage in very detailed
public conversations about the product and your store. This is a great
way to connect with future customers on a deeper and more personal
level. When other Twitter users see your conversations you also begin
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• Promote a contest – If you have a clever idea for a contest, using
Twitter advertising to get the content buzz out is a good idea.
Remember, you’ll be able to reach more followers and you only pay
for actions taken by people who interact with your tweets. In theory,
you could create tweets that act more like billboards that help with
branding your contest. This could result in lower advertising costs
since you’re not instigating actions like retweets, follows or clicks.
Reserve Time to Manage Your Twitter Account
With all these tactics listed above, the most important thing is that you can
respond to tweets, mentions and direct messages in a timely manner. As
a matter of fact, if you can respond to them instantly, you’ll achieve much
better results from Twitter advertising.
So with that said, you’ll either have to set up your social media monitoring
tools to allow you to be alerted at any given moment or hire a social media
manager to do this work.
You can also use this to take advantage of bigger retailers who may be using
Twitter advertising. There is a chance that they are “sleeping on the job” so
to speak. You are allowed to engage their customers and prospects who have
been left unattended to. That’s why the say the most important thing to do
when using Twitter as a business is to “listen”.
Test, Test, Test…
Twitter is a very interesting universe where you can employ all sorts of
marketing tricks. Spend time testing your Twitter tactics out and once you’ve
found something that works, kick it up notch with Twitter Advertising.
For instance, try testing branded hashtags (#) and mentioning (@) key
influencers in your industry. You may unlock some interesting opportunities
that will become key marketing secrets you’ll hold dear for years to come.

Chapter 29 Get a Booth at a Market
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CHAPTER 29
Get a Booth
at a Market
We know that farmers markets, flea markets, and even pop-up stores
might not sound like the savviest ways to sell products, especially
if you’re focusing on building an online business. But nothing beats
speaking to potential customers one-on-one and selling to them directly,
especially early on when you’re still building your company and you’ll
do next to anything to get that first sale. The one thing you’ll learn from
running an online business is how important it is to get customer feedback
to see what they like and don’t like about your products and how you
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That’s why we think it’s a good idea for people who are starting ecommerce
businesses to try selling in the physical retail world. You’ll quickly get an idea
of what people think of your product and your brand. And you might even
make some good money along the way.
Get Ready for Some “Dirt-ache”
Farmer’s markets and flea markets in particular are hard work. It’s no joke.
The hardest days we have ever worked in our life were running booths at flea
markets. Here’s why:
• They start pretty early – Chances are you’ll be getting up at the
crack of dawn, loading your car or truck with your tents, chairs,
display cases and merchandise.
• There is a lot of manual labor – Aside from standing on your feet
most of the day, sometimes in pretty hot weather, you are responsible
for lugging around merchandise and equipment as well as setting it all
up and tearing it all down.
• You end the day filthy – There is no way around this. One day at
the flea market will get you dirtier than a full day of gardening. So if
you’re planning dinner arrangements afterwards, make sure you have
enough time to go home and clean up.
Finally, consider having someone help you or at least come by to relieve you
at some point in your day. If you are looking after a booth all by yourself and
you need to go to the restroom, well, you either have to risk leaving your

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booth unattended, asking your neighbor to watch over your stuff or worse,
holding it in.
Now for the Good News
Aside from all the hard work and dirt that comes along with running your
own flea market booth, you may come out making a decent chunk of cash at
the end of the day (which will definitely be deserved) and most importantly
you’ll obtain one-on-one feedback with real people.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: GET PEOPLE TO SIGN UP
TO YOUR MARKETING LISTS
The worst mistake you can make when operating a booth is not getting the
people you meet on your marketing lists. The sooner you can build your
marketing lists, the better shape you will be in down the road. As matter of
fact, building your marketing lists should be a top priority every day you’re
in business, no matter what you’re doing. These lists will be incredibly
valuable years down the road when they are full of thousands of people. So
start building them now.
Here are some tips for building your lists out in the real world:
• Have people Like your Facebook page on the spot – If you
have a good conversation with someone at your booth, ask them to
Like your Facebook page on their mobile phone. If they don’t have
Facebook on their phone, ask if you can get their name to reach out to
them later.
• Have people friend you on Facebook – This is a little bit dicey
depending on the type of person you are. If you are a pretty light
Facebook user that doesn’t expose a ton of personal stuff on your
Facebook profile, sometimes is a good idea to have your customers
friend you. Facebook profiles have the ability to market a lot stronger
than Facebook pages.
• Collect email addresses – We would go as far to say that emails
might be more important than Facebook fans and friends. Simply
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and go with popularity. If you are really thinking long-term, building
your email list might be the smarter strategy.
Some Financial and Administrative Stuff
Some cities will require you to have a business license in order to operate a
booth at one of these events. Additionally, the organizers usually charge a fee
to rent a space at their event. These costs are usually pretty minimal and are
always cheaper than opening a store front.
Depending on the disposable budget you have for your business, it’s
definitely a good idea to stock up on some physical signage and business
cards.
Since you’re coming in as an online merchant, be sure to brand your domain
name. Remember, you’re building a brand not just a business. So get that
domain name out in front of people and make sure your domain name is on:
• Your business cards
• Your booth sign
• Any flyers or coupons
How to Accept Payments
Nowadays, it’s important to accept various methods of payments. Most
booth operators simply accept cash because they don’t even have an online
presence. Since you’re main business in online and you accept credit cards
through your online store, there’s no reason you shouldn’t accept credit cards
at a farmers market, trade show, flea market or pop-up store.
If you run your ecommerce store on Shopify, simply use the mobile card
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What if Your Products are a Flop?
Say, after a few weekends of selling your products at the market, you find
that most people just don’t seem interested in what you’re trying to sell.
Assuming you’ve gotten enough feedback, you might want to consider
closing up shop and focusing more on your online efforts.
Perhaps the demographic at those markets is the wrong niche. Generally,
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cash on them. Maybe your product is too high-end or expensive for them.
So don’t be discouraged – and remember:
• Your Target Audience or Customer Base – For the people who did
resonate with your product - did they match your target persona? Did
the experience help define your target personas better? Keep painting
a picture of these ideal customers in your mind!
• Feedback – Are you learning what real people like in terms of
your product selection? What inventory can people do without?
If you’re selling your own product – what did people like? What
did they dislike? Carefully record these finding for future product
development.
Remember to get people to give you feedback. Maybe they are the wrong
customers for your product, that’s okay. They still might have excellent
feedback on what you’re trying to do.
The Ultimate Goal with Selling in the
Physical Retail World
It’s possible to devise a strategy where you employ people to man booths all
over your country. That could be an interesting model that works for moving
your product. However, most people will find that after a summer of hitting
up the markets, the grind really isn’t very scalable for growing a business.
But trying to make millions from selling your products at a flea market
isn’t the point. The point is about getting used to selling your products for
the first time, getting to know your first customers. It’s about getting real
feedback, understanding the emotions people have when they first see your
product. Listening to the language they use, taking in the overall customer
experience.
You’ll appreciate your first customers, your first sales and the marketing lists
you built. And most importantly, the feedback you received from real people
who were willing to discuss what they liked and didn’t like about your
product.
Selling in a physical retail setting? Check out Shopify’s iPad POS System to
easily sell your products and process payments.

Chapter 30 Local Business Networks
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CHAPTER 30
Local Business
Networks
In this chapter we’re going to get into the nitty-gritty of how to
effectively network in the real world to get results, and by results we
mean sales for your business.
If there is anything we want you to take away from this chapter is, then it’s
the first rule of business networking: “Give other business owners’ referrals
(a.k.a. business) and they will do the same for you.”
Pretty simple right?
It’s just good business karma.

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Local Business Networking Groups
In almost every city around the world local business networking groups
exist. The most common example of these groups would be your local
chamber of commerce. Typical chambers of commerce will meet several
times a month for various events such as new business openings, speaking
engagements and small business workshops.
Over the years, niche networking groups have developed in order to increase
the effectiveness of local relationship building. Some common networking
groups include:
• LeTip – LeTip groups meet once a week and only one business per
category is allowed (to avoid competition within the group). Members
are required to either provide a business referral or do business with
a member each week. This helps members understand what each
other’s businesses are – thus catalyzing the networking effectiveness
of the group.
• BNI – Business Network International is similar to LeTip, but has
groups outside of North America. The group mechanics are very
similar in operation to LeTip.
• Your local chamber of commerce – The beauty of your local
chamber of commerce is that they connect you with your city’s
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How Can Business Networking Groups
Help Your Business?
In a nutshell, the bigger your professional network, the more trusted
referrals you’ll get. When we say “referral”, don’t just think of a referral as an
interested first-time home buyer or someone who needs a gentle dentist. A
referral can also be a local person looking for certain products that you sell.
Now you can network day and night and get zero benefit out of it. Simply
collecting thousands of business cards won’t ignite explosive growth.
However, if you network the right way, it might be the only form of
marketing you ever do. Many professional networkers will say this time and
time again.
Here are 6 key strategies toward successful networking:
1 Be memorable to other business owners – When you attend these
groups you need to be memorable. One of the easiest ways to do this
is to have a very unique and creative business card. Alternatively,
experienced networkers will have a silly poem as a tagline: “When
you’re bathroom becomes a bummer, just remember Pete the
Plumber!” You don’t necessarily have to be “cheesy”, but you MUST
find a way to be memorable.
2 Find businesses in your network that compliment your own – If
you own an online jewelry store, you should partner up with local
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to your power partners (which is WAY easier to do than to refer
business to non-related businesses), the greater the chance your
power partners will refer you business in return. Makes sense right?
3 Find out which networking groups are effective – Not all groups
are going to be good at delivering business. When you start attending
business networking groups in your area, ask other business owners
what other groups they like. Over time you’ll notice a trend of what
groups seems to deliver the best value.
4 Frequent these groups once a week – The only way anyone is
going to remember who you are, and more importantly, what you do,
is if you show your face regularly. The more you show up, the more
referrals you will get.
5 Identify the superstar networkers – In every networking group
there will always be “superstar” networkers. These are business
owners that really understand the value of synergizing and helping
other businesses out. What you want to do is identify these superstars
and develop a good relationship with them. Generally these people
will have been in the group the longest, and will have the most
influence within the group.
6 Keep going – The reward of networking doesn’t happen overnight.
You will need to devote a good few months for it to really take effect.
This goes back to giving people in your networking group time to
know who you are and what you do. Also, you’ll need time to deliver
your first referrals too. But once you get your networking mojo down
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How Does This Help My Quest For
Global Domination?
As you grow and your business scales, local business networking may not fit
into your weekly regimen. But when you’re starting off, it’s a great way to get
your local community aware of your business. Especially if you have a brick-
and-mortar location. In certain metropolitan areas, developing your local
strength can be a huge portion of your revenue.
However, as you get busier, you’ll notice that business networking takes
time. You’ll have to make the call as to whether or not you can fit networking
into your schedule and if it’s worth it to your bottom line. Many established
businesses will send employees to networking groups to maintain a presence
in the local business community.
Whatever you do, get out there and give networking a shot. It’s a great way
to create opportunities for your business that sitting behind a computer can’t
get you.

Chapter 31 Go to a Meetup
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CHAPTER 31
Go to a Meetup
Meetups are a great way to meet local entrepreneurs. Networking with
local business and/or tech people can pay off big time. You’ll get to learn
from experienced people who know the ins and outs of the industry. There
are plenty of ways to find a local meetup. Your first destination should be
Google to search “your town __ meetup”. You can also go to Meetup.com
for keywords like “startups” and “tech” to see who else is working on an
online venture in your area.
When you attend your first Meetup, here are a few things you can do to
make the most out your experience:
• Cross promote online – Exchange coupons with them for future
mailings or simply write about each other’s businesses in your emails.

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• Tweet and share each other’s content – Going back to the rule
about business karma – help your local online business buddies
by sharing their content online on sites like Twitter, Facebook and
LinkedIn. They will repay you for it by doing the same.
• Guest blog – One great way to spread awareness of who you are and
to get some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefit while doing it,
is to write guest blog post for other people’s business blogs.
The one big benefit from going to tech or online business Meetups is that
you meet people who have experience. The knowledge and people they
know can be very valuable in your own startup quest.
Start Your Own Meetup
One thing that can really boost the awareness of your online business is
to host your own Meetup. Now you don’t want to make the focus of your
Meetup about your business. What you want to do is to create a reason to
meet with local people in your area who might have an interest in something
related to your business.
Here are some examples to help illustrate what you can do:
• If you own an online kayaking store, you might want to organize a
weekly kayaking Meetup at your local river or marina.

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• If you operate an online shoe shop that specializes in high-
top footwear, you can host a Meetup that is a 2-on-2 basketball
tournament. Offer a trophy and a free $100 gift certificate for the
winners.
• If you own an online jewelry shop, you can host a jewelry making
Meetup.
You may find that running your own Meetup is a faster way to network since
you will be the hub of all the activity. But there are few important things to
remember:
1 It will take nurturing – You will need to update your Meetup page
often, reply to comments, and make sure your group is happy. You’ll
probably want to spend a few hours a week answering questions,
responding to comments and updating your calendar of events.
2 Don’t make it about your business – Create a Meetup that provides
value for the attendants. That’s what will keep people coming back
and spreading the word.
How To Start
Remember how we said to always be building your marketing lists , a great
way to spread the message about your Meetup is through your marketing
lists (Facebook, Twitter and your email newsletter). Hopefully by now, you
have a few good sized lists that you can market to about your Meetup group.
It might also be wise to reach out to your network of friends and family to
kick-start the first few Meetups. They can add to the attendance and help
facilitate ice breaking.
Be sure to fill out your Meetup profile to 100 percent completeness. This will
help target people who are searching for new Meetups. Meetup.com will also
market to people on your behalf who they think might be interested in what
you have to offer. They will use the data you input towards this marketing, so
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Meetup Metrics
One really nice feature of Meetup.com is the group statistics they provide.
These stats are a great way to monitor the health of your group. Here are
three important metrics you should watch:
1 Member joins – This keeps tabs on how well you’re attracting new
members and how your audience is growing.
2 Attending – Knowing your RSVP counts over time is a great
indication on whether or not your group has that “viralness” that you
should shoot for.
3 Total and Active Members – By tracking joins and leaves you can
get a sense of how engaged your group is. Keep in mind that Active
Members are more important than Total Members. Keep an eye on
your “Active Member” count, make sure that number is growing.
By monitoring these stats you can determine ways to improve your group’s
activities, location and meeting times. For instance, you may want to try:
• Changing the day of the week – Which days of the week work
better for your group members? Maybe Mondays are too busy for
most people as well as Friday. Perhaps weekends are the sweet spot.
• Changing locations – Locations are a huge factor to the success of a
Meetup group. At first you may want to try many different locations.
However, later on, you may find that switching locations is disruptive
to your group’s growth.

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• Changing times – Having events at 5pm on weekdays might make it
really hard for your members to attend. Try testing different times to
help narrow in on that sweet spot. Again, changing times too much
down the road may throw members off.
• Changing the event format – Remember, the goal is to provide
the most value for your group. What can you do to make sure your
members get the most out of your Meetup? Be careful of trying to
pack in too much because you might spread the event out so thin that
the overall value received becomes very mediocre.
And Finally, A Couple of Secret Tips
First, you need to be careful about having your group become too directly
related to an individual person, simply because the group becomes “Jane’s
Group” or “John’s Group” and less about the brand. This can become a
problem if “Jane” or “John” leave the company or can’t attend the Meetup
anymore.
Lastly, many people have found that January is a huge month for new
member signups. So whatever you do, make sure your groups meets in
January and doesn’t die out because of the Holidays.
We can’t emphasize how powerful Meetup.com is to spread your brand’s
awareness and generate sales. We highly recommend you give it a shot if you
have the time and a creative approach to weekly events.

Chapter 32 Sell Wholesale to Other Retailers
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CHAPTER 32
Sell Wholesale to
Other Retailers
Sometimes you’ll find that selling directly to consumers may not be
your forte or hasn’t yielded the same results you were expecting.
Before you give up, you might want to consider moving up the supply chain
and start distributing your own products (or even other products from other
companies) to other retailers. Usually, due to the increased volume you’ll
be selling, your revenues will grow much faster, but it is a different kind of
business and it takes some getting used to.
The hidden advantage is not only do you open the possibility of growing
your cash flow, you are allowing other businesses to take part in the

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marketing of your products. They will talk about your products to their
customers and hopefully spread the word about it through their own
internet marketing activities.
It may be a bit trickier to control the marketing messages once you’re in this
stage –but that’s just a little growing pain that has to be felt when scaling.
Create Different Pricing for
Different Customers
Now you’ll have at least two different types of customers: consumers and
retailers. The golden rule is:
Don’t undercut your retailers.
This means that you should always sell your products to your retailers at a
lower price than you do to your consumers. So if you sell widgets for $20
on your public facing website (where ordinary consumers make purchases),
make sure you sell widgets for $10 to your retailers so they can make a profit.
Also, keep in mind that If one day you decide to blow out a bunch of
inventory and post a huge sale on your website, you might make some of
your retailers upset. Especially if they just bought a lot of inventory from you
at a higher price than what you’re selling to the public.

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Minimum Orders
In order to achieve selling volume to increase your revenues, you’re going
to probably want to enforce a minimum order rule. This means retailers
(wholesale buyers) must buy a minimum amount of product or dollar value
when placing an order. This allows you to discount your products since they
have to buy in bulk.
Advanced Wholesale Pricing
Some companies take it a step further and would start offering pricing tiers
to their retailers. For example:
• If you buy 100 units, you pay $10/unit.
• If you buy 500 units, you pay $9/unit
• If you buy 1000 units, you pay $8/unit.
The idea here is to encourage larger orders and more revenue. It’s probably
wise to start out with something simple and see how your business adjusts to
this new way of distribution.
It’s going to be tempting to allow retailers exceptions when it comes to
placing minimum orders. You’ll have to be the judge of this. You might
want to be lenient for new retailers who have signed up for your wholesale
program. You can offer “no minimum order” on your first purchase to
incentivize sign ups.
But it’s probably a good idea to stick to your guns after the initial grace
period. If you always let people buy small orders at a discounted rate, just
be aware that it might have detrimental impact on your ability to stay in
business.

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Allowing Other Retailers to Dropship
Another way to speed up your wholesale business is to allow other online
retailers to dropship your products. If you’re new to the concept, we highly
recommend reading another one of our Ecommerce University guides,
“The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping.” But in short, the way it works is,
their customers purchase your products from their website and you ship the
products to their customers.
The retailer will most likely pay you a slightly discounted price for the item
since you didn’t have to pay for any of the marketing of the sale.
Obviously this can be a tricky system to set up, but it’s worth spending some
time over a spreadsheet to see if it’s a profitable business decision for you. If
you think about it, there are tons of online shops out there ready to sell your
products if you have a dropshipping program available.
Some Final Words on Selling to Other Retailers
In many ways, starting a wholesale distribution business means you’ve
reached the big time and can focus your efforts more on your B2B
relationships. Take some time to think it through and seek out some expert
business advice. It may be wise to consult a business coach who is familiar
with this territory. Learning from other’s mistakes is way better than paying
for your mistakes.

Chapter 33 Take Your Business on the Road
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CHAPTER 33
Take Your Business
On the Road
A fun and productive way to see the rest of your country while looking
to make that first sale is to showcase your business in other locations.
Now granted, this strategy is better suited for more established businesses,
it’s still a viable option for those just beginning as well. By going on the road
you may find different pockets of culture that appreciate your offering more
than in your immediate geographical region. It’s also something companies
like Warby Parker are experimenting with as a way to reach a completely
new audience. The company’s Class Trip tour had them going around the
nation on a school bus bring their entire line of eyewear to the offline world.

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Image Source: what-the-font.blogspot.ca
In fact, many great businesses were built on the road. It can be an
enlightening experience and will open you up to many possibilities that you
just can’t get staying put. You’ll create new business relationships and get
brand evangelists that you would never find normally.
But First – You Have to Be Somewhat Social
A lot of magic that happens on the road are the small run-ins you have with
individuals. It could be when you’re filling up for gas or pulling into a hotel -
you never know who you are going to run into, and that’s exactly the point.
If you’re not the type of person to start conversations with strangers then
this activity will be self-defeating. However, if this is right up your alley –
then this adventure can be the start of small business empire.
Here are a few examples of successful businesses that started out of vehicles:
• Nike – Started out of the car of Phil Knight. A green Plymouth
Valiant to be exact.
• Stussy – A lifestyle clothing brand that originated in Laguna Beach,
CA. Like Nike, Stussy started out of car – just a decade later.
• Pangea Organics – They didn’t start out of a car, but a van rather.
They sold soap and now have a strong skincare brand.

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Make a List of Trade Shows and
Community Events
If you have decided to go on the road, the next thing you need to do is make
an itinerary of places and events to go to on your travels. Answer these
questions first:
• How long can you be gone?
• How much budget do you have for your trip? Don’t forget fuel costs.
Next, make a list of tradeshows, meet-ups and business networking mixers
that are on your route. Be sure to email the organizers to see if there are any
potential registration pitfalls that may keep you from attending.
If you live in the United States, you might want to visit these sites:
• localharvest.org – This website lists all the farmers markets across
the United States.
• tsnn.com – Trade Show News Network is your one stop resource for
everything trade shows. Not only do they cover the United States,
they list shows that are held all over the world.
• meetup.com – We dedicated Chapter 31 to Meetup.com. Meetups
are usually free to attend and are popular all over the world.
Selling in person? All you need is your iPad and Shopify’s POS Software.
Deck Out Your Vehicle
While you’re on the road, you’re going to pass thousands if not hundreds of
thousands of automobiles. You might as well turn your car in to a billboard
for your business.

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The example above is a bit extreme, but you get the point.
(image credit: http://www.trendblast.com/city/san-francisco/
mobileretailvan)
There are plenty of “auto wrapping” businesses available these days. Just
Google the words “Vehicle Wrap” and chances are there are a few outlets
in your city that provide the service. Here are some tips you should keep
in mind before you wrap your vehicle with something overly wild and
unreadable:
• Focus on your domain name – Consider only using your domain
name and forget your business name. Cut out the http://www part as
well. Just use: yourbusinessname.com. Everyone knows how to use
the Internet these days.
• Don’t get too wild and decorative – True, it may attract more
eyeballs, but those same eyeballs might get lost in a sea of crazy and
incomprehensible artwork.
• Have a value proposition – If you’re going to include any other text
on your vehicle, let it simply be your value proposition. What’s a short
and memorable benefit of doing business with you?
The Traveling Checklist
Before you set out on your journey, there are some crucial things you must
remember to bring to ensure success.

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“MUST HAVES”:
• Laptop with charger
• Mobile phone with charger (check about roaming charges)
• Business cards
• Pop-up tent
• Foldable chair
• Company banner (more than one can’t hurt)
• Medical insurance
• Basic medical kit
• Hand sanitizer
• Inventory (if you need to ship orders from the road)
• Portable printer
• Post-it notes and a pen
• A suit / dress clothes
• Dress shoes
• Breath mints
“IF YOU CAN SWING IT”:
• iPad or Tablet
• Extra credit card (for emergencies)
• Car power inverter (to charge electronics while driving)
• A good camera (for Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr)
• Wireless internet plan
And When You’re Finally On The Road…
Try to stick with at least half of your itinerary. If the trip doesn’t seem like it’s
giving you much benefit at first, and you’re eager to get back to home base –
realize that sometimes it’s the second half of the trip that makes it valuable.
But in the end you’ll have to make the call. That’s really what being a good
business owner is about: being able to make good decisions.

Chapter 34 Deploy a Sales Team
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CHAPTER 34
Deploy a
Sales Team
Sometimes getting that first sale is a quick endeavour. But sustaining
growth in sales quickly makes you realize how tough it can be to be a
one-person sales team, especially if your product requires a little more
convincing than traditional consumer goods.
The obvious question that you’ll probably have next is: How can I afford
a sales team? The answer is that your sales team has to be designed to not
only pay for itself but also bring in additional revenue and customers, so it’s
all about how you design your team. Think of your sales team as miniature
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So how do you design a sales team to do this?
Determine Your Sales Goals
Considering that you may bring on a few sales people, what kind of sales
numbers do you want to hit each month? Remember the entire point of
creating a sales team is to achieve financial growth. So you need to figure
out what your first financial goal will be, then work backwards and see how
much you can pay your sales team to get to that goal.
This math will be iterative. You’ll have to spend time adjusting numbers to
see what wages, commissions and number of salespeople will work with
your goals.
Commission Pay Structure
Next, you’re going to want to create a wage structure which incentivizes your
team to create business. Here’s a basic structure:
• Base rate – Trying to hire salespeople for commission only jobs
tends to be pretty difficult. And without having tried the job first,
there is no way of them knowing if your company provides the
support and resources they need to make sales.
• Commission – Typical sales people will make a percentage of the
revenue they bring in. You’ll obviously have to do some math to see
what you can afford to pay in terms of commissions. The general rule

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of thumb is: the higher your commission, the more motivated your
sales team will be to go the extra mile.
• Bonus – For sales people who really knock it out of the park for
a given month, you may want to consider offering an additional
payment bonus. This is a great way to lure sales people towards
certain sales goals you have set.
The beauty of a sales team is the fact that they have to be somewhat
independent. It’s up to them to make sales.
How Do You Get Your Sales Team to
Make Sales?
Obviously, just having people sit in your office or warehouse all day is not
going to stir up any business. You’ll need to make a plan for them to follow
so they can create business. Here are a few ideas:
• Twitter – Encourage them to build relationships on Twitter to help
build customers and evangelists. You’ll have to tell them that it will
take time and not to be too aggressive. Most importantly, they should
design their twitter profile to have a unique title at your company.
For example, their Twitter bio should say “The Happy Man at XYZ
Co.”. The idea is that they aren’t labeled “Sales at XYZ co” or “agent” or
“representative”. The last thing you want them to do is scare off their
prospects.
• Reaching out to Past Customers – One of the easiest ways to stir
up sales is to reach out to customers who haven’t purchased in a
while. Remember, you essentially paid for these people to become
customers in the first place. Don’t let them slip through the cracks!
Just give them a gentle reminder that you’re still in business to serve
them.
• Provide Live Chat or a Toll Free Number – By simply making it
easier for customers to buy from your site, you can increase sales. Let
your sales team “man” the live chat and phone lines to help customers
buy from you and teach them to upsell! Upselling is the art of enticing
customers to add more products to their order.

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• Check your Email Marketing Replies – A common place for
untapped business are from people who reply to your email
marketing campaigns. Perhaps you should also think about making
your email marketing a bit more interactive to stir up conversations
with customers.
• Events, Tradeshows and Networking – Like we talked about in
previous chapters. Live events are great places to generate business.
Your sales team should be a perfect fit for these events. With a sales
team your company can hit more events during the week than you
could ever do by yourself.
Hiring the Right Sales People
This is the hardest part if you’ve never done it before. If you put an ad out for
a job position, you’ll likely receive hundreds if not thousands of responses.
So how do you find the best talent?
1 Look for previous sales experience – Sales is extremely tough
because it requires a great deal of emotional armor. Great sales people
can face being rejected 100 times in a row and can keep trucking.
Therefore, only a select few are really cut out for sales. If this your first
time creating a sales team, only hire seasoned sales people as they’ll
be able to teach you a thing or two.
2 Call their old employer – Checking references is tedious, but it’s the
best way to weed out the winners from the losers. For people who

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apply for your sales position that don’t list references to their old job,
just throw those applications in the round file.
3 Check their LinkedIn profile for recommendations – This can
be another way to cut down your applicant list. If they don’t have
any LinkedIn recommendations, you can eliminate them from the
running.
4 Don’t hire green salespeople – You’ll find plenty of people who
will say “Yes” to everything you ask and are even willing to work for
commission only – yet have no prior sales experience. You probably
want to stay away from these people. In the end they won’t make any
sales and will waste your time and energy. It may be tempting to hire
people willing to work for free – so if you really want to try it, be
prepared to hire 100 of them! Because only a few of them will make
any sales.
5 Provide generous compensation – Since you’re looking for the best,
reward them with decent if not stellar pay. Again, this can be in the
form of high commissions. It’s worth it. These people will be essential
to growing your revenue and more importantly your customer base.
Be Nurturing
The worst thing you can do is hire your sales people and then tell them
“to figure it out” or “I hired you so I don’t have to do this work”. In order
to achieve the greatest amount of success you will need to be available to
answer questions, point them in the right direction and give them ideas on
how to sell more. You’ll need patience at first and you’ll probably have to
work “overtime” to get the team to gel.
But again, if you look at this as an investment (like going to get a MBA), then
you should understand that it’s not automatic and it will take some elbow
grease on your part. As soon as you start hitting your sales goals, consider
promoting your best salesperson to be a sales manager. This way he or she
can take over the nurturing task and also onboard new sales people.

Chapter 35 Get Going with Tradeshows
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CHAPTER 35
Get Going with
Tradeshows
Trade shows can have a profound impact on your business, especially
if you’re the manufacturer or source of your own products. Even if
you’re simply reselling products created by other companies, you can achieve
a good amount of success at a trade show. If ever you have trouble finding
something pertinent to you, a handy resource to look up trade shows that
might be relevant is the Trade Show News Network (TSNN). Not only will
you open yourself up to some on-the-spot sales, but hopefully, you’ll be able
to build lists of highly interested prospective customers while you’re there.

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Should You Get A Booth?
Depending on the trade show, floor space can be quite expensive. That’s
actually why trade shows have become so popular. The trade show organizer
is basically renting otherwise cheap floor space for upwards of $1,000 a
square foot.
If it’s your first time going to a particular trade show, you might want to
come as an attendee and not as an exhibitor. That way you can get a feel of
the trade show to see if it would be a good fit for your business strategy next
year.
However, if you know there will be a lot of attendees that would be perfect
customers for your business, you may want to just bite the bullet and rent a
booth. And if you’re the manufacturer of your own products, trade shows
are a great place to book large orders with retailers from all over the world.
Consumers At Trade Shows
If the trade show is more consumer oriented instead of just a bunch of
industry “heads” getting together, not only will you be able to make sales at
the show, you can add highly interested people to your marketing lists.
Trade shows attract some of the most targeted customers than any other
event you can think of. These people are perfect evangelists for your brand
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Start by Making them Happy
Consider stocking up on items like stickers, t-shirts, pins and other
promotional items that consumers might appreciate. But think creatively,
what would your target consumer really like? You want to give them
something they will talk about.
After you have given out your swag to these lurking evangelists, get in the
habit of having them Like your Facebook page on the spot, or get them to
sign up for your mailing list. Remember, these are people you want to keep
marketing to for years down the road. So bring a laptop with you so that you
get people to sign up for your newsletter or Like your Facebook page.
If you’re selling products at your booth, consider giving your new customers
an instant discount for a Like or an email sign up. Don’t get overly excited
about sales at the trade show and forget to add them to your lists, being able
to remarket to them will bring you much more revenue in the years to come.
Industry Networking
Trade shows are really about networking and building relationships with the
right people in your industry.
Here are some of things to look out for at a trade show:
• Manufacturers / companies that white label – We can’t emphasize
the power of branding enough. If you can provide your customers

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with high quality products that have your brand label on them, you’ll
find this strategy to be much more effective than selling other people’s
products in the long run. Generally, you’ll have better margins and
you’ll be able to spread brand awareness with every product sold that
has your logo on it.
• Competitors – Find out who your competitors are and talk to them.
Building a persona of your competition is usually a good thing to do.
Find out how you match up to them and in what areas your company
is lacking.
• Power Partners – Look for companies that don’t directly compete
with you and that you can synergize with. Think of ways where you
can partner and run cross promotions. Try to find big companies
that might give you a spot on their newsletter or will run a cross-
promotional campaign with you. The key is to approach them with
an offer they can’t refuse. Consider crafting an entire cross-branded
email for them so they don’t have to do any work but send it to their
list. If it’s a success, get them to run it on their Facebook page.
What If There Are No Trade Shows
In My Niche?
This might be the best scenario that could happen. Why? Well, you might
want to consider starting the first trade show in your industry.
Starting a trade show is the ultimate authority power play. It shows that
you’re the leader in the industry and will make you the hub of all activity
and information.
BUT AREN’T THEY EXPENSIVE TO START?
No one said that your first trade show has to be in Las Vegas. Most trade
shows start out small. Call your city and see what local venues they have
available and what rates they charge. Even local hotels and event centers
might have affordable conference space they can rent to you. You’d be
surprised at what is available if you spend some time looking.

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You may find trade shows are such a valuable event for your business that
you might go to them every couple of months. It’s definitely worth a look
into, so make sure to check them out.
Selling in person at Trade Shows? All you need is your iPad and Shopify’s
POS Software to easily sell your products and process payments.

Chapter 36 Go Door to Door
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CHAPTER 36
Go Door to Door
This might be one of the most overlooked startup marketing
techniques out there. It actually can work for digital, subscription, and
physical products. Simply, go door to door and introduce yourself as the
founder, creator or “insert creative name here” of your company. It’s a
technique that more and more companies are surprisingly turning to in
order to win customers over.
But People Hate Door To Door Salespeople
Yes they do, and maybe you do too. It’s no secret that through various
mediums, we’ve built a negative stereotype of what it means to be a
salesperson. But try putting it to yourself this way, you’re not going around

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selling, you’re going around introducing yourself and sharing what you do.
That’s all. You’ll be surprised by the wide variety of responses you’ll get, and
even though it might be a slim percentage at first, the number of people who
appreciate what you do and are willing to hand over their hard-earned cash
for your products or services.
When you knock on your neighbor’s door, you are approaching them not as
a salesperson, but as a neighbor. You can open with this pitch:
“Hi, My name is _______. I’m your neighbor and I just wanted to introduce
myself.”
As the conversation gets going, it might become natural for the topic of what
each other’s profession is to surface. That’s the perfect time to introduce your
brand, but don’t try to sell them. Simply show them what it is you sell during
“working hours.”
Now it’s important not to do this for completely self-serving purposes. The
idea is as a business owner and hopefully future leader, is that you want to
become a community pillar. So this strategy is only for those of you who
genuinely like your neighbourhood and want to get to know the people in it.
These genuine relationships will repay you tenfold.
But, Do All This Just To Talk To A Dozen
People On My Block?

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You can take the “neighbor” strategy citywide. Simply go door to door and
let people know that you have started a business in their town and leave
them with something creative and memorable. Be really clever with this. For
example:
• During the winter holidays you can leave them with some mistletoe.
• At the beginning of summer, hand out BBQ matches. They’re cheap
and can be nicely bundled.
• Bring them a list of 10 awesome things they probably don’t know
about their community. For instance, check to see what discounts the
local utilities companies offer. Find out all the little details that can
benefit local residents and compile them into a nice flyer.
Whatever you do, don’t just leave a flyer on their doorstep without meeting
them. Then you are just trashing their doorstep and giving them more work
to do, because now they have to throw away your flyer. As a matter of fact,
don’t leave anything on their doorstep without meeting them. The point is to
make a personal connection.
We want to leave you with this final thought, there are probably tens of
thousands of people in your town alone. Imagine if you could turn all those
people into raving fans? So start thinking about how you can engage these
local evangelists.

Chapter 37 Use Print Ads
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CHAPTER 37
Use Print Ads
In the age of online advertising where you can calculate your return
on investment to the penny, suggesting print advertising may seem
quite unusual. Especially when magazines are getting extremely thin and
newspapers are going out of business.
That’s exactly why we’re suggesting it.
If there has ever been a greater time for print advertising, it’s now. In
other words, it’s a print advertiser’s market. Believe it or not, in many
circumstances you can practically call the shots when it comes to negotiating
rates.

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Why Print Advertising?
Think print is dead? Think again. For many magazines and newspapers
print advertising is less expensive than it was a decade ago. That’s simply
because a lot of advertisers have moved most of their budget into online
advertising.
Naturally, as the demand for ad space has diminished, so have advertising
prices. This is not the case in every single instance, but by and large this is
true across the print advertising world.
Depending on your niche and what print outlets are relevant to your
business, this can be a goldmine of opportunity for you to not only get
exposure to the right audience, but put a creative spin on how you want
your brand to be recognized.
What Kind of Advertising Opportunities
Should You Look For?
The smartest thing you can do is survey your customers and ask them what
magazines and newspapers they read regularly. This will give you a strong
indication of where you should advertise. But, most of you haven’t made a
sale yet so you don’t have any customers, so here are a few things you can do
to pinpoint the perfect publication for your business:

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START LOCALLY
Not only will local publications be less expensive, but you can take advantage
of the fact that you’re local as well. You can run ads that resonate with locals,
whereas with national or international advertising, you just can’t get the
same effect.
CHART READERSHIP VS. COST
You’re going to want to chart which publications have the highest readership
numbers along with their advertising cost. Determine which publications
have the lowest cost corresponding with the highest readership numbers.
Those are going to be the newspapers and magazines with the best bang for
the buck. Of course you will have to also weigh which publications will be
the best match for your business. The more niche specific and relevant the
publication is to your business, the better the effect it will have.
For example, if you were debating whether to run an ad in the Wall Street
Journal or Adventure Kayak Magazine (assuming you own an online
kayaking store), you probably would want to advertise in Adventure Kayak
Magazine since that’s what your target audience reads.
CHECK THE TWITTERSPHERE
A great way to see if anyone actually reads the publications you’re thinking
about advertising in is to see if anyone is tweeting their articles. Chances are
these publications will have an online component, so you can do a Twitter
search to see how often people talk about them. Another good thing to do is
to check their Twitter follower count to see how popular they are.
In the example below, we’re going to see how frequently people talk about
or link to “thrashermagazine.com” (Thrasher is a skateboarding magazine).
First we must navigate to https://twitter.com/search-advanced to
perform our search:

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After entering the domain name in the exact phrase field, we hit enter and
we get the following results:
We can see that people are talking about this magazine quite frequently
(a few times an hour), so this is a good indication that a good amount of
eyeballs read this magazine.

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Some Tips for Diving into Print Advertising
1 Plan for the long haul – The number one rule when it comes to print
advertising is that you have to stick with it for a while. Don’t expect
sales to come pouring after your first ad. It’s more about branding and
generating demand over time.
2 Create special promotion URLs – Create URLs that will help you
track the effectiveness of your ads. These URLs will not give you an
exact number of people who saw your ads, but they do give you a
relative measure of how effective your ads are.
3 Don’t clutter your ad space – One of the biggest habits of new
entrepreneurs is to try to squeeze in as much information into their
ad as possible in order to take advantage of every millimeter or real
estate. Well it doesn’t work – and actually ruins the effectiveness of
your ad. Instead advertise one promotion. Having a clear and concise
offer will generally yield much better results. Otherwise you’re just
going to confuse people.
4 Don’t wait until the last minute to create your ad – You should
come up with your first draft a week before the deadline. Chances are
you’re going to have to reformat your artwork or you may come up
with an even better idea for a better ad. Give yourself some breathing
room – you’ll thank yourself for it.
5 Never pay full price – To find out the price of an advertisement in a
magazine you go to their website and check the rate calendar in their
media kit. There you will see something called “Rate Base” which is
the guaranteed audited circulation, and then prices for varying sizes
of ads depending on volume of buy. Big discounts go to advertisers
who commit to 6-12 issues. Now you have to talk to a sales person
to negotiate the rate. The first quote you get is called the “open rate,”
and you can usually get them at least 30% lower than that. You should
always negotiate a better rate, nobody expects you to pay what is
listed on the website, or even their first quote. Listed price is $100,000
for a full-page ad, you can probably get them down to $50,000 for a
one-off. We have negotiated to pay only 30% of the listed price before,
so we can’t stress this enough: never pay full price.

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6 Don’t pay extra for color or bleed – So many advertisers don’t
know this, but magazine ad departments are ripping everyone off
with bleed charges, and charging extra for 2-color, 4-color, and more.
These charges come from the days when it would actually cost more
to print full bleed (they would lay ads out by hand) or in full color.
Nowadays with printing technology it makes no difference, so never
pay extra for color or bleed.
7 Negotiate position – While you’re negotiating rates you will need
to consider where your ad will appear in the magazine or newspaper.
This is an important conversation since you probably don’t want the
last 30% of the publication. Be prepared to negotiate first 50% of the
magazine, you will get more eyes and you will be placed among more
reputable brands.
8 Beware of buying remnant ad space – If you call up an ad
department shortly before they go to print you can often buy highly
discounted ads. This can be a good strategy for some merchants, but
others beware. When you buy remnant ad space you will not have a
say on positioning and will likely end up at the back of the magazine.
Remember, many great businesses were built on print advertisements. So
don’t count them out just yet. The entry point into online advertising is
extremely low, but advertising in the right print publications can add a lot
of legitimacy to your business through increased brand recognition and
trustworthiness which you should see translate into a boost in sales activity.
Again, as we’ve mentioned throughout this chapter, there has never been a
better time to pick up reasonably priced print ads.

Chapter 38 Sponsor an Event
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CHAPTER 38
Sponsor an Event
Sponsoring events is an age old form of marketing that can be really
hit or miss. A lot of larger companies will send their “marketing team” out
with a table and a banner and call it a day. This “throw it and see if it sticks”
approach will probably get you nowhere. With that said, we’re now going
to show you how to make the most out sponsoring an event and how it can
lead to some serious sales on your end.

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Picking the Right Events
You’ll get a lot of offers, whether by mail, email or in person, to attend events
all over the country. But instead of randomly selecting any event, you really
want to know if the right attendees will be present. You know – attendees
that will make loyal customers and raging evangelists.
Here’s a simple recipe for picking the right events:
1 Place priority on events where consumers will attend – At the
end of the day, these are the people you really want to talk to. This is
where you can collect feedback, add to your marketing lists and make
real relationships with future evangelists.
2 Pick events where people will actually be interested in your
business – This may sound obvious, but if you just go to some local
fundraiser, you’re probably not targeting your ideal audience.
3 Sort by cost – Most events will charge for a table and for other extras
like banner space. Sort all the data you have collected and go to the
events you have time for based on a priority of which events will be
the most beneficial. It’s easy to casually select events without really
looking at all the information you have. But don’t be lazy – think
about what’s going to work best for your business.

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Charting up-coming events and getting a little information about them can
save you from wasting your time and focusing on what events are the most
beneficial for your business.
Demo Your Products
A lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of coming to the event with just a
table, a banner and some flyers. If you run an ecommerce business, bring
products to sell. Having tangible merchandise that can wow event goers and
that they can even purchase from you brings you much closer to gaining
lifetime customers.
Bring a laptop or tablet with you, so that consumers can make purchases at
your table and become registered customers at the same time.
Now, if you produce your own products than product demonstrations are a
must. Your job is to expose your product to the world so make sure it’s there
at the event!
Give Them Something to Talk About
At any trade show or event, you can choose to have a boring and typical
table like everyone else has – or you can have the table that stands out. As a
matter of fact, don’t bother attending events or trade shows without having
an awesome spread ready to go first.
So what do you do? What do you bring?
• Bring your Purple Cow products – These are the products that get
people talking. You want to be able to start conversations with people
and build relationships on the spot.
• Tell Your Story – It’s important to address why you started your
business. Hopefully you have an inspirational story that you can tell

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event goers. We recommend watching a Ted Talk done by Simon
Sinek entitled: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Action.
It’s about how the best businesses like Apple Computers operate
differently by the way they communicate their company purpose.
A lot of people who watch this video completely redefine how they
approach business after watching it.
Collect Email Addresses And Facebook Likes
As you engage people at the event(s), for the people that seem really
interested in your story or your products – ask them to Like your Facebook
page on the spot or join your mailing list. You can also try to incentivize
more Likes with giveaways:
• Free stickers
• Coupon Codes or Discounts
• Free beverages – what better way to keep an event going by giving
away free liquids for Likes. You might be the most popular table at the
entire venue, and you’re marketing list might skyrocket.
Remember what we said earlier: You’re there to build relationships with
future customers and people who will become die-hard evangelists of your
brand, not to mention make a few on-the-spot sales while you’re at it. So
with that in mind, make sure to design your table, pitch and your marketing
around relationship building.

Chapter 39 Distribute Flyers
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CHAPTER 39
Distribute Flyers
Perhaps the oldest form of marketing next to the shop sign would
have to be the flyer. Even with the popularity of Internet marketing, flyers
and direct mail are still effective ways to make sales, especially that tricky
and often allusive first one. The beauty of a flyer campaign is it’s easy and
inexpensive to test for effectiveness.
Start with a Sample Test
If you’re not sure if you want to spend the energy doing door-to-door flyer
campaigns – you can easily test to see if it’s worth engaging in.

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1 Create a flyer – Start with something really simple and to the
point. Less is more. Less is also much easier to test and makes a
great baseline. Try promoting a sale, a specific item, or an event. For
example if you run an online kayaking store, then offer free kayaking
lessons. Whatever you do, don’t just promote your URL and hope for
sales to come in.
2 Print out 100 flyers – 100 pieces is a good number to give you
results to make an informed decision later on. It also won’t take too
long to distribute.
3 Go door-to-door – Delivering 100 flyers will take a good portion of
an afternoon.
The easiest way to see results is to check your sales over the next month. You
can look at your billing and shipping zip codes to see if they match the area
your flyers were delivered to. You might want to keep checking a few months
later to see if any more sales trickle in.
Alternately, you can use a special URL or a coupon code to track your flyer
efforts. For example if you want to offer a discount to residents in your city,
you can send them to a URL like: www.yourdomain.com/city-name or give
them a coupon code like “CITYNAMEYEAR”.
Depending on how many sales derive from your campaign, you’ll be able to
determine if it’s worth scaling. In many cases, just a few sales out of 100 are
usually worth justifying future flyers campaigns. Don’t forget that some of
these customers will be repeat customers, so the investment upfront should
pay off more down the line.

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Scaling
If you want to try a larger flyer campaign and cover more ground, it’s good
to think of it as a mini science project. Before you make a new flyer with a
new promotion you should try the exact same flyer again, this time sending
it to 10 times the number of new prospects than before.
The reason for this is simple: with an expanded reach, you have even better
data on how effective your baseline flyer is. If you send the flyer to 1,000
homes, you’ll have a more accurate conversion rate of that first flyer.
You’re also going to want to hire someone or a company to deliver the flyers.
At 1,000 homes – it’s no longer worth your time to kick rocks. There are a lot
of businesses that do flyer delivery for you – so simply do a Google search
to see who offers the service in your area. Of course this will increase your
costs and you might not get the same results. And that’s exactly why it’s so
important to test and measure.
Testing Your Flyers
The next step is testing your flyer. Over the next few campaigns, test things
like:
• Copy – Change the wording of your flyer.
• The Offer – Try a more compelling offer.
• More than one offer – Try multiple offers, but be incremental when
adding offers. Your tests will be much easier to gain insights from.

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Only change one thing per campaign. If you change too many elements
on your mailing piece at once, you’ll have a hard time knowing what has the
biggest effect. Later on when you get your flyer testing “chops” down, feel
free to do big bold changes to see if you can make a bigger impact to your
bottom line.
Going Purple Cow
Now, what if you completely got rid of the plain old paper flyer and did
something really unique? For example, what if you put an envelope with a
bow on it, and nicely placed on your prospects front porch?
And inside, you wrote a personalized note explaining that you are also from
the neighborhood and you’ve started up a small online business down the
street.

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Remember, building a strong loyal local following is worth its weight in gold.
Especially if you have a local brick-and-mortar store. Going the extra mile
with your mailing pieces is certainly worth the effort.

Chapter 40 Advertise Outdoors
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CHAPTER 40
Advertise
Outdoors
If you’re really hungry for that first sale and traditional online methods
aren’t yielding any results, offline methods like billboards can be your
holy grail. Not only can they persuade the public that your brand is large
and well established, it can target large amounts of potential customers on
a daily basis. However, Internet marketers are usually afraid of outdoor
advertising because it’s hard to track its effectiveness with web analytics. But
in some cases, and if you have the money, it could be worth a shot.

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Billboards 101
Since no one is going to take the time to stop and examine your billboard
message in detail, you’ll have to remember these things:
1 Limit your word count – Don’t write sentences and definitely don’t
write out paragraphs. Make your message quick and concise.
2 Focus on branding – More than anything, billboards are a branding
strategy. Your logo and domain name should look good and readable.
3 Emphasize your domain name – Make it big as possible so grandma
can read it. Lose the “http://www.” Everyone knows how to use the
internet these days. Even grandma.
4 Don’t try to be clever – There is nothing wrong with a “genius”
billboard. We’ve all seen them. But if passers-by don’t “get it” right
away, then you’ve lost them.
Location, Location, Location
A poor strategy would be to randomly advertise on billboards around
your city. Ideally, you want some geographical context when picking your
location. For example:

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• An Online Kayaking Store – In this case you would want to try to
find outdoor advertising next to kayaking launch sites and roads that
approach bodies of water.
• An Online Hi-Top/Sneakers Store – Here you would want to
advertise near parks, basketball arenas, and possibly city centers.
• A Fashion Related Online Store – For this case, you would want to
advertise next to major shopping malls and college campuses.
As you’ve probably guessed: you want the kid going to the basketball court
every day, the girl that hangs out at the mall, and the kayaking fanatic who’s
always driving to the local stream – to see your message on a regular basis.
It’s all about maximizing impressions.
Mobile Billboard Advertising
A new form of outdoor advertising is mobile billboards. The beauty of these
is that they solve the problem of not being able to get the location that you
desire. You can hire mobile billboard services to drive around the locations
you want to be seen at or simply park on strategic intersections.
Not only that, they can cruise around major events that may be perfect
targets for your brand. If you run a sporting related website, you might want
to have them lurk around the local sports arena during playoff season.
You can also wrap your own automobile in an advertising skin and drive
around to conduct some tests. Try parking in strategic locations and see

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if you get any lift in website traffic. Be careful of letting the vehicle wrap
companies do the wrap design for your car. Sit down with your graphic
designer and come up with some concise, uncluttered vehicle wrap concepts
first.
A Final Word on Advertisement Design
Tacky graphic design can do damage to your brand image. Good looking
design can instill trust and authority towards new prospects – so don’t
skimp on the design of your outdoor advertising. Remember, you’re not just
building a business, you’re building a brand, so think about how you want to
look to the rest of the world.
Hopefully, at this point in your business journey you’ve partnered or hired a
good graphic designer or someone with a good eye for design. This is a key
secret that most small business owners fail to realize and what could mean
the difference between you making your first sale or not making any sales.

Chapter 41 Tell Family and Friends
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CHAPTER 41
Tell Family
and Friends
Your network of friends and family will most likely be your easiest
first sales. You may not want to sell to them, but consider that every time
someone else has your product in their hands, you’ve increased the chance
of something very important happening: the opportunity for social currency
to take place and word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing to kick into effect. That
is, every time someone has your product in their hands, there is a very real
chance that they will:
• Tell someone else the benefits of your product.
• Tell someone where they can find the product.

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• Verbally deliver your brand name.
These three actions we listed above are a lot more powerful than if you go
out and advertise your product yourself.
The key lies in the third party validation of your products and your brand.
To put it simply: do you believe what advertisers are telling you in a
television commercial? Or do you trust what your closest friends and family
members recommend to you?
The more you can get people who do not work for your brand to evangelize
your products for you, the greater the chance of success you will have. We
would go as far as to say that should be your ultimate marketing goal for the
life of your company.
And the more your friends and family know and use your products – the
more social currency they will have when telling other people about your
products.
A great way to give your friends and family awesome social currency to
use – is to give them something newsworthy to talk about. What’s special
and unique about your products or brand? What makes you different,
remarkable or great?
For example, Toms Shoes gives one pair of shoes to someone who is
shoeless for every pair of shoes they sell.
Obviously, having the effects of social currency take place as soon as possible
is in your best interest to getting your business off the ground.

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Your First Lesson in Targeting
and Demographics
Since your friends and family are mostly likely made up of people who are
of different genders, ages, interests and personalities – your first marketing
campaign will have a scattered effect that might not yield much return, but
that’s okay.
This is actually a very important moment in your business development. It’s
important to take note which people your product resonated the most with.
Was it mostly women? Was it an older crowd? What you need to start doing
is creating personas that fit your product offering.
To build your personas, figure out what your typical customer looks like.
Write down their age, gender and their interests. Start to determine what
kind of personalities like your products.
As you refine your personas and target demographic over time, you can
launch more specific and relevant marketing campaigns that will yield better
returns.
Get Testimonials
Now we want to talk about testimonials in a little more detail.

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Your friends and family have a unique value that no other group really falls
into. And that is, they are the easiest and cheapest ways to get awesome
testimonials for your products. It’s so easy that people forget to ever do it.
Simply ask your friends and family (one by one again) to write you
testimonials of your product and more importantly: your brand. These
testimonials will come in very handy one day for your website and other
marketing material. Just imagine if you had a unique testimonial on every
page of your website.
Having your friends and family write you testimonials will require them
to really get to know your product. It might inspire them to buy one for
themselves. But really, the intimacy they achieve with your product gives
them more social currency to use when they talk about it with other people.
It’s like having the world’s best trained salesmen roaming the earth for you.
One Huge Problem with Friends and Family
Although your family and friends will be your best evangelists for spreading
the benefits of your products – they also can be the worst source of feedback.
Simply put, your family and friends don’t want to hurt your feelings. They
will naturally tell you things you like to hear and tell you “you’re doing a
great job… keep doing what you’re doing”. This actually can be the worst
possible advice.
Getting feedback from people you don’t know is the best navigational tool
you’ll ever come across. You will want to develop an addiction to getting
feedback from real customers and people you don’t know personally.
Now this doesn’t mean your friends and family can’t write the best
testimonials. They will indeed and they will write them more passionately
than almost anyone else. But for real feedback, you want to listen to the
cruelest of unsatisfied customers.

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The Second Lesson on Targeting
and Demographics
Your products most likely will not have mass appeal. That’s why getting real
feedback from all kinds of people will be very important. Some people will
hate your products, some people will find flaws and of course some people
will absolutely cherish them.
The important lesson is to start to understand who your products are for and
who they aren’t for. It’s also why we like to say: “Love thy Haters.”
They will increase your profits. How? Because you’ll know not to waste
advertising money and energy on them.
The real important point we’re trying to make is that you need to
start understanding your target audience and how to get people to
evangelize your brand for you. These are long term strategies that the best
entrepreneurs and businesses focus on for ultimate success. It is what
separates the best from everyone else.

Chapter 42 Participate on Forums
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CHAPTER 42
Participate
on Forums
Participating in online forums can be an amazing way to get your
business in front of the right audience. Frankly it can be one of the best
forms of online marketing there is. The only problem is that it’s incredibly
easy for forum marketing to backfire and cause more harm than good.

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The Temptation
As soon as an entrepreneur has a new product to sell to the world, most of
them want to blast, spam and annoy every one they can, and as fast as they
can. Because it’s a “numbers game” right? Wrong.
The first thing you have to do is get that age-old saying out of your head. We
have a strong suspicion that phrase or way of thinking is the cause for more
failed online businesses than anything I can think of. In fact, businesses that
thrive in today’s connected world tend to have a customer-centric or “you-
centric” approach rather than a “me-centric” approach, that is out to provide
value and genially help customers with their problems. If you haven’t already,
be sure to read Jay Baer’s new book “Youtility”.
The temptation with forums is that since they contain some of the most rich
and targeted environments to market your products, you’re going to want
to come screaming in, telling everyone what you have for sale. This will
generally get you banned from the forum faster than you can say spam.
Never Spam Anyone, Anything or Any Website
The first rule of online marketing is to not spam. You must treat these
carefully built communities with the highest respect. You’re in their house.
You wouldn’t go into a coffee shop and plaster their walls with flyers without
permission would you? The same thing goes for the online world.
But it’s easy to fall into the mindset of a spammer. You don’t have to face
your victims in the flesh. You may not even understand the annoying
consequences of what you’re doing. You might even start to get away with it
for a while. The important question that you should always ask yourself is:
“Is this good for the brand?”
When you start to think of your business as a brand, then you’ll begin to
understand why spam hurts your ability to grow your business.
How to Find Forums
Finding forums is very easy thanks to good old Google. Simply conduct
Google searches like:

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“[your industry] + forum”
“[your industry] + message board”
Or pick a few popular product types you sell and use those words in your
forum search. Hopefully, Google will spit out dozens of popular forums
related to your industry or niche. Before you spend time setting up profiles
in these forums, be sure to see if they are active. Google will keep results in
their search engine of forums that may have been dormant for years. Quickly
weed out those forums and keep note of them.

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How to Become a Cherished Member
of a Forum
Once you find forums that consist of your target audience, be prepared to
go through a long initiation of becoming a part of the tribe. Leave all your
business and salesperson thoughts behind and let the community transform
you. Be prepared to give in to their culture and their way of doing things,
this will be a transformational journey that will prepare you to be the best
business leader you can be in their world.
Let’s get into the process of carefully going about this:
1 Sign Up – This is the easy part. Sign up for accounts at the forums
of your desire. Fill out your bio and “about me” sections. Upload
a real photo of yourself. But refrain from putting up links to your
ecommerce website. Just let the community know that you are a real
person first.
2 Read and Listen – Spend a couple hours a day reading the
discussions that are happening on these forums. Get used to the
community and take notes on what they like and what they don’t.
Not only are you getting introduced to the local tribe, you’re doing
market research too. Find out what kind of spam they don’t like.
Find out what pisses them off. Some forums will be more particular
than others. The main point is to learn as much as you can from your
audience. Remember, these are your future customers.

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3 Help – After you feel comfortable with your new community and you
know your way around your new hangout, feel free to help people.
Helping people by responding to their questions and providing
information to them will make you highly respected in any forum. So
long as you’re not pushing your own content or links to your website.
Be as unbiased as possible and help them as genuinely as you can.
4 Promote the Right Way – Once you feel that you have developed
real relationships with members of the community and you are
truly one of them – then slowly let your business be known. Start by
going back to your bio and link to your website. When you feel really
comfortable and if the forum allows it, create a signature that either
links back to your website or provides a way to solve problems for the
community.
By tapping into a already passionate community that’s the perfect target
market for your product, not only is all the time and effort worth it when
it comes to forums, it’s almost equivalent to a goldmine when it comes to
finding your early customers when starting out. So make sure to keep at it.

Chapter 43 List on Craigslist
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CHAPTER 43
List on Craigslist
Perhaps the easiest way to launch any business is through Craigslist.
Started in 1995 by Craig Newmark, Craigslist has been providing the world a
(nearly) free marketplace to sell just about anything.
For someone starting out a business Craigslist can be a godsend. It’s really
the closest thing to free advertising there is and probably should be utilized
by more mainstream businesses as well.

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How to Start Selling on Craigslist
The first thing to do is to locate the most geographically relevant Craigslist
subdomain that is closest to your neighborhood. Craigslist is all about
dealing locally. Just because you may be selling most of your products
online, it doesn’t mean you can post on every Craigslist subdomain there is.
We’ll get into why that’s important later.
If you navigate to the Craigslist homepage, you will see a list of cities (or
counties) sorted by state or province. Find the city that you live in or live
closest to. Click on the most relevant city, and on the next page you will see
a heading that says “for sale” right in the middle of the page. Click on “for
sale” and you will be brought to a page that lists everything that is for sale in
your city.
Now it’s time to post your product, and this is where the magic happens.
Take this hypothetical post we created for example:

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There is a ton of opportunity at this posting point that so many people
simply ignore. Here are some tips to make the most of it:
Spend time creating creative post titles, there is no reason to post boring
titles.
• Have fun writing funny or clever product descriptions. Your words
are a method of customer engagement. Have a sense of humor and
more people will be willing to connect with you.
• Upload clean, non-blurry images, show multiple angles, and let them
see what you’re selling.
• Make it easy for them to reach you. Leave a phone number where
they can text you. Texting is more effective when reaching out to
customers than expecting them to reply via email.
• Finally, link to your product page. Since Craigslist posts last for
months, you might get repeat online buyers by adding in that simple
link.
What if You Don’t Want People Coming
to Your House?
If you’re just starting a home based business, and you don’t feel
comfortable having strangers coming over – that’s okay too. There are plenty
of solutions for selling locally before you set up a brick and mortar store,
such as:

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• Set aside time during your day for people to meet you at a busy public
location. In front of your public library, civic center or coffee shop can
make a good location to do visible business.
• Have a friend or family member accompany you during your “store”
hours.
• Offering local delivery, if you don’t mind driving to your customers’
home.
How to Avoid Being Flagged (How to not
Spam Craigslist)
Since Craigslist is such a wonderful, almost-too-good-to-be-true
marketplace, you should really respect their rules so you can keep
conducting business on Craigslist. Naturally, since Craigslist provides free
listings to just about anyone, most business people will see that this is as a
source for infinite return on investment. They will try to spam or “carpet-
post” on this service to milk as much business as possible.
Of course this has caused the Craigslist team to be incredibly tough on
spammers or people who try to take advantage of their marketplace. So, with
that said, treat Craigslist with the respect it deserves.
Here are few tips to keep in mind:
• Don’t post multiple ads for the same product.
• Over posting in general, tends to get flagged and removed.
• Try not to be a posting “hog” – people who seem to go crazy with
Craigslist tend to get banned.
Basically, you want to stay somewhat under the radar so that you can keep
using this free service for years to come. We would recommend to always
use different post titles and description paragraphs for each listing you
create.
After you get comfortable using Craigslist, consider switching to a “dealer”
as your business gets more established. The reason for this is to best fit the
description of who you are – which Craigslist appreciates.

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Giving Away Freebies for Branding Purposes
One way to build your marketing lists is to use Craigslist to give away
“freebies”. One of our favorite methods is to give away free stickers. You can
post stuff that you are giving away for free in the free category under the “for
sale” section. We would also take advantage of this area as a great place to
really advertise your local business. One tactic we like to employ is to make
fun posters that tell a story about your brand and upload them as an image
to your post.
If you can afford to give away free products in exchange for emails or
feedback, you might find this is a great, ultra personal way to build your first
brand evangelists. Since most of your responses will be local, you can easily
meet people and have one-on-one conversations about your product. The
social currency one receives from meeting the founder of a business usually
travels a lot farther than does a social media relationship.

Chapter 44 Give Out Coupon Codes
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CHAPTER 44
Give Out
Coupon Codes
Coupon codes can be a pretty handy tool to attract new and repeat
customers. However, it’s important to make sure discounting fits into your
overall brand strategy.
Racing to the bottom to become the “low-price” leader can have a disastrous
effect if you’re not careful. Sometimes, it’s better to not lower prices and
wiser to devote your energy to providing outstanding service and an overall
unique brand experience.

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In any case, running an ecommerce business is all about experimentation
and finding out what works best. Let’s go over some of the ways you can use
coupon codes to attract and delight customers.
Go After New Customers with Coupon Codes
If you’re hungry to make your first sales and you’re more into
experimentation than having rigid brand development standards, then here
are a few ways to competitively go after new customers.
TWITTER
For your most popular items, simply tweet out coupon codes and append a
hashtag for the keyword or brand name that is associated with these items:
You may want to tweet out your coupon codes a few times a day to get them
more attention. Be sure to switch up your tweet sentences so you’re not
duplicating tweets.
FACEBOOK
Facebook now allows you to use hashtags as well. But in order to get a better
Facebook response, upload a photo of your product along with a short
message regarding the promotion.

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How To Use Coupons Without Hurting
Your Brand
Although we are warning you about developing a culture of discounting,
that doesn’t mean coupon codes can’t be used occasionally or even
intelligently. Here are some ways to use coupon codes without hurting your
brand.
INVENTORY THAT JUST WON’T MOVE
This is the most obvious place to use coupon codes. Nothing is more
dangerous than sitting on inventory that won’t sell. In this case you can
create coupon codes targeted to move these items. You can either give a
straight percentage discount on individual items or make them free when a
certain dollar amount is reached on an order.
For example: “All orders over $100 get a free toaster cover. Use coupon code:
TOAST100”
SHOWING CUSTOMER APPRECIATION
Customers who have remained loyal are any business’s best friend. This is
simply because it cost so much more to acquire new customers than to keep

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old ones. A great way to show your appreciation is to email old customers
coupon codes to show thanks for their continued support of your brand.
REWARD NEW CUSTOMERS WITH AUTOMATIC DISCOUNTS
One way to build customer loyalty is to automatically apply discounts
towards their first purchase with your business, but without telling
them upfront. Alternately, you can waive their shipping fee for first time
purchases. Surprise is a great tactic to make lifetime customers.
Marketing On Coupon Code Websites
If you’re really itching to get your online store known and get that first sale,
you may want to put your coupon codes on websites that get a lot of traffic
from coupon seekers. The drawback is that these websites target people
looking for the lowest prices and aren’t necessarily looking to become brand
followers.
Here are a few websites that you can market your coupons on:
• RetailMeNot – You can submit your coupons here: http://www.
retailmenot.com/submit.php
• Coupons.com – This website emphasizes their ability to target
mobile shoppers.
• Slickdeals.net – Has been around since 1999 and provides a free,
user driven deal sharing site for coupon collaboration.
If you’re going to experiment with giving coupons out, think about how
they fit into your overall business strategy. Also, check your local consumer
protection laws on coupon expiration dates and usage rules.

Chapter 45 Do Affiliate Marketing
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CHAPTER 45
Do Affiliate
Marketing
Affiliate marketing can be an amazing sales channel for an online
retailer. A lot of your success has to do with the type of products you sell
and how well you pay your affiliates.

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How Affiliate Marketing Works
(Source: http://www.cj.com/what-is-affiliate-marketing)
The basic premise is that you let other people market your products and
send you website traffic. In return, you pay them a percentage of any sales
that are made that originate from their efforts.
This is done usually by giving them special hyperlinks that they can post on
their website. These hyperlinks usually contain an ID code which helps to
track their efforts. Here’s an example of what an affiliate hyperlink may look
like:
http://myonlineretailwebsite.com/blue-widgets/?affiliate-id=123456
In this example, a blogger might put this link on their blog to try to get
their readers to click through to your “blue widget” page and hopefully buy
something. If the visitor who clicks on this link actually buys something,
affiliate tracking software will automatically (usually – depends on what
system you are using) pay your affiliate a percentage of the sale.
Sounds Great! When Can I Get Started?
At first glance it sounds like the answer to every online retailer’s dream: let
anyone in the world market your products and give them a cut of the sales.
With enough volume, you can’t lose. Well the truth is affiliate marketing has
some sticky issues – so you really have to align your stars just right to make
it work.

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DETERMINE HOW MUCH OF A “CUT” YOU CAN AFFORD
You’ll have to do some math to figure out how much of a percentage you can
afford to give up to do affiliate marketing. Can you part with 5% of the total
revenue that comes from a sale? How about 10%? The higher the percentage,
then generally the more affiliate traffic you will receive.
If you’re really interested in setting up an affiliate program, you may want to
raise your prices to allow margin to pay affiliate marketers.
Joining an Affiliate Marketing Network
The easiest thing to do is to sign up for an affiliate marketing network like
Commission Junction. They provide a marketplace where your affiliate
program will be advertised to other affiliate marketers. They also provide
the tracking software for your affiliates so you don’t have to build your own
tracking system. In some ways this is better because it takes care of the trust
issues. Affiliates are always suspicious of whether or not they’re getting
credited for the sales they generate. By having an intermediary take care of
transaction tracking and payments, the fear of being cheated is alleviated.
Affiliate networks will also take a cut of your sales or charge fees to use their
network. You’ll have to weigh this additional cost to see if you can afford it.
Be sure to check out these webpages of other affiliate networks that are out
there:
• Commission Junction

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• ShareASale
• LinkShare
• Affiliateprograms.com
Building Your Own Tracking System
If you don’t want to use an affiliate network, you can build your own tracking
system. For example Shopify shops have plugins and modules that you can
install to start your own affiliate marketing program. It’s just up to you to
advertise your program well enough to get affiliate marketers to join.
There is a lot to be said for independent and home grown affiliate marketing
programs that are trustworthy and pay well. You may find that news will
spread quickly about your program and attract hungry affiliate marketers
who appreciate the high payouts and less “red-tape”.
Why You Shouldn’t be Stingy Towards
Your Affiliates
If you think about how much you spend on advertising, you may find that
giving bigger percentages to your affiliates is equivalent to how much you
spend on advertising. Additionally, don’t forget that affiliates are not only
bringing you sales, they are bringing you new customers.
Think about how much one customer will bring in over the lifetime of your
relationship with them, it’s worth spending more up front to acquire that
customer.
Finally if you have an army of affiliates sending you traffic because you’re
generous, your daily revenue may jump several-fold. It’s important to do the
math to see what kind of scenarios affiliate marketing will provide. So get
out a spreadsheet and see if affiliate marketing will be the blast your online
business has been waiting for.

Chapter 46 Build Relationships with Suppliers
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CHAPTER 46
Build Relationships
with Suppliers
It’s no secret that as an online business some of your most powerful
alliances are with your suppliers. Too often, retailers forget to reach out
for help from their suppliers. In this chapter we’re going to go through some
of the ways you can put your suppliers to work for you.

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Build A Relationship with Your Suppliers
Before you go on a spam blasting tear asking all your suppliers for help, be
sure you’ve developed real relationships with key people at each company.
These relationships will be very valuable down the line and can help your
business grow in more ways than one.
The easiest thing to do is to email your sales representatives and start some
genuine conversations. Ask them if they have:
• Any good deals on inventory
• Products they may want to liquidate
• Specials of the month
But only do this if you’re actually interested in ordering from them. They will
really appreciate someone asking them for business, because they usually
spend the day cold calling. This will definitely make you more memorable
and they will be more likely to do you favors.
Next, be sure to share their Facebook statuses and retweet their tweets.
So follow both the vendor’s social media profiles and those of the sales
representatives. This is a good way to get on their radar so you can soften
them up for what’s next.
Get Them to Link to Your Website
A great place to get trusted links is from your suppliers. As a matter of fact
it’s one of the most obvious link building strategies for businesses to engage

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in. Most suppliers want their products to move, so showing people where
they can buy their product is kind of a no-brainer for them.
Some suppliers, usually bigger ones, won’t link to online stores to make sure
they keep all their customers happy. And that’s fine. That’s why you shouldn’t
forget to ask your smaller suppliers for backlinks, especially the ones that
are just starting out. They are usually more inclined to do so and don’t have
the bureaucracy in place yet, the kind that make website changes nearly
impossible.
Ask to be on Their Store Locator
One incredibly obvious place for your suppliers to advertise your store
information is on their store locator. Most suppliers will have a store locator
on their website. Your job is to make sure you’re on there! Not only will it
send you natural online referrals, it will also boost your website’s SEO. For
example, Holstee lists all its retail partners to help customers know where
else they can find their products.
But don’t just stop at getting one link to your website. Ask them to link to the
specific product page or category page that relates to the vendor’s products.
Also ask to have your social media profiles listed – like your Facebook page
and Twitter profile.

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Ask if You Can Guest Blog or Provide
Content for Their Newsletter
Since you are probably well versed on the ins-and-outs of your vendor’s
products, you’re probably a good candidate to provide some insightful
information to their consumer base. Ask your vendors if you can guest post
on their blog, perhaps write an instructional or “how-to” post. Additionally,
see if they can put the same content in their newsletter.
Hopefully, they will say yes and you’ll be able to link back to your online
store, and be able to siphon some new customers that way.
Bottom Line on Vendor Relationships
When you boil it down, the better relationships you build with your vendors
the more likely they are going to think of you first when they need to refer
someone to a dealer. Additionally, by having regular communication with
your vendors, you’ll be the first to know of discounts and specials which
you’ll definitely want to keep on top of, as they can greatly boost your profit
margins.

Chapter 47 Demonstrate Trust and Security
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CHAPTER 47
Demonstrate Trust
and Security
A major hurdle all small online retail businesses have to face when they
are just starting out is getting consumers to trust doing business with
them.
Demonstrating trust and security doesn’t even apply just to small and
medium sized ecommerce stores, but in fact impacts retailers as big as
Target, whose information got hacked and resulted in compromised
credit card information for over 40 million consumers. Generally, here
are some common questions (based in terms of fears) consumers have with
unknown online retailers:

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• Is the site secure for credit card transactions?
• Will my data get hacked and will my personal information be in the
hands of criminals?
• Will they charge my card for more than what I agreed?
• Will I ever see my items?
• What if I get the wrong color, size or items? What happens then?
Generally, by stomping out these common fears you can increase your sales
and build a loyal customer base. Here’s how:
Display Your SSL Certificate Badge
In this day and age it’s nearly impossible to do online commerce transactions
without the use of SSL (Secure Socket Layer). SSL means that your
customer’s online experience is encrypted and safe from hackers while they
are shopping online. However, SSL doesn’t protect the customer’s data that
you store in your website database – that’s an issue for another day.
You can easily see if your online commerce site is using SSL by making sure
that you see “https” in the URL bar during checkout.
To take full advantage of your SSL, you should display your SSL provider’s
badge on your website. Simply find out what company is providing your
website with SSL and look for the website badge they offer. There are various
SSL and third party services that are in the business or authenticating that
online stores are safe. Below are some common badges from these services,
in addition to other trust companies like Norton and the Better Business
Bureau:

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You can test placing the SSL badge around your website to see if it increases
sales. Try putting it in the checkout region of your website, or just put it
somewhere visible on every page of your website.
A lot of professionals who specialize in CRO (conversion rate optimization)
will perform tests where the only thing they change is the location of the SSL
badge on an ecommerce website and measure the effects it has on sales. You
can also perform the same test, just carefully measure your results – it’s a
great habit to get into.
Provide an Awesome Return Policy
Nothing builds trust better than an awesome return policy. Zappos is the
king of awesome return policies. They introduced the “Free Shipping & Free
365 Day Returns” guarantee early on in their rise to internet stardom.
Having a return policy like Zappos says to potential customers: “We believe
in our service so confidently, that we know you’ll love doing business with

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us.” By giving your customers no reason to say no to your service, how can
you not make that first sale.
Guarantees
Guarantees are another great way to build trust with new customers.
Especially if you’re selling your own line of products. You can test making
your guarantee big, bold and highly visible on your website to see if it has an
effect on sales.
Just make sure you actually honor your guarantees and that you have a solid
system in place to respond to guarantee inquires.
Show Your Reviews from Review Sites
If you’re already known for stellar service and great online shopping
experiences, chances are some of your customers have written positive
reviews for you.
One tactic is to place these positive reviews throughout your site to help
instill trust with customers along the way. It might be the little nudge that
gets customers to complete checkout more often.

Chapter 48 Think Global
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CHAPTER 48
Think Global
Most ecommerce merchants get their first sales locally and in their
native language. Heck, some successful online stores never stray away from
one language and only ship to their home country. While there’s certainly
nothing wrong with that, you should know there can be huge benefits of
thinking global early on in the process of building an online business. Here
we will share a few strategies to consider while starting your company.
Low-Hanging Fruit
Let’s assume that your run a U.S.-based online store, in such a case, another
ideal language for you to target would be Spanish. Presently, there are 38

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million people who speak Spanish in the United States. That’s almost
12% of the entire U.S. population.
Now, the beauty of this strategy is that you’ll pick up search engine traffic for
searches conducted in Spanish. And of course, you can build loyal customers
that appreciate your effort to provide a service that is easy for them, similar
to companies like Zapatoo.
So, where do you start? Here’s a three-step process to help you get going:
STEP 1 – CREATE A SUBDIRECTORY CALLED /ES/
It’s best to create sub directories for each language you wish to target.
Depending on how your ecommerce platform is structured, you may have to
create new product pages with the copy translated into Spanish.
An example subdirectory would look something like this: http://example.
com/es/
STEP 2 – DO NOT MACHINE TRANSLATE YOUR COPY
Google will penalize websites that use machine translations (like copy
created from Google Translate). If you’re not well versed in the language
you are targeting, hire someone to provide written translations of each of
your product pages. Odesk.com is a great place to find someone who can
translate your webpages for you at an affordable price.

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STEP 3 – USE THE CORRECT HREFLANG TAGS
HREFLANG tags tell search engines that you are creating duplicate content
(which is bad for search engine optimization), but for the specific purpose of
providing information in another language. In the case of targeting Spanish
speakers within the United States, your HREFLANG tag should look like:
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com” hreflang=”es-us” />
Place this tag in the head of every page in your /es/ subdirectory.
You can use online tools to generate the correct HREFLANG tags for your
website (if you want to target different languages and/or countries). This is
a great tool for generating such tags: http://www.internationalseomap.
com/hreflang-tags-generator/
Targeting Customers in Different Countries
The first step is to simply expand your shipping options to allow for
international orders. You’ll find that a small percentage of new sales will
originate outside your country. Take extra caution because more fraudulent
orders will arise when shipping outside your country. Be sure:
• That the billing and shipping addresses match.
• Require CVV3 (the three or four numbers on the back of a credit
card).
• Don’t accept checks.
You may even want to refuse business from certain countries that are
notorious for fraudulent orders. The energy, cost and time required to
process chargebacks and loss of inventory is usually not worth doing
business in certain regions.

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Going Global
The more advanced strategy is to create new websites for each country you
wish to target and purchase the TLD (Top Level Domain) of that country.
For example:
• A Website Targeted for Mexico – You would use the same domain,
but get the .mx CCTLD extension (CCTLD stands for Country Code
Top Level Domain). So your domain might look like: www.domain.mx
Naturally, all your content should be in the native language of the country
you are targeting. Again, don’t machine translate your content. Hire a native
speaker to translate all your copy, including your meta tags (title tags, meta
description and alt tags).
Search engines and the people in those countries generally prefer using
websites that represent their home country. Of course this gets extra tricky
because you’ll either have to decide if you want to set up an office in that
country, or simply ship from the country you’re currently based out of. The
one disadvantage for your customers is that their shipping costs will be
inflated if you choose the latter.
However, if you’re in a really niche market and you’re one of the only
suppliers of the merchandise you carry, then this strategy can work quite
well. Either that or your business has become so large by now, that you can
afford to set up shop in multiple countries. If that’s the case, you’re well past
your first sale and probably well-versed with everything we’ve talked about
in this guide.

Chapter 49 Get Things Done
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CHAPTER 49
Get Things Done
When you’re first starting out, it feels like the entire weight of the
world is on your shoulders. You’re likely wearing more hats than you can
juggle, all the while scrambling to prioritize what deserves your immediate
attention. However, if you want to make your first sale, or any sales for that
matter, eventually you’ll come to a realization that you can’t do it all, and that
you’ll need some strategies on how to properly manage your business and
yourself when you’re building a company with more than one person.
Running a business is really about expanding your own mind and
boundaries. There are a lot of comfort zone issues you’ll have to deal with in
order to get to the next level. For example you might be worried that other
people won’t pack orders nicely, forget inventory, or be rude to customer via
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These are common fears for growing “etailers”, but that can easily be
remedied with a few systems changes and ways of thinking:
You Are Not Your Business
The first thing you must do is remove yourself from the business. Your
business doesn’t have to be perfect and its performance has nothing to do
with you as a person. People won’t judge you if your business has flaws. This
is a really important thing you must understand in order to let your business
grow and flourish by generating sales.
The reason why is because whenever you’re looking to grow, you will fail a
little – and things won’t always be pretty. But you’ll have to be comfortable
with these realities. It will be the only way you’ll know what works and what
doesn’t. And that’s exactly how you know which direction to move your
business in: by experimenting, failing and trying again. An excellent book
that goes over the correct entrepreneurial mindset in detail is The E-Myth
Revisited by Michael Gerber.
Create Checklists and Recipes
The best way to hand over your day-to-day “work” and make sure that
quality stays as high as it can be is to create checklists and recipes for your
employees. Well documented procedures help create a system of consistency.
But checklists are even better. By actually having your employees check-off

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each step of a process, it helps to eliminate missteps and also provides a
system of accountability.
It may seem very time consuming and tedious at first, but checklists will be
the key to growing a successful business that scales. Think of checklists as
great multipliers of future revenue. Even if you are still running a one person
operation, you may find that building checklists now will improve your
operation immediately. And when you decide to bring additional people on,
you’ll already have them ready to go.
If You Want Something Done Right,
Have Someone Else Do It
Again, getting into the habit of correcting everyone else’s mistakes or doing a
majority of the “work” at your business yourself, is a one way road to disaster
(or the road of never making any sales). If you find employees making
repeated mistakes, your job is to fix the business design flaw that is causing
that mistake.
It might not be the employees fault. You may need to provide resources or
tools to make the job easier and foolproof. Streamlining and improving
efficiency usually solves these types of problems.
As a business owner, you are not supposed to be the “technician”, the
customer service rep, the order packer, or the shipper. Your number one
priority is to continually grow the business and you do that by:
• Constantly implementing better business design

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• Identifying and hiring talent
• Creating amazing culture at your company
• Creating and executing the brand vision
Plan an Improved Business Design
To move into a more entrepreneurial mindset, the first thing you need to
do is plan an improved business design. How are you going to grow? What
systems do you need in place? What talent do you need? Can you outsource
virtual talent?
Create a plan of growth by answering questions like the ones listed above. It’s
also very important that you assign goal dates to get these business design
features implemented. Keeping yourself accountable to growth timetables is
the real secret sauce of successfully getting that first sale and beyond.

Chapter 50 Be Persistent
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CHAPTER 50
Be Persistent
At this point, we hope you have tried a whole bunch of different
strategies to get your first sales with your online store. It’s possible that
you are implementing ideas simultaneously and find it quite overwhelming,
especially when you have no or few sales to show for your efforts.
Here we’re going to give you a little advice on how to make managing
multiple tactics easier for you to manage, so that you can optimize both your
business and your time. Ultimately, we hope by doing so, not only will you
see results more quickly, but become profitable while you’re at it.

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Step 1 – Test, Measure and Repeat
If you engage in any marketing or sales activity, measure your results
carefully. Running a business is very much like a science experiment. It’s
really easy to run around and test out different strategies and tactics and
assume you’ll remember how effective they were. But remember, recorded
numbers don’t lie and they can’t be forgotten.
Getting into the habit of recording and measure your business experiments
will really season you for growth. Often times, reviewing your business data
will give you insight on what else you should try for the iterations of the
same experiment. This is usually how breakthroughs are made.
Now you’re always going to feel too busy to do this tedious activity. But this
is actually what business is. It’s about making informed decisions that lead
to brand growth. Running around frantic all day, with a “business as usual”
attitude is not entrepreneurial and doesn’t lead to growth.
To help you gain a better understanding of this crucial topic, we highly
recommend that you read “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries. In the book,
he not only shares his own experience building IMVU, but a tried and true
methodology for building businesses that grow.

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Step 2 – Picking What Works
If you’ve done your due diligence and have taken the time to record your
business experiment findings, you’ll have a good idea of what works and
what doesn’t. It’s easy to say to yourself – let’s do all the sales and marketing
activities that proved beneficial. But before you commit to that, you might
want to pick the top few (maybe even the one thing) that not only worked
the best for you, but seemed to work the most naturally for you.
Anything that goes with your natural “work flow” is probably the process
that works best for your business. Trying to do sales and marketing activities
that have caused friction to your natural work flow tend to be self-defeating.
For example, you may find calling old customers who haven’t ordered
in a while financially beneficial for your business, but it’s also very time
consuming and sometimes upsets old customers. Alternatively, making
cute photo-ops of your product and “Instagramming” them drives the same
amount of business. In this case you should stick with Instagramming.
Anything that creates negative energy in your organization should most
likely be avoided.
With that said, double down on your best sales and marketing activities, and
figure out ways to make them better.
• Is there a way to streamline or automate parts of the process?
• Can you hire people to do this work?
• What would make this process easier for you and your company?

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We all know that overwhelming yourself with too many activities will get
your nowhere. Keep these things in mind:
• You get the best results when you focus on one thing. All your energy
and attention goes to that one process and therefore has the highest
chances of success. Humans are naturally bad multitaskers.
• Employees do their best work when they focus on one thing. Trying
to get them to do many things yields mediocre results.
• Your energy is limited. Respect yourself and design a business that has
longevity. Don’t design a company of frantic culture and ridiculous
expectations. Businesses like that “burnout” and employees leave.
Step 3 – Growing
The idea with the first two steps is that you have picked a few sales and
marketing activities that are the easiest activities that drive the most revenue
and gotten you your earliest sales. They come natural to you and your
business and make your customers and employees happy.
Before you go back to experimenting with new strategies and tactics, try to
scale your primary activities further. These activities have the most recorded
data and you simply understand them the best. Your best bet is to take them
as far as you can. Ask yourself these questions:
• How can I grow my business using only my primary sales and
marketing activities?

277
• What’s the ROI (return on investment) of adding employees to help
scale these activities?
• If I automate or streamline any part of the process, will I increase
revenues?
The idea here is that focus and persistence is the best formula for marketing
and sales success. If you know what works best for your company and you
focus on scaling and improving those activities, you’ll generally end up in a
better situation. Then once you’ve got more capital, employees and a sound
method for expanding into activities, then you’re ready to move on and
try new methods. Just remember, start with an experiment, note down the
results, optimize what works, discard what doesn’t and repeat. With that
you’ll be well on your way to building the business of your dreams.

Glossary
278
Glossary
We use a lot of terms you may not be familiar with in this guide, so
here are some simple definitions to help you out.
Affiliate: A publisher or site owner that forwards qualified web traffic to an
online merchant on a pay-for-performance basis is called an affiliate in the
context of online marketing.
Affiliate Links: A universal (uniform) resource locator (URL) that includes
an affiliate’s identification number and additional information that makes it
easier for merchants to track affiliate activity is an affiliate link.
Amazon: In the retail context, Amazon is a multi-national online retailer
with a market capitalization in excess of $128 billion U.S. as of January
2013. Amazon also hosts a marketplace wherein other Internet purveyors
may display and sell products, and offers several software-as-a-service and
infrastructure-as-a-service solutions for business.
Application Programming Interface (API): An API is a protocol created
to allow separate software solutions to communicate over a relatively simple
interface. Developers will often use APIs to connect or integrate systems and
services.
Authorization: A payment card transaction performed specifically to
determine if the payment account has sufficient funds to complete a given
transaction.
Authorized Distributor: A manufacturer-approved or -designated
distributor able to sell products in quantity to commercial customers like
Internet retailers.
Authorized Retailer: A manufacturer-approved or -designated retailer able
to sell products directly to consumers.
Better Business Bureau: A non-profit organization in Canada and the
United States that is focused on trust in advertising. The organization
responds to consumer inquiries about business reliability, and accredits
businesses. Accredited online merchants may display a Better Business
Bureau badge.

Glossary
279
Bing: Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, displays results in response to a user’s
search query. The site uses a complex and secret algorithm to select which
sites to display in response to a particular search. Bing also offers a pay-
per-click advertising platform, and allows merchants to offer a discount to
shoppers.
Blog: A blog is an online journal or publication that includes relatively
short, discrete articles, called posts, that are typically organized by date with
the most recent posts first. Frequently, blogs allow readers to add comments
to posts. The term blog is a combination of “web” and “log.” At first, blogs
tended to be personal journals or opinion sites, but the term has come to
include an array of different types of publications. In the ecommerce context,
blogs are frequently used as a marketing tool, and may be included in a
merchant’s social media or content marketing campaigns.
Bootstrapping: In business, bootstrapping is the concept of self-funding
a new company, meaning that a business pays its operating expenses either
with profits or from its founder’s own investments, rather than accepting
external capital.
Bounce Rate: An Internet marketing term used to describe the percentage
of site visitors that arrive at a single page on a given website, and then leave
(bounce) from that same page without visiting any other page on the site.
Brick & Click Store: A retail outlet or business with at least one physical
location and at least one ecommerce enabled website.
Brick & Mortar Store: A retail outlet or business with at least one physical
location.
Business Structure: A company’s legal status or organization. Often refers
to incorporation.
Call-to-Action: A phrase, button, link or other site element that specifically
asks a visitor to take some action, including purchasing a product,
registering, subscribing or similar.
Canonicalization: The practice of selecting preferred URLs for a specific set
of content. Many modern sites allow content to be accessed from a number
of URLs, including URLs that may contain session or query information.
Canonicalization helps to manage which of those URLs search engines index
and credit.

Glossary
280
Canonical URL: The canonical meta tag that directs search engines to index
the preferred URL for site content that is available from multiple URLs.
Capture: The process of securing payments from a payment process after an
authorization.
Comma Separated Values (CSV): A file type that stores data values. CSV
files are often used to transfer product feeds.
Content Management System (CMS): A software solution that makes
it possible to create, edit, maintain, publish, and display content on the
Internet from a single interface or administration tool. In the online retailing
context, a CMS may be used to manage a stores product catalog.
Conversion: A marketing term that describes when a user or visitor
completes some action or achieves some marketing goal. More specifically,
conversion is often used to describe when a site visitor converts to a
customer, making a purchase.
Cookie: A very small file saved on a user’s computer or mobile device for
the purpose of storing information related to the user’s interaction with a
particular site.
Corporation: A distinct legal entity and business structure, wherein the
business is separate from its shareholders.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): A software solution
specifically devoted to organizing, synchronizing, and automating a business’
customer relationships.
Directories: Sites that list and link to other sites, including online stores, are
referred to as directories.
Discount Code: A series of numbers and/or letters that an online shopper
may enter at checkout to get a discount or other special offer. Discount codes
may also be called coupon codes.
Distributor: A distribution business that inventories products from a
number of manufacturers and sells to many retailers. Often distributors
are able to offer shorter lead times than manufacturers and may sell in
smaller quantities. It is common for distributors to charge a premium over a
manufacturer-direct price for the service and convenience provided.

Glossary
281
Domain: The root address for a web page.
Dropshipping / Drop Shipping: A fulfillment strategy wherein the retailer
does not actually inventory the drop shipped product, but instead passes the
shipping address to either the manufacturer, or a distributor that actually
ships the purchased items directly to the customer.
eBay: A online auction and shopping website, best known for its consumer-
to-consumer sales. Many online merchants also use eBay as a sales channel.
Ecommerce: Buying and selling products over electronic networks,
including the Internet or mobile applications. The term may apply
specifically to electronic transactions or more generally to the online
retailing and online business.
Exporting: The practice of selling items to wholesale or retail customers in
another country.
Fraud: Intentional deception for the purpose of gain.
Fulfillment: In ecommerce, fulfillment is the process of completing an
order. The term may also be applied to third-party companies that inventory
products and ship orders on behalf of an online store.
Google: The leading search engine provider, Google displays search
results using a complex and secret algorithm that considers many factors.
The company seeks to show its users the best possible results. Google also
provides other services, including a pay-per-click advertising network,
payment processing solutions, product discovery tools, and an excellent
analytics platform.
Google Keyword Tool: A free keyword suggestion tool included in the
Google AdWords Platform. The tool uses data from the many searches
conducted on the Google search engine to suggest keywords for a given URL
and category.
Google Trends: A search engine tool that shows how often a particular term
or keyword is searched for on Google. Results are shown in a relative scale,
making the tool well suited for comparing keywords or phrases. Trends will
also show where searches came from and how search volume for a particular
keyword has changed over time.

Glossary
282
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language): A markup language specifically
created for displaying web pages and applications in web browsers. Like
other markup languages, HTML annotates a document, describing its layout
and syntax.
Inventory: The value or quantity of a retailer’s current stock of products.
JavaScript: A scripting language – ECMAscript – used to make web pages
interactive and dynamic.
Landing Pages: In the online marketing context, a landing page is a single
web page that is displayed in response to a particular call to action. Landing
pages are often shown in response to a link in a pay-per-click ad, a link in an
email, or a specific URL shown in offline advertising. Landing pages include
content meant to meet the expectation set with the link a visitor clicked.
Limited Liability Company (LLC): A business structure that blends some of
the best elements of a partnership and a corporation.
Linking Root Domains: In search engine optimization, when site A links to
site B one or more times, site A is said to be a linking root domain. Linking
root domains — in the plural — are the total number of unique sites that
link one or more times to a given website.
Liquidator: A company that purchases closeout products for the purpose of
resale.
Listing Fees: Marketplaces and online auction sites, like eBay, may charge a
nominal listing fee for posting products.
Logistics: The management of products or other resources as they travel
between a point of origin and a destination. In ecommerce, logistics might
describe the process of transporting inventory to a merchant or the act of
shipping orders to customers.
Long Tail: Posited in the October 2004 issue of Wired Magazine, the Long
Tail is Chris Anderson’s idea that markets and marketplaces, especially
online, are moving away from mainstream, broad-appeal products toward
niche products. In ecommerce, new retailers may find it easier and more cost
effective to focus on niche products.

Glossary
283
Long-Tail Variations: In search engine optimization and pay-per-click
advertising, Long-Tail variations are keywords similar in meaning or root to
other high-volume keywords, but less competitive. Long-Tail variations are
often employed when a business is just starting out and cannot gain traction
or afford to bid on top performing keywords.
Long-Tail Traffic: Website traffic derived from Long-Tail variation keywords
or from niche searches and keywords in general.
Manufacturer: A company that makes goods for the purpose of sale.
Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): The price at which a
manufacturer recommends that retailers sell a given product.
Margins: The difference between what a retailer pays for a product and
what the retailer’s customer pays for the product. Margin calculations may
consider only the cost of the goods sold or may take into account overhead
and other variable costs.
Minimum Order Size: Manufacturers or distributors may require retailers
to place orders that meet a minimum value or unit count. This requirement
would be the minimum order size.
Multi-Channel Retailing: Retailing products through more than one
channel where channels include online stores, online marketplaces like
Amazon, physical stores, physical catalogs, and similar.
Net Profit: The difference between a business’ revenue and its costs – all of
its costs. Net profit may be thought of as the money left over after every bill
is paid.
Niche: A distinct market segment.
Organic: In the context of search engine optimization and search engine
marketing, organic results are those listings search engines show because of
their relevance to a query, not because a site owner paid for an ad or paid to
be featured.
Outsource: The process of contracting work to external, third-party
organizations.
Overhead: The ongoing expenses associated with operating a business.

Glossary
284
PageRank: Google’s proprietary page ranking system that places emphasis
on inbound links as a means of determining how important a given page is.
PageRank can be measured on either a ten-point or 100-point scale.
Patent: Protection for some forms of intellectual property, granting the
inventory exclusive right to manufacture, use, or sell an invention for a
certain number of years.
PayPal: Founded in 1998, PayPal is a leading, worldwide payment
processing company. The service can process payments for merchants.
Pay Per Click (PPC): An online advertising model wherein advertisers
pay only when a prospect clicks on an advertisement and is directed to the
advertiser’s website. Google’s AdWords platform is an example of pay-per-
click promotion.
Per-Order Fee: When a manufacturer or distributor drop ships an order
directly to a customer on a retailers behave that manufacturer or distributor
may change a per-order fee for processing.
Profit Margin: The difference between what a retailer pays for a product
and what the retailer’s customer pays for the product. Margin calculations
may consider only the cost of the goods sold or may take into account
overhead and other variable costs.
Quantitative Metrics: In online marketing, quantitative metrics are those
measures that may be represented as numbers. Click-through rates, visitor
counts, and time-on-site are all examples of quantitative metrics.
Qualitative Metrics: In online marketing, qualitative metrics seek to
measure the quality of a customer interaction, and may be subjective in
nature. A retailer, as an example, may implement a new product review
campaign, compare reviews written before and after the campaign, awarding
each review a qualitative score, and then use the relative scored to decide if
the campaign was successful.
Reseller: A company that purchases goods or services for the purpose of
resale not consumption. In web economics, a reseller may also be a form of
affiliate marketer, promoting a rebranded service.
Retailer: A company that sells directly to the end consumer.

Glossary
285
Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Online marketing aimed at increasing
a given website’s visibility on a search engine results page (SERP) by both
optimizing the website for indexing and purchasing ads or paid inclusions.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of making a website
easier for search engine bots to index and categorize.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP): A search engine web page displaying
the list of responses to a particular search query.
Shipping: The process of physically moving merchandise form a point of
origin, like a retailer’s warehouse, to a destination, like a customer’s home.
Social Media: Internet-based tools or websites that facilitate sharing of
content, opinions, links, images, or videos between people.
Social Media Marketing: A branch of Internet marketing aimed at
promoting products or service via social media. It may be thought of as web-
based word-of-mouth marketing.
Sole Proprietorship: A business structure wherein a single individual both
owns and runs the company. For the most part, there is not legal distinction
between the owner and the business.
Split Testing: In online marketing, a testing model that has marketers
simultaneously test two variables (often labeled A and B) in order to
discover which variation in web page or ad content or design produces the
best possible result.
Supply Chain: A network or system of businesses involved in moving a
product from its manufacturing point to the customer. In online retailing,
the supply chain usually represents the distributor and manufacturer of a
product.
Trade Show: An exhibition created so that manufacturers and distributors
may show or demonstrate new products or services.
Traffic: In Internet marketing, traffic represents the number of visitors a
particular page or site receives.
Usability: The relative ease of navigating, reading, or otherwise interacting
with a website or web application.

Glossary
286
Vertical: An industry segment made up of similar business and customers.
Wholesale Price: The price manufacturers, distributors, or other
wholesalers charge retailers for products.
Wholesaler: A manufacturer, distributor, or similar that sells to retailers.

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About the Authors
SEAN WORK
Sean Work is the Director of Inbound Marketing at
KISSmetrics – a customer analytics company. He
also owns and operates O.C. Search Consulting, Inc.
located in sunny Orange County, California.
He started his professional journey as structural engineer for the
International Space Station and Space Shuttle programs. As the engineering
needs for these historic programs began to decline, he decided to do
something completely different. Instead of jumping over to another
engineering project, he started an online skateboard shop. This is where his
skills of ecommerce optimization, web development and internet marketing
were honed.
Today he runs the KISSmetrics blog, owns OC Search Consulting, and
spends his free time being a wild chimpanzee with his daughter Zoe. Follow
Sean on Twitter.
MARK HAYES
Mark Hayes is the Head of Public Relations and
Communications at Shopify, a commerce platform
which allows anyone to easily sell online, in store
and everywhere in between. Prior to joining Shopify,
he was an acclaimed journalist who has written hundreds of articles for
publications around the world.
In 2013, along with co-author Andrew Youderian, Mark wrote the
bestselling book and ebook The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping which
has been read over 500,000 times.
Mark is an expert in marketing, communications, social media, ecommerce,
public relations, content marketing, advertising, and dropshipping. He lives
in Toronto, Canada and enjoys restoring and repairing pinball machines,
trying new hot sauces, traveling and drinking coffee. Follow Mark on
Twitter & visit Mark’s personal website.

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