Archive for June, 2009
Holiday Revelation & Update
Posted by: | CommentsWell, it’s been a while since I’ve posted and in that time, things have changed a fair bit for me.
I have just come back from a lovely holiday in Scotland and it’s such a beautiful country that it’s given an amazing taste of the kind of outdoor lifestyle that I want to live. During my time away, my wife and I just did lots of outdoor activities and enjoying the fresh Scottish air! It’s been great and I’ve had an insight into my Internet ventures.
I have realised that my passion in terms of Internet activites is ecommerce. As a result, I’m diverting my energies into setting up and operating ‘real’ ecommerce stores working on a dropship basis. With this, I will feel as if I am building a real online asset and real business. By working on a dropship basis, I also get to trade real products at greater profit margins than I would as an affiliate and also would be location free! Being locaiton free is a big goal of ours and we wish to generate an income irrespective of where we are, this way we hope to enjoy the fruits of life even more.
Another advantage of a dropship business is that if I decide to, then I could have the option of stocking products myself and buying them at wholesale prices for even greater profits. This is not something I am looking to do at present but I would have the choice.
I have also decided that I am not going to pursue the pay per click model of business for the time being as it is not really something I’m interested in at the moment. Though I do know that it can bring in an additional 20%-30% of traffic from search engines like Google. I prefer to work on natural search results.
The decision to not pursue pay per click at this stage is due to realisation that I was getting the “get rich quick” bug. I was basically caught up with a lot of the marketing crap out there and wanted to earn the big dollars fast using PPC. Of course this resulted in me burning lots of dollars. So, rather than be a sheep and follow the crowd, I’ve decided to follow my own interests and make money and business the way that is right for me.
In all, this blog should really be renamed as I’m not really looking at pursuing the affiliate model though I have a couple of sites up that are bringing in the old sale here or there. I will keep those and perhaps go back to them some other time.
So, this blog will be about my endeavours to create an ecommerce lifestyle for myself!
Reminder
Posted by: | CommentsNot sure if this is the same for everyone, but I often get in the flow nicely and become very positive about life and everything. This occurs especially after watching some decent film with a great message or reading spiritual books. I’ve come to realise that for me, I need to periodically remind myself of all that I know, e.g. we are spiritual beings, the Universe works for us all the time, etc etc.
As I go through life, I am often very aware of when I am not in the flow of things or that my thought patterns/processes are not as positive as they could be. It is at these times that I need a reminder. A reminder of all the things that I know. My wife and I recently went to a yoga and complementary health centre in Camden town called The Alchemy Centre. It’s a great place and we we went there after work to watch a lovely film called ‘August Rush’. This is a very powerful film about a boy and it reminds us that we need to follow our dreams and our inner guidance. If we follow our inner guidance and intuition, great things come about as the Universe works to help us flow effortlessly through life. If you get the chance to see the film, then definitely go for it.
I’ve also recently watched, ‘The Secret’ again. This was a very powerful film for us both when we first watched it and the message is stil very effective for us. We have seen it many times over and each time we ‘hear’ new things or certainly concepts that we know and have forgotten about. I find it a great way to realign my focus and energies into the right place.
At the moment I’m reading the ‘Power of Intention’ by Wayne Dwyer and this is helping me to maintain my state. I’m also doing some Chi Kung (chinese breathing meditation) on a daily basis which I find very helpful in making me focus and providing some sort of regular regime to give me some ‘time out’ time! Without some sort of structure, I’m useless in taking time out for ‘me’!
As a side note, I bought ‘A Course in Miracles’ which is a well-known spiritual text but have not really read any of it! I bought the book a long time ago (months and months ago) and plan to work through it sometime. I want to dedicate some time to it and do it properly so have decided to leave it until I can make a firm commitment to working through it. In the meantime, life is busy as usual and I am finding my own strategies to maintain my spiritual focus and keepin in the flow. What I find most useful (but also most resistant) is taking time out from ‘doing’ things and just ‘being’. At least I’m aware of it! Until next time.
Progress
Posted by: | CommentsOk,agian it’s been a few days since my last posting but I’ve been busy as usual. Here is an update.
Now my ecommerce site is up and live (finally!) it’s time for me to do the marketing stuff which is the bit that I do not really enjoy too much. I’ve come to realize that a lot of Internet marketing is all about writing. You need to actually enjoy writing or if not, then at least be prepared to outsource the work. For my ecommerce site, it’s time to write. I’ve added a little content to it and will now plan some sort of marketing plan for SEO purposes.
I’m going to plan to write at least 3 new pages of content to the site each week. That’s abot 12 per month. It’s definitely doable and for me achievable enough so that I do not get too bored and start hating it. I know about the niche so it’s something that I can write about. This is my first plan. I can defintely see some hiccups in the coming weeks as I’m doing a reasonable bit of travelling so will not be at home as much. However, I will do my best and commit to at least 3 new pages of content to my site per week.
I am also going to explore PPC. I have an account with the top 3 PPC search engines (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search and MSN Adcenter). In my Yahoo account, I still have a positive balance left of about £30 so I’ve just today thrown together some keywords of about 100-200 keywords and just put them all into a single test campaign. Ok, it’s not the best strategy but I just want to get something out there and test some stuff. When the balance runs out, I will stop the campaign and then see how it went. I will spend a bit more time planning a campaign properly and will start proper using Google Adwords. More on this when I finally get round to it, but I expect it not to be too long as I want to do more testing using PPC.
Since finishing my ecommerce store, I’ve had another project in mind that I have since been working on and the reason I’ve been quiet on the blogging front! My wife was away last weekend so I literally spent most of the weekend putting my site together for this new project. I’ve done well and the site is almost ready. Just need to sort out the payment and clarify some things with my supplier. Will post here when that is completed.
For me, it is certainly a good thing to have two projects to work on as I can switch between the them if I get a bit bored of working with one. It is certainly more the conceptualising, planning and developing of a new site that I love doing. I may end up outsourcing some of the content but at the moment I prefer to do it myself. I can save money this way and in the past I’ve rarely received an article from a freelance writer that I’ve been 100% happy with and did not alter in some form or another. I guess no-one knows your own business better than yourself so you are the best person to product the content.
Anyway, more work to be done and will post when there are more developments and I will post how my Yahoo! Search campaign went for my ecommerce site.
eCommerce Store Now Live!
Posted by: | CommentsAt last, my ecommerce store is completed! It was finished this weekend, I had lots of problems with the shipping module of zencart and it needed some custom programming. I found someone to do the work for me as I’m not programmer and it only cost $40. Well worth the money as I had no idea what I was doing!
Anyway, the site is up and live and there are jsut a few bits to tweak to make it look better. Another thing I need to work on is the SSL certificate. It’s generally understood that websites with trust seals tend to have higher conversion rates or it certainly does not harm. This is something I will sort out in the near future.
Now the site is completed, I will work steadily on adding content and doing marketing stuff to promote the site. I will also commence a PPC campaign and test it to see how things go with that.
But for now, I’m taking a little break for a day or so and on;ly doing little bits here and there. After that, I will start some more serious work on building the site and getting some rankings.