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Michael Bloch: Survival in online business

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

taming-the-beastYou’ve been working feverishly on your site for months; staring at a computer until your eyes bled in order to refine your online business. One morning you wake to your inbox full of orders or commission notices. Finally, success!

After a while of this success, you start to think about what you’ll do with this new found wealth and the dreaming begins.

It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to not only dream but to discover that these things are truly possible to achieve.

.. but…

The reality of online business

The web giveth and the web taketh away; especially if you’re relying on organic search (free search listings). The traffic may continue at that level for years, but it may also literally dry up over night. Small online businesses that don’t have a bricks and mortar store get on average 2/3 of their traffic from organic search listings. Could your business survive such a loss?

Survival strategies

Running a successful site or online store based on search engine traffic is a white knuckle ride. If you’ve suddenly achieved search engine success and are raking it in, I advise to save as much of that cash as you can and continue working like mad for a while.

Create a nest egg equivalent to at least 3 months of living expenses and loan repayments before you start spending too much of it on other goodies, and especially before you quit your day job – 6 months is even better.

During this saving phase, try to implement strategies to make your site more “sticky”; to encourage your visitors and customers to keep frequenting your site. Newsletter, blog, forum, competitions; these are all good options – particularly newsletters or a blog.

Keep close tabs on your industry, don’t let what the cash can buy you cloud your thoughts too much. You need to think about what you’ll do should the free traffic suddenly dry up. Approach your cash management as if tomorrow your business will disappear.

Rainy day revenue streams

If you generate revenue through affiliate programs and you’re offered a choice of large one-time commissions or residual options, if the company is solid; go for the residual commission option – this revenue may be what keeps food on the table if things go pear-shaped and buy you a little breathing space.

An accountant once told me; “you won’t get rich selling products, sell services”. This advice was imparted at a time before the Internet really took hold in Australia and before “soft goods” became commonplace. He was correct though – selling hard goods is a hard game – inventory to maintain (unless you’re drop shipping), handling costs, tight profit margins. Those sorts of conditions also require a lot of staff and huge amounts of advertising as the money is made on volume; unless of course you have a unique product or are addressing an underserviced niche market.

Software, information products and services are definitely a good way to go; so if you deal only with hard goods, consider branching into some sort of subscription services as a way of generating an ongoing flow of income.

Debt, saving and investment

While things are good, still try to keep capital investment down if possible and certainly don’t become over-committed credit-wise. That rainy day revenue saving could serve you very well, both psychologically and materially if should you suddenly hit the skids. How frustrating would it be to run yourself clean out of cash during a slow period when maybe all you needed was to be able to hang in there for one more month?

By the same token, don’t be too tight when it comes to reinvesting back into your business – growth is a good buffer against hard times. Determine a safe percentage of revenue to reinvest that still sees your bank balance grow and then stick to it.

Entrepreneurial spirit vs. safe play

I’ve been making a living online now for over 8 years and the web has been very generous to me – but I still have a “day” job – which is also online. It’s my way of creating a buffer; a safety zone. Often I wonder if I had jumped away from the job at particular points if I would have been able to pretty much retire by now. I’m not complaining about my income, I’ve been very fortunate; but there’s nothing like a family and mortgage to throw a bit of cold reasoning water on an entrepreneurial spirit that can sometimes get a little heated :) . And perhaps that’s not a bad thing.

No doubt you’ll come across rags to riches stories, and they do certainly occur – but the rags to riches to rags scenarios and the rags to even older rags occurrences are far more frequent.

Chasing your dreams is great, throwing everything on the roll of a dice can be exhilarating – but always consider what you can lose by doing so. It’s the old gamblers saying of “don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose”.

Get rich slow… and keep it :) .

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Michael Bloch: Traits of Successful Online Entrepreneurs

Sunday, June 1st, 2008

taming-the-beastOver the many years I’ve been involved in the online world, I’ve had  the privilege of communicating with many successful small online business owners. I’ve learned much from the good and bad ecommerce has to offer; especially regarding the mindset of people who climb the ladder.

You’ve probably come across many information products that claim to help you generate a six figure income by using them. In some instances, you certainly can; but what isn’t mentioned on many of these sales pages is the critical element in order to make the tool successful  – you.

No matter how much you spend on tools and the number of people you employ, if your heart isn’t in it, if you aren’t truly passionate about your chosen business, your venture will more than likely fail.

The following are some common traits I believe have been the major reasons for some site owners achieving massive success in online small business.

Determination

If you’re someone who retreats when told something can’t be done or handle disappointment poorly; then the online world is not for you.  You must have total faith in yourself and your goals and be able to take the hard knocks. If there’s something that all successful people share in common, it’s certainly determination.

The 2nd job

Just about everyone I know who made it online under their own steam worked two full time jobs initially – one being their salaried employment, the other their business; and often the latter made them no money for quite a while.

The salaried employment provides a source of funding and security, and sometimes experience, until the online business up to standing on its own legs. Even after that, given the volatility of online business, it doesn’t hurt to have a job on the side just in case – but preferably one related to your own business.

I pulled the cash together for my first business by cleaning toilets early in the morning 7 days a week for a couple of years. I’d do that for a few hours each day and then hook into my own business for the rest of the day and into the night. It was tough, but worth it. Even now I still contract out to steady work, but all purely online and in fields that I’m passionate about.

So many times I’ve come across people who dream of having an online business but just can’t make this sort of time commitment or aren’t prepared to work unglamorous jobs to get that crucial kick start.

Passion

Passion is key to making it in my opinion. It helps in creating a positive vibe with your prospective clients, but equally important is the passion to succeed, for *yourself* – not so much as a “head” thing (determination), but in your heart. It must be a burning desire.

Endurance/discipline

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Most of the people who say they earned 6k in 6 days selling X product fail to mention they spent hundreds of hours in prepping the product and promotion *before* it was released; not to mention the thousands of hours in failed attempts to market other products in the past. All that accrued experience allows for short cuts, but prep work is still a big time sucker and being your own boss means the only person who will motivate you is you.

Get into good working habits and stay in them – routine is essential, especially when your business revolves around you. It’s so easy to let things slide for a couple of days because you’re tired or you’ve been kicked around a bit – and then so hard to get back into routine again. Lighten up the pace a little if you need to, but never totally ignore your business, even for a single day, unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Focus

Beware of time burglars. These are things such as people who waste your time for nothing in return and petty issues that distract you from your business. Hobbies can also be time burglars. While a little rest and recreation is essential for maintaining sanity; every minute you spend not working on your business is a minute longer it will take you to achieve your online dreams.

Even within your business there will be some tasks  better farmed out to others – so outsource those where you can. Think about what your time is worth in relation to tasks that no-one else can do and then about tasks that others can.  A great example is bookkeeping.

Leadership

Even the successful one-man shows have solid leadership qualities. While you may have no staff to begin with, you will have service providers to deal with and yourself to lead. Listen and act on solid counsel, give clear instructions, and draw the line when someone you are dealing with oversteps their mark or fails to deliver.

Research

Many people fail in online business simply because they’ve had a really good idea, but no-one else, especially their target market, has shared their optimism. Just because you think something’s great and should sell, it doesn’t mean that will translate to sales. Successful entrepreneurs research the market thoroughly before betting the farm.

Family co-operation/planning

This is probably the toughest aspect of all and without the support of family, many of today’s success stories would have been dismal failures. If your family doesn’t believe in your dream, you’ll be expending energy pushing against their will for you to do something else.

When kicking off in your online business, be sure your family knows what lays ahead and how much attention it’s going to need. Let them know how much time you think it will take to achieve your goals so they know it won’t be forever.

Realism balance

Season your unbridled optimism with a dose of realism. Sure, you *can* make 6k in 6 days – but it can be a little like the lottery at times; so expect it to take a lot longer. By being realistic, it will also soften any of the blows along the way.

Dollars and sense

Good gamblers only spend what they are prepared to lose and successful online business owners are the same. Successful people also know the gravy train can derail at any time, so they sock some of the cash they’ve made away for a rainy day.

Action

There’s so many good ideas out there, but so few who are able to actually action them. Procrastination in the online world is very dangerous as things move so quickly and trends appear/disappear every other day. Do your research and once you are satisfied that a particular strategy or tool will work – implement it immediately; work day and night until it’s done.

Promote and network

Succesful entrepreneurs are always promoting at every opportunity, even to the grocery store checkout person they are on semi-familiar terms with. Don’t be shy – you’ll be surprised in where you can generate interest. Even if the person you are talking to you about your business isn’t really interested, they may know of someone who will be. Sow seeds wherever you can, without being overbearing of course – try to talk about other things with people too ;) .

Co-opetition

Sometimes small business owners tend to become overly concerned about what the competition is doing, but will also shun communicating with competitors. This can be quite counterproductive. There’s a whole swag of profits to be made through what I term “co-opetition”; working with competitors from time to time to achieve a common goal.

I hope these points have given you some insight into what makes some of the well known online small biz entrepreneurs so successful. Good luck to you in your in ecommerce venture!

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Michael Bloch: 11 Tips for Developing Contact Forms

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

taming-the-beastDid you know that many sales are lost just because of a poorly implemented contact form? To a potential customer, a form that’s hard to use or has glitches may be just enough to set them skittering away to your competition.

Here’s 11 handy tips for developing solid contact forms.

1. Don’t make people think too much

Use radio buttons, check boxes and multiple choice form elements wherever you can to shorten the amount of time an enquirer needs to spend completing the form.

2. Sufficient options.

It’s not uncommon to come across forms where dropdown boxes and other multiple choice features don’t include options relevant to the enquirer. Options such as “other” or “not sure” should be included for those people who may be confused with choices, or to whom the other choices do not apply.

3. CAPTCHA readability.

CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” and is often used on forms to reduce spam. It’s a great idea, but some CAPTCHA implementations use images that are nearly impossible to read. Ensure you use an image set that is easily human readable or include audio options.

4. Thank you pages – that work

How many times have you used a form, hit submit and then be presented with a “404 file not found” error page? This is really frustrating for the enquirer as they don’t know if their message got through. Ensure you test your thank you page each time you edit your contact form. A thank you page is also a good place to let people know when they can expect a response from you.

5. Minimum compulsory fields

I’ve seen some contact forms that had so many compulsory fields, it’s made me suspicious of what the company would do with the information. Only make compulsory what you really need to know, all other fields should be optional. Even then, keep them to a minimum – there’s nothing like a foot long form to scare people away.

6. Provide instructions

If you have form fields with validation rules, don’t make these a surprise. Give people tips on how to complete the field if you need information in a particular format.

7. Correct validation rules

Ensure the validation rules you have enough flexibility. A good example is where US merchants have have phone number validation rules that aren’t compatible with international number formats.

8. Relevant validation alerts

When using validation rules, ensure any alerts contain useful information as to why the input was incorrect rather than just stating “error”.

9. Validation timing

There is nothing so infuriating as completing a form, submitting it, getting a validation error, being returned to the form and finding all the info you entered is gone. This happens mostly with server side validation that’s been poorly implemented in the form processing script.

If this happens on your forms and you can’t fix the script itself, add some client side javascript validation. It’s easy to do and as that will be executed first before the form details are submitted to the server side processing script, it will avoid  the problem.

10. Correct tab order

The tab key allows people to move from field to field in a form, check yours to ensure tabbing follows the form sequence.

11. Easily accessible

Your contact form should be accessible with a single click from any point on your site. People look for contact form links under menu items such as “company”, “about” or in the footer.

A good contact form is such an important part of the sales process and client retention;, so it should be given special attention rather than hastily slapped up.

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Michael Bloch: Web Site File Base Structure

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

taming-the-beastBefore you begin the hands-on building or upgrade of your web site, it’s good to put pen to paper or a whiteboard for the planning stages as it can save you a great deal of frustration later on.

Web pages breed like rabbits.

Web sites tend to grow past the original concept. My own site was originally 4 pages around 10 years ago. It now contains thousands.

By drawing a plan or site map of your web site, in the same sort of format as the Windows Explorer layout, (folders, subfolders and files) it helps you to visually categorize current and future development of the site.

Many site owners feel they will be able to “sort things out” after their site was finished. This has a tendency to lead to confusion, busted links and placeholders where images should appear. Another big concern is improper naming and location of files can have a major impact on search engine rankings.

Naming your home page

The root directory or top level of your site should contain as few files as possible, ideally just your home page and the folders containing all your other files.

Your home page should be named either index.htm/asp/php etc. or default.htm/asp/php etc.  The reason for this naming convention is most web servers are configured to fetch particular documents by default.

When you type www.example.com, the server is configured to automatically look for the appropriate files called index or default. This saves the user having to type www.example/index.htm. If the homepage file was named somethingelse.htm, it would not display when www.example.com is entered – either a browser error message would appear, or a directory listing.

Images

It’s best to place all the images for your site in a folder called, wait for it – images. This single location makes it easy to manage your image files, and since some images are often repeated on a site, it is a good deal easier to locate them during the design process and prevents doubling up on the same image.

File naming guidelines

The simple rule of thumb is:

Relevant files should be given relevant names and stored in relevant folders.

File name relevancy

Name your files in a way that relates to the content of the page. Using unrelated or numerical name can make troubleshooting and general maintenance a real headache as you will have no visual cue to remind you of the contents of that page. Relevant filenames can also assist in search engine rankings as search engine algorithms do assign some positive scoring based on the name of the file.

Do not use spaces in file names as this can cause error messages and looks amateurish. To create the illusion of a space, use_the_underscore_key or-dash-key, but use it sparingly; 4 hyphens or underscores maximum.  Don’t use other characters such as &,% etc. when naming files.

File name length

There’s no hard and fast rules on this, but think of it from an aesthetics viewpoint. Here’s an example:

tutorial-about-naming-web-site-files.htm

vs

file-naming-tutorial.htm

My recommendation is the second version as it will make the URL shorter, still accurately summarizes what the page is about using important keywords and the URL string is less likely to be broken if sent to someone via email

Naming folders

Apply the same sort of approach when naming your folders. A small business web site might contains folders such as admin, contact, images, product, order and about.

A little bit of forethought on your file base structure and naming conventions will help humans and search engines quickly determine what the page is about, plus cut down the amount of time spent in maintaining your site.

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Useful Articles: About Us Benefits

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

taming-the-beastMany small online business owners don’t say much about themselves on their web sites and the “about us” page can often be very vague, reading something along these lines:

“Established in 2005, Example.com offers the very best Flombles at the cheapest prices. Rest assured when you buy from us, you’re buying quality. We are experts in the field of Flombles… blah, blah, blah”.

This type of thing can be found on thousands of sites – but it really is just fluff and puffery. It says nothing about you and can cost you sales as it has zero credibility.

The vagueness may be for reasons of privacy, but if you’re wanting people to purchase your goods and services, they need to be able to trust you won’t just grab their money and run. There needs to be a human connection.

Small businesses with few staff that thrive do so mainly due to the “personal” vibe they cultivate with their clients. In fact, the personal touch allows them to charge far higher prices than the big box competitors and still survive. We purchase from small business services as we know the owners or staff – we trust them as humans, rather than as a business name.

When I ran my mobile computer services business back in the mid 90’s (I had no shopfront), most of my customers already had a fairly good idea what type of computer they wanted and how much they wanted to spend. What they were unsure of was who to trust. I spent as much time selling myself as I did the products. The fact that I visited them in their own homes played a big role in my success as the customer felt empowered being on their own turf.

We don’t have that sort of face to face in the online world, but the “About Us” page is an excellent means of selling yourself and it should be considered one of the most important pages on your site.

Here’s how to structure a good “About us” page

Aside from the general “we’re the best” blather (and keep that side of things subtle), include a few paragraphs about yourself and your team.

Remember to include the following points

1. A photo of yourself/your team helps people to connect to you as a human being rather than just as words on a page. It has an added benefit when you are communicating with potential customers via email as they’ll be able to put a face to the name

2. List your experience in your area of business – don’t hide your candle under a bushel, but by the same token; try not to go overboard or exaggerate your experience.

3. Reveal some (positive) personality traits, hobbies or pursuits to potential customers that translate directly to your business. For example, let’s say you sell surfboards – if you’re a member of any surf club; mention that.

4. Your contact details. Invite your visitors to communicate with you – even if it’s just a link to your contact page.

5. Some of your plans for the future (relevant to your business)

If you are hesitant to provide those sort of details and arethat concerned about your privacy, it’s really time to get over it. Nice people like to do business with other nice people.

Don’t make the common mistake of trying to make your online business out to be a faceless international mega-corporation, because then you’ll be competing at that level – and you simply don’t have the resources to do so.

Selling you as much as your products is one of the secrets to success in small online business.

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Michael Bloch: Email etiquette tips

Friday, February 1st, 2008

taming-the-beastIn the early days of your online venture, email is likely to be relatively light, but as traffic picks up, so will the email and it can be quite a juggling act keeping up with it all. I’ve been online now for many years and some days, my inbox just simple overflows and I do drop the balls from time to time.

Email is a vital line of communication with your visitors, clients and associates and the way you approach email communications can make or break your online business. Consider every note as an exercise in marketing.

The following tips can help you in honing your email communications skills:

  • Whatever you send can be forwarded to others, so consider your responses carefully knowing that they could be published elsewhere or used against you at a later date.
  • Email forgery is rampant, so don’t assume that any message is from who it says it is; i.e. be careful what information you provide in a response
  • Be careful with attachments as these can harbor viruses and other malware; so be sure to have a virus scanner running that’s upt to date.
  • Plagiarism applies to email communications, so cite all references and sources.
  • Don’t let others have access to your email account as you’ll be responsible for anything they transmit.
  • When forwarding a message, don’t change the wording of the person you are quoting.
  • When replying to a message, if the thread is lengthy, quote the relevant parts followed by your responses.
  • Bear in mind that email communications lack some of the advantages of face to face communications, such as body language and tone; so be careful in using humor or sarcasm that may be misconstrued.
  • Don’t answer emails with single word responses, particularly without any of the original note included; the recipient may be a busy person having multiple conversations and have no idea what you’re referring to.
  • Take care not to respond when angry; once a message is sent, it cannot be retrieved. It’s best to write out your response and then let it sit for a couple of hours before reviewing it and then sending.
  • UPPER CASE LETTERS ALONE ARE CONSIDERED “SHOUTING” and very rude. Use proper casing.
  • Use a  subject line that is relevant to the contents
  • Don’t use the “high priority” flag unless the email is actually urgent. Some people use this for every communication and in the end their notes are ignored or read later; and one of those notes may actually be important.
  • Use signature lines, but keep them short. Use at least your first name in your signature; people want to know who they are communicating with.
  • Always use an easily identifiable “From” name as generic names such as “Customer service” tend to be ignored.
  • When sending attachments, use a file version which is likely to be supported by the recipient.
  • Large attachments over a few hundred kilobytes can really cause a bottleneck for recipients; particularly if they are on dialup. Always ask the recipient before sending a large attachment, or upload it to your site and provide them with a download link.
  • When sending email to a list of people who may not know each other, use the Bcc (Blind carbon copy) field. This ensures that each person receiving the email will only see their name and not the whole list.
  • Read and respond to your e-mail regularly; aim to respond to people within 24 hours.
  • Delete unwanted messages from your inbox regularly. This helps prevent important emails from being overlooked or deleted when you decide to purge a large number.
  • Save important messages in a special folder email communications are considered to be legal documents.
  • Using fancy stationery or fonts in your email may look fine on your system, but can look terrible on someone else’s. Plain text is the safest bet.
  • If someone writing to you seems a little arrogant, don’t return the tone. It may be that the person doesn’t speak English as their first language, has literacy issues or is just having a really bad day. Give them the benefit of the doubt the first time around.

Human communications can be incredibly fragile; one misplaced word can destroy a potentially lucrative relationship – so always check over your responses before hitting that send button to try and ensure the message you’re putting across is the one you wish to.

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