You - Tool For Business - How To Use Your Unique Personality
People would be willing to pay you for your knowledge. Doing it on the web is the broadest and fastest way. Share it and you'll be awarded.
Do you have a hobby, or anything you like to do? Read this guys story how did he turned his hidden passion into revenue and do the same:
Jugglenow.com: A Case Study by Jim Nelson
Almost a year ago, I was excited to start building a "web business" although not sure of WHAT, exactly. I was quickly overwhelmed by the number of companies pitching sure-fire roads to riches. I knew I couldn't do everything at once -- I knew I could go bankrupt buying all those "invaluable secrets."
So where should I start?
What stood out, in all the research and information I had found, was SiteSell, especially Site Build It!. SiteSell clearly had such a good reputation that their guarantee made my purchase a no-brainer. If it didn't deliver, I'd get my money back. And the whole approach outlined on their SiteSell site just made so much sense.
I had several ideas for an SBI! site. I wanted to fly, but the Action Guide told me to crawl. Luckily, I followed the Action Guide, step by step (as the friendly little man with the whip, who I suspect is really Ken, highly suggested).
The time saved by doing that is equal to ten times the time that would have been lost. So, if you are just getting started, I can't stress that enough.
Follow the Guide!
I took my time with the brainstorming, eliminating several ideas. After working through the Action Guide, with several ideas, the idea of a juggling site became obvious. It was a niche that I knew!
I had started writing a juggling book years ago, and while that has certainly not been finished, my Juggling site with SBI! is. (Well, I guess it's never ever finished, especially when SiteSell keeps coming out with more great ideas, but I'm pretty happy with where it's at, right now.)
My site began (as Ken recommends) with some quality information, such as juggling instructions, thoughts on equipment, help especially for new jugglers, etc. I had wanted to offer an e-book on juggling (yes, that one started long ago.) Quality content that PREsells.
And the e-com ideas kept coming, the e-books and other e-commerce ideas. I now sell so many different juggling products, and even have my two e-books ready to go soon:
1) A book of original juggling graphics
2) A pattern for our original crocheted juggling balls.
But I'm getting a bit ahead of my story.
Here's how I've grown:
Dec (right after starting with SBI) my monthly unique visitors were about 50-60 a month through March 2002.
Then I started really using SBI!.
April doubled to 147.
May doubled to 373. I started selling juggling supplies, and that keeps growing.
June to 684.
July to 975.
August to 1053.
And it's been growing ever since. (This may not seem like huge traffic to you, but this is for Jugglers!)
You know how I did it? I wish I could say that I went out and did something brilliant. But I just followed the Action Guide.
I haven't obsessively "optimized" all my pages for search engines. Just as the Guide suggests, I "got it right" by using the Analyzer and since then haven't updated a lot. I let the engines come to me... and they do, just as the Guide predicts.
I swear by SBI's submissions and engine-tracking. And pay-per-click research help and mass-bidding. As my site began growing, I realized that I already had a product that I could offer. My mom, years ago had crocheted some juggling balls for me. I've been using them for years teaching my students, and realized what a great product they were! I talked with my mom about my idea of offering them for sale. Now, understand this...
At 90 years old, she didn't quite get that "computer thing." But she started making balls again. And she wrote out the original pattern for them (after all she's been crocheting for almost 80 years.)
Now that I had traffic, it was time to sell (so many people get the whole idea backward, putting up expensive stores with shopping carts, then realizing it's all a waste of time without traffic).
PayPal's shopping cart was fast and easy to add to my site and I love the low costs. I didn't have much "start-up" capital - and their fees were better than I could get by having my own merchant account.
PayPal has no setup or monthly fees. Their "per transaction" fees are comparable to a regular merchant account. (2.9% + 30 cents per transaction, and lower for higher volume sales.) With their "money Market" option, I currently earn 1.85% on my balance plus 1.5% cash back on purchases using my PayPal debit card.) And they're easy to use.
The important deciding factor -- what if I was wrong and no one wanted juggling balls? PayPal is a great, low cost way to test the market. If this took off (and it did!) I could always expand. So I signed up with PayPal with a business account so that I could accept credit cards.
It was so simple to incorporate PayPal into my SBI! site. I just cut and paste the HTML generated at PayPal and put it into my site. And there I was... all set up with the PayPal store in SBI!. Here are a couple of my resulting SBI!-PayPal shopping cart pages (these links open new windows)...
http://www.jugglenow.com/juggling-books.html
http://www.jugglenow.com/juggling-balls.html
(And I plan to use PayPal for e-goods and subscriptions, too, when I get to that stage.)
After just a few sales, I began looking for some wholesale juggling supplies to add to the "store." It started small, but grew quickly. I kept putting everything back into finding more equipment to offer for sale.
PayPal and SBI! worked wonderfully together. My inventory was growing, my mailing list was growing, my sales were growing!
With this solid base, I decided to look into more ways to monetize the tremendous traffic that SBI! was delivering. A friend had been using Yahoo! Store with success, so I began looking into it.
I looked at tons of storefront options before deciding to try Yahoo! Store. I knew I could easily interlink the Yahoo! Store with my SBI! jugglenow site. I set up my own merchant account through my local bank, although any one of many online services would have done just fine, too. My business had proved itself, beyond my hopes actually, so this "merchant account route" was now worth the cost (more of Ken's conservative, smart teachings).
Besides the merchant account fees (for me, about $20 a month and per transaction fees just under PayPal's), Yahoo! has a $49.95 monthly hosting fee, 0.10 per product listing fee, and 0.5% of total revenue. I still have my PayPal "store," and I'm using Yahoo! Store to add new products. ("Multiple streams of income!")
Yahoo! Store offers great flexibility, and a lot of features I have yet to explore. But the cost is high for a beginning business -- that $600 a year hosting fee alone is twice the cost of SBI!, and Yahoo! Store only does that one thing. But it makes me another profit, so...
Two profit centers instead of one!
It's not all wine and roses (those are hard to juggle, anyway). Selling "hard goods" does take more energy, more time, more investment, than selling e-goods, or products through affiliate programs. But!
It does make more money, and more opportunities to sell than e-goods. It has allowed me to establish a customer base that trusts jugglenow.com - and so, any additions to jugglenow's offering are looked at seriously, with trust in the company. (By the way, it was Ken, and the fantastic SiteSell.com support staff, that made me realize that this personal attention was essential to establishing a successful business.)
Since I've started, I have had only one complaint. But I would not hesitate to contact that customer for a reference on how well the problem was handled. From Ken, I have learned how important it is to lead by example. Trust comes from honesty - dishonesty (or misrepresentation) takes a lifetime to fix.
This began only last May. Less than 4 months after starting with my mom's creations, we now offer 70 different juggling related items, with a lot more on the way. I've been able to build a business using PayPal and Yahoo! Store, but none of it would have happened without Site Build It! -- it is the engine that drives everything.
I'm ready to keep growing. I tell you, this SBI! is just brilliant!
Jim Nelson
Anyway you don't need to have a product to sell. All you need to do is just to find a passion inside of you and work will become pleasure.
Related Tags: content, knowledge, online, passion, hobby, paypal, web business, site build
More on the SBI! website - http://buildit.sitesell.com/sellit36.html.
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