I've been recommending MailChimp for years. Probably as far back as 2009. Part of that is because they have a free plan which is great for small businesses. The other part is that they have a phenomenal user experience. Everything in their system is easy to use. That's why when I started marketing my book I signed up for a MailChimp account. As of today I've been using it a full year and I've learned quite a lot in that time. I hope you can learn from some of my mistakes.
Just over a week ago I released the WooCommerce Cookbook. And when I did that I also shared the announcement post on social media. A few days later I dug into the data to figure out exactly how many people went to the purchase page from my social media efforts. The results weren't amazing.
A few days later I sent out the message to my newsletter subscribers. I've heard stellar things about newsletters out performing social media but that wasn't exactly the case here. Let's look at the numbers.
You can't throw a stone without hitting an article praising social media. While I really enjoy certain aspects of social media it doesn't seem like it would be a very effective marketing tool. Just looking at my own history how many times have I seen a tweet and then pulled out the credit card? I don't know if I ever have. Are other people that much more wiling to buy stuff based off random links they see on social media? Maybe.
Last Thursday I announced the WooCommerce Cookbook on my blog and via social media. The goal of course was to let people know that my book was finally released and that they can go to the publisher's site or Amazon to buy it. I thought this would be the perfect situation to experiment on how effective social media can be.
There's a big difference between people saying they'll definitely buy your product and people actually pulling out their credit card and spending some of their hard earned money. You could very easily talk to ten people who are excited about your product and then have only one of them follow through. If you're creating an online store this can be a big problem. You're investing your time and money into this venture and of course you want to know if it will work out.
So you've thought about what you want to make and who you're going to sell to. Now, how do you organize your products? Do you list every single component as a single product? Or do you package them in some way?
You can sell products individually, in bundles, as add ons, as configurable products, or even as monthly subscriptions. Each of these work under the right circumstances. If you package your products wisely you'll be able to upsell your customer without them even realizing you're doing it.
Running an e-commerce site isn't easy. You have to do a lot of planning before you can open the doors and expect any sales. The first step is to pick the product that you want to sell which isn't easy. After you pick the product you need to focus on a specific audience for that product. It’s not surprising that people don’t want to part with their hard earned money. People aren’t really interested in buying products. They’re really interested in the end result or what the product can do for them. People don't care about the weight loss pill they just want to be thin.
You need to think about the problems that this product solves. Instead of looking at it from your point of view try to look at it from your customers point of view. Once you have the customer in mind you can create a site to communicate that message to the audience.
Building e-commerce software means that I see a lot of success stories: people that quit their day job, get their store up and running, and start growing their own business and that's awesome. Really awesome. But for each success story there's a story of someone who tried to open a store and it didn't go well. Maybe they made a product that no one is interested in, maybe their product isn't different enough from competitors products, or maybe they didn't take into account item breakage and returns into their pricing.
There are a lot of facets to e-commerce and thinking about your business model before you start thinking about the e-commerce software will help you make sure it really is the right venture for you. By thinking about the different types of products within an industry you should be able to pick the right product for you. We're all in different situations with different amounts of time, skills, and money to spend so you need to pick the best option for you.
How hard can entering a coupon be? Not so hard right? Well I found out just how complex coupons can be if you don't think it through.
Do you ever notice how you appreciate a gift just a little bit less than if you bought the same thing yourself? If someone gives you a book it might sit on your shelf for a year before you crack it open.
Curtis McHale gave me a copy of Good to Great and it took me a while to get started. I'm only 1/2 way through and it's awesome. I'm kicking myself for not getting started earlier. The book is about the strategies companies use to become great. There are too many strategies to talk about in this post (go read Curtis' review for that) so I'm going to highlight my favorite one, The Hedgehog Concept.
Imagine you're given the choice to either be a fox or a hedgehog. Which would you choose?
Foxes are crafty, sly, & fast while hedgehogs are simple and maybe even a bit boring. The fox may think of dozens of ways to try to trick the hedgehog but in the end the hedgehog can always curl up into a little ball surrounded by spikes. Eventually the fox leaves to find other prey and the hedgehog continues on his merry way.
The author, Jim Collins, argues that the leaders of great companies are hedgehogs. They take a complex world and simplify it down to it's most basic components. Once you figure out what you're good at (turning into a ball of spikes to protect yourself) do it over and over and over again until you win. Constantly analyzing a complex world to come up with crafty solutions to catch a hedgehog is draining. It's better to find your hedgehog concept and own it.
You can't just find any old idea and expect that to transform your business. You have to pick the right idea. There are three important parts to pick a good hedgehog idea:
When you find what's in the center of these three ideas and you keep working at it you'll find your hedgehog concept.
What I can be the best at:
How I can make money:
What I'm passionate about:
You'll see that I highlighted developing plugins for WordPress in each of the three categories. That means that if I really wanted to maximize my side business I should focus exclusively on building plugins. It doesn't mean I can't refocus later or occasionally experiment outside of that market. But I should focus on building plugins.
Thanks to blogging for the last couple of years I'm decent at technical writing. That means I could write books, or do affiliate marketing on my blog. I actually tried both in the past year and didn't have amazing results. With affiliate marketing I made almost no money and writing a book is agonizingly slow. I've spent the past 5 months writing the book with at least another month in front of me. In that time I could have built plugins that make 10x the revenue I will be generating from this book.
It's not that affiliate marketing and writing a book won't make any money it's that I can write a plugin that makes as much money as the book in 1/10th of the time.
I love public speaking. I'm still not amazing but I'm working on it. It's something I can continue to explore and who knows maybe I'll be an amazing speaker that can charge $10,000 per conference. I'm leveling up my skill but the effort I'm putting into it is personal rather than professional. From a business perspective it isn't worth the time investment.
I love the idea of doing a video course on setting up a website but I haven't tried it out yet.
In my 2013 review I had two client jobs and they went OK. I'm good at getting the job done but I don't enjoy the process. I love helping people but the whole deal negotiation process is something I don't enjoy. I know that are people that have hacked the negotiation process like Curtis and Daniel but I haven't learned that skill and that kills any motivation to get into that field.
If I were a business I would put my head down and start cranking out plugins.
but
I'm not a business. I love exploring business ideas on my blog and in my free time but the keyword is free time. In my free time passion rules all. I'm going to keep trying different things in that list even if they don't make money or even if I don't do the best job.
I love this hedgehog concept. In the end it's all about focus. You have to find spend the time and energy to focus on something and then don't take your eye off of it until you knock it out of the park. I'd rather be the hedgehog that is productive everyday rather than the fox that's constantly trying to outwit the hedgehog.
I'm a strong believer in goals. You can't willy nilly wish for something and have it come true. You have to create specific, actionable, and time sensitive goals otherwise you have no chance of accomplishing them.