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FIB - Scams 101
Re: I don't claim to be an expert -- me neither...
Posted By: Steve MacLellan In Response To: Re: I don't claim to be an expert (far from it), but the site scared me away... (Chris Wysong)
Date: Friday, February 9, 2007, at 4:58 p.m.(pst)
Hi Chris,
>> None taken!!!! Exactly what I was looking for! I don't really have a
>> target market.That's a problem. You're putting the carriage before the horse.
You see the eBook in my signature? It says "Used Car Dealers will be Begging YOU to Take Their Money"
Well, they did beg me to take their money, but not because I'm any sort of expert marketer. Let me explain.
I moved home from a Calgary after 20 years, in 2002. All I had to drive was this old half-ton I had it loaded to the roof -- with the few possessions I managed to keep after my ex took me to the cleaners.
I wanted to find a good used car. But I had been away for so many years, I didn't know where any of the good deals were. I didn't want to drive the truck all of the time.
I searched the Internet. There were very few local used car dealers coming up online. There were a few, but the cars were sold, or the advertisement was tooo old to respond to.
You see? That's a problem. And since this town is surrounded by a very large rural population, I wasn't the only one having this problem.
I solved this problem.
What problem is your website solving? Why is it different? Why would I want to join?
The first thing I see on your website is: Wystores You Can Make The Best Of It Spread the word about this free service: The more people who use it, the more beneficial it becomes to you!
What are you talking about? Flash? Yes... very entertaining... for 2 seconds, but I don't see anything on this site that would make me want to stick around.
You can see a screen shot of the front page of my Used Car website here:
http://homebusiness-websites.com/images/trurousedcars2.jpg
(Might take a little while to load if you're on dial-up)Other than the popup being in the way, you don't have to guess what the website is about. You know you are going to be able to find a used car for sale.
You see? There isn't any guessing...
In 3 months this site went from $0.00 profit to $3,000.00, and it continued to grow after that. A year after I pulled the plug, local used car dealers were still calling me to advertise on the website.
You know what? The funny thing was there were other people around the province who tried to copycat me. They even used the same open source software I used to power their database. Their websites failed -- no one would pay to advertise on their sites, yet the dealers were begging me to take their money.
Why?
I identified a problem.
BEFORE I built the website I did some market research to see how many local dealers were spending money on advertising every month, with particular attention to those who were also advertising online. I created a sample list of dealers from my research.
See the difference? You haven't identified a problem you are going to solve. You don't know who your customers are. I did.
From the list I compiled... I didn't email them, I didn't call them, I didn't write any letters -- I put on my best business suit and I went to their used car lots. I said "I have an idea; if you listen, you might be able to make some extra sales."
So I identified the problem, I had a sample list of potential prospects, and then I went and interviewed them (in person) to see if they might be interested in what I had to offer. After getting enough POSITIVE responses, THEN I built the website. I already knew who my customers were going to be and what they were willing to pay. This magic is called market research. Then it is time to build a website.
Your website doesn't seem to be cater to any particular niche. It lacks focus, and you don't have any potential prospects. You're like the other 100 million people who think they are going to splash up a webpage and make some money. Really... if it was that easy, there would be more like 560 million people doing it.
This doesn't mean you can't do it. You just got to put some thought into it.
Even if you *do* put some thought into it, it isn't a guaranteed success. I've failed more times then I've succeeded. Some ideas work; some don't -- but you need a plan... so far, you've got nothing.
Take a piece of paper.
Make a profile of your ideal customer.
What's their income?
What do they work at?
Why would they use your site?
What problem are you going to solve?
Where do they live?
If they can get the solution to their problem other places, why should they buy it from you?
...
You also need some help on the website. It doesn't display properly in Firefox which could be about 20-30% of your site visitors.
Your DOCTYPE is DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd
Changes between 24 April 1998 HTML 4.0 and 24 December 1999 HTML 4.01 versions, font tags were deprecated and certainly not to be used in XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Although I seriously doubt that this is what is causing your display problem, you might want to look into it:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/graphics.html#edef-FONT
(This section of the specification discusses some HTML elements and attributes that may be used for visual formatting of elements. Many of them are deprecated.)Also noted you have the site DIV'ed to death.
You don't get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Hopefully you will find this reply useful. It isn't meant to be negative in any way, other than to encourage you to put a little more thought into what you're doing, why you're doing it, and who are you doing it for.
Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan
Used Car Dealers will be Begging YOU to Take Their Money
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