Build It and They Will Come?
Keiron's Ramblings April 24th, 2007The title of this post is a tagline from the Kevin Costner film, Field of Dreams. I often use it because it sums up the expectations of many website authors when they first create their website!
It’s supposed to be easy isn’t it? Bang up a website, wait for the visitors to arrive and sell them something or get them to click on a link and you make some cash?
Generally it doesn’t happen like that, but just recently I created a website that did just that!
The site I’m talking about has a Keyword Domain, I haven’t had to promote it heavily because it is EXACTLY what users searching for what I’m offering type into Google!
I know some people will probably be itching to know what the keyword was and what the domain is, I’m not going to reveal it at the moment as I don’t particularly want to skew any stats I’m monitoring!
I purchased the domain many moons ago and never really did a lot with it, I liked the name and nobody else had got it - when it came up for renewal I thought it might be time to do something with it!
I added some of Amazon’s products to the site to get commision from the Amazon Associates Program if people purchased them (I’m sure some of our topics will centre around affiliate programs soon enough!), it started getting one or two visitors, and they were buying. I’d built it, and they HAD come!
With a little bit of work (and programming), I used the Amazon Ecommerce System to add all of the related products in that area, and because I’m using the Amazon ECS all the prices and reviews of the products will automatically be updated - automation is the key to an easy life!
So I’d built it and they really were coming, but was it worth it? Certainly!
In March there were 29 products ordered for £430.52 worth of Amazon Products, earning me a grand total of £27.19 - for doing absolutely nothing (well nothing once the site was built). April is looking a little more quiet, but I’m not worried - I don’t have to do anything to the site.
How did it make this money? Simple, for the search term that is my keyword (it’s DVD related) it ranked number one (above Amazon, HMV, Play, Virgin and Asda) on Google for the whole month! It’s currently dropped to the second spot, but I can live with that! It’s frontpage of Google also has a Page Rank of 3 with no work!
That’s how keyword domains can work in your favour! I’d love to hear from anyone reading this that has had a keyword domains success, or even a keyword domain flop! If this is you, leave a comment and let us know!
April 25th, 2007 at 9:03 am
This is an interesting topic - building a web site and expecting the world and his dog to pop along to help make you millions. As Keiron has seen this can happen, although it’s normally far from the truth.
I find that lot of customers I do e-commerce web sites for, even though we go through with them how to promote it and then provide a fact sheet on doing this, come back to use six months later and say no one is visiting it. When you look in to it, they have done nothing more than linking to it from their ebay lists (which is against policy on ebay, but can work sometimes).
The cold hard reality of life, you need to make an effort to get people to your site. Be that the traditional painting the side of your van with your web address or putting flyers out to houses or businesses near you, you just need to do something.
In Keiron’s case, he has managed to work the system and get people to his site by doing as he said and a few bits of trickery you probably won’t find out unless you cross his hand with silver. However he has done something to get people there, all be it, not as proactive as a leaflet drop.
On the sales in April being down - well that really does follow. One of the e-commerce sites I personally run, has had an extremely quiet month. But this makes perfect sense, for the first 20 days in the UK of April the weather has been so good it has been more like June. Simply put, if the weather is good, they are not in the houses using their computers and therefore not shopping.
When it’s cold and wet, they get bored surf the web and splash some cash.
April 25th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Glenn’s right about this time of year being very quiet as the brighter weather arrives people spend more time outdoors, if you have an offline or outdoor business, now is the time to really push it!
If you have an online business you’ll find this is the time to take stock and get ready for Christmas, yes you heard me correctly Christmas! (and that probably deserves a topic all of it’s own, with only 244 days to go!
April 25th, 2007 at 9:47 am
[…] we discussed the prospect of April being a quiet month in a previous post, I started to think about Christmas! As a rough guideline, I always think you should really start […]
May 20th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
I’m experimenting at the moment with keyword domains, just a hobby really, and can see - unless you’re extremely lucky - you need to promote them.
As for April it was quiet with my online shop aswell. I put that down to easter aswell the nice weather. Roll on the bad weather where people get bored and spend!!