Ever since my first exposure to SEO back in 2002, I’ve been thoroughly fascinated with it. Although I did not know much about it, and failed miserably just using Web Position Gold’s on-page optimization tools at the time, I did not give up. I knew that this stuff was possible to learn, if I just knew where to go and who to learn from.
I started my website Tonerall.com back in 2002 with the cheapest ecommerce package/service I could find (bizhosting.com), which gave me pretty much a turnkey ecommerce package for about $39/mo or so, which was a great deal back then, and even now. Although they were a bit slow at times, it did the job.
Soon after I set up my site, I realized I had no traffic and no customers, and as a newbie, I sure was not confident of my knowledge to get traffic via SEO on my own, so I started doing some research for SEO companies and decided to go with a company by the name of proboostgold.com.
They worked with my budget and charged about $1500 and basically optimized my home page, key category pages, and got me some precious inbound links which at the time I had no idea how to get and did not know how crucial it was. Well, when they were done I crossed my fingers and waited a few weeks as I was told. To make a long story short, before long, my first order came in, and then the second, and then the third, and that’s how I got started in the ecommerce business. Thanks to SEO!
With SEO starting to work by itself little by little from the work Proboostgold.com had done, I started learning to step out in faith and tweak my non-optimized pages much like the way they had optimized my other pages as much as I knew how. I also started studying my server stats and discovered which product pages were getting traffic and learned that by lowering my prices for those items, I was able to get more sales, too.
Then I heard about Google Adwords, and decided to give it a try. I learned to drive traffic for each individual products, and it was quite profitable for me for sometime, because the competition was not as stiff as it it today. I would spend upwards of $1000 a month on my PPC campaigns, and although I was not diligent enough to track the stats or use analytics, I could tell it was bringing in qualified customers for me and making me money.
With a combination of SEO and PPC, although I was not on top of the new marketing strategies of the internet, at least by sticking with the basics I already knew, my sales quickly went up to around $250,000-$300,000 per year. Since I had a 1300 sqft warehouse, I was also making much of my own products there, thereby maximizing the profit margins which was around 50-70%.
I slowly lost my excitement for the printing supplies industry throughout the years, as I really did not enjoy dealing with customers over the phone, handling returns, etc., etc., so finally starting the beginning of this year I began exploring the possibility of becoming a serious affiliate marketer, content site builder, and many other types “auto-pilot” internet-based business.
I now have a few Adsense arbitrage projects going (always looking for more), a few profitable affiliate programs, and am in the process of launching a few more projects. Because of the diversity of all these different types of internet business, I’ve become convinced that in order to grow, I really need to build some momentum and then hire some help. My time is limited and without being able to duplicate myself, I simply cannot get to the next level.
Throughout the 5 years of my internet marketing journey, I’ve purchased countless systems, programs, softwares, ebooks…the truth is while there are some good stuff out there, there are also things that I consider pretty useless. At this stage of my journey, I believe I have figured out what basic areas I really need to focus on, what kind of specific information and tips I really need and can implement, in order to get to the next level, and I’d like to articulate that and share it with my readers.
Well, I’ve rambled on longer than I wanted to, and it’s getting late…I’ll continue hopefully tomorrow!
