Happy New Year to everyone!
This past holiday weekend definitely turned out differently than I expected. My plan for the weekend was pretty straightforward. I just took out a subscription to GetResponse.com to manage my email autoresponders, online newsletters, opt-in forms, etc. So, the plan was to spend a few hours watching GetRespones' video tutorials to learn how all of this works and to enjoy some "New Year festivities". That was plan A. Plan B - which is what usually happens, turned out to be much different.
First, I recieved an email from one of the companys that I market products for - WorldWide Brands. They market themselves as the "#1 online wholesale products/legitimate wholesalers information source on the web" to source products to sell online or from your brick & motar business. Well, they had mentioned in their previous affiliate newsletter that the new year would bring some major surprises. They hit the nail on the head with that statement! They have completely retooled their website from offering a suite of products to one expanded and consolidated offering. They even changed the name of their products from "Premium Product Sourcing Package" to "OneSource". Once you spend some time reviewing the changes, they all make perfect sense (take it from the expert here!). I think the marketing of this product has improved immensely with these changes. Hopefully this will result in improved sales for both the company and their affiliates (of which I am one). This change required me to retool the webpage that I have for Worldwide Brands products (2hrs).
Next, I am part of a "Value Exchange" through Sitesell.com. This is a free, mutual "link exchange" program offered through SitebuildIt for qualified sites. Well, this email contained an offer to obtain a one-way link from this person's "high traffic and high page rank" website to mine, if I would become an affiliate to market his program. I believe everyone is aware of how beneficial it is to have as many one-way links from high quality websites that link to your site. I spent some time evaluating the offer, checked out his sites, etc. and decided that his offer made perfect sense. The service that he promotes is complementary to a service that I offer on my site. This required some retooling on my SitebuildIt Reference & Resources page and the creation of 5 new webpages to display informational articles to go with this (2.5hrs).
As a "new" webmaster, I have solicited advice from friends and also asked them to review my site, i.e. play the role of both customer and editor for me. Sometimes you are too close to something to see what is very obvious to others, so I always try to get some independent and honest feedback. One of my "editors" called me and discussed several items on a few of my webpages. I tried to remain objective. See I said: "tried". I then proceeded to tell him that the site was fine the way it is and that he was basically brain dead for suggesting the changes that he did! (I didn't do this - honest!) He actually had some excellent recommendations, which I then proceeded to implement. (4hrs)
By now I was beginning to see a pattern developing here. I was now full-tilt into Plan B mode! Plan A was long gone! While I was making all of these changes, with my keen eye for things, I spotted several other areas that were open for improvement (3hrs). To sum it all up this is what happened vs. Plan A:
Rewrote 3 web pages
Added 5 new web pages
Tweaked 4 web pages
Established links with two high traffic sites
Formed an affiliate relationship with another company
Opened a Google Adwords account and created two campaigns and a partridge in a pear tree...
Looking at this list, I actually did get quite a bit of work accomplished this weekend, didn't I? It's just not what I had originally planned. My advice to everyone - when (notice I said when, not if) this happens to you, the best thing to do is to go with it. You might be surprised at the outcome. I sure was and am "positively" glad I ended up on plan B.
My apologies for going off on a tangent this week. I wanted to share this with everyone because I think it is something that has probably happened to all of us at one time or another, with my point being to remain postive throughout when it does happen to you. I'm glad I did!
Next week I will return to my theme on "ecommerce beginnings" with a discussion about buying, selling and marketing on ebay. Thanks for listening and have a great week.
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
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