Running an online business, Being in education & Doing voluntary work for youth education

Do you like my post title? Pretty snazzy huh. That basically sums up my life at the moment, and it's hard work. I'm taking some A-Levels at the moment (don't ask) which means I'm usually chasing down customers payments in the evenings or during free lessons. On top of that I'm doing a lot of voluntary work for various youth organizations. So yeah, I've taken on quite a bit.

So this post basically is saying, I'm doing a lot, but I don't reduce my workload and don't give up. And if you want to be successful you wont either. I'll try to blog a bit more often now, but no promises.

EZhost.org - A Month On

I haven't made a post in almost a month, criminal of me I know. EZhost.org has been going from strength to strength and at the moment we're just trying to make our customer database more efficient! We're also looking into offering a referral program. I think that's important, getting your customers to promote you practically "free" is a great way to expand even further and it builds trust for your website because everyone's saying EZhost is great, not only because it is great but because they get some free hosting if someone else signs up. I've also bene monitoring EZhost.org uptime at Pingdom and all looks good, we'll probably make this information available to our customers at some point. A customer database is vitally important by the way, for you upcoming websites! Start early and save yourself some hassle.

ProjectWonderful.com

Project Wonderful is a great concept, I'm currently trying it out for marketing purposes. I'll let you know how it goes. You're welcome to try it out yourself ofcourse. Click here.

Quick Tip: Delayed Success

You can throw everything you've got at AdSense, 1800banners, SEO, Viral hype and Social Advertising and nothing happens...days go by. No new customers.


Suddenly, a week and a half later 4 or 5 new customers turn up at your website and by your product/service. Why does that happen? The answer is that an alarming percentage of users wont click on your ad or react to someone's suggestion immediately. But when they get put in a situation later on when they may desire a product/service of your kind...if you're marketing was effective it should kick in and the customer will google your website or visit your web page.


I hope this somewhat obvious yet often overlooked tip is helpful. Don't get yourself down when you don't see an immediate ROI from your advertising campaigns.

Quick Tip: Facebook and Twitter

Creating hype via Facebook and Twitter will create a huge amount of success if your product or service is free (or you offer something free). Otherwise you will find you'll struggle.

Quick Tip: 1-to-1 Marketing Online

Don't underestimate the power of one-to-one marketing just because you're online. One-to-one marketing has the highest return rate because the customer knows you've gone out your way for them.


If you post on forums, facebook..what have you, if you see an opportunity (someone questioning or asking about your market) you reply to it then follow it up with a personal message containing links to your site. MSN, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger again are all good ways to one-to-one with clients on a networking site.

Adapting And Changing A Marketing Strategy

Although some people would say you should create a rigid marketing plan and stick to it, I prefer a more dynamic approach. Sometimes data you didn't have comes through half-way through your advertising campaign and you'd be a fool not to adjust.


For example if you owned a web hosting company, you'd see that google has est -60% searches for terms to do with" web hosting and domain registration" from the UK now compared to 2004. This should lead you to the conclusion many people already have web hosting providers and you should focus on making them change web hosts and the benefits.


On a side note, you'd be a fool not to use Google Insights.