Publishing articles even if they are shit, we have a few reasons why you should.

There is loads of blogs out there recommend that blogger publish ‘Valuable content’ and essentially stuff that is worth being read. Its obvious that if you’re a writer or whatever you probably have 2-3 posts sitting in the pipe line. Wither it be scrawl in a jotter, half assed post in word, and a final draft sitting in wordpress. What’s stopping you from hitting publish to get the job done.

Maybe it s because you afraid of your readers. I know myself, and im sure many others feel the same way, every time you hit the publish button, or at least are ready to hit it… loads of questions surface.

• What if they don’t like it? Publish it anyways.
• What if they get mad? Publish it anyways.
• What if they think I’m stupid? Publish it anyways.
• Hit publish regardless, and here is the reasons why,

People Remember Your Best Work – Not Your Worst

For many bloggers the #1 fear is that if you publish a bad article or whatever, and relationship you have with you current readers will disappear and be forever braked as spam. Its true that they are countless blogs that suggest you only publish you very best time and time again. Indeed a notable goal, providing your best content time and time again, however this is not always the best strategy.

I have searched countless blogs before I started to write, so take a look at some of my earlier posts, a mere shadow of some of the greats. However regardless of the poor writing quality and sometimes subject matter, they still get peoples attention and build some sort of rapport with the readers.

If you wait to create amazing posts, rather than publishing consistently you will have very little on your site. I know sounds hypocritical coming from me, with only 2 articles online… but this is the rule I follow from the great Joal Runyon. In his words;

“Nobody holds any of the terrible posts I’ve written over my head because most of them aren’t actually terrible, they’re just not very good. I am not advocating mediocrity, but unless you consistently put out crap without a care and learn nothing from it, you’re much better off getting in the habit of creating and publishing rather than trying to create stellar posts without ever publishing anything.”

Very rarely do readers read a bad post and completely delete you account. What is most likely to happen is that they simply mark it as read in their inbox and leave it at that. Trust me, I do this too. :s

On the other hand however, if you never create epic work, you will find yourself being easily forgotten. Perhaps an epic amount of effort is what is needed in every post and the end result will eventually end. Another great quote from Corbett of ‘Think Traffic’

“write epic shit. but in order to get there, you first need to create epic amounts of shit.”

You Have No Idea of the outcome

I don’t think any blogger knows quite what will happen when an article is published. It could be frowned upon by all, hated by millions and leave you a ruin, unlikely, well maybe if you write on the most controversial topic you can find, just to throw a sinister twit on the whole think. It unlikely that the very mention of your name or site will become a social faux pas or taboo. After all the majority of people don’t know what will come of their post. For example I recently posted an article; ‘Amazon Vs eBay; or do they both shit on the little guy’, I really didn’t know what to make of this article, I know that thousands of people are in love with Amazon or eBay and probably an equal amount hate them.. But to be honest, nothing much really happened from this post L much to my disappointment.

Thus highlighting the fact that you just don’t know.

One blogger in particular Steve Pavlina, who writes about self help and personal development stuff published an article entitled ‘How to cook brown rice’In 2007. Check out the stats… not so bad for such a random subject. J

You Get Better

Simple enough. I suppose its common sense, the more you write, the better you get. But only if you publish your work, no matter shit, then you can gauge feedback, stats etc. as well as demonstrating to your readers that your online human I suppose.

“Your goal isn’t to be perfect, your goal is to suck less.” – Joel Runyon

You wont become a novelist overnight, or start of writing stories that move people so deeply that they want to change their lives completely. Its essentially like any undertaking in life, wither it be music, art, drama whatever, only with practice will you improve. Its is no accident that people who create the best ideas also create the most ideas (as well as some of the worst).

You will never know who your audience is until to hit publish.

– Tony

We would love to know your thoughts and experiences, so leave us comments, or drop us an email. Also we would be smiley faced if you could follow us on twitter and face book, or of course Google+ if that’s what your into J

Amazon Vs. eBay – or do both of them shit on the little guy?

Over the years countless business have launched themselves wholeheartedly into the Amazon or eBay market place with … let’s just say ‘mixed’ results. The essential question we want answered is how do these internet superpowers treat the little guy, and is it really worth injecting your time and energy into eBay/Amazon stores when you could be building your own site?

                We want your comments for this topic, feel free to email us your experiences   and more and more blogs will follow.

It’s fair to say that eBay and Amazon have faced much controversy in recent years in relation to their somewhat ‘underhanded’ dealings with sellers both big and small, from the usual timely amazon ‘review’ right before your disbursement date and the eBay ‘refund all’ agenda, as we have all seen in the past. How can business get ahead on this footing, and are the claims of ‘eBay millionaires’ really true. I personally find it very hard to believe. I am sure that some business out there exist working quite well In association with eBay and amazon, however all the companies I have spoken too have a very different outlook on the internet moguls.

eBay.co.uk

There are countless forums/blogs on the net outlining the problems that one might face working with these third party sites, the vast majority of which seems to snowball overnight. One particular case is where a UK based dressmaker sold a wedding dress via eBay to a customer in the USA. 4hours after making the purchase the customer opened a case claiming that the item ‘was not as described’ and demanded tracking info. When the dressmaker got to her computer that morning eBay and PayPal had already refunded the customer the £1,500 and suspended her account!

We have all heard horror stores like this, and some of us have fell victim in similar ways. But let’s stop for a moment and break down the situation down into a nice little graph.

It’s safe to say that the traffic generated on the eBay marketplace is every entrepreneurs dream. High volume, high coverage, high visitor engagement, what more could you want… well maybe my money, for a start. Yes that’s right, all too often eBay sellers have been slammed with the 30, 90, 120 day payment freeze and account suspension. Loads of blogs suggest that when a seller contacts eBay or PayPal regarding the account suspension, they start playing the ‘blame game’.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that sir, but that’s a eBay not PayPal matter, hold on I’ll just get you their number”

“No, no, no… I’m sorry but it appears that ‘PayPal’ slammed you under those circumstances, and won’t tell us anything”.

Sound familiar? I think so.

It’s a sad state of affairs when a business person can’t sleep at night because you’re worried that you shop will start refunding every customer that visited over its lifetime. One guy actually told me that eBay continued to let him sell, but PayPal wouldn’t take the money for the items, or at least wouldn’t let the seller touch it. “oh yes good sir, I would like to purchase that stool”, “well my love, its packaged and all for you, just call back in six months and sure you can pay then”. Don’t think you will roll in the millions with that attitude, well maybe… But you would have to be selective about your customers.

So let’s sum up the cons of using eBay:

Ok so there are a lot of problems that a seller can run into on eBay, but if I’ve missed anything please drop me a line.

So once you dodge all of these traps and pitfalls surely you will be on the ‘pigs back’ so to speak. Well that’s the problem, when exactly do you know that’s its plain sailing from here on out? With eBay … you don’t.

Amazon.co.uk

It can’t be all bad, can it? Let’s take a look at some of the facts regarding Amazon.  Amazon led online retailers with 282.2 million visitors that month out of a total Internet audience of 1.4 billion, comScore estimates. That’s a 27% jump from June 2010, when Amazon got 221.8 million visitors — which was 17.7% of all Internet users. In the new report, Amazon was followed by eBay with 223.5 million, or 16.2% of all Internet users. China’s Alibaba.com got 156.8 million (11.8%). The report also found that Amazon has an impressive global reach. Just 35.4% of its visitors came from North America in June. Europe was Amazon’s number two market with 31.8% and Asia Pacific produced 24.1%. In contrast, 83.4% of Walmart.com’s visitors came from North America.

With more coverage ethan eBay amazon seems like another good bet. However as many blogs suggest there is a shadier side to this beloived smiling A-Z giant. All to often online business trading on Amazon get slated due to random reviews, pending orders and a system which, lets face it, when things where going well it worked fine. However introduce a slight bump in the road and you cant seem to find any information for any of the departments you need to speak to. Amazon’s ‘contact us’ tab has load and loads of information however no contact details. They have a lovley little tabe where people can submit there telephone number and amazon will call them back. I personally don’t like this system, as Amazon appears to select who to call back and who not to.

One of the more startlying artlices I read, with over 14,000 comments attached was regarding the ‘seller performance and veloicty reviews’. Lets face it, every seller on amazon has to go through on of these at some point. What this artcile was getting at is the information provided by amazon to help you ‘expediate your review’. They ask for, company reg details, VAT numbers, Addresses, Directros ID and proof of address and above all…. Your suppliers information.

Head over to the wholesale forum and find a range of people having falling victim to amazon sezing a gap, or should I say taking over a gap in the market. It is reported that after suspending accounts amazons simply starts selling their products.

To be honest, I cant verify this information however I will keep digging.

So in short

Conclusion

It’s safe to say that there is no good answer on wither amazon or eBay really are any good for small business.  Both have massive traffic, high competition, fees (which are taken at the drop of a hat regardless of the situation on your account), sneaky departments, faceless, hidden policies and can shut you down overnight. Never plant your eggs in the one basket. At the end of the day, when you have bills, suppliers and staff to pay you can’t let eBay or amazon hold the purse strings.

Although one might think that I am bias in my opinion of eBay and Amazon (which I’ll admit I am) I do believe that on can benefit from using their services, however what I would suggest is ‘slow growth’. Due to EU money laundering regulation, these companies have to keep a close eye on every £ or $ you make, and of course how much you have. It’s true that there is so many scams on the net, Trust is the issue of the day. A small business trading on eBay or Amazon can benefit from the trust that they have built up over the years, however as I said before on a small scale.

Build your own site. Be in control of your business however using amazon and eBay’s traffic is a great way not only to test the market and your pricing but get your brand out there. A few select items on a store there will not alarm anyone about your growth but could see people coming to you direct to see the rest of your catalogue.

Thanks for reading, as I said before I would love to hear your experiences with amazon, eBay weather good or bad, or maybe just the benefits of having your own site. Also keep up to date with our product reviews and freebees on our Facebook and twitter pages.

 

Cheers

Tony Robinson

p.s. amazon.co.uk phone number is: 0800 496 1081 

Web Traffic tips! Is everything you read really worth the time implementing it?

I think it is fair to say that the net is full of a wealth of knowledge and information about anything one cares for. But the real question is, ‘are all the articles on traffic you read helpful, or just a waste of time’? Google has about 83,600,000 search results for the term, “how to drive web traffic”. Safe to say, more than one person can digest in a lifetime. Therefore what I am going to do in this post is essentially outline some of the articles and tips that I have came across which essentially ‘stand out’ form the current paradigm as well as some old favourites.

Let’s go over a few of the more ‘tried and tested’ tips about.

1. Go for quality not quantity.

Some might say we’re gifted with the internet and the arrival of ‘the modern age’, I for one think that is the case; however the amount of trash on the net is madness. I once read an article stating that the #1 way to build internet traffic is via a loan or cash input of £50,000 to marketers. As if a budding entrepreneur will have £50K to drop on advertising. No … What many blogs suggest is simply write about something that is worth writing about. One must really ask oneself, is my content worth being read by millions?

1. Be everywhere.

Many blogs and articles on the net make reference to this point. Nobody wants to be that guy who’s left out of the loop. So by simply plastering your material everywhere you can you can create a desperate following of people who don’t what to be ‘that guy’. I’ll be honest I haven’t tried this strategy myself. Seems pretty straight forward but time will tell.

1. Create timeless not time bound content.

Essentially this is up to you. There are two messages you can take from this tip. Many bloggers including the very influential Steve Pavlina suggest that one should write content on a deeper level that is not limited by the current paradigms, but rather content which readers can refer to 10, 20 years down the line. This is a more long term strategy for building solid roots on the net. However on the other hand, joining in on the massive collection of current topics which are currently being covered, celebrities, politics, world events etc. can be a way a generating quick traffic, but with a high bounce rate.

As Pavlina states;

“…timeless content connects with people at a deeper level than time-bound content. The latter is meant to be forgotten, while the former is meant to be remembered.”

 

1. Use ‘call to actions’ within your post.

Generally people respond better when you make it really easy for them to engage with your blog. If you have a Face book ‘like’ button tucked away in the corner of your blog, chances are they aren’t going to follow you on face book. If they engage with your article, and you make it easy for them to find the ‘like’ button or whatever, with a little nudge then they are more likely to click it. After all, worst that can happen is they don’t.  Facilitate your audience as much as possible.

1. Write for people, not search engines.

This might sound a bit contradictory to the general rule regarding the net, but after all there is little point writing an article full of keywords and sentences that don’t make sense. Referrals are a better way to build solid, consistent traffic to your blog/site as opposed to search engines which pile your articles into the pot of 86,000,000 others.

This is essentially the first blog I have ever written, and I am keen to see how the wealth of information I have absorbed regarding web traffic over the past few weeks will affect this blog. I understand that as it relatively new, it will take time, I will however be sure to keep you in the loop. I welcome you feedback.

Please follow us on face book / twitter or the blog to get all you updates. Also if you have any strategies that you have come across, be sure to let us know.