“Lessons Learned” – This is a letter from a small business owner working on the web.

New online business owners you could benefit the most from not repeating some of the mistakes I have made.

1. Never ever accept a free lunch, it is too good then its not true – All apply in real life and for an on-line business. 2 years ago I paid a SEO firm to get my better rankings. They set up a site and liked to mine. They key word spammed and set up back doors, set up non-quality links (all of which I didnt know about then). They promised results, I saw a dribble of traffic and then the company was gone, I think Google droppped me from their index and I was out of alot of $$$. But time heals all wounds, I learned from the people on this board and set up good content on my site, learned about key word optimization, internal key links and if you type into Google: NFL Towels Johnny Lew’s Sports is number 1. Yahoo NFL Merchandise and we are in the top 5. Wow!!!

2. Dont try for the most traffic. Get the most quality traffic. I once bought Dallas Cowboys as a key word . Do you know how many times Dallas or Cowboys is searched on Google and Yahoo??? I do, thousands of dollars worth of CPC, and I had almost no sales…Why…because people are searching for Dallas Cowboys news, player updates, game days and to see pretty picutres of Cheerleaders. Refined my keywords to what I sell Dallas Cowboys Flags and I was back on track.

3. Focus on Conversion. Quality traffic means that someone looking for what you sell or offer comes in to your site. Now you need to get them to buy from you. Buying is the conversion from a browser to a buyer. If your not taking your CPC campaigns and making sure you have the best landing page (not just your front page) your losing conversions. If your not making sure the order button is above the fold (ie not hidden below the screen) and your order process is clean and un-inhibited your losing conversions. Make it simple. Make sure your giving that customer a sense of security to buy from you. We are all not JC Penny or Dick’s Sporting goods, so our brand name and recognition is almost nill. So make sure you have a phone number, guarantee, and a good about you page.

4. Costs less to Sell to existing customers. Once you convert a customer NEVER EVER forget about them, because they will surely forget about you. And thats too bad, becuase if your a reputable firm and provide a good service that customer will likely come back. If you give them a reason. Send them a post card from time time. Remind them that your still around, ready to help them. From my top ten converting key words johnnlew.com or Johnny Lew’s Sports is in 4 of the top key words. People are searching for our company, how cool is that.

5. Start Small and be real good at that first. Dont try to launch a huge selection of products all at once. You will be out of capital quick as you try to stock all those different items. Here is a great way to optimize your Cost Per Click campaings. If you sell Wall Clocks for example, start by focusing on your best selling wall clock. Optimize your key word for wall clocks. Once that is going well and you want to expand products, dont go for something totally unrelated like Playstations, but branck out to Alarm Clocks. Take advantage of the CPC traffic your getting from Wall Clocks, and you will be offering your customer more choices (they love that) you have a chance to get more items sold, you can link from Wall Clocks to Alarm Clocks and vice versa, helping your organic SEO efforts and get higher ranked in the natural search results, and you will save some $$$ in CPC because you wont have to fund and entirely different set of terms.