The start of my journey into cyberspace.
This journal will be my journey, adventure, experience and challenges into the realm of cyberspace of eBuiness or eCommerce, internet marketing, online shopping and blogging. I will also provide tips and links for doing business online as well as blogging. I will also hope to share with those just starting up a blog or thinking of starting up a blog what to do in their proceeding days ahead. This will be a day-by-day guide to them to set up a blog as I had experienced it before.
Now my thoughts about the rest of my cyberspace journey for since November, 2007.
Many years I have been buying products of different sorts online. “What a great business to be into”, I told myself. For years I had the urge to get my hands into the field of eBusiness. I never really got to do it until November 2006. I guessed just like anyone else, I was putting it off as long as I can. I simply convinced myself that the realm of the unknown can be put-off till another day and then another day.
One destined day in November last year, I decided to learn more about the unfamiliar and taking up the challenge. Next day, I paid a hefty sum of money and got myself enrolled into an internet marketing workshop. For the next 2 1/2 days, I told myself that I should have started the journey the moment I had that fire to do so. Well, how true the saying goes - “Better late than never”. And at the age of 52!!
Today it is exactly 13 weeks ago since I launched my teddy bear website. The journey might seem brief considering that I attended the workshop in mid November 2006. It had been a challenging 8 weeks prior to the website launch. The workshop had provided me with an understanding of some of the areas that I could consider.
Options were available to me for to look at which business model would be appropriate for me. I would have taken the easy route and either launched the platform based on affiliate programs or drop-shippers. Another choice was e-books.
I chose to source a product, promote and market it. It has to be something that is well-liked, suitable for all occasions, simple and light to deliver to customers. Of course, the profit margins have to be uncompromisingly attractive!! I decided to sell teddy bears. These teddy bears that are unlike those generally available in the marketplace. I headed to the bookstores. I bought books and even more books. Books included topics covering Internet marketing, SEO, Blogging, Video-blogging, eBay, Dreamweaver 8. I read and read…trying to gain a more in-depth understanding of the sorts of application of the knowledge gained from the workshop on a subject I have not idea of at the beginning and yet so complex.
Sourcing for the right teddy bear product has taken a month. I began designing the teddy bear website. However, with the tight time line that I had imposed on myself to launch my website, I finally passed that task to a webmaster. Armed with the knowledge I have equipped myself from workshop and the books, I worked with the webmaster to structure the website that way it should be as per recommendations I sourced from books. Just a piece of advice here. Never leave it to your webmaster entirely to create and design the website. There are just too many other considerations besides the look and feel of the website. For a website to be able to attract traffic, it is critically important that keywords, meta-tags, site optimization, ranking,Google AdWords , blog are considered. All these I had to work with the webmaster in addition to the shopping cart and adding a blog to the website.
Finally on January 20, 2007 I was ready to uploaded my website and it was done.
For the first 2 weeks, nothing happened as far as money making was concerned. I was tweaking areas such as my keywords, landing pages, page titles, blog, , robots, Google Analytics. I was also working on my blog, http://my1teddybear.blogspot.com, with the hope to promote and drive certain amount interests to the website. I simultaneously initiated another blog, http://francoyong.blogspot.com. This blog is about Mind, Body And Spirit including numerous other thoughts that might come along the way.
Further area I worked on was Google AdWords - activated sponsored links. That effort, immediately within the same hour, drove my unexpected traffic (being a novice) to the website from all over the world। I had 85 visitors within the first 5 hours of the Google AdWords being activated. Believe me now!! Indeed Google Adwords does work. I generated about 3.5% conversion on average. Over a 5-week duration, I received orders amounting to just over USD 4,000 from the world at large. I must say that is pretty impressive for a start-up for my teddy bear website.
Oh…another thing. I also extend my support for now, to two international orphanage homes as well as one in Malaysia. In total there are 150 international orphans and more children will be added as I go along. Furthermore, with the money earned from the teddy bear website, I will set aside 20% for hungry children in extreme poverty. 1 child in the world dies of hunger every 3 seconds. That’s the least reason these children should die this way.
I am happy for the path and the milestones I have covered so far.
Heap Heap Hooray!!
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