Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool

It took me about four years to decide it was time to create another product. This time, it wasn’t going to be about leadership or management, but about websites.

This is my first e-book, Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool, and it’s up there in the most prominent sales spot of this blog. The story behind this one starts in November 2006.

I’ve mentioned here and there that I am a member of an organization called the Professional Consultants Association of Central New York; I’m also on the board. What happened is that the Monday before our November meeting that year the president sent out a notice saying that our speaker had canceled at the last minute. He asked all the board members what we should do about the meeting on Friday. I don’t know what I was thinking about, but I volunteered to do a presentation on search engine optimization (SEO).

The funny thing is that I was already giving a presentation on Wednesday on hospital charge changes as it relates to coding that was going into effect on January 1st. So I already had one presentation that I’d been rehearsing for, and here I was volunteering for another one; I must’ve been out of my mind. Still, I was up for the challenge.

After the presentation I gave on that Wednesday, I came home and I sat at my desk trying to figure out exactly what I was going to talk about for my presentation on Friday. Late that evening, I came up with an idea that was going to put something together, and I went to bed around 4 AM, woke at 9 AM, and spent the next seven hours putting it together. I thought it was pretty good, and then did a little bit of rehearsing to get the time down, figuring that just because I was doing a last-minute presentation didn’t mean that I had the luxury of walking in and not being prepared. I do consider myself a professional after all.

The next morning I gave my presentation, and let’s just say that it went over very well. It was like I was bringing a whole new concept to these guys, and seeing as how at the time I was probably the youngest person in the room, I can understand that; isn’t that a shame? Anyway, afterwards I ended up having some of the members of the organization asking me if I would do some things with their websites. I thought that was pretty cool, and I realized there was another way I could generate some income. As you know I’m a big proponent of The Secret, where it says that you never know where an opportunity for success will come from, and I figured this might be one of those ways.

At that time I also decided it was time to create a new business website, so I came up with the name SEO Xcellence; actually, all those letters were initially linked together, but for some reason people couldn’t see the one word without seeing the word “sex”, even though I couldn’t see it. So it took me about a year but I finally made the change to what you see above (as of December 2014 the site has been shut down).

A year later I created this blog, and a few months in, with very little traffic and a whole lot of chutzpah, I decided to see if I could do a legitimate product launch. Truthfully, I had no real idea what I was doing, and the truth of the matter is that I didn’t have enough people following me on this blog or Twitter for that matter for it to have had a chance at success. Yet, I still gave it a shot.

I wrote the book, I sent it out to a few people I not only trusted, but figured might learn a couple of things about the topic. I got positive reviews from everyone, and luckily one guy really scrutinized it and saw some typos in it, and once I get those corrected I was ready to go. So I announced that the ebook was coming, and five days later I had the product launch.

In retrospect it was a moronic way for me to do it. You don’t do a product launch with only five days notice because there is no way you can build up enough enthusiasm in only five days. Also, you need followers, or at least some kind of big list of people you can send something out to, and I had neither. So on the day of the launch I sold two books, then didn’t sell another book for about a year and a half. Still, I have made some sales, and it’s a product that helps me advertise how I can help small to medium-size businesses with their websites and internet presence.

There’s the story of Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool. It will be interesting to see if the search engines think that the title indicates that this is a duplicate or triplicate post, since I’ve probably had at least two other posts with the same title on them; probably not. I made sure when I wrote this not to make it too complicated, so it’s not overly long. But it is about 56 pages worth of information, and if you’re new to the whole thing I think if you liked how I write explanations on this blog of things you will like that ebook.

And that’s that; one more product to go.
 

14 thoughts on “Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool”

  1. Hi Mitch

    I am enjoying your sharing about your products. Sounds like you have been busy! I love doing product reviews and I know others enjoy reading them. Especially when they know the person writing them.

    BTW thanks for the comments on my blog and the links. Much appreciated 🙂

    Patricia Perth Australia

    1. No problem Pat, and thanks for your words. I’m betting you’ve never seen anyone write about their products in this fashion before.

  2. I’m grinning big right now Mitch. I very much enjoyed your tale of your first product launch. This topic has been on my mind as I wrestle with the question of what I could do to generate some kind of income from my blogging efforts. Writing another book and “publishing” it as an e-book has seemed the most sensible option. But with just a dozen or so subscribers it does seem like wasted effort. You’ve encouraged me to revisit that thought. At least I’d have *something* to offer as an audience develops. And if my “launching” is more akin to spraying the prow of a dingy with rootbeer than smashing a bottle of champagne on the bow of a yacht, well… so be it.

    1. Allan, the launch failed, but I did get to write about the product multiple times, and it is sitting up there at the upper left. I think the idea of creating the product was more important than my lack of success and knowledge in trying to do a product launch. Heck, sometimes even the big boys aren’t successful with their launches either, so I’m thinking I might have been in good company after all.

  3. I’ve already expressed my reaction to this book, but allow me to do so one more time. For someone struggling with website issues — even the question of whether or not to have a site at all — any single page of this book will pay for itself in useful knowledge.

    1. And I thank you for your review of this product. I really had to pull back on it when I was creating it; there’s tons of bad websites out there.

  4. Good luck with the new website Mitch. I also did an SEO presentation, of how to write SEO outline and SEO plan, however, it was more in general as SEO plan usually depends on the SEO practitioner and there is not a “real” framework”. To be honest I see some bad movement in SEO world. To get a top ranking is not a question of skills and hard work, but spending a lot of money on expensive software. That’s why Google is dancing more than ever.

  5. A high-impact Web site can be a powerful marketing tool. Before you start creating your Web site, take the time to plan a Web site creation strategy. The time that you spend planning will save you time in the building phase and help you build a more effective site.

Comments are closed.