Need some suggestions to increase sales please...
Hi all!
I don't post a lot because I've been getting busy with some of my projects.
Anyway, wedding season, followed closely by graduations, is right on top of us and I need some suggestions for boosting sales to Bookmark Wedding Favors and Custom Laminated Bookmarks for All Occasions which is my primary website, followed closely by its spin-off, Memorial Bookmarks for Funerals and Memorial Ceremonies.
For the wedding bookmarks site, I'm averaging about 100 uniques per day with multiple page loads and my Google positions are good for my main keywords.:
wedding favor bookmarks: #1, 2, 6 and 7
wedding bookmarks: #2, 5 and 8
bookmark wedding favors: #2, 4, 5
wedding bookmark favors: #3, 4, 6
wedding favors and cheap wedding favors: #8, 11
homemade wedding favors: #4, 7
graduation favors #11
graduation bookmarks: #3, 9, 11
For the memorial bookmarks, I'm averaging around 35-40 uniques per day, which is pretty good because I just spun this section off on its own a couple of months ago.
memorial bookmarks: #3, 4 and 8
memorial bookmarks for funerals: #1, 7, 9
But overall, both sites combined, my sales after almost three years with this business are still very sporadic.
My goal is to drive this business up to making on average a steady 5-7 sales per week of at least $100 per sale, which is 75 bookmarks, a pretty medium or average sized wedding actually, or two smaller memorial bookmarks orders that would total $100.
It's weird; I get so many compliments on my customer service, reachability, helpfulness, quick response, ability for people to completely customize at no extra charge, my ability to help with design suggestions, rework photos, you name it, etc., etc., and even more so when it comes to the memorial side of the business because it takes a certain amount of empathy to interact with the grieving loved ones that are left behind to deal with the arrangements.
But how to "advertise" this is where I get lost. i.e., how do I "brag" about myself without sounding like a complete egomaniac?
Yeah, Vistaprint or iPrint might be better, but like some of my customers have said, I'm a real person, not an automated machine; I can listen to what my customers want and help them design what they're visualizing - without charging "set up fees," or "extra photo fees," or "tassel fees," or "ribbon instead of tassels cost extra" fees.
You know?
I'm REALLY GOOD at what I do and people love my work.
And I love this business! I love learning new things with PhotoShop to make the bookmarks better than the others out there. We just bought a new tool that rounds the corners making them look a lot nicer.
So with that in mind, I need some new and unique ways to promote both of these sites aside from doing even more press releases, article marketing, Facebook, MySpace, social bookmarking and backlinking, but at the same time, resources are less than limited so they need to be free promotions.
I've done the analysis of my top competitors and I'm listed in the same directories. I've done blog commenting, YouTube video promotion (I could probably do more of that; it's easy and effective).
So aside from spending more hours on YouTube promoting my bookmarks videos, any other suggestions?? Maybe buying a radio spot through Fiverr? I haven't tried that yet.
Do I get myself "all dolled up" and get in front my videocam and brag about all my abilities or what? Like, Grandma Knows Best! ROFLMAO!!!
I've been wanting to retire from doing transcription work for a while now, and even more so lately because with all of this typing, I'm starting to get tendonitis and arthritis in my hands. So I need to build up these bookmarks businesses so I can give my wrists and hands a break!
Being on SSD (social security disability), I can make about $2000/month and claim about $800/mo in expenses so I'm within my allowable earned income range w/o risking losing my SSD, which I desperately need for medical expenses.
So that's my goal - a combined $2000/mo in sales from these two websites and I will be one happy camper. We're making about $135 every other month with Google AdSense from our other sites, and my husband just hit on a really cool craft idea that could potentially allow him to make his allowed $2000/mo too.
We are NOT looking to "get rich," and we don't mind working. But he's a crafter, not a marketer or computer guy. So whatever techniques we can come up with that initially are completely free to promote our sites (his is Lighted Personalized Wine Bottles and Mason Jars), and we'll be all set.
Thanks for reading!! And have a great day!
I don't post a lot because I've been getting busy with some of my projects.
Anyway, wedding season, followed closely by graduations, is right on top of us and I need some suggestions for boosting sales to Bookmark Wedding Favors and Custom Laminated Bookmarks for All Occasions which is my primary website, followed closely by its spin-off, Memorial Bookmarks for Funerals and Memorial Ceremonies.
For the wedding bookmarks site, I'm averaging about 100 uniques per day with multiple page loads and my Google positions are good for my main keywords.:
wedding favor bookmarks: #1, 2, 6 and 7
wedding bookmarks: #2, 5 and 8
bookmark wedding favors: #2, 4, 5
wedding bookmark favors: #3, 4, 6
wedding favors and cheap wedding favors: #8, 11
homemade wedding favors: #4, 7
graduation favors #11
graduation bookmarks: #3, 9, 11
For the memorial bookmarks, I'm averaging around 35-40 uniques per day, which is pretty good because I just spun this section off on its own a couple of months ago.
memorial bookmarks: #3, 4 and 8
memorial bookmarks for funerals: #1, 7, 9
But overall, both sites combined, my sales after almost three years with this business are still very sporadic.
My goal is to drive this business up to making on average a steady 5-7 sales per week of at least $100 per sale, which is 75 bookmarks, a pretty medium or average sized wedding actually, or two smaller memorial bookmarks orders that would total $100.
It's weird; I get so many compliments on my customer service, reachability, helpfulness, quick response, ability for people to completely customize at no extra charge, my ability to help with design suggestions, rework photos, you name it, etc., etc., and even more so when it comes to the memorial side of the business because it takes a certain amount of empathy to interact with the grieving loved ones that are left behind to deal with the arrangements.
But how to "advertise" this is where I get lost. i.e., how do I "brag" about myself without sounding like a complete egomaniac?
Yeah, Vistaprint or iPrint might be better, but like some of my customers have said, I'm a real person, not an automated machine; I can listen to what my customers want and help them design what they're visualizing - without charging "set up fees," or "extra photo fees," or "tassel fees," or "ribbon instead of tassels cost extra" fees.You know?
I'm REALLY GOOD at what I do and people love my work.
And I love this business! I love learning new things with PhotoShop to make the bookmarks better than the others out there. We just bought a new tool that rounds the corners making them look a lot nicer.
So with that in mind, I need some new and unique ways to promote both of these sites aside from doing even more press releases, article marketing, Facebook, MySpace, social bookmarking and backlinking, but at the same time, resources are less than limited so they need to be free promotions.
I've done the analysis of my top competitors and I'm listed in the same directories. I've done blog commenting, YouTube video promotion (I could probably do more of that; it's easy and effective).
So aside from spending more hours on YouTube promoting my bookmarks videos, any other suggestions?? Maybe buying a radio spot through Fiverr? I haven't tried that yet.
Do I get myself "all dolled up" and get in front my videocam and brag about all my abilities or what? Like, Grandma Knows Best! ROFLMAO!!!
I've been wanting to retire from doing transcription work for a while now, and even more so lately because with all of this typing, I'm starting to get tendonitis and arthritis in my hands. So I need to build up these bookmarks businesses so I can give my wrists and hands a break!
Being on SSD (social security disability), I can make about $2000/month and claim about $800/mo in expenses so I'm within my allowable earned income range w/o risking losing my SSD, which I desperately need for medical expenses.
So that's my goal - a combined $2000/mo in sales from these two websites and I will be one happy camper. We're making about $135 every other month with Google AdSense from our other sites, and my husband just hit on a really cool craft idea that could potentially allow him to make his allowed $2000/mo too.
We are NOT looking to "get rich," and we don't mind working. But he's a crafter, not a marketer or computer guy. So whatever techniques we can come up with that initially are completely free to promote our sites (his is Lighted Personalized Wine Bottles and Mason Jars), and we'll be all set.
Thanks for reading!! And have a great day!
