Michael Cheney - behind the I.M. curtain

Every day through the week I get up early in the morning and
go for my daily jog.  On some days I’ve noticed a strange
phenomenon that I’d like to tell you about it as it will help
you grow your business..

Not Opening The Curtains..

Monday to Friday I go jogging first thing in the morning and
nothing can stop me.  When I first started I was mentally
weak and used to open the curtains and take a look at the
weather before stepping outside.  This was weak because
occasionally I would use what I saw outside as an excuse not
to go jogging.

Now I don’t open the curtains before I go outside.  I just
go outside and jog, no matter what.

So this strange phenomenon I was talking about - what is it
exactly?  Well, it’s called the "Come Rain Or Shine" Factor..

Are You a Come-Rain-Or-Shine Business Owner?

I’ve noticed on some mornings there are far few joggers about
than usual. Having a set route I get used to seeing the same
faces in the same places but on certain days these faces are
nowhere to be seen.

Why is this?  Simple.  The weather’s bad.  That’s right!  When
I’m out jogging in horizontal rain, snow and hailstones these guys
have played the weak "looking-out-the-curtain" game and decided
that jogging is only for them when the sun is shining.

You can see this is all areas of life - employees that only work hard
when things are rosy, people who only feel good at weekends etc.

But if you’re going to be successful in this life - at business or
anything else - you can’t be a fair-weather jogger.

The Real Test

The real test of what makes a great business person or a great manager
is not how they work when everything is sunshine and roses - but rather
how they react when its pissing it down and the whole world seems to be
against them!

"Internet Rainy Days"

Here are just a few examples of some Internet rainy days that you must
work through and not decide to let your performance or motivation take
a nose-dive as a result:

- Your site gets dropped by the search engines
- Your site goes offline for a week and there’s nothing you can do about it
- You discover a huge competitor that is stealing your visitors
- Your email system crashes for 48 hours
- You spend thousands on an ad campaign that doesn’t generate a single sale

So remember - it’s not what you do when it’s sunny that counts, everyone
can be motivated then.  It’s how you react when things go wrong or when
the storm starts whipping up.  That’s what separates the men from the boys..

Too many times us website owners forget the bigger picture in the business game.  We get caught up in getting more traffic to our sites, getting more content created and getting more people on our list. To be honest - I’ve done all these things myself.

And the worst thing about it is that you’re only doing these things to get more business but - and this is the real ironic thing - by doing these things to the exclusion of everything else sometimes you are LOSING business!

Back To Basics

I have physically seen, with my own two eyes, a person spending hours each week looking for reciprocal links for their website but automatically deletes all the link requests that come into their Inbox without reading them.  What the hell is that about?!!

I’ve also heard people, with my own two ears, whinge about how they’re not getting enough sales and profit from their website and yet when an email enquiry comes it takes them a few hours, OR EVEN A WHOLE DAY, to get back to the person!!  What’s up with that?!!

And worse still I have heard people complain about how poor their website is at generating sales and yet their site:

- Has little or no content of interest
- Doesn’t tell the visitor what to do
- Has hidden or no contact information
- Doesn’t have an opt-in offer to capture prospects’ email addresses
- Isn’t loaded with customer-centric benefits on the homepage

Saved By The Bell

Even in these new Millenium days of flying cars and housecleaning robots you still sometimes need to bite the bullet and close the sale by telephone or, GOD FORBID, by meeting someone face to face!  Yes of course it depends on your product - but if you have a relatively high value item or service that you’re trying to sell if you think you can just sit there all the time and wait for orders to flood in you’ll have a long wait.

You’re Fishing For New Visitors But What About The Ones You’ve Already Caught?

It’s the oldest mistake in business.  You get so totally distracted by wanting to get more and more new customers that you lose focus and forget about your existing customers that you fought so hard to attract in the first place!  When was the last time you sent your best customer a thank you note or a personal gift?  How about a phone call out of the blue to ask them how business is or mention a news item you heard recently that affects their industry?

There are too many people for my liking who have this whole Internet game wrongly worked out.  It is not about the technology.  It is about using the medium to enable the conversation between company and prospect to begin.  Yes - you can sell on the web.  But don’t stop selling the hard way too - it has the added advantage of a two thousand year track record at least..

Countless times people have come to me saying:

"Michael, I’ve had this great idea! I’ve bought up loads of domain names that all include words relevant to my product and now they all point to my main website.  I can’t wait for the floods of traffic to come pouring in!"

Well good luck with that.

The main flaw to this approach is that despite what many people believe - there is not a massive amount of traffic to be had from people trying to guess domain names.  Now obviously there are exceptions to this - like if you happen to buy up domain names like coke.com, nike.com or msn.com.  But that’s never going to happen is it?

You may get some people who try to guess a website by typing in a certain domain name but the fact still remains that if you don’t have a website behind the domain name all it becomes is a forwarding entity.  Without a real website behind it, it will never get listed in the search engines and never be found on the Internet unless people type it straight into their browser.

So What Can You Do With Extra Domain Names?

Well, first off, it can sometimes be a good idea to protect your intellectual property and buy the various extensions of your domain name.  The most popular ones are .COM, .NET and the extension for your country.  As thousands of domains are bought up every day you will need to move quickly.

A great use for additional domain names is to use them in your offline marketing campaigns.  Assuming you have the right traffic tracking mechanisms in place you could use a specific domain name in a certain ad campaign and then monitor its effectiveness by measuring how many people get forwarded to your website from that domain.

If you manage to buy a domain name that is more meaningful, shorter and easier to remember than that of your main website then you may decide to adopt it as your main site address in all your communications.

Some Final Domain Name Pointers

Choose .COM wherever you can. People will always guess .COM before anything else but the tricky part comes in finding .COM names that are still available!  Avoid hyphens if possible.  The shorter your domain name can be - the better.  Where possible try to secure a domain name that includes a word or two that are relevant to your product - this can give you a slight edge in some search engines.