This is another episode of Tuesday With Kenneth where I help our members with their challenges. Today we have Jane, who shared with us her interesting business idea.
We are living in an economy right now where we are all short of money. I started a site where you can get books for $1.00 and I will buy them back for $.25 and pay the media postage. The site is http://janes-dollar.com. Please let me know what you think? – Jane
Hi Jane,
It’s an interesting concept, though I’m not too sure how profitable it will be.
From the look of your website, it seems that you are not too competent in web programming. It’s okay, but you must keep in mind that if you want to grow, you must take one of the 2 paths:
– Master web programming yourself
– Outsource web programming and learn how to manage programmers
That is something you need to keep in mind and work on consistently. For now, you just need to promote your website and measure the response.
Promoting your website is pretty straight forward. You can go to various book forums to spread the words out. At this stage, you need to know what is the market response to your service.
Bear in mind that market response depends on 3 factors:
– The effectiveness of your sales letter (in this case, your homepage)
– The source of your traffic (whether it’s targeted)
– The business model
If you are not getting response from your promotion effort, it must be due to one of these 3.
About your sales letter / homepage
My assessment is that your homepage is weak and it needs some major improvement.
You need to ask yourself an important question, “What do you expect your visitor to do when they visit your website?”
If you want them “to buy a book from you for $1”, then you need to show them what book you’re selling.
If your objective is to get them to sign up your newsletter, you should include the signup form on the same page and give them a good reason why they should opt-in.
Remember, when people visit your website, it’s your job to arouse their interest and give them a clear instruction on what to do next. If not, they will just do one thing – leave!
About your business model
As I said in my earlier post on How To Start An Online Business, never reinvent the wheel.
Your business is actually buying and selling cheap books. A simple search for “buy cheap books” and “sell books” returns several established websites that are already doing that.
As an entrepreneur, your job is to think of how to make your service better and different from other competitors.
For now, it’s apparent that you can’t win them in terms of popularity. You also can’t beat them in terms of website features and design. But there is one thing you can be better now – you can have a better business model, since you have the advantage of evaluating and improving their business models.
Do not be intimidated by these established sites. Start with whatever resources you have now. As long as you keep upgrading your skills and keep moving towards the vision of a better business model, your business must grow and prosper.
The $1 offer is bound to attract prospects but I also feel it necessary to have an optin popup / lead-capture system actively asking for name and email on home-page. Amazon ads are a good idea from Upsell point-of view. I recommend a membership-site model as it will allow to get hold of lead’s contact details and also increase website’s overall value.
Jane, you may want to check out BANS. Just find your niche (used books?)and get started. With the BANS (http://testgearstore.com, link to BANS is on the right side of page) template it’s very easy to get a web page that looks great without a lot of web master knowledge.
Hi Jane
I think it’s a great concept, but you have great competition mainly Libraries to combat this I would make your main page less explanation keep it simple $1 a Book at the top and load the whole page with books.
Get ride of everything you have written on the page starting with your name they already know where they are keep the ad we will buy your books put that at the bottom of the page.
Plan on making space for a product category on the left side of the page as your inventory grows keep it right above the google ads.
And advertise the heck out of it that’s the hardest part of any online business or any business for that matter,advertise,advertise,advertise.
There is a middle ground approach to spicing up your website aesthetically and that is to pick a template close to the look you want, then customize it to be unique. I understand that you are a neophyte with web design, but this is a terrific way to add to your skill set without getting in too deep right away. Look at my website for an example and get some free help.