It's Lonely Out Here

We have a website, now what? Back in 2005, when createsticksandstones.com was first launched, we were so excited to finally have our “store” opened in cyberspace. However, if you’ve seen the movie “Bugsy”, it was like the scene where he opens the Flamingo in the desert on Christmas Eve. It was a ghost town.

Looking back, it seems naïve. After all, we don’t have the benefit of drive by or foot traffic on the Internet, and if no one knows we’re here, how do they find us? We started using the pay-per-click advertising offered on Yahoo and Google, and though we made some sales for Christmas, it put us into the red pretty quickly. Pay-per-click advertising is a double-edged sword. If you choose terms that are too general, the cost is exorbitant because of increased competition. Plus you get a ton of “window shoppers”, people just clicking around before settling on a buying decision. For instance, if I am trying to sell handmade, personalized keepsakes online, I could choose “keepsakes”. On the other hand, I can choose a more specific term such as “handmade personalized keepsakes”. I’ll pay less, but I’ll also have far fewer searchers, and thus, a smaller pond in which to swim.
We spent thousands of dollars, with a net loss of at least $5,000 over the first 6 months. This was not the way we envisioned our business going!

The benefit we had at the time was that no one was doing what we were doing (as far as we know), so getting discovered was a matter of spurring the process along. Just like with any market with no barriers to entry, we knew if we had some success there would be competitors creeping up. So we knew being first to market and building a solid, trusted brand was absolutely crucial.