What to consider when deciding to use Link Referral:

• Quantity or Quality? When considering Link Referral you have to ask yourself if you are looking for a large number of visitors that may or not be interested in your site or a small group that is going to your site because the are in the market for a product or service you offer.  Mixed in that quantity may be 2% that are in the market for what you are offering… and that’s just by chance.  Odds are that they are working with Link Referral to simply direct traffic to their own site and don’t pay attention to sites that come up.  People that are not targeted visitors have a lesser propensity to purchase from you.  So is that 2% traffic worth your time?  If you don’t know about other resources to improve your site’s visibility it very well could be worth the time.  For my store Your Pet Store With More almost everyone is a potential customer.  So many people either own dogs or know someone that owns a dog.  But then we come back to the problem of how closely the visitor is looking at your site.  If they are viewing it blindly just to get credit, you get nothing out of it.  It’s that 2% that I estimate that you’ve gained in viewers.
• What do you have to do to get traffic with Link Referral? After you sign up with their website your site goes into a pool of other websites.  All of those sites are categorized.  When you view other members’ websites and give them a review you get “credits”.  With credits you move higher up on the totem pole. The more websites you view (of member websites) the more often you’ll show up in the search results when other members are looking through websites to get their own credit.  You can gain more than 20 visitors per day with this method.  The more pages you view the more people view your page.  Link Referral says they get 100,000 visitors per day.
• Free! Link referral is free.  They also have paid programs if you prefer not to surf other members’ sites.   The paid programs range from $25 to $100 per site.
• Site feedback: Site reviews provided by fellow members may or may not be helpful.  You’ll find people leaving comments like “nice site” just to get credit for a review and others take the time to write a thought-out review.  When I first started my website I was VERY concerned about how my site looked.  So getting affirmation from fellow members was helpful.  It’s nice to get a pat on the back every now and then.  And even criticisms if they are constructive I welcome them.  I am ALWAYS looking to make improvements.
• Is Link Referral the best way to spend your time?  Let’s say 2% of the 20-30 people that visit your site in a day are actually interested in something on your site.   You don’t have to be a math genius to know that isn’t many people that are interested in your site.  Then those people that are interested in your site may not even buy for any number of reasons.

When I first started my website, I was excited to just get 3 hits on my website.  Given that Link Referral could give me 20+ visitors I signed up.  It was nice to see my numbers go up, I enjoyed reading the reviews, and with my limited knowledge of website promotion Link Referral gave me visitors while I was still learning.  As I found better ways to spend my time I stopped using Link Referral.  It’s been about a year since I logged in because I don’t receive enough value from my time.  For the beginner I think it’s a good start, but I recommend seeking out other sources of customers like site engine optimization, outgoing links to your site, advertising on sites that would have customers resembling your customers, blogging and other social networking, and the list goes on.

Have you tried Link Referral?  What do you think?  Have you gotten any sales because of it?

Do I want to be able to ask the store a question? YES! I do not want to buy from a website that doesn’t clearly post their contact information and that must include their phone number. It is far too easy for a company to ignore emails. A telephone number reassures me that I can call the company if I don’t receive my package, if I don’t like the product or customer service, or if I want to place the order over the phone.

Do I want assurance that my credit card isn’t being unleashed into cyber space with millions of other cards vulnerable to thieves?  Absolutely!  Although the the added security still won’t give comfort to some, the majority of shoppers will sooner give their credit card number to a protected website than an un-protected website.

Reputation is a big deal right?  Many consumers use their friendly neighborhood Google search to provide them with details regarding retailers on the internet.  Enter the retailers’ name and see if you find complaints, praises, or even a presence on the internet.  You can also try “business name reviews” You might steer clear of a company with complaints.  Or maybe the complaints you read are trivial in your opinion.  Slow shipping?  Maybe you’re not in a hurry.  Never received the product?  Now THAT’s a problem!  Thanks to the internet, we can decide for ourselves what is important in our buying decision.  

What determines if you’ll buy from a company on the internet?

The growth in 2009 has been plentiful but I have so much more growing to do in 2010. I have…

• changed the store name to be less exclusive to dogs but include cat merchandise as well.
• closed my cat focused store in the process.  I wasn’t able to give it the focus it needed so I think I’m much better off with the two pet types together in one store.  So many people have a cat and a dog that now people can shop from one store when they are looking for both pets.
• changed my blog over from blogger to wordpress.  I still need to switch it to be hosted by godaddy so I can install the awesome plug-ins.  That’s on my list of goals for next year.
• became more active in the blogger community.
• started blogging more consistently once I moved over the Wordpress.
• set up a fan page on Facebook.
• joined various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, digg.com, ning.com
• given Amazon.com a shot with the store.
• Increased inventory in the store.
• Advertised on Facebook and MySpace.
• Ran a contest online.
• Tried advertising a bit on other sites.
• Submitted my site to search engines.
• Decided to remove link partnerships from my store’s website.
• Started using stock photos in my blog.

I will post goals for 2010 sometime soon.  I’d love to hear anyone else’s goals for 2010!  How did you do in 2009… about what you expected, above expectations, below expectations?  Do you know why you did well or not so well?

Do YOU use pictures on your blog?  What site do you use?  What is your first impression of sites that use pictures in their blog… does it impact your opinion at all?

Dog Slippers for Humans

In the mean time I’ve been filling lots of orders over at Your Pet Store With More.  Customers LOVE the dog slippers for humans that I have.  They are awesome!  They are adorable AND are so comfortable.  Check out the features…

* Nylon Tricot (which the foot rests on )

* Eva Foam

* Polyurethane foam

* Polyester Tricot

* Stippled PVC dots on the bottom of each slipper to provide traction.

On top of all that… the heads turn around. They are just too cute. EVERYONE needs slippers at Christmas time right? Why not these adorable slippers?

• So how do you keep yourself under pressure in the blogging world to make sure you get things done?

In the back of my mind I know my blog won’t be noticed if I don’t keep it updated.  Google won’t care about it and people won’t subscribe.  I’m using the blog to help my business and with that I would LOVE to become a stay-at-home mom.  That very desire is what motivates so much of what I do in life.

• Are you currently working ‘for the man’?

I am currently working ‘for the man’ and would love to be working for myself and more importantly my 2 children.  I want to create a warm loving home where my kids can know I’ll be home when they come home from school.  I want them to remember that about me… not that dad picked up mom from work everyday.

• How much time do you get to spend on your blog?

Writing a blog, I’ll probably spend 3 hours a week on my blog.  If you mean writing and marketing the blog, I would say 6 hours.  That extra time is spent looking at other people’s blogs, commenting, and hoping they do the same for me.

I enjoy blogging and plan to stay accountable.  What about you?

I’ve been pretty busy posting new products on the website and finding new resources to help us all better our business.

I’ve been using the Google blog finder to find interesting blogs and it has led to reading a lot of great blogs AND getting great resources from those blogs.  The most recent is from Ms. Ileane Speaks.  I really can’t say enough about this blog.  She always has great resources and even does video demos.  The most recent find by Ileane was Blog Engage.  This is a community of bloggers.  A great place to find great blogs.  How does it work?

1. I joined last night, added one article link and already increased my blog hits today.  What you do is one by one submit your blog articles by entering a brief description and the URL for the article.
2. People will click on your blog link if your description entices them to do so.  The link will open in a new window.
3. When the person is done reading the article your hope is that they vote for you and/or leave a comment.  Comments are great in terms of increasing your presence on the internet.
4. Read and comment on others blog articles.  This will help you find other resources that may benefit your business, allow you to get a meaningful links out there for your website, and help others that may in turn reciprocate.

There are some other notable features:

1. Click on the Story tab at the top of any page and you’ll receive a list of the most popular tags.  There you can choose a topic you’d like to check out.  I used this feature because I wanted to see what was out there.  Maybe something I hadn’t thought to look for but would love to read about.
2. You can also enter a search phrase in the search box if there is a particular topic you know you want to read about.
3. The Live Feeds tab shows you the new blogs being submitted.  So if you’d like to review more current submissions that would be the place to stop.
4. Your Groups allows you to join like minded groups to share ideas with.
5. There is a Make Money tab but to be honest with you I’m not interested in that tab so you’ll have to check that out if you want to make money with your blog.
6. Cool Sites tab… you can add your site here.  Just need to follow three really easy steps.

Of course I can’t mention all of the features here, but I hope I’ve made enough points for you to give Blog Engage a try.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, you want to get as many of your links out there as possible.  GoArticles.com provides the opportunity for that.

Other Features of Go Articles:

• People are able to subscribe to authors.  If you’re an excellent writer or if you talk about topics that people are interested in, you may gain a loyal following.
• There are various methods of bookmarking the article that the website provides buttons for.
• People can vote for your articles.
• You can receive RSS feeds to watch for particular topics.  I’ll sign up for feeds on pet topics.
• There is a count called “requests” that shows how many times your article was read either on their site or someone wanted a copy sent to them via email.
• The database is very easy to navigate.

Sheila pointed me to GoArticles a couple days ago so I got to thinking… see… me getting side tracked again.  She recommends I submit my articles there and I come out of the suggestion with a completely different idea.  Although I still want to submit my articles… I’ll come back to that idea.

I’ve been told that customers care about themselves.  They want their problems solved.  They don’t want to hear your sales pitch unless it helps them solve their problem.  Makes sense.  As a result of this I’ve developed a new feature on Your Pet Store With More. 

My Plan: Each week I will post a new article I’ve found on GoArticles.  This will be an article that I hope is informative and possibly helpful to people visiting my site.  I want to make 10 articles available for download if people wish or they can come back to view the new article each week. I also want to ask the customers to send the article to a friend.  That might be done with the tell & share button, but I might work on something else. Just have to figure out how to do it.

My goal with this action:

1. Become a source for information and help to site visitors.
2. Gives customers a reason to come back to my site.
3. Asking people to click on a button creates a “call to action,” which is a potential lead.  I’ve also added a survey at the end of the article where customers have the choice to provide their email.
4. Another call to action is having people provide their email for the 10 free articles all at once.  Both of the opportunities to obtain email addresses open the door for me to gain a lead and a possible future customer.
5. I would like referrals from customers in the form of them forwarding articles onto their friends that may benefit from an article or two or three.

Why GoArticles? Although I do enjoy writing, the time it would take me to research and write these articles would be taken away from developing and marketing my website.  The articles are free so that was even more of an incentive to go this route.  If you choose GoArticles just remember that you can’t alter the article.  You must keep any links and references to the author.  Basically copy and paste and that’s it.  To have as few outside links on my site as possible is another reason I decided to only post one article per week rather than posting a ton of articles.  In addition that gave me the opportunity to create the call of action for people to request the 10 article download.

I still want to discuss SUBMITTING my articles which is where this idea all started.  I’ll do that tomorrow.