As most of you have seen, we have made a few changes to Merchant Services. We have renamed and repositioned many of the categories in order to present a functional, step-by-step approach to how you interact with Merchant Services. Hopefully, you will find this change beneficial.
Some of the changes to Merchant Services include two new icons:
- This icon will appear anytime there is a New article in Merchant Services.
- This icon will show anytime we have Updated an article in Merchant Services.
An article recently updated was Stealth Linking. If you were to access Merchant Services, you would see the Updated icon next to the article’s title.
Speaking of Stealth Linking, let’s take a moment to discuss this strategy. Stealth Linking is an unconventional approach to getting links in ways most online merchants would not consider. With this approach, you will utilize the interactive features of many Web sites to post messages, such as blogs with reader-comment functionality, Web-based message boards, forums, and Web sites with guest books.
The reason you are doing this is to build incoming links to your site and as a secondary benefit this can also bring qualified traffic to your site.
As an example, here is a StoresOnline site that recently used stealth linking.
There is a Forum called the AvianBirdFlu Forum (http://www.avianflutalk.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=964). On Tuesday, May 30, 2006, Oprah Winfrey had a show on the Avian Bird Flu and the Forum (mentioned above) included a link to Oprah’s show and a link to a StoresOnline site (DisasterNecessities.com).
Here is the example of how links were posted.
This is just one of the many ways you can employ the Stealth Linking strategy. For more information about this strategy and how to use it, visit Merchant Services.
Outsourced Job Market Leads to the Success of an Internet Business
As outsourcing and the frustrations of finding employment affected the Davidsons, Gail and John decided it was time to market their business on the Internet.
For a long time Gail had a job she really enjoyed: technical support for computer operating systems. However, like many others in the computer industry, her job was to be outsourced overseas.
After considering various possible replacement jobs, both Gail and John liked the idea of starting their own business. They decided to begin an Internet venture because unlike starting a “brick and mortar store,” Internet businesses can get started without a substantial amount of monetary investment up front.
"After we started our own company, one of the things we did was to go out and look at a number of different website hosting providers,” John said. “All of the companies I looked at offered their own products, and everyone who signed up could sell their products. We considered this to be a very unattractive business venture since everyone in that room would be a competitor of yours and it was up to you to figure out how to differentiate yourself from everyone else."
John continued to look for other alternative ways to market their business on the Internet. During his search, John found StoresOnline and said to Gail, “This looks pretty good. I think you need to come look at this. This company provides marketing resources that the other [companies] don’t.”
Gail and John attended a StoresOnline presentation where they saw the benefits of doing business with StoresOnline. The thing that impressed them the most was the fact that StoresOnline operated much differently than the others. Instead of focusing on “their” products to sell, StoresOnline explained their focus was to teach you how to market your website.
During the StoresOnline presentation, the speaker explained how there are millions of websites created daily. “If you don’t know how to market your website, it doesn’t matter how much money you spend developing a website. If Internet users can’t find your website, you will not have a successful business.”
Gail and John were attracted to what StoresOnline had to offer because of the tools and assistance to make their website successful. “It was exciting to know that StoresOnline continually updates their reference material as they learn of new methodologies that will help you be successful. Their reference materials are also designed to teach people who know nothing about the Internet–on how to get started marketing you business on the Internet and how to be successful,” Gail said. “We found the StoresOnline presentation so informative that we felt that this was a company who could teach us what to do.”
At the end of the presentation, Gail and John bought six websites for their business even though they had no idea what they were going to sell.
At the StoresOnline workshop, Gail and John were advised to go home and make a list of hobbies and interests in order to come up with a list of possible items that they would find interesting for their business to sell. Gail and John followed that advice, and began brainstorming on possible products to sell, as well as reading the reference materials provided by StoresOnline. “All the materials provided by StoresOnline were pertinent in helping us market our business on the Internet. There was a lot of information on how to set up an Internet site and how to use the resources,” Gail said.
Gail and John used the tools provided by StoresOnline to help them decide what product their business should sell. After a thorough analysis, they decided to sell storage sheds. They used the reverse search tool to discover how many people were looking for information on sheds and the Keyword Analysis Tool to see their competitors’ marketing efforts. “From the tools StoresOnline offered, I was able to identify a product for our business that I didn’t believe other people were marketing properly,” Gail said.
Gail and John built their storage shed website and used the resources in Merchant
Services to begin the marketing their business. One of the suggestions within Merchant Services was to use relevant, keyword-rich content in the website’s pages. Gail and John used the suggestion and built the pages accordingly. “When we developed the content, we made sure to integrate the keywords we wanted the search engines to find”, Gail said. “We submitted our site to the various live Directories identified by StoresOnline. We worked on link building. Afterwards, we saw a dramatic increase in number of unique visitors to the website. Within the first year our website achieved a ranking by Alexa.com meaning that traffic to our website was sufficient to qualify us as one of the top five % of all websites,” Gail said.As Gail and John built their site and added content to their specific pages, they discovered how simple it was to use the software. “I found the tools so easy to use, that I preferred building it myself. I like having control over the content and the look and the feel of the site. I also like the fact that knowledgeable StoresOnline customer service representatives are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week to help answer any technical questions that might arise,” Gail said.
Because of various marketing strategies and hard work, the business took off. So much so, Gail needed to hire a couple of employees to help out. “Our website went live in May 2004, and by August 2004 our business had grown so much that I had to hire somebody else since I couldn’t keep up with it. The business has grown and grown and grown. At this point [April 2006], I have a staff of five people working for me. I attribute our success to the wonderful knowledge given to us by StoresOnline,” Gail said.
“As I grow my business, one of my business objectives is to expand the offering to our staff, in terms of benefits. In our first year we implemented profit sharing. Whereas, the trend today in America is to reduce benefits, my goal is to improve the offerings every year.”
Visit Gail and John’s website at http://www.shedtopia.com/
*Testimonial results are not typical and your individual results will vary.
Your success depends on having the right price, product, and marketing efforts
StoresOnlinePro.com recently added a Technology Blog. Through this Blog, the StoresOnline Pro Engineering Department will discuss new product features, ideas, solutions, and more. The Blog will further highlight the powerful and cutting-edge technology behind StoresOnline Pro. Visit the Blog as often as you wish, as it will be updated regularly. Go to http://www.storesonlinepro.com/tech_blog to access the Blog.
