The Limitations of Social Media

I’m an active user of social media, and sites like StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Digg have been incredibly valuable for helping me to grow my blog for almost a year now. Many other bloggers, like me, have seen the power of social media, and it’s very easy to get sucked in and focus the majority of your efforts catering to the social media audience.

While I am certainly an advocate of social media marketing, I also think it is critical to understand the limitations of social media. If your primary goal in blogging is to generate traffic through social media you’ll probably be left with some impressive stats and not much else. Stats alone really don’t mean anything, so it’s important to get what you can out of social media, but rely on a balanced plan for long-term blogging growth.

Social media sites can be a tremendous source of exposure and they’ll help you to build links and indirectly search engine traffic, but the visitors you will get from social media marketing will have some limitations that you’ll need to be prepared for.

Sales

If you’re hoping to drive traffic to your site in attempt to sell a product, social media is not going to be your best source of traffic. The percentage of social media visitors that will buy anything from you will be ridiculously small.

However, this doesn’t mean that social media marketing is a waste of time if you’re trying to sell products. My approach in this situation would be to set up a blog on the site and post articles that would be of interest to those who might actually buy your product, but cater the posts to social media audiences. Don’t try to sell anything to them, just get their attention.

A big hit like this with social media can produce a lot of inbound links to the site, which can help to improve your search engine rankings and indirectly increase your sales.

Ad Clicks

Much like product sales, social media visitors are unlikely to click on ads. If you’re monetizing your website or blog by some type of advertising like AdSense where you’re earning money for each click, you probably will make very little from social media traffic.

This horrendously low click-through rate can actually wind up costing you money because some programs will drop the amount of money you make from each click if your click-through rate goes down. You may want to try a different type of advertising, or remove the ads altogether.
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Bouncing Back from a Failed Attempt

One of the realities of starting a business is that there’s a chance of failure. Almost all successful entrepreneurs, online or offline, have failed at least once, if not many times. It’s pretty rare to hit it big with your first attempt.

Risk is a necessary element of entrepreneurship, and without risk the reward would also not be there. The risk is what keeps a lot of people on the sidelines, leaving plenty of opportunity for anyone willing to work hard and take some chances.

Whether your online business is a blog, an e-commerce site, a membership site, affiliate marketing, a service of some type, or anything else, failure is a possibility. For most entrepreneurs the difference between success and failure is a major motivating factor that drives them towards their goals. For many of us, dealing with and overcoming failure will be necessary at some point in order to keep moving forward.

Doing Business Online

Fortunately for online entrepreneurs, the internet provides unlimited potential with a relatively low level of risk. Because of this there are obviously millions of people across the world working online or attempting to make money with an online business. The reasons that internet entrepreneurship appeals to you (such as low cost of entry, low overhead costs, no need for employees, flexible schedule, global operation, and unlimited opportunities) have also drawn plenty of others as well.

Reasons to Bounce Back from a Failed Business Attempt:

Most Don’t Succeed Right Away

It’s pretty rare to find an entrepreneur that achieved big success right away. A natural progression involves some failure and the ability to bounce back and keep trying.

It’s What Separates the Successful from the Unsuccessful

If you aren’t willing to pick yourself up and make another attempt, you’re guaranteeing that you won’t be successful as an entrepreneur. Those who are willing to keep going and keep striving for success will be pretty likely to achieve it at some point.

You’ve Learned from Your Failed Attempts

The best thing about failure is that it can be a great learning experience. Most of us learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. Everything that you learn from a failed attempt can be used to improve your effectiveness and your efficiency in the future, putting you much closer to success.

There’s No Need for a Huge Investment

As I said earlier, one of the main reasons so many people are turing to the internet as a way of doing business is because there isn’t really a need for a large investment with most internet businesses. If you’re running a traditional bricks and mortar business and it fails, you’ve probably lost a substantial investment. In order to bounce back and try again you’ll need to take another big risk financially. With internet businesses you can start something new with very little financial risk.

Tips for Bouncing Back:

Keep Your Ultimate Goal in Mind

I think all of us have something that makes us want to succeed with an online business. Money is an obvioius motivational factor, but many of us also desire the flexibility that comes with working online. Whatever you ultimate goal is, try to stay focused on that motivational factor and you’ll have an easier time overcoming your failures because you understand that bouncing back is necessary in order to meet your goals.

Evaluate What Lead to Failure

Failure is only a learning experience if you understand what caused the failure. Rather than jumping into something new immediately, take some time to evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Can you continue to build on the things that worked and make some changes to the things that didn’t work? Find a way to implement what you’ve learned into your new venture.

Build Your Network, Leverage Your Existing Network

Networking is important for any entrepreneuer. Sometimes those who are building an internet business tend to overlook the need for networking because the internet can easily be cold and impersonal. However, building a strong network can help you with any online business that you want to build. Once you have a network established find ways to work with others to use the connections that you have made.

Keep an Open Mind

Try not to box yourself in when it comes to your online business ventures. There are so many different paths to making money online that you need to keep an open mind. You may think you have a particular method that is the right path for you, but don’t be closed to other valid options that may arise.

Get Help When You Need It

One of the tendencies of most people who start an internet business is to try to do everything on their own. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about expenses being a necessary part of doing business online. Most of us are hesitant to pay for any type of product or service that isn’t completely essential. However, there are some services that could truly benefit your business depending on your needs. Concentrate on what you do best and find others who you can hire to take care of other aspects of your business.

Make it Happen

The biggest difference between those who have succeeded with an online business and those who haven’t is the simple act of making it happen. Don’t sit on the sidelines, take action and move towards your goals.

What Are Your Thoughts?

Have you had to bounce back from a failed attempt?

This post was written by Steven Snell. 

10 Social Networks for Entrepreneurs

Social networking is obviously very popular online today. Unlike general networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, there are a number of smaller networks that focus on professionals and businesses. These sites can be an excellent place to gain some exposure and to communicate with other entrepreneurs. Here is a quick look at 10 networking sites that should be considered by entrepreneurs.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has quickly become the leading social network that specializes in professionals. Many users have their resume posted on their profile and a growing number of employers are using LinkedIn as a recruiting tool. Entrepreneurs who are not looking for jobs can still use LinkedIn as a great resource for meeting other professionals and gaining some exposure for their own work.

PartnerUp

PartnerUp is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs find joint venture partners, co-founders, executives, and board members. You can either post your opportunity or search the listings placed by other entrepreneurs. There are networking capabilities through forums and an Ask a Question feature.

Konnects

Konnects focuses on professional networking by giving each member their own profile page. You can join communities, get to know other members, and just generally network with other like-minded professionals.

Ryze

Ryze has been around for a while but isn’t as well known as some other networking sites. On Ryze you’ll get your own profile page that can be customized, you can add friends, leave messages for others, and join groups.
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Sell Products Online with Click2Sell

We were contacted to take a look at a new site called Click2Sell that bills itself as a direct competitor to sites like Clickbank and Paydotcom. Clickbank has enjoyed such a stranglehold on marketers for so long that I must admit, I was skeptical.

They may bill themselves as a direct competitor with Clickbank but at first glance it appears to be no competition. Feature for feature they compare very strongly to Clickbank and should enjoy a significant amount of success if they can execute well.

I signed up for their service tonight and spent a few hours checking out the site and what they have to offer. I will be honest, I like what I see for the most part with a very few exceptions. Click2Sell has improved on Clickbank in many ways but has a few negative points that I don’t like.

Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the site and what it offers each set of users. The feature list I have below is only a small sample of what they offer so make sure you check it out for yourself.

Merchant Features

Free Account - Unlike others, Click2Sell offers you a FREE account with an unlimited number of products to sell or promote, no hidden costs.

Advanced Reporting - If you use Clickbank then you will understand how much of an upgrade these tools are for your campaign. A few benefits are real time sales reports, product conversion rates, affiliate’s performance, best converting keywords, different traffic sources, refunds, profit and more.

Creatives - Banners, emails, text ads, etc. You can make your affiliate program more efficient by providing your affiliates with promotional materials that they can use on their websites.

Fast Payments - Whether you have Paypal, Moneybookers, Authorize.net, Worldpay or Google Checkout account - all payments from your customers will be deposited straight to your chosen merchant account. No more long weeks of waiting for your payments!

Low Fees - Click2Sell charges a flat fee for your transactions. They range from 1 to 3 dollars depending on the purchase price. This is one of the lowest fee structures available.

Affiliate Payments - You may see this is a positive or negative but unlike Clickbank, vendors pay their own affiliate commissions. They do offer a simple to use interface to make this easy, but it is an extra step that ClickBank doesn’t require.

These are just a few of the features available to merchants in the Click2Sell system. It’s hard to appreciate just how well this matches up to the competition unless you use the others. As I said before, this is only a partial list, you can check out the complete list here.
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Taking Advantage of a Competitive Niche

I’ve talked to a number of bloggers who got started out because of an interest in a particular niche or because of a desire to make money, only to find down the road that there are a million other blogs doing the same thing as them. With the constantly increasing number of blogs online, it seems almost impossible to have an impact in a saturated market. I’m sure you’ve read about how you should avoid choosing these crowded industries because of the difficulties you’ll face. Many of you probably blog in competitive niches, and I’m sure some of you would choose a different path if you were to do things over with the knowledge that you have now.

While I completely agree that analyzing the niche is a critical step before launching a new blog, I also see some strong reasons to want to be in a busy and active niche. My primary blog covers topics related to web design. Of course there is no shortage of information already existing on the subject, so yes, it’s not easy to stand out. On the other hand, I have some incredible opportunities that bloggers in smaller, less popular niches simply don’t have.

If you’ve been building your blog for a while, you’re probably not too excited about the idea of giving up and starting over just so that you can choose a less competitive niche. If you haven’t launched your blog yet, maybe the topics that really interest you have also interested thousands of other bloggers. If either of these situations applies to you, you may want to consider simply accepting the challenge that you have in front of you, but recognize the opportunities that come along with this situation.

To start with, blogs in crowded niches have opportunities for:

1. More Links - Since there are more blogs and websites on the subject, it should be easier to build links.

2. More Traffic - Crowded niches provide loads of traffic to the blogs that are popular. With more people interested in your subject, there’s simply a larger potential market.

3. More Subscribers - Blogs in tightly-focused niches often struggle to gain subscribers, but popular blogs in a competitive niche will have huge audiences.

4. More Exposure - Of course there are many ways to get exposure, but a crowded niche can provide plenty of opportunities. There are more blogs to get links from, more blogs to write a guest post for, more social media sites that cover your topics, more chances for search engine traffic, etc.

5. More Advertisers - One of the things I love about blogging in the web design industry is that there are tons of companies that are interested in advertising to designers and developers. There are so many products and services in this niche that it’s not very hard to fill advertising spots with competitive rates.

A Plan for Success in a Competitive Niche

1. Make an Effort to Get Exposure from Other Blogs (Preferably Major Players) in Your Niche

As I mentioned above, there are more opportunities for exposure in a crowded niche, but you’ll need to make them happen. One of my favorite methods is guest posting for other blogs with a similar audience. When I was just getting started with my blog I was pretty active with finding other blogs to write for, including Blogtrepreneur. Over a span of two or three months I wrote about 20 -25 posts for other blogs. While I didn’t see a huge response from any post in particular, all of them added together to lead to more subscribers, some valuable links, and the one thing I didn’t really expect, some great contacts that helped me to build a strong network of other bloggers. I think many bloggers don’t pursue guest posting because of the added effort and time that it takes, but I highly recommend it and I think you’ll find that it’s well worth the time.
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