It has been a few weeks, and disappointment has been the initial emotion as no one came to my site, except me of course. The site is very narrowly focused on a specific topic, with excellent (found no where else) blogs - 8 of them so far - right on topic and demonstrating the expertise and giving the information the targeted clientele (family business owners or their spouses) would need.
But lo and behold! 7 hits in the last few days. No contacts to me during that period of time, and yes 7 ain’t much, but somebody is finding me.
I specifically narrowed the topic area so as to remove competition so that when this topic was searched, I would be found. I am only expecting a few new clients a year from this site, as that would be successful as each client would be worth more than $10k, and perhaps a lot more. And they in turn would lead to additional referrals on the topic area down the road and perhaps repeat work.
My plan is to have a dozen or so such sites put up with similar narrowness of topic, but on different topics.
Given my initial disappointment, I started my second site, but have not finished it yet (plus I got busy, busy). But the fact that someone is finding my original site, I will proceed with the rest of the plan. A dozen sites working like this could turn into substantial numbers of hits, and cumulatively a lucrative marketing effort. Just takes the time, effort, and the intellectual property (that I have libraries of) to put together. Again, these sites are simply blogs, a home page, and a page containing my voluminous client quotes. So nothing complex at all. I may link it to my “real” site and do a hub and spoke like thing with them after I finish it all.
So as a continuing update, it took a few weeks, but there is a trickle of traffic. I have done absolutely no marketing other than the SEO available for the $29 site plan, tightly woven topic description along with very specific URL, and my original blogs. Just this trickle, if multiplied out 12x has excellent potential for my specific marketing and business needs.
Now, if you are selling product that needs much higher volume, you will need to do a lot more than I am doing.
I will update again in a few months when I get all my sites up, and see if I hit on something or not. But so far, except for one graphic that is sideways on my home page (I am sure I could flip it over if I took the time, but don’t have the time), Shopify is an incredible product without question.
As we discussed on the RB SHOP board, I think SHOP is a better version of eBay more than an Amazon sort of thing.
Tinker