Lessons Learned from a Start Up Business Venture
Wednesday, March 4, 2020, 6:00 AM | Leave Comment
About a year ago I decided to come out of retirement and start a new ecommerce business.
While I was enjoying retirement, I missed the sales action of the business world and starting an ecommerce business sounded easy and manageable from a home office.
I had high expectations and thought that many of the marketing and sales skillset from my prior business experience would serve me well in this new endeavor.
In March of 2019 I founded Lookout Web Services LLC and set up a website as a first step. Then started shopping on Empire Flippers and Flippa to find some ecommerce businesses for sale.
My first ecommerce business venture was to acquire mattresscouponguy.com, an affiliate business operating on the ShareASale platform.
At MCG we offer discount coupons to shoppers looking for mattress coupons or coupon codes for major mattress brands.
Our most popular link is for the Dreamcloud Mattress Coupon. We are an affiliate for a half dozen popular brands including Luma Sleep, Plush Beds, and Eco-Terra.
Shoppers interested in these brands can learn about the products on our website and click a link providing a discount coupon for up to 20% should they eventually purchase a mattress.
I acquired this business in March of 2019 and focused on broadening the look and feel of the website. We wanted to improve the site’s visual appeal and to provide more information of interest to shoppers and to people interested in a better night’s sleep. The website was beautifully redesigned by Cecilia Wagner of Sleek Production.
Despite our efforts to improve the website the google ranking of the site went down. I was learning some hard lessons about competition in the ecommerce world. Mattress ecommerce has exploded in popularity over the last year and competition for our keywords is intense. The key lesson learned is to not take your google ranking for granted.
Dropping a few places for shoppers interested in mattress coupons makes a big difference in the traffic and ultimate success of the affiliate site.
I ‘ve learned that optimizing the site for traffic and implementing an ongoing multi-part marketing strategy is more critical than adding other products or improving the aesthetic qualities of the website. I took our ranking and traffic levels for granted and learned that it is not easy to maintain a high Google ranking in a competitive product line. Restoring our site to that top three ranking will now require some time and investment, but we will get it done.
I have learned a great deal about ecommerce in the last year and am impressed by the level of competition for product and service sales online. My expectations that it would be easy to own and operate some websites that would print money have been replaced by a more realistic understanding that success will require a great deal of hard work, expert knowledge, and keen strategy.
-
Lesson Learned
Much of what I now know about sales and marketing does not apply to ecommerce.
Throw us a like at Facebook.com/doable.financeAbout the Author
Joe Gaudino attended Rancocas Valley Regional High School in 1970 and now lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina
He operates two e-commerce businesses.Honestroots.com Marketing Organic Turmeric with Organic Black Pepper And MattressCouponGuy.com a website offering mattress discount coupons to manufacturers like Dreamcloud and Plushbeds.
