Traffic to my one of my businesses main portfolio of sites that bring home the bread is up, but the revenue has dropped significantly from this time last year. The economy, price wars, and the fact that internet users are becoming more savvy are some of the reasons everyone in this industry it feeling the pinch right now.
Today I decided to jot down a few notes on what I have done since my revenue started to drop, to hopefully give you some inspiration if you start to see a decline in your online earnings.
1. Ask for advice
I emailed the smartest people I know for advice. A quick 2 to 3 sentence email meant it wouldn’t take long for them to respond (whenever you email busy people, keep you questions short and direct). The overall response I received was amazing, and got me thinking about my industry, sites, revenue and traffic in different ways than I had before. In my experience, entrepreneurs go out of their way to help other entrepreneurs – so don’t be shy to ask for help!
2. Market Research
It had been a while since I last visited my competitors site’s to see what they were doing, and it was interesting to see what they were up to. Looking at price points, marketing strategies to other elements that effect conversion rates, I was able to get some new ideas I could implement and test on my own projects.
3. Explore different routes to market
While I highly recommend getting good at a couple of online distribution methods when first starting out online, it’s still worth educating yourself on the other distribution channels that can drive targeted traffic to your site.
For example, my background is SEO so most of my traffic and content creation is around optimizing my pages for organic search listings. However late last year I allocated a small monthly budget to invest into paying for traffic (PPC) across the major ad networks. The success rates have been a mixed bag, but I’m pretty confident my “budget” will more than cover it’s self over the long run. Exploring different routes to market your products and services can be a great learning experience, and can also be a lot of fun to work on.
4. Web properties and features
I’m a huge fan of creating web properties around the niches I’m involved with. And with the help of open source software, it’s never been so cheap to create value added verticals or services that not only benefit your customers, but also can be a great way to build some links for SEO value. From Social Networks, to Blogs, Q&A sites, forums, reviews to Affiliate Programs, these are just some of the distribution channels you can build to further promote your brand, products and services.
5. Split test
It’s simple: If you split test different elements on your sales pages, you WILL IMPROVE conversion rates. Do it.
6. Take a break
While in Bali last year, I did not have access to my notebook for a couple of weeks. Apart from checking email in internet cafe’s, I was offline and unable to work. At the time I thought my world had ended, however I managed to fill 2 note pads with ideas on how to improve this particular business and have since started working on my ideas I wrote down at this time.
Whether you take a weekend off hiking somewhere or a full week away, I think you’ll be rewarded for getting back to basics with pen and paper.
7. Cut costs
This should be a no brainier, but worth noting just in case you haven’t considered cutting costs within your organization. Hosting, staff, office, equipment… the list can go on. Work out deals, give up site equity to form partnerships…. basically just explore different cost cutting options that will make sure your business rides through the bad times while you work on getting the figures back up.
8. Network
When times get tough, it’s not a good idea to fly round the world for conferences, however there’s still scope to network with others in your industry via Twitter and Email. Networking, collaborating and sharing ideas with others is a sure way to get your creative juices flowing!
9. Diversify income streams
Diversify your revenue streams as much as possible. This could also be said for traffic sources. This is hard to do for most businesses, but one that is worth paying attention too.
10. Innovate
This is a must for any online business; innovation really does separate you from the competition, and when executed properly, will bring a whole bunch of other benefits such as viral marketing, market share and quality leads/traffic.
11. Forget about emotions
Most business owners grow emotionally attached to their business. I’m no different. Last year I sold a web property of mine and then bought it back again, even though the reason I sold it was due to the site not making any money. I bought it back because I was emotionally attached to it, I had put so much hard work into the site that I couldn’t let it go.
I’ve since re-sold the site, and was lucky to sell it at a small profit. But I know I was lucky… it’s better to make business decisions based on statistics and data rather than emotions.
12. Don’t quit… yet
Unless you’ve looked at the above points and can honestly say you’ve given them all you’re best shot, it’s not time to quit. There’s so much stuff you can do before it’s time to move onto something else.
I know a lot of my readers out there work online, so I ask you to add to the conversion in the comments below with your thoughts, ideas and strategies you take when the figures start going into the red.
And remember; tough times don’t last, but tough people do.
One that sticks out for me is emotion, it can be really tough to pivot when you’ve been eating at the same table for a while. Ian and I have been having the same challenges as we try to break out in to bigger markets. If I were to add a suggestion its that I try to take the longish view on things and not freak out and become overly reactionary. It takes many years to build a business and you can’t turn a things around in a week. So keeping your eye on the horizon and ensuring you aren’t over-worrying or over-reacting can keep you developing new customers and streams of revenue.
Great point Dan. I’ve been working on the above list for the last 6 months, and the revenue started to drop a year ago – so worth noting that it does take years to build a profitable web business up from nothing.
Great point about doing your market research and keep checking out what your competitors are doing – keep your friends close and your enemies even closer! It is amazing how often this business gem is forgotten
Suzi, I completely agree!
Great post Chris, here’s my 2 cents….
It’s always worth checking the ABSOLUTE BASICS because it’s amazing how often the simplest things can be overlooked by the smartest of people…
For instance, if your site relies on affiliate earnings, you might want to check all your links are working properly. Has your affiliate partner changed their systems? Test everything. Conduct test purchases. Are your promoted products even still available for sale from the vendor?
Has your site been having down-time? Has your webhost become unreliable? Maybe your visitors can’t access your site properly. Check your stats for any unusual dips in traffic or use a monitoring service to ping you when your site goes down.
Are your .htaccess and robots.txt files setup correctly. Sounds stupid but once when checking why a site was getting very little traffic, I found a typo in the robots.txt file that meant it was blocking all crawling on the site!! Duh!
What if your site has been penalised in Google? For instance, I had a site that was hacked and I wasn’t even aware due to my lack of monitoring (ie – too many projects on the go). The hacker added some links to malware. By the time I realised, Google had flagged my site and I was suddenly getting no traffic from them.
We should all definitely be trying to squeeze every last bit of value from each visitor. Agree totally with your points on a/b split testing and testing different monetization methods. Also, if you’re not doing it already, collect email addresses and build relationships with follow up emails. This way, you get several attempts to convert a visitor, instead of just one.
Of course, there is always the chance that your niche is simply reaching the end of its natural life cycle, in which case, its time to diversify! Check research sites, such as Google Trends and, like Dan said, DON’T PANIC! :)
Top tips Matt!
The other thing that I admire about blogs that have truly great value are the comments. From them, little communities are being built and new ideas start to spring. Couldn’t agree more with, “it’s amazing how often the simplest things can be overlooked by the smartest of people”