Selling on a blog

[Former_Member]

Hi Mel, I was asked a question from one of my followers about selling on a blog. Is it a positive way to sell? I personally had great results but what do you think?

[OutdoorEyes]

A quick answer is positively "YES", if the blog articles are written to educate a visitor and not for direct selling of a product.

Now, for the long explanation and hopefully I don't lose anyone with an explanation of what I do (it obviously is taken to an extreme marketing level).

I live in a tourist town and approximately 3.7 million visitors come through our town and Rocky Mountain National Park during June through November. I am fortunate that I can match my photography products with the experience of the visitors (Rocky Mountain National Park).

So, I write a blog for Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park (fortunately for me, the most popular blog on Internet for those 2 topics www.rmnp.me). The important element of my blog is that I write about my experiences in RMNP and the visitors that enjoy my blog come back each and every day (during the high season about 1,500 visitors per day - now is a slower time for my blog). I have links to my www.GUMPcard.com website which I sell everything listed in my Etsy Store, too (actually more items are listed on my own website). The visitors who visit and read my blog will have a higher interest level in my products as the products relate to RMNP. I just recently received an order for 72 GUMPables on my own website directly due to my blog article.

Now for the real extreme marketing of a blog:

1. The same Google account that is used for Google Analytics (in a recent discussion topic on this team) is used for Google Feedburner. Feedburner takes your blog and sends it out to all the major blog feeds who then send it out to readers who are interested in the articles that are written on your blog. Feedburner also sends it out to all the people who subscribe to your blog, too. During the day when this occurs, you see a huge spike in traffic to your blog.

2. I also use Hootsuite. Hootsuite takes your blog and feeds it automatically as a post to Twitter, Facebook and many other social network websites.

3. I also have placed an AddtoAny link on my blog posts. This allows anyone reading my blog to also post a blog article to their social networks.

4. I just started writing a greeting card blog on my GUMPcard website (so it is just in its starting phase).

5. What type of articles should be written on your blog? For my RMNP blog, I just write articles on Rocky Mountain National Park. For my GUMPcard blog (greeting card blog), it is a lot more difficult. I recently wrote an article on "How Tough It Is To Select A Greeting Card & Gift." I figure if someone is interested in that type of article, that person might be interested in my new GUMPables for a gift and card. I try to be listed in the top 10 articles on Google based on the topic. I also wrote an article on "Greeting Card Innovation" and the last time I looked, I was in the Top 10 for a search of "greeting card innovation."

6. You should be very careful in the selection your blog categories and blog tags (similar to Etsy) as it is very important to use the best search words or you won't be found in a search engine.

7. I also place a banner link below each blog article to my GUMPcard website.

Overview:

You can write a successful blog and not be concerned about extreme marketing of a blog. So, don't be concerned if you don't understand all of the above. You just have to write all the time (at least once a week). With my RMNP blog, I write every day. But my blog articles are not long at all. I try to have people comment on my articles, which is sometimes tough to do. The length of an blog article doesn't affect how important an article is.

One more thing that I did, that is not related to blog question. On my GUMPcard website, I have a lot of ecards that visitors can send for free. I figure if they don't want to purchase a product at this time, they can use my ecards to send to their friends. Each time a new friend receives an ecard, that is one more person that knows about my website and one more person that could purchase a product from me. And it gives people a reason to come back to the website more often.

I also have to say that I do considerably much better sales on my website than I do on Etsy. I still haven't figured out the best method of marketing on Etsy yet as I haven't had my store for too long. But eventually I will discover the best approach as I keep changing my store each day a bit based on my marketing reports from Google Analytics and the Etsy Stat Report. And if I do discover the best method, you can be assured that I will post it on this team's discussion. So, any creative help with sales will be greatly appreciated (as great sales posts have already have been added by other team members).

Denis, I hope you have learned a bit more than when you started reading this discussion post and I also hope you invite your follower to the Rocky Mountain High Team.

Mel

[Former_Member]

Hi Mel, when you give info about a subject, you really go into details. I love your dedication to this team...thank you

[BazaarCharlotte]

Great advice that I shall start incorporating into my blog. I just started one last week. It is fairly new and unsophisticated, but have set a goal of one post a week and one page improvement a week. A modest goal, but I also work full time along with the new business.

Is there a quick and dummy version guide somewhere on how to add all the wonderful things I see on other pages?

Char

[BazaarCharlotte]

By the way my blog is http://bazaarchar.blogspot.com/ if anyone wants to take a look and give advice.

[OutdoorEyes]

Charlotte,
I just visited your blog. Here are my thoughts:

1. I thoroughly enjoyed the articles and I would come back again. Well done.
2. The blog is well designed, liked the colors and layout.
3. You have added Etsy for yourself and a few of your teams. Please realize that when you try to help out other friends, any links that go to other places other than your own links have a chance to hinder your success. I relalize that it is a find line to walk. If your other teams are adding the same team Etsy on their blogs, then there is definitely a balance. The risk that you take is that your blog, that takes a lot of work could become very successful and others benefit instead of yourself. I have done similar in the past, so I am not saying it is a positive or a negative addition to your blog... I am just pointing out the possibilites.
4. Nice addition of a coupon to your blog. I didn't think of that. I will use your idea. Thanks.
5. I am not familiar with Blogger as I use WordPress software and I can configure it any way I want to. Regarding your question of adding wonderful things on other pages, I assume you mean widgets? Widgets are pre-made software that can be moved around on the pages to add information such as #views, #visits, links, tags, etc. They are very powerful and easy to use. I download them and install them, but Blogger probably has a section in your account to use them??? Check that out for sure. You might have an easy was to add Google Analytics as Blogger must have an easy way to add it.
6. I see your first article didn't have Labels (tags). You can go back and add them to that article. You might want to look for a Label widget to display on your blog, too.
7. Check out if you can add categories to your articles as I don''t see them right now. Each article could be in a category and then you could add a category widget to your blog, too.
8. I viewed your blog on my iPhone and the subscription did not appear until I looked at it in full web view. Maybe there is another way to also add subscription for the mobile version for your blog. That would be very important as anyone looking at the mobile version can not subscribe right now.

Good luck and well done. Everyone should take a look at Charlotte's blog and see what can be done without a lot of experience. You will become more versed and even more creative in what can be done with your blog as you learn more each day. Take a look at other blogs to get new and innovative idea.

Mel

[BazaarCharlotte]

Thanks Mel for all the advice I will try to figure some of that out this weekend :) I can go in and add the tags today. Blogger does have a menu of things to choose from, but the descriptions seem to be written for those who know I will keep plugging away at it.

Char