Tag Archives: Sales

Sand castle Boracay


NoTonight I was discovering Boracay by just walking up the beach north towards what I thought was the end of the island. Unfortunately I was not able to continue my tour around the island, as somewhere near the northern tip the beach stops, at least during high tide. And I guess I could have continued, but there is a restaurant or something at the end that blocks the way to some kind of path along the shore, but I decided not to pass through the terrace, mainly because it was dark and also pretty quiet where I wanted to go, even though there were people there as I saw some flash lights.

But I don’t want to write about my small expedition on the island, no, I wanted to talk about some amazing thing I encountered during my trip. And the thing I encountered was a sand castle type of Boracay logo that drew my attention. And at first I could not really make something of the thing that caught my eye, as normally only small children build sand castles, even though of course many grown up people also like things like building sand castles, including me.

To be continued…

Advertising

I just decided to do some paid advertising for Inspiration for Success on Facebook and it feels a bit strange, as I am kind of against advertising and I kind of decided not to put money in Inspiration for Success. But traffic is not increasing, on the contrary, a few months ago it went down quite a lot and only the last week or so it has stabilized and goes up a little bit now, but it is nowhere to what I wanted and expected when I started this site, this blog, this idea.

And I have no clue to earn from it or something, or even what the site means as it all got lost in not meeting my expectations, traffic not increasing, people not commenting and the team leaving me long time ago.

And I know I am persistent and together with the ideas from Think and Grow Rich that keeps me going, but for a long time it has been no fun anymore, where I started so enthusiastically sharing the stuff I found about inspiration and success, the Principles of Success.

Anyhow, something needs to happen and a few days ago I started paid advertising for one of my customers as I thought that would be a good way to promote his businesses, and I think I was right, as the advertisements at least produced “Like’s”, which means people are following those pages now. So well, why not do it for Inspiration for Success, and The Malasag House, so I decided to spend a little money on that just half an hour ago or so.

And it is kind of against my ideas, supporting big companies like Facebook, as they seem to have the power and earn more and more. But maybe they deserve it and maybe this works for me (and customers/interested people).

And I also want to become rich through something like Facebook, so somehow I am the same.

Anyhow, strange to do this and it was kind of an impulse, but keeping doing the things I did before doesn’t seem to work, so I have to do something else.

And Facebook works, so why not for me?

Success by repeating

I encountered several things lately how to achieve success, how to become good at something. And that is something like starting small, starting simple and then slowly increasing your skills until you’re good at it.

So yesterday I encountered a blog with, of course, some kind of book where you can learn how to make your blog successful. And I guess there is something in it and I was a bit jealous yesterday when I found that the site of James Altucher is not that old and much better and is doing much better than mine, than this site, than Inspiration for Success.

And now I am annoyed, as I was just reading something again like ‘if you give to the world you’ll get things back’. And I hear that everywhere and if it is true I don’t give much to the world as I don’t get much back. Or more on the contrary, next to getting nothing in people helping me with e.g. this site I just have a lot of bad feelings, I just feel shit.

And yes, I still have that idea of that it’s  never enough. And of course e.g. the page Top Inspirational Sites is not yet finished, far from it. But I did quite some work on it and it’s going to take an awful lot more work to make that part of the site, of evaluation inspirational and motivational sites, a useful part.

And I know I can write shit, but right now I am still writing, even though it is 3 am right now. And I not fully sure if I am not mainly writing it for myself or for SEO reasons or something, but there is certainly a part of ‘giving’ in it. And yes, the Inspirational Tools part of the site is also not yet fully finished as I have it in mind, but it is certainly working and the idea of focusing on desire document and Principles of Success has certainly a reason as those things brought me further in life than anything ever before.

Ah, yes, the thing in my mind was about following the advice of all those successful bloggers to do things like writing comments and writing guest posts. So it’s all about marketing and sales again in a way that I don’t like. But I guess it works. So what would I do, follow my feeling or do something ‘that works’.

And yes, I think I have been quite generous with links from this site, but until now I don’t think I didn’t get many links back. And I am pretty sure people know I am linking to their site as WordPress has this nice ‘ping back’ feature that reports when someone links to your site. At least as both sites have that feature of course. But most sites are WordPress sites, so I guess they have that feature.

Anyhow, still hard for me to decide to do more of the ‘things that work’, the things I don’t like or the things I think I don’t like, or to just continue writing and working as I have been doing until now. Ah, yes, that was also in my mind, that this site, this blog was never intended to be my main source of income or something and that it is also certainly not my main priority in time, which is also why it is not my priority to do all those things ‘that work’ as I don’t want to spend the time for it.

Anyhow, I would still love to get some feedback or something, whether positive or negative, so at least I would know people read my stuff, next to seeing statistics in Google Analytics of course.

So if you read this, please post some comment or send me an e-mail? Please.

Marketing

Marketing, yeah, everything seems to be marketing. And I just don’t like it. At least that’s what I feel, that’s what I believe. And I still don’t know why I don’t like it, as somehow I am proud of the things I make, the things I do. Like this site, it may not have the best content in the world and sometimes or often I’m complaining, but I am proud that I am writing every day. My Google index graph is still going up slowly and that is very satisfying to see. The traffic to the site however is going down at the moment. And I have no clue why, except maybe that there are no new links to the site. And I guess Google still ranks sites mainly or at least party based on the number of links towards it. But I was thinking about how to get links to this site and I don’t really know what would be an appropriate way to do so.

Yes, of course I can write comments in other sites and add a link to this site there. And I did several times in the beginning, but right now it feels too artificial, too cheap. Another option, a good one, is writing a guest post in another site, another blog. And that is what I tried to do also when I just started here, mainly to beat the site Under 30 CEO. As their page 44 success quotes to inspire and motivate you was the highest scoring site for ‘inspiration for success’, the name of this site. So of course I wanted to beat them by adding a post on their site linking to this site, so this site would benefit from their ranking.

And strange, looking back, as of course now this site is always in the top 3 or so in Google for ‘inspiration for success’. And somewhere in the future I am quite sure it will be stable on number one. and the page 44 success quotes to inspire and motivate you is now somewhere at the bottom of the first page, so basically ‘nowhere to be found’ as only the top 3 or maximum the top 5 is important as most people don’t look any further. And at the time the problem was that I was not successful. And that site is about success. And of course they wanted a useful article about success. Which I was not able to make in the time I wanted to spend on that article for that purpose at the time. And I was, and I guess still am, not that good in writing ‘good articles’. So in the end I decided not to push through as it was too much effort or whatever.

But of course with my new habit of finishing things and writing this post right now I am thinking of indeed finishing that article. Or another article. And have it posted. And this time I guess for the right reasons, as I just want to finish it. And not for some kind of SEO reason, although of course it might still help, especially related to what I stated at the start of this article, that this site needs more links towards it to become successful.

So well, marketing. The thing I don’t like. The thing I always hated. And the thing I always bumped into, the things people, bosses, ‘society’ (for earning my daily bread and butter) want me to do. And yeah, I know it’s a bit different than the idea I have about ‘sales’ (and marketing). As with me, and I guess most people, ‘sales’ has a very bad image, like the car salesman wanting to sell you a car that you don’t really want or need for too much money. But slowly I also know that sales, good sales, is something different. Good sales is providing a solution for a need or a want of another human being. And yes, being paid for it, getting something in return for it. So a good salesman would not sell you something you don’t want or need. But then again, what if you think someone else needs something and he or she doesn’t know it’s a need. Like today I was just looking for the hospitals in Cagayan de Oro City to put them in the DoctorsConnect beta site and found many of them don’t have a website. Or not a website that is somewhere on the top in Google for the phrase ‘hospitals in cagayan de oro city’. And apparently the did not register their hospital properly in Google Places, as I saw many weird things in the list Google displayed for this type of search. And then my business partner and I ended up in some discussion like what’s the (financial) benefit for them to have a website and/or to show up properly in Google. And then I am still Dutch and a web developer, an internet marketer, as to me it is kind of logical, kind of a necessity that a hospital (or a hotel or something like that) shows up properly in Google, has a website. Just as service to the customers (or patients) so they could easily get information about that institution or business fully owned and managed by that business itself.

But yes, Cagayan de Oro City is Cagayan de Oro City and business is business (profit), so maybe I am wrong and should a website always have some financial return. But I am not convinced, so I will think about it a bit more.

And yes, that is ‘marketing’ (and sales) again.

Looking forward to your ideas and comments about this.

Advertising

3D WordcraftWell, I was a bit confused yesterday. As John Pitkin from 3dWordCraft e-mailed me about advertising on this site (or in the e-mail) related to the daily inspirational quote. As he is selling 3D objects with words. And of course that would be perfect for quotes. So someone liking one of the quotes I send, might want to have a physical object with that quote.

So this is a great idea and I believe would certainly benefit people, but, the business model I chose is about ‘give and receive’ and not about ‘selling’, getting money directly for services or products, in this case advertising.

And wow, I just checked his site and I am laughing, as it appears to be a one page very simple site and it is built with Drupal. That’s like renting a super crane to move a small bench or something. But that’s not what this post is about, although it is a bit as of course I also would like to share my knowledge about websites and sell my services related to that.

Anyhow, the last is of course applicable as this is about selling through the internet and this page is certainly intended for promoting 3dWordCraft by e.g. putting some links to his site and to the shop.

The main issue is here that I am confronted with an idea that is very good, where I often see ‘selling’ and ‘advertising’ as bad. And the problem I am encountering a bit is that if I ‘give’ without ‘receiving’ (money) means I am the one in charge of what is going to happen, what is being displayed or posted or sent or whatever. Where it is also logical that a person advertising, selling his or her services, would want to have (full?) control over how the advertising is going to happen.

So somehow my chosen business model is about control as it implies I want full control over how this site looks like and what the functionality is. Which has a good side, but apparently also a (possible?) bad side.

So very well worth rethinking the business model I have in mind and how that would or could or should work in the real world. As John Pitkin really threw me off balance with his request. Which is a good thing. Thank you, John.