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Arts & Crafts BusinessWelcome! I should mention first that, although I originally wrote this for people who ran a home or small business making and selling arts and crafts, most of the information in this section will be just as useful for anyone running a small business that sells products that can be shipped anywhere. It will be useful for people like me who sell services, such as my consulting, and want to attract a wider market than we can by advertising in our local area. It will be less useful for you if you sell a product or service that is local in nature, or that is too big to be shipped outside your local area. Still, I hope to have information here that will be useful to anyone who wants to use the Internet for information distribution and marketing -- whether you do this via email messages, autoresponders, newsletters, websites, or even through streaming audio and video. The Internet allows many of us who were tied to a local area to extend our reach to others, no matter where you might be on the planet. In this section of JohnDilbeck.com, I plan to develop as many sources of information as possible to help us manage our businesses and to market our products more efficiently and profitably. Please look over the menu items to the left and select the area in which you're interested. I'll be developing this section further as I have time. Like most of the web, this site is a continual work in progress. November 2004 UpdateEver since my friend Barbara Brabec had problems that she attributed to the Alexa Toolbar (see Is the Alexa Toolbar Spyware?), I have been aware that folks who use Windows computers are flooded with spyware and all sorts of other things. I still disagree that Alexa is spyware, but I'm removing links to their toolbar. I'd hate for anyone to have troubles with their computers because of something I recommend. If you'll read the article, you'll see that Ken Evoy has released a search utility that isn't downloaded and installed on your computer. Search It! is an outstanding tool that will give you access to Alexa rankings, Google PageRank, and much more. Read Is the Alexa Toolbar Spyware? for information on how to use it. I'd like to thank you for continuing to visit JohnDilbeck.com. My Alexa rankings continue to improve and it's because of you. Thanks! May 2003 UpdateRather than continue to talk about traffic and ranking (see below), I decided to use one of Alexa.com's new tools to speak for itself. In the column to the left, you'll find my current ranking and number of links pointing to me. Every site must have traffic in order to sell -- whether you are selling products, services, or providing free information. I discuss, below, how I managed to build my traffic so that my site ranked from just another site with no traffic to now being in the top 2% of all websites based on traffic as monitored by Alexa.com. It's thanks to people like you, who visit, that my rankings have improved. Your site can improve, too. The last time I checked my rankings, I was in the high 200,000 range, and I'm continuing to work to make this site more useful for you and me. March 2003 UpdateEven though it was a short month, thanks to nice folks like you, there were over 16,000 visitors to JohnDilbeck.com in February, 2003. This is a 60% increase since the November Update, below, and it's still growing. In late February, I checked my Alexa ranking for JohnDilbeck.com and I'd risen over 50,000 in the rankings to my current ranking of 320,245. That puts me within sight of 300,000 which would be about the top 2% of all websites. (See the discussion below, in the November 2002 Update, for more information about Alexa.) This just underscores my idea that if you follow a set of procedures and stick with it, you can build a website with lots of visitors without spending a lot of money. Persistence is the key. Once you learn how to build a website and make it attractive to the search engines, you just have to continue to work your plan and your site will grow. November 2002 UpdateWe reached a new milestone in November. This is the first month when over 10,000 of you have visited JohnDilbeck.com. That's more than a 500% increase in traffic when compared to this time last year, and it's still growing. At the current rate, there will be well over 100,000 visitors in 2003, and each one of you is welcome here. My ranking at Alexa.com is 372,210 this month. (See the Alexa toolbar link in the left column to learn how you can get this tool for your browser toolbox. It gives you the ability to check any site's popularity and relative traffic.) With approximately 16.6 million active websites on the Internet, a site with a ranking of one million is in the top 6 percentile. With a ranking of 300,000, a site would be in the top 2% of all Internet sites. I'm aiming to be in the top 1%, which would be an Alexa ranking of less than 150,000 or so. I'm making progress. The first time I checked my Alexa ranking I was well over 1,000,000. I hope you fell welcomed and find what you're searching for. This is a good time to thank Ken Evoy and the other SiteSell folks, the folks at Wordtracker.com, and at SelfPromotion.com for their help. Each of these sites offer free services and training, and later, when you're ready, you can purchase the full services or products and put them to work for you. I learned from Ken how to create a website that sells. I followed some of his advice and ignored other parts. The best thing I did this year was to purchase and download Make Your Site Sell! (the 2002 update) and really study it. I learned a great deal from this book and several others that I purchased from him this year. (In November 2004, Ken released a great little ebook called Make Your Contents PREsell! which condenses his hard-won knowledge into a little over 130 pages and sells for $10 USD. I highly recommend this book. The more I study Ken's methods, the better I do.) When I joined his affiliate program, I found over 1,000 pages of expert advice on building traffic to my site and how to make money selling products and advertising other companies here. Even a year later, Ken still has the best affiliate program that I've been able to find, and I've been looking for nearly two years. I've joined hundreds to evaluate them, and Ken's 5-Pillar club beats them all. For less than the price of two months of hosting JohnDilbeck.com, Make Your Site Sell! gave me the tools and inspiration to completely rebuild my site and make it something I could be proud of. (You can learn more about Ken and his products on my Does Your Site Sell? page. I highly recommend all of his products, although some of the information in his Make Your Net Auctions Sell! ebook is a bit out of date due to changes that eBay made. Update: Now, Ken offers it as an updated free ebook.) I learned from Ken about WordTracker.com. There, I've spent many hours researching key words and how they're actually used on the Internet. I've been able to locate niches where folks like you can find me on the web. It's a simple matter of finding what people are searching for and finding niches where there aren't too many competitors. Then target those key words in the meta tags of your pages and in the content. Major search engines like Google and MSN will be happy to lead visitors to your site. You can subscribe, for free, to a list of 500 top keywords that were searched for during the previous week. They have a great service and you can learn to use it for free by working with the trial version until you understand how it works. Then, when you're ready to do some serious research, you can subscribe to the full service at very reasonable prices. I've subscribed for a day at a time and then concentrated on working for several hours. I've been paid back much more than what I invested. In fact, I'll earn more from my affiliate sales just through Amazon.com this quarter to pay for all the money I've invested promoting my site this year. WordTracker.com is quite a bargain and is very effective. Finally, I used all the tools available at SelfPromotion.com to get JohnDilbeck.com listed in the major search engines. You can try the service for free, and if you like it, all he asks is for you to pay what you think it was worth to you. I've paid him twice this year and I'll pay him again. It's been well worth it! If you found JohnDilbeck.com through one of the search engines, these are the three tools that I credit most for putting me out where you could find me. Of course, it took lots and lots of work, but it's been fun. Site Build It!I could have saved myself a lot of work if Ken Evoy's Site Build It! system had been available a couple of years ago. For a very fair annual hosting fee, his system does all of what I talked about above, without taking months of work and hundreds of hours reading and understanding all the technical details. When I get caught up with all my sites this spring, I'm going to purchase a Site Build It! site and give it a try. I know it'll be faster and easier to build a site with it that it has been using all the tools that I've been using. Check out my Does Your Site Sell? page for more information about Ken and the products he offers. Still not back to full speedDuring a very difficult year, when I've been caring for my mother around the clock for the last year and have only recently been able to leave the house, I've taken the time to work on my website. At first, I spent quite a bit of money, but sometime this fall it started breaking even, and now, I'm starting to show a bit of profit. This year, when I'll be able to get back to my smithy and make The Rose That Never Wilts, again, this website will still be working for me 24 hours every day. I think it's been a good investment of time and energy. And, as a real bonus, it gave me the opportunity and freedom to spend a year taking care of my mother after her cancer surgery and struggle to recuperate. I can't put any kind of price tag on that. I'm glad you dropped in. You're always welcome back here. If you have any comments, criticisms, or suggestions about JohnDilbeck.com, feel free to write me. Please put JohnDilbeck.com in the subject of your email. My email address is at the bottom of every page on the site. Arts and Crafts MarketingIf the crafting field has a single recognized expert, I'm willing to nominate Barbara Brabec for that title. I've read all of her books I can find, I read her newsletter and visit her site whenever I have time, and I recognize and appreciate all the time and effort she's put into learning about marketing arts and crafts. I recommend her website, her books, and her advice with no hesitation. She's already doing, and has been doing for many years, what I set out to do a few months ago. I bow to her expertise and experience. National Crafts AssociationThe National Crafts Association was founded in 1983 and offers a variety of help and information to crafters of all experience levels. The very best resource I've found for professional crafters who help each other with their business and crafting issues is their mailing list: A Craft Biz Connection. You can learn more about the list at that site and subscribe to it, if you like. I highly recommend this list and I've learned a lot from the very helpful participants that you'll find there. SCOREMany people have received excellent help from counselors at SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives), but I've been less pleased with their services. I think it depends greatly upon what you're attempting to do and the counselor you're assigned. Sometimes it can be greatly helpful, other times less so. Either way, I like the idea and I hope you'll find useful information and maybe some good help if you contact the SCORE office in your area. Arts and Crafts Business at About.comAbout.com has a number of sites related to arts and crafts that are maintained by dedicated individuals in their areas of interest. I've provided links to a few of the arts and crafts sections at About.com on my Arts and Crafts page. They also have great sections on business and such areas of interest as desktop publishing, clip art, web site building, advertising, marketing, and more. You can start looking for sections of interest by going to their home page at About.com.
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