General assistance/guidance needed...

[Davek0974]

Hi all, first time asking in this forum, usually lurking in the accounts one

I started a small home business a few years ago to help offset the cost of my hobby - building large scale steam traction engines. I made ironwork brackets, packed and sold nuts, bolts and washers etc and have also written and self-published three books on the subject of building engines.

I put together a website (here) which is pretty crappy as I'm not a web developer and recently the development of new design languages etc has made it much harder to keep up with professionally designed sites. It gets little traffic as expected.

I sell my stuff on eBay but again they have been steadily increasing charges and thus lowering my takings which are pretty low anyway. My products and service have all gotten excellent customer reviews so i know that what i can do, people do actually like.

I am trying to think of ways to improve sales or expand my home business with as little outlay as possible, i have advertised the books in a leading magazine which bought in some sales but not enough to cover the cost of the adverts which was pretty high.

Can anyone offer some advice to steer me in a reasonable direction? I know its a tricky question in the current climate but i know that i have more to offer, i just don't know where to start or how. I try to offer things that are slightly 'different' to whats available elsewhere :- the hardware i offer is better quality and cheaper than the DIY stores, my ironwork was pretty distinctive, and the books are very highly commended but the target market is unfortunately very small as expected. Through the hobby, i have access to hardware that most do not which is why they stand out so maybe i could expand that?

In a nutshell, i have loads of effort, quite a bit of time, a workshop, not too much money, and stuck in a rut.

Advice as always would be much appreciated.

Dave

 

[virtuallysorted]

Hi Dave

Quick idea off the top of my head - could you run a competition to win one of your inventions? You could either run it in one of the magazines you mentioned (and I would tell them that you didn't get a very good response and say it's really put you off advertising again), or simply put it on your own site to get people talking about it and visiting the site. Make sure you collect all the data from entrants and permission follow up with newsletters/special offers etc.

Would that work?
Caroline

 

[Findermonkey]

Well 3,600 people type "Ironworks" into Google each month thats an ok amount of traffic for a start. You need to get these people to the site which I agree does need a bit of work. You need to simplify the site and promote it correctly and you should be onto a winner.

 

[Davek0974]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try and have another go at the site, it does have keywords but they don't seem make any difference so something's not right.

Thanks again.

 

[Marta_K]

Having Keywords is a simplification - you need a description of the product that as enticing and unique as your products. Because your product is niche - make it fashionable and present it as fashionable. tell your customers why they absolutely need to have one of your products, explain how it is better than other similar products, how it makes garden more beautiful.
Keywords are for robots, descriptions are for real people. And it's people that pay.

 

[Davek0974]

Well I've had another bash at the website here http://www.ddmetalproducts.co.uk I think it's much better than the old one, still in progress though as i need to get some new photos etc.

What do you think?

 

[elgunvo]

Its okay, but im thinking that the site could do with more SEO and tbh the over all look does not appeal to me, just my suggestion (no offence) If you need some help let me know and I can help you free of charge with a few bits.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Why not have a site GardenIronworks.co.uk or similar, that appears your main lines, at the moment nobody has any idea about what you are selling, small nuts and bolts, steam engine books , steam engines or garden products

To me the planters would be the obvious area to really expand as it's a general interest to many gardens where the other bits and bobs may be your hobby but mainly only of interest to steam buffs at shows

 

[Swisaw]

Only your steam engines and books are good for online sales, take the rest to car boot sales or make some videos of them and put them online, which may help.

If you advertise with google or yahoo for example, your daily budget and click cost can bring your advert to the first page.

You need to increase your knowledge a lot on online sale. Go to scrub the web, http://www.scrubtheweb.com/ , where you can find a gold mine of search engine optimisation, seo, the same thing on google, just search for 'Google key words' or google adwords.

 

[Davek0974]

Only your steam engines and books are good for online sales, take the rest to car boot sales or make some videos of them and put them online, which may help.

If you advertise with google or yahoo for example, your daily budget and click cost can bring your advert to the first page.

You need to increase your knowledge a lot on online sale. Go to scrub the web, http://www.scrubtheweb.com/ , where you can find a gold mine of search engine optimisation, seo, the same thing on google, just search for 'Google key words' or google adwords.

Thanks for that, i will check that link out.

i will freely admit that that i am not a web designer or seo expert, I'm a printer / engineer by trade and this stuff does my head in

Adwords seemed confusing and complicated to set up to me.

 

[Matt Gent]

i would agree with the above post and try adwords, its not as confusing as it may seem

 

[Chris Ashdown]

It's a waste of money to use adwords on his present site as it is obviouse a very low cost exercise and learning adwords can eat up a lot of money for little return

Unusually for me I would think he is better to make up some various garden planters and sell them on ebay which will be simple and easy to control prices, then when money comes in consider a specialised web shop.

 

[Swisaw]

Thanks for that, i will check that link out.

i will freely admit that that i am not a web designer or seo expert, I'm a printer / engineer by trade and this stuff does my head in

Adwords seemed confusing and complicated to set up to me.

You don't need to setup Adwords, but you can learn a lot about doing business online. If you feel adword complicated for you it means you can not do business online as simple as that. But if you spare an hour or two a day on scrub the web for a week or two, all these things become a piece of cake.

 

[Swisaw]

It's a waste of money to use adwords on his present site as it is obviouse a very low cost exercise and learning adwords can eat up a lot of money for little return

Unusually for me I would think he is better to make up some various garden planters and sell them on ebay which will be simple and easy to control prices, then when money comes in consider a specialised web shop.

Let him to set 50p a day budget and 1p per click and choose global market. I bet he may get a lot of orders for his steam engine abroad.

Learning from adwords is free, it cost nothing.

 

[Davek0974]

Thanks to all, lots of good stuff coming in from here.

I have been playing with the scrub the web site and have started tweaking meta data etc, I have raised my search engingine visibility from about 4 to 25 in a couple of hours fiddling, still more to do and I'll have another go tomorrow.

The adwords idea of 50p and 1p a click sounds feasible for a try, i won't look into that until the site better tweaked, according to various analysers I need a robots.txt file and a site map file too.

Lots to do.

Dave

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

I bought some motorcycle bits off of Ebay last week from a company that uses Ebay a lot - when they sent my item they included a flyer advertising their new website where they sell direct to the public giving a 5% discount (it obviously saves them from paying Ebay fees) I wont hesistate to go direct next time all for the sake of a well produced flyer.

I also get emails from a mailing bag supplier we use for our mailing bags who sell on Ebay they do the same ie also sell through their own website offering a small discount, and the periodic emails I get remind me of this which is great.

Maybe worth thinking about.

 

[Davek0974]

I bought some motorcycle bits off of Ebay last week from a company that uses Ebay a lot - when they sent my item they included a flyer advertising their new website where they sell direct to the public giving a 5% discount (it obviously saves them from paying Ebay fees) I wont hesistate to go direct next time all for the sake of a well produced flyer.

I also get emails from a mailing bag supplier we use for our mailing bags who sell on Ebay they do the same ie also sell through their own website offering a small discount, and the periodic emails I get remind me of this which is great.

Maybe worth thinking about.

Definitely on the to-do list now, thanks, always good to skip the ebay fees

Dave