By
Tyna Willett
How
we built LittleShamrocks.com
into a successful online business with SiteSell.
In
the beginning ... It was November of 2005 and my family
had gathered to celebrate my son Chris' birthday. We had
an addition to the family by way of my sister Andi's new
boyfriend, Lou Bradbard. Lou was, by profession, a computer
expert working for IBM in Boston. Andi, Chris and I were
all pretty computer literate but, by no means, were we
experts.
Lou
was telling us that he had written web sites for some
of his friends and decided that was what he wanted to
do full time. He had a few ideas of his own and I told
him
about my passion which, of course, was Ireland. I explained
that I had completely and totally fallen in love with
Ireland when I accompanied my friend, Terry Reynolds,
on our first
trip in April of 1998. We loved it so much that we went
back again for several weeks in the summer of 1998. Due
to unforeseen circumstances, we were not able to take
another trip until March 2005, for St. Patrick's Day
week.
As
I continued my story, I told him that I had become obsessed
with Ireland and I named my first stab as an
eBay seller
'The Irish Cottage'. I was dabbling in antiques and
collectibles but it wasn't my forte. I had become very
ill and was
having all kinds of tests to determine what my illness
was. It
turned out that I had thyroid cancer. After a successful
surgery and radiation treatments, I was feeling like
my old self again. I decided to give eBay another try
but
changed my ID to LittleShamrocks. Changing the name
didn't change my success on eBay, so I decided to pack
it in.
I
told Lou, and everyone, that I would like to have a web
site with an online store selling Irish products.
I was
telling stories about our trips there and about all
the Irish products that could be sold, which included
Aran
Irish knit sweaters, Waterford and other brands of
Irish crystal, Belleek porcelain, Irish chocolates
and other
foods that we loved. He liked my idea and we decided
to check it out.
Over
the next week or so, Lou and I both researched Irish
web sites to see if it would be a good idea.
We both
discovered that we needed to find our own niche.
There were some general
'gift shop' sites that carried a number of the
typical Irish products and souvenirs but there were not
many
that specialized in just one product. So ... we
decided that
we would sell Irish food.
During
the time that we were researching, Lou was checking into
some web site building companies
and found that
SiteSell was, hands down, the best one and the
one we should
use. He sent me the information to read and I
liked it very much. The one thing that really impressed
me was
that it was not going to be an overnight success.
They
wrote about how some companies would promise the moon
but the web sites would fail because they had
no
formula
for
success. Their 10 step program using C > T > P > M (which
stands for Content > Traffic > Presell > Monetization)
was backed by a money back guarantee.
Click
here for a quick overview of C > T > P > M.
Lou
and I decided to create a partnership for the new web
site. I would write it and he would
build
it. The
first
task was finding a name and creating a logo.
We didn't want it to be 'cutesie', tacky or
associated only
with St. Patrick's Day and leprechauns. Site
Sell
recommends
that the name should included the words of
what the web site is about because people would search
using
the keywords
'Irish food'.
They
sent us a long list of names; however, we didn't like
any of them better
than
LittleShamrocks.com. Under the circumstances
of not finding an 'Irish
food'
name we liked, we realized how the importance
of keywords comes into play. We also had
to choose a color scheme,
which resulted in muted tones of ecru and
green, and little shamrocks in an old shoe for a symbol.
My
first solo project was writing the Content.
I wasn't sure if I could do it or not but,
once I got
started,
the information just poured out of me. I
wrote stories about
the trips that Terry and I took to Ireland.
There were stories about the places we went,
the people
we met,
the things that we did, and even a few funny
mishaps. Then
there were the places we stayed, the restaurants
where we dined, the food that we ate. I wrote
the 'About
Us' page and all the Irish heritage in Terry's
family and
mine. Then I wrote about the genealogy searches
and the cemeteries
we visited, and the 'Driving In Ireland'
experiences. And, along with the stories, we added the
photos
to accompany them. This was the most I had
ever written about anything,
and I really loved it. Every time I finished
my project, Lou would put it up on the web
site, which
was first
on
line in March 2006. Then he would send me
some instructions for the next step.
My
next project was adding keywords to the stories. Lou
sent me a list of the most popular
keywords
for Irish
web sites and I incorporated them into
the stories that were
already written. Keywords are how a web
site gets Traffic. In the beginning, nobody knew
who LittleShamrocks.com
was, so nobody would be searching for our
site by our
name.
But ... they would search under Irish Food,
Irish Recipes, Irish Travel, Irish Genealogy,
Irish
Town Names, Irish
County Names, Ireland, St. Patrick's Day,
Shamrocks ... and the list goes on.
Now
comes the Presell. Hmmm, I thought this
was going to be a little more difficult
but
I was
wrong. I
started writing
about the Irish food that we purchased
and ate in Ireland. Then about the recipes
that
I made
using
Irish ingredients,
which we purchased from an imported Irish
food distributor in New York. This was
even more
fun than writing
the stories. I've always loved to cook
and bake, so this
was right up
my alley. So, we have authentic Irish
recipes, other recipes using Irish ingredients and
some of my favorite
non-Irish
recipes that I just wanted to share.
We would all get together and have a photo
shoot with
the new
recipes.
Then, we got
to taste it all ... Yummy!!
So
far, we have completed the Content,
the Traffic and the
Presell; and people
are coming
into LittleShamrocks.com
by searching the keywords we have used.
Now, next comes the Monetization.
Monetization is basically
opening
the
online store and selling the Irish
food products.
Site Sell recommends that you not open
a store until you
have at least 500 unique visitors per
month; unique meaning
that every visitor is a different person,
not just one person visiting 500 times.
That day
was in
November 2006
almost exactly one year from when we
first discussed building a web site.
We started
out with 15 products,
as recommended
by SiteSell. We categorized the products
according to our distributor's categories;
i.e., Coffee/Tea,
Jams/Preserves,
Mustards/Relishes, Chocolates. We photographed
all the products in their packaging,
then showing them
in use;
like jam on a scone, for instance.
The
orders started coming into the online store from everywhere
in the
United States
and Canada.
We even
had some orders
that we shipped to Ireland, England
and Sweden. Monetization also includes
earning
money
by becoming affiliated
with online businesses related in
some way to ours, and by
placing ads within our web site.
In order to offer our customers
a wider variety of food, we became
affiliated with our Irish food distributor,
FoodIreland.com.
Our
customers would have hundreds of
imported Irish food products
from
which to choose, and they would be
drop shipped from FoodIreland's location
in
New York.
Lou
was doing most of the work 'behind the scenes', so to
speak. He was
constantly finding
more ways
to monetize
by adding more ads, adding more
affiliates and joining 'pay per click' sites,
for referals. It has been
a little over a year since we opened
the online store at LittleShamrocks.com.
Remember that we needed to have
500 visitors a month to get started;
well, now we
have
10,000 to 12,000
unique visitors per month, and
almost 3,000 visitors
on St.
Patrick's
Day 2007 alone. That's another
plus ... you can go into your Site Sell
account
and get
any information
about
your web site, including daily
traffic and search engine
rankings.
Well,
I can't say enough great things about Site Sell. They
are
a fabulous
company
to work with
building
a successful web site. Lou is
no longer with IBM but is now
writing a number of other web
sites using the SiteSell method. Lou
and I have
both learned
so much
in the
past two years, and now it's
beginning to pay off. I probably
wouldn't have attempted this
on my own but, with Lou as a partner
and
SiteSell as an
instructor, my dream
came
true ... I have a voice on the
world wide web about my beloved
Ireland.
Tyna
LittleShamrocks.com
is an affiliate website that
receives commission from
the products we recommend.
Click here to take the SiteSell
Video Tour.
If
you are on dial-up click here to take the SiteSell
Quick Tour.
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Next: Read
Lou's story of how we used
the SiteSell system of web tools to
build a web site that gets over 500 hundred
visitors a day.
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