Honestly, Robert,  I had very little profit. When I first started, I was promoting some other websites that I had little faith in.

I've only been promoting my new website for a couple of weeks now. The difference is that I truly believe in the products and I'm putting in some outside work as well. I just want the website to boost my sells. In the short time that I have been involved with the company, I've already seen a nice profit and huge potential. But I'm going back to work fulltime and am not going to have a lot of time to put into outside sales.

So give me whatever advice you have to give.

Kay

Hi Kay,

Actually the problem for you as I see it is that although the products you promote (without looking my guess is make-up etc..) are highly consummable and in great demand, they are promoted by millions of people, and widely available.
Your problem is not so much where to advertise, but how to get seen. Like one grain of rice in a barrel of rice, what makes you stand out from the crowd?
As Helen so rightly put it..your own website..and I'll add to that, Your own name!
If you aren't branding yourself, and are simply promoting a cookie cutter website, you will most certainly face a lot of disappointment.
I would expect Avon to have already taken care of a lot of optimization in the creation of the website you've been given a copy of, but the fact remains...

You have to be VISIBLE to be seen. It's as simple as that.

You have some options to increase your visibility. Website optimization is one way, and PPC is another.

Ultimately..in such a crowded niche as yours, your chances of being seen greatly increase the higher your website sits in Google or any other search engine, because when (or if) my wife looks for make-up, she's not going to page 10 or 50, she's picking from the list on the first page of her search.

Your present website will not allow for any structural changes or further optimization, so in this case your cheapest option for immediate return is to buy the traffic. General advertising will bring only limited and likely inadequate responses to cover your costs, and most of the free advertising you could do brings you back to the "grain of rice in the barrel" problem.

You need people to find you when THEY are looking for what you have, and the best way in your present business (IN MY OPINION) would be PPC.

BUT PLEASE>> Don't go rushing off to buy PPC without knowing more about it!

There a MANY keywords related to make-up that could be used to advertise your site, they would have a fairly reasonable PPC cost, and these methods would most definitely increase your chances of attracting traffic.

I offer this as proof. I was involved with Herbalife products, and one person consistantly hit the top of the charts in recruiting and sales..and many people were at a loss as to how.
What I discovered was that he had built his own site, and perhaps more importantly, he had been successful with PPC.
He was using both methods I've suggested (optimizing his own site and PPC) and the results were impressive.

Setting yourself apart from your colleagues in that business is your only chance of success. Trust me...some of your people are using these very methods and are having amazing success, and don't expect them to tell you everything they're doing.

My suggestion is to read as much as you can about PPC. Below is a link to one product I've encountered.. but there are many more available online..
Mastering Google Adwords

Best regards,

 

Tim,

Forgive me for not knowing, but what is this PPC you are talking about?

Besides that, everything else you said about being a "grain of rice" and needing to be seen made perfect sense.

Thanks,

Kay

Hello Kay,

Some good advice here about having it be YOU that people are searching out and not EVERY OTHER person that is doing the same thing.

AS far as buying traffic and spending money to make make money is not what I would suggest.

You mentioned you were going back to work so your time is going to be limited.

With that THOUGHT in mind what makes logical sense to you to where and how you are going to promote your business?

If you keep in mind that YOU are the key.

May I suggest a few idea's?

First there are sooooo many Free add places out there you can shake a stix at. IF every other person out there is using them HOW do YOU stand OUT?

Exactly YOU don't.

So if YOU are the deciding factor You can best use your time and energy and the fact that you have a web site to show people your product. You need to let everyone YOU know they can find out about what you are doing and why.

Building relationships with your customers is the KEY to any business.

What do you do when you have had a successful experience with any product or service you have ever used? IF someone asked you about a product or service or a person and you have had a good experience, don't you tell that person?

Of course you do.

Use the very thing you have that is all around you letting people know what you have if they become a customer and YOU show them WHY they should continue to buy the products from you they in turn will send you referrals IF YOU ASK.

Remember the PRIMARY reason someone tells you, you need to buys leads or buy traffic or you fill in the line THEY ARE TRYING TO SELL YOU what they are trying to market as the next best thing to build your business.

I have been in this industry for over 11 years and I have seen people try to buy their way to success, more often than not they lose their money and end up quitting.

If what I say makes sense to you and you would like more thought I talk way better than I type please feel free to call me. I will get you in the right mind set to bring you  to the right path to walk.

Nope I have nothing to sell.

Sincerely,

Robert Buchholz

616-291-2797 EST

Hi Kay, please allow me to open your eyes to a few things.

I'm going to share SPECIFICS and not mouth a few platitudes, and first off I should say that I'm NOT an Adwords expert, but I HAVE learned more than a few things about it.

First off, PPC is Pay Per Click. If you open Google and do a search on the word " Avon " first thing you will likely see is the top sponsor for that keyword, which on my browser (funny enough) was the "Official Avon.ca site. (Google knows of course that I'm in Canada ;-) )
Avon has paid Google for that top spot, and logically if someone was searching for Avon, they would very likely click that top link.
Now if you look to the Right Hand side of the page, you'll also see another link or links. This would also be a paid ad in competition for the same keyword a similar keyword or keyword combination, but in a lesser position and thus probably not as expensive per click, but on my browser there was only one link so likely one of the most competitive keywords.
You should also look at the top of the brower where Google indicates to you approximately how many web pages contained the keyword Avon.

If you go to http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ and search on the keyword "avon" you will see that there were about 148562 searches in YAHOO during the month of January. I've heard some say that equates to about 1/3 the total of searches done for the same keyword in Google. That's a LOT of people searching JUST on that word alone, and is what the big players all know about.

So, when someone pooh pooh's my suggestion that you buy your traffic (which PPC is essentially doing..buying the clicks), I would suggest they don't know much about this marketing method at all.

I would ALSO suggest, that AVON knows VERY WELL what the benefit of using PPC is, and how it taps into that incredible flood of customers waiting to buy it's products. Here's some numbers for you. If just 1% of that traffic purchased JUST $50 worth of make-up from that top site, they would be selling about $222,000 worth of product in that month from that one method of advertising alone.

MY Primary reason for making this suggestion to you to increase your results was simply to answer your question MOST HONESTLY. You want traffic and more sales? Well..obviously Avon knows how to get it, I know how to get it, and so do many other marketing experts.

PLEASE> Again I stress..DO NOT attempt PPC advertising without carefully reading and learning as much as you can. You can lose a lot of money if you jump into this without knowing what to do, and how to bid on keywords so that you don't end up losing more than you gain.

I suggested PPC because it works (and I have nothing to gain by that suggestion - Google sells the clicks not me)