Update On Jon

Apr 9, 2010 by

I haven’t realized that my last blog post was on February 4th! I haven’t really been to motived to blog lately, I guess I’m getting lazy, but that is all about to change.

So what have I been up to these last few months? Well lots of stuff, in-fact I got too spread out on all of my projects that I had to cut back a little bit. I would love to work on lots of different projects but I am realizing that I just don’t have the time to work on all of them. So lately I have been focused on just 3 niches, and that game plan has been working out great. Lately I have been finding myself bossing other people around more then actually working on stuff myself, the reason is because I have so many projects going on so I have to hire other people to take care of stuff in a timely fashion. I know how to code php, how to design, how to set up wordpress blogs, write content, etc but lately I have been hiring all that stuff out just so I can get it ALL done on-time.

For the last 1-2 months I have been working with 2 designers, 3 xhtml coders, 5 php coders, and of course the customer support lady. During my “entrepreneur life” I have gone from doing all the work myself, to having a crew of people to take care of stuff, but lately I have been mostly the boss guy and not being able to do much of the work myself. Dont get me wrong, I still do some of the work myself, but I only do small jobs these days like fix php errors (theres lots of these little buggers) and doing a small amount of content. I’ve been enjoying every minute of the “boss thing”, I can now afford to outsource most of my projects which leads to a lot less stress and time spent working. I can almost run my whole company through my blackberry and that is how a business should be.

If your curious of some of the projects I have been working on then your in luck;

1. Shopping Cart Added: I spent $900 to have a company update 2 of my eCommerce websites to add a shopping cart system. The site was first set up so that the customer can only purchase 1 product at once (long story why It was set up that way). I spent $900 and within 2-3 days the new update paid for itself from multiple products being ordered at once. I wish I did this update a year ago lol. I am now working with the company to add a system for “related products” and such to help increase sales.

2. Customer Support Lady: I hired a lady to come in mon-fri to do customer support work for 4 of my businesses plus one of my drop shippers business. It has actually taken a ton of time to set this all up. I spent a lot of time writing up questions & answers for her to use when people send support emails. I also have 25-30 full pages of how my businesses work and some instructions for certain aspects of the business. This took a ton of time setting up, and the sad part is that the “customer support book” (that is what I call it) is only about 60% done. I still have about 15,000 words of instructions to add before I am happy with it…. that book is a lot of work, but it should be worth it in the long run.

3. Increasing Conversions: Want to know something funny? My top 3 main websites that get the bulk of my orders gets less then 300 uniques a day, yes that is right, I make my money from 300 uniques a day! That is just my ecommerce websites, I have “satelight” website set up that get way more traffic then that, but the actual money maker websites dont get much traffic. So why do I only get 300 unquies a day? Because that traffic is very very very targeted, I have a pretty good conversion rate

So how did I get my awesome conversion rate? I use Clicktale! Its a great software and I highly highly suggest it!

Want some quick tips that I have learned from clicktale?

1. Phone numbers decrease your sales, only ask for phone numbers if you really need to (I require them for call-backs)
2. A lot of people tell me to get your products above the fold, I actually get a better conversion rate if I add it below the content/fold, check out this landing page for an example.
3. Keep your products grid view simple! People dont like choices on eCommerce websites, keep your products simple (notice that I only have 3 packages of products on developerhut.com?).
4. Make your checkout process stupidly simple…. stupidly simple, make it so a 2nd grader can figure out how to checkout.
5. Give people detailed product descriptions

I have lots more tips, but Ill have that for a later blog post.

4. 3 New products on Developerhut.com: I am working on adding 3 new products to developerhut.com, they are; signature forum posting, wordpress blogs, and a secret product (no one else offers it so I have to keep it on the down low). I already have a wordpress blog creation product, but the new one will make it so you can hire us to create normal wordpress blogs like domain.com. I have been spending a bunch of time setting up wordpress blogs, so I have been training my guys to create them. They are trained to install wordpress blogs with a free theme, add SEO plugins, add some content, and do all of that with 0 footprints. If you order a wordpress blog from us then you will be able to add all of the websites info such as the database info and ftp info and my guys will take care of the rest. That product should be done this month sometime, the other 2 products will be coming out next month sometime.

Well I have lots of work to do tonight, my to-do list is 3 pages long. I was very very sick for 2 weeks in march that set me back sometime, but I will be getting caught up soon. I will be blogging more soon, so stay tuned.