Handmadejewelryhandcraftedjewelry’s Weblog

Despite what all the so-called internet gurus say, internet marketing is not as easy as collecting money while you sleep, not for us anyway. No, we did not wake up today to huge piles of money being deposited into our  bank accounts. Not yesterday, not today and probably not tomorrow! The only ones making money on the internet seem to be people telling you how easy it is to make a million dollars online.

Getting to #1 in the search engines is the realistic goal. It can be frustrating, very frustrating. It’s like a rollercoaster, one day PR goes up and you hit page 2, then the next day your site vanishes without a trace. Change what you can and hope for a little miracle. Most importantly be patient, everything will come in time. Our goal is still there and we continue to work on it hoping that someday all our hard work will pay off, big time!

Until then we’ll continue to do what we have always done, sell handmade jewelry and unique gift ideas. I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t quit your day job quite yet. A lot of people get fed up with their life and want to start something new. One of the easiest looking things to do seems to be working at home on an internet business. Looks can be deceiving and frustrating, very frustrating. The list of things to do never stops with an online business and it takes a long time to establish that internet empire. If we didn’t have an existing business we would have been broke a while ago.

Perseverance is a virtue and today I’m feeling virtuous (that doesn’t happen all that often!). I’m not ready to jump at that dangling carrot, I’m going to stick with it and keep doing whatever needs to be done to get quality customers to our site. If we made a successful business offline, we are sure to be able to make a successful business online.

We initially went online so we didn’t have to print an 80 page catalog, the expense was killing us as we are constantly adding new products and handmade jewelry lines and revising items to make them sell faster. The website is so easy to keep up to date. We have saved a lot of money, quite a few trees and made it easier for our customers to order. Our website has done its job.

Our main source of targeted customers comes from Wholesale Jewelry and Gift Shows, but more and more we are getting inquiries from around the world because of our website. It takes a lot of time and SEO work to get the targeted traffic so don’t waste your efforts on the wrong keywords and phrases. Do your homework and you’ll get lasting results!

The effort you put into your website shows to your customers and the search engines as well. Approach it like a “real world” business and you will do well.