Lessons Learned on SitePoint
As promised, tonight I would like to go a little bit into detail on the lessons learned from my latest SitePoint experience. It is – I hope – a very informative post, and I hope you will find it interesting and relevant as you consider your own career in Internet Marketing. The lessons contained in it apply not only to site flipping alone, but virtually to every single aspect of your business that requires some measure of marketing (which, in IM circles, is pretty much everything).
Positioning is Key
I really, really cannot stress this strongly enough. Before you even start writing your product, ask yourself what you are going to do to make it appeal to your target segment.
For example, my last SitePoint sale was not particularly smooth – in fact, it took almost 3 days since the listing date before the auction was sold. By my standards, this is a pretty poor result – so what went wrong?
The problem was originally in the domain name I purchased. While it sounded nice, it simply did not communicate the purpose and value of the product to the target audience. The second I changed the name to something more immediately apparent, bids started coming it.
If you need to explain your product to the target segment, then there’s a good chance that you got the positioning part of STP wrong. While there are important exceptions (for examples, high-tech products sold to engineers), the product name you choose must communicate your product’s proposition.
First Impressions Count
One thing you need to understand about the SitePoint marketplace is that, unless you are selling an established site, no one knows how well your copy will convert. It takes an expert to tell excellent copy from plain average – so, unless you are an exceptionally skilled copywriter or your copy exceptionally sucks, prospective buyers will not know the difference!
This leaves us with only one thing to impress customers with – graphics! Spare no expense or effort in getting top-notch artwork for your site. The better the graphics quality is, the higher the perceived value of your site will be – and the more of a premium you will be able to charge.
