Tonka Park » startup

Big Cartel Shop Startup – An interview with Original Bros

Matt — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:27:19 +0000

Original Bros, a t-shirt company based out in Rhode Island, joins us to talk some about starting a new business and how Big Cartel has helped them get up and running.

1. What is your business?

OriginalBros.com is a startup t-shirt line geared toward college-aged guys, our shirts are and will continue to be a mix of party worthy novelty and humor as well as some design based work.

2. How long have you been open?

We have been open on Big Cartel for just about 5 months.

3. Why did you choose big cartel over the other online services such as Shopify, Etsy and others?

We chose Big Cartel because of the shopping cart feature but the selling point was inventory tracking so that we do not oversell product. The Big Cartel shop is also pretty inexpensive for a self-funded project.

4. What was the second option if big cartel didn’t work?

If Big Cartel didn’t work out we were looking at integrating Google’s cart into a custom site, using x-cart or having someone build us our site. This would’ve taken a while and cost us too much.

5. What was the most difficult part of setting up a site on Big Cartel?

The most difficult part of setting up on Big Cartel was the learning curve of the code, we are not great at coding but know the basic language structures. It wasn’t till we ran across the css style page for our theme, which was hidden online, that we could really start to tweak our site’s design and make it closer to what we had envisioned in the first place.

6. What advice would you share with someone else trying to start up an online store?

Do your research. Make sure you are ready to commit your time and energy. Create a following or fan base that is not online as well, marketing is very important and getting people to be aware of your site in the first place is the hardest part. Have fun with it because it is fun and addicting.

Go buy some of their shirts.

If you would like your internet business to be featured on our blog please contact us at hello@tonkapark.

Beginners guide to affiliate marketing

Matt — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:10:52 +0000

Do you have trouble falling asleep quick? Do you struggle with jet lag because of your travel schedule? Help is here. A 0 calorie sleep and relaxation drink that relaxes, reduces anxiety, induces sleep and improves your sleep is available. Try Dream Water 30 Day Money Back Guarantee: Don’t like it? Ship it back and we’ll refund you for the unused portion of your order.

This is just a taste of my new affiliate marketing campaign that I have begun. This is a free guide to getting involved with affiliate marketing. I will be sharing how I started my adventure into affiliate marketing using Commission Junction. Read below to find out how I started.

Affiliate marketing sign up

First things first is you need to sign up. The sign up process is a bit of an interview without actually talking with a person. The form asks for contact information and a current website that is generating traffic or where ads would be placed. You aren’t locked in to using this website for your ads since you don’t even know what advertisers are available at time of sign up.

Prior to signing up you can browse some of the 1000′s of potential advertisers for you to partner with. Once signed up you can continue to browse, view performance ratings and commission percentages as well as the text and banner ads available for you to use.

Picking an advertising partner

I decided to go with a new advertiser to CJ. I did this since I am just learning the ropes of affiliate marketing and wanted to partner with a company that has few affiliates already out there. I don’t want my marketing to compete with 100′s of others immediately. I am not sure I will have an advantage but time will tell. The company www.DrinkDreamWater.com offers a decent per sale commission but has a product that is relatively new but in a growing market. The offer a sleep and relaxation drink in a variety of flavors. For those having trouble sleeping or fighting jet lag their drink offers a simple, natural, non-addictive solution to getting your body ready for sleep.

Since I didn’t have a huge blog or other website already generating very specific content I was open to any advertiser. The one piece of advice I got was to find something where you can get a unique domain that is full of keywords. So that is what I did and eventually ended up with the Dream Water partnership. You can see the two sites I have started to help draw visitors to check out www.DrinkDreamWater.com.

The sites I created are here, fallasleepquick.com and sleepandrelaxationdrinks.com. Both are using a similar layout but have slightly different wording and one has an extra ad banner. This will allow me to do some A/B testing and determine which words or links are working best.

Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools

Of course, just like all sites I work on I setup both the google analytics and webmaster tools for each website to monitor the numbers.

Google AdWords Setup

The next step to this process for me was to setup a new Adwords account. I had yet to use adwords for a marketing campaign. I have used the google adsense but this is different in that you are signing up to pay for advertising on google searches and partner networks.

I luckily had some adword credits laying around so I signed up, put in my promo code and paid the minimum $10 charge to get started. $5 is for activation of the account and you cannot have the promo credits until you make a first transaction.

Setting up an a new ad

There are some helpful dialogs to get you started creating your first ad. I decided to make 3 ads. Since I have 2 sites and some differing keywords I tried out 2 ads for each domain to see which ones draw the most clicks. If you have ever read the 4-hour work week some of this advice can be found in those pages. If you have multiple domains you can use the same campaign but you have to create a new ad group within that campaign for each domain.

I started out with a default minimum bid of a penny. Once you get all your keywords entered you can go to a spreadsheet view which then gives you more information about the words you chose and if your keywords are a low volume search or if you aren’t bidding enough to get to the front page of results. I raised the Max CPC for some specific keywords that I believe would convert higher. So while writing this article about 10 minutes after setting this all up I already have 6 impressions for the keyword “relaxation drink”. I will keep waiting for the first clicks.

Improving Organic Search engine results

The next step in this process of creating an affiliate marketing campaign is to improve the organic search results of the two new sites. This might take creating new content on the websites, posting on forums, submitting sites to search engines and perhaps a tweet or two on twitter.

Small Business Affiliate Marketing

If your company needs help with a new internet marketing campaign or has any other internet needs please don’t hesitate to drop us a line at Tonka Park.

SEO tips for startup websites

Matt — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:39:36 +0000

Mark over at Brand5 shared this week about a few simple tips for planning when starting a new website. I have used these suggestions on a recent project that I will be unveiling soon.

“…regardless of how little you think your new website is going to rely on organic search for traffic (trust me it will be way more than you plan for, it always is), don’t wait until launch to set the wheels in motion with search engines.”

Read the article at Brand5.com