By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
September 29th, 1999

See Also   Terrence Sherry and 1 World Sarongs   Andrew Bridgeman and eART-originals   Mark Annett and Scruplestore.com   David Sabot and Cheaphumidors.com   William Waite and Nemmelgeb Murr   Mary Lu Wason and LampLink   Michael Campbell and Cellwest   Bob Rankin and Flowers Fast   Louis Jay and Health4Her.com   Jeff Swearingen and TheGift.com   Bill Broadbent the T-Shirt King   Jim Goodbody and PlanetLearn   Todd Mogren and coastaltool.com   John D. Einhorn and CapShack.com   Beverley Wood and the Gift Ship   Sgt. David Hack and US Wings   Brenda Do and MindFood Media.com   Rory O'Connor and Shopirish.com

[This is the second part of a three part article. The first part can be read here].

Lang: How much did the Cellwest store cost to build? How much to maintain and promote?

Campbell: He spent a couple of thousand dollars initially to have a site made by some guy who said he could make web sites. Ouch, big mistake. He then paid a graphic designer to overhaul the site and ended up with some nice looking graphics, logos and pages that actually loaded within a reasonable amount of time.

He then paid me to fix the overhaul. I put my own spin on things, little tricks of the trade I learned in 10 years of typesetting catalogs and designing flyers for the print world. So before he got something that was really marketable, he was into it for $10,000 at least.

The site doesn't take much to maintain. There are new products to add and price changes. But almost anyone at Cellwest can take care of those. Part of the process was to train the Cellwest staff how to use an html editor and make changes to the site. They also have on staff a junior graphic designer who has been trained in search engine positioning, hook pages, email direct marketing to the opt in list and more.

Initially it was my responsibility to promote the site. To reverse the risk to Cellwest I chose a performance based model. We agreed that I would get 15% of gross sales, not including phone sales (which have next to no markup). I nearly starved for the first couple of months but after that, the cash just started rolling in. So if I told you it cost over $100,000 to promote a web site, that's the truth, because that is how much I was paid in compensation for promoting Cellwest.

Lang: What were the major problems/challenges you faced?

Campbell: I was lucky in that the owner of Cellwest is a pretty laid back guy. He let go of the reigns and let me "take him there". There was very little interference with what I was trying to do. By contrast, I've worked for one of the largest printers in the world and during a three month contract, they did not heed one single piece of advice I gave. So I just gave up and moved on to the next challenge (which just happened to be Cellwest).

There were little challenges along the way. Writing letter after letter to search engine directory editors trying to get Cellwest listed in their "portals", was really annoying.

There was also the massive growth, the transition moving beyond just two people into training eight employees. Moving to bigger warehouses twice in the same year was also stressful.

Another thing I faced in every contract I've ever done, is when there is "no budget" for a piece of software or hardware, a tool that is so essential that the employer is crazy "not to buy it". Well I don't wait for the money to come. Being the type of person that I am, I'll buy the software, do some miracle with it and show the employer why they can't live without it. Suddenly they buy that software off of me and are offering more cash to go out and buy the rest of the tools I needed in the first place. It works every time!

Lang: Looking at the Cellwest store now, what aspects are you especially pleased with and what do you feel could have been done better?

Campbell: Looking at Cellwest now I'm pleased that I actually took the risk and did it. Being paid on performance, there were no guarantees on where the next pay check was coming from or for how much it would be. I took great comfort in all the uncertainty around me because I was confident in myself and my own abilities. I just had no idea I was going to be so successful in such a short period of time. It just grew and grew beyond anyone's imagination or expectations.

What could I have done better? I don't have any remorse really, other than I wish he would have met someone like me earlier and saved thousands of dollars initially. I would probably sit down with the same set of tools and the same action plan and do it all over again. It's hard to top 3/4 of a million dollars your first year on the net, especially selling real "dirt world" physical products to over 6500 customers.

Lang: What are your plans to develop the store over the coming 6-12 months?

Campbell: Well I'm out of the loop now. Cellwest is its own entity with its owners, designers, marketers, order takers, shippers and what not. As a good consultant should, I effectively worked myself out of a job. That's the only way I can be assured that I was successful as a consultant, is if Cellwest continues to grow and prosper once I have done my contract and moved on.

I will share a piece of parting advice I gave them though. Split up the site under several domains. Put batteries under one domain, leather cases under another, phones under another, chargers on their own and so on.

Use the same logos, look and feel, and graphic design to pull all the sites together so they all "look" the same. The casual user will not even be aware that they are surfing to a new domain with each new product category.

The search engine owners will probably find a way to filter this out, but by employing this strategy in the mean time, you can beat the link popularity, link relevancy game that is employed by many of the engines right now. You also get several web sites that are highly targeted to their keywords as each site deals only with one product category.

I also suggested that they start an affiliate program to sign up hundreds, if not thousands of sales reps eagerly trying to sell their stuff. Plus I want them to continue emailing their opt-in customer list on a monthly basis, even if it's just to say hello.

Lang: Which methods have you used to try and promote your store? Which were most / least effective?

The least effective means of promotions were free banner ad exchanges and newsgroups. I tried various strategies but banners have become like commercials on TV, we humans have become masters at tuning them out. As for newsgroups they can be effective at the very beginning to announce your site, but after that they become flat for generating traffic very quickly.

The search engines are by far the most powerful way to promote an online store. Cellwest would never have got off the ground, never existed if it wasn't for my ability to get the web site into the top ten - the front page - of the search engines.

When it comes to attaining new customers, it's a numbers game. If you know how people use the search engines to find a product or service like yours, it's easy to make pages that get found.

As the number of customers grew, EDM or email direct marketing became the next most important. Good marketers know that people who have purchased from you in the past are 30 to 40 times more likely to purchase from you again than make a purchase from a stranger. We would everyone on the opt-in list specials and coupons and on average generate an 18 - 35% response rate, which is unheard of in conventional direct mail.

It's all about relationships, simply people talking with each other. The whole vastness of the internet universe vanishes when two people stop to have a conversation. It often means taking the time to care about someone else and listen to their problems. Anyone you take the time to help and answer their email questions will become a customer for life. A customer that really relies on your expertise. But you can also rely on them, to be an ongoing customer for life.

Michael Campbell is the author of "Nothing But 'Net". How I generated $750,000 in internet revenues with virtually no advertising costs.

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