the business of blogging

Yeah! I got a client to say no to an email marketing project today. I wasn’t alone in saying no, and that makes me feel good too.

Yes, I help clients organize emails, and newsletters, and do the creative for them, etc., etc., and that this could have cost me money and future business from other clients wanting to do the same sort of thing and needing to see samples of it, but I don’t care. There are times like this when I know for a fact that my client is better off not having exposed her business to 400,000 people.

This client is launching an existing business into a new market niche. She has a new website with an eCommerce functionality that has taken nearly a year to build. I am helping her with a blog that will drive traffic to that site.

She was excited to be approached by someone who offered an email list of 400,000 supposedly qualified and interested prospects. Who wouldn’t jump at a chance to jumpstart a new business with that sort of exposure, right?

Unfortunately the person offering the database wouldn’t or couldn’t even send us a simple email stating that he legally owned the database and had the right to rent it to us. The programmer who has spent the last year lovingly creating a 1,500 item eCommerce engine and I ganged up on the client to remind her that she’s come too far and worked too hard to throw everything away.

Moral of the story is an old one…if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Compound that old common sense with the new reality that nearly anything and everything can be tracked on the Internet and you have a recipe for business disaster. If  you send emails to a stolen list (or one that is just “scraped” and not double opted), you are just as tainted and guilty as the person who stole (or obtained that list under shady circumstances).

Building a business online takes time. Real time, not just Internet time. The tried and true techniques we use to get your site ranked and increase human traffic to your site work, but usually take at least 3-6 months to see results. The one thing we can do today that will show you results today is Pay Per Click advertising and that will cost money instead of time.

There are no shortcuts if you want to build a business.

Posted under social marketing