I'm female, I'm young.. will that help with my marketing??

[MarcieZoob]

In regard to your web site, one thing that might help is focusing on copywriting for marketing... and not making biased remarks there. For example, the intro text on your web page reads as being very negative -

The website started when I was sick of other American auction sites charging me to list items...

Kind of a strong statement about American stuff, which can be a turn-off for someone who stumbles across the site. The impression that you're "sick of other American sites" carries a lot of negative weight.

Reword your copy so you are putting a positive spin on your services. Stay away from "can't" and "won't" (reword your copy so these words are absent). By shifting your focus to have a more positive spin regarding the benefits of your action site, visitors will see why they should participate in your auction site.

[greeneagle]

Tubby:

"message to Ken. 'doing what I want to do'"

Sounds like you and Amie paired up well!
I wouldn't question your Mentorship capabilities for a second!
This is good, I know you can help Amie "get along".
Not only that, she has something to offer in exchange.
Looks like a great pairing, personality and business wise.
That's a big part of what these forums are all about.
Carry on!

Ken

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by lloydienames

You are the only one even trying to understand what I am saying.

Amie, a lot of these guys spent a lot of time analyzing your situation and offering thoughtful and helpful suggestions. I admit, your initial question puzzled me, but brushing off all these people who have been nothing but helpful puzzles me even more.

This is a forum for marketing professionals and personally I'm impressed with all the posts.

[Tubby]

Marcie ? Quote
"we market our services locally by selling face-to-face and networking heavily with our chamber members. I also serve on various nonprofit boards and stay active within my community."

Marcie, you do use your personality to market your website. you may well attempt to not reflect it on your webpages. But I suspect a percentage of your customers has met you and done their own 'sizing Up' before signing on the dotted line.

Quote
"When it comes to marketing, any expressed bias, gender specific or other, diminishes your market potential."

Marcie, does your chamber of commerce members not know you are a woman? The websites you build might well reflect the view in the above quote. But your own marketing definately seems to involve a strong female personality...

I do sincerely believe that personality plays a large part in web sucess Marcie. I feel compelled post this observation. You are a woman! with personality. .

[ctabuk]

Cheryl, I have just PM'd you.
I think I know where she is coming from, and I don't think for one minute that is deliberatly brushing aside other advice. What you do have is her Father saying one thing and Tubby giving really great, almost parental assistance. It is nothing other than an age gap thing, and finding someone to relate to. It's a very good forum post and one that all contributers should be proud of.

[cspelts]

Yeah, maybe I'm a bit overprotective. I just appreciate this forum!

[Tubby]

Ken. I am not sure I am paired up with Amie. But I am interested in getting some feed back from Amie and my stats on how users respond to the "girl" ad.I think Australian will respond to this sort of marketing, I will most likely drop it when I know.

But I do not know where I am headed, It just seemed like a subject that was one where I know what my opinion is. Personally I think Amie could not have chosen a worse market to have a go at, but I never chose it . . . I do think its possible to make an auction site a success, (living wage ) and I do think with about six weeks of developing a good marketing strategy, it could be presented to the design and programming stage.

Aussie Girl is just a bonus for me....

Currently I am crossing my fingers that Amie can simply 'absorb' comments made. .

[greeneagle]

Tubby,
I don't know that you have "paired up" with Aime here or not either. It seems like a natural from my perspective though!

I have personally developed many valuable mutually beneficial business relationships here though. One of which I recently sent a sizeable sum to develop a Site for me!

That is a strong element at WPW and other Forums that I hope many don't overlook!

The need for a "Mentor" and the ability and desire for another WPW member here to step up and pair is great! It happens "behind the scenes" more than most realize.

The "mentor" relationship in business is as old as the "oldest profession".

I like seeing it happen here, and every contributor plays a part when it does!

Every morning I walk around my yard and look at the new blooms, feed my chickens, ducks, dogs (& slap them around a little to keep them straight!), parrots, and cats, watching the butterflies lay their eggs and just getting off on life!

When you play a part in helping put together a good business relationship....it's ever bit as good as that for me!

I hope you don't mind my little esoteric twitch here! (whether it's a good call or not)

Ken

[greeneagle]

Tubby:

"Personally I think Amie could not have chosen a worse market to have a go at, but I never chose it . . . "

Maybe your involvement can help Amie find something that will not be so costly to implement, while being well suited to her character.

It will be extremely costly in every respect to take on that behemoth!

Amie,

I don't think that the contributors in this thread were referring to your personal maturity in their posts as much as they were your business maturity.

There is nothing else that substitutes for experience there and that just doesn't come in a couple years time!

Ken

[ADAM Web Design]

Amie: if Ken focused on 'internet marketing' as you seem to think he did, and I don't doubt for a second that he would since he's damn good at it, there's a very good reason as to why: cost-effectiveness.

In the short run, it may be better for you to get traffic to your site by going out in your local community and promoting. The biggest problem with that method is that it's a temporary solution.

Once you've handed out all of your flyers, you have to pay for more.
Once your newspaper (or whatever the Aussie equivalent is) ad runs out, you have to pay for more.
Once your radio commercial runs out of airplay time, you have to pay for more.

The advantage to online marketing is that, if done correctly, you will continue to add long-term, permanent traffic sources, quite often for nothing more than the same time you would have invested in offline advertising ventures.

If you spend 15 minutes writing directory/link submission copy, and then maybe 5-10 minutes a site submitting to the myriad of free places out there to submit to, you'll not only end up with direct traffic from those sites, but indirect traffic that will grow exponentially from SEs and the like as a result of other people giving you links, as well as the inbound link factor associated with the SEs.

And if you play the Internet marketing game correctly, it won't matter a bit who or what you are.

I don't know about anyone else, but it seems to me that the reason you posted isn't necessarily for advice, but to have someone, anyone, validate your opinion. And if that is what you really came here for, then you're going to have some serious problems if your site grows and others criticize it.

[greeneagle]

Adam:

"The advantage to online marketing is that, if done correctly, you will continue to add long-term, permanent traffic sources, quite often for nothing more than the same time you would have invested in offline advertising ventures."

As I have mentioned in other threads, my clients are ditching "Off-Line" advertising sources right and left.

You are right on - I can absolutely substantiate your statements in my practice!

But...There are GORILLAS on the block here!

It all starts with "Competitive Analyses".

From there you project what the costs will be.

Ken

[nottheusual1]

Small businesses have always needed a strong leader with a multiple skill set. The most successful small businesses are run by people who, early on, recognized their limitations - they either learn how to do it, or, hire/partner with somebody who compliments their skill set.

The Internet/Web has opened the door for millions of more people to become entrepreneurial, and I find that to be its' single greatest accomplishment. That being said - the "instant on" nature of doing business on the Web doesn't preclude the necessity of having a plan and the resources to execute it. If you aren't a "guru" in some important aspect of your business either learn quickly or partner with someone who is.

Forums like this one are invaluable tools of learning - but they are just tools. You still need to develop the foundation skill set to run a business. The most important of these skills is knowing what you don't know. Business is still business - the Web hasn't changed that. The formula for success hasn't changed, either. Know your business and know your market.

Web businesses come and go every day, and the one's that do go rarely pass on from a lack of passion on the part of the owner. If you don't have basic marketing skills (or choose any other basic, core skill), it won't matter whether it's online or offline - it just won't work out.

Two of my first Web customers ended up closing their businesses this past year. It fascinated me that they'd spend thousands of $$ a year on lawyers and accountants but wouldn't spend $$ on professional marketing/sales help. They thought they could do it themselves - along with all the other things to keep the daily business things under control.

Ken's said it before, too - sales&marketing is an artform. Not everybody is a natural at it.

[lloydienames]

Originally Posted by cspelts

Amie, a lot of these guys spent a lot of time analyzing your situation and offering thoughtful and helpful suggestions. I admit, your initial question puzzled me, but brushing off all these people who have been nothing but helpful puzzles me even more.

This is a forum for marketing professionals and personally I'm impressed with all the posts.

Please don't take offence to what I have said...... but Tubby so far has been the only that I can see actually listening to what I'm trying to say. He hasn't just said "you're 100% correct amie".. etc. etc.... he's partially agreed with what I'm saying and told me what I could do to improve on it. Everyone else seems to be straight away saying I'm being negative and not being positive with anything....

My initial question may have been a bit puzzling and I am sorry for that. Sometimes it not always easy to word things 100% correctly. I am only human afterall.

I've been asking "will this help with my marketing"... thats a general.. will being young help me at all? will being female help me at all?.. what will help... ?

I seem to be getting a lot of people bagging me outright for asking these questions and not saying "what should I do"... im trying to think a little bit for myself... I don't see there being a problem with that.

I also seem to be getting a lot of comments on that I should get more traffic to my site.... but no-one is putting their hand up saying "this is what you should do".... I am only new to this, hence I am asking for help.. not pure outright criticism.

That's why I'm saying that Tubby has been such a help to me. He's given me actual ideas and even helped me by putting a link on his site (and I did one in return)............

Please don't take offence to all of this, but this is how I see it, and other people I have shown the forum to have said they see it that way also.

I do appreciate comments, I put this topic on the forum FOR comments... but some positive comments on what I should do here and there wouldn't go astray....

Cheers,
Amie

[Tubby]

this forum is full of members that have spent years learning what they know. one of the things that we know that you do not is, you do not need traffic yet. First you need to have something to offer users when they get to your site.

You have chosen a very tough field but there are some huge gaps in this (auction) market, One of these gaps is the op-shop area. Op-shops have an advantage of having a central location where people could call in and collect, pay, donate items, virtually every church has one. At first glance it might seem an odd direction to point your website into.

Take the morning off Amie, head down to the nearest op-shop and take a look around, have a chat with the person that runs it and see if you can see what I see. But do not look in terms of percentage of fees -instead look in terms of traffic.Do you know how many op-shops there are in Australia? - they sell everything from Fish tanks to Silver spoons. They have armies of volunteers collecting sorting and selling. A small program that enabled the local church to upload selected items would cost something, but could create big traffic

Putting something together like this would in no way be easy . . Putting together a successfull site is never easy, there is lots of competition. To tackle it and win you need to be better than the other 50,000 websites that will compete with you. (better for the user, not better for the webmaster.)

There are advantages in starting a project like this in a small way - you can 'trial and error'with a local church op shop, if you can make it work for one you can make it work for them all. If you had 50 or 60 (and growing) op-shops submitting selected items, and people knew where they could collect them - or reserve them. you would have created a huge new market.

This post is written to get your mind moving . . Find a seed that you can Grow Amie. Be a girl!

O.K. Amie, now you should create questions for yourself - how would I market something like this? What do I need my program to do? etc..

For those readers that think "he's tripping" I say. Its my trip!. . Go get your own.....

[nerdbyte]

Originally Posted by lloydienames

This might sound like a dumb question... but I want an honest opinion... I'm female, I'm young.. will that help with my marketing??

Well, it'll definitely help you get attention. Will it get you respect? No. But it will get you traffic. It depends on what you're going for. If you plan to be (or are) a professional in your market, it would more likely hurt your reputation in the long run. If this is just a site you've put up as a hobby, then it probably won't do much damage professionally.

[Tubby]

I thought this thread might need rounding off. I also think If I were 18 I would be highly tempted to throw a swag into the old Holden and head of see what I could sell. (yes I put the surfboard on the roof) Id tell my Father to get back on the computer and change the program to suit my needs.

Today I called into a church op shop and I chatted to Father someone. He told me he had a set of bunk beds that had to be dissasembled because the women only had room to display small items, I was (almost Forcibly) dragged to the corner of the store to see it, Two mattresses were up in the roof. "Its almost New" The Church had a Digital camera and it loads directly to the church computer, but its not allowed off the Church grounds. But that is not a problem because pictures could be emailed to Mrs Hardy who could do this sort of thing at home - and she comes in on fridays beteen 4 and 7. An auction over a period of time would not be useful, If the buyer simply called in and paid for the Item mrs Hardy could ammend the list of items. "I could have the bed for $20 - The Church get offered a lot of larger items but have to decline because they had to put some things outside under a tarpaulin - I was taken out and shown a wobbly pine table." a couple of dollars would be plenty if I had a ute" (Utility truck to collect it) and 'no, I am an Athiest' was accepted quite well.

I had to go and see him, Once the thought of op-shops entered my head, I could not let it go. (I expect a few members know the feeling)

I think If I talked to a dozen op-shops of varied types, the sort of program and site required would become evident to me. But I am 60 next year, I shall not be doing a tour of the county signing them up.

There are lots of people searching for ideas of how to make money on the net, and unfotunately most of them simply do what everyone else does and gets a dating site - or an auction site. For a crazy Idea to work it needs to be 'One off' crazy, and there needs to be someone just as relentlessly crazy to sort out all the bits that work from those that don't. and persitant enough to almost force it to work. . Once its working of course everyone will copy you . . but they will be to late. Its always too late for Immitators. .

I enjoyed this thread, It took me somewhere I never expected to go . . . . I put myself in the shoes of girl and imagined what I could do with what I suspected I knew. It's a good age to be young in.

[Tropical]

I was curious as to how many emails/pm this young lady received from male readers...lol..or how many persons actually visited her site.
Would the response be the same a 18 year male had written?
A lot of good points were raised,I enjoy reading the posts.

[JKomp]

hmm, i read about the first half of the posts, and just wanted to say that if i were to judge your marketing ability on what you have posted here then i would say it was pretty poor. With your initial post you alienated just over 50% of the world's population and then went on to alienate a load more with comments about 'american' auction sites and the such. If i were you i would try to appeal to a broader market, which as ken pointed out a number of times, is generally possible whoever you are.

Will being young and female help, hmmm i dunno, I'm young and male and i seem to do ok, but i think level of ability has a lot more to do with level of success.

Oh and:

"I think everyone needs to take a step back, perhaps even out of their own shoes, and understand what is happening in the real world... don't be so naive.

You deal with Internet Marketing moreso than offline by the sounds of it..... and don't realize what is happening with the real world... and the "average" people in it." - If we are so naive and you know about the way things really are, why did you ask us the question?

[JKomp]

Also i would like to add that for me if someone is using a young lady to attract attention to their site then i immediately think that they must have a really poor product/service, why else would they not be focusing on advertising the best characteristics of their website.