Any Small Business Owners here?

[MoniDew]

Hi!

I was just wondering if there were any fellow small business owners on these boards. I own a small flavored tea business. (Any tea lovers?) You can find me at My Cup of Tea (http://www.mycupoftea.net) (Holiday teas are now available! (http://www.mycupoftea.net/holidayteacollection.htm)) :wink:

I think it would be fun to promote and support eachother's small businesses. An equitable exchange, wouldn't you say?

[Backyard Permaculture]

Yes I am a small business owner. I am a custom cabinetmaker/furnituremaker with 30 years Professional experience. I work out of my home in a small town in SE Arizona, 16 miles away from the imfamous OK Corral in Tombstone AZ.

I am also struggling to get a market garden going in the area, listed on local harvest at http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M13631

Presently selling pastured eggs and, if the freezes haven't killed them yet, vine ripened tomatoes

Ron

[MoniDew]

That's fantastic, Ron! I wish I lived close enough to become a steady customer! There's nothing better than an organic, free-range egg! YUM!

[MoniDew]

I had to make a VERY difficult decision regarding my small business. So far, I have been selling my own teas. But the economy has got my business struggling. And I had to choose between stubornly defending my own brand and feeding my family. In the end, I chose my family - which I am sure is the right thing to do. But that means that I now will be selling commercial teas alongside my own. The quality, of course, will never be as good as my own. But people are more familiar with the brands, and therefore may buy more. Wish me success with my little business!

[Sinfonian]

Best of luck to you. We love tea and try to shop locally whenever possible. Sorry to hear you had to expand beyond your own creations. I hope that difficult decision makes it work for you!

[Cynthia]

I've had my private practice for three years. I work out of my home which means no commute for me, and no extra overhead for rent.

I worked like a fiend to market my business, and in fact, my own marketing coach hired me to coach for her :) So I do a little marketing training on the side.

My best advice, if you don't have a blog already, set one up and blog about tea, everything about tea! Google LOVES blogs, they are indexed often within an hour of writing a post. Pay per click advertising is also effective but you have to be willing to invest some $ for that to work.

Do you sell at Cherry Street ;)

Good luck to you.

[MoniDew]

I just followed your link. You are a therapist! PROBABLY A GOOD THING I MET YOU!

I was a nutritionist/naturopath for a while, before starting the tea business. Which means that I have attempted self-employment before (and unsuccessfully. Twice.) It was a MAJOR leap of faith to try again.

I will definately take your advice about blogging! That sounds too good to be true! Thank you for the tip. I've been trying for months to get listed at Google.

As for Cherry Street, not this season. I just got my business license in July, and it took until mid-August to get up and running "live," so to speak. So it was too late for this season. But I'm carefully monitoring for when to apply for next. So hopefully, next year I will be there!

Thank you for the good luck wishes. I will need them!!! And best to you as well.



I've had my private practice for three years. I work out of my home which means no commute for me, and no extra overhead for rent.

I worked like a fiend to market my business, and in fact, my own marketing coach hired me to coach for her :) So I do a little marketing training on the side.

My best advice, if you don't have a blog already, set one up and blog about tea, everything about tea! Google LOVES blogs, they are indexed often within an hour of writing a post. Pay per click advertising is also effective but you have to be willing to invest some $ for that to work.

Do you sell at Cherry Street ;)

Good luck to you.

[Cynthia]

there are free and low cost blog sites available. when you pick one, you can usually buy a domain name and have that point to the blog so you might be able to get something cool and tea related.
Also,
try writing 5 or more posts immediately. Then submit your blog to blog directories (google free blog directory) These also help you get seen.

I'm way behind on blogging right now - I have had a couple or really busy months with family and work and then got a really bad cold I can't seem to shake - or maybe it is now allergies since it is almost cedar fever season down here -w ho knows - I haven't been blogging in ages...

one more thing - set up a google alert (google "google alert") for your company, your name and your blog. this is how I can track how fast google picks up my blog posts - it is amazing.

[MoniDew]

starting a blog is no problem. that ability came with my website (I already own a domain name.) But - how to get google's attention? That's another matter. I tried to go through the service offered by my site developer (webs.com) but maybe I'm not quite understanding how to do this. Could you explain further, please?

[Cynthia]

sorry, I don't understand what you are asking.

use the built in blog if you can - that is even better than finding a new one.

[MoniDew]

submitting the blog to google. getting their attention. HOW? What's your trick?

[Cynthia]

your product is tea - right?

What keywords would your ideal client be using to find you on the www? tea? loose tea? I don't know...
swrite about tea. Use words that talk about tea, describe blends, brewing, give recipes, whatever.

Google likes new content. So you can be picked up quickly by google but you still have to have relevant content so that someone who is searching can find you.

So patti would use gardening, organic gardening, urban sustainable, etc in as many posts as possible.

maybe do a search on "blogs about tea" and see what other people are doing.

put your blog link in your signature line and on your email signature put a link to it on your site

there are even books about blogging for business - I can't hink of a title right now, but this is definitely an affordable option for some of your marketing.

I am off to work - good luck

[gardengirl72]

I have figured out a few things about building a website and generating traffic.

1. It takes a really long time and something you have to be patient with.
2. Google cares about inbound links, mainly from sites that are actually already popular. This project began for me when www.peakoil.com (http://www.peakoil.com), took a liking to my first video. It then got another boost when Susan Harris from Garden Rant wrote on my project and then from Farmers Almanac, and now Fine Gardening and Organic Gardening. But to make a long story short you need to create inbound links. When the googlebot sees the inbound links it will automaticlly start boosting you higher up the food chain.
3. To create inbound links you have to create content that people care about and come back to often, and stay awhile at. Me, I decided to do video content about my lifestyle as a urban homesteader and since Feb 08 I have slowly built and grown the web traffic by shareing my content with other sites who post my videos and stuff around.

I checked your website links useing a SEO tool (Search Engine Optimization) and see that what Cynthia is talking about is absolutely right. Everytime you make a post here on this messageboard, if your website's are part of your signature, you just created some more links.

Start a blog as the Tea afficianado. Just make and review different types of teas. That will start creating key words that the Bots will start to see. God forbid, make short videos making and drinking the tea giving us a review of it----this starting to sound like my thing, don't try this at home, unless you want to be completely overworked etc.....

To get noticed by google, you need to be listed in Open Directory which takes a year AND you need to have established yourself as a go to site with an audience. If you submit too early they wont list you.

[MoniDew]

Thank you for the valuable information. It must be too soon. I've only been online since mid-August! I will have to be more patient. Thank you for the inbound link information, too. I will remember that!

[Cynthia]

Keep after it, continue to refine your website content to make it both great sales copy as well as key-word rich.

Submit your site anyplace you can, ditto with your blog.

It only took me a few months to get a good spot on Google, but again, I worked at it like crazy. And, I wasn't in something like tea, which I imagine is very competitive. It is very possible, just be really clear who your market is and talk to them in all your copy.

I love the name Tea Afficianado BTW
better yet Tea Afficionada

[gardengirl72]

That is a good name. Goodluck Moni! Let us know how it goes.

[MoniDew]

well, with my weird sense of humor, I wound up going with "always in hot water"

Hope you'll be frequent visitors inspite of the name.

[gardengirl72]

I got my first order of tea today from Moni's site! I can't wait to try it, maybe this evening...for tea time.

[MoniDew]

So tell us, Patti, what did you think of the tea?!

[gardengirl72]

You'll see.....:)

[goplayallie]

I have found this software called "Comment Kahuna" it allows you to find the Google top rated sites based on keywords and then you can comment on the blogs. You post your link to your blog which helps with incoming links. It takes a little time to comment on relevant topics but I find it helpful to see who is also publishing content and what people like to comment on.


go out and play,
Allie
http://clarksplayground.com/index.php/blog/
Find me on twitter: http://twitter.com/goplayallie

[Garden Green]

You can "get listed" by adding meta tags to your site. But that will only be for the free ones like Google, Yahoo, MSN. Others like Dogpile, Altavist, ect, you'd have to pay to be included on those searches.

They will rank you. And by rank I mean they will use an algorithm to determin key word relivancy and to get general stats on your site. How many people come there, how long do they browse? That sort of stuff.

Add meta tags to every page of your site, they are used for ranking much anymore because of abuse, but they are still handy for those engines that do utilize them, and it helps because it gives the description of your site, at the same time:

<head>

<title>Title of Your Site</title>

<meta name="description" content="Description of your site here.">

<meta name="keywords" content="keywords separated by commas">

</head>

So when the crawlers go through your site, they will be able to categorize it so that you can show up on the correct type of searches. You wouldn't want your site showing up for, I don't know.. Daughter's of the British Empire! or whatever so you'd want to stick with keywords that would bring the right people to your site.

There is a *lot* more to it than this, but this can help get you started at the very least.