Can you imagine purchasing a walmart store with thousands of products, and a half a million dollar inventory, for $300?
How many of us would jump on that?
Imagine the CEO of Walmart walking up to you and telling you that you can have the most modern and brand new walmart store with all it’s inventory, utilities, and employees for a $300 per year lease.
Would you take it?
You bet.
You would be excited. Your significant other would be excited. Your mom and dad would be excited. Your kids would be excited and I know your dog would be.
So you sign the lease with the Walmart head cheese, shake hands, and he hands you the keys to the Walmart doors and you walk out of the CEO’s office with a big smile on your face, shaking your head in disbelief that he would be so stupid as to give you a Walmart store for $300 a year. What a dummy!
Then it dawns on you.
You run back into the CEO’s office and say “by the way, where is my new Walmart store?”
The CEO says “in the middle of the Arizona desert”.
Grand opening is only 2 weeks away and you jump into your SUV and head to Arizona. Twenty five miles west of Tucson, out in the middle of a cactus infested field of sand, you see your store in the distance as you approach with great care. You arrive and greet gramps at the front door, run in and introduce yourself to all your smiling employees, admire the half a million dollars of stock, stare at the shinny new cash registers, credit card processors, and sit back and wait for the money to roll in. After all millions of people love Walmart, don’t they.
Twenty-four hours later, after drying your eyes, you look down at your cash registers and find it empty and as dry as the Arizona desert.
“Why me Lord”?..you cry.
I have this beautiful store, with great employees, a free inventory, and I didn’t make one red cent on grand opening day?
Why did I get blessed with the only Walmart in the world that sucks?
I guess Walmart success is just one big lie and I bought into it like the sucker I am.
Here’s my question…
Don’t you want to scream at this poor guy and say “hey stupid, you don’t have any traffic. You don’t have a bill board sign 15 miles back by the highway ggiving directions to your store. You don’t have a yellow page ad, a newspaper ad. Nothing.
In fact, you don’t even have any paved roads leading to your store, even if you had the billboard and ads. You’re an idiot.
Duh?
I did the exact same thing with my first web site. I had a great store, great products, outstanding tools, and I didn’t make one red cent.
How many of us do this with our web sites?
We have great graphics, beautiful colors, outstanding look and feel, great inventory of products and the best credit card processing equipment available. We have auto responders that would sell a freezer to an Eskimo…
But we’re missing the third piece of the puzzle.
TRAFFIC.
Our website is like the Walmart in the desert.
It has the potential to make us rich with it’s great products and services, but no one knows where we are or how to get to our site.
That’s a shame.
You know customers will drive the extra 15 miles to get a great deal and you failed to let them know where you are and how to get to you?
So what do you do now?
Do you throw up your hands and say “Walmart sucks”?
Blame the employees?
Maybe you listen to all the Gurus and try to get free traffic.
No.
You go to work and let people know your address. You give them direction.
After all you didn’t have to spend millions to get your Walmart, so open up that tight little fist and pull out some money for advertising. If you don’t have the money, then be prepared to invest the time.
I don’t care if it’s PPC search engines, newspapers, bumper stickers. It doesn’t matter. You have to get traffic! You have to let people know you’re out there with great products and services at great prices.
In my opinion, the internet is the last great frontier for small business people with passion and time to build the life of their dreams.
But you have to have all three pieces of the puzzle in order to succeed on the web.
Qualified traffic is just one piece of the puzzle and you need to invest money or time to make it work for you.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is the real world of building a web business.
A “get rich quick” free zone.
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