The Chatterbox

He's baaaaaaack (aka Where the heck has Randy been?)

Yeah, yeah... I know I've been neglecting my personal blog for a couple of months. Again. Sorry, but I was incredibly busy with several projects. Busy with my own e-comm sites, of course --you know ... the ones that pay the bills -- as well as getting a couple of new things ready to launch after the first of the year and helping out a few friends with their web sites.

For those wondering, no I don't normally announce new parts of The Kingdom here, but I will tell you one of the new sites will be all about Bidness on the Web. Specifically it's going to be a series of guides teaching how to set up and run tests to improve conversions. Along with software recommendations to make the job considerably easier.

Think of it as a guide (actually several guides since one would get too big) that doesn't require any previous conversion testing knowledge or experience.

I've also been donating some time to help out a few friends during what I think everyone can agree is a stretch of tough economic times. Folks who were on the cusp of being hugely successful or just breaking even have taken a pretty good hit based upon what I hear from those I talk to. It's just not a good time to be in business if you didn't already have a cushion built up, let alone if you're not very imaginative.

Everybody seems worried that it's something they're doing. I'm here to tell ya it's probably not anything you're doing or not doing. Well not directly anyway, though there are always things you can do that'll improve your situation. The reality is most e-comm sites have seen a decrease in revenue in the last 8-12 months. How much of a decrease seems to depend largely upon if the product/service being sold was a Necessity, or was simply something nice to have. Though there are always things you can do to help stave off and manage such decreases in times like these.

One positive thing I will say about these tough economic times is that they've apparently kick started more people into paying a lot more attention to how well their site currently converts visitors into buyers. This shift of focus makes a good bit of sense when you think about it. Traffic isn't cheap, so when money is tight it becomes more important to spend your advertising dollars wisely and convert more visitors into customers.

I noticed this new anomaly because I've had a lot more people asking me to help them with their site conversions over the past 6 months or so. Lots of people who are completely willing to pay for consulting services if it'll help, even though most of them know before asking that I don't consult for hire anymore. This is a promising development IMHO, even if it's one that had to be forced on business owners by some fairly shaky times.

Folks just don't have much extra cash laying around these days. And even those that do are being pretty stingy with it. I fall into the same general category. Though I've not stopped my spending dead in its tracks like some have, I am a lot more selective about how and where I spend my money.

This is the new reality tegardless of whether it's a personal spend or a business spend. Though I do freely admit to having spent a fair chunk of change in the last month getting a couple of things for the business that I needed. And I admit to making the purchasing decisions before the first of the year, mainly so that I can claim those purchases on my taxes when I compile and file them next month. (I like to get all of the tax stuff out of the way in January so I can get back to business!) I'm making these purchases now as opposed to buying in January or February and not getting the tax deduction for many, many months.

I figure if I'm going to spend it in the next couple of months anyway, I might as well spend it in 2008. I'm sure my purchases have made a few somebody's quite happy, since each purchase was in the thousands of dollars range.

What was the point of this posting anyway? Oh yeah, those friends I've been helping out. There are actually two things to cover, but I think I'll get those in another quick post or two, considering my rambling has gone on too long in this one already!

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