A Saturday Revelation

I witnessed something interesting the other day which made me rethink what I know about internet marketing.

My girlfriend and I were downtown in a nice pizzeria. Since we were near the window we could watch what was happening outside. Two meters (we use imperial, yes) from the window there was a girl and a guy selling pizza slices.

Here is the interesting thing about them:

1. The quality of the pizza they were selling was good, not something special but it was good
2. There were only two types of pizza, nothing more
3. Each one was about $1.50
4. The guy was smoking while handling the pizza and there were times when the cigarette was in his mouth while he was carrying the big plate with the new slices
5. The girl was not a smoking hot model, far from that. Just an average girl. She wasn?t even trying to smile at the customers.
6. Any additional products they were selling ? just water, beer, soda, but few people were buying that.

We were in the pizzeria for about 2 hours and for these two hours there wasn?t a single minute that the guys outside were not selling pizza slices. Really, they didn?t stop for a minute and I tried to count if there were more than 40 seconds without clients.

The only advantage they had was that they were selling downtown. You can imagine how many people are passing by especially on weekends. I don't know what their expenses are but they didn't stop selling.

Now, what I thought at that time was that everything comes down to traffic and these guys proved it. They didn?t have some fancy stand, they didn?t care about customer service, they didn?t have a product that you can?t find 2 minutes down the street, you don?t even have much of a choice ? just two sorts (one with meat and one for vegetarians)? and that?s all.

It all comes down to traffic. I mean targeted traffic because all these people wanted to buy pizza. It?s so simple.

It does not all come down to traffic. You first have to acquire the product which people want, then you have to set up a place to sell the product, then you have to get the targeted traffic. This is not easy in the internet world. For every couple of pizza sellers who succeed, 50 have failed.

I can tell you how to get targeted traffic, all day long. Banner ads on related websites, and adwords banners. But you have to get the product and the landing page which is going to turn that customer walking past, into a buyer.

and by far getting the traffic is the most tough part..

ALL the methods I've been trying to implement later are not working because there's no enough traffic..
Not even near how much traffic the methods creators (threads here in BHW) said that there would be..

I can't get traffic not even placing personals as a girl..

Targeted traffic is the key. I was reading one of the Adsense books and they spoke about billboards. This was so true...

The guy said, when you are driving down the highway you don't really pay attention to the billboards, but the second that you are hungry, you start reading each and every billboard.

When someone comes to your site, they arrive there because they are hungry and looking for information, you have to serve them up what they are hungry for, and your ads and banners should be like sides.

Just some food for thought.. hee hee (Pun intended).

-Capp

Hi, Devils Advocate here!

Not that simple homie!

To give you another brick and motor example: My family business for instance, has been in culinary business for over 20 years. Growing up, I have seen all types of restaurants pop up of similar types related to my family's business. Only 2 out of maybe 45 are still around.

If your talking about sustaining a business long term, or even making a profit, then I can tell you from experience, online and off, that its alot more complicated then just "get in front of traffic".

There are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many things that goes into not only starting, but most importantly MAINTAINING a business its not even funny. Esp. now-a-days. Even on the internet.

Trust me, if it was that simple as just "getting traffic", you wouldn't have these posts on BHW asking "hey, I get 3000 untargeted/targeted uv a day, but not making any money/conversions suck. HELP!!"

Its not that simple. Unless your spamming hundreds of MILLIONS of people a day, or your a big business running commercials on super bowl weekend (and even those are questionable as far as its direct effect on profits unlesss your a new business noone has ever heard of), for smaller business, there are different rules that you have to play by (like being creative, for instance!)

AND......

To give you something else to think about: How do you know that guy running that pizza shop is even making enough profit?

For all you know, he may be still running it from business loans he acquired before he open the shop.

Rent? Supplies? Employees? TAXES (State, Fed, Health Care, Payroll, Etc.)? Possible interest from Loans? Back Taxes?

Unless he has a franchise (still doesn't mean anything), you never know what the situation is regarding his business and his TRUE
bottom line!

Just a thought! Looks can be deceiving!

That's actually a really clever observation. Targeted traffic is extremely important, but I wouldn't dismiss all the other aspects of internet marketing.

This is why I said I don't know what his expenses are. I just saw that they didn't stop selling for one minute even.

Are they covering their expenses? - I don't know
Could they improve their "conversions"? - most certainly

Of course it is all about targeted traffic. I am talking about the people in the queue waiting for their slices and not about all the people passing by.

Frankly speaking the conversions are not very high but this made me think - I would better have a moderate one-page website with a mediocre product to sell on first page of Google(downtown) for a keyword than a beautifully designed informative and interactive website with a killer product on third page (10 blocks down the street).

What those two learned, they implemented.
Learn from and act from
every experience you have.
Because most of us, when hearing that story,
thought of all the reasons it couldn't be done.
all the reasons why it shouldn't have worked.
but they were selling pizza, non-stop.
Don't over analyze. Roll up those sleeves.
Go do it. Somebody's sig here says it best-
"Knowledge is NOT power. Knowledge, with action, is power"

unselfishfan said:

"Knowledge is NOT power."

Click to expand...

I agree..

Wisdom is Power..