The Problem With Blogging And Why You May Want Your Own Ecommerce Store Instead
The Internet is filled with bloggers who are not able to earn a full time income from their blog.
If you are one of them, you may want to consider eCommerce instead of blogging.
I have about 3 years experience with my own ecommerce store: ToothyGrinsStore.com and it has been worth it.
Bloggers Are Struggling
I’ve seen the discussions, many bloggers are struggling to earn enough money with their blogs to quit their day jobs.
I must admit it is a tough thing to do. Unless you are very lucky or very skilled, you will likely struggle to obtain the results that you seek.
Yes, there are some successful blogs but their are thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of non-successful blogs for every successful one.
If you want to be successful as a blogger what you need more than anything is a loyal follower that eagerly awaits your next blog post.
Ecommerce As A Viable Option
- Selling physical products and receiving pay in return for those products is something that has been tried and tested. It is a model that has worked for thousands of years and it is likely that it will continue to work well into the future.
Ecommerce is just the modern way to employ this model. You buy products at wholesale and sell them at retail.
Your customers get a valuable physical item in exchange for cash. They are used to doing this and have done so practically since the time they were able to hold money in their hands.
Selling Physical Products Is Better Than Selling Digital Ones
The one exception to this might be software. But even there, there are problems. The public is tired of buying ‘abandonware’. What does abandonware mean? It means you bought a peice of software to do a particular job but the creator of that software has moved on to other products and does not keep it updated.
Therefore you software becomes problematic when operating systems or content management systems change. If there is no updates to your software, it may become useless to you.
The public has seen enough ‘abandonware’ to be leery of buying more software.
In short, you need to be REALLY good and poeple need to believe you won’t abandon them and their investment in the future.
I have purchased a LOT of junkware over the years. That accounts for a lot of wasted money.
People and small Businesses have learned that buying software on the Internet is problematic at best.
Selling physical products that people can touch and feel gives them the sense that they received something of value for the cash they gave you. This is a much better and safer way to go.
Why E-books are Less Attractive Now
There has been a lot of hype about the ‘low cost’ to create digital products. E-books are, generally speaking, earning their creators less and less. Competition has made it hard to sell an e-book for more than a few dollars now.
Take a look on the Kindle store or the I-Book store. The competition and the larger fees that the bigger retailers are taking are eating into the profits of e-book publishers – small and large a like.
In addition, there are tons of places to download pirated copies of e-books for no or very little cost.
While the government will spend tax-payer money to protect the larger industries and merchants are they going to care about the small publisher at all? Nobody is going to help you reclaim losses from pirated copies of your e-book.
Many people are now giving e-books away for free now! How are you going to make money on your e-book when other are giving similar information away for free?
Even my own book: What You Should Know About Gum Disease - sells for less as an e-book than it does as a paperback!
The only real exception to this problem is if you have a loyal following that are willing to buy whatever you create.
Leveraging the Power of Affiliates Working For You Rather Than Being One Affiliate In Someone Else’s Army
This is perhaps one of the greatest advantages to having an eCommerce store. You can create an affiliate program that capitalizes on an army of commission only salesman.
In fact, you can offer slightly more than a certain big name retailer to your affiliates and get their attention. Why would they sell a product for a measly 4% commission when another program will give them a 10% commission for the same exact product?
Do you see the potential here?
There is nothing wrong with being an affiliate at all. In fact, we have an affiliate program at Toothy Grins Store that you can join today. It’s free! Yes, there are banners and links and even a data feed you can use to promote our products.
However, having hundreds of people promoting YOUR products is a lot better than being one person (all alone) promoting someone ELSE’S products. Wouldn’t you agree?
The Power Of Online Shopping Comparison Engines
As an affiliate selling someone elses’ products or as an e-book or digital product seller you miss out on one of the greatest opportunities for marketing exposure.
Online product comparison engines such as Google’s Product Search or Bing’s equivalent or 100′s of others are available to the merchant’s of physical products but you cannot get e-books or digital products listed in these engines.
That equates to a whole lot of exposure that you can get!
PPC Marketing
This is another area that online merchants have an advantage in. You know how Google has cracked down hard on a lot of people using PPC or ‘Pay Per Click’ marketing?
Well, the good news is that they like ecommerce stores and I suspect they even ‘favor’ them. You can use PPC to market your physical products easily. And this is a lot easier to do than it is for an e-book or a ‘digital product’.
People shop for physical products online every single day. These searchers are often ‘buyer’ searches. These people are searching for a product because they know they want to buy it.
As you know ‘buyers’ are exactly the kind of visitors that you want to your website.
Email Marketing
Everyone talks about email marketing right? Well, would you rather have a list of people to market to that have already bought something from you OR would you prefer a list of people that signed up to get your free e-book?
The answer is clear, it is much better to have a list of people to send email too that have already bought from you. They will be far more likely to buy again than someone who never bought anything from you and just downloaded your free e-book.
With an eCommerce store you can develop a list of BUYERS. What could be better?
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So, have I convinced you that is time to put away your blog and create your own ecommerce store yet?
Hate what I said? Love what I said? Have questions?
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
The post tells the reason why the ECommerce website is better than blogging. Know all aboit it
Yeah I agree that blogging is not bringing money for all bloggers but then again, starting and setting up a ecommerce website is again not an easy job.
Yes, Shiwangi, you have a very good point there! It is hard work either way. But it seems that trading products for money is a time honored and long standing tradition around the world for may thousands of years. That’s because it works! Blogging has not been around for that long and as you pointed out, many bloggers are not ‘making it’.
I’ve had friends galore tackle the blogging world, give it every inch of their creativity and then, after a few months, watched them burn out and give up on their project.
I think it’s unfortunate because blogging can be a great outlet and, more often than not, they’re run to read too. The fact that they demand so much time, however, is what puts people off in the end. It makes sense that running an ecommerce website, even if you don’t like the idea of ‘selling’ to people online, is a much better option than just straight up blogging.
The best blogs – and by that, I mean both the best to read and, I’m sure, the best to own – are those that seemlessly blend the two together. A tough ask but when achieved, very profitable as it’s been proven time and time again.
A nice collection of thoughts here, Dave! Top work, mate.
Thanks BJ. I know there are blogs out there that make a lot of money on their advertising. I do know of a couple on a second hand information basis, but I also think it is rather rare. If I had to guess, I would say that most of the people blogging are not really making much money – at least not from their blogs. But some are, I just think it is a small fraction of the total number of blogs out there.
I started blogging as a way to share photo essays with friends and family, so earning money was not my primary goal.
That said, I’ve received many paid writing gigs as a result of my blog. As a writer, this has been good!
Thanks again for joining in with the Traveler’s Show & Tell blog carnival. Hope to see you there again sometime.
~Tui
Hi Tui,
thanks for your comment. I am glad to hear that you are getting paid writing gigs. That sounds nice.
Do you have any tips to share on getting paid writing gigs?