August 15, 2007 Results
Recommendations for denvergreenchili.com
Primary web site:
denvergreenchili.comSituation before Mastermind Meeting:
1. Anita created denvergreenchili.com a year ago as a hobby. Each September for the prior 3 years she had bought roasted green chiles from roadside vendors and had shopped around for prices and varieties for the Denver area. She figured that if she wanted to comparison shop, others also wanted to. Hence she decided to create an online reference web site.
2. She created the site using Microsoft Office Live, a hosting & site builder. The web site is 100% free for life, including the domain name.
3. She assumed it could never make more than about $500 a month as it is just local to Denver. She spent 1-2 hours posting it to directories and did no more promotion for a year. She did plan to put some effort into updating it and promoting it early August 2007 as the season was starting.
4. After January, 2007, she steadily got a handful of emails each month from people wanting recipes, questions about chiles, etc. The emails were from across the country. She never bothered checking the web statistics or positioning on Google as she assumed it was low.
5. In February a chile vendor called to ask if he could advertise on the site as the season approached. I was very surprised!
To prepare for the meeting, she checked the stats.
The site was averaging about 10 visitors a day, then the stats jumped to over 50 a day right after she worked as a judge for the regional chili cookoff Aug 11 & 12. Wow, a little tiny bit of promotion went a long way.
About two thirds of the searches were typed into Google, and here were the top keywords:
Keyword Views
green chili 101
green chili recipes 93
green chile 54
how big is a bushel 15
green chili recipe denver 14
frozen green chile denver 9
best green chili denver 9
green chili denver 9
green chile denver 9
denver green chile 8
Notice the keywords are very consistent – it’s a clear and narrow niche.
She searched Google using “green chili” and “green chile” – for both the site came up #19 – that is page 2 of Google.
Page 2 of Google with no promotion at all??? That is amazing and indicates there is an untapped niche here.
At the meeting:
1. She presented the above data, showed the site, and went over some of the products she had found that could be sold (hot sauces, t-shirts, posters, cookbooks, etc.). Some can easily be sold anywhere in the country and have nothing to do with Denver.
2. The response from the Mastermind Group was instantaneous and overwhelming. They said, “This isn’t a $500 a month site – it’s a $5,000 a month site! Drop everything else and turn this into a money-maker right away!”
3. Specific recommendations, in order of priority, were:
a. New domain name. Denvergreenchili.com limits it to Denver, but the sales of products could be nationwide. We brainstormed and came up with “greenchililover.com” – Anita reserved the domain name the next day.
b. Set up an opt-in list asap. They said it doesn’t matter what the newsletter is – just get the opt-in list up. We figured the natural thing is a “recipe of the week”
c. Locate products and get affiliate links and google adsense up right away.
Actions Anita has taken since then:
Unfortunately, she had an out-of-town wedding to go to that took up nearly a week, so action got postponed.
1. Highest priority was fully updating the web site for 2007 data, especially since Labor Day is the start of “Chile Wars” when the vendors are offering discounts and special offers and advertising. She had to get the site updated at least a week before Labor Day weekend in order to get it into the Rocky Mountain News & Denver Post.
2. One vendor said she was offering free quesadillas over Labor Day weekend, so Anita began calling other vendors and asking if they had specials planned. Many then decided to create a special offers. This made for more valuable information for the web site and the newspapers.
3. After updating, she called and emailed the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, and Westword. They all said they would publicize denvergreenchili.com in the Wednesday edition before Labor Day.
4. Anita called the vendor who had asked to advertise, told him about the upcoming publicity and he agreed to a front page ad for one week for $100. She sold another such ad to another vendor – so there are two advertising on the main page. She didn’t try to sell more yet as she had no clue as to what to expect.
5. Then she started madly trying to build out greenchililover.com in the hope that I could have it up before the Wednesday publicity hit. That way she could instantly get traffic and some search engine visibility. She was able to get the structure built, but getting at least 50 recipes up by then was hopeless.
6. Sure enough, all 3 papers publicized the site. Here are the stats for the week:
Date Unique visitors
8/24/2007 49
8/25/2007 56
8/26/2007 95
8/27/2007 119
8/28/2007 120
8/29/2007 1190
8/30/2007 450
8/31/2007 264
Note how the stats skyrocketed when the newspapers came out.
7. On Friday, advertising vendor #1 said he wanted to put a coupon or offer up on the site. About 40 minutes after he and Anita hung up the phone, he walked into his shop and found a customer waiting with the coupon in hand. Several others showed up that day with the coupon.
8. On Saturday, she visited some vendors. The above vendor was delighted and asked if he could just pay $100 a week to keep advertising. Would she take payment now? Can he pay cash?
9. Stats were climbing again Sunday morning, 9/2/2007 - the Rocky Mountain News had publicized the site again. They had gone to the site, gotten a recipe and cooked it – altering it a bit. They credited denvergreenchili.com for the recipe. The site got over 1500 unique visitors that day – an all-time high.
10. Anita checked Google again that afternoon. Denvergreenchili.com had moved up from #19 in Google to #11 – in 5 days. That’s almost on page 1 of Google.
11. The “recipe of the week” opt-in list keeps climbing. So far, over 80 people have signed up, and inquiries for recipes and questions about chiles are pouring in. It will take some work, but it will all turn into rich content for both web sites.
12. Anita has made an agreement with vendor #1 to promote his frozen chiles nationwide, year-round, for 10% of sales. This will be an automated order form with a small amount of ongoing promotional activity.
13. She made an agreement with vendor #2 to market his cookbook online as an ebook and split profits.
Boo-boos (ok, she was stupid about some things):
1. Anita didn’t put the “recipe of the week” opt-in form on the site until Friday, 2 days after the publicity hit. She had planned to launch greenchililover.com and just have the subscribe form on that site rather than denvergreenchili.com. After realizing she was missing out on possible subscribers, a light bulb came on and she realized she can have the same opt-in on both web sites. It took less than 15 minutes to put it up on denvergreenchili.com and people started subscribing within an hour. Duh!!
2. She should have followed up with vendors immediately, especially those advertising. She did send an email, but should have at least called. When she showed up on Saturday at vendor #2, the first thing he said was, “Can you change the price for a sack? It says $30 instead of $38. People are driving all the way from Grand Junction to buy chiles because of the ad.” This was very embarrassing, to say the least.
3. Getting greenchililover.com up before the publicity hit was not so important. She spent much of 2 days getting the design in place and that time would have better been spent promoting denvergreenchili.com via blogs and articles. If she grows the opt-in list, she can promote the new site to them. She should also be able to get 2-3 more weeks of publicity from the major newspapers, so she still has time. She should also be able to get off-season publicity just by providing the newspapers with recipes.