Internet Business Blog

Cyber Monday

Today had already been a pretty good day (Cyber Monday) for one of my largest clients, TKO Warehouse. Little did we know… it was about to become hectic!

Setting The Stage

Forrest Griffin is an extremely popular Mixed Martial Artist who really made a name for himself on the TUF reality show a few years ago. Since then, he’s excelled as a fighter with a 6W-2L record in the UFC and is a huge celebrity in our sport.

How We Got Lucky

By sheer chance (or luck) we happened to have all of the correct networking pieces in place via Social Networking and Niche Forums.

Forrest Griffin’s 71,000+ MySpace friends received a bulletin that this particular MMA Clothing website not only carries his exclusive (signature series) Xtreme Couture t-shirt, but it’s also running a HUGE Cyber Monday sale!

… Within two minutes, chaos ensues. There were/are so many visitors on the website that the server slows. This couldn’t have happened on a better day. Talk about great PR - and a great opportunity to make some sales.

Magic Myspace Formula:
Celebrity + Myspace Bulletin + Promoting Your Brand/Site = $$$

This particular ecommerce website is very new. In fact, it’s less than three months old. That being said, it’s already beating 3/4 the real competition out there in both traffic and sales. Being so new, this was the first huge influx of potential customers (50+ at a time) that we’ve received for the site, and it has converted very well..

I suspect that visitors will trickle in over the next couple of days. More importantly, it should lead to the creation of a higher brand awareness with his fans, and the sport of MMA in general.

What You Can Take Away From This

Though this post was about the MMA Store specifically, I think that we can all learn a valuable lesson or two from this in not only Internet Marketing but General Business as well:

1. Keep your eyes and ears open. If I hadn’t answered a question on a niche forum, this traffic/brand awareness boost may have never happened.
2. Stay Persistent. This is especially important because if I hadn’t been persistent about visiting the particular forum, I would have never seen the question to begin with… thus never having the opportunity to answer it.
3. A little luck goes a long way. … and it’s bound to happen sooner or later. If you play the game long enough, rewards will come.

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One month ago I did a favor for a friend who was working in sales for a company that we’ll call call ACME for the purposes of this blog entry. This was a non-paid favor (the real kind of favor) for a guy who was in a bind. His boss, ACME’s VP of Sales, wanted two web pages done FAST - and apparently my friend somehow got this task dumped onto him.

Because he didn’t know HTML, Image, or Video editing I decided to help him out. I was extremely busy, but he was in a pretty tight spot. Overall It was an easy decision to make. He needed my help, so I did what friends do and helped him. Little did I know how it would splash back in my face later on.

The Web Pages

Both web pages had their own domain names associated with them. To make things easier, I had them log into their domain registrar and redirect the domains to two separate folders on my test server. The streaming video’s were already on ACME’s server so I wasn’t too concerned with the tiny bit of bandwidth that these two pages would eventually take.

Both web pages were extremely easy to produce and literally only took maybe two or three hours of actual work. We took a few images, sliced them up, and embedded the streaming videos in the middle. We then made the pages blend with visuals and that was good enough for him.

My friend was happy, his boss was happy, so I was happy. My good deed was done. Now I could get back to consulting with my paid clients.

The Calm Before The Storm

… Everything was quiet for about a month …

The Aftermath

Yesterday my friend was let go from ACME, and they seem very concerned about these two web pages sitting on my test server. The ACME webmaster sends me a friendly email asking for the login credentials. I give them a polite “No” (to MY server, are you kidding me?). I still decide to take the high road though and zip up all of the files used for both web pages and email them across.

Here’s where things get really screwy…

Later that evening I receive an email from the VP of ACME DEMANDING login credentials. I again (though a bit sarcastically) take the high road. I email him step by step instructions on how to resolve the issue. I also tell his webmaster how to complete the job. I outline to him that I shouldn’t have had to do any of this, and want no future involvement for three key reasons:

1) They own the domain name. If they are missing the username/password - contact the registrar. I no longer have it.
2) They own the website’s files. They don’t need me anymore.
3) My friend, who I did this favor for, is no longer employed by them.

The VP who so carelessly registered both domain names, is the technical contact. His registrar emailed him the login credentials when he set up the domains. He could also retrieve them any time he wanted by hitting the “forgot password” link right on their front page. Recovering a password isn’t rocket science.

Wouldn’t you know it, I receive another email from the ACME Webmaster earlier this morning. Like the VP’s, this one is nasty and uncalled for. I have yet to respond via email, because I’m not sure if a pissing match will solve anything. I haven’t been this heated in a long time.

Lesson Learned: Be careful when doing favors, they may come back to bite.

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Hey all,

I’ve been really busy this week gearing up for PubCon Vegas, launching a client’s Ebay store, launching another client’s e-commerce site, managing two other e-commerce sites (SEO, SEM, Products, etc), and pursuing development on another web project.

I promise you’ll see some new, interesting content here early next week!

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