This is a user generated content for MyStory, a YourStory initiative to enable its community to contribute and have their voices heard. The views and writings here reflect that of the author and not of YourStory.
How I built a 70,000$ worth online business by connecting charities and donors
It's a data-heavy post with detailed insights on my recent project. These actionable strategies will help startups understand where to focus and how to push their business to the next level.
This is a user generated content for MyStory, a YourStory initiative to enable its community to contribute and have their voices heard. The views and writings here reflect that of the author and not of YourStory.
Google Organic Traffic and Rankings from Google Webmaster Tools
The Project & Results:
The main idea of the project is to connect charities and donors in an Auto industry and create a win-win situation for both. However, the idea was not new, but the approach to the startup and building an online presence to build a huge customer base in short time period is something that makes it unique.
The results are quite impressive; In less than 6 months, the website gained huge popularity in its targeted country (the USA). Google organic traffic alone brings over 20,000 visitors (refer screenshot) and including remaining channels, it gets close to 30,000 visitors per month. These levels of targeted traffic can bring huge profit to any business. On average, many online businesses run below these traffic levels.
As I stated in the beginning of this post, I will be providing more detailed insights on this business online performance and strategies applied to it. To get into those insights, it is important to understand few main things about the business such as the business idea, revenue model, about service, etc.
Well, the business idea is to connect non-profit organizations & vehicle donors together and create a win-win situation for both. The individual who donates a Car, Truck, Van, Boat, RV, ATV or any other used vehicle with us (DonateCarToCharityTax.com) will receive a tax deduction receipt, while we work with the charitable organization to sell the used vehicle and support their cause, this way, it's a win-win formula for both donors and charities. We have 2 types of revenue channels in this business, the primary revenue comes from the margin based on car selling price and the other one is through advertising on the website. The profit and business success of these 2 channels majorly depends on the targeted traffic and its quality.
The Design & Development Phase:
The web design and development technologies are rapidly growing day by day. Designing a professionally appealing website with required functionalities is a big challenge and maintaining the same website across all the devices (responsive/mobile friendly) with page load time under 2 seconds is another challenge. At last, I decided to use WordPress platform to build the site because it comes with huge flexibility, easy maintenance, and huge SEO benefit.
Content & Google Organic Traffic Strategy:
I did some research on the best converting traffic channels for the SMEs across various industries. According to industry benchmarking data, the natural organic traffic(SEO) is on the top for many, followed by pay per click advertising, email marketing, referral sites, social media, etc. I decided to focus on the Google organic traffic especially since it was my core expertise and I already had a proven strategies in this area.
The Content Strategy:
The hardest part for the project I had to deal with is "Content". Developing a content strategy for both On-Site and Off-Site was the biggest challenge I faced. After brainstorming for many days, at last, I came up with a winning content strategy. I thought of skipping this step in the beginning since it was taking too long (and in fact searched for easy alternatives) but later I realized that the content strategy has played a vital role in bringing profits to the business. Based on my research, many businesses don't put enough efforts into developing a good content strategy for their website and promotional activities.
What I observed in this process may amaze you !! almost 98% of my competitors have no proper content strategy in place. They just had some content for the sake of having it. In fact, it is true for many industries and it's a great opportunity to leverage for your organization.
Google Organic Traffic Strategy:
I will try to summarize the whole SEO strategy as simple as possible, solid content strategy for both on-site and off-site promotion plays a key role in organic traffic. Since we have done this step very well, we have been successful in acquiring high-quality links to our site and the user experience on the website is equally did a great job. I strongly believe that these insights can boost any startup or small business to next level.