3 ms·
Who are you targeting with this site - people who already use Kratom but are actively searching for a better price? How many people are searching for Kratom? I
by reitzensteinm 19y ago
Who are you targeting with this site - people who already use Kratom but are actively searching for a better price? How many people are searching for Kratom? I know I've never heard of it.
Frankly, I think this is a bit of an ill conceived plan. You're basically trying to catch people who are already using and are familiar with a niche incense, by promising to sell it at a discount. How price sensitive are people using niche incense going to be? Versus trusting a new supplier off the internet? So lets run through it - right now your page would convert someone that:
1) Uses Kratom
2) Sees your advertising
3) Is concerned about saving, er, actually, looking at your site, maybe a few percent on something that costs next to nothing
4) Is concerned enough about that saving to buy off of a new one page site on the internet
All while you are presumably running razor thin margins and paying for the advertising. Razor thin margins could work when you are making up for it at a large volume, but I don't think the market is big enough for that. My father is working on a site that does exactly what you're doing, but for 10,000 products instead of 1 and attempting to catch organic search traffic. Many products haven't ever been sold, and individually the traffic per product is very little, but it's the area under the curve that counts. It's very Web 0.2, but when selling to average people, that doesn't matter.
You might want to consider turning the site into a Kratom info page that only incidentally sells it. Make comparison pages with whatever else is similar to it (types of incense I guess?) that will show up in organic search under other terms. Pages of info or uses or whatever that'll show up in organic search. Your page rather snarkily tells me to learn how to search the internet. I'm sorry, but if I don't take the time to research the product you are selling and find out if I want to buy it, that's not _my_ problem, that's _YOUR_ problem. I clicked on the Wikipedia link and I still don't know what it is... I mean, I know that it's some plant from Asia that can be burned as insence... but I don't know why I would care (sell me on the benefits and maybe I'd try it).
There's another thing you could try, and it'll cost money and probably won't work (but if it does it'll be passive income for a long time). It'll only have a chance of working if Kratom is relatively obscure (one supplier in the world, I'm presuming it is). You'll also have to track things well.
But what you could do is stop selling it at a discount, and bid on ad words for words like incense, pointing to a page saying exactly the problem you're facing. Say how good it is, and that you've got the ability to supply Kratom and nobody really knows about it, but you believe in it so much that you'll personally send out a sample to anyone in the US that wants one. Full instructions how to use it etc. Fulfill 100 or 200 orders and run the numbers. You've paid maybe 1000 x 10 cents to get those people to fill out the form, maybe $100. You've paid for the samples of Kratom, maybe $5 per person. X of those people loved it and will become customers - you've got to work out the gross and net value of each customer, that is, average sale price x frequency of sale x time they stay customers (could be a hell of a long time). There is obviously a bit of guess work here. So there you'd have a $x of advertising expenditure gets you y customers who will on average bring in $z profit each. If you make decent margins (to pay for your time), keep doing this for years and you'll make a reasonable amount from the site. If you don't, try something else a bit radical, or ditch the whole thing and try something else (recommended).
- rms 19y agoThanks, I really appreciate your advice. I put the site up without doing a lot of consideration to the marketing, which is a challange. I put it up because Kratom is an extraordinarily profitable product for sellers. The supplier enforced price floor means that I am not operating on a razor thin price margin. It's close to 100% profit margin. I need not fear someone undercutting me. Kratom is not an incense, though it can be smoked. I recognize it is confusing, but the current vendors of Kratom claim it is an incense and sold for those purposes only. Kratom is an opiate comparable in strength to hydrocodone. In smaller doses it is stimulating, providing a mental boost similar to caffeine but without the jittery side effects. The main medical uses would be opiate withdrawal, chronic pain management, and treatment of ADHD. Traditionally, workers would chew the leaves of Kratom but now is usually boiled into a tea. If you add a lot of sweetener, it even tastes good. It is high in antioxidants, containing much more than brewed green tea. The active alkaloid, 6-hydroxy-mitragynine is 30 times more powerful than morphine by weight. However, I can't tell people that kratom is a drug on my site because it is probably illegal to say so. If I told people that 10 grams of kratom leaf is comparable to 20 miligrams of hydrocodone, I would be selling a drug without FDA approval. Paypal would also ban my account because they want no part of this business. There have been Kratom vendors that made claims about Kratom's use as an opiate on their website that had shipments of Kratom seized by customs. I have spoken to one of the larger retail vendors of Kratom who strongly recommended only referring to Kratom as an incense. If I was legally allowed to market Kratom as a drug, I would. It's a potent painkiller that doesn't make you tired or slow you down. There is certainly a commercial market for a new, natural opiate but I'm not allowed to bring something like that to market in the USA. It's a bit of a catch-22 -- if I tell people it's a drug, everyone will want it but I can't tell people it's actually a drug. What I really need here is legal advice telling me exactly what I can and can't say about Kratom, but without legal advice I'm afraid to do any more than give people the tools to find the information for themselves. Does anyone know a lawyer that could offer a qualified view on my business? I am competing on price and only able to sell to those that already know what Kratom is, unless there's an angle I'm missing here. I've been selling on eBay for a while and a website was the logical way to increase volume. I have some passionate customers, including one who advocated for me on a chronic pain management support group. Most of my customers just email me requesting a PayPal invoice for their Kratom. If I could pull some SEO magic and be highly rated for kratom keywords, this business would be profitable. Until then, I'm just going to advertise online. Where should I advertise besides Google Adwords?