What do you get when you combine a creative business mind, rubber stamps, and cheeky retro humor? The answer is our Website of the Month: BombshellStamps.com!

The brainchild of Shannon Lucier, this San Diego-based small business sells vintage style rubber stamps with attitude. Shannon has been using the CityMax.com website builder since 2007, when she first created her business plan. Shannon told us her story:

“I had another company which seemed like a lot of hard work with little reward – so I did a business plan that emphasized balance: between my creative side, time I would have to invest and the income I expected to make. This took me a month of brainstorming, trying to look for a niche that hadn’t been done before.

In August 2007 I decided to go for it, and the CityMax.com tools were so extensive and clean that it was just perfect for my business. I knew nothing about HTML or how to get a website up – but it was so easy that now I have to streamline my content!”

BombshellStamps.com currently averages over 290 unique visitors daily, and generates thousands of dollars in revenue every month. She has even managed to drum up some pretty impressive publicity for her business. Shannon is currently rolling out an innovative new line of digital products for her business to help support new customer markets, rather than compete with other existing products.

Shannon was kind enough to pass on a few tips for other aspiring entrepreneurs:

“If you’re just starting out, really think through the entire aspect of your business: a business plan is so important. I gave up three different ideas that didn’t work because of money, or time. I’m proud of the fact that I planned for everything from pricing to shipping, which made it easier for myself. Those details will make or break your business.”

These are definitely sound words of advice from a veteran entrepreneur. Thank you Shannon and congratulations to you again on making our Website of the Month!

In an age where everyone is writing or blogging about something, it’s a challenge to allocate your reading time and attention.

At CityMax.com, we have a well-stocked library with business gems such as The Rockefeller Habits and Blue Ocean Strategy - yet I often find the need to balance it out with some  Kurt Vonnegut or other fiction.

Marketing and social media expert Chris Brogan talks about how to make different types of reading material work for your small business, rather than living solely in “your world” of literature. He makes some good points and may give you a new perspective on your reading habits.

What are some of your fave business books? Or better yet, what are some of the most unusual books you’ve been able to apply to your business?

So, what is Pay Per Click? In a nutshell, Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing is a type of advertising that only costs you money when someone clicks on your ad. The most popular example is Google AdWords - you’ll see these ads on the side of search results on Google. As someone who handles multiple PPC accounts for our website builder, one of the most exciting things I get to do is introduce it to people building a new ecommerce website. Why?  It’s like a fresh canvas: a clean start to build something great.

One of the biggest problems I often see is new PPC users jumping right in with no plan, no goals, and no real strategy for what they want to achieve, and it’s pretty easy to waste a lot of money on it. That’s why I was thrilled to learn that I’d be talking PPC with Marco and Heather Barberini from OvernightPetTags.com, our winner of the 2009 Homepreneur of the Year competition.

Every successful PPC campaign begins with planning offline.  So before we even turned on the computer, I asked Marco exactly what his vision and goals were for his Google Adwords account. Google currently holds a 64% market share of all searches in the U.S.

Here’s what I asked Marco, and here’s what you should ask yourself before you take the plunge into Pay Per Click marketing.

1. What is the main reason to start a PPC account?

Obviously, to get more sales and make more money.  But how are you going to do that?  Are you going to be acquiring leads then calling them?  Do you want to drive traffic directly to a specific product?  Or do you want to to drive traffic to a catalog of products?  Maybe you offer a service and want people to phone you right away after finding your business website.  Even if you have an entire list of possibilities, write them all down.

2. What are you selling?

Of course you know what you’re selling, but can you organize it effectively?  Create a tree of your website and all of your products.  Make yourself a map and organize your products or services into different categories.  In Marco’s case, he sells pet ID tags.  So he would start by categorizing his website into two main top level categories: Dog ID Tags & Cat ID Tags.  These new main categories would be his “Campaigns”.

3.  How would you break down each individual product or service in each campaign?

Once you have broken your site down into its main categories or “campaigns”, you have created a backbone to structure the rest of your account.  You can then break things down further into Ad groups which fall under campaigns. For example, the Ad group “Sports Dog ID Tags” would go under the Campaign “Dog ID Tags”  mentioned above.

4. Who are you selling to?

You might know who you are selling to offline, but online is different.  When you’re advertising online, anyone can search and possibly click one of your ads costing you wasted money if they aren’t “qualified” (a good fit for your products).  So, make a plan offline for who you want to target.  Age, gender, what they might be searching for and why?  Try to create a customer persona and paint of picture of who you’re selling to.

Again, planning is the key to a great start with any new PPC account.  There are many other factors to consider, such as budgets - what are you willing to pay to get a new customer or sell a product?  These four tips above are just the basics to get your head wrapped around how to start.

Here is a list of key questions to ask yourself as your draw up your plan:

• What search engines do you want to target?
• What is your monthly budget?
• How many products are you selling? (this should help you break down your categories)
• What are your goals for PPC? (i.e. traffic, conversions)
• What will you use for track? (Our recommendation is Google Analytics but you may prefer Hitslink or StatCounter)
• How much are you willing to spend if it converts well?

In my next post, we’ll break it down further and discuss Ad groups, Keywords and Ads.  In the meantime, grab a pen and paper and start planning!

“If you have a dog that poops, we have a person that scoops!”

Nathalie Bland has always been passionate about dogs. Three years ago, she read a Readers’ Digest article about “the top 10 disgusting jobs that people will pay others to do.” Inspired by what she read and fed up with her corporate job, Nathalie quit and decided to open her business: Call To Doody.

The Houston-based company frees dog owners from their worst chore: poop scooping. The business serves anybody with a dog and a yard, as well as parks and apartment complexes.  Promoting clean yards at an inexpensive price, Nathalie’s small business has grown in just two and a half years to 7 employees and 3 trucks.

Nathalie spoke about the role her website plays in her business: “I had never really done anything online before, other than email. I didn’t want to pay someone hundreds of dollars to update my website, and not even have control over it. So I did a 10 day free trial with CityMax.com and within a couple hours, knew I could handle it. You guys made it so easy, and whenever I have a question your support staff responds promptly and works with me until I get it.”

Nathalie is enjoying her newfound independence: “I can’t wait for Monday morning anymore. I get up every day and get to work with like-minded people and be passionate about what I do. There are long days, but when you do something you’re interested in, it’s not really work. Whenever we go to a dog owner’s house they are always so happy to see us – it frees up their spare time for the things that they want to do!”

In 2009, the business experienced 52% growth, and Call To Doody is now looking to expand into the Dallas and San Antonio markets. Nathalie shares a few words of wisdom for aspiring entrepreneurs: “If you have an idea, listen to yourself – not others. If I had listened to everyone else I’d still be wearing my suit and heels, traveling four days a week.”

You probably already know all about Facebook. You might even be thinking, why should I care about Brenda’s late night out or what Tommy had for lunch?

The answer: with over 400 million active users (50% of them logging on every day), businesses big and small are using Facebook Pages to connect with customers and enhance their relationships.

When you consider that the average user has 130 friends, you can quickly see that Facebook provides an unparalleled opportunity for businesses to engage and network.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to launch the CityMax Facebook Page - better late than never, and we want to hear what you have to say! Go to www.facebook.com/CityMax and hit the “Like” button to start contributing to the conversation.

Why connect with us on Facebook?

1. access to special promotions and offers,
2. the chance to promote your own website, and
3. the opportunity to leave and ask for feedback.

To celebrate our launch, we’ll be giving away an iPad! To enter, simply join the page and tag yourself in a “Save a Chicken, Win an iPad” photo.

The CityMax.com Facebook page has a “Favorite Pages” section – that spot is reserved for all of our customers’ Facebook Pages (which is why you should create one for your business!).

One example of a great Facebook Page is CityMax.com customer Classic Shaving – their page has an impressive 1,505 “Likes” (formerly known as “Fans”).  Their page offers special discount codes, and allows customers to ask questions and leave comments.

With the growing importance of “Likes” in 3rd party websites and its use in search engine optimization, we recommend that all online businesses have a Facebook Page. To get started on your own page, click here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.

Having a rough go of it? You might want to take a look around you.

In one of Seth Godin’s recent posts, Expose yourself…, he points out a very basic truth about human nature that we tend to forget: we are strongly influenced by and believe what surrounds us.

Unfortunately, it’s just as easy to absorb the negative as the positive – sometimes it seems even easier.

Consider this within the parameters of your small business. Take a good look at what’s around you and if there’s a continuously negative influence, you might want to consider making some changes. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Do you surround yourself with friends, colleagues, coworkers, or employees who boost you up and believe in your business?
• Are your business goals shared with others that can help you achieve them?
• Do you interact with people whose skills you admire and that you can learn from?
• Do you have clear metrics that you can measure success against and/or improve?

You’ll be surprised what can happen when you’re surrounded with the right energy.

What tactics do you employ for keeping positive? Or, for cultivating positivity within your small business?

Foursquare, if you haven’t yet heard, is the newest social media craze that is driving business revenue. Users “check in” with their phones at locations and businesses around town, and are subsequently earn points, “mayorships” and badges for their loyalty. It becomes a fun and competitive game that encourages people to try new places and revisit old favorites – while increasing repeat customers and branding.

Gabe Zichermann, of tech blog TechCrunch takes a look at how three other businesses (Facebook, FedEx, and Amazon) could incorporate more fun to encourage consumers to buy: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/27/facebook-fedex-amazon-fun/.

As a small business, what could you do to increase enjoyment for each of your customers’ experiences? Is it a free widget with their 10th purchase? Could you be using Foursquare or another “fun app” for your business?

Welcome back our Website of the Month! This month’s spotlight is on Ken Levine from Southern Missouri Mule Outfitter & Equine Supply (Somomule.com).

Ken retired as a federal law enforcement agent in 2007 to focus on his love - outfitting mules. As a trained ferrier (horseshoeing) his hobby quickly became a business after he set up his website using CityMax.com.

Somomule.com is a retail sales outfitter for horses and mules, selling pack equipment, tents and even Amish tack for backcountry pack saddles.

“It was very easy to figure out, and I don’t have any HTML knowledge,” said Ken. “In two and a half years we went from zero to making six figures a year from the business. My wife quit her bank job and we have more time to run our farm now.”

Ken’s site currently receives around 5,000 unique visitors per month. He offers this advice to aspiring entrepreneurs: “You need to be dedicated to your business idea and be organized - be on top of everything. From shipping to selling, this has been a labor of love with thousands of hours going in.”

You can tell the man truly enjoys what he does! Congratulations again to Ken and Somomule.com, our March Website of the Month.

Key to every successful business website is having the right product to sell at the right moment in time. A good source of intelligence about what is hot and what is not is Google Trends.

For those that don’t know, Google Trends provides a tremendous amount of data about people, products, or concepts. Want to know what is going to be the hot seller? Ask Google. As noted in this blog, “search volume data (how much people are searching for a keyword or term at a point in time) is a great measure of how interested people are in a particular topic over any given time period.”

At CityMax.com, we use Google Trends for a couple of different things, including search engine optimization and PPC research. However, in looking at Google Trends the other day, we noticed an interesting correlation that “scientifically” proves what we’ve been maintaining for the past 10 years: Entrepreneurs Make the World a Happier Place.

Well scientifically proven may be a bit of a stretch, but we thought we would share our observations:

Our search started with the concept of “happy” (see below for the trend report since 2004). The concept of “happy” ebbs and flows around the holidays, in large part to “Happy New Year” and “Happy Holidays” no doubt. But what piqued our curiosity was the relative volume of news mentions at the end of 2007 and the start of 2008… mentions that have been increasing relatively constantly since that time.

This chart surprised us a little. After all, aren’t we still in the midst of a recession? Isn’t it all a doom-and-gloom, the sky is falling, run for the hills, depressing kind of world that we live in right now? Why is ‘happy’ trending upwards?

Take a look at the keyword concept “recession” to see both the massive spike in the volume of search surrounding the concept as well as the mentions in news. Yep… the recession is in full swing (though interestingly it is on a downward trend).

Given this increase in “happy” in the midst of a recession, we asked ourselves, “What makes us happy?” Responses came from across the company: customers, success stories, getting a product out the door, selling. In other words, what makes us happy is winning.

So we ran the “win” and “lose” search concepts through Google Trends and here are the results:

Six years ago, “win” was searched for with much greater regularity than “lose”. In fact, “lose” has recently overtaken “win” for the first time in Google Trend history. But the same uptick occurs for news mentions, correlating to the increase in happy. We guess it stands to reason, that news mentions about winners might happen to mention that the winners are happy.

So was this the answer, or was there something deeper? We dug into things further with a few search concepts that are dear to our hearts: the life of the entrepreneur.

CityMax.com of course is passionate about entrepreneurism as evident by our homepreneur contests, our entrepreneur spirit days, and our website builder that speaks to early-stage entrepreneurs.

We started with a simple search for “small business” (see below). And there was our first “ah-ha”, the same uptick at the end of 2007 and start of 2008. What was interesting is that this uptick also corresponds well to the searches around “recession” and recessionary concepts. Captain Obvious might state that if people are worried about the economy and losing jobs, they might very well consider starting a small business of their own.

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What happens when you search for the concept “entrepreneur” and “self employed” within Google Trends? You see the same spike in mentions in the news and you see a rolling average increase in the total number of searches.

So, in our opinion, this proves what most entrepreneurs and small businesses know intrinsically: when you are an entrepreneur and running your own business, happiness is often a result.

Do you agree? Are entrepreneurs happier than most? Let us know in the comments below.

Written by John Lyotier, VP of Marketing at CityMax.com and avid reader of stats, charts, and graphs.

That’s according to Brian Solis, renowned public relations expert and digital thought leader. In a recent blog post, Solis explains why most viral marketing attempts fail, through analysis social scientist Dan Zarrella’s work on why ideas spread and the seven types of “sharing motives.”

A few key takeaways:

• Identify and pre-seed your message with appropriate key influencers
• Some of the top emotions that motivate sharing are: Personal, Relevant, Timely, and Humor
• Define the action you are trying to provoke
• The ability to share with one-click essential to spreading your content/message
• Videos are much easier to spread on Facebook compared to Twitter

It’s not a short read, but definitely great food for thought as you market your small business. Read it once, chew on it awhile, then read it again!