How to Overcome The Fear of Success
Copyright 2006 Peter Dobler
Today I will talk about something that all of you are working
hard for, but when it really happens, nobody knows what to do
next.
I'm talking about success. Day in and day out you are tweaking,
testing, tracking and improving your website to get more traffic
and a better conversion rate. Slowly you are seeing better
results. You are receiving more traffic. You're making more
sales and that's what makes you more successful, but what
exactly does success mean?
The real phenomenon in an online business is the unconventional
way success manifests itself. The increase in traffic to your
website doesn't happen linear. It is more in the shape of a wave
and spikes all over the place. You never know when the next wave
of traffic will hit your web server.
The first time I experienced one of these spikes was when one of
my websites was featured in a member's only site with a large
subscriber base. My traffic stats went through the roof. The
site visits were more than tenfold than my average visits per
day. This went on for a couple of days, but suddenly the traffic
dropped to previous levels again. This is a typical reaction to
an announcement like being featured on a respected website. It
doesn't matter if you initiated the announcement or somebody
else did.
Once you notice the traffic jam on your website for the first
time, it will keep you up all night long. What if the web server
is not big enough? What if the shopping cart database crashes?
Did I setup the autoresponder messages correctly? A thousand
questions and worries are going through your head. Did you do
the right thing?
What I just described is also known as "fear of success". You
work so hard to be successful, but when it finally happens,
you're like the deer in the headlight. Believe it or not, but
that's the only difference between you and all the hot shoot
internet marketing gurus out there. They didn't do anything
different than you do. They have the same tools and ingredients
to work with. The difference is that they know how to capture
the sudden attention and turn it into even more attention.
When I experienced the sudden attention I did exactly what all
you would have done too. I spend too much time answering every
single email. I went out of my way to redesign my website,
because I thought that having all the attention I needed a
better design to please my new visitors. While I was busy doing
all this, the traffic wave hit rock bottom again and nobody was
there to enjoy my pretty new design.
What exactly did I accomplish with all this work? First of all
my website was featured before I did the total renovation.
Therefore somebody liked it for what it was. No need to do
anything. Second, I didn't trust my autoresponder or the quality
of my messages. End result; automatic messages got mixed in with
emails I personally wrote. You can imagine the confusion I
caused with my new customers. Instead of being in a position to
create easy follow-up sales, I upset my new customers and my
sales plumed to zero.
Overreacting to sudden success is as bad as not reacting at all.
So what should you do now? Before you spend all your energy in
generating traffic to your website, you need to have everything
in place and ready to flawlessly serve any new customer that
wants to buy from you or simply requests more information.
Here are some fundamental things you need to take care of before
you can handle the increased workload during peaks.
Email:
Plan you autoresponders in advance. Have multiple autoresponders
for different purposes like an online course, more information
about your products or your very own newsletter. Good
autoresponder systems let you choose a different reply-to
address than the from address. This allows you to setup a single
email autorepsonse telling the subscriber to send their feedback
to your ticket system.
I use ticket systems with great success. They are commonly part
of your web hosting package and are easy to setup. A ticket
system keeps your inbox clutter free and allows tracking of
every inquiry. It also allows you to hire help. If you ever
received more than a hundred emails a day, you know what I'm
talking about.
Shopping cart software:
Don't waste your time to create your own shopping cart system.
Unless you want to sell the software later on it is not worth
the trouble. There are many great systems available. Don't
install a system on your web server if you're not 100% sure what
you're doing. Ready made systems are easy to work with and
guarantee availability and reliability.
Having these two simple things in place will enable you to turn
on your traffic generation machine. The key is to automate as
much as possible. If you can handle one single customer smoothly
and without manually completing a step, you're ready.