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• Started an online retail boutique going on one month now and I have not seen any sales. Feedback seems to be that the website looks great, and customers like the products, but nothing. I have created a facebook ad, gained a few new "likes" from that, gained more followers to my blog but otherwise no sales. What could I be doing wrong?

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    1. You need to have a plan and strategy to drive consistent and relevant traffic rather than focus on ad-hoc tactics such as an occasional Facebook ad.

    2. You need to analyze your marketing funnels to see where people are dropping off on your site. They may like your home page and products page but you may have problems at the checkout.

    3. Ask your users how they’re doing at every stage of your site. You may want to use a tool such as http://www.kissinsights.com/

• We have an online classifieds website but this space is too crowded. We are here to give a better user experience then Craigslist and backpage. We are a startup and can't compete with them but how can we get users without spending a lot of money?

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    Do what Yelp did – Hustle really hard in one city to build up and audience and then take on CL/Kijiji. You should also read how AirBnB grew their business by porting users from CL over to their platform (although I do not condone their methods) http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-dollar-company/

• Hey guys. What have you found to be the best credit card processing merchant? I'm looking for an option that could handle a monthly subscription. With so many companies, all with different rates, it's hard to determine which one is best. I appreciate the feedback. Thanks in advance! -Will

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    Look into http://recurly.com/tour for your subscription billing needs.

• One of my business partners seems to want a lesser role in the company, as our roles evolve and we get busier. However, he's got a fairly large ownership share. Is there a good way to buy back some of his shares so that his ownership stake corresponds to the lesser role he desires? I know we must tread lightly here.

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    Conversations like these are always difficult. I think having an honest discussion is the right way to tell your partner that they must give up some of their control (if not ownership) to correspond with them reducing their role and responsibilities in the day to day running of the company.

• My business sells a marketing platform for Real Estate agents. I started with 8 beta customers and 6 of them have been paying for a few months generating about $200/month in revenue. We're two engineers and don't know much about sales. I think we have a product. Any advice on getting a sales team in place?

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    At that CMRR (cumulative monthly recurring revenue) I’m assuming you’re probably aiming to onboard customers en mass to achieve profitability. You have two or three options at this point:

    1. Build your platform so it sells itself (without a sales team).

    2. Hire an outsources tele-sales team.

    3. Hire a revenue-engineer/biz dev person who works for you full time. Have them focus on brokerages adopting your solution rather than individual agents.

• You suggest creating content as a great way to go about inbound marketing. How would you distribute that content if your target market would not necessarily be looking for thei solutions on line?

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    There are two primary ways of focusing on inbound marketing if your target market is primarily offline and both focus on directing them online.

    1. The Off-line ‘hook’: You use direct marketing methods such as direct mail, sms, flyers, magazine ads with a call to action for the target audience to visit a trackable url which captures their information into your marketing funnel. Then, you nurture them by sending them educational material to build trust and knowledge, followed by a call to action to ‘buy’.

    2. You earn your way into offline channels – This involves getting interviewed by magazines, getting print placement in newspapers, or actually writing for industry print publications.

• How were you able to grow your start-up?

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    We’re still growing and focusing on a number of new initiatives to grow Powered by Search further. That said, here’s what got growth off the ground:

    1. We developed a reputation for being the best at what you do. For us, that was Enterprise SEO and a deep knowledge of Local SEO (both for SME’s and for large franchises).

    2. Get the word out – We guest blogged, wrote guides, spoke at conferences, chambers of commerce, and generally built good karma and more credibility by sharing our knowledge with our target audience.

    3. Attracted top-notch talent or didn’t hire at all. We wanted our client experiences to be nothing short of amazing and we knew the only way of doing that was by hiring wicked smart, committed and curious hires.

• What are the best practices for link building? Do you have any resources you could point me to?

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    Link building best practices are constantly evolving to keep up with search engine guidelines. Great content is at the core of all high-quality link development programs. You can find a fairly comprehensive list of best practices and tactics at http://www.singlegrain.com/blog/how-to-build-links-the-ultimate-guide/

• How many visitors do you need to start putting AdSense on your website?

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    I don’t believe there is a traffic requirement but you may see PSA ads for a short period of time. Check out https://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=48182

• I am in process of launching a marketing consulting service - how do I determine appropriate pricing ranges for various services. Thanks, Upen Shah

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    Pricing is a difficult beast to tackle and merits much thought. I would encourage you to approach your services under the ‘value based pricing’ model instead of selling your services by the hour.