The Loneliest Lemonade Stand…
Here’s a picture of my neighbor, Spencer, from a few weeks ago. I think he’s about 10, a cute kid and a good marketing case study for us.
If you notice in the picture – we live in a court. Translation = pretty much no car or foot traffic! While it’s great for letting kids play outside – it’s not so good for a budding lemonade tycoon. After buying 2 cups of lemonade from Spencer, I had to give the kid some ideas. I told him he needs to move the stand where he would get a lot more traffic. He should go on the corner of our street or at least put signs directing people to the court.
Did he do it? Nope. He just went on yelling, “Lemonade for sale!” on deaf ears into the court.
The sad part is so many people do the exact same thing with their sites. They’ve got one of the loneliest lemonade stands on the Internet. Why? Because they aren’t putting themselves in front of a stream of traffic.
It really is that simple.
Find where the traffic already is and plant yourself along the way offering up something these people want. Let’s compare Spencer’s lemonade stand to one I remember a few years back. It wasn’t in front of anyone’s house – but rather it was in front of a steady stream of joggers, walkers and strollers on the Capital Crescent Trail in Bethesda. The budding entrepreneur went out of his comfort zone (beyond their front yard) and went to where the marketplace was already – and simply got in front of them.
Did it matter his lemonade was from concentrate and not made from real lemons? Nope – not one bit.
The late, Gary Halbert, had a famous bit of instruction he did in a seminar talking about going into the food business. He told the audience, “I’ll let you have any advantage you want. Name it.” People would mention “I want the only McDonalds” or “I want the best food”, etc. etc. After everyone had their turn, he’d say, “Okay, the only advantage I want is a hungry crowd.”
Hmmm….
Quite frankly, when you stand in front of a hungry crowd even the ‘roach coach’ gets business during lunch time. Same with your site. What are you doing to get out of your comfort zone (front yard) and place yourself in front of a stream of ‘hungry’ traffic? Here are just a few ideas:
• Adding your offer to partners Thank You pages and Opt-in pages.
• Buying ads on highly-trafficked sites.
• Doing deals with other sites who show up high in search engine rankings for your keywords & phrases.
• Piggybacking on hot trends? (How many iPod accessories are out there now?)
• Putting package inserts into outgoing packages.
• Finding out how to work with big sites in exchange for content and affiliate rev-share deals. Etc…
If you’re not selling enough products (or lemonade) – maybe it’s time to get in front of the right crowd!
* Update: I saw this comic from Jimmy D. Brown and asked him if I could reprint it here. Seems only fitting:
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Sounds like my business except that the traffic I get keeps whizzing by. What is worst no traffic or ineffective traffic.
This economy crap should do the birds and fly away.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Hey Yanik,
About time you back to “work” and post something.
I check the mail every day looking and waiting for my copy of Maverick Business Insider to arrive.
Great analogy with the kid and the lemonade stand. I noticed the court as soon as I looked at the photo, before reading your comment.
Saundra, too many people in this world only see the bad things like the current economic situation and say, “Why do these bad things happen to me?” Then they sit around feeling sorry for themselves. But instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you must look for the opportunity in the situation and jumped on it.
Bad things happen all the time. Things happen that we can’t control. It isn’t what happens to us that is important. What is important is what we do when it happens.
“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” Jimmy Dean
There are a million and one opportunities out there waiting to be created.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Young Spencer apparently has a future as an automotable company CEO…
Or US Senator…
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Awesome analogy Yanik. Very simple but very powerful.
I am going out of my comfort zone by asking you to email me about how I can help make you some extra income. That’s my first step.
As per the Maverick giving back creed, I’ll promise to donate 10% of my income if you do the same for yours to a worthy charity.
I look forward to hearing from you soon and I can go into more details!
You should have my email from the forum post.
PS – got my Maverick package in the mail today and can’t wait to get into it!
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I need to find that hungry crowd of people.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Great analogy Yanik. It also shows that knowledge is not power…APPLIED knowledge is power. If you don’t take action on what you learn and apply your knowledge, you may gain knowledge but you will never increase your success.
Thanks for sharing!
Scott Thomas
To earn more, you must learn more
http://www.ilearningglobal.biz/AchieversLife
November 24th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Well said Yanik. Business needs traffic. There are so many lazy marketers who call themselves internet marketers. They haven’t got a single article written and just pray for someone to pass through their websites.
November 24th, 2008 at 12:07 am
What ever sort of business one is in, reaching out there is a must.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:58 am
“Adding your offer to partners Thank You pages and Opt-in pages”
as a person in the lead generation space, good to hear these type of suggestions. it’s a very simple way for sites to grow, and generate revenue.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Great illustration. The ‘teach’…go with someone who has already been there and traveled that road. Appreciate your insights and thanks for sharing!
November 24th, 2008 at 10:27 am
I was reading down through the comments.
Rick, very funny (and so true). I almost spit coffee all over my laptop.
In the brick and mortar business world I hope and trust most people know the saying, “The 3 most important things are location, location, location.”
Seems odd to me people don’t see the relationship in the cyber-world??
http://www.teasemeteas.com
Rob
November 24th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I used to be on That Path of the young entrepreneur…..its called the path of least resistance. It’s a Dead End. When you get to the end you can either give up or decide that harder less appealing work will be worth it in the long run.
November 24th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Yanik, you are so right!
Traffic is key. So we need to ask ourselves how do we increase traffic? Most of us by now know that “Content is King”, and “Design is Queeen” (to steal that from Joel Comm). Thanks, Joel.
Well all of your suggestions and tips/tricks are great.
I do, though, submit our first, original site to you. It’s been up for seven weeks now. When we launched on September 28th (Sunday), our Alexa rank was around 17-18 million. As of last week, it now stands at around 1.415 million.
And, that’s without optimizing the site for keywords (yet)! In fact, we don’t even have a ppc campaign or even an autoresponder to opt into, so no e-mail marketing either!
Talk about counter-intuitive!!! But yet, it seems to be working.
That said, I have over 1300 other domains and I will be employing your strategies you listed to. While the strategies I have been implementing have seemed to be working, it is very time-consuming.
Thanks for your insights!
Best,
-K
http://budurl.com/hkzs
November 24th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
@ Rick LOL!
At least Yanik bought two cups… (Spencer looks like he wants to sell you a third)
November 24th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
[...] new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Yanik Silver’s latest Internet LifeStyle Blog entry titled “The Loneliest Lemonade Stand…” caught my attention today, when I was checking [...]
November 24th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Nice kick in the pants for me! I often think about JVs and contacting other website owners but don’t always follow through. There is a lot to learn from this post – thanks
Andre
November 25th, 2008 at 1:31 am
It sounds like their are a few little kids with lemonade stands out there. That’s why I’m here. I’m still in my comfort zone. I hope you can help me Yanik. Really looking forward to MBE package
November 25th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Yanik, Brilliant Analogy. There are so many of us like Spencer. I have vowed that my new travel venture’s ONLY marketing strategy for next 2 years would be to piggyback on other people’s high traffic zones…
Thanks – that was a WOW moment for me…
Regards, Puneet
November 25th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Yanik,
This is a great story, but not just on the topic of “traffic”, also on the topic of close-minded business people. Close-mindedness is probably more of a hindrance to overcome than marketing ignorance is.
At least you can learn marketing, that is, if you have an OPEN MIND!
So many budding entrepreneurs suffer from this “disease”. They want to be “right” more than they want to make money.
Heck, the Japanese are perfect examples. Did they invent the modern auto assembly line? NO. But they learned what the Big 3 did, then did it 10x better.
So many people (I used to be one) want to reinvent the wheel. Wouldn’t it be easier, and more profitable, to take the advice of someone who makes tons of money doing what you do?
For some, evidently no.
Best to you Yanik, have a great Thanksgiving,
Jim Rodante
http://twitter.com/Referral_Pro
PS. In Potomac he could probably charge a 50% premium on the lemonade too
November 25th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I just wanted to post this. I just received my copy of Maverick Business Insider. Guess what I will be doing this weekend.
I spread it out on the table in our boat and took a picture.
http://www.teasemeteas.com/robspersonalblog.htm
Thanks again Yanik for sharing your knowledge.
Rob
November 26th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Great post Yanik! I can almost see myself in place of Spencer!!
I’d bought Your “Instant Sales Letters” in Sept’06 but never used till early this year, when I started working on my site. I could use only the one for Customer Feed Back; but got some Very Good Testimonials!
http://www.BedspreadsHeaven.com
I’d never emailed You earlier to Thank You for those .. so I thought this was The Best ‘DAY’ to THANK YOU for an Excellant Product for a newcomer !
The site was launched recently(First week of September) & have a couple of articles published on ezinearticles.com, plus comparatively good Organic SE rank on MSN & Google(long tail), more than average traffic (according to Analytics).. BUT .. NO OPT-INs!!
Could You please visit my site & suggest a solution?
Thanx Again,
Sameer(09/25 too)
** Sameer – that’s great! I love to hear stories like that. Continued success! -Y.S. **
November 27th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Great comparison with the way most of us work. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The problem is there are so many parts of my life where I am selling lemonade on a cul d sac.
Rick
Why do you still have the nofollow on this blog? Is that on purpose?
November 27th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
In another word, Find the feed frenzy. It is what a fisherman will do.
However, hope that seed you planted in Spencer’s mind will eventually blossom.
He is lucky to have you as his neighbor, Yanik.
November 29th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Hah, maybe we should all be forced to run a (successful!) lemonade stand before starting our internet businesses.
We’ve got a family that works the Burke Gilman trail in Seattle (packed with bikers, skaters, dog walkers, etc. in the summer), and those kids are paying for their college that way (seriously–it was in the paper a couple years back). It’s amazing how much money you can make even selling something for $1 if you’re in front of that hungry (or thirsty!) crowd.
December 10th, 2008 at 2:33 am
Love the comic,
Have an example of the opposite of above. We live in a street that is the christmas light street. You know the one that every house has to put up lights that would make the Griswalds proud.
On Saturday night was the night when the street officially turns on their lights and has a party. The street comes alive and is flooded with families from the suburb coming to check it out.
This year a savy 5 year old and his 4 year old brother set up a lemonade and biscuit stall.
What do you think every child was asking mom for as they passed the stall.
Yep lemonades and biscuits.
Every second family was strolling the street holding empty lemonade cups. It was cool.
Maybe next year they can offer the endless cup for $5 more!
Rich
December 11th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Great advice Yanik and a problem I see too often! I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on what 2009 will have on the Prediction Call http://www.predictioncall.com
December 15th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
That analogy is one of my biggest problems when doing business online. You must find the hungry crowd then find it. Thanks for reminding me to focus my strategies instead of blind guessing all the time. Bookmarked!
December 17th, 2008 at 12:29 am
That was a great analogy!
And, it really opened my eyes. I believe I will try to implement this simple yet powerful idea!
Now I just need to find the intersection to set-up my stand :p
Great post Yanik.
Thanks a bunch!
Joshua Collins
December 17th, 2008 at 2:02 am
[...] Yanik Silver just uploaded a new post to his blog. In it he makes a great analogy! [...]
December 20th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Hi Yanik,
Love the picture. Made me chuckle.
My eldest son, just a little older than Spencer, is taking an active interest in me building up my online business. He already understands some of this social media stuff better than me, lol.
I think I’ll use him as a consultant – probably do better than some of the so called ‘experts’
Great stuff as usual Yanik.
Garry
http://garryparkes.com/
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:57 am
Hi Yanik, that’s great. Love it. I referenced the “QuickLube” guys I see nearly every week standing by a busy street with a hand-made sign that reads “Oil change?” You can read my post at here if you like: http://www.bestwebpresence.com/not-all-traffic-is-created-equal/
Michael
January 13th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
This is the best general piece of marketing advice that I’ve read. My own success has been just that – stick myself in the middle of traffic flow, but I never really looked at it quite that way before. Thank you so much for your clear thoughts and great ideas.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:35 am
The analogy is great, however there is another lesson to learn from a small,actually very BIG, mistake you made yourself Yanik. The kid behind the lemonade “desk” was most likely given instructions by his manager “parents” and was simply following them- maybe in this case “don’t leave the front yard so we can keep an eye on you”. The point is that you approached the wrong target audience. You had a much better chance to sell your advice to the parents, the decision makers, for greater results. I know it is an analogy on your part, however there are lessons to be learned from all angles of life’s experiences.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Excellent post, Yanik
I liked it so much, I just HAD to Tweet about it. So many marketers ARE just like your neighbor. They do all the work to prepare, set-up, create…they yell at the top of their lungs…and have nothing but bee stings and mosquito bites to show for it. Not to mention, being in the hole $10-$20 for the cost of supplies to make the lemonade no one bought. When all they had to do is go where people are ready to buy lemonade. Same amount of work (if not less). But much better results. Simply by working smarter.
You are an excellent adviser, and always have a wealth of information and knowledge to share.
Thank you,
Zsolt Eszes
May 6th, 2009 at 5:06 am
Thanks