SleepPhones® Blog October 2009 Through November 2009
Bloggers Help Marketing and Search Engine Rankings
We have been very fortunate to have such strong supporters for SleepPhones. There are a number of blogs online that rave about SleepPhones. Most blog entries were completely unsolicited. We just search on the name SleepPhones every now and then and find stuff about us.
Here is an annotated list of some of them.
Sleep Required— Thanks Dan for a completely unsolicited review about SleepPhones!Brain Waver
— This was one of the earliest random reviews for us. Thank you so much for your early support!Art Van Furniture will have SleepPhones soon
— We work with Sleep to Live, a division of Kingsdown, I think that's where this link came from. That's a nice picture!Cranky Fitness Reviews
— She contact us about doing a review and then a giveaway. She's a popular blogger, with high rankings. So we worked with her, and she gave us a very detailed honest and positive review.Carina Romano Photography
— She's our photographer for many of the pictures on the website. She was nice enough to put us on her blog, which is very popular.Miscellaneous Finds 4 U
— She contacted me about doing a giveaway on her blog, and it certainly drew a lot of great attention! Lots on nice comments about the product.Boing Boing Gadgets
— We contacted them to see if they would like to try our product. Well, they just wrote a review and never tried it. So I don't think they can really say anything with any authority since they've never seen just how good SleepPhones are. What they propose doesn't work. SleepPhones work. Hmm... I was going to put a link down, but on second thought, I won't give them that.Kaboodle
— A college student in TX apparently added us on this site. Thanks!Nerd Like
— Someone we don't know named Jazzy gave us a great review. Thanks!Mind Reality
— Someone we don't know had put this great ad up for us. Thanks!Listen and Learn
— I contacted her because her blog was featured by BlogSpot as a great place to get short free music for autistic kids to learn about the world. And I had just received a rave review from a parent of an autistic child. So I asked if she would review a pair for me, and I'm so glad she liked it!iliketotallyloveit
— Another unsolicited great review. Thanks!Deep Delta
— Thanks whoever you are! Nice info on binaural beats and how we can help.Busika
— We're so glad Yellow Start 2000 put us on the list of must-haves for travelers! I found out about it from Google Alerts.Thifty Boutique
— Thank you for this Ad! I think she probably gets a commission from Amazon when someone buys with her link. Well, that's fine by us!
Some bloggers contacted us via email or Twitter to see if we would send them a free pair for a review on their blog. We have taken a few people up on that, but there would be a never-ending free sampling if we were not discriminating about that. In the past, after we did two giveaways, many small-time bloggers (who had just set up a blog to get free stuff) wanted giveaways too from us. We just can't afford that, so I had to turn them down. Now that bloggers are suppose to disclose these deals, I expect we'll see fewer of these propositions. I think it's great advertising for us, but realistically, when the blog is about free stuff and cheap stuff, the people visiting those sites are not ready to put down $50-60 for SleepPhones. We have not seen much sales from blogs, even when we offer a coupon for the blog readers. I think the biggest benefit to advertising on blogs is name recognition, back-links for search engine optimization, keyword associations, and positive reviews for potential customers to read.We really really appreciate all of the bloggers and niche community people who voluntarily advertised for us over the past few years. If you contact us via DM in Twitter (@sleepphones), we'd love to talk to you!
SleepPhones® Versions
I've finally made a big table listing the versions of SleepPhones we've had since going into business. We've had three versions.
Light Therapy Products
Light Therapy Products is an online company specializing in products for seasonal affective disorder (SAD). They sell various light boxes and sleep aids. We have sold them some SleepPhones at wholesale prices, and they will be reselling SleepPhones over this holiday season. Although the old model of SleepPhones are shown on their website, they will carry the latest black model.
Famous? Maybe one day we'll be as popular as Grasshopper.com
So last week, Grasshopper.com's Ambassador of Buzz contacted me because of my previous post on how cool their new phone system was and how it helps improve our customer service. Apparently they can help promote our business too! I know they are pretty darn popular with all of the big names mentioned on their website. I think our most famous contacts would be Grammar Girl and Steven Gurgevich who works with Andrew Weil (one of my idols). We were just lucky to be mentioned in CNN Money and Health magazine. If Grasshopper can help promote our business, it could do wonders! I didn't think anybody read this blog, but even if it's only Google Alerts reading it, I guess that's good enough!
In order for Grasshopper to promote us, we have to give them some material to work with. Here's what I typed up for them. It's the same basic story, just condensed, since I like to write in tangents.
I had trouble getting back to sleep after the emergency room called. With my sleep being frequently disturbed, I needed something that could help me fall asleep quickly. I am a family doctor who finally realized how important sleep is after being sleep deprived for many years in school and in training.
Many people need help either with falling asleep or staying asleep. It could be that they can’t stop an internal voice from worrying or an external noise snoring next to them. Insomnia is a very frustrating experience. One usually gets more and more angry as the night drags on slowly, and that makes sleep even harder. To put a stop to the frustration of not sleeping, it would be nice to listen to something relaxing in bed, in comfort, without disturbing any bed partners. I know it works from personal and patient experiences.
We invented SleepPhones because there were no headphones for sleeping on the market. You can listen to anything with SleepPhones by plugging them into your iPod or any other music player. SleepPhones are the softest, most comfortable headphones for sleeping. The patented design is completely unique. Thin high-quality speakers are hidden and padded within a fleece headband made from recycled plastic bottles. SleepPhones are assembled in the USA and shipped directly from us (the manufacturer) to customers via orders from our website. Visit http://www.SleepPhones.com to check out the ultimate sleep headphones.
Pretty New Websites by Yahoo and Google Sites
We have more homes on the web for SleepPhones.
This website is designed through Yahoo Sites. Their content management system makes it easy to design pretty simple websites. There is no HTML edit option, so the variations in design are very limited. The payment system is through PayPal and is easy to setup. Again, because it's so simplified, there are no detailed options. Check it out at site.HeadphonesForSleep.com.
Here is the Google Sites webpage. At the minimum we have to hold down the name SleepPhones in all of the major internet locations. It's like trying to get a street corner with parking for a retail store or putting up a big sign. Google Site for SleepPhones
We made these website in order to have yet another way people can find us on the web, emphasizing a slightly different set of keywords.
Random Student at Barnes and Noble
Last night we had about an hour to kill before our dinner plans with friends, so we stopped by Barnes and Noble. Jason's a bibliophile. We have a library with 10 tall bookshelves and no cable TV in the house.
Anyway, we saw a friend (the best cupcaker maker ever - her snickerdoodle cupcake was spotted at the entrepreneurial women's expo) who was knitting at a table there. We have a whole group of cult-ish friends who meet every Monday night at Barnes and Noble to sit around and knit. They even have a name badge and T-shirts for the club. They are called the Knit Pistols. They nearly swept the County Fair's knitting contest this past year, having entered for the first time.
My form of knitting is quality control on this latest batch of SleepPhones® headphones. I put on the Velcro cord wrap, check the speaker placement, and make sure everything works just right. I happened to have my bag of SleepPhones with me because I work on this in the car when Jason's driving. So while the Knit Pistol Baking Fool Hannah worked on her flip-top mittens, I worked on my SleepPhones. Surprisingly, Hannah had not heard of our company. So I started telling her about how I couldn't sleep being on call and how I needed sleep headphones. She is so excited about our product that she's going to blog about us now!
Meanwhile, a random student was sitting around, waiting for a friend. She turned around and said, "Wait, what? Headphones for sleeping? I totally could have used them last night." So we got to talking. I showed both Hannah and this student all about SleepPhones and how they are the coolest things ever. I gave the student my card, and she said she was going to tell all of her friends about them. (I've learned by now to always have my card everywhere I go.) Yes!
That was a very productive hour of random marketing at Barnes and Noble.
Grasshopper.com
Grasshopper.com is our business phone/fax system. To be honest, I hate talking on the phone. I always have. I guess I'm much more visual than auditory. We figured we have to have a business phone number and fax number, so we went this this very cheap and convenient option. We're one of those households that don't have a land line anymore. We both have cell phone numbers from 2-3 moves back, so they aren't even from the same state. Grasshopper with all of the options we need is about $12 a month. Plus it does faxes — as a PDF attachment to the email, so we don't have to have a land line with a fax machine wasting paper and ink.
Grasshopper used to be GotVMail. This new name is cuter, and I like their new system. It's easier to make outbound calling card phone calls now. And for a limited time, I get free voice to text conversion. How cool is that? That just became available a few days ago, so now instead of having to listen to a message with a pen and paper, ready to write down pertinent information, I can just read it. We've had 2 messages transcribed by computer so far. One was perfect, barely a mistake. The other was less good, but I can tell what they were asking. I'm debating whether the $10 monthly extra charge is worth it or not when the free trial runs out.
I just dread having to listen to a voice message because I never know if it's a nice message or a complaint or a stupid question (err, I mean, there is no such thing as a stupid question) or a really good question I don't have an answer to. And I'm very sensitive to the accent and tone of the speech too. I have to take a mental timeout after listening to a message just to interpret the emotions in the message, especially if it's a complaint. The detached impersonal standardized text for reading is much easier for me to process. I wish I could email back to the phone calls so I wouldn't have to muster up the composure for speaking to customers.
I'm a doctor all day long, so I have to keep my composure and exude a certain air of confidence and compassion. While it is a service profession, and customer service does count, I'm the authority in the situation. The personality I assume as a doctor is very different from the subservient acquiescing customer service representative where the customer is always right. And as a CEO discussing deals with suppliers, business advisers (lawyers, accountants, etc), wholesale customers, and business relationship, I am again used to being in charge. When I have a few phone calls a day to return as the nice customer service rep, I have to change my personality so much. And by the end of the day, my patience runs out, I'm tired, and I'd rather eat dinner than call a grumpy person back while being as nice as I would like me to be. When I've called Land's End in the past about placing orders, sizes from previous orders, mistakes in orders, or anything along those lines, I've always been very impressed with the level of customer service. That's why I've been such a loyal customer for so long. They are always nice, alert, competent, and with excellent follow-through. I try to hold myself up to those standards, but I guess I just wasn't cut out for the sales/customer service field.
P.S. If you have comments or questions, please send us an email. Don't call, because I'll respond slower to that. And we're never immediately available by phone because we have day jobs that take all of our attention during the day.
Google Search
It's always scary for the entrepreneur when the bulk of customers are from one source. If the source goes away, it could spell disaster. In our case, most of our customers find our product from a Google Search. I don't think Google will go away, but our ranking on Google is never a guarantee. We constantly monitor searches on SleepPhones and the listing for our main keywords: sleep headphones, headphones for sleeping. We've optimized those terms as much as possible in our website so we do show up highly in those searches. That's an achievement not to be taken lightly nor messed with frequently. We'll probably upgrade our website to Drupal 6.0 after the holiday season. Making changes right now that might change our ranking is just too risky, since our December sales are typically double a normal month and help boost our sales for the following year. We're working on bettering our search results in Yahoo, Bing, and Ask now.
Newly Added Box on Website
We just added the Follow Us box on our website. It has all of our social media links so you can get the inside scoop and the latest on SleepPhones! I think this Blog covers most of the SleepPhones news, but it takes much more effort to come here than to get the occasional update on Facebook or Twitter.
eBay Auction for Sleep Headphones
SleepPhones® eBay auction starts bid price at $24.99 for the best headphones for sleeping — more than half off!
SleepPhones® Headphones in Yahoo Store!
We have a Yahoo Store for SleepPhones now! We're trying out this marketing method by creating another website. Perhaps by increasing internet presence and cross-referring to our various accounts, we'll increase our back links and strengthen our grip on our main keywords: sleep headphones and headphones for sleeping. We're also hoping that by paying Yahoo for this account, they will crawl our site a bit more often and rank it higher. So far, it hasn't seemed to happen.
We decided to try it because there's a good deal for 3 months of the Yahoo! store with no setup fees.
We do have the best and only headphones for sleeping on the market today. But we are competing with big names in audio for the attention of search engines. We have to try every inexpensive resource. Amazon has worked out well for us. Hopefully Yahoo! will pan out too for optimizing headphones for sleeping.
Taxes
We've paid all federal, state, and local estimated taxes through the end of the year. Whew! Cash on hand is low, but we anticipate getting it all back over the next 2 months. And I finally filed the 3rd quarter state sales and use taxes too. That's after updating all of my bookkeeping in Quickbooks since July. And I finally learned how to write off bad debt too, thanks to this nice video. A local retail store that sold many local crafts and carried SleepPhones® headphones went out of business during this recession, so we are having to write off a lot of money.
Packing Station Organized
Yesterday was a busy SleepPhones day. Jason worked on starting some ad campaigns on Bidvertiser and AdBrite. We found that we were good on Google but not so highly ranked in Yahoo, Bing, or Ask. So we have to ramp up our rankings on those engines.
Due to the more complex nature of our sales now, with multiple options on an item, we have to pack each individually and very carefully. It's taking us hours to fulfill orders each night. So I decided to rearrange our packing system. Everything we need is now in one central location and the computer is right there to check orders and listen to Pandora at the same time. I suppose sometimes I might listen to Grammar Girl Podcasts, lectures about business, and world news channels. I'm happy that it's finally all organized in one place. The various components of the packing used to take up the whole house. Here's a picture of Jason looking through the reorganization. We're going to take a break today and go practice archery.
SleepPhones® Coupon
SleepPhones® Coupon $5 off.
Holiday Season Shopping
The holiday shopping season has started. Our sales this past week have started to increase. Although the competition for customer attention is up during this season, people seem to be more open to spending money. We are ramping up our advertising efforts. In a few weeks, we're sponsoring another episode of Grammar Girl. She's touring the country giving out SleepPhones at each book signing location. We're sending out emails to previous customers and mailing list subscribers. We'll do more promotions on Facebook and Twitter too. Maybe local radio. We tried an ad in Newsweek, which was an expensive flop. Haven't seen much results with RevTwt yet. I'm going to work with a local photographer to get more model pictures with the newest design. As we think of more things, we implement those.
SleepPhones® Headphones in Tanzania
Wow! We have a SleepPhones order from Tanzania! We've had some orders previously from South Africa, but this is the first order from another country in Africa. We have a particular affinity to Tanzania because they produce Tanzanite, which is a lavender-colored precious stone. I have a few Tanzanite items of jewelry, including my engagement ring. And we like just about anything lavender. I didn't use to own any lavender clothing until we started SleepPhones. Since then, I've had a good excuse to buy lavender outfits — for work, of course. This person ordered a lavender sachet. I wonder if Tanzania's port is as strict as Australia is with dried plant materials. We can't ship lavender sachets to Australia because they would just cause the box to be opened and the sachet removed.
Anyways, Tanzania's a really cool country. It's home to the tallest mountain in the Africa: Mt. Kilimanjaro, the origin of the Nile River. It borders Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, and Lake Tanganyika, the deepest lake in Africa. It contains much of the Serengeti plain, where many Discovery Channel and National Geographic people spend their time capturing images of the wildebeest. Dr. Jane Goodall spent her days watching chimpanzees there. It's the idyllic African Safari location.
Lavender Accessories
We are going to bring more high quality, all natural lavender accessories to the SleepPhones website. We in the process of working with a local vendor to provide these products. The vendor is a one-woman shop. She has similar beliefs as I regarding skin and hair care products.
I believe that anything applied to the skin and hair should be at least somewhat edible. That is, if I can eat olive oil, coconut oil, and lavender tea without getting sick, then I can apply it to my skin. If I don't eat petroleum, I won't apply petrolatum to my lips or skin. If I don't eat artificial (lab chemical) fragrances, FD&C Yellow No. 5 , or titanium dioxide, then I won't put it on my skin. Lye (originally from wood ash) is needed to render oils into soap and is the classic method of making soap. The soap we sell will be a lye-rendered vegetable-based soap that won't kill your child if accidentally eaten.
The skin is our body's biggest organ and it is very much in constant contact with our environment. It absorbs and takes in as much as it puts out. Shining sunlight on it helps our bodies create useful vitamin D. Rubbing poison ivy on it will cause an itchy rash for many people. Putting medicine on a patch of dry eczema can heal it. The skin has pores that secrete oils and salty sweat. It releases water as a by-product of metabolism. The skin regulates our body temperature by opening and closing pores, controlling blood flow, and sweating. It is not just a piece of dead leather to be scrubbed for cleaning and crudely oiled and painted.
There are many lines of products available claiming to be all natural. I think that it's a step in the right direction. But ideally, products applied to the skin should be of the same quality as what we eat because they are absorbed just the same.
Products on Amazon
Having a sales channel through Amazon is quite beneficial to our business, and I highly recommend it for small companies with new products like us.
Here are the drawbacks:
- They take a huge chunk of our profits. We have to pay them 15% of the selling price and more from the shipping.
- Plus, there is a $40 monthly fee for the listing.
- They pay us every 2 weeks, so the cash flow can be tight if depending solely on their check.
- We use Fulfillment by Amazon, so we have pay to ship a big box of products to them.
Here are the benefits.
- It is one of the biggest retailers, so many people shop there. Since we have a unique relatively unknown product, having it in a giant retailer is very cool. People browsing through their "virtual shelves" may come upon our product. If they don't buy it through Amazon, they may follow the links to come to our website.
- Amazon has many promotions, gift certificates, free shipping incentives, and other methods that encourage people to buy there. It's marketing that we don't need to do.
- You can get a sense of your competition and collaborations after a while. There is a section of the page for "People who looked at [your product] also looked at..." For example, our biggest competitor would be a pillow that I will describe as little as possible. Our biggest collaborative sale is with the Delta Sleep System, a CD. It's tremendous market research. You just have to figure out how to use that information.
- For us, it's one more sales channel that is relatively hands-off. Using Amazon Fulfillment, we just ship a big box of SleepPhones to Amazon, and they will ship them to customers for us. Any returns also go through them. If we have an emergency and can't be at home to ship out SleepPhones for a few days, they will always be there for customers desperate to get some sleep.
- Customers buying through Amazon are encouraged to write comments about your product and company. Since we sell a great product, our reviews have been very positive. If I saw our ratings, I would be curious about the product because everyone loves it so much. If someone writes a negative or misinformed comment, sometimes other customers will even post a followup comment correcting them.
- Most retail shops request the standard wholesale price, which is 50% of the suggested retail price. 20-25% is a lot less than 50%.
So despite having to give Amazon about 20% of every sale, it is a great retail sales channel for a fledgling company.
Amazon
We've only got 1 Gray Small SleepPhones left on Amazon.com in the inventory they have stored in Indiana. We've just been too busy to pack the old SleepPhones to send in to them. So we've converted most of the availabilities back to being fulfilled from us for now. As soon as Amazon received a stash, we'll convert them back to being fulfilled by Amazon (which qualifies for free shipping and Amazon Prime).
Cute Sheep
Delay in Shipping
We are attending a funeral today and tomorrow. We will send out all orders on Friday October 30. Thank you for understanding!
Retail Distribution
A sample of the new design for the headphones should be arrive to our retailers soon. One of our retailers is in Manhattan, the Sleepy's on 86th street in the Upper East Side. We also have retailers in North Carolina at the mall chain, Sleep to Live. We have one retailer in Canada now. We would like to establish distributors in the UK, Australia, and Germany. It is very important to us that our distributors have excellent customer service records and are reliable shippers. We strive to maintain our superb customer service reputation.
Grammar Girl and SleepPhones® headphones
Grammar Girl's Book Tour Schedule:
- 10/27 San Francisco, Books, Inc. in the Marina, 7:30 p.m.
- 10/29 Washington, D.C., Borders, 7:00 p.m.
- 11/4 Lake Forest, Lovell's of Lake Forest, noon (luncheon with entrance fee)
- 11/12 Denver, Denver Woman's Press Club, 12:30 p.m. (members only)
- 11/12 Boulder, Boulder Book Store, 7:30 p.m
- 11/19 Cincinnati, Joseph-Beth Bookstore, 7:00 p.m.
- 11/20 Tempe, Changing Hands, 7:00
- 12/5 Reno, Sundance Bookstore, 11:00 a.m.
- 12/13 Reno, Grassroots Bookstore, 2:00 p.m.
She's giving away SleepPhones® headphones on the tour! Here's her YouTube video with the tour schedule.
Halloween
Midnight Black SleepPhones available now with a limited time Halloween Coupon.
Extensive SleepPhones® Work This Weekend
Website Changes
Over the past 36 hours, many changes have been made to the behind-the-scenes SleepPhones website and marketing technology.
Our brand new SleepPhones® System page has been created and launched. It has many more choices than previously available. You can choose the color (midnight black or deep blue), music (none, CD, or digital player), and packaging (with lavender, in a nice storage tin box, or in a gift box).
The original design of SleepPhones® headphones has been discontinued from our website. We are sending the rest of that inventory to Amazon. There, they will continue to sell the original design in Gray and Lavender colors, but with limited sizing options. A few other miscellaneous products have been discontinued as well.
I updated the Contact Us page to include our social networking connections.
Due to all of the changes, especially in the Products section, I ran some link checkers to make sure we didn't have any dead links in the website.
First Email Newsletter
We reached 50 mailing list subscribers on AWeber yesterday! So I wrote the first email newsletter for AWeber. Included in that newsletter are a Halloween Coupon and a way to get a $10 rebate on a previous order. The Halloween Coupon webpage launched yesterday will be up for 1 week. It was advertised on Facebook, Twitter, this Blog, and the Newsletter.
Statistics for Marketing
Updated AdWords Campaign Management for better tracking statistics, including view of the SleepPhones System page and the Mailing List Subscription Confirmation page. No major AdWords keywords or ads have been changed this weekend. In Google Analytics, I set goals to track views of the SleepPhones System page and shopping cart page.
Social Marketing
We are up to 570 Twitter Followers today. The Twitter Giveaway continues. Jason found the search function in Twitter, which saves us lots of work. Facebook is now linked with Twitter, so posting on Facebook for SleepPhones now automatically posts a Tweet. I also invited nearly all of my friends to be a fan in Facebook. Hey, some friends are customers too. As for this blog, I've been posting nearly daily for 3 weeks now! I don't know how long I can keep that up, but I do have 2 more posts already written and scheduled to be posted. Maybe this habit will last longer than previous attempts with exercise, yoga, swimming, and vegetarianism... Now I have to figure out if there is a way to automatically put these blog posts to Facebook and Twitter. Marketing is dominating my time lately, which really feeds my internet addiction.
Drupal
Jason is upgrading the SleepPhones® website content management from Drupal 5.0 to Drupal 6.0. That will include a new Ubercart, which will hopefully make shipping calculations and coupons be more straightforward, before reaching Google Checkout. Right now we're just using a hack to do priority shipping by making it a product. And the survey discount is also a product, just with a negative dollar value. Theoretically one could completely negate any charges with an order by adding lots of survey discounts. You can't place an order for a negative amount and get money from us — I did test that. No one has deliberately abused the discount so far, probably because people are generally good. (I actually still believe that, despite handling all of the customer service emails and phone calls.)
He's appropriating Dreamhost settings, loading Drupal modules, and copying over the content to a test server here at home. Once the testing passes, he'll roll it into production. We hope to have that available in the next few weeks.
Use of Technology in Business
Our beautiful styrofoam head models the new Blue SleepPhones® headphones.
I took some macro pictures of the new SleepPhones™ design in a homemade light box with my Canon® digital camera and digitally modified them with Photoshop® on my Windows 98® Dell® machine. Then I made a brochure of how the speakers are inserted using Word® on my MacBook®. Now that I'm finally done with all of that, I can print them out on our HP® laser color double-sided printer. During all of that, I listened to Pandora® online radio set to my own Ethereal Beats station. Now, I am using my Google™ Blogger™ account to update this blog.
As you can see, it is imperative to be technologically-savvy in a wide variety of devices and software in order to expedite the business process. It is actually not difficult to learn these technologies, but fear or laziness impedes many people from just doing it. I believe an entrepreneur needs not be afraid of learning and trying. Failure is just the pessimistic word for a learning experience. Some people ask how I learned to run a business. It's not like anyone taught me every step of the way. While I've sought out advice from mentors and advisers, I've actually learned much more by discovering things for myself, using as much common sense as possible, the internet, and books.
Here is the brochure processed through Gimp.
Lavender SleepPhones® Headphones Are Coming Back!
We have been almost completely out of lavender SleepPhones® headphones for a few months now. We tried a few different colors, but couldn't find one that we liked as much as the original. So we are now placing an order with Polartec® to make our special lavender in recycled plastic bottles. It takes months to produce, so we won't have any lavender-colored SleepPhones until 2010, but we are bring it back eventually! Our sheep have approved the color sample.