100 Percent Bootstrapped 10 Million Dollar E-Commerce Company: WaterFilters.Net CEO Jamin Arvig (Part 5)

Sramana: When did you start reselling and begin to pick up commercial clients? Jamin Arvig: From 2003 to 2005, we were largely a consumer reseller. Developing a commercial clientele was a gradual process that occurred between 2005 and 2008. We really focused on commercial and reseller accounts in 2008, which was a big step because

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100 Percent Bootstrapped 10 Million Dollar E-Commerce Company: WaterFilters.Net CEO Jamin Arvig (Part 4)

Sramana: Aside from the content in the catalogue, what other content did you offer on the website? Jamin Arvig: We created resources for the customers including a blog and the forum. We used the forum early on for a Q&A interface for customers who were looking for answers. We were not just uploading data from

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100 Percent Bootstrapped 10 Million Dollar E-Commerce Company: WaterFilters.Net CEO Jamin Arvig (Part 3)

Sramana: When you first started in 2002, how did you acquire customers? Jamin Arvig: Primarily search engine optimization was how we found customers. Even today that remains a key part of our operations. We did not invest in a lot of pay-per-click advertising initially because that was more risk than I was comfortable with.

100 Percent Bootstrapped 10 Million Dollar E-Commerce Company: WaterFilters.Net CEO Jamin Arvig (Part 2)

Sramana: So you decided to base your e-commerce business on water filters because of the potential of the industry? Jamin Arvig: We saw it as an exciting industry and a future market. It was also coupled with other growing markets, including the green industry. Every water filter we sell saves many water bottles. That is

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100 Percent Bootstrapped 10 Million Dollar E-Commerce Company: WaterFilters.Net CEO Jamin Arvig (Part 1)

Jamin Arvig is a serial entrepreneur who is a founder of WaterFilters.Net. He has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering as well as a law degree. After practicing patent law for a period, he decided to maintain a focus on business which led to increased effort being place on WaterFilters.Net, a business he started in

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 7)

Sramana: What role do inbound links to a site really play? There seems to be ambiguity and controversy around link-building techniques. Mike Mothner: You can have 10 experts in a room and get 10 different answers, hopefully with some overlap. Fundamentally, the best links are those which are not negotiated or traded for.

Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 6)

Sramana: In general, what metrics do you track and optimize against? Mike Mothner: We always want to have a metric to use to track effectiveness. That metric will vary from client to client. We can track when somebody purchases a product, when somebody fills out a lead form, phone calls by using different numbers for

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 5)

Sramana: When you do get a list that includes all of the long tail keywords, how do you prioritize that list? How do you manage lists that have tens of thousands of keywords? Mike Mothner: We group keywords semantically. We will focus on the major keywords individually which are determined by search volume. We will

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