Creating A Small Business Online Co-op

I have spent the last week working on a co-op idea for our company’s Indpendent Consultants. Here at Barefoot Books, we call them Stallholders (for the  gorgeous little bookstalls in Paris, along the River Seine).   I guess I should first explain that Barefoot has Stallholders all over the place, on both sides of the “pond” and even in some really far off countries.

The point is that for many of us in the Southwest area of the U.S.; there are issues which are a little different than in other parts of the country, or even the world (except maybe for Australia – yes – we are there, too!). In our geographical area — towns are far between and sometimes sparsely populated; making it hard to advertise, market community events, drive (fuel expenses are killing us) to hold bookfairs or deliver easily. Add that to the high cost of advertising on our tiny WAHM budgets; and you will begin to get the picture of our unique issues.

To remedy those problems; a colleague and I are starting a private blog for our group and we are creating our own website to bring more internet traffic directly to our group, to share local training & workshops, to communicate more locally within our states/region; plus, use co-op advertising to share the burden of costs for our small businesses.  

Of course; as with any business tool: the blog and website will evolve with how the group uses it. I would be interested on feedback about your use as a WAHM (or WAH-DAD) with similar tools or ideas. Have you found any great ways to advertise with a co-op (not a corporate-linked site – we have those)? Or do you have any other tips? Please post here if you do. Thanks!

Edit: For those Barefoot consultants who are trying to find the SW sites – they are now listed in my blogroll! 

2nd Edit: 2/17/08 Well Game On! We have sent the co-op information out to our home office managers to see how it is received! Will report the next stage as we get the info! I have to say that our new co-op website looks crisp, clean and professional.

3rd Edit: 4/11/08 I just realized that I had never updated the news on the co-op and am here to remedy that. It took a little tweaking and re-arranging content to satisfy the home office and the Regional Mgrs. but I am happy to announce our co-op site is going over wonderfully. It is constantly evolving with fresh content, and we are adding several new members to the group listings weekly.

We have added lots of customer friendly content first and foremost, since it is mainly for exposure to help our group who can’t afford their own websites. So, of course; we have member links for Barefoot Stallholders in geographical lists, by state. We have links to help parents and teachers find great information, and lots of fun ways to show our newest products and most recent breaking news. That is just on the public side.

On the password-protected side we have tons of content to cover business tips, product reviews, training, marketing, web-function info, literacy links, colleague site samples, company trivia, message boards, and a private Stallholder group blog.  Check us out at www.BFBSW.com I would love to hear some feedback if you would like to send me comments about the public content.

Marketing in new ways?

I know I haven’t posted much but advertisements here lately, hope to remedy that soon. What can I say–life happens sometimes and it is not always good material for others consumption.

Now to the subject for the day – Marketing in new ways. I have been looking for new ways to promote my sales of children’s books (and my other grown-ups books). I have seen a lot of connections of visitors to this blog that have gone over to my children’s website; however I have seen very little sales of these wonderful books. (I am not just bragging on the product – Barefoot Books has won many, many awards for these books and other book-related products). 

I am considering other options to get more (print) exposure. Perhaps a new website, similar to this blog that combines both stores products? Microsoft has offered me a free site this week — but it does not look like it will be very functional for product purchases without a lot of costly add-ons. Without much recent sales; I cant afford to buy a great site yet which has all the capabilities I need for the merchant accounts, etc. My current site for the children’s books is up for renewal and for the life of me- I cant see what good it is doing if there are no sales from visitors to the site. It looks great but just does not generate sales. Could someone out there take a look and tell me what is wrong and what I could create to turn browsers into sales — maybe it is simply the low exposure to search engine rankings (although our corporate group assures us that they send the info out for that) . Could the Microsoft free site help in that regard? I would think that they (a Microsoft site) would at least get  exposure from the big search engines, right? Or if someone has a better idea; would you please leave a comment to steer me in  a better direction – since i am so new to this online media format? It would be greatly appreciated, if someone would take pity on me and send me some info. In the meantime- I will be searching the net!  

 also looking for great avatar sites –haven’t been happy with what I have found out there and now really need to find one that “fits” since it will travel through-out the web-world thanks to our very own “Gravatars”. Please advise in comments!