Anyone and Everyone:

My husband and I worked VERY hard to find a niche' and built our website from scratch. It's an excellent idea with marketable products. However, we constructed a second business that was birthed from this first one.
We have not had the time to market said first business as we've been slammed with business from the second company. My question is this: should we bail on the first company despite its potential? Can we sell it? Can we dissolve it and resurrect it later? Please visit the site: www.praiseandplay.com.
All opinions will be considered. Feedback is critical as he wants to shut it down immediately because we're not selling anything and it's costing us more to keep it up than we can afford. I think, however, that it's got potential but we just don't know how to get the business working for itself while we work OVER full-time on said second business. Confusing, yes?

Thank you for your time and input.

Good Morning;

This must be a difficult decision for you and I feel your frustration. Ultimately however, it is one you and your husband must make based on what is best for your situation.

You have a nice website, with a sound, niche product line. I think we would all agree that there are many things you could do to start getting this website moving in the right direction, but not if as you say, time is the biggest challenge.

Select Keyword marketing, partnering with other similar minded websites, link exchanges, auctions (especially this time of year), ect, ect all would help in increasing the viability of this aspect of your business progressing. But, only if you have the time and energy to persue.

Evaluate what the site is costing monthly to host, ect. Keep in mind, by pulling it down entirely, you are destroying any progress your site has made through search engines, links and so forth. It may be worth leaving up if ONLY for this reason.

If you believe within the next 3-6 months, time will allow you to persue on a more committed effort, I would maintain if at all possible. If you do not feel more time will become available to you, you may want to explore alternatives. But, if sales are minimal, the value of your enterprise would also be minimal. To get maximum value out of a selling this business, you may still want to focus on growing it first!

Thats my 2 cents. Hope it helps.

Rob Siegmund
Resellers Solutions
www.resellers-solutions.com
rob@resellers-solutions.com
866.282.4199

I looked at your website and would like to offer you some advice. I have been building websites for over 5 years now and even started my own small website business. When I first started building websites I was mostly building them to sell products on them.

By the way I will admit that most of them have failed miserably. I wouldn't get any visitors and none of my products would sell. As I got more experienced in how to build websites I learned why most have failed.

And by the way I tried those so called "No html required website builder" programs. In fact, when I first started I used a website builder to build all my sites. I figured that i didn't have to know amy html because I was trying to sell stuff, not build websites for a living.

But after reading up and getting the neccesary knowledge required to build a website from scratch, create the proper layout, market it, and make sure that its easy to navigate, I learned some important lessons.

First of all, whenever you start a company that sells anything online, a website is your most important part of that business. When people visit your company or buy anything they see your site and are using it. If theirs any errors on tha page or if it loads too slowly they will leave never to return. And by the way flash on a first page is a no-no. In fact flash is a no-no anyway. Ever wonder why sites like Amazon or Overstock use simple sites with no flash?

And always have a professional design your site. Don't fall for those scam website builder programs out there or templates that you buy cheaply. This is your business so take it serious. Website design has came down alot in price the last few years, so don't scrimp on it. A designer can create the right layout, color scheme, and spot any potential problems before the website is published and your visitors see them and laugh or get mad about them.

Last but not least, don't pay for search engine optimization. Get a good designer to look over your site and help you with the content and what would be the best way to get your meta tags in order. Just make sure the designer offers this service and knows how to do it.

Of course theres always the chance that your marketing is bad or the products that you are offering is something that nobody wants. In that case sometimes you just have to chalk up your losses and just know when to throw in the towel. Yes, letting go can be hard, but losing more money when you have lost the battle can be even harder yet.

In order to keep this message from getting overly long I will end it here, but if you have any questions that you would like to ask me id be more than happy to answer them.
E-MAIL: contactbizenez@bizenez.com
Or use my contact form on my website at: www.bizenez.com

Remove the flash intro and improve your cart's design. Its too difficult to checkout with.

~Aaron
High Conversions
http://www.HighConversions.com

"We have not had the time to market said first business "

No one can know your business is out there if you don't tell them. How much is your hosting? I would find a more affordable hosting, market it and then see if it's worth shutting down. You haven't even given it a chance.


Hope this helps,
Renee
http://small-business-911.blogspot.com/

Have you considered hiring staff to manage the business while you are busy with the second one. If there is potential, why not continue... Your web site is down and I can not see the concept but if it's something that can be easily taken over by an employee, might be worth it.

FileHawk - The File Organizer
www.filehawk.com