Dave's Cool Little - what?

I feel a bit like someone who heard the child yell, "The emperor has no clothes!"

A few weeks ago, I got a powerful sales letter from Tim Knox and Dave Purves, promoting "Dave's Cool Little Store." It's a site on their server into which you enter your eBay and ClickBank affiliate codes, and voila! You're in business!

Now, to my embarrassment, I have to admit that my very first thought was: "Why would anyone come to my store? What makes it special? How can I set it apart from all the other identical stores out there?" I should have followed that thought to its natural conclusion.

But having been caught up in Tim's excellent copy, and figuring that since he's made a lot more money on the Internet than I had, I paid the $97.

My store - http://www.joelscoolstore.com - was set up quickly.

And then? Nothing.

I sent out some mailings. Nothing.

I looked around for people on the Web who were having success with their "cool stores." Couldn't find any.

Then someone (David Vallieres, I think) suggested "tuning" the meta keywords to a niche topic, and directing traffic there on that basis. I clutched at that straw, and did that. Nothing.

I just looked at a calendar: I just missed Clickbank's 60-day refund deadline by 3 days.

So I want to get at least a decent blog post out of this...:-)

Go to http://www.joelscoolstore.com. DO NOT click on the banner at the top, to buy one of your own. Or wait - go ahead and click on it, because their sales copy is worth learning from. Just don't buy, unless you know something I don't.

There are lots of ways to make a quick buck on the Internet. I suspect this project made a bunch of bucks for Tim and Dave. But to build a long-term, stable business, you have to have content, which attracts traffic; you build relationships with your customers, so that when you have something to sell them, they believe you; that leads, ultimately, to monetization.

The lesson for me: Pay attention to my instincts. Do things that make sense. This didn't; and doesn't.