Return on the investment?

Hi just a quick question for you guys. When you invested the time and money into building your ecommerce site... how long was it before you started to see a return on your investment?

We recently had an online shop built selling a wide range of safety signage and signs to the industry and would just be nice to hear some feedback on how long it took you guys.

Cheers.

It is largely depends on the products that you carry. I know someone who has a toy stores and he is able to generate 10,000 dollars of sales in only 2 months. However, they spend a lot of money in marketing by buying advertisement from some related web sites. You may want to give it a try.

It a little irrelevant...

From the guy that knows everything in SEO to the person that knows nothing and both relying on organic search to feed their hunger... are the extremes.

From the guy that knows everything about PPC and isn't concerned about "budget" to the guy they dabbles around 2p phrases... are equal extremes.

From the guy that has 140 hour work week to dedicate to the task to the guy that does it "after work, family, and TV time... are more extremes.

The question you should be asking... depend on a great many specifics

1. How long did it take you to learn to be competent in organic SEO or PPC?

2. How much trial and error did you run into? [deadends]

3. What budgets in time did you invest in learning each day or week?

4. What $ did you start with as your investment

5. Are you a SEO for others, a small business owner or an employee of a company?

Just asking how long it took you guys... isn't going to receive a consistent response... "it all depends on 6 things"...

1. Time availability
2. Desire to actually learn
3. Your attention to detail (a huge advantage/disadvantage)
4. Your ability to prioritize
5. Your ability to multi-task
6. Your perserverance

If you're really weak in any of these you won't likely be successful in doing your own SEO.

Candidly, if you're functionally working "elsewhere" and that isn't in a SEO firm or a company that has you working as a learning SEO... and your SEO learning is tertiary to that "first job" and the need to implement a strategy before you actually learned one... you won't likely ever be a success story... without needing a few years of figure out what you don't know you need to figure out... and then start figuring that out.

In going the PPC route it is very easy to lose your shirt if you don't know what you are doing. Even after you know what you are doing you can blow a load of dough figuring out how to get an ad visible for low cost and then you have conversions.

So, even if you are successful at SEO you still must succeed at marketing your product and efficient execution of the business.

You can waste enormous amounts of money with expert SEO or SEM on a site that does not convert or in a market where sales are difficult.