Cigar Site Seeks to Develop B-to-B Customers

Online entrepreneur Scott Hall found a new venture to acquire eight weeks ago, at an unlikely source: online classified ad service craigslist.com.

The business he purchased is MyCigarLabels.com, which markets not the stogies themselves but personalized cigar labels.

Hall wants to bring the 10-year-old site, which markets custom-made cigar labels primarily to consumers to become more of a business-to-business operation.

Already, he’s started with both paid and organic search engine marketing, with the company listing at number seven on the unpaid listings and number one on the sponsored links on Google this week.

“The market for these labels is really the event space,” he says. “I realize there’s a lot of opportunity to partner with small public relations companies and small cigar shop outlets.”

With all these efforts, he hopes to bring mycigarlabels.com up to about $300,000 in revenue in a year’s time.

In the next few weeks, Hall also plans to launch co-marketing with event planners and is doing some online advertising in some higher end magazines.

“I think because cigar labels are a luxury item I want to take this product and Web site more upscale,” he says.

On top of that, mycigarlabels.com is looking to beef up its affiliate marketing efforts, including those with cigar makers. Already, the site has relationships with at least nine other companies.