by MATTHEW TOREN There’s a big difference between visitors and customers. The logic is simple: Would you rather your startup have 10,000 monthly visitors to its site with a 10 percent sales conversion or attract the attention of 100,000 visitors with only a few finally deciding to buy from you? This question, as simplistic as it is, remains a big source of frustration for many online entrepreneurs. They often invest a lot of time, energy and finances to drive traffic to their sites, only to find out these people are not even the ones they want to fish out in the first place. So how can you steer clear from the many traps of aimless traffic generation? Here are five tips: 1. Be a problem solver. You have to admit that at least part of business success has to do with the timeliness of your products or services. You must answer people’s needs. The key is settling into a business that has problems you really love to solve, with customers whose pressing needs you are very good at addressing. When you’re able to identify your niche, you don’t only go out there to earn, you have a unique passion and an offering that suits the needs of those people. 2. Get into your customers’ psyche. People buy not only because they need things, they often buy to satisfy something deeper in them. It’s often the feeling they associate with a product that they finally make the decision to buy. Everybody needs a pair of shoes, but not just any shoes can satisfy that need. This is when branding, reputation and customer service come into play. In fact, this is why there is marketing in the first place. Get into what excites and interests your target market. This is the only way you can tailor-fit your campaign to the people who would not think twice of paying for what you have to offer. 3. Where are your customers? In online marketing, determining how your market interacts with the Internet is very important. It gives you leads to “where” they are online. Online behavior can point you to what sites they frequent, the social-media networks they prefer, the news they’re more likely to read and so on. If you know where they are, you can be sure to focus on places you need to have a commanding presence. This assures you of a steady stream of traffic of ready-to-pay customers, and it prevents you from effectively barking up the wrong tree. We all know how costly and time consuming that can be. 4. Do you really know them? To really pinpoint who your target customer is, you’ll want to dig in deep… find out how they tick, if you will. The key is to learn about them, even change with them over time. So basically, this means you can’t just buy one customer list and operate off that in perpetuity. You’ll need to continuously find out about your target audience. Are they reading things you should be reading? Do they shop at stores you’ve never heard of? All of these puzzle pieces could fit together and help you identify the bigger customer picture, if you’re willing to spend time accumulating them. 5. Close in on the deal. Once you know your customers and understanding where they are and how they think, you can specifically design an online marketing campaign that appeals to those people who would love to pay for your products or services. By being a problem solver, you’re forced to know yourself and understand your brand’s strengths and weaknesses. But understanding who you want to engage with online really seals the success of your business. What customer-targeting strategies would you suggest fellow entrepreneurs follow? Let us know in the comments section below. (First published on :youngentrepreneur.com)

BY MICHELLE GOODMAN

Nikhil Arora, 25, and Alejandro Velez, 24, didn't plan on being mushroom farmers. In 2009, during their last semester at the

university  of California, Berkeley, Arora lined up a corporate consulting job and Velez nabbed one in investment banking.

But a lecture on sustainability in a business ethics class changed all that. Their professor mentioned that he had heard it was possible to grow edible mushrooms in recycled coffee grounds.

"No one had ever taken that idea and done anything with it commercially," Arora says. Intrigued by the idea, the students took to Velez's fraternity kitchen, where they set up 10 paint buckets of used coffee grounds fertilized with oyster mushroom spawn. Ten days later, they had sprouted their first crop.

They conceived a business, fueled by a $5,000 prize from a campus innovation competition that allowed them to buy a van and rent a 200-square-foot warehouse. "At that point, that was like giving a million dollars to us," Arora recalls.

Two weeks shy of graduation, Arora and Velez nixed their plans to join corporate America. They spent the summer couchsurfing and giving themselves a crash course in urban farming, tweaking variables like humidity, airflow and temperature. The investment paid off. That October, they sold their first mushrooms to Whole Foods Market in Berkeley. "We still have that invoice on our wall," Arora says.

Soon they branched out into manufacturing and distributing indoor grow-at-home gourmet mushroom kits using recycled coffee grounds as "soil"; this became the basis for their company, Back to the Roots. "We started off doing the fresh mushrooms, then both the mushrooms and kits, and now just the kits," Arora says. "We were almost out of business doing both ... realizing they are very different operations--consumer-branded product vs. fresh produce--and we had to pick one to really execute."

Today, Back to the Roots operates out of a 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Oakland, Calif., selling its DIY mushroom kits to 2,500 retailers internationally, including Whole Foods, Safeway, Home Depot, Loblaws in Canada and Three-Sixty in Hong Kong, as well as directly to consumers online. Revenue reached $1.3 million in 2011 and is projected at $5 million this year. Consumer purchases of the $19.95 mushroom kits through the company's website account for 20 percent of all revenue.

To produce the at-home kits, Back to the Roots collects at least 40,000 pounds of used coffee grounds each week from 30 Peet's Coffee & Tea locations. This spared landfills 1 million pounds of coffee grounds in 2011; this year, Back to the Roots is on track to recycle 3.6 million pounds.

Arora and Velez take pride in having grown their sustainable food business organically, without VC or equity funding. To date, their most substantial cash infusion has been $125,000 in prizes from business-plan competitions, including two worth $50,000. To help ensure their employees share their enthusiasm, the owners divide half the company's profits among the 31-person team at year's end. "It's a fun way to align everyone to the same goal," Arora says. "We're all growing together. We really want to build a lifetime, generational brand."

(First published on entrepreneur.com)