So how do you deal with complaints or returns of products from your online storefront?

Hmmm this is a tricky subject.  On one hand, customers complain about stuff that is legitimate such as a non functioning product or a products quality.  All of these are very valid.  They also complain about stuff that has nothing to do with you such as the service they received from UPS or USPS or the way the box looks when they get their item.  They also complain about changing their minds, and wanting a full refund without paying restocking fees.  I also know of customers who return items after taking the parts out that they wanted as well.  So how do you handle it?

1. Develop a returns budget, you are always going to get people that will return things.
2. Add a scratch n dent section to your site so that you can resell the items as returns or slightly used.  Include all the reasons why its in this category and people will buy them up like mad.
3. Develop thick skin and figure out who is trying to con you out of a return for a reason that is not valid.
4. Know your product.  If you have a big product that gets damaged, ask customers for pictures of the box, and the damaged items.  After a while you will learn the trends of where items get broken.  For example we sell a larger heavier box that Fed Ex drops on the corner of the box every now and then.  It looks the same everytime, and the same part of the item inside is damaged the same way.  A quick glance at the picture tells me what to do.
5. Talk to your shipping representive and develop a claim plan.  Tell them you know what your items look like from certain damage.  Also have them inspect the boxes of large volume items.  This cuts out the first step of them refusing your claim.
6. Develop a “shipping” section on your site that spells out in plain english what your return reasons are and what the customers can return for, then stand by your policy.
7. Do not be surprised if someone wants to fight and argue with you.  I gladly stand up for myself and my company and really do not put up with any garbage or abuse.  The mantra of “the customer is always right” is not always true. (my opinion)  Bad behavior should never be rewarded.  Realize the fact that some customers are ideal for your business.  The ones that are rude get banned from the store via their IP address.  Don’t get me wrong, but there are a lot of people out there that never learned manners and think they can speak anyway they like.
8. Take a deep breath.
9. Make a chart on your wall (I use a clipboard)  when I have a return, missing item or problem, I note it there and also note whether I emailed them or solved their problem.  When its done, I check it off the list.

Are you designing your own product to sell?  This can be very exciting and challenging at the same time.  A lot of people do not plan around the packaging.  This can become as important as the design itself, which we will get into later in this article.  If you are thinking about selling something on line, most have never given much thought to the size of their item or creation.  One of the biggest factor about selling products online is shipping.  Shipping an item is a combination of headaches and high costs.  Do not believe the cleverly crafted commercials done by the U.S. Post office.  Those commercials are created to try and breathe some life into a dying agency that is losing money.  The one part they get right is the fact that shipping can be a hassle, here are some reasons why.

• The costs are very high and will always increase.  Freight is one stable industry in regards to demand.  There will always be demand to move items back and forth.  When prices go up they are passed onto the customer and there is very little you can do about it.  The price is the price, there is no dickering over it.  With that they are always discounts to be had for shipping customers that ship a regular amount of volume but only with Fed EX and UPS.
• Most businesses have no idea how to get a discount.  If a vendor or manufacture has no idea how to get volume discounts for shipping, chances are they will transfer their shipping prices to you.  This forces you to pay close to retail prices for shipping business to business.  Its up to businesses individually to pass on reasonable shipping prices if they want to keep customers.  We have several vendors that we have dropped because they are “too busy” to contact their shippers and get a better deal.  Most of the time you can negotiate a better deal by just asking for it.
• Bigger boxes are a consideration.  I have always said that the smaller the product the better.  If you are designing a product this is something to keep in mind.  If you sell your product on Amazon and its bigger than 18″ on one side, its considered over sized and a hefty shipping charge is applied.  I personally find this quite unappealing and unacceptable.  We pulled a good selling 5 pound product off the Amazon market place because the shipping price was outrageous.  Smaller items are easy, take up less room and are cheaper to ship.  If your new product does not weigh much that is an added bonus.  Larger and heavier products are also subject to more damage. If they are heavy there is a good chance that someone will drop it because its heavy.
• Companies that get the biggest discounts do not often pass them down to customers, this is a revenue generator.  large companies that ship in volume get significant discounts with shipping companies.  This is because they ship a lot of volume and are good customers.  This reduces shipping costs and improves margins for the company.  Not all companies pass these savings on to you.  In some cases by charging regular shipping a company can in some cases make money on their shipping costs.
• Customers are demanding free shipping.  The world of online shopping has spurred a lot of companies to offer deep discounts or even free shipping on some items.  This has become so popular that a lot of customers expect free shipping all the time no matter what the item.  This puts small businesses in a bind to compete especially if they sell and ship heavy items.  A 60 pound box traveling by ground from coast to coast can cost up to $80 in some places.  This is a very real cost that has to come from somewhere.  Eventually it gets worked into the price but can be a significant part of the cost of production.  Customers want low prices and low shipping, this is our own fault and results from what I call the Walmart generation.  Add in the fact that it has to be American made and you have a real problem.  We have created a real challenge for small companies to produce items that sell well and are inexpensive to ship, heaven forbid if its made overseas.  So how do you reprogram today’s customers?  I am not sure that you can, there will have to be a correction somewhere in the future or more items will become unavailable.
• Boxes  Box sizes and availability is another detail you may want to think through.  If you can design a product to fit in a standard box, your costs will go down.  The minute you have to use a custom sized box is when your costs will increase.  A lot of companies can make you a custom box but you will want to try and avoid one of possible.

So with all these factors in place I hope you are inspired to think a little bit more creatively in regards to shipping your great new market changing product to your customers.

We put out a post about a week past about where to get t shirts for your product ideas.  A couple things were left out that I would like to add in and clarify.

1.  The set up charge.  One of the items is the dreaded screen set up charge.  This applies to shirts, mugs or anything you want to put a graphic on.  If you are going to do a small run to test or figure out demand, this can have an impact.  On a set of coffee mugs we wanted to do, the screen charge plus higher cost for a small oder (12 mugs) made the cups over $10.  Although this is ok if you have decent traffic and sales (rankings) for that page, it may deter some buyers.  This is something to think about.

2.  If you are going to do shirts, you will need to think about colors.  Colored shirts raise the price significantly.  Add on the screen set up charge and low volume order and you can be facing the same dilemna as the cups.  I have figured that for a decent offering of a new design, it will cost about $250 for a single design.  It would be less if its on a white shirt.

If you have a Facebook page for your business or service, then you probably know that you are going to want to have as many eyeballs on that page as possible.  In order to get more eyeballs, you need to get people to “like” your page.  The question for most is how do you get a lot of people to push the like button?  Ask ten people and you will most likely get ten different answers, and eight of those will be incomplete or wrong.  So here is what we are doing and we hope this is a complete list.  But first we need to look at why you want to have more likes and a social interaction.

I will start by first saying it has nothing to do with SEO.  I generally hate the whole SEO idea, when someone says this is the best SEO technique or that this does wonders for your page ranking, i usually ignore them.  I choose to change the golden rule of SEO to this statement which does not have much to do with typical techniques.

Familiarity breeds trust and trust leads to conversions.

If you truly embrace this concept the benefit of better rankings come along all by itself.  So what does this mean?  People do not want to be pitched too, I hate it and you probably do too.  There are tons of good quality sales letters out there but they really do nothing to help establish your page or your persona as a “giver”. By interacting with a community (your people on your page) you will build familiarity with your group.  Familiarity will lend itself to trust with repetition, and repetition will cause someone to eventually push the buy it button.  This very concept is the future online and you have to embrace it.  So lets look at the list

1.  Create a Facebook ad.  Your ad needs to spark interest in your page such as a conversation or a compelling interest.  I generally mix my ads with several different ads to measure the effectiveness of the ad.  For example I would have one add as a special discount for a certain product for Facebook fans only.  Then I have an ad that states “do you love __________(insert your topic) please like and join our community.  This ad works well since people are not feeling sold too.  You can get very creative with your ads and generate ad many different ones that you can to stimulate interest.

2.  Once people get to your page, you better have posts on your wall to look at.  Our page is about aviation so automatically post lots of pictures for people to look at and comment on.  I also like to ask open ended questions that make it easy for people to answer.  Take some time and post a lot of content for people to see, you want to show some activity even if you do not have anything going in the beginning, it will pick up.  I like to find videos from you tube and post them on the page.  Its free and you can find a ton of them that are on the theme of your site.  Also offer links to articles, whitepapers, places to find deals, ebooks and the like.

3.  When someone likes your page, do a small happy dance but stay focused.  You next want to go and like other pages and people’s posts in communities they hang out in.  So look at what the wall of what someone that liked my page.  Read a few posts, like some and maybe leave a comment.  The key here is other friends or subscribers of that person will see you and wander over to your page.

4.  Search for pages that are similar to yours and like them.  Why?  Because other pages friends will see that you like them and eventually wander over to your page.  Just doing this a couple times a day is effective, you do not have to go overboard, just be yourself and stay under the radar.  I generally do not friend request, it can seem weird, just participate.  The key word is become familiar.

5.  Every ten posts or so, i put up a post with a discount for a particular product I am selling.  I may run a Facebook add for a few days in tandem with the post.  After a while this will work well if you give a good discount, be generous.  My goal is to sell to them once, when I do that, I now can follow up with them via email marketing.

6.  Give stuff away.  I love this idea and nothing gets more people into a frenzy then the power of a deal.  Give something good and they will read your wall.  When they read your wall you will build trust and familiarity.

7.  Make your posts appealing to both men and women.  Try not to single any group out that may participate.  I like to create polls and target them to encourage answers from both men and women.

8.  Consider building a Facebook store tab right in your Facebook page.  I had one built right into the page that uses an api from my site.  Potential customers never have to leave Facebook to shop, they are not directed to my actual site rather they make the purchase right there.  Once in a while i will post that fact on the wall.

9.  Understand the fact that you are looking for thousands of fans.  Work slowly and consistently and you will get them.  If it sounds hard then good, nothing good is easy.  Be persistent.  Resist the urge to buy Facebook likes.  While the idea of getting thousands of likes quickly is appealing, these are most likely people who will never interact with your community.  Most are “accounts set up to look like real people” which is a marketing ploy.  Aim for real people and offer fun content.  Those people will tell their friend s who tell their friends and so on.

10.  Interact with active participants and invite them to add content to your page.  Give them the opportunity to be “important” in your community.  They will make your life easier and post all kinds of content for you making your job easier.

11.  Consider hiring or getting someone to professionally manage your community page.  This person can be a part of your organization or a firm that you hire.  They must do all the steps listed above on a regular basis.  This will allow you to concentrate on other items.  I have not had much luck finding these services with a google search.  There are two or three out there and most offer software to run your community instead of a person.  I like posting an job on odesk.com with the exact requirements i am looking for.  By paying someone to manage what you have built you can concentrate on building some other aspect or participating as well.

12.  Add your Facebook page icon to your email signature.  Don’t stop there, include it on your business cards, your forum signatures and link it on your website.  Anywhere people see you, they should also see the opportunity to join your conversation.

A blog is a great way to express yourself and stay in touch with your peers. Not all blogs are meant to focus on written content. You can be a photographer looking to showcase his talent and publish photos accompanied by a short description. You can be a businessman or salesperson promoting certain products. You can be a writer or a journalist. You can turn your blog into a private online journal. You can publish your short stories or poetry, if you trust that no one will steal them!

However, no matter the nature of its content, every blog should have an appealing design. We all know visitors always come back if they like what they see and read. This is why it is very important for you to choose a stylish blog theme that will emphasize your message and attract more readers.

WordPress is one of the most popular open source blogging tools. Unfortunately, as we all know, WordPress is most likely the best blogging platform available with tons of available themes giving you the ability to monetize your site.

Studio Press offers Genesis-powered themes and templates for WordPress blogs. Used by more than 65000 online publishers, their templates use top-notch, search engine friendly code and Genesis turn-key designs that offer you full control of the framework. For a unique, affordable fee, Studio Press offers unlimited support, updates and domains. This means you won’t have to pay more if you wish to use their themes for multiple blogs.

Don’t worry if you’re not into coding: the Studio Press website provides free tutorials to guide you through the designing process, step by step. You will be offered all the support you need, from the very basics to advanced notions such as admin management, breadcrumbs and column classes. If these don’t mean anything to you right now, just wait and see…

Developers at Studio Press have also come up with several plugins to meet your social, SEO, data and design needs. Some of these plugins (such as Simple URLs) even allow you to monitor daily traffic from outbound links that you get to create and manage. Menus, tabs, sidebars, sliders… blogging has never been more fun!

The Studio Press blog and newsletter will keep you updated and help you discover more interesting facts about the company. And of course you won’t have to pay to have access to these! Overall, Studio Press is a great tool to make the most out of your Word Press blog, and if you’re into real blogging business, then you should definitely consider their services.

I hang out on a lot of web forums and small business forums.  A lot of people ask about how to best set up a store to sell items (ecommerce)  I am always amazed at how much terrible information is passed on in forums.  Most people have no idea what they are talking about.  They share responses about what they “think” or “heard” might be good.  Here is the deal, I own and run two Yahoo stores and they are great.  You can set up a store for yourself in a weekend, however after a while you may want to make improvements and Your Store Wizards allows you to buy items and features via piece meal.  If you do not want to develop the store yourself, they also offer a complete development option.  I opted to build my stores and then put in the features little by little as the stores grew and become profitable.

Your Store Wizards offers tools and templates meant to customize and improve the functionality of your virtual store. Think outside the box! Your visitors will be thrilled to notice that your store has something different than the others, that it is unique and welcoming. These features fall into six different categories.

1.  In the Automation & Operational section you can find templates that add extra functionality to your Yahoo! Store web page, such as backup, RTML functions, productivity and templates for exporting your data. The good news is that some of these features are free!

2.  The Design Improvement category comprises a set of tools that will help you adjust the look and feel of your web page. You can customize almost everything and make your page look just like you want to!

3.  The Image Enhancement section has all the goods you can wish for when it comes to the quality of your pictures. High quality pics are very appealing to customers, and that way they will also figure out some of your product’s features at a first glance! One of the most important add-ons in this section is the image watermarking tool… better safe than sorry, right?

4.  You can deal with the marketing part of your business using the extra features in the Marketing Features category. Social networking bookmarks, shopping feeds, an awesome widget to show customers the percentage they would save if they chose your product and many, many more!

5.  Customers always prefer a website that is user friendly and easy to use. The Navigation Improvements section contains templates and tools that will make your website more organized and easier to navigate.

6.  Last, but not least, the tools in the Search Engine Optimization section will make sure that search engine queries will bring customers to the right place: your new and improved Yahoo! Store. Automated hot links, meta tags, site maps and SEO copywriting tools… you couldn’t ask for more.

You are the merchant. Your Store Wizards brings the tools of the trade. What are you waiting for? This is one of the best tools you can get to make the most out of your online business. You won’t regret investing in these awesome tools.

This is a combination article that I will hope spawn some really good ideas.  I will show you a link later on in this article to a great site for some great ideas.  I am not affiliated with the site whatsoever.  I stumbled across it the other day while looking for something for one of our sites.  I found some amazing ideas and wanted to share them with you.  First we will go over some facts and then dive into the site.  After you are done with the site you may need to read the facts again to crystallize your idea.

First a couple of facts:

1. If you create a product, you never create something stand alone, you create a line of products.
2. If you build a product line, you build it around a niche or singular theme.  You want to avoid a “gift site” or something similar.  You want to offer a site that will appeal to a certain demographic.
3. You always want to test the market in small quantities.  It would be ideal to buy items in small quantities at higher prices to test them and see if they sell.  Then if they do, you buy in bigger quantities to get a better cost price.  Then and only then, if your product is a hit, you source it overseas.  This way if your product is a dud, you only have a dozen to dump somewhere like Ebay or Craigslist.

Premise for this example

• We are going to take some artwork and use it to print on shirts, mugs, water bottles and bags.  These products promote your theme which is in the artwork.  For example if you have a car or aviation site, you would be selling something aviation or automobile oriented.  The extra products here support your main product and add a product line to make it complete.  Shirts with a bunch of different cars and phrases are a good example of a shop that sold model cars or airplanes.
• You do not have to be an artist.  You just hire one, why try and do everything.  You can take out an ad on Craigslist and find a million starving artists in an afternoon.  If that does not work, go to www.odesk.com and fill out an ad there.  You will be swamped.

Pick out items that match your desires and products and get to work.  In this example we have an aviation site that caters to pilots and flight attendants.  Our main goal is to add more products and fatten up the offerings on the site.  We also sell at tradeshows.  We offer lots of aviation apparel products but are always looking to test more.  The designs that sell well, we now put on a coffee cup or bag and see how that sells.  Because the design is tested, it’s only a matter of time before it reaches a decent quantity that allows us to lower costs.

This is the site http://www.discountmugs.com

Do not let the name fool you, they have a lot of different items.  Even if you do not find something to your liking, it is a great site for you to stretch your creative muscles and figure out what to sell online.

There are many simple, but important things that we often overlook and tend to ignore. Home signs are a perfect example. Think about the confusion that can be caused by the absence of only ONE home sign… would there be any sense left in this world if they all disappeared? Everything would be simply chaotic. Moreover, how would you like it if all home signs in the world looked exactly the same? So home signs also mean diversity and creativity, since most house owners often craft them themselves, or have someone else do it for them. Let’s see more about the science of carved home signs, as presented by www.carvedhomesigns.com, one of the market leaders in this fine art.

Choosing the type of wood is the first step in creating a home sign. This depends on your taste and house design. Mahogany, redwood, cedar and sugar pine are highly recommended, although not all of them are cost-effective (mahogany) or easy to find (redwood). Sugar pine is highly preferred thanks to its consistence and moisture content.

The next step is to ensure background smoothness. In order to do this, the piece of wood is treated with an alkyd or epoxy primer. For two consecutive days, alkyd satin black enamel is brushed on the surface. The background and letter colors are chosen. Letters can be black, white or polished with 23k gold (99% pure). The gold leaf is provided by Art Essentials in New York City. The superior quality of this gold leaf lies in its thinness: it is about 1000 times thinner that a human hair. The black outer border offers a stylish, efficient and easy to maintain alternative to classic home signs with no borders.

Carvedhomesigns.com take great pride in their top notch hand carving, by Richard “Dick” Clark. The great looks of their signs lie in the real chisels. This ensures the classic, traditional touch of every home sign that leaves their workshop. If you don’t believe it, then have a closer look: chisel marks can be noticed on the letter surface.

You can also opt for decorative appliqués, which are also hand carved and polished using top notch West Systems® Marine Epoxy. They are covered in the same 99% pure gold leaf – you can see it in the way they shine! This will personalize your sign and make your house more special among the other houses in your neighborhood.

Although you will have to set up the mounting hardware yourself, don’t be afraid: all necessary pieces and instructions are provided upon delivery. An installation photo essay is also available at www.carvedhomesigns.com.

You don’t have to be a trendsetter to come up with a brilliant idea for clothing. Fashion and trends change every day, but a really awesome T-shirt will never get old. Sometimes, wit and inspiration are way more valuable than a crazy design meant to be worn only one time on the catwalk. Have you ever thought of branding and selling T-shirts? Your idea can make someone’s day… or a great gift! Read on.

ShirtCity.com is more than just a website. It is an online store and a community. You can print your slogan or design on T-shirts that others can view and buy. But you have to be sure that you will get more than money out of this. To begin with, the most popular T-shirt categories you can buy or design yourself are:

• Geek
• TV serials
• Birthday
• Wedding
• Humor

You can earn up to $7 from every sale. To sell, you will have to go through three easy steps:

• Register and upload your design, on two conditions: the image has to be a vector graphic and of good quality. Registration is free.
• Open a virtual shop. This will gather all your designs in one place so visitors can view them. Of course, you set the prices and commission, ShirtCity will take care of the rest! Opening a virtual T-shirt shop is also free. Isn’t that great?
• Cooperation. ShirtCity works together with several major brands to implement individual merchandising solutions. So if your idea is really brilliant, the ShirtCity marketing team will offer advice and guide you every step of the way.

ShirtCity is a great way to earn something out of your creativity and make the first steps in entrepreneurship. Wit? Sense of humor? Creativity? Do you know what others would like to wear? What they would enjoy? Or do you simply want to try it out? Then try it out! There is nothing to lose, and you’ll have a lot of fun.

ShirtCity rewards creativity by organizing design contests regularly. The “Scribtee” section is dedicated to the winning T-shirts! The stock is usually limited to 500 pieces – this would be quite a privilege, right? Who knows… maybe your design can join the Scribtees too. So don’t waste any more time and start using your wit and creativity. Join the ShirtCity club and start selling your designs around the world. You can’t get famous if you choose to stay unnoticed!

A CNC machine is a pretty big and robust piece of equipment.  What a lot of people do not realize is that they come in many sizes that make them affordable.  So what would you use a CNC machine for?

• Prototype part creation
• making your own finished product
• small run assembly
• large run assembly
• unique woodworking projects
• unique items in any industry

CNC are computer aided router tables, which means its a very fancy printer that carves in wood.  These are not toys by any means and they do some amazing work.  The downside would be there is a bit of a learning curve in getting started. (so what)  What I like about CNC is that you can start with smaller units and work your way up to large full sized tables if you expand.  If you do any type of furniture work, the CNC table can take you to the next level.  If you are trying to produce something from idea to production, they CNC could be what you need.

In my experience with this machine, its really best to outsource your work to someone who owns the machine and can do the work you want.  The next step would be buying your own and reducing your costs after you have established the product into the market place.  What most people do not think about it is that its not all about the machine, its about having someone with some experience running the machine for you.  With a lot of practice you can learn the CAD design software and start processing your own parts or products.  You can easily do this in your garage or storage unit to get started.  Good projects are:

• small pieces of furniture
• Table legs (sold separately too)
• children’s furniture
• Artwork
• shelving
• post work
• decorative molding
• architectural pieces
• decorative boxes

You can find small CNC machines at very affordable prices here at Rockler