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.

Using Amazon Verses eBay for Boosting Revenue, 7 Essential Facts for Today’s Market

By Tony Scorch

I have used both the Amazon store platform and the eBay store platform for many years. I have noticed that there is a serious shift in the marketplace and so have a lot of other customers. The main determining factor is in your target audience and knowing exactly where they hang out and where they look for products. Some audiences are clearly budget minded, which makes the “power of a deal” concept of eBay very enticing. Others are demanding of an excellent and uneventful shopping experience, that is where Amazon shines. These seven facts can help you make or break your goals for next year in selling anything online. Here are my findings, your mileage may vary.

1. Market share. Depending on your product line niche, you need to determine whether or not more listings show up in the search results for Amazon or for eBay. In all of the market lines I am familiar with and sell through, Amazon is clearly the 900 lb gorilla. One reason is that once a product is in the Amazon marketplace, it stays. It may show out of stock, but that page stays in the system and is indexed through the search engines. If you forget to renew an auction, it is not available in the eBay system. If you fail to renew that product in your store, it vanishes as well. This is a big factor in why Amazon will rank for that product even if they are out of stock Advantage: Amazon.

2. Stigma There is a certain stigma building about eBay and that is that most people think it is for amateurs. The Internet is becoming more trusted and people are learning how to use it effectively. Thus they are becoming smarter and more picky about who they purchase from. Amazon has built itself as a trusted partner through their customer service, they bend over backwards to take care of their customers. Advantage: Amazon

3. Fulfillment. Amazon has a fulfillment program which allows companies or individuals to send Amazon stock and let them store that item for them. When that item sells, its shows as being stocked and sold by Amazon. This helps a lot with customers trust factor, knowing that Amazon is going to ship it in a timely manner and that they really do not have to “take a chance” on a vendor they are not familiar with. This also frees up a tremendous amount of time for the vendor since they do not have to touch the item in the sales process. Amazon picks and sends the product and notifies you of the sale. This makes managing your inventory much easier and allows you to just send Amazon products to keep your inventory supplied. This means instead of sending out orders individually, you send them by the case instead. This is a huge amount of time saved. Advantage: Amazon

4. Fees. Amazon charges 15% for their fee in processing and selling your product. Our experience with eBay has been about the same percentage by the time you add up the launch fee, the final value fee and the Paypal fee. Not to mention the time you spend touching the product and getting it to your shipper or freight company. So this 15% seems to be a wash and makes fulfilling through Amazon more desirable in the sense of time management. Advantage: Amazon

5. Time Management. Looking through the back ends of Amazon and eBay Stores for inventory can take a little time. With eBay, you have to cross check with your own inventory to make sure you have what you are advertising. If you are out of inventory when you say you have it on eBay, you will incur negative feedback through eBay. You also have to make sure your graphics are stored correctly and if you use a third party software, that those pictures are active. Advantage: Amazon

6. Credibility Having a store front with your company name is a great way to boost name recognition. Although either site does not give you any real link benefit from your name, having your name out there in many venues is excellent. A lot of people still use eBay, so it is still a great place to start and get your name out there. Amazon still does not promote your name, but will list it somewhere on the product page, again the more the merrier. Advantage: Tie( both)

7. Volume The real test is in how much volume you move. Depending on your product line, this can be measured and used to figure out the best venue.eBay publishes a “HOT” list and that varies per month. If you just use Amazon’s fulfillment program, it means your product goes out all the time. It delivers sales at all times 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Advantage: Amazon

Summary

It may seem like Amazon is the clear winner, and in my opinion it is true. I have learned to use the leverage of the immense power of both companies marketing budgets to my advantage and so can you. Of course you are the real expert concerning your product line and where your target audience lives.

Tony Scorch is content provider specializing in ecommerce products such as pilot supplies and home and garden supplies. If you are interested in contacting Tony for custom content for your site feel free to send email at this address.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tony_Scorch
http://EzineArticles.com/?Using-Amazon-Verses-eBay-for-Boosting-Revenue,-7-Essential-Facts-for-Todays-Market&id=5636841

By Tony Scorch

As a legitimate seller I would love to run campaigns with the following headlines, if I could get away with it.

• “My products do not suck, you will be glad you paid for them”
• “I am not ripping you off, I am just not that clever’
• “Yes we are legitimate, and no we don’t sell crap”
• “I am not a scammer, I am not a BS artist, and I am not some mindless criminal that cannot figure out how to contribute to society. I sell this Product (insert product name here) if you are looking for this product, here it is. I would rather sell it to you and build a good relationship with you so that I can in turn, sell you more stuff in the future. This is good for me and good for you.

Can you imagine these as Google pay per click ads?

Imagine how your world would be if the words “cheap”, “easy”, “free” and “instant” did not exist. Ads or services that promote this type of banter hurt most legitimate sellers in the market place. Most people (consumers) seem to be suckered into things that are easy or cheap.

I say this because most people are lazy, (yeah I said it) they do not want to take the time to do something right and somehow are predisposed into thinking that some seller really has their best interests in mind. Sellers that put packages together or sell concepts based on the word “easy” are right up there with spammers in my opinion. Most do not want to legitimately give their consumers good value or content for the money. Instead they opt for the quick and easy buck and move onto something else.

This type of sales tactic really hurts everyone in the long run.

A Persona is Created

Because most people have been ripped off at one time or another, they become wary of what you are buying either online or in a regular storefront. I find that I tend to ask the question of ‘what’s the real deal” to myself on a regular basis. Today’s sales tactics are getting more and cleverer as people tighten up their wallets. So when a person gets ripped off once, they automatically assume that you are trying to rip them off again as a seller. This makes the job of selling more and more difficult.

So how do we fix it?The only real way to fix it is by encouraging one potential seller at a time. If you are a potential seller, do your homework and offer good value to customers. Build good relationships with them, offer them deals, become an authority on your subject matter. That is what people want.

They want service and someone who cares. If you are a potential seller but don’t like to work hard, get a job. Yeah, I said it; we don’t need more mediocrity thank you very much. Its hard enough trying to get good content out their and indexed so real people can buy them. If you want the quick buck, do something else. The other way to fix it would be having some sort of official enforcement, but we all know that is not going to happen any time soon.

Tony Scorch is a contributing editor to Do it Yourself Manufacturing that is a site that helps you identify the best small business opportunities on the internet today and promotes manufacturing yourself as a product. You can also find business videos on the site to help you in your business research for starting a small business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tony_Scorch
http://EzineArticles.com/?Will-the-Real-eCommerce-Sellers-Please-Stand-Up?&id=2490579

Last year I included two trade shows into my calender and learned some really valuable lessons.  I attended shows that were related to my niche and accomplished several things.  These included

• Meet a lot of people and competitors in my field
• Find new products that I could carry on my website
• Take lots of pictures that I could use to blog fresh content onto my blogs
• Get my creative juices flowing

I did all these things and both shows were a huge success for me.  I met a lot of people and added a lot of product to my sites.  Not only was everyone that was anyone in the industry at these shows, but I also made a lot of contacts from others that attended.  One of my biggest takeaways was that a lot of the vendors that displayed at the shows had signs up that stated “vendors or distributors wanted”  This was like a holding bait out and I was eager to bite.  Some of these vendors I had been trying to get the attention of for a very long time.  Here they were looking for me.

That got me thinking, I am putting together a plan for next year to work even smarter.  Why not become one of those vendors and display my items at that show and find a few people to sell my items, much like an affiliate program?  This is very easy to do, but you have to be prepared.

Look Good

One of the things I noticed is that some booths looked better than others, some were very elaborate.  Professional graphics make all the difference here and you have to be ready.  You need tables and chairs and tablecloths too.  Have really nice Trades how displays makes a big difference.  These types of displays can be used over and over again and are a great investment.  A lot of booths also have Vinyl banners.

Whatever you do, you have to be prepared to follow up with your potential new customers.  Thinking through the details makes all the differences.  I was most impressed with companies that did this.  The good ones had dealer packets ready to hand out with all the details you would want to ask about.  This saved you the conversation of asking the same thing over and over again.

Distance

If the tradeshow you want to work is far away from your office or home location, then the real challenge is getting your gear to the show.  I was fortunate enough to be able to plan a small rental van into the plans.  This holds all our tables, and displays and the small amount of stock I would be using for demonstrations.  This can be a great way to gain exposure and explode growth in your custom products.

This post is not a question but more of a tip or technique you can use.  How were your ecommerce sales this holiday?  I had the highest sales ever and here is how I killed it.  You must have a indexed site that is established, I also recommend using an email marketing campaign along with this.  You have read about this concept but its worth repeating because its very effective….Give your customer value.  Here is how I did it.

1. Choose the item(s) you want to promote and make sure you have enough inventory and a good a good shipping system in place.
2. Create (yep) some sort of accessory kit or bonus bundle that does not suck.  I say this because there are so many sites or retail storefronts that say, buy this thing and get this really cheap whatever it is, for free.  It’s highly unmotivating.  Blow their mind, its tax deductable.  I shop for bonus bundles when I am ordering from my vendors whether its in the US or I am importing.  Find several items that you can put together that are inexpensive to buy in bulk (importing is great for this) then combine them as a kit.  For example I bought a bundle of stuff that cost me $13 but actually had a retail value of $103.  Take pictures of this cool kit and make decent graphics.  Now think of this, If I just lowered the price of my product by $13, it would have been a snoozer (regular price item is $179 to $229) but if you give them $100 worth of stuff its instant buzz.
3. Create your coupon codes to program your shopping cart.
4. Make a home page graphic to get the most attention.
5. Feature this promotion in your email marketing campaign.
6. Blog it on your blogs (yes more than one)
7. I also run the ad right next to some sort of newsletter sign up box or giveaway, build build build the list.
8. Next write 10 to 20 different variations of tweets about your promotion, Give this to your SEO person.  My guy has over 200 accounts (which is somewhat low) and have them start tweeting. Use good twitter manners and dont spam .   If you dont have someone with that many twitter accounts, find one.
9. Go to every relevant social site and forum and tell the world about the special.  If you can make a video about it, do it, then upload it to all video sites.  My particular product does not do super well on video.
10. I then also blogged the special on my blog matrix, not one blog but many blogs, all theme relevant.

Be organized, make your plan, tape it to the wall and tweak the heck out of it.  This promotion yielded a 98% increase in sales over Dec of 2008.  It will inspire you to have some sort of whopper promotion going every month.  Build one for each month and figure out your own road map.  Of course you will get more of a bump over the holidays, but I make it work much more consistently so that it is now a matter of tweaking.  Good luck!

Every once in a while you come across something pretty neat that is directly related to a new business idea.  If you are interested in the jewelry business, this company is a good opportunity to get going quickly.

To summarize what this site is about we have reviewed it and will include the details.

Details

• drop ship turnkey site
• pre loaded with 20,000 products
• $995 down and $50 per month.  Don’t let this number scare you, it really is pretty inexpensive when you consider you get the site and you do not have to hunt down any of the products.
• You get a customized logo
• Marketing tools (free data feed)
• Extensive FAQ’s section

Website Details

Your Turnkey Drop Ship Website Includes

• Clean and crisp high-resolution images with white backgrounds and image zoom functionality
• Products pre-categorized into collections for easy navigating
• Advanced search, search by price and keyword search capabilities
• ‘Email To Friend’ option on all product pages
• Mailing list with customer email addresses automatically added when orders are placed
• Email template generator to send promotional email blasts to your mailing list
• A complete shopping cart pre-integrated into your website
• Pre-optimized website with relevant meta tags ready for major search engine crawling
• Promotional messages displayed in FLASH on homepage
• ‘Last Updated’ date stamp on every page of the website
• Updated ‘Order Status’ and tracking information
• Promotional offers such as free shipping, jewelry box and certificate of authenticity

In order to be truly interactive, we really should have put this post out long ago.  So we are doing it now with a call for comments and questions.  What kind of help do you need?  We are prepared to tailor special sections, articles, video, or what ever it takes to get your questions answered and get you moving on your way.  To help you with this please refer to the following sections and include that in your reply or comment.

E-commerce

• Product Ideas
• Store front platforms
• Building the site
• Hosting the site
• Finding products after I get selling my own
• How to produce my own product locally

Importing

• Where to find product
• More information
• Where to find a sourcing agent
• Importing and selling on Ebay
• How to deal with customs.

Blogging

• What topic to blog about
• Where to set up my site
• Costs
• How can I make money at blogging?
• Differences between services
• How fast can I start

Ebay

• How to get started
• Where to host pictures
• Paypal

Information Products

• Where to get them made
• What topics do I pick
• I can’t write, now what?

So now comes the fun part, if you have signed up for our newsletter, take it a step further and ask us a question.  You can email us directly at our email address.  We are all about helping you get going, especially in today’s economy.  It really helps your state of mind when you know you have something going and can constantly work on it.

If you are thinking about getting started with an online or home based business.  You can easily get overloaded with a ton of responses from all sorts of people in the business.  Most will say that their business is the best or most profitable.  A lot of time that is because they think its the best because it is the field they are in.  This is similar to someone saying the pizza is best from their home town just because its what they know and what they like.

What you need is the basic facts to get started, a place to learn the basics.  When you have those basics, then you can go on and start to sift out the gems from the rocks.  There are a lot of rocks out there.  We have found a site that is a video site and it teaches you how to get started in your home based business.  It gives you the basic dynamics of what to look for and explains some very important facts.

Buy a business on Ebay?

If you think a good idea is to buy a premade or existing business for sale on Ebay, then you really need to look at this site too since they really focus on it.  There is a lot of garbage out there and if you do not know what to look for, you will get separated from your hard earned cash.  The site includes a membership and you can easily get through all the material without having to sign up for another month.  The best part is the checklist that you can take with you (print) and use a valuable reference in whatever site you choose to buy (or create).

You can find all this information plus a bunch of free stuff in their guest section.

http://www.internetbusinessnavigator.com

This one I highly recommend.

Time management

• So when your product ships from overseas you basically do not touch them or handle them at all when you use fulfillment.  You pay a monthly fee per pallet that covers the storage and a freight charge for shipping the product out.  Most fulfillment businesses ship a lot of packages and are willing to pass some of the savings on to you.
• So basically you do not handle your product at all from the time it leaves the manufacturer to the time it arrives to the customer.  This in itself is much better for most business owners in the long run.
• You have to individually crunch your own numbers to see if it will work for you.  You also need to take into account that your product needs to be a complete unit for the fulfillment scenario to work best.  If you have to combine products or do any type of assembly, it takes away from the profit scenario and increases costs.
• Typical storage charges can be from $8 per pallet to $20 per pallet, depending on where they are stored.

Shipping costs

Another factor is shipping costs.  You do not want to pay full retail shipping to your fulfillment company that is just wrong.  A 20% discount to new customers is not unheard of with a decent volume of shipping.  If you have a fulfillment center centrally located in the country, then you can ship to either the west coast or the east cost with reasonable costs.  If your center is on either cost, you have higher costs when sending to the opposite coast.  For example, if your fulfillment is in California, and you ship to New York, then that is going to cost you more to send a box than it would to Arizona.  Having an office centrally located is a good advantage over time.

Summary

Personally I have done both types of shipping discussed in this article.  I may have switched to fulfillment sooner, had I known some of the details discussed here.  Depending on what type of ecommerce store you run, it may be necessary to use a combination of both types.  Larger operations use more than one fulfillment center to handle shipments.  Usually they have one on each coast to take advantage of the shipping cost savings.  Finding the right system for you involves a bit of homework and some brainstorming.  This is a small price to pay for not being held hostage to all the details of shipping your product to your customer.

Ecommerce Shipping and Fulfillment Part 1

Ecommerce Shipping and Fulfillment Part 2

Fulfillment

So how do you touch your items less and spend less money?  Fulfillment is a different way of looking at the physical process of moving your items and touching them less

Here is a break down of things you do NOT do, but still gets done by someone else.

• Items unloaded from ship, trucked to warehouse near port
• Shipping container stripped out (unloaded) and put on pallets
• Items labeled and shipped to your customers when ordered.

So how do you save money?  Most of the money you save is in time.  Most online business owners today get sucked into a vortex of time wasting activities, not realizing how much time they give away working “in” their businesses when they should be working “on” their businesses.  Here is a sample breakdown of how the fulfillment process can save you money.  Substitute your own money amounts into the examples.

• Unloading the truck and moving into warehouse.  Most likely a full day’s work plus hiring or employing some help.  Generally you can figure 3 people to unload the typical twenty foot container.  (the reason you need help is that typical trucking vendors allow you two hours to unload, you cannot unload this all by yourself in two hours)
• You will need a forklift and pallet jack unless you have a loading bay. (most do not)
• Items will have to be stacked in some particular order according to stock numbers to keep the inventory organized.  This can take a good chunk of time depending on what you are receiving.  Personally we remove all the items from the truck and spread them out before we move them inside.  When overseas manufacturers load your containers, they do not do it with any particular order, so things can be mixed and matched to load maximum volume into the container.
• Product may need to be reboxed or combined for final product assembly.
• Product then needs to be “picked” or selected, when the customer orders it.  The shipping label, packing invoices are printed and then it somehow makes it way to UPS or Fed Ex for shipping.  All of this takes time.  If you hire someone or employ someone, this can be many hours of their job functions.

If your are looking for Part 1 of Ecommerce Shipping and Fulfillment