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.

I have some advice from you, but it tends to go a bit different than what you get on here.  Why on earth would you want to get your products into a bigger department store?  First of all, if you are new to the business, this takes some time and experience.  For example the buyers that work for these large chains have a manufacture list and can go direct to your source if they want to.  They really do not need a middle man, and I say who cares.  What you should really do is develop your own brand with these products and open a website that is niche oriented.  Niche is where the future is, niche is authority and Google and other search engines love authority.  My brother has an account with Walmart that took him 9 years to get into.  They (Walmart) has beat his pricing and packaging down almost to the point of pitiful margins.  He does much better working with his distributors and through his website.  Most people think that the major department store is really the sign of victory, but it is slowly changing.  Think about it, would you rather talk to some kid at walmart about a little bit of everything or to a expert in one particular product line.  If you specialize, like in niche markets, you are the experts and people will automatically recognize that as fact.  I hope this stretches your perception a bit.

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.

This is an excerpt from a forum post, but I do believe that it holds a nice little snippet of information, which is the name of the game.

Answer 1

“i would say , that their are so maney ” networks marketers ” that the supply is greater then the demand.”

Answer 2

“The lack of marketing due to cost can be an issue. I suggest the advertising system I am using with great results to promote my own business. It is called The Online Ad Network and you can run as many ads as you like without having to worry about spamming.  (link omitted) You can have your new advertising account up and running within minutes.

You can also build a fantastic residual income referring other advertisers!!!!  It’s simple. And it truly pays to advertise!”

Answer 3

“The main reason is that network marketing takes WORK. Most of the time people talk to their friends and family and then do not commit to finding new contacts for there product. The second reason is that the products are not products that people use or reuse daily. The product needs to be something that will stand on its own, so it can be sold at retail for a profit. The fact is that people would rather work 8 hours a day to make other people money instead of spending a few hour a day building their own business.”

My answer

In my humble opinion it is a combination of things. One being that the programs that exist are over saturated and cheesy. They may be profitable in the very beginning but quickly fade out. There is not longevity to their programs. I think people are drawn to “easy” or “fast” or “automated” when real business is none of these concepts. When they find out how much work it takes, they lose interest. I am more the proponent of building something tangible and real, something that can be controlled, built and sold when your ready. But like I said, that is my opinion, I am sure many will disagree.

Ken

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

If you inventory products for your ecommerce site finding a good solution for shipping and storing your products can always be challenging.  Most warehouse the items yourself and spend lots of time “touching” your products.  So what is “touching” and how does it cost you money?

The typical scenario

You bring in goods from overseas and they get off a boat and are trucked to your location.  You (the receiver) unload and move them into a warehouse.  Generally you will spend some time inspecting your inventory and organizing it so that you can pick your items and ship in an effective manner.  Sometimes if the packaging is not complete, you many find yourself repacking or re boxing items for final shipping.  So here is how the “touching” is applied

• Unloading it off the truck, you have to do this
• Into the warehouse
• Organizing in the warehouse
• Possible repacking
• Final pick for shipment to the customer who ordered it

This is five times that the item is touched, moved, processed or handled.  If you are smart, you most likely have an employee do this work, which means you pay the employee and manage the process.  Not counted here is the managing of the items coming from port and getting to your ware house that is a separate discussion.  The warehouse cost is also not included in the cost at this particular point.

Every year credit card theft increases.  Every year online fraud increases as well.  If you sell any type of product online, chances are pretty high that there will be some sort of fraudulent activity that you are going to have to deal with.  So why does this keep increasing?  The answer is simple, fraud pays, and people know it. The problem is simple to figure out, people are not afraid anymore because they know the system cannot or will not handle it.

Last month a customer made a purchase on my site using a stolen credit card.  A couple of days later a real nice lady that owned the credit card called me and told me that someone stole her card.  I told her I would be happy to help her and give the police everything they needed to catch the guy.  I had the name, address, phone number and email address of the cheater.  An open and shut case, right?  Wrong, the authorities could do nothing, not because they lacked information, but because they are overloaded.  So I with my wild imagination came up with the perfect solution.

I will take the time to now warn you, this solution can be considered unethical, so if you get jammed up about that, you might want to go read some other article about something else.  My solution actually solves problems creates jobs and creates a better place to live.  You also might get a laugh out of it which is a bonus.

New Business Opportunities

The best idea of the year is called Product recovery.  Here is the theory behind it and an explanation of how it works.

Theory

Product Recovery is kind of a conglomeration of the Police, The Repo man, The Better Business Bureau and a Bounty hunter.  It also has a strong technical background (geeks) and a great accounting program.

Product Recovery might bend some rules and laws but they are highly effective in their techniques.  In some ways, not all but some, it resembles the old version of the Mafia.  I do not agree with the techniques that they employed, but you know that no one messed with them whatsoever.  For some reason everyone understands a crack in the teeth, it would seem to be the only real answer to this growing problem.  But that is not the theme, this is theory.  Here is how it works.

• Joe knucklehead uses stolen credit card on website
• Website owner ships product and afterwards finds out about the fraud, he calls Product Recovery.
• PR takes the facts and retrieves said product back from “alleged customer” using their own “collection technique”
• Website owner pays PR half the value of the item and gets his property back.