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.

How it works

Product recovery is very similar at this point to the repo man; their job is to get the product back.  Intimidation is at their own discretion and that is more or less the beauty of the system.  If you think about it, we tend to glorify the repo man and the bounty hunter, heck we even make TV shows about these jobs and put them on legitimate well thought of networks. When a bounty hunter brings in a man or woman, it doesn’t seem to matter if someone fell down and got a little banged up.  It’s part of the job, but not the focus.

The whole idea is to deter crime because there is now some accountability, something this country is sorely lacking.  I am not talking about a bunch of vigilantes running around chopping peoples fingers off, but there is value in persuasion.  By the way some product recovery groups specialize in international operations.  Jurisdiction and international affairs are heeded but not endorsed.  In other words, everyone who thinks they can rip you off from a foreign country is fair game.  How sick are you of the Nigerian email scams?

Contrary to popular belief Product Recovery is considered a “good guy operation” A while back there was a TV commercial that talked about how great it would be if you could tell who the good guys were.  They cemented the idea in your head by showing normal everyday vendors that were “good people” by having them wear capes.  This way you could easily identify who the good guys were.  Pretty cool idea, I wish it were that easy.  If it was Product Recovery would definitely be cape wearing contenders.

Creating jobs?

So how does this create jobs you ask?  Well their certainly is enough work out there for everyone, in fact it’s rampant.  Crime is out of control, and there are plenty of opportunities for new businesses to begin.  This creates jobs.  Every product recovery needs a good accounting department, a killer computer system a bunch of geeks (virus creation optional), large scary looking guys like Vinnie and Lou, (I can say that cause I am Italian) and a good customer service team.

When you think about the amount of crime that occurs in one city alone (think NY) and then consider all the hotbeds of activity, you have some very real potential.  So if you think this sounds stupid, look at the current and known drug cartels that are operating in the world today, they are doing the very same thing on a much higher scale.  We could go hog wild in some other examples but that would not serve this particular example well.

Summary

Funny or serious, what the world needs to do is step up.  We are so wrapped up in being civil that we are letting evil take over the world.  Self defense is part of the deal, stealing gets your hand cut off in certain countries.  We need to be civil and the owner of Product Recovery certainly needs to train his people that way, but enough is enough.  Accountability and consequences are what keep us from putting our fingers in light sockets when were children.  If you steal something, you need to know, someone is coming to get it back.

Where to go with your Budget

Here is a quick and dirty list of what you should at least consider when building your budget.  If you are in the website/ecommerce/blogging type game already, this is a familiar list.  IF you are not, you need to do your homework and learn how to implement these.  If you don’t, you will waste your money. These are not listed in any particular order.

1. Blog
2. Article Marketing
3. Social Bookmarking
4. Social Marketing
5. Forum Postings
6. Web 2.0 sites
7. Wiki’s
8. RSS Feeds
9. Directory Listings
10. Blog commenting

In summary I would like to leave you with some advice that is pretty much straight and to the point.  It is not meant to degrade or discourage anyone.  In fact if you are as bullheaded as I am, it may spur you on to make something happen.  When I was growing up, we had chores to do around the house.  Like any kid I tried to do as little as possible and cut corners where I could so I could go and do what I really wanted to do.  My father would say, “Why do it half as….”  Who wants to be known for that?  Anyone can do a mediocre job, why lump yourself in with that?  Since then I have added to that with these little morsels of learning.

1. Why be “just another _____” (fill in the blank)
2. Most people want to do things the easy way.
3. Being successful online is hard work and not easy.
4. If it was not hard, everyone would do it.
5. Easy, Guaranteed, Simple, Quick, “make big money”, “monster profits” and “fabulous opportunities” are terms for suckers.
6. Never put your success in someone else’s hands.
7. No one is as motivated as you are.
8. There is a time to outsource and time to do it yourself, but most of the time, you need to outsource it.
9. Try very hard not to “work in your business” “working on your business is much smarter.
10. Don’t just sit there, do it.

Looking for part one of The website Misnomer?

The other day I had an interesting discussion with a friend about putting up a website to sell a product line that he was starting.  To make a long story short, he offered to supply me with product if I built the site and started promoting it.  Sounds good right?  It could be if the keywords had some potential, but the conversation revealed some interesting insights.

Build it

First you have to build the site, which means you have to decide on which platform you want to build it with.  Considering the fact that I already own and operate stores, I thought it might be a good idea to use the same platform that I already use.  This makes life easier, since you don’t have to learn something new (software)  Learning takes time and stops my progress.  I don’t like to be slowed down since there is more things to do in a day then there is time.  So you could build the site yourself, switch to something new, pay someone to build it for you or just throw something up as an experiment.  Either way to make a summary out of the conversation, you are going to spend about $2000 on the site, whether you hire a basic design out or you do it yourself. (Your time is worth money remember?)

What’s behind door number two?

So let’s say you spent the two grand and now you have a site, now what?  Well this is where most people get excited since their site is finished and it’s online.  However they are not making a dime because they are not promoting it.  In fact, they had no idea that they need to promote it because most website designers don’t know a thing about promotion.  They are two different specialties.  You really need a budget to make sure your website is found by your customers.  By the way, this is not easy, and anyone that tells you that it is, is a big fat liar.    So in order to do it right, since I spent $2000 of my hard earned money, I need a blog.

Blog Please

I wont get into the specifics of why, but I will say that if you are smart you will use a blog to promote your site.  So here we go again.  Do you use a free blogging platform? (Very limited)  Do you hire it out?  Do you build it yourself?  If you have someone who knows what they are doing, you can plan to spend between $300 and $500 for decent blog and design.  This is if you know who to ask and where to go.  But don’t forget the blog needs promotion too, just like the site.  The blog works for the site, but it still needs to be promoted as well.

Door Number Three

So if your math is right you have about $2300 into this project and know one including Google knows you exist.  And if you do not exist in Google, you don’t exist period.  So you need a budget, if you’re serious.  So how much do you spend?  That my friend is the golden question that begs to be answered.  Most people would say, “Pay what you can afford”.  This to me is a mistake.  The correct answer is in the form of a question.  How much do you want to dominate in the search engines for organic search results?  If you want to make it to the first page of Google or Yahoo, then this is going to take some money and a good plan.  I am not saying you have to spend a fortune, but I am trying to get you to understand that you cannot spend $100 a month and make it happen.  You would be better off taking the $2300 you invested and taking your special someone on an all inclusive cruise.  The point of this conversation is this, if you want to be a player you have to be aggressive, have a plan and make a budget.  I know people that spend 50K a month on their plan and I know some that spend $500.  Budget is a function of keywords as well.  If you are trying to rank for the word “mortgage’, get out your checkbook or buy a lot of lotto tickets, that my friend is a long row to hoe.  However if your keywords are less competitive you can spend less.  This of course leads you to the keywords conversation which is another article (sorry)

Progress Minded People

Someone asked me the other day why I started my own business even though I had a perfectly good career in another field.  I told him that my business allows me to make progress and my career does not.  So I thought it might be a good idea to explain how this concept works. (in my mind anyway)

There are two different types of people out there when it comes to employment, there are people who work for themselves (entrepreneurs) and there are people who work for someone else. (Employees)

Employees

So let’s start with the Employee minded person and you will see what I mean.  An employee works for someone and is quite happy doing so.  Whether the position is white collar or blue collar they start at some entry level position and begin to work their way up the corporate ladder.  At some point, if they can keep the same job, they will eventually go as far as they can go.  This could even be as radical as the president of the company, but it is still the top of the chain. (See graphic)  What happens is, that particular peak never again progresses any further.  This generally is fine for most people since they made their goal and now they can enjoy the benefits of enjoying their life and their accomplishments.  If you are in this category, I applaud you and congratulate you wholeheartedly, well done.

Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneur’s brains are wired a bit different than employees.  It is not necessarily better, just different.  If you look at the graph you can see that the progress goes up, levels off for a bit and then goes up again.  Entrepreneurs need to be fed and are never really satisfied with their current status.  In this particular example there is no peak; the sky is the limit for someone in this position.  One of the reasons is that entrepreneurs are not content with making a goal and then staying there.  They simply set another goal and strive to achieve that goal again.  It can be bigger or more challenging, but it keeps their brains engaged and active.  There is always a better mousetrap.  These types of people like to control their own progress.  They like to push to make things happen and are generally unhappy when they are not making much progress.  Working for yourself is more personal since you own it.

So which are you?

I have heard some people say they are a mixture of both.  This could be partly true if you have a career and then start out to build your own business while enjoying the stability of a steady paycheck.  These people eventually quit their jobs and cross the line into a full line business man or woman.

Progressing

So how do you keep moving up the highway of learning?  I have found several useful tools that I use every week.

1. Add new products. If you are in the ecommerce field, you will find that you will always want to be adding more products.  This not only fattens up your website, but it keeps your creative juices flowing to give something to your customers that your competitors do not.
2. Brainstorm Coming up with new ideas, researching new marketing techniques or learning new skills always challenges your creativity and keeps you moving forward.  The thing I love about brainstorming with what I call the “morph” principle.  That is when you are working on an idea; it generally turns into something else that you were not thinking about.  This is where the really good money making ideas come from.
3. Outsource Outsourcing frees you up to do stuff that helps you make progress.  Making progress makes you more successful.  You would be amazed at what things you do that sap your time and keep you from being progressing.
4. Network This is very similar to outsourcing because it can give you ideas and help you become affiliated with people you might not have come into contact with.  I have met more people that I would never thought about talking to through networking.  There is always someone out there that knows more than you.
5. Plan Planning forces progress.  I do weekly planning as well as monthly planning.
6. Learn Learning a new technique or staying on top of the latest trends keeps you moving forward.  Social media is a great example of this since it really is the hottest trend on the Internet today.  There is not just one site that defines social media but hundreds of new sites.  They all have advantages and disadvantages and can all help your business.  This in itself keeps your brain engaged and working on a high level.

Paying bills is no fun. Juggling costs for a start up business is not picnic either. If you are starting out on a shoe string, you know that it can be a challenge to pay everything on time. Again being organized is key. I do some key planning on the white board before starting the business. This can help in the lean months.

1. Set up a company bank account
2. Set up a company credit card linked to the bank account
3. Set up a credit line linked to the bank account.

Pick a bank you like and set up a separate account that has nothing to do with your home account. Most banks will be more than happy to set up the credit card at the same time as well as the line of credit if you qualify. I always try to pick a credit card that has some bonus point’s perks. Today’s marketplace is competitive. If the economy is slow, banks need to come up with ways to bring in more business.

The perks are for you. Use the card for all of your expenses and build up some points. Put every expense that relates to your business on it and watch it add up. You might as well enjoy an extra gift card or airline miles if it is available. Many of the awards are useful for your business such as gift cards to Office Depot or Staples. You can use these cards to save money on the things you need for the business anyway, or you can treat yourself for being smart.

Sometimes things come up in business that you did not plan. Occasionally you will be strapped for cash and you can use your card to take up the slack. It used to be considered evil to use a credit card to start a business or finance parts of a business. However times are changing and the use of the card in a responsible way is more accepted and encouraged.

Using line of credits in some instances is gaining more credibility as well. One of the main advantages of this and the credit card route is that you can do it on your own schedule. Banks are notorious for not giving loans to new businesses. That can make it very hard to get your business going. If you are responsible and can manage budgeting the card payments, this can give you some needed flexibility. A year or two later you have a track record as a business and you will be much more likely to get a loan.

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