FAQs

General

What do I sell?

The most common question we get so we will give you the most common answer we can come up with.  I don’t know, do you research, read the articles in the article section and you will figure it out fast.

Whats a realistic budget?

If you’re aiming for starting up with auctions, you can start with next to nothing.  Almost everything is free but you have to pay the insertion fees, which go right on your credit card.  If you are going to start selling via a website, the minimum I would have set aside would be $1000 and that is if
you do everything for yourself.

Should I worry about Patents in the beginning?

No, Anyone who wants something you have only has to change it by 20%
and they can get around any patent laws.  Chances are you will be working
under the radar of most companies and will not raise any alarms until you
get to a threatening size.

Should I start by myself or get coaching first?

It all depends on how much time you have, how hard you are willing to work, and how easily you get frustrated.  I am a big fan of paying for help and
wisdom.

What about wholesalers?

It’s an easy way to test a market and can give you some valuable data to
decide if manufacturing a product line is right for you.  We often will buy
something from a dropshipper or wholesaler and use them to test markets.
If the markets have the right demand we will create our own source.

Do you have any drop shipping information?

Go here (link to wwbrands.html)

What is easier to start, Auction or Website?

Auction.

Whats a niche?

Niche means speciality.  You can drill down to brand names if you need to.
For example, a tool site is fairly broad, but a niche example would be
cordless drills, going further to brand names would be Bosch Cordless Drills.

Whats an affiliate program?

An affliate is someone who sells someone elses product for a commission.
There are many people who write books and software and pay other people
(salesman) to sell their goods.  Usually the commissions are handled by
bigger companies that manage the programs.

Should I ever buy goods that are store returns by the pallet?

In my opinion, no.  You do not know who is legit and its like a grab bag.
You really don’t know exactly what your getting and there is no way of
knowing who cherry picked the best items out of your lot.

Should I get a PayPal account?

Absolutely, its free and super popular.

How do I find companies to produce goods for me according to my design?

Read the importing article found here. (link)

Auctions

Is Vendio better than other Auction Management programs or services?

Ask 10 people and you will get 10 different answers.  I love em.  Its super easy and I have never had one problem.

Ecommerce

What web editing software should I use?

Well it depends on what you want to do.  If you are just getting started you can use Yahoo’s site builder software which is free.  It is very similar to Front Page.  Front Page is a good software to use as well if you are a beginner.  Some web hosting sites will offer FrontPage extensions, which means you can use front page files on their sites (or they support it)  I personally think Yahoo’s is very good for just starting out.  If you want to step up to something more powerful, Dreamweaver  and Adobe
make excellent software with all the bells and whistles.

Do you recommend any of those services that offer the site, hosting, cart and system all in one?

I have only used one, and it was awful.  You could not control anything and even moving a picture around the page was painful.  There is a newer service called Blue Voda, but I do not have any experience with it.

Whats a good credit card processor to start with?

Paypal has a shopping cart API that works excellent and is very easy to use.  They charge $25 per month which is half of what everyone else charges and it’s EASY.

eBay Specific

Whats better, an Ebay Store or running auctions?

Both have their advantages.  A store is a place you put your items and they sit there until someone comes along to buy them.  You can search Ebay stores, but not many people do.  They mostly search by auction.  So when ever you launch an auction, Ebay will feature your stores inventory at the bottom of the auction.  The more auctions, the more advertising for your
store.  Store inventory is cheaper to list than auctions are.  So it pays to have a decent amount of items in your store.  Stores start at $15 per month.