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!

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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)

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About 8 years ago I was looking for a way to supplement my income.  I worked for the airlines, which most people think is a good job.  However contrary to popular belief, even if you are in the cockpit, you are expendable and subject for dismissal at the moment fuel prices rise, but that is another story.

So there I am, no work and mouths to feed.  I had been selling children’s tables and chairs on Ebay for a while and it was going very well.  By the way, very good market here, the most powerful demographic online today (hint, foot stomp, wink)  But, the problem was, I could not make them fast enough in my basement to sell enough to live on. Somewhere along the way I needed a router table to make a better top and chair sides, so I built one.  I eyeballed that thing and thought I might be able to sell it better.  So I made a bunch and sales pick up.

I really needed some inserts for the table and was not able to find any.  I found a great website called “Global Sources” and found a company in India that did the Acrylic work I was looking for.  I stumbled onto this and wonder how I made it happen.  I ordered the parts, and had them shipped  to my nearest port of entry.  I will now give you highlights of all the dumb mistakes I made so the story keeps moving.

• Acted as my own freight forwarder, knew nothing about customs
• Screwed up customs form
• Had to drive to port three different times
• My goods had to be warehoused while I figured out how to get them out, I paid huge warehousing fees
• Went to load my goods into my pickup and warehouse strictly forbids loading your own goods
• Finally got items into truck and drove away not realizing that customs does not put things back the way they found them, lid to crate blew off half way home on the highway somewhere in Maryland. (if you were behind me, uh, sorry)

Despite my stupid mistakes I decide to bring more in a year later.  Do you think I used a freight forwarder this time?  Nope, I wanted to save some money.

• I did a slightly better job with customs
• I still had to pay some warehouse fees to some guy name Lou
• The port in Philadelphia is very scary, bring large friends
• I ended up paying the same price to bring something in, as I could have for retail
• Don’t try to skimp and save money, bring in a lot of goods and do it right, lesson learned

Ok now I am up to bat about 2 years later.  I have a website and want to expand my product line, so I contact another Chinese company and make arrangements.  This time I hire a freight forwarder.  You basically give them the order details and tell them to notify you when it gets here. (yeah, pretty easy)

• I ordered 10 pallets worth (called LCL, which is less than container load)
• I have to wait till truck comes which takes longer
• When truck driver comes, truck driver does not want to wait while you unload your stuff. Truck driver gives you evil eye if you don’t have forklift and muscle. (pallet jack too)
• LCL loads are prone to damage since more hands touch your stuff, I had many destroyed boxes by careless forklift drivers.
• I am learning, so this is better but I paid too much to the freight forwarder.

Now I am acting like the executive I think I would like to be.  I consider ordering a full container since I want to have less damage and get more product for my money.  I still work with same company but I have to hammer on them for quality control, lots of mistakes coming out of Chinese factory.   I order the container, but get little response from my manufacture overseas.  Why you ask?  Well it’s Chinese New Year, and basically everyone takes the month off, good luck.  Eventually I get going and give my order to the freight forwarder.

• Order comes, but the container is sealed with some kind of bolt not even Hercules can break (bring a hacksaw or grinder, just in case)
• I hire college kids with stronger backs and less sense than me. (they need money)
• I rent a forklift and pallet jack and even a friend who can drive a forklift
• We unload in less than 2 hours to my happiness.
• Everyone goes home and I am happy.
• Then the freight forwarding bill comes with surprises, a rate increase and fees not mentioned. Yep, time to find a new company.

The next order is a container from my same manufacturer and 10 pallets from a new company for two separate shipments.  This time I do more research,(I am big on research now) and hire a sourcing specialist.  I tell him my woes of poor quality, long delays and high prices.  He connects me with the right people who know what they are doing.  My sourcing agent actually goes to China, and goes straight to my manufacturer and hammers out new agreements.  He saves me money, time and grief.  I spend  less money, but he takes a small fee and so it’s like spending the same money without grief.  I now have our goods shipped to a fulfillment center, after the container hits port.

• I don’t worry
• I don’t lift boxes
• I don’t think about customs
• I don’t have to give money to a guy named Lou

Yes it is funny when I think about it now, but it is a life lesson.  The bottom line, don’t step over a dollar to pick up a dime.  Sourcing products from overseas can really bite you and cost you some serious dollars if you are not careful.  Learn about Chinese culture and how to build up relationships with factories overseas, this will help you in the long run, but that is another article.

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In this video, Dr. David Weiman of MarketingJewelry.com discusses a June 2008 Crafts Report article (“Market Saturation”) in which he is interviewed about the impact of competition on artisan handcrafted jewelry makers.
http://www.MarketingJewelry.com — sign up for the free e-newsletter!

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http://www.kameronkay.com Kameron Kay is a Malibu Jewelry Designer who shows other jewelers, and artists how to sell their pieces and crafts to shops, boutiques, and on the internet.

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Anyone that is in the Ecommerce game knows that from time to time you get a really difficult customer that you have to deal with. Because there is so much deceit online today, customers will often assume the worst and treat you accordingly. Good customer service is hard to come by these days, and this can be part of the reason why. It is the Golden rule to keep your cool and influence your customer into a calm resolution to whatever their problem is.

I remember in college taking a job as a waiter at a new restaurant. I have been waiting tables for a quite a while and knew the game pretty well. My very first customer, on my very first day, turned out to be “one of those” There was not a thing I could do to make this guy happy and it was quickly going bad, I thought I was going to be fired for sure. My boss was a very passionate and emotional woman about her restaurant. My only recourse was to say, “You know what, this guy is a jerk, and it was my day to serve him” She shrugged her shoulders and let it go. I got to keep my job and three years later the boss would walk through broken glass for me. It was life lesson that I use today in Ecommerce. Some people are just jerks.

I sell power tools on one my Ecommerce sites, and well, some people just should not own power tools. Most Ecommerce owners can tell you story after story about returns, and customer dissatisfaction and problems with delivery. I had a gentleman order a particular part and type in the wrong address in the shopping cart. So, guess where we delivered it? Right to that address, which was wrong but is somehow my fault. So the dance begins we go around and around about how to solve this dilemma. I get rude emails about how stupid we are and yada yada yada. I am trying to be cool calm and collect when it suddenly occurs to me. I don’t need this guy as a customer and he can take his part and stick it in his ear for all I care. So I fired him! Yes that is right, vamoose, your gone, here is your money back and your not welcome here any more. I can write off the $40 sale as a loss and preserve my mental health. Sometimes that is more important than anything, keeping your mind clear and focused. Why feed the stress machine?

So what’s my point? Well good customer service does solve a lot of problems, you can many times turn a negative into a positive by using good techniques such as follow up and discounts. But sometimes, you just have to turn the fire hose on and clean house a bit. Some customers are just not worth having. If you are new to the Ecommerce game, then don’t be eager to put this into regular practice, just keep it in the back of your mind that these situations exist. The customer may very well be like my passionate restaurant owner, mad one day, and then, your best customer for life.

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This is video that will help you see more information about making children’s furniture for sale.

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Every day I get asked what type of E commerce business should someone start. What kind of products to sell? What niche to enter? What about my competition? How am I supposed to compete with the nine hundred pound gorilla that is number one on Google?

To answer these questions I always ask a few of my own. The first thing you have to get into your head is that you will never be able to be the next Amazon or the next Walmart online. Those are battles you do not want to be involved with. Instead there are plenty of other opportunities that you can explore that are not as competitive.

When starting a new business I try to find an area that first interests me. The reason is because I want to make sure that I am passionate about growing it. If I am interested in it, it will hold my interest. If I have no interest, doing the work that it requires to dominate will seem overwhelming and become a burden.

Now the next one is even more important than the first. I have to make sure that I do some homework on the niche or products carried to see who is dominating the market. A few quick keywords into Google will show you who ranks for those particular products. I then take a separate sheet of paper and write down each site and start to evaluate these sites. If they are poorly constructed and weakly marketed then I can get excited. This has to be in addition to my interest factor. I will not start a site that I am very interested in but the competition is way to tough and wisely optimized. Its is an exercise in futility. Both factors have to be there or its on to the next topic. Taking your time here is where the details get exposed.

I once decided to market a friend’s site for him. His site was so poorly optimized that he could only go up. It was the typical story, someone sold him a beautiful website that was almost non functional according to the search engines. It did not even have title tags. As I dug a little deeper I realized that even though the site was 4 years old, it badly needed almost everything in regards to optimization. He only relied on Pay Per Click advertising so his organic results were non existent.

The real excitement began when I looked at his competitors. I stood in awe as I discovered that not one of his competitors sites were done well. No title tags, no meta tags, no keywords, no plan and no direction. How could this be? These are big companies making very big money but without any direction in their online presence. I realized very fast that this was going to be so dramatic that the fun would be in watching his site rise to the top of the rankings. Destroying the competition was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel, and it was.

Now, does this happen all the time? Not really, but there are plenty of hidden gems out there that are just dying to be discovered. When you put the interest factor and combine it with the competitor factor you will eventually find a winner.

The best place is to start on paper. Use the internet for ideas. I love to use Ebay for product ideas since Ebay tells you what products are the hot products for that month. That’s right, they take a lot of the work out of the process for you by telling you what products are great sellers and which ones are not. I then take those products and look for regular websites selling them and go from there. Strategy is much more fun when you have a plan.

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• Raising Ecommerce Revenue, Amazing Results

How To Generate Unique Business Ideas That Make Money?
By Abel Cheng

Every money making opportunity that you see boils down to one common thing: idea. As you know the best ideas pay. The most creative ideas pay.

The best thing about ideas is it’s free and everybody has the capability to think of ideas.

In order to be creative and innovative about ideas, you have to have knowledge. Knowledge is important. You need to know thousands of things to be creative.

Below are steps that you can take to come up with profitable innovative ideas:

1) Read and study as many things as possible about your industry or product. You need to investigate specific information of what you are going to sell. For example, if you want to be involved in real estate, you study everything about the subject matter in details. If you want to start a business, you have to know what’s going on in your industry, what sells and at what price, etc.

2) Improve general knowledge. Don’t limit yourself to only learn about things in your own industry. Learn as many topics as possible from other industries. It can be any topic. This enables you to think out of your own industry.

3) Mix and match ideas from cross industry. Once you investigate and research enough, your mind is the
storehouse of all the ideas you have studied. And this is the main source to your creative ideas. All the knowledge you have learned so far is the raw materials to produce new ideas.

4) Thinking of raw idea. After you have done your study, think hard about the solutions you want to your problem. Then stop and relax. Get a cup of coffee or go for a movie. Do something relaxing and let your subconscious mind work for you. The idea or solution will come to you at a much unexpected moment. For me, ideas always come to me before I sleep. My mind will be bombarded with ideas that I can’t stop.

5) Refine your raw idea until it’s up to your satisfaction. You can always do your own research on the raw idea by asking questions to target market to test the feasibility of the idea and how to improve the idea further.

Basically new idea is a combination of old ideas. You need to have enough old ideas to come up with new ideas. That’s why constant reading and observation are important.

Sometimes when someone has launched a new product, you would say, “Hey! I thought about that before. That’s my idea.” You might have had thought about the idea but you didn’t capitalize on it. Someone has done it before you.

It’s always good that you have an ideas book. Whenever you think of a good idea, write it down. You can always work on it or improve it later. Bring along the ideas book wherever you go. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It can be a normal pocket-sized spiral notebook.

With the method outlined above, I hope that you will be the next person who makes fortunes with unprecedented ideas that people can never think of.

Abel Cheng is publisher of Abel Cheng’s Business Diary, a
free publication that provides unorthodox home and small
business success tips, tools and resources. Get instant
access to his publication at http://www.abelcheng.com/diary.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Abel_Cheng
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• Looking for Small Business Ideas?

Another example of using Global Sources. This is an excellent overview that shows how legitimate this company is. We personally have used this website to source one of our Ecommerce sites with great success. It is all about building relationships with overseas manufacturers one at a time, just as you would locally.

Some Key points to remember and note

• This is a trusted source since 1971
• They give the right information in the right format
• Global Sources understands buyers and Suppliers
• There is a ton of information
• And the major value of that information is the content they provide and the ideas that it can spawn.

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Getting started and getting organized can be a very daunting task. This video overview shows a Microsoft product that we thought worth adding. It really does help small business get some foothold on all the task that you need to do when starting a business. Any software that helps you make a to do list ranks high on my list. This is great for generating ideas.

Watch Startup Starting Line – Microsoft Small Business in Technology |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

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