By Chris Malta & Robin Cowie -'s Articles

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Tradeshow Sourcing: When The Show’s Over
Following Up with Suppliers

For the online retailer, tradeshows are a fantastic way to locate product sources. You can easily fill up a suitcase with the materials you collect from different wholesalers at a show. But having supplier information is only a start—your next step is determining which suppliers you want to use and then beginning to develop relationships with them.

Ask the Right Questions

When you talk to a supplier, you should already be familiar with the...
3 Tools For Product Sourcing On Ebay - Using Seller Central
You may have already discovered that selling on eBay can be fun and profitable. But after you’ve cleared out your garage and attic, and auctioned off everything your husband owns, where can you go to get new product ideas?

Tapping into EBay’s Resources

Most people don’t realize that eBay itself is actually a terrific place to find product sourcing ideas. Besides being an easy selling venue with built-in traffic, it also contains a goldmine of useful data about what that...
Tradeshows The Right Way - How To Get The Most Out Of Going
For online retailers, trade shows are an incredible opportunity to source goods, connect with wholesalers and manufacturers, and expand their product lines. There is a right way and a wrong way to attend tradeshows. To get the most out of your experience, you need to prepare.

Your first step is to find the tradeshow that’s right for you—there’s a tradeshow for nearly every industry imaginable. One good source for locating tradeshows is http://www.TradeShowWeek.com—you can ...
How To Save Money With Shipping Alternatives - Shipping Freight Without Breaking The Bank
The Problem with Freight Shipping

According to both UPS and FedEx, anything exceeding 70 lbs. is considered freight. The price for shipping anything that falls into that “freight” category often exceeds the value of the item itself. For this reason, most eBiz owners don’t deal in large or heavy items. And most consumers walk away when the shipping for their online purchase exceeds 20% of the item’s cost.

If you do ship sizeable items—cars, boats, pianos—you have to deal...
More For Your Money - Pay-Per-Call—A Smarter Way To Advertise
Pay-per-call is one of the biggest trends in online marketing right now. In fact, pay-per-performance advertising, overall, is gaining ground as more and more businesses discover the high value proposition it provides. Different search engines are incorporating this type of marketing, including AOL search, InfoSpace, and Marchex, who have a combined total of 1.3 billion searches a month.

A Quick Overview

The concept of pay-per-call is simple:

• It’s an auction for cu...
Understanding LLCs - The Ups And Downs Of Incorporating
You may not have considered it, but if you’re starting an internet business, you’re starting an actual business—and that means constructing a legal entity, usually a sole proprietorship, a LLC, or a corporation. By default, you have a sole proprietorship, but this formation offers you little in the way of protection or tax benefits. So what about your other options?

Limited Liability Companies (LLCs)

• The Upside: Your personal assets aren’t exposed in a lawsuit relatin...
The Inside Scoop On Trade Shows - What They Are And How They Work
The Nuts and Bolts

Suppose you run an eBiz specializing in floral arrangements. Imagine coming across a huge mall devoted entirely to—you guessed it—flowers! You’d probably be pretty excited to find such an amazing source for products and ideas. Well, when you attend a trade show that is basically what you’re getting. At a trade show many vendors within one particular industry set up exhibits to provide information on their products and services.

Only members of legitim...
Selecting And Changing Your Product Lines - What Should I Sell Now?
Product Sales Tracking

Everyone’s constantly after new products to sell, but it’s just as crucial to recognize how your current products are selling. In order to know your best business move, you need to ask the right questions: What’s selling? Why is it selling? When does it sell best? How frequently do my customers buy from me: Just once? Weekly? Monthly?

Ruth King, CEO of http://BusinessTVChannel.com, an internet TV station focused on small businesses, stresses the i...
Importing Basics - What You Need To Know To Get Started
You’re Already Importing—Why Not Get the Benefits?

Everyone knows there are great deals to be found overseas—items that can be picked up for a fraction of the cost. But what most people don’t realize is that almost everything they’re buying domestically was already imported. They’re just paying a mark-up cost to the middle-man who did the actual importing for them. For those new in business, there’s nothing wrong with that. But for the established businessperson, importing...
Increasing Your Profits Through Buying Groups (2) - Strength In Numbers
Why Join a Buying Group?

Because wholesalers give pricing breaks to customers who buy in large volumes, small businesses are at a disadvantage. They usually can’t afford to purchase in huge quantities like the larger vendors. Many small businesses are turning to buying groups to level the playing field and allow them to compete with bigger sellers.

Attorney Harry B. Ray, of http://BuyingGroups.com, defines a buying group as “a group of businesses in the same industry wh...
How To Make Product Liquidation Work For You - Sourcing Liquidated Products
Liquidation—a very scary word for most of us. But the reason we get nervous is just because we really don’t understand what liquidation is. One man who is extremely familiar with the process is Bob Nelson, president of Power Retailing, a retail consulting firm (http://www.retailing.com). Nelson explains liquidation is simply “get[ting] rid of and convert[ing] inventory and other assets into cash.” It’s a practice that allows manufacturers and retailers to maximize the value o...
Sourcing Customer Returns - Buying Retail Returns At Wholesale Prices
Retail overstocks and customer returns can be an excellent product source—as long as you understand what to expect when purchasing this kind of merchandise.

A Mixed Bag of Goods

Typically, returns are sold as pallets of assorted, dissimilar items—you’ll find everything from snow boots to toy cars to staplers. Most likely, you’ll also find some damaged goods among a pallet’s wares. A portion of these items were returned because the customer damaged them, or they didn’t w...
3 Tips For Every Woman Starting A Home Based Business - Challenges To Expect, Keys To Succeed
More and more women today work from home, and even more want to. Some are single moms or widows who need to earn a living. Others just want a little extra income or a sense of independence. Particularly for women, starting a home business presents a unique set of challenges. Lesley Spencer, founder and president of Home Based Working Moms (http://HBWM.com), suggests three steps to help ensure success:

1. Consider Your Options

The first obstacle in starting a business is...
The Price Is Right! - How To Arrive At The Best Price For Your Products
Avoiding Common Mistakes

A trap many eBiz owners fall into is trying to set their prices by simply adding a percentage or flat amount to an item’s cost—they buy a watch for $20, slap another $20 on the price tag, and pass it along to their customers. The problem with this type of pricing is that your costs aren’t fixed. For example, your costs for buying and reselling 100 blow-dryers will differ substantially from your costs for buying and reselling 10,000 of the exact sam...
Promoting Yourself On Ebay - Tips From A Powerseller
The key to being successful on eBay is getting people to your listings. If no one sees what you’re selling, no one’s going to buy it. And if they get there and don’t like what they see, they won’t stay around and buy. EBay PowerSeller Skip McGrath, of Skip http://McGrath.com, shares some simple techniques you can use to boost your traffic and your sales:

Increasing Your Traffic—Building Numbers

• Optimize Your Listings—90% of all eBay shoppers search by keyword, rather ...
Ebay Made Easy—Breaking The Inertia With Technology
The greatest challenge to getting started on eBay is just that—getting started! Though technological advances have made online retailing faster, easier, and cheaper, would-be entrepreneurs still get discouraged and give up without realizing their goals. An extremely high percentage of first-time eBay sellers leave the site without ever listing an item—they get overwhelmed by the lengthy and intensive Sell Your Item form.

A Simple Plan

This was the frustration that led J...
Work Smarter—How To Streamline Your Ebay Business
Automating the Processes

Imagine a tool that eliminates most of the busy work associated with running your eBay business. According to Dave Cotter, that was the idea behind his company, http://Mpire.com. After talking to hundreds of eBay sellers and hearing the same complaint again and again—people were spending too much time running their e-businesses—Cotter and co-founder, Greg Harrison, were inspired to create a tool to automate the processes involved.

4 Advantages t...
Legal And Tax Strategies For The Online Retailer - Protecting Yourself And Your Assets
When you open an eBiz, it’s important you remember that it really is a business and approach it as you would any other business. Don’t just jump in and start selling. Consider all the legal issues—your responsibilities and the risks you’re assuming—in order to safe-guard your investments.

Do I Need to Charge Taxes Online?

If you’re running an internet company, it’s your responsibility to keep current on tax laws that affect you. As a retailer, you’re obligated to know t...
Must-Do’s For The Holiday Selling Season - How To Cash In On The Busiest Retail Season Of The Year
The holidays are a great time to be a retailer—60% of all retail sales are made during the holiday season. Millions of new online shoppers make their first internet purchases during this season, and their experience there can either erase their hesitancies about online shopping, or reinforce them. This gives you, as an eBiz owner, an opportunity to create loyal customers and generate repeat business.

That’s why you need to be ready when the holidays roll around—don’t get t...
Email Marketing For Your Small Business - Selecting The Right Server
There are many different methods for promoting your business online, but one of the most effective is still the email campaign.

Weighing Your Options

For emails, you have three choices of software, each with distinct benefits and drawbacks. You can install software on your desktop and be your own server. You can install software on the web server you’re using. Or you can join an ASP hosted service.

The most obvious benefit of a hosted server is that getting your emai...
4 Things Web Analytics Can Teach You - What Your Traffic’s Telling You
Brick-and-mortar stores often change displays, move goods around, and put impulse items beside checkouts. The reason behind these changes is they’re analyzing customer traffic and studying behavioral patterns to understand how consumers shop. As an online retailer, you need to study your customer traffic as well in order to increase sales.

Listen: Your Customers Are Talking

There are a number of web traffic analytics companies, such as http://OneStat.com and http://Stat...
Software Designed Around Your Needs - Microsoft’s New Small Business Solution
Microsoft has a new service designed with the needs of small businesses in mind—businesses with 10 or less employees. If you’ve thought about taking your business online, Office Live makes it easy for you. There are three different versions of this software to meet the particular needs of your small business:

Option One—Basic

This first solution is Microsoft’s core product and comes with several free services:

• a domain name
• web hosting
• email in your company n...
Sometimes It Pays To Follow The Crowd - 3 Online Marketing Trends You Can Use
It doesn’t matter if running an eBiz is old hat for you or if you’re just getting started: advertising is always going to be a key element of your business strategy. Search engine marketing is probably the biggest tool you have available for promoting your web store, so you need to stay on top of the trends in that area to be competitive.

1. Blogging for Profit

One of the hottest trends on the internet right now is blogging. What started as informal personal journaling ...
Search Engine Marketing - Gaining Exposure Through Sponsored Ads
No matter how great your products or how well-designed your website, if no one ever sees them, you’ll never sell anything. You have to let people know you’re there. According to Boris Mordkovich of http://AdWatcher.com, “Search engine marketing is a way to expose your business to thousands of people who are searching for your products and services.”

One of the main types of search engine marketing is pay-per-click advertising. Internet users search for items using keywords...
What’s Affiliate Marketing - Forming Marketing Partnerships
Affiliate marketing is advertising for someone else in exchange for a cut of the sales you generate. You’re sharing your traffic for a price. It’s a great way to capitalize on the traffic your website’s already producing.

Being an Affiliate

If you run a small, home-based eBiz, you can join an affiliate program and get paid to share your traffic with another merchant. You’ll want to look for sites that tie in with yours—things your customer base will be interested in. Ch...
Creating A Website That Sells - How To Keep And Convert Viewers
Designing a good sales website can be the difference between losing a visitor and making a sale. You’ve got ten seconds to capture a viewer’s attention and convince them to stay—that’s how long it takes people to decide to keep reading, or move on.

Make Your Site User-Friendly

You need to plan your website carefully to make it really sell your product:

• Have an attention-grabbing headline that tells viewers what they’ll gain by staying. It should list some clear, co...
Marketing With RSS Feeds - Creating A Direct Link To Your Customers
What’s an RSS feed?

Due to the overwhelming amount of spam on the internet, many users are turning from traditional newsletter subscriptions to RSS feeds to get their information. RSS is Really Simple Syndication. Besides connecting you directly to your customers, feeds are advantageous for several reasons:

• They update automatically. Anytime you publish a new article or blog, your readers receive it with no effort on their part, or yours.

• Unlike an email campaign...
How To Make Your Family And Friends Your Investors - Minimizing The Risks Of Personal Loans
Most people don’t realize that over half the businesses in America are financed by money from family and friends. The truth is everyone relies on their circles when they have nowhere else to go. Someone with mediocre credit may have a difficult time getting a start-up loan from a bank, but Mom and Dad will always help out if they can.

Weighing the Pros and Cons

There are inherent risks and advantages to getting a private loan over a bank loan:

Risks:

• Not clarify...
Internet Seminars: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Finding Quality Seminars and Avoiding Scams

Internet seminars can be a valuable tool for your eBiz: they give you opportunities to network and meet new contacts in your industry. You can learn a lot about how to improve your business and run it more efficiently. Says Sydney Johnson, of http://Auction-Genius-Course.com, “My definition of a good seminar is when I make more money from the information [I get] than I paid to go there.”

Unfortunately, for every useful, educat...
4 Rules For New Entrepreneurs - Practical Tips For Starting Right
It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur—in the last decade, technology has leveled the playing field and propelled an entrepreneurial revolution. As an entrepreneur, you now have more access to information that enables you to make more intelligent choices more quickly. You have an advantage over big businesses in that you’re lighter, more flexible, and faster on your feet. You can target new markets more quickly, and you can turn on a dime.

But being a successful entrepren...
What’s A Blog And Why Should I Have One? - Using Blogs To Generate Business
Most everyone on the internet has, at some point, run across blogs. Blogs are simply internet journals recording whatever happens to be on a writer’s mind at a given moment. Typically written in an informal tone, blogs read as though the writer is having a friendly conversation with their readers. Though blogs have exploded in popularity, few online retailers understand that having a blog can be a very effective way to drive sales for their e-businesses.

Getting Started

...
5 Benefits Of Using Feeds - How Feeds Can Help Your Ebiz
What’s a Feed?

Feeds are a way of sharing content. When you make material from your website available for publishing on other sites, you provide them with a feed. Basically, it’s a code that lets them post your articles and blogs. There are different kinds of code—XML, RSS, Atom, etc.—but essentially they’re all just different ways of accessing a feed.

According to internet expert Sydney Johnston, “The great thing about a feed is everybody wins.” The article writer gain...
Branding Your Ebiz - Creating A Name Your Customers Trust
If you want customers to spend money with you online, you have to make them feel confident they’re dealing with a legitimate business. They’re giving you their personal information, as well as their credit card number. If your website sends a clear message you run your business from home, they may not feel comfortable entrusting you with that kind of info. That’s why it’s important to create a brand your customers recognize and trust.

What’s a Brand?

A brand is what dif...
3 Things Search Engines Want To See - Using Links The Engines Will Like
Search engine companies are constantly changing their algorithms to keep their results up-to-date. Optimization used to be the primary factor search engines used to determine a website’s ranking. However, it currently makes up only about 10% of their total algorithms. What carries the most weight with search engines now is linking.

Linking is the process of connecting to other sites that are relevant to your target market and that are highly ranked, and of getting them to ...
4 Strategies For Seasonal Selling - Planning For Retail Cycles
Every product has a natural life cycle and a season where it sells best: some early buyers come at the beginning, and then the mass of buyers come. Prices peak and retailers begin running out of stock. Sales slow, and trickle down to a few last-minute shoppers.

As an online seller, it’s critical you prepare for the natural retail cycles throughout the year. With some simple strategies, you can make the most of the opportunities presented by the changing seasons:

1.Keep ...
What A Wholesale Supplier Expects From You - How To Ask For Distributor Accounts
You wouldn’t think of going to a job interview unprepared—you’d never get called back. Yet many eBiz owners approach wholesalers and manufacturers without any preparation at all. You need to realize it costs a manufacturer time and money to set up an account. If you seem like you won’t be a profitable distributor, they’ll probably turn you down. Says manufacturer Charlie Hall, owner of Charlie’s Woodshop, “I spend a lot of time helping [online retailers] get going with my pro...
Shopping With Uncle Sam - A Breakdown Of Government Auctions
A Retailer’s Bargain Paradise?

We have all heard about the amazing deals you can find at government auctions—the planes, trains, and automobiles your neighbor’s uncle’s cousin picked up for a song. But how true are these stories? Are government auctions really a good source for purchasing products for resale? The answer to that is they CAN BE, but you have to know what you are doing.

Where do Govt. Auctions get their products?

Government auctions are can be held onli...
Understanding Consumer Buying Trends - Building Dynamic Product Lines
The ability to detect trends and to interpret that knowledge can tell you what consumers want now, but also help you predict what they’ll be looking for tomorrow. This can really give a retailer a big edge, particularly when it comes to selecting product lines.

What is a Trend?

A trend is not a group of popular items that everyone is buying. A trend is an expression of what matters to consumers at the moment—it’s a sign of what they’re excited about. A trend can actuall...
The New Face Of Advertising - Drawing Customers To Your Site With Interactive Marketing
What is Interactive Marketing?

We’re all familiar with the popular pay per click advertisements that many eBiz owners employ a very effective tool for driving traffic to your website. But according to Jackie Peters, Chief Creative Officer of http://HeavyBagMedia.com, the real question is, “once they get [to your site] what is their experience going to be like?”

Peters’ company helps many of its clients launch campaigns designed to pull, not push, customers in through a ...
One Man’s Trash… Could Be Your Treasure - 3 Rules Of ‘Thrifty’ Product Sourcing
Thrift Shops and Consignment stores can be an excellent source for your product inventory—they always have fresh items to pick thru and you can find some great deals!

• Consignment Stores, are commission-based. People bring in products for the store to sell on commission—what doesn’t sell is returned to the owner.

• Thrift Stores are often ‘not for profit’ and get most of their goods via donations.

In comparing the two, Thrift Stores are typically more willing (and a...
Everybody’s Doing It: 3 Reasons You Should Have An Ebay Store
Testing the Waters

If you’ve ever dreamed of quitting your job and going into business for yourself, you may have considered online retail. But opening your own website is quite an undertaking—you’ll need to get a URL for your website, acquire a shopping cart, have someone design your web pages, get listed with the major search engines. And you’re going to have to pay for all those services up front, which means you’ll need to have some capital set aside. So before you tel...
Virtual Staffing For Your Small Business
What’s a Virtual Assistant?

Virtual assistants are independent contractors or entrepreneurs who provide administrative assistance to multiple clients. Unlike regular assistants, they work out of their homes rather than at your business’ physical location.

There are numerous advantages to using a virtual assistant:

• Location. If you work from home, you don’t have to find a place to put an employee.
• No Overhead. They provide their own office supplies, desk, compute...
Our Town — Sourcing Products Locally
Get Creative with Community Resources

If you’ve ever picked up a trinket for $4 at a yard sale and sold it for $65 on eBay, you know how exciting translating your treasure hunts into cash can be. But yard sales are not your only local source of goodies. Dennis Hester of http://MillionDollarDeals.com has built a successful online business using local providers almost exclusively. Flea markets, antique stores, auction sales, craft shops, Hester attends them all.

One parti...
10 Tips To Increase Your Search Engine Rankings
The Basics of Optimization

Many online sellers get frustrated with search engines regularly changing algorithms. But there are basic principles that haven’t changed through the years. Apply these tips to increase your rankings:

Tip 1—Don’t be too quick to change domain names. Google has an aging delay for any new domain—it can take up to a year for your keywords to start showing in the searches.

Tip 2—Optimize your site for your target audience, not the search engine...
How To Build Your Online Consignment Business
Get the Word Out!

Consignment is a simple concept—taking other people’s products and selling them for a percentage of the sale. According to Skip McGrath, of http://skipmcgrath.com, a successful eBay PowerSeller, “[Consignment selling] is the fastest growing phenomenon on eBay.” The key to successful online consignment is marketing your services. You really have to promote your business, and McGrath shares some techniques for doing just that. There are four areas you’ll us...
Take Charge Of Your Time, Take Charge Of Your Business - Budgeting Your Time To Be More Successful
Running a One-Man Show

Transitioning from working in the corporate world to working from home requires a lot of adjustments, but the biggest one is probably organizing your time. Because, in a very real sense, it is your time now. It’s not your boss’ time or the companies’ time—you answer to yourself. That’s a tremendous amount of freedom, but it’s also a great deal of responsibility.

You’re now in charge of every aspect of your business. It’s your job to find your clie...
Protecting Your Intellectual Property - How Copyrights And Patents Affect Your Ebiz
You may not realize it, but you deal with intellectual property (IP) every day. If you own a website, that website is your intellectual property. The way you deal with IP—yours and others—can directly impact the success of your business.

What’s Intellectual Property?

Registered patent attorney Patricia McQueeney (http://BrinkleyMcNerney.com) explains, “[Intellectual property] can be broken down…into four types: patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.”

• A...