Here are a few photos – will have a video from Bill Harding up soon.
Until then, enjoy the photos.
Learn How to Use eBay Widgets for Profit
It’s Getting Closer!
Starting Next Week
Our New Look:
Dany and I are putting on the finishing touches on the new site. Sometime early next week this blog will turn over to the new layout shown above.
If you’d like to continue receiving news and updates please click over to the blog right now and subscribe to our membership area. That will give you free access to the existing membership area for the weekend PLUS you’ll be the first to know about the changes.
Of course, I highly recommend checking out the new members area on the Web Sellers Circle when it comes online – I know you’ll find the tools you need to grow your business.
Posted in Uncategorized.
The May Edition Of The Web Sellers’ News Is Online
The latest Web Sellers newletter is now online at:
http://www.clovercitysells.com/May09-news-1.htm
Please check it out.
A quick reminder, we’re starting to transition to the official WSC site, which will replace this blog.
If you want to be part of this unique place and keep informed be sure to sign up for the free membership on http://websellerscircle.com and you’ll be the first to know!
Posted in Uncategorized.
The River The Ranch And The Bay
Last week Beth and Kat from The River The Ranch And The Bay podcast turned the tables on me. Instead of interviewing people – they interviewed me!
If you are interested please give a listen.
Thanks for the invite Kat and Beth.
Posted in Uncategorized.
A Few Tips When Buying New Inventory For Your Online Business
Finding the right vendor that will work with you and help your business is one of the hardest parts of retail. If you are just starting out not only must you find the true wholesaler suppliers, you have to find ones that will open the door to you. In many ways, retail is like the ‘good old boys club’ they really don’t want newcomers to join.
Here are a few tips to get you started.
Make sure you are buying from a reputable source.
- Look at their history
- How long have they been in business?
- Generally it’s better to find your source offline; like a trade show or through a business association
- Check the suppliers references with the Better Business Bureau, do a Google Search on the company, etc
Start small and build a relationship
Ask what the MOO is (Minimum Opening Order) and try to keep the first order at that amount.
Try to conserve your capital (cash) don’t over-order. Ask for show discounts if you are at a trade show.
Once you’ve ordered, reviewed the products and company the next step is to set-up a credit account.
Purchase on credit (not your credit card – on the vendor invoicing system) and pay off completely before due date, but not too soon. Keep your cash as long as possible. But always pay your suppliers on time. This one step will get you more goodwill than anything else you do!
After you have ordered and paid a few times, it’s time to start negotiating. Suppliers and sales representatives will be more open to working with you after you show them you are a reliable seller. Find out if there are any ‘early order’ discounts. Early Orders are placed before they bring in their supply. Vendors will give you a discount if they know you’ll take delivery as soon as their shipment comes in.
As you start to build trust with the vendor and see how they control their inventory you can decide whether the company is reliable enough to approach about drop shipping. If the supplier keeps good stock, has a good communication system (or customer service support) you should consider approaching them to work out a deal. Ask the vendor drop ship the larger or more expensive items while you continue to order the smaller or less expensive items in larger quantities.
If your vendor agrees to drop ship don’t expect a super discount on the drop-shipped items. Because your supplier is holding the inventory, tying up their storage space and capital investment, they’ll expect the lions share of the profit. That’s OK, you’ll still be ahead of the curve because you can offer a greater ‘depth of inventory’ or larger selection for your buyers.
Building a relationship with your suppliers takes time. Expect to start slow. As you get started (unless you have an ‘in’ with the company) you probably won’t get the best prices on products until you prove yourself. Conserve your cash, start small and build slowly, and always be on the look out for the next vendor to start a relationship with. It’s healthy in business to have more than one source for your products.
Posted in Business Principles.
Using Twitter & Facebook For Business
Using Twitter & Facebook For Business
I know that social media is all the rage these days. You’ll hear every marketer and guru tell you that you “must be on Twitter and Facebook.”
They tell you to get out there and be friends with others but they never tell you how or why. Without that important piece of the puzzle you wonder what the value of it is, and how it works.
Let me quickly tell you. Selling products is more than filling a need for a customer. It’s an exchange. Sometimes, it’s simply an exchange of an item or cash – but often, in the buyers mind, it’s an exchange of cash for a lifestyle improvement. That’s a pretty big thing to your customer and they want to know they can trust you to give them what they seek.
That’s where social media comes into play. Using blogging, facebook or twitter to show people who you are, what you know, and how you can help them builds trust in an otherwise faceless medium; the Internet.
The main focus of “being social” is to use these applications to build relationships with your customer. However, I think many of us are Twittering – or using Facebook or MySpace and not seeing the results we are looking for – because we are targeting or ‘friending’ the wrong group of people. In other words we are not targeting our segment of buyers.
Start thinking of who you have on your friends list – are they your family and friends – or your customers? Here’s the difference if you have friends and family, are they your purchasing customers? For example: It’s great to have all your family following you on Twitter, it makes you look very popular indeed. But those thousands of followers aren’t necessarily your buyers.
If you enjoy the ‘social’ part of social media, perhaps you should have one account to talk with friends and another account to build your list of potential customers.
You’ll get a lot more return on investment by following the one simple rule below.
SOCIAL MARKETING GOLDEN RULE: Spend your time on socializing with YOUR CUSTOMERS.
If you have time and energy left at the end of the day, spend the rest socializing with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.
Here are five more tips to maximize your social marketing:
1. Focus your Tweets and Facebook posts on your business. Make the blurbs benefit your customer; “just in rare first edition Harry Potter” or “check out this blog post about Starbucks Collectibles” These types of tweets are much more interesting to your buyers than which conference you attended or what you had for lunch.
2. Toss in an invitation to join your blog RSS feed, Twitter Account, Facebook or MySpace account in every email or package you ship to your customer and tell them what’s in it for them if they join. Super bonus – make it a handwritten invitation signed by you!
3. Don’t waste your valuable time on sites that don’t return the investment. Check out the social media sites demographics before spending time building a following. Facebook is more likely to be your place if you sell products to women over 40 – Twitter if you are selling to Internet geeks and marketers – MySpace to the youngish rockers, etc.
4. Post regularly – people love stability – but don’t take up all the oxygen in the room! Twitter & Facebook can seem like a really loud party with everyone shouting to be heard. Tip: People who post too much, get removed from feeds.
5. Ask questions! Your clients and customers want to know you are listening to them more than anything else in the world! Set up surveys, invite them to reply to your tweets and posts and be open to comments.
Posted in Business Principles.
Domain Names Are Important To Readers
A recent survey done by memorabledomains.co.uk shows the importance of putting a word pertaining to the product your site is about in the domain name.
Referred to a generic domain names in the survey – they found higher click through rates – or better pay per click ad performance when the web address includes even a generic mention of the product or service provided. A domain name like TaxPreparation.com or Carnavigation.com attracts more clicks than a less intuitive or lesser branded company name.
They tested three names and found these interesting results:
ElectricBicycles.co.uk (generic domain name with an exact product match)
YourBikes.co.uk (an alternative generic domain name)
InAHurry.co.uk (a non-generic name)
The generic domain name with an exact match had a 15% higher click-through rate than the generic and a 42% higher click through rate than the non-generic domain.
They concluded that:
Memorable Domains attributes the strong performance of generic domain names to several factors:
Because a generic domain name describes a product or service using the words people automatically associate with the topic, it encourages them to click more.
The presence of search terms in the domain name leads to higher organic rankings or a
better ad quality score in pay-per-click ad ranking algorithms.
Search engines commonly automatically bold any word in the domain name that matches the search term, drawing attention to the listing.
There is a potential positive impact of the domain name on ad quality score.
My conclusion to reading this is that while a keyword included in the domain name may not be as important as thought when it comes to SEO spiders - it absolutely plays an important role when it comes to the human factor. Don’t forget the end goal of all naming and branding is to get a person to click and the best way still is to tell them what’s in it for them. A name like ElecticBicycles.co.uk tells the viewer quickly it’s a site about electric bikes.
More information about the study can be found at:
http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/generic-domain-names-in-ads-outperform-non-generic-8957/?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink
Posted in Business Principles.
Bonanzle Item Traits – an new system to help buyers sort and filter results.
Bonanzle Item Traits – an new system to help buyers sort and filter results.
For example, if a buyer is searching for antiques created in the early 1900’s, there is now a filter in our search that lets them view only those antiques created between before 1950. We have a name for these specific item details: “traits.” The example above is one of more than a million category-specific item traits we now have available in our system.
Starting soon, buyers will be using traits to make very specific searches on Bonanzle, and if your items haven’t been setup with traits, you could be missing out on potential sales when your items don’t match the buyer’s filters.
Great news, especially seeing this will also be part of the google connector feed to help target your buyers.
A new project is underway to help build Bonanzles knowledge base called the Booth Optimization Project. If you have expertise in selling on Bonanzle and like to write – help the Bonanzle community.
More information here:
Finally – congratulations to Bonanzle they reached 50,000 members last week! They are now a solid tie for second place after eBay in listing volume.
Posted in Uncategorized.
Amazon FBA adds Inventory Age Report
In the recent newsletter from Amazon about Fulfillment – I noticed a great new offering:
Inventory Management Tools: New ‘Inventory Age Report’
The new ‘Inventory Age Report’ will launch soon to give you visibility into the age of your inventory in our fulfillment centers. The report will show a snapshot of inventory by age in incremental 30-day groups to enable you to identify how quickly your products are selling. With this visibility, you will now be able determine appropriate actions such as offering a sales price, creating a promotion or even removing the items from storage.
You will be able to access the report from the Fulfillment section of the Reports tab in your seller account, and it will be available both as an online view and as a downloadable file.
I love it! Now I don’t have to wonder how fast or slow my FBA inventory is selling.
Posted in Amazon.
Business Grant For Women Entreprenuers
Are you a woman entrepreneur with an idea for an innovative, socially conscious business?
Eileen Fisher Business will award five woman-owned companies with grants of $10,000 each
For more information, or to apply:
http://eileenfisher.com/ourcompany/cons/women_owned_bus_prog.asp
Posted in Business Opportunities.