Whether Halloween is your bag of candy or it’s just another day to you, there are some TRULY scary forces at work in the Ecommerce wholesale industry that would curdle the blood of the most experienced tricksters. These forces work to damage the success of your ECommerce business EVERY DAY of the year, not just on Halloween.

So we thought we’d take this opportunity to show you how to get the TREAT for your EBiz this Halloween, instead of all the TRICKS.

Here’s Day 5: “Slik The Free Trial Imp”

As we said in Day 4 of this series (you read Day 4, right?), the Halloween lore is rich with Imps. Malevolent, deceitful little creatures, these tricksters delight in misleading people, and in wreaking havoc and destruction wherever they can.

The ECommerce business is no exception; it’s full of Imps. Just search “ECommerce” in Google. You’d have a really hard time finding anything that does NOT lead directly to something controlled by an Imp!

In Day 4 we talked about Bogus The Product Choice Imp. Here in Day 5, you need to be warned about Slik The Free Trial Imp. In many ways, this Imp is even more dangerous than the last.

Slik The Free Trial Imp has found that it’s easy to prey upon unsuspecting EBiz Owners by playing off a natural weakness we humans have for the word “FREE”.

Any time we see “FREE”, we think ‘Oooohhh! Free!’ and we tend to jump on whatever the offer is. After all, what harm could there be in something that’s free??

Empires have fallen over things that are “free”. Remember the Trojan Horse? How much you wanna bet that ‘free’ gift was inspired by an Imp way back then? The forces of evil are not new; they’ve just found a new place to play when it comes to the ECommerce marketing space.

The scary, nefarious influence of Slik The Free Trial Imp can be found in many different offers in ECommerce. Free Web Site Trials, Free Webinars, Free Tools…it’s a long list, and it leads straight to the dreaded ECommerce Graveyard.

WHY?

Because ‘Free’ is NEVER ‘Free’. ‘Free’ ALWAYS leads to something else you’re told you need to BUY in order to make ‘Free’ actually WORK. Still, we humans flock to ‘Free’ like a gaggle of Trick-or-Treaters flock to a bucket of candy.

Since there are so many examples of this Imp-driven practice in ECommerce, we’re forced to stick with only two; listing them all would take forever. So we’ll stick to two that tie in with the Tricksters and Imps we’ve mentioned previously. Kill-O-Tron The Automated Product Feed Day 1 and Bogus The Product Choice Imp Day 4 work well together with Slik The Free Trial Imp when it comes to FREE TRIAL ECOMMERCE SITES, and FAKE WHOLESALE SUPPLIERS.

1. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH A FREE TRIAL ECOMMERCE SITE?

You’ve seen them all over the place. “Get your Free 14 Day Trial!”, “Need A Web Site? Get TRIX for 30 Days Free!”, and so on and so on, ad nauseum.

The problem is that not only do these places FULLY expect to make you DEPENDENT on their systems so that you HAVE to buy them after the Free Trial. They ALSO work very hard to make you believe that ECommerce is EASY, and that you’ll see RESULTS in that short period of time.

Here’s the kicker…they encourage you to quickly place all kinds of UNRELATED PRODUCTS on that Free Trial web site so that you can get it up and running quickly. After all, it’s a LIMITED Free Trial, right? If you want it up and running in that Free Trial period there is NO time to do proper Market Research in order to find a profitable, well-niched set of products that will sell well online.

SO…

Slik The Free Trial Imp gets you to put up an instant site-in-a-box, slap loads of unrelated and un-researched wholesale products on it, and when that DOESN’T work (which it never will) Slik The Free Trial Imp shows his true colors and starts CHARGING you for all kinds of expensive and ridiculous marketing tools that don’t work either.

Hey, these Imps don’t care that you won’t succeed. They just need to keep you bobbing for apples for as long as they possibly can, because each time you stick your head in the water to try to grab an apple, you PAY for it.

2. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH FAKE WHOLESALERS?

Well, beside the obvious fact that they’re FAKE (major clue), Slik The Free Trial Imp loads up these ‘Free Trial’ Wholesale Directories with fakes that look real. We’ve talked about this, remember? Middlemen, no profit margins, etc.?

Then, when you can’t compete on price even if you COULD get your site or product listings seen in that short Free Trial period (which you won’t anyway), Slik The Free Trial Imp starts telling you that you have to PAY for info on more suppliers (which are also FAKE, and lead to more middlemen and no profit margins).

But it’s all okay to start heading down this dark and lonely path, because Slik The Free Trial Imp tells you, IT’S FREE.

It’s the chicken and the egg and the chicken. Round and round the barnyard we go, and this close to Halloween, there are all KINDS of bad things lurking in the barnyard at night!

SO HOW DO YOU PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR BUSINESS?

As we said in Day 4, Imps can be banished by the use of certain wards, weapons and enchantments. But those are uncertain, unclean and dangerous things that we humans shouldn’t be messing with.

Your best defense against Slik the Free Trial Imp is to IGNORE him:

1. Forget the Free Trial web sites. That’s an Imp-inspired marketing tactic that will leave you with Goblin manure on your face and nothing in your candy bucket. Research the CAPABILITIES of the web platforms you consider selling on, not the HYPE.

2. You need to locate REAL wholesale sources that are NOT FAKE, and that provide tightly niched, well-rounded selections of wholesale products you can sell online. That’s the only way you’re actually going to earn real profits online.

How do you find these REAL, tightly focused suppliers? The only way to be CERTAIN is to use a 100% REAL Wholesale and Drop Ship Directory.

There’s only ONE. Worldwide Brands.

For 18 years, Worldwide Brands has been fighting this hidden battle against the evil ECommerce business-killers that go bump in the night, INCLUDING Imps of all kinds. We Certify wholesalers with a lengthy process that insures that every wholesaler we list is REAL. Then, just to be sure, we check to make sure they don’t offer any misleading ‘Free Trials’.

This Halloween, make sure that you’re not making critical Imp-inspired mistakes in YOUR online business. Get Worldwide Brands at a huge Halloween Discount, and spend your time selling LOTS of your tightly-niched products online.

If you want to make money online, you need the TREAT, not the Trick.