Posts Tagged ‘Chris Malta’

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Why Junk Information Damages Your Business

Tuesday, August 13th, 2013 by

pile of sprinklesStarting a business, ANY business, takes time, money and a commitment to learning. Those things are all investments you are making in yourself, and in your future. Anything that slows down the progress of those investments is a BAD thing!

One of the most important things you’ll need for your business is information. How to use eBay. Who are the best web hosting companies. How to collect money from your customers’ credit cards. Where to find products to sell. Etc., etc., etc. Nobody is born knowing all this stuff! You have to learn it, which means you have to rely on someone else, somewhere, to teach it to you or to write down the information that you need so you can read it and learn it.

In our opinion, one of the lowest, sleaziest things one human being can do to another is prey upon their hopes and dreams for a better life, in order to cheat that other person out of a few lousy dollars. Yet, this happens all the time on the Internet when it comes to Information.

In our Information Market, which is Product Sourcing, there is an absolute human cesspool of scammers and lazy profiteers who are more than willing to lie to your face, promise you riches beyond your wildest dreams, and then leave you with information that will not only not help your business, but will actually damage your business. Bad information can actually cause your business to fail completely.

Many of the people who do this are outright scam artists who are actively and purposely trying to cheat you. Some of them are simply lazy, and are looking to make a fast buck selling substandard, outdated information, not caring who they hurt in the process.

Some others actually think it’s “ok” to cheat you, because “everybody else does it”.

Then there are a very few of these small operations in Product Sourcing Information (only two or three, actually) who do try to put together halfway decent information, but they don’t have the time and manpower to maintain that information, and it quickly becomes outdated and useless. That cheats you and your business as well, although it’s not malicious, it’s just irresponsible.

How can bad information damage your business?

Mostly in the form of lost time. The money you spend on the information isn’t really the thing to worry about here. Most of the bad information is cheap to begin with. Some of the scammers have realized that cheap information is recognized as bad, though, and will actually jack up their prices and charge you premium money for the same worthless piles of cow flop.

However, still, it’s really not the money. The problem, as we said, is lost time.

Let’s use an example.

Lionel decides he wants to start a Home-based Internet Business. His full-time job doesn’t pay all that much, creditors are always calling, it costs money to raise two kids, and his wife hasn’t been able to find work in a couple of months.

Lionel’s not broke, but he’s not making it all that well either. Beside that, he really doesn’t like his job to begin with. So, he takes a leap of faith, and decides to invest what money he does have, in his ability to start a Home-based Internet Business.

Lionel decides he wants to sell on eBay, because of the low entry cost. It doesn’t cost him much to get started. He starts out by selling a few things out of his attic, and from garage sales around the neighborhood. He quickly realizes, though, that if he’s going to make real money in the long run, he needs to find a steady, reliable source of the products he wants to sell, and pay genuine Wholesale prices for them, so he can make a good profit.

Lionel has heard that Drop Shipping is also a low-entry-cost solution for getting a real wholesaler to ship brand new products directly to his customers for him, so he doesn’t have to buy a bunch of products up-front and ship them from his home. That sounds pretty good!

He’s now a fairly experienced eBayer, so naturally he turns to eBay to search for information on Drop Ship Wholesalers.

He enters a search on Drop Shipping in eBay. What he finds looks exciting to him! Auction upon Auction for all kinds of “Guaranteed Genuine” lists of Drop Shippers and Wholesalers!

Better yet, many of them are only $5! What a great deal!

So, Lionel spends a few bucks on something called the “Ultimate Genuine 2013 Drop Ship and Wholesale Connection Guide”. The name sounds so impressive, that it must be a wonderful source of information! Besides, the Auction promises him Guaranteed, Genuine Sources that will make him thousands of dollars in a matter of days! The owner of the Auction claims to have built this and used it himself, and it works wonders!

Lionel gets his hands on the information, and lo and behold…there are hundreds of listings of “wholesale” company names there, categorized by the kinds of products they “wholesale”!

Lionel is anxious to jump right in, so he goes to the Sporting Goods category, and sees a listing for what sounds like a large Sporting Goods “wholesaler”. There’s a phone number there, so Lionel calls it. The number rings a couple of times, and then Lionel gets a recorded phone company message telling him “this number is no longer in service.

Hmm. Well, thinks Lionel, companies do change their phone numbers. Or, maybe it was printed wrong in the information. So, he sends an email to the Email Address listed in the “Ultimate Genuine 2013 Drop Ship and Wholesale Connection Guide” for this Sporting Goods “wholesaler”.

Lionel waits a couple of days for a reply, then decides to send another Email. In the meantime, he’s busy getting other aspects of his business ready to go to selling brand name products on eBay. A week goes by, and Lionel still has no reply. By this time, he’s getting frustrated. So, he calls the Chamber of Commerce in this city where “Ultimate Genuine 2013 Drop Ship and Wholesale Connection Guide” has told him that this Sporting Goods “wholesaler” is located. He asks about the Sporting Goods company he’s been trying to contact.

The nice lady at the Chamber of Commerce tells him that the company went out of business nearly years ago. (That, by the way, actually happens. There was a Sporting Goods drop shipper in Pennsylvania that went out of business, and is still listed in many of the junk drop ship lists on eBay, as are tons of other useless listings).

Okay, now Lionel is getting a bit upset. He’s just wasted a week of his time, that he could have used creating Auctions for Sporting Goods products.

He’s not going to give up, though, so he goes back to the “Ultimate Genuine 2013 Drop Ship and Wholesale Connection Guide” and finds that there are several other Sporting Goods “wholesalers” listed. This time, he calls them all.

He gets two more disconnected numbers, one number is answer by a lady who says “Sherri’s Hair Salon, can I help you?”, and one answering machine that tells him that Jo and Bill are not in, but if he’s calling about the 1983 Buick for sale, it’s still available and they’ll call him back.

At this point, Lionel realizes that he’s been the victim of a Junk Information Scammer.

You see, it’s not good enough to simply have information. The information must be honest, accurate, and up to date, or IT IS USELESS.

Many people buy one of those junk lists you find for sale for a few bucks on eBay, for example, thinking that even if the information is mostly bad, there are bound to be a few gold nuggets in the cow flop. Some of that information must lead to real wholesalers, right?

Let’s give you another kind of example of how that kind of thinking will hurt your business, even if there are a few gold nuggets.

A couple of months ago, my Family Physician made a referral appointment for me to see another Doctor for a minor checkup. I hadn’t been to this other Doctor’s office before, but my Family Physician’s receptionist gave me an address that was way on the other side of Orlando. The address she gave me was in Altamonte Springs, about a 45 minute drive for me. So, on that day, I set off to go to this Doctor’s office. I drove all the way out there, got there about 10 minutes before my scheduled appointment, found the office building, and discovered that this Doctor’s name was nowhere to be found in the building’s registry.

I got on my cell phone and dialed 411 to get this new Doctor’s office number. I called his office and told them where I was. His receptionist told me that they had recently moved to Ocoee, Florida, which was actually only about 15 minutes from my house!

There was no way I could make it all the way back from Altamonte Springs to Ocoee in about the five minutes I had left before my appointment, and the Doctor was tightly booked, so they made me reschedule for another day.

So, because I had gotten outdated information from my Family Physician’s office, I used a quarter of a tank of gas, and wasted nearly two hours of time that I could have used much more productively.

Now, I know that doesn’t sound all that terrible. But, think of it this way:

What if I repeated that same fiasco with several hundred Doctor’s appointments, and only made it to an actual Doctor’s office a handful of those times? That sounds a lot worse, doesn’t it?!

That is exactly what happens to you when you buy junk information. For each one of the potentially hundreds of “drop shipper” listings in those bundles of garbage, you are going to spend time trying to contact each of them. Let’s be generous, and say that ten companies out of a list of 300 companies are real, genuine drop shippers. How many days, weeks, or even months do you think it’s going to take you to go through lengthy contact processes and sift through all that junk and find the few real ones?

You’re going to be making phone calls and waiting (possibly forever) for calls back. You’re going to send emails and wait hours, days or weeks for responses that will never come. All that wasted time could have been used productively on building your business if you simply had 100% honest, accurate, up to date information.

That $5 you spent on that cheap list will actually cost you hundreds, or even thousands of dollars worth of lost time. We call that the “save now, pay later” plan. You end up paying a LOT more than you save!

And if that’s not bad enough, just wait until you think you’ve finally found a real drop shipper, and it turns out to be a “middleman” who isn’t a real wholesale company at all, but instead is just some guy sitting at a computer in his bedroom claiming to be a wholesaler. All he’s doing is having you order from him, then he’s re-sending your orders to the REAL drop shipper. That middleman ups the prices you pay for the products, and leaves you with very little profit margin. He makes money for doing nothing more than lying to you.

Once again, It’s not good enough to simply have information. The information must be honest, accurate, and up to date, or IT IS USELESS.

“Time is Money”. Truer words were never spoken. You’ll find out, when you spend time spinning your wheels chasing down useless leads from junk information, that the time you wasted has cost you a lot. It may even put you out of business.

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Posted in Online Business | No Comments »

Home Based Business: Why Do We Do It?

Tuesday, August 6th, 2013 by

hard workerWhy do we do this to ourselves? Why are we out there working so hard to learn new things and explore home-based business opportunities, when we could just settle in to a steady job, working for someone else, until we retire?

This is not one a “here’s how this or that works” post. This is a more philosophical kind of post about something that just needs to be said once in a while. So, on with a little philosophy!

Most people are perfectly content to live out their lives working a regular job. Maintain a steady income, buy a house, put money away in the Company 401K plan, create a College Fund for the kids. Get home from work at 5:30, tired, but with a general sense of satisfaction that they have put in a decent day’s work and all is basically right with the world.

Get dinner on the table; make sure the kids have done their homework. Maybe watch a movie, or putter around with a hobby. Spend some time with the spouse. On the weekends, play a little softball, go see the Grandparents, hang out with a couple of friends, jump on a Jet Ski, take the kids to the Zoo.

Once a year, take that accumulated vacation time and rent a cottage somewhere, or maybe once every few years blow a stack of cash and go to Disney World.

Same job, day in and day out. The people change occasionally, but that’s all right. There are always new friends to be made amid the shuffle and bustle that comes out of the Personnel Department. The longer the time on the job, the greater the skill and knowledge. With that comes the respect of co-workers, and gradual advances in pay and privilege.

Sometimes there’s grumbling and griping. The new boss is an idiot, or there’s a co-worker who just arrived from the planet “Huh?”. The occasional setback; the Company’s sales are down, so there’s no Christmas Bonus this year, or rumors of layoffs have begun to circulate once again.

Overall, though, there’s a deep-seated satisfaction that one is Working For A Living, and that’s something that’s very important to have.

If you’re one of that majority of people in this world who can work the daily grind for thirty or forty years, retire, and call it a good thing, then more power to you. It IS a good thing. I envy and respect you, I really do. But then, you wouldn’t be reading this post in the first place, so you’d never know that. Sometimes I wish I could be happy to be Working For A Living for someone else!

There are those of us who simply cannot be entirely satisfied with that life, and that’s probably why you are here reading this.

For some of us, although we Work For A Living on the surface, we are simply never happy with it. There’s a longing for something more that is actually a physical heartache at times. Many times we don’t know what it is; we just know that we need it, and the need never goes away. We search for it by changing jobs, or changing relationships, or both. Sometimes we even unconsciously keep the most important people in our lives pushed away, at arm’s length, because we are so obsessed with our pursuit of something that perhaps we can’t even define. It’s an elusive but overwhelmingly annoying feeling that what we’re doing with our lives is simply not enough. We need something more!

If you haven’t guessed already, I’m one of those people with that need. As far back as I can remember, I was never happy simply holding a steady job. I was always looking for more, even though I could not define what more was. I didn’t even know if more was good; I just knew I needed it.

I don’t know if that need is something I was simply born with, or something that I picked up while growing up. I DO know, however, that either way, it came from my parents.

They both had the need, too. Both of them. My Mother had a good career, but she was always doing other things on the side. She found an answer to her need through a series of home businesses.

Back then, the big home business was the Party Plan. Tupperware, Rubbermaid, Park Lane Jewelry…you name it, she was into it. And she was good at it. It wouldn’t be long after she began a new venture that she would become the Regional Manager for this or that, or the Top Producer for the other.

My Father had the need too, as I said. He worked himself practically into a coma supporting our family, and his combination of drive and need finally culminated in his actually buying the last company he worked for. He took over that company and turned it into a viable, respected multi-state entity that employed a lot of people and had a solid reputation for quality and integrity. People always trusted my Dad, because he always kept his promises.

I don’t think he ever really understood how much I respected him and my Mother for what they accomplished in their lives. How they started with very little, went out into the world on their own, risked everything, and never gave up. How they found answers to the need that I know from my own experience was so powerful and overwhelming for them both. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to actually do it, and their examples are a source of great pride and inspiration for me.

Through the years, boiled down to it’s most basic aspect, I’ve come to realize that my own personal need is for a financial security that does not depend on the ups and downs of someone else’s company or business.

Financial independence, for me, is not about how much money I can put in the bank. It’s about the fact that whatever I earn, I did it MYSELF. From something I CREATED.

Yes, of course, it’s partly about earning money. However, hungrily accumulating money just for the sake of accumulating it is NOT important to me. Money is just a tool. It’s what can be done with it, and what I actually do with it, that’s important.

For me, it’s about having enough to give my family a secure life. Paying for a solid college education for all my kids. Making sure that many years from now my grandchildren, and those who come after them, will be able to share in something of what I created. It’s also about being able to reach out and to help people who need it whenever I see them. Could I do all that by Working For A Living? Working the daily grind all my life for someone else?

Yes, I could, and many people do. However, that doesn’t cover the entire scope of it for me. For some reason, I need to be able to do it myself. I need to be the one creating the things that bring in the income. So satisfying that need, for me, means financial security gained from something I created myself.

Wherever your own personal need comes from, you know it’s there, and you’re looking for a way to satisfy it. The fact that you’re reading this post is pretty good proof.

I’ve been in business on the Internet for many years now, and I can tell you that I work harder at it than I ever did when I worked for someone else. There are long hours, setbacks, ups and downs. There’s a lot to learn, and you have to constantly plug away at your business, day after day. You can’t slack off when things look tough, and you can’t blame other people for your own occasional bad decisions.

There will be times when you think you might have been crazy to try it in the first place. There will be people who tell you ARE crazy for trying it in the first place!

Now, if you quit your regular job to try and start a Home-based business, you may BE crazy! You need that steady income, until your own business at least matches it, and you’re sure you can sustain it. So, you do need to keep the day job, or look for one if you don’t have one right now. The beginning of any entrepreneurial venture has to be based on a solid foundation. For home-based business, that foundation is a regular job while you build your business.

If you feel the need to be an entrepreneur, though, that means that it’s a part of who you are. Follow it through. If you deny it and keep it bottled up, you’ll probably regret it at some future point in your life.

You and I are not crazy.

We’re driven. We’re creative. We’re inspired.

We’re Entrepreneurs. :o)

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Posted in Online Business | 7 Comments »

Five Ways to Make Your EBiz Look More Professional

Friday, June 7th, 2013 by

Selling online is largely about trust, and many online consumers are wary of buying from a Home-based Business.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with running an Online business from your home. It’s become a HUGE part of the overall Internet Marketplace!

Honest LinkinHowever, when you’re selling online, you’re asking people to trust your business with sensitive information, like their Credit Card numbers, and sensitive material, like their money. You’re also asking people to trust that you will deliver a product that they really want, in a timely manner and in one piece!

A tremendous number of online shoppers still will not buy from an online business if it’s obvious that the business is run from someone’s home.

Perception is the key, here. You’re an honest person, you’re selling good products, you are working hard to provide great service for your customers, right? Of course you are. BUT: when a careful online shopper (most online shoppers ARE careful!) checks out your web site or Auction store and looks for some basic information on your business, what are they going to find? The potential Customer’s perception of your business is going to make all the difference when it comes to whether they buy from you or not.

If they find that your Business Name is simply “Joe Smith”, your Business Address is “123 Main St., Apt 4”, there is no Business Phone Number, your Business Email Address ends in “Aol.com”, and you have NO Privacy Policy, Shipping Policy, Return Policy, etc., in your store, forget it. The Customer is going to go elsewhere, and you’re going to sit at home wondering why everybody ELSE is making money in ECommerce, and you’re not.

This is the way a huge number of Home-based ECommerce Businesses are set up, and even if many of them are making money, they could be making a lot more. Your potential Customer must perceive you to be a legitimate business, and should not be able to easily tell that you work from home. So, the following Five Tips are designed to help you with these things.

  1. Get a legal Business Name. There are many reasons to form a legal business; we talk about that all the time on our web site. This is just one of those reasons. It’s not hard in most places, it’s not expensive in most places, and it WILL make your business look more professional to your Customers. Your business name should probably be a generic name; don’t tie it to a particular product or service. A business name like “Joe’s Fingernail Clippers, Inc.” isn’t going to work well when you decide to open another store to sell Kitchenware. A business name like “J. Smith and Sons, Inc.” is a good, professional sounding generic name that can be easily retained when you start to expand your business into all kinds of different online ventures.

  2. Think about your home address. If your home address is 23 Wildflower Lane, potential Customers are going to be pretty sure you’re working from home. If your home address is 2112 Boulder Blvd., that’s better, and will probably work as a business address. If you ARE stuck with a home address that’s something like “Wildflower Lane”, think about getting a UPS Store Mailbox, or something similar. UPS Store Mailboxes are a great service, and always give you a more professional sounding address. It’s well worth the few dollars per month.

  3. Put a Business Phone Number on your Store. Most people who own Home-based ECommerce Businesses, when they do this, put their home phone number on the Store. That may not be the best idea, especially if it’s likely that your teenage son may answer it when you’re busy, and say to a potential Customer, “Uh, Mom’s in the bathroom. Do ya wanna leave a message?”, or if when YOU answer it, your potential Customer can hear your kids yelling in the background, or the TV blaring. Bad, bad, BAD! If those things are likely, seriously consider adding a second phone line to your home that ONLY you answer, preferably in a small but quiet room that you can use as a home office. When you’re not there, make sure the answering machine message on that line says, “Thank you for calling J. Smith and Sons, Inc. Our representatives are currently busy…” (you know the rest!).

  4. Get an Internet Domain Name for your business. For goodness sake, don’t accept and answer your ECommerce business email from your personal AOL email account, or worse yet, from those free Yahoo and Hotmail email accounts! Nothing screams “small home business!” like an email address like that! Once you choose a business name, get a Domain Name that matches it, like “www.JSmithAndSons.com“. When you get that Domain name, make sure it comes with Email Addresses (most of them do). That way, you can set up several business email addresses, like “Orders@JSmithAndSons.com“, and “Service@JSmithAndSons.com“, etc. Very professional!

  5. Make sure you display Policies on your Store Site. What are Policies? Just go to any big, professional Online Store and take a look at their Privacy Policy, their Refund Policy, their Shipping Policy, etc., etc. Then create Policies of your own containing the same kind of information, related to how YOU do things in your business. Slightly painful and boring to do? Yes. A sure way to make your business look more professional and earn more money? Absolutely.

Once again, perception is key in Online Sales. If you let yourself look like a little guy, you will be a little guy. Look and act like a Pro, and you’ll be surprised at the difference in the money you earn online. :o)

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Posted in Customer Service, Online Business, Online Business Advice, Recommendations | 4 Comments »

Contacting a Wholesale Supplier

Friday, May 31st, 2013 by
linkin emailing

Linkin Emailing a Wholesale Supplier

The more professional a Wholesaler thinks you are, the more anxious they will be to deal with you.

We were accidentally sent an email by someone who is a Member of our WBI Certified Wholesale Directory recently. The sender thought he was emailing one of the Suppliers we list. Instead, somehow, he managed to email us.

He was trying to email the Wholesale Supplier to ask for a Retail Account setup, so that he could do business with them through his ECommerce site.

When I saw the email, I cringed. I knew that this person was going to have a great deal of trouble communicating with Wholesale Suppliers, and possibly even causing them to decide not to deal with him at all.

The email went like this:
i want to sel the porduct’s you have. send me catalogs i need tohave all your pricestoo. i am making a ebay store to sell lots of product’s i am not working because of downsizing i have to make money right now

TR

Now, if YOU were an Account Representative at a Wholesale Supply company, and you got an email like this, what would YOUR first impulse be? Yep. DELETE!

We aren’t Account Reps for a Wholesale Supply company, so we took the time to send this person back an email gently suggesting some serious corrections. We never got a reply, so we can’t say whether or not he took our advice.

Most people don’t send emails that are THAT bad, but everybody needs to consider that an Account Request Email is the first impression you are making on a Supplier that you may want very much to work with. You need to make a good impression, or you may never get a second chance!

So, let’s take this email apart and look at what’s wrong with it, and then we’ll talk about how to construct an effective Account Request Email.

1. You can’t tell by looking at the email text above, but this email came to me from a FREE Email Service. That, right there, is not a good start. People in business know that free email services like Hotmail, Yahoo, and all the others are FREE. Those services might be great for personal use, but for Heaven’s Sake, if you are going to be in business, PLEASE get yourself a Domain Name that reflects your BUSINESS name, and gives you the ability to have Email Addresses with it. When you send a business email from a free email service, it makes you look like a small-time operator to the business you’re emailing.

2. There was NOTHING in the Subject line of the email received. Subject lines exist for a reason and should be used, especially in a business email. He should have put “Retail Account Request” in the Subject line of the Email. A Wholesale Account Rep loves to get emails that have subject lines like that. It means more potential business for them, and they are sure to open the email!

3. There are very obvious spelling errors in the email. Hey, not everybody is a good speller. That’s fine. But Email programs have spell checkers! If you know your spelling isn’t that great, use the spell checker!

4. There is absolutely no capitalization and very little punctuation in the email. Capitalization is a necessary function of communicating in the English, or in any other language. This is an Account Request Email, not an online chat session! This person needs to remember that sentences start with capital letters and end with periods, especially in business communications!

5. There are words that are run together in the email, with no spaces in between. That smacks of pure carelessness and indifference, and is a great way to make a very bad impression on a potential business contact.

6. The email is a DEMAND, not a REQUEST. “send me catalogs“, instead of “Please send me catalogs”. When you’re making a first contact with a Wholesale Supplier that you want to work with, remember that YOU are the one at a disadvantage. Wholesale Suppliers generally have plenty of Retailers to work with, especially smaller retailers. If you contact them for the first time and DEMAND that they do something for you, they’re going to chuckle, and delete your email.

7. The email gets into the person’s personal situation. “i am not working because of downsizing“. As compelling as your life story or personal circumstances might be, or as much as you might need to earn money right now, a Wholesale Account Rep frankly doesn’t care when you first contact them. You may get to know them well later, and exchange stories about fishing or baseball or the grand kids for years to come. When you first contact them, though, they really have no interest, and it actually crosses a personal comfort line that most people draw in their minds as to how much they want to know about someone they’ve never met or spoken with before. So, NO personal circumstances unless they are completely relevant. If you are visually impaired, for example, THAT would be an acceptable thing to mention, since you might need to ask if they can send you pricing information with large lettering. However, they don’t want to know a thing about your current work situation, your brother loaning you money to help you start your business, or the last time you had to go to the Doctor for your Lumbago.

8. There was no Salutation in the email, and no real signature. When you write a letter to someone, you say “Hello”, or “Dear Josephina”. You don’t just start spewing words. When you’re done with your letter, you say “Thank You”, and then you identify yourself with your full name. In a business email, you also include the name of your business and your email address.

Okay, we’ve dumped on this poor guy long enough. Let’s give you an example of an Account Request Email format that typically has had a great deal of success over the years.

(EMAIL SUBJECT LINE:) Retail Account Request

Hello;

My name is John Doe, of Doe Retail Enterprises, Inc., in Orlando, Florida. I found your company listed in Worldwide Brands’ Light Bulk Wholesale Directory, and am interested in setting up a Retail Account with you.

Please let me know what information and qualifications you require from me, and I will be happy to return them immediately.

Thank You
John Doe
Doe Retail Enterprises, Inc
john@doeretail.com

There. That’s IT. Nothing more is needed, unless you already know something about the Wholesaler and what they will require of you. Short, sweet, to the point, and professional. Capitalized, punctuated, beginning with a Salutation, ending with a signature and business information, and NOT sent from a free email account. :o)

Once again, use a spell checker. If you know your grammar isn’t all that great, that’s OK. Have somebody you know who writes well check it over for you.

First contacts with potential business partners are very important, and it doesn’t take much to make the first impression a good one!

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Posted in dropshipping, Online Business, Online Business Advice, Recommendations, wholesale tips | 6 Comments »

Dropshipping Insurance

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013 by

worldwidebrands.com safety linkinNo, you can’t get an actual insurance policy against drop shipping issues, but there IS a way you can insure that you won’t get caught empty-handed by a backorder!

Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Here at Worldwide Brands, we spend so much time dealing with drop shipping and light bulk wholesaling and verifying and certifying legitimate wholesale suppliers that some of the simplest things about this business get taken for granted, and we assume everyone realizes them. As a result, sometimes there are simple little tips and tricks in the business that we don’t mention often enough to our site visitors and customers, assuming that you already know these things.

Well, when you’re just getting started in ECommerce, there are a LOT of little things to learn, and we have to remember that nobody is born knowing all these little tips and tricks. So, when we realize that there is a basic fact that will help you, and we haven’t said much about it, we need to get the word out.

Everybody knows that something you need to be careful about when you’re using a drop shipper is that you don’t get stuck with a backordered product, right? Someone comes to your Internet Store or eBay Auction and buys a popular item that’s selling well for you. You order it from your Drop Ship supplier, expecting immediate delivery to your Customer. But, the drop shipper emails you back to say that they are temporarily out of stock on that item, and it will take a few days or maybe a week or two to get the item to your customer.

So, you grit your teeth and screw up your courage, and email your customer to tell them the item is backordered.

When you run an Internet Store, a backorder is usually not such a bad thing. Most customers are understanding about it, and if you stay in touch with them once every few days concerning the status of the order, they’ll wait it out and still be happy with your service. Of course, if the customer needs it right away, you may end up refunding them. On eBay, however, people are used to immediate (or at least fast) order fulfillment. If you tell an eBay customer that you can’t ship the item they bought right away, you do take some risk that the customer might leave you poor Feedback, and possibly go elsewhere. This doesn’t happen often, but there is a way you can prevent it entirely.

What most people don’t think about is the fact that Drop Shippers are ALSO Bulk Wholesalers. Every single one of them. Bulk Wholesaling is the main business of these companies. At least, all the 100% legitimate drop shippers that are listed in our Directories are. :o) Drop shipping is simply something extra they are willing to do for you.

So, here’s the trick. When you have a product, or even a few products that you get from a drop shipper that is/are selling well on your site or Auctions, and you want to be sure you don’t get caught in a backorder, buy a few of them yourself! You don’t need many! Even just two or three will do it. Your drop shipper is a wholesaler, right? You’ll get them at a wholesale price, and you may even get them at a lower price than you’re paying to have them drop shipped, if you place a large enough order. For example, if you have four products that you know sell really well, you could buy three of each of them and have them shipped to you. Not drop shipped; just shipped bulk to your home. As I said, you may get a bulk order price break for doing that.

Why do that? Well, if you have one or two or three of these products stocked in your home, you DON’T get caught in a backorder! If your drop shipper backorders you, you can simply ship out one of your Reserve Stock products directly from your home to the customer, and then immediately suspend further sales of that product on your site or Auctions until you know the item is back in stock at your drop shipper’s warehouse.

Simple, right? A perfect little insurance policy against ending up with an unhappy customer.

Why buy two or three? Well, remember that you do this only with products you know are selling well. It’s possible that you might sell two or three in the same day before you find out that the item is backordered. If so, you’re covered, and you can quickly suspend further sales until you know the drop shipper has them again.

You can scale this little trick to fit your sales, too. If you sell five of a certain product every day, you might want to keep five of them in Reserve Stock at your home. And so on, and so on.

Yes, this costs you a little upfront money, but you can do it with profits from your business after things are running well, you don’t HAVE to do this right from the start. Backorders are NOT that serious an issue if you talk to your customers about them immediately, and offer a refund. And remember to be sure you only do it with products that are selling well, so you DON’T have to keep Reserve Stock of everything you sell!

Of course, if you sell wide-screen TVs from a drop shipper, you can’t do this, but the majority of people in online business sell products that this little tip will work well with.

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Posted in dropshipping, Online Business, Online Business Advice, Packing and Shipping Tips, Recommendations, Website, wholesale tips | 6 Comments »

The Dangers of ‘Hottest Selling Product’ Lists

Tuesday, May 14th, 2013 by

fireYou’d think the ‘Hottest Selling’ products on the Internet would be a good place to make money, right? Not necessarily!

There are many places that publish lists of ‘The Hottest Selling Products on the Internet’. They range from the big Internet Marketplaces like Yahoo and eBay, to smaller companies that sell software and ECommerce tools related to online selling.

A ‘Hottest Selling Products’ list is a strange thing. It can be a good thing if used properly, but it can also be a bad thing if you’re not very careful.

You should approach these lists like you would approach a large, dangerous looking dog that you’ve never seen before. Do the right thing, and the dog just might sniff your hand and lie down at your feet. Make the wrong move, and you might end up missing a hand or a foot!

The good thing about a ‘Hottest Selling Products’ list, when it comes from a reliable source like eBay, for example, is that it gives you a good picture of what really is selling well on eBay over a reasonable period of time. That’s important information to have when you’re selling online, whether you use eBay or not.

There are two potentially bad things about it.

  1. The first potentially bad thing is that these lists are generated from very simple statistics. If a large number of a certain type of product is being advertised and/or sold in a certain marketplace, then that product gets on that marketplace’s ‘Hottest Selling Products’ list. The problem is that the ‘Hottest Selling Product’ list does not take profit margins into account!

A very good example of this situation is the Electronics market. Computers, DVD Players, Stereo equipment, etc. Electronics is, in my opinion, the absolute lousiest market to make money in on the Internet. For some reason that nobody really understands, almost everybody who first starts out in Internet Business wants to jump right in and start selling electronics! I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it is very difficult. That market became flooded with competition years ago, which caused everyone to undercut everyone else’s prices over and over again to stay in business, which left a very slim profit margin in Electronics that still prevails today. You have to really sell a lot of Electronics to make any real money, because the individual sale profits are so small.

Yet, Electronics are almost always at the TOP of all the ‘Hottest Selling Products’ lists! Why? Simply because so many people starting out in ECommerce are advertising them and trying to sell them!

  1. The second potentially bad thing is that when these lists are published by a large Internet Marketplace like Yahoo Store or eBay, everybody sees them! That can be a bad thing, even if the product in question is a NEW product that just made the top of the list!

Let’s say, for example, that a new blockbuster adventure movie comes out in the theaters. The super-spy star of the movie, Dash Rimrock, constantly uses a brand new kind of palm-sized computer/video phone throughout the movie to save himself and many beautiful women from all kinds of dastardly and dangerous bad guys. The product is called the ViddyPuter, made by a company called VidTechie, and it looks really cool. Now, this is a real product, and most people don’t realize that the manufacturer, VidTechie, paid the movie studio millions of dollars to feature that product in the movie constantly. It’s a promotional tool that offsets production costs for the movie studio, and works very well for manufacturer. That’s why you see all kinds of brand-name products prominently featured in movies; it’s a very expensive form of product commercial.

Suddenly this product becomes a market trend and everybody wants one, because everybody wants to be as cool as Dash Rimrock. That is exactly the result that VidTechie was hoping for when they paid the studio to feature the product in the movie. Pretty soon, the quickest of the market-savvy ECommerce Sellers are starting to sell the ViddyPuter on eBay. Before you know it, so many of them are out there that the ViddyPuter makes it to eBay’s ‘Hottest Selling Products’ list.

So, when you see the ViddyPuter suddenly appear on the ‘Hottest Selling Products’ list, should you immediately jump in, find a supplier for that product and try to sell it on eBay as well?

Probably not.

Why not? Because when the ViddyPuter hits that list, millions of people are going to see that at the same time you see it! Chances are that ViddyPuter market is very quickly going to become flooded with new Sellers, and then the price-slashing frenzy begins. Too much competition equals everybody trying to undercut everyone else’s prices, which equals the ViddyPuter’s profit margins bottoming out in a very short time after it hits the ‘Hot List’.

So, from a straightforward ‘What Should I Sell’ perspective, ‘Hottest Selling Products” lists are not a good place to draw your inspiration from.

However, there IS a way that you CAN make a ‘Hottest Selling Products’ list work for you, and the most successful sellers out there know what that is.

The way to make that list work for you, and make money on the ViddyPuter frenzy, is to attack the product’s Vertical Market. A Vertical Market is simply a group of products that are similar to, or closely associated with that product.

For example, instead of trying to sell just the ViddyPuter all by itself, like so many others will try to do, put together and sell a ‘Dash Rimrock Super Spy’ kit. Include the ViddyPuter, because that product is what will get your listings noticed on eBay or in the Search Engines. However, you sell the ViddyPuter at just about cost, and don’t expect to make money on it. The other products that you bundle into your Dash Rimrock Super Spy Kit are the ones you take your profit margin on. Your Kit could include a cool pair of compact Spy Binoculars, a Spy Pen that contains a portable computer hard drive (yes, they exist!), and a pair of Spy Sunglasses that have backward-looking mirrors built into the frame, so that the wearer can see behind them! The additional products in your Dash Rimrock Super Spy Kit are the ones you make money on, because when you add several products into a very unique bundled mix, no one can really compare your prices against other sellers’ prices. You can build decent profit margins into the other products. What you’re selling is completely unique, allows no opportunity for price-shopping, and is part of the Vertical Market of a very hot-selling product.

Instead of being just another one of the tens of thousands of people that are trying to eke out a small profit in the super-competitive ViddyPuter frenzy created by the ‘Hottest Selling Products’ list, you become someone who really does make a good profit selling a unique ‘bundled’ set of products in a very hot Vertical Market.

Sales, whether on the Internet or in a store in your local mall, is a creative art, folks. It’s not just a case of ‘Here it is, buy it!’ You can apply the method above to just about any kind of product; you just have to avoid the Herd mentality, and think about it a little first. :o)

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Posted in Online Business, Online Business Advice, Recommendations | 4 Comments »

The Incredible Power of Personal Networking

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012 by

Over the last several months, I’ve watched eBiz owners become increasingly frustrated in starting or running their online businesses. Hey, it’s no big surprise. The economy sucks eggs, and it’s not our fault but there’s nothing we can seem to do about it. People are scared half to death about whether or not they’ll have a job next week, and where the money will come from if they don’t. Those of us who have decided to be our own bosses are getting increasingly worried about how we’ll be able to pay our bills if the money we invest in ecommerce doesn’t pay off.

The fact is that most people who start online businesses do NOT succeed, and there’s a very good reason for that. There is one major difference between people who succeed and people who fail. The vast majority of people who succeed know what PERSONAL NETWORKING is and how to use it.

Personal Networking is as simple as understanding how to communicate with people in business, and communicating with people who understand business and are willing to share. It’s about learning how to deal with people in business.

As ONE example of Personal Networking, most newcomers are afraid to deal with large companies, such as wholesale suppliers. If you’re like most people, you see wholesale suppliers as giant faceless monsters that chew up small business owners and spit them out for breakfast. You’re nervous about contacting them, afraid they won’t see you as someone who is important enough to work with. You have no idea what to say to them, and are afraid of saying the wrong thing and blowing your chance to get a good supply of the product you want to sell.

The most important thing to realize is that wholesale suppliers are people too. When you call a supplier, you’re talking to a Salesperson. That Salesperson has a family. A Mom, a Dad, brothers, sisters, kids, friends, a dog, a mortgage, a car that breaks down when they least expect it, bills to pay, bad hair days, and all the rest of the things that come with simply being human.

There is a person just like you on the other end of that phone line or email address, so act like it! All you have to do is talk to them. When you talk to a supplier (or anyone else in business) simply treat that person like a friendly acquaintance. As you work with them, start to form a personal relationship, just like you would with a casual friend.

Anyone in business who feels like you’re at ease talking to them will be at ease in working with YOU, and you’ll get much farther with them than you would if you act like they have bad breath and you don’t want to stand too close to them.

This example is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Personal Networking. It starts there, and grows into getting into contact with others in business, and working together as groups of business owners. There’s tremendous strength in numbers and in the sharing of information, experience and common goals, and that makes Personal Networking is a critical skill to learn if you want to survive and prosper in business.

One person that understands business and is willing to share, is our Founder and CEO, Chris Malta. Chris hosts workshops for new and for struggling online business owners. He knows online retail and he knows how to sell products. Learn from Chris and also get direct lifetime support from him at anytime. Check out his workshops here; http://www.chrismalta.com/workshops

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Posted in Customer Service, Marketing, Online Business, Online Business Advice, Recommendations, Website, wholesale tips | No Comments »

How to Make Money Selling Products with No Profit Margin

Thursday, April 5th, 2012 by

cables
Have you ever bought a Printer for your computer, and wondered why you have to buy the Printer Ink separately? Ever bought a television, and then had to go buy the cables you need for it separately?

These are just two small examples of how the big chain stores actually make their profits in the Electronics market.

The Electronics market on the Internet is very often the first thing that newcomers to online business try to get into. It’s flashy and cool, and everybody says it’s the hottest market on the Internet. Well, maybe it is, but when you have, say, 100,000 people buying Electronics online every day, and 120,000 people selling them, none of the sellers are going to make much money.

It’s a pretty well saturated market, as has been for a long time. Most newcomers look at the wholesale pricing they get from Electronics Drop Shippers and other wholesalers, and complain that the prices are too high.

But they’re not. When you work with legitimate wholesalers like the ones you find in our Certified Directory, the prices are right where they should be.

The thing that most people don’t understand is that not only is Electronics highly competitive, which drives the profit margins down, it’s also an Accessory and Service Plan Market, and always has been. That means that the profits are not so much in the products themselves, but in the Accessories and the Service Plans that get sold with them!

Of course, you’re probably not going to be selling Service Plans for the products you sell on your website or eBay Auctions. So, let’s go back to the Printer Cable.

You can get a great printer for a good price at places like Best Buy. But, you can’t print anything until you buy the Cable, the Ink, and the Paper! And once again, that’s where Best Buy makes their money.

You can do the same thing. If you feel that you must sell in highly competitive markets, look at the products you’re selling, and think about the kinds of accessories that can go with them. Then, create package deals that you can sell on your Stores and Auctions. That’s how people who ARE making money in Electronics are MAKING that money!

Talk to your Supplier. Ask them what they carry that you can use to accessorize the products you sell, no matter what market you’re in. I guarantee you’ll find that the accessories carry a higher profit margin than the base products themselves, and that’s where you’ll make your money.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Peter Kaminski

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Posted in dropshipping, Marketing, Online Business, Recommendations, Website, wholesale tips | 8 Comments »

Trade References

Friday, July 3rd, 2009 by

When you ask a genuine wholesale supplier for an account with credit terms, the wholesaler typically asks you for Trade References.  When supplying a Trade Reference your provide a telephone (fax or email address) that allows the new wholesale supplier to contact people your have purchased from in the past to determine your payment history and credit worthiness. 

A new business will not have any prior credit history.  You will have to pay up front or using your credit card until you have built up a good credit history with your wholesale supplier.  That wholesale supplier then becomes a Trade Reference for you (provided you have a good payment history with that wholesale supplier.)

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Posted in What's New, wholesale tips | No Comments »

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