Every good Internet business understands the value of conversions versus hits received. Far too often, businesses become fixated on the hits they are receiving instead of monitoring their hit to sale conversion rate. This misguided focus is the road to ruin because it fails to take in the issue of abandonment.
Abandonment
“Abandonment” is one of those terms that has a unique meaning when applied to the Internet. The term refers to reasons why a user abandons a site before taking the action the site owner desires, typically purchasing a product or making an inquiry.
There are a number of beautiful sites on the Internet with unique innovations. Unfortunately, these sites rarely turn a profit or unnecessarily limit their profit potential. Site owners must focus on only one thing when building a site – converting visitors to customers. To avoid abandonment issues, you should focus on the following:
1. The site should always load as quickly as possible to accommodate visitors that are using 56k dialup modems.
2. The site should be designed for ease of use, not “what looks good.”
3. All advertisements must click through directly to the items that are being searched, not the home page of the site.
4. Site pages should be kept short to improve load times.
5. Information that is not germane to the product or service should be removed.
6. Flash, music and other “atmosphere elements” of the site should be removed or optional to speed up load times.
7. Signing up for the site newsletter must be incredibly easy.
8. Customers should be required to fill out the minimum of information to make a purchase.
9. Newsletters should be issued in HTML and text since some email systems do not accept HTML.
10. All images should be compressed for quick loading.
11. All links and emails must also include AOL friendly equivalents.
12. All emails must have automatic text wraps at 60 spaces so that the recipient does not receive a disjointed mess of code in their email box.
13. Email communications from the public must be responded to within 24 hours.
14. Communications made after business hours must be responded to first thing in the morning.
15. The site should offer accumulating bonus points for purchases that eventually lead to a “free gift”
16. When an order is shipped, an email should be sent to the customer telling them as much.
The list is fairly endless, but you should always view site designs and advertising from the perspective of the customer. The universal question for each project is, “How could we make this easier for customers?” By emphasizing this approach, you will bypass many of the problems you see on the net and avoid wasting your advertising dollars.
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The World Wide Web has become an integral part of our lives. It has penetrated so deeply into our daily living that people now turn towards the World Wide Web for buying clothes, books, electronic equipment etc. For an online seller, then, it becomes imperative to find means to make an online transaction as easy and painless as possible. Since most people prefer to use their credit cards while shopping, webmasters need to integrate this service into their online shopping websites. An answer to your online payment needs can be a payment processing company.
Most online shopping sites enter into a business alliance with payment processing companies. However, you should diligently comb the market for the best deal before you sign up with a service. Make sure that they are not overcharging you. Also, check out their reputation in the market – are they known for their fair minded financial and business transactions? This kind of a company operates through two types of services – one id intended for companies with merchant accounts with their banks and the other for companies who do not possess this kind of a bank account. The first kind of service is generally used by fairly large financial institutions and organizations dealing in independent sales.
The advantage of having a merchant account is that you can receive payments within a few days of the transaction. However, if you do not have a merchant bank account, the payment processing company receives the payment on your behalf initially. The mode of operation is that the buyer will fulfill the transaction not on the seller’s website, but on the site of the payment processing company. (If you choose the former service, the processing company will help you enable your website to receive payments from the buyer directly.) Also, it is only a few times in a month that the processing company will forward you the payments.
There are a couple of steps which need to be completed before your website can host the facility of receiving payments through a credit card. Firstly, you will have to host an order form on your website. You then need to establish a gateway. This kind of service transfers the customer’s payment and credit card information to the payment processing company. You would then need to establish the facility of a shopping cart on your website. If your site already hosts this function, the payment processing company will surely be able to integrate its services with it.
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Have you ever wondered why your perfectly fine classified ad fails to attract the attention you desire? There should be dozens—no, hundreds—of perspective buyers swamping your e-mail inbox with offers. After all, you are offering a mint baseball card, a vintage coat, pristine used car, those wholesale-priced sporting goods, and whatever other attractive items are in your inventory. Instead, you only have a slow trickle of questions, a handful of sales. What gives? More than likely, your sales are slow because you have not mastered the three techniques of writing a classic classified ad.
Of course, give yourself credit for recognizing one important facet of today’s selling world. You decided to sell your stuff at an online classified site. As anybody in the business knows, online classified ads get you more privacy, a broader selection of buyers, and a wealth of tools to help you keep tabs on your transactions. When compared to a newspaper, cyberspace is also a wee bit more spacious. There are billions of pages on the Web, and only a few dozen in your typical neighborhood rag. For you, that means a lot more space for your ad to say the least.
With that space, however, comes great responsibility—and great potential. The extra room gives you the freedom to include as much product description and sale copy as you want. You can’t just slap together a whole bunch of information, though. You need to use the three special ad writing techniques that will attract buyers and seal the deal: attention, interest, and action.
Attention. Make sure the buyer stops at your ad instead of the thousands upon thousands of others out there in cyberspace. Your ad’s title is the first lure to grab his or her attention, and the first component of a catchy title is the item’s best feature, whether it’s the price, the item’s rarity, or its popularity. Next, be sure the title includes keywords or other synonyms for your item that a buyer might use in a search. For instance, a buyer could search for “automobile” instead of “car,” “pullover” instead of “sweater.”
Interest. Once you have the buyer’s attention, hook them with details. There is a direct relationship between the amount of information you provide and the number of sales you’ll make. So describe the item as completely as possible—size, color, material, designer, model—and provide a clear, digital photo to finish the job where your words leave off. Even offer your prospective customer the item’s history if possible.
Also, try to list as many possible benefits that your sales item could offer the buyer. Come up with some that the buyer probably wouldn’t think of on his or her own. And zone in on specific benefits. Use what you already know about your target. For instance, if you were selling a car, you know that whoever is looking at your ad is in need of a vehicle. If your car is compact, perhaps the buyer is in search of great gas mileage. Or perhaps it’s power he or she wants if your car is a sports model.
Action. Finish your ad strongly. Don’t just suggest to the buyer that you offer a great deal. Tell them it’s a fantastic offer that they can’t pass up. Use phrases like “Call me now before someone else does” or “Buy now, this opportunity won’t last long.” Be cordial while you’re pressing the issue, of course. Thank them for reading your ad and make sure they know you appreciate their business.
Most importantly, your customers will also value your honesty throughout the whole ad. So whether it’s the attention, interest, or action you’re shooting for, never lie or exaggerate. Go so far to include any defects if your product is not in mint shape. Your honesty will build trust, and trust above all else makes an ad work. What’s more, it makes for repeat customers.
Remember, if you use all three of these elements—or four if you include honesty. When you’re finished with it, it should read something like the two examples below.
Example 1:
Discover the beauty of a Forest Hill Home
2500 sq. ft. home, 4 bedroom, 3 baths, double garage, upgraded kitchen, 12 ft. ceilings
This open concept house is situated in a historical landmark district of Rhode Island. It’s a wonderful neighborhood to raise your family, with nearby schools and amenities.
(Insert your image or photo here.)
Call for an on-site appointment. Thanks for looking!
Example 2:
Looking for an inexpensive used car that drives well? only $4,950.
2003 Honda Civic, Limited Edition, 65,000 miles, manual transmission, CD, AM/FM radio, power steering, low maintenance. Great on gas – this car will save you $$$ on high gasoline prices.
(Insert your image or photo here.)
Send me a message now. Thanks for looking!
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One of the most serious problems with any blogging system, including WordPress, is that the comments area is wide open to that scourge of the Internet, spammers. In this case, it’s comment spam.
Comment spam is created by people seeking to boost their Google rankings by having lots of links pointing to their own websites. This causes a wide variety of problems:
• When Google detects content spam, they will often block the site it’s coming from because it messes up their ranking system.
• It takes up your valuable time and bandwidth to eliminate these posts.
• If the onslaught of spam is heavy enough, it may result in a denial-of-service attack, intended or not, which is a situation in which the server tries so hard to post bad information and/or deliver notification emails to you that it denies service to the legitimate requests. In at least one case, a blogger received over two thousand email notifications of comments that needed approval; as he dealt with these, he continued getting more, ultimately crashing his mail server.
As you can see, even if you have your comments set to post only upon approval, this can be a serious problem. One solution is the Akismet plugin for WordPress.
Akismet Plugin and Other Plugin Options for WordPress
Akismet is designed to help you filter out those nasty spammers, and it’s not hard to get it installed into your WordPress system. Download the plugin, and upload it to the blog directory on your server in the plugins subdirectory under wp-content. Activate from the WordPress plugins menu. If you have a notice that you need the Akismet API, go to the WordPress website and look or ask for one.
Here’s the magic: the only instruction in Akismet is “forget that spam was ever a problem.” You don’t have to do anything else at all – the spam will simply be bounced. You will not receive a notification, nor will you have to go out and delete spam.
Another plugin for eliminating spam from bots is the “Did You Pass Math” plugin. This one makes the user perform a simple math problem before submitting a comment. As most humans can handle this and most spambots can’t, it’s pretty likely that a comment posted through this is a legitimate comment. You should add a note of caution that your comments will be deleted if you answer the math wrong, though; a wise commenter will use an offline composition tool, not post directly to the comments area.
If This Still Doesn’t Work
If you still can’t eliminate spammers with these plugins, you can eliminate them by denying them access to your comments area. This does not mean you have to disable your comments section, only that you need to set up a filter.
It’s not usually as simple as just blocking their IPs. Serious spammers use random IPs, while blocking IPs may get rid of them for a short time, it will ultimately prevent legitimate comments from being posted. Spammers are also notorious for hijacking other people’s IP addresses. But as a short-term emergency solution, you can try it. The IP address is included in the information packet for the comment; it’s similar to a traceable phone number. Look for clear patterns in your IP numbers.
Use the .htaccess file to block unwanted IPs from even seeing your blog. For instance, these lines can be added:
order allow,deny
deny from 123.123.123.123
deny from 456.456.456.*
deny from 789.789.*.*
allow from all
IPs are four-part numbers, such as 192.168.0.1. Typically, if you see a pattern with the first two sections being identical, you can block all IPs of that type by simply listing them as 192.168.*.*, as you see above. This screens out all these IP numbers. Blocked IPs will get a 403 error page; customize yours so that your contact details are listed in case you’re blocking out a legitimate user. Don’t use your regular email; a spammer can harvest that too, for a whole new set of problems. Instead, encode your email so that it’s not automatically readable.
When you think you have your problems addressed, you can remove the block from your .htaccess file. If it still doesn’t work, or if you don’t see an IP pattern, it’s likely that spambots are hijacking someone else’s machine to attack your site. In this case, do not use the IP block.
Again, if you don’t have an IP pattern of attack, this may not be worth doing. Remember, too, that with IP addresses, the first numbers affect the largest number of computers, like a reverse address: USA, California, Sacramento, X Building, Ste. 101, Joe Schmo. An IP follows roughly the same pattern, with the last of the four sections referring to the specific computer it is attached to.
Google’s Nofollow Attribute
Of course, if it’s a waste of their time to spam you, spammers may just skip you altogether. For this reason, you can use the Google Nofollow attribute for links: . This attribute is embedded automatically by modern versions of WordPress.
It does not eliminate links, which is what spammers are working on adding to your site. Instead, it makes those links irrelevant to Google. The end result is that it doesn’t hurt your rank in Google, and it doesn’t help a spammer to send data to your site. It also marks you, for spambots looking for an easy target, as a waste of time.
This is not an immediate fix. But it is a way to make your blog resistant to spammers in the future. If you’re already a target, you’ll have to work with it slowly, incorporating all these fixes. If you aren’t a target, the very least you should do is turn on the nofollow option in your WordPress system; this will deter any hungry spambots. Upgrade your version, or look for one of the plugins that provides this service for you.
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The internet has virtually changed the way we certain aspects of our lives. It has changed the way we view where we get the latest news, how to communicate with one another, how we play, how we shop and even how we trade and make money.
The internet has made these aspects of our lives more instantaneous and, with regards to shopping and trading, brought these activities to our door steps. It now allows us to shop and purchase items that we like by just looking at the items offered in different websites. Ditto for trading, where we now have the opportunity to sell and trade products and, thus earn money, from the comfort of our homes.
The potential for online trading is so great that there are now people who do this professionally. They have quit their regular jobs and instead work and support their families by buying and selling various products online.
One of the most lucrative and interesting aspect of online trading is the buying and selling of used or second-hand goods. Through the power of the internet, web based marketplaces have sprouted all over where visitors can browse around for various second hand goods and purchase them online. It is like a virtual flea market where you can browse through different items of interest that have been owned previously by other people. The significant difference between doing this in an actual flea market and selling it online is the number of people of potential customers that will see your items. Potentially, the people that will be able to see your items online can number in the high thousands, and that is just a conservative estimate. What’s more since you sell your items online, you won’t have to man any stalls or booths. If there is a person who wants to buy your items, then you just get notified by email. Isn’t that convenient?
People who would like to try selling their used goods online don’t even have to set up their own websites – which can be quite difficult especially since you will need to install a payment gateway which can be quite hard and expensive to set up. They can always go join online communities that encourage the buying and selling of used goods. Communities like http://www.usedjunction.com make the task of selling used goods so much easier. These websites already have their infrastructure in place that can accommodate both the buying and selling functions of a virtual marketplace. Another benefit of joining these online communities is that you get to take advantage of the marketing muscle of the website. With minimal marketing efforts from you as a seller, you can be assured that prospective customers will still be able the items that you are selling. This is a tremendous benefit that should not be overlooked. Just make sure that you give a good description of your item, and more importantly good quality pictures of the items that you are selling so that you can be noticed by prospective buyers.
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For every one entrepreneur who learns how to earn money on the internet, there are many more wanting to do the same thing. So, the ratio of success to failure increases as the gap between the two groups gets bigger.
One of the by-products of this growing gap is the increase of traffic in opportunity offers as the result of the increase in successful projects. There is no doubt that opportunity abounds, but in any endeavor it takes time, a resource that is in short supply especially if your not quite ready to “fire your boss”.
After getting past free promotion, bonus packages, and getting down to business, a knowledge gap appears. At this point the relation between time and easy, or time and low cost, is starting to look more like a liability instead of an asset.
I think of my time as a valuable asset that must be leveraged to increase its value. Similarly, money is an asset if more comes in than is paid out. So I invest time as I do money, by evaluating the risk and return on investment. Therefore costs hidden in free offers are mainly based on the value of time.
Not all opportunities are created equal in the leverage department. Once you find out that “easy” is not the same as the time it takes to get your business produce a profit, your time has been leveraged by someone else at your expense. When time and money liability becomes unsustainable, the opportunity is forgone for stories about internet business that doesn’t work.
Many investments in so called easy to follow, step-by-step, methods lead to monthly liabilities like service fees for an ISP, leads, auto-responders, etc. Until income exceeds the cash flowing out, the liability is compounded by the time it takes to learn how to build the business to profit and you’ll likely need deep pockets to leverage your time. Alternatively, opportunity with a fixed cost changes the time leverage factor in your favor.
Fortunately, I discovered one such opportunity that’s like a Swiss army knife because of the multi-function it delivers. Once past the red flags of big money, low cost, network building, and leveraging time for marketing, this extraordinary opportunity earned its place in my portfolio because it is also an object lesson, a bonus to learning how to leverage time and money to build your business.
There were only three payments to start-up, a total one-time expense less than a 1 year domain rental liability. Software and ebook products were delivered immediately upon purchase. In a few easy steps, I had signed up for merchant accounts that now enable me to do transactions internationally. All I do now is promote the site along with my other internet business investments.
If you don’t have a low maintenance high potential earner in your portfolio yet or would like an object lesson to test your existing investments, please drop by my site for the link or email me.
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Choosing what you want your website to be isn’t always as obvious as it might seem. There are so many options available to you that it really pays to take time out to think about this question before jumping in. Ask yourself what you are actually aiming for in having an online presence? Do you want a personal website, an online shop, a blog or diary style presence? Or do you want to run a forum related to your product or interest, perhaps an ezine with a back-issue website or if you are an artist, photographer or craftworker, maybe an online gallery would best promote you? To help you decide, try asking yourself these questions.
Do you want to sell physical goods? Items that have to be delivered by post, such as books, toys, clothes, electrical goods etc are ideal for an ecommerce website. There are many options open to you whereby you can catalogue your items by entering them into a database. This sounds more complicated than it actually is. Most shop building software has a simple interface whereby you can enter items in obvious categories, add prices, sizes etc and postage costs. The add to basket buttons are generated for you for each item.
There’s a huge number of companies offering you shop solutions for your website but they don’t all have the same facilities. As ever, it pays to research and find one that does everything you want it to. Most companies will offer you a free trial and I recommend that you select a company that does.
You can choose to buy shopbuilding software to install on your computer, the benefit being that this is a one-off purchase and no recurring monthly payments, apart from your web hosting. Alternatively you can go for the hosted shop option. There are an enormous number of companies offering this. Advantages are that your hosting and website are integral. Everything is done online so you can even update your shop from any computer wherever you may be. These options are usually very simple to use and have good help menus.
Do You want to sell downloadable goods, eg. software, music, ebooks? Downloadable products are very hot selling items on the internet. The reason is obvious and it benefits everyone involved. The buyer receives his/ her purchase immediately payment has cleared and the seller has no stock to buy, keep or deliver. Some product examples are music, images, software, templates and ebooks.
Ebooks are one of the most popular downloadable products. They are very easy to produce and most people have the ability to read them from their computer screen or even print them out. “How to” books are the most popular by far as they provide answers, solutions and ideas. The internet is used by many as a research tool and people are actively looking for information and solutions to problems. If you can provide these on a popular enough niche topic, your ebook is likely to be in demand.
There are several websites which offer you the facility to sell downloadable products, such as Clickbank and Payloadz. A quick google search will give you more options to explore to find the most suitable for your particular needs.
Are you an artist or photographer or craftworker? Firstly, ask yourself what your purpose of having an online presence will be. For example, are you looking to have a classy online portfolio or do you want to set up an ecommerce shop where you promote the sale of your original work and prints? Can you design websites or do you have the financial means to ask someone to build one for you? Do you have sufficient I.T. skills to join one of the many online galleries that allow you to upload your work to your own gallery area on their website? Do you like the idea of being part of a larger online gallery but need someone to do all the techy things for you?There are an enormous number of online galleries now but knowing what you want to achieve will help you narrow your search significantly.
Do you have a bricks and mortar shop? If your business is in the real world, think about what it is you require your website to do in order to promote or give added value to your business. Do you wish it to be simply an online information post so that people can find more about what you offer or find their way to your premises? If so, you may if that your local government will offer you a free web page or mini website on their main council site. If you want something more individual, then a simple site built with Frontpage or a webuilder is probably your best option. If money is no object, then you can hire a webdesigner and achieve something more sophisticated.
Or perhaps you wish to add something extra to your business such as an online, out of hours, ordering system with home delivery. Again, unless you can pay for your site to be custom built, one of the easy web-shop builders is probably your best option. Here are some excellent ones for you to review.
Do you want to sell or promote a service? For example, are you a webdesigner, childminder, photographer, plumber, tutor, dogwalker, typist, financial adviser, mobile hairdresser, decorator, gardener, acupuncturist or beautician? The list is endless. If you offer a service whether online or off you will want to reflect your professionalism in a well designed and easy to navigate website. If you are able to afford to have your website designed for you to your own specifications, then this can be a good choice as it frees up your time to get on with actually providing the service you are involved in.
This is in option which many cannot afford. An alternative would be to build the website yourself. The advantages to this can really repay the time you put in. To start with, you can update your site whenever you wish, so keeping the content fresh and relevant. Software to help you do this is easily obtained. Dreamweaver and Frontpage are amongst the most popular. I find that the latter is an excellent choice for someone new to web design as it is so intuitive and easy to learn.
Having built your site yourself, the only ongoing costs are the time you decide to spend on it plus your webhosting and there are some excellent deals to be had these days. If you feel uncomfortable with building sites, don’t despair. There are some fabulous online website builders on offer these days. with this option, your website and hosting are all inclusive. Typically, you will be given a login area where you can select the template, ie. look and feel of your website and add images and information in a very simple step by step way. There is considerable competition amongst web hosts offering this option and for you, the consumer, this means that more added value is being tagged onto these packages all the time.
Do you want to build a community website? Websites reflecting the interests of a community or group membership don’t need to be sophisticated but it is an excellent idea to have one that is interactive. Being able to post questions and opinions, vote on a member poll or even post photographs will encourage members to participate more fully and can lead to new ideas and renewed enthusiasm within the group. An ideal solution might be a one page website linked to a forum. Some web hosts will offer free websites and hosting for not-for-profit groups and this is well worth looking into. Another idea is to have a community Blog. Again, these are something that permit group participation in posting plus are easy to set up and manage and many are free.
Good luck with your endeavours whatever your aims! The internet is a great place to have your own voice.
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10 things you should be monitoring on your website
By David Leonhardt
Every business needs to know how it is doing. That’s the idea behind exit surveys, customer feedback forms, suggestion boxes and other devices. Without feedback from the customer, monitoring inventory, expenses, revenue and other benchmarks, a business can take a quick slide down a slippery slope, without the owner ever seeing it coming – or being able to stop the slide.
Webmasters also have things they should be monitoring on their websites. Most of these can be classified as traffic related or server performance related. Here is my top ten list.
Monitoring website traffic
Traffic totals. You want to know how much traffic you are generating. If the line on the graph is heading down, you know you have to find out why.
Referrers. It’s not enough just to know how many visitors you are getting. You need to know where they are coming from. I discovered I was getting a lot of visitors from a Thanksgiving site. They were all being funneled into my Thanksgiving Happiness article. Suddenly I knew I should get more links from other Thanksgiving sites. Valuable information.
Searches. Much to my surprise, my happiness site started getting a ridiculous number of hits from the search for “hairdressers”. It just so happens I wrote a humor column on a hairdresser experience. I was surprised to see it getting so much traffic for such a generic, competitive search term. If that had been a term of a little more relevance for me, this information would have lead me to properly optimize the page and get even more traffic.
Pages viewed per visit. If people visit only one page per visit, you have some work to convince them to visit more pages, like those that make you money.
Pages visited. So you threw up on your site something cool as an add-on. How were you to know that other webmasters would link to it and send a whole bunch of traffic your way? Well, now you know, so add some copy to the page to pull visitors into the rest of your site.
Monitoring website performance
Forms. Are they all functioning? A good website monitoring service can keep tabs on them for you. The last thing you want is to have lost hundreds or thousands of subscribers because a sign-up form stopped functioning
Shopping carts. Slow and complicated shopping carts are responsible for an estimated $25 billion in lost sales. Make sure yours is functioning properly. A good website monitoring service can watch this for you, too.
Download speed. Clear your cache and test your pages. Hmm. Maybe those images are a bit large. Time to compress them, or even remove some. Remember that some people are on a much slower connection than you are. I use a satellite connection sometimes, but when I don’t, my connection speed is 28K.
Server speed. re there problems with server speed? Maybe not where you are, but on the other side of the world. Global website monitoring can alert you to a transatlantic connection problem, so you can take it up with your web hosting service.
Server accessibility. All the web hosts promise 99% accessibility. But is that for real? Who monitors them? By one estimate, 75% of inaccessibility is not on the hosting server, but rather on the Internet’s backbone network and in global routing. A global website monitoring service can help identify the problem, so that you can work with your web hosting company to resolve it before too many sales are lost.
Fun. If you are not having fun, audition for that drummer position in the local band. There is no point spending your life doing something that bores you. Webmastering should be fun.
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If you want to make money selling on ebay, you should look at finding yourself a wholesaler in the field you are selling in. A wholesaler is the ‘bridge’ between the manufacturer and the retailer. Quite often the manufacturer doesn’t want to deal with individual retailers because of they may only sell hundreds of their product, whereas the wholesaler can sell thousands. Because of this, they only mark up their prices probably around 15%.
Wholesalers have only recently found the power of the internet, with more and more are shifting from having just an online prescence to having a full e-commerce site. And that’s good news for the retailer.
Due to the nature of the wholesaler, they won’t deal with end consumers, and only deal with ‘traders’, but that doesn’t mean they won’t deal with you. Provided you are going to be buying in bulk, in general the wholesaler will sell to you. Being a trader simply means you’re not going to keep the products you buy. If you’re selling on ebay as a hobby that still means you’re a trader. You don’t need to set up a company, the same way you don’t need to when you sell at car boot sales.
So now you know what a wholesaler is, how do you go about finding one. Buy a wholesaler list from ebay, right? Wrong! Those lists may contain thousands of companies, but accurate are they? In my experience, not very. Out of interest I bought a list, and 90% of the wholesalers listed aren’t in the country you’re interested in. Very few had websites, and some just had mobile phone numbers as the contact, which were not in service. Don’t waste your money. They are out of date as soon as they are put on the cd, or in the PDF.
You have a couple of options. The simplest is to pick up the Yellow Pages (or visit Yell.com). You’ll be suprised how many there are on your doorstep. Just pay them a visit explaining that you’re starting to sell online. Some do require letterheads etc, but many don’t. All it takes is a visit to find out.
The other way is to visit a trader directory website. There are a few on the net, but most of them require you to pay to see the wholesalers listed. I think this is backwards. It’s like asking you to pay every month for the use of the Yellow Pages. The right way to do it is to have free access, but if any payment is required, it should be from the advertiser. There is another benefit to the advertiser/wholesaler too, and that’s their page ranking. Search engines look at how many other sites are linking to their site, and more specifically, sites that are related (by theme/topic etc) to each other. Having similar sites linking will improve the page ranking of those sites, which will make them appear higher in search engines. But I digress.
When you find a wholesaler, visit his site. If he’s in the UK, he needs to have a contact name, address and number on their site (as required by section 4 of the Business Names Act, 1985). If they are a registered company, their company number needs to be visible also. You can use this to check how long the company has been in business and their registered address. Give them a call and have a chat. If they’re legit then they’ll welcome the call and quite happily answer any questions.
Check the terms and conditions. Because they sell in bulk, there may be a minimum order quantity for individual items, or a minumum order value. This can be as little as £50 or as much as £1000.
You may need to register to see the wholesale prices. This shouldn’t pose a problem. Once you’ve got the prices, compare them to similar items on ebay to see what kinds of profit you can make. I’ve found prices for the same item can vary quite dramatically between wholesalers. This is because wholesalers get discounts from the manufacturer depending on the amount they can sell. The more they sell, the bigger the discount.
Build up a good relationship with them if possible. Some online wholesalers are very friendly and offer what feels like a personal service. If you are regular, they may provide an even higher level of service.
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Determining a profitable website is not easy especially if you are looking to flip it for higher profit within a short time frame. However, with the correct steps and procedures, it is possible even for a beginner to pick up a good site with great potential to start off.
The first step to determine if a website is worth the investment is by the number of income streams it has. Most websites have more than one income channel such as Pay-Per-Click advertisement (Google Adsense etc), Pay-Per-Action programs (AzoogleAds, ClickBank etc) or selling of own products. Basically, this step is to analyze the current profitable channels and see if you can expand or add in other sources of income. Never rely only on one income source for a website.
The second step is to find out where are the traffic coming from. Most websites should have a healthy amount of constant traffic from the search engines followed by social bookmarking sites or regular visitors. If the majority of the traffic is coming from the search engines, proceed to ask the owner what are the keywords that brought in the traffic. Try out the keywords in the search engines and check out the search engine rankings of the site.
You should also check with the owner what are the top search engines that direct the traffic to the site. With these information, check the on-page optimization effort of the site and you may have more ideas for improvements after you have bought it.
The next step is to highlight the areas of possible improvements of the site. If you can come out with at least two quick fixes to the site that can increase the value created to the visitors, the traffic to the site will increase to the next higher level eventually. For example, if you can include an online tool to calculate the financial networth of a person in a financial blog, that would most likely benefit all your readers in a long run.
The fourth step is to check for back links to the site that you are interested to purchase. It is highly recommended to use Yahoo backlink analyzer to check for backlinks since it displays almost all the pages that linked to the site. You may want to use the Yahoo powered analyzer at USESEO.com.
With the above four steps, you should have no problems choosing a profitable website that can generate a stable income for some time. You are advised to check on the seller’s history as well to know more about the seller’s background before confirming the transaction.
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