Have you ever run across a blog browsing the Internet? Sure you have. What are blogs? Generally speaking, blogs are kind of Internet journals. The authors of blogs share their ideas and feelings with their readers (as a rule, in an informal tone). It looks like the authors have a friendly conversation with the audience. At the moment, blogs are incredibly popular over the Internet and they are gaining more and more popularity each day. But only few online retailers realize that blogs can be real assets for their e-business.

How to Start?

There are a number of ways to start your own blog. For instance, a free service like BlogSpot.com or Blogger.com. You need to set up an account and start blogging. In order to start a blog on your site you have to install some software (for example, SixApart.com).

Take your time to build a base of permanent readers. At the same time you can try the following technique: draw traffic to your own blog by posting and leaving comments on the relevant blogs. Go to a social bookmarking site (like propeller.com) and find blogs that have a similar topic as your own. Link to the blogs that have worthy content and can be useful for your readers. You can also contact the owners of these blogs and try to persuade them to link to your blog.

But let’s assume that you have a product site. It doesn’t mean that all you have to do is write about the product itself. Write about things somehow linked to your product.

Anthony Perry, BlogAds.com, says:

“You can make your customers feel empowered if you inform them to make their own decisions, as opposed to just beating them over the head, saying, ‘This is a great product! You should buy it!’”

3 Major Pluses of Blogging

A decent blog has a number of advantages:

1. Do you want to persuade your potential customers that there is a real person behind your site? The best way to do it is write blog entries. Blog can help you create the effect of customer trust and loyalty to your brand
2. If you give your clients useful knowledge they are more likely to return to your site. Experience shows that the more time clients spend on a site the more likely they will return there. If you are able to give your readers valuable information you will be able to sell them your products.
3. Feedback is king. Try to get as much feedback on your products, your site, and your customer service as possible. Your customers will leave comments and thus you will see what products they are interested in. Perry continues: “Blogging’s a tool that lets you communicate with your customer base in a way that’s far more intimate than a monthly e-newsletter.”

Here are a few pieces of advice for you to know how to act and hot NOT to act being an eBay auctioneer:

Have a look at your undertakings through your clients’ eyes

• Images

Never take vague and odd pictures. Create an impression of being a professional. Again think like your customer: would you want to deal with unprofessional seller? Certainly, no! So don’t be unprofessional yourself.

• Contact Info

Always include some contact information in your listings. If a customer sees that he can contact you any time and solve all the issues, he gets more confident in you as in a businessman. You can include email, and your phone number.

• Questions

Respond to all customers’ inquiries as soon as possible (if you can do it immediately – never postpone). Online clients want all and immediately. If it takes you more time than they are ready to spend, be sure they have already gone to another seller.

• Money

Never accept cash in mail. If you do, you won’t be able to prove anything. Use safe payment methods: credit card, PayPal.

• Prices

There are a number of good tools (HammerTap.com, Terapeak.com) that can help you set the prices. Research the market and find out what prices are reasonable and then follow your research in setting your own ones

• Prices once again

Never lower the price for an item by artificially inflating the shipping costs. If your shipping costs are higher than the cost of the item you sell but you on purpose mask it until the last moment, your customers will be unhappy and will most likely cancel the deal.

• What’s in the name?

Choose a good and credible ID name. Never try to follow the pattern like this: “cool4u” or “bestUcanGet”.

• Brand Names

Try to avoid the names of unknown brands in the titles. Over 60% of sales are made using the search function. Don’t use the names no one searches for.

• Names & Titles

Avoid misleading names in the title. If you sell sponges and you call them Sponge Bobs people will come and see that you deceive them. Do you think they will ever to a businessman who once proved ignorant?

Following these tips you can avoid common mistakes and start off your business successfully right from the very beginning.

We get email here all the time asking us why Internet Retailers shouldn’t just buy the products they sell, directly from the Factory at wholesale.

Here, at Dropshiparea, we get a lot of mail asking why it is not possible for a retailer to contact the manufacturer directly and buy the products from it at wholesale. Really, it would be much better if you could contact the product manufacturer and buy items at considerably lower prices with no middlemen participating in the process, wouldn’t it?

Of course, it would! But…It is rarely possible in reality. Manufacturers will hardly jump at a chance to collaborate with a single retailer. Why? Let’s find out why.

Manufacturers have their hands occupied even without sales problems. Producing something is a tiresome and time-consuming process.

For, instance, first of all a manufacturer has to patent its new product, then he has to find suppliers of the parts of his product, later he has to buy and set up machines that will manufacture the item. And so on and so force.

When it comes to selling the manufactured products there can be two possible ways:

1. The manufacturer decides not to collaborate with a wholesale supplier. In this case he has to rent its own warehouse. He has to spend years establishing relation with chain stores and single retailers (in this case it is possible to contact the manufacturer directly and buy item from him at wholesale)
2. The manufacturer contacts a supplier. The supplier already has trustworthy mechanisms, contacts and thousands of stores to supply the products to. The supplier also has its own warehouses and the manufacturer can simply sell its product by the truckload.

Do you see it now? Do you really think that a knowledgeable manufacturer will try to reinvent the selling mechanism instead of using a ready one? I don’t think so.

That is why use are not likely to contact a manufacturer and buy directly from it.

Wholesale suppliers are the place every one buys from: consumers and huge corporations. You won’t be able to avoid this kind of middleman in any kind of business.