March 9th, 2008
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:
- 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
- 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.
- 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.”
Posted in Directory of Ideas, Dropship, General Business, Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 3rd, 2008
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
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.
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.
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.
Never accept cash in mail. If you do, you won’t be able to prove anything. Use safe payment methods: credit card, PayPal.
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
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.
Choose a good and credible ID name. Never try to follow the pattern like this: “cool4u” or “bestUcanGet”.
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.
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.
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February 19th, 2008
People who sell things online are always puzzled by the key question of this branch of the market: What to sell on the Internet?
People do their best to come to the solution (if there is only one or arrive at some new ideas at least). Don’t think that the choice of goods to sell is a simple choice: even the most successful Internet sellers are puzzled by it. Plus we, average people, want to know what to sell online too. The thing is that even the Internet gurus don’t know for sure, and no one knows for sure. Nevertheless, there are things you can do to make your choice as close to the optimal one as possible. There are some basic rules you may follow (as a great number of successful Internet sellers do) to decide which products to sell:
We, at Dropshiparea, research the market thoroughly. Don’t think that it is an easy and fast process. In requires careful studying of search engines. When you want to know if there is demand for this or that product you have to find out if people search for this product. Then, when you get the results you have to categorize them according to the most popular searches and thus find out what products are in demand on the market.
Do to that, you will have to study the Internet once again. To find out the competition for a certain product you have to check 2 most popular types of Internet sales: Internet stores and auctions. You have to look through a great variety of stores in order to find out if the completion is high and then categorize all the received data.
- Research the GENERAL INTEREST LEVEL
In fact if the competition for a certain product is low as well as the demand it doesn’t really mean that the product is a market failure. You may have discovered an Untapped product market. It is the nest one can find, and if you have done so, you can consider your research a successful one. Then with the help of advertising you can develop the market and later on exploit it.
- Research the ADVERTISING of the product
A few influential and successful Internet sellers advice to consider 3 most trustworthy Pay Per Click Search Engines: Google, Findwhat and Overture. You enter the name of the product you want to sell and search for:
- If there are other people who pay to advertise that product.
- What do their ads say?
If there is too much advertising the competition is likely to be high. That’s not a good thing for you
Take your time to thoroughly study all the data and make certain conclusions and decisions. Consider the following factors:
- Low demand
- High competition
- Low general Interest
In fact, you have to compare different demand, competition and general interest combinations and find the best one. I don’t say it is easy, but if you do the right choice, you might hit pay dirt.
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