Being an online retailer requires a good command of the industry, the insights of it. But where can one learn about that stuff? One of the best solutions is reading industry publications. This source can help you learn how to market the products and make up the product lines according to your customers’ requirements.

Some words about Trade publications

First of all, what’s a trade publication? According to Lisa Suttora (WhatDoISell.com), it is:

“A trade publication is a magazine, newspaper, or even email newsletter that is written specifically for industry insiders.”

A trade magazine supplies you with a great amount of extremely important information:

• Product lines that are being sold
• The ways of successful marketing of the products you are dealing in
• Reports on what is selling good at the moment and what is likely to be popular in the near future
• All the upcoming industry events
• Contact Information of suppliers (as you already know this information as well as the choice of the right wholesale suppliers can be crucial for you business)
• The new products the manufacturers are likely to come up with
• All the latest trends and tendencies in the industry

Rely on your knowledge

No matter what industry you are into, each has its own publications which are as a rule available only to subscribers. Some of these subscriptions come for free, others cost money. But even if you pay a monthly fee you can still save a lot of money by learning from others’ mistakes instead of doing your own ones. In order to find these industry publications you can run a Google search under “trade publication” or “trade magazine.”

Does it really give me a competitive edge?

Of course if does! Reading such publications ones gains valuable knowledge on the structure of his business and his/her sourcing choices become more conscious than blind. You can learn all the latest trends beforehand and thus have a competitive edge over your competitors.

Perfect Product Sourcing

Trade publications help you make the product lines more versatile. The give you a clue on how to make the selling strategies and tactics more effective.

Suttora continues:

“You’ve got to look at all the ideas available for different kinds of products to sell. You can’t do that in a vacuum—you need a system to help you have creative ideas.”

There comes a day and you think it is time to hire extra help. You do not cope with all your websites and you need some time to think about new directions of your current projects, to consider new opportunities and new websites to start.

So, you look for the outside help. I will describe my way – I realize that the quality of help needed depends on the type, amount, scale of the projects you run.

I outsource all my work at the moment – I do not rent an office and do not manage any in-house staff.

When I need a new developer I refer to ‘20 good questions to ask’ checklist and it works for me in an efficient way to find what I need. I guess my projects are quite simple – a mediocre developer (PHP, HTML, CSS) easily handles my tasks.

When it comes to copywriter/ blogger, forum moderator or search marketer to promote a website I have, as a rule, to start from zero explaining university graduates and students what I mean and need. Yes, they all are familiar with forums and blogs, but as consumers, not makers of the product. So, I have developed a sort of ‘Training kit’ that I periodically revise. I include links to the articles and posts that are, from my point of view, best published on the subject and that will help the staff to fully grasp what I need from them.

Here comes the selection of the links I send to any person I hire to help me with running websites:

Forum/ community management:

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12527

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/81.htm

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6783

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/71.htm

Moderator’s manual:

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=105&d=1088338022

Copywriting/ writing for the web:

http://performancing.com/node/3288

http://www.retrospector.com/2006/05/30/the-50-habits-of-highly-effective-blogging

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/how_to_get_traf.html

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/01/how-to-build-a-high-traffic-web-site-or-blog

http://performancing.com/node/2600

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_perfect_article

http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=61811

http://mistersnitch.blogspot.com/2005/11/blogging-styles-and-traffic-stats.html

Summary: I do not think that it fits everyone’s needs, but it should help you as well to fill in some gaps (I hope so) – when I revise the training kit I re-read the articles myself and as a rule discover some missing points. And you can select just those links that are applicable in your case and send them to your helpers.

It is difficult for me to state how effective the training kit for my hired help, but I observe the progress and am quite satisfied with what I see.

I would be glad if you share your own way to train staff.

Technorati Tags: staff training, training kit, freelance jobs, how to get a job, telecommuting, networking, online communities, forums, web forums, traffic, links bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, text-link-ads, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, duplicate content, earn your living online

The video-download service is planned to start in August and it is going to feature a subscription service for movies and TV shows.

The service, which is known as Amazon Digital Video (or Amazon DV) has changed over the past year from a music download to a video based one, according to production-studio and TV-network executives briefed on the plans. The reason for it is that at the moment Apple already holds such a large share of digital-music sales that Amazon felt it would be very complicated to break into the market.

The service will require users to install special software on their computers to allow them to buy videos. The executives at lots of TV networks claim they have been working with Amazon and hope to be on board at launch, but at this moment ABC company is not on the list.

Amazon’s change of the plans and tendency to switch to video also hints at a reluctance to take on not one, but two behemoths battling over online music sales. iTunes holds over 67% share of music sales, Microsoft plans to create new service, called Zune. Microsoft is thought as the only possible competitor to iPod & iTunes combo. At the same time, the Microsoft player is developed by J. Allard, who successfully placed Microsoft at the gaming market previously held by Sony and Nintendo.

To read the full story GO HERE

Amazon, Microsoft, iPod, iTunes, Microsoft player, Sony, Nintendo, ABC, Apple

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Microsoft, iPod, iTunes, Microsoft player, Sony, Nintendo, ABC, Apple