A reader emailed the other day asking whether our business could continue to function if my wife and I took an extended vacation away from it all. He then followed up that question with a proclaimation stating that our business was really just a J-O-B disguised as a true business.

“A business is only real when it continues to thrive even with the owners not present. Otherwise, it’s just another job.” he exclaimed!

While there is some element of truth to his statement, it is the completely wrong attitude to have towards your own personal venture. If you consider your business as just a job, then you will never succeed.

Photo by Neajjean

Every business has to start somewhere. Every business owner doesn’t have the luxury of taking time off especially in the early stages. Here are my thoughts on the distinction between a job and a business. …

No matter what you do, at some point in time your website will go down. It’s inevitable. Perhaps your server will crash. Maybe your website will get hacked. Perhaps your database will get corrupted. Whatever it is, it is crucial that you be able to recover from these calamities as quickly as possible.

Our online store was recently hacked. While I’m still not 100% sure how they got in, I was able to recover from the attack in a very short period of time. Why? Because I was prepared.

Don’t kid yourself. Even if you are up to date with all of the security patches and you think your

Photo by Gutter

code is robust, someone someday will break into your website if they want to. There are far too many exploits and patches to keep track of that any experienced hacker can and …

I’m proud to present a guest post from Dragos Roua. He’s doing something extremely unique here today. Dragos has put together a 7 part series on the 7 stages of a business all to be simultaneously published on 7 different entrepreneurship blogs. And I’m proud to be one of the 7 blogs presenting his material today.

This article is part of a series about the 7 ages of a business from an entrepreneur’s perspective, initially published at eDragonu – the choice of a personal path. The remaining 6 articles are published as guest posts on other 6 fine personal development and business blogs. You will find links to them at the end of this article.
Being Number One
Leadership age is by many metrics the highest point a business can go. It’s the most visible and publicly rewarding position. Leadership means you are controlling your market, you are serving the …

When you run an online only store, it is essential to have good product pictures. Because the customer can’t actually touch or interact with the product in person, your product photos are the single most important factor in whether the customer will make a purchase or not.

As a result, we often embellish our products with accessories while taking product photos in order to make them more visually attractive. But sometimes, this can lead to some funny misunderstandings.

Me: What can I do for you today?

Customer: Yes, I was looking at your bride groom wedding set online. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about this set since it’s hard to see the details from the picture.

Me: No problem. Did you try clicking on the picture to enlarge it?

Customer: Yes I did but I still couldn’t see the details. Could …

I admit it. I used to be ashamed of telling other people about our wedding linens business. When we first opened our online store, not only did we not receive many orders in the first 4-6 months, but the idea of opening an online wedding linens store seemed almost silly compared to what my other entrepreneurial friends were up to.

You see at the time, a good number of my friends and acquaintances were starting their own businesses and they were all quite impressive. One of my friends started his own cellphone gaming company. Another friend started his own web development software company. And a third friend started a small consulting firm. Whenever we saw each other, we would ask each other how things were going with our respective companies.

Photo by Nina Frazier

Friend: So Steve, how’s the linens business? Is it fun?
Me: Linens …

There’s a point with every successful business where the level of sales slowly begins to exceed the infrastructure required to support it. While this generally indicates that business is good and fundamentally strong, the volume of customer support issues can be overwhelming especially if you don’t have the necessary manpower or capital equipment.

Overwhelmed is exactly how we feel about our online store at the moment. As we struggle to grow to the next level, our business is currently going through what I call “Growing Pains”.

Photo by Tavallai

Now if I didn’t have a full time job and if my wife didn’t have to take care of a cute little 14 month old during the day, we could devote our full efforts into expanding our business and these growing pains would not be as much of an issue. But under the current circumstances, my wife and I only have …

Recently, one of my readers asked for some details involving importing goods, dealing with customs and paying importation taxes. The process may seem complicated at first but isn’t really that bad once you’ve gone through the process once.

Importing your goods from overseas is the best way to obtain quality products at rock bottom prices. But as with all good things, there are several logistical issues you have to work out in order to be successful.

In this article, I’ll try to provide a brief overview of what to expect when importing goods from overseas along with some details and tips on how to get your goods shipped directly to your place of business.

Photo by Ronnie44052

What To Expect When Importing

Long Lead Times – Most overseas vendors won’t even begin making your products until you actually place an order and put down a small down payment to cover the cost of …

With the sheer number of telemarketer calls and spam emails that we all receive on a day to day basis, it’s no wonder that many of us are a bit paranoid about who we provide our information to. While most stores and shopkeepers run a legitimate and honest business, all it takes is one negative experience to leave a bad taste in your mouth.

This particular customer must have had quite a few bad experiences shopping online because she was by far our most secretive customer ever. Judging by her actions, she’s probably been ripped off or cheated on many occasions and obtaining her information was like pulling teeth.

Photo by Bah Humbug

Customer: Yes, I’d like to order 10 sets of 3 of your white embroidered hankies please.

Me: Of course. Is there anything else I can get for you?

Customer: Nope that will be it. Is it okay if …