I like to perform a thorough price comparison and competitive analysis before I buy most things. Especially when shopping online, I tend to browse many online stores before finally choosing where to make my purchase.
Sometimes in the middle of shopping, I get sidetracked by my daughter. Sometimes I have to do some chores or run a quick errand. Sometimes, I get last minute jitters and abandon my shopping cart even after I’ve entered in all of my information.
How This One Store Got My Business
The other day, I spent over an hour online shopping for baby shoes not realizing how daunting of a task it was and how expensive these tiny kids shoes could be. Some of these little miniature baby shoes cost as much as my adult shoes!
Anyways over the course of my shopping experience, I must have hit at least 10 online stores, …
Lately, I’ve getting a bunch of emails asking me how much time my wife and I actually spend running the store and what our day to day operations are like. All I can really say is that every week is completely different. While on the surface you would think that all we do is pack and ship orders, there is a good amount of customer interaction and other activities that occur behind the scenes.
Photo by Alaskan Dude
As with everything in life, running our store has its share of ups and downs. And while the downs inevitably suck, the variability and unpredictable aspects of running the business are things that I really enjoy. In the interests of trying something different with this blog, I thought I’d occasionally devote a post or so to discuss the highs and lows of running our business. This past week definitely …
This is a guest post by Kathryn Vercillo. Kathryn is a writer for Promotionalcodes.org.uk which gives away free coupon codes and also publishes a save money blog. She quit her day job long ago so she could work from home and discusses why she is now better able to cope with the recession as a result.
I started working from home nearly ten years ago. There were numerous reasons that working from home made the most sense for my life. However, earning a good income was not ever one of those reasons.
As far as the financial risks go, I wasn’t sure if working from home was a good idea. And I’ll admit that I made a lot of mistakes along the way which caused me financial trouble. Nevertheless the benefits outweighed the costs. And what I’ve discovered is that the financial lessons that I learned from deciding to work …
My wife just closed the books on our mid year numbers (January – June) and sales are up significantly! Once again, we both are amazed at how our little wedding linens store has managed double digit growth for the 3rd consecutive year.
Of course our growth has slowed from last year when we managed to increase profits by 147%, but a 75 percent profit increase isn’t anything to sneeze at either. I admit that it is a bit early to start celebrating since only half a year has elapsed. In the back of my mind, I know that many bad things can happen during the latter half of the year that may negatively impact sales. But I am optimistic that we can maintain this pace since our busiest months (November and December) have yet to come.
Here are some of the highlights of our half …
Earlier this week, I was interviewed by Michael Dunlop at IncomeDiary.com, so head on over and check it out when you get a chance. The title of the interview is My Wife Quit Her Job And Became An Internet Entrepreneur!
For all of you who’ve never heard of Michael Dunlop, he’s only 20 years old and runs 2 very successful and popular websites Retire At 21 and Income Diary. I don’t know about you guys, but when I was 20 years old, I was too busy studying, going to parties and wasting time. Not only is Michael knowledgeable about the web, but he’s extremely business saavy as well. Michael probably makes more off his websites living the internet lifestyle than most people do working their day jobs.
Both of his websites offer truly inspirational articles and tutorials so I encourage you to head over and check them out. …
This is part 5 of a 5 part series on how to create a profitable online store. If you’ve followed steps 1-4, you should now have a webhost and domain, products to sell, an online shopping cart and a way to process credit cards online. It’s now time to put on the finishing touches to your online storefront.
As you may have noticed, the default installation of your online shopping cart is plain, bland and boring. If you stick with the out of the box look, you aren’t going to be attracting many customers let alone selling any product.
5 Easy Steps To Follow
Introduction
Part 1: Find A Webhost And Domain
Part 2: Find Goods To Sell Online
Part 3: Select A Free Shopping Cart
Part 4: Select A Payment Processor
Part 5: Get A Great Design
More Online Store Tutorials
The lack of graphic design skills often discourages would be online shop owners. In …
This is part 4 of a 5 part series on how to create a profitable online store. Your online store is worthless unless you can accept payments from your end customers. There are many different ways to accept payment. For example, you can accept payments through Paypal, Google Checkout or even check/money orders. But despite the many payment choices available, the most important one is the ability to accept credit cards online.
Looking at the payment statistics for our online wedding linens store, 97% of our customers use a credit card to checkout and the other 2.9% use Paypal. Less than .1% use check or money order. For an online store, paying by credit card is an absolute requirement. In this article, we will discuss the different options on how to process credit cards online.
5 Easy Steps To Follow
Introduction
Part 1: Find A Webhost And Domain
Part 2: …
This is part 3 of a 5 part series on how to create a profitable online store. So you’ve signed up for your webhost, registered your domain name, and established where you are going to source your goods. It’s now time to start working on your online store front.
Most people have the misconception that you have to pay thousands of dollars to hire someone to create a website for you. Thanks to open source, there are many fully featured shopping cart software packages out there that are absolutely free. What’s nice about using an open source shopping cart is that you aren’t tied down to a specific company or service provider. You can take your store wherever you go and you pay absolutely nothing.
5 Easy Steps To Follow
Introduction
Part 1: Find A Webhost And Domain
Part 2: Find Goods To Sell Online
Part 3: Select A …
This is part 2 of a 5 part series on how to create a profitable online store. Finding products to sell online is where many people get stuck when trying to start an online business. There are 3 main issues to deal with. For starters, you have to decide what you want to sell. Do you want to sell physical products? Do you want to sell software or informational goods?
Unfortunately, no one can answer that question except for you. If you need help in coming up with ideas however, you may want to check out a previous article I wrote on How to Find a Niche Market for Your Online Store.
5 Easy Steps To Follow
Introduction
Part 1: Find A Webhost And Domain
Part 2: Find Goods To Sell Online
Part 3: Select A Free Shopping Cart
Part 4: Select A Payment Processor
Part 5: Get A Great Design
More Online Store …
This article is step 1 of a 5 part series on how to create a profitable online store. I wanted to start this section off by addressing a few philosophical issues. One question I get asked all the time is, why should I host my own website and shopping cart when there are so many services available that will allow me to use their own proprietary shopping system for free? Why wouldn’t I just want to open an Ebay or Yahoo store? Why not just have an Amazon store?
I always answer this question with another question, would you ever place your future and destiny in the hands of someone else who doesn’t share your same interests?
5 Easy Steps To Follow
Introduction
Part 1: Find A Webhost And Domain
Part 2: Find Goods To Sell Online
Part 3: Select A Free Shopping Cart
Part 4: Select A Payment Processor
Part 5: Get A …
This article is the start of a 5 part series on how to create a profitable online store. If you’re tired of devoting the majority of your time to your day job and you’d rather set your own hours and be your own boss, the best way to escape from the rat race is to start your own business online.
When my wife became pregnant with our child and decided that she was quitting her job, we managed to create a profitable online store that generated 100k in profits in just over a year. Today, my wife stays at home with the kids and works just several hours a day on our online business from home!
5 Easy Steps To Follow
Introduction
Part 1: Find A Webhost And Domain
Part 2: Find Goods To Sell Online
Part 3: Select A Free Shopping Cart
Part 4: Select A Payment Processor
Part 5: Get A Great Design
More …
