Thanks for sharing your insight!! Your story has inspired my husband and I. I am interested in starting my own online store, however neither my husband or I are from the business background, I am wondering if either you or your wife is from a business or marketing background before she quitted her full time job? For our situation, will you recommend us to take some business related classes? Thanks
My wife has a background in finance. She graduated with a bachelors in economics and worked as a financial analyst at various firms such as Agilent and Intuit. I have a masters degree in electrical engineering.
I wouldn’t say that my wife and I have ideal backgrounds for the business world. Both of us are definitely not marketers and outside of a few years spent studying entrepreneurship, I don’t possess any business experience prior to opening our online wedding …
This is a guest post by A-ron who quit his job over 2 years ago because he decided that cubicle life was just not right for him. He now shares his wisdom over at his blog So I Quit My Job and I highly recommend checking it out.
I’d like to think that everyone on this planet has the ability to thrive running their own business. That everyone in existence, especially in the US, has the capability, resources, creativity, and energy to start and run their own business in a capacity that aligns with the lifestyle they wish to live.
To date, this isn’t the truth, it’s just a pipe dream. Everyone knows and feels that working for someone else sucks, but that’s where most people leave it, accepting their “fate” of being an employee for life.
That’s why we’re here, to change that, to break free …
My wife and I are currently on the verge of coming to an agreement on a house purchase and we’re excited and terrified at the same time. In just a few short months, we’ll be running an online store, maintaining a small business blog, and taking care of a second child as well. Besides the need for an extra bedroom for our new little one and a nice backyard to play in, our business has required the use of more and more room as we continue to expand. In a nutshell, we are in desperate need of some extra space and this house fits the bill.
Photo by Rev Dan Catt
The problem for me when it comes to home buying though is that I hate carrying a large mortgage. I was always brought up to pay my debts in their entirety and to not have any …
Embrace disaster. When things go wrong and your customer is angry, take advantage of the situation and make things right. Don’t make excuses and take responsibility! After all, the reputation of your online business is defined by how you deal with adversity and unfortunate circumstances rather than how you handle day to day operations.
Photo by Alan Clark Design
Take our online store as an example. 90% of our customers complete their purchase from our online wedding linens store without ever contacting us. And whenever this happens, it’s difficult to make a strong impression. We have not personally interacted with the customer in any way and the point of sale is just another sale. Sure, the customer might like our products and they might mention our business to a few of their friends. But most likely, their purchasing experience just blends in …
My wife and I jumped right into our online business with a “whatever it takes” attitude. We were excited. We were enthusiastic. And we were ready to make money by any means necessary even if it meant catering to our customers. Looking back, this was not necessarily the wrong attitude to have. But this no holds barred policy got us into a lot of trouble and wasted a lot of our time early on in the life of our business.
The truth was that we felt desperate. After countless hours of work, we launched our online store but didn’t have the customers to justify our efforts. Our website was a ghost town and we practically jumped on every customer that came through our virtual doors.
Photo by Stoo Hopwood
As a result, we went out of our way to do special requests for anyone that …
Some interesting questions of the week. I just want to apologize to those whose questions I haven’t been able to get to just yet. I will get to all of them eventually, I promise.
I am trying to start my business but I’m having a heck of a time with dreamweaver. It’s got to be the most unintuitive thing i’ve ever tried to learn. Especially with CSS considering one change on one page changes something else you didn’t intend in a different page. I’ve come close to throwing my laptop several times now.
Anyway, I was initially trying to build my own website by myself and just add an “add-on” shopping cart to it that I can drop “add to cart” buttons anywhere on the page. However, I know that html or “static” front end websites are more search engine friendly and can have a more custom look but I’m …
It has been quite awhile since I’ve looked at some of the available all-in-one eCommerce solutions. But lately, I’ve received several questions from readers who are finding themselves a bit hesitant about the whole website setup process and are looking at all inclusive eCommerce packages. This particular reader is considering using Yahoo Merchant Solutions and wanted to know my thoughts.
I wanted your opinion on the Yahoo merchant solutions. I know you said eBay stores are not the way to go. I completely understand why, especially after doing some research. But I was looking at the yahoo merchant solutions, and they charge a monthly fee to do all the hosting as well as charge a 1.5% of all gross sales. It seems like they offer a lot of services, including good customer support, for the price. I am pretty computer literate, but have never …
For the past few years, our online wedding linens store has been a cash machine. The store website hasn’t required much work at all and sales have been more or less on autopilot. Each and everyday, orders come in, orders get packed and money is deposited into our bank account.
Photo by Gibsonclaire
In effect, our entire business has been pretty much on cruise control which is why for the past several months we’ve been neglecting many important tasks and just letting our business coast.
But just the other day, my neurotic side kicked in and I started feeling a sudden wave of fear like I was being chased. Is it really safe to assume that our online store will always continue to grow? Has the competitive landscape changed at all? Can we really depend and sustain this level of income in the long term while just coasting …
I’ve been finding myself answering the same types of questions on email over and over so I thought it might be more productive and interesting to answer them in a single wrap up post for all to see. Here are a few questions that I received this week.
Help With Product Sourcing
I will like to start my online store, and we has been having almost the same situation that you share on your website. We have 3 kids and my wife isn’t working.
I look to on alibaba and dhgate website because they have the best prices I ever see in my life, but most of the product they sells are replicas, fakes, copies and iligal. This is giving me a hard time to choose a good product to sell without broke any law.
Did you have any advice? My wife and I will like to sale woman cloght, shoes, …
The 5 steps outlined in my guide on How Create A Profitable Online Store do not have to be completed in order. Some people like to work on getting their website up first. Some people choose to take care of all the legal issues ahead of time. And some people try to nail down their product sourcing strategy before doing anything else.
What usually ends up happening though is that most people save the product sourcing problem for last because it requires human interaction and an active effort to develop business relationships. Recently, I received this email from one of my readers who was a bit apprehensive about contacting their first vendor.
Photo by Star5112
Hi,
Just want to say thanks for the extensive information you provide on your site. I have found it quite valuable and encouraging.
I’m just starting out with my new venture and was hoping you could help? …
Even though I’m already in a happy place from both a personal and professional standpoint, I love to read self improvement books in my free time. Because no matter how good I feel about my life, there are always new ways to improve myself, to push myself and to test my limits. So when my buddy Tim sent me over his latest book, I jumped at the chance to review his newest creation.
I must admit, I was a little bit taken aback by the title when I first cracked open the book. “How To Be Rich And Happy” as the title of a book makes for a very lofty goal and sounds a little too good to be true, almost like some sort of get rich quick scheme. However as I began reading the book, I immediately realized the powerful message that Tim and John were …
Every entrepreneur takes their own unique path and it’s always interesting to hear things from a different perspective . In this guest post by Jack Busch, Jack tells his story of how he became self-employed. Jack is a freelance writer and blogger specializing in debt loans, personal finance and credit cards and maintains an excellent blog over at MasterYourCard.com.
When I first discovered MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, I was thrilled. For years, my wife and I have been discussing ways to gain financial independence so we could spend less time at our jobs, which we didn’t necessarily hate, but simply demanded too much of our time and energy. The best plan that we came up with was to buy a Powerball ticket every Wednesday and Saturday and cross our fingers. With somewhat disappointing returns, we’ve ramped up our efforts and have taken to crossing our toes, too. Still no luck.
Fast forward …
