This is a short follow up post to my article on Are Coupon Code Searches Costing Our Online Store Money?. I got a lot of good responses and just wanted to summarize some of the main points. Ultimately, I decided to make a small change to our store based on one particular reader’s input and I wanted to talk about the effect this change had after just 2 days of operation. Usually, two days of testing means absolutely nothing but in this case, it firmly cemented in my head what I needed to do.

From the comments, pretty much everyone agreed that as a customer, seeing a coupon code field and not actually having a coupon code carries a negative psychological effect on the whole shopping experience.

For one thing, most of you that responded stated that seeing an empty coupon field is an instant signal to go off …

Every couple of months, I take an in depth look at the search keywords that people use to arrive at our online store. In addition, I also use keyword tools to see whether people are doing searches for our business directly.

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Much to my surprise, I found that some amount of searches were for the term “Bumblebee Linens coupons” or “hanky coupons bumblebee” etc… I guess it’s only natural that shoppers search for coupons.

But the truth is that we rarely give out coupons yet we prominently display a coupon code field during checkout. The fact that customers are looking for coupons makes me wonder whether they are prematurely exiting the checkout process in search for nonexistant discounts.
Why We Don’t Issue Coupons Very Often
There are different schools of thought when it comes to coupons. Some companies always have coupon codes outstanding as a way to entice customers …

Adwords, like any tool, is a double edged sword. If used improperly, it can flush your money down the drain. But used correctly, it can be a very powerful driver of sales to your online store. The main problem however, is that most new users fall into the money wasting category.

One of the biggest mistakes that newbie Adwords users make is to misuse broad matching keywords with their campaigns. To illustrate my point, I’d like to tell you about some of the boneheaded mistakes that I made early on with our Adwords campaigns.

As I mentioned in some of my previous articles on How To Use Adwords The Right Way With Your Online Store and The Realities Of Using Adwords Effectively, finding the right keywords to use is an iterative process that requires patience and the right tools. And the only way to refine your campaigns properly …

This year marks the first year that my wife and I are hiring an accountant to do our taxes for us and I’m pretty nervous about our decision. Even though I absolutely hate doing them, I’ve filed my own taxes for well over a decade now and I’ve done so because I prefer keeping my financial data private. I also like the feeling of control I get from being able to see how all of the numbers are calculated. That’s not to say that I don’t trust my accountant but while we’ve had an accountant for quite some time now, we’ve only used him as an advisor and never for any actual work.

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I’m especially nervous because by having someone else file our taxes for us, we are essentially turning over all of our sensitive financial data to a stranger and paying him to file …

It has been a while since I’ve done a competitive analysis of the various shipping carriers so I thought I’d do a quick update. With the United States Postal Service jacking up their rates every 4-6 months, what used to be the most economical shipping method is now priced inline or even more expensive than some of the more reliable carriers like UPS or FedEx.

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Because there are so many different shipping variables and options to choose from, it’s difficult to make an apples to apples comparison without locking down some of the basic parameters. For the purposes of this article, I am going to assume the following.

A 14in X 12in X 3in package is being shipped cross country from California to a residence on the east coast. Incidentally, this is the same size as a USPS Medium Priority Mail Flat Rate Box.
Out of the …

Every 2 or 3 months, I set aside a couple of hours to analyze the competitive landscape for our online wedding linens store and to see what our competitors are up to. And in most cases, it’s business as usual. Sometimes a new competitor pops up and a new one goes under. Sometimes I find some new products that I feel that our store should carry. But for the most part, things are pretty calm.

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This past week however, I noticed that one of our old competitors completely revamped their website and started slashing prices on similar products. When I told my wife about this, she seemed very concerned. After all, how could our little online store possibly compete against a store with such low prices? Unless they were purchasing their products at a much lower cost (unlikely), …

Many would be entrepreneurs hesitate to start their own business because they think it is too risky from a monetary perspective. In fact, most people don’t think starting a business is even worth trying unless they can come up with a grand slam profitable idea. Of course profitability is an extremely important factor with any business, but what if I were to tell you that you could save a decent amount of money every year with your business while only making a small profit or none at all?

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That’s right! Most people don’t consider the tax savings involved in running a business. Most people don’t realize that having a day job is one of the worst ways to save on taxes because Uncle Sam takes a huge chunk out of your paycheck BEFORE you pay for anything. On the …

Your website could be the most beautiful site in the world but it does you no good if it takes forever to load. Let’s face it. People are impatient and a slow website prevents potential customers from completing their purchase. When I go online shopping, I expect pages to load at worst within 5-10 seconds. Any longer than that and I get antsy or I leave the store altogether. Sure, some people may be more patient than I am but why take the chance? Play it safe and make your business website as fast as possible.

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Before you begin however, the first thing you need to determine is how fast is fast enough? This extent of your website optimizations largely depends on the analytics and demographics of your web visitors. For example, 3 years ago when my wife and I …

Whenever I mention to anyone that I work a full time job, help my wife run our online store and maintain MyWifeQuitHerJob.com all while having two kids in the house, one of the first questions I always get is how I find the time to do all of these things.

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Believe it or not, even with all of these items on my plate, I still feel I have time to take on even more. The secret is being more efficient with your time and managing your day a little bit better. I know. It’s easier said than done. But I’m going to describe in this article how my wife and I organize our time to run our online business and and how we manage to cram a ton of activities into a single day. The reality is that there’s plenty of free time …

Lately, I’ve been receiving a number of emails from readers asking for the easiest and fastest way to open up a cookie cutter online store. I’ve also been asked to critique several newly launched online store websites and unfortunately, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. People have this tendency to do the least amount of work possible while expecting the largest possible payoff. Lesson #1, doing little work for a large payout just doesn’t happen very often in this world.

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First off, I hate it when people ask for a “cookie cutter” solution because it implies that the design is exactly the same as someone else’s and there is no originality involved. Some of the stores that I looked at didn’t even bother to change their look from the standard website template. So I wasn’t surprised at all when I heard that …

After reading my series of articles on how to save money on your taxes, a buddy of mine decided that he was going to start taking extra tax deductions by turning one of his hobbies into a business.

Hey Steve! You know how I love to paint right? And just the other day I sold a painting to someone on Ebay… Why don’t I just call this a business and declare business losses off my tax return? May as well right?

At first glance, my friend’s logic sounds reasonable. After all, he does create paintings that are sold for profit as a side business. So shouldn’t he be able to take business deductions and losses for all expenses incurred while painting?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is a bit complicated. While my friend is technically allowed to deduct business related expenses for his painting business, the …

I was discussing the merits of using Adwords the other day with a few buddies of mine when I couldn’t help but notice the skeptical looks on their faces. In fact, both of my friends were quite shocked when I told them how much we were paying Google every month to use their Adwords service.

I must say that I was a bit surprised by their reaction. Even after explaining to them that our return on investment for Adwords was quite high, they still didn’t see the value. After all, they had both dabbled with Adwords in the past and felt as though it was a complete money pit.

So I dug a little deeper and asked to look at one of their accounts and soon everything became clear. There were several things that they were not doing correctly and they were optimizing for the wrong metrics.
A …

My wife and I try to make an effort to update our online store website with fresh content at least once a week. In addition, we constantly put up new products and take down old obsolete products as well. The upshot is that our website gets updated on a fairly regular basis.

It’s rare, but sometimes we also tweak the structure and html of the store to mix things up. And three weeks ago, I rearranged the way a few product categories were displayed which introduced a huge bug that went completely unnoticed. The funny thing is that orders continued to come in just fine and everything seemed completely normal.

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I wasn’t just being careless either. Being a paranoid person at heart, I always do a fair amount of testing every time I make even the most minor of changes. But I probably wouldn’t have …

I’ve only been writing this blog for a little over a year, but one thing is clear based on the types of questions that I receive. There are a number of people out there who are terrified of the technical aspects of starting an online business. Because they are not computer saavy, they are worried that throwing up a website is beyond their abilities.

But what if I were to tell you that you could receive 24/7 technical

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support from skilled programmers for free? Yes, you heard me right. You can get all of the help you need for absolutely no cost.

As Scott Clark of Buzz Maven pointed out in a comment on my post on How To Prevent Your Online Store From Becoming A Money Pit, most people don’t realize that there are many forums out there where technical people congregate to help you …

“I have no idea how to create and manage my own website and I have absolutely no interest in learning either. I’m just going to hire someone or pay for a service.”

Believe it or not, most people that I encounter who want to create their own online store or business have this attitude. They are reluctant to learn basic web programming because they are afraid of the technical aspects of running a website.

To me, this attitude is contradictory. You want to start an online only business yet you have no desire to learn about the web? That’s

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like saying that you want to be a real estate agent but have no desire to learn about the rules and regulations involved in buying or selling a house.

Unless you have the budget to hire a full time web developer, you are going to have to …

Several of my friends and acquaintances that follow MyWifeQuitHerJob.com find it hard to believe that our online wedding linens business can possibly make 100 thousand dollars a year in profits for selling to such a tiny niche. And they are correct. We don’t make 100K a year. We make much more than that now that our business has expanded and we are more established.

Photo by Borman818

While a six figure profit number might seem like a lot of money at first, getting to 100K a year is actually not an insurmountable task when you look at the number in smaller, more manageable pieces.

In fact, my wife and I initially chose 100K to be our profit goal for the first year because we felt that it was a number we could actually hit. That, and 100K per year was roughly the salary that my wife left behind when …

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 …

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 …

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? …