In my previous article on My Latest Take On Hosted vs Non-Hosted Ecommerce Solutions, I recommended two hosted shopping cart solutions, Volusion and BigCommerce, that do not charge any transaction fees for using their service. Not being charged a percentage of your sales is nice because you can run your store at more or less a flat monthly rate(not taking into account credit card fees) that does not scale proportionally to your revenues.

A few weeks ago, I signed up for trial accounts with both Volusion and BigCommerce and decided to compare the two services. Before I get into the guts of the review, I’ll just tell you up front that you can’t really go wrong with either service and choosing between the two really depends on which features and factors you value more.

I also wanted to mention that I’m not going to really go into that much …

As long as I’ve been writing tutorials on how to open an online store, I’ve always advocated going with a free open source shopping cart and hosting it yourself as opposed to signing up for an all-in-one hosted ecommerce solution. After all, if you host your shopping cart yourself, you’re in charge of your own destiny. You have full control over the source and no one can suddenly raise prices on you. Plus, there are many cool things that you can do on your own that the big hosted solutions won’t allow you to do.

Photo By Kevin McShane

But after running this blog for a couple of years now and listening to reader feedback, I’ve come to realize that using an open source ecommerce solution and self-hosting may not be the right solution for everyone.

Some people are just completely tech averse and don’t want to deal anything remotely …

With just about any business these days, how well you handle customers is crucial in defining your reputation and how fast your business spreads via word of mouth. One of the early problems that my wife and I faced with our online store was how to deal with incoming calls from customers. After all, it was just the two of us and we weren’t equipped to handle large volumes of calls nor did we have an easy way to manage the calls that we did receive.

Photo By Dan Brady

Especially if you have small customer support team or even just a single person manning the phone lines, it is important to have some sort of virtual phone system in place. By handling your phone calls via the web or through a computer virtually, you can make it appear as though you have a large customer support team even …

Every now and then, an angry or dissatisfied customer will call us on our customer support line and it’s not a pleasant situation to deal with. No matter how good your products are or how good your quality control is, inevitably some customer won’t be happy with some part of your business. And the worst part is that the customer may not always be reasonable. No business is immune to this. If you run your business long enough, getting an angry or unreasonable customer will eventually happen. It’s inevitable.

Don’t Let Customers Leave Angry

Photo By Josh Janssen

Due to the rise of social media, blogging, twitter and other lightning fast means of communication, it’s crucial that you pacify angry customers quickly and efficiently. All it takes is just one tweet, blog post or facebook entry and your reputation could be permanently marred. The …

Since I commonly get asked what services I use for my online store, I thought it would be useful to create a resource page that details every product, tool and service I recommend. If you are thinking about starting an online store in the near future, you should bookmark this page for your reference and convenience. Enjoy!

Web Hosting
Blue Host – Blue Host is the shared host that my wife and I used for 2 years to run our online store before we switched over to dedicated hosting. BlueHost is inexpensive, reliable and offers a wide array of free services. Highly recommended for new shop owners.

ServInt – ServInt is the dedicated webhost that I use now for every website I own including my blog and online store. Service and uptime are top notch and I’ve never had any problems ever. If you are looking for …

Based on several emails that I’ve been receiving lately, it seems that a few of you are hesitant to start a business because you’re hung up or stuck on selecting a business idea to pursue. And the number one concern seems to be whether there is enough demand or too much competition in your niche to succeed.

Photo By Soller

I received an excellent email in my inbox a few weeks ago that pretty much summarizes where a lot of people are getting stuck so I’ve decided to dedicate a blog entry to the topic.

I just came across your site and it seems like an awesome resource. I have a question for you, that might make a nice blog post. I did a search of your site, but could not find the answer to my question, so here it is:

My wife has an idea for an ecommerce store. It seems …

Many of the questions that I receive in my inbox at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com are related to opening a dropshipping store and I can certainly understand the appeal. When you run an online store that only offers dropshipped products, you don’t have to worry about inventory and you don’t have to worry about product fulfillment. All you have to do is sell the product, take orders and make a decent profit. Alas, if only it were that easy…. As with everything that sounds too good to be true, there are always gotchas.

Photo By Suzanna

In theory, dropshipping sounds like a great idea because it’s inherently scalable without you having to do a lot of work up front. But when you dig down a bit further, it becomes obvious why dropshipping isn’t so great. Most people try to open up a dropshipped shop expecting it to be easy, …

When most people think about entrepreneurship or starting their own business, the first thing that comes to mind is the risk that is associated with being your own boss. Perhaps that is why entrepreneurship is such an exhilarating and sexy term. It takes guts to go out on your own.

Photo By Better Than Bacon

But the funny thing is that most of the successful entrepreneurs I know are very conservative and don’t like taking risks at all. Ironically, my entrepreneur friends are some of most risk averse people I know! I happen to fall into this same camp as well. Sure, I would risk a good amount of money to start my own business but would I ever bet the entire bank or stake my livelihood on a business idea? Hell no!

Managing Risk
One of key aspects of entrepreneurship is knowing how to mitigate risk. …

How many of you check your Google Analytics stats religiously at least once a day? How many of you check your stats live using Woopra or some other real time stat tracking software? If you run an online store or sell goods online, do you actually go to your website as a customer on a regular basis to look around?

Photo By Gerlos

Informally, I asked a handful of my webmaster friends these exact questions and most of them said “yes” to the first two questions and “no” to the last. In fact, the webmasters I spoke to rarely visit their site at all unless they need to make a change. They rely mostly on analytics data to observe the health of their website.
There’s Just Too Much Data
Have you looked at your analytics data recently? Of course you have. The fact is, there’s just too …

Embarassing as it was for me to write my last article on how I was a neurotic mess when our business first launched, there were several points that I wanted to emphasize…

There is always a struggle and a period of uncertainty with every business until you make it over the hump. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of it. If you hear a story that sounds too easy, chances are that it’s a sales pitch.
Some amount of neurosis or craziness is required with every business because it’s an indication that you have the necessary passion. The key is to channel that energy to the right place.
Sometimes you have to do whatever is necessary to get the job done even if it means sucking up your pride.
Someone needs to take one for the team. If my embarassing stories make you feel better about your own …

The store that I’m reviewing today is 2sand.com, a sanding supply store that is run by someone who I will refer to as RJ in this article.

RJ did not have any specific questions or problems in regards to his online store. He basically asked for an overall site review with an emphasis on how to improve traffic.
First Impressions
Overall, RJ’s site looks good. On the front page, he states his value proposition very clearly and gives a brief bio about who he is and why he runs his store. As soon as I enter his website, I immediately know what RJ’s store specializes in and why I should buy from him.

The store design also looks professional and there are various security badges displayed around the site that makes RJ’s site look legit. In addition, he offers a live chat service as well. Overall, I don’t …

Whenever you read about an entrepreneur who has a made a large sum of money in a short period of time, there is always this misconception that their path to success was quick and smooth.

Photo By Derek Miller

Take John Chow for example. If you read his blog and his tips, it seems as though he can make tens of thousands of dollars per day by barely lifting a finger. What you never hear about though is the pain and hardship he went through to get to this point.

The fact is that once your online business is up and running, life does get easier and we tend to forget about the early stage pain. Looking back at our online wedding linens business, there were several times when I was a neurotic mess and I did a lot of stupid things. (Notice the use of the word “I”. …

I received a question from a reader the other day in regards to whether product liability insurance is necessary for a business even if one is protected by limited liability via an LLC or corporation. Specifically, he wanted to know whether it was worth paying for insurance for a pass through entity like an LLC or S Corp which carries no profits within the business. Whenever someone asks me this question, I always say yes no matter the nature of the business but it largely depends on your risk tolerance.

Photo By IXQUICK

Especially if you are running a business in the United States, the chances of getting sued are higher than you think and it really doesn’t take much for someone to take you to court.

There’s also a common misconception when it comes to limited liability with an LLC or corporation that most people may not be aware of. …

This is a guest post by Tyler Wells who is a certified public accountant. For all of you who don’t know Tyler, he’s an unrepentant nerd for numbers with a passion for accounting, finance, and small business. Tyler’s love for entrepreneurialism took root while working on his family’s exotic animal farm and blossomed while advising entrepreneurs as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala. Currently he is building an entrepreneurial practice as a Certified Public Accountant and blogs at WebBizFinance.com.

Choosing an accountant is a bit like choosing a life partner, it can be too easy to rush into a relationship, make a choice for all the wrong reasons, and once you’ve finally realized that you made a mistake, find out changing can be a real headache, not to mention expensive. Well, it’s not totally like a romantic relationship because at least accountants don’t …

Marketing your online business and attracting customers to your ecommerce store or sales page is much harder than marketing a blog or any other type of website. Why? It’s because no one really cares about your business. Nobody really wants to know what you have to sell and no one likes being led to a sales page. Even if you think you’re offering the most magnificent products ever, by default people are going to ignore you unless they know who you are.

Photo by RBarney.com

People Hate Sales Pages On Social Media
Marketing your business on social media is all the rage right now but simply posting your online store URL on Twitter or Facebook is not going to get you customers. For one thing, most people are extremely suspicious of any type of sales page they encounter. Anything that even resembles a …

This is a guest post by Alban who is a personal finance writer. He offers information on how to effectively use a credit card and helps people to compare credit cards online.

Owning a small business is a big responsibility as you have to take care of your clients, provide them with the best service and manage your business success for the sake of your employees as well. However, having a small business credit card is an even bigger responsibility because business credit card spending can quickly get out of control, and instead of making your bookkeeping easier to manage, your business credit card could turn your business dream into a nightmare.

Instead, maximize the use of your small business credit card by understanding when and when not to use it, and follow these top three tips for small business owners using credit cards in their business.
How to use …

It’s been a while since I’ve written about product sourcing, but I’ve gotten several questions lately on how to deal with new vendors so I thought I’d devote another post about the topic. Picture this scenario… You’ve put together a list of potential vendors that you want to work with either from a tradeshow or from a manufacturer’s distributor list. You’ve never purchased in bulk before. You don’t even have your online storefront up yet and as a result you are extremely apprehensive about contacting your vendors for the very first time.

Photo By Youssef Hanna

Don’t be shy! Unfortunately, you can never be sure what to expect when calling a vendor for the first time. Are your order quantities going to be too small? Are their prices going to be too high? Are they going to give you the time of …

One of the biggest mistakes that I see when I’m asked to evaluate or critique an online store website is that the shop owner has used the out of the box template for their store. Simply put, the out of the box design for any shopping cart is going to be ugly, non-functional and you aren’t going to sell much no matter how compelling your products are.

The main problem is that most people aren’t web designers. They want an attractive design but they either don’t have the funds or are too cheap to hire a dedicated developer. Admittedly, hiring a web designer can be pricey and while it’s easy for me to say that it’s worth every penny, most people don’t want to put down a lot of cold hard cash upfront if they are just testing the waters.

A Hybrid Solution
These days, all open …

In this article I present the conclusion of my experiment on whether hiring an accountant to do your taxes is better than using turbo tax or tax cut. If you missed part one of this experiment, please check it out here first before reading on.

Photo Youssef Abdelaal

So the results are in! The good news is that our accountant fulfilled his promise and delivered our tax return way ahead of the April 15th deadline. The bad news is that our experiences with our accountant weren’t exactly positive.

Before I continue, I just want to emphasize that the conclusions I’m making in this article should be taken with a grain of salt and are not indicative of accountants in general. There are thousands of CPAs out there and our experiences represent just a single data point.

To provide some background information, my wife and I have worked with this accountant …

This is part 2 of a guest post by Xurxo Vidal. Xurxo is a co-founder and search marketing strategist at Bloom Search Marketing – an agency specialized in paid search campaigns, SEO, Google Analytics and conversion improvement. We are lucky to have him here today to talk about optimizing Adwords campaigns. You can find more of Xurxo’s writings on his company’s blog.

This article is part 2 of a 2 part article on adwords reports that can increase conversions and save you money. If you haven’t done so already, please check out part 1 here

In part 1 , we covered the keyword performance report, the ad performance report and the geographic performance report.

The remaining reports I’ll cover in this post are:

Search Query Performance Report
Placement Performance Report

Search Query Report
The search query report can be your best friend in finding those pesky unrelated keywords that you’re paying for – especially if …