As part of my free mini course on how to start an online store, I recommend 2 different credit processing services, Paypal Website Payments Pro and Merchant Plus which is an Authorize.net provider.

But the problem with recommending more than one option is that you still have to make a choice. And making the right decision largely depends on the nature of your business and the volume of payments that your shop processes.

The reason I decided to recommend more than one option is because both services have their pros and cons which I’m going to talk about in this article today. I’ve used both credit card processing solutions before so I’ll give you my breakdown and let you make the call.
Which One Is Cheaper?
The first and foremost criteria that most people use to select a credit card processor is price. But when it comes to credit card processing, …

Ever since I posted my article on Why Etsy Stores Are At A Disadvantage Compared To Online Stores That Own Their Domain, I’ve been meaning to show everyone how easy it is to install a free open source shopping cart.

These days, there are many open source shopping carts out there that are completely free and very feature rich.

You simply have to sign up for a web host, download and install the free shopping cart and you are almost ready to go.

So today, I thought that I’d give a mini tutorial on how to install Open Cart which is one of the open source shopping carts I recommend in my free 6 day mini course on how to create a niche online store.

Open Cart is an incredible shopping cart that is easy to use and has an elegant back end interface with which to manage your orders and products. Did …

Every year, my wife and I hire a professional photographer to take pictures of the kids and the family. While this is not cheap, it’s something we like to do because the kids are growing up so fast and we want to have photos for every stage of their development.

What’s funny is that hiring a photographer is only a small portion of the overall cost. Buying all new matching outfits for the kids and my wife is what tears a hole in my pocketbook and gives me heartburn.

For all of you who know me well, I’m pretty cheap and seeing the clothing costs for these photo shoots makes me want to faint. In fact, I don’t even bother checking the credit card bills during this time because I’m that terrified.

The other day, my wife was shopping online at a kids clothing “boutique” and probably spent a …

To be honest, I’m a little bit late to the Facebook and Twitter game when it comes to using social media with my online store. And the reason I’ve waited such a long time before applying these services to my business is because I was never fully convinced that it was a good use of my time.

After all, I have many tasks on my plate and very limited resources so I have to prioritize my time accordingly. But lately, I’ve been hearing way too many success stories with Twitter and Facebook to ignore them any longer.

For example according to Search Engine Land, many ecommerce companies have seen huge increases in sales and traffic after implementing Facebook Likes for their websites. Here are a few examples.

Levi’s jeans found that referral traffic increased 40X after implementing the Like button
Giantnerd.com’s revenues increased over 100% after implementing the Like button
American …

My daughter is now 3 years old and as she continues to grow and mature, it’s becoming much easier for the two of us to communicate with one other. Finally, she can put together simple sentences and convey what she wants and needs using words instead of grunting or crying.

The problem is that she’s also getting smarter and harder to negotiate with. Once she wants something, she’s tends to have a one track mind.

Daughter: Daddy, can I play with your phone?
Me: Not right now my love
Daughter: Can I see your phone? Can I see your phone? Can I see your phone?
Me: I said not right now
Daughter: I picked up my toys off the floor…
Me: Mommy made you do that so that doesn’t count
Daughter: Can I see your phone? Can I see your phone? Can I see your phone? Please Daddy?
Me: AHHH!!! …

My wife and I put it off for as long as we could. Our friends teased us about it. We had visions of the both of us crouched over on our hands and knees scrubbing the floors all day. Potty training was the one aspect of parenthood that my wife and I absolutely dreaded. Unfortunately, we had to bite the bullet sooner than we wanted to because our preschool forced us to take action. In order for our daughter to advance to the next class level, she had to be potty trained or be held back with the younger kids. And to make things worse, we recently had brand new carpets installed. (Bad timing. I know)

Photo By SpaceNinja

Yet in many ways, what instigated my wife and I to start our business and to potty train our daughter were very similar. Some …

A few months ago on a Sunday morning, I was looking through my emails when I discovered a bunch of new Google Alerts in my inbox. For all of you who are unfamiliar with Google Alerts, Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. As an online shop owner, I keep track of the competition for all of my main keywords using Google Alerts which tells me when new websites are indexed that pertain to my industry.

Photo By Nisha A.

Once a week (or whenever Google sends me email), I do a cursory scan of the wedding linens competitive landscape. While most of the new webpages that pop up are from Etsy or Ebay (which I ignore), this time out of the corner of my eye, I happened to notice some content that looked …

Early on when you first launch your online store, one thing is certain. You will not be receiving many visitors and customers will have a hard time finding your website. But rather than view the lack of traffic as a negative, this is the perfect time to do some targeted conversion testing using Google Adwords and Google Analytics. Why? Because you have so little web traffic, there is less data to interpret which makes sifting through your Google Analytics reports much easier without having to create complex filters out of the box.

Below I’m going to describe how my wife and I tweaked the conversion rate and diagnosed the early problems with our online store website using Adwords and Google’s free web analytics tool. Incidentally, if you have not signed up for Google Analytics, you should do so right now. It’s an extremely powerful tool …

As many of you who follow my email newsletter are aware, I recently switched my email marketing provider from Mailchimp over to Aweber and I thought that it would be interesting to compare the two services. For all of you who are not doing email marketing for your business, you really should consider doing so. Having an email list or newsletter is the best way to mobilize your audience to take action. It’s also a great way to maintain an active community of readers/customers for your site. In any case, this post is not about trying to convince you to use an email marketing provider, but if you are in the market for one, this review may help you out.
What Initially Attracted Me To MailChimp
Honestly, what attracted me initially to Mailchimp was that they offer a trial period in which their service is free for …

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 …

Whenever I think of duct tape, I think of my favorite television superhero MacGyver. What?!? There’s a ticking time bomb set to explode in 10 seconds? Take that stick of chewing gum, some duct tape and disarm that bad boy. It wasn’t always pretty, but MacGyver always got the job done no matter what the situation. He was never concerned with how elegant the solution was, he just did what was necessary to help his client.

If Macgyver was a real person, who wouldn’t want him on your team? The truth is that every small business needs a duct tape guy. Because the duct tape guy is the guy who will make sure you launch your business on time. He’s the one thinking about and developing concrete ways to market your business. He’s the one getting things done while others …

The other day, I came across a heated forum discussion that went back and forth debating over the definition of a “true” entrepreneur versus just a regular small business owner. The thread was over 5 pages long and participating in this discussion were a wide variety of different business owners. Some of them ran brick and mortar retail stores. Some of them ran small-medium sized internet consulting or software companies. And some of them were freelancers looking to eventually start their own firms.

Photo By maubrowncow

The main crux of the debate was whether a person opening a brick and mortar business like an ice cream store or a freelancer with no employees could be considered a true entrepreneur. Where do you draw the line between true entrepreneurship and just running a small business?

As the two sides argued back and forth, I couldn’t help but think…who …

In order to build wealth effectively, we all have to be frugal to a certain extent. We have to watch our spending. We have to analyze our expenditures and cut back on the fat. We have to make sacrifices to make sure that we can save enough money for college and retirement.

Photo By Edward Kimuk

Fortunately, my wife and I both share the same principles when it comes to spending money (ie. we don’t spend frivolously). Otherwise, we would be seriously screwed. But after analyzing last year’s expenses using Quicken, I feel all frugalled out. We have pretty much cut back as much as we possibly can without drastically affecting our lifestyle.

If we look closely at last years expenses, we cut spending by another 4% over the year before. We are going out to eat less thanks to my wife’s desire to …

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?

Photo by Chasing Fun

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 …

I’ve heard a ton of business ideas. I’ve listened to and read many business plans. And the one thing that always strikes me is how little most people think about the viability, profitability and end goals of their small business. Is the goal to become a millionaire? Is the goal to just make a living? Is the goal to just do something fun?

Photo By Reinvented

Perhaps this explains why in just the past year alone, I’ve seen many brick and mortar businesses open up their doors only to close down just a short while later. Perhaps this is why I know of several acquaintances who are in limbo with their business. They don’t make much profit yet they are literally working their butts off for the equivalent of minimum wage.

Granted, a lot of this might have to do with the current economy and the …

When most people think about starting a company or business, they think of the Microsofts, the Googles and the YouTubes of the world. They tend to think big because the media focuses on these multi-million dollar success stories and over glamorizes the risks and rewards.

Photo by MarkyBon

In fact, the media tends to portray entrepreneurs like lottery winners because that’s what makes the news. Because the chances of creating a company like You Tube or Facebook are so slim, most people shy away from starting their own business because they think it’s just way too risky with very little chance of success.

Just the other day, I had one of my readers email me that they were afraid to go out on their own because they didn’t want to risk everything for a measly 1% chance at success. A 1% chance at success? Where the hell did he …

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 …

You may have experienced this pattern before. You start a brand new job and work extremely hard in the beginning to establish yourself and your reputation. At first, the nature of the work is extremely challenging. You are constantly learning and trying to keep up with your coworkers. You find yourself staying late at the office just to get by.

As time passes however, you become adept at your job. You find ways to do your work faster and more efficiently. You become proficient and an expert at what you do. As more time passes, you feel comfortable and at ease with your job. You find yourself able to finish all of your work in an 8 hour day. You have more free time to spend at home. Things become cushy. Is it time to leave?

Photo by Just …

This particular reader was feeling a bit discouraged about her situation so I thought that I would try to lend a few words of encouragement. A, Thank you for emailing me. This post is for you.

I have been following your blog for about 3 months now, I work retail so I absolutely love the customer stories(I can relate). I have been working on starting my own business (it is very hands on in that includes sewing and screen printng) both of which I love. So much so that this has actually lead me back to school, and I know exactly what I wish to do. However I keep butting my head against the wall, now thanks to you I understand BHAG and have been working accordingly.

However I still get those nagging, you should be happy to have a job, you’re a bit old to start(really I’m 35!), you …