Current Mood: Meh

It’s fall, so I figured I’d better add a bit of life to this site.

Summer was…er…a mixed bag. In contrast to the prior post, sales dropped way off in Sept, and while they have increased since then, I figure it won’t be cruisin’ properly until after the election. Election years are a real spikey thing. First there’s the breath-holding & economic tanking (which everyone forgets happens every time there can’t be an incumbent after the election [although this time is unarguably worse than when Clinton had to step aside]). Then, after the election, half or more of the people are glad that whoever wins, did win, so they celebrate–by buying like mad!

So I’m sitting here waiting, with my merchandise…

On a brighter note, I finally bought 50 daffs (and some tulips) for myself AND got them planted. Usually I buy bulbs with the intention of planting them, but end up selling them. Not just for the money, but because planting is w*rk! So it will be nice in the spring to see a new daff patch, bordered by some tulips.

I half-expect that next spring I’ll be thinking, “I should have put those up for sale…”

Current Mood: Ecstatic

Celebrating a new gross-income record at ScalesEtc. this month!

I wouldn’t have expected June to be the month to make the first recordbreak this year (as a fairly new site, ScalesEtc. is due for *many* recordbreakers as it grows). But it’s done it.

What’s more to say, other than:

w00t!!

Current Mood: Erm…

Yesterday, I saw an offer from a merchant that’s really lucrative for affiliates. But, since his specs aren’t something that fits me, I can go ahead and say my real opinion of it…

He’s smoking something.

Not the guy that they stuck into publicizing the offer, but the actual merchant. See, this merchant is paying $50 for ONE PAGE of boring info-content dreck. Er…I mean, a “content rich” page on either a content site or a site that’s dedicated to promoting his category of stuff. And, the site must be on its own domain, or “loved by the search engines” (or very similar wording), too.

Clearly this merchant is after branding:

The merchant knows this kind of a page is nothing but a branding page, hence the $50. But since he’s making this offer to affiliates, he’s also promising double commissions! So what’s wrong with that? 2×0 = 0, that’s what. If they want to make any commissions, they’d better put a real sales page up. If affiliates just wait for the branding effect to kick in, their cookies will be long expired!

So what’s “smoking something” about this merchant’s plan? He seems to want branding and possibly a pop in his own search ranks. But:

1. Branding Takes Ages.
It could be months before he sees an increase in type-ins.

2. Branding takes a LOT of exposure, over a long period of time, before anything happens!!!

As in hundreds of sites of exposure. At $50 a pop, that’s going to get damned expensive. I’m sure they’d say they were rich enough to afford it. But from what I’ve read in the Wall St. Journal, NO company is “rich enough” to keep wasting money. Financial inefficiency adds up!

3. He’s paying WAY too much. Doesn’t he know he can get people to post for way less? Granted, 90% of those aren’t “loved by the search engines.” But not banned is good enough, as long as they’re getting some traffic.

4. He isn’t getting any SEO value from those “SE loved” sites he’s after: Affiliate links go through the network’s server before redirecting to the merchant–leaving the Googlebot on the other side! Check the robots.txt at the affiliate network. Usually bots are banned from their redirectors.

So, I pronounce his plan to be made of lose.

Still, it’s worth $50 to anyone willing to put a page of not-salesy-enough c*ntent on their site, so if you’re interested in parting that merchant from his money, leave a comment to that effect, and I’ll drop ya a link to the forum where they’ve got their affiliate manager peddling this. There’s probably a deadline, so look at the date on this post first. (If it’s a year later, I’m not going to try to refind that link.)

Current Mood: Erm… & Playful

Today I decided to look over some items at a wholesaler, since I need to do some restocking. And amazingly, they have an item that actually matches what I’ve been getting quite a few searches for! I realized that since that industry is affected by certain fashion aspects, that they actually update their offerings by the season. And, it’s about to be spring, so stands to reason that all the new stuff would be available now so retailers can start flogging it, right?

Wronggg!!

Apparently they think the particular colors in question are fall colors, or at least summer colors, because they’re not going to actually HAVE the things until JUNE!! Argh…

And never mind that similarly subdued colors, in a different pattern that won’t get half as much customer interest, will be available in March. As in, probably in a few days from now.

Wholesalers: Denizens of their own little worlds.

Current Mood: Meh

After spending the week trying to get motivated, I managed to accomplish some stuff! Two things are now off of my list.

Reuseable grocery bags are now up on Cozy Homewares, and the month’s advertising is now running.

Woop-de-do, huh… Still have to get those products into the Froogle feed, too, since the spiders aren’t yet convinced that that site should be king of the SERPs.

As for next week, I really need to quit stalling on getting the rest of the Escali stuff up. They’ve passed the test run and then some. Not to mention that their stuff looks cool

Nice, huh.

Current Mood: Surprised

Logging into Authorize.net the other day, I was greeted with an unwelcome message on a “splash” screen. Auth.net uses these screens when it wants to make SURE that everyone sees a particular message (especially if there’s something that would require contractual agreement for it to take effect).

The splash screen said basically that they were discontinuing their “Suite” package, and that my merchant/gateway account would have to be split into two accounts (a merchant account and a seperate gateway account)! And, that I had to accept this change soon, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to keep accepting credit cards.

This reeked of something that’d turn into a ball of overwhelming PITA and FUBAR upon implementation, despite their site’s many assurances to the contrary. And, they said that the merchant account would be handled by Wells-Fargo. Even though they said the fees wouldn’t change, I know that Wells-Fargo has much higher fees than what I’m paying, so I figured that it wouldn’t be long before they actually *would* be changed…even if they refrained from doing it immediately.

Strangely, I thought at the time, they didn’t have an actual “new contract” screen come up, nor any “accept” button. I figured that they just hadn’t put it up yet and that I’d catch it at the next login.

But today, I got emails from Authorize.net telling me that this “splash” screen had been a mistake! It was only supposed to show up for a certain part of their customer base–a part which does NOT include me!! So, my accounts will remain as they are. No new contracts to accept, no impending horrible technological and records mishmash, no big Wells-Fargo fee-beast laying in wait for the time when “you said ‘your rates will not change’” can be reasonably countered with “hey, we didn’t mean NEVER.”

In other words, them showing me that screen was an “oops!” And this is when “Oops!” is a good thing to read.

Current Mood: Cool & Ecstatic

That describes it.

The glories of the Christmas Buying Season!!

When everything has a glow, when the email alerts are not all “somebody spammed the forum” notices, when the stuff that’s been sitting here all year becomes a hot commodity, and the already-hot items become ON FIRE…that’s the High Retail time of year!

I’m just lovin’ it! Not only does all the above happen, it’s possible to tell almost instantly whether a new product line is any good, because there are enough buyers coming in on generic terms that it doesn’t take long to see what they’re going for. For instance, I added these Escali digital food scales a couple of weeks ago, and they’re flying out the door! They really are a good deal, but not only that, they come in a zillion colors, and people seem to like to see the food scale section with a lot of choices. There’ll be even more choices soon–there are a lot more Escalis to put up.

The affiliates over at ABestWeb are on Cloud Nine, too–the spike in volume means tons more commissions. And in years past, I would have thought that was Some Thing, too. But now that I’m a merchant? I could put it a few ways, but…

If business was coffee, the affiliate-side is actually the decaf version. When it’s your own stuff going out the door, THAT is caff!

Current Mood: Ecstatic

It’s always a joyous day when the FIRST SALE of a new merchant site rolls in! And today, I got another hit of that special joy. I woke up to my first sale from Merchant Site #3!!!

Yes, yes, yes. What is there to say but glorious “YES!!”

Another baby has come to life.

I’ve decided to try to get all the major steps of becoming a merchant into one post. My reasons are simple: My irritation at how “hard” and “expensive” people have made it seem, has overtaken the negative of more possible competition on my list. There is a lot of BS out there, and it’s time for me to get out a shovel.

I will disclaim that: This is not meant to be comprehensive–to do that would take a book rather than a single post! I also disclaim that what works in some categories may bomb in others.

So you want to be a real merchant!
Not a weenie ebook seller. Not a provider of “quotes.” Not a service provider. But a real, honest-to-goodness merchant, who buys stuff wholesale and then ships it out for retail. Good for you and congratulations–you have more guts than what seems to be 99% of the population!

First thing–before you do anything, before you even decide what to sell: Start collecting about $1200. That’s right, just twelve-hundred, also known as “one thousand, two hundred” dollars, USD. This–not $100k, not $1MM–is what it takes to get a basic setup started (assuming you’re not thinking of selling something like diamond jewelry or Rolex watches, of course). The rest of the startup doesn’t cost money. Ongoing operating expenses are another matter. For now, I’m talking about the raw startup fees.

Don’t start spending that dough yet. Read on…

I’m figuring that it’ll take some time to get the money up. While you’re saving up, that’s when you brainstorm up products to sell, and research the markets. Since you’re going to be online, that means you’ll most likely END UP having search engines deliver most of your traffic. At a search engine, if people aren’t searching for what you’re selling–you ain’t gonna sell it. It’ll sit and rot. So, you need to make sure people are searching for what you are considering selling. Use keyword tracking services for this. WordTracker’s the best one that won’t take your arm and leg clean off. If you’re willing to part with the limbs, there’s KeywordDiscovery.

Don’t ever get wedded to a particular idea, product, or category.
Don’t be discouraged if/when it turns out that the searchers are NOT searching for what you are thinking of selling! If there aren’t enough searchers, the solution is simple: Stop thinking of selling that!!! Think up something else to sell. Better to dump an idea, than obstinately try to “make” a market for it. Yah yah some lucky sucker in the 50s managed to sell pet rocks yada yada yada. To heck with that guy. Pretend he never existed. The average merchant will get laughed right outta the arena trying to sell some junk like that. And if you’re reading this, that means YOU, newb.

Keep checking out ideas until you find one that 1) People WANT! and 2) Doesn’t have much competition, or, the competition doesn’t know SEO (search engine optimization), and/or, the only competition is lame free-hosted-looking sites. Basically you want the competition to either not be there, or be so lame that it might as well not be there.

Get your sales tax license and any other legal stuff your local government requires (register your business, etc.).

Get a Business Checking account for the new business. Don’t get your merchant account (for credit-card acceptance) yet.

Set up your shopping cart software. Zen-Cart is FREE but the first setup is a really frustrating experience. Others charge, but some of them are ALSO frustrating! So I say, go with Zen. It’s free, and your pulled-out hairs will grow back.

WEB DESIGN: Throw away whatever you think would look good. Newbs have no taste in ecom. You’re reading this guide? That means you’re a newb.
Take yourself over to Amazon.com. Check out Sears.com. Peer at your own favorite ecommerce sites–ones you’ve bought repeatedly from.
Notice that they all have similarities: WHITE BACKGROUND, nav down one side, a search box, the logo goes at the top. Product-finding nav is separate from links to stuff like “about us” and the FAQ. About-us is on a separate page. Copyright stuff goes in the footer. Fonts are clean, nothing fancy. Border and tab colors are not ugly (what counts as “ugly colors” depends on your target market, NOT your own idea of ugly.) Links to products are underlined! Everything is easy to see and even a moron can work the site.

They have this kind of format for a reason: IT WORKS. Never mind what YOU think is “pretty.” Beauty on a sales site is in the mind of the Bank Account, and only the Bank Account. The Bank Account lives by the KISS Principle (Keep It Simple Stupid). So too, does your site, for they are joined at the hip.

Get and install a Secure Server Certificate (if you have shared hosting, you may have to have your host do this). Don’t pay any arm and leg for the thing. Check out RapidSSL.com.

Find Wholesalers.
This post may be enough, or it may be frustratingly not enough, depending on the product you’ve picked. Sometimes, finding a wholesaler is as easy as typing “Wholesale [product name]” into Google. Other times, it’ll be a wretched pain in the butt and require a load of research along with a couple of months of interminable-seeming waiting while the ones you find get around to responding.

For those research-requiring times: This is what almost always works, but is a PITA anyway. Go to the store that carries The Items. Write down the name of the manufacturer of the item, or the distributor, whichever is listed–it should be right on the pack. Write to them or call. Be prepared to WAIT FOR AGES for responses (if you call, it’ll seem immediate, THEN you wait ages for the catalog and price list to actually show up). Then, if it’s made by some really big place like Proctor & Gamble, expect to have to do more research before you find the distributor that’ll accept you and your little $1,000 order.

Still–do NOT tell them up front that you only intend to order $1K or less of stuff!!! Just ask what the minimum order is. If it’s above your budget, just say “uh huh” or “okay thanks” (without giving away your budget) and keep looking. Don’t burn your bridges by gagging outright, or otherwise branding yourself as a Puny Newblet. Remember, if all goes well, you won’t be puny nor a newblet in a few years. But if you let them pigeonhole you now, because it may interfere with dealing with them later.

Once you find a suitable distributor/manufacturer, get their price list. This should be a just-ask proposition once you find the right place. But, they may take ages to actually send the thing. That’s how the dinos are. Just vent on your blog

Make sure you can resell the item at a price the market will bear–and still make a profit doing it. Don’t forget to calculate for overhead, and the cost of them shipping the stuff TO you.

If it passes the demand-vs-competition test, and you can make a profit selling it, MAKE YOUR FIRST ORDER.
It takes about $900-$1000 worth of goods to get going, and not run out 2 seconds after the buyers find you. Don’t buy lots of the same exact item, rather, spread it out over 15 or so variants so you have an impressive selection (buy a few of each variant though). Customers don’t like empty shelves, and the web equivalent of that is a site that’s got about 3 different items.

Get the stock in and put at least some of it up on your site. DON’T ADVERTISE YET! You still need to be able to accept credit cards! Don’t worry, nobody’s going to find a site that’s not yet in the search engines, and isn’t advertised either. But don’t dawdle on the next steps–when the engines do rank your site in a findable position, you want to be ready. Get it into your mind that you will CONTINUE with the next steps right away, once you’ve put the stock onto your site! Don’t get so hurried that you do something stupid!!! But, don’t go on vacation or something, either, because eventually, the engines will list you, and you want to be ready by then. This isn’t the time for days off–at least, not until you’ve put in your merchant-account app (they will probably take a few days to do their end).

Go to your bank and get hooked up with a merchant account, to accept those magically wonderful plastic cards. It may cost you about $300 for setup fees (some or even all of this may be called an “application fee.” Important part is, you end up paying out money!). Yeah, there’s “free” offers on the net, but they have catches. For instance, Wells-Fargo has a free-app no-setup one, but their monthly fees are so much higher that you end up missing your shirt after about a year or 2. Other “free” offers are often more fly-by-night, doing things like renaming “setup” fees as “application” fees, or bait-and-switching you on the transaction fees (those “1%” fees are only if you–yes, YOU–have great credit, are in physical possession of the card [like at a brick-n-mortar], and other such baloney. Baloney, because if you’re an ONLINE merchant, you are doing “card not present” transactions–which are charged at the high rate. Etc. etc. etc.).

Monthly fees for merchant accounts come under various baffling names. Cut through the red tape by adding the whole wad of them up.

Make sure your merch acc’t uses Authorize.Net for its online processing. Auth.net’s one of the biggest online card processors, they know what they’re doing, and don’t F it up. All others I’ve checked out have been cussed for various things, some of those things being major.

When you get your merchant acc’t info, hook it into your shopping cart. The “how” varies with the cart. Check the cart’s manual/FAQs/forum/docs for the specifics that pertain to your cart.

Put the rest of the stuff up on the site, if you haven’t already done it.

Advertise. This is an ongoing expense. Some methods of advertising are obvious, while some are proprietary information even though they should be obvious to those with good eyes. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) at Overture is a fast way to start bringing in traffic. It’d take a whole other post to talk about its nuances. But the basic thing to remember is: Don’t pay more per click than you can afford.

How to do PPC and not lose your shirt at it is beyond the scope of this post, which is already very long. But it’s definitely worth more research if you don’t already have the skill (have=you have actually done it successfully). PPC does have a risk factor that is higher than something like a newspaper ad. That’s the tradeoff for it actually having the potential to be profitable–unlike a newspaper ad, which is usually a waste of money for a site. With PPC, you can get an INTERESTED viewer for as low as 10c/click…while with hardcopy advertising, your ad gets slapped at thousands of people who COULDN’T CARE LESS, yet the overall cost is higher! Sometimes much higher!

Look around online for other methods of advertising. There are a couple of good ones…good enough that I’m not going to explicitly state them, but I will admit to the fact that they exist.

I will also mention that some things online are JUNK: Foremost among pure junk are “guaranteed traffic” sellers. These money-eaters do things like show your site as a popup, or send robots to it, or show your ad in click-fraud-ridden foreign countries that you can’t ship to even if they did order. Some traffic-sellers even “show” your site in a frame on other sites, a frame so small that it’s invisible! This fools your logs into seeing lots of different IPs, but no humans are actually seeing you! So SAVE YOUR MONEY, nobody can legitimately guarantee nonjunk traffic!

Congratulations, you now have your merchant site up and traffic will start coming once you advertise it! The search engines will *find* you fairly quickly, but won’t LIST you in a user-findable spot for quite some time. Check out some SEO forums or blogs for how to get around that. Once you get your site to rank well in search engines, your business can expand exponentially!

Will you be able to sell anything? A resounding “maybe.” It’s a gamble. Some people have a good eye for what types of things they can sell, while others have some really abysmal product-picking skills! If a particular product is a go, expect to have to make some tweaks to get the best conversion ratio. And, if you have a good conversion ratio already–don’t mess with it!

An acceptable conversion ratio (visitors-to-buyers ratio) is 1/100. Higher than that is good.

Oh, one other thing: Make sure your TRANSACTION LIMIT from your merchant account can handle a spike of at least TEN TIMES the initial volume–and maybe more. A #1 Google listing for the relevant keywords can happen literally overnight. It’s not guaranteed by any means–but IF it does happen, you need to be sure your merchant account won’t put a “hold” on the funds due to the unexpected spikeage.

Good luck–unless you’re trying to sell the same stuff I am…

Wholesalers seem to live in some kind of funhouse-mirror world. Not that this is always bad, per se. It’s just weird.

For most of the years I’ve been dealing with wholesalers, the economy’s been pretty good. Excellent housing/real estate market, good empl*yment levels, no real political uncertainty, etc.

For those years, all the wholesalers insisted that I have my credit card on file, they wouldn’t just ship now and bill me, and even with those restrictions some wanted references!

This year, the real-estate market is tanking, there’s been massive layoffs in my state, and the uncertainty of an upcoming election is already starting to loom. And there is hot rhetoric between the US and Iran.

And now places will ship to me first, and bill later. This is *without* running any kind of credit check on me or my companies. One of them was even a place I had never dealt with before! This phenemon isn’t industry-specific, so it’s not just a standard difference in methodology.

What the…?!?

It’s nice, but it doesn’t make a lick of sense.