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: 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.

Current Mood: Ecstatic & Surprised

And energized enough to bounce through the roof even though I haven’t had any caffeine yet!

It was to my shock that yesterday my order from the first dino-wholesaler showed up! I think it was 2 days after I got back to them with my card number!! Too bad it took 3 or 4 weeks for them to actually pack it…

Anyway, now I am the proud owner of 4 cartons of merchandise. And hopefully, soon to be the proud owner of just ONE ITEM from those cartons–the one I bought for myself. The rest, of course, are to be sold!

This stuff is the same stuff I’ve seen in stores around here. With the professional packaging and everything! How uber is that!!? I love being a merchant!

Maybe I was a weird kid. I used to go to stores and just wish, wish, WISH that I could have those shelves as mine–and all the stuff on them, with its professional packaging and “buy me” colors. Not fake-o kiddie “brands,” but the real deal. Play-store, that never did it. I didn’t want pretend.

And, I got (and still get) no thrill from buying onesies. I wanted the Store. And not out of greed, either (who’d be greedy for 100 copies of an item you only can actually use 1 of?!). The excitement was/is in being the Store, being the one that other people went to to get what THEY need, and the whole excitement of retailing/advertising, and yes the very LOOKS of a fully-stocked store! And to be the one responsible for its existence as well as its goodness, when people say “I love this store and I wouldn’t shop anywhere else!”

Most kids empathize with the line “like a kid in a candy store.” That never did much for me. But one day I thought, “to heck with being IN one for a night. That’s not very exciting; I can’t even begin to eat all the candy in such a store. What’d be really uber would be to OWN the place, and have other kids clamouring to get in…” Then the adrenaline kicked in.

Opening those boxes yesterday took me back to those days, again. I got the same thrill when I got my first shipment of bulbs, and then when I got the first shipment of scales. But this seems a bit more pronounced, even. These items are branded, and with a brand that someone actually may recognize from a big bricks-n-mortar store!

*holds products like they’re a psychological combination of chocolates and gold bars*

I’m sooooo excited about this…my first Recognizable Brand line…I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when I get the BIG brand stuff. JUST LIKE MACY’S and the like have! I think they’ll have to peel me off the ceiling, then. Is it possible to OD on a natural high?? If it is, I am doomed.

Time to start scanning in the product pix. The store should be open by Tues or Wed at the latest. As soon as the merchant account is turned on, it’s a go.

By all this excitement, you’d think this was the culmination of the dream! And while it does fulfill a lot of dreams that required branded items, there is still one left on the burner: Owning a grocery store! But that’s probably a long way in the future. Right now, my energy is going to the latest site, and there’ll probably be more sites after that!

Current Mood: Ecstatic

FINALLY I’ve found some wholesalers who have a clue!!!

It took some thinking outside the box, but it seems that I’ve finally managed to dredge up some clueful wholesalers. One was even clueful enough to advertise on Google!

The first products should be here by next week…then time to turn on the new Authorize.net account and start barraging the Internet with ads.

If I bid enough, I should be able to catch at least some of the Q4 wave for Merchant Site #3!!!

Although I am excited to see progress, I do have to remember: The first months of a new merchant site are a mere whisper of what it can do after being established for a year or 2. People don’t like to beta-test new companies, so things don’t start really cookin’ until there’s some branding built up.

Still, it would have been a crime not to have been able to get any stock this month!

Current Mood: Meh

Things are progressing on Merchant Site #3. The biz reg has been sent (I should have my official, embossed papers in return mail today or tomorrow), and the ZenCart is ready for me to pull the trigger.

And, that reminded me…I needed an SSL Cert for this baby, and to renew the one for Merch. Site #2.

An SSL Cert, if you don’t already know, is what makes that little lock appear on a secure site. It makes the encryption work. It also serves an identification function, which is one of the reasons browsers put out warnings when things don’t match up.

Now here’s the bit with these things: You can get ‘em for $15, $49, or even–hold onto your seats!–$800 and up!

So, when I opened Merch. Site #1, I educated myself on the difference. For anyone who wants to know, here it is in a nutshell:

The SUPER CHEAP jobbies are “chained” certificates. This is Greek for that it could have gone through several resellers, all vouching for the prior reseller’s reputation. So, all it takes is one weak link in the chain, and you end up with junk. Those are a bit too iffy for me.

The CHEAP ones ($49) are just fine for any sane purpose, as far as I can tell. You get a “root level” cert, that is, one that has NOT gone through a gauntlet of resellers. So, you only have to trust the one company. For $49 it’s got very minimal identity authentication. It has to go with the site you’re trying to run it on and that’s about it. Oh, they claim to authenticate the buyer. LOLOL that consists of a short phone call to the buyer! BUT, the real point of an SSL certif is to get that sensitive data to encrypt, get the lock showing, and basically keep customers from running away screaming–NOT to show that [my real name] is really me, or that I’m on Dun & Bradstreet (which I’m not), or any of that.

So, in short, the $49 one is just fine. And, that’s what I get.

The LUDICROUSLY EXPENSIVE VERISIGN ONES are a ripoff from all I can tell. The only difference between these things and the $49ers, is that they put the buyer through a bunch of hash to prove their identity. The important part–the encryption function–is no different! What Verisign and their ilk do is make the buyer fax in a bunch of paperwork, take about 5 days to *really* verify it, and then fork up the darn cert. Oh, and the merchant gets to display that fancy Secured by Verisign seal instead of the kind of cheap-looking “Secured by RapidSSL” one that I have. Woopee.

But, some people think that they should overspend when they’re a business, and a lot of big companies have that same insanity, so there’s a lot of Verisign seals to be seen out there.

There’s actually a FREE way to get an SSL certif! It’s called a “self-signed” certificate. What that basically means is simple: You can generate your own certificate! Most decent server management software has this capability, although shared-hosting users may be outta luck unless they can get their host to generate one for ‘em. But before you run to get a free one:

With the self-signed ones, there is no ID authentication at all. It’s basically saying, “It’s secure, cuz I said so.” It DOES really enable the same 128-bit encryption that all the others do. But, it makes the browser kick out multiple warnings: “This is an unknown certificate issuing authority” (or words to that effect) being chief among them. And if you don’t use it on the domain it’s made for, it, like all others, will also trigger warnings based on that mismatch.

Due to the warnings, no customer in their right mind is going to trust a self-signed certif, which is what’s wrong with those–and what keeps the “certifying authorities” (SSL cert sellers) in business. But there may be some noncommercial applications for those. Self-signeds are also good as “practice” installations, which comes in handy when figuring out a new installation interface.

As for what one of these certificate files looks like, all the components are made of what appears to be gibberish. Like someone randomly pounded on a keyboard with their fists until they generated about 200 characters of junk!!

Yet, out of that “junk,” browser software can pick out all kinds of stuff–the site it’s issued to, when it expires, who issued it…and whatever info is needed to make the encryption happen.

So the tech is pretty cool, despite the fact that it costs money to get a certificate that browser software actually recognizes.

Current Mood: Meh

Geez! “Dull” is actually an understatement. No wonder I never went fast on those j*bs when I did them for empl*yment. They put me to sleep!

What reminded me how dull clerical stuff can be?

Every year, I send out postcards to old customers to let them know that the tulip season has begun. Needless to say, this entails some clerical work. I had to enter all the names/addresses into the label template, print that out, and then sticker the postcards with those labels and my return-address labels.

And, I actually fell asleep a few times before I was done with the last set of labels!

At least I didn’t hate inventory/counting. Because the next step for the beginning of a season is to count out all the packs. They’re 12-packs, because I make ‘em 12-packs. But there’s clerical in that part, too: They have to be labeled by type.

No wonder shipping has improved on my opinion-meter! I got rid of all the nasty parts of the shipping operation. My boxes are big enough that fitting the stuff in isn’t a hassle, nobody can tell me to speed up and pack 1/min (I won’t ever fire me!), and I make sure to buy the good tape so there’s no frustration with that part.

But the clerical stuff…I think that’s irredeemable for now. There’re machines that WILL do it, but I’d have to be sending mass-mailings out a lot more often to make that equipment worthwhile. I only send cards out once a year…

Current Mood: Playful

To be planting! Specifically, tulips.

Why tulips?

Because they’re a great investment in next spring, because they’re the most popular bulb plant, because they’re pretty foolproof…

And because I just got my load of bulbs in from Holland for GoodBulbs.com! So the bulb-selling season is here, as well as the planting season!

Current Mood: Really Sad & Angry

As an affiliate marketer, there is one thing that’s dreaded: Reversals. Waiting to see if an order will “stick” is like walking on light bulbs.

This effect is greatly lessened as a merchant, but occasionally, something happens that condenses all the pain into an exquisitely tortuous experience!

An order cancellation.

I’m going to have to reverse ON MYSELF! Oh, that sucks! Suuuuccckkkkssss!!!

Affiliates may think that “at least the merchant knows the real reason.” But, NOT! I don’t know the real reason! He just said “[product] isn’t going to work for us.” Which is as good as the notorious “reversal reason: other” of affiliate networks.