When building a website for your online business, the first obstacle that people have to figure out is the homepage.  The homepage provides a critical role in your business structure because it is the first thing that people see when they click on your web address and it can set the tone for not only your business, but people can decide based from the structure of your homepage if they can trust you, your products, and doing business with you as a whole in a matter of seconds. Here are seven tips that can help anyone who is building their own website homepage, and how these helpful hints can keep customers from feeling nervous about clicking on your url.

7 Dropship / Wholesale Business Homepage Tips

1. Identify Your Business Purpose

The purpose of your business is not what you’re selling, or what you have to offer, but it’s what you’re trying to accomplish with your website. For example, if you’re selling custom animal feeders for example, your purpose might be to provide high quality animal feeders at low costs. If you’re selling memberships to your wildlife conservation efforts, your purpose might be to educate the public about wildlife conservation and provide effective means to protect our planet.

2. Avoid Sales Outright

If you have tangible items that you’re selling on your website, it’s a good idea to try not to make a sale on your homepage. You can have a small area for promotional offers, but don’t have a line of skirts that are on sale, a line of discontinued items, or clearance, right on your homepage. It’s a good idea to have easy navigation for your site, so that customers can find the products that you’re selling, but try to keep them off the front page.

3. Change It Up For New And Returning Visitors

Customer traffic is what generates the income with online companies. It’s important to always encourage both new and returning customers and one of the ways to do that is by setting up an RSS feed to remind visitors to come back to your site, create newsletters, or any kind of incentive for returning. If you have the programming ability, you can to do something similar to amazon.com, where customers who aren’t logged in can see popular items, and customers who do log in can see suggested items based from things that they previous purchased.

4. Prioritize Content

You only have so much space on your homepage to put information in without making it seem cramped. Figure out the main things you want on your homepage, and prioritze them accordingly. If there is something that you would like to have more attention drawn to, highlight it with boxes, larger – but not excessively larger – font, or anything else that would work with your page layout. Keep in mind that customers usually see websites in the “f pattern” style. Their eyes usually hit the top left corner first, then go right, then down. The more they scroll down the less interested they become in the content, to build accordingly.

5. Have Contrast

It’s important to remember not to have a noisy background or something that is going to mix your content in with the back of your screen. If you’re putting together two colors that clash, or are too dark together, then it could have a negative effect on your website’s success.  Keep in mind relevant sizing when it comes to font sizes and images, and to avoid “shouting” at people with all capital letters. One thing I had a hard time learning when I was getting my BA in Communications Design was white space. I always wanted to get everything I could into a page, but white space is much more classy, less suffocating, and more effective than clutter, so be sure to use plenty of it.

6. Maximize Page Response Times

If you are importing pictures that are 3mb a piece, it’s going to take a while to have the page load with all the content. Make sure to have your files downsized accordingly so your customers don’t instantly click off your page once they realize it will take more than five seconds to load. Customers have very short attention spans, so don’t lose them even before they get to your homepage.

7. Pick Graphics Carefully

Graphics and photos are one of those things that can make or break your homepage. If you want to use graphics, make sure they are relevant and applicable to what your overall design of your website is, and what your company is selling. If you found a cute picture of a cat and wanted to share it – putting it on your homepage is probably not the best place to put it.

Education, home based business, online business, website design / help

As an added measure of information, I decided to do a part two on what things to avoid when you are trying to figure out your ideal niche market. Although some of these points might simply be the opposite of the things you should do when finding a niche in the previous post, sometimes people have an easier time seeing what not to do than a list of what you should do.

Avoiding Common Niche Mistakes

1. Becoming Infatuated With Your Product

If you have a hobby or an interest and one day think, this would be an awesome product to sell! I should start selling it! thus spending the next few weeks completely insterested in selling this product that you just love only to find out there’s absolutely no market for it. You need to make sure that if you love your product, that others actually love it too and there’s a market for it.

2. Not Doing Your Research

Like mentioned in the previous article, it’s very important to do keyword searches to see if there are people actually typing in what you want to sell. If people simply don’t have any interest in what you want to sell, they won’t be typing it in, and it won’t show up. A product with a consistent amount of hits is something worth considering.

Another aspect of not doing research is trying to sell something that people could easily get for free. This example is most common with recipe books and some sheet music. If you want to sell your cookbook online, you have to have something additional to convince your potential customers that your book is so much better than what they can get for free from the five websites surrounding yours on Google.

3. Selling Just Products

It’s important to remember to have a niche market / idea like bathroom soaps and supplies and then have various sub-categories in your niche like custom soap molds, cute toothbrush holders, etc. If you are only selling one product like bath rugs and people aren’t interested in bath rugs, it won’t matter if you have fifteen different colors, textures, and shapes, they won’t buy your product.

4. Competing With The Big Dogs

Like mentioned in the previous post, it’s important to go where the customers are, but don’t think it’s a good idea to compete with big name suppliers. Like our example with Bath and Body Works, The Body Shop, and Bed Bath and Beyond, if you don’t have something unique or different about your product, customers will most likely just stick to their big department stores.

5. Selling What You Don’t Know

Yesterday, I commented on how it’s important to know what you’re selling about, not only for the customer’s sake, but also for the sake of building content. If you were selling makeup for example and didn’t know the first thing about it, you wouldn’t be able to make interesting video tutorials about how to create a certain look – and especially in the case of makeup, people with a lot of experience will most likely buy their stuff online and might not trust the quality of your products if they think you don’t know what you’re selling.

6. No Passion For Your Niche

It’s important that you find something that you not only know about but that you have a passion with. Just because you know a lot about lawn supplies doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re interested in things related to the outdoors. You’re going to be spending a lot of time, effort, and money building up your business so it’s a good idea to be passionate about your products.

Education, Uncategorized, home based business, internet marketing, make money online, product research

Recently, I have been getting a lot of comments on past posts from people who want to start their online business and websites and need a little more insight, so I decided to go over some tips for everyone who is at the point where they need to build their website for their business, but need a place to start before jumping into the deep end. Here are 8 points to keep in mind before you indulge in this new business venture.

8 Things You Want To Realize Before You Start Your Dropship Or Wholesale Website

1. Do you know what you want?

Some people might look at this question and quickly answer, “Well, of course I know what I want. I want a successful business that will make me lots of money so I can retire at 45 with my beach house in Cabo San Lucas, and my winter house in Aspen, Colorado.” Okay, so people might not say that exactly, but if you ask that question to most people that are starting a business, their first response usually is geared toward making a lot of money. Who doesn’t want to have a lot of money? However, if you only think that, you’re missing the point. You need something before you can even think about making money. What is that one thing? Happy customers. Without happy customers, your business simply won’t survive, with happy customers, income should ultimately follow.

2. This is going to cost more and take more time than you first anticipated.

Building a business from the ground up is not something that is going to happen overnight. It takes time, patience, money, and usually much more than what people first anticipate. Not getting a huge increase right off the bat is something that people get scared about, and they instantly back out of what they’re doing because their initial dream profit didn’t happen. If you’re willing to put the time and investment into your company, then the rewards will follow. They might not follow immediately, but if you continue to work hard and do the right things to build your business, they should eventually follow.

When it comes to designing your site, if you have a developer making something for you, you can save time and money by having things such as content, pictures, etc. ready for them, so when they’re ready to piece your site together, you’re not wasting time or money putting everything together.

3. Websites aren’t one big piece

If you go to any website, you will notice it’s not just one page and that’s it. Websites are built in pieces, so it’s important when working with a developer or making your own website that you don’t cut any corners when it comes to your site. If it takes a couple extra pages to make something better, but it means that it will be a couple more hours of extra work, it’s worth it.

4. Don’t overload on the glitter

Some people who are just starting out want the most fancy, flashy website they can imagine. They want music, pictures, animation, etc. Just remember that having a flashy website isn’t always going to be the best thing. Yes, people like animation and things like that, but all with moderation. Just remember that when it comes to design or content, content always wins out. So, build a nice website, but don’t forget that what goes in it is the important part.

5. Just because it’s online, doesn’t mean people will come

There are millions of websites active on the internet. Just because you make a website does not mean it will actually have customers or even visitors. Sure, you might have the occasional person who writes exactly the same paragraph that you did on your main page, but how likely is that? This is where things like marketing, social networking, and other methods of attracting customers come into play. If people don’t know that your site even exists, then how are they supposed to come? If you’re not familiar with social networking, you might want to check out these blogs.

6. Don’t build then leave.

Imagine building a house – it took you time, energy, and a lot of planning, but you finally have a nice outcome. What happens if you don’t ever clean the inside of the house or get things replaced that break? Eventually, your beautiful house that you worked so hard on isn’t going to be so beautiful anymore, and the smell coming from each room is going to scare any visitors from saying more than two seconds in your house. Your website is the same – you will spend all this time working on it, making it amazing, but once it’s established you can’t just leave it alone. You want to make sure to update your website on a daily, weekly, or bi-weekly basis. Think about it this way, “How is my target audience changing, and how can I adapt to what they want?”

7. You get what you pay for

If you hire someone to develop your website for you, you’re going to get in return what you invested in. If the person you hired is your neighbor’s daughter’s friend’s brother who learned two lines of HTML but is really good about lifting codes (taking the HTML and CSS work / the design of other websites), and all he does for you is lift codes all day for your $20 paycheck, then what you’re going to get is a poor website that isn’t original, and could cause you a lot of problems when people find out your whole thing was illegally lifted.

8. Don’t start with a CMS right away

For most small businesses that start right off the bat, a Customer Managing System might not be something you need immediately. Wait to invest in a CMS when your customer base builds and you need to have something to handle all your customers. Talk to your web designer about getting something more low key to start off – they might have something they can make in the meantime.

home based business, make money online, online business, selling products online, website design / help

With growing technology, people are able to view items, buy items, or simply research products through various mediums. For example, not only does e-commerce entail people simply on the computer browsing for things, but also the people on their cellphones, PDAs, etc. With the changing dynamic and growing expectations for companies who operate with the Internet, business owners have to know how to keep their business at the top of the game. Here are some tips to keep those customers and utilize the people on different operating systems aside from computers, and how to give your company an edge.

Adapting To The Commerce Everywhere Consumer

Find A Niche

We’ve reiterated this message in plenty of blogs, but it really is that important that I think it’s necessary to repeat it. To give you some ideas on what you can use for your niche market, check out our blog post, How To Brainstorm Products You Can Dropship For Profit. Niche markets will give you the edge because you will know the ins and outs of your product.

Improve Usability / Add Features

I offered some advice on what you should add for your retail site, but those tips can be broadened for any website. If we’re simply talking categories, things like sizing charts, features lists, color swatches (possibly even an idea of getting a picture of the fabric used so people can see the real color, or trying to simply find a color online that matches what the fabric looks like) are a good idea. Other aspects, like multi-media (video and images), and cross-sell and up-sell options, as well as customer reviews, ratings on products, are all good things to add to your site to make your customer’s experience the most effective. The more dynamic your website is, allowing customers to customize their searches to find the exact products you’re looking for, is a sure-fire way to have people not feel frazzled coming to your site or simply get tired of having to dig through your products to find what they want.

Making Things 100% Right 100% Of The Time

It only takes one bad experience for a customer to either drop your brand, question using your website, or simply just disappear. It’s important to have your products information correct 100% of the time. As a buyer on amazon.com, I always check to see why people leave sellers negative comments. One of the most common ones I notice is that they posted something as being available, when in reality, it was sold out. No customer wants to get excited about getting a product at a great price just to find out it’s not really there after they paid for it.

Check Out Product Content Managers

PCM is something that basically makes it certain that you do not have erroneous information with your products. Not only will it get the most accurate information about your product, but it will grab all the customer reviews about the product to add as well. PCM covers things like creation, aggregation, categorization, staging, publication and syndication to the assignment of attributes such as category, price and promotion eligibility, as well as integrates things like reviews, videos, etc. about products as well. These are the kind of things that are becoming a key feature in making your products accessible from various channels.

Uncategorized, dropshipping, eBay, home based business, make money online, online business, selling products online

People are always trying to avoid getting their Reseller’s Permit and Tax ID Number.  They’ll send Research Requests asking for suppliers who don’t require it, or will only sell on eBay and never open their own website because they don’t want to register their online business.  Avoiding getting your Reseller’s Permit and Tax ID Number isn’t doing yourself any favors.  In fact, it’s a real detriment to your business.  Getting the proper documentation should be the first step in starting your online business – you should do it immediately, not try to avoid it.

What is a Reseller’s Permit?

A Resller’s Permit or Resale License is required if you sell or lease personal or tangible property: you need a Resellers Permit if you are a retailer or wholesaler of taxable items or services.  The point of the Reseller’s Permit is to avoid paying sales tax on items you are going to resell (you don’t want to be charged taxes twice on the same item).  Reseller’s licenses vary state to state: you can either apply for one through the many, many companies offering their services online (for a fee), or you can download the form from your state revenue agency website.

What is a Tax ID Number?

A Federal Tax ID Number or “Employer Identification Number (EIN)” is a number assigned to your business by the IRS.  Any business offering products or services that are taxed in any way needs to get this number.  To get yours, simply apply online at the IRS website.  It’s very simple; in fact, you receive your number immediately and can download and print your confirmation notice.  If you have any questions or concerns about Tax ID numbers, contact your nearest IRS Field office or call the IRS Business and Specialty Tax Hotline (800-829-4933).

3 Reasons Why You Need Your Reseller’s Permit and Tax ID Number:

1. Legitimate dropshippers and wholesalers require them.

If you want to work with a quality supplier, you need to provide them with your Reseller’s Permit and/or Tax ID Number.  Suppliers who don’t ask for these are probably middlemen, not legitimate wholesalers or dropshippers.  Thus, asking to work with a supplier who doesn’t require the proper documentation is basically asking to work with a middleman.

2. Setting up your business properly allows you to take advantage of tax breaks.

Small business owners get a ton of tax breaks.  I don’t know why anyone who’s not selling designer marijuana would operate their online business “under the radar”, disqualifying themselves from all the government bursaries and benefits according to small businesses.  As a business owner operating out of your own home, your phone, internet, and even a portion of your rent could qualify as write-offs, not to mention all the other expenses that come along with starting a new business.

3. You could be subject to fines and other penalties if you fail to register your business properly.

You can’t legally sell property without a Reseller’s Permit, and you’ll probably have to file your taxes fraudulently at the end of the year without your Tax ID Number.  It’s a lot easier to set this stuff up in the first place than to scramble to get it later when an immediate need arises.

home based business, online business

photo credit: alamosbasement

If you’re anything like me, forms that come with numbers and acronyms on the top make you want to bathe your eyeballs in vinegar.  But if you’re serious about your online business, you’re going to have to file a few of them.  I receive the most questions about tax ID numbers, reseller’s permits, and LLCs.  I’m not a CPA or an attorney, so I everything I say is purely my understanding and my opinions, but here are the basics of how they break down:

Tax ID number: A Federal Tax ID Number or “Employer Identification Number (EIN)” is a number assigned to your business by the IRS.  Any business offering products or services that are taxed in any way needs to get this number.  Many dropshippers and wholesalers will require it to do business with you.  To get one, you can apply online at the IRS website.  It’s very simple; in fact, you receive your number immediately and can download and print your confirmation notice.  If you have questions or concerns about the form, you can contact your nearest IRS Field office or call the IRS Business and Specialty Tax Hotline (800-829-4933).

Reseller’s permit: A resller’s permit or resale license is required if you sell or lease personal or tangible property: you need a resellers permit if you are a retailer or wholesale of taxable items or services.  Reseller’s licenses vary state to state.  You can either apply for one through the many, many companies offering their services online (for a fee), or you can download the form from your state revenue agency website.  The reseller’s permit allows you to avoid paying sales tax on items you are going to resell.  Also, many wholesalers require you to have this permit.

LLC (Limited Liability Company): An LLC combines aspects of partnerships and corporations: its owners have limited liability for the company’s debts and obligations like shareholders in a corporation, but its income and losses are passed through to the owners like in a partnership.   It is much less formal and more flexible than a typical corporation.  The benefits include separating your assets so you’re protected in case your business gets sued.  It also provides some tax breaks – you are only required to pay taxes on your earnings once instead of paying both corporate and individual taxes.  The downside of an LLC versus a corporation is if a member of the LLC dies, leaves, or goes bankrupt, the LLC is usually dissolved.  To set up an LLC, you need to file Articles of Organization with you state (usually through the Secretary of State).  You can hire an attorney to do this, or you can do it yourself (there are numerous do-it-yourself kits to help with this).  When I have legal/business/accounting work, I like to do it myself, then hire a lawyer or CPA to check it over.  That way I only have to pay for a little of their time, but I can be sure everything is correct before I file it, saving time and money in the long run.  You might consider making your dropshipping business an LLC if you want to reap the tax benefits (this would be important if you expect your earnings for the year to be quite high).

photo credit: Rodrigo_Amorim

If you have any other questions about tax ID numbers, reseller’s permits, or LLCs (or anything else), feel free to email me at support@wholesalematch.com or to post below the blog.  If I don’t know the answer, I can research it, and we’ll both learn something new!

home based business, online business

No matter how hard you try to please your online business customers, you will inevitably tick some of them off (for every ten sweet little Charlotte Churches there’s a Mariah Carey just waiting to explode if you don’t pick every last purple Skittle out of her candy bowl).  If you care about customer retention and word-of-mouth at all, you need to have a plan in place that dictates how you’ll respond to customer complaints.

5 Essential Customer Service Tips:

Tip #1: Be Available

When someone is already annoyed by your product or service, the best way to make them furious is to neglect to have a “contact us” or “customer service” button on your website.  The optimal situation is to have a call center where they can call and speak to someone directly, but if that isn’t tenable for your business, an email address will suffice.  If you go this route, it helps to state clearly that “questions and comments will be answered within one business day” (that means you actually have to do it).  If you decide to go the livechat route, please for the love of Heaven get an operator who can type quickly.  When I contacted Bloomex to complain that my aunt’s birthday orchids were never delivered, I could have driven up to Canada and dropped the flowers off myself in the time it took the operator to type her response (see – and now I’m burning the company in my blog).

Tip #2: Don’t Judge The Validity Of The Complaint

Maybe the complaint is a solid one: the laptop you sold them arrived with a smashed screen.  Maybe it’s entirely spurious: they don’t like the color of the box it came in.  It doesn’t matter.  Whatever the complaint is, it obviously bugged your customer, and might cause them to delete your address off their toolbar and slander you on every message board they can find.  Don’t try to tell them it doesn’t matter; figure out how to fix it.  Which brings us to tip #3:

Tip #3: Have A Policy In Place

You don’t want to be inventing something on the spot while an irate customer is screaming in your ear.  Also, you don’t want to be bullied into promising something unreasonable.  Have a plan in place for common contingencies so you can calmly and kindly inform your customer that the company’s policy in that instance is to…

Tip #4: Be The First To Suggest A Solution

Don’t wait for the customer to tell you that they want a full refund.  Instead, offer a replacement product, a discount on their next order, or whatever policy you’ve decided on.  Sometimes, an apology is all that’s necessary (in case of poor service, for instance).  Offering a solution will help diffuse the situation by assuring the customer that you are taking their complaint seriously and will work to resolve it.  Asking what they would like you to do opens the door for them to demand maximum recompense.

Tip #5: Be Polite, But Not A Punching Bag

To put it bluntly, some people are jerks.  It doesn’t matter what you do for them, they’re still going to leave with a bad taste in their mouth.  This is just my opinion, but you don’t need the business of that tiny minority and you probably couldn’t keep it even if you wanted to.  So I would never sit and listen to a string of profanities or threats.  You can calmly inform the customer that they are welcome to call back once they’ve cooled down, and hang up the phone.

Customer service is the backbone of any strong business.  In online business, customer service often takes the form of resolving complaints.  Because you’re not in direct contact with the customer when they find your dropshipping website and order the product, there are few customer service initiatives you can implement besides thank-you emails and so forth.  Usually the point where you have direct contact with a customer is the point where they call to complain, so use that opportunity to wow them and boost your repeat business percentage.

home based business, online business, selling products online blog, dropshipping, online business, website, wholesale

Online business can be different from brick-and-mortar business, but it does not differ in one respect: it is no easier or less complicated than “real world” business.  The following are tips for making your online business successful by following solid traditional business techniques:

Tip #1: Plan And Prepare. Before you put finger to keyboard regarding your online business, you should have a well formulated business plan.  This should include financial and marketing plans.  You need to have a clear and solid budget, so you know exactly how much you can spend on things like website development, finding suppliers, and advertising.  A lot of people mistakenly believe that they will be able to get into e-business without spending a cent.  This is a fallacy.  While there are many things that you can do yourself for free and a lot of information available gratis on the internet, there are other things you are going to have to pay for.  You may need to set up a line of credit with the bank.  You may need to be able to live partially or entirely off savings if you are not able to give full-time hours to your day-job and full-time hours to developing your business.  As far as your marketing strategy goes, it’s not enough to have a great product.  You need to know how to promote it.  Your strategy should take into account the strengths of your product, your competitor’s weaknesses, and your customer’s needs and desires.  People aren’t going to buy from you simply because you’ve posted a product on the internet.  There needs to be a clear motivator for them to use your services over all the others available.

photo credit: freddthompson
Tip #2: Get Some Help. Going it alone is hard.  Do you know someone who has successfully opened a similar business?  Is there anyone who can mentor you?  What services are available in your community?  One option is to volunteer your company to be a case study at a business school.  Business students will examine every aspect of your online business and inform you where your strengths and weaknesses lie.  They will often provide you with a full report of what you can do to improve your business.  You can also use Small Business Development Centers (find locations at www.sba.gov).  Join entrepreneur groups and small business clubs.
Tip #3: Build Relationships. You need to have a real and solid relationship with every single person you work with.  Your suppliers and customers are not simply tools and sales.  Your dropshipper or wholesaler is part of your team, and should be treated as such.  Communicate with them.  Use more personal methods such as phone calls in addition to email.  Show your gratitude when they do their job well, and make sure they are always, always paid before you pay yourself.  Likewise, let your customers know that you appreciate them, and do what it takes to make them happy when something goes wrong.  Taking a small loss is preferable to being blasted in customer satisfaction ratings and by word of mouth, and losing all possibility of future business.  Above all, be professional.  Having a good business relationship with someone doesn’t mean you can send them a slap-dash email with no capitalization and a dirty joke halfway through.  There are more deals lost through poor writing skills than you can possibly imagine.  Keep your messages clear and concise, take the time to proofread, and when in doubt, err on the side of formality.

photo credit: BodogGirl
Tip #4: Go The Extra Mile. If you want people to take your online business seriously, YOU need to take it seriously.  Don’t have customer emails sent to sexypants_rockstar@yahoo.com.  Make sure you get a business email, preferably one that matches your business name.  See if you can purchase a domain for your website that comes with business email accounts.  Also, include networking in your promotional efforts.  Join sites like LinkedIn.  This is a social networking site specifically for business people, and can help connect you with suppliers, buyers, and people who can give you good advice.

photo credit: Zanastardust
Tip #5: Hire A Lackey. When your workload gets past a certain point, don’t be afraid to hire an employee.  But be warned, you are trusting this person with your business.  Find someone affordable, but quality.  Consider a stay-at-home mom, formerly a powerhouse in the industry, now willing to work for you so she can organize her schedule around her two year-old.  Use an immigrant (a legal one, obviously), or a graduate student who needs work experience hours.  These are all people with excellent skills and experience who are more flexible than your average 9-5er.

Your online business may exist almost entirely in the virtual world, but there is nothing more real than the hard work you’re going to have to put into it.  Treat your e-business like a real business, and you are sure to succeed.

home based business, make money online, online business, selling products online

Due to the popularity of our online business success stories blogs, I’m posting a second installment of anecdotes for your pleasure and edification:

Success Story #1:
Wanda Silva started selling on eBay as a way to help cover the grocery bills while staying at home with her son.  The first thing she sold was her son’s old winter coat, and when she received $20 for an old coat she originally bought for $29.99, she was inspired.  She began selling everything and anything she could find in the house, and when she had cleaned out her unwanted items, she turned to clearance sales to find products to sell for a profit.  She made the jump to dropshipping and wholesaling on eBay by finding an excellent supplier for garden flags, opening a store called “My Silver Toe”.  She soon expanded to a wide range of garden and home décor items, and watched her sales take off.  She credits her success to keeping herself organized with online programs and spreadsheets, and keeping her workload low by streamlining her online business (important as she soon had a second child on the way).  She used tools like endicia.com and free USPS pickup to help make her job easier.  She also recognized when it was time to graduate from the eBay “sell your item” form to Turbo Lister, and then to Sparedollar.

photo credit: brad montgomery
What did Silva do right? First, she started small.  She didn’t jump into eBay sales with huge, high-priced items.  She practiced with small, cheap items until she got a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.  This kept her costs low when she was in the early stages and prone to make mistakes.  Second, as her business began to expand, she remained flexible and organized, and used tools to keep things running smoothly.
Success Story #2:
Rena Klingenberg was also a stay at home mom, trying to run a jewelry business but finding it difficult to balance against her son’s needs.  In order to develop a second income so she could scale back on her jewelry business, she turned to info publishing.  Info publishing is a system where people who are knowledgeable on a certain topic build a website with free helpful articles focused on that topic.  They earn money by including a small amount of related advertising.  Obviously, Rena chose jewelry-making as her topic, and launched “Home Jewelry Business Success Tips” in October 2003.  She used a website building tool called Site Build It (SBI) to bring her website into the top 1% of web traffic.  This was key, because the amount of traffic your site gets determines what you can charge for advertising.  Rena expanded her new business to six different informational websites.  She gives all the credit for the success of these websites to the SBI tool, which packages various types of search engine optimization (SEO) with website hosting and numerous site-building tools like the newsletter publishing tool.

photo credit: lovinlife_rightnow
What did Rena do right? She found an online business model which was well-suited to her talents.  Most importantly, she found programs to help her build, manage, and promote her website.  Doing everything on your own is hard, and no matter how hard you work, it remains inefficient.  If you want to make money online, you HAVE to get your website noticed.  I can’t stress the importance of search engine optimization enough.  Rena’s use of SEO, particularly keyword searching, put her in that coveted top 1%, and was the real source of her income.
Success Story #3:
Deming Colbert was an economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury when she began to design her own line of organic, concentrated skin-care products.  At first she produced and sold the products herself, but as sales increased, she found a manufacturer and began selling in mass on eBay.  Deming opened her PureDeming store on eBay in 2004. Her sales have grown an average of 17% annually since then.  Her success can be attributed to two main factors: her capitalization of the international market, and her customer satisfaction level which accounts for 70% of her customers returning as repeat buyers.  EBay has over 222 million registered users around the world, and Deming’s products became most popular in Japan, Europe, and Australasia as well as the large coastal cities of the U.S.  40% to 50% of her sales were international.  To help facilitate international purchases, she translated her shipping information into several different languages, and partnered with groups in Australia to distribute her product more widely.

What did Deming do right? One of her most important decisions was shipping to international customers in Europe, Japan, Australia, etc.  She recognized that the market for her products was primarily in large international cities, not spread evenly across the States.  Shipping to international destinations allowed her sales to explode, and brought in lucrative business partners who could handle some of the more difficult elements of international expansion.  Selling to international customers is not always necessary, but you have to consider the nature of your product.  It may sell better in other locales than it does in the US.

You may think that a jewelry blog or a skincare line is nothing like your online business, but each of these savvy women took intelligent steps that you can imitate.  All online businesses are alike in that it takes ingenuity, flexibility, and ecommerce smarts to make them work.

eBay, home based business, internet marketing, online business

You probably didn’t think much about taxes when you started your online business, focusing on the thousand things you had to do to get your business up and running, and maybe fantasizing about the kind of money you were going to make.  But now you’ve made some money, and you need to pay taxes on it.  The very thought of managing forms and deductions may make you want to crawl under the carpet, but fear not, because owning your own business can be a real boon come tax time.

4 Tax Tips For Your Online Business:

Tip #1: Get A TIN

Tax Identification Numbers are useful for filing taxes, and have the additional benefit of impressing dropshippers and wholesalers with the legitimacy of your online business.  When setting this up, consider carefully whether you want to be a sole proprietor or a corporation.  This is a complicated decision, and you may want to consult an attorney, but basically the difference is that a sole proprietorship is easier and cheaper to set up, but does not separate business assets from personal, leaving both liable to seizure.

Tip #2: Take Advantage

Now that you’re a small business owner, you need to pay an additional self-employment tax of 15.3% on top of your regular income taxes.  How is that helpful, you may ask?  Well, you also get a whole new set of nifty deductions along with your taxes.  These may include home office deductions, the cost of your equipment, business/travel related expenses, training/educational expenses, and payroll (even if your wife is packing orders in your garage, you can pay her $12/hour and write that off).  Keep in mind with payroll that you have to send your employees a W-2 form at the end of the year, or, if they’re an independent contractor like the guy who designed the website for your online business, you need to send him a Form-1099 if he did more than $600 worth of work for you.

Tip #3: Don’t Wait Until The End Of The Year To Start Paying Taxes

You may owe more than you think, and even if it’s pretty much what you expected, shelling out $14,000 in one shot isn’t going to be fun.  So pay an estimated amount every month.  If you pay too much, you can always file a return at the end of the year, and it’s a lot more fun to get a check in the mail than a “request” for funds.

Tip#4: Keep Records Like It’s Your Job, Because It Is

Keep track of anything and everything.  Use accounting software, or if you must, a super-sized filing cabinet, but if there’s any possibility you’re going to need a receipt, form, or even an email, then DO NOT throw it away.  In the Wholesale Match office we have a mini-scanner, it looks like an umbrella when it’s in the case, and we use it to scan and digitally file absolutely every piece of mail we get.  Keep the records for your online business at least five years, preferably ten.

These are a few tips to help you on your way, but laws differ state to state, and ultimately you should hire a CPA to look over your return, particularly your first year.  And remember, honesty is the best policy.  Fibbing to Uncle Sam to save yourself $800 is going to be the worst reverse-investment you ever made when the IRS rakes you over the coals.  Hell hath no fury like the taxman scorned.

home based business, online business