Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.
I've been trying to determine the best method for my site navigation. At one point I listed all of the pages on the site on the left hand navigation bar together with all of the links also being listed at the bottom of each page. Then I shortened up the pages listed on the left hand navigation bar to only include what I considered to be the main content pages with links to the second tier pages on each of the main pages. Ying and Yang, Yang and Ying??? After doing an informal survey and considering both the short and long versions I have decided to go with the long version, which I feel will make it much easier for people to locate information on this site. That is the whole purpose of the internet, isn't it? To provide information!
Together with the expanded left hand navigation bar I have also installed a free script from a company named Allwebco. This script, which "floats", i.e. remains on your page on the right hand side as you scroll down, allows you to list key site pages and to navigate instantly back to the top of the page you are on, bring you back to the home page, etc. You can configure the script any way you choose. And, don't forget, I still have all of the page links listed at the bottom of each web page and on my site map page. Again, the idea is to make the site as easy to navigate and as friendly to use as possible for all visitors.
PS The link to allwebco above is to their FREE scripts and add-ons page, which contains all sorts of free website add-ons!
I am still building the new "Site Marketing" page and hope to have it live by the end of this week.
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
Ecommerce Beginnings - XXVI
Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.
Where to begin? The past week and a half has been another whirlwind for me. I've noticed a pattern that has really become pronounced during the past several weeks. Each time I have done a posting on my blog I give a few highlights of what I have worked on recently, what I plan to work on in the short term and some advice based on what I have been learning along the way.
The one thing that keeps everything on an even keel is my "To Do" list. Without this list I would probably be a little lost and unorganized. As the rule says: Always have a plan! The funny thing about the "To Do" list is that it becomes almost a living entity, almost like it takes breathes as it expands one week and contracts another. But just like a hike I recently did in New Hampshire - using the "To Do" list is just like following the trail map so I don't get lost along the way.
Ok - enough preaching on being organized. During the past week or so I revised at least 6 pages on the site to make them flow more smoothly and to make the content more focused. One of the pages was completely restructured and renamed. What used to be Sitebuild Masters Courses is now: Success University This page contains 11 different FREE ebooks that are completely focused on helping you to develop your website business.
The next priority on my "To Do" list is to develop a new page: Successful Site Marketing A rough outline of the information that this page will include information on: Content, Traffic, Pre-Selling and Monetization of your website, website promotion, internet marketing and network marketing. Also included will be an RSS based feed of an SEO article database (continuously updated relevant articles) and several FREE ebooks.
I've just got to keep working on that "To Do" list and enjoy the ride!
PS I'm going to give myself a minor kudo this week. My 3 month average site ranking on Alexa is now at: 563,166 (top 1% of all websites) and the weekly average is at 255,522, but who's counting anyway! That "To Do" list or something must be working (I think the content, keywords, and links are doing the trick)
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Where to begin? The past week and a half has been another whirlwind for me. I've noticed a pattern that has really become pronounced during the past several weeks. Each time I have done a posting on my blog I give a few highlights of what I have worked on recently, what I plan to work on in the short term and some advice based on what I have been learning along the way.
The one thing that keeps everything on an even keel is my "To Do" list. Without this list I would probably be a little lost and unorganized. As the rule says: Always have a plan! The funny thing about the "To Do" list is that it becomes almost a living entity, almost like it takes breathes as it expands one week and contracts another. But just like a hike I recently did in New Hampshire - using the "To Do" list is just like following the trail map so I don't get lost along the way.
Ok - enough preaching on being organized. During the past week or so I revised at least 6 pages on the site to make them flow more smoothly and to make the content more focused. One of the pages was completely restructured and renamed. What used to be Sitebuild Masters Courses is now: Success University This page contains 11 different FREE ebooks that are completely focused on helping you to develop your website business.
The next priority on my "To Do" list is to develop a new page: Successful Site Marketing A rough outline of the information that this page will include information on: Content, Traffic, Pre-Selling and Monetization of your website, website promotion, internet marketing and network marketing. Also included will be an RSS based feed of an SEO article database (continuously updated relevant articles) and several FREE ebooks.
I've just got to keep working on that "To Do" list and enjoy the ride!
PS I'm going to give myself a minor kudo this week. My 3 month average site ranking on Alexa is now at: 563,166 (top 1% of all websites) and the weekly average is at 255,522, but who's counting anyway! That "To Do" list or something must be working (I think the content, keywords, and links are doing the trick)
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Ecommerce Beginnings - XXIV
Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.
Another positive week last week! I completed the work on and uploaded another new page to my Original New England Website: Top Affiliate Information
You see in my mind it made perfect sense to add this page as a complement to the other "ecommerce" solutions offered through my website. This continues to be one of my main goals - to add new, relevant and helpful information pages to my website so it will continue to be a source of information that will help individuals to be able to build their own online business.
The information included on this page describes:
what affiliate marketing is, how it works, how to make money with an affiliate program, etc.
Then I put two more main information blocks on the page:
My next two goals are to:
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Another positive week last week! I completed the work on and uploaded another new page to my Original New England Website: Top Affiliate Information
You see in my mind it made perfect sense to add this page as a complement to the other "ecommerce" solutions offered through my website. This continues to be one of my main goals - to add new, relevant and helpful information pages to my website so it will continue to be a source of information that will help individuals to be able to build their own online business.
The information included on this page describes:
what affiliate marketing is, how it works, how to make money with an affiliate program, etc.
Then I put two more main information blocks on the page:
- recommended affiliate resources - top resources to teach you everything you need to learn about affiliate programs and how to make $$$ with them.
- affiliate program recommendations - the top programs that I personally represent and believe to be excellent recommendations that you can make good $$$ with.
My next two goals are to:
- finish the database for Best New England Products
- develop a new webpage - "Best Small Business Practices" to add to the content of Original New England
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Ecommerce Beginnings - XXIII
Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.
I happened to become reacquainted with a couple of old friends during the past few weeks. We ended up getting together with my wife and I for drinks and munchies last weekend and did the usual things like talk about old times, what we're doing now, blah, blah, blah!!!
During our conversation my wife happened to mention that I have this "Online Business Thing" that I have been working on. Well, I didn't really want to get into it too much at this time, but I gave them one of my business cards and left it pretty much at that.
A couple of days later I received an email thanking my wife and I for having our friends over, etc., etc., and then my friend said that she and her husband had checked out my website and thought it looked great (a drumroll for my ego please!!!) and that she had considered starting a site to sell custom jewelry on. She explained that the problem she was having was "Where to Start!" She went on to explain that she doesn't have a clue about the technical stuff and that there just seems to be so many choices, ie. "Information Overload" and who to trust?
I thought about it and decided to respond to her email with some beginning advice. Below is a copy of the email that I sent her in the hope that this information may help others who are in the exact same situation as her. (See Below)
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
I happened to become reacquainted with a couple of old friends during the past few weeks. We ended up getting together with my wife and I for drinks and munchies last weekend and did the usual things like talk about old times, what we're doing now, blah, blah, blah!!!
During our conversation my wife happened to mention that I have this "Online Business Thing" that I have been working on. Well, I didn't really want to get into it too much at this time, but I gave them one of my business cards and left it pretty much at that.
A couple of days later I received an email thanking my wife and I for having our friends over, etc., etc., and then my friend said that she and her husband had checked out my website and thought it looked great (a drumroll for my ego please!!!) and that she had considered starting a site to sell custom jewelry on. She explained that the problem she was having was "Where to Start!" She went on to explain that she doesn't have a clue about the technical stuff and that there just seems to be so many choices, ie. "Information Overload" and who to trust?
I thought about it and decided to respond to her email with some beginning advice. Below is a copy of the email that I sent her in the hope that this information may help others who are in the exact same situation as her. (See Below)
Just a few ideas to possibly help you sort through all of the information about an online business that is available. Believe me, like anything, there is a tremendous amount of junk and con-artists who are willing to take your $$$. I love to read and this helped me, because as Sheila would tell you, I have spent quite a bit of time doing research on the web to sort through all of the available information.
If you are that interested in trying to sell some items through the internet eBay is a good place to start. The site is very easy to figure out about how to list products for sale, etc. If you are interested in developing your own website the choices become more interesting. You could try to assemble all of the services you need from different providers to make it work.
Such as:
- Allwebco.com – excellent (and inexpensive) pre-made html based website templates with lots of free add-ons
- NVU – by far the best free html wysiwyg editor. All you have to do to get it is to go to their website and download it. (this is what I use)
- GoDaddy – you can purchase your domain name (www.whatever.com) from them. They also provide many other services. The only one I use from them besides the domain name service is their hosting service.
- Nichebot – this is the best to do your keyword research (keywords are what it is all about) In the online world (unlike brick & mortar) if you build it, it doesn’t mean that they will come. You have to set it up properly to generate traffic to your site (keywords)
- GetResponse – I use this service to do my email broadcasts of items like my monthly newsletter. This service also captures emails (see my signup form on each page of the site) and manages these lists for you.
Now if like you say you aren’t very proficient or knowledgeable in this area (like most people) the way to go really is with SiteBuildIt This company has all of the tools that I listed above (and many more) all in one place. You pay one fee per year and don’t have to spend all of the time cobbling services together and/or making sure that they actually function together, etc. By having all of the services provided by one company (and the key is that most of it runs in the background, you don’t need to be a techie to figure it out) you can save a lot of time so you can focus on developing your website/business! Here are two links that will give you a good start to understanding all of this (even if you don’t use SBI):
- Action Guide Video or if your prefer reading Action Guide
For product sourcing (if you don’t have your own products to sell and/or if you don’t have or want to spend a lot of $$$ on them) Worldwide Brands is really the way to go – Worldwide Brands In any case, this site has a tremendous amount of free information on getting started with either wholesale product sourcing or with dropshipping.
If you decide to go this route you will need to set up your business (incorporate) and the best way to do this is probably as an LLC (limited liability company) for tax purposes, exposure to liability, etc. There is a ton of information available on this and it is really simple to set up (if I figured it out I’m sure you can). Search under the state of RI business incorporation, etc. I hope this helps.
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Ecommerce Beginnings - XXII
Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.
Well, we had another very busy week with several new additions to our business.
A couple of months ago I created a short ebook on sourcing wholesale products in the "Made in New England" niche. My thoughts on how to use this product to assist my business is two-fold. First, we are using it as a free give-away to entice people to join our newsletter. Second, I thought that it would be a good idea to list it as a digital product on eBay for those who didn't wish to join our newsletter. This was the first time that I had attempted to list a "digital product" on eBay. I started by doing some research through the eBay site on how to sell. Here is the link to their help section on digital items: eBay Digital Items The directions are very straightforward and clear. I only had one issue during the entire process and that was a short-term technical issue that eBay was having. I used eBay's live online help for the first time (the service was very timely and the representative was very knowledgeable) to resolve this issue. By the way here are the links to the ebook:
Either way I think you will find the book to be very helpful for wholesale product sourcing!
Last week I also reviewed my goals for the business and decided that for one of the goals (SEO) it would be a good idea to start generating and submitting articles to Ezine Articles again. I had started this process with two article submissions last spring, but somehow got sidetracked from continuing this effort. Submitting articles to Ezine Articles is a great way to build traffic to your website. There are also many other well known article submission sites that are available. My personal decision to choose this one was based on research that I had done.
Another task that I accomplished was the increased monetization on my website. I added some display ads for eBay and also for a company named Maine Goodies I have been doing some research to locate "Made in New England" companies that I can represent as an affiliate and/or that have some sort of a dropship program with their products. So far I have only found the one company, Maine Goodies, and many companies that will only sell on a wholesale basis to you. The search will continue in this area. (Help in this area would be deeply appreciated)
Next on the list for the upcoming week is to begin publishing our monthly newsletter (Original New England Home Business Solutions) again. To see prior issues go to this page: Newsletters
My goal here is to provide relevant and helpful information to people who are developing their own home based online business. The information that I include in each newsletter is contained in 5 categories:
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Well, we had another very busy week with several new additions to our business.
A couple of months ago I created a short ebook on sourcing wholesale products in the "Made in New England" niche. My thoughts on how to use this product to assist my business is two-fold. First, we are using it as a free give-away to entice people to join our newsletter. Second, I thought that it would be a good idea to list it as a digital product on eBay for those who didn't wish to join our newsletter. This was the first time that I had attempted to list a "digital product" on eBay. I started by doing some research through the eBay site on how to sell. Here is the link to their help section on digital items: eBay Digital Items The directions are very straightforward and clear. I only had one issue during the entire process and that was a short-term technical issue that eBay was having. I used eBay's live online help for the first time (the service was very timely and the representative was very knowledgeable) to resolve this issue. By the way here are the links to the ebook:
- Join our newsletter: Original New England
- Buy the ebook: eBay Listing
Either way I think you will find the book to be very helpful for wholesale product sourcing!
Last week I also reviewed my goals for the business and decided that for one of the goals (SEO) it would be a good idea to start generating and submitting articles to Ezine Articles again. I had started this process with two article submissions last spring, but somehow got sidetracked from continuing this effort. Submitting articles to Ezine Articles is a great way to build traffic to your website. There are also many other well known article submission sites that are available. My personal decision to choose this one was based on research that I had done.
Another task that I accomplished was the increased monetization on my website. I added some display ads for eBay and also for a company named Maine Goodies I have been doing some research to locate "Made in New England" companies that I can represent as an affiliate and/or that have some sort of a dropship program with their products. So far I have only found the one company, Maine Goodies, and many companies that will only sell on a wholesale basis to you. The search will continue in this area. (Help in this area would be deeply appreciated)
Next on the list for the upcoming week is to begin publishing our monthly newsletter (Original New England Home Business Solutions) again. To see prior issues go to this page: Newsletters
My goal here is to provide relevant and helpful information to people who are developing their own home based online business. The information that I include in each newsletter is contained in 5 categories:
- Article of the Month
- Product Review
- Free Download
- Website of the Month
- Free Giveaway
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Friday, September 14, 2007
Ecommerce Beginnings - XXl
Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.
This past week turned out to be a very positive and busy one. I'm still working on the PHP interface to my MySQL database. It will be completed soon!!! But, the other news is that I have created two new content pages for Original New England.
They are:
The focus of Home Business Choices is to help you to be aware of and to educate you on all of the different options that are available for the type of website business that you may want to develop. This page contains links on 14 very informative choices to help you "Find Your Small Business (or idea) and Build a Website That Works!"
The focus of Sitebuildit Made Easy is to help all the people who start out building a Site Build It site who encounter obstacles to their success, be it generating traffic or monetizing their sites successfully.
Additionally I have upgraded the Frequently Asked Questions page. Each question is now a link that when clicked on creates a pop-up window with the question and the answer to the question displayed within it. Overall we felt that this method is much cleaner to use, allows us to store more questions on one page and is better visually.
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
This past week turned out to be a very positive and busy one. I'm still working on the PHP interface to my MySQL database. It will be completed soon!!! But, the other news is that I have created two new content pages for Original New England.
They are:
The focus of Home Business Choices is to help you to be aware of and to educate you on all of the different options that are available for the type of website business that you may want to develop. This page contains links on 14 very informative choices to help you "Find Your Small Business (or idea) and Build a Website That Works!"
The focus of Sitebuildit Made Easy is to help all the people who start out building a Site Build It site who encounter obstacles to their success, be it generating traffic or monetizing their sites successfully.
Additionally I have upgraded the Frequently Asked Questions page. Each question is now a link that when clicked on creates a pop-up window with the question and the answer to the question displayed within it. Overall we felt that this method is much cleaner to use, allows us to store more questions on one page and is better visually.
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article interesting and/or helpful.
Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Friday, September 7, 2007
Ecommerce Beginnings - XX
Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.
Two big items to share with you this week. First, while the new sites that I have been discussing are being completed I did a redesign of the existing Original New England site. This redesign consisted of linking changes utilizing internal page linking by major section of the website vs. having all links on a VERY LONG menu bar on each page. We also added two new pages to the site, one is a guest page, which was added with the idea to improve the ability of site visitors to comment and/or receive feedback on the site. The second new page is called Sitebuildit Easy, which is an informational page designed to help people to understand the Sitebuildit product.
The other big news that I would like to share ( a drumroll please!!!) is the continued climb of Original New England in the search engine rankings. For this week the site is currently ranked at 248,492 by Alexa. We couldn't be happier with this site ranking! Hopefully with the recent changes that have been implemented the site will continue to rise in the rankings.
In other news, now that summer has ended (and I have completed some other major projects) I am back to focusing my efforts to complete the major business overhaul discussed in the past several posts. My "To Do" list is now down to approximately 12 items and counting, with the #1 item still being the creation of a PHP based front-end solution for my MySQL database. Wow, it almost sounds like I actually understand all of this techie talk. Believe me, I have learned quite a bit during the past year, but I still have a long way to go, but I am a persistent type of person (and I really enjoy learning new things) so the journey continues.
Hopefully my next posting will be the announcement of the new sites going live!
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article helpful. Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
Two big items to share with you this week. First, while the new sites that I have been discussing are being completed I did a redesign of the existing Original New England site. This redesign consisted of linking changes utilizing internal page linking by major section of the website vs. having all links on a VERY LONG menu bar on each page. We also added two new pages to the site, one is a guest page, which was added with the idea to improve the ability of site visitors to comment and/or receive feedback on the site. The second new page is called Sitebuildit Easy, which is an informational page designed to help people to understand the Sitebuildit product.
The other big news that I would like to share ( a drumroll please!!!) is the continued climb of Original New England in the search engine rankings. For this week the site is currently ranked at 248,492 by Alexa. We couldn't be happier with this site ranking! Hopefully with the recent changes that have been implemented the site will continue to rise in the rankings.
In other news, now that summer has ended (and I have completed some other major projects) I am back to focusing my efforts to complete the major business overhaul discussed in the past several posts. My "To Do" list is now down to approximately 12 items and counting, with the #1 item still being the creation of a PHP based front-end solution for my MySQL database. Wow, it almost sounds like I actually understand all of this techie talk. Believe me, I have learned quite a bit during the past year, but I still have a long way to go, but I am a persistent type of person (and I really enjoy learning new things) so the journey continues.
Hopefully my next posting will be the announcement of the new sites going live!
That's all for this week!
As always, I wish you the best in your success! We hope you found this weeks' article helpful. Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com
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