ECOMMERCE BEGINNINGS - XXXII

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

My main website Original New England Enterprises is currently ranked at 437,238 by Alexa.com. While my site is receiving traffic and is ranked well, it is not getting very many final "click throughs", i.e. the purchase of the products that I am marketing. I have been puzzled as to why this isn't working the way I had hoped. So, I recently had a few people review my website to get their "unbiased" opinion on the layout, content, etc., etc.

Some of the feedback surprised me. Comments like: confusing, too many steps "clicks" to reach the main objective, etc.

Sometimes it is hard to have a completely open mind when people are offering you advice. It is easy to get a little defensive on the subject. It is almost like someone saying that your child, who you think is the best thing since sliced bread, may not be "perfect"!

After listening to this advice and thinking about it for a day or so, I realized that I completely agreed with what they were telling me. Sometimes the most obvious things are right in front of you.

So, I took their advice (the main advice I received was that my home page and my ecommerce solution page were too similar, i.e. they had duplicate content and therefore placed an extra step in the process to reach the main goal of providing useful content and of obtaining a sale.

I ended up spending several hours on Saturday and Sunday combining the best of both pages, eliminating duplicate content, and trying to get the new page to be highly focused and on target with the message I am trying to convey in respect to my three main ecommerce solutions:

• website development
• wholesale product sourcing
• successful marketing

Hopefully within the next few weeks I will start to see some positive results with the redesigned home page and the elimination of the "duplicate" ecommerce solution page.

My final advice for 2007 is:

• Keep an open mind

and

• Listen to the advice of others!

I hope everyone had a successful, healthy and happy 2007. And hopefully 2008 will be even better!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

That's all for this week! (and for 2007)

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

Original New England Enterprises

ECOMMERCE BEGINNINGS - XXXI

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

Yes - it's that magical day of the year again. The day that is so special for all of us - especially for the little kids (even for the little kid inside of the BIG Kids!) to have fun.

Well today I'm going to share two special links that I think you will find to be very beneficial. One is to help your online business to become even more successful than it may already be. Yes this information is completely free.

It is, as they say, my passing along a good deed, i.e. some very helpful and informative FREE information to you in the form of multiple very good website analysis videos and software provided through: STOMPER.NET

Click here to access their excellent free video library: STOMPER.NET

The second item that I wanted to share with everyone this week is an excellent video that one of my daughters found on YouTube. It is well worth watching and is an excellent reminder about why we should all cherish our lives to the fullest!

Click here to access this excellent video: SUNSCREEN

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

Original New England Enterprises

Ecommerce Beginnings - XXX

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

CONTENT, TRAFFIC and HAPPY CUSTOMERS

This past week I did something that I haven't done in almost 10 years. I attended the Town Council meeting in the town that I live in. I won't bore you with all of the details of the meeting, but the reason I am mentioning this here is because of the analogy I see between the town council meeting and the internet. Both are very public venues where people can share information and interact freely with one another. This is very similar to the "new" Web 2.0 where everyone is promoting "user created content" as the newest fad! Well, this "fad" has been around for the past few hundred years in the United States. The Internet is just a new way of packaging "user created" content.

As I sat and listened to the different agenda items being discussed and to different individuals expressing their views, the whole time I kept thinking about shoppers and businesses and customers. I was thinking: " Do the town council members know that the citizens are their customers?" "Do they know how to treat their customers so that they will continue to shop, i.e. live in this town?" The analogy to people who shop online being a websites' "customer" and understanding that you only have one chance to make a great impression on your "customer" was all I kept thinking about during this meeting.

One of the reasons I kept thinking about this was because the council members weren't doing a very good job of listening to their customer's wants and needs. It seemed that they were more concerned with just how they looked to everyone, but they lacked substance. I guess the analogy here is a website that looks great, but as soon as you start to click and read through it all you find are ads and no content of any real value!

Why would anyone want to shop at a place like that? You wouldn't would you? No, you would leave this site and seek out a site that provided real CONTENT to you!

So, if your goal is to be successful online, make sure your website has real CONTENT, so your CUSTOMERS will be satisfied, and maybe even delighted, so that they will keep coming back to your site (TRAFFIC) and/or to buy products that you may be selling.

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

Original New England Enterprises

Ecommerce Beginnings - XXIX

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

In addition to all of the other things I have done with my websites recently I have also been working on the "Re-construction" of the Successful Site Marketing page on the Original New England Enterprises site, and finally completed its redesign and uploaded the page a few days ago.

The page includes an excellent overview of the key ingredients to a successful web business. The ingredients being: Content, Traffic and Presell, which set the table for the 4th ingredient: Monetization. If you develop your web business along these 4 concept guidelines you too will achieve online success!

I've also tried to include new technologies to make the page more relevant, i.e., by having RSS links, which provide continuously updated, new articles and a complementary YouTube video to explain each of the 4 concepts of CTPM.

When you get a chance check out this great new page: Successful Site Marketing

Other very good news this week is that my just launched (2 weeks ago) site Best New England Made is doing fantastic in the search engines. To date I have found several keyword combinations that are ranking this site #1 on MSN Search. Keyword combinations like: complete new wholesale, new england made, new made wholesale, best new wholesale and best new made. I even found a result for "Best New" where the site ranked #39 out of 2,830,000,000. Now that made my day!

That shows you that if I can that almost anyone can do well at this search engine ranking game if they want to! I have had no formal training on Search Engine Optimization, but I do a lot of research and am constantly reading, and then doing more reading on website related material. So, again, if this sounds like what you love then I'm sure you will be able to be successful too. It's all about being passionate about what you do! Oh well, enough preaching here!

That's all for this week! Have a Great Thanksgiving!

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

Original New England Enterprises

Ecommerce Beginnings - XXVIII

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

I would like to start this week's article off by making an announcement. BEST NEW ENGLAND MADE is finally live. After several months of working in the background to develop this site I uploaded it this past week. It's Alexa.com ranking is already around 700,000, which to me is a fantastic beginning.

Remember, to gain access to our FREE Wholesale Products Database you have to sign up for our FREE Newsletter, which when you signup you also get a FREE copy of our ebook on New England Made Gift products sourcing, with advice and links on how to develop your own online business. Go ahead and join our FREE Newsletter to get all of these great freebies. See the form immediately on the right hand side of this page to sign up now. You'll be glad you did!

The addition of this website now completes my marketing circle concerning the New England Market. The sites that I now have posted that are focused in different niches are:

Original New England
Focused on ecommerce website development, product sourcing and site marketing.

Best New England Made
Focused as an online product niche guide of unique New England Made Wholesale products.

Original New England.net
Focused on home internet education and education opportunities through eBay, Clickbank and Google.

Original New England Auctions
Great product auctions and lots of information on developing your own business through eBay on our About Me page.

Best of Original New England
And last, but not least, our blog that you are reading each week that describes our online business development learning adventure.

This is our 28th posting on this blog and it has been a lot of fun so far. I keep being surprised each week at the variety of issues and changes that have been occurring. If you had told me a year and a half ago that all of the above would have been created I would have found it hard to believe. I guess the key to all of this is that it has to be something you enjoy. And I definitely do enjoy doing this.

Thank you to everyone who has assisted me to date for all of your support and help!

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

Original New England Enterprises

Ecommerce Beginnings - XXVII

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

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

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:

• 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.

I also developed an article this past week on "Why User Created Content is King" and posted it on EzineArticles. To read this article Click Here

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
  

Hopefully they will both be completed by the end of the week so I can show them to you!

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

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)

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.

REMEMBER – DON’T SPEND ANY $$$ IF YOU DON’T HAVE TO! THERE IS A TON OF FREE STUFF AVAILABLE ON THE NET TO HELP!

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

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:

• 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

with the goal being for me to do have done the research for people to save them time developing their business.

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

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:

• Home Business Choices
• Sitebuildit Made Easy

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

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - XIX

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

This week I'd like to address two topics that are closely related. The first is an update on the redesign of the Original New England Enterprises website/s. As stated earlier my main website, although filled with a lot of good information, wasn't very focused. There was just too much information about too many subjects on this one site. So the main site was divided into three sites, with each focused on a specific ecommerce business area. This leads me to my second topic, the release of these new sites online. I apologize for the delay in releasing these new sites. Believe me when I say I am probably much more anxious to see them released than you are, with me being like a proud new parent. The holdup is that I am still working on the interface between the PHP code and MySQL database. I have been promised that this will be completed shortly. (A drumrole please for the developer!)

Coinciding with the release of the new websites I will be sending out a special edition of our newsletter with a FREE ebook download on "New England Wholesale Product Sourcing".

In the meantime, one of the companies that I represent is currently running a fantastic special focused on "WHY BUILD JUST A WEBSITE? BUILD A WEBSITE THAT WORKS! This special runs through August 28th. For more information go to this link: BUILD A WEBSITE THAT WORKS

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - XVIII

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

This week I believe I am going to talk about putting things in perspective. By this I mean when you begin a new hobby, etc. it is only natural to put all of your energy and time into it, especially if it is something that you are really into. It's only natural to do this! A word of warning, even though it's great to learn new things, it is also important to learn how to keep things in balance. Be careful when you start something new that you don't stop paying attention to the other things that are important in your life, be it work, friendships or your family. All are equally important and need to be nurtured and maintained to keep them going.

I'm not trying to sound profound or to preach to anyone, just a little advice that if taken, I believe, will go a long way in helping you to be successful in both business and in your personal life.


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

Ecommerce Beginnings - XVII

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

My apologies for not posting last week. The database creation is still a work in progress. It seems that in addition to the MySQL database creation, that in order to take the next step, which is for the database to display, you need to use another programming language, PHP. From what I have learned PHP is a server side HTML embedded scripting language. Huh? What does this mean? I really don't have a clue what this means. All I know is that this means there is one more step needed to make all of this work.

I'm also working on uploading all of the files for the companies that will be part of this database. This is also taking quite a bit of time to do. The good thing is that this keeps me out of trouble and I am constantly learning new things concerning programming, etc. The online education continues!

The new anticipated release of the database together with the new websites has now been moved to June 1st. This way I will be sure to have it completed by then and will not have to keep changing the completion date each week.

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - XVI

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

As I mentioned last week the wholesale products database is still under construction, but I have been promised that it will be completed within a few days. That should allow me to input all of the information that I need to into it. The next step will be to go live with the revamped sites. I can't wait to do this!

In the meantime I focused on the creation of my ebook this past week. I am proud to say that it is complete and ready to be published. It ended up being what I would call more of a guide than a book. It is 32 pages in length and provides information on the following:

• A Real Business with Real Business Requirements
• Finding Products to Sell for Your Niche Business
• New England Wholesale Product Shows
• New England Fairs
• Creative Product Sourcing
• Appendix of Helpful Business Links

Once I completed this my next step was to convert this to PDF format so that it could not be altered. An additional requirement was to make sure that all of the hyperlinks contained in the book would be clickable. This is where I ran into some problems. Long story short, if you don't own Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.0, ($499) which is more than adequate for this task, there are much less expensive alternatives available.

After doing some research I found out that Adobe has an online service that they charge for, $9.99/month or $99/year that will allow you to convert your word documents into PDF format, and will make it so that your hyperlinks are clickable in your new PDF formatted document. It is a personal decision, based on cost and need. If you think you will need this service full time on a continuous basis then maybe you should buy the full Adobe program. If you only need to use this service occasionally then I think the online option is much more economical. This is the route I chose and it works like a charm. You upload your file, it is converted and a link is sent to your email notifying you that it is complete. Next you click on the link to open the file. If it is ok then you can save it to your desktop, folder, etc. The link to access this is: http://createpdf.adobe.com/

PS You will at least need to have Adobe Reader if you use the online method. Adobe Reader is a free download. Click on this link to access the free download: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - XV

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

Well I spent quite a bit of time working on the "Best New England Made" website during this past week. This site is going to be all about wholesale product sourcing. This site presented the biggest obstacles to me in respect to the home page. There is so much information available. I lost count of the number of revisions that I went through before I felt that it looked and conveyed the information the way I wanted it to.

I have one major step left to complete on this site. That would be the New England Made Wholesale Products Directory database. This was just a little too techie for me, so I contracted someone that knows all about MySQL database creation to put this together. Once it is complete I will input all of the wholesale supplier information, test it out and then the site should be ready to go.

The other item I had done was to have a new logo created to differentiate this site from the other Original New England sites. Here's the new logo:








I was really happy with the way this came out. What do you think?

Together with completing the wholesale directory I have a list of other things to do to complete the revamping of Original New England. So, while I am waiting on a couple of things I have started to work on my next project - the creation of an ebook on sourcing unique, quality, New England Made wholesale products. This ebook will be a complete guide to sourcing wholesale products in New England and everyone will be able to get it for FREE! The only requirement needed to obtain this e-book will be to sign up for the Original New England Home Business Solutions Newsletter! Now that's what I call a good deal!

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - Part XIV

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

The redesign continues! I am learning more and more concerning web design - new terms like MySQL database, I-Frame, how to make a page password protected with javascript and more! All of this can get confusing, but, in reality, I am enjoying all of the learning that is taking place as part of this process.

We are still on schedule for our May 1st new release date. (lots of work and hours to go - if you know what I mean) What started this process was the realization that there was just too much information on the main website: original new england enterprises

After analyzing just what our goals are and how we want to convey this message to our customers, we decided to take the original site and to break it up into three unique sites, in addition to our other two existing web presences. The plan is for it to end up like this:

• Main Corporate Site w/ links to all other sites
• Ecommerce Site
• Wholesale Products Site
• Online Opportunities Site
• eBay Site

By segmenting this way we believe we will be able to present a much clearer and well focused message for each of these sites vs. the cluttered and unfocused message currently being conveyed. As they say: "Change is inevitable - so embrace it!" Our hope is that these changes will meet everyone's expectations and that we will all be able to become more successful because of them.

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - Part XIII

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

If you remember, in my posting two weeks ago I discussed some upcoming changes that I am working on to improve the “Original New England Enterprises” website and also announced that we are working on a new website “Best New England Made” that will showcase the “Made in New England” Wholesale Product Theme that will provide a free, comprehensive database of New England manufacturers. The goal is to be able to provide a complete set of services on our sites that will allow one to:

• build a complete ecommerce business
• have access to a unique, focused and in-demand product supply
• have the complete tools required to effectively market this business online
• allow a person to be one of the top 1% of the people who know how to sell online

Well, our plans have changed somewhat from what was originally stated. You know how people always refer to Spring as a time of rebirth, for new things, etc. Well, we decided to get some outside opinions and to personally re-review the entire content of and the message that was being sent by each of our online entities. We are asking ourselves if they make sense, how we can improve the message, the overall design, the content, etc. to help our customers to become successful with their online business. The good thing, while this review is still underway, is that we have decided on some major changes. The one unfortunate part is that the expected release of the new “Best New England Made” site has been pushed back. Our present goal, if all goes according to plan, is to release our revamped business websites at one time (May 1^st is our goal!)

We’re really excited about all of these changes. We’ll keep you updated with the progress of these changes during the next few weeks as the target release date of May 1^st approaches.

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - Part XII

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article. Most people who use the internet are aware of the explosion of the popularity of online video and audio, i.e. YouTube, Facebook, itunes, etc.

Well, as I suspect most online business owners do, I am constantly looking for ways to improve the marketing of my website. I did this by investigating the different options that are available for video and audio. I quickly dismissed the idea of a video for now. I just didn’t think that I would be able to make something that would pass for a professional marketing vehicle for my site. Instead I decided to record an audio file that would review and explain all of the key features that are offered on my website.

Step I – Develop a Script
This initially took me a couple of hours. I let it sit for a day and went back to review it. I ended up making multiple edits and then left it for one more day.

Step II – How to record the Script?
I really had no idea how to accomplish the recording of this script. So, I did what a lot of people must do and I did a Google search for information. I would need a program to record the script and a microphone to hook up to my computer. I was able to locate and borrow a microphone from a friend. Based on my research this saved me between $16 and $29. They are available at places like Best Buy, Staples, etc. and it seems the most popular ones are by Logitech. My friend told me there was a recording program that was standard on MS Windows. I found it in programs – accessories – entertainment – sound recorder. The only problem was that it only recorded for 60 seconds. My script was way to long for that. This prompted me to do another Google search for: "free music recording software". There were what seemed like hundreds of results. I really don’t know how I decided on the one that I did, but I am glad I did. I located a freeware program named Neosound v1.2.4 at the following website: http://audacity.sourceforge.net There was one small problem with this software. It doesn’t allow you to save a file as an mp3. In order to do this the program actually displayed a message that told me that I needed to download a file named: Lame 3.97. Back to Google for another search. After doing this I was now able to save my recording as an mp3 file. I was making progress!

Step III – Placing the mp3 file on my Website
I found an inexpensive program named: "Skinnable Big Button Welcome Message" for this that is offered through a company named Allwebco. Allwebco offers hosting services, full featured web templates and many free and/or inexpensive website add-ons. Their website link is: http://www.allwebco.com. All you have to do is pay $12, download the file to your desktop and install it. Then follow the instructions to install the files into your website. That’s it and, in addition, they give you around 12 different sets of skins to use if you don’t like the stock set. (see the notes below from allwebco’s site)

Skinnable Big Button - Hook a microphone to your computer. Record any message. Convert this to an mp3 file (help included) and easily add this to any website or template.Add a Flash sound message or mp3 music file to any website or template. Compatible in all newer web browsers this download includes: One message button, 24 different skins, all PSD files and step by step instructions to add this to any website. Includes help with converting .wav files. Flash software is not required to change skins.

Step IV – FTP your new files onto your Server
All that is left now is to upload your new files and you’ll be all set. Even I, the non-technical person that I am, was able to accomplish these tasks. All it took was a little bit of research and a lot of patience when I was recording the script (my phone rang in the middle, the dogs barked, the doorbell rang, etc. – no kidding). I finally waited until real late one night when everything was quiet to do this.

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - Part XI

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article. I must admit that I have been playing a little bit of hooky lately. I guess I just needed a little bit of "mental" as well as "physical" rest. To do this I escaped to the wilds of New Hampshire during the past week to do some skiing. I brought one of my daughters along to make it a father/daughter trip also. The conditions and the company were excellent. As they say: "Just what the doctor ordered".

The point behind this story is that I believe most of us can relate to the fact that our lives are much more fast paced, no hyper-paced, than they used to be! The reasons for this are varied, but the fact remains that they are. Many of us are overworked and stressed out with what seems like a million things to do and not enough time to do them in. Can you relate to this? Does this describe your life? Unfortunately, it seems like this is the norm for us. One area that highlights this frenetic, fast paced life is the in-box of your email account. This is the new home (vs. the nightly dinnertime phone calls) where we are constantly bombarded with all sorts of solicited (non-spam) and unsolicited (spam) information.

If you are like me, most of the time you probably don't bother to open and/or read the majority of these emails. You quickly reach for the delete key and poof - they are instantly gone!

My advice to you, as hard as it may be to take with the limited time we all seem to have, is to take a couple of extra minutes to screen these emails. The reason I am recommending this to you is that buried amongst the majority of plain old garbage can be some real gems. Just like the old-time miners sifting through tons of dirt to get to the small bit of gold. I have discovered a few of these gems that contain excellent, quality information, in just this manner, when I wasn't looking for them.

Below are a couple of the ecommerce advice gems that I have come across in the past few months, by following my own advice, that may be of interest to you:

Practical Ecommerce

Practical eCommerce magazine was launched in July 2005 by Kerry and Joy Murdock in Grand Junction, Colorado, USA. Its mission from the start has been to provide down-to-earth articles and advice to help smaller businesses succeed online. This editorial content was originally delivered primarily through a monthly, printed magazine, but it now (2007) includes this website, podcasts, and an email newsletter (EcommerceNotes), as well as the printed magazine, which is now bi-monthly.

Real folks are behind this company. We are a small business ourselves, and we take seriously the notion of helping other small businesses decipher the complexities of migrating online or improving their online operations.

Web Marketing Today

Dr. Ralph Wilson formed Wilson Internet Services at the very beginning of the commercial Internet in 1995 to help small to medium businesses and organizations learn how to use the Internet effectively.

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - Part X

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article. After the past month of persistent cold we finally got a taste of spring today, with the temperature around 50 degrees, together with bright sunshine and light winds. So, my friend and I took a ride during lunch down to the beach (we work less than a mile from the ocean in Rhode Island. Yeah, I can hear everyone now - tough life right?) and watched around 20 people who were surfing on some really good waves. Dreams of the summer that is soon to be!

Well with the approaching spring there are several large New England Product Tradeshows coming up. They are the 23rd annual New England Products Trade Show on March 17-19, the Cape Cod Gift Show on March 18 and 19, and the New England Gift Show on Oct. 1-3. All three of these shows showcase the "Made in New England" product theme. Together there are several hundred unique "Made in New England" product manufacturers represented at these shows. So, if you are looking for products to sell on your online business, be it on eBay or on your main business website, don't miss the opportunity to check out one or all of these shows.

Lately, in addition to focusing on fine tuning and the marketing of Original New England Enterprises , I have been working on the development of my next website. The idea with this site is for it to complement Original New England Enterprises by focusing on the "Made in New England" product theme/niche. The name of this site is going to be Best New England Made. My goal is to have this new site online by the middle of March at the latest, to coincide with the spring "Made in New England" product shows.

The focus and goal of this site, as reflected by its' name: "Best New England Made" will be to showcase the made in New England product niche. Additionally, as part of this site, we will be providing a free, comprehensive database of New England manufacturers, as a complement to the services we offer with Original New England Enterprises complete Ecommerce Solutions. So, now you will have the ability and option to:

• build your complete ecommerce business
• have access to a unique, focused and in-demand product supply
• have the complete tools required to effectively market this business online
• be one of the top 1% of the people who know how to sell online.

Whew - that was a mouthful! It almost sounds too good to be true, but in this case it is 100% true and backed by solid guarantees! The key is to follow the process that is taught in these solutions, by working smarter, not harder and by being persistent in your quest for success.

There is a fantastic book that I think everyone would benefit from by reading. It is: Pushing Up People, by Art Williams. You can find this amazing book on Amazon.com. The main idea of this book is that by showing others how to be successful that you too will become successful. I hope you take the time to read this. I truely believe you will benefit from this if you do.

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

Ecommerce Beginnings - Part IX

Hello and welcome back to this weeks' article on Ecommerce Beginnings.

Well I think we all know what time of year it is, don't we. Yes - it's tax time. This is that wonderful time of year when we need to make sure that all of our records are in order so we can submit our tax forms to Uncle Sam and hopefully don't have to pay any additional taxes.

This year will be my first year completing my taxes as an official business. I incorporated as a single owner LLC. This means that any income, etc. will pass through the corporation and will be treated as personal income. Well, I started off the year doing everything I thought I was supposed to do correctly. I went out and bought Quickbooks Professional and spent some time setting up my company file, with the chart of accounts, etc. This program is an excellent and fairly straightforward piece of valuable software to keep your books with. Don't just take my word for it, you can trust the thousands of other satisfied customers opinions on this matter.

Well, I kept fairly good records throughout the year, but I didn't enter the information into Quickbooks like I should have. This neccessitated me spending an entire day with a friend who is an accountant to input all of my data around 2 weeks ago. I learned a valuable lesson here, because it can be difficult to try to remember what all of the transactions were throughout the year and we know what the result of this can be - CHAOS!!!, which for people who are over 40 know is the opposite of CONTROL. Remember: GET SMART!

The end result is that I now have a nice, well organized balance sheet, a profit & loss statement together with all of my records now accurately documented. I also have a clear picture of the current state of my new business. Shame on me for not doing this along the way, but I definitely learned my lesson going forward.

Two links that I am recommending:
QuickBooks and Janelle Elms to help you with your finances and general business advice. Both are excellent sources of information to guide you in your business.

That's it for this week. I hope you have a great week and please stop back next week for another informative and possibly entertaining article.

Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com

Ecommerce Beginnings - VIII

Welcome back to Ecommerce Beginnings. This weeks' posting is a little late because I have been having some issues with my website and its' ranking on Google. You see, my main site: www.original-new-england-enterprises.com has been, as they say: "kicking butt" in all of the search engines, with a large number of #1's for multiple keyword combinations. That was until this past week when my site all but disappeared from the Google pages. What happened??? I had no idea, so I started to do some research. It seems that there is some sort of a correlation between my website and the service I had been using for my blogging posts (Serendipity). Each time that I sent out a new post on my blog approximately two days later my website would drop out of site on Google, to reappear a few days later after the Gogglebot had revisited.

Now, I'm not positive about the correlation between Serendipity and my website. I have also been using pinging services each time I send out a new posting. These services are Pinggoat and RSS Junky. This issue has only effected my rankings on Google. My rankings have not been effected on Yahoo, MSN, AlltheWeb,etc. by this. It is definitely perplexing!!!

My inability to solve this problem has led me to shift my postings to this venue (Google Blogger). Maybe that will solve this problem. If anyone has had a similar problem or knows of a solution to this please let me know ASAP! If your solution works I will put your children through college. I will paint your house for free - you get the idea!!!

That's it for this week. As always: Thanks for stopping by and please stop back next week for some more interesting and hopefully informative information.

Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com

Ecommerce Beginnings - VII

Monday, January 29. 2007

Welcome back for this week's article on Ecommerce Beginnings. I hope everyone had a great week!


Research

During the past few weeks I did a lot of research on Email Management Services providers. I needed to find a solution to manage my email marketing efforts. So, like many people I went to the Google Search Engine and typed in: email marketing solution. This query returned 4,120,000 possible results. What to do next? To save some time I pretty much did what most people probably do - I investigated the options presented on the first page. All of a sudden I was faced with another entirely new language to learn. Terms like: permission based email marketing, pop-up creator, double opt-in confirmation, unlimited autoresponders, and on and on the list went????


Decision

I ended up narrowing the list down to 4 different email marketing solutions. I read each of their features offered lists, checked out their price options, some were by the month, some were set up to charge based on the number of emails sent each month, some were set up based on your birth date, combined with your mother's maiden name and if anyone on the list was named Smith.

Well, I almost felt like this after trying to compare all of the apples to apples to oranges options offered by each company. In fact most of the options were very similar, which made the decision process a little more difficult.


Note: I am currently signed up to recieve several ezines from well known and reputable businesses and online marketing gurus. Each one seems to use a different provider and they each mention how happy they are with their email service provider. Just another curveball thrown at me in the decision process.

Well, I like things to be fairly straightforward and simple. You know, I like lots of features, but I also like the options to be easy to understand and implement. I don't need to load my brain up with too much more as it is! I ended up choosing GetResponse because of several factors:

* their website layout (logical and well organized)
* online video tutorials (very helpful - also provided in PDF format)
* streamlined plans to choose from (you know the KISS principle)
* and last, but not least, their pricing, (either a limited free plan to start out with, or a Pro version)

Note: You know those marketing types. They use terms like: basic, intermediate, etc. and then they use the term: "PRO"! Well, who wouldn't want to be a user of the "PRO" version? Doesn't "PRO" sound so much cooler? Guess which one I chose? Those marketing people are geniuses aren't they?


Learning to Use

As I mentioned above, GetResponse has 4 well organized videos that you can watch to learn "how to" set-up and manage your email marketing campaigns. I will admit that I watched the videos twice. It definitely helped and was prompted more by my lack of knowledge in this area.

I decided that I wanted my website's newsletter to be formatted on one of my website pages vs just a text email message with links. I felt that this was a better choice for marketing purposes. Next I had to create several new web pages and an opt-in form. Click here to see the NEW FORM

The new pages I created were to support the process of capturing an email address, verifying they meant to make this choice, sending another email for their free e-book download, then the actual newsletter notification email, the newsletter itself, with the multiple articles and product download options. Whew!!! It was a lot of work, but I actually enjoyed it. I was just like a proud new father showing off his new child to the world! Click here to see my 1st NEWSLETTER Please let me know what you think of the newsletter and/or if you would like to see other options/choices offered in it.


Conclusion

As I stated above there were many excellent email marketing solution options available to choose from. Here are links to 4 that I felt were the best options to choose from:

* GetResponse
* Constant Contact
* Aweber
* Vertical Response

I'm sure there are more excellent options available, I just didn't have the time to keep researching all of them. I hope this information proves helpful to you. Make sure you stop back next week for another entertaining and informative article and Have a great week!

Mark@Original-New-England-Enterprises.com

Ecommerce Beginnings - VI

Monday, January 22. 2007

Welcome back for this weeks article on Ecommerce Beginnings. Where to begin? Well, as anyone who is a football fan is surely aware of, the New England Patriots fell a little short in their quest to return to the Super Bowl for a 4th time in 6 years. My congratulations to them for an excellent season!

The reason I keep discussing the Patriots is because, to me, they are the epitomy of an organization that excels at getting the most out of their abilities. This ability to excel under constantly changing and demanding circumstances is a blueprint for success that everyone who wishes to be successful should follow. As the quote says: " People don't plan to fail, they fail to plan!"

Don't Let This Happen to YOU!

Now, getting back to two articles ago, I left you with some advice on thoroughly learning the eBay system. Once you establish yourself and become comfortable using eBay, i.e. have hopefully made a few purchases, possibly listed an item for sale and completed a sale or two. That is great! You should be feeling more comfortable and understanding how everything works.

To expand on this I recommend you go to the eBay Site Map, then go to the Selling Tools section. You'll find a complete listing of all of the tools that are available to support and to develop your selling ability on eBay in this section, both within eBay and through third-party solutions. Again, a word of caution - investigate each and every option very carefully. Be smart - check out each company before you make a decision. Look for independent reviews to see what others are saying about them.

Here are a couple of excellent sources of information to help you out:

• Entrepreneur Magazine
• Ecommerce Guide

Remember, don't forget to check out the eBay Workshops. They are another great source of relevant information to help you.

Thanks for stopping by this week. I hope you have a great week and make sure you stop back next week to see the next posting for more helpful and sometimes entertaining information.

Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com

Ecommerce Beginnings - V

NEW ENGLAND 24 SAN DIEGO 21

Welcome back for this weeks article on Ecommerce Beginnings. Believe me when I say I almost needed a tranquilizer to calm me down after yesterday's New England vs San Diego playoff game. Again, the Patriots (the cardiac kids) came through in the clutch. The way they accomplish the goals they set is amazing. Congratulations to the New England Patriots on another hard fought victory!

The reason I am starting out discussing the Patriots is two-fold. First, I am a Patriots fan, but second, and more importantly, because the New England Patriots are the role model for success. They continuously accomplish what they set out to, many times against huge adversity. Their success isn't predicated on having a large ensemble of superstars on their team. It isn't predicated on luck either. What their success is predicated on is a result of excellent planning, determination, hard work, execution and a firm belief in their ability to succeed. People say that they get lucky. I say that they make their own luck through their dedication, consistency and belief in their system.

My word of advice to anyone who wants to be successful with their home based business is to look at who is already successful, be it in business, sports, or any other area of life. There is a consistent theme to the successful people/organizations in this world. We know that it isn't always the most talented who are successful, but usually those who are better prepared, better prepared to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves in the face of constant change. That is who is usually successful.

I don't mean to be too preachy this week, but I want to make sure that everyone understands that it is really hard to keep your eye on the ball, to remain focused 110% of the time on your success. That is probably one of the reasons that 90% of new businesses fail within the first year or so. Be like the Patriots, the model of consistency, the model for taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves and doing something purposeful with them. There is a reason that they continue to be so successful year in and year out.

For anyone who is looking for some great ideas to implement for their own personal success, check this out. I'm currently reading a great book that I believe anyone who is considering becoming or is already involved with an online business should read. It is: SUCCESS SECRETS OF THE ONLINE MARKETING SUPERSTARS by Mitch Meyerson. I picked up my copy at a local Barnes & Noble. I'm sure it is available in through many different outlets. This book contains interviews with 24 of the top internet marketers in the world today. They share their proven strategies for making money online.

Note: I have no affilliation with the sale of this book. My recommendation is strictly based on my belief that it is an excellent source of information that will help you to be successful with your online business.

That's it for this week. I hope you found the above to be helpful and informative. Please stop by next week to read the latest installment of Ecommerce Beginnings. Thanks and have a great week. Oh yeah, don't forget to cheer on the Patriots in next week's game. GO PATS!!!

Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com

Ecommerce Beginnings - IV

FINAL SCORE: PATRIOTS 37 JETS 16 THAT JUST ABOUT SAYS IT ALL!

Hello to everyone. I hope everyone had a great week. I sure did and as you may have guessed, I am from New England (no kidding!!!) and I am a completely devoted fan of the New England Patriots. I was very excited to see them beat the NY Jets today. Next stop: San Diego!

Ok, enough about the football game. The real reason you are probably reading this posting isn't for my humor or my sports likes and dislikes, but to find some information that may be helpful to you with your online business. As I stated last week I plan to discuss buying, selling and marketing on eBay this week.

Through all of the research I did in respect to buying, selling and marketing on eBay I realized one huge fact: that there is a tremendous amount of duplicative information out there. It reminds me of the old advertisements on TV for the "Ronco Vegematic - It slices, It dices, It chops, etc., etc. - all for $9.99!" I think you get the picture here. So my advice to you is:

In the beginning spend a lot of time on the eBay site. By looking at other peoples' listings, by buying on eBay, by reading all of the tutorials, going to the chat rooms, etc. you can find and learn 99% of what you need to about how eBay works. To make it real easy to navigate around on their site use the SITE MAP page. Make sure you bookmark this page. It makes it so much easier vs. clicking around on multiple pages and trying to find this or that page later on.

Once you become familiar with eBay there are a lot of resources available to assist you. It all depends on what your goals are. My advice is to take your time and evaluate everything very carefully before you give someone some of your hard earned money. Like a good carpenter: measure twice and cut once!

I found these two free ebooks to be very helpful. They are a good source of information on buying and selling on eBay. They are written by a man named Terry Gibbs. He is an eBay Powerseller who has been selling on eBay for the past 5 years or so. To get your FREE copy of his ebooks click on these links:

• The eBay Buyer's Guide
• The eBay Seller's Guide

Here are some additional links to help you out:

• ecommerce articles
• ecommerce information
• ecommerce tools

Thank you for stopping by this week. I hope you find the information provided above to be helpful to you. I hope you have a great week and make sure you stop back next week to see the next posting for more helpful and sometimes entertaining information. Remember to cheer on the Patriots unless you are a San Diego fan. GO PATS!!!

Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com

Ecommerce Beginnings - Part III

Tuesday, January 2. 2007

Happy New Year to everyone!
This past holiday weekend definitely turned out differently than I expected. My plan for the weekend was pretty straightforward. I just took out a subscription to GetResponse.com to manage my email autoresponders, online newsletters, opt-in forms, etc. So, the plan was to spend a few hours watching GetRespones' video tutorials to learn how all of this works and to enjoy some "New Year festivities". That was plan A. Plan B - which is what usually happens, turned out to be much different.

First, I recieved an email from one of the companys that I market products for - WorldWide Brands. They market themselves as the "#1 online wholesale products/legitimate wholesalers information source on the web" to source products to sell online or from your brick & motar business. Well, they had mentioned in their previous affiliate newsletter that the new year would bring some major surprises. They hit the nail on the head with that statement! They have completely retooled their website from offering a suite of products to one expanded and consolidated offering. They even changed the name of their products from "Premium Product Sourcing Package" to "OneSource". Once you spend some time reviewing the changes, they all make perfect sense (take it from the expert here!). I think the marketing of this product has improved immensely with these changes. Hopefully this will result in improved sales for both the company and their affiliates (of which I am one). This change required me to retool the webpage that I have for Worldwide Brands products (2hrs).

Next, I am part of a "Value Exchange" through Sitesell.com. This is a free, mutual "link exchange" program offered through SitebuildIt for qualified sites. Well, this email contained an offer to obtain a one-way link from this person's "high traffic and high page rank" website to mine, if I would become an affiliate to market his program. I believe everyone is aware of how beneficial it is to have as many one-way links from high quality websites that link to your site. I spent some time evaluating the offer, checked out his sites, etc. and decided that his offer made perfect sense. The service that he promotes is complementary to a service that I offer on my site. This required some retooling on my SitebuildIt Reference & Resources page and the creation of 5 new webpages to display informational articles to go with this (2.5hrs).

As a "new" webmaster, I have solicited advice from friends and also asked them to review my site, i.e. play the role of both customer and editor for me. Sometimes you are too close to something to see what is very obvious to others, so I always try to get some independent and honest feedback. One of my "editors" called me and discussed several items on a few of my webpages. I tried to remain objective. See I said: "tried". I then proceeded to tell him that the site was fine the way it is and that he was basically brain dead for suggesting the changes that he did! (I didn't do this - honest!) He actually had some excellent recommendations, which I then proceeded to implement. (4hrs)

By now I was beginning to see a pattern developing here. I was now full-tilt into Plan B mode! Plan A was long gone! While I was making all of these changes, with my keen eye for things, I spotted several other areas that were open for improvement (3hrs). To sum it all up this is what happened vs. Plan A:
Rewrote 3 web pages
Added 5 new web pages
Tweaked 4 web pages
Established links with two high traffic sites
Formed an affiliate relationship with another company
Opened a Google Adwords account and created two campaigns and a partridge in a pear tree...

Looking at this list, I actually did get quite a bit of work accomplished this weekend, didn't I? It's just not what I had originally planned. My advice to everyone - when (notice I said when, not if) this happens to you, the best thing to do is to go with it. You might be surprised at the outcome. I sure was and am "positively" glad I ended up on plan B.

My apologies for going off on a tangent this week. I wanted to share this with everyone because I think it is something that has probably happened to all of us at one time or another, with my point being to remain postive throughout when it does happen to you. I'm glad I did!

Next week I will return to my theme on "ecommerce beginnings" with a discussion about buying, selling and marketing on ebay. Thanks for listening and have a great week.
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com

Ecommerce Beginnings - Part II

Sunday, December 24. 2006

Hello to everyone on this fine Xmas eve. I guess most people are probably socializing with their families and friends at this moment, but my wife is a nurse and unfortunately she had to work this evening. The good part about that is that I now have the time to write this installment on "Ecommerce Beginnings - Part II". The reason I mentioned my wife is really to thank her. I'm sure you have heard the old saying about every great man having a great woman behind him, prodding and guiding him along, haven't you? Well in my case the part about having a great woman behind me is definitely true. My wife has been the inspiration for all that I have accomplished during this past year (my first year spent developing an ecommerce presence). To my wife and my love I say: "Thank you - from the bottom of my heart for everything that you have given me and for your patience while I have spent many hours working away on the computer during the past year!" Now, the part about a "great man", well, I think we'll leave that one alone, but this past year (actually the last 9 months, but who's counting) has been a great learning experience for me in regard to "how and what" is needed to set-up and run a home based ecommerce business. Tonight I'll share some interesting parts of this journey with you.

The most surprising revelation that I have had during my internet journey is the huge amount of time I have ended up investing in this project and how much work it has involved. I thought since everything was online that it would be much easier than the old "brick and mortar" type business. Surprise, surprise, surprise, it is different than the brick & motar world, but still a lot of work, but I wouldn't trade one second of it for anything else. I have found this to be extremely interesting, educational and a lot of fun. I guess the part about it being fun plays right into the saying: "it's a lucky person who is able to work at something they enjoy." I have definitely found something I truely enjoy here.

I started in an area that thousands of other people have started at - with eBay! The number one internet auction site. I figured that would be a good point to begin my ecommerce education. Everything about eBay makes it a natural to begin with - high amount of traffic, ease of use, tons of "how to" information right on their site, PayPal to handle the financial transactions, etc., etc.

• 
  Like most things in life what appears to be fairly simple and straightforward isn't. Ebay was no exception. As most people who have tried eBay are probably aware of, there is a whole cottage industry designed to support your efforts to do business with them. By nature I tend to over-analyze things to make sure that I have checked out all of the available options and finally to select the best fit for me. This was no exception. Through trial and error I made some key decisions:
  opened both a buying and a selling account on eBay
  opened an account with Paypal
  developed a listing template (purchased template development services from an ebay listing - very inexpensive: $37 for a complete template package that makes you look professional)
  developed an About me page on ebay for marketing purposes (an option that is way underutilized by most people. If you sell on eBay make sure you develop your About Me page!)
  selected a free service named Auctiva to host my pictures with, create my templates with and to schedule my auctions with. They offer additional free auction services also. You can find them at: www.auctiva.com Their site is a little balky at times if you try to access them during peak useage times, but other than that they have been outstanding. This service saves you on average .75 to $1.00 on every auction listing vs. doing it straight through eBay or by using one of the multitude of other services that are available. I am not passing judgement on the other services as to whether they are good, bad or whatever. Auctiva is just the service that met my needs and has served them well to date.
  selected some products to start listing (I have a good size collection of 78 RPM records from the 30's, 40's and 50's - all big band jazz, that I have been listing)
  did some research on pricing strategies (there are numerous strategies to choose from depending on your end goal. Some people try to get maximum price, some start out with a low price just to drive traffic to their About Me page and/or to their off eBay site (that's me) etc.)
  started listing auctions on eBay
  

To date I have done a couple of hundred listings and have sold around $1500 worth of product. The key idea is that it is a work in progress. I am constantly tweaking it, making minor changes, and learning more and more about what works and doesn't work in this dynamic environment. One of the most important things to focus on is your feedback rating with eBay. This is your "report card" from your customers. The goal is to get and maintain a 100% positive feedback rating. How do you do this? By providing excellent customer service. This rating is your lifeblood if you have any hope of continuing success on eBay. If you want to see an example of my About Me page and of my listings click here: http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/original_new_england

Note: I'm not listing my link above for any other reason except to show as an example.

That's it for this week. Next week I'll tell you about a few of the other services that are available to make your eBay experience work smoothly. Good night and Merry Xmas to everyone!