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
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