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