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 - 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