Successful Blog

Drop Ship Business on eBay: Pitfalls and Mistakes to Avoid

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h4> by
Niamh Allan

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How Do You Ace the RatRace on eBay?

The surging popularity of eBay has grasped the interest of entrepreneurs who are looking to make money with an online business. Many of these businesses are boot strapping. Drop-shipping is a logical solutions for those entrepreneurs who wish to set up a shop, but can’t spend big amounts on inventory.

Good product sourcing is vital for any business, and drop-shippers help businesses make profits without investing much effort. Reputable drop-shippers offer good wholesale pricing and ship orders the same day. Yet, risks are inevitable. Research and experiment with drop-shippers before you choose one.

Common Drop-Ship Relationship Pitfalls

Though drop-shipping has some of the best benefits, it does not come without pitfalls. Some of the most common pitfalls in drop-shipping are:

  1. Lack of communication:
    A lack of communication between supplier and retailer can leave the retailer clueless about whether the supplier received the order, whether the items ordered are in stock and when the order shall be shipped. This lack of coordination leads to more problems. The drop-shipper / supplier must be transparent about shipping schedules, which is sometimes not the case. Communication between supplier and retailer needs to be the best.
  2. Transparency about Costs
    You need to carefully understand and analyze the prices of the wholesaler you’ve chosen. In order to set prices in your store, it is essential that you know the price of every single drop-shipped item. Understand all costs involved or a drop-shipper can trick you into paying more. Some companies lure retailers by quoting very low wholesale prices, but later make their money by including unreasonable shipping charges.
  3. Supply out of Stock
    The retailer is held responsible for ensuring that customers receive their products on time. Ask for references and speak to other retailers about how often the drop-shippers items are out of stock. If the supplier is not too communicative, speak up and stay in touch with the retailer.

Common Drop-Ship Buying Mistakes

While drop-shipping has some inevitable risks and pitfalls, there are also some common mistakes committed by drop-shippers. Some of these are:

  1. Buying from Bad Suppliers / Drop-shippers

    Choosing inexperienced and unethical drop-shippers can create unnecessary problems. Retailers bear the brunt of supplier inexperience and dishonesty. The inexperienced suppliers can also commit careless mistakes which would reflect badly on your business. Have a sample order shipped to you first. Inexperienced suppliers leave their own logo on the packaging instead of using yours. Inefficient suppliers have often miscalculate stock requirements and fail to ship products on time. While choosing suppliers, go for ones who are honest, efficient, and experienced.

  2. Buying products at inappropriate prices

    The attractive discount may lure you to buy products at retail prices while drop-shipping, but have you already included the VAT or taxes, business overheads, shipping and packaging costs? You need products with high profit margins to succeed on eBay. If you are not quite sure calculate your exact cost and profit margins, and understand how to compete with other retailers on eBay.

  3. Buying poor quality products

    Businesses often fail when they ship poor quality products. Most retailers are competing for customers on eBay. Good quality, inexpensive, and popular products are what will dent the competition. Carry out a proper product research and a thorough market research to emerge victorious.

Instead of succumbing to the tough competition on eBay, overcome it to ace the rat-race!

Author’s Bio:
Niamh Allan writes about business, especially about logistics services and fulfillment services.

Online Reputation: Fostering Relationships With Influential Bloggers

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h4> by
Alex Summers

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Relationships with the Right Bloggers

A blogger can make or break your business. With a few strokes of a keyboard, a blogger can either catapult your brand into the worldwide realm or sink it into oblivion. Having a relationship with the right blogger is key to keeping your business at the forefront of the positive chatter on the Web.

While many people tout the many benefits of search engine optimization when it comes to Internet marketing, not as much is discussed about managing your online reputation. Monitoring what is said online about your company by bloggers, commenters and forum posters is critical to your business success. All it takes is one negative review from a blogger to send your company’s good name spiraling down the path of no return.

Information moves at the speed of light on the web. By the time an event has aired on network television, the top bloggers have already picked up the story, dissected it, given their personal take on it and opened it up to comments. These bloggers can be your best friends if you manage your resources well and develop a good rapport with the key players in the blogosphere.

Online Reputation: Fostering Relationships With Influential Bloggers

Linking up with the right bloggers is a bit of a challenge. As you can imagine, everyone wants to be friends with the tastemakers of the web. That automatically puts them at an advantage over the myriad of small businesses that want to take advantage of their popularity.

If your business offers a service or product that is complementary to their niche, offer to place their ads on your site for free.

Subscribe to their blogs and add them to your social media sites. The key here is to show them what you can do for them before you ask what they can do for you.

In order to stay in good graces with the bloggers, you must remain a credible resource. Keep your website updated with fresh and relevant content that is useful to your readers. Regularly update your photographs and provide links to related products, services or information. Offer a free e-book or newsletter that your readers will find helpful. Bear in mind that a blogger will only want to endorse your company if you are a genuinely helpful resource.

When you have developed a good working relationship with the key bloggers, work hard to maintain that relationship, even when you’re not looking for favors. By staying in their good graces, you will be in a better position to ask them to endorse your product or service when the time comes.

Sometimes you will receive a bad review on a blog, forum, or consumer website. There may be bad news surrounding your company or personal life. In instances like these, reputation management is key. The first step is to find out what is being said and take steps to mitigate it. If your product is being trashed by a disgruntled customer, handle that customer’s issue before they cause more damage. If it is a competitor, you may have to work harder to erase negative information about your brand online. A good reputation management company can handle these reputation challenges, and their team of experts will work tirelessly to restore your good name on the web.

Most influential bloggers are experts at reputation management — it’s integral to their influence. Most good reputation management companies have great relationships with influential bloggers for that reason.

The relationship between bloggers and businesses is a delicate balancing act of objectivity and loyalty. Your business will benefit greatly from a good working relationship with bloggers who can sing your company’s praises. Foster good relationships with key players and reap the benefits of free advertising. Maintain those relationships and you will find your company’s bottom line grow with each blog post.

How do you foster authentic relationships with influential bloggers?

Author’s Bio:
Alex is a blogger, freelance writer and recent college graduate. She currently performs market research for an online marketing firm when she is not contributing her own thoughts and observations to the online community.

Why Small Business Grants Are the Best Way to Fund a Business

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by James Crawford

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Each year, thousands of government agencies and local organizations hand out billions of dollars in small business grants. Grants come in all shapes and sizes, and are distributed for any number of reasons. There are small business grants for technology, hiring new workers, and even grants for established family businesses. The list goes on and on – if you own a business, thousands of available grant opportunities could fit your business.

Why Small Business Grants Are the Best Way to Fund a Business

Here are some of the reasons why grants are a great way to fund a business:

1. Tax-free capital — Unlike retained earnings, grant payments are tax-free cash that can be used to build upon an existing business. Tax-free capital is the best kind of capital, since a profitable business will pay anywhere from 10-35% of its earnings in taxes — money that can’t be spent on expanding a business.

2. Grants provide networking potential — The best part about grant opportunities is that a grant is usually awarded to several different people and businesses. In accepting a grant, you will have the opportunity to meet other successful business owners who might have an interest in working with your business. As most business owners understand, half the difficulty in running a business is building connections to other business owners and powerful people in the community.

3. No repayment — Grants are free money, period. No capital disbursed through an available grant opportunity has to be repaid. So what you receive from a grant is money that you don’t have to worry about paying back. Many businesses fail because of the stress of debt capital – money raised through bank borrowing that requires frequent monthly payments to service the debt load. Debt tends to be most difficult for smaller businesses that are not yet established, as well as established businesses which have irregular cash flows. Irregularity of income is especially concerning when your expenses are regular, and servicing debt is a burden that will cost your business month after month, year after year.

4. Grants allow for expansion — Sure, some grants will allow you to invest in growing your existing business, but grants can also be used to extend your business into new markets. A printing company, for example, might find a grant which would allow it to hire a graphic designer. In doing so, the company can move into a new market – graphic design – while maintaining its existing business in the printing industry. Think about how you could use capital in your business to make a new product or service that complements an existing business that you have right now.

There is no better way to fund a new or existing business than with a small business grant. Remember that grants are tax-free money that never, ever has to be repaid. And grants are anything but limited – you can find grants for any kind of business in any size.

Start searching for a business grant by reaching out to local business development organizations! Between incubators, free resources like SCORE (http://www.score.org/), online directories, and government agencies like the Small Business Administration (http://www.sba.gov/), there is no shortage of ways to discover free and available funding for your business right now.

Author’s Bio:
James Crawlord writes about business financing, especially about small business grants at Grantstar.org. You can find him on Twitter as @jamescrawlord .

Do You Have a Clue on Finding the Right Temp Worker?

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With many businesses in a quandary these days between hiring more help and cutting back on expenses, the issue of hiring temporary workers oftentimes comes to the forefront.

Should we disperse more of the work among our full-time employees? Should we reach out to a temp agency to bring in people for a period of time? Is it better that we place our own ad looking for temp workers? These are just some of the decisions that come into play for the business man or woman trying to best organize their staff.

Over time, the expense of hiring temp workers is often cheaper than the cost of bringing on permanent employees with benefits.  In the short term, it typically proves to be cost-efficient to hire a temp.  Meantime, for jobs that figure to last six months or longer, it may pay to bring on a full-time employee.

If you find yourself debating this issue, there are a number of things to keep in mind before you pull the trigger on such a decision.

They include:

1. How long will I need the help? – First and foremost, determine how long you will need temporary help. Is it just for a few days to catch up on business? Is one of your full-time staff taking a vacation or longer leave of absence? Could the temp help possibly be part of our team for several months? Knowing the timeline goes a long way in deciding who to hire;

2. What type of temp worker do I want? – Temp workers come in all varieties, so which one will be best for your office? Is your office very conservative, meaning it is mostly all work and no play? If so, you may be looking for a little older employee who has been around for a while and can get right down to business. Then again, if your office is very laid back and even fun to work in, maybe someone a little younger who brings a lot of energy and spirit to the job. There are older workers who are fun to be around, just as there are younger workers who can roll up their sleeves and work hard for you. Knowing your office culture will help you in determining just the right fit. The last thing you want is hiring someone that will throw off the office chemistry, creating more problems than solutions;

3. Will the temp worker need a great degree of training? – One of the other important aspects to the decision is the necessary experience level of the temp worker. Are you planning on bringing them into a challenging situation where skills are of the utmost importance? If so, do you have the time to train them? If you are more in need of general office work, this issue should not really be a problem. While a temp agency should supply you with qualified workers, you do not always get what you ask for;

4. What is our pay scale for temp workers – Since just about no one works for free these days, do you know what you will pay any temps who work for you? While you are likely looking to save money in today’s economy, short-changing a temp worker could also lead to so-so results. Make sure you and the temp agency (if you are working with one) are clear on expected salary for the individual that will be filling in at your business;

5.  Finding the right temp agency – Lastly, locating the right temp agency to work with is critical. In order to improve your chances of finding the right one, take the time to find one that meets your particular needs. Review their websites to find out how long they’ve been in business, their “mission statement” and the kinds of temp employees and services they offer. The last thing you need is getting sent a few “lemons” before finding the right fit for your business.

Photo credit: excelle.monster.com

Dave Thomas has more than 20 years’ experience as a writer, covering news, sports, marketing, SEO, press releases, social media and more. You’ll find Dave at: http://www.examiner.com/news-in-san-diego/dave-thomas

Productivity and Focus: Avoid Relationship Detours in a Pay-It-Forward World

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Relationship Detours on the Road to Success

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Monday morning seems a good time to realign our focus, set new goals, dig in and get going on the week. How long does it take before something happens and you find you’ve been pulled off your path?

Avoid Relationship Detours?

A strong reason for deciding where we’re going and what we want to build, make happen, or become is that if we don’t chart out our own true path, other people will. Even after we decide on our destination — the mission and vision that will propel our business or our life — our own true nature can pull us away from that true path.

One of the coolest things about the internet is the community ethic that we’re here to help. I figure it comes from the fact that statistically we’re more alike than different.

  • We all have access to the internet.
  • We all can communicate in text
  • We all use the same tools to do that

Sometimes we even agree on what the tools can do for the world.

Productivity and Focus: Avoid Relationship Detours in a Pay-It-Forward World

Now we’ve started to move that social business ethic into the larger world. Whether we work at home, with a team, or for a company we love, contributing to the community is part of our own success. That community ethic makes it easy to reach out to new people who join us. We want to keep the culture that we’ve come to know and value. So why not show them how it works? Someone helped us when we got here. It’s a pay-it-forward world.

The downside of that can be relationship detours.

  • Are you so busy helping other folks that you’ve lost your own way?
  • Do ideas and projects that other folks propose take you away from your personal goals?
  • Do you spend more time on other folks’ success than your own?

Helping is good, but doing is necessary to get to where we want to go. You have to know where you’re going to know who to help. Time is a limited resource and focus is key to achieving our goals. So, when you choose to help, ask yourself if you’re extending the most help to people who are heading on a similar path. Then the help you give can be part of your learning, expertise, and growing skill sets.

And when folks expect you to set aside your own productivity to focus on theirs, remember that sometimes the most useful help is to show someone how to find the answers rather than to offer a hand.

Be generous with your time.
Share your expertise with abandon.
Help others achieve their goals without expecting something in return.
But know how to decline when what someone asks you will detour too far or too long off your true path.

How do you decide who gets your time and your help?

Knowing where you’re going in irresistible.
Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Online Surfing and Depression. Is There a Connection Between Them?

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by
Jack Samuelson

Depression is hard to diagnose, but the earlier symptoms are discovered, the better.

That is why a new study of Dr. Sriram Chellappan of Missouri University of Science and Technology could be a turning point in fighting depression. Dr. Chellappan and his associates found that students showing signs of depression use the Internet differently than other students.

Online Surfing and Depression. Is There a Connection Between Those Two?

According to Dr. Chellappan, his research could be a real breakthrough. That is because this is could be the first study based on actual Internet data, not surveys. Using surveys to retrieve the information about Internet usage was the main problem of previous studies. People usually forget the course of their online activity (especially if it was random), and even if they remember what they did — errors are common. Another problem is the so-called “social desirability bias” (i.e., the tendency to answer survey questions so they would be viewed positively by others). Using “real” Internet data gave researchers the advantage of analyzing empirical, undeniable, totally accurate facts.

The study itself should be considered as the first step showing new, possible ways in recognizing signs of depression (or other mental/social disorders). It was conducted on 216 Missouri students, collecting their Internet data for a month.

Students received pseudonyms so they would remain anonymous to the researchers. But first, all participants were tested for symptoms of depression. Having gathered and analyzed all the data, researchers found that the online activity of students with no signs of depression differed from that of participants with signs of mood disorders.

The differences in the two groups were significant.

Researchers managed to identify nine fine-grained patterns of online surfing that may indicate surfer’s depression. Identifying nine patterns on such a relatively small group is a remarkable finding, showing how much our mental health can influence every part of our life and change the way we perform even the most mundane activities. A longer research could help better recognize symptoms of depression.

What are these differences?

Depressed students tend to surf online much more randomly, frequently changing sites and applications. They also are more likely to use file-sharing sites and services, chat online, send messages and emails, watch online videos and play online games. Which pattern really stood out? The randomness. Dr. Chellappan connected this finding with the fact, that people suffering from depression have trouble concentrating, which would help understand reasons behind such activity patterns.

How Would Knowing This Connection Help?

According to the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) between 10 and 40% of all American students suffer from depression. It could almost be called an “epidemic”. Findings of Dr. Chellappan’s group could help deal with the pressing problem of depression among students.

This kind of study could help develop a new, effective tool to identify symptoms of depression. Software monitoring online activity could send an alert when Internet behavior patterns indicate signs of depression. It could also be installed in campus computer networks to help trained counselors detect students with mood disorders, and help them deal with their problems as soon as possible. I doubt that such software could be created before new studies are conducted on much bigger student groups. But the right idea is there, and it could only encourage further research.

If future studies confirm Chellappan’s findings, it would open the doors to analyzing Internet usage patterns of people suffering from other forms of mental disorders — for example anorexia or schizophrenia. It might also give a strong push for studies on other groups with high risk of depression such as war veterans or single elderly people.

Why Not?

The only disturbing thing about this research is concern about online privacy. If it were possible to diagnose depression through Internet usage patterns, then eventually it would be possible to create a “psychological profile” based only on an individual’s online activities.

Such profiles would be valuable for commercial companies and for public institutions. Employers could predetermine psychological profiles of future employees, and hire only those matching their expectations (or fire employees who showed undesirable psychological traits). Companies could tailor their advertisements for specific target groups (and those advertisements would work every time). To be honest – just the idea of an outside entity having my full psychological profile makes me a bit anxious. It seems Orwellian. But maybe I’m just paranoid – what do you think?

Author’s Bio:
Jack Samuelson is a contributing author who writes articles on numerous subjects. He has a wide range of interests, and a soft spot for weird news and funny stories. He has been an insightful observer of the world but always tries to balance his commitment to serious issues concentrating on some less serious, funny news. You can find him on Facebook