Archive for ECommerce Business
What would happen to your ecommerce business if something happened to you? Do you have a backup plan? Can your business survive without you? Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I have not been updating it as frequently as I had in the past. Well, first let me say that I am ok and that I have not closed down the blog. But I did have an extended illness that came up suddenly and it made me put this site on hold while I recovered. I am not 100% yet, but doing much better. Read more... (474 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)
Recently, a friend of mine who works for a non-profit company asked me how he could apply some of the knowledge we have talked about as he was considering starting his own little side ecommerce business. I told him he could be as big or as small as he wants to be, that there is no “right size” that makes you successful or even profitable. Its all a matter of your wishes and what scale you choose to participate. There is a certain threshold you have to hit, if you want to “make a living”, but many people are just happy making a little money on the side. Here is the advice I gave him: Read more... (571 words, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)
Well, I have been a luke-warm supporter of eBay for the past few years now. In its early days I was a big fan. I started selling casually on eBay around 1999, and eventually launched an eBay store and significantly grew my eBay sales to a few thousand dollars per month in the early 2000’s… Around the same time, I launched my eBay store I launched other web stores and it has been nonstop since. But year after year of changes has caused me to move further and further away from eBay. Even when eBay became unpopular with its seller crowd a few years back, I hung in there because I realized that there is a premium to be paid to get foot traffic to your listings and eBay still has foot traffic. But once again eBay has changed its fee structure to try and draw more seller listings. But what is good for eBay isn’t always good for all sellers. Internet Retailer Magazine has a great article on eBay’s strategy and why eBay thinks it is great for them to mess again with the fees that sellers pay. eBay recently reduced the fees on most fixed price listings in the hopes that it will encourage sellers to list more items. Read more... (886 words, estimated 3:33 mins reading time)
Wondering why your online store is not doing well in the search engines? Start by looking at your product descriptions. Most online sellers use the manufacturer descriptions when describing their products. Do you? If so, do you expect the search engines to treat your site any different from the other online merchants out there using the same default descriptions? Read more... (278 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)
