StomperNet 9/09/09 Launch Tomorrow!

Yes, it is almost here and I am super excited! No matter what type of online thing you do, StomperNet can and will help you do it better. The faculty has been expanded, the structure has been changed, and the resources that have been put together are incredible.

I’m not prone to exaggeration or hype marketing, I am truly excited about what has been put together. Business owners of all types and levels are going to benefit from these changes and that brings a smile to my face.

I’ve always enjoyed teaching – it’s a selfish thing – I like helping people succeed, it makes me feel good. I never recommend anything I don’t personally believe in. Those that already know me know that to be true. It’s all about Good Energy!

Check out the launch here: StomperNet 999.

Are You Article Marketing?

Article marketing is wonderful on many levels. Think about all the ways it can help both your business and your website – they are related but not always one and the same.

First and most obvious. They allow you to create content rich pages to expand your site that are useful to you visitors. That alone is enough of a reason to be writing them. But wait there is so much more…

You can use in-context links to strategically build your internal site linking structure. Internal site structure is all about control. You’re creating these pages with specific purposes in mind and can use whatever anchor text is best to link to the pages you most want link juice going to. Fantastic, but that’s still not all.

These articles can easily be repurposed and used on blogs, article directories, other people’s sites, Squidoo Lenses, etc. So you’re creating content based around your business that will be used on other domains that have the possibility to rank for your keywords. Hmm, this sounds like a path to domination.

And there are still links. Not all the directories will allow followed links but plenty do which means while you’re building this great, SEO friendly content you’re also getting external links to your site. And again, just like on your own site, since you are creating these articles you control the anchor text. Bullseye!

I don’t go out and search for links very much anymore. Instead I concentrate on creating articles because I get links that are surrounded by related content that I can link to any page in my site (not a fan of always having to link to only my home page). At the same time I’m expanding both my website and my external content.

Articles are 100% win.

Start writing people!

9/09/09

Many of you know that I am one of the faculty members at StomperNet and many of you have heard about the “something” that will be happening on 9/09/09 at 9:09:09 am. And if you haven’t you can check it out here: StomperNet 9/09/09. Oh yes, it is exciting.

Now I’m certainly not going to give anything away but I do want to let you eCommerce people know that I am involved. There is going to be a lot more eComm-centric stuff going on with StomperNet and I am going to be there for you!

If you’re already a member, I am going to be doing my first Faculty Office Hours call next Wednesday at 8pm EST. Hop on and let’s talk shop(ping), I love it and am excited to be working more closely with all of you.

I’m still working on my post about Live 8. It was such an awesome time I’m finding it hard to articulate but it will be posted in a few days. I met a lot of eComm people there – some who I’ve known online for years and others I talked to for the first time. I took your suggestions to heart and am working with Brad and the rest of the staff to make StomperNet more eCommerce friendly. I think you’re going to love it.

There’s Not Enough Time In The Day

Yep, it’s happened to all of us. You get up bright and early and start working away and before you know it it’s 10pm and you still have half your To Do list left.

“How did that happen? There’s not enough time in the day!”

Owning and running your own business can be a time consuming endeavor, especially during start-up or when you’re beginning a new project or expansion. It can get very stressful, I’ve been there. It can easily swallow up all your time and leave you feeling like you’re never going to get ahead.

Here’s the truth, you are never going to have nothing to do. There will always be more promotion you can do, more products to add, little problems popping up here and there, etc. That’s how it is with business – any business. Unless you hire someone to take over all the management while you sit back in your big, comfy CEO chair you’re going to be busy.

And that’s fine. Maybe someday you will hire someone to take over so you can just chill. But until you get to that point you have to pace yourself so you don’t get overwhelmed and lose control.

Before I start talking about actually managing your time, I want you to accept something – your To Do list will never be empty. As soon as you accept that you will feel less stressed and more in control. Business is like that, there is always something that needs attention. If you ever find yourself with nothing to do, you’re not doing something you should.

So how do you keep from getting overwhelmed when you’re pouring your heart, soul, and time into something that will never be finished? Police yourself.

Everyone does this differently. Some people create very strict time tables for themselves; blocking out time to work on one project and when that time is up they move into the next time block and the next project. Some people set goals; once one goal is reached they move onto the next. Some break up the days of the week; Monday is for blogging, Tuesday is for conversion work, Wednesday is for Paid Ads, and so forth. You’ll want to experiment to see what works best for you personally.

Here’s what I do:

I don’t work well under strict structure, I’m much more of a fly by the seat of my pants kind of gal. So I set one or two main goals for each day and once they are reached I work on smaller stuff. I always have several projects going on at once, the goals I set are not “Complete Project #1 then work on newsletters and articles”, I don’t make the project my goal – I make part of the project my goal.

For example, I am writing a How To eCommerce Book. If I made my goal the book, I wouldn’t be able to work on anything else for weeks. So instead I make one or two chapters my goal and then work on other aspects of my business. Then the next day my goal will be two more chapters.

Pay attention to how you work. You can try keeping a daily journal detailing time spent and work completed. That may help you determine how you work best. Don’t try to force yourself into a structure that is too stringent for you, you’ll end up getting frustrated which leads to lower productivity.

Think about breaks during the day too. Working from sun up to sun down might sound like it’ll help you get a ton accomplished but very few people can actually stay focused for that long. That’s not how we’re wired. I like to take a walk in the afternoon – get outside, away from the computer, just for a little while. Breaks are refreshing and will help you maintain a solid level of productivity throughout the day.

There will be days when you don’t reach your goals. Don’t freak out, it happens to the best of us. The reasons for it are as varied as our personalities and lives. Don’t let the failure to meet a goal get you down, just get up the next day, readjust your plans if you need to, and get it done. It’s not the end of the world and you CAN do it.

The Work At Home Diet

This isn’t a recipe, nor is it specifically eCommerce related. This is personal advice from one work at homer to another… take advantage of your situation and take care of yourself.

You no longer have that half hour commute in the morning – sleep longer or do some exercising. Don’t wake up, head straight for your email, then park yourself for the rest of the day. That’s not good for you. Make yourself a healthy breakfast AND lunch. You have access to your kitchen now, no need for a daily peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I know a lot of people who work from home and many of them have the same habits as they did while working at an office. Part of the joy of working from your home is being able to do things you couldn’t when you were on someone else’s time schedule. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in your business (because it is YOUR business) and it can easily take over your life in ways most regular jobs won’t.

Don’t let it.

I’m not suggesting your shirk your responsibilities or take a cavalier attitude toward your business, far from it, I work everyday and not just for a couple of hours. I know what it’s like to be consumed by it, when I first started I would spend as much time in front of the computer as my poor, tired eyes would allow. I didn’t even like to stop to eat, I would make a quick sandwich or microwave meal and eat while I worked.

That is not healthy.

Even if you can’t stand to be away while your’e eating, at least take the time to make something good for yourself. Of course there are still days when I get lost in what I’m doing or I’m busy with a project and a hurried meal while working is the best option, but that is rare. If you’re constantly tied to your computer, your home business won’t be fun and rewarding as it should be. And if you let it, it will take over.

Enjoy the benefits of working for yourself otherwise running your home business will be just as bad as working for someone else. Own your business, don’t let it own you.

Cross Sells, Upsells, Upgrades!

Everyone wants to make more profit per sale. That’s the best way to increase your income without having to increase your traffic, advertising, or product offerings. There are many ways to do this – generally limited only by your imagination and your programmer’s skills. But there is one very common and easy way to get more out of each conversion…

Cross Selling

Actually I like to break it down further into cross selling, upselling, and upgrading. Most store platforms have at least some form of cross selling function available. Take advantage of it. Whether it is on your product pages or in your shopping cart you want to use it for everything you sell, it works. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let me first explain exactly what I’m talking about.

Products featured as “other items you might be interested in” or “other customers also bought” are commonly known as cross sells. They are on every product page in your store and/or your cart page. Cross sells are basically related items.

Products that are add-ons for another product are referred to as upsells. An example would be headphones for an MP3 player. A lot of people lump these in as cross sells, I’m not a big fan of that, I like to use both if applicable and keep them separated.

Upgrades may or may not apply to your products. It doesn’t have to be for electronics only, I sell swords that can be sharpened for an additional amount, I consider that an upgrade. Anything that is part of the product that can be customized or changed is an upgrade.

If you have the functionality in your store you should take the extra few seconds to set it up for each product. By making it simple for your customers to add other products they might want to their cart you’re increasing your chances of making a higher profit. These functions are helpful and shoppers like them – done right they can make shopping at your store more convenient which is something shoppers will remember and come back for.

Here are some examples of how I use cross selling, upselling, and upgrades in my stores.

Some platforms allow you to discount items that are offered as cross sells. For example, in the Armory I sell a cloth arming cap for medieval helmets. It sells for $17 if purchased alone but if a customer adds a helmet to the cart they have the opportunity to buy it for $15. This sort of incentive based cross selling is not only a great idea, it also works very well.

That cross sell takes place on the cart page but I like to have upsells on my product pages too. For instance on every one of my tapestry product pages I offer an option to add a rod to the order. I put it in a drop down box right next the order button, all the customer has to do is select from the box. It’s easy; the customer doesn’t have to even look around the page. You can go one step further and discount those add-on items to entice the customer into placing a bigger order.

I use this tactic with great success in the Armory. The pictures I use for my medieval clothing are mostly of a model in a full knight costume. So someone interested in the tunic being featured might also want the belt, crown, sword, or any of the other accessories that are pictured. So I offer these in a drop down just like I offer the rods on my tapestry site. When I started doing this my “average products per order” increased. Yours can too with very little effort.

Get cross selling going for your store, it is simple and incredibly important for your business. If your store platform doesn’t have a cross sell function see about getting a developer to create one for you. You can increase your profits without more traffic or more ads – just show your current customers what you have to offer and make it easy for them to buy it.

Drop Ship Versus Wholesale

I’m partial to drop shipping, I always try to find a company that will drop ship a particular product. Drop shipping usually fits my business model better than wholesale stocking, for a few key reasons;

1. I have several eCommerce stores that, in total, carry thousands of different products. If I purchased those products wholesale, I’d need a very large and expensive warehouse for all of those boxes to live.

2. With that vast of a product line, inventory management would become a fulltime position along with shipping and receiving.

Keep in mind that the above situation is not true for all eCommerce storeowners. I happen to own many stores with many products per store – not everyone does.

Also, many eCommerce storeowners don’t sell products that occupy the same amount of space as a suit of armor, medieval shield, or wall-sized tapestry – I do. The products you sell may not take up a huge volume of floor space.

The bottom line is, your decision to warehouse inventory or find a drop shipper to do it for you must be based on factors specific to your business situation, like:

1. Do you have the room in your home to store goods?
2. If you don’t, do you have the means to rent a small public storage facility or share warehouse space with a local business?
3. Do you have the operating capital to purchase a quantity or products in bulk from a wholesaler?
4. Are you prepared to deal with yourself or hire someone to do your shipping and handling?

Those are pretty obvious. But what might be surprising to you is that when you purchase bulk wholesale from a company, you may be able to do so at a substantial savings over drop shipping. In fact, when I do purchase goods in volume, I often realize a savings between 10% and 40% over a drop shipped product.

If you’re in a very competitively priced market, having those extra margins may mean the difference between competing effectively, or not competing at all.

However, I want to share with you a concept that I believe can make a huge difference in your ability to grow your business. That concept is called “Effective Time Management”. What I’m talking about is not being able to schedule your business work time effectively – even though that’s important, it’s not what this is about.

I’m talking about being able to make a judgment between low value work and high value work. Here is what I mean…

The most effective use of your time online, or in any business environment for that matter, is growing your business’s sales volume. That means getting more traffic, turning that traffic into customers, and turning those customers into repeat buyers.

You turn your traffic into customers by having an effective sales presentation on your site, offering incentives to buy, and merchandising products in a unique way. You turn customers into repeat buyers by following up with them, communicating information that they are interested in, and offering a pleasant buying experience. And you spend time refining and enhancing all of the above by testing different methods.

I’d like to think that I have some experience in these areas, and it’s been that experience that all other considerations for your business, other than the above, are secondary. Sure, you need to manage your books, your Internet connection, your vendors, your credit card merchant, and your cash flow, etc. But what makes a business successful is the amount of sales volume that it generates.

And that’s what I’m talking about. low value work is the sort of work that doesn’t do anything to increase your sales volume. While it might be necessary in order to operate your business, it doesn’t do anything to grow it.

High value work, by my definition in eCommerce, consists of the following procedures:

1) Site Conversion testing and tweaking
2) Search Engine Optimization
3) Paid Advertising
4) Customer Follow-Up
5) Unique Product Offerings in the form of packages or special value purchases.

Hey, I’m a business owner. I realize that you have to do both. But your priority should always be growing your sales volume. That’s why I drop ship.

I know that is a long-winded explanation for the reason I drop ship. But consider this – when I get an order from one of the stores, all I have to do to fill that order is take the incoming email that I got from my shopping cart, and turn that into an order for our drop shipper.

That means having 2 windows open and copying information from my email into the order form on my vendor’s website. Total time to complete? 60 seconds.

Sure, as a drop shipper, I make less money per sale than I would if I were an inventory stocking eCommerce storeowner, but I spend far less time completing the transaction of the sale. No picking, sorting, packing, labeling, or shipping. In a sense, all I’m really doing it turning around an email. And that’s why I try to drop ship whenever I can.

Having said that, there are times when I can’t find a drop shipper for a product that I want to sell. When that happens, I here’s what I do:

I find a source for that product and ask the wholesaler for some samples. I then create the product listing, drive some traffic to it with some paid ads, and measure the results. I figure out exactly how much money it cost me to generate a sale for that product, then figure out if I can make a profit selling it like that.

If I can, I’ll purchase a minimum quantity from the wholesaler, ship it all to a fulfillment center or ask the manufacturer to warehouse it for me (they will sometimes do this), and start optimizing those product pages for the free search engines while I’m driving traffic to that page with paid ads.

See what I’m doing here? I’m taking a very small financial risk to determine if that product sells at a profit for my company. I’m using paid traffic to determine if I can sell that product. Testing the water before I dive in. Only after I’m able to judge that product’s effectiveness by testing will I make a financial commitment to it and buy a quantity of it from the wholesaler. Then, in order to keep the sales fulfillment cycle short and easy, I send that inventory to a fulfillment center that picks it, packs it, and ships it for me.

The best of both worlds. The key to this method is testing testing testing!

I need to find out if I can make a profit selling that product by using the most expensive method of online advertising available (at least when you compare it to free search engine Traffic) – paid ads. If I can generate a profit from a sale from this traffic, then I’m pretty confident that my profit margins can only improve once I start to optimize that product page for the natural search.

In my opinion, this is the lowest risk method of determining a product’s potential for your store, short of finding a drop shipper right off the bat.

Take Advantage of Holidays

Not just the big ones… all holidays.

I get a lot of sales newsletters around the major holidays – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc – but not nearly as many around the smaller holidays like Father’s Day, Labor Day, and others of that sort. Why? I honestly don’t know.

Perhaps some storeowners forget about these holidays until they’re upon them. Maybe they don’t think they are big enough to warrant a sale. Or maybe they don’t think their products apply to what’s being celebrated.

Whatever the reason, it’s a bad call. If BestBuy can have a Valentine’s Day sale (and they do) you can too, no matter what you sell. Your products DO NOT have to be related to the season for you to celebrate it with a sale.

Some stores will do better than others during different holidays, that’s just logic, and my Swords For Your Sweetheart sale newsletter might not make me a million dollars but I guarantee I will make me more than if I didn’t send it out.

Then again your subscribers might love the idea. I had a couple emails about my Valentine’s Day sale last year saying the idea never would have occurred to them but the sword was a big hit.

Many people have a tendency to forget the smaller holidays which is another good reason to promote these sales. You remind them with a newsletter geared toward the upcoming holiday and pack it with discounts and you give them an easy solution to the problem of finding a gift. Offer your customers the path of least resistance and your sales will be successful.

So keep on top of your calendar. Know what holiday is coming and start promoting sales ahead of time. Be sure to send out your newsletters early enough so your customers won’t have to worry about their products arriving late. Be creative in what you offer and try to tie into the season as much as possible. Your customers will thank you with orders.

The Customer is NOT Always Right

“The customer is always right.”

Yes yes, we storeowners already know that is rarely the case but we pretend they are anyway because it’s what we’ve always been taught. Businesses are supposed to meet all their customers’ demands… no matter how ridiculous.

Well I say no!

I rely on my customers to make my business possible. I care about their gripes and listen to their requests but when a customer mistreats my employees or starts to cost my business money, I draw the line.

Most issues are perfectly legitimate and most customers are fair about them; ie. if a product arrives damaged they don’t automatically assume you shipped it that way and fly off the handle.

There are going to be problems from time to time, that’s just the natural order of the universe. You’re even going to screw up a few times, no one is perfect. You just apologize, fix it, and maybe throw in a little something extra for the customer if it was a big error. Everyone ends up happy, or at least satisfied.

But there are times when you NEED TO FIRE A CUSTOMER.

If you have your policies spelled out on your site (which you should!) it is the customer’s responsibility to read, understand, and accept them before making a purchase. You need to have pages like your return policy, FAQ, terms and conditions, etc clearly defined and available for your customers. You should link to them from your site pages, your cart pages, and include links to them in your customer follow-up emails.

This is imperative for regular issues as well as major problems.

By making your policies clear and readily available you’re doing everything you can to make sure the customer knows and accepts the rules. I do this on every one of my sites without exception.

So when a customer balks about a restocking fee or tries to return something months after the return period has expired I can point them to the pages on the site and explain, very nicely, that they are wrong. Most of the issues end right there.

But every now and again you’ll get one that just won’t see reason. Here’s where you need to be judicious. If they are giving you a huge problem over a couple bucks, let them have it. It doesn’t matter if they’re wrong, they’re wasting your time and by letting them go early you’re probably saving yourself the hassle of a chargeback.

If it’s a large amount or they’re harassing your customer service reps, give em a pink slip. You should not have to waste your time and lose a chunk of money because they couldn’t be bothered to read your return policy. As long as your policies are clearly displayed and the customer got everything they ordered you are not in the wrong.

Make sure you always keep all customer information and correspondence because in situations like this you’ll need it to win the chargeback that’s most likely coming. I have only ever lost one chargeback in a case like this, the credit card companies are usually pretty fair and you give yourself a lot of leverage by presenting all the evidence you can to support your case.

Here is an example from my own experience.

I have no control how my customer’s monitors are set, what shows up as pink on my screen could look more like red on someone else’s; so in a store where I’m selling something very dependent on color, like my tapestry store, I have a note on my return policy page that says: Due to the variations in monitors, colors of the actual tapestries may vary from the pictures shown. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email us at info@european-wall-tapestries.com.

So when a customer wants to return a tapestry that isn’t quite same color they expected and are trying to force us to forgo the restocking fee I don’t bow down. First I offer them a free exchange – no restocking fee on the return if they want something else and if they choose a more expensive item I’ll give them a little discount to make up for the inconvenience.

If they refuse that and continue demanding, I simply let them know that those are our terms, they are clearly posted on the website, and I give them the information they need should they decide to return the tapestry. Then I end the communication. I am never rude or condescending – stick to the facts and be professional in your correspondence.

In cases like that, most of my customers accept the restocking fee and return the product and the others submit chargebacks. Let me just reiterate that this happens very rarely, I’m talking maybe 3 or 4 times a year.

These people will just keep arguing with you, you will not win.

Don’t be afraid to fire a demanding customer. By taking up your time or your employees’ time they are weakening your business and that is the opposite of what customers are supposed to do.

The Social Marketing Time Suck

Social Marketing your eCommerce store can be fun, it can be tedious, or somewhere in the middle. There is also so much of it to be done and so many different avenues to take that you can become so engrossed in it that you ignore other areas of your business.

I’ve had days where something fun or cool was happening on Twitter and I had to use all my will to stop hitting the refresh button and go get some actual work done. It’s bound to happen sometimes but if it becomes a habit you’ll end up wasting time that could and should be spent doing things that make you money.

I’m not suggesting that you avoid social networks, they can do great things for your business, you just have to watch that you stay focused while using them.

You should regularly post and respond to your followers and friends but it should be a get-in-and-get-out sort of thing. If you hang around too long you can easily spend hours clicking through pages, comments, and pictures; or worse get caught up with silly distractions like quizzes and games.

I try to spend no more than a half hour or so a day working on my social networking. I go in, spend a few minutes on one, and then move onto the next. I do the rotation a few times a day and am able to stay caught up with what’s going on and communicate with my networks without it taking away from my work time.

If you do it right, it’s a great way to take a break from whatever main project you’re working on while still doing something positive for your business.

Twitter: Audrey Kerwood

Facebook: Audrey Kerwood

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