Get Rich and Happy Online

That’s where we all want to get to, right? Being rich AND happy? It is possible, that’s what the Get Rich and Happy Event is all about.

I am one of the featured speakers at the event which is in Philadelphia Nov 5, 6, 7. The event is going to feature 14 amazing speakers in all – Jim Britt – Jason Oman – Ken McArthur – Jim Donovan – just to name a few.

I’m really excited to be speaking at the event. I’m going to be speaking about eCommerce and Online Marketing in general and welcome as many questions as attendees can throw at me all weekend.

Get Rich and Happy is going to be a killer seminar. The breadth of experience and perspectives from the speakers is massive. With so many different approaches and types of businesses you will learn how to take your business to the next level… the way YOU want to.

The cost for this event is almost ridiculous it’s so low. For all 3 days with 14 amazing speakers, the cost is only $97.

http://getrichandhappyevent.com/?id=audreykerwood

I’ll be on a webinar for the event this coming Thursday, August 19th at 8pm Eastern. If you want a taste of what the seminar will be like or what I’m like in person, join us on the call here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/707770489

Larry Steinhouse and I will be talking about eCommerce and online marketing and I’ll be taking questions afterward. I’d love to hear from you.

The webinar is totally free, it’s part of the Get Rich and Happy Event series Larry has been doing with the seminar speakers. It’s going to be a great call and an even better event. Hope to see you at both!

Setting Up eShop For The 2010 Holiday Season

Want to make the most out your online store this holiday season?

You need to start planning NOW… and have the best Christmas season your store has ever experienced.

On this webinar, I will be taking you step-by-step through my own personal eCommerce holiday preparation process. I’ll not only show you WHAT I do, I’ll explain WHY and HOW it helps bring in more sales each year.

Sunday, August 1st at 7pm Eastern – Register here: http://eComIncubator.com

Each step from the end of August right up through the New Year will be covered. You can see exactly what an online store needs to do to raise it’s holiday presence and profits.

There will be live Q & A with Audrey following the presentation and 2 special BONUS GIFTS for attendees.

This is a totally free event, I hope to see you there!

http://eComIncubator.com

Whoops, I forgot about Mother’s Day…

It happens. We are all prone to forgetfulness at times, especially when we’ve got multiple plates spinning.

So yeah, I’ve been caught up with the new eCommerce Catayst Community, the eCom iPhone App I’m helping develop, two major site redesigns, plus a few other projects… and I forgot about Mother’s Day.

I’m not saying I forgot and the date has passed – as this writing Mother’s Day is still 5 days away – what I forgot was the marketing I should have done for my stores. Now there is not enough time to guarantee shipment in time for the holiday.

Suck.

Well, if you’re in the same boat or find you’ve missed a holiday marketing opportunity there is a way to salvage some of those lost profits. You’ll likely not make as much but some cash is better than no cash. So what is the answer?

Gift Certificates.

I know there is a certain stigma around gift certificates; they lack the thought that is said to be the real GIFT part of the gift. There are ways around that thinking. Here’s how I positioned my gift certificates for Mother’s Day.

~

Tapestries, whether they be wall hanging, pillow covers, table runners, or any other style make great gifts Mom will be surprised and excited to receive.

But it can be difficult to decide which style you think she would like the best. So instead of making a guess, why not give Mom a gift certificate so she can choose the style she likes best for her home decor.

What’s nice about a Tapestry Standard gift certificate is that it’s not some generic money voucher, it’s very specific and so shows the thought you put into deciding to give the gift of her choice of tapestry. It’s a fantastic way to show you care and give Mom the freedom to choose for herself.

~

I’m providing the “thought” and adding the benefit of Mom getting to choose. You can see the store blog post here: Wall Tapestries For Mother’s Day

So don’t fret if you find yourself behind at the approach of a holiday, salvage what you can and then set up a calendar alert so it doesn’t happen again

eCommerce Mistakes Over The Years

This is a reprint of an article I wrote for The Net Effect.

We all make mistakes. Whether it’s because we’re beginners who don’t know any better or we’re experienced storeowners having a “dumb moment” – it happens to everyone.

Of course you always learn from your mistakes but isn’t it so much better to learn from others so you don’t have to suffer the stress and/or profit loss to gain the knowledge? Absolutely. So here are my big eCommerce mistakes – we’ll start simple and go from there.

Some of these really are like duh… if you’ve made any of the same you can laugh along with me if you haven’t you can go right ahead and laugh at me while making a mental note not to do it yourself.

Whoops #1

The first order I ever received was paid through PayPal. It was simple; I got the order notification followed almost immediately by the PayPal payment receipt. It was awesome; I was on top of the world! Previous to store ownership I had sold on eBay and everyone paid me through PayPal, it worked the same way.

The second order was paid via credit card and so was authorized for the order amount… but not automatically charged. Since I had never had a merchant account or payment gateway and in all my store building excitement I set them up but didn’t bother to learn anything about them, I didn’t realize I had to charge the card myself.

I lost $200 on that sale and only realized it when I went to look in the backend to figure out how to do a refund.  I noticed it hadn’t been charged and the authorization had run out two days before.

Lesson learned, be sure you know how your gateway works or you may not be charging for your products.

Whoops #2

About eight months into the life of A2 Armory I got an email from one of my vendors about a new Braveheart Replica Sword they just started carrying. The price was low and the sword was hot! I immediately added it to the store, created an eye-catching ad for the home page, sent out a newsletter, and put a banner ad on a bunch of ezine type sites (they were still worth something then) – all without considering how many other stores were doing the same thing or the stock my vendor had.

I was able to fill two orders, the rest turned into irate customers who didn’t want to wait six weeks for the next shipment. Not fun.

Lesson learned, always check stock before running a big promotion.

Whoops #3

Finding a new vendor is exciting… all the new products and sales possibilities always put a smile on my face. But I don’t let myself get caught up and forget to make sure I know the vendor’s policies.

I once found a vendor with an awesome line of daggers and swords. I read all their sales literature and it seemed straightforward and acceptable. I added a bunch of their products to my site and since it was well-established orders for the new products started coming in right away. So far the new product line was performing exactly as planned.

I placed the first few orders and received an email from the vendor saying, “None of the orders placed meet the minimum order requirement for drop shipping and so would all be cancelled.”

Wait, what?

So I get on the phone, fighting to keep my cool, to find out what is going on. Apparently the sales literature was incorrect and the drop ship minimum is $100. Each of the items I’d added cost me less than $40 – I couldn’t sell their products unless I packaged them together. All the yelling was for naught, they wouldn’t budge. So I ended up cancelling the orders and dealing with disappointed customers.

Lesson learned, don’t assume anything about your vendor or their policies. Double check everything – at worst you spend a little extra time on the phone, at best you save yourself hassle and upset customers.

Whoops #4

A customer calls wondering what the charge from A2 Armory is on their credit card. I tell them who we are and what we sell and the customer says okay, he doesn’t remember ordering anything but he would sort it out. I say to please let me know if he has any more questions or needs more info about the order.

A few days later I receive a chargeback in the mail describing the order as fraudulent. I have no record of my phone call to send to the credit card company and the package has already shipped. The best I can do is refute the chargeback with my AVS information and the shipment tracking number, usually not enough for this type of chargeback.

I call the customer and get no response, same when I email. I ask that he please either refuse delivery or send the package back so I at least get the product back. I follow up my original chargeback case with a letter explaining that the product had already shipped and the customer was not responding to my emails for it to be returned, hoping they would see that something was amiss. No good, judgment in his favor and I never heard from him again.

Lesson learned, handle all customer issues yourself. Don’t rely on your customer to fix it, do the right thing, or even understand what’s going on. Once you relinquish control it’s hard to get it back again.

Whoops #5

There are problem customers who argue about restocking fees and return shipping then there are problem customers who threaten and/or waste huge amounts of your time.

I once had a customer who I’ll call Logan who fit into the second group. His first order from me was for a full armor breastplate and spaulders. He wrote me an email to tell me how excited he was to be getting his first real piece of armor and how he couldn’t wait to wear it, etc. It was nice – I like getting customer feedback.

After he received it I got another email. This one extremely hostile in tone saying the armor had cut him and was unsafe and if I didn’t take it back for a full refund I was going to be hearing from his lawyer. Whoa. I wrote back asking how he had put it on. After all the armor wasn’t sharp and if it was worn over something (as it is supposed to be) it would be very hard to cut yourself with. The response was more threats so I refunded him and paid for the armor to be returned.

A month later I got another order from Logan. It was for a sword and it was followed by an email asking if the blade was sharpened. I responded saying, “No, the blade is not sharpened but could still be considered sharp. Was he sure he wanted it.” The answer was yes, he was thrilled about the sword, he went on to say how beautiful it was and he was going to use it for display. Okay… I sent it.

Another nasty email asking if I knew what the word sharp meant. Once again my product was too dangerous and if I didn’t pay for it to be returned I was going to be in big trouble. I sent a semi-terse email back suggesting that Logan was handling the sword incorrectly and I would pay for the return again but he was no longer allowed to order from A2 Armory.

The next month Logan ordered again. This time he didn’t even get the chance to send an email about how excited he was. I cancelled his order immediately. He still tries to place orders from time to time but they are never filled.

Lesson learned, don’t deal with these problem customers – cut them off at the knees, they will only waste your time and money.

Whoops #6

A couple months after the Armory started to produce a steady income I decided to open a second store. I brainstormed, did a bunch of keyword research, and found a few drop shippers. I ultimately decided to open a store selling a line of dishware. I was meticulous about all the demand research I did and went in full force to build the store.

I had gotten everything in place – all my products, the site design, the merchant account, etc and it was ready to go. I started promoting it through paid ads and went to work getting it to rank in the natural search listings. In total I spent about two months dedicated to this store… all without looking closely enough at the supply side of the equation.

That was a major mistake. Ranking for every term related to my product line and bidding on the top spot in all the paid listings was my drop shipper. Their retail prices were too low for me to compete with, in some cases even lower than I could buy the items for.

They were unsympathetic when I called about it, saying their prices would not change. It was suggested that I concentrate on other ways of marketing like mail order or print ads and not try to compete with them. Yeah, okay, that’s ridiculous and I just wasted two months of work for absolutely nothing.

Lesson learned, do not neglect to research supply. Demand can be huge but if you can’t compete with other suppliers it won’t do you any good.

Learn from my mistakes, these are all big time and money wasters that will frustrate you and impede your forward progress.

eCommerce After The Holidays

In a way the holidays coming to an end is a relief. It’s an end to the hectic customer calls and emails, an end to extended working hours, an end to the year. Phew, it does feel good to relax.

The tough part is that when the holidays are over all too often the sales and profits plummet. Not a good way to start off the new year. But there’s not much you can do, right? I mean people were buying for Christmas, they’re not in the same buying mode now so it makes sense that sales would drop off… doesn’t it?

It doesn’t have to my friends. People have gotten cash for Christmas, they’re also gotten things they didn’t necessarily want and didn’t get things they did want. And, they ARE still in buying mode – only now it’s for themselves.

So how can you capitalize on the after holiday buying season? You can run after holiday sales and promotions.

Get on the phone with your vendors and find out what they have overstock on, then work out a deal to get you better pricing, and promote the crap out of that product. I’m running a “Get What You Really Wanted For Christmas” Sale in the Armory. As of this writing it is 4 days after Christmas… my sales have not dropped. And I don’t expect them to in any sudden fashion. They will eventually return to normal monthly levels, but not until around the middle of February and the decline will be a slow one instead of the typical drop off the cliff many eCommerce store owners experience.

So use your vendors, they will appreciate the continuing sales. Use your list, make them feel special and get them thinking that they most certainly do deserve to treat themselves. Use your store and your blog to get new customers buying with your super after Christmas discounts.

These tactics work and make the after holiday blow much much softer. If done right you won’t even feel it.

Article Marketing Continued…

All right, so we established that you should be writing articles to get more content out there and bring more traffic to your site. But what do you write those articles about? A lot of people end up writing much less than they should because they get hung up trying to come up with topic ideas.

I’m here to tell you, it’s not that complicated. If you’re running a store, you can write at least one article about each of your products and you should be able to get a bunch out of each of your categories as well. The trick is thinking in terms of story. You don’t want your articles to read like feature list, make them interesting by adding a little something that imparts the ownership experience to the reader. If people are going to click through to your site wouldn’t it be great if they were excited about your products instead of just interested?

I’ll give you some examples of article topics I’ve used for The Tapestry Standard:

How are tapestries woven?

History of the loom

William Morris tapestry history

How to hang a tapestry

How to clean a tapestry

How to get folds and wrinkles out of a tapestry

Mille Fleur styles, what is the symbolism

Abstract art vs Modern art - what are the differences

Complementary colors and room design

I think I might want a tapestry, but I have never owned one before

What should I look for when shopping

What style should I choose?

Why should tapestries hang an inch or two away from the wall?

It’s not hard to come up with a huge list of easy-to-write articles that people will be interested in reading and will find helpful.

Get on this. Next post we’ll talk about the final step in awesome article marketing… outsourcing the writing and distribution.

What Is StomperNet?

I just got an email from Brad Fallon over at StomperNet. I thought the email was so good I’m just posting it to you.

Here it is:

I had a GREAT call with the Faculty last night, answering
questions we had gotten from you and your colleagues.

It occurred to me – based on a number of the questions
you sent us about “what StomperNet is” – that should
write to you and just net it all out for you.

And that’s hard, because StomperNet is BIG.

We know that, and sometimes even WE have a hard time
getting our arms around it.

So today, I’d like to take a moment to simplify.

First and foremost, StomperNet is a TRAINING organization
- we will train you in every facet you need to be successful
online.

Our Library has over 1400 individual pieces of training -
we’re pretty sure it’s the largest Internet Marketing library around.

But it’s not just what we teach – it’s HOW we train that sets us apart.

Frankly, it’s pretty straightforward: some of our most
successful customers are the ones that just did EXACTLY
what we TRAINED them to: No fancy jiu-jitsu, just get the
basics right, ESPECIALLY the customers that were just
starting out.

Our training cuts through all the clutter out there to ensure
that the shortest distance between you and success is through
StomperNet.

But we support all that training with things that frankly, no other
organization on the planet can duplicate – all geared
around making sure that ALL your questions get answered and
QUICKLY:

We strongly believe that STRATEGY is critical to online success:
the proper business model, the most profitable niche, and ensuring
that you understand which are your *money* keywords.

Our 21 FACULTY members build all the cutting edge
training content, and answer your questions via Faculty
Office Hours, patrolling the forums, or backed into a corner
at a LIVE event.

Our state-of-the-art PORTAL delivers the over 1400
individual training pieces, plus 200,000 forum posts that
probably have 95% of your questions already answered (and
are well-organized and easy to find).

And if after that you STILL have questions, we have the
COMMUNITY: other Members and Moderators gladly helping
you out in the portal.

Sometimes you might need more strategic guidance – that’s
where our Professional COACHING comes in – they can
help you either in a group setting via our Masterminds, or
one-on-one if you prefer.

Our EVENTS are designed to support you face to face – we
have LIVE events several times a year for hands-on in-person
training. And we’ve even announced the StomperNet World
Tour – 18 cities next year – and StomperLocal to bring
StomperNet to the rest of the world.

And that’s what StomperNet WAS…for 3 years. And that was
enough for many of our members to build great businesses
for themselves and their families.

But it wasn’t enough for us.

In order for us to stay out front as the leading online training
company, we took a long look at how we could deliver MORE.

And we came to the conclusion that the one thing our members
were missing from us is TOOLS.

So we went and got some.

TEN of them…

…we call them StomperTools.

We hand-picked the Software and tools we considered to be
MUST HAVES for online success and to create competitive
advantage for your business — all INCLUDED in StomperNet
Membership:

• Market Samurai – best-in-class Market and Keyword Research tool
• Traffic Geyser – automated video submission tool to Social Media sites
• StomperStorm – incredibly easy to use split testing and Taguchi testing tool
• StomperCommerce - easy-to-use, SEO friendly shopping cart
• SEOQast - semi-automated massive ranking-oriented syndication tool
• ArticleQast – Send your articles directly to a network of over
  17,000 subscribing sites with YOUR links and link text defined
• StomperQast - Add text messaging to your integrated marketing efforts with this platform that includes text messaging, email, and
  social media
• CommuniQast - Telephone platform for EACH member (not VOIP) – Personal 800 number for inbound, plus conferencing, and
  21 other features
• ReviewQast – Ethical reviews of your products or service from 3rd
  party that get posted to Google Local or other review sites.
• StomperSocial – Like Tweetdeck on Steroids + Twitter Twenius training program

These tools would cost you well over $500 per month if you got
them separately, and that doesn’t count over $1,000 in setup
charges and fees.

So, there it is.

As you can see, StomperNet wants to give you all you need to
succeed with your online business.

No matter what level you’re at, between our tools, training,
faculty, events, and community – this is the greatest Internet
Marketing Success System there is.

Don’t ask us – ask the countless members whose lives have been
changed for the better over the last 3 years.

We invest a lot in our customers’ success.

Very soon, you’ll have your chance to join us and change your future.

And we’ll be offering ALL of this for a price that ANYONE can
afford – you can’t get HALF of what we have anywhere else for
TEN TIMES the price.

$197 per month.

That’s StomperNet – as simple as I can make it.

Are you serious about online success?

If so, we think your next decision is pretty easy.

So we’ll see you on the inside, where we’re ALL serious
about it.

Best regards,

Brad Fallon
CEO
StomperNet

That’s it. There is a ton more information at:

Stomper999

StomperNet opens up again tomorrow.

StomperNet is the best for good reason, and has my highest endorsement.

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!

Going To Live 8?

Why yes I am.

I’ll be around all weekend so seek me out and let’s have a chat. I’m excited to actually “meet” all of you in person. It’s going to be a fun and informative time. I’m sure I’ll have lots to talk about after the trip.

I’ll be posting updates and such on my social networks, so now is a great time to hook up with me:

http://www.facebook.com/audreykerwood

http://www.twitter.com/a2armory

That’s where I’ll be posting regularly. Hook up with me online and if you’re at Live 8 come say hi. Hope to see everyone there!

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