Common Sense eCommerce

Have you ever been to website and bought something; then noticed how difficult the buying process was?  Then contrast that to a website that does a superb job of completing the transaction with as little interference as possible.  I like to sit up and take notice of both extremes and ask where our websites fit into this spectrum.

I like to think they’re near the second, but it’s nice to go through the shopping cart process once in awhile to test and ‘play the customer’.  Amazon and GoDaddy are both examples of confusing places to conduct transactions.  I think it has to do mostly with the barrage of upselling going on at those sites.

I have nothing against upselling and in fact, it should be part of every business strategy.  Whether it has any place in the shopping carts of commodity purchases like Amazon or GoDaddy transactions is somewhat debatable. But I’m pretty sure they could both do a better job of upselling without hitting you over the head with everything they have to offer that’s related.

I also am an Amazon MarketPlace seller, so I see both sides of the coin there.  I often get complaints from customers who say they didn’t mean to buy that item or that they’re confused about which vendor they bought it from (when items are aggregated from different MarketPlace sellers, strange things happen).

Bottom line, make sure your transaction process is painless for the customer.  They might remember how painless it was and want to return!  If it’s painful, they’ll probably remember that too.
Tags: Online Transcation Process, Shopping Cart Process, Online Upselling, eCommerce Transactions

We have several websites that sell physical products via drop shipping arrangements as well as an eBay business. Every once in awhile, we’ll get a note from the customer in the order notes instructing us that “No Signature is Required”, “Delivery Signature not Needed”, or something to that affect.

The other day we got this kind of note on a $300 item.  We went ahead and sent it ‘Signature Required’.  At some point, it is up to the business to make this choice, not the customer.   If the item is lost, stolen, misdelivered, etc. who bears the risk? In some cases, the shipping company will, but usually the risk bearer is the business, not the customer.

If the delivery driver leaves the item on the porch without a signature and it disappears, is the customer going to be willing to eat that loss?  On an expensive item, probably not.  We have no idea what kind of neighborhood or safety conditions exist where we’re sending it.  For example, we don’t know if it’s an enclosed front porch away from the street or a doorway right next to the sidewalk.

On lower cost items, like something that’s worth $20, we might be willing to shoulder the risk, but on more expensive items the signature thing is our choice, not theirs. We use $100 as a cut off.  This doesn’t always make for a happy customer, but we have to balance the risk in our business.

Starting a Drop Ship business on the web is one way to make money using the internet. It’s particularly favorable for a home-based model because you don’t have to stock any product. Someone else does the inventory management and fulfillment for you.

There are lots of things to consider when evaluating a drop ship supplier. One of them is turnaround time. How quickly can they turn your order around?

I recently had to dump a drop shipper from my list of possible suppliers because their turnaround time was 2 to 3 weeks. Customers typically will not appreciate having to wait several weeks for their order to be shipped. There might be certain kinds of products where this is necessary and acceptable, such as monogrammed or otherwise personally customizable products. But for items displayed on a website, while they can’t “have it now”, they will “want it soon”.

One way to find out what a drop ship supplier’s turnaround time is would be to place a test order. Often turnaround time is missing from their terms and conditions document and the “salesperson’s version” may not be true.

So — when sizing up a possible supplier to do your drop shipping, make sure you find out about turnaround time.

Tags: Drop Ship Business, Home Based Business, Drop Ship Supplier, Drop Ship Home Business

I received an embarrassing email in my box this weekend.  It had this as a subject line:

Hi !firstname_fix}, This set a record at Clickbank

!Firstname_fix?  The worst part is that is from a very well known, highly successful internet marketer.  You probably know his name.  In fact, maybe you saw this as well.  I know his list is very large. 

This is a problem with the email auto responder setting. If you are going send out an email blast, marketing gurus, please make sure your auto responder is set up properly.  My name is not !firstname_fix}.

That is a really quick, quick way to get your email deleted before being read.

What is eBay’s credibility going into 2007? From the buyer perspective, I think eBay’s credibility issues are probably much the same as they’ve always been. In Steve Woda’s Blog (link here), he attributes buyer trust problems to ‘information asymmetry’. According to Mr. Woda, information asymmetry exists where:

… one party has more or better information about the product than the other party. In eCommerce and on eBay, the seller clearly has an information advantage over the buyer, and this is information asymmetry.

I think this is an issue facing eCommerce in general, but it’s particularly apparent on eBay. This is due to many factors such as eBay not qualifying sellers and seller related fraud on eBay.

What about from the seller perspective? eBay Sellers were treated to a huge amount of flip flopping from eBay this past year and I will go out on a sturdy limb and say that seller trust in eBay is waning.

There was the announcement early in the year where eBay promised it would direct more traffic to eBay stores and give them more exposure. Yet on July 19th (almost two months after eBay live - the annual public relations event), Bill Cobb announced an enormous store fee increase and a reduced store exposure strategy, contradicting the earlier direction. This was given under the limp banner of “Resetting the Balance of the eBay Marketplace”.

Then there was the confusing paid ad partnerships with Google and Yahoo! (Yahoo for United States eBay users, and Google for Non U.S. users). And there is the persistent problem with the money eBay spent on Skype and their failure to bring it to market in any meaningful form.

In general, this has not been a good year for eBay establishing trust among sellers. There are already indicators that sellers are leaving eBay or are in transition. As an eBay seller myself, I would ask eBay: What have you done for me lately?

Tags: eBay Selling, eBay Stores, eBay Sellers, eBay Credibility

Such is the trumpet call from online shopping fans. This article  (Article Link Here)describes the scene at a CompUSA store on Thanksgiving. CompUSA is one of the retail stores that decided to open on Thanksgiving day to try to get a jump on the holiday shopper’s desire for electronic goodies.

Is it cheaper to buy on the internet? One could probably compare the price of fuel to the shipping charge incurred when purchasing online. And what if the store you go to is out of the thing you want? Will they get it for you or will they give you directions to another store (where you will expend more fuel getting to and from).

I suppose some people like the ‘holiday crowd’ hustle and bustle thing. I am old enough to remember Holiday shopping before the internet and I can assure you, that all of the people on my gift list will receive gifts bought online. There are those of us who don’t really like waiting in long lines (see my previous post on line management) and would rather shop online.

The selection online is far more vast than your neighborhood scope can ever be - even if you live near a Wal-Mart. The biggest drawback to Holiday Shopping online is the window of time. One must plan ahead to shop online for the holidays. Things purchased after about December 15th may or may not arrive in time. After that, it’s off to the store!

Online shopping is great for planners-ahead, but for last minute buyers, there is no substitute for that physical retail store.

Tags: Online Shopping, Holiday Shopping, Christmas Shoppers, Holiday Shoppers

One of my pet peeves in life is waiting in line.  It has to do, I think, with a larger part  of me that doesn’t like time wasters - the kind that waste my time when I’m trying to get something accomplished.  Oh, I can mitigate this somewhat by bringing my web enabled cell phone with me, or if I’m really expecting a long wait, my iPod.  Or I can try striking up a conversation with someone else in line.

Retail establishments and other organizations with waiting lines often spend lots of effort and money developing ways to make their lines move faster.  This is ok - a moving line is always better than a line that only nudges every few minutes. 

What about accepting that there will be lines and just doing something to make the time in line more enjoyable? That’s exactly what one of the local Bank of America branches near me has done.  Banks often have the worst lines.  Not all teller transactions are equal and some of them seem to take enormous amounts of time. 

This Bank of America branch simply put up a few large flat screen TV monitors, mounted at near eye level in various places so that you could see the TV from any point in line.  It was not that elaborate - I would say the screens were basic 25 or 27 inch models piping a cooking channel from cable or satellite.  But it was just a ‘little thing’ that made my trip to the bank less un-enjoyable. Plus I got a great idea for a no-crust, no-bake pumpkin pie!

We often see failure as something to be avoided.  But failure is part of every business.  There are little ones and there are big ones.  Obviously, it’s wise to try to avoid the catastrophic failures.  But trying to learn from the little failures along the way can help you build a better business. 

For example, if you use QuickBooks for your accounting software, use the reports to see what parts of your business are loosing money and correct them. If a business entity is loosing money, try to figure out a way to turn it around or get rid of it.

One of the advantages of being a small business is that you can ‘turn on a dime’. Take those little failures and turn them into something else!

Too many little failures can lead to bigger ones.  Being aware of them and taking action on them will be a giant step toward success. 

It seems that there are companies that just don’t do Customer Service - unless they’re forced to by competition.  Take a look at your local public utility company.  If they’re like ours, they’re hardly the models of exemplary Customer Service.  After all, where else can you get your water or electricity?  They know you can’t go anywhere else and they treat their customers accordingly.

But what happens when competition is introduced?  Think about what has happened with the local or regional phone companies.  In our case, that’s Qwest. Just a few short years ago, you could have included Qwest in that ‘public utility’ category with no competition and treating their customers accordingly.

In recent years however, competition has been introduced.  You can now get wireless phone service from a wide variety of carriers.  You can get a Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone solution from a broad range of choices.  In many areas, you can even get phone service from your cable company (via VOIP)!

Presumably adapting to that changing market, Qwest stepped up to a higher level of customer service.  In fact, they might now be considered a model of large corporate customer service.  Is this ’stepping up’ genuine or bogus?  It’s debatable whether that even matters.  What matters is the customer won and competition probably drove that company to step up to a higher level of customer service.

Tags: Customer Service, Customer Relations, Customer Relationship Management

When we talk about Google, everyone thinks about Google the search engine. But what about their other products? For some time, it seemed that Google was just putting out product after product at a dizzying rate. Some were in beta, some were successful, and some were not. They still put out interesting products, but it’s beginning to look like they may be focusing on fine tuning the things that work well and getting rid of those things that are not so successful.

Google News recently came out of what seemed like a very long beta status. It now includes news archive searches (although you have to pay to actually see the content on a lot of those search results). The Google News is a very refined and successful product.

Orkut was a ‘not so successful’ product. It was supposed to be an answer to MySpace in the social networking arena, but apparently was only popular among certain undesirable elements. It created a public relations nightmare for Google in Brazil and India. Now it’s no longer shown on their page of Google products although the Orkut website is still live.

The ‘Google Base’ just celebrated it’s one year anniversary. Base is a product that’s still developing and showing growing promise with integration to other products.

Google shows an amazing amount of flexibility for such a large company. The ability to quickly ditch markets that aren’t performing well and build up on ones that do, is easier for smaller business. But Google seems to do a good job of emulating this core small business strategy.

Tags: Google Products, Google Branding, Google Base, Google News, Google Orkut

Back in the day, well not too long ago, link exchanges were all the rage.  You link to me, I’ll link to you.  The online version of reciprocal back-scratching, each link was supposed to benefit the linkee with an inbound link.

It was such a rage that software packages were built around the concept. Software like SEO Elite that would manage this network of reciprocal links for you. (SEO Elite has value beyond that, thankfully).

But with each successive Google update, these link arrangements became more and more suspect.  I can remember as early as February of 2005 hearing warning sounds coming from SEO professionals about these kinds of arrangements.  There was even some anecdotal evidence that these link swap arrangements can penalize your rankings.

Yet, it amazes me that I continue to get ‘link exchange’ requests on my eCommerce sites.  I have long since discontinued the ‘links’ email address and now I get the requests in the customer service and info mailboxes.  The senders explain to me how much the link exchange will benefit my site.

Mounting evidence tells me that these are no longer a good idea, except perhaps in the case where the two sites are relevant.  Of course ‘relevant’ is awfully subjective, so even that needs to be carefully studied.   I have a form email for these requestors now that politely says we no longer engage in link exchange arrangements. 

Does anyone actually think these are a good idea anymore?

Tags: Reciprocal Links, Link Exchange, Link Swapping,

If you’re trying to sell on eBay or build a business elsewhere, it’s important to find a real wholesale source for your products. Often overlooked is the ‘direct approach.’ For example, if you are wanting to sell Baby Swede baby products, go right to their website.

In cases like this, you’ll find the website to be a presentation site where you can’t buy anything because they don’t sell directly to the public. But it will contain various tidbits of information about the company. Try using the contact information to contact them.

Identify yourself as a business who is interested in re-selling their product. Give them your location, and ask how you can contact the distributor or rep. They may give you the information or they may have the supplier rep contact you. You will be surprised how often this works and how often you can find product sourcing this way. One tip: have your business license / resale number ready - they’ll usually ask for this.

Tags: Wholesale Product Source, Finding Product Source, Locating Wholesale Suppliers,

Microsoft’s music player has hit the market with a mixed hoopla.  I plan on checking it out over the next week as my iPod is rapidly in decline.  As a longtime iPod user, here are few things I feel Apple could improve on to make their product better.   (In the unlikely event someone from the Microsoft Zune product development team reads this blog, they might get some free ideas here.)

Battery - Much has been made about the iPod battery issue so I won’t belabor the point.  It could have all been solved, Apple, if you would have ONLY built the iPod with a removable battery.  Then people like me would have been happy to pay for a new battery to extend the lives of our iPods.  Microsoft, are you listening?

Podcasts - I’m a far cry from the typical iPod user.  I use mine mainly for listening to podcasts.  On the iPod, podcasts are organized under … Podcasts.  Makes sense.  Except when you play one and the episode finishes what happens? The iPod goes back to home position. Oh I know, I can create a playlist to solve this, but Apple, why didn’t you set it up so that the next episode in line automatically plays? That would have been ever so handy.  Microsoft, are you listening?

Wireless - Updating the iPod is nothing short of clunky.  First you must update the iTunes software on the computer, then plug the iPod into the computer to update it. A 2 step process that really could be better. I have said for a long time that the iPod would be so much better if it were a wireless device and could connect to the iTunes directories wirelessly. Microsoft, I know you listened a little here but I mean really wireless.

My digital player needs are simple. Why are the devices stumbling over each other to be so complex?

Tags: Apple IPod, Microsoft Zune

Submitted by Viktoria Vidali in cooperation with Addie Rementer and Sarah Takahashi

This is a story about how three women developed an original approach to starting a business by including positive cultural components that helped overcome the problem of limited funding.  One of these components is the magic of elevating simple partnership trust to the level of real friendship.  The second is generous sharing of time, assets, and talents.  The third?  Daring to bring an enterprise to life by choosing communicating from the heart as an operating principle.

Handcrafted greeting cards and exquisite art works for personal gifts and interior decoration manifest the individual and common vision of Addie Rementer, Sarah Takahashi, and Viktoria Vidali.  These women are venturing into a new dimension that deepens the art of greeting and gift giving by providing a distinctive alternative to cookie cutter card and gift clichés.  Years ago, handwritten letters required not only time and fine penmanship, but thoughtful content and words of sincere affection; the same holds true for gifts, which were mostly fashioned at home.  Today, elevating greetings and gift giving to an art requires no less.  The act of giving should come from the heart and emanate — with memorable visual power and eloquence – recognition and honor of the loved one’s human value.

The New Woman

Hope for a bright future lies in the power and creative endeavors of the New Woman.  What defines the New Woman?  Her awareness of the need for more love and beauty in our world.  New Women are rising with ever-greater influence to transform this dark age of fear and insecurity into an era of peace, environmental renewal, and social justice.  Therefore, it is not surprising that their businesses often have higher goals than commercial success alone.  The New Women is quietly determined to dispel the illusion that “might makes right” because she knows, and history verifies, that every empire fell when deceit and greed replaced truth and charity.

Addie, a very young New Woman, is the team’s mixed media artist, and tells, in her own words, what made her want to participate:

When I was asked to be a partner in ‘Greetings With Heart,’ I knew intuitively that this was an offer I couldn’t refuse.  I had just designed an inventive line of eclectic images and was looking for ways to have it seen.  The opportunity was timely.

If I could use one word to describe what it’s like to start a business, even with good partners, I would choose the word…WORK.  However, if we LOVE that work, then the joy of accomplishment is well worth the effort.

The challenge of an undertaking with equal partners is to make the best of everyone’s strengths. For example, Sarah has a knack for summarizing the items we cover at our meetings, so she writes our minutes.  She also keeps us focused on priorities, which has made our team very productive.  Viktoria maintains our business records and works with Orlando, our web-designer, my good friend, and her talented son, to implement a short and long-term marketing strategy.  I had fun designing our logo and GWH’s initial commemorative print.

A loner by nature, I had to switch my thinking to ‘group mode.’  Initially, this was my greatest hurdle.  I had to relinquish control of the way I thought things should be done, and realize how important collaboration is.  Artwork is personal and it’s not always possible to let go of an idea that only the completed work does justice to.  We organized the company so that in our personal art we are free to create, without constraints.  At the same time, we collaborate to project one integrated image for our enterprise, like galleries and museum do.

Starting a business from scratch is trial and error and requires patience and a sense of humor, like the day I decided to wear a mermaid costume to a photo-op by a duck pond and found myself hopping around the park on a single fish tail.  I threw that gambit to the wind but will always remember how hard we laughed!

I LOVE to have fun while I work.

Sarah, also a young New Woman, has shared her passion for design and crafts by giving handmade cards to friends and relatives since childhood, and spontaneously decided: Why not widen the circle?

One of the reasons I love ‘Greetings With Heart’ is that it combines the beauty and sweetness of creation with the intensity and good sense of enterprise.  This combo comes through in our website as well as in our meetings and how we treat each other.  We often have breakfast at Viktoria’s lovely mountain home.  We gather around a big round table, gab about what’s going on in our lives, and when the dishes are cleared, exchange ideas and brainstorm.  It is a comforting approach because we truly act as a team.

The process of starting ‘Greetings With Heart’ was as relaxed and fun as I imagine starting a business can be.  As partners, the three of us have fostered a strong bond with one another by maintaining open lines of communication.  Success for us is more than having a profitable business; it’s having fun.

Viktoria, a New Woman with a camera, gives us her picture:

In my reading I came upon an intriguing and bold statement, which, at first glance seemed too good to be true: ‘Do something you love and it will bear fruit.’

Now, there are two essential ingredients to this recipe.  The first is to find something you REALLY love to do, and the second is the active verb ‘do,’ which requires a commitment to keep moving forward.

We spent several months designing and refining our collections, securing the best and most reliable suppliers, discussing quality, size, pricing, packaging, shipping, deciding which nonprofits we wanted to support, and in the process grew to appreciate just how many details have to be fine-tuned before a product can be placed on the market and how important it is to project a cohesive business philosophy.

I saw symbolism in all this, even in our amusing mistakes or my silly episode, which was at the time not so funny.  One afternoon I crawled in ice plant on a plateau overlooking the beach to take a close-up picture of a wildflower.  Within hours, I broke out with a terrible rash.  The culprit?  Poison oak, lying triumphantly beneath the ground cover.  That went down in our history as Viktoria’s Secret Photo-op!

You can see from the pictures that I am older than Sarah and Addie (actually, they could be my daughters!), but speaking for myself, I don’t feel an age gap.  It is a real joy to be working with these young women, who have plenty of fresh ideas and enthusiasm to share.

Now that we all have the first ingredient, we look forward to testing the recipe to see what kind of delightful fruit the three of will bear!

The essence of what this team of entrepreneurial New Women has learned is that “getting your feet wet” is all it takes before stepping fully into the water and swimming.  Or, as the ancients have said: The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.  One thing is certain: courage and team spirit go a long way in making life the grand adventure it was meant to be.

Sarah, Viktoria, and Addie discussing retail card displays and placement at a Greetings With Heart business meeting. On the web:  www.greetingswithheart.com

There’s been a lot of news coming from the Microsoft campus over the past few days.  Almost hidden behind chatter about Microsoft’s new music player, Zune, is the news that Microsoft has completed work on the long awaited next generation operating system Vista.  That’s the good news-bad news thing. 

The bad news is that it won’t available to consumers until January 30, 2007, much too late to pump up any 2006 holiday season sales.  To make the best of this unfortunate situation, Microsoft is providing Vista Upgrade coupons for PCs that are Vista Ready.

I think this is making the best of a bad timing situation.  A new computer with a coupon is not going be the same as a new computer with a brand spanking new OS on it.  Still, there will be a number of consumers who will see value in this and hopefully PC sales won’t suffer too badly this holiday season.

Tags: Microsoft Vista, 2006 Holiday Sales, Vista Upgrade Coupons

Anyone who has ever tried to get into Google’s ranking, especially on the first page, knows that it takes a while to get there.  How does that affect relevancy for the end user?  In many cases, Google results are just what the user ordered but in other cases they might seem old, outdated, or just non relevant. 

The reason it takes some time to get to the top of Google’s rankings is due to several factors.  One is that Google has what’s called an ‘aging delay’ in place for most sites.  That means you can’t put up a site and expect it to jump to the top of the search results immediately.  Many experts think this delay can penalize new sites for up to year.  This delay is necessary to ensure the integrity of their results - otherwise any new spam sites could come along and pop right into the first page of the results.

But how does this affect the end user experience?  If the user is looking for fixed information, such as information about the Reagan presidency, the aging delay will probably not effect the result. But if the user is looking for more recent information, for example about certain new members of congress or new congressional impact plans due to the recent US election, it might be a different story.  The user can of course, check the Google news, but the standard search may not give them what they want.

If you have ever tried to search for something on Google and gotten frustrated with their results, try MSN.  MSN seems to rely on other methods to filter out spam sites and does not seem to penalize new sites.   So when you are searching for fresh content, try MSN as an alternate to Google.

Tags: Google Results, MSN Search

eBay’s VERO program (VERO stands for ‘Verified Rights Owner’) was designed to give intellectual property owners a way to protect their copyrights on eBay. Typically, this is used to protect against counterfeit and illegal sale of items.

You might imagine my surprise when I learned our eBay account was zapped with a VERO complaint earlier this week. At first, I thought it was some disgruntled competitor using the VERO program to create negative strikes against us. The VERO violation was for a brand name juicer we sell although it really wasn’t clear exactly what the VERO violation was for.. Upon closer look, I saw that the email of the person who filed the complaint was from the juicer company itself. The eBay user id was a ubiquitous one which is apparently kept as a ‘mole’ for this company.

The biggest issue I have with this is that we are established resellers for this line of juicers and we have permission to use their images, trade name, etc. on our website (according to their terms). Apparently, that permission does not extend to eBay although their terms say nothing of that. Furthermore, this particular juicer is sold nonexclusively on the Amazon Marketplace with stock images, text, and trade name. So this begs the question: why is OK to use their trade name on my website and other sales channels, yet it’s a VERO violation on eBay?

It looks to me like this VERO complaint is nothing more than a sham to keep sellers from selling their product on eBay. It doesn’t appear to be about intellectual property at all. My inquiry to this eBay user regarding this matter has gone unanswered, so that leaves me to rely on assumptions. To be honest, this line of juicers was performing poorly on eBay (and other channels) and I had decided to drop the line before this VERO complaint.

I suspect this isn’t an isolated incident. Here is an article that describes another dubious VERO case.  Are IP holders filing VERO’s because they don’t like eBay?

While suppliers and IP holders should be free to establish their sales channels and to limit certain sales channels like eBay, such policies should be communicated clearly in their Terms and Conditions. If they don’t want their product sold on eBay, let them say so in ways other than bogus VERO complaints.

Tags: eBay VeRo, Home Based Business, eBay Home Business, eBay Business , Intellectual Property

MAP Pricing (MAP stands for ‘Minimum Advertised Price’) is a pricing control technique used by many manufacturers and suppliers.  When there is a MAP price policy in effect, you are usually required to not show a price lower than that on your website, eBay listing, etc.

The problem with MAP pricing in practice is that it is often keystone or higher and many times is not the competitive value of the item.   Someone once said that ‘the value of an item is only what someone is willing to pay for it’.  Nowhere is this more true than on eBay.

MAP has different specific definitions depending on the supplier, but in most cases it controls the price you can show but it lets you sell it at lower prices using discounts and other techniques.

One such technique that works well in the eBay environment is using the ‘Best Offer’ feature.  When setting up a listing, you can choose to allow buyers to submit best offers to you. Suppose for example, you have an item that has a MAP of $89.00.  You can set up an eBay listing with a Buy-It-Now price of $89.00 and allow Best Offers on it.  When you allow Best Offers, you listing will appear like this.

This allows you too sell your item at competitive levels and still satisfy the MAP pricing requirement of the supplier. 

Note: if you do accept Best Offers in your listing, decide on a set price that you will not go below and stick to it.  Some buyers will make ridiculously low offers.  All in all however, eBay’s Best Offer is a practical option when MAP Pricing is in effect.

Tags: MAP Pricing, Home Based Business, eBay Home Business, eBay Business

This past weekend, I was working with an entrepreneur friend of mine who was setting up a small office. One of our tasks was to install Ethernet cabling.  I don’t know where he got it from, but he had a large spool of raw Ethernet cabling - perhaps several hundred feet - that didn’t have ends on it.  More than enough for the 4 stations we needed to cable.

His ‘money saving’ idea - Buy a cable punch tool and some Ethernet cable ends and make the cable ourselves.  “Have you ever put ends on Ethernet cable?” I asked. He had not.

That particular task is very detailed work and not something most people can just do right out of the starting gate.  You must cleanly snip the cable, remove a half inch or so of the cable coating, and feed each of the 6 wires into a specific slot in the end. And they must terminate in the cable end a certain way or they won’t work.  It’s delicate work and takes some practice to master.

I know this because I’ve tried to do them before. This is why we have cabling specialists.  Once I pointed this out to him and pointed out there was a Circuit City a mile away which sold ready-to-use Ethernet cable, I think he got the point.  We would have spent much more money (in time) than we would have saved by attaching those cable ends ourselves.  And we might have ended up with some poor quality cable.

Sometimes, as entrepreneurs we want to do everything ourselves.  But sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense.

If you browse the web for business opportunities, you will often come across businesses advertised as ‘drop shipping’ opportunities.  Drop Shipping businesses are set up so that someone else does the handling of the product for you and sends the product directly to your customer, without you (the business) being involved in the shipping.  While this sounds great in theory, it rarely works in practice when presented as a service - a common approach for drop ship scams.

The biggest problem with these kinds of services is that the are “middlemen” and the prices they offer are NOT wholesale (even if they say they are).  It’s hard to compete when you’re buying products at retail to re-sell.

Another problem with them is competition. In these scams, everyone who subscribes to their ‘drop ship’ website will have access to the very same set of products.  That means you will have a difficult time differentiating yourself and carving a niche for your business.

The only way to do Drop Shipping as a business is to do the product research yourself, find your own suppliers who will do the drop shipping and get yourself setup with them.  Sounds hard? Well there is no easy money and who said Common Sense E-Commerce would be easy?