Do you own a office to run your business or Working from your home? This question comes up for a lot of small companies wondering what is best. We'll take you through the benefits of each.

What are the benifits of having a office if we fully operate our business through online?

An office would be good if you have multiple employees and are a large/medium size operation. If you're just offering hosting services there is no point to having an office for clients to stop in, unless you're doing a large colo or network services. Clients don't really care where you work from, as long as their website is online.

Obviously you'll save tons of money by working at home. I have a second room in my house as a dedicated office room, fax machine, desk, filling cabinet, etc and it works very well. If you work from home you can also write many things off like internet connection, rent, phone, etc.

If you're a small company with 1 or 2 guys work from home, you'll save lots of money that can be put towards advertising and new sales. Just take the cost of rent for an office and use that towards sales. Once you grow and expect to have many employees, have been in business for a while, have a solid business plan and real income from current clients - then get one. Otherwise you'll end up going belly up, not being able to afford it.

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As business grows, it can be a good idea to support your eBay sales with a website.

The first step is building a web presence outside of eBay by creating your own website. Building a website is not a difficult task. These days you don't necessarily need the know-how to do it all yourself - there are plenty of people who will do it for you. Turnkey stores are an option, or you can have a designer create the basic design for a website and then purchase shopping cart software separately.

Either way, you need to think carefully about branding at this point. Branding is recognizable design features that are carried across your entire business from product to business cards, to your website and brochures.

A brand helps your customers associate your products with an over-riding concept and identify them as part of their lifestyle. For example, some brands are associated with natural and organic concepts while others are associated with fine quality or a particular lifestyle. When establishing your online business, take care to make sure the branding you have already established on eBay remains consistent across your new website.

There are thousands of stores on the web, so to be successful, you'll need to do something to make people visit your site and stay there for longer. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by providing people with information about your products. For example, if you sell small kitchen appliances, why not add articles to your site on how to use each appliance, tasty recipes to make with each, how to fix problems, and so on? Not only are you giving your users a reason to come back to your site, you are also increasing your chances of being placed in the top search results for keyword searches relating to the items you sell. Search engines give higher priority to good quality, unique information, so this is an effective way of keeping rankings high and getting traffic from organic search results.

Another way of getting more traffic to your site is by carrying out link exchanges. Just remember to limit yourself to related sites, otherwise you may find that you end up with a lower rather than higher search engine ranking! Linking to sites not related to the content on your site can actually give you a lower search engine ranking, so stay away from sites that offer hundreds of links for a fixed price. The best idea is to link to other sites that relate to what you are selling. For instance, keeping with the appliance example above, a site such as this could exchange links with sites selling china, cutlery, linen or recipes.

Finally, you can drive traffic to your site through advertising. Your ebay listings are one way of advertising if you add your site URL to your About Me page. Google Adwords is another very effective way of getting traffic to your site. A targeted campaign can do wonders for your website.

Done well, a website should increase overall sales, increase traffic to your eBay listings, and increase your reputation as an expert in your area.

About the Author: SaleHoo is one of the fastest growing product sourcing portals on the internet. It contains a database of drop ship, wholesale, closeout and manufacturing suppliers offering thousands of product suppliers to consumers! Located at http://www.salehoo.com, visitors are allowed to sign up for unlimited and lifetime access to the completely searchable database of products and suppliers. The database is regularly updated, ensuring that the latest retail products are always available for purchase and SaleHoo carries the BBB Reliability Seal!
Join SaleHoo Today for their Special Startup Offer!

Written by SaleHoo.com © All Rights Reserved
What is drop shipping?

Drop shipping is when the product distributor takes care of all the shipping for you. Rather than ordering stock in bulk, the stock remains with the distributor. Then, when you make a sale, you send an email to the distributor and they pack up the item and send it straight to the customer with your company label on the box.

Drop shipping is a very popular option with sellers because it takes a lot of the grunt work out of selling on eBay. However, there are some major downsides to drop shipping - especially for new sellers.

Here's a list of the pros and cons of drop shipping so that you can make the right decision for your business.
Drop shipping Pros

1. No storage room required
You don't have to fill up your living room with stock and packing materials! This is particularly useful if you are selling large items such as kit-sets, furniture, sporting goods, and so on.
2. No shipping costs getting stock delivered from the distributor
Drop shipping means you don't have to pay a carrier to bring stock from the distributor to your own storage area, which can mean big savings in the long term.
3. Spend more time on other areas of your business
You don't have to organize the packing and postage system, nor do you have to drive to the post shop each day to post your packages. This gives you a significant increase in time to spend on other tasks such as marketing and communicating with customers.
4. No packaging required
You save money by not having to order and store packaging materials.

Drop shipping Cons

1. Can be Costly
You have to pay for the cost of the labor and materials involved in drop shipping. Generally this is between $2 and $5 per item. Many new sellers find that the additional costs of drop shipping greatly reduce their profit margins and sometimes nullify the whole operation. This is the main reason why drop shipping is not a viable option for some sellers.
2. You are still responsible for any shipping problems
So the item arrived damaged? Was there a shipping delay? You'll get the flak for anything that goes wrong with the shipping even though it is technically out of your control.
3. Hard to find a distributor who will do it and do it well
Many distributors will not drop ship because of the extra paperwork involved. Then there is the matter of checking up on quality standards to make sure your items are being packed correctly.
4. Low stock levels may cause unhappy customers
Your drop shipper won't necessarily tell you when they are running low on stock. If they run out and have to do a back order, you may end up spending a great deal of time placating a bunch of unhappy and impatient customers.

Drop shipping is a very appealing prospect for many sellers; however it is not always a realistic one. Despite the hassle, 'doing it yourself' can often be a more sensible option financially, especially for new businesses.

About the Author: SaleHoo is one of the fastest growing product sourcing portals on the internet. It contains a database of drop ship, wholesale, closeout and manufacturing suppliers offering thousands of product suppliers to consumers! Located at http://www.salehoo.com, visitors are allowed to sign up for unlimited and lifetime access to the completely searchable database of products and suppliers. The database is regularly updated, ensuring that the latest retail products are always available for purchase and SaleHoo carries the BBB Reliability Seal!

Join SaleHoo Today for their Special Startup Offer!

Written by SaleHoo.com © All Rights Reserved

1. Start Small

If you're anything like me, once you have a good idea you want to put it into action immediately! Although you probably know in theory that any business takes 12-18 months to become established, somehow you still hope that you can get there in 2!

But, one mistake entrepreneurs consistently make is to throw their life's savings into buying case loads of stock - before they even know how eBay works. It's easy to be lulled into a false sense of security on eBay after buying just one or two items. For buyers, eBay is meant to be user friendly. For sellers, things are a little more complicated. All powersellers agree that there are new things to be learned all the time and you'll be surprised at how much more you know after several months selling small, inexpensive items.

Be prepared to spend the first couple of months buying and selling a variety of inexpensive items you can purchase with your loose change. Keep track of what sells best and work on narrowing down the possibilities to a few strong products. By this stage you will also have experienced the best and worst situations eBay has to offer, so you will be much better prepared to crank things up a notch.

2. Respond to questions as quickly as possible

Most people use the Internet because it provides what they need instantaneously: information, contacts, gifts, advice, and so on. Therefore I can't emphasize enough the importance of checking your emails as often as you can and replying to queries as quickly as possible.

3. Organize your time and keep to a schedule

If you are holding down a full-time job and working after hours to get your ebay business in motion, then it's vital to have a list of what you need to get done and stick to it so you make the most of the precious time available. Once you are working on eBay fulltime, this becomes even more important! It's all too easy to reach the end of another day and find that you have got hardly anything done. So keep a planner or diary and make a timetable of what needs to be done and when.

4. Do take professional photographs from the beginning

The old saying remains as true as ever: A picture speaks a thousand words. A bad picture can look unappealing and unprofessional. Plus, if the buyer can't really see the item properly, they may be put off bidding because they can't tell if it is what they really want. So right from the beginning, work on creating the most professional pictures you can, even if it means spending money on a photo tent and better lighting.

5. Don't put all your eggs in one basket - use other ways of selling apart from eBay

eBay is not the be all and end all of selling online - although it is one of the best ways to start. As soon as you can though, try thinking of other ways you can increase your web presence. Perhaps you could place a classified ad in Yahoo or write about your auctions in a MySpace blog. There are plenty of cheap and easy ways to build up your profile.

6. Do keep a constant look out for other products to sell, while also monitoring carefully what you are already selling.

Don't become complacent! Even if your items appear to be stock standard - such as chairs for instance - make sure you keep looking at what other sellers are doing, emerging trends, magazine articles, home decor programs, and more. There may be another related product opportunity just waiting to happen that you completely overlook if you keep your blinkers on.

7. Do keep in contact with your wholesale supplier regularly to ensure you are aware of any stock issues.

A backorder can create a lot of extra work for you soothing customer's ruffled feathers. And if they want their order refunded, it costs you money too. So make life easier for yourself by regularly touching base with your suppliers and ensuring communication lines stay open.

8. Do carry out regular keyword and market research

Keyword research is the way to ensure your potential customers find you successfully. Set aside some time each day for marketing and research to ensure that you're keeping at the top of your game.

9. Do use software to help organize your sales

It's hard to part with the initial investment when the business is still finding its feet, but the right software will make life so much easier. My eBay quickly becomes unwieldy when you are selling more than 15 items, and software ensures that you avoid making costly mistakes, such as under-ordering stock, forgetting to ship to a customer, and so on.

10. Don't offer free shipping as a gimmick unless you can afford it

Free shipping is a very effective way of attracting more people to your listings. However, before you consider offering free shipping, think carefully about your profit margins, how much your item weighs, and the fact that shipping will vary depending on how far away you are sending it. Offering free shipping is a good move if you can absorb the cost in your profit margin, but it could easily become crippling if you apply it to a variety of items of different shapes and sizes.

About the Author: SaleHoo is one of the fastest growing product sourcing portals on the internet. It contains a database of drop ship, wholesale, closeout and manufacturing suppliers offering thousands of product suppliers to consumers! Located at http://www.salehoo.com, visitors are allowed to sign up for unlimited and lifetime access to the completely searchable database of products and suppliers. The database is regularly updated, ensuring that the latest retail products are always available for purchase and SaleHoo carries the BBB Reliability Seal!

Join SaleHoo Today for their Special Startup Offer!

When building and getting a site online you have to think of a number of things. Some of these include the following:

1. What is your site going to be about If you want to get a site online to make money then you need to do some good research before you choose what your site is going to be about. This is because there is no point in you choosing a topic for your site where other people have no interest in. If no one has any interest in the topic of your site then you will find it very had to get a good amount of visitors to your site. So the best thing to do is to choose a topic that is likely to interest a large number of people and is also likely to make you some good revenue online.


2. What web hosting provider are you going to choose to host your site with Choosing the right Web hosting provider is very important when choosing it to host your site. This is because there is no point in choosing a Web hosting provider that is likely to be unreliable just because it is cheap or just because you dont know enough about it. I Recommend the HOSTGATOR because you can host unlimited websites. The article at: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/a00033/854.html gives you a better idea on how to choose a good Web hosting provider to host your site with.


3. How can you add more content to your site. Once you have your site up and running, you will then need to think of ways of making your site bigger and also updating your sites content on a regular basis so that your visitors dont get bored of your site and so that they will have a reason to keep visiting your site on a regular basis. Some ways of adding content to your site could include the following:

You could add some free reprint able articles to your site that is on the same topic as your site. You can find well over 800 reprint able articles at: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php
You could add some free to play games on your site so it becomes stickier. You can find a load at: http://www.miniclip.com
You could add a forum to your site so people can keep informed of current events and updates on your site and also chat amongst each other. You can find some good forum scripts at: http://www.hotscripts.com where some of these are free with the GPL.


4. How are you going to earn from your site
Once you have built your site and have found a good web host to host your site with, you will then need to think about how you are going to earn from your site.

If you are selling your own products or offering your own services, you may also want to add a few affiliate programs to your site so that you can produce a little extra income from these programs as well as earning the money from selling your own products or offering your own services. You can find well over 800 affiliate programs at: http://www.affiliateseeking.com These include pay per click programs, pay per lead programs, two-tiered programs, pay per impression programs, residual income programs and more.


5. How are you going to promote your site to get visitors
Now that you have your site up and running with maybe a few affiliate programs included within your sites content, you will now need to promote your site so that you can start getting noticed on the Web. The article at: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/a00000/197.html gives you some of the best ways of getting visitors to your site.

Once you have done the above five things, you should now have your own site online. The amount of visitors that your site will receive and the amount of money you will make from your site will all depend on the amount of work and effort you put into your site. The more work you do with your site, the more money you are likely to make.


About the Author:
Jonathan White has been involved in Web Hosting and other Webmaster activities on the Web for over two years now and is the Webmaster of http://www.1hostseeking.com - a categorized Web hosting directory listing a large amount of Web hosting providers.

As you can imagine from the search engine basics that spends a great of time focusing on the basics of internet marketing, you must realize that it was all just an informed lead in to the affiliation, which is the whole reason that we are here. The first thing that you have to think about when getting into the affiliation game is how to go about it. In order to understand this, you will need to know exactly what it is and get basic knowledge about it.

Affiliate programs are an excellent way to generate income for your site or someone else's, and it is a pretty good introduction into ecommerce, however but it’s a numbers game. Basically, the more people who visit your site, the greater your chances become for creating a good income, especially if the programs you participate in are related to your site topic. Chances are you have probably come across many commercial sites that claim to offer the best affiliate program. What you will often learn is that this is simply not true.

So what exactly is an affiliate program, you might ask? An affiliate program is where a company offers to pay you a certain amount of money for either a click through from your site, or a fixed amount for a lead (where the visitor signs up for a newsletter, etc.) or a percentage of a purchase made by a visitor as a result of a click through. Even if the visitor does not make a purchase on the advertiser’s site right away, most programs will offer "cookie duration" of usually around 30-90 days.

What this really means is that as long as the visitor has the cookie in their cache; even if they return to the advertisers site one month later, you will still receive the commission from the sale however, as in all things that are business related, cookie duration is not a guarantee when you sign up for an affiliation program and is something that you need to check for before signing on.

Search engines are computer programs that are used to explore the internet in search of web pages. They do this by using "spiders," "crawlers," or "robots" which are used to search for the most up to date information on any given search request. This may seem like an odd place to introduce you to the search engines, but I can assure that this section is well placed. Giving you the basics here will help you to understand what I am saying in the later sections. Anyways….back to the basics and explanation of search engine spiders.

These spiders (like those that are used by Google) are able to follow the links present on web pages that are located by specific keywords. When spiders are searching for a new webpage, they copy all or parts of the text present on the page into their search engine database. Other spiders revisit these pages on a regular basis so that they can register changes or dead links. The wait time varies greatly from search engine to search engine. It is for this reason that your website should stay current.

The search engine will have hundreds of millions of web pages in its database. In order to deliver relevant results, the search engine companies have developed special ranking algorithms that calculate the order of search requirement results. The keyword or keyword phrase the visitor enters into the search form of the search engine will determine which web sites get picked up by the query. The pages the search engine find most relevant will be listed first. This will determine where you will be listed upon search requests.

For instance, if you are searching for "Beethoven," and the search engine finds a main headline on that page containing the phrase "Ludwig von Beethoven," it will assume that this page is fairly relevant to your needs. If, on the other hand, it finds the phrase only once, and it is buried in a long text, it will ignore it because it will assume that this is not important. That is why so many websites use special keywords more than once in a particular article or webpage, because that is how the spiders pick them up and place them higher in the results of a search.

What does this mean to you as a business person? Well…..this means that in order for you to even consider affiliation; you must first have a website. If you want your website to get attention, you have to appeal to search engines first. Many potential affiliates will not want to associate with just anyone prefer a site that gets traffic. Knowing about search engines and how to appeal to them will get you this traffic.

If you currently own a business or are thinking of starting one up, chances are, you are going to need some information about how to get the word out about your product or service. That is when you need to think about marketing and building a marketing strategy.

With the World Wide Web being the major source of information sharing and communications in the world, it is natural that you would want to use this as a major focus for building your marketing strategy. That is what the Affiliate Magazine Blog is for; to teach you how to become a major player in the field of business that you choose by taking advantage of the internet and using affiliation as your marketing strategy's foundation.

Of course, before I can show you how to become a master affiliate, I think it would be best to begin with a basic introduction to marketing in general. So in this introduction to becoming a master affiliate, I will give you a basic explanation into marketing because this will help you to better understand how an affiliation can be done with expert precision.

Most people are aware of what marketing is, but most do not realize everything that is involved in marketing. Marketing is not a temporary thing. Marketing is more than sales. Marketing is actually an entire process of activities that is used to:

1. Get your potential customer’s attention
2. Motivate them to buy
3. Get them to actually buy
4. Get them to keep buying

Marketing is how you define your product, promote your product, distribute your product, and to maintain a relationship with your customers. All of this is important if you want to run a successful business. When you become an affiliate, you are just gaining access to a world of customers instead of just being available for a local customer base. It simply allows you to reach millions of potential customers instead of hundreds. With this kind of potential, is it a wonder that so many people are relying on the web as their marketing hub.

In order to get the consumer's attention, you will need to know who they are and where they are. When you use affiliation, you can cut some of that work in half. When you are an affiliate, a lot of your customers will find you. This is a business feat that is just too good to be true, and if you know what you are doing, the benefits are simply awesome!

Your first interest in any type of marketing campaign is to start developing a marketing strategy that is going to be focused on who you will need to determine your target market is. This is exactly who you think will be your consumers. For starters, you need to know how to break down your consumers.

Target market is the group of potential customers that will be selected for the reception of your marketing strategy. It certainly makes it easier to develop your strategy if you know exactly who/how old/where people live when trying to sell things to them. If you are looking to segment the market, you need to determine the different target markets for each segment. For example, if you are selling tires, (which everyone needs) you will need to divide your market by knowing how people shop for tires, and who they are.

If you are selling high cost/quality tires, you have to market to a market that is likely to buy them such as middle aged and established consumers as opposed to teens and twenty-something's who may not be able to afford them.

There are different means that are used by professional marketers that help you to find your target audience. You can use both of them that are within your means. Some of these methods include:

1. Researching the market through surveys, interviews, and setting up shop in a mall to see who questions you the most etc. to see who would benefit the most from your product and be most likely to buy.

2. Host experimental sessions for people to try out your product and give their opinions for improvements etc. so that you can ensure that you giving the people what they want or need.

3. Host trial websites that are geared toward finding the market by letting the market come to you. You can best do this by utilizing keyword centered articles that will let you know who is coming toy our website.

It really doesn't matter if you stand on your front porch and just ask people what they want in a product or service like yours or not, as long as you get a good handle on who your market audience is. If you are selling T-shirts, you will likely want to appeal to younger people who are more likely to wear them; which means that you should market your wares to those people. To do this, you will have to begin your strategy where you know you will find them…...on the internet.

When you are using the internet to market any product or service, you must understand the basics of what internet marketing is. When you are marketing on the internet, you are looking to reach a larger audience and therefore, you need something that will catch their attention and bring them to you. In order to do this, you will have to bring these people to your website.

Once you have your website built, you have to work on getting people to visit not just once, but over and over again. You can start this by using your website to do more than just sell stuff. You should always try to host a website that is also informational. It is generally the website’s that offer up to date information as well as sell wares.

It is through the information that you establish yourself as a trustworthy authority to your consumers. Doing this establishes trust with your consumers and brings them back again all of the time. Nobody wants to visit a website that is profiling outdated information in a month. It is the up to date website’s that get and keep clients. These are also the website that the search engines find relevant during a query.

A nice tip for keeping your information up to date; especially if you are selling a product or service that is rarely updated is to keep a weather program or stock ticker program running on your website because the search engine spiders and robots will view this as new content and still return to your site on a regular basis.

If you are running a website that can sell things directly or order services and make payments there etc. you will want to generate as much sales as possible.
What this means is that you need to make search engines come to your site for a particular product or service before others. It is because of this need that search engines have to become your best friend, which I will explain what these are below.