CONTROL FREAK!

For many years now I have realized my tendency to want to control too many things in my life. Recognizing the trait has been healthy for me. But it's causing me problems with my website.

I've lost a few orders because I took the tactic to drop ship my items rather than putting my cash on the shelf and risk not recovering it. If I did a financial analysis on that, I may decide that I should stock the inventory and liquidate what doesn't sell. But I'm not a "big boy" and not ready for that financially or mentally.

But getting an order and finding out my supplier didn't tell me they were out of stock for a month is a bit frustrating. Also frustrating is not being able to take more pictures of the items, expecially the antiques.

So what do I do? I take a big breath and let it out slowly. Then I make a mental note of the situation and sally forth. Someday I'll be in the position to make improvements to the business, I just can't do it today. You see? It's still under my control, isn't it?!

FINALLY

June has been a strange month for me. It's the 24th already and I see where I have only posted on the blog once this June. I guess I get quiet when I have big question marks in my mind. Why the question marks? Because business has been slower than I ever expected. But today, FINALLY, I received a decent inquiry about some product - I've got to tell you, I really was wondering if there were any people behind those unique visits to the website.

I'm floundering a little on what merchandise to pick. Not my expertise at all. I just have to go by instinct right now until I can afford help. I went to SCORE online to see if there was a counselor with merchandising expertise. Think I found someone who might be able to help but she keeps asking me for my business plan. I sent her a draft and now she wants financials. Haven't sent that yet because I was waiting to see what response I was getting so that I could extrapolate some numbers. She also wanted to know how much I've invested to-date. I thought I already told her so I'm a little frustrated. But I tell myself to just take a deep breath, forego the frustration, and keep on moving.

I also received some information from SCORE on internet marketing. Says that 97% of internet business gross less than $30k per year and only 2% have sales exceeding
$500k per year. Wow! Another interesting point was the 1/3 Rule of Thumb for site design - 1/3 text, 1/3 white space, and 1/3 graphics and design. That made me go back and look at my homepage. I quickly saw that I had added on too many 'boxes' and the site was looking cluttered. Another WOW!

I have continued to look for product online and think I'm making a bit of progress. But now I'm getting to the point of deciding how much money to commit. I'm still not convinced there is money to be made here. But breakeven would be nice. And volume would be even better.

Enough posting for today. I'll try to get back soon.

Tossing and Turning

I get all these great ideas at night when I can't get to sleep. You'd think I'd jot those brilliant pieces down on paper but I don't. I wake up the next day and sometimes really have to struggle remembering those brainstorms. And even when I remember them, sometimes I don't get to them because of all the other tasks that need my attention and completion. I really need to start a list - next to my bed.

Sometimes my ideas aren't really brilliant. Sometimes I really feel like a dumb fool. And that was me last night. As I was stewing over reasons why I haven't converted more visits to sales it suddenly occurred to me that I am being greedy. My dropship wholesaler is charging me for packaging and I have set up my website to pass that charge on to my customers. Well, if you take a different perspective that should be an overhead of mine. I mean, afterall, I don't have the brick and mortar expense to pay for so maybe I should bear this cost. Duh!

Thanks for listening!

Google Adwords - Comment 4

I'm at 78 clicks at a cost of $21. Still no communications from anybody. 954 visits - MOL I'm pleased with that. Now I need to get some visits converted to orders.

I'm working on adding more product choices. And offering products with lower price points. And products that aren't so limited in the number of people interested in them. What more is there? I did one month of free shipping. Now I'm going to be contributing 10% of sales to Oxfam America. Poco a poco I guess.

For other entrepreneurs

Why am I blogging? I thought it might be helpful to future entrepreneurs to read about the steps I am taking to start my web business. I'm bound to do some good things and I'm bound to make some mistakes and I just thought it may be useful to someone else to have this information.

Already I have missed posting some of the steps I've taken because I'm not in the habit of blogging. I'll try to correct that and post the minutia as it happens. Everything I'm doing is a learning process. It's fun and I am resolved to be tenacious with it. Quitting would be too easy.

SEM

I've had 2 cold calls from SEM companies. I think they are getting my name from the hosting company and I don't find that too thrilling because they call me at dinnertime. I told the one yesterday that their prices were far too high for my pocketbook. He was telling me that I should have been starting SEM when I first got the domain name. My reply to that was - fiddle fhoo - I didn't even know what products I was going to carry at that point. How do you come up with keywords when you don't have product?????

I had an epiphany about it last night. Why haven't I used the keywords from my Google Adwords optimization and added them to the website metatags???? Bet that's where the SEM companies start.

I'll try it and let you know.

Google Adwords - Comment 3

I'm up to 56 clicks now at a cost of $14. No orders but my visitor count is climbing. I can even see that some have made it to the shopping cart window. I'm getting a lot more traffic than the clicks I am paying for from Google and Yahoo. That's exciting.