For some reason, there is nothing more rewarding than getting a check in the mail. When I receive emails saying you’ve got cash, it doesn’t float my boat as much as receiving a check in the mail. I don’t know if others feel this way or not, but for me it’s hard not to kiss the checks as they arrive.

When you sell products business to business you end up in the love hate relationship of purchase orders. Purchase orders (POs) protect the buyer big time because the buyer doesn’t pay anything until the product is received. For sellers, purchase orders can be nice because you save money in credit card processing fees when they pay via check. The hard thing about POs is you float the money until the money comes in. Just recently, we had quite a large amount of cash floating. We just received a couple of checks today that covered atleast half of what was floating. It is such a relief when those come in.

When we first started our online business we didn’t accept POs. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to accept them until they can sustain it. The best case scenario would be to have the money in the bank to cover any POs that are out.  If you are doing business to business transactions accepting purchase orders will allow your sells to grow.  But again like I said before, don’t accept POs until your business can sustain it.

When I first got started on the internet I searched around for a shopping cart that would work for me.  I’ve found that Paypal was my best option.  I wasn’t bringing in any sells at first.   I would have lost money paying for my shopping cart until I started getting customers.  The nicest thing about Paypal is there are no monthly payments if you use Paypal Website Payment Standard.  There are also no contracts.  You only pay a precentage when customers order online.  This allowed me to afford my shopping cart while I worked on my advertising campaign.

If you are building your site from scratch using HTML or PHP, all you have to do is cut and paste code to build your easy to use shopping cart.  If you are using OScommerce or any other open source shopping cart that works with Paypal, all you have to do is put in the email address that is associated with your Paypal account in your admin section and you are all set.

I recommend for everyone to upgrade to Paypal’s Website Payment Pro when your orders can sustain the monthly fees.  Website Payment Pro allows you to accept credit cards over the phone via a virtual terminal.  Website Payment Pro also gives you some nice features that you can use to help customize your check out process if you are using OScommerce.  Being able to accept credit cards over the phone has helped our sales to increase with leaps and bounds.

I’ve heard people in forums complain about Paypal saying how they got ripped off by Paypal and this and that, but I’ve moved around thousands and thousands of dollars with Paypal and have never had a problem with them.  Most times people get ripped off because of their own stupidity and want someone one to blame it on so they choose Paypal.  Regardless of what others say, I give Paypal two thumbs up.

Maybe, you have a little start up money and you feel Paypal isn’t exactly what you are looking for. Be sure you get all the facts and as many reviews about each cart you come across.  You can use the information to compare the shopping carts.  This will help ensure that you get what you are looking for.

I feel it is extremly important to go the extra mile to keep customers happy. Today I had a customer call. We sent them a product about a month ago. For some reason they just opened it today. They found out the product wasn’t going to work for their needs. They need this product for a function tomorrow (Saturday), so they called hoping we can solve their problem for them. After much discussion with the customer and the manufacturer, we found out we could fix their problem, but it involved overnighting products which would cost a bit of $.

I decided that even though this issue wasn’t our fault, we would send the products free of charge. Come to find out the manufacturer didn’t carry one of the parts that was a necessity to make our little plan work. I spent probably three hours trying to find this little part. No one had it. Those who did, couldn’t ship it out because the UPS guy already did their pick up at the store, or some other reason. Lastly, I called a local store to find out they had one in stock. The part cost $14 and to ship it overnight for Saturday morning delivery cost $50. I’m thinking the cost of shipping the other product from the manufacturer will end up costing me about $100. After all the costs, we may have broke even with the original product we sent or we may still have a little bit of a profit margin. I haven’t added it up yet, but I know we lost a lot of profit with this customer. But we didn’t stop there, we sent a restaurant gift card to let them know that we appreciated their business.

Some of you might be thinking that I’m a brick shy of a load. Why would I send I them the products for free? Why would I not only send them for free, but why would I overnight them knowing it would cost me at $150 just to ship it? My answer is this, at the end of the day, my conscience is clear. I hope that my customer sees how much we went out of our way to make sure he got what he needed. If he does, we earned a repeat customer and some word of mouth advertising. If he doesn’t, at least I know I did my best. Now a days, it’s hard to find any company that stands behind integrity. It is hard to find a company that is really there to serve you. No matter what business you are in, being a servant should be your number one priority. If being a servant is your priority, customers will eventully be beating down your doors for service.

I’ve shipped products all over the US. I tried shipping a product into Canada for the first time. All I can say is, wow, what’s with all the fees, eh? I’ve shipped a product into Brazil that was much easier than shipping into Canada. The only problem I had with the Brazil order was the initial purchase. The person who bought the product only spoke Portuguese. (That’s a story to tell.) Shipping to Brazil was not a problem. There wasn’t any weird fees.

For those considering shipping into Canada from the US, UPS charges the receiver a fee when they accept the package. I paid for the charge for them since they were unaware of that they would be receiving a charge. I lost quite a bit on that transaction. I’ve learned from this mistake. I’m going to make sure to put this info up on my site so I don’t get hit by it again. I will also be sure to inform any customers who call in orders from Canada.

Anyone who starts an online business is starting their business with the hopes of success. Sometimes the desire of success overrides all common sense. There are businesses on the net that only exist to seperate you from your money.

When I first started my internet business I made some pretty lame decisions. I had people calling me, and I still have people calling me, telling me they can get my site in the top ten of every search engine. When I first started it was a huge temptation to fall into this trap. I wanted to succeed. I wanted to get my site in the top ten. These people said they could do it, and even had “proof” that they got other sites in the top ten. The one thing that held me back from paying these people to rip me off is, I am tight with my money. If I’m going to pay you anything, your services better be able to take me to the moon and back, or you’re not getting a dime. Now these same type of companies call me up and say some of the stupidest things like, “you need more keywords in your meta tags.” That’s like telling a mechanic that they need to change their blinker fluid. I politely tell them I’m doing fine with out their services.

Just a quick thought on SEO companies, if a so called SEO company is telemarketing you, they aren’t a real SEO company. A really good SEO company will rank well for SEO or some other marketing term.

There are tons of internet related companies out there who make you think that they can make you money, but they totally rip you off. One ridiculous service that newbies often fall into is search engine submission services. These companies offer to submit your site into search engines, but the service is pointless. This service can cost you anywhere from twenty five dollars to hundreds of dollars. The people who are really prey to these kind of companies and services are newbies. If you are starting an internet business, learn all that you can about how it works or you will get hit in the pocket book.

Here are some places where you can learn:

www.webpuffs.com, of course :), forums.digitalpoint.com, seoguy.com/forums, www.v7n.com/forums. There are many more, but these are the ones that I frequent. You have to be careful who you listen to on some of these forums. There are wolves in sheep clothing everywhere. I tend to listen more to people who have a good track record.

I received the following email on Saturday morning. I like to post stuff like this so more than just one person can learn from the question.

do you no any one that has bought a website from turnkeynation i was
thinking about it can you help.
i dont no 2 much about where to find info about websites to see if there
scams please help .

thank you jr

Hello JR,

I don’t know of anyone who has bought a website from Turnkey Nation. But I can think of 3 good reasons off the top of my head why I wouldn’t buy a website from them.

Reason #1: Chances are, Turnkey Nation (TKN) is selling duplicate websites. You might buy a website from them to sell Teddy Bears. TKN has sold that same exact website to other people. The website may have a different name, maybe even a different look, but the content is the same. Google clearly states in their guidelines not to have websites with duplicate content. Read under Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html

When you build your own website, you can control the content. If you don’t know HTML, you can go with an OScommerce site, which is what TKN is selling.

Reason #2: Turnkey websites sell the same products as other turnkey websites. Like the sites being duplicated, so are the sells of the product. Even if the turnkey website sold a niche product that not too many people were selling, more and more people would get a turnkey website from the same place trying to sell the same product. Eventually, everybody and their brother would be trying to sell the same product. Competition drives your profit margin down in the dirt.

Reason #3: TKN is charging between $400-500 for a drop ship website. They are OScommerce websites. They look like templates sites. You can get a fully loaded OScommerce template for around $150. All you need is a product to sell, preferably something as niche as possible. Then you have to load your product and you are ready to go.

If you want to buy an already built website. I would recommend checking out website sells in Forums like forums.digitalpoint.com and http://www.v7n.com/forums/. There are many others. I for the most part, prefer building my own.

If you have any more questions, feel free to email me. I will be posting this email in my blog for others who might have the same question.

Thanks,

Jon