If you are selling tangible products that you have to ship, things are bound to go wrong. Maybe something breaks in shipping or for some reason you can’t ship out a product fast enough to a customer. What ever it is, it is bound to happen.

One time I had my dropshipper ship a product to a customer. By the time the product got there, it was broke. I had it sent in and replaced. The second time it was sent, it arrived broken. My customer was pretty ticked and so was I. I don’t think it was my dropshipper’s fault. I’ve been working with this dropshipper for three years, and never had this kind of problem before. My dropshipper has always been good to me. They get products there on time and they never get there broken. I believe it was the UPS’s fault.

This is how I handled the situation. I told my customer that I was extremely sorry. She was wondering why I didn’t check the products before they left the shipping dock. I told her the truth. Because of the many options that our products have, we drop ship our products straight from the manufacturer. I then had her send the damaged product to me. To save time, I purchased a new product from the manufacturer and sent it to myself. I took pictures of it, showing her that the product was in 100% working order with no damage. I then FedXed it to her just in case it was the UPS guy smashing it.  I seriously think the UPS guy was like Jim Carey on Ace Venture, kicking the package down the hall and smashing it with the elevator door. The package finally arrived to her with out damage. To top it all off, I sent her a gift card for the Olive Garden for about $25 or so.

I don’t know if the customer will ever buy from me again after that experience, but at least I did my best to make it right. I believe that is what you have to do, be honest, and go way out of your way to ensure you have a happy customer. Did I loose money on the deal? For sure, but it was worth it.

I’m beginning to make the gift card thing a part of customer care. Any time I have a customer that might be a bit unhappy, I’m going to send them a gift card. Maybe, some customers will never return, but for those who do my little gift card was well worth it.

I’ve always been pretty conservative with my money.  Every once in a while I get on a buying kick where I convince myself that I need certain things I don’t really need, so I go out and buy it.  I did this quite a bit when I first started my online business.  The only problem was that often these things didn’t help bring in any more profit, but instead sucked me dry of the little money I had to work with.  Quite frustrating.  The key to making money in any business is keeping your expenses lower than your revenue.  When I first started I had no revenue, yet I had big ideas that cost money.   I later realized that I only needed to buy things when I had the money.  I started making a little profit, so I bought a web template.  Soon a little more profit allowed me to purchase high-speed internet, a fax line, and so on.  I have run into people that have a huge dream and expect that if they lay all this money on the line right away, they will suddenly see tons of profit fall into their laps.  Not so.  That is actually one of the biggest pitfalls in business.  Hoping for quick cash, along with debt lingering over your head, will lead only to disappointment, frustration, and failure.  A business takes hard work, lots of time, and much perseverance.  Couple this with smart money management and you will soon be on your way to success.

When I first started getting into this web stuff I had no money to invest into an internet business, yet I had a huge desire to start one. I was so motivated I paid a guy $200 to build a two page website. He built me a cheesy website that wasn’t worth ten cents. I later tried to get my brother-in-law to build a website for free for me. He didn’t have the time to build it so it took for ever to get anywhere. He did a great job with what he did for me, but I felt kind of trapped if I needed a quick change I couldn’t change it. I had to rely on my brother-in-law to even do a simple change. I soon realized if I was going to get anywhere I needed to learn how to build a website on my own. My number one best investment was an HTML book that I bought. From it I learned how to build my own website. It saved me tons of money and I was able to make website changes when ever I wanted to.

My greatest advise that I could give to a person who is wanting to start an online business is to learn how to do as much as you can on your own. Atleast learn HTML. Hang out in forums where people freely give you information on how to run a business. Learn how to do search engine optimization. I would have probably given up a long time ago because I didn’t have the funding to get my business started. But since I took the time to learn a few things I was able to get a website going that began to turn profits.