photo by Sean Morris

The title is worthy to be accompanied by a lengthy How-to book. But I want to paraphrase some basic, but very important points to consider when looking to start a new eCommerce site.

Domain Name

So you’ve decided to sell products online. Great! But where do you begin? Just go out and see if a good domain name is available for your site. Let’s say you want to sell Toys. Stop right there and go back and find a product to sell that you can’t buy at every store in town. Vintage Toys? Ok, that’s better.

I register all my domains at Godaddy. Why? Because they are the #1 domain name registrar in the world. The reason. They have superior customer service. And their prices are great too.

So go over to Godaddy.com and start searching, via their Domain search bar, for a good domain. Forget about Vintagetoys.com. That’s been registered forever. Keep trying until you come up with something that you like.

Things to keep in mind when searching for a domain name:

1. Keep it as short as possible

2. .com is always better

3. No hyphens if at all possible

4. Keywords in the domain don’t hurt

5. Something catchy that people might remember

Once you’ve thought of a domain name, and you like it, register it NOW! Why? Because it only costs a few bucks to register a domain. And you can sit on it until you are ready to start building your website.

Just register an account with Godaddy. Then, when you get to the pages where they try to sell you some other goodies, you can bypass these steps by scrolling to the bottom and click ‘No Thanks’. After you complete your domain purchase, you can then log in to your Domain Manager section of your account and manage the nameservers, locking, and other domain features.

Web Host

After you get a domain, you need to find you a good web host. A web host is where your website files will reside so that your website will show up when someone types in your url. I recommend Hostgator, hands down. Like Godaddy is the top domain registrar, Hostgator is the top Webhosting company. They have impeccable service. You can get in touch with a Livechat agent 24/7 or just call their toll free number. I usually get a tech on the phone in 30 secs to a minute. They are awesome!

Register for a hosting account with them and you’ll get details about your login information by e-mail shortly thereafter. If you have any questions on which packages are best for you, just contact them. They will be happy to help.

Shopping Cart

Next you need a Shopping cart solution. There are several options out there. There are many services online where you pay a monthly fee for the shopping cart + hosting combo. Volusion is one such company. I have never used them. This could get expensive if you have a limited budget.

There are some CGI shopping carts that will add-on to existing HTML sites. These require that you place some code next to all the products on your site. The code usually makes some type of ‘Buy’ button on the customer end, that will take them to the CGI cart. I have used this solution before, and had some problems with the cart communicating with Authorize.net (payment gateway). This resulted in some orders not showing up in the cart. Still could be a viable option.

You can also find a standalone cart option such as X-cart. Though you will pay for a license upfront, there are no monthly fees associated with a standalone cart, and you have full access to the source files to make any changes you want. These standalone carts are usually search engine friendly and have several different themes to choose from. Basically you can just change the default logo and start uploading products via a robust backend. The backend has a lot of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) function, so you don’t have to know HTML to create pages and upload products.

There are also some free shopping cart software solutions like Zen Cart, OScommerce and Magento. A disadvantage to these solutions is that they are very plain, out of the box. But if you go to Templatemonster.com, you can search ‘eCommerce templates’ and find some nifty themes that would make your store look like a customized, clean design.

Accepting Payments

There are some different options for accepting payments online. Paypal is easy to set up and accepted on most sites. But by itself, it’s not the best option. Google checkout is pretty good. Just keep in mind they have some pretty hefty policies over there. There are also some Third party merchant account solutions that charge a fee per transaction. 2checkout.com is one you might have seen a bit. But I’ve always gone with the #1 payment gateway, Authorize.net. Authorize.net is the actual payment gateway, not the merchant account. You will still need to find a good company with the most competitive rates to set up your merchant account. I use United Bank Card. They have the most competitive rates, and have always been very helpful on my websites.

SSL

This stands for Secure Sockets Layer. You will need to buy an SSL so that your checkout area is secure on your eCommerce website. Talk to your webhost about setting this up. Hostgator sells their private ssl for $50/yr.

Don’t Re-invent the Wheel

Once you are ready to go, and you start uploading products, and designing your website, just remember not to re-invent the wheel. Any great startup company has always researched the competition. I would suggest that you look up your keywords in Google and find out who the top 20 players are. You can skip Wikipedia and any non-related sites that might be in there. Only look at the sites that are to be your direct competition.

See what keywords they are targeting in their meta Title, as well as their meta Description. Make sure that you are targeting the right keywords before building your categories, page names, and link campaign.

Most importantly, if you get stuck on anything at all, just ask Google. Back in 2003, I learned a ton about HTML, building websites, search engine optimization, merchant accounts, freelancers, 301 redirects, etc. from searching in Google. Google is much better than the library I had growing up. You don’t even have to go to the card catalog to find what you are looking for.

Other Questions

If you are just starting out, and you have questions, feel free to comment at the end of this post. I’ll be glad to help where I can. For advanced users, I will get more specific in an upcoming post.

photo by Danard Vicente

Instead of me jumping in and giving all sorts of basic SEO Tips and stuff you can find anywhere, I want to give you some updated information on a technique to achieve better Google rankings. This is a technique that you should consider before ever rolling out your website, but you can apply it to an existing website as well.

Back in the old days, you could obtain backlinks in many different ways. As long as you had the most backlinks from high PR sites, and the anchor text was relevant, you could achieve #1 rankings.

But the game has changed drastically. No longer can you just get a site ranked by having the biggest pocketbook. Google has put all it’s PHDs to work and has the most relevant search results thanks to their hard work.

Imagine that your website is a shopping mall. Google walks up to your website then walks through the front door and starts having a look around. It sees that there are several different stores. Google sees the following: Abercrombie and Fitch, Macy’s, Black & Decker, Bath & Body, General Nutrition Center and JcPenney.

So at first glance, your website sells silk scarves, vitamins, tools, t-shirts and scented body wash.

Google takes a few snapshots of your stores, and then leaves. So, if your goal was for Google to see you as an online shopping mall, then you have achieved your goal. But with so many different types of products, will you actually rank well for any specific products? Probably not. At least not without pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into your eBiz.

Ok, let’s go back and say you only sell Tools. So Google walks through and gets a good idea that you sell all kinds of tools. This is great, but can you possibly compete with all the tools stores online? I think not.

If you want good Google rankings fast on a new site, then you must make your new site as Niche market as possible. This means that it is centered around one theme.

Tools is way too broad. Power tools is still too broad. Antique tools is a more niche term. If you build a site that sells Antique tools, then each one of your categories would lead to some page that offers products relating to a specific type of antique tool.

Since your site focuses on Antique tools only, you would have a better chance competing against some of the older websites out there, and Google would recognize that your site is all about Antique tools.

Along with the basic SEO principles, Google will reward those searching specifically for Antique/Old tools with your site, that specializes in nothing but Antique tools.

Besides just having product pages, you can add original content on informational pages about different types of antique tools. This type of information is relevant to your product and can also be a great way to build ‘linkbait’ pages. Linkbait is any page that users link to voluntarily from their sites, just because they like the information on the page. This type of link is excellent, because you do not have to do anything to obtain the one-way link. A link to a subpage within your site is called Deep linking, and can be very beneficial to your SE rankings as well.

Since Google has the ability to determine the theme of a site just by looking at the whole site as one snapshot, it is now ever more important to make sure that all the content on your site is relevant to your theme. A niche website would have a more specific theme sitewide, and would give you, the webmaster, a better chance to succeed in your quest for top organic search rankings.

For starters, there are a ton of people who want to make money online. The problem has been that there are so many people running scams online, that it makes it almost impossible for the novice entrepreneur to get started.

I, myself, have tried several different ways to make money online. But the one thing that I can tell you is this. Selling products may not be the easiest way out there, but it is the most ‘sound’ method that I have found.

So that’s where the drop ship distributor comes in. You want to make money online selling products. So you’ve basically got 3 choices:

1. Build or manufacture your own product to sell
2. Stock or warehouse an inventory of products to sell
3. Drop ship your products direct from the distributor

Option 1 is really a great option if you are handy or can make something that people would want to buy. Doing this would give you a huge edge, since the competition would not have access to your product. You would also have phenomenal profit margins.

Option 2 would be really good if you have a sizeable amount of money to invest upfront. The margins here would actually be pretty good as well. The big downside here is that if your products don’t sell as well as you thought they would, you are going to be out some money. This is basically the risk that a Brick-and-mortar business takes. You would need to do a good feasibility study to make sure you are making a good investment.

Option 3 has a bit lower profit margins and lots of competition than option 2. Drop shipping products tends to draw a ton of newbie webmasters who want to try their hand online to a low upfront-cost business. This option definitely has the least risk, and is my personal favorite.

So where do you go about finding a drop ship distributor? There are several ‘lists’ online and drop ship companies who want you to sell their products.

One legitimate source that I have used (and have a lifetime membership to) is a company called Worldwide Brands. Also known as the Drop Ship Source Directory, they can be found at www.mydssd.com. Chris Malta is the founder of Worldwide Brands and has really put together a nice directory over the years. When you buy a membership to their directory, you get instant member-only access to thousands of Dropshippers and wholesalers.

He has it laid out so that you can search for products several different ways. I usually use the keyword search tool. There, you enter a product and click search. You get a list of all suppliers that drop ship or wholesale this product. Each supplier page has contact information and website url.

What I would strongly advise against is using some all-in-one drop ship supplier that carries toothbrushes, swords, shoulder massagers and ceramic horses. These companies, like SMC, do not specialize in any one product line. Therefore, how do they know what products actually sell? It is best to find a drop ship distributor who specializes in the product, so that they will only carry items that they know you can sell.

Another way to find a drop shipper is just ask. I have found several drop shippers by contacting the manufacturer and asking if they drop ship. Amazingly, some of them do.

Before deciding on a product to sell, be sure and research which drop ship companies are available for this type of product. This is the important warning. Do not…I repeat DO NOT use a drop shipper if they are selling their own products on a retail site below MSRP, discounted or with Free shipping promotions. In other words, many distributors have a retail store front with MSRP pricing. That is not a problem.

But more and more, I am finding that today’s distributors are selling their own products below their list price in addition to offering free shipping for orders over $50. You cannot compete with the distributor when they are doing this. So do not try!

Other things to consider when researching drop shipping distributors:

1. Be sure and find out if the distributor has a Drop ship fee or handling fee, that would be in addition to the normal shipping cost. This could seriously cut into lower price product margins.

2. The cost of shipping has gone up quite a bit over the last few years. But I have had a distributor that was a good bit inflated over my own real-time shipping costs. There is no good reason for a distributor to mark up the shipping cost to the retailer.

3. Get a wholesale price list before you even spend all the time building your website, if possible. That way you can find out what your margins will be. Be sure and compare their MSRP prices to the actual prices that other retailers are selling these products for. Even though you don’t want to be the lowest price guy out there, you will likely not be right at MSRP. This will give you a better gauge of what your real margins are.

4. Order a product or two and see how the distributor handles order processing, shipping times, tracking #s, etc.

5. Some drop shippers will put your Business name on the return shipping label. Some will not. If this is important to you, make sure you know this. Drop ship a box to your neighbor and see how the packaging looks.

6. Be cautious about ‘middlemen’ claiming to be drop ship distributors. There are retailers out there that are claiming to be drop shippers. You should get an idea they are for real by their presentation, and if the profit margins are really low.

7. Make sure your drop ship distributor keeps a good inventory of their products. Your customers will be none too happy if you are frequently delaying shipments because your drop shipper has the items backordered.

8. And my biggest pet peeve. Any great Drop ship distributor knows that by finding good retailers, like you, to sell their products through many great websites online, they will make a lot of money, and be highly reputable in the long term. But those who are greedily competing with their own retailers are destined to doom, and they will take great potential retailers with them. Don’t fall for it!

Finding a drop shipper is not hard. The hard part is researching your product and ensuring that your next eCommerce web venture is going to be feasible and competitive.

photo by Mike Jones Photo

Today, I launch the first, official post from AnimatedMarketing.com. Let me give you a quick background.

I launched my first website in early 2003. I bought the site on eBay for $68. It was a cheezy, little self defense products site that was setup so I could drop ship products directly from the distributor. I had no idea what to do with this site. So I went to Google and started asking all kinds of questions.

I optimized it for the search engines, started a reciprocal linking campaign, etc. and within 6 months I got my first order. Not so good. But I continued working the site in my spare time. By January 2004, my site ranked #1 in Google and Yahoo for its main keywords. For those who don’t remember, Google and Yahoo results used to be one in the same.

I continued working that little site and by 2006, I decided to sell it. I was on pace for $250k/yr in sales in 2006, but I figured this site had to be worth some money, and I was ready to try something new anyway. So I sold it on my own for a nice profit. What’s funny is that the guy who bought the site…turned around and sold it a year later through a broker for more than twice what he paid me. If only I knew.

Anyway, since then I have continued to learn more and more in the eCommerce world and am still drop shipping products today on several sites. I still do an occasional site flip as well.

The reason I started AnimatedMarketing.com is that I am always talking about things I have done or know how to do…to my friends and family. I never run out of stuff to talk about. So what better place to channel that information than on a Blog?

I will be talking about a whole range of things related to eCommerce, drop shipping, marketing, seo, keyword research, how to know what product to sell, etc.

Note: For anyone who wants to get deeper into these subjects and pick my brain on a specific project you are working on, I am available as an online consultant as well. Just contact me and give me some ideas on what you would like to do. I will send you a customized quote for my services.

In today’s economic state, there are so many people who could benefit from learning to run a business online. The problem is that there are so many ‘get rich quick’ schemes out there, and many of them are camouflaged behind a great presentation. I hate to see people get steered in so many directions when the whole process really is not that hard. It’s just learning the right steps and doing it.

Just as a final note…in every industry there are many experts. I am extremely knowledgeable in many areas, but not a certifiable expert in any one area. So if you can contribute to this blog with your knowledge about anything we will discuss, it will truly help the reader experience.

I look forward to meeting many great people through AnimatedMarketing.com.

Bryan Robinson, Owner