Just Keep Shopping

The world is one big shopping cart. You can shop anywhere, anytime, with just a click of a button. Not only can you shop, but you can create a way to make money from all of the other happy shoppers. There seems to be a piece of pie for everybody, if you are willing to do a little research, and take time to set up a website.

There is a chain of shoppers, just like there is a food chain. The higher up the chain, the more profit you make and the less you pay for the end product. The top of the shopping chain are the manufacturers. These creative beings make the product and churn it off of the factory lines. They pack them into huge boxes to sell in mass, to the Importer or Exclusive Distributor. Because a majority of the products are from countries overseas, this distributor gets to handle customs and taxes and all the fun stuff. But his piece of the pie is very large.

The next link in the chain is a wholesaler or Regional Distributor, he will take big boxes and sell them in truck loads to the local distributors. This is where most small business start. They can handle a smaller inventory but still buy at wholesale. Some people will start by asking these Regional or even a link above, the Importers, to drop ship products for them.

Below this are the Jobbers, who deliver to the store for smucks like me, who pay full price , being at the bottom of the shopping chain.

So how do you get a piece of the pie? Some entrepreneurs start websites, with the hopes of being an affiliate marketer. You can sign up with Amazon, or Guitar Center, or other such entities and create links to your blog. When someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase your affiliate store will pay a referral fee to you. It can be as generous as 15%. Not bad money for not a lot of work, but it is not going to pay for your family vacation in a week. I would imagine it could take years to make money this way.

So you want to make money, sell something, choose what you want to sell and Google “Wholesale Distributor” + the product you want to sell. You can find wholesalers willing to sell a product to you, which you then resell at retail. Don’t want to deal with inventory, check out the wholesalers who drop ship and individually send packages direct from their warehouse to your customers.

The thing I would suggest is to be passionate about what you sell. Know and like the product. You need to attract customers to your blog, one way to do so is to pay Google Adwords to get your name to the top of the list. Don’t forget that the Government needs a piece of the pie. All wholesalers will ask for a tax ID for your business, before they can do business with you. I leave you with my thoughts on shopping, expressed by Will Smith.

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.
~ Will Smith

Not Quite What I Expected.

As I sit on my imaginary bench on a cold wintery day, I ponder on the lessons I have learned in the first two weeks of my Web Business Design class. The first thing is, this is not a class just on creating a website, but a class on building a web based business. I have to think of a product or service to sell on line, develop a business model and learn how to promote my website that it will be more prominant on the internet. The cold air is needed to clear my head. I need to think of 20 business ideas! I search the web, I ask my friends, I think of what I am good at or enjoy. Here is a list of my top 10 ideas so far.

Portrait Photography
Meals-to-Go
Teach English
Pintrest Parties
Cup Cake Bakery
Card Making
Make and Sell Wreaths
Social Media Management
Detective Agency (my husband would be the detective)
Freelance Photography
Because I am so new to the online digital way of making money, I am drawn to the Merchant Model of business, because it is what I know. I create something, I sell it. What I do not yet understand are the many ways you can make money from a web business with out even creating a single thing. If you blog, you can make money through the Advertising Model. You can also use the Subscription Model to get people to pay periodically to hear what you have to say on a certain subject. You can provide information to help consumers understand a certain market in the Infomediary Model and you can assist consumers to buy and sell to each other in the Brokerage Model.

My Web Business will ultimately be my photography. It is what I am passionate about and what I can excell in. I have been reading Seth Godin’s book, “The Purple Cow” in it he teaches that you “must be remarkable” just like a purple cow is different from all the brown cows out there. You must find a way to make your product or service remarkable. How do I take the best photographs? How do I make them different from all the other photographers in town? How do I make my business that much better, so that people will want me to take their pictures above anyone else in town? These are the questions I will be asking myself and trying to figure out as I work through my web design business.

It has been a little over whelming and I feel I am in over my head, yet the process of learning how to establish a business on line, enable it to accept payments and promote it, so that more people will see it, will be invaluable to my initial purpose of building a website for Sarah-Jayne Photography.