Shopster's Dropshippers, eCommerce, and Selling Online Blog

Effective Strategies to Establish Your Brand Online

By now, all businesses are aware of the importance of online branding. With the amount of day-to-day business conducted online, a brand’s online presence can probably make or break the enterprise. To those in the know, establishing a brand online does not just mean investing money on the brand. It is all about building a solid entity that your customers can remember and relate to and will generate repeat business. This reason alone is enough for businesses to make online branding one of the top priorities in solidifying their products and services.

There are lots of strategies involved in establishing your brand online, but here are the top ones to get you started:

Know your audience

This first step is very crucial to the success of your online presence. Before you launch all your other efforts, you should know your target audience. You need to establish this before you come up with content strategies and marketing/communication plans. There are lots of tools available online for this task, which include Nielsen and Google. Through these tools, you can get important information about your audience, such as age, gender, income, and marital status.

Establish the voice for your brand

Using the outcome of your research, you can now find out what the audience prefers to hear or see, which will help you create the message that you want to send out to them. When doing this task, remember to keep an open mind and go through all ideas. Your content should speak with your audience and should be consistent. This will build credibility for your brand.

Establish your online reputation

This task is by no means a walk in the park and will take considerable time to accomplish, but this is something that you should not disregard. Your reputation online can make or break your brand. You need to identify the strategy and tactics that you will use.

Ways to Sell on Facebook

If you are thinking of creating your own business, you couldn’t have picked a more perfect time than the present. Gone are the days that merchants are limited to selling their products and services through physical stores. Now you can actually sell stuff without an actual brick and mortar store. Online selling has allowed those with limited capital to hawk their wares without spending so much for overhead, which is a major budget-eater for conventional stores.

There are lots of channels available for online sellers. Facebook, with its millions of members, has become a juggernaut when it comes to promoting and selling products and services online. Within Facebook, there are several avenues you can use for selling. Here are some of them:

Ads

Those small ads on the side of your Facebook page are more than just an annoyance; they actually make money from targeted markets. That ads that appear on the sidebar depend on the user’s interest and searches. Using these ads, you can target anyone you choose, but you can’t convince users to click on the ads whenever you wish.

Fan Pages

Your business can’t survive the selling competition on Facebook if you don’t have a fan page. You can use your page to raise awareness for your product or service by communicating directly with your fans. You will be able to get fast and honest feedback from the community. You need to update your page constantly in order to make this work.

Virtual Store Apps

These handy and easy-to-use applications integrate your products and services into your Facebook page. In order for this to work, your customers have to permit the apps to access their personal pages and allow Facebook to transact for their purchase. Keep in mind that some customers may get turned off with this feature and will not allow you access to their pages.

Hot Items to Sell on eBay for This Year

One of the great things about eBay is that you can sell practically anything and you will be able to find a buyer for your items. More and more people are turning to shopping on eBay to look for items, easy-to-find or not. If you already have an existing eBay business or just thinking of putting up one, you can gain an edge by knowing which items are hot right now. Life and social trends determine which items will fly off your virtual shelves.

Sell more items for college students

Why, you ask. More people are extending their stay in college, which means that there will be more customers from this market. Aside from the usual items like text books, school clothes, and graduation rings, you can also sell costumes which they can use for those numerous dress-up parties that students have. No matter how limited a student’s budget is, he or she will manage to cough up enough dough for a decent costume.

Sell more items for aging baby boomers

With millions of baby boomers entering their retirement years, imagine the need for recreational items. See, a lot of these baby boomers will unload their big homes to settle for smaller abodes. With the downsizing of homes comes spending money that they will spend on hobby items and gadgets, as well as stuff they can use for their travels. And since they will be selling their furniture and home decors when they unload their homes, this means that the market will be flooded with these items. This is a niche that you should avoid for the meantime.

Great SEO Copywriting Tips for Link Building

There are many techniques that link builders use to garner more links, but not all of them use copywriting for regulating content. Don’t know how to do it? Consider the following tips:

Make content memorable for those who skim

Author Steve Krug got it right when he said, “We don’t read pages. We scan them” when it comes to website usability. You should use layout, images, and language that will stand out and get noticed by power skimmers. We’re not saying that you should you abandon all efforts in making your content pretty and detailed, but content should not look like it belongs to an encyclopedia. In short, do not write Wikipedia-style content.

Take advantage of headline formulas

Take your cue from newspapers and magazines when it comes writing headlines. Catchy headlines grab readers’ attention. This should work for your website as well. The classic “who, what, and why” formula never fails.

Use numbers

Numbers make content look more relevant. Headlines with numbers grab the attention of readers. It makes users want to click on your link and it also makes your copy more organized and attractive.

Do not use halfway words

Using words like perhaps, maybe, possibly, might, or try won’t do wonders for your content. Users are more attracted to power words such as free, guarantee, simple, and quick. Weak and tentative terms should not be included in your vocabulary list.

Use sub-headlines

Users want their content organized and easy to read, and this is why you should use sub-headlines. This is imperative especially if your content is longer than 400 words.

Make Your Small Business Benefit from PPC

It’s true that competing with the big boys and their mega marketing budgets can be very difficult for a small business. A fledgling business does not have the same means that big businesses have. But there are still ways that a small business can put up a good fight by making use of great pay-per-click campaigns.

Use negative keywords

This is a must if you want to ward off unwanted traffic in your website. This strategy allows you to go for higher volume keywords without having to expose your website to searches unrelated to your business.

Use available match types

If you are one of those who still add keywords for broader matches, then stop it right now. Hoping for returns from these broad keywords will not really help your site in the long run. Aside from denting your budget, you might end up attracting unwanted traffic to your site. Use exact matches and available match types to bring down your costs.

Utilize time/day parting

If you know when your customers usually log on to your site to look for products and services, then you should utilize the time/day parting options allowed in Google. You decide on when you want your ads to display, on the exact time and day of the week. No need to have your ads appear in random time, which can only balloon your costs.

Invest in other search engines

Google is still top priority given the fact that they own the greatest share of the market but it helps to invest in Bing and other search engines as well. They are not as influential as Google, but they do have lower bid prices.

Who Knew Selling Adult Toys Was a Growth Industry

You might have heard that the world is having a economic recession and stress levels are rising!  Well looks like that is helping the adult toy market, it is suggested that the sex toy market place is around $15 billion industry.  So as the rest of the economy has dipped this industry has been growing and growing no pun intended. In the past sex toys were sold mainly in land based stores that could be a little uncomfortable and seedy in many cases but there has been a major switch to online selling of sex toys.  The big key is selection and discreet shopping.  “ People can shop on our store in the privacy of there own homes and offices and they can do it when they want and how they want, online stores like ours have much larger selections then most brick and mortar stores and better pricing.  Customers want selection and they want the private and discreet shopping site like www.purePASSIONATE.com offers.” Ryan Wuest, the Executive VP of Marketing of purePASSIONATE told me.

So setting up your online store and selling adult toys and product could be and seems to be a great way to beat the recession blues!

I know, it’s still months away before the Christmas season, but given the craziness that comes with the gift-buying period, don’t you think it’s a smart idea to start shopping for presents now? Why not save yourself from the stress of last-minute shopping by putting these beautiful toys in your list? You won’t regret buying these toys and I’m sure your girls will surely thank you to death for giving these pleasure tools at their disposal.

Nexus Vibro

This is the perfect gift for a woman who already has extensive sex toy experience. The Nexus Vibro is clearly not made for the beginner. The size of the toy may prove overwhelming for the neophyte. This works great as a perineum massager as well, which makes this baby a great present for men as well.

Gigi and Liv

You can’t go wrong with LeLo toys, and these babies are no exception. These beautiful toys called Gigi and Liv sports an elegant design totally light years away from the common sex toys. These toys look very sexy and the minimalist design is ideal for the women who want their toys discreet. Gigi is great for g-spot stimulation while Liv is perfect for vaginal and anal penetration.  

Tryst

Wooden toys may not be on the top of your list, but one look at the Tryst can change your mind. This wooden dildo is nature-inspired and multi-functional, which means you can use it for g-spot stimulation and anal penetration. It is perfectly safe for use because of its non-porous and hypoallergenic material.

Having a back up

There may be days when you are unable to attend to your online store. You may be under the weather, or have urgent chores to attend to, or go on that long-planned vacation. Unlike a brick and mortar store, however, your store is theoretically running 24/7.

Even if your site is a one-person operation, you will still need someone to back you up, otherwise you could lose some precious sales.

Think of your online store as something precious that you own. Who will take over in case you are no longer around? That person – it can be a close or a distant relative, or even a good friend – can serve as your back up.

Inform him or her of your site, and ask that person if he or she is willing to temporarily take over every now and then. If you get an affirmative reply, then you have your back up. If, on the other hand, that person is hesitant, then you will have to look elsewhere. It’s his loss anyway, so don’t sweat it.

Since online store operations are relatively simple, you can give your back up a briefing, which shouldn’t take too long. Stick to the basics. Shop him or her how to handle orders. If the person has some extra time, then you can go further. You may even consider compensating your back up whenever he or she processes an order for you.

With a little bit of luck, your online store can be around for a long, long time. All because you prepared yourself for any and all eventualities.

Don’t let the economy get you down

Throughout much of the developed world, the state of the economy has been pretty much in the doldrums ever since the global economic meltdown of three years ago.

Retailers such as yourself and wholesalers such as your drop shippers feel the pinch, although there are enough positive signs that a recovery is underway.

It’s easy enough to surrender to the general negative feeling that persists in many industries, retail and wholesale included. But if you allow those negative feelings to grab hold of you, your chances of moving forward become, for all intents, non-existent.

Your drop shippers are aware of this. Remember that they do have a different vantage point from you. You and your business are at ground level, but your drop shippers see things from a higher perspective.

If the economy were going downhill as a few doomsayers say, then your drop shippers would have shut down their operations a long time ago. If, on the other hand, they see that a full-blown recovery is approaching, they will likely stay in business at all cost.

So what do you see? Are your drop shippers falling like dominos? Or are they standing tall, taking the licks as they come, and planning for better times ahead?

Since all drop shippers have spent much larger sums than you to put up their business, the fact that they are still around should tell you what’s ahead.  When a nation’s economy falls, the next sure thing to happen is for that same economy to rise. Drop shippers are expecting a major economic rebound, and they want nothing more than to bring their retailers up with them when it does. That would include you!

Holding an auction to boost sales

Everyone knows eBay. This online company’s formula for success is as simple as it is effective. Post a product on the site and have people bid on that product. The bidding is for a fixed time frame, so any interested party has up to the deadline to decide if he or she really wants that product and at what price.

The owner of the product can also specify how much he wants so if anyone really wants that item, no bidding is necessary. The buyer agrees to pay the asking price. The deal is sealed, payment is made and delivery is arranged.

There have been attempts to imitate the eBay formula to varying degrees of success.

Your online store can copy the formula without having to be a poor man’s version of eBay. You simply select one or two products of the week or month, and open the door to bidders. If, for example, you sell men’s clothes, you can have bids for the extra large leather jackets you have in your inventory for one month, then move to pastel colored golf shirts the next, then on to silk neckties the following month.

If your online store sells women’s shoes and handbags, you can have bids on single items only such as that last small pair of red pumps. If you have single items up for bids, your turnover could be faster than if you offered several similar items.

Also, adding an interesting detail can make an ordinary product more attractive. If the basketball shoes you sell are the same kind that President Barack Obama or Tom Hanks uses when he plays, then say so. Such details can be enough to clinch a sale sometimes.