Diary of a Working Mom

Fantastic Marketing Resource!

2009-10-15T10:58:00.002-05:00

Another recent website I’ve come across is hubspot.com. It is a fantastic educational website for people starting their own website. I’ve listened to a couple of webinars and read some articles. They are very helpful! They have products they sell to make life easier on a website developer, but they aren’t shoving it down your throat. They show you the long way around if you don’t want to go the easy rout with their product(s). It’s an exceptional website and is well known on the internet with thousands of references throughout the internet.

SOME of the topics that are gone through are:
• Blogging. Why it’s important to your website.
• Marketing analytics and how it can work for you.
• SEO
• List of other marketing tools available.

There is an excellent workshop that Hubspot did. It’s available for everyone on-line actually.

If you’ve worked with hubspot or listen to the workshop, post a comment. I’d love to hear from you!

2009-10-13T14:00:00.001-05:00

It's been a while since I've written. I've changed the name of the website to Your Pet Store With More. Now I can offer various pet supplies and don't cater to only dog lovers and their friends. I'm starting with adding cat supplies. I'm excited about the change!

Since I've written last I've been continuing to work on the website in the matter of marketing and adding new products.

I have found a few very helpful resources of late. The first is Website Magazine. Only a few stories into my first issue and I love it. The issue has reminded me that I need to keep up on my network marketing to get my store noticed.

I've added a page to my website that lists all the places I can be found on the internet. Helps me keep it all straight AND helps my customers find me.

I've started a lens on Squidoo. More on that tomorrow.

This update brought to you by our Savvy Tabby Cat Toy
-Our Interactive Cat Toys by Savvy Tabby called Jungle Jabbers are creatively designed cat toys in fashionable animal prints.
-Feathered balls make an enticing peeping sound.

A few new sites to use as tools

2009-07-13T21:51:00.002-05:00

The first that I've actually received two customers from is merchantcircle.com where you can add promotional advertising for your site. I put a 10% off coupon there and have gotten 2 customers from there so far. Well worth the cost... FREE. :-) Here is the coupon I posted. Just took 5 minutes.

Another site I found from a posting on buyitsellit.com community boards is all4webs.com. You create a web page where it's a little like a home page. You direct people to your website with this tool. Here's my page.

The final website is weebly.com. You can create a blog here, but for now I'm treating it like all4webs and just creating a front page for people to click for my real website. Here's my Weebly page.

All of these were very easy to use and just took a few minutes to set-up. Hopefully it will bring new visitors.

New Products

2009-07-03T22:17:00.007-05:00

I'm adding new products that I'm hoping will bring in new customers that are looking for a top quality dog dish. They are unique dog dishes hand crafted by a company called Melia. I received a phone order for a pair of dishes a few days ago and the customer was very surprised at the low cost compared to other sites offering the same dog dishes. They can be personalized or not. I'm very excited to be able to offer such a quality product! Check them out for yourself and let me know what you think. Luxury Ceramic Dog Dishes

BISI Down For a day

2009-07-03T16:22:00.004-05:00

This week was rough for Buy It Sell It account holders this week. Everything was lost up until the 26th for a full day and later restored. While the restoration was happening nobody had administrative access to their stores. This cause understandable fear and panic amongst store owners. BISI will lose many stores because of this outage. I myself am considering moving to zencart.com. I'm still trying to weigh the pros and cons. Everyone that has moved to zencart.org seem very happy with their stores. I'll have to search their community boards and see how many complaints there are. The cost of both are the same. However I did just sign up with propay a couple months ago for them to handle my credit card transactions and I can't use propay with Zen Cart. Luckily I wasn't impacted very much by the BISI outage, but who knows what will happen if there is a next time. In looking at the boards of BISI it appears that people are still having problems though. Check out these complaints from The Selling Lounge. Well I'm off to dinner and the park to relax and not think about this whole mess.

2009-06-20T21:24:00.008-05:00

The weather is finally heating up around here. I can't say the same for the store sales. Because of that, and because it's been a few weeks I'm starting to think about another newsletter. I'll get one out in the next week or so. Haven't been doing much with the store in the last week or so. I wonder if that's why I haven't had many sales or because we're getting into summer full swing.

I've also started sending out coupon codes in the form of a flyer and attached business cards to everyone on my mailing list. Hopefully that will bring in repeat business and hopefully people will refer friends.

I've started to try entering more comments in blogs to see if I can get a higher ranking with my blog through google. I've actually found a few very interesting blogs in the process.

Speaking of search engines... Microsoft has come out with a new search engine called Bing.com so I've submitted my site there. We'll see if that increases my traffic. After a week or two of submission I don't see many people coming from there at all. As far as visibility of Bing.com... I've seen commercials for it. I had to be told by someone what it was though. Not really a good sign when you don't know what something is after seeing a commercial AND visiting the website. I haven't defaulted to using bing.com for myself but Bill Gates does know how to market and produce a great product so who knows where bing.com will be in 6 months.

This blog post brought to you by

First newsletter was a success!

2009-06-09T22:24:00.004-05:00

I included a 15% off coupon and someone purchased a dog pool. These have become very popular in the store. Of the 28 emails I sent I'm including the responses below. I don't think they are too bad. I like that nobody opted out.

28 Sent
12 Views
16 Untraced
8 Clicked
0 Forwarded
0 Bounced
0 Unsubscribed

On another note, I have begun to have an average of 1.5 sales per day. I'm very excited about that. The dog pool has been extremely popular. It is a terrific price with terrific quality so where could a person go wrong?

I've begun printing my snail mail flyer to send out to customers. With the flyer I am including a coupon code for 10% off anything in the store for them and if they refer a friend them and the friend will receive 10% off. I'm just waiting for stamps from USPS and I'll mail them out. I'm hoping for some good word of mouth advertising.

Newsletters

2009-05-29T21:30:00.004-05:00

I have decided to sign up with a service called Mad Mimi that helps you create a newsletter for your business. For the long time I thought I needed to have lots of customers to justify this account. But even at 25 customers I can send out a newsletter. I mean they can forward these offers to friends, they can be reminded they purchased from me and remember the good experience they had with my store.

I have created the mailing list and now I need to create the newsletter. They have quite a few tools on there so that should make it easier than starting from scratch with the limited tools I have on my computer.

This post brought to you by our Dog Agility Training Course.

2009-05-27T08:01:00.005-05:00

So I've gotten 100 submissions with my forms using Jotform.com. I decided to become a paying member last night. It's $9 a month and there are discounts for signing up for a year. I'm not sure how long I'll be asking people through Twitter for their photos. Well, I guess it is a good way for people to look at the site. I was thinking it's time consuming to add the photos but I think in the end it's worth it. People enjoy seeing their pets on the website and it gives them a chance to browse the website while they're submitting. I signed up for the paid account last

I've also been pointed to a resource that allows your website logo to show up in the address bar. It's called a fav icon. The site I went to to generate my code is http://www.iconj.com/ . I'm excited about this little feature.

I've also added a Share and a Bookmark icon to the site. Hopefully people will use the buttons.

I'm in the process of working with Mad Mimi a service where you can create a newsletter and hold your newsletter subscribers. It's free up to 100 names. I'm nowhere near 100 names so I'll be good for a while unless I'm lucky and suddenly get a lot of new customers.

1 day after I fixed the credit card with Propay I got 2 credit card orders. I hope it continues.

This post brought to you by our popular Guardian Gear Large Pool .

2009-05-22T20:47:00.004-05:00

I'm trying something different with Cat Dish Store. I'm charging $6.99 for shipping on all products. I don't want to do it with Dog Dish Store just yet. That would mean updating hundreds of products. I don't have a lot of products on the Cat Dish Store yet so I'll see how it goes there first.

Just added a book-mark button and share button to the my Dog Dish Store site to encourage people to bookmark my site or share with a friend. Even if they don't push the button it might get people to think about taking the long route in doing so.

I checked my abandoned carts on Google on Friday and saw that I had 200+ in the last 30 days. Maybe that's average... not sure but to me it was alarming. I tried to process a transaction on the site for a penny to test it and found that that my credit card processing system wasn't working. I use Propay with Buy It Sell It. Looking through community threads in Buy It Sell It I was able to see that I needed to contact Propay. I apparently had some kind of restriction on my account at Propay that wasn't allowing credit card transactions to go through. So I charged a penny successfully. So we'll see if that change impacts my sales for the better.

This blog entry brought to you by a Unique Kitty Hideaway

A Couple New Sources for you

2009-05-20T07:44:00.006-05:00

22 followers now! Welcome to all!

I've started my catdishstore.com twitter account. I've changed my welcome message to ask people to submit cat pictures and dog pictures for the dogdishstore.com and have gotten quite a few responses. I'm very pleased with the level of response as a matter of fact.

If you need a company to provide you with forms for your website check out jotform.com. It's free up until I think 100 submissions. I'm hoping I don't reach that with how many photos are being submitted but it might be close. Whenever possible I ask people to email me the photos to avoid the form submission.

I continue to be very pleased with my Twitter accounts. It's bringing customers and now photos to my store.

I ordered my business cards from vistaprint.com last week. The business cards are free and you just pay for shipping. I spent $11 and got 250 business cards being able to download my own design and I got an address stamp. I'll be sending these out to customers with a 10% off coupon code for them to use on their next purchase. I'll be providing them with 2 business cards. One of them is to pass along to a friend. If their friend makes a purchase, that friend gets 10% off their first purchase AND the referring friend gets 10% of their next purchase as well. I'm in the process of working on a flyer right now. I'm not impressed with my design skills, but it will get me by I suppose.

This post brought to you by our welcome mats

Cat Dish Store

2009-05-11T15:19:00.003-05:00

Well I have officially started working on my next store. It is Cat Dish Store! I'm very excited about it. I'm working on stocking everything right now so it's still in its very beginning stages. I'm trying to decide if I should go with a scheme like Dog Dish Store or make it a blank canvas like it is right now. I've started building my followers on my new twitter account. There are so many steps involved in getting this going. It's easy to forget all I've done in the last 5 months in getting Dog Dish Store up and running.

I've also been spending more time in The Selling Lounge getting questions answered and chatting with a lot of helpful people. If you are interested in starting an online store or business I recommend the Selling Lounge.

SEO tips

2009-05-01T09:22:00.004-05:00

Someone on Buy it Sell it was concerned about her traffic so I gave her some suggestions. I thought it maybe helpful for others.

I'm no expert but I wanted to give you some input on your titles and stuff that might help you get more traffic. I have to admit I'm a bit bored at work and that's why I have time. :-)

I recently optimized my pages and my Google percentages went up by 2% (according to the BISI stats on our Dashboard. I was at 25% until I started tweeting a lot so that brought me down for google percentage but not down in Google search quantity. I used google adwords to find the best words for me. After I was done I went to SEOCetro.com and used the keyword analyzer to be sure page title is in sink with my keywords and description. Also you want to have the keywords you find in google adwords to be the first words in your title.

Let me give you an example.... You have this title for a product. Black and White silk/sheer hair clip. Double loop I would change to Girls Hair Clips Black & White Silk / Sheer I always put the spaces before and after the slash so the search engine sees the two words separately otherwise I think they are seen as one word. Most importantly the title I'm showing puts the Girls Hair Clips front and center. That's the keywords you're hoping people will search for. Why? Because in Google it shows people look for that phrase is 1,900 in a month AND there are 618,000 pages competing with you. Now if you change that to Hair Clip you get 301,000 searchers but you don't know if they are looking for women or girls. AND you are competing with 2.36 million other pages to get your page to the top of google AND to be clicked on by the customer. So with Girls Hair Clips you are targeting more of a niche group and they are more likely to be interested in sticking around. And take note when you go into Google that the S on the end of a word makes a huge difference. In your case, I would use the S exactly where I have them.

I know some people on Buy It Sell It think you don't have to add SEO attributes and they'll be added for you, but I think it's just added as whatever you have on your home page... that's not going to apply to all of your items. And when I see my percentage increase by 2% from optimizing I beg to differ with them that it's not necessary to add your own. I had always been adding to SEO, but I wasn't as diligent with my title.

This update brought to you by
Outward Hound Life Jacket for your Dog

Are you getting the most out of your Twitter account?

2009-04-28T08:31:00.004-05:00

I don’t pay for any twitter tools and I recommend you do not as well. There are plenty of free ones out there. I don’t claim to be a Twitter expert, but I wanted to write this after seeing that many of you don’t have a lot of Twitter followers. I consider that to be less than 200 for many and less than 50 for even more.

If the only reason you use Twitter is to keep up with friends and fellow sellers that’s fine, but if you want to market yourself on Twitter that won’t work. My purpose in using Twitter is to get sales and market to people that might be interested in my products. To use Twitter as a marketing tool you MUST get MANY followers that are interested in your product line. As of right now I have 1,100+ followers. I’ve been with Twitter only about a month and I do not pay to get that many followers. A lot of people will ask if you want thousands of followers and they’ll want you to pay for a tool, but who knows if you’re targeting your niche market with those techniques.

How have I gotten 1,100+ followers? Twellow.com (and Search.twitter.com sometimes) and Tweetlater.com. Allow me to illustrate. I did post these two tools in another post but I wanted to post them here to encourage everyone to take full advantage of their tweets.

Twello w:
• People fill out profiles on Twitter. Find the people that are interested in what you sell and start following them. If you’re lucky they will start following you. If they don’t follow after a few days or weeks (whatever time limit you set) UNFOLLOW. You don’t have space for that. I’ll revisit this topic further down. The interest I look for is pretty easy. I sell Dog Supplies so I just have to find people that are interested in dogs. If you have troubles figuring out what your customers may be interested in or who to direct, post here and I or someone else may be able to give you suggestions. If you sell antiques I bet there is an interest for antiques. If you sell rummage sale items you can probably find people interested in rummaging. Rummaging interest could probably also be for antique sellers. If you sell kids clothes look for moms.
• Twellow.com is where I found most of my followers of late.

I use twello in conjunction with Tweetlater.com. Some points about tweetlater.com:
1. Unless you are really interest in what someone has to say (like for me it’s celebrity dish) don’t follow the person unless they follow you. Some people start following you just so you follow them then un-follow you once you are following them. You don’t have space on your account to follow people that aren’t following you. You have a max of 2,000 people you can follow before Twitter starts looking at the ratio of followers to following on your account. I don’t know what the ratio is but I hit 2,000 the other day and they wouldn’t let me follow anyone new so I knew it was time to clean out a bunch of people that were following me. I give people a few days to follow me before I will un-follow them. I try to keep the follow to followers ratio pretty close.
2. I don’t recommend un-following people that are following you just because you think you got ‘em. If you do that to someone like me I will un-follow you automatically.
3. Tweetlater has sooooo many functions. One being to un-follow anyone that un-follows you AND to automatically follow anyone that follows you. This is such a time saver.
4. You can also keep your multiple twitter accounts here so you can tweet from one central location.
5. You can set it up to receive emails when people tweet about keywords like your store name, something you sell or whatever you think you need to watch out for. I should note this tool hasn’t worked for me as I only received one email from it.
6. Tweetlater also allows you to set up tweets when you’re away from your computer. If you want people to constantly get messages from you set it up here. Remember that MANY people that will be following you will be following 1,000 others. So you want to make sure they read something from you everyday. If you only tweet once or twice a day you are going to get lost in the shuffle.

Don’t just post about your store on twitter. For me, that gets boring. If someone is following you that is only following 50 people they are going to get frustrated if all you put up all day is visit my store with a link. Frustration leads to an un-follow. Tell everyone about your day so you are seen as a real person. See what everyone else is tweeting about. It can be dumb stuff like “I just got the laundry out …. I hate laundry.” You might start a conversation with someone else that hates laundry. It makes you more personable.

I hope this helps everyone! I want to see higher numbers out there from everyone… if you want to use Twitter as a marketing tool.

Great Twitter tips and tools

2009-04-16T22:10:00.003-05:00

Check out the tools I love on Twitter

http://search.twitter.com/search: This allows you to search what people are talking about. For example if someone says "my dog" or has dog in their comment and sounds like the like or love dogs I add them as a follow. Then I hope they'll follow me and see my advertising.
I also use this http://twitter.com/invitations/find_on_twitter to find people with "dog" in their name or profile. I add them and hope they add me. I currently have 600+ follows.
If you have multiple accounts on twitter you can use http://hootsuite.com/
Someone recommended this site the other day. I guess you don't have to log in and out of your accounts. That will come in handy when I start my next website.
Check this out.... this site lists all the cool twitter tools. I'll have to browse every now and then for stuff that isn't helpful today... might be helpful tomorrow.
I love the Karma tool. It even shows the last time the person tweeted so I drop them if it's past 100 days. I'm seriously considering 60 days. There are so many different accounts I log into that if I haven't updated one for even 30+ days for me it's not a very important account and I may never touch it again. In addition I've gone through the people I follow and if they haven't started following me within maybe a week or so I'll stop following them. I try to keep # of people I'm following and people following me pretty even so it's not so obvious that nobody wants to be my friend. LOL
The one I've been using the most lately is Tweet Later. You can schedule tweets. So I think of things (personal) that I might be thinking later. And I'll post products. Then I'll schedule them for 2-3-4 hours from now. I have 10 tweets set up for after I go to bed.... if I ever get off the computer. You can also shorten your URL that you include with your tweet when you create your message.
My new favorite tool is Twellow.com. You can enter interests of people to find them and follow them right from that page. With Search.twitter.com you have to click on the person, be taken to Twitter then follow them, but you can follow very quickly and easily from this site. This might allow me to get to 1,000 followers by the end of the month. I'm running out of time.

Another thing I love about this is that I can indicate preferences to follow people automatically if they follow me, I can set a preference to unfollow people that unfollow me (love that).

And you can set up automation to send a message to people when they start following you. If twitter already has that as a main function I haven't found it.

ANOTHER THING: If someone says my dog, dogdishstore, or dog dish store, or dog dishes, I will get an email with those people listed every 12 hours.

I'm building my list to have many people per day that I have in my advertising audience.

I try to post at least 5 product links a day. It doesn't have to be something I JUST added. Just usually something I haven't posted on Twitter yet. That will get me about 25 views on that product in about 5 minutes. Pretty quick advertising!

I also talk about my personal life on there so it doesn't seem like I'm just posting to get people to look at my site. It's a nice place to talk about what I want to talk about without wondering if people I know will here. I can remain anonymous kind of. Sure if someone investigated me they'd find I made comments about so-and-so, but I haven't done anything that will be investigated so I should be good. :-)

Just some helpful hints I've come across in the few weeks I've been on Twitter. I'd love for everyone else to share any techniques they use on there to help their business.

I accept Credit Cards

2009-04-15T14:59:00.002-05:00

Yes, you can accept credit cards from people through paypal even if they don't have a paypal account but soooo many people don't realize that that I'm sure it's hurt my business. SO today I signed up with Propay. For $40 a year I can accept credit cards and the charge is done right through my store. I don't have to risk customers getting confused about that process if they had to go through Paypal. I'm very excited. I've been promoting this on Twitter today. It's already looked like I accept straight up credit cards for a while now so I won't need to announce it on the site or anything.

I've been adding more items to catdishstore.mybisi.com. I would like to be adding more more frequently but there isn't enough time in the day. I really need to set a plan in place for the following nights so I know what I want to get accomplished the next night.

One thing I've been busy doing is adding friends on Twitter. You get quite a few views on your products that way so I highly recommend that. I'll post some Twitter sources for everyone soon.

I'm ranked on Google!!!

2009-04-06T12:36:00.003-05:00

I'm ranked 1 out of 10. I'm so excited! This is huge for anyone starting an online business in my opinion. You can see your own ranking by downloading the Google toolbar OR if you don't have the google tool bar downloaded you can go to http://www.googlerankings.com/ or http://www.googlerankings.com/prindex.php

to see how your site ranks.

Here's a blurb from Wikipedia to explain the importance of page rank. "a PageRank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is."

"Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google." From the way I understand it you'll end up in more searches the higher you are rank.

Buy It Sell It has an affiliate program now!!!

2009-04-03T10:25:00.002-05:00

Exciting news! Buy it Sell It has a new affiliate program where if you recommend people to them you receive 25% revenue share on those referred accounts. So I've added a link to the left. You sign up, create your fab website and start recommending people to Buy It Sell It after you see what a great place it is to sell on.

Got my 1-888 number today

2009-04-01T12:50:00.002-05:00

I finally bit the bullet and signed up for a 1-888 number. It's only $2/month with a $2 sign-up fee. Then it's something like $.06 /min if someone calls. I used kall8.com for this and I get a referral credit if someone signs up under my number so keep me in mind when you sign up for your 1-888 number. I considered getting 1-888-dog-dish but it wasn't available on the site and it would have been $15 so I'll go without. It's not that important. So when you want to use me as a referral... or if you have product questions.... 1-888-219-0452

Link Exchanges

2009-03-24T21:23:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I submitted my site for link exchanges with about 10 different companies. I had to give myself a pat on the back for that one. Tedious but necessary task. I was able to do it at work because I had some time on my hands so I didn't even have to take away from family time to do it.

My new visitors was up to over 50 yesterday. That is GREAT for me.

Well, I'm off to try and get more link exchanges.

Where did all that motivation go???

2009-03-20T20:53:00.002-05:00

It's funny how long I can be UN-Motivated and how briefly I can be motivated. I see that just a few days ago I was motivated enough to add some items to my store and I even got a sale yesterday, but somehow today I am just not feeling motivated. SO that's EXACTLY why I'm writing in my blog tonight. It will help me stay on track and MAKE me create a list of things to do. My goal tonight will be to contact 5 companies to see about a link exchange. It's kind of a tedious process, but it really is worth it because those incoming links are very important for a business's success on the internet. I should start Re-reviewing the SEO Class notes as well. There is so much to learn in the class that you can't possibly remember it all... well I can't at least. Off I go....

Been a while

2009-03-16T21:32:00.003-05:00

OK I'm motivated today! I just got a new ceramic dog dish supplier and I'm really excited because they are fantastic looking and of fantastic quality. I'm going to post a bunch tonight.

I've been getting quite a lot of visitors from Twitter to my store which makes those quick posts worthwhile.

There's quite the buzz on buyitsellit.com today. Fees went up on the paid account from $4.95 to $9.95. Not too bad... actually a bargain based on other sites out there for hosting and having the tools for you to set up a great looking site with your own domain name. I think the problem is coming in for people that currently have free stores. With the new structure they'll be limited to 10 items in their store... that's not many at all. So many say they'll close their store. It's my understanding that this is all to curb fraudulant activity. I can see that working. People that are fraudulant aren't going to waste their time with a place where they can only post 10 items... most likely AND they don't want to spend $10 on a store if they are an ameture scammer. I was thinking about opening a new store, but I'll have to wait until my first store can pay for it.

Off to add some dog dishes to the website....

2009-02-28T21:39:00.003-06:00

I signed up with Twitter a few days ago to use that as a source of advertising. I've gotten a few hits from there so far. It's easy enough to use so I figure I'll use it for a bit to see if it helps. Follow me!!!

It was pointed out to me the other day by someone on Buy It Sell It that I didn't have the information on my blog page for people to follow me on here. I'm thinking that made it difficult to gain followers so I've added that.

I've been using sitemeter to follow my stats for my store because for ME it's more user friendly than Google stats. I'm sure google contains more information so I'll have to explore that more too. Well, I realized the other day that I didn't have the sitemeter code on ALL of my pages so I was only getting reads if someone came in through my home page. I've fixed that and now I see many more people visiting. I can see that they're coming in through google so I'm very excited about that. I also clicked on one of my items and noticed that when it appears in Google Base it shows my name rather than my store name. I'd MUCH rather it show my store name of course so I've made the adjustment that I think will correct that I just have to watch for it to change. I'm expecting it to take a day or so to take affect but I might have to do some investigating to figure out why it hasn't shown up as DogDishStore yet.

I've been posting more in a dog forum to try and get customers. It's pretty nice. I've been adding input regularly on there.

I've gotten a few places to link to me and I'm thrilled about that. I have to work on getting more of that going. It's kind of tedious but VERY necessary to rank high with google.

I hadn't realized how much I've done until I wrote it all down. I think I need to give myself a pat on the back. :-)

Need to Focus

2009-02-22T20:23:00.003-06:00

So I've decided that prior to getting in front of the computer to work on my business I have to have a concrete plan in mind otherwise I don't think I'm accomplishing as much as I could otherwise. I feel like I spend half of the time needlessly trying to figure out what I want to do when I could already have that thought up and save so much time.

I have a few things on my immediate to-do list.
1. Create Unique descriptions for all of my items in my store. The ones I'm using right now are from my supplier and Google is strongly apposed to
duplicate content. I need to tweak those.
2. Link Exchanging: I need to get more places to link to me to get my visibility increased on Google.
3. I need to add items to my store.

There are many other things on my list of things-to-do:

market via posting to dog forums
getting a 1-800 number
getting signs from vistaprint for my car and maybe some other merchandise from them (I'll have to browse when I order the car sign)
making cosmetic changes to my site
go back to Cricket's Marketing and SEO class to review for things I've forgotten about or overlooked the first time.

I started a Twitter account today. It feels kind of like Facebook in terms of making small updates rather than a large blog like on here. Seems fun so far. We'll see if I get any hits from it.
Everyone seems to be opening an account with them so I thought I'd better jump on that band wagon to see if I can gain some hits from that venue. I'll keep everyone posted.

I think I'll work on those unique descriptions tonight. It's been a long weekend so I should really turn in early. I'm starting early so I'm hopeful.

Update

2009-02-17T13:57:00.003-06:00

Lately I've been busy adding items to my store and of late, I am going back to all of my listings to edit them for duplicate content. There are so many listings that hardly differ from the next but to keep my items from being banned from Google I need to be sure they are on duplicate. I've gone to jpeterman.com for inspiration. I can't believe how descriptive and poetic their product descriptions are. If you ever need motivation to write better content, check out jpeterman.com.

I see I have two followers to my blog now. YAY! Welcome! Feel free to send your friends. :-)

What has changed via Buy It Sell It of late:
* They have come out with a new template as of yesterday and everyone is buzzing about it. I love it myself. It's really making me want to come out with a cat dish store, but I should really do more with the dog store before I focus on two sites at once. At least that's my current thought. There are still so many items to post in the dog store and so many things to better about the store. Although I know there are always things I can make better about the store so that part won't keep me from moving onto creating a new store.
*Statistics on our stores has also been added to Buy It Sell It so that will be helpful. Google Analytics is great, but it seems that stats from Buy It Sell It will include more visits than Google includes. I always feel like I'm shorted by Google in looking at my page views in Buy It Sell It so hopefully this will help me analyze what I can/should change about the store.
* I was able to add more featured items to my home page so now it's at 9. You really can fumble through html and get buy with a Buy It Sell It store. You may have questions now and then if you want to get a little fancier, but there is always someone there to help. I know people have been scared away from custom templates on there because they think they need to know html, but if you look at it often enough you can figure out how to make minor adjustments to do something that an unpaid user wouldn't be able to do.

This past week I got 2 sales in 1 day that I'm very excited about. What's even more exciting is that it looks like they found me through Google. VERY key to being successful on the internet is ranking high with Google. Hopefully there are many more sales to come. I'll keep ya posted!

2009-02-09T12:36:00.003-06:00

So I've decided to take the plunge and purchase the E-Book for the SEO class I'm taking. People report better results with it, and I figure the book is probably more organized than my notes.

I've been continuing to post new products in my Dog Dish Store. I have to admit that I'm getting a bit discouraged. On my to-do list currently is to get people to add my site to their site, and the response for this is VERY low. Kind of frustrating really. But it's one of those not so fun tasks of setting up this successful site. It's a job I don't want to do but really HAS to be done to get my name out there in Google. The more links the more likely Google is to crawl my site and the more likely I will move up in their rankings.

I think one reason why I've been discouraged is that the SEO class is coming to an end and while I feel like I've learned a lot I'm not at the top yet. And maybe unrealistic, but I think I expected to have more hits by now. It's only about 20 hits per day. That's nothing. I would love at LEAST 100. And for more to be coming from Google. I only get about 9 per day from google. The others come from buyitsellit community boards or Selling Lounge. All great people, but I guess I'd rather people get there without me putting the website right in their face.

I should also point out that I have found another fabulous online community full of sellers helping sellers called Selling Lounge. I only wish there were more posts on there, but once people start coming from buyitsellit.com and plumdrop.com hopefully it will pick up.

2009-01-31T21:35:00.004-06:00

I've been busy adding new products and trying to get my site used as a link on other websites. In the mean time I got another sale! It's a set of 3 treat canisters. I think my dog dish order of 8 will fall through, but when the order wasn't paid for right after the sale I knew that was a bad sign. I was pretty cautious going into that sale. That's ok. I'm excited about the new order and am trudging forward to get more in the future.

A fellow buyitsellit.com member that manages little-online-store.com participated in an article that is a terrific overview on Buy It Sell It if you'd like to learn more. It really is a great community and place to house your online store.

My First Sale

2009-01-26T22:23:00.000-06:00

YAY ME!!! I have my first sale... well my first two sales! The first was a slipper dog bed. That was last Thursday. THEN a sale today for 8... that's right... EIGHT ceramic dog dishes. I'm so excited!!! I've been adding items daily and trying to get people to link to me on their sites. I'm also continuing with Cricket's class with anticipation for each new lesson.

Today I decided to add text to the website indicating when I last added products ... a tip from someone on buyitsellit.com. It lets everyone know it's an active site. I think I'll be changing that date everyday because I've been adding products non-stop for I don't know how long. I want to make sure I give variety and I want to become a one stop shop for people. I know when I buy from someone on the internet I'm thinking "do I need anything else they offer? Maybe I can save on shipping."

Time to get off the computer for tonight. I've decided of late to take some "me" time before bed and relax in front of the tv. I love working on the business but I need time away from the computer every now and then.

A Couple New Sources

2009-01-19T11:35:00.000-06:00

I have submitted my items on buy it sell it to Google Base. More people can now see my products and I'm hoping I will rate higher with Google.

I've also been introduced to another tool that I have seen before and have used on my site DNAETC.COM, but kind of gave up on it because I couldn't get my keywords to get a high rating. This tool is seocentro.com. You can enter your website on there and it will examine your keywords and help you determine if those words will help you rank higher with the search engines of Google, Yahoo, and Live. I was able to determine many of the keywords I WAS using in my site. I made adjustments and I'm in the very good range which I'm very happy about. You can examine all the pages on your site so I'm still in the process of doing that. I don't think I'll examine all of the product pages but the custom pages I've built like my dog owner page. This will also give me a better idea of what to use for keywords in the future. There are a bunch of things seocentro offers I can also see my page ranking with the three major search engines.

I've found another great source that I'm using in conjunction with Google Analytics. It's sitemeter.com. You can see details on visitors to your site. Just add a small code to your site and your good to go. For me it's more convenient because it's live. With Google Analytics I have to wait until the next day to see stats. It's nice to be able to check a number of times a day. It's nice to see an individual's activity. I prefer the format of sitemeter as well.

1st update 2009

2009-01-04T21:29:00.000-06:00

It's been quiet the last few days. I'm trying to think of content/articles to add to by website. I have topics in a list but the Website Marketing Class. I'm taking recommends the content be about 1,000 words. That's a lot of words I'm finding after doing one article on sleeping incontinence in dogs. That was my first article. I was actually able to tie in a few products to the solutions I have for that problem. I've been adding more products, reviewing my SEO class content and trying to revise descriptions to increase visibility on Google and decrease my bounce rate in Google Analytics.

I'm adding a link in my links section for a Website Credibility article that was provided in my Website Marketing Class. I just reviewed the site again and thought it would be helpful for anyone building their own website. It goes through steps to make your site increase credibility amoung it's viewers.

I have some photos to add to my site as well. I want to take off the formatted name I have on the photo and rather add it to the side of the photo. That will make it easier and quicker to add future photos.

I go back to work tomorrow after being off for the holidays for two weeks. I'm very sad about this. I've enjoyed the extra time with the kids these two weeks and I really don't want to go back. I really hope this dogdishstore.com site takes off.

More progress!

2008-12-28T15:37:00.000-06:00

It's recommended that pages of content on your site are 1000 words. So I worked on that last night for a page I'm calling Dog Dish Solutions where I compare the different types of dog dishes I have available in my store. Holy cow, 1000 is a lot of words. I finally did it though.

Also, thanks to Christi's hard work and creativity I have a terrific logo and site design. I LOVE it. Check it out!

Update on my pages indexed by google.... it's up to 146 today. I can't believe it! I want to start working on my descriptions for my products soon.

I'm beginning to contemplate a 1-888 number, but I want to get the number of visitors up before I invest in that. It's not terribly expensive, but I might as well save where I can.

Off to try and get some people to link to my site.

Busy Day

2008-12-27T00:00:00.000-06:00

Today I discovered a site where I can create forms that people can fill out when they visit my webiste. This will add to the professionalism of the site. The site is jotform.com. It's sooooo easy to use. I was able to add a contact us form and a form for people to submit pictures of their dogs for the site. Let me know what you think. It's a free service until you get 100 submissions in a month. Then it's $9.

In addition, I added a logo for paypal to the front page of the site to tell people I accept paypal. I'm trying to get one for Google Checkout. I couldn't find it but I do have a question into them to find out if they have URL for that.

With the help of a Google tool I created a Privacy Policy for the site as well today.

... busy day indeed.

Dog Dish Store is coming along nicely

2008-12-24T12:26:00.000-06:00

I've been busy adding content to my website to get it recognized by google. I had 10 pages indexed by google when I last checked... about a week ago. Now there are 70 pages indexed! I'm excited about that progress!

I've begun adding dog photos to my site. I've gotten from friends, family, and the great people at buyitsellit.com. If you have a photo to shared, please email me at customercare@dogdishstore.com. I'd love to add it to my site.

Another feature I'm working on is the pros and cons to the different types of dog dishes. I'll be using those to optimize with the site engine optimization class I'm working on. The teacher says not to start with the home page so I've decided to start there because there is pleanty of room for content. If I focus on the dog picture pages I'm not sure what I could add to those pages besides pictures. With some thought and research I think I could come up with something though. Maybe cameras to use or picture taking skills to use. There are probably a variety of things.

I've also gottena link to add to the links page I've started. I want to add lots but I can't add sites that are in direct competition with me. I think educational dog/pet sites that have link pages to post my site on. If you have one, let me know.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Buy it Sell it

2008-12-15T16:31:00.000-06:00

Buy it Sell It allows you to customize your website with them. I've been struggling with that but have finally got the basics down. My current template is being used by them, but now that I have the html figured out for the site, I can start customizing the pages. I was able to add my first page. Dish O' Links where I'll add my favorite links. I'll be able to exchange links with fellow dog lovers and have my site appear on their site. My aim will be to get on sites I like, but also sites that rate high on Google.

I'm still in the SEO training class. I highly recommend the class. You move at your own pace. Like I've said, there's no cost so there is no risk.

Bottom line is I'm still rockin' and rollin' with my new site Dogdishstore.com. People on Buy It Sell It have been a huge help in getting me going on the site. No sales yet, but to tell you the truth I don't expect any until I get the site optimized in Google, get some more product in there, and make a few tweaks to the site. There is still a long journey ahead, but getting the html to work for my pages today has made a huge difference. If you're thinking of starting a website, check out buyitsellit.com. For anyone not familiar with setting up a website, it makes the process a little easier.

My own Domain

2008-12-06T21:58:00.001-06:00

I decided to take the chance today and buy my new domain name. It's dogdishstore.com. I'm so excited! Buy-It-Sell-It is hosting the site so I still get to use their posting tools. For me it will still look like a plane ol' buy it sell it account, but to all else it looks like a stand alone store. Much more professional and easier for Google for index you to the best of my knowledge. I also set up my company email address: customercare@dogdishstore.com. I like the customer care prefix that tells everyone that great customer service is priority for me. That's also reflected in my Terms listed on the website.

I received my first lesson for the SEO (Site Engine Optimization) Training. I've printed that so I can read it before I go to bed. It's been a long day today so I want to turn in relatively early tonight. It was a good day though. The kids sat with Santa for the first time. Dave and I were right there with them, but that's ok. They're making progress.

2008-12-05T23:40:00.001-06:00

It's been almost a week since my last post so I thought I'd better post. I've been very busy with tools for my journey. My goal this week was to get more products into my store on buyitsellit.com but in the process I learned so much. I've read about niche stores before and that it's good to have one, but I guess I didn't take it seriously. Now I'm sitting up and listening. I decided to start a new store with exclusively dog dishes on buyitsellit. It's called Dog Dish Store. I'm excited about it! I have about 23 listings on there right now. I'm working on getting many more. I'm getting a fare amount of viewings as well.

I visit the community boards on buy it sell it daily and I'm so jealous of these people ... in an admiring way though. It's almost comical to see so many people talk about how well there stores are doing or even how average their stores are doing when I've had a store on the site for a year with NO sales. To the site's credit I haven't done much to promote my items on there. It's not a huge site like Ebay so you have to bring people to your store. Google, word of mouth, ways like that.

I have also joined a Sight Engine Optimization free online class. It's to start within the next day and I'm so exciting. You join Yahoo groups to get the classes. There is a $20 book to follow along with the class, but you don't have to get it. People have been found to be more successful WITH it. I haven't bought it yet, but I think I will. It's an online book so you don't have to wait for shipping. You can get the book mailed to you as far as I understand. Click here for the SEO training class. Make sure you sign up for the class AND the Yahoo groups or you won't get into the class. ALSO you have to sign up for the Website Marketing Training Class at the same time as the SEO Training Class. What do you have to lose? ... It's FREE. :-) I can't wait to get the first lesson and put some of it to great use. Someone on buyitsellit that used the program just had a $300 day the other day. Can you believe it? That was enough for me to sign up!

In case you're wondering where I'm getting the dog dishes from, they are from the dropshipper that I belong to with my website DNAETC.com. They really give you so much to work with if you want to take it to another site to sell in addition to selling on your own site. Click on DropShipDirect to the left to check it out.

Getting late. Better get to bed. We go to see Santa in the morning. Then to a friend's Christmas Party. Then Santa again on Sunday. VERY full weekend!!!

YAY!

2008-11-30T22:35:00.000-06:00

I got the bulk upload to work on Buy It Sell It with the help of the people in the community message boards. I'll have to add 'quick AND helpful responses in the message boards' to my list of "LIKES." They have people on the message boards called bisi gurus that are experts in there and respond quickly so if you have any questions you don't have to wait for the company or someone that MAYBE knows what they are talking about to answer back. You get a response from a knowledgeable person relatively quickly. I'm so excited! Now I can add items relatively quickly. I'll work on getting more products in there tomorrow night. Right now I'll just bask in the glory of success. :-) Check out the site and let me know what you think.

2008-11-30T19:42:00.001-06:00

I haven't been very productive this week... not as productive as I'd like anyway.

My family and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday. We went to my in-laws' home and it was a lot of fun: good food and lots of memories were shared. Now the Christmas season hustle and bustle begin.

LINKS
As for the business, I have discovered that linking to others' websites increase the visibility of your own. So I'm trying to find like-sites that don't compete with me, and having them link to me while I link to me. The bigger and better the site the better for me is how I see it. I have a couple of sites to the lower left that I have started with. I'll have to search for additional sites. Once I get a number of them I'll just add a Link category so people can click on that and see a number of other great sites that I like.

Buy It Sell It
I've had an account with Buy It Sell It for sometime now. I've had active products on there, but haven't sold anything so I haven't really paid much attention to the site.

LIKES:

Set up a free store.
The store is nice an professional looking.
Easy to set up listings.
You can use unlimited time frames for listings.
Can set up Google keywords for your listings so I think the products are more likely to show up on Google.
There is a bulk upload. This is done via tab delimited files you set up. At this point I haven't been able to get this to work for me, but others have and there is a community I'm working with to get my data corrected.
Everything is buy it now so you don't have to wait for an auction to end.
You can promote your other site(s) in your listing or in your storefront.
Products are fed to Google Base where people can see all of your auctions/listings on different auction sites.
You can use your own domain name with it, or just use your name in the following format: dnaetc.mybisi.com

DISLIKES

Not much traffic to the site so you may want to work to drive traffic to your buy it sell it store. I see there are a lot of listings on there so hopefully it's getting bigger.
You'll need to market your store. It's just like having a stand alone store so most people won't find you until you market the right way. I haven't spent anytime doing that yet so I do have no sales but I see on the discussion boards that people do have consistent sales using the buy it sell it site/tool.

2008-11-25T21:42:00.000-06:00

LINKREFFERAL.COM
Today I decided to add a new account to linkreferral.com linked to my business website: dnaetc.com. I'd like to start steering some traffic that way. This will give me a chance to see what people think of my site as well. I have been keeping up with the site under my account for this blog and it's been working pretty well. They have a rating system that places you higher up in their listings the more goals you accomplish. The aim is to review 30 sites per day, rate 5, post 1 comment in their forums and add 1 favorite. I don't do all of those things everyday, but I do generally visit 30 sites per day and rate 5 per day. This ranks me in the top 20 or so. That's perfect. If people are reviewing 30 sites in the same category on a specific day, they will more than likely get to my site since I'm only number 20. To anyone that is looking for traffic to their site, I recommend linkrefferal. I know people think nobody of substance will look at your site, but I actually do find sites I like on there and add them to my favorites so I can come back and visit them. And some people have even added my blog site to their favorites.

GOOGLE
I found some more resources on Google today. They really are an extraordinary company. One is Google Analytics and Google Base. I don't know a lot about Google Analytics because I won't be using it until I've done more business. From what I can gather: Google Analytics provides a number of statistics for your site

adwords specifics telling you the usefulness of your adwords looking at specific words you’ve selected.
You can learn which visitors became a customer and at what point in the process they left your site. That will help you make site adjustments. If people leave after clicking on a specific product you might want to eliminate that product or make adjustments to the description or heading of the product page.

I have to take a closer look at Google Base. It is a free service to post information, products, all different things. You don’t have to be selling. You can even post recipes on here. There is even a video tutorial which is very nice. You can use it to find products on the internet, although using the tool seems a bit technical so it may be complicated for some. I think I could use this tool in conjunction with a free auction site I'm a member of: buyitsellit.com. I haven't sold anything on there but I'm leaning towards using it more as a form of publicity since you can include links to your own website(s) on your listings. To do that I'll have to post more items and Google Base might be the route to take. I think I'll be able to add items directly from buyitsellit to Google Base. It would be nice if I could add code from my website to one or both of the sites rather than adding everything manually one by one. It will be challenging to figure this tool out. That's when I like to go to mylot though. I know I've said it before but they really do have many knowledgeable people on there. I'll let you know when I find out more information.

2008-11-23T21:22:00.000-06:00

Blog Header Work:
So for the past two days I've been working on changing the presentation of my header. I hope everyone likes it. I wanted it to be more enticing to readers. I've found that as I'm looking at the blogs of others, I'm thinking I don't want to read a whole lot to figure out what their intent is. I want to know upon opening the blog. Hopefully I've accomplished that. Let me know what you think!

Slide Show on Blog:
I've also been attempting to create a slide show of items I have in my store dnaetc.com but using Picasa with Google I haven't been able to get beyond making the slide show. Posting it in here correctly has proven to be a challenge. I've posted the question on mylot to see if someone can offer some advise. As I've that site is full of talented people that are a huge help.

Word of Mouth:
I found out the person that purchased from my store recommended my blog to some women at his work. That's exciting! Word of mouth is so important. Feel free to forward this site onto anyone you know that maybe interested in such a site. It's fantastic source for stay-at-home moms and moms in the work place.

MY FIRST SALE!!! Does Desire = Success

2008-11-21T21:48:00.000-06:00

I got my first sale on my website! I'm so excited!!! It's been a year.

It's been just two weeks since I started making a go of trying to market the website. Up until now I had half hearted attempts to get traffic to my website, but this time it's different. Why? I think the insecurity of possibly losing my job, or my desire to leave my job, or my increased desire to be at home with my kids, or my desire to have another child. I want to be able to stay at home if I have another child. I want to be a full time mom if I have another one. I feel strongly that the life of my family would greatly improve if I could be a full time mother. Not that life is bad, but it could just be better. The house could be spic and span, I could parent 24/7, I could be a great wife to my husband. It's hard to explain to anyone that doesn't see that as the ideal situation, but the passion and desire to be at home rather than at work for those 40 hours a week is my goal. Hopefully desire = success.

Success

2008-11-21T21:29:00.000-06:00

So I finally figured out what I needed to do to get Google Adsense added to my site. I had been accepted by them but for the longest time all I was showing was Public Service ads. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.

After a couple weeks of focusing on other aspects of my business I decided to research why I couldn't get the code to bring up real ads. Then I ran across a blog on the internet (after a google search) and from that I was able to figure out what a Channels are on Google Adsense. From my understanding, I need to set one up for each of the sites I am using the code on. That is my way of tracking the activity on my site with Adwords. For example, the code for this site is attached to the words I choose for my Channel. When I want to check to see how the code affiliated with my site is I will check using my Channel of DNAEtc.blogspot. Could be anything else just as long as I know that code is associated with this site. It's like using a label for the code. Funny that I had to search Google for someone else to explain it to me. At any rate I've figured it out so I'm happy.

At the same time I was able to add the code to my other business DNAEtc.com so I killed two birds with one stone last night. I'm less discouraged today than the last time I posted here.

Discouraged

2008-11-19T21:55:00.000-06:00

Today I’m a little discouraged. On mylot.com I asked:

So I'm a member of a couple PTC sites, but not for the money as much as getting traffic to my website. Is that the best way to get traffic to my site? If so, are you a member of more that one PTC site? Which site is your preferred site?

I was told that that’s not the best way to get quality traffic to your site. I need to make my site “search engine friendly.” My thought “that’s not as easy as clicking on websites so people come to my website.” That’s why I got discouraged during the last run at making money on the internet. I just couldn’t get my site map to submit to Google correctly. I just need someone to look at the code because I had to create it on my own and I’m not technically savy when it comes to writing code so I don’t know. It could just be that I have a dash where it shouldn’t be.

So I may have mentioned before that there are so many routes to take with these businesses online. Here is a perfect example of being pulled in different directions en route to a successful online business. I need 48 more hours in the day.

I've posted another question on mylot asking

"So I'm a member of a couple PTC sites, but not for the money as much as getting traffic to my website. Is that the best way to get traffic to my site? If so, are you a member of more that one PTC site? Which site is your preferred site?" ... I just posted it a few minutes ago so no responses yet. I'll post any helpful information here as I get it.

Clickthru

2008-11-16T22:39:00.000-06:00

I've been spending so much time addicted to trying to get this business up and running that I'm feeling a little guilty that I'm not showing 100% attention to the kids. I mean they are 3 and 4 and can entertain themselves but when I'm here all day on the weekends I should really be devoting all time to them. I feel like I've been checking my visitor number and doing research a little too much. I don't want my kids to grow up and have only memories of mommy on the computer. I sometimes make it ok in my mind by saying if I can pull this off, the kids will benefit in the future. Then in the back of my mind I think what if I DON'T make this work? Then all the time with my attentions away from them have been in vein. It's such a struggle.

Well, in the research I've done this weekend I came across a site called clickthru. I want to add their add to my blog, but right now I'm having problems with the html getting the button to work. I have an email into them for advice. In the mean time I'll still do a write up on them because I like their concept and think it will help me once I can get a button in here.

Clickthru is a traffic exchange site where you can earn money that turns into visitors to your website.

Quick overview:

You register your website with them and they will put it in their database with other user's websites.
You browse that database and earn money for viewing and raiting sites.
Those sites in turn are shown your site and your hope is that someone looking at your site will want to be a customer of yours.
The cash you recieve for viewing adds can be used to buy yourself a higher presence on the site.
You are given visits to your site just for joining then to get more viewers of your site you can add the clickthru button to your website with html language they give you. Advertising on your website in general is a great way to earn money through your website so I don't mind that I need to do that task to gain visitors.
Even if I don't pay for traffic with this site, I think I will benefit even by people clicking from my website. And I don't expect any out of pocket expenses with this website. I plan to pay for any advertising with them to come thru my clickthru earnings.

Ways to earn cash on Clickthru:

Visiting websites and rating them thru Clickthru
Complete tasks like signing up for websites. They don't even have to be sites that charge you to sign up. I see that most are free and many pay out $.50 for signing up through clickthru.
When sign up with clickthru as a referral of you. Use the referral link in your website like I am or send the link in an email. Although they do have a policy against spamming so you'll want to make sure you observe those rules.

Review:

I've had a few visitors from it in just a day or so. I have to view more sites on their website and have people click on their link in order for me to get more visitors, but so far I really like the site and the concept. I think it will work for my needs. I love the no-cost of it. As I've mentioned in the past I don't want to pay out anymore money for this business.

Dropship Site

2008-11-15T23:29:00.000-06:00

Dropshipdesign.com is the site I use for my website dnaetc.com

One time fee and they host your website. No monthly fee. No transaction fees.
Dropshipdesign.com sets up the website in terms of providing photos for the merchandise and a guide for pricing. They set the price for your customer but you can change that if you think they set the price too high for your customers
If someone buys something directly through your website they deal with the transaction and the customer if they have problems.
If you sell through Ebay, you log into your website and purchase the item and indicate that you need the item sent directly to the customer and provide the address.
They accept Paypal and credit cards from you and your customers.
I bought my domain name from godaddy.com but you don't have to do that. They'll give you one that's something like dropshipdesign.yourcompany.com
One thing I don't like is that you have to pay a small monthly fee (I think $3 to get customer support via telephone) otherwise you can email them with questions. So far I've just used the email route. Like I've said I want to make no further investment.
You will have to make a concerted effort to advertise your site. You can't just set it up and hope for sales. I have only gotten sales at Ebay and I'm now trying different routes to promote my site. I won't lie... it's challenging.
There is a lot to think about when you commit to owning a website.

Let me know if you have any questions on this. I might be able to help.

Another option is to use keywords Dropship Free on google.com search to find others. I'm going to post another great site as soon as I get my affiliate account set up so check back or subscribe to my blog to find out what that one is.
I'll have to try and think of others I've used....

Dropshipping Turorial

2008-11-15T23:01:00.000-06:00

I have noticed that a lot of people want to know more about dropshipping companies. I have experience with a few myself and have some tips. First lets go through what dropshipping is exactly:

Company A is a large company that holds a lot of stock in various items.
You research what items would be in demand. Check out past and current sales on Ebay if you want to sell on Ebay.
Find something on Company A’s website that you think would sell for a profit on Ebay.
List that item on Ebay. Don’t buy the item from Company A yet. When the item sells on Ebay, go to Company A’s website and have them ship the product directly to the customer. No investment except what you spend to post the ad on Ebay.
Start small by listing a couple things and if they sell make sure they get to their destination and you receive positive feedback.
To find your own dropshipper try a search of dropship free on google.com

Pros to Dropshipping:

If you work with a good dropshipping site, they will send a replacement to the customer if they receive damaged goods or have proof the customer didn’t get the item. If the postal service says it was lost en route.
No need to pre-buy the item you’re trying to sell

Cons to Dropshipping:

You are at the mercy of the dropshipper: Going with Company A’s word (and receipt sent to you) that the item was shipped. It’s difficult to know for sure if the correct item was sent.
On Ebay you have to disclose you don’t hold the item in your possession and some buyers may not be comfortable with that.
Stiff Competition on Ebay for items you may want to dropship. You can find items to undercut them on, but profit is pretty small. You have to rely and selling a lot of something in order to make a great profit.

General Tips:

Do not pay money to join a dropship site or for a company to sell you a list of dropship websites. Enough of them are free and you can find them if you look hard enough. I’ll even help you.
Compare prices between dropshippers. Many of them hold the same merchandise so see who is the better company: price, delivery time, sophistication of the website, cost of delivery. For example: Site 1 is $19.99 for product + $6.99 shipping. Site 2 is $16.99 for product + $12.99. On the surface it seems like site 2 is the better buy, but you have to look at the shipping before you decide. Ultimately Site 1 is the better choice if you’re going by price. And competition is so tight over there I generally only based my decision on price. Shipping times honestly didn’t very enough in my opinion. Oh and some add a $1 processing charge that adds to what you’ll pay and should weigh on your decision to use them.
Try to use a Dropship site that has a phone number.
I don’t recall coming across any that were not in the United States but I would make sure the company is based in your home country.
Ideally you want to find something on a dropshipper’s website that nobody is selling on Ebay and everyone is looking for.
Make sure you do you research your competition before you post anything.

WARNING:

If you start posting stuff on Ebay (particularly new stuff) you might get a lot of emails from people that want to sell Lacoste shirts and other high end merchandise and they’ll drop ship them for you. Stay away!!! I was scammed by someone this way (her name is huajing zhu). Stay away! Only go through reputable websites.

So much to do... so little time

2008-11-13T22:50:00.000-06:00

The only time I really get to work on my internet business is after the kids go to bed and on my lunch break at work. So that's 3 hours a day if I'm lucky. Just not enough time. With how much research is needed as far as reading materials on these websites it's so easy to get overwhelmed.

Let's go through what I did today. I got my approval for adsense so I set that up. Now I'm looking into sites recommended by someone on mylot. They are sites that help you promote your blog. That promotion would get people hear reading about my journey and hopefully clicking on my website: dnaetc.com

entrecard.com: This site is filled with blogger sites. You sign up (for free) and they post your site as well. You put their widget on your blog and people drop cards into your inbox and you can drop cards into theirs. For each card sent and/or received you receive a credit that can be used for other online tools or to advertise on other blogs or you can sell them for real money or give them away on your blog site with some sort of contest for your guests. From what I can tell the online tools are e-books. You might be able to get the same advise for free so from the little I know about the site thus far, I would be inclined to spend my points on advertising on other blogs. They even have statistics on clicks and best value by widget.
BlogCatalog.com: Similar to entrecard in that you post your site to a whole community of bloggers. It's free as well. They have some cool widgets like one I just added where people can rate your blog. I'd like to know what I need to improve so if you rate me, go ahead and shoot me a line to tell me why you do or don't like my blog. It'd be a great help. I also added one that has other places you can find my store at. I need to compile those sites and add links. I can add links to places like mylot too. Anywhere that I can get paid as an affiliate/referrer I will want to add in there.

Well, I feel like I got a lot accomplished today. I hope everyone enjoys!

Low energy

2008-11-12T22:17:00.000-06:00

Today I'm just looking in mylot for business tips. I don't have much energy; came down with a cold last night so I'm low on energy. One thing I learned is what a 3 matrix is. I saw this posted every now and then when people refer to sites that can make you money. It's a site that moves you up to the next level once you have three people under you. All of these sites are really about referrals. That's why I put my affiliate link everywhere in here. An affiliate link tells the site you go to who referred you. You'll want to make sure you make note of your affiliate link if you sign up with a site. I've put that one and the one for my store at the end of every email I send out on the signature line. I have to get around to seeing how many sites I can actually recommend to people. There are a bunch of free auction sites that I need to update and add to my page here so people can find out about them. Just not tonight... of to bed.

2008-11-11T21:55:00.000-06:00

I've started working with a website called mylot.com that pays you for commenting on hundreds of topics. It's only a penny or two for posting a comment, but there are benefits other than making money:

I get the chance to practice my writing skills.
I can talk about so many different topics that interest me.
I can get tips on various topics
I can advertise my site and my blogs on there
Recommendations from members on other money making sites or endeavors.
I've actually met someone on there that has given a LOT of fantastic advise on starting up this business so that has really been the most beneficial part of joining mylot.com

Even if you don't go on there to make money, if you like to chat online you might as well make money while you're doing it. There community is pretty large so there are a variety of people to interact with as well. Check it out!

Another blog up: tipstomoms.blogspot.com

2008-11-10T21:51:00.000-06:00

So I signed up for an adwords account and now my account has been adentified as a spam blogging site or something like that. WHAT??? Ugh! I just can't catch a break. I'm sure all Google will have to do is look at my account and see that's not the case, but it's so frustrating. I don't like people wondering if I'm dishonest.

In the mean time I started another blog today with parenting tips on it. It's at Tipstomoms.blogspot.com. I may be able to work in some products on my website that would be helpful to parents. That site is dnaetc.com.

New Move

2008-11-10T12:02:00.000-06:00

I think it should be a goal of mine to do something new everyday to help my business. Otherwise I get lazy and don't move forward with the business. The thing I did today was sign up for adsense with google to see if I can generate income from people clicking on the adsense link. Since it's an "application" process for which I have to be approved I have to wait a day or two for approval. Google doesn't disclose their pay scale so who knows what I'll make if anything. But with an investment of $0, there isn't really a down side to adding that feature.

I'm also looking for ways to stay organized with this internet business. With SOOOO many sources and things to think about how do you stay focused on your goal or purpose AND keep track of everything you need to do to be profitable. I feel overwhelmed with the wealth of knowledge and sources out there. I'm going to start a list of resources I use and resources I am looking into or need to look into. There are so many on both sides, but resources I need to look into is by far the longest list. I have joined some free auction sites that will be on the list of resources I use. I actually need to get out to those sites and add more products and my blog address. So much to do so little time.

The Diary Begins - Day1

2008-11-09T15:57:00.000-06:00

My daughter will be 5 years old in January. For 5 years, my goal has been to be a stay-at-home mom. Although I’ve made various attempts through the internet over the past 5+ years, I have not been able to accomplish the long sought after goal of staying at home with my children rather than working 40 hours a week. There are soooo many ways to make money on the internet, but it’s soooo difficult to determine which offer is legitimate, which will make GOOD money and which will make $.12 a week.

My pattern thus far:

Be drawn in by a tempting sales pitch to try some new website that will make m a lot of money.
I’ll start researching one option to make money on the internet, then giving up because it seems so overwhelming. Sometimes there are so many different things to think about just do to work through one route.
While I’m researching that last option something else sounds pretty straight forward so I get started investigating that option in conjunction with getting the ball rolling on the new endeavor.
When I don’t see money right away (which is most of the time) I start to wonder if I’m putting in more time than it’s worth. It’s a constant struggle with so many factors coming into play. The only thing that keeps me trying for this internet money is the fact that people DO making money on the internet. I KNOW it’s possible. I just need to find a happy medium: high rate of return on my time, simple enough for me to learn on my own without paying someone to tutor me through it, no investment since I’ve done enough of that already.

A few of my most recent methods of trying to make money on the internet:

The newest has been mylot. Now I don’t make a lot of money there, but the advise from users has been invaluable so the profit for that site isn’t important to me.
Another one has been CIAO.com that after paying $1 for a review is down to paying only $.25 for a review. That I immediately determined is not worth my time. Although at $1 it was only enough to get my creative juices flowing; not enough to make me a stay-at-home mom by any stretch of the imagination.
I tried Ebay for a while and other auction sites, but the other auction sites don’t hold a candle to Ebay.
I have looked into adwords to pay-per-click, but to do it effectively, you should buy into a program or two and without proof it will work I can’t do that. On top of those programs I’d also pay for every click to my website. And who knows if anyone will buy once they’re there.

As my struggle continues to be a stay-at-home mom, my children grow and grow. My daughter, Hannah, is in 4K half days. My son, Jonah, stays home with his father (my husband during the week), and has daycare 3 mornings a week. I know they would still benefit from me being a stay-at-home mom even once they’re in school so just because they’re becoming school age doesn’t mean I’ll be giving up. I know it would have meant a lot to me if my mom were home when I got home from school. I would have known I was priority. I still remember dislocating my knee in high school: after a kid pulled it so it went back into place, my mom should have probably been called to pick me up but I stuck out the last class with my leg propped up on a neighboring chair because I didn’t want the school to bother her at work. To think, I thought she wouldn’t want to come pick me up because of work. I don’t want my kids to ever feel that way. I want them to know nothing is in my way to keep me from them. Sure I could tell them that, but that doesn’t have as much meaning as being home and them not seeing that workplace as an obstacle. There is also the idea that when they come home I’d be able to help them with their homework right away. They wouldn’t be sitting in front of the tv waiting for me to have time for them. I would also have so much more time to care for the home. Clean, cook, take care of my husband. I do that now, but it’s not at the 100% level that it could be if I didn’t have to work 40 hours a week outside of the home. When I’m home I should be making up for lost time with the kids so my biggest concern isn’t that the house be spotless or that the dinner is top notch. At the end of the day I’m tired from being a mom and working outside of the home. It’s hard to make time for my husband like I should.

My most lasting venture has been a website called DNAEtc.com D=Dave (my husband) ‘N’ A=Angela We own the domain name for a year and the website is a dropshipping website that I paid a one time fee of $200 for. One good thing is that I don’t have to pay any monthly fees, while many people pay monthly fees to companies hosting their websites. Now the only problem is how do I promote this website? Adwords is an investment. And after so many companies promise something for something and I never get anything I don’t want to put anymore into this venture without seeing something come out of it. I’ve decided that this blog is one way to advertise. I’ll get into other ways I’m advertising on future blogs. Feel free to request updates whenever I add a new blog entry. Eventually I’ll add photos of my kids. You’ll want to stay tuned for those cuties. J