Suppliers-Good and Bad

PayPal Secrets
By October 28, 2013 0 Comments Read More →

PayPal Secrets

If you search online for the phrase “PayPal sucks” you’ll find discussion board comments and even entire websites with bad things to say about PayPal. Many of the complaints seem to suggest that PayPal freezes funds and even shuts down the accounts of honest merchants for completely unfair and arbitrary reasons. Reading between the lines, I […]

QuickBooks Hell
By May 19, 2013 0 Comments Read More →

QuickBooks Hell

As your business grows – and especially once you start to work with outside suppliers – you’ll likely need an accounting software package. For most businesses QuickBooks is the unavoidable choice. If you want to get help from an accountant or eventually hire a bookkeeper QuickBooks is practically mandatory. QuickBooks has the potential to make […]

Shipping Your Products
By October 19, 2013 0 Comments Read More →

Shipping Your Products

If you sell physical products online (as opposed to electronic downloads), the choice of shipping options presented to your customers and the way that shipping fees are calculated will both be determined by your shopping cart. Very basic shopping carts (like PayPal Standard) usually calculate shipping fees based on weights that you configure and order quantities, in […]

Steve’s Marketing Rule
By September 22, 2013 0 Comments Read More →

Steve’s Marketing Rule

As our business grew, we made a real effort to measure each marketing program to find out how much of a return it provided. We carefully monitored our online campaigns, and used incentives like coupons to test the effectiveness of print ads. Because we measured the return on every dollar spent on marketing, we learned […]

Steve’s First Rule of Money
By September 19, 2013 0 Comments Read More →

Steve’s First Rule of Money

Steve’s Marketing Rule, discussed in the previous story, is really just a corollary to a general rule that I’ve always found to be true. While this general rule doesn’t have much to do with selling online, I think it’s worth sharing. Steve’s First Rule of Money: Never trust anyone who tries to sell you anything with a […]

Amazon Is No Friend
By September 13, 2013 0 Comments Read More →

Amazon Is No Friend

As a consumer it’s hard to imagine a better online shopping experience than you get with Amazon. The company does an outstanding job selling and delivering products, while also promoting items that are shipped to you by other retailers. I’ve always found transactions on Amazon to be fast and trouble-free, and I’ve been satisfied with their […]