Grow Your Business Online with Webplus Shop!

This article is part of our series on wholesale and dropship services.

If you’re ready to invest in your online busienss and access a large volume of inventory, keep reading. We’ll examine the pros and cons of using a drop shipper that charges a recurring fee. What is a dropshipper?

Some dropshippers charge recurring fees, often on a monthly basis, to ensure that they primarily work merchants who are motivated individuals and companies. We maintain lists of dropshippers here at Webplus Shop. Call us toll-free at 1-866-338-8883 (international: +1-605-229-0307) to talk about specific wholesale companies.

Pros of Recurring/Monthly Fee Dropshippers

• Dropshippers and wholesalers that operate monthly memberships often have the largest and most diverse inventory.
• Products are typically of better quality at a lower price. This means you can have a greater profit margin.
• A recurring/monthly drop shipper also may offer name-brand products your customers will recognize.

Cons of Recurring/Monthly Fee Dropshippers

• The big disadvantage is that your recurring payment is due regardless of your sales level.
• If monthly wholesaler fees sound like too much, consider a One-Time-Fee Dropshipper

Leverage a Recurring/Monthly Fee Dropshipper Relationship

The recurring/monthly fee wholesalers are the real deal of online sales. Commit to good marketing to ensure to reach your target sales volume each month and keep current with your wholesaler membership. Good marketing and clever pricing can eventually result in a positive return on investment.

This article is part of our series on wholesale and dropship services.

If you have a small amount of start-up cash to invest in your online business or just want to expand your inventory, keep reading. We’ll examine the pros and cons of using a drop shipper that requires a one-time fee. What is a dropshipper?

Dropshippers that require a one-time entry fee simply ask that you pay once for the continued use of their services. The fee helps ensure that the dropshipper primarily works with motivated individuals and companies. We maintain lists of dropshippers here at Webplus Shop. Call us toll-free at 1-866-338-8883 (international: +1-605-229-0307) to talk about specific wholesale companies.

Pros of One-Time Fee Dropshippers

• One-time fee dropshippers tend to have decent wholesale prices made possible by larger, more frequent orders from their well-funded and motivated merchants.
• Larger merchant orders also mean better selection and better availability of inventory.
• The initial fee usually accompanies capable support when you’re getting started and help with any issues later on.
• Some products may even be from trusted, name-brand manufacturers.

Cons of One-Time Fee Dropshippers

• The initial fee is usually several hundred dollars or sometimes more. If this seems like too much, consider a Per-Order or No-Fee Dropshipper.
• It may be hard to predict the value of your up-front investment to the dropshipper.

Leverage a One-Time Fee Dropshipper Relationship

Do extensive research on the dropshipper. Ask their sales staff direct questions about anything not fully covered on their website. You’re going to want to find a dropshipper that is suitable for the long-term. The longer you’re selling, the greater your return-on-investment will be.

For more information about wholesale dropshippers or starting your own online store, call us toll-free at 1-866-338-8883 (international: +1-605-229-0307) or send us an email.

This article is part of our series on wholesale and dropship services.

When you earn a profit from your online store, you must report it to the IRS. This is normally done on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ. Profits from your website are taxed as part of your income. If you lost money on your online business, though, you may be able to deduct your losses from your other income such as a job or another business.

There are some rules to keep in mind for deducting your website and business expenses. The biggest is that you need to know (and prove) whether your online store is a business or a hobby. The main difference between these is whether you have a profit motive. If you intend to make a profit (even if you ended up taking a loss), you can declare your website as a business and deduct its expenses, such as for web-hosting, marketing and promotion, and your wholesale cost of goods or services.

If the IRS determines that you did not intend to make a profit from your website, then you may still be able to deduct some of the expenses, but they are restricted. In general, if you make money from a hobby, you can deduct the costs up to the amount you earned. This means you may be able to reduce your hobby-income to zero with the expenses, but you cannot declare a loss to offset other income.

The IRS understands that most businesses do lose money the first couple years, since it takes time for marketing and promotion efforts to pay off and initial expenses are incurred when a business starts. During this time, the IRS can use a set of criteria to determine whether your online store is a hobby or a business.

If you make a profit (even a small one) for 3 out of 5 years, the IRS will see that you intend to make a profit and will see your website as a business and allow you to deduct all legal business expenses.

What this all boils down to is that there are some tax advantages to running an online business as a second income (or even as a first income). Your hosting fees are deductible as business expenses. Also, your ISP or broadband costs, all money you invest on marketing and promoting your website, and all consulting or customization fees you pay to customize your website would also normally be deductible.

Depending on how much you make from your online business, you may be able to take additional tax deductions, such as a percentage of your health insurance costs, a home-office deduction that includes a percentage of your rent or mortgage and utilities, and other deductions that are allowed as business expenses.

This means that even if you end up with a loss on your online store, you can still win by using that loss to offset some of your other income and reduce your overall taxes. Then, when you make a profit on your online business, you have more money in your pocket. An online store is a win-win either way.

You should understand this article is not to be taken as tax advice and that you need to talk to your tax advisor about how you can use your online business to maximize your tax deductions.

Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs in the last few months with nowhere to turn but paltry unemployment benefits. When the benefits run out, where will they go next? Welfare-offices? How do you ensure that you’re not among them? By not having all your income eggs in one basket.

Experts agree that the best way to recession-proof yourself is to have multiple streams of income. Your job is your main income source, but you should have others. An online business is an excellent way to create an additional stream of income with a minimum of investment.

It is important to start at least one online store as soon as you can, since it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It does take some time for your marketing efforts to work and for your customer base to grow enough for the income to be steady. But as the turtle won against the hare with his slow and steady progress, a solid web business will provide a reliable stream of income.

Once you get one web store going, it will require little time and effort to maintain and grow it further. That is when you can start a second online store to provide further income and insurance against recession. Multiple online stores compliment each other. Like all businesses, they have cycles. When one is going through a slow period, like a Christmas store in June, another store possibly selling beach gear can be doing better to keep your overall income even or growing.

Compared to other types of businesses you can use to supplement your income, online stores are among the most affordable, both in time and money. For less than $15/month and just a couple hours on the weekends, you can open your own online store and begin working to diversify your income. If you need help with getting started, our specialists can help you with any aspect of running your own business, including finding products to sell and how to effectively market them. For a small additional investment, our professional designers can design your store for you and set it up with the first 25 products.

During this frightening New Year, one of the best resolutions you can make is to diversify your income. Don’t assume that your current employer will be able to keep you on board through this long recession. Don’t assume that your employer will survive.

Ask yourself one question. How much is it worth for you to have some income if the worst happens? $15/month and a couple hours on the weekend? Take control of your future and start an online store today.

[photo by Allison Felus is shared]

This article is part of our series on wholesale and dropship services.

If you’re looking to open and online store with no up-front investment or want to cheaply supplement your existing online store’s inventory, keep reading. This article will help explain some of the pros and cons in regards to the no-fee and per-order drop shippers. What is a dropshipper?

No-fee dropshippers simply require that you sign-up with them to use their services. Per-order dropshippers charge a small fee each time you place an order for products. We maintain lists of dropshippers here at Webplus Shop. Call us toll-free at 1-866-338-8883 (international: +1-605-229-0307) to talk about specific wholesale companies.

Pros of Per-Order & No-Fee Dropshippers

• You have very little or no overhead on your inventory. You don’t have to keep any stock on hand and you don’t have to worry about packaging and shipping from home.
• “No Sales, No Fees.” This means that if you experience a slow month, you won’t be paying a monthly wholesaler fee that eats into your profits.

Cons of Per-Order & No-Fee Dropshippers

• Often the products will be at a higher wholesale cost and you won’t have as high of a markup.
• Sometimes the products are not name-brand which can, but doesn’t always, indicate questionable product quality.

Leverage a Per-Order or No-Fee Dropshipper Relationship

You can easily use a no-fee or per-order drop shipper to your advantage. Not only does it have zero or very low overhead cost, it also allows you to widen your catalog with no initial fee. A larger catalog can quickly widen your customer base.

Lastly, keep an eye out for drop shippers with steep minimum order requirements or consistently low quantity-on-hand (i.e. in stock) amounts. These can result in an inconvenience to both you and your customers.

For more information about wholesale dropshippers or starting your own online store, call us toll-free at 1-866-338-8883 (international: +1-605-229-0307) or send us an email.

This article is part of our series on wholesale and dropship services.

Since your webstore will need to collect personal/private info to complete a sale, you should consider writing a Privacy Policy for your business. Having a written policy gives a customer confidence in purchasing from your website. The people over at Trust and Security Online seem to agree.

Having a privacy policy builds a large amount of trust in this area because:

1. The customer will know what is going to happen to their information once they provide it to a company.
2. The customer will learn what they need to do to keep themselves from getting any unnecessary newsletters, emails, or other unwanted material.
3. The customer also knows where their information will be stored once they provide it to you.

Although there are a few Privacy Policy generators available to you, your best bet it is to clearly and simply state what you intend to do with customer information. We here at Webplus Shop indeed follow our own advice and have our own clear, short privacy policy.

Finally, to create a webpage for your Privacy Policy, use the Custom Page tools already built-in to your Webplus Shop store.

Drop shipping is a form of supply chain management where one company, the wholesaler, manages the inventory and shipping while another company, the merchant (You!), promotes the products and takes orders from customers.

When a product is purchased, the merchant sends the customer’s order info and shipping details to the wholesaler. The wholesaler then ships the goods directly to the customer. Merchants earn profit by selling the products at a higher price than the low wholesale cost of the items.

Signing-up with a wholesaler usually done through one of the following types of plans…

• Recurring-fee membership to the wholesaler’s inventory and services
• One-time, up-front investment for a lifetime membership
• Small, per-order fees paid when products are ordered
• No-fee, free-to-use drop shipping services and inventory

Over the next several weeks on the Webplus Shop Tips & Tricks Blog, we’ll examine these different plan types along with the pros and cons of each method.

Read all of these articles on wholesalers and dropshipping.

If you would like specific info on wholesale relationships available to you as a Webplus Shop Merchant, please give us a call at 1-866-338-8883.

   One of the first questions facing many merchants new to selling online is whether they should set up their new online store themselves or pay for professional online store setup. It may seem logical that if you are able to set up the store yourself you should. Why pay someone else to do something you can do yourself, especially if you are on a tight budget? However this is not always true. Below is a brief discussion of the pros and cons of setting up an online store yourself vs. paying a web designer to do it for you.

 

   First off, I should say that many shopping carts do not leave an option for you. Many are very complicated on the backend and require a programmer to do all setup and future changes. Unless you have programming knowledge I would not recommend attempting to set up a store yourself with such a shopping cart. For the average merchant, I would not recommend this type of cart at all since all future changes will require you to hire a programmer which can get very expensive. Only in the event that you have a programmer on staff or happen to be a programmer yourself would I recommend a cart which is this technical. With that said, Webplus Shop, our shopping cart software, leaves both options open for you as it is simple enough for you to set up yourself and we also offer affordable website setup for just $349.

 

   So back to the question, should you set up your online store yourself or pay for professional setup? In most cases, if resources allow, I would recommend paying to have your online store set up by a professional web designer who can make the website look great and get it done in a timely fashion.  Web designers usually have years of experience in what makes a website enticing to visitors and can showcase your products in a way that, in most cases, would be better then if you set up  the website yourself. The initial setup of your online store is very, very important to the future of your online business so you want it to look as inviting as possible. You should use the initial setup of your online store to learn from your web designer which you can apply as you make changes to the store down the line. As you get more experienced running your online store you can begin to add your own touch. Then there is the time factor. As if it weren’t time consuming enough running a small business now you have to worry about setting up a website as well! For many small business owners just finding the time to get all their products entered into their online store can take weeks. In ecommerce, time is money! You are missing out on sales every day that your store is not online selling for you. For this reason, the couple hundred to couple thousand dollars that most web designers or shopping cart companies charge to set up your online store is well worth it and a small investment for the long term. Our company charges $349 for complete online store setup and can usually have your website live within 48 hours.

 

   Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely against setting up your online store yourself. There are some cases in which it makes sense. If you have a very limited budget or are simply experimenting with a product concept, it may make sense to set up an online store yourself to test the waters without much of an investment. If you are good with programming or graphic design you may want to put your skills to work as well. Or if you have adequate time to learn new software and do the store setup, again, you may consider setting up an online store yourself. This may be true of retired individuals or those whose business is currently more of a hobby.  Webplus Shop is very easy to use with no programming knowledge required. We usually figure it takes under an hour to learn. If you are looking for an online store solution that is easy to set up yourself please do give it a look.

You’ve opened a new online store and set it up. How do you attract customers to come and shop? It’s not like a traditional store. You don’t just put a “Grand Opening” sign in the window and an ad in the local newspaper.

There are many ways you can successfully promote your webstore. One of the most powerful and free ways is by making effective use of “SEO,” or search engine optimization. Search engines are similar to really big phone books. Just like a traditional phone book, you might be listed, but that doesn’t mean anyone will find your tiny entry among the thousands of others. Also, like a traditional phone book, you can purchase advertising in search engines to attract people to your webstore. Though effective, this can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, which might not be feasible when your online store is just opening.

The free way to leverage your listing in the search engine “phone book” is to optimize your site to help your listing appear higher in the list when potential customers search for things you sell. Search engines work hard to give people the most relevant websites to them first, based on the keywords they entered. There are many things you can do to your online store that will help search engines see how relevant and important it is to your potential customers.

One quick method to make your webstore more search engine optimized is to setup your “Search Engine Meta-Tags.” These include your <title> tag and your <meta> tags in all pages of your online store. Here is how to do this using Webplus Shop.

1. Login to the merchant interface of your webstore (link opens in a new browser window).
2. Click on the “Marketing” tab.
3. Click on the “SEO” option that appeared.
4. Change the “Page Title” for each page to include keywords that you think your customers would use to find your store. Make the title no longer than 20 words. Search engines consider words in the <title> tag to be very important, so they pay close attention to those words when they decide how high to show your listing in the search results. Include the most important and relevant keywords toward the beginning of your Page Title. Don’t repeat keywords too much or the search engines will regard them as spam and may reject your website completely.
5. Enter other keywords that you think your customers would use to find your site in the “Keywords” text field for each page. You may repeat keywords used in your Page Title if you wish, but you should have a lot more in this field. Again, don’t repeat keywords too much or the search engines will regard them as spam and may reject your website completely.
6. Enter a description for each page in the “Description” fields. This description should also use a number of keywords, but should be written as regular English, since some search engines may show this description to potential customers to help them evaluate whether they want to visit your page.
7. The checkboxes in the Search Engine Meta-Tags table should all be checked for nearly all webstores, as they give search engines permission to collect and use as much information as possible when cataloging your website.
8. If you wish to include some text at the beginning or end of the “Page Title” (<title> tag) of all web pages, enter that in the “Store-wide Title Tag Prepend” or “Store-wide Title Tag Append” fields. One such use would be to include the name of your store in the Page Title of all pages. If you do this, it is highly recommended to put your online store name in the “Store-wide Title Tag Append” field. The keywords you entered in the “Page Title” field are more important to search engines than the name of your store, since the keywords are what your customers will use to find you.

Entering the basic settings of search engine optimization in your online store will help to increase your website’s exposure to potential customers. It may take a few days for search engines to pick up your changes, so it’s important to do this as soon as possible.

In a future article, I will go into more free and powerful search engine optimization techniques you can do with your online store using Webplus Shop.

Aberdeen, SD (PR.com) – July 29, 2008

Webplus, Inc. (www.WebplusShop.com), the leader in hosted ebusiness solutions, announced today the release of the latest version of the Webplus Shop online store shopping cart software, version 6.5. Webplus Shop is the simple, affordable way to set up and run webstores and business websites. Webplus Shop makes it possible for anyone to sell anything online with no programming knowledge required and very low business start-up costs.

Webplus Shop v6.5 incorporates a number of improvements including automatic image resizing, a new payment gateway for accepting credit card orders (allows adult product merchants), the ability to customize virtually any element of the shopping cart, an improved store setup/layout tool which allows new online store owners to select various elements of their store (images, colors, layout, etc.) one at a time which combine to form the overall look of their store and numerous other small improvements and bug fixes.

“With Webplus Shop v6.5, it is even easier to setup an online store and have a website that looks great,” said Bryan Kriech, COO, Webplus, Inc. “Merchants new to the Webplus Shop shopping cart will find that getting the store to look as they would like is easy with our new setup tool. This release, more than anything, gives online store owners much more control over the look and feel of their store and allows them to create better looking, more robust ecommerce websites without programming knowledge. This translates into more customers and more sales for merchants using our software.”

Activate and begin customizing your own Webplus Shop store instantly by visiting http://www.WebplusShop.com. Or contact 605.229.0307 or email us with questions or for more information.