How to Establish an Online Shopping Site

July 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment
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Launching a successful online shopping site is no small task. Online business owners who have the greatest success are those who organize and plan carefully, and use customer feedback tools such as kissinsights.com. Here are the steps to consider when setting up an online store.

1. Do your research. You may want to sell business cards but find that the online market is saturated with that product. The perfect product to sell online is one that is hard to find and can be sold relatively inexpensively compared to the same product found at a brick and mortar store.

2. Start out small. Select one or two products to begin testing out the online market. What you don’t want to do is to stock your warehouse with a large inventory of items that you cannot later unload.

3. Create an attractive website. Create a professional appearance, paying special attention to the design of the site and posting effective marketing copy that is clear and free of grammatical errors.

4. Clarify payment options. Whether you will take credit cards, PayPal or another payment option, make it clear to the website visitor exactly what steps must be taken to purchase the product.

5. Implement a customer feedback process. Use kissinsights.com to communicate with customers. Find out what they like about your product and if they have any recommendations for changes or improvements.

6. Use social networking sites to advertise. Draw people to your online shopping site by creating a page on Facebook and Twitter. Connect with members of these sites who are likely to purchase your products.

Filed Under: Business, Internet, Online shopping Tagged With: , ,

Best Ways to Monetize Your Facebook Fan Page

May 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Facebook fan pages have exploded in popularity, with some pages having fan bases that reach into the millions. Notable pages include the “Not Being on Fire” page, which reached over a million fans, and pages for specific brands like Dr. Pepper reaching similar numbers. Many of these pages aren’t official pages created by the company that owns the product line, but the person who established the page now has an opportunity to speak to an audience 20 times larger than an overflowing Yankee Stadium. Even if you haven’t reached this monumental level of success, you may be considering taking advantage of your page to make a little money on the side. Here are some of the best ways to monetize your Facebook fan page.

Affiliates and Indirect Sales: It’s That Simple

One of the most popular ways to make some additional money is through affiliate links. These simple links generally lead to special deals and offers from a company. If the visitor signs up for the offer, you get a commission. This can range from a few cents to a few hundred dollars. Companies of all kinds are looking for affiliate promoters, so it’s not too difficult to find a company that’s appealing to your fans.

The two most prominent sites that can connect you to affiliates are Click Bank and Commission Junction. Others, like PayDotCom, are also available. Some larger companies provide their own affiliate program, and a link entitled “affiliates” may be found on the bottom of some of these major websites. Alternate programs include using a “pay per view” video display or a “pay per call” phone number, again linking to interesting offers for your fans.

YouTube and Facebook: With Your Powers Combined

Another great way to monetize your Facebook page is to pair it with a YouTube account. After making your YouTube account on your desktops or laptops, simply upload fun, funny, interesting, or useful videos that are relevant to the topic of your fan page. Then simply link to the YouTube video through your page. After you have over 1,000 views on a video, YouTube should contact you about paying you for your video, giving you a chance to earn a portion of what they make from advertisements placed on your video.

Selling Sponsorships: Yes, You’re Allowed To Do This

If you have a really large fan base, you may want to consider selling advertisements directly to the companies that want them. The sort of company to which you’ll want to sell will vary depending on the size of your fan page, not to mention the subject matter. If you have an especially large page, in the hundreds of thousands for fans, you are in a position to sell directly to large corporations. If you have a smaller setup, you may well be able to do a fine job selling your ad space to smaller companies.

If you don’t want to go through the effort of contacting the companies one-on-one, selling ad spots on sites like eBay can work very well.

Filed Under: Internet, Online shopping Tagged With: , ,

Facebook and Privacy Issues

December 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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Facebook continues to be the leader in the online social media websites. With so many different reasons to log in, millions of users frequent the website. Facebook has been one of the top performers in terms of its website presence for the last few years. But, in the last year, privacy issues have sprung up, leaving may Facebook users to be leery of the website and its safety.

The year has been good to Facebook, especially with the success of the film, The Social Network, which chronicled the start of the Facebook website and its developer, Mark Zuckerberg. While the movie did well, the company itself saw some rough spots as many people grew concerned about the way Facebook allows users to see personal information about other users.

The changes were announced at the F8 meeting in the spring. The changes included changes to the way that the company works with third party websites. This helped to encourage developers to turn to Facebook itself, but it also lead to privacy concerns, spurred on by the privacy advocates. The FTC also took note of the concerns when various advocacy groups petitioned the organization to monitor the way that social networks communicate private information.

The company responded by taking steps to protect private information from users. The company rolled out a variety of changes including overhauls to profiles, improved messaging services and added changes to Groups. Some of the company’s relationships, especially with companies such as Zynga, a gaming platform on the Facebook platform, were strained. The two companies came to an agreement.

While there is still likely many additional changes likely to come in the upcoming months to the Facebook platform and to the privacy settings on the site, there is now an increased awareness among many Facebook users about the service. Privacy concerns are important, experts warn, since other social media companies are watching and waiting to learn what the rules will end up saying.

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Not Fearing Technology

November 7, 2010 by Leave a Comment

It is difficult to work in an office with older employees that do not understand technology. Things are changing very fast in the technology sector, and to stay at one place is to stay behind. Businesses want to move forward with useful tech innovations, and older employees with a fear of technology make them cramped and slothful.

If you are an employee with a fear of technology, if you are someone who hears a computer’s telltale sound or even free music ringtones on a next generation cell phone and gets a palpitation, ask yourself – am I losing my usefulness at my office? Is my fear hindering my work and the future of our company? An honest answer will may be yes.

If you will just consider how quickly children learn new technology and become more proficient than their parents with tech gadgets, you will learn something. You will learn that adapting to technology is all about mindset. If you do not have a clear approach to technology, if you do not have a tabula rasa, so to say, when it comes to technology, you will never learn it quickly or thoroughly. If you are comfortable doing old things the old way, technology is not going to work for you.

However, there are so many things that a little technology can make easier. Just take typing as an example. Remember composing a legal document on a typewriter? The forceful use of fingers on those inelegant keys, the manual movement of the lever, the typos and the whitener to remove them, and most important, the lack of a method by which to “store” the typed data for later editing. These were the banes of typing, and each of these is eliminated by the computer.

So, why not try to use one? After all, it will only make you faster.

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How To Prevent You Business From Online Criticism? Preempt Labor Complaints In House

October 25, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Computers and internet have enabled businesses to market their services online and reach a large number of persons. However, it also created a situation where employees badmouth the company using the anonymity of the internet. How to tackle such a scenario?

Well, it is one thing to establish ground rules advising employees not to talk badly about organization online. However, such instructions, if made mandatory, is only going to spoil your goodwill further. The fact that you have imposed such a restriction on employee will imply that you have something to hide. Employee cribbing about the employer and criticizing work is not new.

Not many are satisfied with their jobs. Even if they are satisfied, they will always have some complaint or the other about employers or colleagues. The internet only facilitates wider dissemination of their views. What steps can you take to prevent this? You can set up an in house system where criticism and problems can be tackled. Few employees will be interested in badmouthing the firm or work if they are given a chance to be heard in the office itself.

Of course, this will require a lot of discipline from your side. You will have to guarantee complete anonymity and will also have to make it very clear that criticism is not going to lead to censure or penal action. Of course, do not expect the employees to believe you immediately. However, if you successfully setup the in house system, you can easily protect the image of your organization on the internet.

As time goes by and as more and more employees log on to the internet, it is just a question of time before negative information posted about your company gains prominence. Rather than suppressing the information, you should try to remove such complaints as early as possible.

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