How Did You Start Off Your Home Buisness?

[Sesshoumaru]

Alright, my brother is investing his money on launching a printer ink selling buisness. He hired me to

do all the webdesigning and hey, we agreed that a webstore powered with "OsCommerce" would be stable and versitile

enough for our needs (hey..it's free). I've noticed that "Love-Scent" is powered by it too (it's a small world

isn't it :POKE: ).

Well this post is mainly directed at bruce, but anybody can chip in. Ok, so I know after I

design the the company logo I have to get it Trademarked right? (to keep other people from using it). "Love-Scent"

has been a pretty sucessful store in my opinion, i've been visiting it for around 6 years now. Attracting customers

and getting webtraffic seems like the big task for me.

We are buying in wholesale so we can offer discounted

prices. But there are so many competitors out there, what can I do to make my website stand out from the others

(aside from webdesign)?. I was a little weary of posting the link to my webstore so you can see it's progress (I

don't want to disturb Bruce's buisness in anyway =P), in the mean time I can just PM it to anybody who is willing

to give me tips.

So the main question aimed at Bruce is.. How did you start off? Was finding wholesale buisness

partners as hard as it seems right now for small buisnesses? Is setting up a Affialiate system the key to getting

more customers? Any marketing tips? :think:

[Mtnjim]

How about a forum like this one

with printing how-to's, problem solving, and tips?

Good Luck!!

[belgareth]

Are you primarily interested in

Internet sales or are you interested in local sales? A combo of both?

My business is home based but is a local

service. I do very little over the web.

[Sesshoumaru]

Well my website is mainly

geared to Internet Sales. Local Sales will only be done to raise money to do internet sales.. Advertising on G**gle

A*sen*e is very expensive these days =(

[Sesshoumaru]

How about a

forum like this one with printing how-to's, problem solving, and tips?

Good Luck!! Actually that would

be a good idea.. it would generate alot more returning customers, but who would go to a forum that mainly discusses

Printer Ink. Well, Probably just hardcore computer nerds :type: lol Hey.. wait.. it looks like I fit into that

description =P

[Mtnjim]

Actually that

would be a good idea.. it would generate alot more returning customers, but who would go to a forum that mainly

discusses Printer Ink. Well, Probably just hardcore computer nerds :type: lol Hey.. wait.. it looks like I fit into

that description =P

I wasn't talking only about printer ink, How about tips on news letters, flyers

etc.??

[belgareth]

Well my

website is mainly geared to Internet Sales. Local Sales will only be done to raise money to do internet sales..

Advertising on G**gle A*sen*e is very expensive these days =(
First, don't advertise in Google or Yahoo.

They, along with most other web pages are competing for advertisers. The way they make their site valuable is by

having the greatest number of other sites indexed. They do that with bots which go out and pick up website data from

the sites themselves. There are way to maximize the value of bots locating your site. The main one is to focus on

the first few words on your site. Make them count! Sit down and carefully make up a list of words that would be used

to search for your product. That will get you hits if done well. There are some good books on the subject but the

advice of a pro who does it for a living would help you a lot.

I've grown my business without any real

advertising by making connections with others in my community and by being very good at what we do. It's called

networking and it works well. It took time and energy to get the ball rolling but once that happened, everthing just

kept snowballing. I imagine you can do the same with internet commerce but I don't know how.