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It’s been a fun first month of blogging for Top Ten Wholesale, and I wanted to thank everyone for reading and pitching in on this blog. Top Ten is a quality product, with top notch staff support, and my resolution for 2008 is to make this blog just as effective as the search engine itself.
Have a Happy New Year and a great 2008! I hope you are looking forward to the year ahead as much as I am.
You heard me dropshipping!
This is kind of a triple threat tip. Whether for:
Dropshipping: Its a business model. Sellers do not keep any goods in stock. Sellers get orders and send them to wholesalers where orders are filled direct from their warehouses and shipped to the customer. This model is perfect for web entrepreneurs , it allows you to focus on web site creation and promotion–leaving fulfillment to the dropshippers
There are entry level dropshipping solutions like DOBA and Salehoo, but they require fees in advance to get to the information/ordering part. If you are looking for a total turnkey solution, use DOBA, but you can figure it out all on your own.
The first thing you need to do is think of an item to sell.
You don’t need to be an internet marketing expert or a dropshipping afficianado to think of an item to sell. You can just look around for ideas. Here’s several different ways to find an ideal product for dropshipping.
Cafe Press is the easiest way with no upfront layout, but what if you have a great original idea? Custom printing even for specialty items like mousepads will only run you around $300 for low quantities. If you have a really great idea or can capitalize on an existing trend, you can make them in larger quantities for less than a dollar apiece.intitle:ballpoint intitle:pens
The above search asks Google for all the pages that have “ballpoint” and “pens” in their Page Title. Basically the theory here is that every sensible website that is trying to compete for the term “ballpoint pens” is using “ballpoint pens” in their page title.
The rough guideline here is 500 daily searches for the product and less than 50,000 competing pages. Of course, 1000 daily searches and 100,000 competing pages is fine too. Basically multiply the daily searches by 100, but that involves math. Plus there are no hard and fast rules.
Much More About Using Dropshippers with your Online Business in upcoming posts.
Whenever I add a new continent to my online empire I go through a basic Q&A with myself on the desirability of the offer. Lots of yes/no questions about the product to help me visualize the position it occupies in its market and where the market sits on the whole product spectrum. Questions like:
T-shirts meet these criteria easily. Everybody has laughed at a t-shirt, because there are many many funny t-shirts. Nearly everyone wears a t-shirt. And, since t-shirts often reflect market and cultural trends you can go straight to the top if you are following the right trend early or even better if you are creating the trend. T-shirts are practically a media market because novelty t-shirts are all about the message. Media markets reward creativity in a fair marketplace.
Here’s an extensive look at being a t-shirt affiliate from Dosh Dosh – I’d look carefully into the paid links recommendation.. but otherwise thats a bible for someone who just wants to sell cool shirts and make some bucks.
However with wholesale tees and wholesale heat transfers you can make an awful lot of money with a small investment. You can get t-shirts for less than a buck, transfers for less than a buck and a tshirt press that works really well for about $5-600 bucks. You can get a t-shirt design for anywhere from $50 – $200 bucks. Basically the costs are manageable, you just need a design that will sell.You can even outsource the creativity! Check out this forum, one of many where you can offer small cash prizes and designers will whip you up 15,20 versions of a theme for $50.
Basically, affiliate programs are great, if you want to stay small time. You can take the factors of production into your own hands, and make huge profit margins, create a real customer list that comes back and gives you money again and tells their friends, and you can still run a t-shirt business like this out of your own home but you will make a lot more money.
Posts About the Same Kind of Thing As This Post, As Long As They Are On Blogs That Look Like Will Be a Cool Trackback and Maybe Become My Friend :
Awesome list of t-shirt blogs (By the way children, people will visit a list like that FOREVER. You can make as much money with that as you can with 50 YACG websites.)
What Your Screen Printer Needs to Print T-Shirts
I was fortunate enough to win an iPod in a giveaway from the goWholesale blog. The contest involved leaving a comment on their blog, and the randomly selected winner was me! The older I get, the more I win stuff. Of course, I’m like a blind salamander poking away at my laptop in my cave, so I see and know all.
The wife thinks the new iPod nano is the bee’s knees. Maybe you’ve seen this ad with Feist[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=8qP79rRzzh4[/youtube]. Its cool, its an impossibly small device for what it does, it’s lighter than my platinum necklace..
I have never been a big fan of this kind of contest, because while I contributed honestly, I entered simply to win the prize. goWholesale followed some good principles of doing a giveaway on a blog.
They asked for a real contribution, that is they asked for a substantive comment on an issue closely related to them. I think if there was a flaw it was that the question they asked was not one that gets people very fired up. Honestly, they might find that their readers more likely to connect with something like “give me your 10 word pitch for your product or service” or “tell us what’s the hottest product in your niche”
They offered a compelling reward – that iPod is pretty slick.
And they got people involved by offering the contest out to several other blogs (it was kind of funny to look and see who has readers and who doesn’t.
I think what you really have to do with a contest is push the marketing externally. You have to be prepared to do a full court press marketing the giveaway.
There are a ton of places to market your giveaway. Here’s my new favorite..
J’Lynn Outfitters – Quality Overstocks – There’s some good deals on wholesale apparel lots in their store…
Tatiana – Lingerie and Intimates dropshippers (who will also sell you a turnkey store). Half of their profits go to charity! Make money and help people!
UD2006 – Designer-inspired fragrances w/ a one case minimum
Howdy new advertisers! Let us know how its going!
An interesting tip from the eBay strategies blog
eBay is concerned about the slow growth of new active users, eBay is going to lower listing fees and take more of a cut after the sale. They recently ran a 2 day test on eBay Motors with no listing fee
This is great news for people who are buying wholesale to sell on eBay, especially dropshippers. Lowering the basic listing fee and taking more on the back end, will allow you to still control your margin and list more dropshipped products
Wall Street has been very sensitive to the fact that eBay has sort of a perfect business model (because they have no inventory, mainly) and Amazon is in a mostly low margin business, with complicated logistics and fulfillment models, yet Amazon is worth more than eBay. The C*O’s at eBay are very sensitive, of course, to what Wall Street has to say about these things. I would think that more than a bit of the slowing growth at ebay is due to sites like Craigslist with no fees, Etsy which works a strong niche and an audience with deep pockets and hundreds of others that offer good commercial outlets in addition to eBay.
Changes to the fee structure are expected in the first quarter of 2008, according to eBay Strategies, probably in late January. My advice to those of you selling products: take advantage of the after Christmas closeout sales that many of Top Ten’s advertising partners, will be running. Watch this space for more details on this.
This is the most successful flea market promotion in history. 2 million people have played this clip on Youtube. It’s the #1 result in google for “minimall”
and as of this writing, it’s on the first page of google for flea market.
People stop on their vacations at this place to film the owner, and learn how to dance like him.
Do you have any marketing piece as powerful as this?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ3oHpup-pk[/youtube]
There’s no way to know what’s going to be viral. I sat for years bemoaning the fact that it was impossible to have fun or be funny about the wholesale industry. Wholesale industry websites exist at the pleasure of their advertisers, so it’s hard to suggest to your customer that they make a fool out of themselves. But, look at the above video. Sammy Stephens is no fool, and even if you started watching and thought he was, you don’t think that now, do you? The only place he is laughing is to the bank.
The name of his business and his slogan have been driven into millions of people’s heads. What would that be worth to you? This is what I learned from Sammy Stephens and the Montgomery Flea Market Video.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p32gV6RKjGA[/youtube]
When I show you what your Competition is doing, I’m trying to move you towards action. There’s a lot more to the new style of internet marketing than just “going viral” but what going viral ultimately means is that your message is picked up and carried forward by others. Other people, other sites have to not just drop you some links, they have to host your message as art of their content. Once they are hosting your content, they are investing with you and your goal. Honor that investment by giving them good stuff to chew on. You’re going to hear a lot more about this over the coming weeks.
Related Posts on Other Blogs:
The Secret Strategies of Behind Viral Videos
Seven Deadly Sins of Viral Video Advertising
Why Everyone Wants a Viral Video
I certainly don’t live in Silicon Valley and I know most of my readers don’t either, but you can’t help but hear about the people who live there because of their huge internet presence. Its really a semi-small community and trends pass through it like wildfire. One of the more recent trends is everyone is reading a book called the 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
The book (I read it this spring) is focused on how you can automate your business processes to run without you, streamline your communications, and advises making extensive use of virtual assistant to allow you more free time to enjoy. Ferriss seems a bit of pushy kook. In fact, “pushy” is exactly the word for him, because one of his many accomplishments is that he won a Chinese kickboxing competition, when he discovered that a fighter could be disqualified if he left the ring 3 times. He also discovered that there was no rule against pushing the other fighter out of the ring. So, his opponents showed up expecting to kickbox and instead got DQ’ed by My. Shove-y Pants. I mean that’s “winning” of course I get that, but usually “winning” doesn’t also include “spoiling a Chinese kickboxing competition for everyone else.” He keeps himself very busy with extreme travel, what he calls “mini-retirements”, the most recent one I’m aware of was a swing through “London, Scotland, Sardinia, Slovak Republic, Austria, Amsterdam, and Japan” Yep, thats a lot of countries. He’s one of those guys…
Me: Oh no, my mom’s got a tumor!
Timothy Ferriss: She should try firing all her favorite automatic weapons, like I did in the Slovak Republic! It feels fantastic!
That doesn’t mean the book is worthless. It’s a breeze to read it and pick up useful tips. You really got to hand it to the guy.
If you go to his site, he pretty much insists on being your friend for life. But, if you want to get a sample of his valuable tips, I’d suggest downloading his Eliminate Email Overload Manifesto from ChangeThis
I’ll give the man this, he understands the true nature of time management
Time without attention is worthless, so value attention over time.
It’s not too late to enter but it almost is! Mirrasou Wineries is sponsoring a “Make Your Dreams Come True” contest with a grand prize of $50,000, open to women who “aspire to open a new business.”
From the contest info:
The “Make Your Dreams Come True with Mirassou” contest is open to women who aspire to open a new business. To enter, applicants must submit a personal essay of 500 words or less describing themselves and why they think they would make a successful entrepreneur. A preliminary business plan will also be required and should include: 1) a description of the new business, 2) the consumer appeal to the new business, and 3) a plan to implement the new business.
The contest ends Dec. 15th but that is plenty of time to write a 500 word essay and put together a preliminary business plan.
(A tip of the hat to Small Biz Survival)
This is a new regular feature for the blog. Last week’s new advertisers on Top Ten Wholesale are:
Tasha Apparel – Free Shipping for order over $300.00, Promotion code : free123
Louis Villani Collections - Beautiful and comfortable looking cocktail dresses
Wholesale Fashion Buys – Department store quality goods, but this site aims at the small independent buyer. Free shipping on orders over $99.
Excess International – They have some excellent deals on some very appealing licensed merchandise
My disclaimer: I’m trying my best but I can’t guarantee this is the entire list of new advertisers to Top Ten this week.
My other disclaimer: Most blogs do this to pay the bills. I came up this on my own, without any prodding from our irresistable marketing department. And I do it because I am genuinely interested in new websites that start advertising. A company that is ready to bite the bullet and gain sales and customers with PPC advertising, is a company that feels confident its website can deliver the goods to the customer. Those are the websites that I want to look at for inspiration and new ideas.
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