Marketing Strategy
What is Marketing Strategy?
An organization's strategy combines all of its marketing goals into one comprehensive plan. A good marketing strategy should be drawn from market research and focus on the right product mix to achieve the maximum profit potential and sustain the business.
Are You Ready to Start a Home Business?
Do you dream of building a successful home-based business? Does the thought of being your boss and setting your hours make you giddy with delight? Working from home is part of the new American Dream.
Recent studies show that more than 60% of Americans would prefer to work from home even if they had to take a pay cut to do so.
Fortunately, taking a pay cut is not necessary. Many successful entrepreneurs make far more money working from home than they ever did while working at a traditional job.
A home-based business can help you achieve your dreams of work-at-home success, but only if you are ready.
How do you know if you are ready to start a home-based business?
You need time, drive, and determination to create a profitable business. Do you have the time to build a business? Many aspiring entrepreneurs start their work at the home business while working at a traditional job, while others start full force putting all of their time and effort into their new venture. Either way can work well, but you have to be able to commit to the hours it will take to get your business off the ground. You'll need the fortitude to push through the difficult times and reach those wonderful periods of soaring success.
Thank you for taking the time to get educated. A home-based business can help you achieve your dreams of work-at-home success, but only if you are ready. Discover: eCourse 1 through 6 to teach you to start at:
Here is your first Lesson 1 of 6:
"Getting the Most out of Your Membership to smithdistributors.com"
You may be new to all of this stuff such as drop shipping, wholesalers, selling online, or from a website, or just the Internet in general. We realize this and want you to get started on the right foot so you can succeed in this venture.
We also realize that some people are experienced in this business and some of the information may sound basic to you, but we guarantee that you will learn some important things over the next few days and weeks during these lessons!
So, let's get started. The first question is where should you begin in all this? That's really up to you because it depends on how much time and effort you have to make this profitable for you. Some of you may want to do this just part-time for now and others may want to sell online full-time or eventually get to that point!
Here are the steps you want to take when getting started:
- Ask yourself, where are you going to sell products from the suppliers? Are you going to sell on eBay, your website, or other sites?
The easiest way to get started with drop shipping is to sell on either eBay or your website. The benefit of selling on eBay is that you will typically get a lot of traffic to your auction site for people to view and buy. However, the downside is that there is a lot of competition from other sellers that may be selling the same product as you, thus driving the buying cost down.
The benefit of selling from a website is that if it is marketed properly (which we will get into a later Lesson #2), you can sell many products directly from your site and then have repeat visitors come back for more. Maybe you want to sell on eBay and a website, which is excellent and can be done as so many of our members are doing that now!
Your Second Lesson is ready:
"Finding Products to Sell That Will Make You Profitable"
In this lesson, we are going to show you the best way to find products that are in high demand and that have a high-profit margin.
First, we know a lot of people are probably interested in selling name-brand products and popular ones. This may not be a good idea if you are new to selling.
Here's why:
For instance, you want to sell the Nintendo Wii which is a hot item, and you think it will sell well. The problem with selling the Nintendo Wii is that if you check on eBay there are hundreds of sellers selling them, each trying to undercut the other one so they can sell the item. This is not a good way to start selling especially on eBay.
What you want to sell instead are products that interest you and build them around the hobbies that you have. This will make selling more motivating for you and even bring some fun into this venture. Are you someone that always has to have the latest new product that comes out? For instance, maybe you want to start thinking about selling gaming accessories. Notice we said accessories because there will be thousands of people selling the Wii, the Xbox, the PlayStation, etc. but instead you can profit from selling the gaming accessories.
Maybe you are a purse lover and have tons of purses all over your house in all sorts of colors and there are probably hundreds of thousands of people just like you always looking for new shoes.
Just browse through our shoe category of wholesalers and drop shippers and see if any suppliers interest you.
So, make selling online fun and ask yourself what your hobbies and interests are, and begin with this approach in deciding on what you want to sell. Now maybe you don't have any hobbies and are only interested in selling highly profitable products online. That's fine too and that leads me to my next topic of market research.
Market research is the key to success that will tell you if the products you decide to sell online will either be profitable or not. You want to find out before you spend the time and money listing an item on an auction site such as eBay or even your website if it will be profitable.
It's important to take the time to research the product and there is an easy way to do this.
eBay is the easiest way to find out typically what the final selling price of an item will go for. All you need to do is search for the product you want to research on eBay, and then check the completed auctions option on the left side and search again.
This will show you all the buy-it-now and final selling prices of the item. Make sure you put in the actual model number of the product to get maximum and true results in your search. Many people are doing this already, but it's very important to research your items before you start selling anything, so you don't have to waste a lot of time and money. Research other sites too.
Welcome to your Third Lesson:
"The Difference Between Wholesalers and Drop Shippers"
In this lesson, we will discuss the pros and cons of using both drop shippers and wholesalers and show you which one is right for you.
First off, you should know that our entire database is composed of both wholesalers and drop shippers. Many might ask why even bother putting wholesalers in your directory as drop shippers are much easier to use because of the advantages of not carrying any inventory or having to deal with shipping out the products. This is true, but there is also an upside to using wholesalers which we will get into later here.
Dropshipping by far is the most convenient and easiest way to get started in selling products online from your website or through auction sites like eBay and ubid. Drop shippers typically do not have any minimum order restrictions and they will carry the inventory, package the products, and ship them directly to your customers. You don't have to pay for the item until the product has been sold to your customer and you received payment. So really there is not out of pocket expense except for the very minimal fee of listing the product on an auction site if that is your avenue of selling the products.
Furthermore, drop shippers will also handle any returns or damaged goods during shipment. Although these cases are very rare, if it would happen, the customer would send the product back to the drop shipper directly so you wouldn't have to get involved in mailing the product back and forth. Think of a drop shipper as the full-time supplier that works for you. Many people do not have a lot of extra money to buy products in bulk or upfront, so using a drop shipper will solve both of those problems.
Those are the advantages of using a drop shipper.
To sum it all up, it's fast, easy, and convenient to use a drop shipper when selling online. So why use wholesalers?
That leads us to our next topic the advantages of using wholesalers.
Wholesalers that do not drop-ship have a reason for doing so. Many suppliers have their business model established and some will sell in larger quantities so you may have to buy the items in bulk and then resell them yourself. Many suppliers don't want to deal with one item at a time so that is why they sell bulk quantities. The advantage of this is that you will get the products much cheaper in price than buying them one at a time from a drop shipper. The downside is that you have to put up money to pay for the products, package them yourself, and then ship them to your customer. A lot of people steer away from this option because it's not as easy as using a drop shipper.
However, we will share a secret with you for those of you interested in selling on eBay. Most of the people that are selling the hot items on eBay are NOT using drop shippers. Why? The reason is simple, Because eBay has a lot of competition with many sellers that list the same types of hot items like personal music players, cell phones, etc., they have to buy in bulk to stay competitive with the other sellers.
We do not recommend that you sell these types of items on eBay unless you have a lot of buying power to purchase these types of items in bulk to get the pricing discount.
So, to sum it all up, using wholesalers is necessary when you want to buy items in bulk (typically hot items) that you want to resell yourself on eBay. Using drop shippers is beneficial when you sell niche-type products on eBay or have your website because you aren't competing with anyone else directly on your site. So, you could use a drop shipper to sell hot items from your website as many of our members are doing this.
Here's a snapshot of the pros and cons of wholesalers vs. drop shippers so you can see which one is best for you.
- Drop Shippers
Pros: No inventory to carry, no packing supplies to buy, the supplier will ship the products to your customer for you, and they handle all returns.
Cons: The price of products can typically be higher than using wholesalers and some suppliers do charge a small drop ship fee per order which can range from $1-2.
- Wholesalers
Pros: The price of products will be typically cheaper than using a drop shipper and no extra drop ship or processing fees are added to your order.
Cons: You may have to buy in bulk, and you will have to carry the inventory and pack/ship the products yourself.
Lesson 4 is ready:
"How to Be Profitable on eBay"
This lesson will show you how you can be successful in selling products on eBay and some of the things to avoid that will
save you a lot of time and money.
eBay is probably the easiest easy way to get started in selling products online through wholesale drop shippers. All you need to do is find a product on the supplier's website, copy the description and image, then simply paste that information into your eBay auction. Once the item sells, you get paid by your buyer, you, in turn, send payment to the drop shipper and put in your buyer's address as the ship-to-address and the item is shipped directly to your customer with your information into the return to address section. It's very easy and you don't need to carry any inventory or put up any money for the products until you get paid by your customer.
However, since this is so easy, many people have come to realize how simple it is to start earning some extra cash selling on eBay. This presents problems with a lot of people selling the same items creating much competition on eBay and driving the costs down because of all the demand.
To be profitable on eBay you need to follow one or both of some techniques that we've learned over the years. The first is you need to sell unique or niche-type products. Niche-type products are focusing on a particular product line or category such as accessories for example. There are thousands of different types of accessories available and selling these types of items will allow you to focus on your niche and dominate a market where there are much fewer sellers than compared to people selling Apple iPods for instance.
An example of a unique product is sports memorabilia. For instance, just think of your hometown professional or college sports team. How many people are in love with sports and their teams in general? If you have a product with their logo on it, they are probably likely to buy it, especially the die-hard fans. For instance, there are many gifts and collectible drop shippers in our database that sell pro and college football helmet decorations for your home. There are many possibilities when it comes to sports items and memorabilia and the true fan is always looking for more things, they can get their hands on with their team logo on them.
These are just a couple of examples of how you can be profitable selling unique or niche types of items from suppliers on eBay. The basic philosophy in these examples is that there is less or no competition, so supply is low, and demand is high bringing your selling price up.
Your next lesson 5 is ready:
"Sites to Sell My Products On & Is An eBay Store for Me?"
In the last lesson, we showed you how you can be profitable on eBay. In this lesson, we will discuss other websites where you can sell products other than eBay and determine whether or not an eBay store is right for you.
Unfortunately, a lot of people get caught up in the hype that they can only sell on eBay to be profitable, and this is a misconception because many of our members are using that to their advantage and profiting by selling on other websites. eBay indeed has more traffic and exposure than any other website, but that also carries all the sellers with the buying power as explained in the last lesson that can sell products for cheaper than going through a drop shipper.
The first website where you can sell your products is Ubid. They are another auction site that doesn't have as much traffic as eBay, but again they have fewer sellers which means less competition for you selling there.
Ubid is also to list items for free so it's another site where you have no risk or money to put up listing an item to test and see how it will do. Ubid is popular for selling electronics, jewelry, clothing, and computer equipment.
Once you have figured out what products you want to sell, simply list them on Ubid to see how they do. Then you can either use both or one of the others in the future to see which site does best for you. There is no one better than the other because it depends on which products you want to sell. You can always browse the completed auctions on both sites to see the final selling price of products sold there which can give you a good idea of if you want to sell that particular item.
Finally, another recommendation for selling products online is through an eBay store. If you are going to be selling your products on eBay it is highly recommended that you open up an eBay store because it will give all the visitors and bidders that see your auctions more exposure to your store and they can see all the other products, you have available for purchase right away instead of waiting for the auction to end.
75% of eBay Stores sellers surveyed said that opening an eBay Store increased their sales. How does opening an eBay Store increase your sales? eBay Stores provides powerful tools to build, manage, promote, and track your business. You can take your sales to the next level with these built-in benefits of an eBay Store. It's also really simple to build an eBay store because they provide you with all the tools to get it up and running yourself in a snap. If you don't plan on selling items on eBay an eBay store is not for you, but if you do plan on listing items for sale on eBay, then you should get an eBay Store.
It's time for your final lesson 6:
"How to Profit with Your Website"
In the past lessons, we've shown you the difference between wholesalers and drop shippers, what products are most profitable to sell, and where to sell the items, and now you'll learn how you can profit with your website.
You may think that having your website can require a lot of work and time that you might not have right now. Then once you do have it set up, how will you get traffic to it?
Those are some things that may lead people to steer away from having their website.
However, there are many advantages to having your turnkey website. What I mean by turnkey is that everything is already set up for you as the products are already loaded and it's ready to take orders once you put in your information, so you will get the profits! These are the types of websites that we offer. If you are a platinum member you should already have some knowledge of how these websites work.
Some of the advantages of having your website are that you can sell hundreds of, even thousands of products all in one place, directly from your website. Someone browsing on your site can order different products at a time unlike if you were listing item by item on auction sites. Another advantage is you don't have to spend the time to list items on auction sites. It can take time to get the descriptions and images from the drop shipper copied over to your auction listing and with a website the products are always listed there.
One of the biggest advantages of having your website is to a repeat customer business. You have the possibility of having a customer that purchased your site a lifetime and repeat buyer, especially if your site is something that sells products that people need to purchase often. Getting repeat business is a great way to make money from your website without having to spend any more on advertising. It's convenient for your customer to go back and purchase the same items or even other items because they are already registered and familiar with navigating through your site.
Another big advantage of having a website is that you can cross-promote other items on your site. For instance, you can put banners on the site from other companies such as Amazon or Buy.com, and typically earn a commission from anyone that clicks on the banner and buys a product from there. You can also put other ads on the site such as Google Adsense which is where if someone clicks on an ad, you get paid from Google just for them clicking on the link. Very easy money!
Finally, if you are selling items on auction sites, you can promote your website in any emails back and forth from your buyers and even in your auction listings. This will get more exposure to your site from previous buyers and another great way of cross-promoting other products to your site and gaining new customers.
The hardest thing is probably to get traffic or visitors to your website. It sounds harder than it is because of all the different available techniques. The easiest and fastest way to get traffic to your site is to get it listed on the search engines of Google and Yahoo. Once someone searches for a particular item and you have it on your site, there is a good chance they are going to purchase the item if the price is right.
It's time to start acting upon all this information you've just learned from our lessons. It may be a lot for you at once if you are new to this, but take each lesson for a day, week, or even longer until you have understood everything discussed for you.
Just let us know if we can help you with anything and make sure you also check out the member's forum for other helpful tips, tricks, and a good insight into how this business works and can also be profitable for you!
To Your Success,
SMITH DISTRIBUTORS