In this case I am talking about something just a little different.

What I’m talking about here is do not be afraid to question your suppliers and your drop shippers until you get the answer that clarifies things much clearer than mud and you feel comfortable with.

The past two weeks I have been researching reputable drop shippers for a website project I’ve been working on that involves one of my own retail websites. I’m adding niche targeted products to my existing lineup of my own products ~ some I make, some are antiques and vintage collectibles. I’m very picky about what I’m adding, quality-wise and appearance wise, as well as tying this all together with a few other sites I own.

I did my research and came up with some fantastic drop shippers, contacted them, we went through the application motions and I’ve got what I wanted.

As we all know, some drop ship websites spell out all the details, and some don’t. And when they don’t, it’s up to you never to assume. This is your business, your reputation and the more time you put into an organized setup plus post clear terms on your website for your customers, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

So many people just want to slap the stuff up on the website because they still have the mindset that if you sell it, the people will come. That mindset is so out of touch with today’s competitive realities of selling online it’s almost painful to watch people do this.

Sure, we’d all like 25 sales a day. In this economy it’s not going to happen. Things are just beginning to pick up, albeit slowly, and we still have to be quite patient with the buying public. For some of them the dust has settled and they are beginning to spend money shopping again, and for some, the blood has not yet stopped flowing as layoffs are still happening and basic security is still a dream.

For those of us who make our living selling online, we need to take care of how we present ourselves. It’s not always the lowest price that wins the customer. It’s the quality of the goods, the need that fills the demand, and the presentation. If the item is shipped out of your California or Wisconsin warehouse, you need to put that in the product description so that people know. If California is a different supplier than Wisconsin, you need to detail that in your shipping policies.

You need to be clear about the California warehouse shipping items out in 5-7 business days and that they are shipped out via USPS as opposed to the Wisconsin facility that ships in 7-10 days via Fedex. Why? Just because you know it doesn’t do anything for the customer. If people don’t know, they expect the item to arrive tomorrow. Things need to be spelled out for customers so there are no surprises.

One of my drop shippers has an extraordinarily clear FAQ page, of which I copied to my computer and printed out relevant segments of it to put in the suppliers file, so when I need the info when loading the items on to my website, I didn’t have to look online every 5 minutes, I’d have it in front of me.

Another one of my suppliers didn’t have anything anywhere. I looked on the price list and the info I needed wasn’t there. I looked all over their website, not there. So I called, got acquainted with the owner and we chatted. He was very nice, answered quite a few of my questions, and we hung up. Well, I thought I had all the questions covered. But I did not. Decided to email him, and didn’t hear back from him for quite a few hours. Wasn’t sure what to think.

Lo and behold later that night he emailed me. We ended up going back and forth for more than an hour, he was incredibly helpful with pricing, shipping, and other questions that I had, even steering me in a better direction that would be more cost effective for me and for my customers. I printed out that email and now have his guidelines to go by. If I had not emailed him, I would still be beating my head against the wall playing the guess work game.

That’s not what business is about, playing the guess work game. If you don’t know, have looked and cannot find the information that satisfies your question, ASK! 9 times out of 10 you will not be regarded as a PITA, actually the supplier will gain a degree of respect for you because you want to know how to sell his / her product in a business like and competitive manner. Who benefits? You both do.

In fact, when I applied to all these suppliers, I received account setup information relatively quickly from all of them except for this one. My very first call to him was about my application. He didn’t have it in his inbox, mine outbox showed I sent it, so as we all know email can be flaky from time to time and apparently it got lost in the ether. If I hadn’t checked on that initially none of this good stuff would’ve taken place.

Many people are afraid to ask questions or follow up because they are under the impression that their questions might be looked upon as stupid, or they might be perceived as a pest, or whatever. If someone looks upon you in such a negative manner because you asked a question, that’s their problem not yours. They are not very business like in their approach then, are they? Your questions serve to benefit both of you in the end, because your sales are their sales.

So, DO NOT BE AFRAID to question your suppliers and drop shippers about pricing, shipping costs, or anything else that comes to mind. You cannot run a successful business based on assumptions and guess work, or by taking a financial loss for not charging enough to cover your expenses so that you come out with your projected profit margin.

]]> http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/06/05/do-not-be-afraid/feed/ http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/05/30/why/ http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/05/30/why/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 12:11:13 +0000 DesignDiva http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/05/30/why-does-my-competitor/ This is a loaded question. We could theoretically finish off the end of that sentence with SO many different endings, couldn’t we?

For the purpose of today’s post, we’re going to finish it off like so:

“Why does my competitor’s website get indexed so much faster than mine?”

And now, for the answer.

Several reasons. Your competitor’s website is:

• older than yours ~ more longevity on the Internet means a more stable website to the search engines, hence means they will index it faster ~ seniority does have it’s perks!
• fresh content ~ your competitor keeps adding fresh content on a more or less regular basis ~ more products, more articles, or keeps updating the already quality content on their site with new and relevant information
• even though search engines don’t put a big emphasis on keywords anymore, the buying public still does. In fact, how the heck do you think they find you? One way is through your relevant keywords ~ which all have to tie together in your meta tags ~ title, description, keywords ~ AND ~ in your quality page content on each and every page

So. What can you do?

Your site is new. Ouch. So that means your website doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in that very warm place, right? Wrong.

You don’t have anymore products you can add to your website on a regular basis. You’re not good at writing articles, and how can you update your page content…………. there’s only so much you can say about what you’ve got.  Oh woe is me!! Wrong.

Keywords. I thought I had all the right keywords. In fact, I’ve added oodles of keywords. That’s what I’m supposed to have, right? Lots of keywords? Wrong.

Oh dear. This is gonna be an interesting post.

So, your website is new, or sort of new, or just not as old as your competitors website. And THAT is supposed to stop you??? Are you crazy? Make sure your domain name is registered for at least two years. Why? Spammer websites tend to only register for one year. You are a sincere website, out to build your online empire? Then register your domain name for as many years as practical, and as you can afford.

Fresh content. The more “static” your site is, meaning, the less often you add fresh content, the slower it will get indexed. Think of it as a freshwater pond. When it becomes stagnant because of no new water sources or water input, it becomes stagnant, overgrown with algae and nasty. Even the frogs don’t stop by anymore, never mind the ducks. The “fresher” that pond is, the more forms of life take up residence on and  in it. Same goes for your website.

Don’t have alot of new product to add? Many people make the mistake of adding ALL their product in one fell swoop.  WRONG. Add X amount of items every week. I don’t care how large your inventory is. Putting it all up there at once doesn’t make any sense. People like to keep checking back on their favorite websites for “new stuff”. Search engines are no different. If you put all the inventory up there at once, it doesn’t give people a reason to “keep coming back” to see what’s new.

Don’t have enough of your own product to play with like that? Find reputable drop shippers to deal with and add their product to your website. Already doing the drop shipper thing? Makes no difference. Add new items weekly.

Still stuck? Add a page or two to your website called “Featured Products” or “What’s New” ~ list random products and change it weekly or bi-weekly. Blog about it. Or, if your shopping cart comes with an RSS feed, or there’s a mod out there for your cart that would add an RSS feed, invest in it. Usually these mods do not cost much and the benefits can be lucrative. Your shopping cart doesn’t have such a feature and one can’t be obtained? That’s very rare these days. You may have to hire someone to write you an RSS XML feed. That’ll cost you. The benefits are still potentially quite lucrative in terms of gaining more business however which may justify the cost.

Why? The RSS feed can be syndicated out and people can subscribe. Not just that, but if you market it properly, the word gets out nicely. It’s all in the marketing.

If you don’t sell tangible goods but instead sell services, write articles on a more or less frequent basis.

If you DO sell tangible goods and write articles about the product genre or specific product information, blog them. Then, don’t let them languish in the blog’s archives!! Eventually those just disappear into the cyber ether. What to do? Put links to your blog articles on your website. Put them under different headings, such as some articles might be under a section called Information, Tutorials, Tips, How To…….., etc. Always list the articles in the website menu UNDERNEATH the product menu. NEVER first.

Why? When people come to your website, you want them to come for your products, not the info, which is secondary. Otherwise you get competitors or tire kickers coming to your site just for the knowledge you are imparting, and you don’t generate sales.  Also, articles need to be written in such a way that they are essentially a teaser with a link to one or more products so that the reader will be wanting to and indeed will click on the links inside the article so they can ” find out more” about specific products that you have for sale on the website. It all goes back to getting the products to sell. Once you realize that, you’ll stop writing articles and content that actually drive people away.

And finally, quality content on the website…………. many minimalists believe in the power of one or two lines. That’s nice. That also won’t get you anywhere.

Why? It all ties in with niche marketing, proper marketing techniques, obtaining targeted traffic, keyword density, quality content on the page, and properly done organic SEO…… things have to be worded so that they impart enough information about each and every product, because the consumer who shops online can’t touch and feel the product, and things have to also be worded to give people a reason to WANT to buy the item. If, in the end, you don’t give people a reason to WANT to buy the item, they won’t.

And that is what sets your competitor apart from you. They do all of this, they do it right, or they’ve hired someone to do this for them, and that professional does it right. And that’s why their website gets indexed faster and has better search engine visibility than yours. It doesn’t happen overnight, because like everything, a website is a constantly evolving process. It can happen rather quickly, if done right. It can stay that way, at the top of the heap, if maintained constantly. If not, it falls under the radar and gets lost with the other millions of websites out there that never come up in search engine results.

Need help with all this? Contact us!

]]> http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/05/30/why/feed/ http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/05/11/north-american-art/ http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/05/11/north-american-art/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 19:15:23 +0000 DesignDiva http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/?p=1208 A few day ago we invited one of our newer clients to share the spotlight in our occasional featured client blog post / very relaxed press release. We like to do this for our clients especially in this tough economy ~ the more exposure we can get someone, the more traffic and who knows, business, might actually flow their way! And so, without further ado from us, we’d like YOU to get acquainted with Bruce Schleicher and his company, North American Art!

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Established in 1993, North American Art has grown from a small regional art company to one that serves most of the United States and parts of the Canadian market by retaining our core of independent owner-operator home furnishings customers, designers, and retail chains across America. North American Art sells all types of Wall Décor and Mirrors to our customers.  We only produce Framed Art and Mirrors in the U.S.

For the past 15 years our mission statement has remained the same, “Provide our customers with superior quality, pricing, and service.”  “Great pictures at a great price” has long been the term that North American Art customers have used to describe our company. Located in St Paul, Minnesota, North American Art is perfectly situated to distribute product to our customers across the U.S.  Our catalog has more than 1,000 different pictures to choose from and our website has more than 2,000 images.

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And here, Bruce talks about his visions for the company’s growth this year, despite the rather grim economic outlook that is not forecast to improve until the Fall.

However, at North American Art, Bruce isn’t taking “no” for an answer…………….. perhaps this can be a lesson for all of us, to look forward, to examine our business, and then to simply move forward.

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I have started this article five different times this morning.  Do I talk about the financial meltdown?  Do I discuss housing?  How about shrinking lines of credit?  Although you don’t see it, I wrote initial paragraphs on each of these topics, only to delete them and start over.  Perhaps these discussions were appropriate two months ago, but they serve no purpose today other than to complain.  I choose to not go down that road.  Instead, I am looking forward and making my prognostications.  And, the wonderful thing about blogs is that you get to put in your two cents worth too.

Here is what North American Art has done, and what I expect for the near future. In January and February we added 250 new images and 18 new frames.  Next week we will be adding perhaps 6 more frames.

Then, we will add an additional 150 images.  These new images, per your requests, will be moderately priced clean simple designs.  Simple cream mats and simple prints. And, we will further expand our traditional frame mat and fillet program.  The mat and fillets which wholesale for $100 to $110 are about 20% less than our competitors for comparable product.  Some stores have chosen to run these pictures at $249 while others have marked them $299.  Reorders have been quite strong in either case.  So, I would frankly recommend getting the extra margin.

Our third area where we will expand in May and June will be to introduce a new selection of “door busters,” for your promotional needs.  We will develop about 20 new pictures at $25 and expand our offering with a new price point of $50 or $60 pictures.  Here too, we will likely ad 20 images.  As always, we allow you to have 25% of your total order in these promotional prices.  It is another reason why I suggest taking a longer mark on our regular product.  Not only will the pictures command longer margins, but you can also offer $90 pictures for $49.

Stores that have run strong promotions have generated strong spring sales.  North American Art will support your efforts with our “door busters.” The Federal Reserve announced this week that it expects the recession to end this year.  And, we have experienced a slight increase in momentum as well.  Our best sellers continue to perform.  Our new offerings provide freshness.  And, we continue to add new customers while delivering in 3 weeks.  Of this, I am certain.

Furniture stores can generate sales today!  But, you have to make it happen.  Talk to your vendors.  Buy some promotional inventory.  Then offer your customers a strong sale and you will generate business.  North American Art will be a willing participant.  Talk to your sales reps or call Deb or myself at 651 776-8998.  We will do our very best to build an art program that will generate sales.

Bruce Schleicher, President
North American Art
651 776-8998

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We’ve featured a clickable snapshot of both the North American Art Website and Blog ~ we encourage you to visit, subscribe to the blog, and keep up with the latest news at North American Art.

Generally what happens is a website owner picks too large a niche, too generic, thinking that if they sell a whole bunch of stuff in a related category, the shoppers will come. Frequently I hear “I’ll just sell everything that has to do with X” ~ good luck! The people will come, and all you’ll be getting is the tire kickers ~ the people who search without having a specific item ~ brand ~ type ~ color ~ whatever in mind. So, your website stats show hits, your bounce rate is high, and you have no sales.

Very few successful online retailers or wholesalers sell “everything” in their genre. If they do, and they are successful, you can best believe that when they started out, they didn’t sell “everything”. That “everything” inventory was built up over the years as they established themselves first in one niche market and then some more.  Rome was not built in a day, and neither will your online empire be built in a day. It takes years to establish yourself.

However, not to be discouraged. If you understand the concept of niche marketing, you can carve out a decent niche for yourself in about a year’s worth of time, if you do it right.

You need to understand the buying market, research trends, of course you need to like / love what you sell or at least be passionate about it,  observe your competition closely, and target your market. That last point, targeting your market, may be the most important of all. Not to undermine the importance of all those points I’ve listed above, but in the end, if you don’t target your market, you will lose sales, have a high bounce rate, and you will fail.

All too many websites are started with the concept of “thinking big”. That’s like thinking you can start from the top without having worked your way up the ladder, or running before you can walk. It doesn’t matter whether you make  your own products, purchase them as inventory and then sell them, drop ship directly from a drop shipping site, or drop ship from your own website. Having a huge array of goods with no targeted market is setting yourself up for failure.

If you sell jewelry, you need to target your market. Lots of people sell jewelry. You’ve got tons of competition. What’s going to set you apart from the rest? Do you target kids, birthstone, particular gemstones, crystals, sterling silver, gold, brides?? Those are only example categories that are popular. Once you establish where you main strength will be, you’ve got to whittle that down further, to more specific niche markets. For example, if you make kids jewelry, it could be name bracelets. Will they be sterling silver, will they be gold, will they be lead free pewter? If you sell gemstone jewelry, do you sell specific gemstones, do you target bridal / anniversary jewelry, and so on. If you sell specific gemstone jewelry, is it a specific gemstone family, specific color range, specific type of gemstone?

It doesn’t matter what industry you are in. If you sell items without having really sat down and established a niche market directly targeted towards a specific group of buyers, or plural that and have several niche markets each targeting a specific group of buyers, you may as well not be in business. You need, for the health of your business, to sit down and seriously define your marketing objective or objectives. If you don’t do that, you’ve shot yourself in the foot.

The whole point of niche marketing with targeted websites is to establish yourself as a trusted supplier in your field, where people KNOW they can go and most times will find what they are wanting. It also helps your SEO service provider or if you are doing the SEO yourself ~ to confidently perform the search engine optimization in a very specifically targeted manner so that your website ranks high in searches for specific keywords and keyphrases. Establishing exactly what markets are being targeted helps the website copywriter or SEO service provider to write specific targeted copy for your website pages, which has a direct result in your search engine visibility.

Without the in-depth analysis of targeted markets that you want to reach being established, you don’t get targeted traffic that you can convert to sales. This is something that the website owner is responsible for, not the website copywriter or the SEO service provider. The website owner has to have a strong grip on the specific markets they want their website to target, has to understand the concept of niche marketing drilldown, and has to have a plan for converting traffic to sales. The website copywriter or the SEO service provider can only implement your niche market targeted plan into the website content, keywords, description, title, etc. thereby establishing your position in key searches, but ultimately it’s up to you to be able to convert that into sales.

If you deal with your own products, you DO have complete control over your own situation.

If you deal with dropshippers, your control goes in two directions.

If your website points directly to the drop shippers site when a shopper clicks on a link, don’t think they don’t notice. You need to establish your aforementioned niche targeted markets very specifically and incorporate that into your website content, and ultimately your blog which promotes your website. Your website content and blog information has to be promotional, interesting and informative ~ in that order, to be effective. If your content is informative first, you invite the tire kickers or your competition who is looking for information they can use to their own advantage. There is a distinct methodology for this kind of drop shipper setup and very few people actually use it, which accounts for the high failure rate and very few sales.

If your dropshipping website is stocked with products that you have uploaded and looks and operates like a website that owns all the products, you generally won’t have the same problem described above unless you are really sloppy about quality content and promotional material on the website and in your blog.

Ultimately, every website owner who is experiencing high bounce rates, few or no sales, or sluggish traffic needs to re-evaluate their niche marketing and their targeted audience. That’s a priority, and only something that you yourself are in control of, with plenty of research in both the consumer trending area and research on your competition. You have to give your shoppers a reason to visit, a reason to bookmark you, a reason to shop with you and a reason to come back. You have to give the search engines a reason to index you highly. You have to give your business a reason to live long and prosper.

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Jewelry Collectibles Design is a New Jersey based SEO and niche marketing IT consulting company. We believe everyone is entitled to affordable SEO, not just big companies with mega budgets. Visit us at Jewelry Collectibles Design for more info as to how we can help you achieve your online business goals!

We also run more than a dozen niche market targeted websites of our own, plus a regular retail / wholesale website with our own products. We talk from experience, and from our success.

This post is for you. I wanted to give you a basic idea of how you might want to use it, and some easy tips to make your usage of this fantastic tool less stressful. I know when I first started using Squidoo several years ago I didn’t have a clue either! I found it frustrating and yes, stressful. I had to read, read and read some more before I understood why I’d want to use it and how to make best usage of it.

Squidoo is a fabulous online social medium for getting the word out about your website, or websites, for sharing ideas, for sharing knowledge, etc.

Squidoo has had it’s ups and downs since it first came online and has shown itself to be serious in it’s mission, with a responsible attitude on behalf of it’s users. Squidoo’s  management team has made numerous improvements that have proven to be beneficial for it’s members.

Squidoo DOES have a learning curve. There are many excellent lenses which cover some of the learning curve topics, you can easily Google this in order to learn or simply search right on Squidoo after you’ve joined up.

My approach to making lenses is simple. I know that revenue can be generated from the ads shown on each lens. Since my personal mission with all my Squidoo lenses is to bring traffic back to my websites, I focus on building each lens around my website products mainly and not in adding extra affiliate links beyond what is generically provided by Squidoo according to lens content.

How each lensmaster handles the revenue generating issue is up to them in accordance with their goals for their lens or lenses. You can add Amazon or eBay modules if you like to your lens to generate extra revenue.

The important thing to remember if you do add these extra revenue modules to your Squidoo lens is that the products you choose to display need to fall into and compliment the niche market that you’ve carved out for yourself when you built your lens.

We’ll talk more about niche marketing and your Squidoo lens in a bit.

What modules you choose are up to you as well. I’m going to discuss here how I do things for my own purposes, and perhaps you can pick up a few ideas for your own targeted goals.

My Squidoo lenses are very focused and targeted towards my particular business goal of bringing traffic back to my websites to I use text modules, the RSS feed module, and the guestbook module. That’s pretty much it.

I use one text module per website category ~ since each Squidoo lens I create is for one website ~ each text module in the lens corresponds to each website category on the website.

Text modules are limited to 10,000 characters which is more than adequate for most if not all of your writeups. However, the one picture per text module limitation is rather limited. Perhaps because that picture ends up getting hosted on Squidoo’s servers so they don’t want their servers bogged down with tons of pictures. Can’t blame them. However, one single picture often does not do the writeup justice, sometimes you just NEED MORE. Also, the picture falls into a generically placed position instead of where you might want it.

There is an easy workaround to this so that you can place several pictures in your writeup area plus position them centered as well as link back to them. All you need to know is a little simple HTML which I will show you below.

To place a picture into your text module where you want it to show up in your writeup, here’s the code:

What you are doing here is making your paragraph which contains the picture to align center, you are inserting the picture, and you are closing the paragraph so that the next lines of text you add to your writeup don’t go centered. Replace yoursite.com/picture.jpg with the URL of the actual picture file, whether it’s hosted on your website, on Photobucket or wherever. Click SAVE and you should see your picture. Of course you’ll have to PUBLISH your Squidoo lens for the whole thing to show up so the world can see it.

This way you can insert as many pictures as you like into your writeup. Remember however that the HTML in the code counts towards your 10,000 character limit for the text module.

To make the picture clickable, as in maybe you want it to go back to the product page it’s on, or the product category it lives in on your website, first you need to figure out the URL of where you want people to go when they click on the picture. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to use the HTML sample below to make the picture clickable. You type the HTML right into the text module.

Replace the yoursite.com/yourpage.html part with the actual page URL you want people to go to when they click on the picture and as in the first example, replace the yoursite.com/yourpicture.jpg part with the URL of your picture.

To make a clickable text link that’s bolded within your writeup so that it stands out better and people don’t miss it follow the example below.

So, now  you get the idea on how to add multiple pictures to your Squidoo lens text modules as well as make pictures centered, text centered, and text bolded.

On to the next part of this Squidoo lens tutorial.

How to Make Your Squidoo Lens a Success!

There are several necessary things that need to be done to make your Squidoo lens a success.

Without further ado, here are the 10 points to success.

1. Niche market target your Squidoo lens to a specific topic, theme, or subject.
2. Make sure your Squidoo lens is full of quality content relevant to it’s theme. Stay focused.
3. Add tags to your lens (right hand column when in Edit mode) that are directly relevant to the quality content ~ if the tag word or phrase is not in your content, either lose the tag word or phrase or rework the content to include it.
4. If  you have more than one lens, link them to each other in your introductory section. This way people don’t have to search for your other Squidoo lenses, they can go directly from the lens they are in to another of your lenses that might be of interest to them. Also as a plus, your Squidoo lenses will be more search engine friendly because they are interlinking with each other ~ providing quality inbound and outbound links.
5. Lensroll your own lenses as well as those of others that you like ~ right hand column mid way down. You’ll find it.
6. Join as many groups as possible that are relevant to your Squidoo lens theme. Dashboard, My Groups, go find some to join.
7. Comment on other people’s lenses that you genuinely like and that are relevant to your own.
8. Favorite other people’s lenses and let them know that you did so. Either contact them or leave ‘em a note in their guestbook.
9. Sign the guestbook of lenses you really like, however, show good manners. Let them know that you gave them stars, give them a positive comment about their lens. Don’t behave desperately and put in a plug for your own lens, it’s just flat out tacky. When the person reviews your comment they have the opportunity to go visit your lens in return. Let them decide do they want to return the comment favor or not.
10. When you update your lens or lenses, which should be weekly or so to keep them fresh ~ BLOG that update; TWEET the update on Twitter; POST that update in Facebook; and send out a Squidcast to your fans in Squidoo.

That’s all for now. I hope at least some of this clears up any confusion you might have about Squidoo and makes it easier to customize your lens and your text modules. Plus maybe the 10 point thing might help you get the word out about your lens, which in turn will send more traffic to your website.

See you on Squidoo!

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Jewelry Collectibles Design ~ Serious SEO and Niche Marketing services that are affordable ~ because every online business  should be able to afford quality SEO for their websites.

Our fish, birds, cats, dogs, reptiles, horses, gerbils, hamsters and ferrets give us unconditional love, devotion and understand us when the rest of the world does not. That is why we decided to create a website that was just for them ~ for their creature comforts, foods, toys, health, wellbeing, housing and yes, even pet memorials for the ones who have swam, flew, walked and ran over the Rainbow Bridge and who are waiting for us now.

That is why we began Pets Animals Supplies ~ it’s a small one stop shopping place for all your special friends needs and wants. Not a mega mall, not a huge national retailer, just a “regular folks” website selling what we need for our fur, feather, fin and scale babies.

Being the proud “parent” of quite a few of our two and four legged friends with feathers, fins, scales and fur, I wanted to open up a store that was niche targeted just to the comfort and well being of all little friends like mine ~ and so Pets Animals Supplies was born!

You’ll be able to find everything you need here for your little or maybe not so little pet friends here ~ we’ve got all sorts of supplies ‘n *stuff* for birds, cats, dogs, reptiles, horses, fish, ferrets, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, you name the pet, we’ve most likely got the product for him or her!

Toys, critter trails, pouches, beds, food, treats, leashes, collars, sleep sacks, playpens, hammocks, cages, habitats, enclosures, misting systems, water dishes, food dishes, temperature control, gauges, meters, timers, skimmers, tanks, lighting, pumps, impellers, plants, heaters, filters, cooling systems, water bowls, food bowls, aeration, carriers, feeders, stands, perches, chew toys, incubators, kitty condos, scratching posts and scratching beds, claw control, flea and tick remedies, litter boxes, flapping doors, electronic fences, blankets, muzzles, strollers, pooper scoopers, obedience training and pet memorials for those precious ones who have crossed over to the Rainbow Bridge.

We can’t name everything we’ve got here, so take a look around down our “aisles” and if you still can’t find what you need, just use our handy search to find it.

Enjoy shopping for your favorite little or not so little best friend!

All the best ~ the folks over at Pets Animals Supplies

]]> http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/04/17/pets-animals-supplies/feed/ http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/04/17/bans/ http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/2009/04/17/bans/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:59:47 +0000 DesignDiva http://www.jewelry-collectibles-design.com/?p=1141 Build A Niche Stores (known for short as BANS) are a real nice way to make decent affiliate income from the eBay Partner Network.  The software enables you to create a niche market targeted online store that points directly to your choice of eBay categories. With the US program you can earn 50% on every sale that comes through your BANS store from eBay.

As with all things, and all projects that build our online empires, quite alot of work has to go into this before you get anything out of it. The days of  “if you build it they will come” are long gone, and so are the days of just slapping up a website and the foolish and naive come to it and make you rich quick.

Thanks to spammers and sloppy webmasters as noted above, and also thanks to those who still cling to the old traditions of the get rich quick scheme, internet shoppers have become VERY savvy for the most part. Wiser too. No one wants to shop at an online store that “sells everything”, that basically looks bad because you can’t find any information on the site about anything (aka this is known as quality content), and that looks like a get rich quick scheme template.

People want to shop on websites that look well built, because looks still do impress, and first impressions are very important. So, if you want your Build A Niche Store to succeed, here is a brief list of things you absolutely MUST do in order to get results.

• Build it well. Put together a pleasant color scheme that doesn’t hurt the eyes, that is well coordinated, and doesn’t involve lots of flashing moving gizmos.
• Research your niche market or markets if opening more than one store. Ideally, your BANS store should be built around something you like, love, know a great deal about, or are very interested in yourself. Otherwise you will not be able to create good quality content for it.
• That’s the next step. Creating quality content for the site. You MUST treat it as your own website in the meaning that even though you are promoting other people’s products essentially, you must have quality content on all of your pages, telling people what they can expect to find, giving them an overview of products, plus adding a few information type pages as well. Without the quality content, neither the search engines nor the people who do come to visit will take you seriously.
• Create a well designed header for your store. This is part of your branding for your store, so the header needs to be designed to be attractive and done with care.
• Make sure your store is search engine optimized to the max. Be very careful with this ~ it’s extremely important ~ the SEO needs to correlate directly with your quality content in order to be at maximum efficiency for your search engine visibility.
• Promote your store just as you would promote your website ~ through your blog, with a Squidoo lens, Twitter it to let people know you are out there. Don’t spam, don’t be obnoxious about it. Treat it as a normal website. Don’t try to shove it down people’s throats. Update your blog daily if possible. Update your Squidoo lens once a week.

And finally, if you have the “Get Rich Quick” mentality, get a reality check or go back and work in a cubicle somewhere……………. there is no such thing as get rich quick. Bernie Madoff found that out ~ what goes around comes around.

Your mental attitude with your BANS store must be to treat it as you would your website ~ keep it fresh, well designed, excellent SEO, great quality content, and promoted and marketed responsibly.

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Jewelry Collectibles Design is a New Jersey based SEO and niche marketing IT consulting company. We believe everyone is entitled to affordable SEO, not just big companies with mega budgets. Visit us at Jewelry Collectibles Design for more info as to how we can help you achieve your online business goals!

In the years that have gone by since the waves of spammers permeated the air with their lost hype, affiliate marketing has become a sophisticated and worthy means of income. Those who have made the effort to take their affilliate marketing seriously and run it like a business have made great strides ~ adding to their family income and building their “online empire”, as some of us jokingly refer to it as.

To get affiliate marketing to behave like a credible income source with actual returns one needs to take a few necessary steps:

• treat it like a business, which it is
• have a thorough understanding of niche marketing
• find your niche or niches
• have a thorough understanding of how to promote it
• keep with it, always tweaking, on a daily or weekly basis
• evaluate where the money is being made, and where it’s not
• constantly adjust the project to turn the lowballers into performers

There needs to be a fine balance between letting the cat out of the bag about your affiliate sites, and only telling so much, for the obvious reason that you need to protect your niche market. You’ve got to find the right balance between saying just enough to promote yet not saying so much that your competition can invade your niche market and bring you down. And believe me someone will try!

You also need a real understanding of SEO (search engine optimization) in order to pull off your affiliate websites successfully. Affiliate websites with little or no quality content and little or no SEO will be a guaranteed flop. If you don’t have a tight grip on SEO and quality content you need to find yourself a niche marketing expert who is also an SEO expert, who can put your website into the top 10 and top 20 and then keep you there. Once you gain the search engine visibility you cannot let it slide or you’ll become invisible.

The affiliate website needs to have the look and feel to the website visitor of being a “real” website, either a “real” e-commerce type of website or a “real” information website, not a bunch of flashing banners that hurt the eyes and don’t do much more. The website design must be credible, the content on the website plentiful and of good quality, and your SEO must be niche market targeted.

Anyone can just throw an affiliate website up on the Internet. How many of those “anyone” types are making a real profit from them? Are you?

Enjoy learning about Moody’s Vintage Collectible Postcards!

Why You Should Collect Vintage Postcards

Over the last 50 years I have been an aggressive collector of many different collectibles including, but not limited to stamps, coins, obsolete currency, toy guns, national currency, baseball cards, sports autographs and vintage postcards, pretty much in that order. After several years, I would become bored and sell one collection off as I started the next one with nothing holding my attention for more than five to six years except for the vintage postcards. Postcards were different and have held my interest for over 20 years.

There are many reasons for their attraction and I want to share a few of them with you in hopes you will find this hobby as exciting, educational and fun as I do. I discovered that there were so many different subjects that I was drawn to that there was no way for me to collect them all but I didn’t want to be limited. My solution was to become a dealer and now I buy just about every kind of postcard, enjoy them and then sell them so someone else can enjoy them.

The only subject that I collect is postcards on my original hometown in Texas. Everything else I end up listing on my website and talking about them on my blog.

Enough about me! Let’s talk about what makes postcard collecting interesting, educational and fun.

I honestly believe you can find a postcard on almost any subject you can name which means you can find postcards on anything you are interested in.

According to the International Postal Union, over 140 BILLION postcards were mailed from 1907 through 1919 and millions more were never mailed and just stuck in postcard albums.

If you are not sure what is available or want to know more about postcards, check out my blog which I update 3-4 times a week with postcard pictures and descriptions to show you what is available and what to look for. My motto on the blog is: “CATCH POSTCARD FEVER!!”.

Postcards are perfect for genealogy pursuits, historical research or just a great addition to your collection of cats, dogs, lighthouses, Halloween, Santa Claus, railroad trains, planes and automobiles. This is a fantastic hobby and you don’t even have to buy the postcards.

Just read my blog or go to my website, Moody’s Postcards and look to your heart’s content. I promise it will be time well spent and you just might find the perfect hobby for you.

Here are a few very simple tips that very well can help you on your way.

Before we get started however, it’s important to realize that having a website is not enough. The days of  “if you sell it they will come” are long gone. Why? Because everybody is selling it and you have a major amount of competition! Remember, as long as people get downsized / laid off from their jobs and start businesses from home, become dissatisfied with eBay and begin their own website, or are retired and begin a home business to supplement their income,  your competition increases.

You need the power of affordable SEO (search engine optimization) services behind you to assist you in gaining search engine visibility and becoming well ranked in the top 10 and top 20. This is an invaluable investment in your business and your website, since quality SEO virtually negates the need for expensive online advertising. This targeted approach channels your hard earned dollars right back into your website, increasing it’s online value and your traffic.

Beyond that, you also need to give your website a subtle push and you need to be dedicated about it. So, here’s a few tips on how to do just that!

• Make a blog post every day about one of the items you sell.
• Twitter that blog post.
• Make a Facebook entry about that blog post.
• Start a Squidoo lens about what you sell.
• Add social bookmarking buttons to your blog and if possible to your website.
• If applicable to what you sell, make sure your website has a wish list, a gift registry, and a contact form.
• Make sure your blog has an email subscription link so that people can get your posts straight into their inbox.
• Link the blog to the website, and vice versa
• Offer free or discounted shipping if you can, building the cost into your product price.
• Make sure your product photos are the best they can be
• Give adequate space to a detailed description on the website for each product
• Utilize LinkedIn, Plaxo, Hotfrog, Kaboodle, and Widgetbox

Making the website as customer friendly as possible, easy to navigate, attractive without being overdone and syrupy is very very important. Offering your customers a “big store” feel ~ wish list, gift registry, free shipping where and when you can, minimizes the “mom and pop” appearance of your business and gives a nice, elegant feel that customers appreciate.

Product photos are important because they are the eye candy by which many people decide they will purchase or not. Detailed product descriptions help the customer also, since they cannot touch and feel the products to evaluate them in a physical way. Give measurements where you can, material content, sizes, whatever helps. Detailed descriptions correctly written also contribute to the keyword density on the page. That’s a partial help for the search engines to find you and position you in searches.

Blogging is targeted niche marketing, plain and simple. Getting the word out about the blog posts via social bookmarking, Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo and whatever other applicable tools you find ~ these are merely mechanisms that advertise for you. These are not inconsequential advertising mechanisms ~ they can be very direct, very niche market targeted, very effective advertising tools if used correctly.

Ah, but you say there’s only so many hours in a day? Learn to schedule and budget your time. Treat this as a business, not a hobby, unless it actually IS a hobby. If your income depends on this, it is most definitely NOT a hobby. Make a business plan, discipline yourself to blog every day, update that Squidoo lens once a week with fresh “stuff”, and watch your traffic stats grow.

As the incoming traffic from these tools and from your SEO provider’s efforts raises  your incoming traffic levels and your search engine visibility, don’t sit back and rest on your laurels. Watch your competition, add to your website, stay on top of things. Only then will you reap the benefits of having put your website to work for you with increased sales!

Need help with all this? Contact us!