Over the last few months, we’ve talked to quite a few business owners looking to sell online.  Some are just starting out, others have an existing business that aren’t supported by their existing shopping cart software.   There’s basically 3 ways to sell an item online:

• an online marketplace like eBay, etsy or Amazon
• using a SaaS shopping cart (e.g. Volusion, Magento Go, Shopify)
• using a self-hosted shopping cart (osCommerce, Zencart, Magento Community/Enterprise)

Deciding which of these three options works for you best depends on:

• the number of products / skus
• the  present revenue generated
• expected future revenue from the cart
• your personal HTML / CSS / Graphic Design ability
• and of course, your budget

It’s the balance of these three that I think pushes many smaller businesses towards the first two options, and truthfully isn’t such a bad idea.   The trick is of course reviewing your options with full knowledge of what the pro’s and con’s really are.

As an attempt to keep our costs down, we outsource much of our work. And yes, in the traditional sense such as sending work to countries like India, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Generally, the work and results are quite varied. Sometimes, you hit a gem of a worker, the majority of the time though you end up with people who have issues with the English language. And while I’m used to working with people whose English isn’t perfect, there’s a workable level that you require.

On the other hand, using a system like oDesk / elance; we get a lot more applicants a lot faster. In fact, we generally find that we get better response to our requests for work than if we use individuals here.

Our most recent banner request is a great example. Asked for a quote from a designer we have worked with in Vancouver – never got a reply after 4 days.

So we ended outsourcing it because we needed the job done. Fast. That’s what we got – within 24 hours, we had the banner done. Even if it did come with an extra hour of aggravation

Oooh my heard hurts when I start thinking about all the social media sites out there. There are just so many right now, it’s beginning to really get bad. Google+ just launched in an attempt to take away from Facebooks dominance.  It’s better designed certainly, doesn’t feel as clunky but…

Do we really want all this social media in our lives? Read a few good cyberpunk novels or sci-fi novels and sometimes, I worry.  It won’t take long before all the information we put out there (whether or not we want it to or not) will be available.

On the other hand, the good news is that with all this information, it’ll get harder and harder to find anything.  If you’re looking for a business idea, data mining and analysis will be a major thing for the futre.

We seem to be working slowly on our projects, slowly moving onwards on each.  I purchased a number of domains a while ago for potential new businesses and ended up not doing anything with them for a while.

With a new hire, we finally had time to get on those projects and started putting up some basic information including Analytics and Adsense.  Until we figure out a better option for those projects, I might as well look into making a couple of dollars via Adsense.

Had my first experience with crowd-sourcing recently, specifically creating a logo for a new project. It was certainly quite interesting, and we got a ton of great submissions.

One of the things that we found was that we didn’t get many submissions till the end, which was a bit of a shame since at least 1 of the submissions we received was so close. As usual, the early bird gets the worm in this case.

The other thing that we found was that due to the large number of submissions, we had some great ideas and concepts introduced to us. It certainly worked quite well.

Lastly, perhaps the thing we found the most difficult was the amount of time it required from us – commenting on all the logos, going through the multiple options and ranking them, etc.

I guess that’s the minus of crowd-sourcing compared to traditional sourcing via an ad agency or graphic designer. Time vs options.

So. Once an entrepreneur, always one. I have a rather bad tendency to get involved in multiple projects at once, which be detrimental to making sure any of them get the right kind of focus they need to be successful.

Currently, working on a site called Trails Today which is a hiking / trails website. Been working on it for a few years, problem is focusing and getting the code finally right and the developers focused on it. Ah well, here’s hoping it gets up within the next few months!

One of the hardest things about running your own business is learning to let go.  Once it becomes your work, your baby – learning to release parts of your work to other people – whether or not they are better, is very difficult.  In fact, for some people, it’s impossible.

We’re facing that problem now – we’ve grown to an extent that we have to actually hire someone soon, yet finding the right person and letting them handle the business process is difficult.

There’s a few things you can do though to make it easier on yourself:

- creates policies & procedures

Think ahead, create the policies and procedures necessary and write them down.  When you hand over the job to someone else, they can then just  follow the policies.  This means it’s easier to teach them, and just as importantly, they know exactly what they need to do to satisfy your standards.

- hire good people

Kind of obvious, but you have to make sure to hire the right people.  If you don’t you’re just leaving yourself open to more heartache.

- be patient

Provide time for your employees to get up to speed, remembering that they need time to learn what you’ve known for months or years now.

- create a list of your ‘new’ tasks

You’ve now given the job to someone else; so what are you doing? Make sure to have a list of new tasks that you now tackle in that free time.  Keeping yourself busy is one way to take your mind off the old work.

- check-in regularly; but not too often

Lastly, for your own peace of mind, set up a regular check-in schedule.  Just make sure that the schedule isn’t ‘every 5 minutes’ and you can provide both the oversight and hands-off approach needed.  Generally, 10-15 minutes quick summary at the beginning / end of a day and a weekly longer meeting should be fine for most jobs.

Lots of new data coming in about Groupon, LivingSocial & the rest of the Social Coupon Sites.  Like the fact that 40% of Groupon users would never use them again.

On the other hand, Amazon had over $110 Million worth of sales in one day thanks to Groupon or that they invested $176 million.  Or the fact that Google was considering buying them.

Lots of people are saying that they are the next big thing, others that it’s just a fad that is going to disappear soon.

As a business model, these companies have it great.  Their only cost is the website, the coding and set-up of offers (which frankly, would only take 1 person at most) and the cost of acquiring new accounts.  Their take? 15% of each sale – and like 3% or so goes to their gateway services.  So 12%.  A mildly successful coupon site that pushes say 100 $20 coupons just netted itself $300 in revenue, $240 in net not including other services.

The other side? The customers… meh.  Make sure you have a good product or service and you’re off.  Service sector companies would work well especially if you’re launching.  Introducing a new service and ‘filling’ your blank spots are great – ditto on perishable goods.

For non-perishable products – now that’s more debatable.  Would it be worth it? I’m not sure.  Gut feel – probably not.  Certainly not like Groupon; where you have no control over the number of coupons.  The others are more flexible, which allows you to control your cost.

A long time ago in University, the Next Big Thing was the Internet.  Among the proclamations was that the Internet was going to render all other forms of advertising irrelevant.  The Internet was going to change everything in marketing.

I hear a lot of the same thing being said of social marketing these days, and I repeat what my Professor had to say to this ‘Hogwash’.

Yes, Social Marketing is important.  Yes, it has altered how we communicate.  Yes, it’s providing some great returns.  Sometimes.   However, it’s worth noting that it is a tool, and should be considered only one of a variety of tools at a marketers disposal.

Here’s an example.  In 2006; I worked for an e-commerce company that generated 80% of its revenue and leads from Search Engine Marketing.  It took me 6 months, but I finally convinced the CEO to allow me to do offline marketing.

We set up a new website and then  I took out a series of print advertisements in a magazine.  In 3 months, we had generated an ROI of 4.  In 12, our monthly ROI was 20.  3 years later, the company generates 50% of it’s revenue from offline advertising.

The fact is, your customers will have diverse viewing habits. Some might only do e-mail.  Others social websites.  Others, just skim the news and some favourite websites.  And even more might just not use the Internet at all except for work.

Your marketing plan must encompass all of these, or else you’ll just be fishing in the same spot repeatedly.  Sooner or late, that spot is going to go bare for new customers.

Since it’s the thing to discuss Facebook and their Privacy issues, let’s.

It’s been discussed to death why unilaterally setting an individual’s privacy settings to ‘Public’ is bad.  It is potentially illegal (depending on which country you are in and your policies); it removes a customer’s choice and most importantly, it annoys your customers.

Since that’s been done, let’s talk a bit more about the marketing implications about Facebook’s current strategy. And let’s be clear here – consistent, repeated actions such as this constitute a strategy.  Even if it is a bad strategy.

Social network sites are built and succeed due to two major factors:

• their technology
• a critical mass of individuals

Right now, Facebook holds the edge on technology, but barely.  It won’t take long for some site (whether it’s a new upcomer or heck, even Google) to build a platform that is just as good if not better.  Technological advantages as a strategy is very, very difficult to upkeep and very expensive.

The more dangerous for Facebook’s long-term survival is that of critical mass.  Once a viable alternative appears, if the level of ‘pain’ experienced by customers on Facebook is sufficient, they will begin to migrate.   Critical mass works both ways – if Facebook loses a sufficient number of customers, the drop will become exponential.

It’s worth noting as well that Facebook is still not profitable.  As such, if the investors decide that Facebook’s current policies are affecting them badly enough, there just might be a slight revolt.  Whether it’s a withdrawal of capital (i.e. cutting losses) or a coup.

Overall, if you own or run a company that collects private information; it’s nearly always better to keep your customers happy.  Build and keep their trust, and that will allow you to build your business.