How to Start a Business Internationally

20% of students on Udemy are from from India. So, Google “starting a business in India” and you'll see that your government offers plenty of information. Use it in order to sign up and register a business. To work with wholesalers, all you need to do is prove you have a legitimate business.

Once you set up a business in India, you are legitimizing your business and you are able to do business anywhere in the world. If you want to do business in the US, call the manufacturer who produces the item you want to sell. Introduce yourself, the name of your company, and where your business is located. They'll give you a list of wholesalers you can work with in India or wherever you're located.

I'm not a lawyer or an accountant and I can not give you legal advice. When you "Google" this information, you'll be connected to your government website. Make sure it's a legitimate government website because you don't need to pay anyone to file the paperwork to become a legitimate business. The government will show you a step by step process, for free and will give you in-depth information in order to legitimize your business.

This will enable you to get products at wholesale prices and work with legitimate wholesalers in the US and internationally to start dropshipping products to your customers, anywhere in the world.

Tax I.D. to Work with Dropshippers (U.S. only)

Applicable to the United States, an Employer Identification Number or EIN is the corporate equivalent to a Social Security Number, although it is issued to anyone, including individuals. The purpose of an EIN is so that the IRS will be able to identify your business for taxes.

You need an EIN to work with wholesalers. Without it, you will not have access to legitimate wholesalers. With an EIN you won't have to pay sales tax on products you buy for your business, including items for resell.

How to Setup a Business License (U.S. only)

The reason to consider getting a business license is because you separate yourself from your business. Your business becomes a person and will be considered one. At the start, I chose to become a sole proprietorship. You alone own the company and are responsible for it's assets and liabilities.

Once you're making money and the business becomes profitable, I became a limited liability company. LLC's are not taxed as a separate business entity. Instead all the profits and losses are passed through the business to each member of the LLC. Members report profits and losses on their personal federal tax returns.

Advantages of an LLC, members are protected from personal liability for business decisions or actions. If the LLC incurs debt, the issued members personal assets are usually exempt. Keep in mind that limited liability means limited liability. Members are not necessarily shielded from wrongful acts, including those against employees. Finally, there's less registration paperwork and there are low start-up costs.

Disadvantage of an LLC is self-employment taxes. Members of an LLC are considered self-employed and must pay the self-employment tax contributions towards Medicare and Social Security. Their entire net income of the LLC is subject to taxes.

To get an LLC, you must file the Articles of Organization, which is a simple document that legitimizes your LLC. It includes information, like your business name, address, and the names of its members. In most states, you file with the Secretary of State. There will be an associated filing fee for this document. You can register with the state you live in. Go to your state government website. You can file with your state online.

How to Setup a Business Bank Account

Once you have an LLC, your money should be separated into a business bank account, and kept away from your personal bank account. You're letting the IRS know that your business is a separate entity and that you're serious about making a profit. If you're being sued and you don't have a separate bank account for your business, then you're not showing that your business is a separate entity!

Bank of America allows you to spend $10,000 per day with your debit card and you don't need to maintain a minimum balance. Bank of America charges $16/month for having a business bank account. They give you some options to get that $16/month back, by spending at least $250 with your debit card per month or business credit card. Otherwise, it's $16/month.

Bank of America has very good customer service, with very nice people. You have an easy access to ATM's and Branches everywhere in the United States. You can deposit cash and checks at any ATM.

I went to Bank of America to open a business bank account and brought all these business documents. Articles of Organization, Tax ID number, Driver's License, Birth Certificate, and Social Security number.

You should be capable of waiving the $16/month fee by spending $250/month with your debit card when you charge your eBay fees, cell phone bill, and other business expenses. If you want to be successful, continue to keep your costs low. On average, when people expend purchases with their debit card, they spend an average of 13%-18% more than cash.

The first time I opened a business checking account, it was with a local credit union. I had a personal checking and savings account with them and they weren't that bad.

It was March 26, 2012 and the biggest product of the year was being released. Wholesalers were gonna charge my bank account in the afternoon and ship my customers orders afterwards. All the money was in the account, over $7,000. But, it's not that easy. The credit union called and they told me that two wholesalers tried charging my account for around $7,000 and labeled it as suspicious activity. The bank said there was a $3,000 spending limit per day. Even if I had a $100,000 in my bank account.

People usually aren't best friends with their banks. Does anyone have a good experience with their bank? Leave a comment below and tell me about it!

Calling Corporate Headquarters

You want to call the company's corporate headquarters and ask for the sales department. Tell the sales department that you own a retail business and want to sell their products. Ask them for a list of their wholesale distributors in the US. Tell them where your business is located so they can direct you to the regional sales manager. They want to sell as many products as possible and they will be happy to give you a list of wholesalers and dropshippers you can work with.

Calling Dropshippers

Call them enthusiastically with a smile on your face because they will notice a considerable difference. Slow down your talking and movement by about 50%. Use pauses when speaking. “Hello, this is Matt Bernstein from Low Cost Hustle, LLC I'm interested in retailing your products on my ecommerce site. Would you tell me how I can get started?” If you get transferred to the sales department say this “hello this is Matt Bernstein from Low Cost Hustle, LLC. I got your number from [this] manufacturer and we're a retailer interested in carrying several of your products. Would you tell me how to apply for a new account please?”

How to Spot Fake Wholesalers

A real legitimate wholesaler will not do business with you unless you have a tax id. They will not show you wholesale prices unless you set up an account with them first. All accounts are free. There is never a risk in setting up an account with a wholesaler.

Signup for Wholesale Accounts

When you're applying for wholesale accounts, they're going to want specific information about your business. Have the following information ready. Business name, Tax I.D. number, business address, business phone, number, and for business status, you tell the wholesaler, you're a new LLC. The following are additional questions the wholesaler will ask you. Answer them truthfully, are you a storefront? online retailer? How long have you been in business? Tell them you're a new online business for less than a year. The wholesalers will want to know your trade references and bank references. Considering, you don't have any yet because you're a new business, tell them you'll pay upfront for every order.

Once you set up your wholesale account you can begin to ask questions. Such as, “how soon after you place an order does the order ship?” and “do you do overnight shipping?”

Supplier Policies

Be sure you understand the supplier's policies in each of these areas:

Pricing

The manufacturer may set a price floor or ceiling in an attempt to control a market. This means you must sell the product within a specified price range. Otherwise known as MAP Pricing

(Minimum Advertised Price)

Refunds

The refund policy defines whether you will get your money back if your customers return an item. Your supplier will define if and how they provide refunds. If a customer returns their order, often you're responsible for refunding your customer and keeping their items as your own inventory. This is the cost of doing business because I only had one return in two years of business.

Returns

The supplier will have specific conditions under which it will accept returns. A normal wholesaler return policy will have the ability to return items anytime within 30 days.

Guarantees

Most suppliers will stand behind the manufacturer's product guarantee. You can honor that guarantee or give your customer an additional guarantee as incentive to purchase from you.

Goods Damaged During Shipping

This policy describes the conditions under which the supplier will accept the return of a product that is damaged while in transit.

Back Orders

Most suppliers do not have a specific policy if you submit an order for an out‐of‐stock product. It will be up to you to determine how you want to handle this situation. In the interest of good customer relations, you may want to let the customer choose a different product or get their money back if an item is on backorder.

NET30

Type of trade credit where the payment is due in full 30 days after the item is purchased.

How to Place an Order with Dropshippers

TO: Sports Images

DROP SHIP ORDER

The following is a Drop Ship Order from Sports Pulse, LLC Account #12345

Please ship the product(s) to our customer with our COMPANY address listed as follows”

Sports Pulse

Street address

City, State Zip

PLEASE CONFIRM THE RECEIPT AND STATUS OF THIS ORDER by return email at service@sportspulse.com, including tracking number where possible.

PLEASE INFORM ME ASAP if item(s) are backordered or discontinued.

SHIP TO:

CUSTOMER SHIPPING ADDRESS

ITEM #: ABCDE

QUANTITY: 1

DESCRIPTION:

PAYMENT METHOD: CREDIT CARD

SHIPPING METHOD: UPS GROUND

Thank you so much,

Matt Bernstein

Sports Pulse, LLC

Order From the Competition at Wholesale Prices

Some of your competition does business with the manufacturer and sells to the general public. This is an opportunity for you to do business with them and get those products at wholesale prices. Contact your competition and tell them you're a legitimate business and want to buy products at wholesale prices from them. In some cases, you'll be able to build relationships this way, and get products at wholesale prices.

How to Create an eBay Account

eBay gives you an easy access to a worldwide customer base - who is looking to buy the products you're selling. Getting started with eBay is virtually risk free for you. You don't need any startup capital and you don't need to take out a loan. You benefit from massive amounts of internet traffic. There are safety measures that protect buyers and sellers from fraud. Your income potential is virtually unlimited and is only limited by…your ability to find items to resell. Your knowledge of creative selling techniques and your time.

You can list a product immediately and make a sale on eBay within 6 hours of listing that item. If you're new to selling and marketing then eBay is a great solution. eBay does all the marketing for you. The best part is, eBay only gets paid when you make a salet! eBay is a great way to test which items sell and which ones don't sell.

Go on your desktop, laptop, or tablet. Make sure you log into one of those options before continuing. Go to ebay.com and click register on the top left corner of your screen, where it says “sign in or register” This will prompt you to the “Get Started with eBay” page and you can proceed to type in your “first name, last name, email address, and password” By clicking submit you agree to eBay terms and conditions.

eBay will send you a welcome message and now you've created an eBay account. You're not done just yet. You still need to learn how to create an eBay selling account. Go to the top left hand corner of your screen and click on your name. A tab will appear and click on “account settings” This is where you can access your account information at anytime.

Next you need to click on the sell tab that is located on the top left corner of your screen. eBay will prompt you to a page where you need to “update your information” You need to type in your “country, street address, zip code, city, state, and phone number” and click continue so eBay can update your information.

Next you want to access your eBay “selling manager” this is where you can keep track of sold, unsold, and active inventory listings you have listed on eBay.

Go to your messages and click on the “eBay welcome message” and click on “account preferences”. You'll be prompt to your account information and click on edit to the right of your “user id” eBay will require you to confirm your password before you can make any change to your ID.

The final step to creating your eBay selling account is to click my account and then on eBay store subscriptions. You do not need an eBay store in order to create a selling account. You'll notice that eBay says “you do not have an active sellers account” click on that link and then confirm your personal information. eBay will call you immediately to confirm your identity. This will prevent fraud. Next type in your credit card information because this is how you pay your eBay commission fees every month after you sell an item.

How to Signup for a PayPal Account

You'll quickly come to know that eBay and PayPal work hand and hand. Especially when you're first starting out. PayPal is owned by eBay and eBay requires you to use PayPal to accept payments when you're first start to sell. Because of this you're forced to create a PayPal account to sell on eBay. So lets get you started!

Go to ebay.com and go to my “account settings” Scroll all the way down to “my PayPal” and click “link my PayPal account” This will take you to the PayPal website and you can click “I don't have a PayPal account” Type in the same email address that is associated with your eBay account and create and confirm your password. You need to review your account information and then click continue.

Now that you've created your PayPal account you need to finish linking your eBay and PayPal accounts in order to sell on eBay. Go back to eBay “account setting” and click “link my PayPal account” and now type in your PayPal email and password that you created and click “link my account”

Now that your eBay and PayPal accounts are linked. Go to PayPal.com and login. PayPal will prompted a screen that requires you to create two security questions to protect your account. Any time you're dealing with a financial account you want it to be secure as possible.

You're going to need to link your credit card, bank account, and social security number with your PayPal account. This is to prevent fraud and confirm your true identity.

You're going to have to rely on your abilities to adapt and learn new things. Throughout this book you're going to be introduced to websites and tools you're not familiar with. Most websites have knowledge bases and videos that will teach you to how to use their websites properly. Your ability to learn these new skills will determine your success.

Once you sign up for a PayPal account and make your first sale, you'll notice that eBay holds the sale transaction money into your PayPal account for up to 21 days. This is to prevent fraudulent transactions. eBay has standards that you need to live up to in order for you to sell on eBay long term. You need to be patient because eventually they will not have that 21 day limit placed on you. This is only for new sellers to prevent fraud. When you upload your tracking number for each order, PayPal will release the funds 2-3 business days after your customers order has been received.

To start, PayPal charges 2.9% merchant service fee on every transaction. Once you start selling more, that will be automatically be lowered to 2.5% or 2.2% depending on your volume of sales. You will get to that point eventually, you just have to be patient throughout the process. This is easy to accomplish, you just need time. Like Frank Sinatra said if you can do it here, you can do it anywhere. Meaning if I can do it, you can do it.

Create the Title

Describe your item clearly and include the keyword phrases that best describe it. Avoid keywords that have nothing to do with the product you're selling. Ask yourself, “What would I type if I was looking for this item?”

Use as many of the characters allowed in the title as you can and use descriptive terms to consider the following:

Product name

Color (if applicable)

Type

Gender (if applicable)

Brand

Size (if applicable)

Style (if applicable)

SKU (if applicable)

Condition

Your description should be thorough and clearly describe the product and its condition. Be sure it points out specific or unique features, benefits, and specifications.

Use consistent business‐like font sizes and colors. You should use:

Black color

Arial font

Size 12

Bold headings

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short and to the point. Buyers want to get the facts of your product quickly. They don't want to read a lot of text. Use bullet points to make them skimmable and to give emphasis to benefits, features, specifications.

Give it a professional appearance. Carefully check the grammar, punctuation, and spelling and get help, if necessary, to get it right. Include return, shipping, and payment policies in the description.

It is very easy to just copy and paste the manufacturer description. On eBay, that's exactly what I did and my listings were found on the top of the first page on Google. eBay does the best job to market your products on all aspects and really earn their commission. My business wouldn't be where it is today without eBay, so thank you very much eBay.

Very clear pictures that highlight all of the features of the item. You can list up to 12 pictures. List as many pictures as possible that will add value to your customers experience. You want them to be sized large (at least 1 side with 500px is required by eBay).

You want to match the best price on eBay (or within $10 of the best price) because people always want to buy the lowest priced listing possible.

You're limited to listing 10 items on eBay to start so keep each listing QTY to 1 per listing.

You're going to be listing products that sell for at least $250 you can offer them free shipping. In my experience, the dropshippers will give you free shipping anyways so it's a no brainer. You don't pay for shipping and neither do your customers. If your drop shipper doesn't ship for free, find another drop shipper that will.

Offer a better return policy than your competition. In retail, your customer always know what they are buying. You should have a return policy because your customer likes knowing in the back of their minds that the option to return their order is available. In all my years of doing business, I've had 1 customer return their order. The sale was $600 and I paid $45 for shipping. Considering my sales were $525,000 in the last two years, having a return policy was absolutely worth it. You want to accept a 60 day return policy on eBay and say that you will pay for return shipping. This gives the customer virtually no risk purchasing from you. You want to be better than your competitors and give your customers the best value so they will purchase with you and not someone else. Again, you have nothing to be afraid of because since 2006, I've had 1 return. I swear to you, only 1 return. So you have nothing to worry about. It's the cost of doing business.

Potential customers want to make a purchase from you if you have the best price. No matter how nice you are, no matter how accommodating you are to them, no matter what your shipping and return policies are nothing makes up for having the lowest price. This is just the retail world we live in today. So you want to match the best price.

The core of your business should be built around things that won't change. Invest in business concepts that people are going to want today and thirty years from now. Amazon focuses on fast & free shipping, great selection, friendly return policies, and affordable prices. These things will always be in high demand. When you focus on permanent features, you're maximizing your long term probability for success.

Focus on items that you can sell more than 12 of

What 20% of products make up 80% of your sales?

How to Increase eBay Selling Limits

After you've created an eBay selling account, you're limited to listing 50 items or selling $5,000 per month. Selling limits serve the purpose of preventing fraud. eBay does a background check on every seller to make sure their legitimate.

It's easy to increase your selling limits. You're going to have to be patient. You'll need to sell some products and max out your selling limits during your first month and receive 5 star feedback from those transactions.

After one month you'll be able to call eBay and explain to them your business plan and they will increase your selling limits each month by about 80%. eBay will want to know where you're getting your products, how many products you want to list, and what the average sale price is.

eBay will also hold your funds into PayPal for up to 21 days after you sell the item. Which limits your cash flow.

eBay wants you to call every month and speak with their experts to talk more about your business and more about you. They'll want to know where you get your products. What other platforms you're using. They will mostly go by your past selling performances. eBay will increase your limits based off your selling habits and tailor the limitations to your business needs. They will increase your limits every 30 days immediately after a phone call with a representative.

eBay Selling Potential

Since I'd have about 530 positive feedback and 100% positive feedback, asking for increases every 30 days was easy and I was getting a 75% increase in both categories. After about 1 year or 12 calls to talk to eBay about increasing my selling limits. eBay raised my limits to 2,500 items per month and could list $1,300,000 worth of items.

Simple Bookkeeping to Keep Track of Profits

When your first sale comes in, you need to keep track of your revenue and all your cost of doing business. The IRS is going to want to know during tax season and you're gonna wanna know how much money you're making also. You need something to measure your goals against. You need to keep track of your cost of doing business so you know what expenses need to be cut.

You'll learn how to use Microsoft Excel to keep track of the books for your online business. At this point, you should not have any upfront expenses. The only expenses you will encounter is after you make a sale. In that case, you only need to keep track of sale transactions.

Create a Microsoft Excel file and title it with your business name and year.Create Column headings for each of these fields.

Date

Mark down the date of the transaction in the next row down from the appropriate “date” column heading.

Customer Information

You can copy and paste the buyers shipping address and email address to be able to easily contact them in the future.

Order Information

Mark down the contents of your customers order. You can also copy and paste right from the sales invoice.

Quantity

Mark down how many items of each product your customer bought.

Revenue

What was the sale price? How much did your customer pay for their order?

Cost of Goods

How much did you have to pay for your customers order?

Shipping Cost

How much did it cost you to ship your customers order?

eBay Fees

How much of a commission did eBay charge you for your sale? It's usually 9% per sale.

Merchant Fees

How much did your merchant account, payment gateway, or PayPal charge you for the transaction?

Net Profit

How much money did you make from your customers order?

Gross revenue - cost of goods/expenses. It's simple math.

Tracking #

Upload the tracking# from your customers order into your excel spreadsheet to keep track of shipping history.

How to Get Repeat Customers Without eBay

Once you make a sale on eBay, PayPal gives you the customers email. What you'll want to do after every sale is thank your customer personally through your own email address using gmail.

What you also want to do is message them through the eBay system asking them if they received your email concerning their order. This will allow the customer to realize that you emailed them about their order and may have to check their spam folders on their email.

In the email you sent them, you will want to kill them with kindness, and update them concerning their order. “Thank you so much for your order. I really appreciate it”

After that just simply tell them what you know about their order. You can tell them you placed their order and are waiting for shipping confirmation. If their order has shipped, give them the tracking number. Keep your customers happy and give them what they want. Contact your customers right away when you have information concerning their order (good or bad) deal with it immediately! Your customers are your business, keep them happy!

Make sure to upload the tracking number onto PayPal too, so they will know that you shipped the sale and will pay you 2-3 business days after the customer receives it. From now on you can communicate with your customers via email instead to get sales from them because you have their email and there is never a need for them to purchase through eBay. Make sure to kill them with kindness and anything they want to buy will be through you first. You'll never get in trouble with eBay for this practice. Since 2006 it has been “against” the rules of eBay. I've tested this routine after every sale and have never gotten in trouble for doing so. You don't need to worry about practicing this routine yourself after every eBay sale.

Send a general email a month or so after they purchased the product “thanking them for their business and asking them if they enjoy the product they purchased in their order” A happy customer is a repeat customer and there is no better way to make a customer happy than to pay attention to their needs. You can sign up for a free MailChimp Account to be able to start your own email list.

Drug dealers get it right. Don't be afraid to give a little away for free- as long as you've got something else to sell. People have a very hard time saying no to someone who has done something, even a small favor, for them. The entire business world and much of family life, runs on relationships that are grounded on reciprocity. Be confident in what you're offering. You should know that people will come back for more.

PayPal Invoice to Create Repeat Customers

Once you've made a sell with a customer, there is no reason that same customer should ever buy from you on eBay again. You want to invoice the repeat customer from PayPal and avoid the eBay fees. You know your customer now and you know how to contact them. You know what products they're interested in. You will use this information to make sales with them in the future. You no longer need eBay. eBay has done their job and has found you a customer who loves your business.

Converting eBay Best Offers Into Sales

In all your listings you want to check off the best offer option. Customers will begin to offer you specific prices for specific products. This is a good way to identify customers who want your product and want to pay a fair price for it. You have no intention of selling best offers thru eBay because your prices are already least amount you're willing to accept for a transaction on eBay.

What you want to do is offer them a price and the transaction will be made outside of eBay to avoid eBay fees. This is good for both sides because the customer is spending a lot less money and you're making more money. If eBay takes 10% commission from $250 = that adds up to be $25. If you give your customer $15 off for $235 you're now making $10 extra profit than you would have made then selling it on eBay. You will ask for your customers email on the eBay messaging system and send them a PayPal invoice to get paid for the transaction. It's a win for your customer and it's a win for you.

Eventually eBay will block you from sending emails and will censor customers emails. To counter this you will get your own website and send them product links. In the many years of selling on eBay, they have never censored URL links in their messaging system.

How to Avoid Getting Banned From eBay

When I first started selling on eBay, I believed that the more products that were listed in my eBay store the more profits I could make and the better my business could be. I was listing and selling products that were getting drop shipped from distributors and I had problems updating my inventory on eBay.

Meaning, if you're listing 2,500 items in your eBay store any 1 item could become sold out with your distributor or they could raise the price of the item.

Lets say your distributor sold out of one of those items and you sell that item on eBay, what are you gonna do? You can either find another distributor and hope they have that same product or buy it at retail.

The worst case happened to me 7 times in the last 12 months and it's the only reason why I got banned from eBay. I wasn't able to find the product anywhere for any price because there is none left. So you have no choice but to beg your customer and eBay for your forgiveness and hope they won't leave you negative feedback. 7 customers left me negative feedback because the distributor sold the item I had listed on eBay.

Keeping track of 2,500 items for 24/7/365 in real time is impossible for any one human being to accomplish. The customer didn't understand or seem to believe that I ran out of product and only believed that I was holding out on the product to make even more of a profit because the product in question raised in value since the customer bought it. It was also the main reason why everyone is sold out on it now and I wasn't able to fulfill their order at this time.

What you want to do to avoid this is list items from the wholesalers inventory that has at least a quantity of 12 in stock and ready to ship because a lot of the products I was selling the wholesaler only had 1 item available of that product. You also want to never stop product sourcing. You want a good standing relationship with every wholesaler and manufacturer you can possibly find. It will even get to the point where you'll work with other retail stores to get a good price.

Right now, eBay has control of your destiny. You're working for THEM by THEIR rules. You don't want that. You want to be in control of your destiny because eBay isn't looking out for your best interest. Only you're responsible for looking out for your best interest.

Create your own website so YOU create the rules. Know your edge. Create a home base where customers will ultimately go to make purchases.

So why is this important?

Converting Best Offer Sales on eBay

You'll be able to convert best offer sales on eBay. Eventually, eBay will censor you from ever sending or receiving an email address through the eBay messaging system.

To be able to continue converting Best Offers on eBay to sales off of eBay, you need to create a website.

You'll be able to send your customer a direct product link to your eCommerce store.

eBay will never censor URL's and this is the most efficient way to continue making sales from eBay best offers.

Independent of eBay

You'll be independent of eBay. Right now eBay controls your company and your destiny.

With a website you'll be able to control your own destiny and increase your probability of success. You'll be able to list your product inventory at cheaper prices because you're avoiding eBay fees.

Your website can be designed anyway you want it to be. You can create a business model as unconventional as you want.

What Makes a Good Website Domain Name

Your websites domain name should be your business name and it should describe what you're selling online.

Logo

A good logos is simple, there is 1 theme going on. It's easy to read, the color and shapes are easy on the eyes.

Navigation

Your website should have easy navigation. It should have a drop down menu of the products you're selling. Your customer should be able to find any specific item they're looking for immediately.

Write Good Copy

You should have a great written description of the fields below. It should be short and sweet. If you can't get through reading your own policies, then you need to make it fun and exciting to read. There is a reason why no one reads company policies because they're all sooo boring. Make yours short, sweet, fun and exciting to read. Act like you're talking to your friend and make it like a conversation. Maybe you'll stand out.

About

Your website should have an “About Us” page on the top of the website. You should be able to find it easily. Tell them exciting things about yourself in under 4 sentences. Tell them how they can contact you. Also let them behind the scenes and tell your customers who are reading how you really do business. Don't be afraid to be yourself.

Contact

You should have a contact page and make it easy for your customer to reach you for any inquires via email.

FAQ

You should have a Frequently Asked Questions page. If you're noticing that your customers are having a lot of the same questions, make sure you add it to your FAQ page. You'll save a lot of time in the future by not having to type the same information to different customers.

Shipping

You should have a shipping policy that is very customer friendly. Give them another reason to buy from you and not your competitor.

Example

You're going to be listing products that sell for at least $250 you can offer them free shipping. In my experience, the dropshippers will give you free shipping anyways so it's a no brainer. You don't pay for shipping and neither do your customers. If your dropshipper doesn't ship for free, find another dropshipper that will.

Returns

In testing, I've noticed that there isn't a significant difference when you offer a return policy as opposed to not accepting any returns.

Example

Offer a better return policy than your competition. In retail, your customer always know what they are buying. You should have a return policy because your customer likes knowing in the back of their minds that the option to return their order is available. In all my years of doing business, I've had 1 customer return their order. The sale was $600 and I paid $45 for shipping. Considering my sales were $525,000 in the last two years, having a return policy was absolutely worth it. You want to accept a 60 day return policy on eBay and say that you will pay for return shipping. This gives the customer virtually no risk purchasing from you. You want to be better than your competitors and give your customers the best value so they will purchase with you and not someone else. Again, you have nothing to be afraid of because since 2006, I've had 1 return. I swear to you, only 1 return. So you have nothing to worry about. It's the cost of doing business.

Carousel

Carousels allow multiple pieces of content to occupy a single, coveted space on your website. This allows you to market up to 5 products you want to promote on your website. Bigcommerce makes it easy for you to design your own Carousel for your website. Learn more.

Marketing Banner

You want to make sure you have a nice looking Marketing Banner. You want to promote your company policies using this feature.

Example

Free shipping

Lowest Price Guarantee

Weekly Sales

The point is to promote the benefits you have for your customers.

Featured Product

You can pick the products you want featured on your home page. This will help promote products on your website.

New Products

This will automatically pull the most recent products you've listed on your website and place it in this field on your homepage. This will help promote newly released products and tell your customers what products that are now in stock.

Popular Products

This field will automatically put in the products you sell most of. People like to move with the herd mentality. If enough people are doing it, they will believe they should do it too.

Customers might have this perception when they see products in the popular products section on your website.

BigCommerce Value Pricing Plans

$25/month buys you 100 products to list

$40/month buys you 500 products to list

Remember, you're not trying to list a bunch of products. New releases will makeup for 80%% of your sales each month. Start out with the $25/month plan and see if you can handle 100 products. See if you're even selling the majority of those products. If you are, you can increase your plan to 500 products per month.

Setup like eBay

What's great about Bigcommerce is that it's setup like eBay. You don't need to be an expert in HTML or any coding. You're paying for the convenience of being able to go in with almost no knowledge and have a great custom website design.

Knowledge Base

You can access the knowledge base here.

This is where you can access a ton of information for how-to stuff on Bigcommerce.

Example Carousel

Type in “carousel” into the knowledge base search bar. You'll see all of these different answers come up.

See for yourself

You'll learn how to customize the carousel on your homepage.

Marketing Banner

Type in “marketing banner into the knowledge base. You'll see all of these different answers.

See yourself

You'll see plenty of options that will help you create a marketing banner.

You're going to be successful based off your ability to adapt and learn many skills. Your age doesn't matter, an open mind does.

Forums

If for some reason the knowledge base doesn't answer one of your questions, you can look on the Bigcommerce forums.

You can ask a question about something you need help with and someone will answer it within 24 hours for free.

It's pretty amazing. When I was designing sportspulsecards.com there were two questions that weren't answered in the knowledge base.

My good friend referred me to this company called the Netmen Corp. They made my friend a great logo and I figured why not give them a shot. I didn't know Fiverr existed and thought $150 was the going rate for a professional logo.

Someone from the company emailed me within 24 hours to inquire about my request to have a logo designed for my company.

3 business days later, they gave me 6 logo concepts.#3 and #6 were the best options and had the looks of a great logo. Something was missing though. In #3 the writing was too small and in #6 the symbol didn't look great.

I gave the Netmen Corp those notes and 2 business days later they gave me these concept logos.These are all pretty much great looking logos and I was very impressed with the job they did. I'd have a logo that could last a lifetime for $149.00

I held a vote with all my customers. Offering them $5 off their next order. Within 24 hours, I had over 75 votes and there was an overwhelming response for #12 & #10.

Logo #12 and #10 are interchangeable so I opted for both. I am the proud 100%% owner of this beautifully done logo for Sports Pulse.

If I ever want to make a change or a small adjustment, the Netmen Corp gave me all of the proper files for a design change to be made.

The Netmen Corp customer service is great. They fulfilled everything I wanted and all for $149.00

Don't Carry an Inventory

When you buy wholesale and carry an inventory of your products upfront you run the risk of several things. You're taking all the financial risk when you buy an inventory without having the sale first. You're decreasing your cash flow in the short term to increase your cash flow for the long term.

Let your wholesalers carry the inventory and take the financial risk. You don't have to. Never carry an inventory. You're increasing your cash flow every time you make a sale in the short term and in the long term.

When Sports Pulse decided to take an inventory it was because sports cards can go up in value tremendously and they unfortunately can go down in price tremendously. I decided to invest into buying an inventory for myself in the hopes that the new released sports card products would increase in price on the release date and I'd be able to sell them to a wholesaler for a profit.

Unfortunately for Sports Pulse, this was an unneeded risk to take on. Especially because if a products price decreased on release date, wholesalers would be looking to dump their inventory to minimize their losses and I'd make a killing.

Instead, I was the person who needed to dump their inventory because, I didn't have a ton of cash flow and needed to take whatever money I could.

If I didn't buy any products, and kept to the dropshipping plan, wholesalers would have been dumping their products at great prices. They would retail the same product for much more to retail customers because they wanted to minimize their losses. I had no financial burden to account for so I could list a product for $50 cheaper than what retail stores were selling it for. I'd make a sale because I was able to give the customer the best price and I would buy the case from the wholesaler. When a product's price drops, these are the times when I profit most, especially when I do not carry the financial burden.

Don't Presale Items on eBay

Presales in the sports card industry can be an amazing way to increase sales. Again, for Sports Pulse the risk does not outweigh the reward. Presales are the practice of arranging the sale of a product before it is available. For example, you and the buyer agree on the sales price and they give you a $100 deposit that goes towards their balance. If they decide not to pay for the rest of their order, you're stuck with that inventory. You also get that $100 deposit of theirs. There is another way to look at it. The customer is a very good customer of yours and they presale an order with you placing a $100 deposit. Time goes by and lets say Jasper doesn't want their order anymore and wants back the $100 deposit. You can either give back the $100 deposit and you're stuck with the inventory from their product but you'd keep Jasper as a customer and he'd probably make you 10x that $100's back sooner rather than later.. Or you can keep the $100 deposit, keep the inventory, and lose Jasper as a customer. That's situation by situation basis. The main point to remember is, enough customers might cancel their pre sale orders with you and you'll be stuck with that inventory. I want no upfront costs, so thats why RULE #2 NEVER PRESELL INVENTORY PRODUCTS.

Never Ship an Order Until You're Paid in Full

It might seem obvious, but greed can take over. A buyer on eBay messaged me and we made a deal. He bought 2 products for $1700 and the profit was $250. That's almost 15%% and it's something I almost never see in the sports card business. I messaged him off eBay and convinced him to buy another $5670 from me. He was going to send me a check and he seemed trustworthy. I'd never been screwed before and wasn't looking for it to happen to me ever. This deal though, that check never came and the excuses did. Considering he paid already on eBay and I emailed him looking to sell more that it would be OK. Selling $5670 to a customer was a normal thing so I didn't think anything of the money amount. The check never came and I lost $5670 and me being 23 years old, that's a lot of money and set me back quite a ways. NEVER SHIP AN ORDER WITHOUT GETTING PAID. Your customer will understand and the legit customer who want your business will always give you the money upfront before they expect you to ship their order out. The risk is not worth the reward. In theory, I had to sell $56,700 in products to make that money back.

Ship Orders to their Billing Address

I made a sale on eBay and shipped out the product to the customer. Through eBay I was talking to her about how this order was a gift for her husband and she needed the order by a certain date. That process went well and wanted to follow up with her about how her husband liked it. She wanted another product for him and placed an order for $259.99. The billing address was different from the shipping address and didn't really wonder why. Was skeptical with fraud, but greed took over for me as it might with you. Don't let the greed take over because PayPal froze the money of $419.99 for the first sale of Michelles and Bank of America took the $259.99 from my bank account because of fraudulent activity. PayPal gave me the $419.99 back because I was protected with PayPal seller protection. Bank of America did not give back the $259.99 because I shipped to an address DIFFERENT from the billing address. RULE#4 ALWAYS SHIP TO THE BILLING ADDRESS there is no need for you to potentially be at risk and lose 100%% of the money from the sale.

Never Overspend on Business Expenses

Always keep your low cost/no overhead and always hustle for what you want to get in life. Webhosting was costing me $150/month, eBay subscription was costing $180/month. It wasn't increasing my income to spend that extra money on website hosting and an eBay store subscription. So I cut those expenses. Always do it the free way first and see if it works. If you can increase your income by spending some money, then try it. Test the waters on a small incremental basis. Test what works and focus on what works in order to make a killing.

Quantify Your Business and Improve Profits

There is no such thing as a lack of time. We all have plenty of time to do everything we really want to do in this life. We all must live on 168 hours a week. A great deal of what happens is unimportant and can be disregarded. There is an enormous amount of waste in our lives. You need to recognize the majority of things in your life have a little impact in the major scheme of things and only a minority of things have a major dominant impact. 80%% of the results come from 20%% of the effort and time. 80%% of company profits come from 20%% of the products and customers.

This is called the 80/20 principle. I didn't invent this concept and it's not a new one either. Identify where you are getting back more than you are putting in, you can up the stakes and make a killing. Similarly, if you can work out where you are getting back much less than you are investing, you can cut your losses. You do not usually get back what you put in. You can get back much less than what you put in or much more. Discipline is the ability to figure out what's worth your time and effort, and what's not – and how to cut out the latter. You want to get as much as you can in return for your investment of time and energy.

Action Items

Find out what 80%% of profits comes from 20%% of its products. You should put all of your efforts behind selling more of those products. Concentrate on the 20%% of customers who account for 80%% of your profits and find out what those 20%% of customers want.

Setting Smart Goals to Create a Business

Are you a force or a consequence? Are you one who creates, acts, and does? Life is short. It takes confidence to live the life you deeply feel is your own.

Decide on all actions you need to take. You need to keep reminders in a system that you check regularly. You only want to focus on the essentials and drop the rest. This makes for a life much happier, less stressed, and more productive. Build your life one action at a time. First thing in the morning, work on your most important task and don't do anything else until it is done. When you are working, turn off all distractions. Shut off email and shut off your cell phone. Stop checking Facebook. If you become distracted, it will show negatively in your work.

Collect things that command your attention. Write down the project or situation that is most on your mind at this moment. Process what they mean and what to do about them. Write down the very next physical action required to move the situation forward. Choose the best option at that point in time. Identify the essential commitments. Eliminate the rest.

More is not better. Your greatest challenge will be resisting the temptation to do more. Not only is this wasteful, it is a predictable path for preventing and reversing gains. Purge all the stuff you don't need and organize the things you want to keep and welcome new information.

TO-DO Write down 10-15 goals you want to accomplish in your life.

What is the most important thing that you have to do? Focus on achieving the ONE important thing.

Don't let your emotions control your actions. You'll never get anything productive done. Let your actions control your emotions. Once you take action in doing what you know you should be doing, your emotions will follow suit afterwards. You need to be the leader of your own life because no one else is going to be looking out for your happiness more than you are. Use this as an opportunity to give your gifts and you never need to prove something to someone else. Dream big and don't be embarrassed about what you are doing. Get others to invest in your visions and dreams and allow your friends to become fans.

Batching Tasks to Maximize Productivity

Time consumers are things you might not want to do, but need to do anyways. Things like paying your bills and checking email. These are time wasters because they're repetitive daily or weekly tasks. You can solve this problem by batching these tasks together and complete them at once. For example, batch email tasks by checking email once a day at 4 p.m. and pay all your bills on the same day each month. Apply this principle to every task you find repetitive and they become less time consuming :)