Start An Internet Business Even If You’re Totally New To The Web!

The above headline might seem pretty crazy, but it is possible to have a home based internet business even if you are totally new to the internet. This next tool that I’m going to tell you about is really not a tool. It is actually a way to have an experienced coder build a customized ecommerce website for your home based business and designed just for the products you will be selling. Yeah, a taped glasses, low hygene, experienced programmer fluent in all those strange programmer languages(sorry to all the coders that don’t fit this profile). The best part is how low cost you can have your ecommerce site created. You see, over 150 thousand experienced programmers can potentially bid on your ecommerce business project. There are some programmers out there that can whip out a site in no time because they’ve done many similar projects. It’s really nothing for them to customize a site for you at a low cost.

The site is called RentACoder. All you have to do is sign up and post your project description. Most of the sites that I’ve had created have ranged from $100 to $400. I have provided a fairly detailed online video that walks you through how to sign up and post a project on RentACoder. You can sign up for my free home internet business videos at ASiteLikeMine.com 

One thing that will help to keep your bidders prices low is to state that you want your custom internet business site set up using ZenCart, Agoracart, OsCommerce, or Cubecart. These are open source ecommerce software kits that provide a complete shopping cart system. Open source means that the software is free and that it can be customized. These free software kits make it very easy for a coder to set your site up.  If you don’t state this in your bid request, then coders will assume that you are not aware of this software and how easy it is to set up an ecommerce site with it. As a result, you’ll get much higher bids for your project.

One other thing that you’ll want to do is sign up for a hosting service. One that I use and recommend to many of my friends is called Lunar Pages  . Lunar Pages is the best and most cost effective website host out there. It only costs $6.25 a month and it comes with a free domain name. Your domain name is what people will type into their browser to reach your site such as “www.mywebbusiness.com.” Lunar Pages also makes it even easier for your coder to set up your site because their service includes automatic installation of any of the open source shopping cart services that I mentioned earlier.

Can you see how easy it is to get your own home based internet business started? There are so many resources out there now that make it possible for even the least knowlegeable web user.  Good luck.

How Do You Find A Dropshipper?

This is another question that I’m commonly asked by future internet home business owners. Once you have selected a line of products to sell, you will need to find the right drop shipper. They key to finding the right drop shipper is not as difficult as it may seem. If the product that you intend to sell has a branded name, then the first place to start is to call the company that owns that brand. Often, the company will have a drop ship program, or they can refer you to one of their distributors that will drop ship the product for you. The Thomasnet Directory buisness directory is a great place to find contact information for different small to large businesses. Use your judgement here though. If you know that the company is a large corporation, like Nike, then you probably can’t expect to get much information directly from them. Large businesses try to stick to marketing through retail brick and mortar stores and they may frown on the idea of having their brand marketed outside of their restricted marketing program.  But, that doesn’t mean you can’t contact them and give it a try. I was able to talk Bibler tents(the owner of Black Diamond Climbing Gear) into allowing me to carry some of their product line even after they initially told me “no way.”If you don’t get anywhere with these two suggestions, then the next thing to do would be to do a search online for a drop shipper by trying some keywords similar to ”Nike drop shipper” on a search engine like Google. Mix up your searches to see what you can find. If that doesn’t work and you are determined to sell specific product, then you might want to try World Brands. The link I just gave you will allow you to search their directory of verified drop shippers. They will provide you with some basic information about the drop shipper and the types of products that they sell, but they won’t give you the contact info until you pay their $69.95 fee. But, once you pay their fee, you have access to all of the contact information for every business in their drop shipper directory.

Here’s one more suggestion for you. If you are dead set on a specific product, but the brand doesn’t really matter, then you’ll want to give this a try. Go into different local retail stores that you know carry the item that you want to sell. Look at the items and inspect them for information about the manufacturer.  Make note of that information and then go look it up online. I’ve found several of my best distributors this way. I was also able to find one on eBay. I did a search for the product that I wanted to sell and then went through each auction making note of the different brands or manufacturers that many of the auctions listed.  Auction sellers will often list the brand as a selling point of the item so this can be very helpful.

Now, one last word of advice about drop shippers. There are many businesses out there that claim to be drop shippers that are really just middlemen.  They will often charge you a monthly fee just to be a part of their program.  As a result, these companies only focus on signing up as many clients as they can so that they have a nice steady monthly profit rolling in. In addition, many of them inflate their so called “wholesale price” so that you end up paying way more than you should for their products. Wherever possible, cut out the middleman and go straight to the manufacturer or authorized distributor.  So, good luck with finding a drop shipper.  If you haven’t done so, you might want to go to my sister site and sign up for my free videos on starting your own internet based home business that helps to explain everything I discuss on this blog.

An Easy Way To Get Started

I started my first online business back in 2002.  As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I started my online business while I was working a full time job. My first child was also born in 2002. Working a full time job and spending time with family did not allow me a whole lot of free time to just up and start a business.  I had to be very careful how much money I spent too. I really couldn’t afford to dump thousands of dollars into inventory and other business expenses.  So, what I started out doing was getting stuff from a local freight salvage business and selling it at a substantial markup on eBay.  I did very well at this. I had a great system down. I would find something I thought was a valuable and way under priced. Then, I would call my wife and have here look it up on eBay to see what something like it sold for. That way, I was guaranteed to make money on each purchase. The only problem was, each time I went into the freight salvage warehouse, there were more and more people shopping there. People were catching on to this idea and I had to compete with the growing number of eBayers that were doing the same thing that I was doing.  My oasis was drying up fast. I had to find another source of products to sell.