Starting A Consignment Shop? Here’s A Tip Or Three

Posted on by DESMOND K

What exactly is a consignment shop, anyway? Consignment shops are sometimes also known as resale, second-hand, pre-owned, thrift, or used goods stores. Starting a consignment shop seems to be a trend that has picked up since the economy took a dip over a year ago.

But even before the economic downturn, starting a consignment shop was beginning to become a trend as merchants not only realized that customers were more willing to buy pre-owned items in an effort to save money but also that consumers were warming up to the idea of recycling.

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Ready To Start A Web Store? Take This Quiz, Then Decide

Posted on by DESMOND K

There are many people out there who contemplate starting a web store but procrastinate or don’t see their ideas get off the drawing board at all.

Yes, starting a business, especially one that’s online, will take more than an ecommerce solution filled with online shopping cart software packages. And yes, there are risks involved as well as added responsibilities. All of us would love the extra income having a successful web store can bring, but many people give up even before they can get started.

Before you make up your mind on whether or not you want to pursue an online business – full-time, part-time or not at all – take our little quiz first.

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Work At Home Based Business Opportunity Ideas

Posted on by DESMOND K

The US is still slowly recovering from the economic slump and it looks like it will take a good couple of years before we can come close to a significant recovery. In the meantime, business has to go on. Prices and margins are dropping and to cope with this, manufacturers and companies are finding more efficient ways to produce merchandise and deliver services to customers.

A work at home based business opportunity is a great way to earn extra income as well as a novel way to ride out the economic slump. But what do you do if your current market is affected?

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Why More Customers Are Using PayPal

Posted on by DESMOND K

After just 100 months in the payments platform business, PayPal had already amassed 133 million users and more merchants than Visa, MasterCard and American Express put together (according to Chris Skinner, CEO of Balatro and chairman of the Financial Services Club). This was way back in 2007. Some stats have shown that PayPal is the preferred mode of payment boasting figures anywhere from 5% to 23% of the total number of online shoppers polled. The figures are impressive indeed.

In this article, we will look at why a growing horde of online shoppers choose PayPal and why merchants insist on PayPal shopping cart software integration in their ecommerce solution.

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Know The Risks Of Starting A New Business Online

Posted on by DESMOND K

Just because our ecommerce solution makes starting an online business very easy, you should not be tempted into just diving into an online venture with your eyes shut. An online business is just like any other business: it needs proper planning to succeed. Ecommerce has afforded many people the ability to achieve their dream of being their own boss. It has also made quite a few people very rich indeed. That said, there are many others who have given up after finding their ecommerce ventures less rewarding than they expected.

In this article we hope to shed some light on the risks of starting a new business online. Although some risks cannot be avoided totally, there are steps you can take to alleviate some of their effects.

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Why You Should Start An Online Clothing Business Today

Posted on by DESMOND K

The multi-billion dollar clothing and footwear industry seems to have survived the economic turmoil although exercise apparel and designer clothing have taken a bit of a hit this past year or so. However, you’d be hard-pressed to notice with celebrities still showing up in droves at movie premieres, wearing the hottest names in fashion. All in all, it’s back to business as usual for arguably the most glamorous of industries.

What does this mean to you? Well, now is perhaps the perfect time to start an online clothing business.

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Unusual Small Business Opportunities Online – Lucrative Possibilities

Posted on by DESMOND K

Businesses are getting more and more creative when it comes to marketing their products and services over the Internet. Every day, we see more unusual small business opportunities cropping up all over. There are tons of web stores selling shoes, apparels, pharmaceuticals and electronics but now traditional offline businesses are making their presence felt as well. We’re talking about laundromats, mattress cleaning businesses and even photo studios.

Businesses cannot afford not to be online nowadays. It does not make sense to be online for the sake of merely having a web presence, of course. Going online is a chance to promote your brand even further and make more money in the process.

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Retain Customers With Reward Points

Posted on by DESMOND K

Ecommerce statistcs and starting a new business gurus constantly state that customer retention is an important factor in the survival and growth of a company. It does not matter if you are a manufacturer specializing in the production of specialized instruments with two or three clients or an online web store with thousands of customers — every customer is important. Remember that one bad remark can go a long way towards destroying a company’s credibility and eliminating a customer base regardless of its size.

In this article we will explore the use of reward points (a feature available with InstanteStore’s shopping cart service) in retaining customers as well as improving sales conversions for new visitors.

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Take Your Retail Store Online And Make More Money

Posted on by DESMOND K

Are stores with dotcoms in their names slowly eating away at your offline retail business? Do you know you can actually do something about this without having to fork out very much?

Every day, more conventional offline retail businesses join the click-and-mortar bandwagon. This way, traditional retail stores can enjoy the best of both worlds. Traditional retail outlets already have invaluable customer service experience, established rapport with reliable suppliers, marketing planning insights and brand names that have seen years of PR investment. Steps to starting an Internet business for a traditional brick-and-mortar company aren’t rocket science. By taking their brands online, companies can look forward to widening their market, increasing their brand awareness, improving their economies of scale and making more money in the process. And companies can achieve this without having to rely on heavy financing.

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The Art Of Choosing Domain Names

Posted on by DESMOND K

In order to start on online business you need a good domain name. Choosing an appropriate domain name should be right up there near the top of your business start up checklist. Many people have little or no idea of the importance that domain names (as well as business or site names) have on the SEO aspects of sites.

There are cases such as “dell.com”, for example, where the domain name in itself does not give any indication as to what the company is all about. If you didn’t know anything about computers or had been living in a cave for the last 15 or so years, then you probably wouldn’t know what sort of business Dell is. But since we do know that dell.com is the company site for the computer company Dell, and since Dell is in itself an extremely well-known brand name, they definitely don’t have any trouble with name recognition. However, having a site name that is “non-descriptive” is the exception rather than the rule.

In this article, we continue our series of tips on starting your own business by looking at ways of choosing good domain names for your online business. We’ll also suggest how you should go about exploring alternatives if you cannot get the exact domain name of your choice.

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