Submitted by: Darrin Campoli

Brick and mortar stores in once thriving malls and housing areas are closing due to direct competition from big mega stores throughout the world thus consumers are left with fewer local shopping choices. But as quickly as such stores are closing, online stores are opening.

The Common story of new entrepreneurs who wanted to start a new business of their own hesitated because of not having sufficient funds to open a store at a mall or to arrange a complete set up for offering of services

Entrepreneur who wants to be a business owner but do not have enough space or sufficient budget to open a store in mall can easily opt for the online stores. These days, many new business owners are opening online stores and developing the e- commerce concept to open an online store, as such you can sell online the services and products that you have.

Many new entrepreneurs who do not wish to risk their money when they start the online stores for the first time can start with the free online store. With some turnkey platform offering free ecommerce website you can get started with an online store which you can open without spending any big investment

Proper business planning is necessary when starting an online business so that you can get everything organized as there are several things that you need to plan when you start the business. You should decide your target customers and offer product or service that appeal to potential customer . make sure your ecommerce website will incorporated online shopping cart in your site so that people can shop their things and order them online. The website should be properly designed. It should have proper navigation facilities so that your customers can easily get the things that they want.

If you wish to succeed online , then you should do some research to search the internet to know more on the online market and the companies that can help you join the internet market without charging major cost for their service. .

The popularity of the online stores has increased in the present days and now online information are easily available that it is even possible to find companies that can help you open free web store and would give you free sub-domain and free hosting so that you can carry on with your business venture

One common example of such companies are dropshipping stores and websites Many such companies offer fully turnkey solution websites, also known as a Ecommerce Dropshipper site, that come complete with shopping cart, online catalog,email marketing ,Payment gateway eg. Paypal , 2 checkout ,worldpay etc and many more.

Such stores usually offers a wide range of products all compile and categorized into individual product website with good product pictures all thumbnail and well organized for easy customer viewing and selection and it allow the owner to add your products to the website and personalize your store. The whole process to ordering and personalizing the main themes of your online store is almost instantaneous

Many turnkey package will come with built-in search engine optimization (SEO) capability and provide a 24/7 workable system with auto-responder system to help store organizer to run it automatically

Drop Ship Products

While doing your business planning to build a successful drop ship business you will need to access to wholesale products. Therefore choose your drop ship supplier wisely. You will want to choose drop ship supplier that carries a wide selection of name brand products at low wholesale prices, replenishes stock on a regular basis, and cares about your success

Drop Shipping means buying products at a good reseller prices from a low-priced source, and having your supplier do the work of packing the goods and sending them to your customer – on behalf of your store’s name

Wholesale Dropship is a revolutionary new system that enables you to make money by sourcing New Released products directly from wholesalers. When you buy from wholesalers, you normally have to buy in large quantities. But with a dropship wholesaler, you get low prices even on small quantities.

Therefore some of the major wholesale suppliers with access to over 1,000,000 brand name products , update inventory counts in real time, and ship products quickly. Wholesale dropshipping is a business opportunity like none other. The products are taken care of – you only need to find effective ways to sell them.

It’s relatively a safe business for you, because you only pay for a product later, after you already sold it and only after having received the money from your customer through the payment gateway like Paypal . There’s no risk of dead stock – no more worries about unwanted inventory.

The downside , is only if your dropshipper fail to deliver product that does not meet to specification ,or if product fail to perform after delivery . Then it will be mind boggling at times when customer wish to claim for such error or faults ,which you need to ensure your wholesale Dropshipper will be willing to accept return or changes of products if such event turns up not to your favou

With a good wholesale dropshipper your customer only has contact with you, not with the supplier.The products will be sent “blind”. That means your supplier’s name / address / contact details are not visible to your customer. Your customers cannot find out your wholesale dropship source ,therefore the business relationship is enforced and will work to your store’s favo

What’s Involved In Starting your Own Dropship Business?

· You can start your business without any large initial investment;

· You don’t have to buy product in bulk – just order after you get paid by your customers;

· You can ‘stock’ your online shop with a huge range of products, effortlessly;

· All the item descriptions and pictures, you can just copy from your supplier;

· You can list items for sale, and if they aren’t popular, you didn’t lose anything… you can test your market risk-free;

· No warehouse costs and no risk of ‘dead’ stock;

· No need to worry about packing and shipping: your dropship wholesaler takes care of packing materials, shipping labels, paying couriers for delivery, and even making sure electrical adapters are right for different regions…;

· …So you can sell to customers anywhere in the world;

· You set your own prices and profit every time you sell something!

About the Author: seo specialist with New media technology and write subject on internet marketing and social Media technologies

bookmarktechnology.com/seowealthsblog.blogspot.com/

This is a link to more information on online business

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By Everett Sizemore

Would you like your new house to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer without the use of air-conditioning, heating, or even solar power panels? You can. It’s called passive solar, and is all about how you design your home and where you place it on your property.

The first thing to understand about passive solar is that it doesn’t have anything to do with solar panels, photovoltaic cells, or any other technology. The whole idea is to build and situation your home in such a way as to harness a maximum amount of the sun’s energy in the winter, while blocking the sun’s rays from heating your home in the summer. And you do it all simply by understanding how the Sun moves where you live.

How Does Passive Solar Work?

There are three main elements that make a passive solar home different from a conventional home: South-facing windows; a ledge of a certain length and angle above those windows; and a mass-wall. The ledge above the windows is short enough and placed at such an angle as to allow the winter sun to shine in and fill the mass wall (or thermal wall) with heat during the day, which is released as the house cools at night. But the path of the sun is at a higher angle during the summer, allowing the ledge to block the sun from directly shining into the house. The mass wall stays cool, as does the house.

Ever feel like your house is hotter at night during the day? Does it get down-right stuffy in the Summer? Does it feel hotter inside than it does outside? That’s because the walls and floors of your home have been collecting heat from the sun all day, which has been shining in your windows in the middle of summer. At night, due to a process called convection (http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node76.html ) the heat stored within the walls and floors is released into the air, thus heating the room and making it hotter inside your house than it is outside. If you have this problem, you do what most of us do and turn on your air conditioner and/or fans. This is hard on the environment and increasingly devastating to your pocketbook. And it’s all because the people who built your house didn’t understand building concepts that people around the world understood thousands of years ago – you work WITH the earth; not against it.

The paragraph below is used with permission from John Schaeffer and Real Goods, a solar panel installation company working in Colorado and California: http://www.realgoodssolar.com . It was taken from the Real Goods Solar Living Sourcebook: http://www.gaiam.com/retail/product/21-0530 :

The angle of the sun from the horizon changes throughout the year. In the summer, the Sun angle (also known as altitude angle) is greatest. That is to say, the sun cuts a high arc through the sky. In the winter the altitude angle is lowest. The Sun cuts a low arc through the sky. The angle changes every day. On June 21, the longest day of the year, the Sun angle is greatest. On December 21, the shortest day of the year, the sun angle is lowest.

Thus, the eves on your passive solar home act as an automatic on-off switch for your passive heating / cooling system. It turns the Sun power’s effect on your home off for most of the day in the Summer, but leaves it on for most of the day during the Winter.

Here is simple picture by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) that will solidify the concept of passive solar home design: http://www.nesea.org/images/overhang.gif . Get it now?

With the exception of adding a slight overhang above South-facing windows, there isn’t much you can do about turning your existing home into a passive solar house without major, expensive renovations. But next time you buy a home, before moving into one of those add-water monopoly houses in the new subdivision, think about how inefficient their designs are. Most of the time you’ll see that the South-facing windows are either hidden from the sun by the house next to you, or two few, which would cause your home to be cold in the Winter and require more energy from the furnace to heat. Or you may notice that the south-facing windows are in full view of the Sun, but there is no ledge above the area, thus allowing the Sun to heat up your home like an oven during the summer.

The ledge, window and mass wall are probably the three most important concepts of a passive solar home. But it goes well beyond that. For instance, knowing that heat rises, there are ways to control the flow of air throughout your house so as to take full advantage of cooler air in the summer and warmer air during the winter. All it takes is a few well-placed vents that can be switched open or closed depending on the time of the year. If people demand this kind of forethought from their builders we would require only a fraction of the fossil fuels being used to cool and heat our homes. If you combine passive solar design with a few solar panels, this often results in the power company paying YOU each month for the extra energy you’re sending back into the grid. Everybody wins with passive solar home designs.

Here are a few more resources if you’re interested in passive solar:

http://www.gaiam.com/retail/product/80372 http://www.solarliving.org/workshops/ http://www.colorado.gov/energy/renewables/passive-solar-design.asp http://www.nesea.org/buildings/passive.html http://www.realgoodssolar.com/solar/ecs/main/ArticlesVideo.html

About the Author: Everett Sizemore is a part-time freelancer and full-time SEO who enjoys writing about subjects such as environmentally friendly products, and consumer product safety.

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By Stephen Turner

As the owner of a St. Louis Public Relations agency, I am often asked for help and advice when a friend or colleague inquires about a marketing problem or a potential marketing opportunity.

I was most intrigued recently when a friend solicited my assistance to spread the word about an upcoming advertising campaign he was involved in. His objective was to find a few organizations for networking purposes where he could tell everyone about a new discounted deal his company was offering.

The news of this discount would soon be the highlight of an email sent to thousands of recipients across the St. Louis area.

I asked him if this was some special new program he was involved with or some new business venture.

‘No’, he replied. ‘I’m doing a Groupon!’

Groupon has no doubt become a part of today’s marketing culture. Each day the company sends an email offer to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of persons living in a specific geographic area.

Most Groupon offers are discounted fifty per cent or more off the listed price of a product or service. Nearly all of the deals involve business to consumer offerings. Common sale items include meals at restaurants, tickets at entertainment venues, healthcare and beauty products, medical treatments, clothing items, and sporting goods.

The success of each Groupon campaign can vary. It seems the better the product or service is known, the better the response.

A popular chain is more likely to generate a greater response than say a niche eatery located in a specific part of town. That being said the Groupon may have a greater sustainable business impact on a small company or restaurant than to a national corporation.

The result of the Groupon is an immediate financial return to the advertiser. Businesses get their money quickly and are assured of a certain cash flow for the next few weeks as the Groupon payments are deposited into their account.

The one drawback, of course, is the money generated is at a large discount to what customers would normally pay for the same product or service. And that money is paid in advance so when shoppers visit a store or restaurant they have already paid for their goods.

For a restaurant the Groupon impact can be a bit challenging. Should many pre-paid visitors come at peak weekend times they can cause other regular customers to incur inordinate waits for a table. The full paying patrons may grow impatient with the establishment and decide to dine elsewhere.

The eatery may generate little new revenue on what is normally a busy Saturday night.

Restaurants and other retailers often face a delicate balancing act based on the success of their offering. The goal of course is to generate new customers with the hope of turning them into full-paying loyal and repeat shoppers. Alienating existing patrons due to an onslaught of discount crazy consumers is only counterproductive to the success of the campaign.

Still for many businesses the impact of a Groupon can be quite positive. It can bring in new shoppers and add income to a company’s bottom line. It can help a new firm create awareness and name recognition where none existed before.

The goal for most businesses to keep in mind is that sending out a Groupon should not be the ‘end-all’ of a public relations or marketing strategy. It should be part of greater campaign that creates and develops customers over time. A campaign that develops positive relationships between the business and the targeted audience it serves, both for now and for years to come.

About the Author: Stephen Turner is a Principal in Solomon/Turner, a St.Louis Public Relations Agency named One of The Best PR Firms in St. Louis by Small Business Monthly solomonturner.com, sturner@solomonturner.com 36 Four Seasons Center Chesterfield, MO 63017 314-205-0800

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