Forum Moderators: buckworks
My primary questions right now are related to the business side of all of this. For example, "Do I actually need to inventory and ship products?" or "How do I find a good supplier?" and so on.
I see discussions regarding "reselling" and "drop shipping", but I'd like to know what these are as well as what all of the other options are, related to selling and shipping and operating an eCommerce business.
Is there decent book or website that has a solid, basic overview of the business side of starting an eCommerce business?
One problem is that many of the so-called ecommerce books seem to be written specifically for such things as affiliate programs and similar.
So, there might be a good one out there, but I have not seen it.
And also. some of the more common terms like drop shipping, have been around for 100+ years - long before the internet came along. The internet is just a new way of advertising and selling, the basics have not changed that much since the days of the Roman Empire.
From my viewpoint - not as an ecomm business - I find that my clients learn on the fly. Part of ecommerce is dependent upon learning how to use the medium and all of the quirks and pitfalls that come with it. The rest - and I think the larger part - is having good business acumen. You don't necessarily need to know how to build a shopping cart or get an Adwords campaign setup but you do need to know the people (or hire them as employees) who can.
But much of what I looked at was wrong, outdated, useless, incomplete - or all of the above.
Anyone know if there's an "Ecommerce for Dummies" book?
An eCommerce book would be ideal, but if it's not around, then a recommendation for more general business book (that might have a chapter or two on eCommerce) would be more in line with what I'm looking for.
I don't necessrily need a "how-to implement a shopping cart" book or anything like that, I just need to find a good general overview of establishing and conducting an online business.
Also, maybe this isn't the best forum to post a question like this. If someone has a suggestion for another newsgroup devoted to online businesses, please let me know. Thanks!
I'm just finding it hard to believe that there isn't someone on this board that is able to point me to a good source of info on getting started.
I'd love to ask how many people here actually carry an inventory of products that they sell, but I don't think I'd get much of a response due to a fear of providing trade secrets.
I'm actually an affiliate right now. But I'm not sure that I want to get into selling online just because of the constant care that it requires. I still have a corp. job, but would love to get this going on a full-time.
Are there other maillists or newsgroups out there that might be better for me to bounce around ideas on?
But I find it more technical then helpful.
There is no one source of information, and you will not pick it up in a week. After selling online for 12 years, there are still 3,245 things I need to learn.
If you have specific questions, then yes, this is a good place to ask - but if all you have is general ones, then perhaps Google would be your best friend.
And, BTW, a search on "Actinic" turned it up quite easily, as the 2nd entry...
The reason I don't have specific questions right now is because I'm still in the discovery phase. My questions will come later on. I'm just looking for a broad overview at this point...
But the basic fact about ecommerce is that 90% is just like horse and buggy commerce - only the platforms have changed. Problem is, there are about 98 million books out there on selling etc, but only about 9 of them any good. And I don't know any more which those 9 are.
I suggest just doing a search for something like ecommerce and marketing and such. Likely the first sites you try will be junk, but they often have links to good sites. And look for ecommerce forums also, they can be good info.
- selling products and services online
Of course these two models are usually combined and depending on a number of factors you can choose to start your business based on either of both concepts.
They are primarily selling a product so their information will be skewed toward getting you to "click here to buy now".
It seems that most sites like this have a product that they are trying to sell. They're not about to give away the farm.
The primary issue I face at this point is how do I know that sites like this are spewing accurate or valuable information? I know no one can answer this for me, but this is the challenge that newcomers face right now...
