Then, I discovered John Chow’s blog and downloaded his eBook. At the time, he was making a little over $12,000 per month on his blog. So, I figured, hey, I’ll give that a try. I was looking for different ways of increasing my income and, even if I could get a tenth of that, that’s still a pretty good deal.

I wasn’t the only one with that idea either. When I was starting this blog, I met a lot of people that were just starting out too. Many of them had the same hopes.

And a good number of those bloggers aren’t around today. Their blogs, if they are still online, sit still like a modern day ghost town. The meal is still on the table, hasn’t been touched. Where did everyone go?

One can never be sure whether they found their riches elsewhere, or just gave up on blogging. I’d venture to guess perhaps more likely the latter than the former as I’m reasonably sure if I won the lottery or something, you’d see a post here advising you of the same.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re starting an eCommerce site or a bricks & mortar business or a blog, you have to give it time. Too often, I think people quit too soon. Sometimes that may be understandable; if you run out of money, for example, you just can’t keep going on. But, in many cases, it’s not that people have run out of money; it’s that they don’t see the dollars coming in as quickly as they hoped.

We’re not all John Chow. Not every blogger is going to make over $300 their first month. Most won’t even make a few pennies. Even if you read and re-read every page of John’s eBook, things still take time. Even though everything is laid out for you, it will still take you time to really get a feel for blogging and really get into it. Some people may do so sooner than others, but for others it will take longer.

And, even if you get into the swing of things quickly, it will still take time to get your blog noticed. Some may be lucky or skilled enough to get their blog noticed quickly and start getting traffic early on. With others, it will take longer. But, you cannot expect to get thousands of readers overnight. Even if you get an article stumbled or dugg, you can’t expect all those readers in that burst of traffic to become regular readers.

Early on, I wrote a lot of posts. I had posts with a lot of backlinks. I had posts that were stumbled. And, I also had contests and other such things to build traffic. I ended up spending tens of dollars and taking in a dollar here and there. Last year, I made a total of $5.25 blogging. That’s less than $1 per month. And, if you count the amount of money I spent in ads and contests, I lost money blogging.

Last month, I made over $16 blogging. That’s more than three times what I made last year blogging! That isn’t taking any expenses into consideration, but $16 for a month is certainly better than $5.25 for a year.

The added bonus is that the more you make, the better you can determine what is making you money and the better able you are to take advantage of it. For example, that $5.25 was all over the board last year. I had a couple dollars through the Buy Me a Soda plugin and the rest a miscellaneous batch. Hard to make any type of determination as to how to increase your income when you don’t have a good grasp of what gets you that income.

But, with the $16 I made last month, I know what accounted for it. That additional knowledge is something I can use to work toward increasing my blog income. That’s something I did not have last July. That’s something I did not have last year! Now, I do.

If I had thrown in the towel and quit, I wouldn’t have made that $16. I would be among those saying that you just can’t make money blogging. It’s not the $16 that’s so exciting (though it is exciting to triple your last year’s gross income in a single month!), but the fact that I know how I made that $16.

That’s why you cannot quit too soon. You have to keep at it. Even though you may sometimes feel like you’re just spinning your wheels, you have to keep twirling away. What works for someone else isn’t necessarily going to work for you, but you have to keep going in order to discover what will work for you.

As always,
Believe. Act. Achieve!

Copyright 2008 Dan C. Rinnert.

Get Google Pay-Per-Click Ads Free!
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Today, for example, is the sixth day of the seventh month of the eighth year of this century. Abbreviated, that would be ‘08-07-06. We won’t see that again for 1,000 years.

Some people try to find significance in these kinds of things, setting wedding dates and that sort of thing, but it’s just a bunch of numbers. If you look throughout history, significant events don’t often occur on numerically pleasing dates.

Still though, it is a neat kind of thing. These kinds of dates do have a sort of mundane significance.

Copyright 2008 Dan C. Rinnert.

Get paid to submit photos online!
Professional experience not necessary. All you need is a digital camera and access to the Internet.

I only finished two of the four things I wanted to get done this weekend. The fourth, however, was a bit of a pipe dream anyway, so really I finished two of the three things I wanted to get done this weekend.

#1 - Much to Michelle’s chagrin, I launched my antiques blog, Retroyears, this weekend. That is, of course, if you consider setting up WordPress and posting a simple “Welcome!” message as a launch. Well, I do, so, yes, I consider it has having been launched this weekend. Actually, it was born on the Fourth of July. (Ever wonder why we celebrate the Fourth of July when technically we (we being the U.S.) declared our independence on the second of July? Well, politicians messed up, that’s why! One year later, on July 3, 1777, they realized they had forgotten the anniversary and figured, oh bloody heck, we’ll just celebrate it tomorrow!) So, anyway, my antiques posts from henceforth will appear over on Retroyears.

#2 - Okay, so now I realize I didn’t really finish this one. But, very nearly there (I hope!). I have a website that I’m re-launching. I spent a lot of time on this one, trying to get the theme to work. Oh, yes, I could have used any ol’ theme, even the same basic theme I pretty much use on all my blogs since I like it so well. But, oh no, I had the brilliant notion of doing my own theme. Having resolved nearly all of the apparent problems that have cropped up, I am down to the final unresolved issue, which is the appearance of a footer bar right below the sidebar and into the middle of the post. The sidebar, for whatever reason, doesn’t extend the full length of the page, and the content does. Part of the footer, a separator bar, appears below the sidebar. The rest of the footer appears at the bottom of the page, beneath the content. Odd thing is that, in the code, the footer stuff immediately follows the separator bar code, so it shouldn’t split up like that. Anyway, that’s where I’m stuck. I may make one more attempt this evening, but I’m pretty tired of looking at it.

#3 - I also had planned to work on the relaunch of another site that I’ve long neglected. This one should be easier. While I considered switching it to WordPress, I have since decided to leave it as is, and just update the appearance. That should be relatively easy. It’s not entirely unlike modifying a theme, as there aren’t a lot of pages (okay, there are more than my more recent designs have used), but I just have to leave the basic processing stuff alone and change the design. Which is more difficult than it sounds, but I will likely also change it as I do it so that the new design will have a more templated design than it is currently, making future changes (hopefully!) easier.

So how did you fare with your weekend projects? Or, did you opt to just spend the weekend relaxing?

Copyright 2008 Dan C. Rinnert.

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You can watch this video for more details.

It really shouldn’t be the end-viewer’s responsibility to determine the copyright status of a clip they view on YouTube. It should also be noted that some media corporations do actually upload their own clips on YouTube for viewing. Given that, it makes it much more difficult for the end-user to determine whether a clip is on YouTube with the copyright holder’s permission or not.

No one is arguing that Viacom shouldn’t have the right to demand that videos which infringe upon their copyrights be removed, but they should not be granted data on who watches what. Now, in cases where a user uploaded a video infringing upon their copyright, that would be acceptable. You’re asked not to upload copyrighted material when you upload something to YouTube, so if you’re willfully infringing upon copyrights, the copyright owner(s) have the right to know. But, for the casual viewer? Come on.

If anything, big media corporations should learn from YouTube. YouTube videos are almost universally viewable. Most people do not have to download any special plugins or viewers to watch a video, as many modern browsers come with all the plugins and features needed to view videos. More people would view videos right from the media company’s own website if they were in a common format. People do not like to download stuff just to watch a video, especially if they have to download different viewers for each website they visit. And, some of the worse ones are the websites that don’t even offer a viewer for the platform the user is on. Thus, viewers go to YouTube.

It’s like watching TV. You just want to flip to different channels. You don’t want to have to get up and adjust your set for each station. Sure, some people probably still have to do that, but many times, those people will just stick with the channels that come in good and not even bother with the rest.

And, if you watch something on TV, are you supposed to first find out if the broadcaster has the right to air that program? Are you, as a viewer, supposed to call them up prior to each show and ask them if they have all the rights necessary to air a specific program?

How is YouTube any different? If YouTube carries videos that infringe upon other’s copyrights, how is that the viewer’s responsibility to make that determination? Before we watch a video, should we eMail YouTube and specifically ask them if that specific video is okay for us to watch?

Once this data gets into Viacom’s hands, who knows what they will do with it? Who knows if one day they might come after you for watching a video on YouTube, demanding money for it? Pay up or go to court. And, you’ll probably have to pay up, as it will be cheaper for you than hiring a lawyer to defend you.

Of course, maybe they’re counting on people to be apathetic. And, that could be a good bet. The last time I wrote about your rights being trampled, the response was largely apathetic (only 2 people left a comment).

But, if you’re really offended by Viacom trying to unearth your viewing habits online, then you could always consider boycotting products and programs they offer. Here is a list of companies they own (according to Wikipedia) that you could try to avoid, if you’re concerned about this in any way:

• Paramount Pictures
• DreamWorks
• Universal International Pictures
• CBS
• MTV
• Nickelodeon
• TV Land
• CMT
• Spike
• VH1
• BET
• Comedy Central
• Showtime
• The Movie Channel
• AtomFilms
• Shockwave
• The Bubba Gump Shrimp Company

That means no more Jon Stewart, Star Trek or Spongebob Squarepants.

Then again, maybe nobody cares about their privacy anymore.

Copyright 2008 Dan C. Rinnert.

Get Google Pay-Per-Click Ads Free!
Internet marketer claims: “I learned an amazing secret very early on that allows me to advertise on TOP Search Engines, but WITHOUT spending any money on pay-per-clicks!”

He suggested I do a blog post on it. Well, okay…

Business Licensing

Business licensing is something that varies country to country and, within the United States, from state to state and even county to county. Before starting your business, you’ll want to talk to an accounting professional, your county auditor or other business professional or government representative that can advise you with correct information specific to your locale.

This is also an important part because, with many wholesale merchants, you are going to need a business license number in order to establish that you’re an actually business and not an ordinary consumer looking to save some money.

Choosing a Type of Business

The first thing you have to do is choose the type of eCommerce business you want to be in. Are you just looking for something relatively easy and profitable? Are you looking for something hands-on, or something that will run itself while you vacation around the world? All these are factors that will go into deciding a type of business.

For example, if you are the hands-on type, and you want to be able to handle and inspect the products you send out, you’re going to want to be a direct seller of goods. That means you’re going to stock the products in-house (either literally in your house or you’ll need to rent a storage space or even office space for your products and business).

If you want something with a little less work and inventory, then you’ll want to look into dropshipping or affiliate programs, where you don’t stock anything.

You could also do a combination of the above. You could stock popular products, have less popular products dropshipped to your customers by a dropshipper and sign up for affiliate programs for products that are complimentary to your own.

In my case, I do a combination. Most products I carry in stock. There are other products that I order as needed from a wholesaler (though I don’t have them dropship; they just send direct to me). And, then I have affiliate programs for other related products. (You won’t see all this on the site you see above, but I do that with other sites and this is how it will be when I finish my major overhaul of my eCommerce site.)

Choosing a Niche

Again, this is something I’m not going to explain in detail in this post. The most common advice is to find something that matches your interests, though some people just look for something that’s highly profitable. Be sure to choose something you’re willing to stick with. Is it a niche you feel comfortable staying in if you don’t get rich overnight? In all likelihood, it’s going to take time to build your traffic and sales to the point where you’re making (hopefully!) money, but if you don’t see yourself sticking it out in the niche for at least 3 to 6 months, you’ve chosen the wrong market to be in! Now, I’m not saying that you’ll be successful in 3 to 6 months; only that it generally takes that long before you start seeing any type of results.

Finding Products

Once you’ve chosen your niche, you need to find products that you can sell.

Affiliates - If you’ve decided to be an affiliate, then you need to find some online merchants with affiliate programs you can join. Here’s how:

• Surf the Web: One way is to visit various merchants’ sites and see if they have an affiliate link on their home page. If they don’t, you can always eMail them and ask if they have an affiliate program. Some merchants may have affiliate programs but not advertise that they do!
• Join an Affiliate Network: You can join an affiliate network and browse their business members to see if any of them carry products that fit in your niche. Here are some of the bigger ones:
  • Commission Junction
  • LinkShare
  • Clickbank
  • ShareASale

  Be aware that some networks or individual merchants within a network may have minimum traffic requirements for your web site. In those cases, you’ll have to either concentrate on building traffic early on or use merchants without traffic requirements.

Reseller - If you’ve decided to be a reseller, then you will need to buy products wholesale. Alternatively (or additionally) you can work with merchants who will dropship to your customers.

Consider, too, that there are different levels of wholesalers. Some manufacturers will produce a product and sell it direct to resellers at wholesale prices. Other manufacturers will only sell products to distributors who then resell the products to retailers. Still other manufacturers will sell to anyone who meets their minimum purchase requirements.

For some manufacturers, you may have minimum orders of under $100. Others will require minimums in thousands of dollars. Alternatively, some manufacturers may sell in minimum quantities (rather than dollar value).

Likewise some distributors will have order minimums as well.

All these minimums are things to keep in mind when choosing products. In some cases, the minimums may be more than you want to start out stocking, especially if you don’t know how they might sell. And, bear in mind too that, when you go to reorder, you’re going to have to meet the minimums again. (Some merchants may have a higher initial minimum and lower subsequent minimums to make things a little easier.)

So, if some products move faster than others, are they selling fast enough that you can justify a reorder of just those items? Something might sell out because it was a passing fad, and if you order more, you risk being stuck with a number of them.

These are areas where experience can be a big benefit. You might want to start out using merchants who dropship and then only start stocking products yourself when you have a better idea of what sells and what doesn’t.

Another option, of course, is to try to unload your slow-moving merchandise on eBay to at least (hopefully!) recoup your costs so you can stock faster moving products.

So, how do you find those products?

• Search Google and Other Search Engines: Some wholesale merchants promote themselves better than others. Depending on your niche, you may be able to find many of them in the search engines. Be aware, however, that even in this day and age, some manufacturers don’t even have websites! (Some may not even have eMail!) And, also be aware that there will be many resellers and distributors fighting over “wholesale” searches, who aren’t really wholesalers but just deep discounters.
• Contact the Manufacturer Directly: If you can get a hold of the actual product(s) you want to sell or find it online, you can find out who manufactures that product and contact the manufacturer directly. Ask them if they sell wholesale or, if not, who their distributors are. Many manufacturers will be happy to provide you that information.
• Subscribe or Join a Wholesale Directory: Some people frown on the idea of paying for a list or directory of manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and dropshippers, but the fact of the matter is that a good directory can save you a lot of time searching through Google and other search engines. Of course, don’t spend the money if you simply cannot afford it and do be careful as there are a lot of low-quality directories out there that oversell and under-deliver. Look for something with a money-back guarantee so you can get a refund if the directory doesn’t prove worthwhile for your needs.

  Here are two that I recommend:

  • Worldwide Brands: I’ve been a member of this directory for a number of years. Lots of different merchants in different categories for you to choose from. Whenever I start researching a new eCommerce site, this is one of the places I go to see what types of products are available in that niche.
  • SaleHoo.com: I’m not a member of this one, but have been an affiliate for a couple years. They also have a large selection of merchants, and I’d join if I wasn’t already a member of Worldwide Brands. I’ve had a good number of referrals to this one, and no returns that I can recall.

Building Your Site

Here again you have many options. I’ll just cover a few.

• Through a Third-Party: You can set up a store and host it with a larger company, such as:
  • eBay Stores
  • ProStores - an eBay Company
  • Mal’s e-commerce
  • Yahoo! Stores
• Through a Webhost’s Tools on Your Own Website: You can add a shopping system to your own website, or integrate your current website with a shopping site that’s hosted separately:
  • Quick Shopping Cart
• Using Third-Party Software Solutions: There are countless solutions out there. Many come with a basic template system that you can modify if you wish while others are more hands-on and customizable. Here are just a few:
  • ClickCartPro
  • Ecommerce Templates
  • LiteCommerce
  • MGI
  • osCommerce
  • ShopSite
  • X-Cart

I went with a “roll your own” type solution, and basically wrote my shopping cart system myself rather than using the templated or built-in version.

Accepting Payments

Finally, you’ll need a way to accept payments. You can allow your customers to mail in a check or money order and, while that is good to have as an option, you’re going to lose a lot of sales if that is your only method of payment.

You’re going to want to be able to accept credit cards in some way. And, with the latest PCI Data Security Standards, doing that online can be difficult and expensive, especially if you’re just starting out. Be sure that your shopping cart solution is compatible with your credit card processor and make sure that it meets the PCI DSS requirements.

If you want to look into getting your own merchant account right at the start and handling credit card transactions directly, rather than through a third party, here are some of the more well-known payment gateway services. Some of them also have resellers, so you might also want to look for those resellers, who may be more familiar with different shopping cart solutions and better aid you in integrating your shopping cart with the payment processing system and making sure it meets PCI DSS requirements:

• Authorize.net
• Cardservice International
• LinkPoint International

You should be aware that there are some hefty fines and penalties if you get caught processing credit cards and not meeting PCI DSS requirements. Last I remember, the penalties were as much as $25,000 or $50,000 plus you could lose your merchant account.

If you don’t want to start out with a merchant account and worrying about PCI DSS requirements, you can use a third party processing service. Two of the most well-known are PayPal and Google Checkout:

• PayPal: PayPal offers Website Payments Standard and Website Payments Pro, which are both affordable options for accepting credit card payments on your eCommerce site. You can also accept PayPal and checks online. They also have a higher end option where they just do the backend processing and no one even knows you’re using PayPal, which is good if you have customers you think don’t trust PayPal. I think that you can either get a merchant account through PayPal or through whichever bank or service you use, and PayPal can function as the payment gateway in either case. It is, I believe, just like using any other payment gateway. In fact, PayPal bought VeriSign’s payment gateway system three years ago.
• Google Checkout: Google also has their own checkout system to compete with PayPal.

You can choose one or the other, but using both would be a good option, as it would give your customers the option to use the one they feel most comfortable with or have an account with.

Note that it is not necessary for your customer to have a PayPal account or to set one up in order to checkout through PayPal.

If you choose one or the other as your sole payment processor, both also have their own shopping cart systems that you can integrate into your website. Or, if you’re using a third party software solution, such as those mentioned above, check to make sure they can work with PayPal and/or Google Checkout before installing and setting up your store! Many of them are, though some may require rolling up your sleeves and getting into the code to do it!

Conclusion

Those are the basics of setting up your own eCommerce store. It’s really not as complicated as it might look, though the level of complication is going to depend upon how you decide to go about doing it!

Don’t let fear stop you from doing something you want to do. Just take things one step at a time and follow through. The most important part is taking that first step. If you just keep putting it off, you’ll never find out if your idea would have paid off or not.

As always,
Believe. Act. Achieve!

Copyright 2008 Dan C. Rinnert.

Get paid to submit photos online!
Professional experience not necessary. All you need is a digital camera and access to the Internet.

Except, it wasn’t Rolando.

It was a spammer using Rolando’s name but with a different eMail address and blog URL.

While it went into moderation and did not get posted as a comment, it did change the URL under Top Commentators in my sidebar from Rolando’s site to this spammer’s URL. Even marking it as spam didn’t change that.

The only way to fix it was to completely delete the comment. Then, the sidebar URL reverted back to the real Rolando’s URL.

I’ve mentioned this before, and this serves as a reminder to regularly delete your spam comments, especially if you’re using the Show Top Commentators plugin.

I’d bet the change in version 1.05 (”Change: Changed the logic for retrieving a commentators URL from their most used URL to their last used URL.”) has something to do with it.

Before I eMail the author of the plugin, has anyone else experienced this as well? I’m trying to figure out if it’s an actual issue with the plugin, or if it’s something unique to my blog. If you’re using version 1.05 and are willing to let me post a fake comment on your blog to test this (you can, of course, delete the comment afterwards!), please leave a message in the comments.

If you are using the Top Commentators Widget, this does not seem to be vulnerable to this potential exploit. At least version 0.999 appears to be okay. (Thanks Pete!)

Copyright 2008 Dan C. Rinnert.

Looking for ideas to make a KILLING on eBay?
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Just like the cat, Little Too doesn’t want her photo taken. Well, she’s a bit less picky though.

You see, I told her the photo was for Pete so he could put it up on MyGPSCameraPhone.com.

She decided to “opt out.” She’ll appear here and on LocoChihuahua.com, but she’s doesn’t want naked pictures of herself appearing all over the ‘net.

Which is just as well, since I took the image with my regular camera anyway, and not my camera phone.

Visit Wordless Wednesday for more.

Copyright 2008 Dan C. Rinnert.

Get Google Pay-Per-Click Ads Free!
Internet marketer claims: “I learned an amazing secret very early on that allows me to advertise on TOP Search Engines, but WITHOUT spending any money on pay-per-clicks!”

As for why I have the surveillance camera watching Michelle, I don’t. It’s part of the new Google Everywhere (beta). Not content to just violate our privacy by posting photos of our homes online, they’re now going to be installing webcams in all our homes, in cooperation with Homeland Security.

Here is my entry. Click on the image for the full-size version.

John Chow Meets the Even More Evil John Chow

In this image, John Chow is holding the robotic head of Ed Lau as the even more evil John Chow laughs.

Pete likes messing around with Photoshop too, so we’ll see what kind of entry he’ll come up with. Same goes for Michelle.

Copyright 2008 Dan C. Rinnert.

Get paid to submit photos online!
Professional experience not necessary. All you need is a digital camera and access to the Internet.

Sometimes it’s tough to blog everyday. But, once you’ve made that a habit, readers expect to find something new on your blog everyday. So, not posting for a day could cause a drop-off in traffic. So, you best have new content!

Granted, I could say, hey, sorry, there won’t be a post today, but that would be an excuse post, and those types of things are bad.

Naturally, I should have a “rainy day” post saved up, which I do. Unfortunately, all of them are works in progress. Mind you, I do have two things I want to post but neither of them is finished just yet. One is delayed because I’m waiting on someone else to do something, which I know he’ll do the moment I post the post without the last bit of data, but I’d like to get that last bit of data in the actual post. The other is delayed because I’m still working on it! Trying to go deeper to have something that will be Stumble-worthy.

Of course, if you want to get one of your own posts Stumbled, you’re out of luck. If, on the other hand, you’d like to get one of your posts dugg, then I can help you out. Well, not me per se, but me by way of referring you to this article: “Top Ten Digg Tactics.”

I think that was a fairly decent segue. Other bloggers fret over their headlines, but I think good segues are valuable too. And, speaking of segues, if you’re trying to get more traffic to your site, and just can’t get dugg, you might have to promote your blog through advertising.

Wasn’t that a pretty good segue? I like to think so.

As for endings, well, I’m not quite yet the master of the long goodbye. I just sort of end the post and hope you’ll catch on.

Copyright 2008 Dan C. Rinnert.

Looking for ideas to make a KILLING on eBay?
Find out which items are in high demand with low competition!