You may have already received a blow to the wallet from your affiliate programs if you live in certain states. Large merchants are dropping local affiliates in response to new laws that require the merchants to pay sales taxes in those states.

Historically, merchants only pay sales taxes in states where they have a physical presence and on physical products. So, if a merchant is in Oklahoma and so is the buyer, the merchant pays Oklahoma sales tax. However, if the buyer is in Texas, no sales tax is charged because interstate commerce is protected from state sales taxes by federal law. So most online sales escape taxes, because the buyer is located in another state.

Now, the new laws require online merchants to collect state sales taxes in any state where their independant affiliates operate. Basically, these state legislatures are claiming that if I’m an affiliate of Amazon, for example, then my home office is a physical location for Amazon. So if I sell a product in my state, to someone else in my state, through my affiliate link, then that product should be taxed in my state.

States currently affected include:

• California
• Hawaii
• North Carolina
• Rhode Island
• New York

Overstock and Amazon have dropped thousands of affiliates in those states, an action that could seriously impact the income of many of those affiliates.

How do these laws affect small merchants?

If you’re a small merchant with affiliates in those states, you may have a reprieve in some cases.

So far, in New York, you must have cumulative gross receipts of $10,000 to New York residents during the previous four quarterly sales tax periods in order to be required to pay the sales tax. This is good news for small merchants who don’t do that much business. However, if you’re a larger merchant, or an affiliate of a large merchant, this could hit you hard.

Check with your local representatives if you live in the other states and want to know if you’re exempt or not. If you do, let us know here.

Pros and cons?

All this said, I’m personally not against large corporations having to pay sales taxes in the areas where they have a physical presence, whether the presence is an affiliate marketer or an actual office. Tax-free online sales have in many cases hurt local economies and these taxes would level the playing field.

That said, I see how these taxes can prohibit new online businesses from even starting out, and this could damage to local economies as well.

What do you think?

You can read the following links for more information:

Internet Sales Tax War

Possible Tennessee Legislation

NY Affiliate Voice

The Amazon Tax and Affiliate Marketing

Sparkplugging is starting a new tradition called “Spark an idea Thursday.” As part of this tradition, I’ll be sharing with you my experiences and interpretations for each week’s topic for those of you who sell products or services online.

I invite you to grab our image over there to the right and carry the tradition through to your own blog. If you do, please link back to this post so we know where you were inspired!

The theme of this week’s Spark an Idea Thursday is: Spark an Idea about Improving Your Workspace.

Don’t you feel refreshed and ready to get things accomplished when your workspace is neat and organized?

I love a clean work area.  For me, there is nothing worse than sitting down to a mess of paperwork in front of your computer. Or having to step over piles of items you need to take pictures of and get listed to your eBay store.  It’s so UN-motivating. 

Do you have a pile of invoices and packing slips that have to be filed?  Articles that you printed out that have to be read?

Try this:

I like to call it the ‘paper game’.  Take the pile of papers that are stacked in a pile in-front of you and make them disappear once and for all.  And I don’t mean putting them in the trash can under your desk ;-). 

Start at the top of the pile.  Take the first piece of paperwork in your hand and don’t put it down until it is filed away in it’s appropriate place.  Do this with each piece of paperwork until your are done with the pile.

On to your eBay inventory.  This is a tough one for some of us - it’s OK.  Keeping things organized may depend on the items you sell.  Storing clothing is a little easier than storing toys.  I used to use the big rubber bin method:

OK, yea - I’m 5ft. tall - as my business grew - so did my bins, all the way to the ceiling!  Not a very productive use of time when your digging for an item to ship that is in the very bottom bin!  So, I cleaned up my bins and went to the shelving method:

MUCH more organized.  When an items sells, I can see it, reach out and grab it in a second and ship it out the door.  Isn’t an organized space a happy space??  :-)  Oh, and the treadmill in the last picture - sold it on eBay. 

How do you organize YOUR space?  I look forward to hearing from you!

Here’s a helpful tip:

If you’re like 70% of consumers - you’ll have back to school clothes on your mind!  Better yet, if you’re an avid eBay seller - you should be getting your auctions ready and stocking your store with Back To School items.  The early bird shoppers who hit eBay this month are well aware of what they are looking for. 

Having your selection ready for them this month will ensure that you are the piece-of-the-pie that will rake in profits now!

The remaining shoppers will wait until August and an even smaller percentage will start in September!

Which percentage would you like to be a part of??

I’d love to hear what you like to sell on eBay at Back To School time - or any time!  I look forward to hearing from you! 

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  People subscribe to Feeds just like they subscribe to a newsletter you would get via email.  When the ‘Feed’ is updated, the subscriber is sent an email notice to check it out. 

You should have your RSS feed activated already, as eBay provides this to you automatically as long as you have an eBay store.  When you update your store listings, your feeds are automatically updated as well.  Again, this only works if you have Store Inventory.

To check to see if your Feed is active - go in to Manage My Store.  Under your Store Marketing - you will see Listing Feeds.

Select ‘Activate your Store Inventory listings via RSS’ and also select ‘Make a file of your Store Inventory listings available’.  Click Apply.

That’s it! You are updated and your feeds are active!  Let’s go submit your Feed to a couple places.  One place is Feedburner.com http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home which actually, was aquired by Google!  Free to join, but you have to register in order to submit your feed.

 Once you log in/register - it takes a few simple steps to get your feed burned. 

First - find your RSS Feed link on eBay. An easy way to find it is to go to your eBay Store Icon and click on it.  Then scroll down to the bottom of the page.  You’ll see the RSS icon in an orange box.

 Go ahead and click on the RSS icon, this will show your URL RSS Feed link in the browser and you will also be able to view what your Feed looks like to others subscribing to your Feed. 

Your URL should look similar to mine w/ rss in the begining, copy YOUR URL for Feedburner:

http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?FeedName=StoreItems&siteId=0&language=en-US&output=RSS20&storeId=22585822

Next step is to head back to Feedburner.com and submit your feed in a few easy steps:

Select ‘Submit your Feed’ on the upper right of the screen and follow the 3 steps.  Paste your URL in the box. Select ‘Preview’.  You should see a page similar to what you viewed on eBay when you clicked on your RSS Feed icon. 

Finally, Submit into the Feed burner Directory!

Once you submit the feed, you can not submit it again. It will be updated as long as you keep listing items to your store inventory!  You can keep track of how many people view and subscribe to your feeds under the ‘MyFeedage’ menu, then by selecting ‘My Feeds’.  

This is just one prefered of getting your eBay listings out there into the cyber world.  It’s more of a ‘fix it and forget it’ method.  Once it’s out there, it’s taken care of and you don’t have to continually update it - because it’s in real time.

There are just tons, and tons of RSS sites to submit your RSS feed on, but you have to keep it targeted to your product or it won’t be accepted.  Feedburner.com has by far been the easiest and most organized.  And the best part about it is, you can also show up on Google in their ranking pages…I was SO excited when mine showed up on google!!

Have fun! 

My #1 recommendation for choosing the right web host: Ask an expert.

And I don’t just mean any “expert.” Your friend’s brother who sells stuff on Ebay is not going to be the kind of web hosting expert that you need. Here are some qualifications for your expert:

• Needs to be a techie with experience in hosting websites like to yours. In other words, if your aunt sells a couple of hair ribbons in her Etsy shop, she’s not going to be able to help you sell $80,000 in products from your website each month without crashing the server. Ideally, your expert will have experience working with sites the same size (traffic, bandwidth, etc) as yours larger.
• Needs to have worked with more than one web host. I know, it’s tempting to go to that colleague who has a complementary, or even competitive site, and go with the host they are using. But if they’ve only used one host, and only hosted one site, they could be experiencing issues they don’t realize they have, like rude staff, or unusually long wait times for issues.
• Needs to understand the issues that can arise from bad hosting. If you end up with a bad host, you could find yourself without any customer service, customer support people who are rude, at best, and more downtime than uptime. (Downtime is where your site cannot be accessed from the Internet.) You could end up with a really slow website and no resolution from the company.
• Must understand your site’s unique needs. Do you need to host a podcast each week, with audio files that people will download and listen to frequently? Do you need a robust ecommerce solution that will put a lot of strain on a server? Make sure your expert understands these issues when recommending a web host.

When I talk to small business owners about their websites, I make sure I find out about their unique needs, how their website is performing now and what their goals are for the future. I then evaluate their website in terms of whether or not I feel that my team can provide the website hosting that they need. If not, I recommend that they go somewhere else.

Most often though, we can handle what the business owner needs, since we offer shared hosting accounts, VPS  and dedicated servers. Our support staff is friendly and knowledgeable, and we’re willing to go the extra mile to make sure you get what you need. We also offer at least two different options — we teach you how to do the task for free, or we offer to do the task for you for a reasonable rate.

If you have any questions about hosting your website, contact me today about your web hosting needs.

Sparkplugging is starting a new tradition called “Spark an idea Thursday.” As part of this tradition, I’ll be sharing with you my experiences and interpretations for each week’s topic for those of you who sell products or services online.

I invite you to grab our image over there to the right and carry the tradition through to your own blog. If you do, please link back to this post so we know where you were inspired!

The theme of this week’s Spark an Idea Thursday is: Spark an Idea about Email.

This is a great Spark an Idea topic!  In one of my previous posts, I spoke briefly about the eBay DSR (Detailed Seller Rating) Scores. 

Communication (one part of the DSR score) is such an integral part of everything eBay, especially as an eBay seller. 

It all starts with your first email to the buyer who purchased one of your items.  This is the email that will ultimately win the future relationship of repeat sales.  You’ll want to walk through every step of the transaction from the begining, to the end and beyond.

Do you do a little Happy Dance when you sell something from your eBay store, or have an auction that has ended way higher than your wildest expectations?  I know I do a little dance! 

Well, so does the person who won that auction or found that something special in your eBay store!  They’re pumped and ready to receive their items as soon as they submit payment! 

Here are a few tips to follow up with, using email to create a lasting relationship.

When you start to build your email list, you will want to utilize the email marketing tool on eBay.  This is a wonderful tool and can be fully automated.  Mine is set to shoot out an email once a week, showing any newly listed items.  

Before you know it, you’ll begin to see repeat buyers and track your progress to see what is working best.

Happy Selling! 

Making changes mid-way can be expensive, or just downright impossible. So it’s very important to make the right decision upfront.

One of the main things I do when I talk to a potential client is figure out what they need in a shopping cart and which of the carts we work with will benefit the client the most. I know not all of you are ready to take the step to ask for a business consultation, so I’d like to put together a few reviews and a comparision chart for you.

And if you’re an experienced online seller already, I’d love to include your opinions. What are your favorite carts? What features do you like the most? What do you displike most about your cart?

One of the Sparkplugging interns and I are in the process interviewing people who are familiar with the under-the-hood portions of the carts and we’re putting together the chart as well. We’d love to have your input to add to the mix.

Please reply to this post, letting us know what you think. Your advice may save another small business owner from making the wrong decision. Thank you!

Having a store will save you time and money. Currently, store listing fees are only .03-.05 cents per listing, depending on your asking price. If you elect to use the GTC (Good ‘Til Canceled) option, this will enable your items to automatically re-list at the end of 30 days, giving you more time to concentrate on making sales. You can list hundreds of items to your store inventory for practically nothing, as opposed to maintaining auctions all of the time. With store items, fees will still apply when your item sells, but the over-head for stocking your store is a lot less than constantly running and re-listing auctions each week. An added advantage is that you will be saving time by stocking your store rather than bothering with listing auctions. By listing all types of items throughout all seasons, you are opening yourself up to a wide variety of buyers. Shipping worldwide will also allow unlimited potential for buyers in other parts of the world who are in opposite seasons and in need of items that may be difficult for them to find at the time, but readily available for you to sell in your shop.

A major key to having a successful store is to continually keep it stocked. This lets you build your inventory to include hundreds of items. The more you list, the more you sell - it’s been proven time and time again. Why? eBay is a wonderful generator of automatic traffic, built in for you to harness without the needed technical experience of running an actual separate online store.

Having an eBay store is your own slice of the Internet. Buyers will check out your store, and by cross-selling other items within each item description, you will be able to recommend items in your store that may interest them. If you offer combined or discounted shipping for multiple
items purchased, customers will be compelled to buy more from you at one time. A store also allows sellers to use features like the Markdown Manager which is not available to non-store owners.

eBay offers tons of additional features at no additional cost. These added features will help you build up clientele for email marketing and more. This will allow you to keep in touch and let your personal email list know of special discounts available to them first before it’s open to the public.

Your store gives you your own unique style. Having a personal, unique design allows you to build your brand and specialize, which encourages repeat buyers. Once you master the features of your eBay store, then it’s time to break out and take advantage of outside opportunities to attract more buyers to your product.

The last thing you need as a new business owner is your own horror story. Those bad experiences cost time and money. And sometimes at least a small bit of your sanity.

So how can you avoid the whole mess in the first place?

Before I share that tidbit of information with you, let me tell you a little bit about myself and my web hosting experiences. While many people have worked with multiple web hosting companies over the years, I’ve actually run my own hosting company. I know the inside story on what web hosting clients want, based on what my own clients have told me. And I know the inside story on what it takes to run a web hosting business, because I’ve been in the trenches, so to speak, for more than 7 years.

I’ve helped clients leave other hosting companies and cleaned up their messes. I’ve had a few clients leave my company for other hosts, for various reasons. And I have a lot of happy clients, including those who have been with my company since the beginning.

I have a unique view from both sides of the fence, and I’d like to share what I know to help you make better decisions, whether that means you choose my web hosting company, or someone else’s.

The #1 most important thing I recommend you do is ask your colleagues or a trusted web designer with sites a little bit bigger in size and traffic to yours to recommend the host. A personal referral from someone who runs or builds similar websites will go a long way in protecting you from ending up with a lemon.

Now, there is a caveat to go along with this. Asking one friend for a referral is not the only step you need to take. Don’t take the recommendation and buy a hosting account in the very next step. You still need to do your homework.

1. Get four or five recommendations from different colleagues or your web designer.
2. Do a search on Google for reviews of the company.
3. Check out the company’s testimonials and contact some of those clients to see how happy they are with their hosting.
4. Contact the company itself to ask about their usage policies, their server specs, how they manage bandwidth overages, billing and client communication. Make sure their servers can handle the software you plan to use for your site.
5. Read the company’s terms of service, acceptable use policies and any other legalese they have. If they don’t publish that information on the web where you can find it easily, find another company. Make sure you understand what you’re reading. If you don’t, find someone who does.

If you’ve followed these instructions and still aren’t sure, tune in next week for the next installment of this series: What do web hosting companies and cheese have in common?

And if you don’t want to wait that long, contact me for a 1-hour web hosting consultation and I can help you figure out to get the services you need and the quality you expect at the price you can afford.