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Friday, December 26th, 2008
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Top Reasons Why Becoming an Online Retailer May Not be a Good Idea
Friday, December 26th, 2008There are plenty of success stories doing the rounds that the world of online retail is highly conducive for growth. That used to be the scenario couple of years back but not anymore. Today, even the regular online stores are struggling to sustain themselves and are embarking on a series of cost-cutting initiatives. If you do not have much capital, lack the experience of online retail and still believe you can succeed in ecommerce then it is a big mistake. Here are some of the top reasons why embarking on an online retail business is not a good idea, especially if you are a newbie to it.
It costs more to be an online vs. an offline retailer
The startup expenses to get any ecommerce site running can run into many thousands. While eight years back, one could start an ecommerce website for as little as 1000 dollars, today it would take much more for this to happen. Unless you have the experience in developing and creating an ecommerce site from scratch, it would take a lot of capital to fund such a venture. True, there are freelance designers and web developers who can do the job for you but the rates for such services has also gone up dramatically the last couple of years. There are many professionals and service providers, who will say you can get a good ecommerce site for a few hundreds but this will not be a high-end site, which ensures success.
More knowledge needed for competition
Gone are the days when a basic knowledge of ecommerce and its workings would be enough to get you started in an online retail business. Today, you not only need to have the experience but also in-depth knowledge about the subject to be successful. Most online retailers that are already enjoying success will never let you in on the secret to their success and neither will they be willing to share their knowledge with you. Thus, what you do get to hear and read about online success is often recycled and outdated information that is irrelevant to these tough times.
Search engines: a change in strategy
Today, merely ensuring a high density of keywords is not enough to get high SERPs online. Concepts like LSI are slowly emerging as the new way of ranking sites on search engines. In addition, search engines like Google are now asking users to rate the results provided. This means, if a user has searched for a phrase and a result does not match what he or she wants they can delete it from the ranking list. This means, in subsequent listings, these sites will not appear. In addition, most search engines tend to focus on the larger established companies that offer quality, cost effectiveness and brand reputation to the consumer as opposed to a third party MLM site.
Advertising is costlier than ever
Campaigns like CPC and PPC are slowly becoming costlier than they used to. While smaller companies were prepared to shell out money for these marketing efforts now they will have to pay much more to get the same mileage. The only advertising channels that have known to show some progress are Adwords and Yahoo and yet these contribute only to a small percent of your target audience.
Dropshipping concept outdated
Earlier, small ecommerce companies could manage to get by even with a small inventory, especially with drop shipping at hand. However, today this proves to be too expensive and small companies no longer have the bandwidth to negotiate the appropriate pricing for this. Often, consumers find wholesale prices to be more expensive than regular market prices of products. While established companies do not lose customers because of this, it is the smaller companies who do not have enough capital that lose out the most in this segment.
Not all’s lost – yet!
There is still hope for the small companies! In fact, the key to success these days is to find a unique niche, which really sells. However, you need to go at it with a pace that is much faster than what it used to be! There are also many free resources online, which talk about ecommerce strategies and finding success online. You can find such information on blogs, sites, social media sites and lots more. In addition, there are many more users, who are willing to share their success stories with you. One of the good things about being a small business is that your overhead costs are much lesser compared to the larger businesses. This automatically translates into higher profit margins for you!
Why Small Companies Maybe Struggling Soon
Friday, December 26th, 2008The online world is all about rise and falls. While the internet boom saw plenty of small sized startups realizing success, today it maybe a different story altogether. It is all about ‘normalization’, where success, power and money only go to the deserving companies. In such a gravitation process, there are chances that smaller companies that used to enjoy success earlier, are left out in the race.
What online marketing pros will not tell you
The whole phenomenon of ‘normalization’ doesn’t seem to go down too well, especially with the online gurus. They will obviously want to lend a positive and optimistic perception of the online retail segment. Hence, they keep goading entrepreneurs and startup companies to try something new and start a website. Many online marketing experts even promise amateur company owners that they can become rich within no time.
The market is saturated
Contrary to all the positive speeches and advice handed out by marketing experts, the world of internet retail is saturated. You may think a product or service is your unique idea but you might soon be disappointed to know another person has already launched it! The bottom-line is that it is not so easy to think up novel products and services that really sell online.
The golden period of the 90s
The ‘90s were a period where virtually every startup company could dream of making it big. The internet was a friendly place, where all entrepreneurs were always welcome. Today, it is a different story. Competition is fiercer than ever, recession has hit the economy badly and although consumers prefer online to offline shopping, they do not seem to prefer the small startup companies.
Advertising models done to death
PPC, email marketing, article marketing, Adsense – all have been done to death. In fact, you name any marketing tool and it has been used repeatedly until its effect is no longer evident any longer! With the advent of CPM advertising modes, people used to purchase large advertising blocks, break it into small bits and then resell as per PPC model, along with markups extended to 100%.
With the same resources, advertising tools and experience, today one cannot succeed at the same level as one used to. Even the established and large-scale companies online are struggling to retain existing customers, let alone get new ones.
Focusing on the right aspects
The future is not all gloomy for new companies as far as the online retail segment goes. While most online gurus maybe shutting their shops because of the lack of success seen in smaller companies, there is still a chance for success. As long as the basic issues are addressed any online company, whether small or big can survive and break even too. Aspects that really need focus right now are intelligent purchases, ensuring better brand recall and brand projection both online and offline, ensuring that operations are more streamlined and automated as far as possible and managing human resources effectively.
How small companies can make a difference
Whether you are planning to make it big in the online retail world or offline, there are just a few simple rules that will ensure your success. Firstly, you need capital and quite a lot of it. In addition, you must be prepared to lose a substantial amount of it, just in case the venture does not work out as planned. You may also lose quite a bit of capital during the initial struggle period of the business. Expenses pertaining to employees, advertising, expansion etc. are an inevitable aspect of business growth. Secondly, you need to work hard. There is no shortcut to success and every online company today has had to toil hard to reach the success they have. Thirdly, you need to differentiate your brand from your direct and indirect competitors. That should be your USP and you should capitalize and market your brand upon it. Lastly, you need to think big if you want to make it big. Dream small and you will only attain that much success.
In addition to all of these realities, it is also a fact that unless you love your job you cannot succeed in it. Although this is a cliché done to death, it is truer than ever, even more so in these recession-hit times. You need to find a domain that you believe will sell, stick to it, find novel ways in marketing it and make sure you turn it into a success story.
Tips to keep your Customer Loyalty Points High
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008The world of ecommerce has probably never had it so good. With the recent recession happening, offline modes of shopping have reduced considerably. Online shopping is convenient, you get plenty of discounts and bargain deals online. However, online retailers should not rest on their laurels, as existing customers should be attracted in a major way. As the popular adage goes, it is easier to win a new customer than it is to retain an existing one.
Having more useful information
Today’s online shoppers look through reviews online and interact with other shoppers to know which are the best shopping sites and products online. In addition, helpful how-to articles and videos are freely available on sites such as Youtube and MySpace as well as other social networking sites. Thus, consumers of today expect even online retail sites to have useful information that will help them in convincing them to make a purchase. After all, why would they buy from your site if another site has reviews, product ratings and comparison guides on it?
Loyalty is not a one-way exercise
Customer loyalty is one of the hardest things to come by and while earlier it may have been easier, today it is a tougher game. In this age, where everything is available online, free, customers find changing retail site preferences as easy as 1 2 3. If a customer does not find what they need on your site they will surely navigate to another site that does. Loyalty is fickle and competition is tough. Therefore, it is high time online retailer buckled up their shoes and started in earnest to attract their existing customers.
Addressing pain areas
One interesting tactic that many online retailers today are exploring is to use the power of social media and interactive tools to touch the customer’s mindset. Most common pain areas about shopping online include security concerns and small font sizes. For aged online shoppers, having larger font sizes can go a long way in ensuring their loyalty towards your site. In addition, when you assure customers that you have an SSL certification on your site, all information is encrypted and that it passes through a secure server, you can be sure that shopping statistics will increase on your site.
Social media and tools like using interactive videos on your site can go a long way in helping you touching base with your customer. Many customers want proof and justification as to why they should invest in your products. By having videos that demonstrate the benefits of your products or how your retail site is better than others you can gain their confidence. However, you must not make the mistake of sticking to promotional videos only. In addition to promotional videos, you should also have instructional videos, which teach your target audience how to perform a specific task. So, if you sell spare parts on your retail site, you could have videos demonstrating how to assemble a specific machinery using spare parts. The possibilities with such an approach are limitless and there is a lot you can do to attract customers to your brand.
Social elements to shopping
Simple social elements like bookmarking a site, or posting a review or comment on the retail site can go a long way in helping instill trust in your site. Most consumers today are well connected with other online shoppers and hence are looking for trustworthy sites to shop from. Having online reviews posted on the site will go a long way in ensuring this trust aspect.
Customer generated content
Another marketing tactic spun out of the whole social media revolution is allowing your customers to generate useful content themselves. They write their own reviews about products they have bought from your site, write articles on which products work well, how to perform a task etc. In this manner, when other similar customers interact with them they are able to make better purchase decisions. With so much connectivity and closeness online, it is possible to realize more sales by having such user generated content on your retail site.
Blogging
Blogging has emerged as another powerful way to understand customer preferences and tastes. Want to know which brands your target customers love? Or want to know what they think of your brand? Turn to blogging. Blogging also represents an informal way to be in contact with your customer. In fact, the whole social media boom is all about a personal touch to sales anyway. Instead of the conventional way of doing your promotions, you are now trying to reach customers with blogging and other indirect mechanisms. These methods are today proving to be far more effective that regular promotional campaigns.
Top 5 tips to foolproof your online retail sales
Monday, December 15th, 2008Most online retailers are a little wary about losing their sales during this economic crisis. However, with a little caution and some thought one can dramatically improve sales and make sure it stays that way.
Method to compare products
In order to increase your sales quotient it is a good idea to provide product comparison options to your customers. At such a time of economic slump, customers want to know which are the best shopping deals and bargains they can avail of. If the end product is to do with electronics, then each and every product will have its own specifications and features. In such a situation, knowing the differences between each will help educate customers tremendously. Basically, when you have a product comparison option on your online retail site, you are helping customers to make informed decisions. This also helps them budget their shopping sprees and justify what they are spending on. Besides, customers are more likely to purchase from your store if you have such a product comparison option installed.
Reviews and ratings
Customer testimonials and ratings have always been a time-tested and foolproof way of garnering sales online. While it may a time-consuming exercise to get ratings and individual reviews from your customers, it is certainly well worth the effort. This is because, if a customer is in doubt as to whether to purchase your product or not, they will be more influenced in buying from you if they see positive reviews from other customers like them. Thus, by having reviews on your online retail store, you can influence customer purchase decisions and make them purchase something from your site.
Personalized web content
Most customers today are finicky and want to see information on a site, which is directly relevant to them. Today technology is very advanced and using cookies and other sophisticated tools, you can easily determine the demographics of your customers. You can build on having sophisticated and very detailed profiles of your customers, that enables you to customize the kind of content they see when they enter your site. Depending on the spending capacity of your customer and their preferences you can customize your marketing and advertisement campaigns. You can even share captured information about your customers with other commerce sites. This way, you can increase your customer profile information, which is beneficial no matter which advertising channel you adopt.
Brand recall across sales cycle
Many online retailers make the mistake of having disjoint marketing campaigns, which are at a complete disconnect with their online content. In order to ensure customers have a sustained interest in your brand, you need to integrate your online and offline marketing campaigns. Thus, if you are running a comprehensive email campaign, you also need to tune it with your online website content. In this manner, when you have an integrated marketing strategy, you will be able to get recurring as well as new business. An integrated marketing approach also works because then there is much better brand recall. Customers end up associating with your brand across the complete sales cycle. Thus, there is a continuity and an assurance that your customers will end up buying the products you have on your site.
Improving search functionality
Most customers hate to browse products on a site on a manual mode. What they ideally want is to be able to search for a product in a search box. This is why your online retail site needs to have a comprehensive, extensive and robust search function installed. You can also tweak the search results based on your customers’ demographics and preferences. You can even customize this information according to the customer profile you have on your database. This provides more relevant search results and ensures more happy customers. If there are changes made to your online inventory, make sure these get automatically updated in your search results. This will ensure that your customers do not see their favorite items out of stock. Nothing puts off a customer more than ordering an item to find out later it is out of stock. If an item is out of stock, you can offer complementary items as part of the search results, as a suggestion to the customer. This may even help a customer realize they may actually need such items. This is another great tactic to boost sales even in these tough financial times.
By following these easy steps you can ensure a steady flow of sales, while the rest of the online fraternity is struggling to make ends meet.
The economic crisis and whether it will affect online retailers
Monday, December 15th, 2008The recession has hit the economy big time but that does not mean everyone has been badly affected. One of the groups who are least likely to be hit by the recession are the online retailers. Here are some of the reasons why they maybe insulated from the financial downslide.
Lower ongoing costs
Unlike the offline retailers who need to spend a fortune on their monthly rent as well as utilities, the online retailers actually need to spend very less to maintain their visibility quotient online. Most online retailers just require to pay up the basic hosting expenses every month in order to be visible to their customers. Apart from this they simply require to keep taking new orders and completing shipments in order to tide over this crisis.
Impact on fresh web development projects
As most companies start going on a cost-cutting spree it is likely that web development and new design on websites may take a back seat. More and more online retailers are stepping back from giving their sites a new look and feel. So we may get to see most websites with the same look they had couple of months before.
More offline selling
A lot of online retailers may also choose to keep offline selling as a backup option just in case their website fails to garner sales. Thus, we may find more e-tailers selling from their own homes and backyards and ending up getting far more sales than expected online.
Growing online retail segment
Inspite of the massive downfall across financial markets, it is surprising that most online retail sites have reported substantial growth in sales statistics. Even in the last year there was a whopping 22% growth across online retail sites while offline retail grew only around 3.5%. Even this year, inspite of the financial crisis, most online retail sites are expected to see a major growth.
Failure across larger companies
The bigger online retail players would most likely have a larger share of debts and expenses, which would need clearing up. Hence, such companies are less likely to bounce back quickly in these trying financial times. In such a scenario, the smaller online retail companies, who have a smaller turnover each year and have fewer expenses, are more likely to shine in these poor economic times. This might just be a great time for such kind of companies to prosper and get a lead in the competition. By the time the economy clears up these companies may just be ahead of the race, leaving the older and larger companies with more competition ahead.
Convenience and zero hassle
Online shopping has been growing, if past statistics are anything to go by and it has been predicted that even during this holiday season shopping is expected to grow dramatically. The major reason for this trend is because of the ease that online shopping presents. There is no need to visit a store or wait in a queue to make the payment. Online shopping is fast, secure and easy. With more and more online retailers making their checkout processes simple and hassle-free, online shoppers are keen to finish their holiday purchases online. In addition, many of the online stores have expedited shipping and delivery times, making such a mode of shopping the preferred choice.
Zero marketing costs
Another reason why online retailers are expected to flourish in this economic crisis is because of their relatively low marketing costs. Most of the marketing can easily be accomplished via blogging, press release and article marketing and manual submission to article and PR directories online. These modes of marketing are mostly free of cost and tend to achieve good results. Thus, traffic inflows will not be a problem if the retail sites are consistent with their marketing methods. In comparison, most regular, offline stores will need to spend a large amount to garner publicity. Apart from investing in advertisements and hoardings offline they may also need to spend more on their marketing methods like sending pamphlets, or mailing customers about new offers. All of this is bound to prove far more expensive than marketing incorporated by online retailers.
Thus, even in these trying financial times, while everyone is cutting back on expenses, the clear winners seem to be the online retailers. In fact, this might be their best time to prosper and gain in more traffic, revenues and sales. With negligible marketing costs, minimal costs to maintain visibility and more consumers preferring online shopping, the online retail segment is only expected to grow.
Market, Assets and Bankruptcy Concepts Explained
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008Once there was a little island country. The land of this country was the tiny island itself. The total money in circulation was 2 dollars as there were only two pieces of 1 dollar coins circulating around.
1) There were 3 citizens living on this island country. A owned the land. B and C each owned 1 dollar.
2) B decided to purchase the land from A for 1 dollar. So, now A and C own 1 dollar each while B owned a piece of land that is worth 1 dollar.
The net asset of the country now = 3 dollars.
3) Now C thought that since there is only one piece of land in the country, and land is non producible asset, its value must definitely go up. So, he borrowed 1 dollar from A, and together with his own 1 dollar, he bought the land from B for 2 dollars.
- A has a loan to C of 1 dollar, so his net asset is 1 dollar.
- B sold his land and got 2 dollars, so his net asset is 2 dollars.
- C owned the piece of land worth 2 dollars but with his 1 dollar debt to A, his net residual asset is 1 dollar.
Thus, the net asset of the country = 4 dollars.
4) A saw that the land he once owned has risen in value. He regretted having sold it. Luckily, he has a 1 dollar loan to C. He then borrowed 2 dollars from B and acquired the land back from C for 3 dollars. The payment is by 2 dollars cash (which he borrowed) and cancellation of the 1 dollar loan to C.
As a result,
- A now owned a piece of land that is worth 3 dollars. But since he owed B 2 dollars, his net asset is 1 dollar.
- B loaned 2 dollars to A. So his net asset is 2 dollars.
- C now has the 2 coins. His net asset is also 2 dollars.
The net asset of the country = 5 dollars. A bubble is building up.
(5) B saw that the value of land kept rising.. He also wanted to own the land. So he bought the land from A for 4 dollars.
The payment is by borrowing 2 dollars from C, and cancellation of his 2 dollars loan to A.
- As a result, A has got his debt cleared and he got the 2 coins. His net asset is 2 dollars.
- B owned a piece of land that is worth 4 dollars, but since he has a debt of 2 dollars with C, his net Asset is 2 dollars.
- C loaned 2 dollars to B, so his net asset is 2 dollars.
The net asset of the country = 6 dollars; even though, the country has only one piece of land and 2 Dollars in circulation.
(6) Everybody has made money and everybody felt happy and prosperous.
(7) One day an evil wind blew, and an evil thought came to C’s mind. ‘Hey, what if the land price stop going up, how could B repay my loan. There is only 2 dollars in circulation, and, I think after all the land that B owns is worth at most only 1 dollar, and no more.’
(8) A also thought the same way.
(9) Nobody wanted to buy land anymore.
- So, in the end, A owns the 2 dollar coins, his net asset is 2 dollars.
- B owed C 2 dollars and the land he owned which he thought worth 4 dollars is now 1 dollar. So his net asset is only 1 dollar.
- C has a loan of 2 dollars to B. But it is a bad debt. Although his net asset is still 2 dollars, his Heart is palpitating.
The net asset of the country = 3 dollars again.
(10) So, who has stolen the 3 dollars from the country ? Of course, before the bubble burst B thought his land was worth 4 dollars. Actually, right
before the collapse, the net asset of the country was 6 dollars on paper.
B’s net asset is still 2 dollars, his heart is palpitating.
(11) B had no choice but to declare bankruptcy. C as to relinquish his 2 dollars bad debt to B, but in return he acquired the land which is worth 1
dollar now.
- A owns the 2 coins, his net asset is 2 dollars.
- B is bankrupt, his net asset is 0 dollar. ( he lost everything )
- C got no choice but end up with a land worth only 1 dollar
The net asset of the country = 3 dollars.
********************* End of the story; BUT *********************
There is however a redistribution of wealth.
A is the winner, B is the loser, C is lucky that he is spared.
A few points worth noting -
(1) When a bubble is building up, the debt of individuals to one another in a country is also building up.
(2) This story of the island is a closed system whereby there is no other country and hence no foreign debt. The worth of the asset can only be calculated using the island’s own currency. Hence, there is no net loss.
(3) An over-damped system is assumed when the bubble burst, meaning the land’s value did not go down to below 1 dollar.
(4) When the bubble burst, the fellow with cash is the winner. The fellows having the land or extending loan to others are the losers. The asset could shrink or in worst case, they go bankrupt.
(5) If there is another citizen D either holding a dollar or another piece of land but refrains from taking part in the game, he will neither win nor lose.
But he will see the value of his money or land go up and down like a see saw.
(6) When the bubble was in the growing phase, everybody made money.
(7) If you are smart and know that you are living in a growing bubble, it is worthwhile to borrow money (like A ) and take part in the game. But you must know when you should change everything back to cash.
(8) As in the case of land, the above phenomenon applies to stocks as well.
(9) The actual worth of land or stocks depend largely on psychology.
Zong Mobile Payments
Friday, October 24th, 2008
Zong has now acquired so much popularity amongst the masses that no business can be termed as complete and efficient if it doesn’t use Zong Mobile Payments. Without them, most of the businesses would end up losing a significant chunk of business opportunities.
Some people go to the extent of classifying such businesses (which don’t use Zong Mobile Payments) as non-serious businesses.
Zong – Mobile Payments for your Web Application
httpv://in.youtube.com/watch?v=O2C3SQraAvQ
So what are these Zong Mobile Payments that we are talking about?
Zong is a mobile payment scheme that enables Web publishers to reach 500+ million mobile users in high speed.
With the Internet boom, came a lot of online businesses. These businesses were in the form of virtual shops (or e-shops) that existed either only on the Internet or were a virtual extension of physical shops. All these businesses (some selling goods, some selling services), needed a way to accept payments from their customers. This gave birth to online Zong Mobile Payments.
The simplest use of these online Zong Mobile Payments is in the form of a simple web page/web-form that asks you to provide your mobile phone number. Your mobile number is then verified and processed to debit the amount from your mobile account through your operator and credit it to the merchant’s accounts. Since Zong uses your mobile account instead of traditional credit cards, the fraud levels are also much lower than traditional payment systems.
As time goes by, the expanse of these Zong Mobile Payments is sure to increase.
Visit http://www.zong.com/ to know more.
Work From Home Jobs
Thursday, October 9th, 2008
The words, ‘Work from Home, Part Time,’ have become such an overly used buzz term these days. Many people who hear that phrase nowadays immediately put their guard up and assume that the information being advertised must be some get rich quick scheme aimed at not helping you earn more money, but taking their money instead. This is a good form of intellectual evolution on society’s part. You, as a wise human being should be on your guard. There are many people who thrive, and become rich on people they can take advantage of. Chances are you could open up your junk-mail folder in your email box right now and find a handful of messages making their attempts at enticing you into giving the mystery writer money, so that in return he will show you a super, secret methodology of generating huge amounts of income. This method is so secret, you of course were the only one privileged enough to receive this most generous offer. After getting barraged so many times by these rip offs, and possibly even becoming victim to a few, it’s easy to become discouraged or think simply that it’s impossible to conduct business and earn money from home. But, believe it or not, there are legitimate ways of actually working full, part or spare time at home that can generate income.
I do however hope I won’t disappoint you in saying that the ways that you can actually work at home is not going to be simply starting zombie faced at your computer screen playing solitaire. If you don’t want to get scammed, and you do actually want to make some money, you’re going to actually need to buckle down and work for it. I will use eBay as an example because it is widely known the opportunity eBay brings.
EBay, upon its inception brought something completely new to the table. If you had something to sell, conventionally you had to hunt down a buyer, negotiate price and make the sale. Now, you have access to a very unconventional means of selling products. Whether they are things you pulled out of your garage, or a product you make. People are out there hunting and looking for your product through this portal. Now where people fall short many times on eBay is by not looking beyond a couple of days. More often times than not, when people are going to use the online auction house to generate themselves extra income, they hear the opportunity and dive in head first without looking too far ahead and noticing potential pitfalls. Sure we can all think of a few things we have sitting around somewhere in our house, that is no doubt dust covered that we could put up and sell on eBay. Good first step. What about after you sell the one thing you thought of? You now need another item to sell. After that you will then need another, and another, and another. You only have so many trinkets and gizmo’s hidden away in the dark corners of your basement that you can display for the world to bid on. At some point you’re going to need to source more products for you to sell. And this is when people fall on their face, and there, ‘work part time from home,’ turned into, ‘work part time from home and clean out your basement.’ It isn’t a very workable or profitable long term business model.
However lengthy that explanation was I wanted to make the point that somehow over time, the term work from home started translating in people’s heads as ‘make easy money without doing much.’ This is simply not the case. The term still has the one little golden gem in it that people seem to miss. That little gem is the word ‘work‘. There are many people who make very good incomes with eBay. But they have also put a lot of work into it, to obtain items that are profitable. They may have needed to research and find a drop shipper or possibly multiple drop shippers. They may have negotiated their own pricing. Or some of the really big go getters have probably made contacts in China, or Japan to get their items directly from the manufacturer. My Point being: is that generating a worthwhile income from your home is definitely not always simple, nor is it usually easy, and straightforward.
Let me go over a few ways that can get your creative juices flowing and hopefully help you find or think of a great way for you to actually work in the comfort of your house as much or as little as you want. If you are looking at working from home, but are ok with not being your own boss, telecommuting could be a good fit. Check out online job boards such as craigslist. Upon writing this, I quickly looked and was able to find a technology company offering $16 an hour. There are also a few companies that hire customer service representatives to work from their house. One such company is liveops.com or there is also the company, workingsolutions.com. From what I’ve heard, you can expect about $15 an hour from liveops.
If you already have a job, is it a possibility to do it from home? The biggest reason why there aren’t more people working from home is simply productivity. Employers are worried that once an employee is working from home, they will become less productive and too distracted with the luxuries of home such as a refrigerator nearby, or the TV remote. Prove to your boss that you have the self control and motivation to do carry your work load from home, and there is a good possibility your only commute for the day could be from your bedroom to your den. If you would like a new job that allows you to work from home, there is a good resource called WAHM.com. It is a great place to look and find legitimate opportunities to do your business from home.
Depending on your skills, there are many different ways and opportunities to work freelance. This would allow you to set your own hours and work at your own pace. Finding work isn’t that difficult if you know where to look. There are many places to find freelance jobs online in graphic design or programming, content creation and other areas. A few places include: Elance.com, FindAFreelancer.com, SitePoint.com, DigitalPoint.com…etc. It may also be beneficial to look again at places like Craigslist if you’d rather deal face to face with someone. If you are into work types such as photography, connecting with people who are looking to hire for a family portrait, people who want to break into modeling but need portfolio shots. Looking on local online bulletin boards would be very beneficial. You can use these types of websites to find more ‘freelance’ type jobs for just about anything you’d be surprised at what you can actually do from your home and make a decent and sometimes great income from it may just take some time and thought to find what works for you.
Look at what you have, right in front of you, skills, knowledge, everything that makes up the person that is you. How can you take all of that and mold it into an opportunity for you to help yourself out financially. Getting caught up trying to find a ‘system’ that makes big promises about making huge amounts of money will more than likely leave you feeling taken advantage of. Instead, work on what you already know and have. If you need to go out and fine tune those skills and abilities a bit, but spending money on buying an instructional book on how to program PHP isn’t the same as spending money, buying a “bullet proof system to make you filthy rich.”
Be wise in choosing which route you want to go, and don’t get sucked into something that sounds too good to be true. Put actual thought into it, plan out your attack and if you need to spend money, only spend it on things that will directly benefit your plan. Books, instructional DVDs, advertisements for your services… These are worthwhile things that can actually make the age old dream of working from home come true. You just need to be smart about it because the opportunities are there.
Fake escrow services
Sunday, October 5th, 2008This is one of the rising scams online these days. Whichever sites provide any kind of financial services are vulnerable to such types of scams. A lot of sites providing social services have also been targeted by such fake escrow services.
How does a genuine escrow system work?
This kind of service is usually set up for auction sites, which deal with high-valued transactions online. Usually, an escrow system functions in the following manner. The buyer makes a payment through the escrow service and once the financial transaction is approved, the seller is contacted stating that payment is made. The buyer can withhold actual payment of transferring of money until he or she receives the item from the seller. Only when the buyer is satisfied with the item and its quality can he or she release payment online. Thus, once the buyer sends confirmation the escrow payment is released and the seller receives payment into the account.
How does a phony escrow system work?
The fake escrow services are meant to victimize unsuspecting buyers into believing they are making a genuine payment. It is very easily setup by trained hackers and other malicious individuals on popular auction sites.
Firstly a new website is created, which looks just like any regular escrow payment site. In fact, all the features of the new phony site are so identical to a genuine site that detection of a scam is nearly impossible. Once the fake site is established, the scammers will visit auction sites and pose as sellers as well as buyers. They will bid on popular products and even sell items on such auction sites. This way, they manage to start getting customers to conduct financial transactions on the fake escrow site. As a buyer, the scammer bids the highest amount on the product and thus wins the item. Then he or she sends an email asking the seller to conduct business only on a preferred escrow site, which would be the fake site URL.
Once the seller accepts that usage of this escrow site is fine, he or she receives a subsequent email that states that payment has been made and will be kept in a bearing trust of non-interest accruing account, till item is received and approved. The seller then sends the item thinking the buyer has made the payment. The seller never receives the payment although the buyer has received the product. Any communication with the buyer fails and this is how fake escrow services have minted millions of dollars from unsuspecting buyers and sellers.
When the scammer poses as a seller on an auction site, he or she lists out only very costly items. Once an unsuspecting buyer bids on the item, he or she wins it and the seller insists on using his or her preferred escrow service, which is the fake one. The buyer makes the payment, thinking that it is a safe financial transaction. Later they realize that they will never receive the item they bought.
Aldo Check out How to Avoid being Scammed by Forum Scammers
