[Ratings] - Overall Impression (7.2/10) * Good - Product Prices (7/10) - Product Quality (8/10) - Product Quantity (6/10) - Reliability of Service (8/10) - Impression of Website (7/10)
[Review]
LovelyShoes.Net is a wholesale company of shoes and handbags. This company seems somewhat reminiscent of Wholesale-Dress.Net, though I cannot quite pinpoint why — perhaps the two companies are related. In any case, Lovely Shoes is another source based in China, which means that the goods come directly (and cheaply, for the most part) from manufacturers in the area, but the international shipping charges are quite high.
The quality and price of the items seem to be fair, and the company stocks a fairly large selection of items. My only complaint, however, is that a significant number of items listed on the website are labeled “Out of Stock” but have yet to be removed from the product categories. This can be rather annoying when browsing through the website. It is also unfortunate to note that over 1000 of the items are categorized as “Out of Stock,” so if looking through the categories, be sure to verify that an item is actually available before planning to buy or sell it. Granted, if the item is unavailable, then the website prevents you from actually buying it. But for all of the dropshippers out there, take care not to promise or “sell” any items that are not actually there.
Still, the provider is worth looking into. The prices are fairly low (though they would be considered “average” for wholesale) and the shoes generally come in an array of colors and sizes. There are boots, slippers, sandals, formal wear, and casual wear available. Apart from shoes, LovelyShoes.Net also offers handbags, wallets, backpacks, and other such bag accessories. There do not appear to be any major U.S. brand names among the products, but there seem to be other brands that I am not familiar with, perhaps notable in Europe or Asia. Personally, though, I find many of the items to be quite cute and wouldn’t mind buying a few pairs for myself. C:
All in all, LovelyShoes.Net is an average wholesale provider. The shoes and handbags are not name brand, but they are still attractive and easy to sell. The things to look out for are high shipping costs and “Out of Stock” items that may linger around the “In-Stock” categories.
–
* Note: The website has temporarily stopped taking orders until 2/22/09. They seem to be busy updating their stock of items.
When you’ve made the decision to get your products online via eBay and/or your own ecommerce website, what is the next step?
First Question: Build it in-house or hire a professional?
Yes, you can build your companies eBay store and website with talent already existing within your organization.
Website design is taught at most high schools or community colleges these days – chances are good that your employee pool may have budding web designer talent lurking deep within…
The next question is… are you ready to trust your company marketing and image to this untested talent?
ebay store provides numerous tools and a great deal of information for anyone to accomplish the task of getting a store up and running. The quandary is… does eBay provide these tips and tricks to help your as a business to thrive or to help their business prosper? Obviously, if you are a seasoned business professional you will soon realize that a company such as eBay does nothing without a reason.
Most of eBay’s teaching tools and to a certain extent, eBay’s entire growth strategy is based upon making the process of setting up an eBay selling account and consequently an eBay store easy for home based businesses. eBay wants mom & pop to go garage sale shopping with an eye towards making a few extra bucks for the cookie jar. To that end they want to get mom & pop up and running with an eBay store as soon as possible (and funneling fees into eBay). Just because eBay has based a majority of their marketing focus on home based businesses does not mean that an eBay store is not a valuable asset for any established brick and mortar retailer or other “real” business concern. eBay is simply going after the largest number of potential users of their products.
Unfortunately this also leads to numerous eBay store failures…
These home based eBay store owners do not have the prior background, sources or resources to take advantage of the world wide marketing giant and revenue producer now known as eBay. Therefore, while getting your company eBay store up and running may seem to be an easy in-house task for any intern, or kid just out of college with a great computer science degree… the real nuts & bolts set up and operation of an eBay store or e-commerce solution or both in tandem (the best option) is better left to professionals who work with eBay and e-commerce each and every day. If you are reading this because you are interested in moving your business more into an Internet sales based program you should consider the wisdom of hiring eBay and Internet marketing professionals to help you and your company get a head start toward those goals.
Still Thinking About Doing it yourself?
Building an online business requires ability in several completely different arenas: graphic design, programming, database development, Web design, copywriting, photography, and online marketing. This is just a short list of what is required to start from scratch or to add Internet marketing to your sales operation. If you have these skills in-house or if you plan on learning them yourself, please take this advice to heart.
Make a list of your employees’ available skills as well as which skills they can learn. When you have a choice between learning a skill that will directly translate into making more money for your company or learning a skill that will let you do cool stuff on the Web, make a careful choice. Decide how much time you really want to devote to learning and doing things that really don’t help you sell more products. Do you want to be an online retailer, or do you want to be a Web developer? The highest and best use of your available time & resources probably isn’t learning the ins and outs of XHTML, but taking care of customers, finding new products, and promoting your business.
Making it Happen
Anything you can do yourself on a website design or to a eBay Store can be delegated or outsourced. You can hire eBay Stores Certified design professionals to design your eBay store from the ground up, create a custom logo, develop a corporate identity with unique colors and fonts, build your store product database, take product photos, write sales copy, perform search engine optimization on your site, custom-build XHTML templates that do almost anything you want them to do, and even manage your orders and perform customer service. It all depends on your budget.
After you’ve decided that you need help, you have lots of choices to make. The first decision is the size of your budget, which determines who you can hire. You can find prices for “building a eBay Store” that range anywhere from $300 to $5,000 and up. You can get a bargain using offshore designers (working anywhere from eastern Europe to India), college kids, or even professional designers moonlighting out of their basement. If you want a more “professional” experience, expect to pay up to $15,000 for a complete branding, marketing, and design package from top-drawer eBay store and Internet marketing firm. Both your web e-commerce site and your eBay store should present your branding and image as you expect them to. Getting the eBay image and your website image to mesh almost seamlessly is your goal, this can be quite difficult for even experienced web designers.
Using a CMS or Content Management System type of website design can significantly reduce your web design costs. There are a huge amount of new and exciting options available for web development, do not think you must use a “hand coded” html site to get your branding and image in front of the public. Some companies are even using simple blogging platforms like Wordpress or Typepad as the basis for corporate websites. These blogging platforms are very inexpensive to set up and the software is free. These CMS or Blogging platforms may also be used in conjunction with an eBay store or a with an eCommerce plug in (or both) to craft a unique Internet marketing funnel for your company.
You get what you pay for
eBay store designs from the good design companies run between $2,000 to $5,000. eCommerce website designs sometimes run in the tens of thousands of dollars with continual maintenance costs and webmaster fees. If your budget makes you choose between the two options, an eBay store is the more economical and faster route to success when managed correctly.
The best part of an eBay stores set up is that once it is installed as you want it, you have very few outside maintenance costs. Your company will have complete control of the products presentation (with the use of a template) and the inventory management is a simple to learn affair on eBay. Advanced tools are available to help with the management of large inventories and to help you create a listing just as you would within a word processing program or text editor.
When you get a quality eBay Stores design, sometimes the results are more than just superficial. Qualified designers improve the shopping experience, which can dramatically increase sales from your existing traffic by increasing your conversion rate. Also, many designs, when set up correctly improve the way your site looks to search-engine spiders, too! (This is the power of an eBay stores “me” page and other exclusive features and benefits of eBay stores packages).
After you determine what parts of the store building process you can do and what you can’t do or would rather not do, you’re ready to look for some help with the heavy lifting. First, you have to decide what type of vendor you want to work with because there’s a big difference between working with a freelancer or independent consultant and working with a large design company or ad agency:
eBay Stores certified design specialists
eBay Stores certified design specialists (certified eBay stores designers) provide the best overall experience. Your company will get the personalized attention it deserves and you will know that the design is based upon eBay marketing principles. Look at the portfolios of these certified eBay stores designers and decide which firm best represents your companies’ image. Stay away from home based eBay stores designers with frilly eBay templates and flashy bouncing mouse pointers. You should be looking more for a corporate image that sells product and more importantly, cross sells more products for your company.
Look at the online stores you frequent in your daily life, think about the type of image and features you would like to emulate for your eBay store. Look at the designer’s portfolios and or ask them if the features you think are most valuable are available in their design packages? Some eBay stores designers can deliver very advanced packages designed to promote more than one primary product at a time. If you are looking for growth in your Internet sales segment, these are the designers to contract with. Talk with several designers to find the one you are most comfortable with and the one who you think will represent the image of your company best with an online design. If the same designer can also develop your off eBay website e-commerce design, you should place that designer high on your list of candidates.
Having a web presence for your company which flows from eBay to your own website with the same “look and feel” is very important. Your goal should be to make your customers feel confident in your products and your company. If you (and your design company) have made an effort to create a nearly seamless shopping experience between eBay and your own e-commerce website, the confidence of the buyer will increase and your conversion rate will as well. Drawing eBay shoppers to your website from within eBay is not only possible, but very probable with a eBay store design done correctly.
Ask your prospective design firm the right questions and you will know immediately if you have made the best choice.
Example Questions:
Are you a certified eBay Stores Designer? Do you have examples of cross marketing designs? Can you create an eBay stores design which matches my existing website or can you create an e-commerce design to match your eBay stores design? Is SEO important for eBay? How important is a eBay about me page? Do your templates appear correct on all of the major browsers? What kind of changes can be made to the design after your job is complete? (Can I offer a special sale item in my template?) If your chosen designer is not informed in these questions you should look further. Not every eBay or Internet design firm has the necessary skills or background to help your company effectively cross-market your products. Find the right design firm which will give your firm a solid foundation from which to grow and prosper in the new world of Internet retailing.
Find out how to get website traffic for your eBay products or other web pages, sites and blogs.
[Ratings] - Overall Impression (7.0/10) * Fair - Product Prices (7/10) - Product Quality (7/10) - Product Quantity (7/10) - Reliability of Service (7/10) - Impression of Website (7/10)
[Review]
Best Handbag Wholesale, as the name implies, is a wholesale source that offers handbags. The company also stocks accessories like belts, wallets, and other such merchandise. The website seems to lack certain company information (like the specific base location), but I haven’t found any scam reports, so the provider should be okay.
Best Handbag Wholesale is an all-around average wholesale source. There are over a thousand items in stock, which is a moderate amount, and the quality of the items is fair. There are also some “designer-inspired” goods that would likely sell easily, since many women (…and men, perhaps…) opt to buy imitation designer purses rather than actual designer brands because of the vast price difference and little disparity in appearance. The prices of the handbags, in general, range from about $10 to $30, which can be a bit high for wholesale, but still profitable. In order to work with this provider, a retailer must contact the company via e-mail and then wait for a representative to respond to the request. It may be possible that the prices of items can be negotiated before partnering with the provider. Unfortunately, though, the website specifically states that there is no shipping outside of the U.S., so retailers must target strictly American buyers.
Again, this is a fairly average company. The only truly negative aspect of it may be the prices of certain products — certain belts, to be specific — which seem rather ridiculous. Many of the more expensive belts cost over $100 or $200 (for no apparent reason) and are rather gaudy-looking. I don’t quite understand why these belts have such inflated prices. So, I would recommend staying away from the unattractive, over-priced belts — but the handbags, the main products here, are aesthetically appealing and seem to be just fine.
Overall, Best Handbag Wholesale is your average wholesale provider. I would caution watching out for some of the belt prices and being careful to remember that the “designer-inspired” items are only designer inspired imitations. Also keep in mind that the company does not offer shipping outside of the U.S., so you will have a somewhat restricted consumer pool. Still, the source is of fair value and may be worth looking into.
The integrity of the website is confirmed by Verisign.
The Internet has revolutionized the way home shoppers approach how they buy and sell real estate. In fact, according to the National Association of Realtors, over 80 percent of all buyers use the Internet as their first resource in searching for a house . And, over 30 percent of all houses purchased were first seen on the Internet. Among the many reasons for this trend include the fact that there is so much great information available on the web, there are a gazillions websites listing houses for sale and also the aging of the Generation X’ers, to the point where they are becoming house buyers (the Gen X’ers are very Internet savvy and prefer to do their research online).
I really became interested in buying and selling houses online in the summer of 2005 when I had a few investment properties to sell. The traditional means of hiring a real estate agent to list, then sell the homes really didn’t appeal to me for a couple of reasons. One, I didn’t want to pay a real estate fee as it would cut into my profit margins. Two, I’m kind of a do it yourself person that always has to try something first. So I looked for ways to sell houses using the Internet.
My search for ways to sell homes on the Internet soon took me to ebay real estate auction. After all, You can sell almost anything on eBay! eBay is the world’s leading marketplace for online goods and services so I was really curious as to how their real estate business was doing, especially considering what they had been able to accomplish in other areas. A person only has to look at one example of what eBay has done to revolutionize buying and selling. In the past few years have you ever looked at eBay to buy a car? If you had, you would have seen that in the year 2000 eBay had a small auto marketplace. Now fast forward to today and eBay Motors dominates the used car marketplace and is the country’s biggest car dealer! Hmmm…now take the above fact and do you think perhaps eBay Real Estate is similar today to where eBay Motors was in 2000? Was eBay poised to accomplish that same feat in Real Estate?
It seemed at the time that selling homes on eBay was really catching on and that it was where the action was in real estate. In mid 2006, eBay seemed like it was going to be a real leader for providing home sellers, investors and real estate agents an inexpensive and effective venue for buying and selling home, commercial properties, timeshares, land, and even mobile homes. The mid 2006 eBay real estate listings were as follows:
- Approximately 4650 Properties were Selling on eBay every month
- Average Listings on any Given Day included:
– 1300 Residential homes – 350 Commercial – 100 Mobile Homes – 1100 Timeshares – 1500 Land Parcels
Given the above numbers it seemed like there was a good base of homes being sold on eBay as well as timeshares and land.
So I plowed ahead and tried selling houses on eBay – two in Las Vegas, two in Washington and a couple of preconstruction homes in Destin FL. I met with mixed success, but more on these deals in a later article.
Now it is early 2009 and I wanted to check back in to see if the real estate business on eBay had picked up any in the two plus years since I had last checked their stats. Here is what I found:
– 520 Residential homes – 140 Commercial – 65 Mobile Homes – 1277 Timeshares – 1006 Land Parcels – 68 Other
The fact that the number of house listings, auctions and classified ads on eBay had declined really surprised. The number of timeshares for sale on eBay had certainly increased, but everything else went down. Why? Initially, I can only think of two reasons why eBay’s real estate business is down. One – the housing market is so bad right now that no one is trying to sell because of the belief there are no buyers. Two – eBay real estate really has not caught on as a place to buy and sell real estate. There can be many reasons contributing to issue number two such as competition for Craigslist (which is free), sellers have had poor success in the past trying to use eBay real estate and maybe all the bad press about online real estate scams have people scared off.
I am curious as to why eBay’s real estate business is down in numbers and I am curious as to what eBay will have to do to gain momentum in this market niche. Do you think how to sell a house on ebay will grow and prosper? Do you think it has a chance against all the other Internet competition?
If you want to sell real estate from your personal site – you will need targeted traffic for this site. You can get free traffic here.
Ratings - Overall Impression (8.6/10) * Great - Product Prices (7/10) - Product Quality (10/10) - Product Quantity (10/10) - Reliability of Service (8/10) - Impression of Website (8/10)
.
Review
Alpha Imports is a wholesale and dropship company of jewelry and gemstones. This company has an enormous stock of items — over 16,000 different items. The company offers mainly diamonds, precious gemstones, and semi-precious gemstones. It has about every type of gemstone you could imagine: over 40 different types, in fact. So, the strong point of this company, then, is its sheer quantity of products.
Not only does Alpha Imports offer a great selection and quantity of items, but the items are of high quality as well. On the website, each item is detailed by shape, color, cut, place of origin, luster, size, depth, treatment, hardness, clarity, grade, and weight. Thus, the website provides thorough information on each product, guaranteeing that you (and your customer) know exactly what you’re getting. The website also makes it easier to search through the massive stock of items by allowing you to seek specific gemstones by size, shape, weight, color, etc. and arrange the items by name, date, or price. In addition, the Alpha Imports offers certificates to verify the quality and grade of the gemstones/jewelry, one certificate per piece. The certificates are, however, priced separately and cost about $50.00 each. Of course, if you were to sell a piece of jewelry — say, a diamond ring — that costs about $5000, then it would definitely be a good idea to get the certificate for proof of authenticity. Customers will feel safer that way.
Well, so Alpha Imports has great product variety, quantity, and quality. But the thing to keep in mind is that these are high-quality goods, and the prices are generally high as well. The gemstones and jewelry can still be considered wholesale and generate good profits, but, as always, some items are priced better than others. Be sure to check your competitors’ prices before buying or offering any of the jewelry yourself, in order to see how your prices will compare.
All in all, Alpha Imports is a great jewelry and gemstone provider. The prices, though varying in terms of profitability, are generally worth the price. Sales should be fairly easy, considering how jewelry is such a high-demand product. The company itself offers a vast quantity of quality products — all the better for you to stock your store. In the end, I would say that Alpha Imports is definitely a company worth looking into.
The integrity of the website is confirmed by Verisign.
[Ratings] - Overall Impression (7.2/10) * Good - Product Prices (7/10) - Product Quality (7/10) - Product Quantity (7/10) - Reliability of Service (7/10) - Impression of Website (8/10)
[Review]
Papaya One is a company that offers wholesale electronics. This appears to be a fairly new company, as I have not heard much about it and have found few others who have actually worked with this company. Nevertheless, it appears to be a fine company to work with, considering there have been no scam reports thus far from the merchants who have used it.
The product prices, quality, and quantity all appear to be of average value. Some prices are better than others, so it is always wise to check your competition to see how they compare. Some of the products — particularly the very low-priced items, like the small alcohol breath testers — are only available in quantities of twenty or thirty items. Just keep that in mind while browsing. Also keep in mind the fact that this company is based in China, so the shipping costs may be rather high.
The quality of the electronics appears to be fine; there is an open customer review section that can help you decide whether or not an item is of good quality or not. Upon closer examination, I have found that Papaya One does not offer any genuine brand name items: there are mostly generic items and some imitations. Still, because electronics are such a high-demand product, this shouldn’t be detrimental to your sales. According to the customer reviews, most of the products are just fine.
The amount and selection of electronics appears to be moderate. There are just less than a thousand items available, encompassing about sixteen major categories. The unusual thing, however, is that Papaya One claims to be a wholesale electronics company, but for some reason, it also offers small selections of apparel and jewelry. Of course, this could work to your advantage; if you own a store that offers a wide selection of different goods, or if you have several stores of different types, then you could make use of this small differentiation in products.
All in all, Papaya One appears to be an “okay” company to work with. My only reserve in terms of recommending this company would be the fact that it is still rather new and unknown, so the reliability of the provider is still somewhat uncertain. However, if you really don’t mind working with a new/unknown provider — then go for it. I’d love to hear your feedback.
We can find people all over the world looking to make more money whether it be from working within their small work from home businesses or working in a small and medium enterprise; whatever the case may be we will always find that the amount of attention that is give to small business plans and also to write a business plan will go a long way to determining the amount of business success that is gained. Making sure that one is operating in the most appropriate write a business plan is something that the most experienced and skilled marketing professional do on a consistent basis as they implement their business and sales and marketing strategies.
Now when it comes to dealing with write a business plan the other thing that must be considered is the actual product and or service that is being delivered to the marketplace. In light of that we see that there are so many business owners who are operating their small work from home businesses by focusing on how to sell books on the internet as well as selling used books. We see that there are so many people who have hundreds of old used books in their homes and basements, there are often old college books that have been unused for years and years and we see that by looking to selling used books in line with consistent write a business plan strategies the business owners are able to generate very significant revenue streams.
Dealing with key specific write a business plan and applying them to a selling used books will mean that the business owner and marketing strategist will need to be in good command of their effective time management as this in line with time management courses will determine the level of success that they will see in their business and personal lives. These three key business strategy parameters of write a business plan, selling used books and time management courses if followed will see any business move on from strength to strength as the business owners look to implement consistent business strategies. It is vitally important in this day and age with the increasing amount of business competition and the fact that we are living in a credit crunch with more and more people having less and less monines to spend; that write a business plan, time management courses are some of the main things that are taken into consideration when one is planning the overall business marketing strategy of the company. It do happens that many people go for a business dealing in time management courses as we see that books will always continue to be one of those things in our lives that we can not do without as we see that knowledge will continue to be the key to our business strategy success.
Ratings - Overall Impression (7.8/10) * Good - Product Prices (7/10) - Product Quality (7/10) - Product Quantity (8/10) - Reliability of Service (9/10) (* offers live online/telephone help) - Impression of Website (8/10)
Review
Wholesale-Dress.Net is both a wholesale and dropship company that offers apparel for women and children. The items are mostly for women, but the website also offers maternity and children’s company. It seems, however, that the website handles wholesale better. Dropshipping is offered, but it involves a somewhat unusual process of depositing $200 in advance into your account, manually e-mailing the dropship order, and then confirming the order after your e-mail has been received. Of course, there’s always the chance that you will not sell $200 worth of items, unless you are serious and determined to work with this company. Thus, I would suggest testing out this provider with the wholesale option first, in order to experiment with how quickly the items sell and how much profit you can gain.
The next thing to investigate, of course, is pricing. Some of the clothing is very low-priced, less than $2.00, and of good quality. Other clothing may be of good quality, but they are too high-priced to consider wholesale. Since there is such a large quantity of items, you will likely find products that are suitable for your store and goals, so you may want to take a look. The website makes the searching process easier by giving the option of arranging all items in a category by price, update, or time still in stock — either in ascending or descending order. However, the key thing to remember is that the shipping charges are likely to be rather high. Remember to keep that in your calculations as you consider what products to buy and what profit they may induce.
All in all, Wholesale-Dress.Net is a worthwhile wholesale source. Though, I would only suggest trying the dropship option if you are truly serious about working with this company. In general, this provider has good prices and quality of items, which is worth looking into. Just be careful about the shipping costs.
