Ok and now onto the questions.

I am looking to start an online clothing store and wanted some advice on the best way to go about obtaining a retail business license or sellars license. I live in atlanta, ga which is home to America’s Mart, one of the largest apparel marts for buyers and wholesalers. This seems like a natural place to start looking for products especially since its around the corner. The only problem is in order to have access they require you to have a retail business license or federal resale tax certificate as well as business checks, proof or merchant credit card ID #, persoalized business ID and so on. I’ve done some research on other small online apparel companies and it doesn’t that many have all of these things. My question is, are all of these things necessary for a small online start-up, or is a place like America’s Mart not a good place for newbies to start.

It really depends on your state, but most states require you to have a business license before you are allowed to sell any “tangible” goods to the public. In your case, clothing is definitely considered a tangible good. If Georgia charges sales tax, then I’m almost positive that you will need a license.

In order to purchase wholesale from another business, a business license is required as well if you want to purchase your goods tax free. Otherwise you would end up paying sales tax twice, once to purchase the goods and again when you sell your goods to the end customer. In general, most wholesalers will refuse to deal with you unless you have a business license.

I’m probably a bit biased but when it comes to clothing, the absolute cheapest place to purchase your goods is from Asia. In sufficient quantities, a tshirt from Asia will cost you probably one-tenth of what it will cost you here in the US. I would probably test out the market with goods from a place like America’s Mart but then purchase in quantity from Asia once you know what works.

So to sum everything up. You probably need a business license. The rest of the items you have mentioned fall more or less into the same category. In general though, you should get yourself a separate business checking account and a federal tax ID number as well.

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Photo by MarkyBon

In fact, the media tends to portray entrepreneurs like lottery winners because that’s what makes the news. Because the chances of creating a company like You Tube or Facebook are so slim, most people shy away from starting their own business because they think it’s just way too risky with very little chance of success.

Just the other day, I had one of my readers email me that they were afraid to go out on their own because they didn’t want to risk everything for a measly 1% chance at success. A 1% chance at success? Where the hell did he get this number from? Turns out that he read that “99% of small businesses fail within their first year” which made him believe that he only had a 1% chance of succeeding.

Listen to me. This 99% statistic is complete and utter BS! Starting your own business doesn’t have to be the next big thing. And if you do things right, your business doesn’t have to be that risky either.

You Don’t Have To Hit A Home Run

The first thing that you have to understand is that your business idea doesn’t have to be the next Google, You Tube or Facebook to make money. If you are planning to start a company for the sole purpose of getting acquired for a billion dollars, then your chances truly are one in a gazillion. So instead of buying a lottery ticket, start something that you can make profitable within a short time frame.

Instead of setting your sights so high, focus on what can make you some money now with very little risk. Ignore the glamor and the hit or miss ideas. Divert your attention to simpler things. The simple things that people are looking to buy. Your idea may seem boring to your friends and family and it may even be mundane, but who cares? Find something that you can do and do it well.

Take a look at Tony Hsieh of Zappos. The man sells frickin shoes over the internet and makes billions of dollars a year. He’s successful because he sells shoes in such a way that people want to buy from his company. If you need a smaller example, take a look at our wedding linens business as well. We sell frickin handkerchiefs over the internet and make six figures every single year.

You don’t have to invent the next big thing. You don’t even need to do anything fancy. Look for a small niche and exploit it. If someone has already taken your idea, don’t let that stop you because the market is probably big enough for the both of you.

If you still don’t believe me, take a look around the next time you go shopping or go out to eat. My wife and I just ate at our favorite Chinese restaurant the other night. But did we go there because it’s the only Chinese restaurant in town? NO! In fact, there are probably 50 Chinese restaurants within a 15 mile radius of our house. And all of them have been in business for years. Despite the heavy competition, they still all make money.

By choosing a business idea that is simpler and easier to execute, you can improve your chances of success by several orders of magnitude. You might not strike it rich or make instant millions, but you can make a nice comfortable profit and be your own boss.

Keep The Upfront Costs Minimal

Keeping the risk factors low means keeping the expenses low as well. By creating a presence online, you can easily start your business for only a couple of bucks a month. Our wedding linens store is an online only store and costs only 80 dollars a month to maintain. If business were to suddenly stagnate, we could literally keep our store open indefinitely at our current burn rate.

When we first started out, our upfront costs were even less. Our web hosting only cost us $6.95 a month at Bluehost and we paid absolutely nothing in development costs. If you just take the time to look around, you can find a lot of free open source software already written for you and ready to use. These days, it’s extremely easy to Create Your Own Business Online. Read my tutorials and get a head start!

If you want the absolute lowest risk business possible, then start a blog or an affiliate marketing site. At $6.95 month, you can keep your website up for as long as you want until you are profitable.

Don’t Quit Your Job Until You Are Ready

If you need even more of a safety net, work on your business while you have a full time job. Take your time! Incubate your business within the comforts of your full salary and launch only when you are ready.

My wife and I worked on our online wedding linens business while we both had full time jobs. There was no pressure whatsoever for our online business to make any money early on because we had our salaries to back us up. Had we not had this cushion, we probably would have made more rash decisions just for the sake of money.

Some people can only be motivated by placing themselves in pressure situations. But if mitigating risk is your most important criteria, then don’t quit your day job until your business is already making money.

What Does It Mean To Fail Anyways?

My biggest beef about the “99% failure rate” statistic is that all businesses are lumped into one large category. I’ll bet that if this statistic was compiled again for just internet businesses alone that the failure rate would be far less.

These days, it doesn’t take much money to start a business and it doesn’t cost that much to maintain one either. If mitigating risk is your number one concern, then play it safe and start a low cost internet business. Pick something simple and build upon it. Businesses take time to grow and you can turn any boring old business into something huge if you have the time and patience.

Make The Decision Right Now To Quit Your Job

The very first step, before you start worrying about what you’re going to do to make money or thinking about what kind of business you want to build, is what I like to call step 0: decide to quit your job. Nothing else has to happen at this point, not even the actual quitting of the job. Simply making it your intention to quit your job in the near future gets you asking the right questions. The questions that propel you towards a more desirable existence, however you’re going to define it.

If you’re still working a job, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog if you loved it. And you probably aren’t reading this blog hoping to find “career” planning advice (i.e. trying to find another job). Why? Because another, better, higher paying job is not the answer, and you know it. You’ve already been down that road. You know that the emotional high from getting a “better” job is short lived, and soon you’ll return to the rut, the routine that keeps you stuck wanting more.

That’s why it’s important to decide, right now, this minute, no delay, to quit your job for good. In your mind already be gone. Pick a date. Calculate how much money you should save to cover living expenses. Start asking questions that matter. Start taking small actions. No more waiting for the solution to appear. The solution is in choosing to take a different path. An unknown path, no doubt, but one that could possibly lead to a more rewarding lifestyle.

Do it now.

Money Is Not The Answer

A lot of folks have the lottery mentality, which is believing that acquiring a large amount of money, without much effort, is the key to escaping the job world. This is certainly one path, but the odds are against you.

The fallacy here is that money is the solution, the magic bullet that’ll free you. While money is important, it’s not the answer. Money is only a means to an end, not the end. Those who amass and chase money are slaves just like those exchanging their life for a measly paycheck.

The key to eliminating the focus on money as the one obstacle keeping you in a job is to define your number. By your number, I mean how much would it take for you to quit your job right now? How much money do you think you need in the bank in order to feel comfortable quitting your job? This doesn’t mean how much you think you need to retire into a life of luxury, but how much you would need to sustain your current lifestyle for 6 months to a year, long enough to fire up that business or other venture you’ve been putting off. Until you exchange the vague “I don’t have enough money to quit”, with “I need $25,000 to feel comfortable quitting”, the lottery mentality will prevail and you’ll continue chasing an arbitrary moving target that impossible to hit.

Yeah, But…

If you got the “yeah, but…” attitude, then you should stay an employee. Keep reaching your hand out and depending on a master/king to provide your sustenance. Keep reading this blog and others looking for “the answer”, the one thing that will get you off your butt and into the game. Keep waiting for that stupendous idea to strike you over the head, the one that’s going to propel you to millions over night and change the world, the one that can’t fail because it’s so brilliant.

Good luck finding it.

I think that most people who have become successful on their own will tell you there is no magic formula, that everyone has to define their own path. It’s impossible to reduce your risk down to zero, which is where most people want it before they’re willing to take action. That’s why most settle for searching for a better job instead of building a profitable business. The former requires no risk whatsoever. The latter requires a little risk, but offers a much greater reward. Not just a monetary reward, but a life altering reward.

Excuses are just a means of avoiding fear and anxiety. Any new venture is going to be a least a little frightening, even starting a new job. But if you avoid the fear, you’re just going to end up exactly where you are right now. Face the fear, don’t run from it.

One of my favorite quotes is from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard , he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”

It’s Going To Be Scary, But That’s OK

When I finally worked up the courage to quit my job about 6 months ago, I was trembling. The moment arrived to tell my boss and my hands were sweaty, my heart was racing, and I was stammering my speech a little. I didn’t think I was going to be able to go through with it.

I stumbled through it though, but for the next couple of days, that anxious feeling persisted. I didn’t have any other source of income. I didn’t have any prospect of income on the horizon either. I had a ton of ideas, but they were just ideas at the time. I was filled with fear and began wondering if I was making the right choice. I knew logically and emotionally that it was, I couldn’t take working in a cramped little cube any more, no matter how well I was getting paid. But the prospect of being out on my own scared the crap out of me.

After a few days of practically living in panic and almost retreating back to the safety of my job, a wonderful thing happened to me, and I hardly recognized it. My focus shifted from “holy crap, what am I going to do now?” (panicked, emotionally charged, anxious) to “OK, where am I headed now?” (somewhat calm, focused, intentional). The panic had subsided and I started focusing on bringing all those ideas I had to life.

Now, I feel a sense of freedom I’m not sure I’ve ever felt before. I see the world filled with opportunity, almost to the point of being overwhelming. When I was mentally stuck in a job, my view of the world was limited. I was living in a scarcity mindset, clinging to any scraps I could get my hands on. Now I see the world is full of abundance. I just needed to open my eyes and become receptive to it.

It’s Time For You To Do The Same

It does you no good to sit around hoping something will change and you’ll be able to take the plunge. Trust me, that moment is never going to come unless you decide to make it happen. No one is going to save you. You’re not going to win the lottery or stumble into an unexpected inheritance (OK, it is possible, but highly unlikely). The planets are not going to align in your favor. Risk is never going to be reduced down to zero. Nothing is going to change in your life until you make the decision to change first.

Once you make that decision, taking step 0 and taking small little actions, defining where you want to go, you’ll see that it’s not so bad. Once you remove trying to go from the bottom of the mountain instantly to the top, you’ll begin to see that you might not have to climb the mountain at all. Shortcuts exists if you’re looking for them, people are out there who want to help you, and opportunity is all over the place, just waiting for you to seize a piece of it.

You don’t have to settle for an unrewarding job. You have a choice. Exercise it.

If you are unable to take step 0 right now, which is simply deciding in your mind to quit your job and start your own business, then it’s never going to happen. Might as well pick out your casket and head stone, which will read something like “This guy/girl lived an ordinary, uneventful, less than fulfilling life stuck in a job he/she hated because he/she was too afraid to simply exercise choice. The End.”

Photo by Rev Dan Catt

The problem for me when it comes to home buying though is that I hate carrying a large mortgage. I was always brought up to pay my debts in their entirety and to not have any financial obligations hanging over my head. For example, I always pay my credit cards on time. I rarely if ever borrow money from friends. Hell, I won’t even borrow money to buy a car unless the finance rate is at or below the interest rate I can get at a bank.

All of these ideals are further reinforced by all of the frugality and personal finance blogs that I read on a regular basis. But principles aside, it looks like I’m going to have to bite the bullet with the house since I simply don’t have enough money to buy a home entirely in cash.

Our Situation

Speaking of cash, my wife and I are in fairly good shape. Because of our frugal ways and our online business, we have managed to save at least what I consider to be a decent amount of cash. And having this nest egg of money has allowed us to sleep very soundly at night. If I were to ever lose my job, we could survive pretty much indefinitely on our online business income at our current burn rate. If I were to lose my job and our business went under, we could still survive for a decent amount of time as well off of our savings.

But when you factor in the cost of the new house into the equation, our financial situation definitely worsens. That’s not to say that we are going beyond our comfort zone with this new house, but the size of the down payment will put a huge dent into our nest egg and introduce a fairly hefty mortgage payment as well.

The Question

If everything continues to go smoothly with both my job and our business, we can easily afford this house. If I lose my job for an extended period, our business can still pick up the slack for a very long period of time. But if I were to lose my job and our business went under, we might be in a bit of a bind. We could still survive for a reasonable amount of time but it would definitely be stressful.

By the way if you haven’t noticed, I’m more concerned about losing my day job rather than our business going under. That’s not to say that I’m insecure about my job, but I’m not 100% in control over my day job like I am with our online business. The likelihood of our online business suddenly making zero revenue is pretty close to nil. If anything bad were to happen to the business, it would happen gradually over time and we would be able to see it coming and adjust accordingly. With my job however, the executives and the board of directors might suddenly decide that the project I’m working on is no longer worthwhile and lay me off at a moments notice. This is a very important distinction and one of the main reasons having our own business is more stable than my day job.

In any case, I’m left with a very difficult decision. Do I borrow more money and maintain a larger nest egg or do I borrow less and have a much smaller monthly mortgage payment?

The Case For Borrowing More

We are currently in a unique situation living in this depressed economy. Interest rates for mortgage loans are at rock bottom. And while it’s still a bit difficult to get approved for a loan, once you do it’s a major bargain to borrow money right now. In fact the interest rates are so low that it is highly unlikely that rates will be this low again for a very long time. In addition at the rate the US government is printing money, it seems that higher inflation is inevitable making it extremely favorable to take out a larger loan.

The other thought I had in regards to taking out a larger loan and putting less money down is that my salary and our online business earnings will continue to rise to offset the increased mortgage payment. Borrowing more money also means having more cash readily available in case of disaster or more realistically in case we need to make any additional modifications on the house.

The Case For Borrowing Less

Borrowing less money is more inline with the principles that I was brought up with. By having a more manageable mortgage, either the business or my day job alone would suffice to cover all of our costs at our current burn rate. We would have to live frugally but I would have peace of mind that we could continue to pay the mortgage even in pretty bad times. The only problem is that our nest egg would be depleted leaving us with less money in case of emergencies.

Clearly there is a fine line here where we need to find a happy medium. Given the following hypothetical scenarios, which would you choose?

• Take out a larger mortgage while maintaining a large enough nest egg for a years worth of burn rate in case something bad happens.
• Take out a smaller mortgage with a significantly smaller nest egg but with a mortgage payment that is easily manageable by either the day job or business alone
• Take out the largest mortgage possible to offset future inflationary pressure

I’m eager to hear your thoughts.

Photo by Alan Clark Design

Take our online store as an example. 90% of our customers complete their purchase from our online wedding linens store without ever contacting us. And whenever this happens, it’s difficult to make a strong impression. We have not personally interacted with the customer in any way and the point of sale is just another sale. Sure, the customer might like our products and they might mention our business to a few of their friends. But most likely, their purchasing experience just blends in like any other.

The best way to spread positive word of mouth about your online business is by having an interaction with your customer. And the best way to shine with your customers is by dealing with negative situations with a positive attitude.

Go out of your way to fix bad situations even if it isn’t directly your fault. I’m not saying that you should sabotage your business to get customer calls but when disaster strikes, think of it as an opportunity and not a calamity.

The Delivery Screwup

Recently, we had a customer place an order with us about 10 days before her wedding. Because she was having a destination wedding, she needed her order at least 5 days prior in order to catch her flight. To make matters more complicated, her order consisted of a variety of personalized handkerchiefs that required custom embroidery.

Under normal circumstances, we usually ask the customer to allow at least 5 days for any custom items to be created prior to shipment. This made the timeline relatively tight using standard shipping methods. But the customer absolutely did not want to pay extra money for rush delivery(we charge $30). Under the circumstances however, we felt very confident that her order would reach her on time because she lived in the same state and only 60 minutes away.

In any case, we bumped up the priority of her order and managed to ship out her order the following day. Just as a precaution, I personally followed up on the status of her order to make sure that she received it on time. Sure enough, the tracking on her order indicated that it was delivered the following day and well within her deadline.

3 days passed and I thought things were all good until I received a call from this customer. In fact, when I first picked up the phone, I was expecting her to thank me profusely for delivering her order in such a prompt fashion. Instead, I got this…

Customer: You told me that I would receive my order on time but I still haven’t gotten it and now I have a plane to catch! Where is my order?!?!

Me: That’s strange. I tracked the status of your order personally and you should have received it well over 3 days ago.

Customer: Well I haven’t received anything! I need my order by tomorrow morning by 8am!

Me: I apologize. Let me see what happened. Oh man! The tracking on your order says that your package was delivered to the wrong address and was being resent! I swear that just the other day, the tracking page indicated that your order was delivered properly.

Customer: Well clearly, it wasn’t! You do realize that I have a plane to catch right? Can you send me another set ASAP?

Me: I’m sorry ma’am. Even if we had another set of hankies custom embroidered, we would be unable to have them shipped out today. It’s already too late in the day (It was already 6pm).

Decision Time

At this point, I had two options. I could make an excuse and state very clearly that we are not responsible for our delivery carrier’s actions. After all, if this customer wanted to guarantee a specific delivery date, she could have selected “Express Delivery” which we absolutely guarantee.

The other option was to take a loss and go out of our way to rectify the situation. The choice was tough because there was a fair amount of money at stake and I had to make this choice in a little under ten seconds. After all, I couldn’t really handle this situation half ass. I either had to wholeheartedly try and help or turn her away. For me at least, I personally hate it when companies try and weasel their way out of paying only to give in to your demands after you have yelled and fussed.

Ultimately, I choose to help her out. We had her order custom embroidered that night and we shipped out her order directly to her wedding venue via express mail first thing the following morning. And let me tell you, rush shipping is not cheap by any means!

The Aftermath

Ultimately, the customer received her order on time. 2 weeks later, I received the following message.

Steve,

I just wanted to sincerely thank you for your assistance in this matter. You were prompt, helpful and sympathetic while solving the problem immediately.

It is so rare to receive such proactive and efficient customer service. Thank you treating me like a person instead of a number. I will recommend you to everyone I know.

Was It Worth It?

We lost money on this transaction but did it matter? I’m sure that this customer probably told all of her friends or at least her bridal party about her experience with our online business. And I’m 100% positive that whenever any of her friends or acquaintances require wedding linens, she will point them our way.

While it’s difficult to quantify the effect of a good customer service deed, I have to believe that eventually all of the good karma will catch up to us someday. If anything, it sure felt damn good to receive that email from the customer. In fact, I would argue that her testimonial itself was worth every penny.

Photo by Stoo Hopwood

As a result, we went out of our way to do special requests for anyone that asked even if it had no long term value for the business.

The quick cash was like a drug. Seeing money come in validated our store’s existence and we let our fear of missing out on potential business turn us into virtual doormats. Back then, we didn’t value our time and it took a few bad customer situations to that help us realize our true worth.

The Wealthy Customer

I very clearly remember our first large potential customer. Her name was Anita and she was helping her daughter plan her wedding which was to take place the following year. I remember speaking with her on the phone for the first time and getting the impression that she was extremely wealthy. I also received a vibe that she wanted her daughter’s wedding to be extra special no matter what the cost. That last part made me salivate.

I remember Anita found us on the web by clicking on our adwords link and wanted to order personalized wedding handkerchiefs for her daughter’s wedding invitations. She had this vision of embroidering the guest’s name on a lace handkerchief and wrapping a paper invitation inside. Quite a novel idea actually and all told we were looking at a deal worth well over $2500 in revenue which easily would have been our largest single order to date.

The problem was that Anita was not satisfied with any of the embroidering options that we had in place at the time. She wanted something very specific to be stitched onto each handkerchief and she wanted to see what it would look like before placing her order.

After getting a rough outline of what she wanted, my wife and I were comfortable with her request and we agreed to help her out. After all, Anita seemed like a very pleasant lady and easy to work with as well. We would work out the details later.

The Result
While Anita was extremely nice, she had no clue what she really wanted. Even though we made samples for her and even put up webpages with detailed photos of the handkerchiefs, she never seemed satisfied. She would tweak things slightly this way, or move the text around. And each iteration would take us several hours to implement.

In fact, we spent several weeks trying to refine the embroidered design to her specifications and she was clearly getting frustrated and so were we. Meanwhile, my wife and I had completely dropped the rest of our business on the floor for this lady. Our original vision of our online store was one of complete automation. Orders were supposed to fly in from the internet and we would just have to fulfill them. Working with Anita on her wedding project just took too much of our time.

Ultimately, we decided to call it quits. The aftermath? One month wasted and no money to show for it.

The Special Order

One of the main strategies that my wife and I had early on with our business was to specifically go after wedding planners. The idea was that if we could get a bunch of wedding planners on board that we could sustain a steady stream of referral business over the long haul. So we were always on our best behavior whenever any sort of event planner contacted us over the phone..

This particular wedding planner wanted to order 50 dozen of our rose embroidered napkins for a last minute reception. But the problem was that it was one of our least popular napkin styles and we didn’t have enough in stock to fulfill her order. The other problem was that she needed the napkins in under 2 weeks.

Since our vendors are from overseas and our products are made to order, we had to pay extra for expedited manufacturing and air delivery. Normally, we would never have placed such an order without collateral, but the wedding planner assured us that she was definitely going to buy from us and just needed the final okay from her customer.

The timeframe was so tight that we decided to place the order with our manufacturer even before the final approval was met. After all, thousands of dollars were at stake.

The Result
The wedding planner was true to her word. She did receive approval from her customer and she did place the order. However, the order was far less than she had initially specified. Turns out her customer decided to reduce their budget and slashed their guest list by over a half. We ended up only making 40% of what we thought we were going to make and we were stuck with dozens of our worst selling napkin styles.

Special Delivery

Perhaps we’re just softies but my wife and I tend to be very sympathetic towards desperate brides. Whenever we get calls from customers on the verge of tears over something wedding related, we are much more inclined to listen and go out of our way to help them out.

Occasionally, we’ll receive orders from customers who live only 10-15 minutes minutes away. This one particular customer placed an order online and then called us begging for permission to pick up her wedding linens in person for her wedding the following day.

One of our policies is that we don’t allow customers to visit our storage facility. We don’t have a physical storefront so we are not comfortable handling customer visits directly. We either ship our orders or we turn the customer away.

Honestly, I have no idea what came over us that day. Perhaps it was because we were desperate for business. Perhaps it was because this bride wanted to order a large quantity of linens. Perhaps it was because she cried over the phone. In any case, we decided to deliver the linens to her rather than have her come to pick them up.

The Result
In her haste, the bride gave us an incorrect address which caused my wife and I to go on this wild goose chase to deliver her order. While her residence was only supposed to be 10 minutes away, we could not find her house nor could we contact her by phone either. She simply wasn’t picking up her cell.

So my wife and I ended up expending a lot of energy trying to track down her real address over the internet. We used every means possible. We searched for her on Google. We tried looking for her fiance by combing the wedding registries. When we finally found her, we had effectively wasted our entire day.

What’s The Point Of All This?

After going through many more situations like the ones described above, my wife and I gradually learned to say no. Learning to say no was an important word to learn because it will allowed us to focus on growing our business the way we wanted it to grow. These days, my wife and I use the following rules of thumb when it comes to one off projects.

• Does the nature of the work provide long term value to the business? Can the work be leveraged towards content or new products for the store?
• Is the money involved justify our personal time and effort? Are we paying ourselves enough?
• Is the income scalable? Can we afford to take on many of these projects without killing ourselves first?

Take it from a former “yes” man. Saying “no” is an underrated skill and can be one of the most valuable words in your vocabulary. One thing we often neglect is the value of our own time. The sooner we realize our true worth, the sooner we can focus our efforts on what truly matters.

I am trying to start my business but I’m having a heck of a time with dreamweaver. It’s got to be the most unintuitive thing i’ve ever tried to learn. Especially with CSS considering one change on one page changes something else you didn’t intend in a different page. I’ve come close to throwing my laptop several times now.

Anyway, I was initially trying to build my own website by myself and just add an “add-on” shopping cart to it that I can drop “add to cart” buttons anywhere on the page. However, I know that html or “static” front end websites are more search engine friendly and can have a more custom look but I’m also considering just giving in to one of the “ALL IN ONE” shopping carts. These are usually open source like zen cart, os-commerce, or magento… etc… however they are also php driven and have crazy extensions like ?\ lkdjfke.php … I think you know what I mean.

Anyway, I’ve heard these .php carts are simpler and functionally superior in every way, but are not search engine friendly.

My question to you is this.

If I give up on creating my own site from scratch and buy a zen cart template or Magento template. Will it hurt my searches in the long run?

Also, what shopping cart did you go with for your store?

I’m going to be frank here. If you are having problems with basic HTML/CSS using Dreamweaver to design your website, then I would say that you should DEFINITELY stop trying to design something from scratch and go with an open source shopping cart or even an all-in-one solution like Yahoo Merchant Solutions.

Designing shopping carts from scratch is extremely difficult. Even if you manage to get a skeleton of a shopping cart working, you still have to worry about security issues. I’m just guessing that if are not proficient in html/CSS that you are probably not proficient in php either. Therefore, it is a much better use of your time to grab something off the shelf and modify it over building something completely from scratch. If you haven’t already, you might want to read my guide on How To Create A Profitable Online Store

The second thing I would like to make clear is that all of the open source shopping carts like Magento, ZenCart etc… can all be easily made to be search engine friendly. In fact, if you are new to SEO, then arguably these shopping carts will do a better job than you can by yourself. Your URLs don’t have to appear dynamic like ?abcdf.php. You can change the way your URLs look very easily.

We use a heavily modified version of OSCommerce for our online store, but if I were to do it all over again, I’d probably start with something different. My advice is to take a test drive of the different open source carts out there. They should all be very straightforward to install and it’s free.

If you find all of this overwhelming, then I would suggest a fully hosted all in one shopping cart solution like Yahoo

If I am planning to do affiliate marketing of an e-book, do you still recommend that I get a separate FEIN, business license, permits, etc? It seems like these are only necessary if I am the seller. Please advise.

If you plan on treating your business like a real business and intend to take tax deductions on business expenses, then you should get a FEIN and keep all of the finances for your business completely separate. I would then open a brand new bank account with this FEIN just for your business.

The business license is not necessary since you are not selling physical goods nor do you need to worry about getting any permits either. In fact as an affiliate, you are just pushing someone else’s products so you are technically not the seller.

I purchased a domain to use for affiliate marketing of health/fitness related products…..Eventually, I may want to branch out and sell different types of products (not specifically fitness related), which would require different domains. Then do all the domains require a DBA? It’s a bit confusing.

The purpose of a DBA is to allow a customer or the government to track you down in case of bad business practices or fraudulent behavior. In your case, you are throwing up a website to do affiliate marketing so you are technically not selling any product yourself. You are simply referring others to a product on a completely different domain. Just to make sure though, you are not accepting payment on any of these domains correct?

If you are not selling anything on your website, then you shouldn’t need a DBA. But as soon as you start accepting money for goods and services, that is when you have crossed the line. In any case, I would check with a small business accountant or lawyer just to make sure.

I wanted your opinion on the Yahoo merchant solutions. I know you said eBay stores are not the way to go. I completely understand why, especially after doing some research. But I was looking at the yahoo merchant solutions, and they charge a monthly fee to do all the hosting as well as charge a 1.5% of all gross sales. It seems like they offer a lot of services, including good customer support, for the price. I am pretty computer literate, but have never built a website. I’m concerned a little about the learning curve. I was wondering if you have heard any feedback or have knowledge of Yahoo! Merchant solutions and what they have to offer. Basically, I am trying to figure out whether to go the all-in-one route, or do and learn everything on my own.

The Good

Having considered Yahoo Merchant Solutions in the past for our online store, I do know that Yahoo is one of the best all in one ecommerce solutions out there. In fact, many of our top competitors run Yahoo stores and several of them make far more money than we do.

The main advantage is that Yahoo practically takes care of everything for you. They host your online store for you on their world class webservers. They provide you with access to their fully featured shopping cart solution. They even help you design your online web storefront. And all of this comes at a fairly reasonable price of $39.95/month for their starter package. In addition to this monthly fee, they also charge a very reasonable 1.5% fee off your gross sales.

Here are the advantages that are immediately obvious from using Yahoo over an open source ecommerce solution.

• They offer tools and templates to help you design your online storefront.
• Their shopping cart is already search engine optimized and easy to implement.
• They offer reliable web hosting for your online store
• You have access to their fully featured shopping cart solution which is powerful and offers many bells and whistles
• You get 24/7 technical support from Yahoo. If your website goes down, Yahoo will make sure that it gets up and running right away. You are not responsible for the uptime of your site.
• They help you take care of credit card and payment processing. You don’t have to worry about your servers being PCI compliant
• They provide you with access to powerful analytics for your website

In short, Yahoo Merchant Solutions is an excellent choice if you don’t want to deal with the mechanics of putting up your own website and setting up the necessary infrastructure. You don’t have to have any prior knowledge of web programming or how to set up a server at all. Everything just works under the domain of your choice.

The Bad

Everyone is scared of the unknown. If you don’t know anything about how to set up a website or an online store, signing up for a service like Yahoo Merchant Solutions can be extremely tempting.

However it’s important to realize that once you sign up and establish your store using Yahoo, you are essentially tied to their service. And at that point, Yahoo has gotten you pregnant. You can not easily leave because that means switching to a completely different ecommerce platform.

You can not easily move to a different shopping cart because all of the links to your products have already been firmly entrenched in the search engines. You can not easily leave because you don’t know how to leave. Yahoo has done everything for you so you possess very little knowledge about how websites work.

Meanwhile if the going ever gets tough, they have the upper hand and can change their policies and terms of use at any time. If they are under pressure to make their earnings for the quarter, they can jack up their rates. Their prices may appear inexpensive for now, but they will definitely increase over time. If Yahoo were to one day decide that their eCommerce solutions were no longer profitable or they were to get acquired, they could close up shop and leave your store in the dark.

By signing up for a service like Yahoo Merchant Solutions, you are essentially handing over the platform of your business to someone else. And at that point, you don’t really have full control of your store anymore except for the domain.

Should I Stay Away Then?

Whether or not you should sign up for Yahoo Merchant Solutions entirely depends on your skill set and your motivation to pick up new things. If you are completely computer illiterate and you have no desire to learn about website programming, then go with Yahoo. If you want to get up and running right away and not have to deal with setting up your shopping cart, then go with Yahoo. If you want something that is proven and works right out of the box, then go with Yahoo.

Just keep in mind that basing your store on a proprietary platform will make it difficult to switch services in the future. That being said, I know of many successful online stores that run on Yahoo’s ECommerce Solutions. Yahoo is definitely a powerful and feature rich platform.

In the end, it comes down to personal preference. When my wife and I opened our store, I was highly motivated to become self-sufficient so I learned how to program php and analyzed the nuts and bolts of various open source shopping carts. Ultimately, I wanted to be in control of my own destiny and I wanted to minimize paying unnecessary fees to third party providers.

In reality, you can’t go wrong either way and it’s a tradeoff between flexibility vs ease of use. Being able to say that I have access to my shopping cart source code is very important to me. But if you don’t mind being tied to a service, Yahoo is an excellent option.

Photo by Gibsonclaire

In effect, our entire business has been pretty much on cruise control which is why for the past several months we’ve been neglecting many important tasks and just letting our business coast.

But just the other day, my neurotic side kicked in and I started feeling a sudden wave of fear like I was being chased. Is it really safe to assume that our online store will always continue to grow? Has the competitive landscape changed at all? Can we really depend and sustain this level of income in the long term while just coasting along?

Everything is fragile. For example, if a major retailer started carrying our products all of a sudden, it would probably take a huge chunk out of our sales. More and more competitors could pop up and steal business away from us. Wedding trends could change and make our products undesirable. Many bad things could happen.

Why Am I Thinking About This Now?

With another child on the way in a few months, my wife and I are currently shopping for a new house. Now a funny thing always happens to us whenever we go home shopping. Our real estate agent always starts out by showing us a bunch of houses within our set range. But every now and then, she’ll also show us a house that is just above what we think we can afford.

Naturally, the house that is slightly outside of our range always appears far more desirable so we start second guessing ourselves and wondering if we can stretch a bit and afford the larger, better home. This happened to my wife and I just the other day. Our agent showed us a house that was 75k more expensive than our comfort zone. Of course, we both loved the place so we started doing some back of the envelope calculations to determine whether we could swing it based on our current income.

And then we fell into the trap. We started assuming that I would always have my job. We started assuming that our online store would continue to grow at an extremely accelerated pace even though we’ve just been coasting. We started making assumptions that if false, might severely affect our finances.

Can We Maintain The Status Quo?

The reality is that when things are going well, we have a tendency to relax and slack off. We start getting used to our current lifestyle and we depend on it. We become demotivated and complacent. After all, if we are getting by with things the way they are, then why change?

But guess what? Unless you make an active effort to keep things interesting and challenge yourself, your life will slowly degrade over time. You can’t just do the bare minimum to get by and hope things will stay the same. You can’t just slack off and not pay the price.

When I sat down and did a competitive analysis of our business for the first time in months, I discovered that 3 new competitors had entered our space! All of this time that we were just sitting back and collecting money, new entrants into the wedding market have been busy trying to claw their way into our market and steal our customers! I have no doubt that if we stay stagnant much longer that we will eventually be overtaken by our competition.

Are You Just Getting By?

It is human nature to take the path of least resistance. Whenever I’m faced with a big decision, my first instinct is to think to myself, “I’m getting by fine right now so why not just stay put?” In the back of my mind, I’m always hoping that things will either stay the same or change for the better if I just wait it out. But time and time again, I’ve discovered that things don’t just get better by themselves. You can’t just depend on luck to miraculously come your way. Time is your enemy!

The same holds true if you are sticking with that boring day job just to pay the bills. Are you just getting by? Are you living paycheck to paycheck? Are you lukewarm about your day job? Sure, you might be fine slogging yourself to work each and everyday for now, but eventually little things will start to bother you. Small annoyances that used to be tolerable will gradually drive you crazy. You’ll become unhappy. You’ll become dissatisfied. You’ll become depressed but you’ll feel trapped because you didn’t plan ahead.

The sooner that you come to the realization that it’s impossible to maintain the status quo in the long term, the sooner you can anticipate the problems ahead and address them.

The Idle Plan Trap

I’ll be the first one to admit that I often make plans that I only half heartedly plan on fulfilling. There are many business related tasks that I should be doing but because things have been going so well, I’ve been putting them off. But that must now change.

Shopping for a home has given me the kick in the ass that I’ve needed to reevaluate our long term income generation plans. We are soon going to be committing ourselves to a good sized mortgage which also means that we also have to commit ourselves to maintaining and generating new income streams as well.

All good things will eventually come to an end. Our online store could stop generating income if we don’t adapt to the market. Business could deteriorate very quickly with my current employer and I could lose my day job. There is no such thing as coasting by even if you want to stay in your present position. In short, cruise control simply does not work!

Anticipate change or risk getting blindsided when things turn for the worse. Those people who took out home equity lines of credit to fund their lavish lifestyles paid the price when the housing market collapsed. Don’t depend on what you have today because you could lose everything at a moments notice. Diversify yourself and pursue your passions while you still can.

Yes, it takes energy to change. It takes energy to start a new business. It takes energy to maintain your current position. If you don’t expend any energy at all, things will only get worse. Now is the time to discover what motivates you. Find something that you want to pursue and stop coasting!