Online sales??

[Davy Da Rosa]

Hello,

New to the forum. I'm glad I found this place. It's a wealth of knowledge and experience that I can't thank all of you enough.

My question to you experts is:

Do your sales come mainly from marketing yourself to local businesses and clients?

Or would you recommend setting up a store front online so that we can sell our products and services from an online store.

Thanks

[Ben Lang]

I think that depends completely on the product/services you are offering, and who your customer base will consist of. Local listings may be helpful if you're offering a local service or a product that is difficult to ship, and an internet based store front would be more helpful for a smaller niche kind of product line, or an online based service.

If you provide a little more information on your product/services we might be able to give more insight.

[Joe Pelonio]

I have sold a few artistic items online (E-Bay) but most of my laser work is wholesale production work. Other than a few previous sign customers that added laser orders, probbaly 90% of my new business came from my website, via people searching. My first big customer was in another state. When I started with the laser there much less competition than now, just 6 years later.

[Harper Abbot]

My sales are almost 100% niche web sales, besides local word-of-mouth jobs.

I would think any business would be foolish not to have some kind of web presence, though.

[Viktor Voroncov]

Very good tool is Google Adwords - I think you can buy something local like "laser engraving in Wa" and it bring good results.

[Ben Lang]

With Google Adwords you can also target your ads to any state, or city too I believe, as well as time frames, platforms, days of the week, etc. Link that with Google Analytics and you have a VERY powerful tool for tracking where your sales are coming from and it even gives suggestions for more keywords to add. Be sure to set conversions and goals.

Be careful your budget doesn't get out of hand, you could find yourself paying out a good deal of cash every month if you let Google Adwords do what it wants!

There is lots of info on Google Adwords available right in their online help center.

[Dave Wagner]

If you know a bit about websites, and If you have paypal, you can setup "BUY IT NOW" buttons on your site, etc....and they can automatically go thru paypal and the other people can use credit cards. I do 100% Paypal (sometimes a few checks/MO's), but never had a problem in over 5 years.

Ebay - You can create a store front for like $15?/month

Yahoo has online commerce stuff too. $$/Month (Not sure)

[Robert Walters]

I do 100% Paypal (sometimes a few checks/MO's), but never had a problem in over 5 years.

I no longer accept checks. Had a "questionable" order once so I took the check to the bank it was issued from and was just a complete hassle getting it cashed.

Due to fraud and various scams, I will *ONLY* accept USPS Money Orders (or PayPal for electronic payments). Even Cashier's Checks can have stop payments as well as being fake.

The USPS will allow $3000 USD per money order and you can get more than one money order if it exceeds that amount. You can also cash the money order at any US post office too without any hassle or service fees.

The postal clerks tell me they too have seen fake USPS money orders, but the thing is if it is fake, just don't ship the order.

If it helps, USPS Money Orders have a watermark of Ben Franklin in them.

[Mike Null]

Most of my customers are on terms and I never have problems with checks. I never never lost one in 12 years. Don't scare yourself out of business.

[Rodne Gold]

What are you intending to sell and what services are you offering?