Grabapple Guide to E-commerce

"This product has ZERO gimmicks, no fancy salesletter or hyped up promises. It simple offers you the TRUTH, from someone who has lived and breathed it."

"It walks you through every facet of it from finding suppliers, drop-shipping, to running you through site set-up, layout and just about anything else that you would like to know."

"…The guide gives a complete guide to finding product to sell and how to gauge if there is sufficient market for it, and also if there is sufficient profit margins in it. He even goes so far as to tell you what are the hot niches to seek out products in. Very, very helpful."

"When I finished up reading part of one of this eCommerce book, I was thinking to myself: This is what was missing out of the 4 Hour Work Week. Tim just could not be bothered to go into this level of detail on how to run a profitable small business."

Warrior Forum Gathering 2012 – Part 3

Written by Dave on March 23, 2012

Right! So here we go with my report on the second day of the conference in Raleigh NC. A few caveats – as on the first day, I didn’t take notes on everything. And as noted in previous reports, I only paid attention to the stuff I was interested in. Some of the presentations were not for me (Most were aimed at those who create multiple WSOs as a business model).

Also, some of the stuff presented doesn’t need to go out into the wild as it were. So – you shouldn’t take the amount of notes or depth of coverage on any one presenter as indicative of the quality of the presenter or his material, OK?

Day Two started off with a headache. I suspect that I was over-served the previous night. In any event, I missed the first 2/3 of our first speaker, who was scheduled to start at 9am. On a Sunday morning. When the night before was the Daylight Savings Time “leap forward”.

But – unsurprisingly, given the combination of the time change and relentless partying the night before, no one else made it either. I was told later that there were only about a dozen people in the conference room at 9am, instead of the 150 or so expected.

In any event, I did finally make my way down, fortified with caffeine and aspirin to hear our first presenter.

Zero to 6 Figures Thanks to Friends and Thieves

Dennis Becker

Apologies to Dennis for missing the first part of his presentation. Dennis was very personable, and his presentation was autobiographical. He related his experiences as an eBay seller of collectibles as well as the owner of a brick and mortar store selling the same.

Some of you may remember the Beanie Baby craze – he was part of that as well, selling not just the plush toys, but the accessories like tag protectors. (The tag left on the Beanie Baby was a sign both of authenticity and the untouched status if the collectable.)

Why people bothered is beyond me. But then, I don’t understand video games either, so there you go. In any event, Dennis was robbed – twice – the second time at gunpoint, so he decided to forego the physical store and venture forth online.

He’s tried a lot of different income models. Currently, in addition to his own sites he runs a forum with Rachel Rofe that seems similar to other MMO forums, albeit with a ton of free MMO products available for download.

How to Build a Massive Community and Earn Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars

Barry Plaskow and Roger D

Ha! Nice title. Turns out though they actually do it. This was my favorite presentation of the day. Barry is a dynamic speaker, quick with a quip, obviously very smart, and just a joy to watch. Their show was all about building a community and lauching WSOs in the most profitable way possible.

Warrior Forum Gathering 2012 – Part Two

Written by Dave on March 22, 2012

Hi Guys. If you didn’t read Part One, you need to go back and do so. There is a lot of background there on the nature of the Warrior Forum I am sure you will find interesting.

My notes are by no means complete. I only recorded the things that mattered most to me, and that I found interesting. Other times, the nature of the presentation did not lend itself to voluminous note-taking. I also left some things out on purpose – I am using my own judgment here, but some of the stuff in these presentations needs to stay in Vegas, if you know what I mean…

So – you shouldn’t take the amount of notes as an indicator of the quality of either the speaker or this particular presentation, okay?

We pick the report up right after lunch on Day One. Once we all came back from burgers by the pool (not as good as it sounds, since the pool was covered) we dove right back into it with

Expert Panel Session

Essentially, we just lined up some of the bigger names and shot questions at them. I couldn’t tell you who answered what questions – it was pretty much a free for all, with everyone chiming in where ever they had something to contribute. I just tried to absorb what I could, and took notes on the best bits.

First up we had a question about the best software to use for a WordPress based membership site. Wishlist won out among the panel, with honorable mention going to Profits Theme (?) used with PayPal, and Optimize Press with DAP (Digital Access Pass).
Stop worrying about what Google wants and worry about what your customer wants.
Whether you are launching WSOs or are just a member in the Warrior Forum, relationships are key. Build them right away, and maintain them.
Find a paid Mastermind group and join it. Paid because people take things more seriously when they have some skin in the game.
Give just to give, not as a tactic to receive.
Consider doing a free WSO.
You can study and learn a thousand different things, but the one indispensable skill is marketing.
Sell one product over and over. Work it, improve it, make it into a cash cow.
Work on what is working! Ignore your new ideas until your old ones are complete. One project at a time.
Take action – in a focused way. Internet marketing is a paid scholarship. The only career where the school is free, and you can make a ton of money in less than two years.
If you are a product creator, remember that even a failed product can be used as a giveaway later.
Take all the notes you want (I believe this was Shawn Casey talking to those of us scribbling furiously) but take action. Make a list of Action Items from your notes and them follow through.
Dr. Ben on outsourcing: Don’t do the stuff you don’t enjoy. If you’re deciding what parts of the business to outsource, make it the parts you don’t like.

Warrior Forum Gathering 2012 – Part One

Written by Dave on March 17, 2012

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending a conference of a few hundred people in Raleigh NC. The occasion was the fourth annual Warrior Forum gathering. I had a blast, and learned a lot, as will be seen below.

Before I get into the meat of it, I want to address the Warrior Forum itself, and the way it is viewed by most in the internet marketing community.

(Note: This reflects only my own small experience here. There may be groups of people outside the WF who hold it in high regard. I have not seen them.)

Opinion on the Wf seems to be divided into two camps:

The Warrior Forum is a good place to get started making money online. The combined experience of the members makes for a tremendously large information resource on most every possible technique available.
The Warrior Forum is a snakepit of opportunists preying on noobs, and WSOs (warrior Special Offers) are crap products and reports that serve only to separate the unwary from their PayPal balances.

As is usually the case, the truth is somewhere in between. There are troubling aspects to the forum, and to the way in which many WSOs are sold. But there are also numerous vendors and product creators who do their best to provide maximum value to the Warrior community.

Sporadically over the weekend I posted some of my observations to one of the forums I frequent (not the Warrior Forum). The responses were pretty much what I expected, ranging from distaste to morbid curiosity, to genuine interest. I’ll start with these below, as they are raw and unfiltered by reflection. Some are edited for clarity and privacy.

Change Your Life With a Breakthrough Project

Written by Dave on March 5, 2012

There’s nothing wrong with running a business, and making a living. I do it and maybe you do too. But there’s one thing about it that is inherently self limiting:

Most people are too busy making a living to get rich.

If you spend all day, every day, just working your business how will you get free? How will you ever manage to spend your time doing anything else?

One way is to follow the excellent advice in the classic book The E-Myth Revisited and work on your business instead of in it. In a nutshell, the concept is this:

When you are working in your business, you spend most of your time attending to day to day operational tasks. These might include things like customer service, and balancing bank accounts.

When you are working on your business, you have systems in place, and most of those mundane tasks are delegated to others. You spend your time exploring ways to increase profitability and expand your market share.

The idea is that eventually, you have your entire business systematized and outsourced to others in your company or elsewhere, leaving yourself free to… what?

For some, (including me until last summer) the answer was simply to start another “mini-business” and generate multiple streams of income. That has worked OK – I now have multiple websites, and I most likely will have even more going forward. But they take up a lot of time, and while there is the chance that one of them could become large and/or very profitable, it is not that likely.

And of course, all I have really done is to create another job for myself. Now that much of the grunt work associated with running my e-commerce business is delegated, I am free to…work on my other sites.

Yay? Not so much.

Time Management for Internet Business Owners

Written by Dave on February 21, 2012

I’ve used a lot of different systems over the years. Eveything from software, to journals, to index cards – you name it, I’ve tried it. But I’ve found that systems of any kind tend to break down after a while.

Life gets in the way. The fancier time management systems are the quicker they stop working. I finally settled on a work flow that makes sense to me, and I think it will work for you as well, if you are in charge of your day.

I have a list of the things I HAVE to do each day. For me it looks like this:

Download cash and check accounts
Enter orders and process credit card payments
Ship product / order from dropshippers
Check UPS / Fedex to see what has gone out, notify customers of ship dates and delays
Clear email and physical inboxes, entering things that need to be done later in Highrise

This sometimes only takes 15 minutes, other times it can eat up 6 hours, what with interruptions / phone calls / appointments. Some days the inbox is full of orders, and others I am free to work as I wish shortly after my morning coffee.

But if those things are done, and I get nothing else done, the business runs great.

Your list will look different, depending on how your business is set up. I do want to point out that it is a short list, and the first four items are all about just two things:

Customer service and collecting money

Regardless of what kind of business you are running, those should be the focus of your daily todo list. If you think you don’t have customers, you’re wrong. Even if you are just putting up AdSense sites, you still have two customers: Visitors and Google.

A few notes:

I only touch a piece of paper once. Paper can be tossed, filed, or acted upon and then tossed or filed. That is it. Never put paper back into your inbox.
Have ONE place where you write things down. Never use paper scraps or post it notes. I have a stack of spiral notebooks going back years. Every morning I write the day of the week and date at the top of a page and everything written goes there.
Your notebook needs to be reviewed at the end of each day. If there is some vital information there, or something that still needs to be done, it goes into your todo system.
Have ONE place where you put all of your todo and followup info. For me it has to be accessible via the web. Highrise even has a free version, and works perfectly for me.

Learn Internet Marketing in 12 Easy Steps

Written by Dave on February 13, 2012

A quick lesson in getting quality backlinks. Check out the great comic from my friend Tony. How many other marketers will trade him a link for this comic? Funny things are good, true things are better, but when something is funny and true…

We did the same thing on my microscope site with a bit of a more serious approach – but the idea is the same. If you want some decent backlinks, offer value in return.

If you’d like to see how this worked out for us, check out our post on this: Getting out of the Backlinks Box

And now, let’s learn Internet Marketing the easy way….

The Facebook IPO in 1000 Words

Written by Dave on January 11, 2012

Loved the book, really loved the movie. But letting alone whether Mark Zuckerberg is really an asshole, or simply trying really hard to be one, as a character stated at the end of the film – it is a monster IPO. Really incredible, science fiction type numbers.

In one respect, it reminds me a little of the dot.com boom in the late 1990s when it was all about eyeballs, and damn the bottom line. Now Facebook is making a lot of money, and is hardly the empty shell that pets.com was. But the numbers do seem excessive when compared to revenue – especially when you see the little call-out to Apple in the infographic.

Arngren.net

Simply the best way to earn money online! Of course, there will be those who disagree with me, but there may be more than a little semantics at play here. Let me explain:

Normally, ecommerce is defined thusly…

Ecommerce: The exchange of physical goods for monetary compensation via a website or other internet based property.

Ok so far as it goes – but it can be misleading. To my way of thinking, all the different ways of making money online are actually ecommerce, whether a physical product is shipped or not. You’re still exchanging some good or service for cash, even if it is just electrons or an email.

This website is a good example. I don’t have anything here physical to ship to anyone, but I certainly have something to sell. Having said that, I still think that physical products are the best thing to sell to make money online, especially for the beginner.

Normally, beginners are urged to just put up a blog and “write about their passion” and sell the resulting traffic (if any) to Google for AdSense clicks or to Amazon for affiliate commissions. I think this is not just wrong, but exactly, totally wrong.

What other Internet Marketers are saying about Grabapple…

I cannot believe the detail and value in this book and the amount of work that went into it yet Dave is selling it at such a low price. He literally holds your hand through the whole ecommerce process from finding products to setting up a site through to getting that site marketed. Rachel Z

Dave's book is basically Ecommerce bootcamp and beyond. If it was a live workshop it'd be $2,000 or $5,000 bucks easy. Fortunately, if you can read and snap up his ebook, that saves you thousands of dollars. Not to mention that some of the important tips Dave offers, he learned via "trial by fire," and he offers the benefit of that experience (rather than you facing getting ripped off yourself). L. Highland

The book covers everything on having a successful e-commerce business, and it's without a doubt the last guide you'll need (Dave has also shared with me his income, and I'll admit I was outrageously jealous but don't tell him that). James H

I can honestly say even with my 30+ years’ experience in business purchasing this ebook was one of my best decisions in 2011. I learned a lot of new things and he confirmed some of the practices we had in place are sound. It’s the best ebook I’ve ever read and you’d be foolish not to jump on this offer. Strega

Website and Facebook Integration by Wild Creature Development

The E-commerce Core Curriculum

Get Started With E-Commerce

Warrior Forum Gathering 2012 – Part 3