This is a killer!  Take it from Audrey and I - if a store-owner doesn’t have a precise target market in mind when they open their Store, they ending up wasting lots and lots of time experimenting, and the end result it usually as loss of dollars, sometimes significant dollars.

Eventually, the owner decides that they are going to sell some sort of widget. They figure, “Well, that’s what I’m supposed to do!  Now, where can I find said Widget?”

 

They usually arrive in this situation because of the path of least resistance.  Maybe they signed up for some sort of Paid Wholesaler club.  In the club, some shiny widget caught their eye and they figured “What the Heck, they have it in stock, let’s sell it!.”

 

So, they post the exact same image of the shiny widget that’s on the Paid Wholesale Site into their store.  They even copy-paste the sales copy from the web page into the products description.

 

They post it on the store with a ridiculous mark-up, not having bothered to check the competition.  They figure that they are going to try to sell their shiny widget for the “Suggested Retail Price” that the Paid Wholesaler has listed for this shiny widget.

 

Since they don’t know much about the product, they don’t know anything about how to market it.  So, in keeping with their path of least resistance motto, they use some schlocky Free Search Engine submission service in the vain attempt to get their store listed in Google, and then spend 3 or 4 hours submitting their store link to 20 or 30 of those Free-For-All Link pages.

 

Satisfied with all of that effort, they kick back in the new office chair that they just bought from Staples and wait for the shopper stampede.

 

Wow. 

 

Wanna know why this is such a bad situation?

 

It’s not because the owner didn’t put any effort into their store – they did!  They spent a fair amount of time and a lot of energy doing all of these things.

 

It’s because they put a lot of effort and probably spent some green on all the wrong things!

 

Let me ask you a question;

 

If the Coca-Cola Company knew that New Coke was going fail miserably in the soft-drink market, do you think that they would have spent $100’s of Millions of Dollars to Create, Promote, and Distribute the drink?

 

Absolutely not!

 

And that’s the beauty of the web, specifically the beauty of "Make Money Smart" E-commerce.  The data-intensive nature of the Internet allows potential store-owners to glean statistical data about product Supply and, most importantly, product Demand before they invest a single penny in creation, promotion or distribution.

 

If you take what you think is an educated guess about what people will want to buy, you're playing the lotto.

 

Simply surfing around other people’s stores or looking at 20 or 30 Completed Auctions in Ebay is NOT the type of research that promotes E-Commerce Success.

 

And frankly, it’s a backwards way to do it.

 

You need to do real research.

 

The kind of research where you make a table of data.

 

You keep track of supply and demand in real numbers.

 

You examine the market place competition and determine if you can source your products at the right price point –Just Like a Real Business!

 

So many people think that E-Commerce doesn’t include the fundamentals of traditional business simply because, in theory, anybody can open an Internet Store Front.

 

Anybody CAN open an E-Commerce Store, but if you surf the web enough, you will start to notice a trend among the most successful Internet Store Owners and Marketers out there – FOCUS!

 

They know exactly what people are buying, how much they are buying it for, and what markets they are buying it in.

 

When we created “Yahoo! Store Profits, A Step-By-Step System”, we knew that this type of How-To-Find-The Right-Product-For-The-Right-Market information is the most critical step to your E-Commerce Success.

 

It’s not hard!  It’s not hard at all!  But it requires 2 things:

1)         Effort - you actually have to do the research!

2)         The Right Methods – You need to know how and where to find this data.

 

I’ll sign off now, but just keep something in mind.

 

You need to know what people are buying and then sell it to them if you want to be a Successful E-Commerce Store Owner - End of Story.

 

Shop You Soon!

 

Audrey & Andy

 

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