Enchanted Works Getting Really Busy
The orders are coming in, and I'm finding that it's getting rather exciting around here. Who would have thought there was just so much to do? Phase one is pretty easy - you generally find a wholesaler or two, sign up with them, "borrow" pictures off their website, build your own website (from scratch if you're someone like me) and sit and wait for orders. However, when you sit and wait for awhile, you tend to go look and see what OTHER people in your position are doing. Then you kind of find that all of the sites that are doing the exact same thing you are, kind of wind up at the bottom of the search engine results and are totally ignored. So, it's on to another strategy.
The new strategy was to offer quality products that I personally test to make sure they're what they say they are, and hopefully build a reputation as someone who offers useful really nice products at a good price. Of course, in order to do that, one must find wholesalers who don't sell the same crap you find on every website in the country, all bought from the same wholesalers, imported from India by the gazillions, etc. etc. And that takes WORK.
So once you get the suppliers together, have ordered the products, etc., you find that most of your new suppliers are small businesses just like you, and therefore they don't have really cool photos. You must then set yourself up as a photography business as well, and the pictures you take had better be relatively nice or nobody will buy anything at all. You get the pictures, you integrate them onto the website, and then you're done, right? Uh, not quite.
Then I had to figure out whether drop shipping was worth it. On the one hand, drop shipping is really convenient. On the other hand, you don't know whether they really have the product, and it's more expensive. So I decided that then I needed more control over the inventory, so I went off and ordered as many of each item as I thought I could easily sell. Of course, then I had to try to figure out where all that stuff went, as well as try to keep straight this thing called "inventory."
With some help from the Wessiepooh, I got shelves in the guest room closet, and immediately filled it with supplies. I got stuff EVERYWHERE. Then could I sit back and wait for the orders to roll in? Well sure. And wait... and wait.... well gee, something is wrong here. So I did a Google search on stuff I was selling to see where I would come up in the ratings. Well, NOWHERE! That's just REALLY not good!
On to do research on search engines, meta tags, keywords, etc. etc. Found out from there that no longer are the days when you could just add things to search engines and *poof* they would appear. Now these bastards want MONEY to include you. Ack! Then I found out that keywords were not what they used to be either.
Of course, everyone has different advice when it comes to how to get ranked on the search engines. And, of course, I have no idea which one is quite correct. And, of course, they all want big bucks for their opinions. So perhaps I should just hang on there and hope that the site catches on.
Meantime, I just got my custom blended oil made ONLY for us :-) Next week or so I should get my lovely custom teas. Then I'll get to play with the website yet some more.