This document provides an overview and summary of an eCommerce training seminar. The seminar covered various topics related to starting and running a successful eCommerce business, including choosing a niche market, website development, search engine optimization, social media marketing, legal and tax issues, and sources of information for eCommerce businesses. The training was intended to educate small business owners and entrepreneurs on practical internet strategies for selling products and services online.
1. eCommerce
Practical Internet Strategies to Sell Your
Products and Yourself
Presented by Dan Bond
Sponsored jointly by Downtown Delaware,
the Delaware Emerging Technology Center,
Delaware Technical Community College (Terry Campus)
and USDA Rural Development
June 2010
4. Introductions
Please give:
Your name
Where you live or work
Your current level of
eCommerce activity
Your expected use of this
training
Something about yourself
of special interest
12. What is eCommerce?
The definition given in Wikipedia is:
Electronic commerce, commonly known
as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists
of the buying and selling of products or
services over the Internet.
13. What is eMarketing?
The definition given in Wikipedia is:
Internet marketing, also referred to as
i-marketing, web-marketing, online-
marketing, or eMarketing is the marketing
of products or services over the Internet.
14. Internet & the Web
The Internet is a The World Wide Web is
global system of a system of interlinked
interconnected hypertext documents
computer contained on the
networks that use the Internet.
standard Internet
Protocol Suite.
31. Finding Your Niche
• Identify an interest -- ideally one related to
yourself, your experiences, your
talents, your location, etc.
• Identify a niche with sufficient
market demand.
• Discard niches where there is already too
much competition.
• Make sure that the niche can become a
profitable business.
32. Profit Margins
• Wholesale price
• Location of supplier
• Price points
• Price competition
• Information value added
• Weight to value ratio
• Shelf life
• Market trends
• Supply constraints
39. Drop Shipping
The Good:
• You don't invest in inventory.
The Bad:
• You have no buying power.
• Competition will drive down your margins.
• Drop ship wholesales do not provide products for
niche markets.
The Ugly:
• You can work a lot, sell a lot and make no money.
50. Domain Name Selection
• Short
• Memorable
• Easy to spell
• Discribes your business or product
• Contains key words
• Has best name extension possible
62. Website Hosting
Usually best to have your website built
and hosted by the same company
Make sure that they have on-site
supervision 24-7
Make sure they have good telephone
technical support service
Explore their up-grade potential
83. URL
Uniform Resource Locator
It points to a specific "page" on a website.
Examples:
http://www.ladybug-shop.com LadyBug Shop Home Page
http://store.ladybug-shop.com/index.cfm?
fuseaction=catalog.prodInfo&productID=1742&categoryID=28
Fuzzy Ladybug Slippers for Children page
85. SEO You Can Do Yourself
Use your keywords as much as possible.
Have good, well written content.
Establish back links from popular websites.
Maintain a blog.
Use Social Media to promote your site.
92. Geographic Marketing
In SEM specify the geographic areas that contain most of
your potential customers or select only those areas to
which you are willing to ship your products.
For example, with Google AdWords you can:
• Search or browse for countries, territories, regions, and
cities.
• Select a preset bundle of locations.
• Choose a point on the map and specify a radius around
it where your ads will appear.
• Target a custom shape on the map.
• Exclude areas within your selected locations.
105. Oompa's Niche
Oompa is a click & mortar business that
specializes in infant toys and furniture that:
Have no batteries, no blinking lights & no
cartoon themes.
High quality and safety standards.
Primarily items made in the U.S. and Europe.
Made to last.
114. Find & development your niche
Build your Web presence
Build traffic flow
Monitize your web traffic
It's a long road!
115. Monetizing Your Web Traffic
Revenue
Revenue from
from sales advertising
of goods & on your
services website
Revenue from
the affiliate
commissions
117. AdSense has become a popular method of placing
advertising on a website because the
advertisements are less intrusive than
most banners, and the content of the
advertisements is often relevant to the website.
Many websites use AdSense to monetize their
content. AdSense has been particularly important
for delivering advertising revenue to small websites
that do not have the resources for developing
advertising sales programs and sales people.
125. Social Shopping Sites
"Websites that combine social
elements such as a social
networking community or the
ability to set social bookmarks
with aspects of shopping such as
product reviews and deal hunting"
126. "A site that only sells one item a
day as a "daily woot" and provides
community feedback on the item."
127. "Discover and share products in a social
environment that allows you to recommend
products to friends, organize shopping lists,
find the best deals and get discounts."
130. PCI DSS
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
Be informed. Got to:
http://www.pcisecuritystandards.org
Failure to understand the PCI compliance
standards could result in higher merchant
account fees and fines from the credit card
issuers.
131. WARNING!
Even if you are PCI compliant, if you
experience a credit card security
breach, you can be open to legal action
from the affected customers.
132.
133. Three types of ownership protection:
A copyright protects original works gives the owner
exclusive rights to reproduce his or her work in any
medium.
A trademark is used to protect a word, symbol, device, or
name that is used for the purpose of trading goods.
The trademark indicates the source of goods and
distinguishes them from the goods of others.
A patent for an invention grants a property right to the
inventor that will prevent anyone else from making, using,
or selling an invention.
134. Potential Penalties for Copyright
Infringement:
1.Actual damages (the amount you would have
to pay to license the material from the
copyright owner).
2.Statutory damages of $750-$30,000 per work.
3.If the violation was willful—up to $150,000 per
work.
4.At the court’s discretion, attorney fees.
5.Embarrassment.
136. In the 1990s, Congress passed the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA). It included a very powerful
tool to quickly attack the theft of unregistered
copyright-protected materials so victims of theft of
creative works can reach out into cyberspace and
aggressively pursue an infringer. This tool, known as
the “takedown notice,” requires a website host to
pull down an allegedly infringing website or page
merely upon receipt of a specified notice from the
owner or its lawyer. No lawsuit is necessary. The
implications to the host are significant: the failure to
pull it down exposes the hosting company to liability
for copyright infringement under traditional
doctrines of law, and it also loses immunity created
by the DMCA. The law giveth, and the law taketh
away.
138. WARNING!
Internet sales are not always tax free.
There are over 11,000 sales tax
jurisdictions in the United States.
Ecommerce merchants located in a state
without a sales tax do not have to collect
sales tax unless they have taken some
action to create a physical presence in
another state.
139. Other states
that do not
have sales
taxes are
Alaska,
Hawaii,
Montana, New
Hampshire
and Oregon.
140. Sales tax vulnerability
In April 2008 the State of New York inserted an item in the
state budget asserting sales tax jurisdiction
over Amazon.com sales to residents of New York, based on
the existence of affiliate links from New York–based websites
to Amazon. The state asserts that even one such affiliate
constitutes Amazon having a business presence in the state,
and is sufficient to allow New York to tax all Amazon sales to
state residents. Amazon challenged the amendment and lost
at the trial level in January, 2009. The
case is currently in appeal process.