Wholesale Gift Baskets! Who doesn’t love getting one filled with surprises?!? You can give and get a gift basket for any occasion. YES! ANY OCCASION! Christmas Gift Baskets and Birthday Gift Baskets are obvious ones. But you can also get or create housewarming gift baskets, get well soon gift baskets, new puppy gift baskets, college test prep gift baskets, lost your first tooth gift basket… the occasions and ideas are endless! This month’s interview is with a listed wholesale and dropshipping supplier that creates unique and one of a kind gift baskets for any special or fun occasion. Wholesale ..read more

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why are we out here working so hard to learn new things and explore home based business opportunities, when we could just settle into a steady job working for someone else until we retire? This is not a “here’s how this works” article. This is more of a philosophical thought that just needs to be said once in a while. So, on with a little philosophy! Most people are perfectly content to live out their lives working a regular job. Maintain a steady income, buy a house, put money into your retirement, create a college fund for the kids. You get home from work at ..read more

Cost management is your business’s financial buddy. Getting cozy with your company’s expenses, giving them a good look-over, and making sure they’re in line with your financial goals is important. It’s like gathering all your receipts, having a chat with them to see where your money’s going, and then telling your budget, “Hey, let’s make sure we’ve got this under control.” It’s not just about keeping an eye on costs, it’s about making friends with the numbers to help your business thrive! Keep a close eye on your money—know what you’re earning and spending. When starting your online store, you ..read more

Customer support means being available for your customer questions and needs. This is very important and even more important to have different contact options. In order to compete with big online retailers, you must be able to provide similar options for support (if not more) to your customers. Having contact options readily available will help your customers trust you when they see how easy it is to connect with you. Customer Support Phone Yea or Nay? Many new small business owners don’t have a phone number on their website and only offer email support. This is a mistake, as many customers wa ..read more

Your website is the face of your company, because that is what people will see. A beautiful website design with easy navigation and shopping procedures will go a long way with helping you to compete with big online retailers. Take a cue from these bigger retailers by taking a look at how they arrange their websites and how the ordering process works. Look at the good things they offer, but then also what are the struggles with their sites? Big Retailer Website Design Disadvantage One of the big disadvantages that a big retailer has in their website design, is that they try to offer as many pr ..read more

February had an extra day this year and we took advantage of it! We are still working on mass updates across the entire Directory to ensure that we have the most up to date contact information for the listed suppliers. At the same time, of course, we are ADDING Wholesalers to the Directory too! So what did we add to the Directory last month in February? We added suppliers that, all together, offer a SKU count of over 8500 products! The Newly Added Drop shippers and Wholesalers Offer: Wholesale STEAM Kits Dropship Calendars Wholesale Educational Games Wholesale Artisan Chocolates Dropship Choc ..read more

A customer loyalty program is a strategy you can use for your business to retain customers and encourage them to come back and buy from you again. It has been reported that around 80% of an online store’s revenue is from 20% of their repeat customers. So try to think of ways that will keep bringing those customers back to shop! Brands are always fighting for customer loyalty. Retail is a competitive environment. When brands offer similar products, you have to be. Something that many stores offer are these types of rewards. Whether it is a discount for purchasing over a certain dollar amount&n ..read more

Communicating with your customers and  potential customers is important. You do this to keep your business in front of them so they don’t forget about you. As a small business owner, you can’t afford commercials on TV or big billboards across the country, but you do have email & social media. Communicating about Products Have a new product? Blast all the social media channels about it! Another great thing you can do about a new product is take a video of it and post it on YouTube, so you can then post it on your website. That will get the customers coming ..read more

Great content is king and for various reasons! I’m not talking about just blabbering and repeating words though, it’s GREAT CONTENT that matters. Not only does great content (keyword optimized) help you with the search engines, but it makes you stand out from the crowd. This is beneficial for competing with big online retailers. Big online retailers have good enough descriptions of products and all the product information that you need to understand what you are buying, but what they lack is a good sense of humor or creativity about it. When You Have Great Content… There are a couple of retai ..read more

Niche! We have talked about this time and time before. Why? Because it works and it’s the right thing to do! Something that small retailers have that big retailers don’t, is the ability to specialize in different areas. That specialization of areas is called a Niche. Selling Niche Market products is staying away from the Mass Market products that many of the large retailers carry. These big retailers carry hundreds and thousands of products in many different areas so they aren’t able to specialize in one thing or another, nor do they have the time to explain in better detail what the prod ..read more