Get Legal, or Get Cheated!Written by Chris Malta
"Get Legal, or Get Cheated!" Are you an Ecommerce business owner, or do you just seem to be one? There is a difference, and that difference will hurt your business. When you sell products on Internet, just like anyplace else, you need to be buying those products from a direct wholesale source. Either factory itself, or a factory authorized distributor. If you’re not, you’re paying middleman markups that chip away at your profits until you’re barely making enough to pay your hosting fees. Sometimes I think that there are more middlemen on Internet than there are ECommerce sites, and they’re all targeting YOU! Here’s a scenario: John Doe wants to open an Internet store, and make lots of money. He can’t believe all news items about new Internet millionaires. He’s seen pictures of these people in news and on ‘Net, and lots of them look like they’re one beer short of a six-pack. “If they can do it, so can I!” he thinks, and starts to search around ‘Net for information on starting a business. He finds boatloads of hosting companies willing to put his site out there for just a few dollars a month. He finds that many of them offer free shopping carts, so that he can take his customers’ orders. He finds services that let him accept credit card payments without even applying for a merchant account. Only one thing left…what to sell? John looks around Internet for product distributors. He comes across a wholesaler of name brand products that he knows are very popular. He contacts them, and they say, “Certainly! We will “drop ship” products directly to your customer for you, one at a time, at wholesale. All you need to do is fill out some paperwork about your business, and supply us with your Tax ID number.” “Paperwork?” thinks John. “Tax ID number?” Yechh! That sounds like work. Worse, it sounds like LEGAL work. That’s a scary thing to most people, and John is one of them! A little more searching, and John finds a web site called “Stuff R Us”. Stuff R Us is screaming at him: “Thousands of wholesale products you can sell on your website! NO investment for inventory! We send each item right to your customer! No shipping, no handling products, no minimums! Sign up with us and we handle everything! This is your road to Internet Riches!” Well, that’s road John was looking for, by golly, so he happily sends his name and address to Stuff R Us along with his sign-up fee. Suddenly he can put all kinds of products on his web site, and all he has to do is email his orders to Stuff R Us, and they handle rest. No paperwork, no hassles. John is creating a new Internet millionaire, all right. No doubt about it. Unfortunately, it’s not him. It’s Stuff R Us. Stuff R Us is a middleman. They sit between John and REAL wholesaler. Every time John places an order with Stuff R Us, they turn around and place that same order with REAL wholesaler, who sends it to John’s customer. John never knows this is happening.
| | Getting a Job – How to Start Written by Jennifer Stewart
Work is much more than simply a way of earning money. It defines us as people in our society. Think of number of conversations that focus on what you do for a living. Introductions are often based solely on this:"Mike, I'd like you to meet my friend, Jan. Jan is a marine biologist." Or, "Jan works at new shopping center in town." At social gatherings people spend a great deal of their time discussing work-related matters, and it's easy to begin to feel left out if you can't join in with a horror story about your boss or coworkers. So it's taken as understood that you want to work. But you don't just want any old job if you also want to retain your sanity. One of life's little pleasures is to wake up each morning and think to yourself, "Wow! Another day at work." One of life's miseries is to wake up each morning and think, "Ugh! Another day at work." It's important to find a job that will prompt first response rather than second. So how do you find out what job will make you happy (and keep you sane) before you've spent years training for it? Easy, really. You just have to know yourself. You need to know: • What you like doing • What you don't like doing • What you are good at doing Then it's a simple matter of tracking down those jobs that fit your personality and skills. There are numerous questionnaires around to help you work out where your strengths and interests really are. You might be quite surprised at results these questions turn up. You may have always regarded yourself as a team player, but after reviewing your responses it becomes obvious that you really prefer to be independent – to make your own decisions and to work alone on projects.
|
