How your competitor can help your business

Competition is normally seen in a negative way, someone who runs off with your market share and profits. Business competitors are eager to take advantage of any mistake we make, and use wicked offers to attract our clientele towards them. Being a monopolist in your field may well be quite rewarding, but it’s very rare to be the only one in some particular business.

Even if it’s some exclusive idea, your success will soon tempt others into it. Competition cannot be ignored, but instead of getting frustrated by it, you should take it in a realistic and positive way. Competition can be helpful in these ways:

Keeps you on your toes:
Many a times, you need competition to bring out the best from you. You never know your true potential until you get into some competition. It keeps you thinking. The thought of loosing your reputation and profits to someone else makes you work hard and strive for improvement.

Innovation:
To gain competitive advantage you have to come up with innovations. Businesses are always trying to offer something new. Products and services are more and less the same, they have to come up with some added value which is new and unique. Without competition, consumers are bound to buy the only option available; no improvement is needed at manufacturer’s end. It’s the competition that makes these innovations occur.

Learn from their experience:
You can always learn from their experiences. If some new product was introduced which fails in attracting customers, or it gains popularity in no time, in both cases you have got something to learn. Observe the market trend and customer’s reaction to changes tried by your competitor. Spying generally is not a good idea but you must keep an eye on your competitor’s pace and direction.

Weaknesses & Strength:
Every business has its weaknesses and strengths, some boost on their technological superiority, some have skilled human resource, some have efficient management. Your competitor’s success or failures can easily be traced down to one major factor, which is the prime reason for their success or failure. You can work on that particular factor to succeed, or avoid the failure which they have faced.

Makes you realize the value of your customers:
Customers are the center of every business. You realize this fact more when competing for each and every customer available in market. It makes you do something more for your customers to sustain them, like adding value to your products, improving your customer support service or adjusting prices.

Benefits of creating an online outlet for your wholesale business

People are likely to purchase more, if you create an online outlet for your wholesale business. This becomes vital if you are willing to expand your business globally. It serves many purposes, from making your business more trustworthy to allowing the prospective buyer an easy interaction with you, also making it possible for your existing customers to keep track of new changes or offers at your side. Let's discuss these advantages in detail.

Credibility:
A well maintained website will help you in earning credibility, representing you as a serious wholesaler who knows about his business. To achieve more reliability, post images of your sample products and work place if possible. Make sure your website works like an outlet, where customers can visit and have a look at your products and services.

Interact with customers:
Contact details at your website will help customers get in touch with you easily. You can create a simple message box for their convenience or provide them with toll free number if you have any. You can also provide your address along with a street map guiding to your office, to help them find, if they decide to visit you.

Inexpensive online marketing:
Online marketing is still pretty economical when compared to offline marketing. By making a website, you will provide your business with lots of exposure and customers without spending a great deal. Submit your link in business directories, write articles related to your business with links to your site, or try "Pay Per Click" campaigns to get guaranteed traffic and that too of targeted customers.



Highlight Discount Deals & Offer:
This online outlet can be used to highlight discount offered at bulk purchase or other offers available for buyers. Often people ignore or even delete the e-mails sent to them about such offers, but a glowing banner at your site or some highlighting technique can attract more customers towards the offer. Write press release about your offers and post it to relevant sites to get maximum exposure.

News & Guides:
A separate section for news and guides related to your sector of business will keep your customers visiting your online store regularly. You can share your observations on news related to your industry, thus promoting the impression that you are an expert in your field. Customers will love to buy more from an experienced seller rather than a new comer popping out from nowhere. Also make some guides for customers to help them understand the traits of business.

Terms & Conditions:
Use your online outlet to state your terms and conditions clearly. Provide instructions for payment and shipping issues. You can also provide some online service for your customer through which they can inquire about their order status.

Biggest mistake Internet business start-ups make

People earned millions literally, by working online from their homes in early days of e-commerce. When their amazing stories reached out, more people jumped in with new ideas. Businesses started on trial bases or even for fun purpose, transformed into large companies. Internet has always been a great opportunity for people willing to work for themselves, who are more comfortable while working from their homes. Online success stories (there are plenty) lure many into trying their luck. What most beginners have in their mind is, all they need to do is to set up a website and somehow the traffic will start pouring in, they will be earning a big fortune as soon as they start. Dreams should never be discouraged, but those without the backing of hard work and concrete planning, can soon turn into nightmares. What they actually see after few months is disappointing and heart breaking. A quick entry without proper planning and research, results in a quicker exit from cyber world. Biggest mistake what internet startups make is, taking things for granted.

Invest time:
Financial investment may not be a requisite that much in an online business, but you need to invest time. In e-commerce, time really is money. There is no alternative of hard work. Businesses that earn 24/7 online are a result of many sleepless nights. If you can’t spend hours and hours working on your idea, in front of your monitor, then internet business is not for you.

Research:
Internet and more importantly search engines have made searching a lot easier and fun these days. You can search for virtually anything.
Willing to start an online business, don’t have any idea? Search.
You have got the idea but you don't know how to get things started? Search.
You have launched a business, but you are clueless about online marketing? Search.
Online research not only provides you with what you were looking for, it can also bring so many dimensions to your searched information. New ideas seem to come into your mind from no where.

Be ready for Competition:
Competition is far more intense in online business now days. Even if you have launched a business as unique as yourself, you will soon find some competitor trying to catch up with you. This will be a sign of two things, first that your idea has worked and second that now you need to work harder to be on top.

Get help from Search Engines:
More then 90% internet users use search engines to find the information or product they are looking for. While you cannot force or request search engines to send more traffic your way, you can always do search engine optimization to get better ranking in search engines results page. Search engines are the easiest medium to drag customers to your site. Although it’s not that easy to get higher rankings in search results, but all your efforts toward improved rankings are well worth it.

Looking for the best wholesale sources and suppliers Online

With more people having access to the internet nowadays, there are larger numbers of people who are searching online for information on particular products that they wish to buy.

One of the best ways you could run a profitable business is to find wholesale sources that would drop-ship these items to your customers when they visit your website looking for information on a particular product. You might also set up auctions of eBay to sell these items.

However, all the wholesale source e-books that you see on the internet, offering you a list of about 10,000 drop-shippers are not all they appear to be. Either the price is too high to make a profit, or they have many links which lead to websites which are active no more, or lead to wholesalers who sell junk items such as dollar store products or as-seen-on-TV items. Most of these wholesalers who find in the e-books are only lists of what we might call ‘middle men’. They buy from the real wholesalers and resell the items to the customers at a higher price in order to make a profit.

The best thing would be to be able to do away with the middle men and find the actual wholesalers of brand name items at prices which will enable you to make a profit. You can do this, but not if you keep depending on the obsolete drop-shippers lists and e-books.

You shall have to find these sources on your own. It might even be as simple as finding a product supplier or manufacturer and asking them whether they will drop-ship the product directly to the customer. Otherwise, you might have to negotiate some kind of a deal to make them drop-ship for you. Whichever way you work this out, you will be able to make a profit as you can get the brand name products which are in demand at a price which is reasonable to you.

If you are wondering how you could find wholesale suppliers, you can find almost all the wholesalers in the United States listed in the Yellow Pages. You should use the ‘Search by Word’ option and type ‘wholesale’ and also select your state from the drop-down box. You could also do a nation-wide search.

http://www.alibaba.com is a website where you can find a lot of sources for products to sell. This website gives you a great chance to find whatever product or brand name you wish to find, as there are suppliers for a wide range of products listed here.

http://www.surplus.net is a website which lists lots of overstock and pallet lots of surplus and refurbished merchandise at reasonable prices. It has lot products listed and at time you can get about a 50%-80% discount on the wholesale price.

http://www.wholesalepages.co.uk lists suppliers from UK and a few other countries. It is an extensive directory with state o the art features and provides quality results for dropshippers, manufacturers, wholesalers, importers, distributors etc

http://www.wholesale-canada.com lists suppliers from Canada

http://www.aidandtrade.com lists dropshippers from USA, UK and Canada

http://www.francewholesalers.com lists suppliers from France

http://www.australiawholesalers.com lists wholesale suppliers located in Australia.