Different types of online scams and how to avoid

Along with individuals, entrepreneurs, students, professionals, internet has also been extremely helpful to scammers. Just like the internet provided a great opportunity to small businesses to reach out and find buyers from all over the world, scammers can also prey at victims* from all over the world, just like the students can make use of various techniques to acquire more and more knowledge, scammers can also employ techniques as hacking, forgery* and the likes. Where the online marketers are always thinking of new ways of doing business, making sales, converting leads into sales, scammers are also thinking hard to defraud people in new ways.

Work at Home:
Of course, lots of people work from homes and it has transformed into an industry. But that only makes it worse, because people can see other people working and earning from their homes, they fall easily for these work at home offers and pay some sort of registration fee. Whole websites are dedicated to lure people and it’s not easy to differentiate between the real and the fake ones. So what’s the best way to see if they are fake or real? There’s no fool proof way to do that, therefore the best bet is to don’t pay any kind of fee to any of these work at home companies. There are very few companies who actually provide this kind of jobs but they wouldn’t be asking for any registration and they won’t be promising big dollars for little amount of work either.

Billionaire & Six figure Income:
Often, you’d have been to some website of an “allegedly” billionaire, who narrates his success story and then tries to sell his secret to you. These “getting rich quickly” stories are enticing and they make you miss one obvious point. The person who’s selling his secret to you is already a billionaire and he’s comfortably earning billions right now so what’s the point of selling their secret to others for a minimal amount? Billionaires aren’t supposed to go for these small profits, second selling their secret means they are inviting lots of competition that will only slash their own profits. Therefore these schemes have fraud written all over them.

Money Transfer:
This is another very, very common type of online fraud. Doesn’t matter which email service are you using, this email must have reached your inbox at some point of time. That narrates some tragic story; praise your nobleness, and concludes with a request to help the sender transfer, a huge amount of money. You don’t even need to put a fraud-check to these emails because these are confirmed imposters.

Source:
UK Wholesalers

Comparing Online stores with Bricks and mortar stores

Online shopping is fast becoming the norm with people buying everything on internet from books to DVDs, and cosmetics to heavy machinery. You can purchase just about anything, anytime on internet. There is a tremendous growth in the numbers of dollars spent every year on online shopping, which is fast, far more convenient and economical, all at the same time. However, shopping from an online store is an entirely different experience and not everyone is at ease while buying from a website, especially those who are not on the ball and well-informed about new technologies.
Let’s compare online stores with conventional stores and look at its advantages or disadvantages.

Advantages:
Online shopping is all about expediency, ease for both buyers and sellers is the biggest plus point of online shopping. To start with the buyer, first of all you don’t need to store products in large quantities, instead you can place images of products at your website and purchase from manufacturer only when someone place an order (especially when you are acting as a dropshipper). The real advantage that online shopping brings to the customers is the option of carrying out research and price comparisons on internet. It’s a matter of minutes to get hold of the information about different products, including their features, reviews, customer experiences and price comparisons for any given requirement. Even those who don’t buy online, likes to surf around for some information regarding a particular product. Such extensive information and research is almost impossible in a traditional store where you are stuck with limited options. Also, online stores are open 24 hours, whole product selection and payment takes little time and the product is delivered to your doorstep.


Disadvantages:
Biggest disadvantage at the moment is probably the access factor, not everybody has the access or the knowledge required to use internet for shopping purpose. One needs to be adept in searching and surfing internet, because the nature of online shopping makes internet an ideal place for scammers. In case you’re caught in the trap of some scammer, it’s really hard to recover your money, once you’ve made the payment. Therefore, some people are always reluctant to buy online; there are very few laws and regulations to keep online businesses under check. Even if the supplier is not fraud, the actual product can turn out to be completely opposite to what you had conceived after looking at the image. If you are running an online store, you must consider these reservations.

Source:
Wholesale Suppliers

Why do you need to have a merchant account for your online business?

A question that haunts anyone who is planning to sell his/her products or services on internet is the mode of receiving payments from buyers sitting in another city, state or country. The best and the quickest option is to accept payment through credit or debit cards. There are other alternatives but none as quick and as convenient as this one. Online shopping is all about convenience and speediness, if the buyer has to wait for days before the payment arrives into seller’s account so that he might be able to dispatch the products. Such a lengthy turnaround time destroys the whole advantage of online shopping. In view of that, when you are setting up an online business, you must arrange for a merchant account to be able to accept payments through credit/debit cards. Asking your customers to send checks or money orders just doesn’t fits in.

Merchant Account is a type of bank account that makes it possible for account holder to accept credit card payments from his/her clients. In other words merchant account provider is a service that allows business owners to accept payment via credit/debit card. Though in most cases, you’ll not be dealing directly with merchant account providers, especially if you are a small or medium-sized business. However, the idea is to be able to accept credit card payments, be it through Merchant account providers, Independent Sales Organizations, Payment Processing Companies or Payment Gateways. Let’s take a look at how payment gateways or third party merchant accounts can help you in this regard.

Payment Gateway:

If you are an online business, you must sign up with a payment gateway service. Payment gateway allows you to offer an easy solution to your customers to make on the spot payments. The process starts from customers clicking on the “pay now” button and the whole transaction takes not more than 4 – 5 seconds (even though there’s a lot of data transfer taking place at the backend that includes various parties validating the process).

Third Party Merchant Account:

Third party merchant account is the most convenient and also the most commonly used medium by small businesses. Third party merchant account services serves the same as the traditional merchant account, however the prices differ. Third party merchant account typically cost less than the original merchant account when it comes to setting up an account; however the transaction fee is significantly higher. Some examples of third party payment processors are PayPal or 2co.

Source:
UK Wholesale

Utilizing demographics in online marketing

In simple words “demographics” is the data or information about some specific group of population. These groups are formed on the basis of distinctions like age, gender, monthly income, race, education, marital status, etc. The word demographics has stemmed from demography which is the study of population. In modern marketing, marketing persons tend to use psycho graphics in conjunction with demographics (demographics is the classification on the basis of age, sex, race while psycho graphics is the study of their attitudes, values, lifestyle, etc). Though some experts are not in favor of mixing up these two, you shouldn’t be too concerned about making out if the information you are going to use in your marketing falls under the label of demographics or psycho graphics (because in all likelihood you’ll be using both).

Using Demographics in Online Marketing:

The most commonly used demographic profiling is based on age, where we have groups like baby boomers, adults, teens or children. Other profiles include men, women, African American, Generation X, Hispanic, and so on. As you can see, knowing the demographics of your target market is imperative when making your marketing strategy or advertisement, or else you’ll be shooting in dark when making your marketing strategy. Therefore, the first thing when planning your internet marketing campaign is to make a demographic profile of your target market.

For example, if you are going to start an extreme sports blog, you must be aware of the fact that the majority of the visitors will be coming from the age group of say 18 to 35, most of them men (the figures are not based on some research but just been quoted as an example). Such generalization helps when deciding what kind of ads you can place on your website or what sort of design or features your target audience would like to see.

Similarly, when you are planning to start an e-commerce portal for some specific region, you must get hold of the information like internet usage in that particular region, online habits, online shopping behaviors and the likes. Users from one country or region can typically have quite a different set of habits, preferences, routine, etc. Furthermore, studies have shown a clear difference between the online habits of men and women. You can find plenty of survey reports doing rounds on internet with a focus on online shopping behaviors. Going through these reports and knowing the facts will definitely help as opposed to a marketing plan which has been put together around assumptions or wild guesses.

Source:
USA Wholesale Suppliers, Distributors, Dropshippers & Manufacturers

The importance of Marketing Relevance

Not more than a decade ago, marketing was considered a relatively simple job, however with ever growing competition and consumers becoming more and more ad averse, marketing is turning out to be a job that leaves you pulling your hairs in frustration, every now and then. At times, it seems that you had left no stone unturned in your efforts to make more sales and still, you keep falling short of the target. Terms like ROI, targeted marketing or marketing relevancy are much weightier than they used to be, and the business owners and company directors are now capable of differentiating between the effective marketing and mere boondoggles by their marketing personals. On the other hand, customers are getting increasingly irritated by the manner businesses have bombarded the digital or print media with their ads, as a result they have gradually developed a tendency to skip any advertising material, come what may.

To cut the long story short, any advertisement that is not relevant will be rejected by the customer, straight away. Imagine that, an outright rejection, which can be regarded as an absolute failure for the marketing department. Therefore, spending time on marketing relevancy is as important as working on the idea and presentation of the ad (even more in many cases). For the reason that a brilliant idea will be wasted, in case the ads do not appear at the right place and at the right time. It applies on all types of marketing, namely online marketing (email marketing, pay per click advertisements or pop up banners), ads in electronic media (Radio & Television channels) or print media (newspapers and magazines).

Online marketing is much more efficient in this scenario, seeing that it provides the marketers with much more control over the display and exposure of their ads. You can spend bucket loads of dollars on sponsoring some of the most viewed TV shows and still more than half of the viewers would downrightly ignore the commercials. Why? Because they are in no mood to ponder over some buying decision in their leisure time, for example if some life insurance ad appears during a football match (viewers will be in a different state of mind altogether, because of the nature of the show). However, online marketing allows you to take help from useful data like search patterns or bouncing rate through different sources, enabling you to keep an eye on your marketing effectiveness throughout the time.

Source:
Wholesale
Wholesale Suppliers

Winning combination of internet and B2B marketing

Though business to business transactions have been there for ages, B2B marketing is a relatively new phenomenon (or perhaps marketing was not classified into separate categories like B2C, B2B, and B2G back then). Ever since the categorization, business marketing has surpassed the traditional "consumer marketing" by all measures, that too in this short time period. Business marketing is now established as a much bigger and more profitable venture, particularly in the developed countries. Basic difference between these two, as evident by the names is that in B2C marketing we target individual consumers, while in B2B marketing our aim is to engage businesses, organizations and large corporations. Business marketing is undoubtedly a tough job, but far more profitable without any doubt. Mainly, for following reasons …

• The profit margin is much larger than consumer marketing
• You don't have to cope with the cut-throat competition that exists in consumer marketing
• Business marketing is not unpredictable and complicated when compared to consumer marketing
• Once secured, the customer (i.e. a business) stays with you for a much longer period
• Customer acquisition cost is lower when weighed against the income that generates as a result

Internet and B2B Marketing:
From positioning to promotion, and sales to customer support service, Internet has revolutionized the B2B marketing, B2B marketing and Internet make an excellent duo that is cost-effective, far reaching and equally promising. Ignoring internet as a marketing medium altogether, can prove to be a suicidal decision if you are running a B2B business.

Low cost:
If you are looking to cut down costs for research studies, promotional campaigns, lead generation or even branding, internet is the most economical medium to carry out all these tasks, and the fact that most of online marketing techniques may draw in only the targeted customers, makes it even more worthwhile.

Cementing your relations with the customers:
Social media networks e.g. Facebook or LinkedIn enables your customers to interact and get the answers to their queries (regarding your business or products) in no time. Corporate Blog is an excellent way to establish yourself as an experienced professional; you can elaborate your business mission, share your knowledge of the industry, and get immediate feedback. Similarly, you can provide your customers with an expeditious customer support service at absolutely no cost involved.

Online B2B marketing platforms:
Luckily, internet offers various types of B2B marketing platforms and business networks, which mean you've got a pool of interested buyers readily available. These networks (e.g. dailytrader.com) can take the fuss out of B2B marketing and give an instant boost to your sales.

Source:
Wholesale

Recession – The time is right to start a business

If, after reading the title you are thinking that starting a business during recession is a walk in the park then wait, that's not what the title indicates. Before we proceed, make one thing clear, recession maybe a good time to start a business but it's definitely not an "easy" time to start a business. Still, the true entrepreneurs would be rubbing their hands in excitement with the hope that this recession, like its ancestors will reshuffle things and make new in-roads to enter into the business world. Have you ever read the stories of all those "today's huge businesses", which got started during recession or even great depression? If such stories failed to motivate or even excite you, then probably you should stay away from this highly demanding venture of starting a business during recession. These are testing times, game is on and the one who'll emerge as a winner after defeating all odds will go home with huge awards.

Now you know the importance of saving:

When something is in abundance, we tend to overlook its importance; it's only the situations like credit crunch or recession that we are reminded of the importance, of every single dollar we save. Because of recession, we are automatically urged in that "saving mode" that is so crucial for new start ups, especially when you have seen how hard it can be to raise the capital for new business. You are bound to cut as many expenses as you can; you become more concerned about whatever you spend on marketing, management or financing your business. You want to make sure that every single penny that you spend, will add value to your business. That is an ideal state of mind for someone who has just started, many times business owners lose the initiative when they get carried away by the initial success and become reckless in their spending.

Going the extra mile:

News of downsizing coming from everywhere, big companies laying off thousands of workers in one go, businesses reluctant to hire, all of these are bad news, but they may have a positive effect on your staff. The fear of loosing the job hangs around, and it makes them work even harder. They are looking to prove their worth; everybody is on their toes including managers or senior staff. Also, because the jobs are hard to get, you can get employees with good qualification at a very reasonable salary packages (you can always pay back once the business starts to grow).

Choose your product carefully; try to come up with some inexpensive but equally good alternative. Make sure, you won't need big investment in the start. Internet or home based businesses (because of their low startup costs) are the ideal types of businesses that you should take into account.

Source:

Wholesale Suppliers