Turning website into making profit

[-Jrabbit]

I noticed your basic questions lean toward non-web areas...

If I sell outside my country, what is the best ways of finding the cheapest, yet fast enough couriering? What about boxes, I might have design for them, where can I order cheap boxes fort the products they'd be put in when shipping out?

Most of this is just legwork, Pekka.

Shipping: Determine the 3 or 4 best options for delivery and inverstigate cost, timing, and reliability. In the US, most catalog/direct mail/web businesses build significant profit into their "shipping and handling" charges. If you're going it alone, think about what your time and materials (boxes, labels, tape, ink) cost.

Boxes: If you're in a major city (Helsinki? ) there should be suppliers of boxes in standard sizes. Having a custom design (or even wanting them in anything other than brown color) adds cost. (If your product won't be displayed in its box at retail, consider whether there's any benefit to this.) These suppliers of standard shipping boxes will generally offer custom print as an option. Price it out.

For my wife's business, we just buy white boxes (slightly more, but distinctive) and bought a custom stamp with our design.

Good luck.

[-Jrabbit]

Additional thoughts

A lot of this will be driven by your warehousing capability. Even when bought "flat" in standard sizes, boxes take a lot of space. Visit a couple possible suppliers to get a feel for this issue. You'll want to buy as big a quantity as possible to hold costs down, but not so many that you're squeezed out of your space.

The key is to have an accurate idea of your costs and price accordingly to your customers.

If at all possible use a standard size of box. If you decide to byuy a custom size or shape, you get into fabrication costs -- paying for cutting dyes or tooling that you have to pay upfront but amortize log-term. That's no way to maximize profits.

Curious about your web sales planning, Pekka. The seamlessness and security of this part of things is critical to the success of any web-centric biz.

Tell us more...

[VetLegion]

I'll guess too: is it one of those defense systems you posted about?

[Pekka]

Jrabbit, good thing is I don't need warehouses.. it all fits right into my place. I have reasonably big place, and the stuff wouldn't take so much space it'd be worth renting warehouse space.

Thanks for your input. What more would you like to know? Ask spesific questions and I'll answer .
It's not a huge secret, I mean it prolly wouldn't matter if I told it right here to the littlest details. It wouldn't hurt me a bit. But I just want to get it up and running first, you see.. then I can say 'hey come and say what you think', because it's not selling even from the first days so.. I'll have the safety level pulled to maximum. What ever happens, i'm not losing money. I'm happy with let's say few hundred bucks a year if it gives me that much. Hundred bucks a month is freaking awesome. I do most the stuff myself. I'm also in it for the experience and having something I can claim to be my own.

VetLegion, Yeah.. I'll put Susie Q's in small boxes and send them via postal service to all over the world .

[Zopperoni]

1a) What is this product you're going to sell?
1b) Who's the target market?

2) How are you planning on gaining product/brand awareness within your targeted customer group?

[Pekka]

Zopperoni, I'm going to give you vague answers, because I'm being secretive, it's exciting to be that way .

1 a) entertainment media
b) everyone who loves this type of entertainment
2 Products are already established. But they don't have these in EU like they would supposed to be displayed. They sell these in EU too, with great numbers, but they are being crappy about it. It's kind of special thing, but the selling numbers are good. Most people in EU still order them outside EU. Because there is no good market place for these. There is, but they all suck seriously.

[-Jrabbit]

Originally posted by Pekka
I have layout ideas. My graphic knowhow is not the best, but my friend has decided to help me who is professional graphic designer, and very good one.

Let's talk about your website. The quality of your site will be critical. I don't know your expertise in this area, so I'll just mention some (obvious, perhaps) generalities.

1. Usability is the key. By this, I mean that all common browsers, including older ones like Netscape 4, should be able to view all the content.

2. Post text as HTML text (minimize the use of graphics to present text info). This is especially important in working with graphic designers. They tend to be print-oriented, and like to present their work in thel form of graphic so that the beauty of their layout will not be affected by things they can't control, like browser settings, screen resolution, etc..

3. Be very careful about using technologies like Flash. They greatly increase load time, and many users have it disabled for this reason. Stick with animated GIFs. In any case, if you have a Flash site, it's imperative that you provide a non-Flash option.

4. Most people do their site development with an HTML tool like FrontPage or Deamweaver. Be aware that ALL such tools are "optimized" for specific browsers (typically IE) and, by extension, will break down (display improperly) in non-optimal platforms. (This is my standard rant -- Websites should be coded, not created from dropdown menus!) (That said, you can actually get pretty good results with some of tools, and MSIE does dominate the market overall.)

It won't start by selling anything. It's a site about something, and after I see how it goes and if the site itself gets popular, then I go selling some products. And mostly just to cover the domain etc costs actually. Maybe few extra euros to buy real cigarettes and not these pirated crap dry ones .

Given your goals and your outlook, your chances of success are good, and it will be a great experience for you.

So it's pretty safe to try out. But what I do not know is the hardcore expertise, the thing that separates the true winners from average and losers. How to maximize it and how to minimize my expenses. ...it's all up to how well I can implement the game plan, because there's nothing wrong with it.

You seem pretty confident, even cavalier, about the marketing aspect of this, Pekka. If this is indeed a Web-specific business, I am curious about how you plan to draw attention your website (and your product), especially since it is a product that is already on the market from other sources. Can you share any more about what will make your approach different and worthwhile?

And can you tell me why you use an American flag in you Poly ID?

[Zopperoni]

Yes, Jrabbit mentioned some good points on site design. You can also Google for "Jakob Nielsen" who is a website design guru.

[-Jrabbit]

Nielsen = usability =

(But only for concepts. He ain't no designer!)

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Pekka
1 a) entertainment media

And J is right, Flash is evil.

[RGBVideo]

I'll guess too: is it one of those defense systems you posted about?

ROTFL

"Suzy Q, I love you!"

[Pekka]

JRabbit, thanks for your well thought reply. I'm not completely ignorant about webdesignes etc, I'm not just very good myself. I can't even draw. But the technical aspect is not so big of a problem. There will be NO flash and things like that. The graphic designer is kind of 'old school'. Functionality first, everything else after that.

Well given the fact that I don't start with selling, I can see how popular the site grows. If it grows to one of the premier sites, I can switch to selling products. The difference between me and other sources would be, that orders inside EU would be nice for EU customers. Why order from the US and hassle with currencies, longer waiting periods etc, when you can get it geographically close. That is my number one key. The other is the ability to offer few products that only one place sells, and no one knows about them anyway. I'd be gathering to good sides of most sites and put it into one, and add my own spice to it.

My strong points would include excellent customer service, all shippings out in 24 hours. E-mails answered.
The biggest problem is how big of a stock would I need to get.. but I guess that's something I learn as I go.

[-Jrabbit]

Cool.

Sounds like the next big issue to consider is your online shopping facility -- data security and ease of use are the key factors here.

It's usually easiest to sub-lease an existing facility that has those qualities "in hand." Many ISPs offer this sort of thing, including a bank deal that allows common credit cards to be used. This makes it much easier for a newbie biz to be professional and efficient.

Beyond that, it sounds like your biggest early need is going to be spreading the word about your site once it goes live (and again once you begin offering products). The Web has changed a lot from it's "word of mouth" days, so this may not be as easy as you seem to think it will be. Having a "cool site" used to be enough. With the incredible commercialization of cyberspace in the past couple years, this has changed considerably.

OK, I'll stop now.
[ / ]


This looks like it will be a great experience for you, Pekka. I envy the time and energy you seem to have available for it. I wish you all success, and am happy to offer help and feedback...

[Pekka]

Yeah, I have checked out how the credit card thing works. It's pretty simple, they've made it really good for internet.

Spreading the word is of course necessary etc, but I am getting some actual unique content there like interviews and other information. So, we'll see how it goes.. naturally if it just doesn't create enough traffic, then I won't be selling anything. But I have this feeling it will get traffic.. most of the sites about this are so bad and horrible.. I believe in content first, then how it looks, but I figure I can have the outlooks decent, and content unique. We'll see. I'll let people know when it's up (next week maybe), so you can check it out, out of interest. No selling then .

[Gangerolf]

Pekka, did you sign up for one of those pyramid schemes and now you got 10000 bottles of herbal body lotion you need to get rid of?