Work From Home Resources Blog

The following is a guest post by Amanda Tradwick. If you would like to write for this blog, please check out the guidelines here.

Drop shipping provides a low-risk way for entrepreneurs to make money online. Drop shippers sell products online without having to purchase the products wholesale up front. When an item sells, the vendor collects the money and the item is shipped directly from the wholesaler. No money is lost, and all sales result in direct profit.

As with any online venture, hard work and marketing savvy is needed to be successful with drop shipping.

Here’s how you can set yourself apart from others.

Choose a Reputable Source

There are many drop-shipping wholesalers who make promises of big profits, but who provide inferior products, are delayed with their shipping, or who are actually middle men who order the products from legitimate wholesalers and then charge a markup on the products. Be sure to do your research to choose a wholesaler with a good reputation and quality products. Make sure the wholesaler is known for timely shipments and legitimate business dealings.

Set Yourself Apart

There are hundreds of sellers on eBay and other sites that sell products from drop shippers — the same products from the same drop shippers. In order to be successful, you must find ways to set yourself apart from these other sellers. There are many ways to do this. You can choose niche products from quality wholesalers, ensuring that you are one of fewer sellers with those products. You can create a high-quality Web site in which to sell your products rather than relying on eBay or other online auction sites. Of course, as with any online venture, a successful marketing strategy is also key. Concentrate your efforts on building traffic to your site, promoting your products through social-networking sites, and other ways to get the word out about your products.

Write Your Own Copy

Wholesalers provide marketing copy and photos for the products in their catalog, which many sellers use for their own websites or for their online auctions. The result is that dozens of sellers use the exact same photos and descriptions of the same products. The only way these sellers can set themselves apart is to drastically undercut their prices or to build up their reputation. You can make your products stand out by ordering samples to take your own photos and by writing your own descriptive copy. You can highlight different features of the products and showcase them in new and unique ways, helping to drive sales.

Create a Blog

In addition to a website for your products, you should also create a blog to help promote what you are selling. A blog can help create awareness for your products by attracting new traffic to your site, highlighting the features of your products, and more. A blog also offers your customers additional value, creating an additional component to your Web site, rather than just offering a list of products for sale. Proper marketing of your blog — including keyword research, generating quality back links, and more — can help you to maximize marketing for your products, as well.

Drop shipping presents a low-risk way to start your own business online, allowing you to sell products without coming up with a large initial investment to purchase products. However, to be successful, you must do the proper research and put the right effort into marketing, as you would with any online venture. These tips can help as you begin your drop-shipping business.

About the Author:

Amanda Tradwick is a grant researcher and writer for CollegeGrants.org. She has a Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Delaware, and has recently finished research on grants for women in college and college grant programs.

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This marks the first income report of the new year. As such, I will also be providing the total income (gross) that I earned last year (2011) from my online business ventures.

If this is your first time here on my blog, first of all, welcome. Every month I do a detailed income report, showing you exactly where my income comes from. This gives you an idea of the various income streams that are available, as I strongly believe you shouldn’t place all of your eggs in one basket.

This is also a way for me to measure my success (or [...] Continue Reading…

The following is a guest post by Alia Haley. If you would like to write for this blog, please check out the guidelines here.

In spite of some massive successes, like Chrome, Maps, Gmail, and AdWords/Adsense, to name a few, there have also been many blunders from Google over the past 10 years or so. Google Wave, Google Buzz, Gmail’s Launch, and DejaNews all have been proved to be failures for various reasons, mostly due to the technical side of things.

Let’s take a look at these blunders in closer detail.
Top 4 Biggest Google Blunders
1. Google Wave
The idea of Google Wave [...] Continue Reading…

2012 is here, and this year I’m going to start a tradition… a recap of the previous year, highlighting popular posts, and posts I feel are important to visit (or revisit).

2011 brought many challenges and changes, positives and negatives, and ups and downs, for me both personally and professionally.

My online business, including this blog, has seen steady growth. Slight changes were made here and there as needed, and are still being made… not enough to probably notice, though. Income sources have come and gone, as is common with this type of business.

Overall, I am very pleased in the direction [...] Continue Reading…

I had a lot of people asking me for months why I never made a lot with Adsense, and the answer was simple.

I stopped running Adsense ads on my home page for at least a year. This raised more questions as to why I would stop running ads if they were bringing in revenue for the site.

That answer is also simple…
Why I Had Stopped Publishing Google Adsense Ads
At the time, I wanted to test Clickbank hop-ads, where money isn’t made with clicks, but rather through actual sales. I placed these ads exactly where the Adsense ads had been, in [...] Continue Reading…

The following is a guest post by Sally Shaws. If you would like to write for this blog, please check out the guidelines here.

No business is ever instant. If you want to make a living at something other than being employed by someone else, you have to carve out your own success. This takes time and hard work. But you knew that already.

It’s a fundamental truism of working for yourself that you never put all your eggs in one basket. Keeping this rule can be difficult when ideas prove to be bigger than you first thought, or if your [...] Continue Reading…

The following is a guest post by Daniel Kamen. If you would like to write for this blog, please check out the guidelines here.

If the grind of the daily commute to your workplace and back is sapping you of all your energy; if you are finding it difficult to balance school with your current job; if you want more time for yourself and your family; if the thought of going back to work leaving your baby behind is traumatizing you – it’s time to say goodbye to the office and hello to your new home-based career!

Yes, the work from [...] Continue Reading…

Every month I do a detailed income report, showing you exactly where my income comes from. This gives you an idea of the various income streams that are available, as I strongly believe you shouldn’t place all of your eggs in one basket.

This is also a way for me to measure my success (or failure) from month-to-month. Each month will vary in income, and that’s all part of working from home as an affiliate and internet marketer. This acts as a motivator for me to keep pushing forward to reach my goals.

I hope you find these income reports helpful [...] Continue Reading…

The following is a guest post by Nancy Parker. If you would like to write for this blog, please check out the guidelines here.

Working from home is a luxury that most people who work in a regular office setting lust after. What you don’t take into account when you’re working the regular desk job is that your desk, chair, and general office space are provided for you with no cost to you. If you are working from home you undoubtedly realize how much easier it is to get things done when you have your own space carved out for [...] Continue Reading…

The following is a guest post by Alia Haley. If you would like to write for this blog, please check out the guidelines here.

In the age of the Internet, it is obvious to expect to make its optimal use for enhancing the scope of business. Marketing initiatives in the social networking domain are an integral part of the overall campaign even for the most high profile organizations.

A home business benefits tremendously from on-line marketing because the expenditure can be kept to the minimum. Social networking based marketing provides an avenue for a targeted campaign that can bring in results.

It [...] Continue Reading…