If not, you should.

New year is a great time for busy entrepreneurs like us to really sit down, think about what we did this past year with our business, set goals for the new year, and create a roadmap to get there.

In 2008, our company main objective is to create a better customer experience, by adding a full time phone support staff and toll-free support no. on all our websites. We’ll also refine our refund and shipping policies to give our customer stronger protection and more flexibility in returning products to us.

We’re launching two ecommerce sites (ShopBeads.com and GolfIsEasy.com) in late January, and may look into 1-2 more towards June. Our target this year Continue Reading »

Its that time of the year when you should be sending Christmas cards or emails to people or organizations that are associated with your business. This includies your vendors, suppliers, partners, employees, and customers. So this brings us to one question - should we say “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas”?

For those of you reading who’re not from the US, you’d probably ask, “Why would anyone say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas?” Well, in the US, there’s something called “Political Correctness”, so apparently if you say Merry Christmas, it implies something about Christ and Christianity so people from other religion may be offended…

So in business settings, especially if you do business in the US, what should you say?

Well, I personally use “Happy Holidays” just in case, but really I dont think it matter that much… do people really get offended so easily? Do you really want to do business with people who are SO particular about irrelevant things?

Tell me what you think!

Technorati Tags: Christmas, ecommerce, internet marketing, business,

Hot off the news, yesterday, December 10, marked the busiest online shopping day of the year for eBay.

Here’s some info from Business Wire:

While Cyber Monday remains an important milestone because it marks the beginning of the online holiday shopping season, data from eBay Inc. companies indicates that online shopping actually peaks on the second Monday in December. eBay Inc. companies have named Continue Reading »

I have consulted with a lot of companies and entrepreneurs on outsourcing - I thought I knew it all: call centers, virtual assitance, customer support, product manufacturing, website designs…

This guy Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hours Work Week totally kicked my butt - he outsourced online dating.

Here’s a few snippets of a recent interview on Tim about this experiment:

Donovan: I hear you outsourced your online dating. Such a crazy concept. Could you explain the general idea?

Tim: Online dating is largely a numbers Continue Reading »

Adding the Hackersafe badge on a already secured Yahoo store is probably the stupidest idea ever in the history of business - considering that it costs $1200 a year per site and does really nothing (for a Yahoo store anyway) besides adding a security badge on your website.

O well, as stupid as it is, it works… the conversion rate among my 3 websites increased by 20% overnight…

Go figure.

Technorati Tags: Scanalert, Hackersafe, Yahoo Store, online retailing, ecommerce,

For those of you who’re not familiar, the term Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas.

Whereas Black Friday is associated with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, “Cyber Monday” symbolizes a busy day for online retailers. The premise was that consumers would return to their offices after the Black Friday weekend, making purchases online that they were not able to make in stores. While the idea has not survived the test of time with sales data from recent years, however, Cyber Monday has evolved into a significant marketing event, sponsored by the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org division, in which online retailers offer low prices and promotions.

As an online retailer, you need to get your store ready for this big day. The couple most important factors include a clear shipping and refund policy, cyber Monday promotions, and most important - watch your advertising dollars to make sure they’re producing results. It is not unusual for Cyber Monday ad spending and search volume to triple - remember to monitor them closely!

Technorati Tags: Black Friday, internet marketing, Cyber Monday, online retailing, ecommerce,

I just acquired a website yesterday called Mom101.com; the site is brand new without much traffic, but it has a really nice domain name to go along with it, a lot of work was put in setting up affiliate products, plus I have a niche baby gifts store at BabyGiftsUnique.com so I gave it a shot.

I am going to rebuild it with a new template, forum, social network, and blog in the coming weeks, monetize it better by rearrange the ads and find JV deals, and hopefully it’ll grow to a certain point before I sell it (or not if it does really well). Hopefully it’ll do well enough to compete with established mom social networking sites like CafeMom or OpMom.

Ok, I know I’m not exactly the mom type but we’ll make it work. We’ll soon add a lot of parenting advice, baby care tips, and mom resources on the site, so if you’re a new mom, definitely stay tuned and let me know your feedback.

Technorati Tags: website acquisition, internet marketing, Houston startups, Mom101.com, Cafe Mom,

I went to the Information Technology and Web 2.0 Forum at Jones School of Business yesterday held by Rice Alliance. It has been a while since I’ve been back to Rice (ok maybe not, I was there for homecoming last week), but it felt kind of weird going back.

Anyhow, back to the forum. It was GREAT. We heard five web 2.0 companies present their detailed business model, countless elevator pitches by startups, and feedback from a panel of VCs.

It was my first time to the forum (I was tempted to go last year but didn’t) and I was thrilled to find out there are so many like minded people in the Houston community. In a way, it reiterates and confirms what you’re doing and it was fun talking to other entrepreneurs, capital guys, and vendors about each other’s business.

Two ventures that captured my mind the most is IdeaTango.com and OpMom.com; both of which are niche social networking site with great potential, both spokeperson was very nice (Lisa Lylod & Carrie Pacini) and I’m interested to see the development of those two companies in the next 12 months.

Another guy that I remembered the most is Blair Garrou, Managing Director from DFJ Mercury (a VC) - he seems to have a really good understanding of the web 2.0 industry and provided a lot of insights in the final session. I immediately try to add him on Linkedin this morning and found out that he has over 300 contacts - wow.

I also learned about this open house event for entreprenuers to network called Open Coffee Club and coincidently, its right down the street from where I’m staying right now (Groundz Coffee on Bagby), so you bet I’ll be there next week.

Anyhow, it was a great event and props for Rice Alliance, Jones School, and all those that were involved. Hopefully, I’ll be able to go next year if I am at Houston.

Technorati Tags: venture capital, internet marketing, Houston startups, Rice University, Rice Alliance,

Many of the clients that I work with are small business owners, and most of them work at home or started out working from home. One of the biggest question they usually have is - can I outsource everything so I can work at home?

The short answer to that is yes, but you don’t want to.

I do believe that with all the modern ditigal technology, i.e. Skype, online meeting chatrooms, VOIP phones, sharepoints, emails, Blackberry … you can literally run your business through a virtual environment. You can even do pretty well with it - its not uncommon to hear people who work from home who brings in over $300-400K a year.

If that’s ok with you, then thats fine. But if you trully want to build a multi-million dollar enterprise, there’re things that you just cannot outsource. Emails and online chatting can never subsitute the level of interaction when you see the other person face to face. Management is so much easier when you can see your employees and discuss things face to face.

From a personal standpoint, if you just work from home, like I did for 1.5 years after college, you lost your touch and connection with others. Your life becomes mundane and you lose conversation topics when chatting with your friends who work in corporate or other entrepreneurs who have their office and are constantly out there networking.

The success of anything lies in “showing up”, so get OUT of your home office, get a real office and build a multi-million enterprise!

Technorati Tags: outsourcing, internet marketing, building business, work from home,

Google Adwords just came out with a cool neat new feature which allows you to compare performance across two date ranges and / or metrics on Account Snapshot

They recently updated the Account Snapshot page with new features that let you:

For instance, you can compare your Average CPC for the last 7 days of this month and your Average CPC for the last 7 days of March. Or you can compare your CTR for July 13–20 with your Conversion Rate for August 3–15.

This will really help with monitoring and improving your Google Adwords marking. Don’t know how to do it? Get an adwords consultant like me!

Technorati Tags: Google Adwords, PPC Marketing, Google, Adwords Consultant,