Ready to make some money this holiday season? Then grab a glass of lemonade and sit down to read this post. Because what you’re about to read will be key to your holiday income success.

Starting on July 5th, with the kick-off of the back-to-school shopping season, the countdown begins to 2010 holiday sales. There are  almost 9 weeks from July 1st to September 1st, when 38% of online shoppers will begin their holiday shopping.

If you wait until Fall to starting thinking about and preparing for the holidays, you’ll find yourself in catch up mode from September to December, and as a result leave a lot of holiday money on the table.

Preparing begins with the actions you take in July.

Every year at this time, I begin helping people prepare for holiday sales.

Unfortunately not enough people take action early on. And there’s nothing worse than rounding the holiday bend in November and watching sadly as your holiday sales slip by.

Don’t let this happen to you! The time is now…

To get you started, I’ve listed some of the holiday prep steps you’ll take this year:

• Creating a holiday inventory list
• Choosing your affiliate products & signing up for the programs
• Creating a holiday marketing plan
• Ordering last-minute inventory
• Organizing your physical products
• Snapping up packaging supplies on the cheap
• Creating holiday advertising graphics
• Planning your website and blog “seasonal decor”
• Creating holiday gift sets
• Setting up your holiday blog/ sales pages if you are an affiliate marketer
• Setting up your email marketing campaign
• Bringing in seasonal help

Now if the thought of putting together a plan for the holiday selling season feels overwhelming to you and you’re wondering how you’re going to find time to add yet another thing to your already overloaded schedule, there’s relief in site.

With 15 holiday selling seasons under my belt (whew!)  – 7 offline & 8 online!  I have the planning and action steps for holiday income success down to a science. Stay tuned, for the upcoming announcement about this year’s Holiday Selling Guide.

If you want to be the first in line to plan your holiday sales, enter your name and email address below for early bird notification:

-Lisa

If you sell physical products, affiliate products or information products, you’re on the brink of the next big online selling season – back-to-school.

Even though many people are just getting into the swing of summer fun, those who have children attending school or who are attending school themselves are already starting their back to school shopping.

To see how back-to-school sales trend, you’ll need to use one of my top research tools Google Insights. You can see by the chart below that searches for the keywords “back to school” are already trending upward:

Teachers prepping the classroom are looking for ideas for their classroom bulletin boards and starting to buy classroom supplies.

And keep in mind that in many parts of the U.S., school starts in late August. So if you sell any merchandise related to back to school purchases, it’s time to get it listed now!

If you’re an affiliate marketer, your back-to-school affiliate sites should be up and running.

If your blog covers parenting topics, school related topics, fashion, technology, accessories etc. you should be reviewing and promoting  back-to-school affiliate products.

The back-to-school shopping season runs from July through the end of October.

July is the pre-season. August and September are in-season. October is post-season. (Post-season back-to-school shopping takes place after the kids have arrived at school, taken a look at what everyone else has/or is wearing and then head back online to round out their “must have’s”.)

That’s 4 months of heavy back-to-school related selling opportunities.

So while you may still be enjoying the summer, your business should be featuring merchandise or affiliate products that are in-demand by back-to-school shoppers.

Here are just a few of the hot products online shoppers will be looking for over the next few months:

• Laptops
• Netbooks
• Laptop cases
• Brightly patterned backpacks
• Rolling backpacks
• Sports bags
• Motorcycle boots
• Ankle bootsGirls school uniforms
• Boy’ school uniforms
• Locker gear (mirrors, shelves, decor)
• Running shoes
• Gym clothes
• Teacher supplies
• Art supplies
• Eco-friendly lunch boxes
• Eco-friendly hot mugs and thermoses
• Cosmetics
• Costume jewelry
• Watches
• Anything with a peace sign on it (clothes, jewelry, accessories)

And some hot brands…

• DV by Dolce Vita
• Dolce Vita
• GUESS
• House of Harlow
• Jessica Simpson
• Michael Antonio
• Miz Mooz
• Modern Vintage
• Nine West
• Rosegold
• Steve Madden

All this back-to-school traffic headed will also impact you if you sell non back-to-school related products as well. Once people are back inside and at the computer shopping for back-to-school supplies, they’ll also catch up on shopping for themselves.

How will you capitalize on the back-to-school shopping season?

Tell me below.

-Lisa

Last month, when speaking at the 2010 Ecommerce Summit someone asked me  “If there was one piece of advice you would give to up and coming online sellers, what would it be?”

My answer to this question is always the same and it applies no matter what you sell or where you sell it.

Your best opportunity for creating a successful business on the Internet is to…

Find a niche and FOCUS.

• If you’re a jack of all trades, master of none,  it’s time to find a niche!
• If you’re spreading yourself thinly between three different eBay stores and 12 different types of products and none of them are up and running profitably, it’s time to find a niche.
• If you’re selling information products on health and fitness, starting an eBay store that sells used computer parts and trying to monetize a green-cleaner website all at the same time, it’s time to find a niche and focus!

Over the years, in working with thousands of online sellers in11 different countries, selling in more than 2300 different niche markets, sub-niches and micro-niches -  one common thread runs through the most successful businesses…

Each one is succeeding in a niche market.

You see, once you’ve identified a profitable niche to serve, you can monetize that niche many different ways.   But without that niche identified you’ll find yourself chasing market after market, opportunity after opportunity, never making any traction or money.

Many would-be business owners find themselves dabbling in multiple niche markets, putting in 10% of their time and attention on each.  But 10% effort in 10 different niche markets does not add up to a 100% income.

You need to first be 100% focused on serving a niche and maximize the monetization of that niche to enjoy  a 100% income.

Because of the importance of this topic, I’m putting together a series here on my blog, showcasing some successful niche businesses and explaining why they work.  Additionally I’ll be explaining  how you can implement this in your business.

So let’s start first, by talking about 7 business reasons why you should find a niche and focus! (Note: There are many more reasons than this, but let’s start with 7.)

7 Reasons to Find a Niche and FOCUS

1. You can’t be everything to everybody. At first glance, this seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at the number of business owners I see trying.  This especially afflicts new Internet business owners, who see the internet business buffet and want to sample everything. The problem is that this sampling goes on long past “happy hour” and into the “main meal” – the point at which you should be building a business that is hearty, focused and nourishing to your bank account.

2. The money comes from knowing your market. What does your market want? What are their problems? What are they buying? How do they like to be marketed to? Where do they hang out? It takes time to really get to know your market. If you don’t know your market, you won’t know what to sell to them and how to sell it. If you sell baby products, how to make money with Google Adsense eBooks, and affiliate products for pomeranians, you won’t have enough time to find out about ANY of those markets.  So you’ll throw a bunch of stuff up on the Internet and hope someone buys. And then they don’t.  Contrast this to selling baby products, eBooks about parenting and affiliate products in the baby niche and now you’re cookin’!

By the way, I call this my Niche Monetizer Method™, but that’s a subject for a later post.

3. It takes money to monetize a niche. If you sell physical products, in order to find the products buyers want, get the best inventory and stock your store, you need to attend trade shows, read industry publications, purchase information on your niche. This alone could cost you several  thousand dollars a year. You may attend the Sporting Goods Trade Show a couple times a year, subscribe to a couple sporting goods industry publications and consumer publications. You may make a few other buying trips during the year to source inventory.

4. Google loves themed, quality sites. This means a niche site with content, audio, video and products all geared toward achieving the same objective.  Want to sell products in the juggling niche? Your site must not only have products, but also content to go with it.  If you have a site that is not niche focused, creating a quality, themed site is impossible to do.

5. Become a destination site online. As a small to medium-sized business, you need to be a go-to destination in your site  in your niche. A well optimized site, featuring the products and services that people want is the path to becoming a destination site online.  If I’m a customer looking for a unique prom dress, I want to browse a site that specializes in prom dresses, with a depth of selection and a knowledgeable customer service staff.  If I’m shopping an eBay store for a prom dress, I don’t want to be looking at running shoes and circular saws being displayed next to the pink frilly prom desk I’m looking at.

6. Branding for the big bucks. Focusing on a niche enables you to build a brand. Your logo, the look and feel of your store and website, your blog, all play an important role in building your brand online. In my upcoming blog series, I’ll show you some examples of online sellers who have built a strong brand  – brands which is now getting people to sit up and take notice!

7. The number of hours you have in each day are limited, with a niche focus you leverage those hours. The Law of Attraction says “What you focus on expands.”  Lisa’s Law of Action says “What you take action expands.”  And the way to leverage your actions is to get more than one benefit from that action.  For example, let’s say that you’re selling info products in the sizzling hot niche, in-city vegetable gardening.  You write the eBook (or have it written), create some article marketing articles, identify your niche keywords and put together your Keyword Bank™ – you can now leverage all these actions into more advertising and marketing.  The article marketing articles are now re-purposed as blog posts or tweets, your keywords are used to optimized your sales page, and the associated products you are selling on eBay. And your eBook becomes a stand-alone product or a bonus for the physical products you sell or your new home study course.

In the span of two days, you’ve leveraged the actions you’ve taken in one niche.

And of course, once you get the system down for monetizing one niche, then it’s lather, rinse, repeat for the next one!

Ask Yourself Today.  “What is my niche?”

How about you? “What niche do you currently sell in?”  or “What niche will you focus on?” The answer to that question is key to your next steps.

Throughout this blog series, I’ll be showcasing businesses who are monetizing in several different niche markets.

Coming up first in our series…

1. From the Variety Store Model to Rapid Niche Success we’ll look at an entrepreneur from Australia who started selling in the variety store model on eBay, but whose business really took off when he started focusing on a niche.

- Lisa

I couldn’t send you chocolate for Easter, so I put together a “basket” of 5 tasty online selling tips instead.

Better than chocolate and they have  ZERO calories! 

Enjoy!

“The Ecommerce Bunny”  (a.k.a. Lisa Suttora)

In the past two weeks I’ve received no less than 7 emails from “gurus” enticing me to make a purchase of their products by promising to sell  me “the secret to success”.  Normally, I just observe these email subject lines with the critical eye of a copywriter, but today one that I received really pushed my hot button.

It wasn’t the email subject line itself that was really the problem, in fact the subject line really isn’t that important. It was the same old schlock that you probably receive in your inbox on a daily basis. What made me made about this email subject was the tone. It was dripping with condescension. Carrying with it the message of “I’m the guru, I know everything and you don’t.”

I was just about to go into a 2 hour coaching session with my Business Growth Group and I quickly added a slide to my presentation to talk about this topic – a topic that makes many would-be (and established) business owners feel inadequate, hopeless and spend tons of money on products and services for all the wrong reasons.

I wanted to share with you what I shared with my coaching group, because I think it will be helpful and make a difference in the way you approach your business from here on out…

Have you ever looked at someone else’s successful website and wondered what “secret” they know that you don’t?

Well you don’t have to wonder anymore.  Because I’m about to share with you the “secrets” of selling successfully online so you can get down to the business of building a business and not spend one more minute looking for the secret that doesn’t exist.

1. There is no “secret” to success, only information, strategies, and insights you have yet to learn. In eight years online, running a successful business, I have never found a “secret” that unlocked the door to the golden room of success. Oh I’ve bought and paid for “secrets”. Especially in my early years online. I’ve bought enough secrets to fund a brand new car. But did I learn any secrets? No. I’ve learned solid information, gained valuable insights, and implemented sage strategies.  But never once was there a secret in that slick packaged guru product. Not even the wildly popular “The Secret” was really a secret. If you’re going to buy from a guru, buy the technique, strategy or information they are selling, but don’t buy it for the secret.

2. If you are not getting the results in your business that you would like, there is a concrete reason. That reason could be that you aren’t getting enough traffic to your website or store.  It could be that your salespages aren’t converting to sales.  It could be that you aren’t selling products people want. But the answer is right there waiting to be found, if you are willing to look for it. Successful business owners have looked at their business found out what is or isn’t working and increased what is working while changing what isn’t working.

3. Just because a business model works, doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Every week I talk to new business owners who want to start an online retail business by purchasing inventory from wholesale suppliers, but they don’t have cash or credit available to make those inventory purchases. Add to that, many have a need for immediate cash flow. They are pursuing the wrong business model. Can you make a go of an online retail business from wholesale products in 2010?  Sure. Does it require cash or credit to buy inventory and build a product line?  Absolutely.  If you have no money at all to invest in inventory, your first goal should be to focus on a  business model that generates cash flow.  I call them mini-profit machines.  A business model centered around affiliate marketing or selling your expertise as a service (trading time for dollars), or selling everything around your house that’s not nailed down or doing the yard sale circuit for 6 months until you get enough seed money to invest in your long term business model.

4. You have to give up something. Very few people selling “how to make money from home” want to say this to you.  You need to sacrifice things in your daily life in order to make your business a success. Maybe it’s your nightly TV shows.  Maybe it’s a few hours of sleep a week. Maybe it’s bigger.  Vacations with the family. Putting off buying that new car so you can invest in your business.  As a single parent, if I sat down with you and told you the sacrifices I’ve made and that my children have made so that I could grow a successful business, you’d be shocked. In the early days of running my business we missed vacation after vacation, because I had a business to run and at the time there was not enough money to bring in help.  So the kids and I had staycations instead. I’m writing this blog post at 4:21am, because both my kids have sporting events tomorrow and I have several things I need to get done before we head out for the day.  Would I change things?  Not in a heartbeat. My children love having a role model for hard work and reward. Next to having kids, creating a business out of nothing is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. It can be the most rewarding thing you’ve ever done. But there will be sacrifices.

5. Learn one new thing and implement it before you move on to learn the next new thing . The other day I got an email from a very nice woman who is a member of my Business Growth Group. She said “Lisa, I’ve read everything you’ve written, watched all the videos and still my sales have not increased.  Can you help me?  I don’t know what I’m doing wrong?” I went to her eBay store and looked at it. She hadn’t implemented one thing that we teach in the Business Growth Center.  I asked her about it.  She said “I know, I’ve been meaning to do it, but I just haven’t had time because I’ve been busy learning.” We now have her on a new Learn 1: Implement 1 program. Each new thing she learns, she implements, then she moves on to the next. After one week on the Learn 1: Implement 1 program, she sold $256 worth of merchandise in one week.  Her previous month’s sales?  Zero.

6. The average conversion rate for online sales is 1-3%. Now this is one secret the gurus don’t want you to know!  This means for every 100 visitors to your website, you will make one to three sales. I remember the first time I heard this number.  My heart sunk to my shoes. But I was determined, so I figured “Ok, I’ll work with it.” Does average mean that you won’t have a higher conversion rate? Absolutely not.  You never want to be “average” in your business.  You always want to strive for above average. It also depends on what you sell.  If you sell physical products on eBay, a 50%, 75% even 90% conversion rate is entirely possible IF you are selling a hot product. But that’s not the average sell-through rate for most products on eBay. If you source one that sells at an 70% success rate, celebrate your good fortune and go source more of it. But I see people everyday who put up a website selling information products or physical products, or create an eBay listing or Amazon store and expect “a flood of visitors with a high conversion rate to happen just because their product is online. It doesn’t work that way.  There are things you can do to increase your conversion rate dramatically – like getting more high quality, targeted traffic and cultivating repeat customers. But that is the process of Kaizen, which means “continual improvement”.  It takes Kaizen to be successful and increase your conversion rates.

7. Time spent on Facebook  with Farmville is not time spent working. I love social media. And I’m not surprised by it’s mammoth success.  Why?  Because we humans are social creatures. We’re pack animals. We love to hang together and communicate. With so much of our lives and time spent on line in the period of time from the mid-nineties to the two-thousands, it was only a matter of time before our socializing moved online too. It’s the rare person who can sit isolated at their computer, not connecting with people.  The same is true of social media marketing and social commerce.  Shopping has always been a social activity.  Now we’re shopping socially online. Word of mouth marketing has always been the most effective marketing offline.  Now we’re doing social media marketing online.  But… just like there’s a difference in corporate America between sitting at your desk and working versus hanging out around the water cooler chatting, there is a difference between spending 30 minutes a day using Facebook or Twitter to do some marketing and playing Farmville or sending people jelly beans on Facebook or tracking Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. As an entrepreneur, you have to be very clear and very defined about when you are working and when you are not.  Can you schedule in a break to connect with your friends on Facebook?  Sure! But when you are in there for the purpose of marketing your business, you have to ignore all the friendly communications that are calling for your attention. Separating your play time from your work time will dramatically increase your success.

8. A true guru makes things easier not more complicated. The inspiration for this post was the gurus who are trying to sell you the secret to success, so I want to get back to that for a moment. Someone who is truly a guru will take a complicated subject and make it as simple as possible to learn and implement. They will empower their students by telling you and showing you that you can do this.  Gurus make things seem more complicated to make themselves look better and make themselves look indispensable. I’ve been online for 8 years now and I’ve never studied an online marketing subject that can’t be learned and applied by just about everyone. Not everyone can solve the Poincare’ conjecture (thought to be the world’s most difficult math problem). Most everyone can achieve success at some form of entrepreneurial online business if they apply what they learned to the right business model.

9. There is more than one way to skin a cat (my apologies to cats everywhere ) Gurus who try and sell you “the secret of success” will also tell you that their way is the right way.  The only way. That everyone else is wrong and that they are the only ones that have the answers you seek. Beware of gurus who tell you how complicated something is and then in the same breath tell you that they are the only ones who understand it and are the only ones who can help you.  After 8 years of running my own successful online business, I can tell you unequivocally that there is always more than one way to do something successfully. It doesn’t matter what you sell or where you sell it. Whether it’s information products, selling on eBay, affiliate marketing or straight up ecommerce, I have seen thousands of people achieve success using different techniques, different methods, contradictory methods and unlikely methods. Does this mean that there aren’t best practices? Not at all! Does this mean that there isn’t a right way and a wrong way to approach building a business?  Absolutely not.  What is does mean is that there is more than one right way to achieve success. And if someone tells you that their way is the only way, you need to learn what you feel is right for you from that guru, but don’t follow blindly. I’m frequently referred to as a “guru” in helping people start, run and expand their online business. But sitting here right now, writing this post, I could give you the names of at least 5 other “gurus” who you could successfully learn how to build an online business with. We each have slightly different approaches, slightly different communication styles, slightly different specialties, different programs and services, but we can all show you a path to success. How do you choose?  You have to choose the mentor/teacher who is right for you at this time. I’ve studied with some of the best on the Internet.  As I change and grow, and my business changes and grows, the people I study with and learn from change too.

10. Thomas Edison was right. “Genius” said Thomas Edison” is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”  And considering the man tried 1000 different times to create the light bulb before he succeeded, I think he’s qualified to speak to the topic of perspiration and hard work. Thomas Edison also said when asked about how he felt about failing 1000 times to invent the light bulb “I didn’t fail 1000 times.  The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.”  The same holds true for your online business. I like to say “There is no such thing as failure, only lessons learned.” The path to your successful business will entail a series of steps.  Some that work.  Some that don’t. It all gets back to point #2.  If you are not getting the results you want in your business, there is a concrete reason. The answer is right there waiting to be found, if you are willing to look for it.

As you can see there is a reason I rolled out of bed this morning at 4:00am to write this blog post. I felt this topic was important enough that I needed to share it with you in-depth.

I hope it has accomplished three things:

• Made you feel more confident in your own abilities to learn the ropes
• Stripped away any misleading beliefs that there are secrets only the chosen few know
• Saved you some money by not purchasing “secrets” from the next enticing email that lands in your inbox
• Shown you clearly and specifically ten of the factors that it takes to successfully build an online business.

There are more than just these 10.  And if you are interested in hearing more about them, pop me a note in the comments box below.

PS: Don’t just read this and think “great post” and go on to the next blog. Take this, print it out, post it on your wall. Read it regularly.  It will help you stay clear, focused and motivated. It will also save you time, money and disappointment on your path to success.

- Lisa

I just finished watching an excellent webinar interview conducted by my colleague Jim Edwards with Mr Rich Cleland of the FTC regarding the upcoming changes on 12/1/2009 to the current FTC policies on endorsements, affiliate marketing, testimonials, and product or results claims.

• If you are an affiliate marketer, information marketer or blogger who has any type of ads on your blog, you’ll want to listen to this webinar.
• If you sell physical products online and review them or post reviews/claims from your customers “This brand new men’s leather belt shaved 3″ off my waste size.” you’ll want to listen to this interview.

In it, Jim goes in-depth with questions on what these policies updates really mean. You can watch the interview in webinar format, listen to it in audio format or download the PDF of the interview.  The interview is free to everyone here.

Here is just a sampling of what Jim covers with Mr Cleland in the interview:

• How these policies apply to online marketing (and offline marketing).
• Whether or not this applies to non-us sellers
• The biggest misunderstanding that people have about the new FTC rulings.
• How to know if you’re inadvertently stepping over the line.
• What affiliate marketers have to do/say when promoting affiliate products.  (And there are several different scenarios to be aware of.)
• How to handle customer testimonials (for both  your products and other people’s products.  (Pay particular attention to the segment on Customer Testimonials.)
• What does this mean for bloggers, blogger reviews and banner ads.
• How to word your disclosures if you are an affiliate marketer.
• The difference between results based testimonials versus satisfaction based testimonials.  Can you still use results based testimonials?
• The difference between advertising statements and endorsements.
• How this affects promotions you do in social media sites (this is big considering that we are moving rapidly into the world of social commerce.)

There are many additional points covered as well.

I watched the webinar version of the interview because Jim has it split out by segments.  All you need to do is click on the segment you want to listen to first and away you go!  (However, you really should take the time out to listen to the whole thing.)

There is so much misinformation being posted on the web about this topic.  Including the fallacy that the FTC is going to fine violators $11,000+ for each violation (you’ll hear about the fine/penalty issue as well.)  This is why Jim went right to the source – the FTC and went in-depth to get the answers.

So click here right now and download, view or read a copy of this interview. If you’re selling something on the web, it’s your responsibility to make sure you are up on this issue.

** BTW, in keeping with the new FTC regulations, I’d like to disclose that I am not getting compensated by Jim for passing on this valuable interview to you.  It’s very in-depth and the best coverage I’ve heard on the topic.  Because it is key information to all online sellers, I want you to be up to date!