Kelly Asks:

Dwayne – You seem kind of like a guru on the online shopping stuff. My husband and I want to try and make some extra money by doing something online. We both have jobs but we figure we can spend about 3 hours on each weeknight and one weekend day to make a go of selling something on the net. We have a few hundred (maybe $500) to put into it. Can you suggest anything? We see the wholesale and dropship ads all over. Does that work?.

Answer:

Howdy Kelly;

Okay that is a great dream and a nice nest egg to start with. First you’re not going to replace your day job any time soon with a $500 investment, but with a little elbow grease and several weekends you can parlay that into something that will pay a car note and maybe create some mad money to boot.

First while I urge you to look into wholesale and dropship options, don’t just leap into anything just because of a sales pitch. Remember that landing page sales copy can be very persuasive and is designed to separate you from your money before you have time to carefully consider. So look into these options then come back and ask for any further advice once you find one you like.

Also consider novelty. Suppliers for novelty items like sexy panties and gag gifts are also an option.

Wholesale or Dropship products:

These are fun. There are aggregators like Doba and Simplix who you pay a fee to and they give you access to many ‘so-called’ wholesale products. Be careful because they are usually closer to 25% off retail so not really wholesale.You can also look into getting individual products and specializing once you find a good wholesale source. For example you can look are and select say, wholesale sunglasses to get started. Setting up a specialty stand at a flea market or the corner of a busy parking lot can make you more in a weekend than a year of eBaying the junk at Doba.

Remember that a lot of other folks are out there trying to make a few extra bucks on the web. If you take a moment to think and talk about differential marketing (how you can be different from everyone else) it can pay off tons.

We want to hear how it goes so please write back.

Thanks again;

Dwayne

My wife and I have been married for almost 30 years. We have been through good times and bad times, flush and lean times. The thing that has been consistent has been that she has always been there for me.
When we first got married I bought her a new watch. This was a very nice watch and she wore it all the time. Then one day, about 3 months ago, the band broke and the watch fell in the road as she was crossing the street. Well you know where this is going, a car ran over the watch and it ended up in a thousand pieces. She was devastated.

I told her to look online and compare watches and find one that she liked. She took my advice and did her research. She was drawn to the Movado Watches. She liked the style of the Esperanza Black Dial. I told her that we just couldn’t afford to spend over $1,100 for a new watch. She understood but was very disappointed. She doesn’t know the real story.
I did some research of my own and found a site called www.bluedial.com. This site has the exact watch that she wants, the Movado Ladies Stainless Steel Esperanza Black Dial. This watch is part of the Esperanza collection. The Black Dial is made of lustrous stainless steel and has a sophisticated modern design that is very attractive. It has a slender tank case that is attached to an open link bracelet that oozes style. This is offset by a dramatic black dial with silver colored hands and a Movado signature concave dot. You know this watch is made with quality in mind because it is water resistant to 30 meters and has precise Swiss Quartz movement. This is all backed by a 12 months warranty.
My wife doesn’t know that I bought all of this for under $500 and that it is her Valentine’s Day gift. I want her to know that I love her all of the time. To me the Movado Ladies Stainless Steel Esperanza Black Dial is the perfect way to show my love all of the time.

Dwayne,

I set up this little site for the Indy Falcons group. (volunteer). www.indyfalcons.com
If you go there, you will see I have embedded the webcams which are sponsored by the Indianapolis Star.
My question is this: if people come to this page and watch the webcams, does that score a hit on the Star site? I know one of the reasons they support the webcams is the number of hits they get during the season. If embedding the cam removes those hits, I need to take it out and find something else to put there….
Thanks
Susan

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Hi Susan;
Happy new year! That’s a good question and a worthy cause.

I looked at the page and checked your code to see what’s what and you are using an iframe to embed these cams onto your page. Since the iframe is just pulling their page into your page it will register as a hit from the visitor computer — your website will not be cited in their logs unless you have some other clickover kind of content.

So to their system it does register a visitor hit so it justifies their supporting the cams. But don’t forget to add some content onto your page also so it can be regarded as important enough to be indexed. If your home page is nothing but an iframe embed from another site it does not qualify as valuable content to search bots. This makes it hard for the site to gain popularity and get ranked so more people can find it organically.

Hope this helps.
Dwayne