eCommerce and Yahoo Stores Reviews

This is where the future of online marketing resides! Through all my online adventures in paid surveys, affiliate marketing, data entry programs and eBay powerselling, my money making goals all point to one direction: Your Own Product or Store. In the past, I have been very successful with some of these opportunities (particularly affiliate marketing), but I do find that these types of ventures can only take you to a certain level (Mind you, this current level of mine is great, but I was still hungry for more!). If you step back and think about it:

Why are websites offering such high commissions to affiliate marketers?

The answer is simple:

They make a heck of a lot of money and the money going to affiliate marketers is just a small bite of the huge profits these websites earn. As an affiliate marketer, it is great for you because your only job is promotion (i.e.: no product sourcing, no creating gigantic websites, no dealing with shopping carts and internet security, etc.). That is all good (and why I love affiliate marketing so much). But still, how do you go from a $5000/month affiliate marketing income to over $1000/day? Getting to $5000/month in affiliate marketing is not trivial, but manageable. Get SIX times this would be a serious challenge for me (and frankly, one that I could not manage).

After lots of research and talking to some of the top online marketers in the business they all told me the same thing: eCommerce! One, good eCommerce site alone can bring in $1000/day. This kind of income would probably require about a dozen modest affiliate marketing sites.

So why didn't I do this in the first place?

Probably the same reason you would not consider doing it either: "THIS IS WAY OVER MY HEAD!" How the heck I am going to design a gigantic eCommerce website when I know nothing about website design, hosting, shopping carts, product sourcing, etc. It seems like a large learning curve and a lot of money.

Right now, these things no longer scare me (because of my past successes), but from my research and studies of eCommerce business, I learned a little secret:

You don't need to really know any of this! If you are coding your own websites from beginning to end, you are doing it wrong. If you are trying to find wholesalers through search engines, you are doing it wrong. THE MOST SUCCESSFUL eCOMMERCE SITE OWNERS KNOW VIRTUALLY NOTHING ABOUT WEB DESIGN, SHOPPING CARTS, EVEN THEIR OWN PRODUCTS THAT THEY SELL.

Huh? Really?

The hard part is NOT the website or the products, it is getting people to your website. The main difference between starting an affiliate marketing venture and eCommerce website is really the start-up costs. With affiliate marketing, you can get away with simple, amateur websites or even free blogs. eCommerce stores are a little bit different. You need to look professional enough to have a customer willing to put their credit card information into your system.

So, here is the trick to starting your own eCommerce store: Find someone to design you a quality website, set up a shopping cart and help you source the products you wish to sell. This is what I have been researching for the past few months and I have found a couple of programs that I REALLY like! Both programs are OUTSTANDING, but offer very different kinds of eStores. Be sure to read each review to learn more about the programs!