VIDEO 2: Should I Hire A Contractor Or Virtual Staff?

This is the second video of the 10 part series. If you have not watched the first video, I recommend going to it now: Video 1 – Why You Should Outsource Your Work.

In this video I show you the difference between hiring a contractor versus full time virtual staff. This helps you determine what structure you should use to outsource your work and is the difference between owning a successful business compared to running a daily business. To get started press play below to begin:

Video 2: Should I Hire A Contractor Or Virtual Staff

If you have any comments and questions about the video tutorial, please click “Read the rest of this post” below to leave your comment.

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Become A Blogger Premium Review – The Blogging Gurus: Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick

Keep reading below as I give you a sneak preview tour through the Become A Blogger Premium website, otherwise if you want to see the video now click here.

Many people come to my blog to read my reviews and look for advice from leading experts that I have interviewed. I’ve made it really easy for anyone to access this information and categorised all my reviews and podcasts into the Business Resources section.

In the Business Resources section you will find:

• Reviews of products I use
• Web services that I recommend
• E-books I have read
• Other useful tools

For a complete list of these resources visit the Business Resources section.

Become A Blogger Premium Coaching Program

URL: Become A Blogger Premium
Purpose: This is a coaching program that will help you create, establish and make money from your blog in any industry you choose.

A few people left comments on the podcast interview with Gideon Shalwick from Become A Blogger and it was very interesting to share with everyone who Gideon Shalwick was what Become A Blogger can do for them. It was not intended to be a review of Become A Blogger, rather an insight into how Gideon become successful in running his Internet businesses.

This article is intended to help you reach a decision on whether Become A Blogger Premium is the right blog coaching program for you and whether you need it to achieve success in your Internet business journey.

Before I give you a sneak peak of the program and also share with you my thoughts, let me share with you why I enrolled into the program.

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Preparing Your Website For A Pre-Launch

Have you ever launched your own website before and received no traffic or any visitors to it in the first few weeks? I know I have, and it was disappointing. I want to share with you some simple steps to avoid the same mistakes I made when I first started. Also these steps are not hard to implement and does require a bit of effort on your part. I know once you have tried these proven methods you will never launch a website without this.

What Is A Pre-launch?

A lot of famous marketers like Jeff Walker, Mike Filsaime, Russell Brunson preach what they practice about the pre-launch phase. It is one of the most important phases to launching a website. A lot of people overlook this and don’t focus enough on it, usually skipping straight to launching their website. What the pre-launch does is it creates a buzz and anticipation for your website. You want to get the message out to world that your website is launching soon and what you are offering is going to be fantastic. Mike Filsaime coins the pre-launch as the “yeast” in the recipe.

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Zen Cart Review – The Pros And Cons Of ZenCart

Over the last four years of running my Internet business I have been very fortunate to use a very robust and reliable system called Zen Cart. All of my transactions are processed electronically through this platform and my business has been streamlined because of this. This is a biased review, and the only system I continue to use today. Though I will be upfront and say that Zen Cart is not perfect and I am always on the look out to find better systems such as Magento Commerce. I will be reviewing that shortly as well, so stay tuned. Also if you would like to see a couple of the websites I have developed using Zencart visit DBV.com.au and AsianGroceryShop.com.

An Overview Of Zen Cart

Zen Cart is an online software designed solely for e-commerce businesses. It uses PHP, MySQL and is an open source project that was developed by a community of shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants who just wanted a simple e-commerce solution. Being open source like Wordpress, the software is free for anyone to use and it allows anyone to modify, develop and distribute. If you would like more information and details about Zen Cart, visit their tutorial section and read their about FAQ.

As of the date I write this review I am basing my experience on version 1.38a of Zen Cart. There was an announcement made in December 2008 for the release of version 2.0 and if you would like to know more about what is happening in the upcoming version, please read the Coming Soon: Zencart 2.0. For now, you can continue below to read my review on the Zen Cart system.

Installation Of Zen Cart
Most hosting companies offer Simple Scripts or Fantastico, which are application installers to help install Zen Cart. I would recommend using them as it saves time and also the hassle of setting up databases yourself. Zen Cart is one of the standard shopping carts available for installation so it should be a breeze to install. If you decide to go through and install Zen Cart yourself then you will need to read the instructions provided and it will take some time to get through. I would only recommend this route if you have a strong knowledge in PHP and MySQL as it will require you to edit some files and utilise FTP tools. You can download Zen Cart here

The Pros Of Zen Cart

Zen Cart Is A Free Bundled With Addons Available
Zen Cart is a great online software and best of all it is free. Since it’s inception over 5 years ago many developers have created numerous add-ons which can be downloaded and installed onto the Zen Cart system at any time. They are publicly available on the Zen Cart website and gives your e-commerce software extra functionality. You can download add-ons ranging from administrative tools anywhere to adding extra languages.

A Great Product Management System
The key to running any successful e-commerce business is how well you can manage your products. With Zen Cart, you are provided with a wide range of product options such as:

• Allows you to sort your products in categories and sub-categories
• Manage and control your stock levels
• Create attributes for your products, such as colours, sizes, and much more
• The ability to create products in bulk using the Easy Populate add-on
• Create specials and featured products
• Write reviews for each product

Each option can be activated when you need it or turned off. Zen Cart’s product management system is by far the most comprehensive system I have used to date and everything is at your finger tips as it is all linked to your orders and customers.

A Wide Range Of Free And Paid Templates Available
Most Internet businesses usually want a customised website and want different features to show their customers, which is why Zen Cart has a wide range of free and paid templates. You will find free basic templates available on the Zen Cart website that can be easily installed changing the colours and layout of your website. If you want more customisation, try some paid templates which start from about $50 and upwards. Here are two sites I recommend: Algozone and Template Monster.

Forum And Community Support Is Good
Unfortunately there is no formal support from Zen Cart or a team hired to handle customer service being a free product. Though there is a strong forum and community that does support and try their best to help. I have posted on their forum many times and got a response quite fast. Most of the answers are found by running a quick search and most of the time they will have a step by step process to fix the problem. I have to admit though it does get a bit technical and if you lack PHP knowledge then I would agree it can be quite frustrating to find a solution.

There is also some documentation available laid out in a Wiki section and FAQ on the Zen Cart website. If you are looking for a detailed manual there is one solely for administrators and it can be downloaded from a PDF file.

If all else fails, then try to find a Zen Cart experienced programmer and pay them to help fix your problem. They won’t cost too much and are very reasonable at what they do. I used a programmer to do some modifications to my website previously and I found them in the forum as well. Simply place a post asking for a programmer and specify what you want done. I am sure you will get people to reply if you pay them.

Export To Major Accounting Softwares Are Available
Currently Zen Cart supports both QuickBooks and MYOB accounting. Though, one module is free and the other does cost. So if you are looking to implement Zen Cart into your Internet business you will want to consider which accounting package to use. Currently there is a free QuickBooks export module that you can download and install available in the Zen Cart Downloads section. Alternatively if you are using MYOB, check out the company that has this export available at Zencart2MYOB.

The Cons Of Zen Cart

Originally when I first started using Zen Cart I was not very impressed by the not so appealing website after the installation. You will you see why:

Not Cosmetically Appealing
As with most of the open source “out of the box solutions”, I knew there were going to be somewhat a lot of customising to be done. What I found at first was the default skin that Zen Cart provided had a lot of “stuff” that were not needed and it made the whole store look a bit cluttered for my liking. Furthermore it was extra work to turn off all the banner advertisements and also to rearrange the boxes to have a simplistic look. I believe there has to be some element of visual appeal for any new user wanting to use Zen Cart as their e-commerce system.

Very Basic Reporting
Most of the basic reports are available which include products viewed, products purchased and customers orders. It lacks more sophisticated reports such as sales by products, profit on each product, profit margins made and so forth. There are additional addons which can be installed but are still not up to scratch. Basically I would not expect in depth analysis of sales, customers and products going through the door. You will need to generate these reports from your accounting software.

Upgrades And Add-On Integrations Are Difficult
This is the big downside of Zen Cart. Once you have installed Zen Cart and made modifications to the software, don’t expect to upgrade for a very long time. In my past experience if you decide to upgrade to the next version, you will basically have to start from the beginning again. The system has not been designed to upgrade without overwriting all your addons and customisations. So if you did any modifications like I have on my websites, I would be very cautious to stick to the existing version. Unlike Wordpress for example, if there are major upgrades or upgrades for add-ons it is a simple click of a mouse and the rest of the system will do the upgrade for you.

I am not saying it is not possible to upgrade, it is just extremely time consuming and a very tedious process. I have upgraded my Zen Cart websites twice from the previous versions of 1.1 to 1.2 and to 1.38a. Each time I have had to do a clean install and migrate all the data to the new version over a very long tedious process. Hopefully when the new version comes out it will eliminate a lot of these issues.

Newsletter And Email Autoresponder Is Not Reliable
I have noticed once your database begins to hit the 1000 customer mark, the email newsletter system and autoresponder facilities begin to show a slower response time. As most hosting companies do not allow for more than 50 emails to be sent out per hour via their mail servers, a majority of the emails do not get sent or are blocked by other mail providers. This begs the question to use other email service providers that will send your emails and guarantee at least a 99% delivery rate. One provider I use and talk about a lot is Aweber and I currently use this to manage my customer email database to send my updates and newsletter through. Unfortunately Zen Cart does not have any addons that are sufficient enough to automatically register a new customer to an email autoresponder and add it to the database. This is a major marketing tool that is missing in Zen Cart that can help Internet businesses grow their online customer database.

Overall Rating On Zen Cart
After using Zen Cart for a few years now I have seen the development and growth of this project. When I first started using Zen Cart it was very basic and I had to do a lot tweaking and personally add code to make it function the way I wanted. This is not ideal if you want a plug and play solution, which is what most e-commerce businesses need. Over time Zen Cart has improved this issue, but has not completely created a plug and play solution just like Wordpress has. I expect the new version of Zen Cart 2.0 will have this ability, as most open source projects begin to migrate to automatic updates rather than manually installing the plugins ourselves.

My rating for Zen Cart is a 7 out of 10 and I would recommend it as a solution to start off with for any small to medium business owners.

Tyrone Shum
Zen Cart User

Building A Successful Ecommerce Business: Find A Niche – Part 1

Over the years of running my own ecommerce businesses I have learnt to find markets, rather than create markets. Finding profitable niche markets is the smarter option than to create a new untested market. Many ecommerce businesses fail because they tried innovating new products that no one wanted and spending all their time and resources on a product they wanted for themselves. I can tell you from experience that I have tried an unknown product in some of my ventures and unfortunately they did not take off the way I hoped. I also did research but not thorough enough and I went by instinct rather than relying on the facts. The facts told me that it was not going to be viable and I was forcing myself to make it work. When you have a feeling of uncertainty, it is a signal to say get out or do not do it.

I want to show you how to find profitable niche markets and how to overcome some of the mistakes I had when I was starting a new ecommerce business.

Find Your Niche

Research is the key to your success in finding a profitable niche market. No matter how good a product sounds or how good someone else says about your idea, you need to do your own thorough research. Sometimes just reading one article or hearing a few testimonials from others is not enough. There are 3 major qualities to determine a profitable niche market:

1. Exists already
2. Easily identifiable
3. Marketable and targeted

Looking for a profitable niche market is about finding the buyers first. Most people start off with the wrong idea and look for a product to sell first. Find out what their problems or needs are and then provide a solution. A classic example from my experience is how I started the Dragonboating business. I was frustrated to not find any company in Australia offering carbon fiber paddles to the dragonboat teams. Furthermore, to order and delivery one from overseas took months. So I decided to create a company and become a distributor of carbon fiber paddles in Australia and guess what happened? Paddlers came flocking to my company and buying dragonboating gear from me and I made money whilst I continued to dragonboat.

Determine How Hungry Your Buyers Are?

Once you can determine whether or not your idea or passion works, then it’s time to really test the market and see how hungry these buyers are. The easiest way to determine how strong the demand will be for your idea is to do research on keywords in that market. Here are the 3 steps in determining if your idea is viable:

Step 1: Investigate Traffic Volumes.

This is the first and most important step. If you find out that your keyword only has 20 people searching for it, it may not provide a good income from that niche. To investigate how much traffic you will get for your niche market keyword, go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com or any other similar site and type in a broad term such as golf. The site will give you a list of the top 100 search results for that word. For example, you will find golf clubs, golf carts, golf buggies, golf gloves and so forth. Next to each phrase you will see the number of daily searches. Using this list, select the results that have enough searches to determine your targeted niche market.

Step 2: Determine The Amount Of Competition.
Your next step is to find out how many people are competing for the keyword you are wanting to market your idea to. Ideally you want to find out who are the advertisers and marketers and take note of this:

• Few competitors = great keyword
• Lots of competitors = not a good keyword

To determine the level of competition, go to Google.com and type in each of these potential key phrases from step 1 and make a note of how many competing sites there are in that market. See the number of results near the top right of your Google results page? Write that number down next to the keyword you searched.

Step 3: Find Out If There Is Money In This Niche.

The final step is to find out if the buyers you are targeting are willing to spend. There is no point targeting a market where everything is free because these buyers will expect this as well, meaning it is not a good market to target. Continuing your Google search from Step 2, record the number of advertisements that appear for each keyword that you search. If there aren’t any ads, then it is not a niche worth targeting.

I would suggest spending at least a few hours and compiling the information together as part of your research. This will help you determine if your idea is viable for your targeted niche market. If you follow this to find out if there is a niche market for your idea, then you will be on your way to building a successful ecommerce business.

Follow on to the next post as I will show you how to create the content to market your idea: Building A Successful Ecommerce Business: Creating Content – Part 2

Tyrone Shum
Building Niche Ecommerce Businesses

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