10 Steps to Testing the Viability of Your Online Business Idea That Won’t Break the Bank
The economic recession is pushing more and more people to consider self-employment. Starting an online business is a very low-risk way to put your toe in the entrepreneurial pond because the start up costs are minimal, the overhead is low, [...]

In an article titled “Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Spending“, M.P. Dunleavey wrote for the New York Times about her struggles to get out of $30,000 in credit card debt.
Ditching debt requires dealing with the emotional underbelly of owing money, and coming to terms with a culture that has serious debt addiction issues. Getting out [...]

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has voted for a “Stay of Enforcement of Certain Testing and Certification Requirements of CPSIA”.
They are proposing a 1 year suspension of the burden of lead testing and certification while they take more time to review the rules and plan enforcement.  Manufacturers (including home-based and small businesses will [...]

Just appeared on the Etsy blog is the following letter from US Senator Jim DeMint concerning the incoming Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) which takes effect from February 10th 2009.
Etsy have been a leading co-ordinator in seeking to protect small and home based businesses from the potential extinction results of this piece of legislation.
AuctionBytes [...]

A recent Auctiva Edu blog post caught my eye, while preparing for a week on BuildaSkill looking at the bank plastic industry and it’s future for small businesses.  The Auctiva post begins -
Paper or plastic? Customers are used to hearing this question at their local grocery stores, but they also want the option when [...]

The U.S. Census Bureau has announced advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for December
Adjusted for seasonal variation, and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, sales were $343.2 billion, a decrease of 2.7% (±0.5%) from the previous month, and down 9.8% (±0.7%) below December 2007.
Total sales for the 12 months [...]

Over on the Auctiva Education Blog, Dennis L. Prince asserted (on Friday) that “Smart listing strategies will ensure continued sales”.
It’s a great post and well worth a read in the context of its original intent. However I’m in a bit of a mischievous mood today, so I’m going to give the post an “on [...]

Most small business owners/operators would probably agree that developing a stand-out brand identity is an essential part of the marketing package for corporates and large companies.
Many would add that branding is not that important for small businesses and see it as an additional expense on the P&L.  So they head off to the local printer [...]

The European Commission last Thursday reinforced its commitment to keeping Europe’s markets open, and to increasing efforts to improve openness further afield.  The following extracts and notes are from the full communique, which can be read in the BuildaSkill “Trade Blocs” discussion board.
The latest communication identifies the main non-tariff barriers faced by European exporters, and [...]

If you use online advertising through sites such as Google Adwords, or Facebook then you know you need to leverage every penny and cent that they cost you.
With the Christmas and New Year holidays approaching, you’re going to have plenty of time sitting around at home wondering why you’re not doing any work. The [...]

While some online sellers in western countries are hitting full-scale panic mode trying to fulfil orders and get them delivered by Christmas Eve, for those of us “out East” today was pretty much the last day of realistic expectation for despatch in time for Christmas.

Regular as clockwork, in each of the previous five years, our sales stopped dead on the mid-point Friday between Cyber Monday and Christmas Eve. This year they went into reverse on the 25th September …

Blogs and forums have been raging concerning the UK Chancellor’s very short notice changes to the rate of Value Added Tax (VAT) effective from Monday as an economic stimulus package.
Less concerned with the overall effect on businesses and consumers, the rage has been directed at eBay and a lack of tools and other assistance needed [...]

Such could have been the chorus lyrics of a top-ten song by 1970’s Scottish teeny-bopper band the Bay City Rollers.
It’s no secret in the online auction-selling community that large numbers of sellers are either leaving eBay, or splitting inventory off to other sites to adopt a multi-channel approach, and leave themselves less vulnerable to the [...]

Philipp Justus, PayPal’s senior vice president of global markets, has followed up Eddie Davis’s post on Monday regarding selling globally, with announcements of wide ranging expansions to the number of localised PayPal sites.

The latest post in the PayPal official blog states that PayPal have opened new sites in another 18 countries, and improved locally relevant information globally for another 173 countries. That’s a massive content edit and creation task and the team are to be applauded for doing it, though one does wonder if it was the root cause of so many glitches in the system this last month? Most notably the global echeques problems late last month and early this month, as well as the currently emerging one of sellers paying eBay fees that are then marked unclaimed.

Looking beyond the obvious of major PayPal site upgrades leading to temporary glitches, this week’s announcements may be indicative of some of where eBay sellers’ woes have been coming from this year.

The late summer change announcements for the North American eBay sites are radically different to those with major effects in Europe.

The NAFTA-zone sites are keeping traditional eBay Stores and SIF format, but adding new listing durations and fee structures for the existing Fixed Price/BIN format in core.

Specifically this means that they will retain the ultra-cheap, but restricted visibility, store listing option, and sellers using it will still need listings in Auction and BIN format to drive buyers to their shop inventory. The BIN format listings also get a single unified insertion fee, which remains the same regardless of unit price or quantity in the listing, and also get several eBay-authorised methods to manipulate Best Match search ranking for their listings. The primary kick-in-the-nuts for sellers comes with the new “electronic payments” only policy, that has potential to slide-in a PayPal-only North America via the back door.