Do you know why most people fail at marketing anything on the Internet?  Even though the products or services they are trying to sell are awesome?

Regardless of your present level of success, pause for a minute and try to find out the #1 reason for failure so you can avoid making the same marketing mistake most people make over and over.  Found it?  It is fairly simple: once they have caught someone’s attention, most people will start touting about how great their products or services are: “nothing that you will have ever seen…”

Generally, when you own a “brick-and-mortar” business, you get to meet face-to-face with your potential customers at least once.  That’s how people get acquainted and how business relationships are established and eventually develop into long-lasting and mutually beneficial rapports.

It’s a fact, people are usually more enticed to do business with someone they feel they can trust.  Believe me my friend, establishing trust on the Internet is the most difficult and challenging thing to accomplish. Why is that?

Here is the main reason:  people don’t get to see each other, to feel each other, to see each other’s expressions and body language which helps to gauge the person that is in front of us and immediately determine whether we want to do business with that person or not. Don’t we say we have 15 seconds to make a good or bad impression?

If you want to be successful online, your #1 goal is to establish a trustworthy relationship with your potential customers. Instead of touting about your products or services right off the bat, you would be better off trying to know people’s needs first!

That’s were proactive networking comes into play.  Proactive networking has become a necessity in today’s business world.  Pro-active networking is the systematic process of establishing relationships with new people and build mutually beneficial relationships.

Once a relationship is established, it will be easier to offer your products or services to people that are in your network and trust you!

Happy pro-active networking!

All the best,

Christophe

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In following up a commitment made last week in an earlier blog post, I’ve spent most of this week collecting data on alternative venues to eBay.

Amongst details of almost 200 alternative sites (all, bar one, being a LOT cheaper than the San Jose giant) and will be working on detailed indexes and directories, together with site reviews and commentaries, throughout this month.  Watch for the A-Z of online selling venues to appear in the left hand sidebar as I get each category and group completed.  Categories will include auction sites, classifieds sites, online malls, metabase search sites, comparison shopping sites etc.  I’ll roll out each group as I get them finished, but some of the less-core groups might not appear until next month.

I’m also working on a major revamp of the Online Selling section of the BuildaSkill Forums, and in addition to rejigging the whole online selling section, I’ve almost completed expanding the section relating to Book Selling.  In the root of the book selling board, I’ve added two polls.  If you have a few seconds to spare, your input would be very much appreciated - basically, I’d like to discover which sites you’ve ever used to BUY books online, or to SELL books online.  The results will help me to gather and present information relevant to you, BuildaSkill’s readers.  To find the threads in the forum root, scroll down past the sub-boards list.

If you haven’t registered for our forums yet, why not do it today?  It only takes a minute, is free, and opens access to double the number of boards you see as a guest.

Ed

HAPPY NEW YEAR & BEST WISHES TO YOU ALL.

 As you all recover from the festivities of seeing out the old, and pondering whether or not your new year resolutions are maintainable, I thought it might be a good idea to write something about the subliminal idea that a new year is a clean slate.

For many people in business, ask what the first week of the year means to them and they’ll almost certainly respond with “January Sales”.  This annual phenomena is supposed to handle two dilemmas of the retailing industry - clearing the last season’s remaining stock, and boosting sales in what is otherwise a low point in the retail calendar.  Yet for almost everyone in business, it should be a lot more than that.

The psychological boost of a new year should be a time to shrug off old thinking and plan for the next twelve months.  Examining last year’s market data and innovation trends can open opportunities and new directions for the forthcoming campaigns.  For retailers there are a rapid sequence of events to profit from - Scotland’s Burn’s Night, Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and the Spring season.  For manufacturers, recognition that many employees will have overspent for Christmas gifts should be a nudge that extra working hours (overtime) will be welcomed and accepted more eagerly.  Hospitality and Tourism businesses may be in the full flow of taking bookings for summer, as should wedding related businesses, but this week may be the time to give staff a quick break before the workload increases.

For business owners, with the pressures of the holiday season gone, now is the time to research your industry and look for new ideas, markets, suppliers, and partners.  Here are some such events and landmarks from history …..

1st January - New Year’s Day in today’s Gregorian Calendar

This week in history - effects on business and innovation

The Julian calendar, which was created in BC 45, preceded today’s Gregorian one, and was adopted around Europe between 1522 & 1578.  The Gregorian calendar was created in 1582, but Britain and it’s dependant American colonies retained the Julian one until 1752 causing plenty of confusion to historians.  Scotland only adopted the Julian calendar in AD1600.

The Gregorian calendar as promulgated in 1582 did not specify that January 1st was to be either New Year’s Day or the first day of its numbered year.  Back then, England began its numbered year on March 25 (Lady Day) between the thirteenth century and 1752, January 1 was called New Year’s Day, which was a holiday when gifts were exchanged.  In this respect (the start of the numbered year being close to Easter) it held similar alignment to the traditional Buddhist New Year.

Birthdays of famous business people & innovators

•  AD 1643 - Sir Isaac Newton, English mathematician & natural philosopher (d. 1727)
• AD 1727 - James Wolfe, British general (d. 1759)
• AD 1745 - Étienne Montgolfier, French inventor (d. 1799)
• AD 1813 - Isaac Pitman, British inventor (Pitman shorthand) (d. 1897)
• AD 1863 - Pierre de Coubertin, French Olympic Games initiator (d. 1937)
• AD 1888 - John Garand, American inventor (d. 1974)
• AD 1892 - J.R.R. Tolkien, British author of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
• AD 1895 - J. Edgar Hoover, American FBI director (d. 1972)

Business Moments - lost, noted, or seized

• AD1660 - Samuel Pepys began keeping his diary.
• AD 1800 - Dutch East India Company ceased to exist.
• AD 1882 - John D. Rockefeller unites his oil holdings into the Standard Oil trust.
• AD 1919 - Edsel Ford succeeded his father, Henry Ford, as president of the Ford Motor Company.
• AD 1942 - Pan American Airlines becomes the first commercial airline to have a flight go around the world.
• AD 1946 - The first civil flight from London’s Heathrow Airport occurs.
• AD 1974 - Richard Nixon signs a bill lowering the maximum US speed limit to 55 MPH in order to conserve gasoline during an OPEC embargo.

 Deaths of famous and not so famous people

• AD 404 - Last known Gladiator competition in Rome.
• AD 1748 - Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (b. 1667)
• AD 1795 - Josiah Wedgwood, English potter (b. 1730)
• AD 1852 - Louis Braille, French teacher of the blind (b. 1809)
• AD 1877 - Cornelius Vanderbilt, American entrepreneur (b. 1794)
• AD 1894 - Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, German physicist (b. 1857)
• AD 1992 - Grace Hopper, American computer pioneer (b. 1906)
• AD 2007 - Momofuku Ando, inventor of instant noodles and cup noodles (b. 1910)

Discoveries that changed the world

•  AD 1493 - Christopher Columbus leaves the New World, ending his first journey.
• AD 1896 - An Austrian newspaper reported that Wilhelm Roentgen discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.
• AD 1927 - The American astronomer Edwin Hubble announces the discovery of galaxies outside the Milky Way.
• AD 1930 - The first diesel-engine automobile trip is completed (Indianapolis, Indiana, to New York City).

Ideas that opened new industries

• AD1772 - First Travellers’ cheques (valid in 90 European cities) go on sale in London.
• AD 1818 - Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is published.   Believed by some to be the birth of the Science Fiction age.
• AD 1871 - Henry W. Bradley patents oleomargarine.
• AD 1888 - Marvin C. Stone patents the drinking straw.

New Market & Opportunity Discoveries

• AD 1673 - First regular postal mail deliveries between Europe and America.
• AD 1788 - First edition of The Times of London, previously The Daily Universal Register, is published.
• AD 1801 - Legislative union of Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland is completed to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
• AD 1865 - The New York Stock Exchange opens its first permanent headquarters at 10-12 Broad near Wall Street in New York City.
• AD 1877 - Queen Victoria of England proclaimed Empress of India.
• AD 1900 - John Hay announces the Open Door Policy to promote trade with China.
• AD 1901 - The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia.
• AD 1958 - The European Community is established.
• AD 1993 - A single market within the European Community (EC) is introduced.
• AD 1994 - Not to be outdone by the EC, The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) comes into effect., and the EC reciprocates with the European Economic Area (EEA).   The International Tropical Timber Agreement also comes into effect.
• AD 1995 - The World Trade Organization (WTO) comes into effect.
• AD 1998 - The European Central Bank is established.
• AD 1999 - The Euro currency is introduced.
• AD 2002 - Euro banknotes and coins become legal tender in twelve of the European Union’s member states.
• AD 2008 - SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) due to come into effect

Start-up businesses that became famous

•  AD 1907 - Maria Montessori opens her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome.
• AD 1939 - William Hewlett and David Packard found Hewlett-Packard.
• AD 1977 - Apple Computer incorporated.

Technology inventions

• AD 1496 - Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine.
• AD 1838 - Samuel Morse first successfully tested the electrical telegraph.
• AD 1847 - Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the United States government.
• AD 1890 - First use of football (soccer) goal nets in England.
• AD 1937 - Safety glass in windshields became mandatory in Great Britain.
• AD 1959 - The first artificial satellite to orbit the moon, Luna 1, is launched by the U.S.S.R.
• AD 1970 - Unix time begins.
• AD 1983 - The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.
• AD 1985 - The Internet’s Domain Name System is created.
• AD 1985 - The first British mobile phone call is made by comedian Ernie Wise to Vodafone.
• AD 2004 - Spirit, a NASA Mars Rover, lands successfully on Mars at 04:35 UTC.

Just a few of the momentous events that can happen in a week when you might be thinking of free-wheeling your business along, waiting for trade to pick up.  Events like the trade-bloc politics can sneak up on you if you don’t use this time to look at the opportunities and threats coming your way.  Technological change can leave you behind the competition if you don’t know where it’s going, and plan accordingly.  It could also wipe out your innovation if the spin-offs from the Mars missions come at anything like the pace that they came from the Apollo series.

 Will you be the next Montessori, Hewlett-Packard, or Apple?  What aboutthe next Anita Broderick or Richard Branson, Vanderbilt, or Wedgewood?  One thing’s for sure, nursing a hangover won’t get you there … unless you use the time to do some research .

Happy New Year everyone - I hope it’s as successful and profitable as your efforts deserve.

Ed

  Have you ever wondered how to keep more up to date on exchange rates when you’re trying to organise pricing on your website or online-auction listings?

I’ve always considered myself to be pretty savvy with such things, especially listing on up to a dozen eBay sites in any one week, each in a different currency.  However, I recently discovered one of my favourite tools has (again) been pulled from the eBay UK home page, and it left me feeling a little bit lost.

For the last 18 months or so, there has been a link at the bottom of eBay.co.uk that took users to an eBay page utilising the XE.com universal currency converter (UCC).  This handy little tool uses mid-market rates to give a straight forward X of currency 1 = Y of currency 2. 

OK, when actually doing the transaction there will be a slight variation that’s not due to exchange rate movements, but due to the payment service’s “commission” rate, however, particularly for the short life of an eBay listing, it’s always been good enough and even PayPal’s punitive exchange rates didn’t throw the base calculation too far out.

Now it’s not there in an easy to find link, I needed to be sure I had easy access to it, so I went a-lookin’ for XE.com and am very glad I did. 

Their site has allsorts of free goodies, including a daily email service, to your PC,  giving the top 100-ish currency rates (based against your home currency), link farms for different free tools, and many other useful “toys”.  The spinning banner at the top of this article goes to their UCC that used to be on eBay, and I’ve also added it permanently to THIS site (over there on the left, just below the signin link) - it’ll be there for whenever you need it, and it’ll open in a new window that you can minimise, then continue reading BuildaSkill   .

Ed