This document provides an overview and summary of an eCommerce training seminar. The seminar covered various topics related to starting and running a successful eCommerce business, including choosing a niche market, website development, search engine optimization, social media marketing, legal and tax issues, and sources of information for eCommerce businesses. The training was intended to educate small business owners and entrepreneurs on practical internet strategies for selling products and services online.

1. eCommerce
Practical Internet Strategies to Sell Your
Products and Yourself
Presented by Dan Bond
Sponsored jointly by Downtown Delaware,
the Delaware Emerging Technology Center,
Delaware Technical Community College (Terry Campus)
and USDA Rural Development
June 2010

2. Terry Campus Map

3. Introductions

4. Introductions
Please give:
Your name
Where you live or work
Your current level of
eCommerce activity
Your expected use of this
training
Something about yourself
of special interest

5. Introductions
Towers Bed & Breakfast

6. Hi, I'm Eebee! I will be joining you for this
course.

7. Outline
Overview of eCommerce
Niche Marketing
Product Sourcing
Equipment, Software, Communications
Domain Name
Website
Shopping Cart
Photography for Your Website

8. Outline
Information Management Systems
Inventory Control
Shipping
SEM & SEO
Shopping Sites & Affiliates
Legal & Tax Issues
Social Networking
Sources of Information

9. Wow, we've got a lot to cover!

10. The Most Important Parts:
• Choosing your niche
• SEM & SEO
• Continually expanding
your market with
Social Networking and
other tools

11. eCommerce

12. What is eCommerce?
The definition given in Wikipedia is:
Electronic commerce, commonly known
as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists
of the buying and selling of products or
services over the Internet.

13. What is eMarketing?
The definition given in Wikipedia is:
Internet marketing, also referred to as
i-marketing, web-marketing, online-
marketing, or eMarketing is the marketing
of products or services over the Internet.

14. Internet & the Web
The Internet is a The World Wide Web is
global system of a system of interlinked
interconnected hypertext documents
computer contained on the
networks that use the Internet.
standard Internet
Protocol Suite.

15. Business to Business eCommerce
Business to Consumer eCommerce

16. "Click & Mortar" Business Model
Selling to
Both Global &
Local Markets

17. "Click & Mortar" Business Model

18. Total Retail eCommerce Sales
were $134 billion in 2008

19. Will eCommerce Continue to Grow So Rapidly?

20. Unique Benefits of eCommerce
Low startup cost
Unlimited market size
Much greater freedom of location
Portability of business
Anonimity
24-7 Sales

21. Many successful eCommerce
businesses started here.

22. The eCommerce Market ... as
soon as FedEx gets there.

23. As long as there is high-speed internet
and package delivery service available...

24. Relocating - Take it with you.

26. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night ...
...keeps the orders from coming in.

27. I want to get on the Internet!

28. The Most Important Parts:
• Choosing your niche
• SEM & SEO
• Continually expanding
your market with
Social Media and other
tools

29. Niche
Marketing

31. Finding Your Niche
• Identify an interest -- ideally one related to
yourself, your experiences, your
talents, your location, etc.
• Identify a niche with sufficient
market demand.
• Discard niches where there is already too
much competition.
• Make sure that the niche can become a
profitable business.

32. Profit Margins
• Wholesale price
• Location of supplier
• Price points
• Price competition
• Information value added
• Weight to value ratio
• Shelf life
• Market trends
• Supply constraints

33. I
love lists,
they are
so much
fun
to tear
up!

34. How narrow is your niche?

35. Tools for Researching Niches
Google Search Results
Google Product Search
Google Trends
Google Alerts
eBay Groups

36. Have you found
your niche?

37. Products
Information Management System
Payment System
Equipment Photography
Accounting System Delivery Services
Website Shopping Cart

38. Product Sourcing

39. Drop Shipping
The Good:
• You don't invest in inventory.
The Bad:
• You have no buying power.
• Competition will drive down your margins.
• Drop ship wholesales do not provide products for
niche markets.
The Ugly:
• You can work a lot, sell a lot and make no money.

40. If you must try drop shipping take a look at:

41. Is everyone still awake!!!!!!!!!!!!!

42. New York International Gift Fair

43. Philadelphia Gift Show

44. Equipment, Softwar
e, Communications

48. Domain Names
www.ladybug-shop.com
www.turtle-treasures.com
www.mispillion.com

49. What's in a name?

50. Domain Name Selection
• Short
• Memorable
• Easy to spell
• Discribes your business or product
• Contains key words
• Has best name extension possible

51. .com
.net
.org
.edu
.gov
.mil
Top Level Domain Names

52. Domain Name Selection Aids

53. This could
be yummy!

54. Domain Name Registration

55. Websites

56. Website Options
Rent it
Build it yourself
Have it built for you

57. Rent Your Website

58. Build Your Website Yourself

59. Website Development Companies

61. Choosing a Shopping Cart
• Product capacity
• Photo capacity
• Inventory tracking
• Affiliate program links
• Discounting & customer loyalty programs
• Search-engine friendliness
• Shipping Options
• Payment Processing Options
• Report Generation
• Technical Considerations
• Support
• Cost

62. Website Hosting
Usually best to have your website built
and hosted by the same company
Make sure that they have on-site
supervision 24-7
Make sure they have good telephone
technical support service
Explore their up-grade potential

63. Payment Options

64. Credit Card Processing

65. Is everyone still awake!!!!!!!!!!!!!

66. Essential Photo Euipment

67. Carriers

68. The Most Important Parts:
• Choosing your niche
• SEM & SEO
• Continually expanding
your market with
Social Media and other
tools

69. "If you build it, they will come."

70. Search Engine Marketing

71. Search Engine Optimization

72. Comparison of SEM & SEO

73. Search Engine Marketing

74. Meet my best friend!

75. To learn more about how to use
Google AdWords for Search Engine
Marketing go to:
http://adwords.google.com/support

76. Paid & Organic Search Results

83. URL
Uniform Resource Locator
It points to a specific "page" on a website.
Examples:
http://www.ladybug-shop.com LadyBug Shop Home Page
http://store.ladybug-shop.com/index.cfm?
fuseaction=catalog.prodInfo&productID=1742&categoryID=28
Fuzzy Ladybug Slippers for Children page

84. Search Engine Optimization

85. SEO You Can Do Yourself
Use your keywords as much as possible.
Have good, well written content.
Establish back links from popular websites.
Maintain a blog.
Use Social Media to promote your site.

86. Alexa.com

88. Website Evaluation
The LadyBug Shop website
(www.LadyBug-Shop.com)
was awarded a grade of 97 by
Website Grader.

89. Use
www.websitegrader.com
to do an evaluation
report on your website.

90. The Most Important Parts:
• Choosing your niche
• SEM & SEO
• Continually expanding
your market with
Social Media and other
tools

91. Expanding Your Market Space

92. Geographic Marketing
In SEM specify the geographic areas that contain most of
your potential customers or select only those areas to
which you are willing to ship your products.
For example, with Google AdWords you can:
• Search or browse for countries, territories, regions, and
cities.
• Select a preset bundle of locations.
• Choose a point on the map and specify a radius around
it where your ads will appear.
• Target a custom shape on the map.
• Exclude areas within your selected locations.

93. Google Maps - Local Business Listings

96. Other Market Expansion Tools
Post Card Marketing
Blogging
eMail
Podcasting
Videos

97. Social Networking

98. Social Media Starfish
http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2007/11/scobles-starfish.html

99. Social Media

100. Make it simpler with ShareThis

101. Boy, I have got to
catch this one!

102. Avoid the Hard Sale

103. WARNING!
SOCIAL MEDIA TAKES TIME &
CONSTANT ATTENTION.

104. Ooompa
website

105. Oompa's Niche
Oompa is a click & mortar business that
specializes in infant toys and furniture that:
Have no batteries, no blinking lights & no
cartoon themes.
High quality and safety standards.
Primarily items made in the U.S. and Europe.
Made to last.

106. Oompa
links to
social
media

107. Oompa
Blog

108. Oompa
on
facebook

109. Oompa on
Twitter

110. Oompa
Videos on
Website &
YouTube

111. Use Multiple Websites
to Grow Your Market

114. Find & development your niche
Build your Web presence
Build traffic flow
Monitize your web traffic
It's a long road!

115. Monetizing Your Web Traffic
Revenue
Revenue from
from sales advertising
of goods & on your
services website
Revenue from
the affiliate
commissions

116. Website
Advertising

117. AdSense has become a popular method of placing
advertising on a website because the
advertisements are less intrusive than
most banners, and the content of the
advertisements is often relevant to the website.
Many websites use AdSense to monetize their
content. AdSense has been particularly important
for delivering advertising revenue to small websites
that do not have the resources for developing
advertising sales programs and sales people.

118. Affiliate Marketing

120. Compensation Models
• Cost per sales (80%)
• Cost per action (19%)
• Cost per click & cost per "mile" (1%)

121. Affiliate Networks

122. Shopping Sites

123. SKU

124. Show me the money!

125. Social Shopping Sites
"Websites that combine social
elements such as a social
networking community or the
ability to set social bookmarks
with aspects of shopping such as
product reviews and deal hunting"

126. "A site that only sells one item a
day as a "daily woot" and provides
community feedback on the item."

127. "Discover and share products in a social
environment that allows you to recommend
products to friends, organize shopping lists,
find the best deals and get discounts."

128. Other Social Shopping Sites

129. Legal & Tax Issues
• Identity theft
• Protection of credit card information
• Copyright infringement
• Affiliate contact violations
• Tax collection
• Spam

130. PCI DSS
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
Be informed. Got to:
http://www.pcisecuritystandards.org
Failure to understand the PCI compliance
standards could result in higher merchant
account fees and fines from the credit card
issuers.

131. WARNING!
Even if you are PCI compliant, if you
experience a credit card security
breach, you can be open to legal action
from the affected customers.

133. Three types of ownership protection:
A copyright protects original works gives the owner
exclusive rights to reproduce his or her work in any
medium.
A trademark is used to protect a word, symbol, device, or
name that is used for the purpose of trading goods.
The trademark indicates the source of goods and
distinguishes them from the goods of others.
A patent for an invention grants a property right to the
inventor that will prevent anyone else from making, using,
or selling an invention.

134. Potential Penalties for Copyright
Infringement:
1.Actual damages (the amount you would have
to pay to license the material from the
copyright owner).
2.Statutory damages of $750-$30,000 per work.
3.If the violation was willful—up to $150,000 per
work.
4.At the court’s discretion, attorney fees.
5.Embarrassment.

135. This is scary stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

136. In the 1990s, Congress passed the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA). It included a very powerful
tool to quickly attack the theft of unregistered
copyright-protected materials so victims of theft of
creative works can reach out into cyberspace and
aggressively pursue an infringer. This tool, known as
the “takedown notice,” requires a website host to
pull down an allegedly infringing website or page
merely upon receipt of a specified notice from the
owner or its lawyer. No lawsuit is necessary. The
implications to the host are significant: the failure to
pull it down exposes the hosting company to liability
for copyright infringement under traditional
doctrines of law, and it also loses immunity created
by the DMCA. The law giveth, and the law taketh
away.

137. TAXES

138. WARNING!
Internet sales are not always tax free.
There are over 11,000 sales tax
jurisdictions in the United States.
Ecommerce merchants located in a state
without a sales tax do not have to collect
sales tax unless they have taken some
action to create a physical presence in
another state.

139. Other states
that do not
have sales
taxes are
Alaska,
Hawaii,
Montana, New
Hampshire
and Oregon.

140. Sales tax vulnerability
In April 2008 the State of New York inserted an item in the
state budget asserting sales tax jurisdiction
over Amazon.com sales to residents of New York, based on
the existence of affiliate links from New York–based websites
to Amazon. The state asserts that even one such affiliate
constitutes Amazon having a business presence in the state,
and is sufficient to allow New York to tax all Amazon sales to
state residents. Amazon challenged the amendment and lost
at the trial level in January, 2009. The
case is currently in appeal process.

142. Sources of eCommerce Information

143. When you have questions, this is the first place to go!

145. Government
Assistance, Regulations,
Taxes
http://www.business.gov/business-law/online-business/

146. Small Business Issues & Assistance
http://www.delawaresbdc.org/

147. Business Information Security
www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/security.aspx
"NISTIR 7621 Small Business Information Security:
The Fundamentals"
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/ir-7621/draft-
nistir-7621.pdf

148. ecommerceoptimization.com
fitbase.fitforcommerce.com
growsmartbusiness.com

149. Dan Bond
302-228-6590 (cell)
daniellbond@gmail.com