Over the years I have worked with wholesale companies in various industries; golf, fireplaces, computer equipment, barbecue’s., etc. That’s a pretty diverse background but all those industries have the same thing in common, they want buyers. Wait a minute they dont want buyers they need buyers! This is the formula for their survival. Now for the first time I am viewing the industry from a new perspective, I am the newest Account Executive for Top Ten Wholesale and JP Communications. The first time I browsed our amazing network all I kept thinking was “Man, I wish I could have used this when I was wholesaling and looking for new buyers!” If you told me I could trade pocket change for qualified buyers coming to my company’s website, I would have broke open the piggy bank immediately! My name is Brian Werner and I look forward to meeting you and passing along my knowledge of this amazing network.

Brian Werner

When you spend as much of your time dealing with wholesale industry professionals like I do it is easy to forget that many people who visit Top Ten Wholesale and Wholesale U are just getting started in the business. It is easy to forget that many of the terms and concepts that are very familiar to the veteran are a complete mystery to the noxiously termed “newbie”.

In the spirit of offering a helping hand to those just getting started in the e-commerce world I like to offer up an occasional primer on some very basic aspect of the trade. Today’s entry; Pay per click advertising.

One of the biggest and most frustrating hurdles for the new e-commerce site to overcome is after all the web site construction is done and the shopping carts installed and filled with shiny new products getting people to come. There are millions of web sites out there and standing out can be extremely difficult.

A way to improve traffic is to enroll in a pay-per-click search engine. The most famous example probably being Google Adwords, a systems used by millions of online businesses, but Yahoo’s Search Marketing isn’t far behind. The engines will charge you a very small fee per visit they generate for your web site. Usually you will bid against other customers for position on the site. The higher your bid the better position you will get.

You should expect to pay fees ranging from a few cents to around a dollar per click depending on the keywords you want your ad to appear with. Pay-per-click ads are among the very best ways to increase traffic to your website, proper bids and a well constructed ad will almost certainly improve your web pages traffic numbers.

In brief, an advertiser simply sets up a pay per click account with the search engine they wish to advertise on and fill out an automated form with the text that constitutes their ad. They then place bids on the key words that relate to the particular product or service they offer. The key words are the search terms that browsers are likely to use in order to find what they are looking for and the bid is the amount the advertiser is willing to pay for every click their ad receives.

How high the bidder goes determines how highly placed their ad will appear amongst the sponsored links that are returned with the search and generally appear either in a side column or at the top of a page of search results. Most advertisers use a key word digger or similar tool to determine the most searched for key words. Key word tools can be found online and most pay per click search engines offer some kind of digging tool for their customers to use.

For example, The Burly Brothers Moving Company might choose to bid on several sets of keywords such as movers, moving companies, and furniture movers. The amount they will need to bid on their key words depends on how popular the key word is and how high a placement they desire and can afford.

To continue with our example let’s assume the Burly Brothers determine that the present highest bid, thus the highest position for the search term moving companies is $.50 per click and the next position is $.40 per click. The new advertiser figures that the second position is good enough and places a bid of $.45 per click. They will now occupy the second position and bump the $.40 bid to the third placement. It should be noted that in most cases, as long as the $.40 bid is not raised, the Burly Brothers would not have to pay the full $.45 they bid. They would only pay enough to top the lower bid, in this instance $.41.

While pay per click ads are not guarantees of success, given the highly competitive nature of the online business world, it is naive to think that just because you have built a website that visitors will come.

Online shopping totaled $30.1 billion during the 2005 holiday season. That’s a 30% increase from 2004. Manufacturers, Distributors, and Wholesalers must love to hear that news. All these ebay powersellers and jobbers are taking advantage of the emerging ease wholesale companies have made to be found online. Consumers trust of on time delivery is growing so the trends are showing us they are shopping a little later in the holiday season. Apparel/Clothing totaled sales of $5.3 billion dollars online last year between October 29 and December 23. That’s a whopping 42% growth from the previous year. Computer products enjoyed a 126% growth in online revenue last year, ranking second in category spending with a total of $4.8 billion. Tied for second was consumer electronics, which is the second fastest growing category bragging a 109% increase year-over-year. Books and toys/video games accounted for a total of $5.3 billion.

Let’s hope these numbers are a sign of what’s to come this year as online shopping continues to grow year after year. Best of luck to all of you searching for suppliers and wholesalers with the hottest products for this holiday season.

Justin Prescott

It just does not happen. There are so many websites I run into that say “make a million dollars by sitting at home.” Has anyone ever had any success using one of those programs? If so, please let me know because I would really like to make a million dollars over night.

What I have seen that works for the multi million dollar companies is having a strategic marketing plan. Most of these plans consist of running advertising campaigns over a long period of time. It appears that the most successful companies are those that find a market place that generates revenue and they stick to it. They are not there for a week and gone by tommorrow.

For those of you that think you can “bark like a big dog” for a week and all of a sudden you’re making millions of dollars, think again.

Jonathan