More so than any other product introduced by Apple, the iPod has changed the company and the world of music and entertainment. Before its inception, MP3 players were in the realm of small companies with limited budgets that were unable to provide content. After the iPod, the entire industry has evolved and grown to the point where the largest computer companies in the world have major interests in the music industry.
Due to the popularity, many companies including Apple, produce and distribute a large assortment of accessories designed for iPods. This market is referred to as the iPod ecosystem. These accessories add more extra features than most music players offer, such as sound recorders, FM radio tuners, wireless remote controls, external speakers, and protective cases/films to personalize your iPod.

Just For Five is your one stop shop for all iPod accessories and offers a wide selection of items including iPod speakers, iPod cases, iPod headphones and anything else you can imagine to personalize your iPod.

Whether you have a small chain of stores, or whether you distribute to the retail market, Just for Five / iWholesaleiPods offers it’s customers the best prices, the best quality, and the best margins on all its products.

Go to JustForFive.com
iWholesaleiPods.com

In the past month, the most common objection I am hearing from wholesale prospects is “this is my busiest part of the year, I don’t need to advertise.” Because it is your busiest part of the year is the exact reasons why you should be advertising.

Most companies report their highest margins during the holiday season. This is the time that you do have the little bit of extra income it takes to bring in new customers. Retail stores, boutiques, flea marketers, and more, are always looking for new items to help increase their revenues during this time. If you have a product that is hot during the holidays, don’t you want the opportunity to show this fast selling item to more retail outlets?

Since this is your busiest part of the year, you already know that this is the time for you to increase your customer base. Companies like JP Communications can help bring you those new customers. Once we bring you that new customer, it’s your job to keep them. With that little bit of information in mind, let JP Communications help bring you the new customers so that you can have a happy holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving.
Jonathan

I’ve been reading a book called “Search Engine Advertising” written by Catherine Seda. I recommend this book to anyone who is trying to run a successful marketing campaign online: because a lot of us are too busy, or too lazy to pick up a book, I thought it would be nice to share with all of you what I am reading. Here is what I have learned so far:

There are millions of prospects online. Advertisers pay millions of dollars to reach these millions of prospects. Unfortunately, all of these millions of prospects are not interested in your product. Because search engines let the buyer tell them exactly what they want, you need to know your customer. By knowing your customer, you’ll have a better idea of what they are looking for online and where you should be spending your money.

Optimization v. Advertising

Companies spend a lot of money on optimizing their sites for the major search engines like google and yahoo. In short, optimization focuses on designing your pages within to attract spiders. To organically optimize your site, it is necessary to pay an inclusion fee to a majority of top search engines if you want specific pages indexed. While paying this fee, you are not guaranteed of what pages will be indexed by these search engines and you are not guaranteed high rankings on the results pages. If anyone guarantees you placement, run!!!!

When you decide to advertise on a search engine, you are in complete control of everything. You have control of where your company is found on the results pages. You have control of the landing page the prospects find. This means that you have instant visibility of what you want the buyers to see.
You, as an advertiser, have 24/7 control of your campaign. As we all know, you know your business best and you have 24/7 access to change any ad and experiment what is working best for you before you go out and spend the thousands of dollars on trying to optimize your site for the major search engines.

The key ingredient to any successful company is to have a marketing strategy. In you marketing strategy, you should identify the message you want your prospects to know. You should know who your target audience is. You should always define your goals.

More to come in the upcoming weeks:
Jonathan 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

According to the Holiday eSpending Report from Goldman Sachs, Nielsen/NetRatings, and Harris Interactive, last years reports show that online shoppers spent $18.6 billion in the first six weeks of the holiday season (Oct.29-Dec.9). That is an increase of 16 percent from 2004. With more buyers shopping online in 2006, those numbers are expected to increase even more. What wholesaler with a website used to conduct e-commerce wouldn’t want a piece of that?
According to the eSpending Report, online shoppers spent the most on apparel/clothing in the 2005 holiday season, totaling $3.4 billion (17 percent) of total online revenue. The consumer electronics and computer hardware categories placed second and third with revenue totals of $2.8 and $2.7 billion. Books and toys/video games completed the top 5, reporting online revenues of $2.2 billion and $1.4 billion.
Seeing as that apparel and consumer electronics are amongst the most popular gifts purchased online, wholesalers should be using every avenue they possibly can to make their products available to the wholesale buyers online.

Happy Holidays: Jonathan Prescott

Opening a wholesale business offline is difficult. First, you will have some of the top fortune 500 companies as direct rivals. There is very little chance that a new business can open competing against such huge giants. How do you expect to profit competing with high capital companies and unlimited budgets? The most profitable and sound possibility of opening a new wholesale business or discount store is through online marketing. Here are some reasons why.
First, owning a wholesale business on the internet is one of the easiest businesses to set up. If you’re already internet suavy, you could have your online business open in less than a day, while it takes months and sometimes years to open a wholesale business offline. There are also plenty of out source web designers that can help you build an online store for as little as $100. What could be better then having a low start up fee and having a business ready to make profits in a day?

With such a low start up fee, you’ll have more of a budget to engage towards marketing. With an offline business, you’ll need thousands of dollars to market towards successful leads and buyers. It is very inexpensive to market your company online and there are numerous ways to do so. The key is to get targeted traffic to your site and keep them coming back. You can market your online business through ebay, search engines, free link exchange programs and much more. Once you get the traffic and keep the buyers coming back, you’ll be more then excited when you wake up in the morning with an email that says “Notification of payment received.”
In conclusion, start your online wholesale business. Start off slow on ebay and other search engines. In the long term, you’ll see the rewards that come to you provided you have the right niche and services for online consumers.

-Jonathan Prescott

It’s All About Conversion!
Steve Gibson
Gigi Fotou

How many phone calls do you receive from excited marketers trying to sell you traffic to your site? Probably quite a few. Now, how many phone calls do you receive from someone wanting to show you how to convert the traffic you are already getting? Our guess is very little or none.
Unfortunately, someone selling you traffic could typically care less about your conversion rate: They delivered the traffic they sold you – and in their eyes, their job is done. If it fails to convert, it must be your site’s fault.
The truth is, over a period of time, traffic to your site will always fluctuate, but with a little work, your conversion rate can steadily increase. Sadly, most internet business owners are satisfied with a one percent conversion ratio when, in fact, one percent is already the general conversion ratio for online sales. Can you imagine any bricks and mortar business content with this rate of conversion? Certainly no car dealership, department store or Mom & Pop. They simply could not survive with anything less than 10%.
Bottom line: Instead of spending money on traffic, focus on conversion and in particular, on the following points to make it happen:
Create Trust – Creating trust means much more than just offering your customers a secure checkout. A professional site with no dead links and no missing products is the biggest credibility builder you can have. A well-designed site utilizes good use of color, space, and navigation techniques to communicate experience, commitment and customer service. In addition, think of including testimonials, client lists and independent reviews to educate your visitors. Yes, prospective customers really do read those things!
Pay Attention to Presentation – You have one chance to present your product: Make it outstanding. Professionally photograph items, optimize your pictures for quick download and show multiple angle and zoom shots of important details. Make it easier for visitors to read about you and your company by keeping your web site content in short width lengths. One of the fastest ways to lose visitors is forcing them to read a wall of text that goes across the full width of your pages.
Write Killer Copy – Write descriptive and detailed copy with an emphasis on benefit and remember to remain user friendly. Don’t bog your readers down with unnecessary words, such as ecommerce when Selling Online can get the message across faster and more simply. Utilize clear, bold headlines on each of your pages to draw in your readers and encourage them to read on. Remember the two-second rule: you really only have two to three seconds to grab the average users’ attention.
Disturb the Buyer - You want the buyer to take action immediately and the easiest way to accomplish this is to associate a negative consequence with not buying now. Low inventory, limited price availability, competitors buying remaining stock and missing the peak trend, are all effective ways of conveying this message.

Entice the Buyer - Clearly define your products’ most positive attributes and communicate the benefits of owning your products. In most cases, people are looking to buy the feeling your product creates. SELL THE FEELING. Speak directly to your visitors and ask them questions that make them think about what benefits you are offering. For example, do you want to improve the conversion rate of your web site? What will happen when you succeed in improving it – More sales? Pride of ownership? A trip to Hawaii?
Ask for the Sale — Most important is your call to action, and remember, your site’s most desired actions could be any number of things, including a quote request, free gift or brochure download. A buyer should never need to look for an “action” button. Name your buttons with assertive buying terms such as, Buy it Now, Add to Cart, Make it Mine, etc. Be sure to place these buttons liberally throughout your pages.
Make it Easy – How many of your prospective customers are computer whizzes? Your buyers need to be able to view their carts easily and check out quickly. Attempt using a one-page checkout to streamline the process. Allow customers to see the contents in their carts and the purchase amount. Clearly define your shipping policy and offer a variety of shipping methods and times.
If you’re serious about your online business, receiving quality, targeted traffic to your site will always be a necessary marketing expense. Optimizing your conversion allows you to wring the most from your marketing dollar and will outlast your advertising campaigns. It is also what your customers will remember best.

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Steve Gibson and Gigi Fotou are partners in Skyabove® Ironically, Skyabove® is a full-service internet marketing agency specializing in both Search Engine Optimization and Conversion. They’re also pretty darn good at web design. Call them today for a free detailed consultation at 714-553-4894 or contact them on-line at www.skyabove.com. They currently have two national locations to serve you better.

How to Double your Conversion Rate
Without Increasing Search Engine Marketing
Steve Gibson
Gigi Fotou

How many repeat customers do you have? For most wholesalers, repeat customers are the backbone of their enterprise. But unfortunately, statistics show us that many wholesalers have less than a 50 percent return customer rate. Why is that? While attracting new business is essential for growth, isn’t it much easier to sell products to those who have already bought from you?
Bear in mind that once a customer places his first order, he has overcome the three challenges to any online sale: Perceived value, trust and safety, and competitive view. This means you have far less work to do to complete another sale by working on tactics specifically designed to encourage many repeat buys.
If you are not successful in turning customers into your clientele, you are not working your back-end marketing strategies. And if you are not working your back-end, you are simply not taking advantage of your full conversion capabilities.
Consider the following strategies you can begin implementing immediately:
Create an Affiliate Program – The selling point of affiliate marketing is that it benefits everyone involved: Merchants love it because they only pay when a certain action is made on behalf of their ads; affiliates earn livings simply by having visitors to their site click on the ads – either in a pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, or pay-per-sale basis.
Coupons on their next order — Include a coupon in every order shipped for a percentage or dollar amount off their next order. Make certain the coupon is time sensitive with a specific expiration date to encourage quick action. If your current shopping cart does not provide for an easy coupon system, it may be time to start looking for another cart. Yes, coupons are that important.
Include a bonus or unexpected gift with order — This could be a sample or promotional item with your name or logo on it. For example, one of the most effective gifts is an eBook because it is inexpensive to produce and easy to distribute. Attach an ad for your backend product to the gift. Your return customer will likely be in a favorable state of mind to read your ad.
Follow up phone call — Call your buyers one to two days after they have received their products. Ask them about their purchase process, shipping time and arrival condition. Are they happy with the products, do they have any questions, and most importantly, would they like to place another order? Asking for another order may seem presumptive but it is the perfect time to push a larger buy on one or many of the current items they have purchased. Although courteous calls like this can take some time, they can result in a 25 percent increase in sales without an increase in your marketing budget.

Publish a Company Newsletter — Newsletters can come in many forms, cover a variety of subjects and are much more potent than generic e-mail campaigns. The key to an outstanding newsletter is to make it worth reading and that means making it valuable to your reader. Make this more than a marketing message; give information that will help increase your retailers’ sales, such as industry news and statistics, success stories, positioning and promotional ideas. Of course, always include a link to your main page and mention any of your top promotions. In most cases, the frequency of a newsletter should me no more than once a week.
Branding — You would be surprised how many times someone in a warehouse ran out of an item and did not know where to reorder it. Print your name, logo, web address EVERYWHERE…on your packaging, packing slips, invoices, wrappers, shipping labels, and anywhere there is some remaining blank space.
“Customers Only” – Creating a “customers only” area on your site conveys the message that they are VIPs and part of an elite group. Fill this area with helpful content, interesting articles, invitations to an event and even some free downloads to really boost this area’s traffic. Subtly promote your product ads without being too evident.
In today’s competitive online business environment, success is sometimes measured not just by great leaps and bounds but by measured tactical increments. It is true that serious online businesses have great looking websites and targeted traffic. But not all of them have the patience, motivation or knowledge to go the extra mile and attract that one segment of their buyer base that will most likely double their sales for next to nothing: The returning customer. If you’re not putting effort into your back-end campaign, you can be sure your competition already is.

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Steve Gibson and Gigi Fotou are partners in Skyabove® Skyabove® is a full-service internet marketing agency specializing in both Front-End and Back-End promotion. Call them today for a free detailed consultation at 714-553-4894 or contact them on-line at www.skyabove.com. They currently have two national locations to serve you better.

Trade shows and holidays are right around the corner. Wholesalers should be concerned about how you’re going to increase the traffic to your booth so you can increase sales. Buyers will be in full power getting ready for the holiday seasons and stocking up on inventory. One known way of increasing sales and traffic to your booth is by advertising your booth space on your website. The same wholesale buyers that attend the trade shows are the same buyers on http://www.toptenwholesale.com every day.
Someone once said to me that they do not encourage buyers to go to the trade shows. I asked why and was told because then the buyers have an opportunity to see the other products and meet the competition. I was shocked. I am under the impression that wholesalers should welcome the buyers to meet their competitors. This gives you the opportunity to show the buyers the benefits and features of doing business with you. And once you gain their trust, they’ll be more then likely to keep doing business with you.
With that said, those of you wholesalers that believe in your product, and believe that your customer service and expertise truly are superior, advertise your booth space. Encourage the buyers to not meet your competition, but give yourself the opportunity to show them why doing business with you is going to help their business.
- Best Wishes

My name is Jonathan Prescott, a current graduate from Western Connecticut State University with a degree in Psychology and a minor in law. I’ve lived my whole life in the small state of CT where I was born and raised. I grew up with three brothers and a fantastic mother. If anyone needs to know how to raise 4 boys by themselves, get back to me and I’ll make sure to get you in contact with my mother, she’d love to brag to you.

My hobbies include reading, shopping, buying, grabbing a drink with a good friend after a long hard day of work, and more recently snow boarding.

At the age of 27 though, snow boarding seems like it should be one of the worlds most dangerous sports. I can’t take the falls like i used to be able to when I was a younger. Does anyone have any good advice for some one just learning how to shred? I would also love to improve my skills in learning the Spanish language. I took Spanish through out high school and made it to a high level of learning in college, however, the only opportunity I had to speak with other Spanish speaking people was when I visited Costa Rica. What a beautiful country. One of my goals in life is to purchase a house in Costa Rica and retire there one day. Is 27 too young to think of where I want to retire?

I’ve been working since I was about 14 in almost any type of profession you can think of. Ranging from a gate guard at a public beach, to working at chain super markets and moving into construction to help pay my way through school. Recently, I was given the fantastic and unique oppurtunity to work in the wholesale industry with JP Communications. Working in retail and construction for many years now I’ve noticed all the opportunites there are in the wholesale industry and I could not pass up on this chance. Even though I am new to the company and to the industry, I am very excited to begin this new venture in my life. It amazes me how big the wholesale industry really is and I would just like to say that I can’t wait to meet people in the industry and if there is any advice anyone has to offer for someone just getting started, please feel free to reply. I can’t wait to get started and meet all the new and interesting people in the industry.

Hope to meet and hear from you soon.

(Email comments to Jonathan at jonathan at toptenwholesale dot com)