by Oleksi on July 25, 2009
Starting online store is very easy these days even if you are not technically savvy although it’s very hard to do everything yourself. So some of the following steps you might want to outsource to somebody who specializes on it.
1. Get Domain Name
Every online business starts with domain name. The sooner you get it the sooner you will feel like you’ve already started your venture! The only catch is it MUST contain the main keyword that targets your chosen niche. Also, don’t make it long – 2-3 words is perfect. And don’t put dashes between words.
2. Pick The Right Shopping Cart Platform
There are many options. Some are free (open source) and some are commercial solutions. The first thing you need to do is to come up with the list of features your online store should have. Then you should pick a shopping cart platform that has most of these features and the missing features should be easy to implement. If you are technically savvy then free open source solution is right for you. If you are not then you should go with paid hosted solution. Just make sure you research the best provider.
3. Load Products
It all depends on how may products you have. If it’s below 1000 you may want to do it all manually. But if it’s above you should consider automatic import of products. Most of the shopping carts support bulk product import. For example you can list all products info in Excel document and then upload this document along with product images to your shopping cart. Then you can run product import with single click and just wait until all products got imported.
4. Site Design
This is the most time wasting step. Many newbies are wasting their time and money on fancy designs and eventually give up on the whole idea. The most important thing to understand is that to sell you need simple and easy to use design. And you can always tweak the design later on. The goal is to make your site unique in some way. Don’t waste time on fancy stuff.
5. Choosing The Payment Processor
In order to accept payments you need to find the payment processor and hook it up to your site. Again, you need to research before making the decision on which payment processor to use. Make sure you support PayPal as well since it’s becoming a standard for online payment options.
6. Market Your Site
Once your site went live, don’t expect making sales right away. In fact it may take a month or more before you get the 1st order. So after your site is up and running you should actively promote it through different channels: Pay Per Click advertisement, Social Networks and Search Engine Optimizations are the major ways to market your online store.
by Oleksi on July 18, 2009
I’m helping my friend to set up online store so I thought it would be helpful to share my experience and what challenges I confront. So I’m going to blog about this in my new category Running Online Store.
At this point I’m done with choosing the shopping cart platform and working on importing of about 9,000 products. I can afford to spend about 2 hours a day Monday through Friday. And I expect this project will take another 2 months. And I have already spent a month.
The niche is Designer Sunglasses from wide variety of brands. This niche is not that competitive (45 millions pages in Google) so it should be easy to market the site once it’s live. I plan to market it through Google Adwords PPC campaigns while we’ll be rising organic rankings through SEO.
So, stay tuned for the next articles. I’ll share my personal experience so you will see how easy (or hard) it is to build online store from the scratch. And we’ll celebrate together when the 1st sale is made 
.
by Oleksi on July 9, 2009
When people share their content in formats that have high probability of being printed (e.g. PDF Documents) they should not use dark backgrounds. Otherwise it will waste people’s printer ink and cause frustration.
The first time I’ve noticed this was when my friend asked me to print a catalog of vanities she found online. The catalog could be downloaded in PDF format and all vanities pictures were on black background. So after printing about 10 of them, I’ve noticed that black ink level in my printer has significantly decreased (about 30%).
Another example is ShoeMoney Xtreme Internet Marketing Guide. Every week ShoeMoney publishes his excellent guide on Internet Marketing in PDF format. I enjoy reading it in a train so I print it every time. But the 1st page is mostly black so I have to skip it every time I print. Of course it’s a little inconvenience but still bothers me.
So, think twice before you decide to use dark backgrounds on printable content. It annoys me because it wastes too much of my printer’s black ink. Does this annoy anyone else or it’s just me?
by Oleksi on July 1, 2009
I’m thankful to TweetDeck for the recent changes they made that allow synchronizing groups between multiple computers and devices. Even more thankful for developing iPhone client app. But one thing really annoys me about Tweetdeck.
It shows me only limited number of tweets for certain time period. This problem exists in both TweetDeck desktop and iPhone clients. So when I run TweetDeck on my iPhone it shows me N amount of tweets for the last X minutes for every group. I don’t know what X minutes is but I know it exists. The result is – I’m missing tweets!
This limitation could be related to limitations of Twitter API. In this case we should blame Twitter. Anyway, no matter who is guilty they should fix this so people can enjoy the whole power of Twitter.
by Oleksi on June 23, 2009
Few days ago I went to eye doctor to check my eyes. This was the first time for the last 10 years so I was a little nervous. I work with computers for about 20 years already and my vision was always good. I don’t wear any glasses or contacts. Doctor examined my eyes and hasn’t found any problems with my vision. There is some dry eye problem but it’s normal taking into account that I spend 10 hours a day with computer. So here are 3 things I believe saved my vision:
1. Blind Typing On Keyboard
As I wrote in my previous post everyone who works with computers should learn how to type right. By this I mean typing with all 10 fingers without looking at keyboard. This minimizes switching of eye focus between keyboard and computer screen which results in less load on your eyes
2. Extensive Use of Copy/Paste
When I feel like I have to type the same word or phrase for more than 2-3 times I just copy and paste it. This way I waste much less of my eye energy. Even if it’s just one word (more than 5 characters), when you type it you are unconsciously looking for typos. When I do copy/paste I need to make sure that the just the 1st instance of word or phrase is written right.
3. Extensive Use Of Keyboard Shortcuts
Most of the applications have keyboard shortcuts to majority of operations that you could do with mouse clicks. Many of these shortcuts became a standard across multiple applications. E.g. Ctrl +N for the new file, Ctrl + S to save file, etc. So, for example when you want to save file in Notepad you could go to File menu and select Save option. But this simple operation will require your eyes to control the movement of mouse cursor. And you can avoid it by using Ctrl + S shortcut.
It takes time to master blind typing. But copy/paste and keyboard shortcuts are simple things that you can get used to. So, don’t waste your vision!
by Oleksi on June 17, 2009
If you are thinking to start blogging or already running your blog you should subscribe to this guy’s site: http://www.problogger.com. His name is Darren Rowse and he is kind of “godfather” of all bloggers. His site is a blog about blogs.
I started reading Darren’s blog in November 2008. I was interested in blogging but just didn’t have time to start my own one. So I subscribed to his RSS feed and started reading his posts on the regular basis. Since then I learned a lot about blogging industry. His posts target the beginner bloggers as well as experienced ones. You can find answers to any blog related questions in his blog.
Another thing that I like about Darren Rowse is that he tells the truth. He puts it straight that you can’t become rich overnight by blogging and it would take a lot of effort to make full time living from your blog. Even if you are going to blog for fun you need to know how to do things the right way.
Another thing I’m thankful to Darren for is Twitter. When I was reading his posts about blogs he mentioned Twitter from time to time. Then I discovered that Darren runs another blog fully dedicated to Twitter. I was thinking that if this guy decided to create separate blog focused on Twitter it must be a new trend I should be the part of. Now I’m a Twitter addict like millions of others.
So, if you made it to the end of this post and haven’t subscribed to ProBlogger and TwiTip do so now! I don’t know Darren personally and this post came from the bottom of my heart.
by Oleksi on June 13, 2009
…without learning how to type fast not looking at keyboard. Many people overlook this and are struggling a lot. When you are average computer user you can afford to type slow with just two fingers. It’s just a little inconvenience and nothing more.
When you start online business everything changes. You have to type 10 times more – sending emails, chatting on Twitter, writing content, etc. All this involves typing. Now if you type slowly with just two fingers you are making 10 times less than you could if you were typing fast with all 1o fingers. You waste most of your energy on typing rather than on more important stuff. And it stops to be a fun.
The easiest and very affective way to learn how to type fast and blind (without looking at keyboard) is to practice with keyboard training software. It’s both fun and learning. Personally I learned how to type fast with very simple and fun game called Babytype. Since it was about 12 years ago this game doesn’t exist anymore. But I’m sure that there is a lot free and commercial software out there. Just google it. If anyone knows the good one, please share through the comments.
by Oleksi on June 11, 2009
Well I believe my life wasn’t in danger but still … Yesterday at lunch time I was eating the fish soup when suddenly I felt like I swallowed a tiny fish bone that got stuck somewhere inside my chest area. Immediately I felt panic since it was very painful. I tried to drink as much water as I could but each swallow had ended with even more pain in my chest area.
In a panic state I went back to my computer and googled for “fish bone swallowed” (thanks to Google’s search intellisense for helping me to pick the right keyword). Among first few organic search results I saw this title from Yahoo Answers: How to remove a fish bone (accidentally swallowed) in the throat? Most of the answers suggested eating a piece of bread and drinking water behind it. This is supposed to push the swallowed bone down to the stomach. I followed this advice and felt a sudden relief from the pain!
So thanks to Yahoo Answers for saving me from trip to the hospital. Just in case something similar happens to you always google it first for the solution.
by Oleksi on June 11, 2009
Hi! This is my Hello World post, meaning the first post on my blog By publishing this post I commit to provide interesting and useful material periodically on this blog.
My posts will be focused on topics related to Web Development, SEO, Internet Marketing, Web Usability, Blogging and Social Media. I will share my personal experience, lessons learned and success stories.
I’ll try to keep my posts short, informative and entertaining. All of us are busy guys and there is so much information on the Internet we are interested in.
So, stay tuned and welcome to my world!
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