A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a list of top 6 reasons why businesses fail on the Self Starters Weekly Tips forum. Owner of the forum, Lynn Terry, also published the list on her blog, Click Newz.

Some of you requested answers to these top reasons businesses fail, so I’m providing answers based on my years of experience with selling products and services online.

This time, we’ll talk about the #2 reason businesses fail.

#2 Impatience

This one is  a biggy. I struggle with it — knowing where I want to go and wanting to be there RIGHT NOW. In my case though, I start looking for things to do. The problem occurs, however, when people look at their goals, look at where they are, and decide to quite.

Sometimes you read stories about how a baby sling seller built a thriving business in 18 months or less. Or how one day a cloth diaper seller’s client told a friend about her store, and the friend told a magazine editor she knew and the next thing, the cloth diaper business was booming.

My opinion, both those ways are harder than just being patience and taking one step at a time, much like the tortoise, if you know what I mean.

The solution: Take one step at a time. Evaluate everything you do to make sure it is taking you towards your goals. Even when it seems like you’re working for nothing and you might as well just quit — ask for help.

If you know people who are already successful in business and you can bend there ear, ask for advice for an hour, give them a call and pour out your heart.

Or, you can call a business coach (Like me!) and seek advice. It often helps to have someone on the outside, who understands what you’re trying to do, take a look at your business and give you advice to rejuvenate your enthusiasm.

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Artists, WAHMs and entrepreneurs who are new to ecommerce are often in a situation where they need to choose one website tool to spend their money on. So the question ends up being:

Should I sell my products on my own site with my own domain name, or just get an account at Etsy, or ebay or some other similar site?

Many people choose the Etsy or Ebay route first, and I can understand why.

Both sites have built in traffic (which can be hard to generate for brand new websites), and are very well known, either generally or in specific online communities.

The sites are easy to setup — you don’t have to worry about site design, ecommerce, a domain name, hosting, etc. You can have your site up and selling within about a day.

You don’t have to worry so much about customer fraud, since Etsy, Ebay and Paypal handle this for you (or at least will step in if you aren’t able to handle the situation satisfactorily yourself).

In my opinion, this is OK if you’re building a hobby.

However, if you’re building a business, you need to seriously consider the benefits of having your own website.

1. You will have your own domain name. I highly recommend you make absolutely certain is registered in your name with a company you trust. This way, if your hosting account goes belly up, you can move without losing all the backlinks you’ve earned.

With Etsy or Ebay, if your site is shut down or you just decide to move, you’ve lost all your marketing. You can’t take mywebsite.etsy.com with you when you go.

2. You will have control over your own fraud prevention. Now, at first it may like a good idea to have Etsy or Ebay helping you with this. But that doesn’t work out so well when one of these companies decides you’re the bad guy. Even if you aren’t.

If you are using a payment method such as authorize.net, you have access to the information you need to verify your customers yourself. And if one sets of your spidey-sense, you can always opt not to do business with them. (I mean really — when someone places an order from “Houstn, New York” and the IP address is out of Nigeria, it’s a pretty good bet that the order is bogus.

3. You can tailor your site to your target market. Etsy and Ebay both serve very specific target markets. Etsy buyers are after handcrafted items. Ebay buyers are after a great deal on everything. In Etsy’s case, you might not be able to branch out of the Etsy community without your own website. And in Ebay’s case, you are destined to sell your products at bargain basement prices — which is not conducive to profiting from your business — or even making enough to pay the bills.

4. With your own website, you can have the best of both worlds. Setup your own website (which can be easy and inexpensive with a $10 a month hosting account and Wordpress) and use the site to promote your Etsy shop and Ebay auctions. Once you have established a clientèle, you can guide them (within the rules of the other sites) to your main site, where you can sell without the fees and where you can be in charge.

Some of my baby sling clients sell the bulk of their products on their website — and then auction off their seconds and returns at Ebay.

Some crafters sell products on their main websites, but use Etsy and Ebay to expand their reach.

What has your experience been?

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Tara Kelly submitted this question to our survey:

What is the best way to manufacture a product in a green way and what is the best way to know if JVing with a manufacturer would be in the best interests of all involved?

I decided to bring in a natural (green) business expert, Carrie Lauth of Natural Mom Business Guide, to answer this question.

She suggests several ways to ensure that your product is manufactured and distributed in a way that is not harmful to the earth.

Carrie’s recommendations include:

• Use organic ingredients in your product.
• Package it with recyclable packaging. For beauty products, there is nothing like good old glass for aesthetics - and glass is infinitely recyclable. If you’re using plastic, be sure it’s a type that can be recycled and it should also be BPA and phtalate free.
• You can buy packing peanuts that are compostable and biodegradable.
• Use recycled or reused paper for your packing slips and tags.
• Another fun idea would be to include eco living tips with your product shipments to help raise awareness.
• Consider creating online FAQs and reports to answer customer questions instead of printing out customer instruction sheets.
• Buy energy offsets and advertise the fact that you do this on your website (This is what I do!).

My response: Now, for your question on creating a joint venture partnership with the manufacture. This would depend on the terms of the agreement. If the terms are beneficial to both of you, then I say go for it!

If not, then you might consider another relationship (perhaps you can buy at wholesale or become an affiliate) or find another vendor.

Do you need answers? Submit your question to our Product Seller’s survey!

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I recently wrote a list of top 6 reasons why businesses fail, which I published on the Self Starters Weekly Tips forum. Owner of the forum and long-time Internet Marketer Lynn Terry also published the list on her blog, Click Newz.

Some of my readers requested answers to these top reasons businesses fail. What can you do to prevent your business from failing for these reasons?

I’ll start with the #1 reason businesses fail today, and will continue with a six-part series.

#1 Lack Of Action

This reason often dooms a business to failure before it even starts. As I said originally, some people will read all kinds of websites and ebooks, but never put what they learn into action.

I also see some of my clients who have actually took the step of purchasing a website — but never went any further. Others loaded their products and site design, but stopped short of actually letting other people know about the site.

The solution: Take action! It’s better to take a wrong action and learn from it, than no action at all. You can’t possibly know all the answers without any experience. Get out there and do your best. Then listen to your customers. Once you start receiving feedback from the people in your target market, you’ll know what you need to change and how you can improve.

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Do you have questions about search engine optimization? Would you like to hear an expert talk about what you should avoid when trying to optimize your website?

Head over to the Winning Sisters Skype room at 11:30 a.m. Central Time today. I will be discussing SEO and my new product, SEO Power Up.

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If you are considering working at home, you probably already have your own very good reasons. I’ve heard many over the years.

One client started a business because her children had moved out and she discovered that cleaning the house got boring after awhile, especially since no one was around to mess it up.

Other clients had an idea for a product that they wanted to create, and it only made sense for them to go into business for themselves. Renting a brick and mortar store can be extremely expensive for a startup business with little capital, so it only made sense to stay at home.

Perhaps this list will help you add to yours, or validate your thoughts. If you’re new to the home business concept, perhaps this will give you some concrete ideas to go along with what you’re feeling.

These ideas apply whether you want to start your own product selling business, or work for someone else at home.

1. If you have young children, working at home allows you to continue being their primary caregiver. The first three years of your child’s life are especially important. Even better, you’ll no longer miss those major milestones like the first step and first words. If you are breastfeeding mom, you can nurse your baby while working at the computer. Your toddlers can play at your feet and your preschoolers can help you type. (OK, so mommies of preschoolers might want to do some outsourcing…LOL!)

This was my main reason for staying at home when my son was born in 2000. I couldn’t imagine leaving him for 8 hours a day. And it wouldn’t work since I was nursing him. Most of my ecommerce clients stay home for the same reason – they have nursing babies and toddlers running around.

2. Save a boatload of money on childcare. If spending extra time with your children isn’t enough to convince you or your significant other, perhaps saving piles of money is. Childcare for just one kid can cost upwards of $70 per week — even if you don’t use the childcare all day, every day. If you must have some time, then a Mommy’ Day Out program can give you a few hours a couple of days a week and still save you tons of money.

My virtual assistant, who works out of her home in Ohio, has four children. Working outside the home would be financial disastrous for her. Even if she were to find a job outside of the house, she wouldn’t make enough money to cover the childcare costs. At that point, she might as well stay at home and find a way to earn extra income.

3. You can set your own schedule. Notice, I did not say that you are free from a schedule. I’ve learned over the years that having a schedule is terribly important. But you can schedule around school plays, field trips, doctor’s appointments, etc. Not to mention, it’s just nice to be able to take a day off, here and there, to enjoy the weather.

With the help of my assistants and tech support people, I’ve been able to attend my children’s award ceremonies, most of their baseball games and practices and help out in the office at my church.

Even better, when both kids are in school, I’ll be able to attend Chamber of Commerce meetings, teach a web design class at the local technology center and spend more time developing projects. And when the school bell rings, I’ll be right there to pick up the kids and hear all about their day. Of all the reasons I’ve given, I’d say this one is the best.

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Debra LoRusso submitted this question to our survey:

Do I need any type of license besides a “seller’s permit” or a city business license to sell my product on the internet? I live in California and I have to do a little sewing to make the product. Thanks for your advice.

My response: You do not need a license to sell products online — at least not if you live in a desert island in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe on the moon.

However, if you live in a city, you may need a permit or a license from your municipality. You may even need to check the zoning of your home. In most cases though, if you aren’t going to have a ton of inventory stashed in your house, or people stopping buy to shop, you shouldn’t have any zoning issues. I would check with your city though.

If you live in the U.S., you most likely live in a state (insert tongue in cheek). As a business owner, you need to file a DBA (doing business as) form with your state, and you’ll need to register your business as either a sole-proprietorship, LLC or corporation, and you’ll need to request a state tax ID.

I also recommend that fill out the paper work for a federal tax ID, also known as an Employer Identification Number. You’ll use this when filing your taxes.

Since you’re a California resident, you can go to the California Secretary Of State website for more business information.

Do you need answers? Submit your question to our Product Seller’s survey!

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One of the “experts” at PC Magazine sure stirred up a mess last week by essential accusing small business owners of selling their customer’s information.

As you know, this is ludicrous. We work hard to protect our customers information, information that we have worked even harder to acquire.

While I was thinking about this situation though, I realized that there are new product sellers who really don’t understand everything they must do to protect their customers information. In most cases, they must rely on their web hosts, web designers or shopping cart software developers to provide the necessary information.

Protecting information that you collect as a small business is critical for two reasons:

1. Legal ramifications. If your lax security allows someone’s credit card number to be stolen, you will be held liable. The legal fees alone will kill your business.

2. Reputation ramifications. While as a small business, you want media attention, this is NOT the kind you want. Getting a reputation for mishandling customer data will hurt. And you don’t have the PR professional available to spin your story like a large corporation does.
So I thought I’d put together a small list of things you need to make sure you have to protect your customer data.

1. Encrypt stored data. If you’re going to store customer’s data on your server, you must do so in an encrypted database. This is especially true if you store credit card information. Check with your shopping cart provider to ensure that they are encrypting the database. (Chances are, if you have to enter special password to retrieve customer data,then it is encrypted.) For the record, customer data stored within Mals Ecommerce, the cart that ties in with the Shop Kit Plus, encrypts sensitive customer data. The SKP does not store customer data, such as credit card numbers.

2. Secure your connection with SSL. Any time a customer is asked to submit sensitive information, the connection should be secured with an SSL Certificate. You will know if your cart does this if you see the https:// before the link in the address bar on the pages where information. For the record, Mals features SSL secured pages.

3. Limit access. If you’re a sole proprietor, chances are you’ve never thought about who has access to your customers private data. I recommend you start thinking about it now. If someone spends the night at your house, can they login to your computer and, using your stored passwords, download a few credit card numbers? My system is setup so that I have to know at least two passwords just to get anywhere near sensitive customer data. And that’s only after getting logged into my computer and finding the right place to go. Also, if you bring in an employee or sub-contractor to work on your accounts, make sure she does not have access to sensitive customer data.

4. Protect your systems. Make sure your computer’s wireless connection is password protected. Make sure you routinely scan your office and laptop computers for viruses. Check with your host and ensure that you are on a hacker-safe, PCI compliant server. Also, make sure any applications that you are running on your hosting account are secure. You can check with your vendors to ensure this is the case. Also, do a Google search for reviews of your cart and host, to find out if there have been any security issues. If there have, make sure those issues have been repaired.

These are four basic steps you can take to make sure you are protecting your customer data. If you have any questions, please let me know.

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