An E-Merchant? Whats that?

An E-Merchant is a person who makes his living by selling goods or services over the internet.

I am an E-Merchant. I have a business selling a service over the internet.

After having made my living running a financial services company with 40 employees for a decade or so I sold it and retired.

It was not to be. I quickly came to learn that I am one of those people that was never meant to retire.

Having been fascinated by the internet for a decade or so I was intrigued by the potential for marketing inherent in that medium.

I quickly learned that there are two ways to approach this. You can sell goods that involve shipping and inventories with all the problems that go with that or you can sell only things that can be paid for over the internet and delivered electronically.

A good example of the latter would be computer software products and E-Books.

I chose the latter and it has proven to be a very sensible choice due to the simplicity of the business flow and the vast supply of products and services to sell.

I have chosen this form of commerce because of the lifestyle and income choices it provides me.

What follows is my usual daily routine

Typically I awake to a fresh cup of coffee and commute to my office down the hall to my computer and key in my sales report for the night to see how many sales have come in during the night.

My website never sleeps. It is busy marketing in Australia and New Zealand and many other time zones while I sleep!

I have a system that provides me with all sorts of inventory for my store and it also contains a reporting system that tracks sales, keeps an ongoing balance of commissions and sends me a check every two weeks. I have never had a late check with this system.

After breakfast my Border Collie takes me for a walk along the river. He has an appointment with every squirrel and rabbit in the area and prefers not to keep them waiting.

After we return, I am back in front of my screen checking my website and its links to make sure none have failed overnight. Miss this little chore and it can cost you as a broken link means your customers cant reach your product.

Then its on to read my incoming emails and answer those that need attention.

About now I like to log on to my financial sites to see what is going on in the investment world and make any moves that the days events demand.

On to visit my article publishers who have a reporting system telling me how many people have read my articles over night and which ones have been picked up for publishing by E-Magazines. Vital stuff this. The very life blood of my business!

Had an idea for an article involving the marketing day of an E-Merchant. Takes me about an hour to think it out and commit it to Word Perfect and send it off for distribution. It is accepted and published within minutes.

What an amazing thing the internet is! I can do more and more quickly by myself in the peace of my home than I ever could with a staff at my disposal in my previous life!

It is now 11:00 AM and my work day is over. Thats it! Im done!

I am free to enjoy the rest of the day as I see fit.

Now lets look at all this realistically.

You have to pay your dues.

Nothing of any consequence can be achieved without some serious effort.

For me that serious effort entailed months and months of research on internet marketing to gather the necessary information on which to base a sound business plan.

I attended several courses, bought various E-books on the subject and it wasnt long before a pattern emerged.

No one source seemed to have what I, with years of business experience, would consider a cohesive business plan. It was up to me to glean bits and pieces from each so- called Guru and assemble a business platform that made sense.

As an aside, many of these Gurus are nothing but charlatans who have nothing much to offer or have made up courses by pirating ideas from others and presenting that as original thought. Amazing how many of them are obvious repeats of each other!

I did, however, in my quest for solid information uncover the work of some individuals who were indeed making serious incomes as E-Merchants and had created a cohesive plan for success.

In my view you need four things to succeed in this business.

[1] A good work ethic and the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff.

[2] The ability to define exactly what you want to sell.

[3] A solid business platform that includes easily available inventory that is much in demand. You need a professional website, a good online payment system and a reliable payroll system to get the cheques into your mail box.

[4] You need to learn how to drive lots of traffic to your website.

Now I cant help you with the first one but you can find competent answers to the other three by following the link in the Bio below where there is much more information on how to succeed in becoming an E-Merchant.