I created my first website about 4 years ago after attending a seminar put on by a web hosting company based out of the USA. I used every cent I had to start my online business and bought everything I was told I needed to be successful online with a total of $29,000 out of pocket, I had to make this work and I have. It really doesn't need to cost you this much.

 

I have purchased Marketing training both via the internet and classroom training. I have purchased ebooks after ebooks believing they would help me and I have tried a quite a few over the years. Eveyone seems to be selling information and I have bought allot, so I started this website to share all the information I have learned over the years in a way to get back at all the crappy ebooks and training I took. Each ebook or training seminar I took was about 80% junk and 20% good information and as I stated before that allot of 20%s to be sharing.

 

I'm not claiming to be and expert because I am not, but I do have allot of information that can help anyone who wants to learn on the fast track to getting traffic to their website without spending a fortune doing it.

 

We are a free resource for beginners who are just trying to learn about online marketing and not eveything on this website are lessons from me personally but from other with more experiance then myself that have agreed to help me help others.

 

You can learn allot from 2GetWebTraffic.com for a whole lot less then I paid for the information. I really wish there was a person willing to help others when I started out it would have save me allot of time and money.

 

The Vulchers Set In! 

Getting started

First of all, when I got laid off I had some ideas about starting my own business but was not too sure what to do, so I just took a little time off.

I did start a "BIG waste of time" online business many years ago when I heard about all the "Dot Com" millionaires out there. I advertised I was looking to start an online small business and the vulchers set in.

It was a flop, I was selling e-books, a package of 1500 Ebooks to be exact, that I bought for $65 with resell rights from an Australian Guy Selling Online Information packages, he's still out there by the way.

Nothing too shifty from this guy really, the Ebooks did help me build my first site from scratch, the only thing was I didn't sell any, not one, Why? First the Ebooks were a dime dozen and FREE anywhere you look online. My Problem was...I didn't look before I bought them. Second I had No traffic to my site as I didn't even know what that meant and third I couldn't covert them into sales even if I did get them.

After a short rest period, I did get back on the horse and I decided to start another online business BUT this time I had my severance money to do it right.

I started the search for help and next thing you know " More Vultures" were trying to sell me everything. I looked at a few different online packages and learned about dropshipping, boy did I learn.

Really quick..for those that don't know what dropshipping is, this is where you sell the product on you website and the manufacturer ships it for you directly from their location. You'd be surprised how many people still don't know.

With most of the dropshipping sites you can sign up for packages or programs. They sell for around $200 - $800 or more depending on your goals and in some cases they still turn around and charge you a monthly fee. So if you sell an electric drill (These are just rough $ amounts) for $89 on ebay, the customer then pays you for it and you pay the dropshipping company about $79 and they ship it to your customers. So... you make a $20 profit but wait...you have to pay the pay pal fees and ebay fees, now you are left with about $11 and you have to recoup your sign up fees and monthly payments. That's allot of sales risk. Also you have an online business now and you have to claim that profit as an income and pay tax on it. You should be out of the hole in about 7 - 10 years at that rate. No Thanks, not for me.

I kept getting calls left a right from these guys to invest my severance and they will make me rich...ha ha ha ha. Yeah OK. It may be working for some folks and that's great all the power to them, I want to make some REAL cash.

There are some good dropshippers out there (Dropship Direct, Green Supply) but to find a real list of pre qualified dropshippers you'll probably have to pay like I did.

A really good "Pay List" is Onesource. Yes you pay but everything you need is there like a market research tool, ebay demand tool, and companies that agree to dropship.

Cost is now at $225USD

My First Big Lesson With My Online Business 

Watch Out For The Awsome Deals...They Are Probably Too Good To Be True!

Ebays Hot List is a good tool to do market research and I found that there was a huge demand for Apple I Phones at that time and they were selling like hot cakes. I looked around the internet and didn't see too many sites selling them and the ones that did were were VERY expensive, around $900 at this time. Looks like a good Niche.

Next was to find a wholesaler or dropshipper. I Found a few websites of wholesalers right away, WOW this is easy! Yeah right... be VERY careful this was my first BIG $ HIT.

Alibaba & Trade Key are the two wholesale sights I signed up to. I'm sure there are legit manufactures here but I found all the bad ones. What a SUCKER!

You can post a buying leads there to tell everyone what you are looking to buy and I did...I'm looking to buy Apple I phones. Literally got hundreds of responses the next day. These manufacturers are mainly in China but I didn't care they said they would dropship for free and the shipping was only $35 anywhere in the world.

I asked all the right questions about price, Min Order Qty, Ship times etc. Finally I settled on two separate companies. The first one sold just Iphones for $250 each and the other sold them for $260 but they also sold Ipods and Ipod Videos etc. What a deal...you gotta know where I'm going with this???

I immediately went to ebay and posted just one for $600 with Free shipping to test the water, it sold within 1:30 minutes of going live. Great! I spoke to the dropshipper (Her name was Cindy Chen) and she requested I send a $250 Western Union.

I never used Wester Union before but after checking I found out that this was the main way to buy stuff from China, good enough for me. See more about Western Union and Money Gram later on in this article (Big NO NO).

Well this first transaction went well I thought so I posted 3 more Iphones on ebay, they sold right away like the first one did, well this is just too easy I thought. Went to bed that night bragging about how much money I made to my wife, this dropshipping thing is a breeze.

Next day I put 5 more Iphones on ebay this time I charged $680 being the smart business man I am with my new online business, again all 5 sold in under 2 min. OK Something is going on here I thought, so I emailed a buyer and asked if he had been looking long for the Apple Iphone long before he bought mine. He told me the Iphones cannot be found this cheap anywhere on the planet then he asked if these were REAL Apple Iphones, What does that mean??? After assuring him they were I went to my manufacturer on Trade Key and asked the same questions. Of course they are...phew was I relieved.

I repeated the process until I sold over $2750USD (My cost) Not to mention the ebay fees and Western Union fees.

Come to find out the hard way...by being told by a VERY upset customer they were replicas. Replicas? Replicas? Replicas?

In my embarrassment I contacted my customers and refunded all their money right away even before they got them. Never do that by the way, because all but one kept them after they said they would send them back to me, they never ever did even after countless emails.

Always wait for the product to be paid for before you ship it, and always wait to refund money, until the product arrives back to you if you can.

Always try to at least see the product first before you dropship, make the first order your own or family member then you can evaluate not only the product but the service and ship time.

When dealing with China tell them you use want to use Pay Pal because the Buyer protection plan covers goods that are shipped so you cannot be suckered like me. If they say they don't accept Pay Pal, MOVE ON.

Another option is to use a third party company in China to go to the factory and inspect the product and service first.

Be sure to check for scammers or companies with bad reputation before you deal with them, this can be done through a few websites, here are some,

http://fraudwatchers.org, http://www.stop-scammers.com, http://www.419legal.org/fraudulent-websites-alert

Total spent $ 2975 not including Ebay Fees.