Show Notes

* VoxNest

* Spreaker

* RobGreenlee.com

* Show Notes

* A/B testing Starter Guide [eBook]

* Disruptive Advertising

* Chris Dayley [LinkedIn]

* Chris Dayley [Twitter]

* Show Notes

* Paleo Treats: https://www.paleotreats.com/

* Paleo Treats Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paleotreats/

* Paleo Treats Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paleotreatsfan/

* Paleo Treats Twitter: https://twitter.com/paleotreats

* LiveChat app: https://lc.chat/67i7x (affiliate link) (Non-affiliate link: https://www.livechatinc.com/)

* Frank.ai: https://frank.ai/

* Seth Godin: Start Small to Go Big

Show Notes:

* SoCalInternetLawyer.com

* DMCAAgentService.com

* LinkedIn: Richard Chapo

Also see:

* DMCA

* GDPR

Episode Transcript:

In this episode of The Business of eCommerce, I talk about how to source products. This is The Business of eCommerce, episode seven. Welcome to The Business of eCommerce, the podcast that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. I'm here to share some strategies to help you grow eCommerce business. So first, some housekeeping about this week. So just some updates on what's been going on on a personal note, my wife actually just gave birth to our second child, a little girl so we're very excited about that. Last week, I had produced the episode earlier so kind of getting back into it now and just very excited to be back. It's great to spend some time family and now it's great being back in the office. So just excited for that.

On a professional update, as you probably know, I'm the founder of Spark Shipping. We tried an update last week. What we're trying to do is we've had a free trial, seven-day trial. We've always gone back and forth on is it something that made sense of our customers, for the business? This week, we made the decision to remove the free trial. We're going to be trying that for a while, see how that goes. What we found there is that a lot of folks, they are most successful when we help them initially, when they talk to us, when we are in the process of onboarding them, that sort of thing. The issue with the free trial is when users are doing that, they tend to sign up, try to get it set up themselves, but if they run into any roadblocks, they may or may not reach out. If they don't reach out and if we don't talk to them, they tend to have some issues and usually just kind of cancel within the first seven days.

So we've originally started without the trial. We went through a trial. We switched back and forth over time. Right now, this week, we're trying to do without the trial. Let's see how that goes. We'll provide a lot more personal onboarding so we're excited to see that and try that. Also an update about the podcast, we are in the process right now of booking some guests. No formal announcements yet but we have several folks that we're talking to about doing some shows in the upcoming weeks, different eCommerce experts that can share some of their experiences. Also, other eCommerce retailers, I think that would be super helpful to have some folks, just to hear from other retailers who have done similar things, have grown their business, scaled their business and kind of see what's worked for them. I think it would be helpful for some retailers listening just to hear some other folks kind of in their circle. So super excited to get some guests on here and start talking to some subject matter experts.

So if you also have any recommendations, anyone you would like, any topics like that, feel free to reach out. I'm always very available. I'm just very open to hearing any feedback, anything like that. So definitely feel free to share that with me. So jumping right into this week's topic. I'd like to talk about how to source products. So this is something that we get a lot when folks are just starting off. They may want to start an eCommerce business. They start looking at what products, what should they sell and how to actually get in touch with the right people to actually be able to provide those products and to sell those products in retail. So it's something that at the beginning it's very confusing and it's not very obvious.

There's a lot of companies out there who kind of show themselves as ways of getting products. Some of these companies you have to actually pay them a subscription to have access to their products. That is not something I'd really recommend. Maybe it's okay to start but it's just in the longterm, you want to work with proper manufacturers, distributors, that sort of thing. So how to do this?

Episode Transcript

Hello, welcome to The Business of eCommerce. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. This is Episode 6. On today's episode, we're going to talk about how to handle chargebacks.

With chargebacks, it's a bit more of an advanced concept, but it's something that if you've been in business for a while running your own eCommerce site, you're almost guaranteed to have got a chargeback. No one likes it. It's awful when it happens. And if you're in business, it either has already happened and it happened many times to you or it's a matter of time before it does happen. So it's something that everyone should be aware of and kind of know some methods of dealing with.

So first off, what is a chargeback? A chargeback is when you as a eCommerce retailer, or any retailer, are selling, charging a credit card, the end user then once they get that bill, they go back and they dispute that charge. Nothing comes back to you as the retailer. A bank puts a hold on the money that has been exchanged already and you then, are then ... the onus is on you as the retailer to basically say either "Yes, this is valid" or fight it and try to get that money back. But at that point, the money's already essentially gone.

So, simple example. Someone comes on your site. Pays with their credit card, a $100 charge. They, let's just say they don't get the product for whatever reason, and instead of contacting you, or, you know, if there are any normal channels, that sort of thing, they just call up their credit card company and say I have not yet got my product. I want to do a chargeback. I want to dispute this charge. The credit card company then takes that $100, immediately gives it back to the consumer, then they contact ... I believe it's Merchant Gateway, it kind of goes through the system. Then essentially you get a letter, usually a written letter saying: There has been a chargeback on so and so charge. There has been a $100 hold put on your account plus an additional chargeback fee. Do you want to provide evidence to the contrary, basically saying do you want to dispute this chargeback now and then go back and forth with them?

So, unfortunately, you as the retailer, I don't have exact statistic, but more often than not no matter what you provide, there's a good chance you could lose that battle. They very, very, very often side with the end consumer. And the retailer basically just has to, you know, eat the loss essentially ... Which is really rough when you're a retailer and you've actually shipped them the product. So not only are you out the refund charge, the actual amount, but you're also out the product though. So you lose both.

So it's something if there's anyway to avoid this, it is very advantageous for you as a retailer to try not to get chargebacks or to get as few as possible. The first tip, and real easy ... everyone should be doing it anyway is just have a really clear refund policy. It's something that even in your terms of service you should have it on every page right in the footer. The very first thing should be a Refund Policy. I would maybe even say put a separate refund policy link with just a refund policy every single page.

Also provide it at Checkout. Just make it very clear what's gonna happen, how, how many days. Don't have any sort of gray areas, any sort of thing that could lead the buyer not to understand exactly what's gonna happen and how. You know, it should be right there in the face. Just make it very clear if you want to say: All refunds in 7 days. No refunds. It's up to you. But you have to make it very clear just so the buyer knows: Hey, if I buy this, this is exactly the terms that I'm buying this under.

That right there alone drastically does reduce the amount of chargebacks due to some sort of dispute where maybe they had it for 90 days and they try to return the produc...

Links

*  The Stairstep Approach to Bootstrapping

* The Stair Step Approach to Launching Products

Episode Transcript:

Hello. Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. I'm your host Charles Palleschi. This is episode five. On today's episode, we're going to cover steer stepping vendors. What this is is, on today's episode, steer stepping vendors is going from more beginner level type vendors, intermediate, to advanced. This episode is targeted more towards retailers who are apparent to you as just starting off, or intermediate, and looking for extra vendors, looking at how to add some more products that are a little more unique to that store. This is really targeted more towards you, if you're that sort of retailer.

When we steer stepping vendors, what this is is there are vendors out there who it's very broad in the range. They go from they are vendors who are willing to accept brand new retailers. You apply, show them basic, some sort of proof that you're in business, maybe you don't even need a site, but eventually they'll start selling you products. They want with very little hoops to jump through. Very easy to get started with these guys, and they're great for starting off. Then, all the way on the other side of the scale, there are some vendors who it's much different. Working with them, you have to fill out credit applications, you need to show them your site, proof that you're in business X number of years. They all require something different.

The deal when choosing a vendor is when you're just starting off, you can only really work with the vendors who basically are allowing newer retailers. It's a lot how to get your foot in the door with these vendors, the bigger ones. The benefit of working with the bigger ones is they have products that tend not to be found online as much, just because they don't let every new retailer in the door. You're not competing with tons, and tons, and tons of folks, you're competing with a much smaller subset of retailers. The goal, in a lot of cases, is to find vendors that are more exclusive because they typically are better doing business with. Better products, better experience they usually offer credit terms.

There's all sorts of different things, but usually, when you're just starting off, it's hard to get your foot in the door with these vendors. What I've done and what I recommend other retailers do is when you first are starting off, always begin with these intro vendors, beginner vendors, ones that basically just let you get your foot in the door, as long as they have the type of products that are in your niche. Let's say you decide you're going to sell a particular type of product in the sports good niche. You then find vendors in that niche that have some sort of products in that category, something you're interested in selling. Maybe it's not exactly the products you want, but it's at least in your niche, it's in your field, it's things that fit with what you're looking to do.

Get started with those vendors, get your site up and running, get some products on your site. It doesn't have to be perfect from day one, but at least now you have some products, you're in business, you can start going out there, you're going to make some ad words, getting some traffic on the site, some orders, some interest. Start building news letter, Facebook audience, things like that. Basically, start promoting the site and getting business. Once you do that, other vendors in that industry, it's a lot easier, then, approaching the next vendor. Maybe day one that's someone that wouldn't talk to you, but now that you have that, it's a lot easier to approach the next vendor and say,

* Episode Notes

* Automated fraud checking services

* Signifyd - https://www.signifyd.com/ 

* Riskified - https://www.riskified.com/

* Episode Transcript

Hello. Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi and this is episode four. On today's episode, I'd like to talk a bit about ways to prevent fraudulent charges.

If you've been around for a while in eCommerce if you run your own eCommerce sight, not so much if you're selling on Amazon or Ebay but if you actually run your own independent site everyone falls victim at some point to fraudulent charges. This is where somebody has made a purchase on your site using a credit card, which is not theirs. They've received product or maybe not received product, but they've made a purchase on your site and you've charged their credit card. And then at some point months down the road you may have got a chargeback and that showed this charge was fraud, it actually was a chargeback from somebody else, it was not the card, the names didn't match and essentially what happens in that case is you as the retailer you basically lose. And you have to give the money back. You lose the product. You also get hit with a chargeback fee. It ends up costing you not just the amount for the order but also then a chargeback fee on top of that. It also isn't good for your merchant account. This is definitely something you don't want to happen.

If you've been around for a while it's happened to all of us. And when it happens it's not good, but there are some ways to prevent it and I'd kind of like to run through those real quick. Just some things I've personally found that work, that help, and that might help you. The first thing is just some basic, basic, basic human monitoring on the orders that come in. If you're around for a little bit you've seen orders come in, you start to know my average order price is x, let's just say $200 is an average order. And you're able to then say, "Any order above five times that," let's say a $1,000 or even $500, just put a number on there. If it's above x you know there's some risk involved. This is a bit different it's outside our norm, doesn't mean its fraud it just means it's just outside the average order.

What I personally have done is come up with a couple criteria and then had somebody ... in my case it was a virtual assistant monitor every order, every day if they meet two out of the three criteria, bring these orders to my attention immediately. And they came in every day at a certain time, I think it was 4pm Eastern, before orders were getting shipped, that sort of thing. It was kind of just like this check of saying, "Let's just have some human's eyes on this and see if this order makes sense. And if it doesn't raise it to my attention." And then I did a little more forensics and ... I'll get into that. First average order volume, that's something I always have them check. If it was above an excepted number ... and these are all numbers you kind of play with after a while, then that's one strike in the column.

Second on the list was the billing and shipped address to do not match. Again, it happens all the time but if they don't match on a $10 order it's very different then if they don't match on a $1,000 order. THat's just something you want to keep in mind. And if you have an order that's both high value and the shipping addresses don't match now you start to get into some sort of territory where this order just looks different, and it's something you want to then start really looking a little more into.

Next is ... let's say these don't match. Usually sending a quick email to the email address you'll see that it bounces back.

Episode Transcript:

Hello, welcome to The Business of eCommerce. I'm your host Charles Palleschi. This is episode three, and today I'd like to talk a little bit about what I call hybrid dropshipping. First, what exactly is hybrid dropshipping? Then we'll go into is it used, who uses it, why it's useful, that sort of thing.

First, what is it? This isn't a term that we commonly see around. A lot folks are using it but nobody really has put a great label on it. I've personally called it hybrid dropshipping. I've seen other folks have a different kind of name for it, but that's just something I've come up with.

What it actually is, is, if we rewind a few years ago everyone was taking physical inventory, that was the big thing. That's how everyone did retail. Along came dropshipping. It became popular. At that point, people started going all in the other direction, all dropshipping, no taking physical possession of merchandise anymore. So then everyone was just using the manufacturers essentially as their warehouse, distributors, that was their warehouse at that point. Nobody ran their own internal warehouse.

Past few years, what I've seen become more popular is this approach called hybrid dropshipping. Where retailers are taking physical possession of some inventory but not all. Where it's been used a lot is when there's a lot of SKUs, a lot of parts, a lot of that sort of thing. Where it makes sense to have let's say a catalog of 100,000 SKUs, you might not be able to have all those in stock but the top 100, the top 10, the top X number of SKUs. That might make sense to have some in-house.

It's not something you're going to do with all SKUs, all products, that sort of thing. It's something that you're going to cherry-pick and have some on-hand, and then for the bulk of them still you'll go back to manufacturers or distributors. When I say in-house, it's either actual in-house, like your own inventory physically at your location, or something, a 3PL, third party logistics company, where it's your inventory you've purchased, it lives in their warehouse but it's your inventory and only you have it.

The other option is some retailers, not all vendors offer this, but some retailers prepay for inventory at the vendor. So ahead of time it's your inventory, it's paid for, but you haven't actually ever left the manufacturer. It's still sitting at the manufacturer's warehouse. So this is your inventory, you know no one else is going to be touching this. Those are three places when I say your inventory, either prepaid at the manufacturer, at a 3PL or your warehouse.

The dropship inventory is distributors, or the bulk of the manufacturing inventory, where it's in that pool of dropship inventory at that point, where other retailers also have access to it. Which is used a lot in let's say auto parts, a lot of parts type of thing let's say, where you might have your top 10 SKUs, top 50, top 100, but also 500,000 SKUs back at the manufacturer.

What this allows you to do is a few different things. First because you have your popular SKUs in stock you are able to first ship them a lot faster in some cases than the manufacturer. Second, there's a lot of folks out there that are dropshipping, some people that's all their business. So if you just pick these SKUs, these 20 SKUs you're going to go after, those then, once they go out of stock with the distributors you might be one of the few people left with those SKUs in stock. So that allows you to essentially make the market and be the only game in town for those particular products for a short time. This even goes for, they could be selling on a marketplace, they could be selling on Amazon, that sort of thing, and they do go out of stock from time to time. If you are the only one left with product on hand, all those sales, 100% of them, will start going to you.

On this episode we review methods to help eCommerce retailers to add more value to their customers experience. This helps to differentiate you from your competition and standout in the crowded world of ecommerce.

On this episode you’ll learn:

* How to better organize categories

* Use specialized products that can not be found anywhere else

* Use custom products/POD products

* Add detailed reviews, descriptions and videos to help your eCommerce store to stand out

Episode Transcript

                        Welcome to episode two of The Business of eCommerce Podcast. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi. In today's show we'd like to cover a topic that we get very often. Usually folks starting off want to know how to add value to their customers. We find this very common in things like drop shipping. Different sorts of sites where they're usually just starting off. Where they're using a lot of products that are very similar to other folks. Maybe you work with one of the big vendors out there, big manufacturers, and you get their products and you're not really sure how to actually differentiate yourself in the market. You want to be special. You want to do something a little different.

But it's really tough sometimes when everybody's selling the same products in the same places. What you don't want to do, to get started there is, you don't want to basically just take the products from a vendor and dump them on your site. Dump them on Amazon. Have the same descriptions right from the vendor. The vendors usually give very basic descriptions. They also give very basic images. Really no details. Their categories are very either simplistic, or relevant to them, not really relevant to your site.

For example, they would be very general, the categories. The manufacturer might be selling different product lines to different industries. But you, your site might be much more targeted to a certain type of people. Let's say the vendor just sells outdoors products in general. You might be selling products specifically to folks that hunt deer outdoors. Something like that. Deer hunting. The categories you'll get from the vendors aren't very tailored to your specific audience. They're just general, broad. We want to jump in with some ways we can actually make your site much more individual and stand out from the crowd, so that it's not just taking products from vendors. Taking their images. Taking their titles. Taking their descriptions. Dumping it into Shopify. Dumping it onto Amazon, and just try to compete on price. Because I think we all kind of know by now, that's not really the way to go. You're not going to beat the big players like an Amazon price, so you have to add something else of value.

Just some general housekeeping before I get into that. This is episode two. Kind of the goal here is to have some information that's more for experienced eCommerce retailers. Some things for folks just starting off, and kind of go back and forth. I'd like to cover in different episodes some different topics. Maybe this one's right for you. Maybe you're beyond this. It really depends on where you're at, but we're hoping to kind of do both with this, and see what people like. It might be kind of choose your own adventure on some episodes are right for you. Others, honestly you might just skip over. Because maybe you've already seen this. It really is just up to you, but we're hoping to add value to a lot of different people in different places in getting started.

I've outlined four different general categories here of how to add value to different eCommerce retailers. To get started, and I was kind of implying this, is the categories topic. Over here, let's see. Kind of what I was implying is, when the vendor is setting categories, they might be relevant to them and their entire catalog of products.