As the owner of an ecommerce fulfillment company, I work with hundreds of successful webstore merchants and am in a unique position to see both the threats and opportunities posed by free shipping strategies.

Different Types of Delivery Offers

Most online retailers already offer limited delivery discounting that takes the form of absorbing unreimbursed shipping expenses such as dimensional weight minimums or rural area delivery surcharges.

Another common discount strategy is a set shipping-and-handling fee that is good for any size order, such as a $6.95 fixed rate, no matter the actual shipping cost. This, of course, encourages larger orders.

The fastest growing discount offer is free shipping in exchange for a minimum order in dollars. This is often in the range of $75.00, but the minimum varies widely.

In many cases, merchants offer free shipping for a limited time only, such as four weeks prior to the Christmas shipping deadline.

Online consumers, predictably, prefer 100 percent free delivery with no minimum, or a free upgrade to express delivery.

Free Delivery Can Produce Benefits, Downsides

There can be big profit potential in free shipping offers, such as:

1. Increase in the total number of orders.
2. Average revenue per order may increase.
3. Item prices could be raised resulting higher gross profit.
4. With larger volume, per-order costs may decrease.

The downside risks inherent in free shipping offers are equally large. They include:

1. The revenue per pound may be too low for shipping discounts.
2. Additional gross profit may be insufficient to replace lost shipping revenue.
3. Some customers may comparison-shop free shipping deals.

The problem is working out the bottom line impact of free shipping offers when costs and benefits are so difficult to calculate. A good starting point, however, is to gather the facts and figures for your unique situation in a spreadsheet format like this one.

Screen capture of “Free Shipping Model” spreadsheet.

The benefit of an economic model like this is the various free shipping options can be compared side-by-side in terms of net contribution to overhead and profit.

A decision model makes getting started easier, but the fact remains that the key decision factors can only be known by real world testing.

Consider a “What-if” Decision Model

The example spreadsheet assumes an average of 12,000 orders a year with revenue of $100 per order, gross profit at 40 percent of sales, an existing $15 per order shipping and handling fee and $13 per order actual shipping cost. You can, of course, enter your own assumptions about your ecommerce project.

This sample analysis considers four alternatives.

1. Don’t change anything.
2. Switch to a $6.95 fixed delivery fee.
3. Offer free delivery on at least a $200 order.
4. Offer free delivery period.

For each of the discount offers, an initial estimate of the outcome for each new shipping strategy has been entered subject to later testing of offers that look promising.

In this example, the merchant’s contribution to overhead and profit presently averages $504,000 per year on product sales of $1,200,000 and shipping and handling revenue of $180,000 per year.

Option 2: Fixed Shipping Fee of $6.95

The example merchant is interested in a $6.95 fixed shipping fee offer. The initial assumption is the average order would increase by $20.00 and there would be a $1.30 net increase in the average shipping cost. These assumptions would need to be tested, but if the real world outcome were the same as the economic model, there would be a $16,200 loss of operating margin. In this example, the added revenue was not enough to cover the reduction of shipping and handling income and pay the added shipping expense.

Option 3: Free Delivery With Minimum Order

In the case of free delivery subject to a $200 per order minimum, the initial assumption is there would be a 1,200 order per-year reduction in sales volume. But because of the higher revenue per order, there would be an overall increase in dollar sales. Because of the heaver package ship weights, there would be an associated increase of $8.50 in shipping cost. If these assumptions were proven true by subsequent testing, the net result would be a $127,800 per year increase in operating margin.

Option 4: Free Delivery With No Minimum Order

If the offer were free delivery with no minimum, the initial assumption is a 3,600 increase in order volume per year and no meaningful change in per-order ship cost. If this were the real-world outcome, the merchant would see an $82,800 per year decrease in operating margin.

These are just arbitrary examples of how various free shipping offers could be analyzed. The main thing to keep in mind is there is a simple way to model free shipping economics, but real world testing must be conducted to project actual outcomes.

Per-pound Costs Decrease as Weight Increases

There is a vital fact that supports an offer of any kind that results in larger orders: Shipping cost per pound decreases as ship weight increases.

You will note from the carrier comparison chart in one of my earlier Practical eCommerce articles, “Shipping Rates: Comparison Shopping Save Money”, that the delivery cost of a 6 ounce package sent first class mail is $7.65 per pound, but the average cost of a 6 pound package delivered UPS ground is only $2.02 per pound.

In effect, as order size and weight increases, revenue goes up, but delivery cost as a percentage of revenue goes down. This opens the door to discount offers of all kinds.

Summary

Free shipping or some form of shipping discount strategy is perhaps a desirable alternative for your ecommerce business. A good way to begin the assessment process is to gather the basic per order revenue and expense data and model the possible outcomes of various shipping discount offers. From there you can conduct a set of real world sales tests to accurately gauge the cost versus the benefits

So before I tell you what we can do for you and how let me tell you a little about us. You can look on the about us page to find more. But we are Freddie and Joyce Brister. We have live in Mississippi our entire lives. We were married back in 1983. Joyce had a degree in Marketing and I had a degree in Education. Joyce went into retail marketing and I started coaching football and teaching school then. After about 10 years Joyce became jealous of my time off in the summer and all my holidays and she went back to school and got a second degree in education. She stated teaching Computer Technology type classes and I continued on my course as a football coach.

As I told you in the beginning we lived in the great state of Mississippi and one of the things Mississippi is famous for is not paying its school teachers very much. Because of this Joyce and I were always looking for other ways of making extra income. We tried lots of things like MLM’s, Selling Fireworks, Doing camps and teaching swimming lessons. But as I had told you earlier in 2002 we discovered Internet marketing. And because of Joyce’s background in Computers and my sports background we started building sports related websites selling sporting goods. Well the sites looked great but we were getting no traffic. I started searching the Internet for programs to help me get traffic to my websites. We went through several coaching programs with several of the well known gurus with no progress. But I actually ran up on a program called Stomping the Search Engines by Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins. (I bought it on Ebay) I started implementing the things that they were telling me to do and I was amazed. I actually started getting traffic and I started marketing sales. I worked really hard doing the things they were telling me. And eventually I ran into another road block and I did not know how to overcome it so I just called them and asked if they had some kind of program I could join and get educated about how to do this stuff. And being the enterprising young men that they were they said to send them a check and come on over. I actually joined their apprentice program. I actually paid over $5,000 to join and later when stompernet was started the charge was around $800 per month. And even though this sounds kind of high it was one of the best decisions I had ever made. Since that time my business has at least doubled and sometimes tripled every year. Joyce and I both became internet marketing coaches for their elite members in 2008 we have worked with hundreds of their members to help them grow their business.

We don’t claim to be the greatest internet marketing gurus around, but we hang with most of them at stompernet and we study every thing they tells us in detail. We work extreamly hard to emplement the things they tell us into our own business. And by the way we have over 45 websites now. Some of the things work and some don’t as all businesses are different. Some things will work in one business model and others will work in others. We do claim to have lots of experience in internet marketing and we can show you what has worked in our business and lots of things that have not. We do not have any majic pills that can make you rich overnight doing internet marketing. But we can help people who are willing to work hard and willing to put in the time it will take to do the things they need to do to get to the top of the search engines.

We fill the best way to help people is through personal coaching. We do this through phone calls, we implement the gotomeeting software so that we can actully watch you work on your computer or you can watch us work to learn first hand how to empliment the stategies that we are going to talk about.
We fill the best package that we offer people is our bi-weekly coacing package where we work with you personally every other week for 30 minutes. We don’t chitchat on these calls we get right down to business. We find out what you have gotten done over the last two weeks since our last call. We try to help you test to make sure that what you are doing is working and we set up a plan of what you need to do over the next two weeks. This program is pretty much exactly what we do with our elite stompernet members who do very well.

We do have modifications of this program where we meet every week instead of everyother week and of course the cost is just doubled for the client. Also we have an economy level for people who are wanting help but are wanting to spend as little as possible. In the economy program we would meet once a month instead of twice per month. The economy program would be half as much as our normal program. And last we have a mastermind group that lots of our clients like to move into after being in the program for awhile.

The cost of these different programs are as follows:
Regular Coaching Program (meets every other week for 30 minutes) $100 per month
Elite Coaching Program (meets every week for 30 minutes) $200 per month
Economy Coaching Program (meets once per month for 30 minutes) $50 per month
Mastermind Sessions (meets once per month for 1 hour) $25 per month when available

Does this sound familiar? Does this come into your head or out of your mouth when you look to get into a market?

Today is Father’s Day, and I was relaxing in the sun having a visit with my dad. The visit was a little one-sided since he past away in 2003. As it often does, inspiration comes at odd times. Let me share with you a story that I was just reminded of . . .

In the early 80s, when I was in high school, a man moved into the house across the street. We didn’t have many move-ins as our neighborhood was very stable. My father made me go with him to welcome our new neighbor to the area. Hey, I was a teenager, I didn’t want to go, but I was fortunate, as it was an introduction that I would long remember. In the conversation, my father asked our new neighbor what he did for a living.

“I sell pianos and I am opening a piano store in the area,” he replied.

This interested my father. Even though he was a school teacher, he loved discussing business. It was a passion of his.

“We just bought a piano,” my father followed. “There are three piano stores in the area already and I visited each one. Each store was empty when I went in and business seemed to be very poor. In fact, we got a great deal on our piano because of it.”

From seorevolution.com

If you work from home, you need to know how to qualify for the home office deduction, pay self-employment tax and understand which business expenses you can take as a tax deduction on your income tax return.

Being your own boss

Don’t listen to the naysayers who tell you that taking the home office deduction is a red flag for an IRS audit. Congress created these tax breaks and we’ll show you how to take advantage of them, with advice on:

• How to qualify for the home office deduction
• Paying self-employment tax
• Which business expenses you can deduct

Going from employee to self-employed

Hard to believe, but you can get a tax break for staying in your pajamas and fuzzy slippers to run your business.

Many people who leave jobs in mid-career choose to fly solo and start their own businesses, working out of their homes. Once you switch from life as an employee to become an independent contractor, your tax situation changes, too. Here are several things to keep in mind to keep your tax house in order:

Estimated tax payments

The bad news, Part 1:

Your employer used to take care of withholding your income taxes and sending payments to IRS. But once you’re self-employed, it’ll be up to you to make estimated tax payments to IRS during the year to cover your federal tax liability, unless you expect to owe less than $1,000. You make your payments quarterly, using Form 1040 ES.

Self-employment tax

The bad news, Part II:

Uncle Sam takes a bigger bite out of your income, employment-tax wise, when you’re on your own. To cover your Social Security and Medicare tax liability, in 2008 you’ll owe Uncle Sam 15.3 percent on the first $102,000 of your net earnings from self-employment.

For net earnings above $102,000, you’ll still owe Medicare tax of 2.9 percent. (For 2009, the full weight of the self-employment tax falls on net income up to $106,800.)

But there’s good news: You can deduct half of your self-employment tax when figuring adjusted gross income on your 1040. So if you’re in the 25 percent federal income tax bracket, the government effectively refunds 12.5 percent of the Social Security tax you pay.

Business expenses

Don’t throw away those receipts!

You can write off a long list of business costs—everything from business meals to insurance to bad debts—so it’s important to maintain good records of those expenses to get all the tax deductions you’re entitled to. And because you can’t deduct personal expenses, you must be sure to keep your business expenses separate. An easy way to do this is to set up a separate bank account for your business, and have a credit card used only for business purchases.

Home office deduction

If you’re working from home, deducting the costs associated with your home office can be a big tax saver—but the rules are tricky.

To get the deduction, the law requires you to use your home office “exclusively and regularly” for your business. It must be an area in your home where you don’t mix business with other activities. In other words, the kids can’ t play and you can’t watch a lot of football in the same area as your workplace. So put that big-screen TV somewhere else in the house.

The office also has to be your principal place of business or a place you meet regularly with clients or patients. What if you’re on the road a lot for business? No problem. You can qualify even if you spend most of your work time away from the office—as, say, a self-employed plumber who spends most of his time working at clients’ homes—as long as you manage the business from the home office and have no other office. If you qualify for home office deductions, the write-off will help pay for what otherwise would be considered personal expenses, such as part of the cost of heating and lighting, and home insurance premiums.

More options for retirement saving

Working in your pajamas is still work.

So plan now for full-time relaxation later and start a retirement plan, which is another great tax saver. And once you’re self-employed, your options go far beyond the individual retirement account. Check out SEP (Simplified Employee Pension), SIMPLE (Savings Incentive Match Plan), Keogh and individual 401(k) plans. All allow you to sock away money for retirement and take a tax deduction for those pay-ins.

Checkbook Wallet

Billfolds

InternetConsultingNow teaches business owners how to build online brand visibility and equity, as well as increase their customer base through online marketing and business development. We assist clients in building interactive campaigns that include market analysis, social media and other types of online marketing strategies and methods for measuring campaign effectiveness. We also offer SEO/SMO services and web copy development to ensure our clients get the respect from search engines that they deserve.

It seems as if everyone is talking about “social media” these days. And while social media platforms can be helpful for sharing brand messages and cultivating relationships, they can also end up as a colossal waste of time. This primarily occurs when a business owner considers the various sites to be an end in and of themselves, rather than a channel through which information flows.

In addition, different platforms appeal to different target markets, have different cultures, different growth factors. Combine the variables of the platforms themselves with the fact that humanity is nothing but one giant variable and the words “moving target” take on a whole new meaning.

Getting the basics can literally mean the difference between long hours of frustration and little benefit vs. productivity and connectivity. We offer four training options to help you get started. If you don’t find something you like here, just drop us a line and we will happily discuss options with you.

We offer four standard training packages, a research option, and a project-based bidding option.

• Just Plain Coaching: This is the package we recommend to everyone. It will get you what you want at the price you can afford. No matter where you are in your business that is where we will work with you.
• Economy: A 30 minute session per month – $50 per month
• Regular Coaching:  A 30 minute session every other week – $100 per month
• Fast Pace Coaching: A 30 minute session every week – $200 per month
•  
• Just Getting Started: This training package is a 1 month introduction to social media marketing. Over the course of 4, 2 hour sessions (with assigned homework) we will teach you the basic information about top social media platforms, engagement and basic monitoring. The sessions will be taught virtually. If you are in need of in person training outside of the West Point, MS area, please contact me for more information. The cost of this package is $1000.
• SEO/SMO: This is not your mother’s SEO…if your mother had SEO, that is. This is the new, social media friendly version of search engine optimization. We build out a language to use on your home site, as well as any social media platforms where you establish a presence. The cost of this service is affected by the size of the job, the fee can range from $400-$750.
• Online Campaign Research and Recommendations: We work with your company to create a research and recommendations package that can include online competitive analysis, market research, target market identification, identification of “best fit” social media platforms, effective engagement strategies, and strategies for measuring results. The length of time for these sessions will vary. Generally, these will be taught virtually. If you are in need of in person training outside of the West Point area, please contact me for more information. This is a project-based fee.
• We Want More: This training package is fully loaded with information online brand research, identifying target markets, basic SEO and SMO, campaign development, identification and utilization of social media platforms, engagement strategies, metrics, analysis and implementation of feedback. These sessions are taught over the course of 3 months in 2 hour blocks, once a week. Generally, these will be taught virtually. If you are in need of in person training outside of the West Point area, please contact me for more information. The cost of this package is $6,000.

Give us a call at 662-251-0844 or email at freddie@internetconsultingnow.com if you are interested in a package option or would like to talk about a project-based bid…we look forward to connecting!

Trifold

On Page optimization has many different parts. Some of these are listed below

* Title Tags
* Heading Tags H1, H2 and so forth
* Copy on the page (copy is king)
* first link prevalence
* outbound links
* especially linking to authority sites
* bold, underlined or italicized words show importance

Internal Linking would be a form of on page optimization. If a link from your on site goes to another page on your site that would be internal liking.

Mens Belt