Electronics Bungalow is now open!!

First, I would like to apologize for the time off from my blog that I have taken. But I am back and am proud to announce that my online electronics store is now open!! You can view my site here:

http://electronicsbungalow.com/


I have dedicated a lot of time and effort to accomplish opening my site and I am proud to finally have it open. But this is really only half the battle, now I need to work on bringing in traffic and bring customers from that traffic. The most important part of bringing in traffic will be my SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. This is what puts your site in the search results on search engines. It will take time for people to come in and make purchases, but I am determined to make it happen.

Right now I have sales going on for Accessories and Laptop Computers so I urge you to take a look at my store and please let me know what you think as there is always room to improve. I am focused on providing great customer service so if you are looking for anything specific or have any questions feel free to ask.

Other than that I hope everyone had a great Christmas and has a Happy New Year. I will be updating this more often with strategies I will be using and promotions that I will be having.


Thank you,
Andrew Owens
Electronics Bungalow

11/29 Update

Hey everyone, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I spent time with my girlfriend's family and had a wonderful meal, in fact I think I am still full from it haha. I don't have too much info in this post, just wanted to make a post and give an update on Electronics Bungalow.

I got in contact with the web developers and the site has been designed and loaded. They still need to load the products before it is officially complete and open for business, but if you want to check it out and see what it will look like here is the website:

Electronics Bungalow

The logo needs some work so I hired the company Logo Nerds to create a professional design for me and I will be getting a few samples later this week. They are inexpensive if you are looking for some quality and they give you a few different options that you can choose from.

I also got in contact with a couple more wholesalers and got accepted as a customer for them so that gives me a few other options to purchase products from. I am hoping that my website will be up and open for business by next week. So please let me know if there are any products you are looking for and i will try to get them for you.

Other than that, I hope to use my next post to give you guys some more tips and info about starting your online business. I haven't come across any quality articles lately and I was hoping to have my website up and running before I shared more personal experiences with you but that might have to wait a little bit. I would however like to hear from people reading this. I have't gotten any comments yet and would love to hear about what you think of my post and any constructive criticism you might have for me. I am starting out this blog and my business probably just like many of you so we are all in the same boat just trying to find our way so lets try to figure it out together.


Andrew Owens
Electronics Bungalow

Electronics Bungalow Update

I hired people today to build my website. I am hoping it will only take a couple of weeks to get it up and running in time for the holidays. I hope to have an option so people can become members of the site and accumulate points based on their spending. So say for every $1 spent you will receive 1 point and once you reach a certain amount of points you can get extra discounts, gift certificates, some sort of prize, etc...

This program will be for members only and membership will be free. This is something I want to do in order to give a little something back for customer loyalty, I know there are a lot of other places you can go to buy electronics, but I want to be able to help my customers one on one and be able to give them great prices and deals. I am also hoping to have giveaways for members who have made a purchase during each calendar month and the more purchases you make, the more your name gets put in for the giveaways.

When looking to purchase electronics I want to work with you on prices too, if there is something you need please contact me about possibly working out a price for it and if I dont' have what you need on my site I will go back to my distributors and see if I can get it for you at a good price. So please feel free to contact me when looking to make a purchase. My business email is electronicsbungalow@gmail.com and if you are looking for something before my site is even up feel free to contact me there and let me know what you are looking for as I do have access to my distributors already and can look into getting the products you need right now

Again, if you have any questions about my business or need help with your online business feel free to ask by leaving a comment here or emailing me.


Andrew Owens
Electronics Bungalow

Electronics Bungalow Update

I am back from vacation, it was a great relaxing time and now it is time to get back to business, I do apologize for not making a post during my vacation like I wanted to. I wanted to touch base on the progress of Electronics Bungalow, I should have myself set up to hire the website developers by the end of this week (fingers crossed). When getting this close to launching the business I am trying to make sure I have things planned out for how I want the website to look and make sure things are set up for being able to sell products as soon as they finish the site.

It will take approximately 2 weeks to build the site so during that time I want to keep in contact with the developers so that it will turn out the way I want it too. I also will need to create a list of the products I want to be put on the site. While thinking about what products I want, I am finding that there are other products I want on there that are not listed with the wholesaler I currently have so I will be exploring other wholesalers in addition to the one I am using.

I want to emphasize the importance of planning out your business. It can get pretty overwhelming with steps that need to be taken care of before your business even launches. I felt like I had things covered and for the most part I do, but now once I am almost at the stage of launch I am realizing that the planning is just beginning. Focus on how you want your business to be set up and the timeframe at which it should be progressing.

When trying to create a timeline for my business I found that it is almost never as accurate as you want it to be. You can't get discouraged if there are setbacks because there more than likely will be setbacks and if you let it get to you then you might start to get that overwhelming feeling and possibly think twice about continuing on and you can't let it get to that point and get you down. If there are setbacks, just be patient and calm and take a look at what is needed without panicking. Figure out what needs to be done and take care of it so that you can keep moving forward.

I have had a few setbacks while trying to launch Electronics Bungalow and yes I will even admit that I thought about quitting the progress. I would even suggest taking a couple days off of looking at your business plan to clear your head which I had to do a couple times. Once I did that, I got my mind focussed back on moving forward and continuing my timeline and business plan.

If you are having difficulties with your timeline or business plan or you are getting frustrated with the progress of your business, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. I want to help out anyone who needs it and as I have stated in earlier posts that you should ask as many questions as you can and get information and answers from anywhere you can find it.

On a lighter note, I wanted to share a few photos of the beautiful view and scenery I had while on vacation. I almost didn't want to leave! haha!

Andrew Owens
Electronics Bungalow

Picking a niche

So you decide you want to start an online business, so what? Where does that get you? How are you going to decide what to sell and how to sell it?....I was in that same position when I first started out and I know it can be a little frustrating.

When I was first thinking about starting an online business I know I found it difficult to decide on what I wanted to do. I thought about it for days and couldn't really think of what I wanted to sell or who I wanted to target to market towards. I searched online for ideas which helped some and asked others for some ideas.

So when trying to figure out your niche think about things you like to do. Think about what you know and what you are good at. It becomes a lot easier to sell something you know a lot about and you enjoy it.

Maybe you already have something already, but don't know where to market it. I would search online for similar products and see how those products are being marketed. I would also just ask friends and see what they think of your product and give you an idea of the type of person that might purchase your product.

There are many sources on the internet that can help you find a niche. I would also recommend finding a forum that has people who are also looking to start an online business. I joined the Power Sellers Union Forum when I was looking to start an online business. There is a great support of people there and they have been very helpful. It does cost a one time subscription fee for that site, but it was completely worth it as I got many of my questions answered through there. If you don't want to pay a fee, I have found Yahoo! Answers to be helpful as well.

I wanted to share a website that explains some really dumb business ideas that turned into solid business products just so you can get your minds rolling and realize that a product doesn't necessarily have to be the greatest idea in the world: 10 totally stupid ideas that made someone rich

I would love to hear from all of you, how is your business venture coming along? Have you found your niche? What step of starting you business are you at?


I will be out of town starting tomorrow. I am going to Cambria, CA for a little family vacation but I will try to make a post here at least one time while I am away and respond to any comments.


Andrew Owens
Electronics Bungalow

Electronics Bungalow Update

I received an email from the wholesaler that I sent my application for and was informed that I was approved. My next step is to have web developers build my website for me which I plan on doing when I get funds in hopefully next week. I want to give a list of items as a sample of what will be included for products on my site just to give you an idea:

• Computers-including desktops and notebooks
• Televisions-including Plasma, LED, LCD, and 3D
• Tablets
• Cameras and Camcorders
• Printers
• Accessories

plus many other items!

Once it is up and running you will be able to view the products available on the site and if there is something you are looking for that is not on the site I welcome anyone to contact me about what it is you need and I will do my best to try to get that product for you. So please follow this blog so that you can keep up with the updates for Electronics Bungalow, I want to give my customers the best service possible and attend to all their electronic needs.


For my tips and advice today, I wanted to share a website I stumbled upon last week that gives a variety of tips for anyone looking to start an online business:

http://www.dragosroua.com/77-tips-for-starting-an-online-business/

Take a look at that site and as always feel free to leave comments here.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Andrew Owens
Electronics Bungalow

Measurements

Being the weekend I am not likely to hear back from the wholesaler until at least Monday about my application. That being said, I thought about what I can do to keep track of sales, page views, item views, trends, etc...I have searched online and it seems that a lot of small online businesses use Google Analytics to keep track of a lot of that stuff while using the merchant services for payment to keep track of the accounting and sales.

However you decide to track the measurements and progress of your business, just know that it is VERY IMPORTANT to indeed keep track of the measurements and progress of your business. There are a lot of useful tools out there and you can't just focus on sales and dollars in order to run a successful online business. It is probably more difficult to run an online business than a brick & mortar store, albeit less start up expenses, which makes it more important to also focus on every factor that has an effect on your business.

I myself will probably start using Google Analytics for these measurements once I get my business officially launched. I will play around with other tools as well and see what I feel is best for myself and my business and will report back here to inform you guys as well. Until then, be sure that you know what measurements you need to keep track of and use tools that are out there for e-commerce businesses.


Andrew Owens
Electronics Bungalow