We’ve created a business that is like no other, allowing
us the freedom to be independent and creative. It’s
been enriching in so many ways. And
there is plenty of room for many others to participate.
Rather than tell you why we like what we’re doing, let’s provide you
with an inside look into our daily activities.
See if this is something that might appeal to you:
Briefly, our website gets thousands of “hits” daily—from all over the world. (Owners of websites will not know the names of their visitors who may remain anonymous, but they are given the distribution of countries where queries originate—that’s why we know we get hits not only from Indiana and Iowa but from Iceland, India and Israel—and everywhere else, it seems.) Some of these people buy our products, ordering on a secure “shopping cart” system, placing books, videos, tools, and our discounted packages into their shopping carts, then paying with their credit card at the checkout stand.
Our daily routine, for weekdays, is fairly simple. First, open the email to read the orders for products. Then fill the orders, packaging most in materials provided by the US Post Office. Next, run the Credit Cards through our Merchant Account, where monies are deposited in our bank. Sometime, during the middle of the day, while doing errands, someone goes to the Post Office to retrieve orders and checks mailed to our P.O. Box. These orders are also filled along with the email orders. During our business hours, we also answer questions about our products and take telephone orders. Sometimes orders are faxed to us. These are usually from bookstores (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many small town book stores), as well as from municipalities, libraries, service organizations, etc. It seems a good percentage of orders received by fax are from people in countries outside the US. We process these orders throughout the day. We pride ourselves in same day service and our customers appreciate that. Then, sometime in the afternoon when all the orders have been filled, the packages are dropped off at the Post Office. UPS orders are also handled as well as Fed-Ex—all with simple ease. Depending upon the amount of orders and plans for getting away for the weekend, the shipments might go out as early as 1 PM or 4:30 PM. That’s it!
A good portion of our orders is drop-shipped. What does that mean? It means that the product manufacturer, distributor or grower ships the product directly to our customer. That means we don’t spend any time in packaging those orders. Drop shipping works well for us because it’s a tremendous time saver. It’s like getting someone else to do the “hard” work for you. They handle the shipping and you make the profit of the sale. Once you’ve set up a system like this, you’ll wonder why more people don’t do it.
And they call this work? Hardly.
A mail-order business is the easiest business in the world.
What’s the key to having a successful business?
There is probably more than one key.
First, find a useful product that people want to buy.
(An environmentally useful product will always be a winner.)
Then, find a type of business that is unique—one in which there aren’t
already millions of people doing it. Find
a business that doesn’t cost you a fortune to start—one that can be started
with a reasonable amount of dollars. Find
products that can be easily shipped, with enough profit to make your business
worthwhile. Sell products and
information and opportunities that people can’t find elsewhere—so they’ll
pay you for these products and less than one tenth of one percent will ever ask
for their money back. Our “returns”
average about one or two a year.
How many returns does the average department store in a mall receive on a
daily basis? We just don’t have dissatisfied customers.
In fact, like all good businesses, we find that our customers tell their
friends. That’s good for our
business.
Finally, all successful businesses are efficient. And we've got a training program that will make your new business efficient from Day One.
If you’ve ever been in a business where there are headaches in Accounts Receivable, you might be surprised to learn that it is possible to own a business where there is never that problem. We have no receivables, because all our products and services are paid for in advance. It’s really nice not to be owed any money. If you’ve ever been a creditor before, you know the lousy feeling you get when someone owes you money. We just never get that feeling. Periodically we “owe” money to our suppliers—most of whom give us 30 days or more to pay for their products that we sell. But we usually pay them well in advance, and always on time. So we have a very happy situation. We want to keep a good relationship with our suppliers who give us their products at wholesale so we can sell them at retail.
To
learn more about this program continue the tour
by clicking on the "next" button on each page.