Land of Opportunity

CNN Money has reported that Ohio residents selling on eBay online auctions will require a state auctioneers license starting May 2, 2005.

In yet another case of well meaning legislators creating laws with unintended consequences, this error could cost eBay merchants based in Ohio a $200 license fee, a $50,000 bond, a one-year apprenticeship, attendance at auction school, and passing written and oral auction exams. Failure to comply may result in a $1,000 fine and a 90-day jail sentence. (more…)

Darryl Gehly has an excellent piece on shopping cart abandonment over at Darwin magazine, a companion site of CIO.com. Seldom is shopping cart abandonment written about except to complain. Darryl’s article is one of the best and is a definite must read if you have an online shopping cart.

Darryle states that, according to Forrester Research, conversion rates average about 2.4 percent. This is a large drop from the already low 2.9 percent average conversion rate of 2003. (more…)

A recent wave of scams involving eBay’s Buy It Now feature has many eBay sellers upset.

In the scam, unknown buyers have been closing eBay auctions early using the Buy It Now feature. The buyer sends an email to the seller offering to pay by Western Union money order. An official looking email arrives stating Western Union has received a money order. The seller ships the item and then discovers that there is no money order and that the email was spoofed.

Common items being scammed include (more…)

SBC Yellow Pages just delivered their massive SBC Yellow Pages book, advertising nearly every small business in central Arkansas. Advertising in the SBC Yellow Pages is not cheap. Many small businesses have taken loans against houses and business assets to pay for large ads in the Yellow Pages directory. Did they get their money’s worth? Experienced Yellow Pages advertisers think so, inexperienced first-time advertisers sometimes don’t get the results they were expecting.

As fate sometimes does, while my SBC Yellow Pages were being delivered (more…)

Zogger at Technorat.com has found a 5-page list of the 100 Greatest Gadgets of All Time. The list was assembled by and published in Mobile PC magazine.

I own several of the top 100, including #89 (more…)

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was enacted to eliminate abusive debt collection practices by debt collectors, to insure that those debt collectors who refrain from using abusive debt collection practices are not competitively disadvantaged, and to promote consistent State action to protect consumers against debt collection abuses.

Anyone who has operated a small business for any length of time has had the problem of collecting on bad debts at least once.

Attorney Shane Jimson at the Virginia Law Blog has a great post on How to Minimize your Uncollected Bills.

One preventative tip that Shane shares is to (more…)

I just returned from the monthly Italian language Meetup here in Little Rock. Meetups are informal social gatherings of people with similar interests in a particular topic. Topics for Meetups range from political to cultural to intellectual to fun.

Meetups are usually held in books stores, coffee shops and restaurants. As Meetups occur mid-week, on what are usually slow nights for many small businesses, Meetups often bring additional traffic and sales. (more…)

A legitimate business opportunity that I speak about lately is the eBay consignment store franchise. Dane at Business Opportunities blog pointed us to this survey of eBay auction consignment stores at AuctionBytes.com.

The timing is opportune as I am speaking this Tuesday evening in Clarksville to a group of 80 or more fellow Arkansans on how to start an Internet auction business. This seminar is a one time good deal as First Security Bank of Clarksville is paying for the program, so admission is FREE. Registration details are on the Arkansas SBDC’s Fort Smith training calendar. I suspect that like many of my programs, this will end up a standing room only affair before sunset.

The survey of eBay franchises and independent auction consignment stores has some interesting findings: (more…)

Betsy Martin, Research Specialist at the Arkansas SBDC, announced recently that she had acquired three new books with demographic data on Arkansas. What an excellent idea for a blog post! Several times each year, I teach a database marketing class, which covers the basics of analysing a customer database and segmenting the data with both Census data and commercial segmentation systems.

What follows is a mini-compendium of FREE demographic sources for small businesses. (more…)

Nick Infusino at Law & Entrepreneurship News pointed us to this column by Gladys Edmunds at USA Today - Money on stopping employee theft within the small business. Gladys, the author of There’s No Business Like Your Own Business, recommends the establishment of a theft prevention system. (more…)