Internet and Mail Order Business Opportunities 3
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Can I print a catalog on my home computer?
If you have a good quality printer and an eye for design, you could produce pages that would list your products and include some graphics. But if you try to print the catalogs yourself, you'll wind up with a catalog that looks homemade, and if you print in quantity, you'll spend more for ink and paper than you would if you have a printer produce the work for you. If you are selling expensive products or need to look like an established company, your best bet is to hire someone to produce the text and the camera-ready copy and then send it to a printer. If you are just starting out and have just a few products, you might want to print up individual product sheets (a single page with product details) instead of a complete catalog. Print them on good quality paper. Switch to having those pages commercially printed when you see you are getting results and you need large enough quantities to make it cheaper to have the printing done by a commercial printer.
Are there any alternatives to printed catalogs?
Yes. You can put a catalog on a web site for a fraction of what it would cost you to print a color catalog and mail it – if you shop carefully for web design services. If you don't know anything about web design try to find a web designer who will set up a storefront for you at reasonable costs and then show you how you can later add new products to the storefront or change details yourself.
If you know a little bit about using software such as FrontPage to create web sites, you can find outsourced shopping carts that work quite well for a fraction of the cost of building your own storefront or buying the software yourself. Alternately, ask your web developer to look into setting up an outsourced shopping cart for you.
Companies that offer merchant services (so you can accept credit card payments) often have a list of shopping cart providers whose software works with their system as well. Be sure to shop around and compare prices before making any decision.
Keep in mind that once you put the catalog on the web, you still have to get people to look at it. Just as it wouldn't do you much good to print up a full-color catalog without mailing it or handing it out to customers, it won't do you much good to put a catalog on the web and not let existing customers and new prospects know about it. So, you'll still need to plan on spending some additional advertising money. But instead of spending a dollar or so on postage to mail the catalog to existing customers, you could put a 23 cent postcard in the mail. Or, if you have an email list for your customers, send them email to alert them of the new catalog on the web. You can also promote your catalog by buying ads in other people's email newsletters and by purchasing advertising on search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
How many items do I need to sell?
It depends on what your customers want to buy and what you can provide for them. Often companies start out with just a handful of products and describe them on a single flier. Gradually, however, they add to their list of offerings.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
