Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain
Cool, you’re signed up The Neville Letters.
It’s gonna kick ass.
Me (or one of the other monkeys around here) will put your 1st letter in the mail. It might be an envelope, or it might be a package. WHO KNOWS!!
But you’re all signed up now.
Lemme know how you like it.
-Neville
nevmed@gmail.com
713.301.1546
Somehow I forgot to post this, but sometime last year (circa September 2007) I went to go see Al Carey, the CEO of Frito Lay speak on the University of Texas campus.
I go to a lot of these things, and for the most part I don’t post anything about them, but this one definitely deserves mention. I say this because he was actually an interesting CEO to listen to! Most big time CEO’s that come speak basically give a one hour promotional speech about their company….but it’s not entirely their fault.
The student groups that bring the speakers say, “Hey (insert name here), come to the University of Texas and say words for an hour.” If I had to speak for an hour given such a vague subject matter, I’d probably talk about something uninteresting for an hour also. They also select a HUGE auditorium where the front row of the audience is at least 25 feet away from the speaker. This causes the whole thing to seem very un-personal.
I thought that’s what this speech would be also, but was pleasantly surprised to find otherwise. For the speech, I wanted a more memorable picture with Mr. Carey, like the one with me and the CEO of Gibson Guitars, or the Herb Kelleher with booze & cigarettes picture. While I wasn’t dressed very well, I did come prepared with a big bag of Fritos so I could get an interesting picture. Long story short, I lost my camera a few days before, so I was using an old camera with a crushed screen…so I couldn’t see the pictures as they were taken. I ended up getting two awkward looking pictures:
Me eating out of the Fritos bag:
HA! He was more than happy to take the photos, and even re-do them due to technical difficulties. I was also happy to hear him give a pretty good speech which the audience ate up! Unlike a lot of other CEO’s who end up inadvertently boring the crowd with information about how great their company is, he knew he was speaking primarily to college students, and therefore tailored his speech to what he thought college students were interested in. It worked great, and the audience enthusiastically asked questions all throughout.
He also just seemed down to earth and interesting. He spoke confidently, looked like he was having fun up there, didn’t hide behind the podium and usually walked right at the edge of stage, close as possible to the audience.
Like many CEO’s I’ve seen speak, he never came into the company with the intentions of going all the way to the top. He just did his job and did his job well. He also spoke very highly of several bosses who simply gave him a chance and challenges when he first started. In fact that was a big part of his speech….simply give the new blood in the company A LOT of responsibility and creative leeway (if they want it) and see what happens. He says more often then not they exceed all expectations.
He gave a great example of how a small group of brand new, young marketing employees wanted to take control of the entire Frito Lay Superbowl campaign (their largest, most expensive and important campaigns). He let them “do their thing” which was an interactive internet campaign where users submit homemade commercials for Fritos, and the winning video would be aired live at the SuperBowl plus a bunch of other prizes. The winning video had a budget of $8.00 and was featured on a $1.5 million SuperBowl ad. Frito Lay product sales went up 18% as a direct result of the campaign! When you consider that sales are in the BILLIONS of dollars, an 18% increase is massive….all because of some young marketing kids who took a risk.
Since I was in college I’ve always enjoyed starting small online businesses. Somewhere along the way I created palm r e p o r t . com
This is a website that allows users to upload images of their palms (either photographed or scanned) and have a professional palm reader look over them. The palm reader then sends you back an mp3 audio file with the reading.
What’s funny is I don’t particularly believe in palm reading…so how did this get started?
1.) Someone one day looked at my palm and jokingly said, “You have a small money line.”
2.) Trying to disprove them, I Googled it. I noticed there were many websites on palm lines, but none of them were very professional at all.
3.) I know a lot of people still get their palms read all the time, but I noticed the places attempting to read palms over the internet required ink prints of the palms to be physically sent to an address.
4.) DING! Idea!
A little extra research on Google, Overture and some other keyword counters revealed the demand for online palm reading was high, but very underserved. It makes sense: Most people who do palm reading aren’t the most computer saavy people. Look up programming websites and you’ll find tons of professionally done sites, but palm reading websites…the opposite.
So I went ahead and built an eCommerce site suited for Palm R e p o r t with the help of a Romanian developing team I frequently use, and Palm R e p o r t was ready. The best part of Palm R e p o r t is that it was designed to sell palm readings, so the backend is very helpful for it:
The system allows customers to upload their palm pictures directly to the website database for easy viewing. This eliminates the need for emailing pictures back & forth etc. The front page of Palm R e p o r t has a very helpful Flash banner which describes the whole process very quickly and easily:
Once the site was done, someone would have to perform the palm readings, so knowing absolutely nothing about palm reading I decided to educate myself. I bought 3 different books from Amazon.com for a total of $38 and learned that actual palm reading had some pseudo-science to it. There were measurements to take, angles to analyze and lines to count. This wasn’t “scientific” but “pseudo-science.” I could work with this, however the sheer volume of information to be learned was more than I anticipated, so it was obvious I’d have to find someone who already knows it.
This was the most fun part. I vaguely recalled seeing those “Palm Reading Psychic” places on the side of the road. I always used to think, “Ha! What a load of crap those are.” I was very right.
I noticed there was one of those psychic place by my apartment at the time. Deciding to do a little “research” I went and got my palm read. I swear it was exactly what I thought of a stereotypical pyschic readers office. Cheesy beaded curtains and an Eastern European looking lady with a shiny cloth around her head.
She sat me down, I explained I wanted the lines on my palm read, she said it would cost $20. The readings starts, and I kid you not this is how it went:
I knew this would be somewhat of a rip off…but seriously, THIS MUCH? I thought maybe it was a fluke, so I went to three more places. I was disappointed to find each place pulled almost the exact same routine. I would even specifically say I wanted ONLY my palms read, and they would proceed with the same routine. One lady told me I had a curse and that she could remove it….for $200. How convenient. The palm readers all looked the same too: Eastern European, gypsy-looking women.
So anyways, I spent some time posting Craigslist ads looking for palm readers with little luck, but then I randomly came across a list of “Hand Analysts” and noticed one right here in Austin. I met up with her, immediately noticed she was much more professional than the side-of-the-road gypsies, she liked the idea of Palm R e p o r t and we were in business. It was a relatively easy sell since I already had Palm R e p o r t .com up and fully running.
This lady did palm readings based on methods outlined by Aristotle and others. What I liked was that she didn’t tell the “future” like the other palm readers. Her approach was more psychologist-like than palm reader. This was good, because I didn’t want to be involved with someone who was blatantly misleading people like the side-of-the-road people.
I set the palm reader up with an open-source recording program on her computer called Audacity and a headset microphone for hands-free recording of the readings. This way she could look at the hands on her computer and record the reading. I would then upload the hands & reading to a page for the customer once the reading was done.
On a live version, the customer would be able to download the .mp3 file.
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So Palm R e p o r t was launched and started making orders, but two years later I really have no interest in running this business any longer. I haven’t updated it in who-knows-when, but the site has garnered a lot of great SEO traffic over that time. This is what keeps orders coming in.
The site gets between 100 and 200 unique visits per day, and hundreds of quality search results landing at the site per month. You can see the stats here:
(UPDATE: stats removed)
I decided to post Palm R e p o r t for sale on the SitePoint forums, much like I did before with the Facebook Site and Resumite.
You can view the auction here. (UPDATE: auction removed)
With the sale you don’t get the palm readers personality (Kianna Smith), so it must be re-branded. So the new owner will get the custom built system and corresponding WordPress blog template for the Buy It Now price of $4,000.
I always thought this business could blow up really big because of the demand for the service and the lack of competition, unfortunately this was never a passionate thing for me. It was unfortunate because once properly established, this business can rake in orders day after day with relatively little work compared to other sites. In an effort to start concentrating on a core group of things, I must let Palm R e p o r t go. However if it doesn’t sell for an acceptable price, I’ll still keep it since it still makes money.
No one has a done a good job at branding themselves as an expert palm reader online, so this is a great opportunity. Much like Erin Pavlina has created a brand for herself doing intuitive readings….I’m not really sure what they entail, but they cost $195 for 30 minutes and she’s book up for weeks at a time.
Anyhow, it was interesting to see this business start then grow. Now it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves to a new owner!
Update September 2016: You can read more about if palm reading is real or fake here. It also includes more details about how PalmReport was started!
Oggz are egg-shaped lights that slowly change color. That’s it.
This surprisingly simple invention is now selling in Wal-Mart which means its been proven at every level of retail up to the highest.
Since I own an online rave store that focuses on light-up stuff, I was one of the early people to start carrying this obscure product several years ago. It was manufactured by Can You Imagine, and the single Oggz unit retailed at $19.99 and the 3-Pack retailed at $49.99. Till this day the price is pretty much the same. The kicker is now you can buy the triple pack Wal-Mart for $28.00 (a full $22.00 cheaper than standard retail price). Wal-Mart’s retail price is even lower than my wholesale price!! Definitely shows the massive purchasing power Wal-Mart has!
I don’t usually see most of the products I sell online since everything is dropshipped, so I was always flabbergasted by the volume at which these Oggz sold at. This product was definitely a large staple for HouseOfRave and most definitely a large income earner. Another plus was people never complained about the product breaking, malfunctioning or not working. Customers loved them. I loved them too because they sold well, had a high margin and no one ever returned them.
I was in college when Oggz came out, so the extra income from this single product was greatly appreciated.
I eventually ordered some Oggz to see why so many people of different backgrounds kept ordering this product, and then I finally saw why people like them….they’re just neat. They slowly morph into different colors as you watch them. They don’t JUMP to different colors…they gently move through the spectrum of light creating a mesmerizing or soothing effect. They’re quite a nice nightlight, play toy or decoration. Lots of spa’s and masseuses would order Oggz to create a nice ambiance around their offices. They have a sleek looking and compact charging base, and when you remove them from the base they stay lit for 24 hours or more without charging.
I ended up liking the product a lot, but noticed the standard manufacturer photos of the Oggz didn’t really fully describe the product effect:
This inspired me to do my very first set of product photos on the Oggz:
I also did my very first product video with a triple pack of Oggz and a bottle of flammable Everclear. You can check it out, but be prepared to laugh!
Keep in mind it was my first product video. I’m not sure what I was thinking with the Journey song in the background or the overly dramatic intro with the fire, but it was fun at the time, and you have to start somewhere! I’m still too embarrassed to watch it the whole way through! I ended up taking this product video down from the Oggz description page because of the extremely high cheesy-ness level, but it still resides on YouTube.
The Oggz seem relatively easy to manufacture. The Ogg itself is simply a white, slightly-bendable poly-urethane case shaped like an egg:
Inside the casing resides a simple yet sturdy mechanism with an on/off swith and three led lights that sequentially change color to create a full-spectrum light show that blends together:
This is now a pretty common effect, you can see many products on HouseOfRave that use this same lighting effect.
Anyways, I’ve always been curious how this obscure and relatively useless product went from mom & pop sales to the big time. Reading a lot about product licensing from Stephen Key also fueled my curiosity of how the Oggz got started.
I decided to call the always helpful folks at Can You Imagine, Inc. to get the full story:
So whenever a set of Oggz is sold, the original inventor gets a cut of the sale. Considering these things sell so well PLUS they’re sold in the largest store on the planet…I’d say this guy is sitting pretty! Cool thing is the original inventor hardly does a thing now. Shows the possible money making power of licensing a product!
While I’ll never make as much as the inventor off these, the Oggz still made enough money to help me pay my tuition!
Exciting title no?
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to keep time of the things I do so I can speed everything up and do more work. As the old saying goes, “Anything that is measured and watched, improves.” Actually, that’s from What Would Bob Do.
So about a week ago
so I could start timing all the little tasks I do. So whenever I start handling the HouseOfRave.com orders for the day, I start the clock and try to beat my estimated time.
One of the scary things about timing yourself is seeing how LITTLE work you actually do. Whenever I have a boring task to complete, it feels like an hour, but unless my $12 Wal-Mart stopwatch is wrong, it only took me 18 minutes. Instead of going downstairs to get a quick snack after the task, I’ll realize it only took a few minutes and keep working on something else.
On the flip side it also keeps me from spending too much time on something. For example as I was making the Disco Ball section banner for HouseOfRave I had to stop myself and just upload what I had as the clock started ticking past 10 then 15 minutes. I usually have fun doing those kinds of Photoshop tasks, but tinkering around with different backgrounds and fonts for an hour doesn’t increase productivity.
Of course there’s a bunch of stuff I don’t document here, but I like looking back to see what I was doing at a similar date the previous year. This at least gives me a little snapshot.
I don’t like many blogs but one of the few I regularly read is Adam McFarland’s. I particularly enjoy his blog because he’s about my age and does mainly web related businesses, so I can definitely relate.
Adam and 3 other guys (who also each own small businesses) formed a company called Pure Adapt in which they all pool their talents. Through a collaborative effort they’ve managed to take George’s online business Detailed Image to a whole new level and it’s now one of Pure Adapt’s most promising businesses. Detailed Image sells everything related to high-end auto detailing like car wax, paint buffers, leather cleaners etc. If it makes your car look good, DI probably has it.
I like Detailed Image as a business because it gets EXTREMELY high conversion rate of orders per customer. So if Detailed Image only gets less than 50 visits a day, they’ll still make 10 or more orders from that. One of my businesses HouseOfRave is the exact opposite. I get tons of traffic but low order rates. So I may get 2,000 visitors per day, but only 10 orders. They do this by staying very active in auto-detailing forums and adding lots of content to them. People are much more likely to buy stuff recommended by an active member of the forum.
This post was completely un-asked for by the guys who run it, but here is my review/impressions/suggestions for Detailed Image.com:
1.) Left Navigation.
It reminds me of one of those standard OScommerce menus. I’d suggest putting some bullet points to tidy it up:
Maybe even alphebetize it:
2.) Product Image Location.
No need to change this, but I was definitely confused when viewing products. I browsed through a couple of items and thought, “Why don’t they have product photos?”
They’ve integrated the product photos into the side bar which is made to look like a GPS navigation system on a dashboard, but when browsing the web your brain generally separates the information in the side navigation bars from the main content. Even now, I still look at the site and forget each product has a picture.
This isn’t really a problem, but a simple fix which could help a not-so-astute person like me is integrating the picture into the whitespace of the main content. This gives the effect of the product picture being a “part of” the main content instead of separated from it. Something like this:
Of course this particular example doesn’t fit into the whole “dashboard theme” very well.
3.) Shopping Cart Upgrade System.
Adam has been talking about how he’s completely revamped the shopping cart system for the site. It’s AWESOME! Instead of making someone go through the site and ADD small ancillary items to the cart individually, it automatically adds related items for you. This way when you UNCHECK items in your cart, you feel “Well, I will need one of those…” and keep it there. This equals larger orders.
Adam mentioned this feature has effectively DOUBLED the dollar amount of each order. Doubling income overnight? I’d say that’s one highly successful modification!
4.) More videos and before/after pictures.
I’ve seen some really nice before/after pictures George has posted in various forums. Some of them were so convincing they had me nearly buying $100+ worth of stuff from DI! However I can’t readily find any links to those highly convincing posts from the website. It would be nice if DI had a small section of before & after pictures of cars with different colors. I drive a black GS 300, and when I saw some before/after pictures of a black Infinity G35 during a detailing, I was VERY close to buying everything in the article. The key was seeing how good my color of paint could look when properly cleaned and polished.
The video of a buffer you guys recently posted is a great addition to the site. I never would dream of buying an expensive buffer had I not seen that video!
That’s all I’ve got for now, great job with the site guys. I can’t wait to see it grow in the coming years!
First post of the year!
Let’s get started. For starters, I’m not going goal-less this year like I tried in 2007. That worked out OK, but setting clear goals is quite an important task. I was using some pretty flawed logic in that goal-less post.
Short Term Goals:
Medium Term Goals:
Year Long Goals & Wants:
That’s all the publicly available goals I’ve got for now, I may add more later. Have a happy & prosperous 2008!
-Neville
No matter how well you did in 2007, I hope your
Now, it’s time to celebrate!
Best wishes,
Neville
So after finally getting HouseOfRave.com off the ground, this is how it works:
I will show what happens from the time I get an order, till the customer receives their order. Everything is done in 5 steps. I can accept, process, account for and send off 2 orders in around 2 minutes with this system. 10 orders will take me about 10 minutes with this system:
1.) Check, View and Review Orders.
I login to the backend of my Shopsite software to see how many new orders I have waiting. I click to view all the orders and do a quick skim of the order information. I am looking for any subtle signs of fraud at this point. After 5 years, I’ve become pretty good.
I can view individual orders or all the orders at the same time:
2.) Charge Orders.
This is the most inefficient step, as I choose to process cards manually to become more familiar with the customer names, locations and spot fraud. I login to my merchant account digital gateway and copy/paste from Shopsite the needed customer information. This step goes quicker than imagined because I use my tablet PC pen. During busy times I turn on automatic charging, so this step sometimes takes only one click to charge all the orders.
Here I find out if each order is legit. If the order is declined, I make a note of it and move on. If the order was paid for using PayPal I already know it was charged. If the order looks suspicious or comes back with negative address verification, I will often call the person on the spot to verify the order.
3.) Enter Into Accounting System.
This step is very quick and allows me to see my estimated current profit, my expenses, what I owe etc.. I’ve used some pre-made accounting modules for Shopsite in the past, but I like my Excel sheet better. Over the years I have honed it to help predict my profit at the end of each month. I don’t know my exact profit until I get the monthly bill from my supplier, but this Excel sheet gets me pretty damn close.
4.) Create with Word & Send.
This step is the way THIS particular business of mine works. Once an order is ready to go, I copy/paste the information into a Word document and send it via email to my supplier. From there, they print it as an invoice and send the order. This is the way my particular supplier chooses to do business, others may have different methods.
5.)Followup.
My supplier will send me a tracking number once the order is sent. These go into my tracking system where customers can check the status of their order. The tracking module also sends customers their tracking numbers via email automatically.
How I make Money:
I pay wholesale price for the products I send out from my supplier. They send me a bill for the products & shipping each month. I charge retail price on the website and bring in all the money myself. At the end of the month, I cut a check to my supplier and the difference is my income after product expenses. I then subtract my server costs, merchant account costs, PayPal costs and phone bill costs to get my total profit amount.
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Hopefully this mini-series helps someone further understand the inner workings of a small drop shipping business!
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The House Of Rave .com Story
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Part 1: The Beginning
Part 2: Finding Something to Sell
Part 3: Finding A Drop Shipper
Part 4: Getting A Site Setup
Part 5: Pros and Cons of Drop Shipping
Part 6: How It All Works
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Having an internet store that uses a drop shipper is an attractive sales model because:
Sounds pretty good huh? Well for the most part it is, but there are also some inherent problems with running this type of dropshipping business:
If this was five years ago I’d tell you a dropshipping model is GREAT, and it still sometimes is….however the largest threat to this model is the wholesalers.
Previously these people would import products by the shipment container full, keep them in a huge warehouse on pallets and only sell to volume buyers. The distributors who buy the pallet amounts would then keep stuff in their warehouses and send out to individual consumers. Then after that comes the dropshippers, think of them more like middle men. As the level of technology and sophistication of these large distributors increases, they now have systems in place where individual consumers can buy small quantities of products at near wholesale prices.
As technology improves it allows these larger vendors to sell to individuals, it also allows the individual consumers to find these distributors through internet search results. So as time goes on, the middle men will slowly have more competition pressures.
SO HOW TO OVERCOME THIS?
Many of the larger distributors focus on a specific niche of products (Party suppliers, cell phones, toys etc), so they only have so much to offer. Distributors keep smaller quantities on hand of products, but can carry many items from various wholesalers. So distributors (and consequently drop shippers) offer their unique selection of products, customer service and unique store shopping experiences.