What's next?

Sometimes I just think that I need my husband to help me organize myself. :p

2012 is coming. We look back what have we done in 2011, what to improve and what to be done in the coming year. Since I have started working, I need to add in my commitment to work into my plan, and since my husband still in his current company he can help me a LOT because he got the time that I don't have.

I am a bit haywire, postage is late, and cant accept all orders unlike last time. We figure out the solution just now when discussing with the 2012 plan.

You can do it too, not necessarily you have a business to run, but in your daily life too. Start as simple as this:

List all 5 must do in 2012
List all 5 not going to do in 2012
List all 5 maybe doing in 2012

Then you elaborate and go deep into the topic. If you have more than 5, then list them all. Then do the timeline on when you want to achieve them, by dividing them into 4 quarter of the year.

Some people said, no need to do any resolution since you will not follow it, but for me, I always do it, and then I look back, what have I done, because I want to make sure I will spend a worth one whole year, not by doing nothing :)

Im going to list down mine by new year eve :)

Happy Tuesday to all!

Communication

Oh no! When was the last update??
Let me take this short time I have to write something.

I found out that if you dont ask, you dont get the answer. And no question is a dumb question. Its dumb when you not asking and pretend to know.

I met an uncle who is a successful entrepreneur - with his own label & product few weeks back. My husband was the one who asked him questions on how to grow. He shared it with us. With his layman words. Until now, the advise is right in my mind and me waiting time, to make it happen.

In crafty, I met another seller - Jenny who shares tips and tricks selling things on Etsy.

In work, I met my boss, who is younger than me, lady and a malay who I think the most intelligent person I met in my whole life working in the corporate world. She shares anything she knows with me and I am so amazed until now, how can she absorb so many information and if the calculation time is right, I am working longer than her.

Answer to all those above on how they get the answers is : experience & answer questions & dig the information.

Im going to share with you later, when I have the time all the information - craft-business-sales related when I got the time, ok? I practice some of them and most of them are totally new information for myself.

****

To you who are celebrating Xmas, Merry Christmas! Wish you to have a happy celebration with your loved ones and happy new year to all of you!

New email address

Hello all,

Here is the new email address. Use this one okay?

info@okinokiyo.com

And, I put my name at the side, call me Maizura yeah? ;p

Have a nice day.

Holiday and Work

So today is public holiday here in Malaysia, but I still cant take a break due to piling orders. But at the same time I am so happy getting all the orders- dont get me wrong. And finally I finished some of the orders and ready to pack those to post when I realized that the I finished all the (BIG) envelopes. So there, they have to wait till tomorrow.

Anyway, I have this thought to be discussed. When you are running your own business, we are suppose to feel happy because you work hard for yourself, and you do things you like and things that customers happy to received. But, when it comes to this doing-the-business-you-like and you run it AT HOME, people around you did not recognize it as a business because its AT HOME, unless you have a shop. That is when people will label it as serious business, which I think that is not acceptable. Because no matter where you do it, it is still a business, and no matter big/small is the business, you still have to consider it as an income and you have to take care of it with really full care, because it depends on YOU. Am I right?

No, Im not angry or in a moody mood now, only that, I have a weddings to attend and these orders, and I appreciate when my other half was kind enough to bring my little ones to feed the fish and let me finished all the sewing and we only will attend the wedding which is tomorrow because of ME (we planned to go one day earlier since this is a close cousin's wedding). How he understand that Im so passionate in what I am doing and willing to tolerate with no lunch during this public holiday instead he bought a dozen of donuts for me to eat? Do I need more than that? Not to mentioned when I said Im craving of sweet Wondermilk cupcakes and cookies and he brought me half dozen of cupcakes and 2 jars of cookies and another trip to 7 eleven with lots of chocolates and no sugar vitagen so that I can snack in between sewing? That is more than enough. The understanding.

So, now, Im packing the bags and clothes to wear for tomorrow, and I realized that my daughter has nothing new to wear! OMG. She can wear the same red dress, she dont mind that. I know. :)

On the other note, I made a new badge for my web/blog and put it in the sidebar. See, I did that and having breakfast the same time this morning. Till then.

Enjoy your weekend!

Re(work)

I dont know what happen to me but I think I dont have much time to update blog anymore. I just too occupied with what Im doing.

Nothing new at the moment, but I have many plans in lines and some of them are in progress. I may announce it later by end of month.


Im into books and tv programmes so much. I love to read and watch tv series. So that is the current book Im reading, title is REWORK suggested by a twitter friend. Do you know how cool twitter is? VERY I must say.. I tried to find the book at MPH, Borders (twice) and finally it's there. And its addicting and inspiring.

As much as I love to inspire people, I love to be inspired as well. So, I suggest YOU to read this book.

How you spent your weekend? I, surprisingly didnt sew during last weekend. I spent my quality time with mother in law who's coming here and my husband who just came back from his business trip.

Ok, I need to stop here. I will spill the beans by end of month. I myself could not wait!

Why I want my own company

There are few reasons, and I will give you my own reasons which are as below :

1) I have a plan to have my own craft company. Last time during my confinement, I watch Martha Stewart show every day at 10am in the morning because I was glued in front of the tv while breastfeeding Nasya.

So I need to have a legal company to make at least 0.01% of my dream come true.

Why?

2) Because if I want to apply any loan for business purposes like the loans offered by PUNB, one of the requirement is to have at least 3 months cashflow to your bank account. Bank account here meaning the company account.

And

In order to create a company account, you need to be registered as a legal company with SSM where the 3 documents are required for them to make a validation with SSM.

3) When I want to sell my products to another company like what I did to Tango Mango, I didnt represent myself, I represent my own company. It looks like you are doing a serious business not just simply a hobby and at the same time customer will have the trust to pay high for your product.

4) Having a company indirectly makes me want to work hard for every cent I spent in order to create the company, create the company account.

5) Having a company, you can tell everybody that you are the owner and the CEO. Its an achievement for yourself, and you have to work hard for it. You can react, plan and do everything like you are doing for your boss now, only you can slow/fast forward the speed, or change the direction where ever you want depending your own limit.

6) You are bound to law. In case a customer didnt pay you, you can make a police report because you have a right, when you sell a product or serve the customer, you should get pay.

That are few reasons why I registered my company.

Hope this entry will help you make your decision whether to have or not to have YOUR own company.

Happy day~

Online business tips from Okinokiyo - #6 - Company

Hello crafters! I totally didnt notice that I have not put any guide on how to register a company. How bad am I..sigh~

Anyway, since we re-brand our company last 1st September , I snap a few pictures during the processes even not very detail.

Here are some of the guide.

You can go to any nearest SSM to your hometown. SSM stands for Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia. Ok I admit that the website a bit confusing since so many menus and guides :p but those staying in KL can go to The Mall, Kuala Lumpur since the SSM located at Level 2 of the building.

So we went there on Monday, very early morning. I purposely took leave and go there. You have to bring a photostat copy of your IC and go get the number.

This was sample of the forms..And you have to prepare at least 3 names of your business. Because if let say, one name is rejected or taken by other people then you can use others. I saw one couple wanted to register their business and they was arguing for not preparing the names in advance. You need to think fast so I will advise you to think it earlier.


I came very early around 9am and the counter is so empty. If you come after 10, you will never see any empty counter or even empty seats because there are so many people there, everyday.


Different counters have different functions based on the numbers. Basically the most left one are for payment purpose and the most right one is where you need to pick up your certificates once you done with everything.

You will get 3 piece of papers :
1 - your company details - stated the company number, company name, company location
2 - the owner details - your name, your address, etc
3 - business details - what business you are doing and related information.


Tips :

1. Usually there are men outside the SSM waiting and calling you asking whether you need their help in registering the company, but I will advise you to do it yourself so that, in a case when the company name is rejected, you can make the decision yourself what name you wanted.
   
2. You will know the feeling after you went through the process :p after all you are the owner what?
   
3. You can ask anything you have in mind to the officer in charge.
4. You can tell other people how the process is just like what I did now.

And later after everything done, just go another level up, you can straight away do the company stamp and business card! All in under one roof.

Happy Monday!

Online business tips from Okinokiyo : #5 - Banking account

Before I forgot. Just want to share here - we just created a new company and new banking account. Previously all money went to Kahwin Dot Net Enterprise account. But now we formed a new company. Why? Because we want to make sure all these brands are under one umbrella.

The new company name is The Leelo Shop.
The new account name is The Leelo Shop as well.

Ok, there is a story behind I will share later.

Now the money will go to one account, The Leelo Shop account. I shall put the payment details in the payment section later.

So, please dont be surprise, if we redirect your payment to The Leelo Shop account in the future.

So, bottom line is, The Leelo Shop is the parent to : Kahwin. Net, Mybirthday and Okinokiyo.

How we created the new banking account?
Choose which bank you want people to bank in the money. We chose Maybank because of the ease of using Maybank2u. We will have CIMB as well in the future for CIMBclick users.

Get the form from the person in charge.

You will get 2 forms. One form looks like small card. You need to get an introducer in order to open a Company account.

Introducer can be :
1) Any individual with current account with that bank.
2) Any company with the company account(like ours-Kahwin Dot Net Enterprise) with the speciment chop.

Provided that :
More than 6 months old
No cek tendang issued by the individual or the company. (Meaning must have clean records)

I asked my frined to be the introducer because we threw away the speciment chop for Kahwin Dot Net since we didnt use that chop anymore. So, to save time, I asked my friend to be the introducer and done.

You also need to bring all the company registration certificate and details you got when you registered it with Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia at The Mall (for KL & Selangor people).

Dont forget to bring you IC along because they will verify your thumb print as the final process.

Once they submit the application, they will contact you and provide you the account number.

But me, no. I myself called the bank and followed up asking whether our account has been created or not, and they confirmed that its done. Phew..

Ok, next step is you need to bank in amount of RM2K to the account in order to get the cheque book.

After they see money is there, they will issue a cheque book in 3 days time.

And you are done. When collecting the cheque book, do not forget to create a Maybank2u account straight away.

From my experience, the Maybank2u account cant be use to transfer money but you can monitor the cash flow.

You need this cash flow statement when you want to get a loan or grant to fund you business in the future.

Ok, I think Im done, go create your bank account NOW :)

Online business tips from Okinokiyo : #4 - Ideas and Inspiration

I have lots of business ideas in my head which one of them I plan to TRY at least by this year.
Anyway, all my business ideas are craft related or like hobby related which is stress-free.

No, it can be stressed also if I dont know how to manage it.

Im going to share how to get ideas in doing business in crafting or in hobby line.

What I will always do is :
Surf the craft sites, craft stores and creative or unique shops
There are lots craft sites that can be found in the net. All you need to do is just google it. Be specific what you are looking for else you could not find what you want.I will search based on what I want to see. I will use keywords like "Handmade dresses for girls" or "Patched dresses for toddler" or "Free sewing pattern for girls dresses". Then the result will go directly to what you are looking for.

Craft stores - As here in Malaysia, I think, almost shops can give me ideas on what to do or how to improve things in what Im doing. Be aligned with the shops or stores with what you are doing if you want to get ideas. It does not mean you copycat things, its just that it can give you ideas.

Example: Im doing a dress to sell, then I went to clothing shops to see what they have and what they dont have. I will try to do something they dont have, so that, customers will have the option to buy something that cant be found normally at the local shops.

Another example is : You want to do color combination dress but you are so scared, the outcome looks ugly or not matched. Then suddenly you see a sample of it in the shop and it looks nice, then you can work on yours.

Browse craft magazines in local stores
I love bookstores so much. If I go to any malls, I will first do a scan in my head if they got a bookstore. I dont mind if the bookstore is small or big anything will do. Its also OK if the book store is just a small magazine stalls where they sell newspapers or magazines as long as I can find any ideas there.

Ideas does not come only from craft magazines. Other magazines also will do. So, just browse any magazines, who knows, inside there got lots of ideas for you to do your next business.

What I need or What I want
The other thing is, I always think like this "I wish there is a....for my birthday. If they sell this thing, I think I will be the first one who will buy it." Or something like this "They should sell item like .... Its good for you when ..."

That can be an idea for you. If they dont have it, why dont you DO it. CREATE it. Does not matter if it might look silly to other people, as long as you love it, there must be other people who love it as well. You will never know.

These are what I always do to get ideas, get inspired.

What do you do to get ideas and inspired? Share it here, come on! Sharing is caring rite?

Online business tips from Okinokiyo : #3 - Domain and Hosting

"What are those craps? I have no IT background!" That are most of my friends asking me. Hehe dont be scared.

#3 : Domain & Hosting
Domain is a name.
Hosting is a space.

Domain is what you type in the address bar.
Hosting is where you keep the craps. Ok..not craps. The images, the database, the template, etc.

So when you decided to have a website. What type of website you have in mind?

Often we have questions from customer why our mybirthday website is a blog type?Not a website like Kahwin.Net. The answer is, Kahwin.Net is a predefined products. While mybirthday product is a custom product. So there is no point to have a shopping cart. So its all related with the #1 tips.

Domain name must be simple and memorable. We are lucky to have Kahwin.net because now the cashier bank also remember the name only that I have to explain to them what are we doing because they taught that we are a matchmaker company. LOL!

.net, .com is cheap compared to .com.my. Not only cheap, but the registration part is simpler and fast. When you want your domain to be a .com.my, yes, it shows that it comes from Malaysia. But then, the registration of .com.my only can be done with the only registrar which formerly was mynic and now is http://www.domainregistry.my.

Since you are carrying a Malaysia name in the url, you have to be a valid company registered in Malaysia, which means you have to register your business as a company with Pendaftaran Perniagaan which the location is at Level 2 (if Im not mistaken) at The Mall, Kuala Lumpur.

Ok, we did this with mybirthday. But we register only the Kahwin.Net company. Ok, that is confusing.

We register Kahwin.Net because we have lots of money back then :p hehehe but then we dont find necessary to register mybirthday because what's the point having different company names or certs since the owner is me?Right? So we just provide/fax the Kahwin.Net registration cert and few docs to let them know, "Hello, Im the owner..." :p

And the other point to have .com.my for mybirthday is we dont ship internationally because its not worth it.

How we named them?
Kahwin.net was registered long long time ago..and by then so many simple and catchy names were available.

The history of having mybirthday name because that was the closest name I can get because the rest is gone. Most of them registered the perfect domain name but then the websites are dead, but then I think mybirthday is not that bad. :D

And okinokiyo is my dear name and I like to remember it for the rest of my life.hehehe...Only that its hard to remember and hard to spell as my husband said... Nevermind, I will wait and give it a chance.

Avoid dashes in the url or long name like www.himynameisnormaizura.com. Because human might misspell and usually its tiring to try spell so many times until they get the correct one. You are lucky if they will try until they got the correct one because Im the other human who will stop at the 2nd attempt :p.

So, domain name must be 1)easy to remember, 2)easy to spell, 3)reflecting the business.

Ok, next is Hosting.

As I mentioned in the #2 tip that Kahwin.net has a hosting since we have our own system and shopping cart, and database to store information. But mybirthday dont have anything to store as well as okinokiyo.

So, the option is yours. If you are you using wordpress as your base and you wanted to put all widget like blogspot, you have to have hosting as wordpress is not as dear as blogspot. That was the reason I move this okinokiyo back to blogspot.

How to have a website like okinokiyo and mybirthday?
Meaning base as blogspot and the domain name is a formal or a dot com name. Its easy. Explore a bit in your Settings tab > Publishing > Advance Settings.


Fill in your domain name which you have bought earlier from any domain seller, and put it there. And it will reflecting right away.

Price wise
Ok, Im bad with price.All this while we bought our domain name and hosting with Exabytes. We chose them because we have a good experience having them as our hosting company with Kahwin.net. Experience in terms of customer support. Their respond is fast.That is important. And hardly the website is down. Mostly their maintanence is midnite or 2am in the morning which the traffic is low or none at all.

And the transaction in RM. We put all our domain names and hosting under my husband account and I cant remember whether we got discount or not. But usually they have some promotion to existing customers.

Hosting + Domain = Around RM300++ per year
Domain = Around RM50 to RM80 ++ per year.

I hope that helps you people out there. Have a nice day!

Online business tips from Okinokiyo : #2 - Website

Ok, frankly speaking, the tips Im giving is not in order, you can do which one first, there is no right or wrong.

#2 : website.
We are talking about online business. Which aims to virtual customers who surf the net to get information not like old times who browse the yellow pages for contacts and info. So you HAVE to have a website.

Nowadays you can use blog as a website. Not necessarily to go call a web designer to do one for you. So, thats the one Im doing now.

Because the customer is using the power of Google to surf for info. You are lucky if your website ranking is within the Top 10. Because the ranking is based on the number of UNIQUE visitors coming to your website.

What is the best website for online business?

About us - The initial part we just say that we have the experience.But the experience we had was my experience doing the wedding deco for my wedding. But then customer will not know. So, when we had our first customer, we boasted a bit by saying that we do orders for Singapore customers..yes, the first customer was from Singapore.

So, actually this page keep changing based on our reputation/experience. I think most of us had no experience right.So maybe if you are really, really into the business you are doing, you can put something like "A passionate girl into bla bla who bla bla bla..." because I think its hard to find passionate people rather than forced people to do business to get money to pay bills. Am I right?

Payment - Obviously just put the account number, account name, and mode of payment. We accept COD as well since some of our customers are non IT literate and sometimes they deposit it via CDM machine. Its ok, as long as the money is received.

But we spent quite a lot to have a formal company account since not many home/online business do that. And for us, that means that we a doing a serious business, not a suka-hati business. This will be elaborate in a separate entry.

Shipping and handling - Well, well, well..Some of the losses we made in Kahwin.Net is we sold labu sayung, and crystal where it took a lots of our money in shipping and handling. Those a hard to handle items where we had to spend on bubble wrap, beans to make sure those items dont break. And the bride/bridegroom-to-be sometimes wanted the items to be delivered ASAP to them and we have to DHL the items.

Stupid things to happen that time was we didnt weigh the items properly and simply put an average cost of shipping, end up, customer paid little and we paid more. So, that is a priceless lesson. :p Stupid huh? So, for those who are doing such business which require you to post bulk items, you need to 1) weigh your items 2) get the table of cost from national courier..Pos Malaysia should be ok and also study how fast can the item reach to the customer.

COD is another means. Its easy but then the drawback is time consuming when you have to wait for your customer and they arrive late or not arrive at all. But then, this is business right? And customer always right..hehehe.

Kahwin.net is using a normal Pos Ekspres - Dijamin Sampai Esok by Pos Malaysia all this while and the cost is RM3 for local and we use Register post for International shipping. We dont COD Kahwin.net VCD since we dont see the rush for the customer to get the VCD, but we do COD the birthday paperbags as it deals with birthday date of the kiddos.

Portfolio - Put all your portfolios in this page. You can use either flickr or slide shows or just put them as normal images. That also will do.

Kahwin.Net is using a shopping cart where we spent I think RM2K for the system. So the shopping cart is the portfolio. While mybirthday just a collection of paperbags of orders we have. Speaking of which, I have emmm think like few new paperbags I have not uploaded because of time constraint. :p My husband will hate me saying this.heheheh

This okinokiyo is more to blog and I sell okinokiyo products based on when-the-items-are-there and in my Etsy shop. This is more to hobby and I would like to go slow with this.

Contact Us -This is the important one. You need to put the email address and you have to check this email like 24x7. But I didnt do that, I forward the mail to my personal mail so that I will know when I got the business mai. Due to the awesome technology, you can set the mail to forward to the handphone as well, so go buy business phone :p

But for telephone number its up to you. As for us, we dont reveal the phone number. We only reveal our numbers when the customer is confirm to order with us for COD purpose. Its kind of privacy for me. But if you have 2 phone numbers, that is another story.

But then, having a website means that you have to maintain the website as well. Update the portfolio page regularly by putting more pictures of your items/orders from customers so that customer will feel more 'secure' to buy from you.

If you are making it as a blog shop, update it regularly so that it wont be a dead website. And Im trying very much to make this blog shop alive by updating at least once a week so that people will know that its growing and not monotonous.

Emm I think that is more than enough for a basic business website. So, are you ready to have your own website?

Online business tips from Okinokiyo : #1- Product

Maybe most of you know that I have few online business where this okinokiyo is one of them. The one I can considered as success maybe Kahwin.Net and the Birthday business.

I think Im gonna share what/how to do business online.

#1 : Product/Service.
Make sure you have a good product/service.

I can say that we(my husband and I) did a big mistake when first doing the Kahwin.Net. We lost almost 20K because we dont know what to sell. We thought of selling wedding door gift but then the competition was speechless.Its not that we dont like competition but I think if we are not the pioneer, its quite hard to compete. Unless we have damn good product compared to the current product in the market.

So we tried to sell many things, from mengkuang to scented candle, from labu sayung to crystal, hand fan..etc etc..I cant even remember. We lost even we sold all of them. Lost because we spent lots of moolah to travel from one state to another to get the supplies. OMG I cant even remember..hehehe.

So we sat and have a thought. What were we going to sell? What were items that have demand and were most needed on every wedding day? So we decided to sell the wedding flower aka Bunga Pahar and Bunga Dulang.

But still, we lost. Lost in terms of time and effort. Since I was working, I had to take emergency leave to complete the orders. The worker then was my husband. Sometimes I asked my auntie to help.

So the brilliant husband of mine thought of us selling the knowledge of doing the flower instead of the flower itself. I did the video shooting. It was horrible because it gave me back pain. And my husband was quite strict for the quality of the video I shoot. I had to re-do some of the video so many time but its all worth it.

And the profit is 300%. Awesome?Yes it is..But as I mentioned earlier, the doing part is damn horrible...thats why there is no new collection since I think Im enough of the flowers.Hehe. And we still have orders until now..It was since 2006.So, can you do the maths?Average orders per month is like 20 orders. So we can say that Kahwin.Net is our baby. Our dearly baby.

We provided workshop to the customer also. And unexpectedly, most of them who come are those who wanted to involve in the wedding business not the bride to be. Indirectly, we are selling the knowledge and I hope the money we get is a berkat money.

So, the conclusion is, sell the best product. Or any product-that-is-hard-to-copy by others. Otherwise you can see many copycats in the business.

But just a reminder, you must have a passion to the product you are selling. So that, if there is no one want to buy your product, you wont feel down, but you tend to create more and more new product so that the customers can have selections of items to choose.

I think thats enough for the #1 tips from my little experience. :)

Funding

Lets talk about funding.
Do you know how I fund the new businesses coming?From our www.kahwin.net fund. Its makes us proud but do you know how we fund kahwin.net?

Its a big tragic history actually.We used my husband's money. He and his friend took a loan from a local bank to start their own business. Hubby was in the business for 1 year before he focus 100% to our baby www.kahwin.net.

In my opinion, taking loans is much more better when you want to start a business rather than funding it using your saving. Whay I say so?It is because, in case the business didnt go well, you still have money to breath in and out and to pay the installment of the loan. What if you use your saving money and most of it gone?Unless, you $ is big, and you only fund less than 10% of your saving, that I think should be ok.

Ok, lets talk what choice do we have out there?

• MARA
• PUNB
• Banks

I will discuss the one I know only and the rest you can refer to the website I guess...

MARA
Eligibility criteria

• Business enterprise based on the definition of SMEs [Link];


• Companies incorporated under the Companies Act 1965 (CA1965) or businesses incorporated under the Registration of Business Ordinance 1956 (RBO1956);


• At least 60% of equity are held by Malaysians and


• Possess valid premise license

For more information, please refer here


PUNB

Eligibility criteria

• Young Bumiputera Graduate
• Less than 30 years old with at least diploma qualification from institution recognised by the government.;
  
• Able to source own capital amounting RM500 for each project


• Businesses
• Wholly-owned and managed by Bumiputera ;
  
• New business or business at the stage of expansion

For more information, please refer here


Banks
Theres a lot choices if you want to take a personal loan. HSBC, Standard Chartered, RHB, Bank Rakyat, etc..But please first check the interest rate ok?

I will continue this later...as I got errands to settle...


Toodles!

Shopping cart

I dont know what we called this thing until my husband said, its a shopping cart honey...haha

Ok, lets talk about shopping cart.Its a tool where you install in your website and customer can view what is your items and buy from the website directly using the shopping cart.

Why do you need this?Because its easy and worth to buy the ready made tool rather than you build/develop your own.Usually when you buy the tool, it comes with a support services which will serve you for a certain period of time. If you want to have is customized and all, you can just email them and they will charge a little bit amount for that.

They are few famous shopping cart in the market. If I Google, I can found the top ranking is http://www.zen-cart.com/. They are so many more in the website and you can choose based on your preferences.

We ( my husband and I) bought a tool in VP-ASP Shopping Cart and now its been applied to our www.kahwin.net website. Soon, we gonna apply to all our online business website.It means, when you buy one, you can use for all business you have. But still they got a free download application and there is a limit in the features.

You can always email the customer service if you dont know how to setup the shopping cart and they will help you straight away.

I hope this entry will help you understand what is shopping cart all about. Just drop a comment if you have any queries...


Toodles!

Focus baby..

Ok, before I jump to what application needed to be installed on the website...I mean the website thingy...I want to share on how to choose what you want to sell.

As in our bad experience, we lost almost 20K because we dont know what to sell, or I can say, we tried to be an anything-you-can-find-here online shop. However, we lost a lot of money and its not worth at all!

When you sell something, be focus. Dont try to be like me who was so eager last time. Its because, when people search in google, they will look for a specific items - example : kids photography instead of photography, or be more specific, cheap kids photography or kota bharu kids photography...got the ideas?

So in order to climb the page ranking, you have to do the "About Us" section perfectly, and stress a lot about your product, and dont forget to put in the meta tag (This I will elaborate later).
So, the conclusion is be focus in what you are selling.Selling clothes, what type of clothes?Focus can be in brand, design, theme, etc.Because so long you are focus in what you are selling, soon you will be the subject matter expert. Only by that time, you can try to look what other demand things in the market..which can be your another item to sell.

Till then ta-ta.

3 first important steps

Let me share how to start your own business.
Domain name
I first bought the domain through godaddy.com. Then after I bought the hosting plan.

Hosting plan
What is hosting plan?Its a place where all your web pages and images are stored. I bought a hosting plan from Exabytes.

Click to see the package they have

It is recommended because of their fast response customer service.

Payment gateway
How customers can pay your product?As in www.kahwin.net, we use both online banking and credit card payment. When you have a credit card payment, this allow customers to spend more and its good for you.

The one we use is Worldpay
There is also 2checkout and the famous Paypal


The first 3 are all important..Then decide what your layout of website you want and I will continue with how to choose package of web system for your business.