Re: advise on a specialty merchandise website

Do a business and marketing plan.  They are quite intimidating at
first, but as you collect the data and do the writeup, you'll find
yourself excited about the possibilities and aware of the dangers.  In
short, you'll know exactly what to expect and how to proceed.  The
small business administration of the government has samples and you
can look for "how to write a marketing plan" and "how to write a
business plan" in google for great templates.  The SBA is at
www.sba.gov.

As owner of several profitable on- and offline companies, the best two
pieces of advice I can give you are to know all of the little aspects
of your business (as will be elucidated in the business and marketing
plans) and market aggressively.

Oh, also get your website listed at www.dmoz.org.  They are the place
the search engines get their start pages when they crawl the web.  The
listing is free and it could easily make the difference in your online
marketing efforts.

Let me know if you need more info.


Don Krapohl
http://www.tranquillitas.com
Website quality assurance testing