Starting an E-Business on a Shoestring:
Step 9. Deliver Products and Services Efficiently
Issue 102, August 6, 2001

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Step 9 in our series of "Starting an E-Business on a Shoestring" has to do with delivering products to the customer. In this issue:

• Select a Low-Cost Way to Store Your Products
• Select a Low-Cost Way to Ship Your Product
• Digital Delivery System Options
• How to Select a Fulfillment House

I hope you enjoy the articles on 4 ways to store and deliver your products, as well as shorter pieces on Priority Mail delivery, digital delivery, and outsourcing the whole process to a fulfillment house.

Last week I published the e-book version of A Merchant's Guide to E-Commerce Payment Gateways (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/gateway.htm). It sells for $29.95 and includes 90 payment gateways from 27 countries, with candid user comments from 72 readers in 15 countries. The report also includes a chapter entitled, "At What Point Is a Merchant Account Better Than PayPal or CCNow?" If you are considering developing an e-commerce site, then you need to purchase this e-book. Or, for a limited time, you may receive it as free subscription bonus (along with two other e-books worth a total of $87.85) when you subscribe to or renew my e-commerce newsletter, Web Commerce Today (www.wilsonweb.com/wct/).

My book will be published by John Wiley & Sons this fall: Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy (ISBN 0471441090). It is now available for pre-publication sale at Amazon. Please sign up for it now. You won't be charged until it ships to you in early October, but your pre-order will give the book a big boost with Amazon -- and this morning Amazon US was selling it for a full 30% off the retail price of $19.95. That's hard to beat. Available at Amazon stores in: US | UK | Germany | France | Japan  Incidentally, I'm looking for reviewers for my forthcoming book who have a relationship with a periodical that regularly publishes their reviews. If you are a business book reviewer, please e-mail me and let me know about you.

Have a great summer!

God bless you,
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Editor

P.S. I have completed a preliminary list of academic courses, instructors, textbooks, and most popular textbooks in the field of Web Marketing and E-Commerce. Check it out. http://www.wilsonweb.com/books/academic_texts.htm

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Select a Low-Cost Way to Store Your Products

Strangely, one of the most important issues concerning selling tangible products is where to store them where they are ready to ship. This article gives the four primary alternatives, and the pros and cons of each. Read the Article

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Select a Low-Cost Way to Ship Your Product

Too many companies offer only a high-priced overnight courier such as FedEx or UPS for product delivery. But you'll sell more products by offering your customer a slower, but lower cost alternative. Read the Article

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Digital Delivery System Options

Delivering your product via the Internet is the merchant's dream. But fraud issues require that you get specialized software to do this automatically. Here are three options. Read the Article

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How to Select a Fulfillment House

Instead of trying to warehouse, pick, pull, pack, and ship products yourself, you can outsource this to a fulfillment house. Here are fees to look for and questions to ask. With two small business firms to consider. Read the Article

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Academic Courses and Textbooks in Web Marketing and E-Commerce

This summer (June-August 2001) I asked readers of my e-business newsletters to help me compile a list of courses, textbooks, and professors in the fields of Web Marketing and E-Commerce. Any such list, of course, is incomplete, but here is a beginning. If you'd like to list a course that isn't here, please submit it to my survey form.

• Textbooks
• Most Popular Textbooks
• Academic Course Listing

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New Ecommerce and Web Marketing Articles

Each month our team of link editors scours dozens of online periodicals and resources to find key information on e-commerce and Web marketing. With so much new literature available to you, how do you find what you need quickly and painlessly? Here's a selective and searchable database of article and resource links to help your research and keep you up-to-date in the field. (Links gathered in a given month are usually available during the second week of the following month.)

Select... Last Month Last 2 Months Last 3 Months Last 6 Months

I've just revived my Affiliate Program and rocketed the commission to 20% commission, with a 10% Second Tier. If you signed up under my previous program, please sign up again TODAY, and let's earn some money together. :-) http://wilsonweb.com/affiliate/