Is there anything positive that has come out of the struggling economy that our country has faced throughout 2009 and into 2010? I truly believe that there is…

Although it is sad to see businesses fail, the recession helps to weed out merchants (both online as well as brick & mortar) who probably shouldn’t have been in business to begin with. It also helps weed out merchants who are trying to establish themselves by undercutting prices until there are no margins whatsoever in certain product lines. The failure of some of these merchants is in no way a bad thing, especially for the more established merchants who can stay alive until the economy starts to improve. This not only applies to merchants, but websites as a whole in general, regardless of the content of the site.

As others fail, there will always be someone who can step in and do it better. If your website is unique, or if you offer a unique way of presenting content that is better than other websites in your niche, you will become a success as long as you keep it online long enough and are consistently growing traffic to your site. Success does not usually happen overnight, and in some cases may take years to become established in your chosen niche.

I truly think that we are starting to see the economy begin to bounce back. Sales revenue from some of the more established websites that our company owns have picked up tremendously in the last month and we hope that this continues to be the case. We are looking forward to what 2010 offers to our company. We re-established our company’s operations in 2009 as a merchant first and an internet based services provider second and are now starting to see the fruits of our labor.

EastWave strives to take our established entities and only make them better going forward. We plan to sell off even more of our less profitable ventures to focus specifically on our core entities. We see a beautiful break on the horizon and we are gearing up to be ready for the ride.

I have told my customers for years to diversify their chosen providers of domain names, web hosting services, development services & other internet related services.  This simple concept can be applied to many more facets of your business though.  In this post I would like to offer some advice on this concept as well as give real world examples of what can happen when much of your online presence is tied to one service provider.

• From the years of 2000 to 2004, I worked as the main web developer for a web hosting company.  It was during this time that I learned the value of good domain names.  The first domain names that I registered were done through the company I worked for, and at time I did not know very much about purchasing domain names as investments.  My relationship with this company ended due to a dispute over the direction of the company as well as other reasons, and it would be correct to say that it ended in a very heated & negative way.  I had major issues in the next month after leaving the company when I tried to transfer the domain names that I owned and had rights to.  The owner of the company would not approve the registrar requests to transfer the domains and I was stuck.  Luckily, I still had a friend within the company who approved the transfers of the domains, unbeknownst to the owner.

• Just recently, I was involved in a similar situation in regards to transferring domain names for the main company I work for now as my dayjob.  This company was using an all-in-one ecommerce system provided by a company that shall remain nameless, so lets just refer to them as Company Z.  One of the owners of the company had worked for Company Z for many years in a relationship that was mutually beneficial to both parties, and one of the perks of the job was free domain registrations.  After building a new system for this company, we planned to move our website on a certain date and then problems with moving the domain off Company Z’s system began.  We experienced blatant lies about dns changes that were never made, derogatory heated emails attacking the character of our entire company and other childish actions.  We then realized that we were getting nowhere with Company Z.  We finally had to go over their heads and go direct to the actual registrar of the domain names & prove that we owned the domain name in question in order to get anything at all changed.  A process that should have taken less than 5 minutes ended up taking up nearly a week to get straightened out.

• An example of multiple revenue streams in action comes from my own business in the last year.  During the years of 2007-2009, one of my main revenue sources was affiliate marketing.  My company owned a network of affiliate stores which would showcase products from various merchants and then send the customer to the merchant’s website to complete a purchase, giving our company a percentage of the sale.  We did very well in this venture until the middle of 2009 when the state of North Carolina passed an affiliate nexus tax which seriously decreased the amount of revenue that our company could make from affiliate sales.  Internet companies usually do not have to charge sales tax on purchases if they do not have an actual location in that particular state.  The affiliate nexus tax was worded so that affiliates of a company are considered to be a sales force in that particular state and the merchant would have to charge sales tax.  Amazon was one of the first merchants to oppose this ruling and decided to cancel all affiliates in states that passed the affiliate nexus tax instead of paying sales tax on those sales, and many other larger merchants followed.  My affiliate revenue started dwindling down immediately following this law being passed.  Luckily, my company was already running our own network of stores selling our own products so we converted some of the better affiliate based sites into actual merchant sites selling products from our own inventory.  Had our company’s only source of revenue been based on affiliate marketing only, our company probably wouldn’t still be online today.

The secret is…
SELL WHAT PEOPLE WANT TO BUY

I know that its really not a secret, but you would be surprised at how many “entrepreneurs” completely overlook that simple idea.

I have owned various types of internet stores & websites on the internet for years now in many different niches.  I have made money from some of them, but I have also lost money from keeping many of them as well.

I look back on much of the stuff that I put online over the last few years and I realized that much of what I built was to “see if something stuck”…
One of the problems that I have faced was actually realizing when that idea “didn’t stick “…   at least not like envisioned… and then letting it go

You can put a lot of effort into something, milk it for all it’s worth, but its hard to just give it up completely, since so much time has been spent up to that point so far on the project…

Maybe pride has a bit to do with that, as it is very hard to admit defeat…

There are a few errors that I have seen that newbies make when trying to start selling online:

SELLING ONLY PRODUCTS YOU LIKE
Just because you like something, doesn’t mean the rest of the world will…
(look for products that offer you maximum profit, even if it is stuff you would never dream of selling)

SELLING ONLY PRODUCTS YOU THINK YOU KNOW A LOT ABOUT
Just because you think you are an expert in a certain field doesn’t mean that the rest of the internet world will…
(you may well be an expert at your field, but the demand for the line of products that you are an expert in may be very low)

TRYING TO SELL PRODUCTS THAT ARE HOT FOR THE LOWEST PRICE
I have seen numerous people try to get into an niche like electronics, and then realize nearly everyone else had the same idea…
(this ends up with no one making money at all, just trying to outdo everyone else on price)

SUCCESSFUL AT ONE NICHE, AND THEN TRYING TO RECREATE IT TOO MANY TIMES
The first idea you had a passion for, the 2nd as well, but once it gets to the 10th or 20th idea…
(this can end up with you completely forgetting the first few good ideas that you had, and stuck with more projects than you can handle)

I know its crazy, but a hard rock guy like myself will even quote Kenny Rogers here:

“You gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, and know when to run…”

Selling on the internet is a huge gamble, knowing that going in is half of the battle…

Research your chosen product line to the fullest (and other potential complementary lines) before you ever invest the first dollar…

Provide unique content on your website, and try to provide an experience that other sites selling similar products do not…

Give your 1000th customer (and 100,000th customer) as much reason to buy your product as your first customer…

Don’t go overboard and try to replicate that in other niches, instead focus on your main products and add lines that relate to your initial successful line…

Try different things, but do not get attached to those things that you try…

If a certain niche is not working, let it go quickly and don’t look back…
Constantly trying to milk something that is just not there gets you nowhere…

There is really no secret to selling online,  what works for one person will not work for another…

Even if you read about someone who made a fortune selling a product out of the trunk of his car, doesn’t mean that you can do the same with the same product…

North Carolina has passed a law banning smoking from all restaurants & bars (excluding private clubs & cigar bars).  This law should take effect in January of 2010.  Isn’t it an oxymoron that our state would even consider this, since North Carolina was built on tobacco to begin with?

James Hetfield said it best 20 years ago… “You can do it your own way… If it’s done just how I say”….

Our main website is now back online and features our new lines of products such as coastal decor, recreation & leisure products for your shopping enjoyment.  Many of the products that we offer are unique & specialty products that can not be found in regular stores.

EastWave originally started out as a website development & web hosting company in late 2003.  After seeing the paths that some of our customers were taking with their own internet ventures, we decided to explore other revenue streams for our own company such as internet retail, affiliate marketing & the domain name aftermarket.  Based on an advice from a good friend at a former job (who is sadly no longer with us in this world…  RIP Archie), we turned on our first internet retail store www.allnitetoys.com in mid 2004 which sells adult novelties.  Over the years this website became the main hub of a network of sites selling these type of products.

After 5 years of successfully running internet retail websites and realizing that those ventures had grown to be more profitable than the services we offered, we decided to shift the focus of our main website www.eastwave.com to internet retail.  We made strategic partnerships with various distributors & manufacturers of unique lines of products such as beach decor, action sports, recreation & others.  We also built multiple minisites on many of the domain names in our portfolio offering various lines of products.

EastWave still offers development services, but we take these type of projects on a case by case basis.  We eliminated our web hosting division and moved all information about our available development services to a new home at www.eastwavemedia.com.

We strive to provide quality products at reasonable prices, along with excellent shipping times & customer service.  EastWave has grown so much since starting out with a dream & a love for the beach in a small bedroom office in Eastern NC.  We hope this growth only continues in the future with our new ventures.

“The Next Wave Begins Today”

I finally broke down and decided to get an iPhone… I have held off on this purchase because I did not want to have to sign a 2 year contract with AT&T. I did not want to pay for what is supposedly a 3G network when 3G is not even available in Eastern North Carolina.

Well, I now have an iPhone but I do not use AT&T. I purchased a used iPhone, jailbroke & unlocked it, and I am headed to T-Mobile. I can get unlimited data, talk & text for nearly half the monthly cost of a comparable plan on AT&T. I will not be on a 3G network in Eastern NC, but I wouldn’t have been had I decided to go with AT&T, either.

Although I am one of those “computer geeks”, I have always been one of those type people who want a cell phone to be a PHONE. I hate text messages with a passion and the truly terrible web browsing experience on Windows Mobile devices & Blackberry phones is enough to make a person toss that “smart phone” out the window.

The iPhone changed all that, and there is no need to go into the praise in this blog post. The entire world has showered enough praise on this phone already, and once again Apple has completely changed an entire industry within a few short years.

Their claim of “there’s an app for that” is most definitely true in nearly all aspects, though. Whether I am checking sales & advertising statistics, waving my lightsaber app at my friends or doing a quick tune on one of my guitars, its literally amazing the power of this “phone”. Many of the most useful apps are for checking various websites such as eBay, FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Google and others. Many times its actually quicker to open the iPhone app for a certain website (or company) than it is to get on the computer and pull it up through a regular browser.

Steve Jobs is a God amongst the insects crawling around in this world with their day to day lives… I hope that his health allows him to live long enough to change even more industries.

RIP great Bodhi…

“If you want the ultimate, you’ve got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It’s not tragic to die doing what you love.”

What I will remember most about the year 2009 is that it was a year of change…
This change was in nearly every aspect of my life along with change on a national level…

Our country inaugurated a multi-racial president in this year and we are also facing the worst economic struggle since the internet was created.  There have been closures and bankruptcies of some of the most well known businesses and corporations in existence.  Many people in this country have lost their jobs, and the ones that have jobs are not spending money due to the fact that they are scared they may also lose their job.  Added to that, credit lines have been shut off for many people and small businesses, which had access to more available funds in recent years.

For many years I didn’t care what happened with the economy because it never really affected me…  My view on this has changed lately, as the issues above started trickling down, affecting my own business.  In recent times, the web development projects have become more complicated and the money made on these projects started decreasing, as well.

Everyone who has read this blog knows that EastWave has gone through many changes recently, such as:

•    Moving away from web hosting
•    Death of a close family member
•    Marriage to a wonderful woman and part of the EastWave team
•    Converting to Mac as our primary computer of choice

As if that wasn’t enough, changes are still taking place and its only August!!!

Throughout the time that I have run EastWave, I also worked a day job for a large internet retailer in North Carolina.  This allowed me to offer prices to EastWave customers, which were way below professional rates for our level of experience in internet development.  This also gave me stable income monthly in which I did not have to stress about getting the bills paid based on the amount of development projects that our team could finish in a given time period.

The large internet retailer that I was working for also started experiencing the fallout from the recent economic recession.  This culminated with my hours being drastically cut in the last month.  I enjoyed the recent time off as I focused on building and finishing my own network of websites, but the struggles of making ends meet were starting to come into play.

Within weeks, a friend of mine who I previously worked with at a former job offered me a new position within his company doing very similar development work as what I did at my former day job, as well as for customers in recent years.  This new position will allow me to utilize many of the skills that I have learned over the years and apply them towards creating a large network of retail websites that I feel will be some of the best work that I have ever created.  The stars somehow aligned and the right opportunity came along at almost the exact right time.

As I have blogged about in recent posts,  EastWave Media will still be taking on development projects just as we have done in the past, however we will be limiting those services somewhat depending on the scope of the project at hand.

Change is inevitable and there are two potential roads to take when a big change comes your way.  You can either resist the change, or you can welcome the change and push forward.  I have always been the type person that sees the glass as half full instead of half empty, so even when the chips were down as they have been this year, I knew that I would somehow get through it and not only survive, but prosper in the end.

When various doors close as you move through life, always remember that there is another door opening somewhere that could lead to even greater success in the future.  The catch is that you must realize this and not dwell on the past.  The future is unwritten as long as you have the strength and determination to write it yourself.

NCScene.com returns once again with a new streamlined website. We have removed some sections of this website as well as added some things. I’ve always said that I was going to keep this website alive as long as I had a server to put it on.

I think I have fixed the spam issue that has plagued the forum for a long time now. Currently new registrations are no longer moderated, you just have to use a valid email address to validate yourself in order to sign up. If you have signed up previously and can no longer login, please create a new user or contact me to reset your password.

Becoming a member of the forum allows you to join in discussions as well as post your upcoming shows to our events calendar and also post your information in our local directory. We have purged everything from our directory as much of the information was outdated to begin with. The directory is now a part of the forum and as a member you have the ability to add and edit your own information as you need. Before I had to manually approve and edit all links posted to the old directory.

We kept the metalfest & upcoming movies section, as well as added a new travel section, which lets you search for hotel reservations in any city that you may be venturing to.

You will also notice links on this site to our new free social interaction network, RockDate.com, which we are catering to musicians, music fans, bikers, tattoo freaks & more. I have always owned this name and originally planned to develop a dating website on it, but I think it works better like this. Signing up allows you to post your music, videos, blogs, classifieds, create groups based around your interests, & more.

We are working on our EastWave Products network at this time…
When completed, the main website of this network will be our main website at www.eastwave.com.

We will soon be rolling out a new shopping network consisting of multiple niche retail stores based on product lines such as beach gifts & decor, camping supplies, grilling sauces & equipment, pet supplies & much more.

We have made strategic partnerships with a few quality suppliers & distributors and are really excited about taking on the world of internet retail.