I can't believe that it has only been two months since I've started my personal six month experiment of starting a business. It is amazing because pretty much everything is set up and ready to go. The credit card processing finally went through with some strings attached. The processing company still doesn't trust my business so they are taking 40% of all transactions for 1 year that is put in a reserve account for me. I'm assuming this is to protect them financially if I attempted to screw over any customers. I'm not a fan of giving up 40% of all my money for one year, but I didn't have another choice. So I'll grab my ankles for the time being.
If you are looking for the cheapest shopping cart option go to www.quickcart.com. They are the cheapest and in some ways I am getting what I paid for. The shopping cart works just fine but the customer service is horrible. The guy that answers the phone for technical support always makes me feel like a complete idiot. The online directions are horrible. For example, I was trying to figure out how to change an order so that it shows that it has been shipped. The directions say select the order and changed the shipped to yes. Seems easy enough. Well, first you don't select the order. You had to click on just the customer name and not on the whole order. Then you need to find a button half way down the screen that says Confirm Shipment. Not a difficult process but it took me an extra 10 minutes to figure it out. It is a cheap service though, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money right away.
For our marketing brochures, I used a company call Vista Print. It is an online template company for brochures. I'm not sure yet if this is the cheapest or best place to go, but I could get a free sample PDF emailed to me that I'm able to forward onto people.
What's the biggest obstacle now? Well, we are attempting to get doctors to hand out our information to patients. First, it is impossible to actually speak to a doctor without being a drug rep sales person with a long standing relationship. We did get the information to the office manager of a hospital. She was forwarding the information onto the doctors to find out the interest. She says there hasn't been any feedback good or bad. Once again I'm relying on someone else who has no incentive to push our product. I won't be dropping this contact. It just might take a longer time to get any results.
Our next step is trying to get our information into the educational packets that newly pregnant females receive. Getting the information directly into the end consumers hand is all that matters.
The good news thus far is that I have not become completely bored with the idea and stopped all progress. I'm still trucking along which had been a big problem in the past. Now the six month experiment has changed to a four month experiment of getting my business to become a success. Here are some of the next steps I'm taking:
1. Posting our information on relevant online forums
2. Contacting additional hospitals in the immediate area
3. Emailing everyone in my contacts about the new business
4. Set Up my accounting software
5. Get Google Ad words set up
6. Find out how and if we can get our product covered by insurance
Alright, wish me luck!
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