International Customers Welcome!

My little girls taking it easy

I am presently working on trying to get sales in the international markets. It seems that to cut off your international sales means you are limiting the potential of your website store. So if you work to get those sales that can increase your bottom line. We have always had traffic on our websites from international shoppers. The problem has been that I have always been afraid of those sales. Hearing the stories on eBay and other places of how the foreigners are just spammers and people out to get us makes you fear them on your site. The thing is, if I had a brick and mortar store and a Frenchman came in to look at my merchandise, would I throw him out? Or would I smile and try to welcome him to my store? Would I try to help him if he was looking for something in particular? You bet I would! I would treat him like royalty. If he took the time from his day to visit my store I would make it worth his time to do so.

Just recently I have had a couple of nice size sales that came from Paris, France. At first we were a little nervous about this sale. The buyer sent me a message and asked if he could buy our product from Paris, France. So we did some research to see how we could ship at a low cost and still make money. We ship for free to all U.S. and Canadian addresses. Our product is small and doesn't usually cost that much to ship. We do not add the shipping cost to the price of the strings. Instead we take it out of our profits. But international shipping is costly. That is what stops most sellers from doing it. We found a way to do it so it would be a worthwhile move for us. Our customer seems happy as he placed another order with us.

It seems awesome to me to be working here from my homestead in the middle of the state forest and selling my product to people living on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean! It shows you just how far we have come in such a short time. Our world is getting smaller and our world market is getting larger...........much larger. To wake up in the morning and have orders of guitar strings waiting to be packaged up is such a great concept. No driving to a job. Just working on the computer which both of us love to do anyway.

As I told in an earlier post this year, I am working on automating my life and my homestead. Making things much easier for us. Ordering supplies online so I don't have to leave home to do those errands. It is much easier for me as I am very busy here. Saves me a lot of time and time for me is also money. Plus no driving around looking for stuff that I can purchase online. Also I  have the ability to have it automated so my orders can be sent on a certain day that I set up.I am looking forward to completing this process. Then I can move onto other more important ventures.

I have been sick for almost a month now and I am finally starting to feel better. It has been the hardest thing I have had to deal with and this was just the wrong time for me to be sick. Spring is my busy time and it was frustrating. It didn't stop me from working but I wasn't my best. Now I am back to normal speed and have many irons in the fire.

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole