Watkins Online - the online catalog and sales center for all Watkins products, is a fantastic e-stored chocked full of our your favorite Watkins products, raning from Watkins vanilla, Watkins double-strength vanilla, cinnamon, soup and dip mixes, bar-b-que sauces, environmentally friendly cleaning products, and all your favorite Watkins brand spices, seasonings, extracts and flavorings.

Speaking of Watkins flavorings, I can vividly recall when growing up as a kid on a small farm in rural Louisiana, my grandmother Brown making banana pudding “from scratch, as they would say,” with Watkins double-stength vanilla and Watkins banana extract.  Hmmm, that was so good — all because Watkins produces the strongest, most flavorful and tastiest flavorings in the world.  In my book, Watkins banana extract was the best of all the Watktins extracts.

As an eSaleman desiring to sell products online, you may be wondering how long it might take to build your website and where would the products come from.  This is one reason I’m so sold on Watkins.  For as a Watkins associate, you’ll not only be able to sell all 350 Watkins products, but you’ll get your own Watkins Online website, just like this one.  Imagine the power of being able to have an instant e-business and online shopping mall stocked with 350 different products you can begin selling immediately. 

Perhaps one of the best kept secrets and best little-known deals in the world of e-commerce is a small independent shopping cart software company called Mals-e.com.  Based in Spain, the owner (whose first name is Malcolm) specializes in one thing and one thing only — the most robust yet simple to use shopping cart software in the world. 

Users can sign up for a free acccount with Mals-e.com to get the hang of the program, build a working shopping cart and start taking orders.  If you wish to upgrade to the “Pro” version the cost is only $24 per quarter.  Thus, for only $92 per year one can have a shopping cart that is fully compatible with all Paypal payment methods, Authorize.net, 2Checkout and most every one of the remaining major credit card or online payment processors that operate online.

The beauty of Mals-e.com is that is entirely web-based and each individual setup option is listed separately.  Thus, when setting it up, one can walk step-by-step through each bullet item in the setup area to set the program up and customize it to your satisfaction. 

You can first sign up for the free version and then convert to the Pro version later.  The free version is a fully-functionable version and will handle most all of the needs for work-at-home business owners.  It even includes an affiliate management system so you can run your own affiliate program! 

The Pro version is designed for much busier merchants and includes the following additional features:

• Remove the “Hosted by…” footer from the cart and replace with one of your own.
• Batch download of orders and payments either as one big page or in CSV format for import into a database or spreadsheet.
• Customize your secure cart pages
• Directly integrate the cart into the credit card payment gateways of Verisign, Authorizenet, Worldpay, Trustcommerce, Secpay and other supported Payment Solution Providors.
• Custom Admin area for your clients
• Advanced shipping calculations
• Simple transfer from free service
• For goods delivered on the internet you can setup an extra 500 products.

Mals must be one of the most gratified and successful work-at-home entrepreneurs that operate an online business.  He has over 137,000 online businesses using the Mals-e.com shopping cart. 

I will close this post by asking you the simple question, how many truly great web applications do you know that operates for a profit, but is willing to give away a full version of their software for anyone to use.  And on top of this, Mal is always good about responding to support emails.  He’s answered my personal emails (maybe 4 or 5 over the years) within 24 hours.  Great product, great price and value, great service — what more could you ask for?

The first order of business when deciding what type of work at home business you want to operate online is to determine what you will be selling.  You must first consider your talents and passion, for there are numerous businesses one can operate online. 

Some of the most successful and profitable businesses online would surprise you.  They represent the passion, hobbies and interests of their work at home owners.  For example, I once read about a gentleman in Spain who made custom guitars.  He knew nothing about web design how to launch an online business, but with a little midnight oil and determination he created a website to tell the world about his guitars.  The site was very basic and amateurish in appearance, reflecting the limited web design skills he possessed.  But it made money, oh boy did it make money — raking in over $400,000 in sales his first year.  Why?  Because he was catering to a small speciality niche and had limited competition.

Time after time I’ve seen and witnessed very profitable work from home websites and the main secret to their success was either unique niches or passionate owners who managed their web businesses daily — adding fresh new content, staying in touch with their mailing list, etc. 

But the truth of the matter is that most people lack a product to sell.  They either don’t have the time, capital or knowledge required to produce products.  This website is aimed at getting you into business as quickly as possible.  Thus, my concentration will be on work at home entrepreneurs seeking to make money online with products that are created by others.  There are several ways to do this.  For  example,  you could:

• Subscribe to a dropship service and market products that are dropshipped by your central supplier to your customer.
• You could write a content site about any number of subjects and run affiliate program ads, thus becoming an affiliate for someone.
• You could become a dealer or an associate for a company that manufactures products and will ship them directly to your customers, or deliver them to you for final distribution.
• You could work out an arrangement with a local company that doesn’t have a web presence and begin marketing their products online.
• Lastly, you could import products directly from foreign manufacturing companies and sell the products you import online.

I’ve done all of the above in 10+ years of doing business online.   All have their pros and cons.  But at the end of the day you want to be marketing a product or line of products that you feel good about.  Products that you’re proud to market, that are in demand by consumers and that are backed by a good company with a solid reputation.  That’s not always as easy to find as you might think.  A lot of time and money can be spent on looking for just the right company to represent.  Like so many work-at-home wannabe’s you can easily fall prey to a fast-talking, high-pressure salesman that promises you the key to El Dorado and all you end up with is fool’s gold.

One sure-fired way I know of making money selling products online and offline is selling Watkins Products.  You may or may not have heard of the company, but they have a line of 350 different personal products used in the home for cooking, wellness, personal health, cleaning, etc.  In short, they are products everyone can use.  Watkins is not some new Johnny-come-lately.  The company is an old-line manufacturer of products, founded in 1868.  They have 50,000 associates selling their products and have an excellent compensation system that pays 25% to 39% commissions.  There are many reasons I recommend them for your consideration:

1. The entry costs associated with becoming a Watkins Associate is very low — less than the cost of a seafood or steak dinner for two at a nice restaurant.
2. The company has been around a long time, proving they have great products, great service and a good reputation.
3. They have products that are “in-demand” and can be used regularly by consumers — meaning happy customers will continue to buy from you.  Most of there items are staple goods, like spices, extracts, cooking oils, detergents, etc. (Don’t worry, if you’re concerned about your lack of sales expertise keep reading — I plan to teach you how to sell such types of products online).
4. The company will provide you a website of your own to solicit and take orders.
5. The company does not believe in high pressure sales tactics, pushy get-rich quick schemes or sales pitches.  They are perfectly happy having stay-at-home moms contented with making a few hundred dollars per month, but have a compensation system that will reward you handsomely if you choose to put more effort into it.
6. Education and training is provided not only by the company but by the Summit Group, an large segment of Watkins Associates who take pride in helping and training anyone who joins Watkins as a Summit Group member. 
7. Lastly, you have nothing to lose.  Even if you never sell a dime’s worth of product you can use them personally and enjoy a 25% Associates discount (i.e. your lowest commission level).  If you only purchased $6.50 per month of product for 2 years, or $13.00 per month of product for one year you would get your setup costs back in savings.

Over time I will discuss many ways to make money online.  But I frankly don’t know of a better way than I’ve just recommended (with Watkins).  There are numerous ways to make money quicker, but trust someone who’s done it to the tune of high six-figures per year, 95% of them have short lives or require hours upon hours of ongoing work.  The beauty of becoming a Watkins Associate is that you start immediately with products to sell and your residual income grows and grows the longer you promote your business.  If you die, your business doesn’t die with you, your spouse or family member can continue on with the business you’ve built.  And whether or not you have experience in marketing or sales, you can follow the advice and recommendations of the Summit Group or WatPros.com to build a successful work from home business, selling Watkins products through your online website or directly to friends, relatives and co-workers.