MAKING THE MOST OF SPIRIT TRADING.

This area is provided to give you tips, hints and a range of ideas on how to make the most of your online business at Spirit Trader. Some of the information you’ll find suggested here is pretty obvious, some is established and good business sense and some, because this IS about Spirit Trading, is a little more special. One thing is common to all of it: the desire to help YOU make the most of your online business.

WELCOME!

Firstly all the team at Spirit Trader welcome you and thank you for setting up your store. Congratulations, you are now starting to build your business in a place that never sleeps. The Internet keeps your shop here on www.spirit-trader.com “open” for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and for every single day of the year. Unlike having a physical shop in a street or taking a stall at a local Mind, Body, Spirit & Healing event, YOUR products and services will now be visible via the Internet anywhere on Earth, not just to folks walking by. With Spirit Trader your business is visible wherever there are computers and the `Internet. It’s not called “The World Wide Web” for nothing!

If you are new to the world of online trading then this is a big, exciting and also possibly somewhat daunting step! In that case we are here to help you and this section will give you much to think about. If, however, you are more experienced then most of this may not be new to you. But you never know…

GETTING STARTED

Having registered your business and agreed the Spirit Trader Terms & Conditions you are able to go ahead and create your store using the simple and user-friendly tools we provide. Just follow the steps and you will be uploading your images and information very quickly. If this is all new to you then visit the FAQs area for a step-by-step guide to setting up your store. Here are some other things you could do:

Look around:take some time to see what others have done with their shops on the site. Pay attention to how quickly and easily you can or cannot make sense of what’s on offer and get an idea of what works best.

Pricing:there are two ways to make a sale on the site. The first is to fix the price and let people buy it immediately. The second is the “auction” style where people have time to place bids and you sell to the highest bidder when the time runs out.

Display:The product is king. So be careful to take photographs that do your product justice. Avoid confusing backgrounds for example.

Invite contact:encourage the bidders or potential customers to ask you questions and make an effort to respond as quickly as you can.

Play it straight:it is vital that you don’t make any claims for cures or state misleading information when describing your products or services. There are several reasons for this caution not least of which is that Spirit Trader works for truth and light and will NOT tolerate exploitation or abuse of people’s trust when they come to the site. Also there is a legal consideration with the amended Fraudulent Mediums Act (1951)that is now integrated with the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

So please tell it like it IS not like you want someone else to think it COULD be. The best way to win customers’ loyalty is to “under-promise and over-deliver” so play down those claims. Provide testimonials and endorsements if you have them but do NOT put in writing any claims that cannot be entirely proven under the law. If you visit many MBS events you’ll have noticed that Clairvoyants, Mediums, Psychics & Healers are observing this for their own protection.

Getting paid:we use the PayPal service and for good reasons. It is well established, highly secure, flexible, easy to use and has been the ‘standard” on such huge sites as eBay for years. If you do NOT yet have a PayPal Account then please be sure to set one up as soon as possible so that people can pay you promptly and securely.

PROMOTING YOUR BUSINESS

One major benefit of building a business online with Spirit Trader is that we have a major ongoing commitment to advertising. So far we have appeared in top magazines including: Spirit & Destiny, Fate & Fortune, Prediction, Paradigm Shift and Kindred Spirit. The readership of just Spirit & Destiny magazine alone is nearly 200,000 in the UK! We also have other equally powerful promotional and advertising strategies waiting for launch. All our activity is aimed at raising the awareness and interest in Spirit Traderand that means we are promoting YOU every time we appear in an advertisement.

There are many things that YOU can do to give your business a boost too. So we are going to give you some useful ideas, helpful hints and top tips on how to grow the number of visitors to your online business:

TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

Yes, that’s so simple and yet it’s often an area that gets ignored because we think of it as “business” not anything to do with friendship. That’s a mistake, especially when it’s to do with spiritual and healing matters such as found on Spirit Trader. So be proud and excited about your new venture and tell all your friends about it. Ask them to visit the site and let you know what they think. Encourage them to register for FREE so they can place bids and buy on the site.

TELL YOUR CONTACTS

We all know an awful lot more people than our immediate friends. Many may be people we see at work or folks we meet in the course of our social life. Some may be more distant and we have contact by email or telephone perhaps. You should make sure they ALL know that you have found Spirit Trader and about your business there.

You can send a simple message to all of the contacts you have in your email address book. If you have someone’s email address and you both communicate with it then adding a line or two giving him or her the web address www.spirit-trader.com and describing your store is NOT a case of SPAM.

TELL YOUR CUSTOMERS

It sound obvious but you’d be surprised at how many already trading small MBS & Healing businesses forget to tell their existing customers about their new online venture. Who better than a loyal and satisfied customer to bring you new contacts? So be sure to make a supply of business cards promoting Spirit Trader available for your customers to take away and also GIVE away on your behalf.

BUSINESS CARDS

If you don’t have them already get yourself some business cards. If you already have cards be prepared to replace them. Cards without the website address on them are not going to build the online business. This doesn’t have to cost you money either! Here are some places you can possibly get FREE business cards, downloadable designs or where you can get very low cost cards:

http://www.freeprintablebusinesscards.net/

http://www.overnightprints.co.uk/main.php?O=products (click the FREE SAMPLES button at top of page).

http://www.vistaprint.co.uk

http://www.dcp-print.co.uk/

http://www.optimalprint.co.uk/en-GB/Free-Business-Cards

STICKY LABELS

If you regularly write to people, or you are already sending stuff out from your office or at home, don’t underestimate the power of that little sticky label. Carry them with you and you can always find something to pop one on to give to someone you meet! You can buy the little pre-cut labels in sheets to run through a printer from most stationery shops. Also you can find them cheaply or possibly even for free on the web but here’s a few sites to look at for now:

http://www.labels-direct.co.uk/index

http://www.viking-direct.co.uk/

http://www.marshlabels.co.uk/

http://www.thelabelman.co.uk/special-offers/

SHOUT IT OUT!

If you have something or some place that people regularly see then that’s a good spot to promote your presence on Spirit Trader. One overlooked asset in the promotion game is your own vehicle! If you want to build your online business you should be proud to have it. If you are proud to have it you should be happy to shout about it. The power of window poster or a bumper sticker is under-estimated. Yet just think; why do commercial cars, vans and trucks always have very obvious advertising on them? Because it works! So you can print out a poster to stick inside your vehicle or you can get a bumper sticker made to put outside.

MAKE ‘EM AN OFFER…

Whether we are in a credit crunch, recession, downturn or not; everyone loves a bargain! We all are interested in someone making us an offer. If we think the offer gives us more than we’ve paid for we usually go for it. The truth is that the “value” of any offer is in the eye of the beholder. If you REALLY always supplied more than was paid for you’d go bust! Yet we go for special offers and deals all the time. The aisles of every supermarket and major department store will tell you the truth of this. Discounts, BOGOFs (Buy One Get One Free), Vouchers, Coupons, Prize Draws, Freebies, Packaged Deals (book three sessions & get one Half Price) Loyalty Schemes and Rewards for Referrals are all good ways to increase your business.

Another excellent way to grow business and loyalty is to offer added-value to your customers. This isn’t exactly the same as making them special offers. This is about that over-delivering against what you promised. That’s like the local car wash who charge the same as most others. However these guys don’t advertise it but they always offer you a nice air freshener for free. They also go that little bit further by opening the doors and wiping down the inside sills. Yes it’s small stuff and not any more expensive for them to deliver but it’s MORE than the customer was expecting.

So think about how you can make them an offer to be YOUR customer.

TELL ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN.

A growing current trend is for evening talks, lectures and demonstrations in Friend’s Meeting Houses, Church & Village Halls, Healing Centres, Community Centres, Schools, Youth Clubs and many more.

For the organisers charged with the task of finding something different and interesting for each of the nights it’s a big task. Having someone you didn’t know about come forward to and offer to give a talk and take questions is a gift from above! Often you can even get paid expenses or even a small fee. But doing it for FREE in return for giving everyone attending a small information pack is a very wise investment. Often you can even sell your stuff afterwards.

So look out for these opportunities. Keep an eye out for posters in local shops promoting the latest evening and take down the details. Contact the organiser and arrange a brief chat about what you can do. If you haven’t spoken in public before don’t put it off. To help you we have a FREE guide to public speaking for you to download HERE.

LEARN BY DOING

For most of us every day is another day when we can learn and grow through our experiences. Running a business, even a small online one, will generate many new and different opportunities and also provide a few challenges. Please remember: to err is human but to forgive is divine. If you make a mistake then you can learn from it. If you have any challenges with trading on Spirit Trader that you’d like help and advice with, then please contact us. Equally if there’s something new that you’ve discovered and would like to share with us then also please do contact us and tell us about it.

Whatever the daily experience we wish you every success with your Spirit Trading.