For the last 4-5 days now I have been working on a reseller account system on Developer Hut. I have had the reseller account idea for years now, but just until recently I was waiting on making sure my current system is dialed in so I wont be working on too much stuff at once. Now since I have the rest of the backend complete I can now focus my attention onto the reseller account section and other stuff related to it that seems to pop up.

The backend for the reseller part is completed I am just working on finishing the add credit part and a bunch of small updates. It was pretty easy to code up the part that adds the orders into the system, the hard part was making my code secure so no one can screw with it. I have never spent so much time researching ways to secure scripts and coding extra long scripts to make sure everything is secure and no one will be screwing with anything.

The backend is pretty simple, if you have a reseller account then you will see a link that shows how much credit you have in your account (which all accounts will soon have) and also a link to the add orders page which a screen shot is below. People with reseller accounts will get 25% off all products but you must spend at least $300 a month and must be approved by me. To add orders the person will have to go to the add order page and fill a few things out and then simply pay for the orders using credit. All orders that are added will be added to the account like normal orders, they will just need to be manually approved by me first, which should not take that long.

(The above is the page the resellers enter all the info)

Tthe above is the page the resellers confirm there order details and then pay for there order)

The reseller account part of the business will be a huge part of Developer Huts future business. Instead of marketing to only individuals I can now target both individuals and target small business owners. The majority of the people using the reseller account will be people with lots of websites or web design/seo company’s looking to out source work. I do not think I will have to many actual “resellers”, but all are welcome.

The resellers account part will be officially launched on next monday, however this monday will will start beta testing which will only last for a week or so. If you are interested in an account please contact me here.

Anyways there is real no point to this blog post, just a rant about the new service that I have been working on for the last 5 days. I am welcome to any and all suggestions about this, just leave a comment

I have so many goals it is hard to keep track of them all, but below are a few goals that I constantly focus on:

1. 3 page views per visit
One of my silly goals is to get 3 page views from every person (average) that visits a website of mine. I use get clicky to track all my stats (I highly suggest them for e-commerce people). The reason why I focus a lot of attention to that is because if the visitor viewed more then 2 pages then that means that they like your website and are interested in what you have, if they leave after 1-2 page views then you know there is something wrong, and you must improve it.

There are a lot of ways to track your visitors and see there actions. I use get clicky because they have a feature on there that google analytics does not… you can view what each visitor does by seeing each page that each IP addy views. I use that information and see what the visitors like and dont like on those pages, and then I can make tweaks to improve my page views.

2. 70% profit margin
A lot of people tell me to not focus on the profit margin, but I do anyways… and I focus on it pretty hardcore. The bottom line is the number right? I wont be able to stay in business if my outgoing funds surpass my incoming funds right? So there must be a formula to keep track of all of this right? This is were my profit margin goal comes in…

I actually have 3 goals tied to this one:
1. 70% profit margin for each site
2. 20% profit margin for the main company
3. Daily revenue goal of $XXX per day

So with the “70% profit margin for each product” goal I must make 70% off each site in my company. Right now I run about 5 e-commerce websites that I am tracking this with, and my goal is to make 70% profit margin before expenses with each site… and its a lot harder then it sounds

With those 5 sites at 70% profit margin I do not include expenses, marketing, or taxes. The number only reflects the cost of the certain product and that is it. I add all of the expenses, marketing, taxes, and fee’s after I add up all of the 5 websites revenues (my backend does this automatically however) and then that is were I get the 20% profit margin from.

So my final goal is to make 20% profit margin on my company after all expenses. Those expenses include all marketing, business taxes, business related expenses, and fee’s. The 20% would be pure profit and would be my own personal income. An example is that if my business makes $10,000 a month, then I will make $2000 profit after everything (for e-commerce 20% profit margin is really good).

My profit margin goal seems to be working, I keep tweaking stuff that keeps improving the profit margin. With one of my websites I am pulling like a 120% profit margin, and in March it was at 56%, so all of the tweaks I did are paying off for that site

I feel if I monitor the 2 profit margins, daily revenue, and page views per unique visit then I can keep sucessful track of my business improvements and marketing campaigns. It seems to be working thus far, but we will see how it goes in the future.

3. Daily Goals
I have a shit ton of daily goals. I always have 1-2 to-do lists laying on my desk and I always have my whiteboard with lots of not-done crap on it. I also write down my other goals (the ones I listed above) so that I dont forget those. I make about 2-3 new to-do lists a week, and I probably update my whiteboard about once every 2 weeks.

So I am curious on how you track your businesses goals? Let me know in the comments

I have a lot going on right now. Ever since the recession hit it seems like everyone has been hustlin and trying to find ways to make money, which is good for me because everyone comes to me when they want something pushed hehe. I have realized that networking is a huge part of any business, so I always try to network with new people, and this has given me huge advantages when trying to find new products to push.

This month alone about 5-6 different people have came up to me asking them to help push there product (not cpm offer I dont do those). I turn a lot of people down, but I did find 5 products altogether which are great… and I will be pushing them.

I also have a new roommate, Tanner Waid, he has been doing some html and design work and now he is looking to get involved with the money making part of the business. Tanner and I will be creating 2-3 websites before Christmas together, he will be in charge of adding products, managing orders, support work, and the websites tweaks. I will be doing the marketing, managing orders, coding work, and helping out on the support work.

The system we will be using is set up a lot like hayneedles, however we will not be disclosing our other niches like they do. But we will be using wordpress for the CMS, and then a upgraded and tweaked e-com plugin from instinct. I already have the design being worked on by a designer named Eli, he is making it a cross between the hayneedle website and developer-hut.com design, I find that developer hut’s design is really good for e-commerce websites. With e-com stores you must keep it as simple as possible.

All of those products will be drop shipped, and we will be working hard on getting them all set up before November 15th.

I am also working on another e-com store with another buddy of mine, he already has the inventory and we will be using the same layout and system as the other websites. The main reason why we are using wordpress and that plugin instead of using my own custom made backend (which I prefer) is because we need to hurry up and get these websites up.

I am pretty excited to finally get working on a network of e-commerce stores. I have been working my ass off on my backend (which is pretty much done now) and creating developer hut so I can use those marketing services. Now I have a great platform to create more online real estate and manage all of it efficiently. I now don’t have to focus on those 2 projects, I can now focus my attention mostly to the marketing and creating parts instead of the “creating the foundation” part.

I still have a lot on my plate this month, below is some of the stuff I will be working on this month:

1. Bringing 2 products in-house instead of drop shipping (a lot harder the it sounds, I have most of the research done however)

2. 5 or so new e-com stores

3. Creating a automated email marketing system. It will work like aweber, were after X amount of days an email will be sent to the person in the list. Email marketing is a huge part of my business now, so this is a must before the holiday season.

4. Creating a ticket system for the wordpress e-com stores. I will be creating (probably paying someone actually) to make a contact plugin that will update a database with the support tickets. The the support tickets from all of my stores will be pilled into one place, so I can make a ticket system with users that will be able to view particular stores tickets. I already made a custom ticket system for developer hut, so It wont take to long to tweak a new one for all of these stores. I want to make sure that I have an efficient way to take care of support tickets, because I know how important those are.

Well that is all for tonight, I can talk all night about this stuff, take it easy.

So if you remeber this month I have been focuses on getting ready to start storing my own products. Well the month is almost over and I am very happy with what has been done this month. I currently have very little errors in my php logs, all of my websites are working fine, i finnally got all my sites PCI compliant, the developerhut.com backend is all updated and I can now do everything I need to with that backend, and now its on to the fun part…

I decided that I don’t want to move that fast with this, I want to do some research and see what the best way to receive orders then ship them off. One of my friends mentioned using Endicia, but I am more looking into coding my own system with USPS’s api. I need to research that and then deicde on a solution soon. Anyone have any suggestions or feedback about that?

I am still looking for a place to rent, I need a place that has either 1 big room and an office or a few rooms because of the amount of shit I have to store and the sizes of the products. I also decided that I will be waiting at least another 2-3 before I start leasing a place, I actually wanted to get everything set up in my house for a few months so I can test everything out and get the system down.

For the first month or two I will be storing my smaller products at my casa, I am turning the bedroom next to my office into the “warehouse part”, it will consist of 2 BIN shelving and then 1-2 regular shelving, and then a big table to do all the packaging on.

I have been looking around for the best deals on shelving, and I think I found the best deal on ebay for what I need, I did a lot of research and I am pretty sure that the below shelving is what I will be purchasing this week:

2x BIN: Click here

1x big racking

1x small for office supplies

(These are actually just for one of the small products I have, I wont be able to store all of my products because of the space)

Well that is all I have today, its sunday and I’m gonna be relaxing today

If you haven’t noticed I added a SEO Tool lead form on the right hand side of this blog. I also added the same exact lead form on most of the landing pages on developer-hut.com. I paid someone $15 to get it designed, and then I paid another $20 or so to get it coded. After I got it designed and coded I updated my code to actually track were the leads are coming from and some other statistics.

Since all of those updates to the lead form I have pretty much tripled the amount of leads I get from that form. The tool is set up to ping your website to 15 or so ping websites (later on I will be adding a social bookmarking feature to it) and if your email isn’t already in the system then the script adds it to my newsletter list, and then I send about 2 or 3 newsletters a month to all of those email address which of course increases my sales.

I made it so that the results will be emailed to the person using the lead form, so they must enter there email address, this way is a lot better then just asking for peoples emails. I highly suggest to anyone that runs a website of any kind to try and get them email address, they convert so well if you market niche-related products.

So I spent $35 to triple my daily leads for that website… and I am very confident that the update will pay for itself a few times over the next time I send out a newsletter Take it from me, grab them emails!

These last months I have been working pretty hard trying to get my company’s going and getting everything done that I have planned. Last week I put in a lot of work and got a lot of work done, at this point I am very very very happy with what I have archived and the statuses of my company’s, but I want more.

Last week I was starting to get burnt out, last thurs-friday-sat I didn’t feel like doing shit, not one thing… so I pretty much took those days off haha. I got back to work on sunday and today and will be working all this week (like normal). Its not fun getting burnt out, you dont feel like doing anything at all.

But anyways, as I mentioned in this blog post, I have big plans and I hope to get my backend done and ready for Oct 1st, and I am actually on track for that.

Below are a few things I need to complete:
1. I need to get that null script done, its not giving me an errors but its not 100% done yet
2. developer-hut.com backend needs the view order pages updated, same with the add orders
3. I need to add 4 ssl certificates to some websites
4. I have maybe 4-5 errors throughout my whole network I still need to fix, but that amount is so much lower then say a month ago.

The above list isn’t very big at all, that amount of work will take 1-2 days to complete, so I get to take it kind of easy for the rest of the month. I have completed so much work this month that I wont even try to list all the updates, this month I have worked my ass off and its starting to pay off, all the company’s are running pretty smoothly and semiautomated. Besides the support and marketing they pretty much take care of themselves, which was my overall goal.

I actually haven’t been marketing to much, I have been more focused on building up the backend aspect of the business and I kind of let the marketing part down a little. I mostly focus on repeat customers and word of mouth, but I know as soon as I get the marketing up full blast then I should be bling blingin’. And to be completely honest, having that thought in the back of my mind really really motivates me to work even harder (imagine if you company was doing good and you were not even marketing to much), so I have been working extra hard to get the backend parts done so I can work on the fun stuff… marketing.

I dont think I will be able to start stocking my own products this month, I still haven’t started doing my research into the USPS api (which looks totally awesome!). I looked at it a little and it seems to be a basic api, the 2 tools I will be using is the shipping label printing one and then the one that you can ping USPS so they will come to your business or home and pick up your packages. If I could incorporate those 2 tools into my business so everything works automated then I should be sitting pretty good.

I still need to do my research into that however, but I have a question for you readers, what is your input on:

Should I use USPS api or are there better options out there?

One of my buddies did link me to a website were you can lease or rent a professional shipping label printer and some of the gear plus the software for a fee, I am not 100% sure on what the benefits for using that compared to programming my own USPS api tool? My long term goal is to make everything in the business networked together to create a efficient business structure, I am in favor for the USPS api tool, but I would like to know your input

I hope you guys don’t mind the new blogging style, I don’t have time to sit down for 4 hours and write helpful blog posts. This is my blog and I feel it should be more like a journal then a make money online site, so that is what you will probably be getting from now on haha.

So in my last blog post I mentioned that I have been busy working on the backend part of my network to make everything work fine before Oct. 1st, well I am still on plan and still working hard on getting my 2 backends up-to-date and not needing myphpadmin anymore.

Here is a break down of what I have been up to the last 5 days:

Developer Hut’s Backend:

My main focus has been making the code secure and updating the backend to be more efficient, secure, simple, and so I dont need to use myphpadmin at all. And right now I am very very happy with what has been accomplished with that site so far, the backend is making everything run so smooth. The real only thing I have left to do is make a page so I can edit the user accounts, tweak some view order pages, create a better system to automatically update article submission orders when the content writers finish the article submission article, and make sure my code is secure.

Since the last blog post I have done a lot of work on this backend, I only have a few more days worth of work then that site should be done, then I will move my attention more to the other backend.

Main backend:

This guy is the fun one, but he needs lots more work. Right now the site doesn’t even have a template system, and that makes the site a mess. I need to create a template system so I can easily update pages. I also need to finish updating the code to make it more secure, along with adding a ssh certificate (better be on the safe side).

And I also need link my personal expenses db with the business one, my plan is to make another password protected page within the backend so I can view my personal expenses, and then compare that number to how much profit I made etc. So I will know at all times how I am doing. If you remeber I added a tracking system to track my expenses, and so far the effort I put into that project has paid off.. its nice to be able to see what exactly needs to be changed and what exactly I need to work on, I highly suggest setting something like this up.

But anyways, before I add the personal expenses part onto the backend I need to make sure my code is secure, add the ssh, finish the template system, and then double check my code. After I complete all that work then the backend should be close to done.

Tonight I spent like 4 hours so far updating the drop shippers part of the code, I made it very easy for them to view orders, I also added my own function to make it so that state and country abbreviation will show the full name.

Hopefully that backend will be 100% updated before Oct 1st, but the developer hut one is the main one Im worried about.

Other projects:

I asked for help on a script to filter NULL’s out, check it out its pretty interesting, and works great I added it tonight.

I also am working on 2 content websites, I will make them public but they aren’t done yet, I will let you all know what they are when they are completed.

I have so many people working on other projects of mine, right now I have 2 designers working, a css guy busy, 2 php programmers working on scripts, and tonight I will be sending my content writer another weeks worth of work. So not only do I work my ass off for developerhut.com, but I also have other people always working on stuff to. That is how I am able to get soooo much work done.

I also have to add like 8 more new products this week, and finish up a new site. Busy busy month :-s

Well its almost 7 am, im going to bed, take care.

Ok so lately my goal has been to get my 2 backends (developerhut.com’s customer system and then my main e-com site that links all the e-com sites together) done before Oct 1st. There is no real reason why I set that date, but I figured that is about how long it will take me to get the final tweaks done so I am now telling myself that I need to get all the stuff below done before that date.

What I have been working on:

Developerhut.com Backend: The backend is almost done and the current version is running so smooth with little errors. The backend’s old outdated php code has almost been 100% replaced, and I am currently just been working on adding statistics and more options to edit customers orders and making it very easy someone with basic computer skills to manage the site. Right now I am still using myphpadmin a lot for looking at orders and sometimes editing them, I hope to be using my own backend 100% before Oct 1st.

Main site: This main site is the website that links all the e-com sites together. Now when I say “links” what I mean is that the site basically pulls up all of the e-commerces sites database info so my drop shippers can easily access that info, and that I can easily view stats and see what needs improving and what not. It has been very helpful for me to set this up, having just 1 place to view all of your e-com stats is great!

Today I went and talked to my accountant, I had him go over my backend and see if he could suggest any changes, well I have a whole new to-do list now, but after thats done then then that backend should be pretty much done.

Getting a building: I have been looking into this for sometime now, but lately I have been researching it even more. The main reason for me wanting to get my own warehouse is because I could then hire someone part time for support, which would take so much work off my hands. I could then move a few of my products in-house, which would literally increase my profit margin by 20% for the products (right now that product is at 70% profit margin after adwords spending). I am also paying one of my drop shippers something like 400-600$ in just drop ship fee’s, some drop shippers charge a fee to ship your goods, but that fee is really starting to add up and I rather use that money to hire my own packager.

My plan is to hire someone for customer support and train them for that. However I would also need them to do packaging and returns until I get enough volume to need someone strictly part time for that. So I would be hiring someone part time, and about 10 hours of the week they would be doing support work and the other 10 would be doing packaging. It would cost me about 800-900$ a month after all of the taxes, workers comp, etc. And if I move the product in-house that required the drop ship fee then that means I would only be spending 400-500$ more for someone part-time (500$ or so in drop ship fee’s – 900$ or so for monthly employee cost), and that would help me out sooo much.

So as you can see I have been researching and going over the numbers a lot lately. The only thing that is holding me back is that my current system/backend is not were I want it to be, but trust me, after Oct 1st everything will be and that is when I will be really looking for a office.

…Ok im done writing for today, I need to get back to support work. I will be writing a post on USPS api soon, hopefully some of you programmers that read this blog will chime in then thanks for reading.

Man what a week! I have been working hard this week, and I have lots more work to come. The last 2 months I have been thinking of taking one of the products I am pushing and start selling the products myself instead of using the drop ship method (which I have been using forever). That has been keeping me motivated to work hard and get shit done so I can move onto that stage of the business.

Right now, as you all know, I use SEO to rank sites and then I sell shit on them. I focus on low traffic and low competition niches. Right now I have 3 main drop ship sites and then like 7 or so little guys (like survivormanfans.com). The 2 products I am looking to move in-house will need at least 1 person part time just for shipping/returns because I probably sell 20-30 units a day, and I am expecting to triple that once I get the term on the first page of google (for the terms I am currently working on).

I will also need to hire someone for support, its getting a little out of hand, right now all I do is support and not enough of the real business stuff. My main problem with this is that I want to micromanage everything, I am a perfectionist and a little OCD and I get frustrated when shit is not going right (happens daily). I did hire someone in-house for support, but she didn’t know SEO so I basically ended up doing all of the support. I then got on freelance and hired a call center company to manage the phone and email support, I then made a script which would let the call center forward me the emails that they didnt know the answer to, well guess what happened…. they forwarded me ALL of the support emails. They did that for 2 weeks so I said fuck it.

So the support work is back to me, what I need to do is hire someone that knows the basics of SEO and have them in-house, that way I can train them on how I want it ran. But to get to that point my backend needs to be working good and the backend needs to be able to manage every aspect of the business. I need it so that I can work just fine from my laptop, but right now I am still using myphpadmin a lot to get certain orders. I have been busy updating that code and getting it all sorted out so I don’t need myphpadmin anymore.

I have also been updating the sites order pages and making it very easy for customers to find information about the products, I had my content writer make up very detailed instructions on each product, you can see that info here. To goal is to cut down on some of the customer support for that site.

I also got my other e-commerce sites PCI compliant and I will now be working on getting developerhuts code all secure this week, its gonna be a lot of work because of all the small mistakes, but after I get that done then I dont need to do it again heh.

And I also launched a new product called “Sales Letter Posting“. Basically, my forum writers will take a sales letter (either written by you or my writer) and post it on related forums to your niche. No one else offers this product, only me. I use this all the time so that is the main reason why I wanted to make it a product, just last week when we did a test run, I had them post a sales letter on 5 niche related forums which cost me like $25 (your price), I made $375 that day from posting the sales letters on only 5 forums. Its a great product and I know a lot of people that can use it, if you are interested in helping us test and get all the tweaks out then let me know.

Throughout this week I will be tweaking that product, along with updating developerhut’s code, adding another e-commerce site, adding 5 new products to an existing e-commerce site, and researching hiring a packager and someone for customer support…. lots of work….. has anyone here set up a warehouse, know any good resources?

Whoa its been a week! I have never been around an accidental discharge of a firearm before till now, luckily it wasn’t me who did it. My roommate came home drunk on Monday night and was showing off one of his guns to his buddy, bad idea when your drunk, and even worse for some reason he kept his .357 S&W revolver loaded.

I am not 100% sure on the details, but apparently my roommate was showing off his gun and it went off when he was showing it. I have no clue why he kept it loaded or why he would pull the hammer back on it. I was downstairs playing Call Of Duty 5 and hear a F’in loud noise, I pretty much knew what it was and ran upstairs, no one was hurt but it did leave a hole in my wall. Thank god he shot the area that has like 3-5 studs right above the window, it hit a stud and didnt hit the neighbors house. For some reason no one called the cops.

So yeah everyone is ok, but I am now down one roommate heh. He now moves out on this coming Monday. Firearm safety isn’t something I fuck with. Learn from his mistakes and don’t keep loaded weapons.

Below is the picture of the bullet hole, he tried to repair it before I woke up the next day (I was to pissed to talk to him that night about it). I have to cut out that and check to see if it hit anything important, and then re-drywall it…. this has been the 6th hole in my drywall caused by friends of mine lol, Im getting better at repairing them

(he used the wrong paint color)