A few people have emailed me lately asking questions about how much time we spend running our store on a day to day basis and I completely understand why. Running a business can be difficult and time consuming so it’s important to understand what one is getting into before taking the plunge. I even received one email from a reader who asked.

Why would I want to open an ecommerce site as opposed to something much more passive like affiliate marketing or blogging?

Passive Income?

First off, I just want to emphasize that no business is truly passive. No matter what, you have to put in a good amount of time and work upfront. In addition, there’s always some amount of effort involved to maintain your income stream once it has been established. The other thing I want to say is that if your purpose is to make money, blogging is a lousy way to do it.

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It is concerning that jobs are not growing. Economic indicators reveal that jobs are still lagging. The economy cannot recover until and unless more people become employed. The month of July has seen a worse-than-expected loss in jobs and that is a result of the temporary census jobs that have closed up.

Though July has seen a gain of 71,000 private sector jobs, it still falls below the expectations of economists. It is very obvious that jobs do not pick up until the economy does, but then there is something very unusual about the 2008-2009 recession. In 2001 as well, the world experienced a recession. But then it was not the same then as the economy experienced a business-led slowdown.

This current recession has a shortage of jobs. Last October, the economy experienced a 10.1% unemployment rate and currently it still prevails as 9.5%.

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Mr. Walt Minnick, the Idaho representative is considered the most conservative Democrat in congress. In 2008 presidential elections, he took his seat by just 2 points. He gained support from unlikely sources like the United States Chamber of Commerce and Tea Party Express. Minnick started his political career as a Nixon administration official. But he resigned after the Saturday Night Massacre in which Attorney General Elliot Richardson was assassinated.

In his early years, Walt Minnick remained a successful businessman. He did a job with Trus Joist, a $30 million Boise based forest product company. He served the company for 21 years -16 years as president and now the company’s revenue is $700 million. He says “I realize I liked Trus Joist a whole lot better when it was a $70 million company than when it is 10 times that size, and bureaucratic.” Following this, he started his own business that dealt with nurseries. He co

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The US economy has started to show signs of growth as business expanded at a faster pace than expected in July. Major manufacturers like Caterpillar Inc. is forecasting a rise in earnings following the demand from developing countries.

Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at MF Global Ltd. Says, “Export growth is still pretty strong and domestic demand has shown some gains.”  According to a Commerce Department report, growth slowed in the second quarter to a 2.4 percent annual rate that is much less than the forecast.

Slowing Economy
GDP increased and showed 3.7 percent in the first quarter compared to a forecast of 2.6 percent surveyed by Bloomberg.  Since 1997, business investment climbed at the fastest rate.

Following the reports, stocks jumped to erase previous losses.  The S&P 500 Index rose 0.1 percent to 1,102.34 at 11:04 a.m. in New Y

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The recent recession was deeper than previously thought, according to new data released by the Commerce Department. The numbers show the sharpest declines in consumer spending and the housing market.

The U.S. economy shrank 4.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2009, compared with the 3.7 percent drop previously reported, said Bloomberg News. 

Household spending fell 1.2 percent in 2009, twice the previous projection. Consumer purchases, which account for 70 percent of the economy, shrank the past three years, with the lowest spending point being last year, said Bloomberg.

Personal and disposable income levels actually rose between 2007 and 2009, according to the Commerce Department report. Higher income and less spending indicate American’s are putting more of their money into savings.

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Apple Inc is planning to undergo a major expansion. The company that has products like the iPhone and the iPad is now targeting small business. They are planning to hire engineers in at least a dozen U.S retail stores to install Apple computer systems meant for small businesses.

This expansion makes sense given that there are already thousands of businesses that run on Apple products, the company has now focused on consumer and niche markets such as media firms and design. Apple wants to use the iPhone and iPad as selling points to leverage more expensive products like Macintosh computers and servers. It is using its 300 retail stores to reach out to local businesses. Apple is also recruiting from within the sales staff so as to form a specialized team to negotiate leasing and pricing terms for customers.

It is unlikely that Apple would be facing more competition from competitors like Hewlett-Packard Co.

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In my previous article on My Latest Take On Hosted vs Non-Hosted Ecommerce Solutions, I recommended two hosted shopping cart solutions, Volusion and BigCommerce, that do not charge any transaction fees for using their service. Not being charged a percentage of your sales is nice because you can run your store at more or less a flat monthly rate(not taking into account credit card fees) that does not scale proportionally to your revenues.

A few weeks ago, I signed up for trial accounts with both Volusion and BigCommerce and decided to compare the two services.

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