Work At Home Business Options

For the past few weeks I have been giving you an brief overview about online Direct Sales Vendor Events. Today, I will finish up by telling you how to find a good DS Vendor Fair to participate in.

To find online vendor fairs, you need to visit various work at home mom (wahm) forum boards and/or web sites, work at home web sites or Direct Sales web sites. You can also find some by doing a web search on google for the keyword Direct Sales Vendor Fair.

Most vendor fair hosts do charge you a small amount of money to participate, usually $3.00 to $20.00 to help cover the costs of the chat room and advertising of the event. However, you will find a few free ones if you look for them.

When it comes to signing up and participating in an online vendor fair, there are a few things you need to look for.

1. How is the event being advertised? If the host site is charging you to particpate, they are equally responsible for helping to advertise the event.

Look online or ask them directly how they are advertising the event? Is this advertising online and/or offline? Text Ads, Banner Ads, Social Network Ads or forum ads?

Once you have that information, INVESTIGATE and make sure you are seeing those advertisements. Why? In my 5 years of doing online vendor events, way too often I have seen host sites take your money and then never advertise the event, they are clearly doing this for profit. If they are charging you…you have the RIGHT to expect that they are advertising the event. (and not just ads on their site).

2. Are the times posted for the Vendor Fair Time Slots, convenient? What I mean is this, are the time slots great ones that can be utilized by all time zones?

Example: a 9am to 12 noon EST time are NOT good time slots because West Coast Shoppers are still in bed or busy that early in the morning.

3. Fair Spots should run 30-60 minutes in length. Anything under 30 minutes is a joke in my opinion. I once attended a fair that the vendors had 10 minute spots, are you kidding me? By the time they got done with their intro, they cut them off and moved onto the next vendor. Anything over 60 minutes loses the customers attention.

4. Is there a variety of companies being represented? If you sell jewelry, you don’t want to present your items on the same day that 8 other jewelry consultants present their products. There needs to be a variety of vendors with a variety of products.

I once attended a vendor fair online and in a 6 hour period of time, there were 5 candle company consultants…this was candle company over-kill.

5. Reputation and Word Of Mouth. You should always ask other consultants online if they have ever heard of XYZ site and if anyone has ever participated in one of their vendor events. Why? Reputation! Over time, a good vendor site will build a strong following that produces the results that you seek. A newer site will not have the same results as an established one. So, you should ask other consultants who do business online for their recommendations and experience.

In a nut shell, particpating in online vendor events can prove to be a great extension of your business to garner in some additional product sales. However, you need to participate with vendor sites who know what they are doing.

Important Reminder: Just as its important for the host site to advertise and promote the event, its equally IMPORTANT that you help to advertise the event too. A vendor event can ONLY be successful if both the host site and ALL of the vendors help to promote the event.

Shelly

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