If you’re just getting started with e-commerce, then dropshopping can help you source and sell thousands of products – without ever having to store or buy your own inventory. In this video Naruby from Ordoro (a great multi-channel dropshipping solution that, of course, integrates with BigCommerce) does a great job explaining the basics of dropshipping.

She explains the 3 simple steps involved in setting up your own online store with full dropshipping capabilities using BigCommerce and Ordoro. Definitely worth watching if you’re more interested in making (lots of) sales than buying, storing and shipping your own products.

Pareto’s principle states that 20% of your effort results in 80% of the result. While this ratio isn’t always exact, the general idea is that not everything you spend your time doing is productive, nor will it produce the results you want.

In this video I explain how Pareto’s principle is at work in your business right now and how you can use the simple concept to work less and accomplish more – specifically how you can increase the growth rate of your e-commerce business without sacrificing your work/life balance.

The key really is to shift the 80/20 balance in regards to tactics (day-to-day tasks that you can pay someone to do) versus strategy (the ideas to increase revenue that will grow your business). If you can shift from the typical 80% of time on tactics and 20% of time on strategy to 20% of time on tactics and 80% of time on strategy, then you can quite easily double the growth of your business in 2011.

Stepping back from the day-to-day and asking yourself as a business owner “where do I want to take this business and why?” is also one of the key questions you have to ask if you’re going to use Pareto’s principle to grow.

Millions of people make new years resolutions on December 31st every year. As a smart business owner you can create a win-win situation where you sell more products by catering to the needs of people looking to stick with their new years resolutions. In this video I’ll show you how with three clear examples of how new years resolutions can help sell more:

1. Green tea
2. Tank tops
3. Holidays

Even if you don’t sell any of these products, the ideas will still hold true for your business and can easily boost your sales by 50% or more in January.

In this video I discuss 3 tools designed to help increase the conversion rate of your website.

First up is HelloBar which allows you to add a toolbar to your website which can encourage visitors to sign up to your email list, Facebook page, etc. You simply choose the color of the bar, type in the text you want to appear and specify the link. Dead simple but super effective.

Next is KissInsights which allows you to include a floating question box on your website to ask visitors questions at certain points during the checkout/browsing process. You can then take these questions and include answers in your FAQ page or use them to improve the flow of your checkout process.

Finally, Visual Website Optimizer allows you to run multi-variate tests on your website. Tests can be created using a simple point-and-click WYSIWYG tool and it’s not uncommon to improve your conversion rate by 10% or more simply by testing different headlines, buttons and banners.

P.S. BigCommerce.tv is now live. It’s a quick shortcut that takes you straight to my YouTube guru channel.

If I had to promote a brand new business and had $0, the first thing I’d do (besides social media marketing) is look to setup mutually beneficial (i.e. win-win) partnerships.

In this video I’ll show you a simple strategy for creating a joint venture contest from scratch. By partnering with companies who sell complimentary products to yours, you can have your products promoted to their customers and subscribers via email, Facebook and Twitter. Your only cost is a few hours to setup the contest and $1,000 in prizes.

The cross-company synergy you get from a contest of this type is huge, and best of all you can implement this strategy if you’re just getting started because all you need to do is come up with prizes to give away. You don’t need a huge brand or a marketing team either.

NET time stands for No Extra Time and is a method to effectively double your productivity during periods of work or exercise that don’t require all of your senses to perform the task at hand. The best example is running: it requires physical effort but very little mental juice.

So how can you implement NET time while running? Easy. Before you run, download an educational podcast (here’s ours) about business growth or marketing and listen to it while you run. If you run for one hour then you essentially accomplish two hours of productivity – one hour of running and one hour of learning from the podcast.

Another example is driving. If you have a 45 minute drive ahead of you then you can turn that into a 45 minute productivity session by listening to an educational podcast, CD, etc.

The most successful people treat their time like gold and don’t waste a minute of it.

In this video I’ll show you a dead simple yet super effective marketing strategy which involves using surveys, StumbleUpon and your blog to get extremely targeted visitors to your website for just 5 cents each. This strategy is infinitely scalable, which means if it works then you can get as many visitors as you need.

The basic idea is simple. You first build your ideal customer profile using a survey. Then, you create an ad campaign on StumbleUpon using demographic and geographic targeting. You setup your ad campaign to point to useful content on your blog (such as a “Top 10 Craziest Shoe Designs” post if you sell shoes) and at the bottom of your blog you include a call to action which directs visitors to your online store where they can buy what you mention in your blog post.

This is one of my many “under the radar” traffic getting strategies which I’ve recently decided to start sharing. Make sure you implement this before your competitors do.

This year we’ve gone all out in the Austin office to really get into the spirit of Halloween. We had a hilarious fashion parade (in the video above) with great prizes, but it all started when we decided to deck out the office, complete with skeletons, spider webs and blood:

You can watch the fashion parade hilarities in the video above, but here are some of our best costumes:

You can see all of the photos on Facebook. If a fun company culture is important to you and you’re passionate about a career with the fastest growing e-commerce platform in the world then make sure you take a look at our careers page – we’re always hiring.

Happy halloween y’all!

In this video I share my “Sales to Content” ratio which, if used correctly, can have a dramatic impact on the conversion rate of your online store.

The basic premise is simple: for every “sales” page on your website, you need to have at least two pieces of content that help establish trust, credibility and respect with your potential customers. Watch the video to learn which particular types of content work best.

Please note: This is the first video I’ve recorded in our new office and the acoustics are terrible. There’s some echo because we have wooden floors and the camera decided to randomly blur me a few times as well. I’ll be looking into a clip mic for the next video – if you know of a good one please email me (mitch [AT] bigcommerce). On a positive note though, my entire office wall is now a white board thanks to IdeaPaint – awesome

Ahhhh, time management. One of the most boring subjects on the planet for us entrepreneurs who only care about results, right?

Well it depends. Effective time management is one of just a few strategies you can implement to skyrocket the growth of your business. It doesn’t cost anything, it’s measurable (and we’re all about measuring, right?) and it’s something you can teach your team as well. Today I want to teach you how to go from being reactive (i.e. doing “stuff” to fix other people’s problems) to being proactive (i.e. accomplishing tasks that will help fulfill your goals and grow your company).

In this video I discuss time management strategies in the context of growing your company faster. Sure it’s nice to manage your time effectively, but what’s the real outcome you want? You can easily map hourly, daily and weekly time management strategies back to a huge increase in the growth of your company over a quarter or year if you know how.

In this video I’ll teach you how.