Business Opportunities Weblog

December 11, 2007 by Dane Carlson | 4 Comments

Today’s the day to announce the winner of the iPod Nano Giveaway. First, I’d like to thank goWholesale for sponsoring the contest.

The rules of the contest stipulated that the iPod Nano would go to the person who left a comment with the best tip for using the web to find products for their business.

And the winner is: Alessandro Galetto.

His tip:

I am not my own business yet but if I had one I would do some sort of social engineering first.

Use the web to understand what other similar businesses are using to run their operations. Hardware, software, supplies, goods, etc.

As the first thing I will use Google to find all of potentially similar businesses in the market I would like to address.

I would then go through their official web sites to understand how they work and operate.

The next step would be going through company blogs, if they have one. These blogs tend to have a lot of useful information on how the business is run.

At the end of this process I will have a list of senior manager names and, hopefully, a list of potential suppliers.

Using these names I would try to search for these names on business social sites like LinkedIn in order to gather more informations on their contacts. It is very usual to add suppliers contacts to LinkedIn shortly after having met them. This should help understand who they have met.

Having the list of suppliers I would use Google alerts to be advised on special deals on their products and services.

Sometimes I would also go through eBay for non critical stuff like office supplies or similar.

And, most important, I would also go through my social cloud to find advice.

Congratulations, Alessandro, and thank you to everyone who participated!

Remember, there are still five other giveaways going on this month, and more to come:

• My Favorite Books of 2007: BMOC
• My Favorite Books of 2007: The 4-Hour Workweek
• My Favorite Books of 2007: The Walton Street Tycoons
• My Favorite Books of 2007: Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing
• My Favorite Books of 2007: McIlhenny’s Gold

Update: Unfortunately, Alessandro lives outside the United States and so is unfortunately, disqualified under the rules. Ryan Knuppel is the new winner. His winning comment was:

It’s obvious that whether you run a business or work for a business, you will most likely have some experience buying products online. This has become the trend for most businesses and it’s only going to grow more.

Myself, I own a network of over 50 websites part-time. I own a sports events business part-time. And I work for a fortune 500 company on a full-time basis. I have a family and a life outside of computers as well. What am I getting at?

TIME is very valuable to me and it should be to you as a business owner as well. Buying products for your business online not only saves you money, but it saves you time like you wouldn’t believe. So what is my tip? My tip is – DON’T SPEND TOO MUCH TIME COMPARING PRICES. Pick a place to buy your products (goWholesale.com) – and stick with them. You will waste so much valuable time trying to find the “best deal” or the “best price” each time you need to buy. This is not time well spent. Even if it means spending a few more bucks – it’s worth it for the convenience of knowing who you are buying from and how they operate.

So that’s my tip. Since time is so valuable in everyones life and business. Do your research once, find a reliable – well priced place such as goWholesale, and STICK WITH THEM!

In Giveaways | 4 Comments