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A gift shop can be an enjoyable and profitable business that only requires the bare minimum of start up costs and overheads. Although you could open a traditional storefront, this is not necessary. It is possible to be fairly successful, while running your business from home. However, for your gift shop to get off the ground, you will require a few essential items of equipment. These are as follows:

Stock

For a gift shop, balloons are an excellent product to sell. However, you will need to purchase weights, glue and string as well. You should buy your stock from a wholesaler, not from a different shop that has marked the price up already. You can locate suppliers of wholesale balloons on the web, or in the telephone directory. Make sure that you compare the prices of different suppliers, prior to purchasing anything. Also, you can find suppliers by attending the Balloon Artists Convention, which takes place every year.

Vehicle for Deliveries

Balloons that are inflated occupy a great deal of space. Thus, to transport them to customers, you will have to purchase a big delivery vehicle. Also, you might have to transport tanks to inflate the balloons with. Several gift shop owners use an SUV (or big van) that has the back seats taken out. Your vehicle ought to display a sign on its’ side with your telephone number. This will allow you to advertise your shop, while you are on the move. Your sign can be painted professionally or (for a more cost effective alternative) it could be stuck on magnetically. An additional cost is that you need to insure your vehicle for commercial purposes.

Effective Marketing

If your gift shop is to attract customers and be a success, you need to have a marketing strategy. You could use a website, business cards, fliers or telephone book listings to advertise your shop. Also, you can attract customers by personally visiting businesses that might use wholesale balloons, like banks, schools and car lots. However, there are cities like Houston that have laws banning outdoor balloon advertising. Hence, always know the laws in your locale, prior to approaching businesses.

Equipment for Your Office

Whether your shop is offline or online, you will need office equipment. Firstly, and most importantly, you need a telephone. Your business telephone number ought to be a cell phone number, or redirected to your cell phone. This way, you can still take orders, whilst making deliveries. Also, think about getting a fax machine. You will require a PC, with an Internet connection and printer. This will enable you to monitor stock and financial details, print receipts and process orders by credit card.

Helium Tanks

Gift shops need helium for inflating balloons. Helium weighs less than air, so the balloons will float and not drop to the ground. Wholesale suppliers can provide you with helium tanks. Finally, you will require a helium/air 60/40 regulator, as endorsed by the International Balloon Institute. This regulator is hooked to the tanks that fill the balloons.

A lot of people dream of making money online. However, from dream to reality there is a long way. One of the best ways to generate profits online is by creating an online business.

Nevertheless, not all of us have the necessary funds to start big. For those who have already started to put their plan into action, we have five great internet marketing strategies.

Not only are these golden nuggets of wisdom extremely useful, but they are also designed to help businesses with tight budgets.

1. Content Marketing

There is no better strategy for an online project, than to create great, well-written, original content. This method won’t cost you one dime as long as you do it yourself. However, it is time consuming.

As a result it is imperative to consistently create helpful content for your blog, guest-blog in order to generate good-quality back-links and also post on free blogs for more credibility.

If you don’t have time to write articles yourself, you should work with someone who has your best interests at heart.

Nevertheless, content marketing isn’t only about the written part. You also have to engage with your readers in order to gain more outreach. I cannot stress the importance of social media enough.

In this day and age, not having a Twitter, Google+ or Facebook accounts means that you are pretty much non-existent.

2. Outsourcing

Another useful marketing strategy is outsourcing. The term of outsource defines the practice of hiring an online entrepreneur or affiliate agency to promote your business. If done correctly it guarantees great results.

However, if you are new to the world of internet marketing you should choose a less risky strategy with low-cost fees.

There are several great online platforms like Odesk and Elance which provide a huge database of freelancers to hire. I recommend that you hand pick your employees.

Moreover, you should keep a close eye on their activity, especially in the beginning, or you might end up spending more than you can had bargained for.

3. Affordable Web Hosting Solutions

Affordable Web Hosting services is a risk you have to take. The truth is that there are a lot of scammers online, but for most there is no other possibility.

We recommend that you conduct extensive research before picking a provider. Cloud hosting is one of the safest and most reasonable deals you can get.

Cloud hosting offers unique domain names, easy to use control panels and reliable hosting.

4. Provide free information to people

Assuming that you have already picked your niche (It is imperative to pick your niche from the very start), you can provide information, tips and tutorials which can attract people to your blog.

For example, if you are trying to sell colored crayons you can create guides and how-to posts about drawing and arts.

It is this type of content that will make people want to connect with your business. Moreover, there are a lot of free forums, where different users ask questions.

You can provide them with much needed information, be seen as an expert, and gain more credibility. Add your website in your signature and wait for people to visit your page.

5. Online Marketing Sites

Every business has its unique set of marketing challenges and opportunities. This means that you will need specific strategies in order to grow your company.

Nobody is born an expert, and this means that you should not shy away from useful tips given by experts.

There are plenty of websites which offer great learning tutorials and tricks which might lead you to solutions that might have never crossed your mind.

1. Come up with your own channel on YouTube
Creating an own channel for your business is the first and basic thing that you have to do after entering into the YouTube and before posting your videos on the website. Generally, a channel will be automatically created when you sign up with YouTube. The thing is you have to maintain it properly. Within the channel, you can create your own profile, organize contents and create playlists.

2. Choose perfect account type suitable to your Marketing Campaign

You will be given an option during the sign up process of YouTube to select an account type for your YouTube account. Different account types will be there and the basic type is standard. Each type has its specific role on the website. For example, ‘a director account’ lets you produce your own web videos and allows adding custom logo to your profile. Similarly, each account type has its unique feature and you should select the one based on your business needs.

3. Create short videos

The best way to make your users to watch your video is to make it short and sweet. The running time of video should be 5 minutes or less than that. If you have long videos to play, then break them into different segments and attach them in the playlist.

4. Tag videos properly

After creating your video or uploading from any sources, just make sure that you have organized your video under perfect category and tagged it. You can always check with other videos about how they are tagged and categorized, which will finally pay off. It may not be possible to fit your content exactly under one category, but still a related category will work when doing a similar search through keywords option.

5. Create playlists

You might be adding your own videos to the list or include videos from some other sources, whatever it is do create a playlist for all the videos that you include in your channel. It makes the user experience great and easy in searching for your channel videos and they will sure express their gratitude for it.

6. Use YouTube promotion facilities

You do not have to wait to see who has visited your profile and watched your videos. YouTubeoffers you some self-promotion facilities. Make use of that to promote your videos. Such a facility is sending emails to the users. Similarly, you can create bulletins from your profile or from other people’s channels. Bulletins are nothing but short messages to the users.

7. Create video responses for other user’s videos

It is so simple to create video responses. Instead of commenting on a video of other users, you can create video responses right below the main video player. You can even record your video using your webcam or upload from your previous videos. However, make sure that your response is related to the content of the main video.

8. Join Groups

YouTube has a great community groups online. You can search in YouTube for different groups and you can join a category that is related to your marketing campaign. You will get more audience in a group. People joining your group will view your content and it directly increases your traffic.

9. Make use of YouTube streams

You can contact the YouTube team directly through the streams. You can share your videos online and discuss about your videos in real time through YouTube streams. This gives you an option to chat with the users in real time about your videos and know their feedbacks on your work.

10. Active sharing

It is a latest feature that lets you drive more traffic to your content. This feature will make your name visible on the side of the video that you are watching. If another user who is watching the same video gets curious about your detail, then he will visit your profile page to see your videos. This is another way of attracting users and drying traffic to your content.