www.Great-Deals-4-U.co.uk

I have recently started working in Syria and you can imagine my initial anticipation and trepidation when I first heard that had secured a contract for one year in a country that gets a lot of negative press coverage. I when there expecting to find a much suppressed population with extremely strict Muslim laws and huge amounts of poverty caused by worldwide sanctions. Imagine my surprise then, when I arrived and found a population that seems to be very friendly and helpful and thriving businesses being carried out throughout the country. Admittedly, there is a certain amount of poverty, but there is as much in Egypt, which seems, on the outside anyway, to be a more liberal country. Image also how I felt when I found out that all kinds of alcoholic beverages are available in almost every shop in every street. Another surprising aspect that I never realised before is the quantity and quality of Syria’s historical buildings and monuments. There are literally hundreds, of well preserved historical sites throughout Syria, some of which date back over 2000 years, some even older than that. Some the best preserved and most complete Roman and Byzantine structures can be found in Syria for example. Did you also know that the famous clothe, Damask, originated from Damascus the capital of Syria, (obvious really when you think about it, but I’d never thought about it before? Other interesting facts include the fact that Syria is famous for producing roses that are converted in Rose Oils and Rose Water for a variety of uses including perfumes and scents. In a mountain area of Syria there is a small Christian town called Maalula. The people of this town still speak the dialect known as Syriac or Western Aramaic. That’s the language that Jesus was supposed to have spoken and this area is only one of a few in the world where the language is still spoken.
Another thing I found incredibly interesting is the fact that Christian and Muslim communities co-exist here without any problem at all. There are many preserved churches and cathedrals that date from the time of the crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries and there are also many mosques and palaces from the same periods.
Overall, I have been pleasantly surprised by what I have found here in Syria and I would recommend anyone interested in history whether it be Roman, Christian, Muslim, Byzantine or whatever, you will sure to be able to find something of interest here.

I’ve been trying to make a go of three web shops now for a couple of years with little success.
My three sites include:-
www.bargain-deals-4-u.com
An American online Shopping Mall selling a huge selection of goods at hugely discounted prices, including jewelry, tools, toys, electronic item and much more. This is the site that I expected to succeed the most due to the excellent range of goods available in the shop. However, so far to date, I have had very few customers.
My second site is:-
www.great-deals-4-u.co.uk
This too is an online Shopping Mall but this time a British site selling a vast array of goods at very reasonable prices, including gifts, cameras, tools, GPS and much more. This site, in contrast to my American site, caters mainly for the UK market and although it doesn’t contain such a selection as my American site it has produced more sales.
My third and final site is:-
www.onlinedvdsales.co.uk
An online DVD store selling a huge selection of DVDs and CDs at greatly reduced prices. This site is relatively new and so far I have had limited success with this one.

All in all I am not particularly happy with the way these shops are performing. I have tried to do all that the ‘experts’ recommend as far as providing links to my sites but progress seems to be extremely slow.
I must admit, I have been neglecting all of the sites recently because I have other projects that I am seeing to at the moment, but I would have expected greater success by now due to the amount of work I have put into them in the past.

However, I keep soldiering on. If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate the information.

Since my last posting I have been busy creating another online shop. This time I have opened an Online DVD Shop where it is possible to purchase DVD films at very reasonable, reduced prices prices. My aim with this site is to provide customers with quality DVD's at discount prices. So. if you require bargain DVDs then check out this site:

www.onlinedvdsales.co.uk

www.Bargain-deals-4-u.com is my American website that sells all kinds of items at very reasonable prices. There are great bargains to be had om jewelry, tools, outdoor equipment, toys and gifts. Everything is sold at great discount and the stock items are constantly being updated to give a huge choice of quality products. Our fine jewelry items are a particularly good buy as we can supply exceptional quality diamond, gold and silver bracelets, necklaces, earrings and bangles at huge discounts.

I have been trying for about a year now to set up two webshops: www.great-deals-4-u.co.uk and www.bargain-deals-4-u.com. The first is an Online Shopping Mall and the second site is an American Onlune Shopping Mall. Let me start by explaining my experiences with E-bay.

There is a lot of hype from companies on the web offering to provide you with drop shipping stock, some very good, but many very bad. For those of you who don’t know what drop shipping is, put simply, it is when you market products that someone else is going to supply and ship for you. You don’t actually have the stock, but you rely on your dropship supplier to ship the goods to wherever you stipulate. You receive the retail price and cost of shipping from your customer, and you have an arrangement with your supplier, to pay him at a “discounted” rate. The difference between the retail and “discounted” prices is yours to keep.
I have put discounted in inverted commas because very often the discounted prices are not sufficiently competetive for you to gain sales at a profit.

Anyway, back to Ebay. When I first started dealing with drop shippers I decided that I would first sell items on Ebay. This was expected to show me whether I could make a profit or not, and it would also save me the expense of setting up a webshop unecessarily. Unbeknown to me, Ebay doesn’t like dropshippers, even though many suppliers claim you can make huge profits by selling their wares on Ebay.

At first everything went well. So well in fact, that I started up my own Ebay shop. I loaded my site with masses of items from dropship suppliers, such as plasma screens, TV’s, tools, etc. I should mention here that the suppliers I was dealing (and still am incidentaly), have proved to be very reliable. I invested in all the webtools to make my life easier and improve my sales, and I also spent a lot of time making my webpages on Ebay looking attractive for buyers. In all, I spent quite a lot of money and a considerable amount of time on my enterprise. I ended up completing nearly 300 transactions without a single complaint. Then suddenly Ebay shut my shop down. They requested all receipts for the items that I was selling, copies of utilities bills etc. etc. I packaged masses of pages together, downloaded from my dropship suppliers websites, including proof of my memberships etc. and sent the whole lot off to Ebay in Ireland, as requested, at great postal expense. I heard nothing from Ebay for some time so I contacted them again and promptly sent off all the required information again and again until eventually I gave up. They were always claiming that they hadn’t received anything or that they required more information and so on. The truth of the matter is they don’t like dropshipping, which I have since found out.

The moral of this story is that if you intend to dropship and sell on Ebay then I suggest you don’t, as it could end in tears. I found out the hard way and it cost me a lot of time and expense.