Beginning Challenges

Well, like any endeavor worth undertaking, my goal of establishing an affordable online card store has some challenges that I will need to overcome.  I've thought of a few major ones that I will address today, as that will perhaps get me thinking of potential solutions.

Here are some of the potential problems I need to overcome, listed in the order greatest to least importance, in my personal opinion:

1. I don't have the Internet at home.  This, needless to say is a huge one.  It is virtually impossible to run any sort of Internet-based store without the Internet.  I typically use the Internet at my mother's home, as well as the local library, and a local coffee shop.  Even when I have the Internet, Pocatello, Idaho, where I currently reside, was recently rated as having the nation's slowest actual Internet connection speed, so even when I am on the Internet, it can be a bit frustrating, both in waiting for my computer, and in the fact that I could go to some random town, like, say, Hampton, Iowa, and be able to find a better Internet connection than here.  Fortunately, my wife has to take an online class for school, and she finally decided that we're going to get it sometime before the next semester starts in January, so while I can't do anything about the speed, the availability of the Internet will shortly resolve itself.  HOOORRAAYY!!
2. My scanner isn't working well. Having done direct Internet sales a few previous times, I know that having a good picture is utterly important, and the best way to get pictures of baseball cards is to simply scan them in.  The printer/scanner which my wife and I inherited this past summer works beautifully as a printer, but the scanner scans images in rather fuzzy, and I don't want my potential customers thinking that I'm selling them shoddy baseball cards!
3. I haven't blogged before!  It's true.  But I decided I should start doing it, because I have heard that blogging regularly on a website a way to get it to move up in search engine rankings. Specifically, one of the things search engines look for is frequently added content, particularly words.  Plus it will help when more people start reading and commenting on my blog, hence doing some of my work for me! In the meanwhile, I have to learn how to use this thing, and add pictures and links and so forth, so it will look more visually interesting than it currently is (or isn't).  I find it ironic that as the world is embracing microblogging for the purpose of changing the world and overthrowing world governments and so forth, I'm just barely getting into regular blogging for the purpose of starting a small business.  This is so 2008.  I guess I had better catch up sometime, so this is as good a time as ever.

Well, to go along with the first problem I addressed, I am out of time to write more, but perhaps I'll come back to it the next time I'm online!