Tip No.5 - The option to earn more if you charge more

This tip is all about prices and commission. When your MoreFrom.Me is first set up, the prices are set to be exactly the same as the MoreFrom group websites. We expect most people will stick with this default price setting, but there is an option to charge more and earn more commission.

We don't claim the default, MoreFrom group prices will be the cheapest prices all of the time - for all 100,000 products, but many will be. Products that are not the cheapest will be very competitive. Smart shoppers do not shop on price alone, they consider the reputation of the retailer and we have a great reputation. It's also worth remembering that with us the price you see is the price you pay, unlike other retailers we don't charge for delivery or add hidden credit card fees.

At the default price you always earn the default commission of 1% of the sale price. To some, 1% may not seem a lot but it is actually the average profit margin for the top 1,000 IT resellers in the UK. The commission you earn is paid as credit to spend on anything sold in your MoreFrom.Me. With over 100,000 technology products you won't be short of things to buy with your credit. It's worth noting we are happy to pay our MoreFrom.Me-ers this commission for giving us the business, we do not increase the price in any way to cover the cost.

For most people selling to friends and family the default price will work just fine. For others (predominately IT dealers and resellers) there's the option to charge a bit more and earn a bit more.

One of the most unique features of your MoreFrom.Me is that you can change the prices. Many IT companies spend a lot of time with their clients, researching and recommending the right products and IT solutions. Their clients appreciate this time and expertise and are happy to pay for it. Typically an IT consultancy providing this level of service will be looking to earn more margin on it's sales. With this in mind, we've developed MoreFrom.Me with the ability to charge more for a product and earn more commission under such circumstances.

If you decide you want to earn more commission, it's done by adding a percentage mark-up to our default price. You choose what percentage mark-up to add and we split what you add 50/50. So for example if you add 6% we get 3% and you get 3%. Plus you also get the default 1% commission giving you a total of 4%. The current maximum mark-up is 25%, so the maximum you can earn is half of that, 12.5% plus the 1% making 13.5%.

How to change the prices to earn more commission
Find under 'My Account'
Log in to your 'My account' and go to the 'Manage your MoreFrom.Me' area. Click on the 'Prices' link, you'll then see a 'pull down selector' set at 'Add 0% to our price'. When you click on the selector you can choose to add a percentage mark-up. You'll also see some examples of how the new price will look and how much you will earn in commission. When you've picked your percentage, click 'Save'.

It's so easy to instantly change the price, you could change your mark-up depending on who you are targeting, then change it back again for someone else.

If you are an IT company you may find our Q&A for IT Dealers and PC Retailers useful.

The MoreFrom.Me IT Business Q&A

The launch of Morefrom.Me has generated a lot of interest from IT Dealers and PC Retailers. Many have set-up a MoreFrom.Me and are making sales already. Others have been considering how to use a MoreFrom.Me and asking some interesting questions. We've had some great conversations and thought it worth sharing the questions and answers.

Q. Is 1% commission the most you can offer?

A. The standard 1% is the starting point for commission, you can earn up to 13.5%.

It's also just been reported that 1% is actually the average profit margins among the UK’s top 1,000 resellers.

Q. So, how do I earn more commission?

A. One of the unique things about MoreFrom.Me is that you can add a mark-up to the prices to increase your commission. Unlike an affiliate scheme were the selling price is fixed by the retailer. With a MoreFrom.Me you can charge more to earn more.

Q. How does the price mark-up work?

A. You choose what percentage mark-up to add and we split what you add 50/50. So for example if you add 6% we get 3% and you get 3%. Plus you also get the standard 1% commission giving you a total of 4%. The current maximum mark-up is 25%, so the maximum you can earn is half of that, 12.5% plus the 1% making 13.5%.

Q. How do I change the prices on my MoreFrom.Me?

A. There's a simple 'pull down selector' in the 'Manage your MoreFrom.Me' area of your 'My Account'. You select a percentage, hit save and it's automatically applied to your MoreFrom.Me. It's so easy to change the price, you can decide what you want to charge for different customers. You could change your mark-up depending on who you are targeting, then change it back again for someone else.

Q. I'll earn more by selling to customers myself. Why would I use MoreFrom.Me ?
A. MoreFrom.Me may not be a solution for all your customers, and you may want to deal with some customers directly to maximise your profit. But what about those that you don't normally have time to deal with or who are not worth your time. You could just selectively promote your MoreFrom.Me to those customers. Otherwise you can bet they will be off to the nearest PC shop and you will earn nothing from that. After all we don't charge any ongoing fee!

Q. Whats the difference between this and a "shop in a box" or "white label"?
A. We do everything for Free!
- No monthly web store fees
- No web hosting/security/bandwidth fees
- No Visa/PayPal/ebay merchant fees
- No need to buy, deliver and chase payment
- No site maintenance & development costs
- No customer service staff costs
- No stock & warehousing costs
- No returns headaches

Q. So, what costs am I saving using MoreFrom.Me?

A. The main cost is your time. Once you've selected the right product for your customer, you can email them a link to it on your MoreFrom.Me and we take care of everything else. That saves you a lot of time, plus there's no invoicing and banking costs, costs that are often overlooked.

Q. I've worked hard to gain my customers, how do I know you won't steal them?

A. We've no incentive to do so, your customers are of more value to us when they continue being your customers. They have a relationship with you and they are more likely to shop somewhere you recommend to them (i.e. your MoreFrom.Me). So because we're in this for the long term benefits, it's better if you keep them and we work together. They won't be sent any marketing from us.

Q. How do I know you won't let my customers down?

A. We have a very good reputation for customer service, we've consistently won awards and scored highly in independent service and reliability surveys. Looking after customers is what we are good at, take a look at our track record of award wins.

Q. I already have an e-commerce website why should I swap?

A. The question is - is your current online shop making you money or costing you money and time? The MoreFrom.Me solution frees up your time, costs nothing and gives you a guaranteed margin. To get sales through your existing shop, your prices need to be very low, so your profit is very small.

Take costs like monthly site fees, merchant costs and development time out of your profit and you're probably left with less than 1% on average. MoreFrom.Me gives you a 1% minimum for doing very little in comparison. Independent analysts Plimsoll recently reported that the average profit margins among the UK’s top 1,000 resellers have fallen to 1%. So even with a MoreFrom.Me set at the 1% minimum, you're guaranteed to be more profitable than the average, because you've got no other costs.

Q. I'd like to run a MoreFrom.Me from our domain, have you got any plans to allow for a custom DNS setup etc?
A. You can set up a domain to point to www.MoreFrom.biz/YOURNAME, but the site would need to use our URLs from then on. IT pro's like us tend to look at things like URLs, but it's worth remembering the majority of people don't even think about it, they'll be looking at the content on the page.

Q. Won't people just see the 'More' references and go to the 'More' site?
A. The connection to MoreFrom and MoreComputers is obvious to you, knowing where the idea has come from and who told you about it. Plus, if you have bought from us in the past, you are aware of our brand. The truth is any visitors you send to your MoreFrom.Me will know about you and won't be looking for 'More', they've probably never heard of us.

Your MoreFrom.Me is pitched as a partnership with MoreFrom, so it does bring the benefit of our service and support awards. These awards give your buyers extra confidence to shop online. We've also removed any links that might have directed people to a 'More' site. We want people to stick with the person they know (you), not come to us. We believe we'll get more business that way in the long run.

Q. Can I order for myself through my MoreFrom.Me and still earn commission?
A. Yes, of course. Any sale made at your MoreFrom.Me earns you commission. You can place orders for yourself and your customers for delivery to your address. It may be that you'd prefer to have an item for a customer delivered to you, particularly if you are doing an install for example. You may simply want to order the item yourself, have us deliver it to your customer and you invoice your customer directly. If you can earn enough margin to warrant this extra work it makes sense.

If you have a question, just ask it in comments below or send a question to us and we'll be sure to answer it.

Tip No.4 - Add your own text in 'About Us'

Here's your chance to tell visitors to your MoreFrom.Me a little bit about yourself. Use this area to simply tell people who you are or use it to give weight to your opinion. It might be that you're an expert in a certain area of tech or that your business specialises in certain products and services. Adding your own text to your 'About Us' page is the way to profile who you are.

How to add your own text to the 'About us' page

Find under 'My Account'

Go to 'My Account' and log in. the first link under 'My MoreFrom.Me' is 'About Me'. Click on this link and you can type or cut and paste some information into the text box. You have up to 1000 characters to use. When you've added your text click 'Submit for approval'. We'll take quick look and you'll get an email when your text is approved.

Tip No.3 - Add reviews and 'how to' articles

Any review text you add now takes centre stage on your MoreFrom.Me. It's a great way to personalise your MoreFrom.Me even further. The text you add is displayed in it's own highlighted box in a prominent position on the product pages of your MoreFrom.Me.

This featured area can be used for reviews of products you own, not just products you've bought from MoreFrom. It can also be used to talk about the the product in more general terms, you could write about how to set it up, what to do with the product or what makes it better than the alternatives. Your review will be added to our normal review pages, so we ask that you don't refer to yourself in the wording. You name/profile picture or logo will be displayed on your MoreFrom.Me, along side what your write, so it will be clear it's come from you.

This is a good way to show people what products you use or have expertise in. The great thing with adding reviews to your MoreFrom.Me is, if people like the review or recommendation and decide to buy, you'll get something in return.

How to add a review

Find under 'reviews tab' on every product page

To add a review go to the product page for the product you want to work on. Click the 'Reviews' tab and scroll down until you see 'Write review for this product'. Enter a name (a name you're happy to be shown on screen). Then enter the email address used when you set up your MoreFrom.Me. Next,enter your text in the review box, then pick a star rating and you're done. We'll then approve the review and you'll get an email to say it's live.

If you've been a MoreFrom or MoreComputers.com customer and added reviews in the past, all your older reviews will be highlighted on your MoreFrom.Me (providing you used the same email address).

This is a great feature and can give you plenty of opportunities to share links and get prospective buyers to your MoreFrom.Me. Your review can be anything from a few sentences and a star rating to an in-depth analysis and how to article.

Tip No.2 - Pick products for your homepage with My Recommended

For extra personalisation why not choose the products that appear at the top of your homepage?

Using the My Recommended feature

Find in My account under 'My Recommended'

Do you like PCs or Macs? AMD or Intel? You can choose the key products (out of the 100,000+) on your MoreFrom.Me that you think are the best. It could be that you simply always buy Sony or that you've never had a problem with Asus motherboards. This is your chance to fly the flag for the kit and brands you like or simply pick the ones you think will sell the best.

To add a product to your homepage, log in and go to the product you want to add. Just below the 'Buy' button you'll see a grey 'Add to My Recommended' button. Click this button and you're done. You can see all the products you've recommended in the My Account section under 'My Recommended'. You can also remove recommended products from here too.

Tip No.1 - Profile Photos, Logos & Theme Colours

So you've set up your MoreFrom.Me what next?

Take a look in the 'My Account' section, you'll find all the following under 'Edit Theme'

Have you added a profile photo?

Find under 'Add/Change Profile Picture'

Let people know it's you by adding a profile picture, in just the same way you do on Facebook. You can use any picture you like. Why not consider using the same picture you use on any social network sites you frequent, that way people can see instantly it's you. If you'd rather not have a picture of yourself and are not sure what to use, a Google search for something like 'free profile pictures' will return lots of ideas.

Your profile photo should ideally be 70 x 70 pixel, that's the standard size for a Facebook and Twitter profile image. You can use a bigger image and it will be scaled down to fit. The maximum file size is 100KB. If your file is bigger than that it won't upload, please use a photo editing software package to reduce it or try an online tool like www.shrinkpictures.com

The alternative to a profile photo is to go for a full logo or graphic header

Find under 'Add/Change Logo'

Uploading a logo/image will replace the MoreFrom logo, your name and any profile photo you may be using. This is a great option for businesses or if you simply want more room to get creative with your name. This option will also remove your name so it's worth including this in any image you upload. To help you create a great looking image, take a look at free online photo editing tools like Photoshop Online.

Your logo/image should ideally be 90 pixels high and up to 500 pixels wide. You can use a bigger image and it will be scaled down to fit. The maximum file size is 100KB. You can upload .Jpeg, .Gif and .png files. Png files will look better if you're using a text style logo/image.

Did you know the colours are completely customisable?

Find under 'Change Theme Colours'

You don't have to stick with the colour theme you picked at set up, it's easy to choose another 'Suggested Theme'. You can then choose to edit that theme, making colours darker or lighter or picking a new colour altogether. If you have specific colours you would like to use, click on advanced and you can enter the Hex References for the colours you'd like. With the advanced option you can exactly match your MoreFrom.Me colours to the colours you use on your website or blog.