Our site is also up on Amazon's Z shops, but we don't particularly like it at all. It takes a very large amount of work to keep it going. The way Amazon has set-up the drop shipping -- you need to get the credit card from the person -- is just not practical. We're only up there for the presence of it, but we do not make very much money at all.

The way people surf over there is different. Even though we have 300 products on Z shops, we only sell 10 videos of the same title. I can't figure out why.

If you are a small business owner going up on Yahoo, you still get beat down by all the big guys because they have the advertising dollars to pay for the prominent spots. But because we've got 5-star for our services, they have put us into higher levels so people could find us. We have found a lot of our shoppers coming from Yahoo.

Online we focus mainly on search engine submission. We do have an affiliate program with some of our manufacturers that do not have online ordering on their sites. We have tried banner advertising and hiring a web site promotion company, both of which turned out to be wastes of time and money.

Our offline marketing consists of our 44 page catalog, sent out twice a year, and reviews of our products in industry and non-industry periodicals. Our best form of marketing, online and off, would be through press releases and articles.

Newspapers and other means of media have been the most effective strategies for us. So when a parent is reading about our catalog in the Dallas Morning News, we'll get hundreds and hundreds of phone calls and major amount of hits on our site.

Financially, it goes hand-in-hand. We make our money off our web site and our catalog because we're selling direct to the customers. We're not selling to another wholesaler or another retailer where we will have to do another wholesale discount.

Because we deal with a lot of schools, libraries and other large institutions, a lot of our web site orders are larger .

The Web and catalog complement each other because a lot of our clients who receive catalogs are avid web users. Even if they get our catalog, most order on the web. Like with mothers, it is easier to go to their computer at night when their kids are in bed to place orders.

We also tie-in our catalog and web site in our promotions. After watching a Rosie O'Donnell show where a company was giving away an audio CD for every person who hit their web and request their catalog, I was inspired to do the same. I thought it was a great idea. Because we own some of our products, it is very inexpensive for us to give-away certain titles.

That day, we started our promotion where for every order you do, you'll receive a free video. So we drive a lot of customers to our web because they know that they get a free video. And it changes periodically, not every month but it could be every 6 or 8 weeks, depending. And it's not sloppy material: it is a title that is included in our main line. So that is how we drive a lot of people into our web site. And people love free items!

How does offering free shipping affect your bottom line?

A parent five years ago who goes to Target to get a children's video is more likely to choose Cinderella over the educational Big Red video.

So when I started with the brochure, I gave free shipping for every 3 items. Nobody was giving free shipping then. As a mom, I loved ordering from catalogs but I hate paying that shipping. I thought that if I could get them to order 3 videos (now it's 4), I could give them free shipping. Out of those 3 or 4 videos, they're going like at least two of them, which will make them come back for more.

If they'll only order one, my chances of their kid loving that video are slimmer. So that's why I did my free shipping -- to scoop up the customers and it worked greatly. My numbers were good and I was still making money, so my bottom line is fine.

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