Question
I'll bet no one else can beat that record, lol.
I haven't made any attempts since last fall to promote my store, however. The google adwords just weren't working for my vintage collectibles (though I think they can, I just need to find the right search words). I spent dozens, even hundreds of hours last summer setting up oscommerce but since last fall I've only spent a few hours here and there tweaking the appearance and (occasionally) adding ebay items to it that haven't sold. I did spend some time this winter adding some add-ons to oscommerce that created title pages from your products and metatag descriptions.
It was nice to find out the process works with oscommerce, I got an email saying I had an order and then almost immediately got an email from Paypal saying the customer had paid. Oscommerce took it all out of inventory and I can print both an invoice and packing slip from oscommerce on the orders page.
It was really easy to put into Auction Sage also, I just clicked on create a non-ebay sales invoice and pasted it all in. I was hoping it would be easy as I want to use one program to track all sales and where they are in the process(waiting payment, paid, shipped etc.).
I have a question for other store owners. I sell vintage collectibles, in case that matters. since google last did their thing back in the winter when they made some major changes (I think it was called florida?) I am getting next to no hits from google at all. Even without advertising I got about 300 last month from msn and about the same from yahoo but I got 3 from google.
The same is true of my ebay store, I have not had a single referral from google since they started the traffic reports on ebay but I have gotten several hundred from msn and yahoo. Is it just me or are others seeing this also?
I appreciate your thoughts,
Mel-
Answer
I just looked at my webstats for my webstore for the year and I have 3000 referrals from msn and yahoo and 64 from google.
Mel-
Answer
What do you think the 1 year worth of listing fees cost?
Answer
Mels I believe I offered to give you some pointers about this time a year ago. I was helping Heather at that time. Anyway Florida did hurt a lot of sites that were in highly competitive fields. If you will send me a private message with your url I will see what you can improve on. It is hard to give pointers for a site without seeing it. There are just too many variables.
Mike
Answer
empires,
did you mean how much did the store cost me? Nothing, I have an account with powwweb to host my ebay pics, it's large enough (650 meg) to hold my store also. oscommerce is a free program. only thing it cost me was my time but I do hope somewhere down the road my website will become a viable sales generator.
Obviously, I need to find the time to work on the keywords etc. but I find it difficult to justify spending time on it when I know the time I spend on ebay will generate an income.
Mike, thank you so much for that offer. If I can find the time this summer to work on the structure of it, I will definitely send you an email. Right now, like I said above, I just can't justify spending time on it other than copying listings from ebay.
Mel-
Answer
mels, congraulations on the sale. If you start getting more sales, you can explore ways to automatically take the osCommerce data and import into your auction management program in an automated way. I know one per year is not enough to justify the time. Looks like a link campaign with "reputable" sites may help you with the rankings...
Answer
one amusing fact
the engine driving the msn and yahoo search is one and the same
it is google
the results you get from the msn and yahoo search are the same as from google
the only difference is which site the people actually did the search from as there is no difference in the actual search engines
Answer
loner,
that is what I thought too and wondered why I am getting hundreds of referrals from them and hardly any from google. strange, need to find the time to look at it.
But the good news is, just had my SECOND store sale! cool. I need to go into oscommerce and see if it tells me how an individual customer found the site. I use awstats for my website and it gives me all that info but would have to figure out which ip address is the customer who bought. oscommerce keeps so much info on a customer it probably has that as well.
At least this has given me some incentive to work on my store,
Mel- (who apparently can't remember the email address she signed up with before under "mels")
Answer
Loner I believe Yahoo and MSN no longer use Google search results. If you do a search on each and compare I believe you will see a difference. I have the Yahoo and Msn bots visiting my websites almost daily.