Wizard's Place

Archive for the ‘e-Commerce’ Category

Getting to the top of the search results is important, of course. Additionally, though, it helps to have more spots on the first page than just one. Let’s look at returns on Google for custom dog figurines, one of the more common search terms in the dog gifts industry.

As we can see on the screen capture (link above), with a little less than 70 thousand returns, Dog Lover Store is in the second position on the first page. That’s very good. But they are also on of three sites included in the Shopping Results special section which is also very good.

Additionally Dog Lover Store is represented on the first page, sixth spot, by their blog site, http://msmosites.com/dogloverstore/. This means they control two of the ten regular spots and have a featured place in the special section. Having more than one site can be very helpful. You can provide relevant back links and control additional spots on the SERPs.

Keep this in mind when deciding on your online business strategy.

For many years now I have been creating custom websites, eBay listing templates, About Me pages, and other HTML-coded pages for a variety of uses. From single listing templates, custom template filler forms, full eBay identity packages, to websites of every sort, working with individuals and other web hosting companies I have created thousands of web documents over the years.

I can create custom a listing template template to match your existing WordPress (or other) website or a custom WordPress theme to match your existing eBay store or listing template. Or I can create an entire multi-venue online identity package.

WAHMS Helper – Premium Coffee Roasters – Vintage Home Arts

I would be pleased to quote on your specific needs for a WordPress website, listing template, e-commerce identity package, custom website, or other web pages.

I’ve often said there are four things a person should have if they are going to sell online:

1 – their own domain name
2 – their own website even if they aren’t going to sell from it
3 – an eBay account
4 – an account on at least one other venue

These days there are a lot of good sellers leaving eBay because they have been caught in the DSR trap and lost the ability to get the lower listing price in the second tier store package. Often these sellers are angry, fed up with eBay, and cut all ties with the venue that previously was their primary source of income.

With reference to the don’t put all your eggs in one basket adage it is certainly better to have options in place before push comes to shove but even for those who don’t, cutting and running may be the worst approach. eBay can still be a valuable market for the seller who migrates most of their business elsewhere.

eBay does have a lot of traffic and it is still the biggest player in the venue market. To cut ties with them is the proverbial cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. Far better to keep a presence and at least make use of the numerous free services eBay offers. The forums are a great place to keep in touch and promote your business — indirectly, of course — and About Me pages are a potentially powerful advertising vehicle. Auction listings, for the member without a store are free and 30 day fixed price listings are still cheap, if not as cheap as they once were. An eBay account is a great way to get exposure for your off-eBay business.

But way another venue? Simple: people shop at other venue. Sometimes people who shop at other venues don’t shop at eBay. It’s just one more avenue of exposure. You really should list your items — at least some of them — at one or more of the many venues available in the marketplace today. Those that offer free listings provide, if nothing else, free advertising for your business. Those that allow you to link to your website are even better.

Main Street Mall Online is one of those places that provide free listings (the free mini-store offers ten completely free listings — no store rental, no listing fee, no final sales commission — FREE!) and allows you, indeed encourages you, to link to your own website. That’s a link for people to follow end a back link from a relevant site for SEO. Certainly w

I’ve seen a lot of discussion on various forums about the power of being part of a venue or community vs. having a stand-alone website. Often the thrust of the comments seems to be that a site like eBay is important because they bring millions of people to the site daily so your items will be seen, whereas having your own website leaves you out in the cold, all alone to find for yourself.

I beg to differ. There are advantages to communities and venues if they provide a way for your listings to be found easily by visitors but many don’t. Often venues are more about getting new sellers (their customers) to the site and less about providing a way for you to be found. I’ve seen venues and so-called community sites that have no mechanism for displaying a list of sellers or for searching for a seller by name, business name, or email address — all of these are important ways a seller could be found.

In particular, for most categories these days, eBay has so many listings and their search is so skewed in favor of key sellers (read “big”) that your listings are often never seen. It doesn’t matter how many visitors a site has in total. What matters to YOU is how many people actually see YOUR listing(s). Put a counter on your eBay listings and see how many hits you get. No one has have shown me a listing with a million or more viewers, or even close to that. Most listings are lucky if they get 100 hits. Sixty million, or whatever the daily traffic number is at eBay is meaningless.

So where do websites come in. Well, first of all, today’s websites are more affordable and offer many more features and functions. WordPress, my personal favorite, is a powerful, feature-rich, content management system for creating both information and e-commerce websites. But traditionally having your own website has meant being out there all alone. And that means little or no traffic.

Not any more. WordPress is an excellent base from which to build an Internet presence. It is very SEO friendly right out of the box and extremely easy to extend for top notch SEO response with an array of excellent plug-ins for the purpose.

But you can go one step further. Find a good, niche market, venue or community site that supports, and promotes, website categories and will help put your site on the map. Harness the power of a like-minded, product specific, group of sites to gain extended exposure and better placement in the search engine return pages (SERPs).

With the right package you can do better — significantly better — than you have done on eBay, and you can do it cheaper — significantly cheaper — than you have likely been paying for listings that haven’t been selling.

I’m interested in hearing from people who are interested in an affordable website that is easy to use and will be part of a niche-market or merchandise-specific community of sites.

Over the years I’ve installed a few websites. A few hundred actually. And in those years, with all the different packages, pre-configured, and custom sites I have done, when it comes to features, flexibility, ease of use, and shopping cart, I have to say that this is the very best. I am now offering this package as my primary e-commerce solution for many online sellers.

Built on a WordPress foundation, using the Templatic WPShop e-commerce theme (shown below), this website offers as complete a range of features and functions as any I’ve seen and allows for extensive customization.

Because it is built on WordPress it has, of course, an integrated blog. And, because of the new WordPress structure, it has the ability to easily add pages which appear, as if by magic, in the already established menu structure. No confusing HTML, CSS, or JavaScript coding here. And adding content is easy too. Post a blog, add a page, type in text, drop in pictures, upload and re-size — it’s all controlled from the built-in control panel called a dashboard.

And the WPShop theme integrates a complete inventory management, shopping cart, and payment processor system. It’s feature rich yet not over-loaded. It offers the things you need but not a lot of fluff you don’t. And, best of all, it uses the familiar blog/page posting process to list items. Listing is as easy as posting a blog entry! Nice.

Here’s a screen capture of the home page of a recent installation:

Before he retired a friend of mine and former business partner was the market leader in a very difficult field and we talked about his success. His business activity involved, among other things, cold calls and regular follow-up visits with his clients. He was actually quite shy (as many of us are) and he would find every excuse to not make the calls he needed to make. He would stop and put a small amount of gas in his car so he would have to stop again. If his wife asked him to bring home milk, bread, and eggs, he would stop at three separate stores. ANYTHING to keep him busy and away from that part of his business that needed his attention.

He was barely getting by and he knew he needed to do more so he began forcing himself to do the various things he needed to do and to track the results of each thing. He found that there were a number of factors that went together to make an initial sale and, again, a number that lead to add-on business and renewals. He had to put out flyers, pass out business cards, mention his business to others, ask the all important sales question, “Who do you know…” and so many other things that anyone who has ever engaged in outside sales will know so well.

Anyway, the result of his tracking was that he discovered he needed to do ten things each day in order to result in enough sales to produce the income he really wanted. Just ten. Sure, he had to do the things he didn’t like but the things he did like were in the mix too. But hey, just ten! He could handle that. And, he realized, if he got the ten things over quickly he was free to do other things that he liked so that added new enthusiasm, even for those things he didn’t really want to do.

He figured out the time that would be involved and he new that he could effectively start his day at about 8 a.m. It turned out he could work in all ten things before noon — just half a day! This was getting better and better.

He wrote out a little card that said, “10 B4 12″ and put it on the dashboard of his car. Every morning he went out knowing that if he got his ten daily chores out of the way by noon he could quit for the day and enjoy life. That sounded pretty good.

Each time he felt shy about speaking to a new person he repeated to himself, “Ten before twelve!” and pushed ahead anyway. No more multiple gas station stops or going to three stores to spread things out. He embraced the job that needed doing and got it done. In a few months he was making more than he had hoped and was enjoying afternoons with his wife and more time with his kids. He became the number one producer in the nation in his field.

Social media marketing is like that. It’s a lot of little, often less than desirable, things you have to do, but there is a fixed number you need to do each day. Figure out what you need to do to move your business to the point you want it and establish your own 10 B4 12 (whatever numbers and times will work for you!) and get it done.

You will be amazed at the results!

One: A WordPress blog is easy to manage. Anyone, no matter how limited their online experience, can operate a blog with only the most basic instruction. It is easy to add new content or change existing information. Working with images is also easy. The control panel, called the Dashboard, puts everything within reach and makes it all step-by-step. Nothing difficult here!

Two: A WordPress blog is extremely user friendly. Ease of use is the holy grail of websites. WordPress blogs offer many options to present your visitors with an array of features that may be easily set up, clearly presented, and, like everything else, administered from the Dashboard. You present, and control, a structure targeted directly to the theme or concept you wish your visitors to experience.

Three: WordPress blogs receive the most exposure of any websites on the Internet. The versatility, extensive content, and continual updating, allow it to control your selected keywords in search engine results. Of course you are not the only one using a blog to your advantage so it still takes consistent application of the right stuff. WordPress blogs just make it easier.

Four: Your income potential with a monetized WordPress blog is pretty much limitless. If you have correctly targeted your blog content to attract a niche readership and you add the right offerings for them using AdSense, Amazon, and other affiliate programs, your blog can be working for you around the clock. It takes work and development over time but it is possible. Many are already doing it.

Five: A WordPress blog is affordable. The software, many pre-designed themes, and most plug-ins, are free so you can get started without much outlay. All you need is hosting space and your own domain name. You can even get started with free hosting and a sub-domain (someone else’s domain) but it is really best to start with your own if you are serious.

The Amazon affiliate program is fantastic and the astore opportunity is without equal on the ‘net, however astores don’t allow for much personalization and you can’t take advantage of things like blogging or niche content for SEO.

Free blog sites are okay and some of the free website hosts will allow astores but you are at the mercy of their “deal” changing without notice. Sometimes sites ban commercial use altogether (sorry folks, an affiliate monetized site is commercial!) and often those that do allow it will require an expensive commercial upgrade at some point. They get you hooked and then, if you are successful and don’t want to change, they get your money.

Even good deals tend to leave you out there pretty much on your own. The Internet can be a lonely place!

In conjunction with MSMOsites website community (http://msmosites.com) I have created a structured website, based on the WordPress website engine, that provides a home page, an astore page, an about page and an integrated blog. The site is installed and configured for you. There is no installation or setup fee and no contract period. The site rental is just $3.99 per month. You can cancel any time you wish.

You can add additional pages, easily add your Amazon astore iframe code to the astore page (see image to the left), and add widgets and other ads to the sidebars. You can have different sidebar content on each of the four included pages and the site will support other affiliate ads as well. Learn more here:

http://msmosites.com/astores/

This is a solid starting point, and a great base upon which to grow, for anyone seerious about building Amazon (and Google or eBay!) affiliate revenue streams. The website is not free but it’s eminently affordable. If you are not prepared to spend a little you probably aren’t committed enough to do what needs to be done anyway.

Oh, and one more thing: I provide tech support and marketing advice (by email) without charge to anyone renting one of these Amazon Affiliate Astore websites.

WordPress is no longer just a blog. It’s a powerful, feature-rich, website engine and content management system. It allows almost anyone to create a multi-page website and, with a little training, to use it effectively.

I’ve been so impressed with this product that I’ve been converting many of my own websites, including this one, to WordPress. Additionally, the WordPress Multi-User (WPMU) package is an excellent way to deploy multiple blogs and/or websites with a single, central, management panel. It is ideal for the entrepreneur who can see the value of a website business but doesn’t know any HTML or other web coding. With WordPress YOU DON’T HAVE TOO!

The key is to get the right information, the right products, and the right training, so you can get started right. And there’s the rub. The Internet abounds with advice, ideas, products, and offerings. You could literally spend the rest of your life researching, trying to figure it all out.

That’s where I come in. I’ve put together a package the gathers together everything you need to get started and backs it all with my many years of web design and marketing experience so you know you will be starting right where you should be.

I’ll teach you what you need to know to run your own website business, offering and hosting WordPress websites. I’ll set up the hosting server with WPMU, the multi-user WordPress core engine, and teach you how to use it. I’ll install the necessary plugins and a selection of ready WordPress themes that will allow you to immediately begin selling personal and business blogs and websites. I’ll teach you about domain mapping and more.

But more than that I’ll be there to help. Initial training will include telephone sessions, videos, web-based documentation, and email. After that telephone and email contact will be available. You will have a business of your own but you won’t be alone.

You can start your own website business today! CLICK HERE!