posted on July 20, 2006 10:10:30 PM
with Bill Cobb's message, I am thinking the time has come to start my own website. I will continue my auctions on ebay, and keep my store for a short time with limited items, but I really want to have my own website.
I know there are ways to create a website by yourself; anyone have a suggestion on a service out there that would help with this process? thanks.
posted on July 20, 2006 10:19:19 PM
Your not the only one. I'm actually in the process of setting up my FREE ecrater.com online store. It sends all your items to Google/Froggle database. I'm going to add about 30 or 40 items that were fast ebay store sellers for me and see how they do. I have already emailed all my repeat customers to let them know I closed my ebay store yesterday. Time will tell how this ecrater.com store works. Heck, it's free and does not take much time to set up so at the worst I will only be out a little bit of time.
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
Whatever service you choose, make sure it has extensive SEO capabilities...You need to be able to edit every page's meta information, every item's meta information (alt tags, etc.)as well as create specific landing pages, again item specific....and there's more.
Also, you need to make sure that your site is not a sub-domain of the service (e.g. www.siteservice.yourstore.com) or that redirects from one url to another, unless you know how to optimize the redirect.
If you want to see a service that allows the type of extensive editing I'm talking about, visit http://www.volusion.com and take the free 2 week demo.
Best,
Michael
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Internet Talk Radio
Everything eBay...and More. E-Auction-Air http://www.eauctionair.com
[ edited by pandorasbox on Jul 21, 2006 07:05 AM ]
posted on July 21, 2006 07:06:03 AM
Sorry...I've corrected it...
---------------------------
Internet Talk Radio
Everything eBay...and More. E-Auction-Air http://www.eauctionair.com
that was an excellent post and reminder to people. i do a lot of SEO optimization for both eBay stores and websites, and you wouldn't believe (or maybe you would!) the number of people who have subdomains or can't edit meta tags or don't know what meta tags are! i even worked with one person who had a meta stating that their content expired on 1 January 1970. seeing as how pcs weren't even around then, i had no idea how my client ever got that in there!
posted on July 21, 2006 10:07:20 AM
January 1, 1970 is the epoch for many versions of UNIX, the one true operating system.
OTOH, as all Mac users know, January 1, 1904 is the epoch for Macintosh.
An epoch is a reference point of time from which time is measured. Necessary because your computer can't simply glance at your wall calender like you do. Your computer keeps track of ticks since the epoch and that's how it comes up with the date and time.
(At least until your computer's internal battery fails.)
posted on July 21, 2006 03:25:40 PM
my main concern with starting one of these online stores is getting traffic into the store. Anyone know how to get the various search engines to direct customers to your site?
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
[ edited by mikes4x4andtruckrepair on Jul 21, 2006 05:05 PM ]
posted on July 21, 2006 06:59:05 PM
So what if you really, really want to set up a website but you are really, really computer challenged. Are there books or websites like the "dummies for book series"? I believe that I would fall into that catergory.
I have asked my son for help as he works on a website for a living but he hasn't helped guided me to anything yet. I believe I may have to give him the old Mother's guilt soon.
mama
posted on July 21, 2006 08:15:07 PM
Guilt him into helping get someone to help you -- through www.rentacoder.com or www.elance.com.
You can hire someone who does this stuff for a living - and release you from the burden of trying to learn all that you can. Of course, it's gonna cost you to get it done.
But if your son knows his way around the code, he can either help you himself - or realize that you're serious about this and will help you manage the process.
Remember - you can trade your time or your money to get it done. Your time should have a value and only you can decide what that is.
Wayne
Never explain -- Your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
~ Elbert Hubbard
posted on July 21, 2006 09:21:53 PM
Mike, I like the look of the eCrater website, but for the life of me I can't figure out the shipping deal, and how to insert the pic for the main foto that goes in the upper left corner of the template. Shipping keeps showing weird amounts when I do a test purchase thru PayPal. Any thoughts?
____________________________________________
Now We Know... Uninformed People Elect Uninformed Presidents
posted on July 21, 2006 10:29:57 PM
profe51 - Click my user name to get my email address and shoot me a email and I'll drop you a reply with some helpful tips on how to set thing's up. The shipping thing had me confused at first to but I figured it out.
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
posted on July 22, 2006 03:27:07 AM
Here's a pretty good post on the ebay store board about setting up your own web-site - along with the caveat that, unlike ebay, you cannot expect instant sales and rankings from a website. It requires time, money and patience. I think the poster recommend that you don't jump the ebay ship until you have had your website awhile and gotten it properly indexed and optimized and even then, it's going to be hard to compete in the world outside of ebay.
posted on July 22, 2006 06:10:36 AM
ecrater.com is a great place! Your store creation is free, hosting is free, etc. is free. So far, I'm happy with the look of my new store with them. I'll make my domain name eventually point to this store (once it's officially open) like it does my eBay store. If anyone wants to see what it looks like, drop me an email and I'll send you a link. They are really very professional looking stores.
posted on July 22, 2006 04:18:47 PM
I had mentioned that I had opened a eCrater store the other day. I thought it was going to take a couple of weeks for the search engines to catch up with the items but I just checked using froogle and there all listed there. Wow, that was fast. I have already had more sales the last two day's then I had in the last 2 weeks before closing my ebay store. Hope the trend continues.
profe51 - I got your email and will reply shortly. Mike
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
