With 0 entries in google for the video game and movie merchandise at the Bonanza store for Couch Critters I’m trying an ecrater store.
It still needs work, but the experiment is to see if I can get the item into google product search
Store
http://couchcritters.ecrater.com/
Item
http://couchcritters.ecrater.com/p/9612610/katamari-damacy-for-playstation-2
Update Nov 4, 2010
eCrater lists google feed status active
0 items processed
0 items inserted
There is the following disclaimers.
- Stats are updated once a week and are running one week behind.
- eCrater sends feeds to google twice a week.
Update Nov 11, 2010
Success – item showed up in google and I’ve got 25 views so far. I’ll be moving the movie inventory over to ecrater shortly. I have different plans for the videogame inventory.
couchcritters site on bonanzle doesn’t appear in google. I’ve reduced the site to a single listing for the playstation 2 version of Garfield Lasagna world tour. In 3 days I’ll check to see if it can be seen in google shopping.
http://www.bonanza.com/booths/CouchCritters/items/Garfield__Lasagna_World_Tour
Results = failure.
After more than a week no entry in Google.
Test of ebay auction format
I got two cables with a new monitor, one DVI and one VGA so tada an item to sell.
I started with 99 cent auction at ebay. 5 looks, but no bids.
Tried 30 day listing at $4.95. Imediately 5 views. and within the 30 days I got a 6th view, but no sale. I would have used the same 99 cents as the auction, but figured hey you had your chance during those 7 days and somehow thought you were going to get a better price.
I’ve moved it over to bonanazle to see if it does better there since I only pay if it sells
Posted in ebay, experiment
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After tiring of ebay’s fees and hostile actions to sellers I moved to Bonanzle. Now changed to the easier to type and say Bonanza.com.
Things I like about Bonanza
- Easy and quick to post items
- up to 6 pictures per item
- Forums with friendly people
- Feedback reputation system with import from ebay so you don’t have to start from scratch if you have been satisfying buyers for years.
- Only pay when you sell
- Syndication system to provide exposure for your items
- Upload to Google
- Fun activities like Hand Picked Lists and selling games
Things Bonanza needs to work on
- Inconsistant upload to google shopping. My first store elevenboxes has no problems with this. My second store couch critters can’t get in there.
- Still hasn’t added Amazon payments. There is a two year old post from Bonanza that Amazon payments is coming and then nothing.
- International shipping settings for listings anly have flat rate or read listing. I use flat rate for Canada, but I need settings for other countries.
This isn’t idle chit-chat I’m actually using Bonanza
ElevenBoxes http://www.bonanza.com/booths/elevenboxes
Couch Critters http://www.bonanza.com/booths/CouchCritters
The story so far.
ebay sales slowed to a crawl and only 1 item was selling, hoops and yoyo plush.
I started to see an interesting trend in the buyers. Most of the buyers had 0 feedback. For a site in a freefall pushing away long time sellers there were still new buyers. These are newer than new buyers, so new they made an account to buy my item. This means that the sales weren’t driven by ebay, they were coming from external sources, most likely search engines since I wasn’t driving much traffic from my website.
Armed with that knowledge I started looking for an marketplace to replace ebay since I had traffic coming from an outside source.
I knew about Amazon, but they’re better for items with a UPC code and the fees are just as high if not higher than ebay so that was out.
I heard about ubid, but they’re for much larger sellers.
ecrater was a big no since the free cart came with all categories listed at the side including adult items in a manner that would seem to indicate that I had items to sell from all of thsoe categories.
In the end I wound up at Bonanzle. I read a post where someone explained that The River was Amazon and The Ranch was Bonanzle. Sales are still mostly hoops and yoyo and mostly to new buyers, but I now have the rest of my inventory up without going broke because Bonanzle only charges a listing fee when the item sells.
New new store location is http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/elevenboxes
Next post
Home on the Range
ebay calls it best match, but for casual sellers a better name is worst match. The old system showed items as they approached the end of their listing lives. While this is a good thing for auctions it’s not so meaningful for fixed price items so other sorting styles do make sense.
The method chosen doesn’t work. I’ve been on the good side and the bad side of best match. On the good side I sold hoops and yoyo plush at a brisk pace. On the bad side the rest of my inventory stopped being visible and stopped selling. The fees for listing didn’t go away so there was a disconnect between fees and income earned.
I removed the rest of my listings and sold hoops and yoyo plush for a bit longer while figuring out my next move. I have a day job and didn’t need ebay to support myself so this was an annoyance, but by no means fatal.
To be continued…
So you’ve setup your WordPress blog and the first thing that jumps out is that the WordPress folks have added their own joke and a bit of branding to the top of your blog.
If you would like to remove the text “Just Another WordPress Blog” it’s this easy.
1) Login to the administration panel
2) Selecting Settings
3) Select General
4) Clear the text field for Tagline
You could also change the tagline to something more appropriate to your site.
The best development tool ever has to be Beyond Compare from Scooter Software
I use this for all kinds of tasks, compare directories, compare files, compare graphic files.
I know that there are compare programs built into Windows and into source control programs, but the interface and functionality of Beyond Compare work so much better for me
http://www.scootersoftware.com/
Based on my success so far with ecommerce I’ll never quit my day job. Please read along and take any tips that help your endeavors.