Firstly, I'd like to say sorry for the delay in posting this next article. The last week has been a lot busier than I expected with my end of year exams and my search for a summer job.

Anyway, in my last post I discussed a few points regarding getting traffic to the site. I will start today by talking about RSS Feeds.

RSS Feeds are the new thing on the internet you can subscribe to an RSS Feed and recieve updates on a site without heving to visit the site, therefore they are a key tool in attracting traffic to your site. The mistake I made here was that I didn't research this before opening my shop as I failed to do with most of the points I have discussed.

If you own a shop Ebay provide you with your RSS Feed URL, then all you have to do is find the sites you want to submit is to such as Feedstation and follow the on screen instructions. It is best to submit your feed to as many sites as possible as this will obviously increase exposure.

Another way to attract traffic to your site is to write articles and blogs. Obviously you have to include links to your website and it is also important to write interesting articles and blogs so that people will actually read them. Aswell as submitting them to eBay you can also submit them to other websites this will of course increase traffic even more as your articles and blogs are getting more traffic and this means more people are clicking the link to your shop.

The About Me page on eBay is also a key marketing tool because wherever your user name appears on eBay, your About Me logo appears next to it and people are going to click on it. It is important to have a good About Me page which will make buyers want to buy off you. Make you sure you have links included to parts of your site so that people click th links and visit it, but make sure they adhere to eBay regulations for example, only include links that relate to your eBay activities.

Now after doing all this I came to Saturday 11th May. The traffic to my site had been slowly increasing throughout the week. On saturday the visits to my site more than tripled on my previous best. Now, I still didn't get a sale but people were visiting the site which is a good sign in my eyes. People were watching my items and I was sure I would soon get a sale.

However, the following few days the visits to my site plummeted again and I didn't understand why, I decided to leave it a few days to see what happened. Sure enough on the Tuesday the visits started rising again and stayed at a similar level for the next week.

I was now getting regular traffic to my site and was awaiting my first sale. Eventually, after a few days I got my first sale. I was very excited I dispatched the item straight away sent an e-mail saying it has been dispatched to my buyer, and waited for another sale. I expected the sales to start flooding in now but they didn't. I had to wait another couple of days for my second sale, when it came it was a very similar item. The item I sold wasn't one I expected to be my bestseller let alone my only seller.

This is when I realised I had to do my market research more thouroughly. It became all too clear to me that the products I was selling weren't in demand and the people buying on eBay weren't at all interested.

During the past week I have been researching the market, looking through other peoples stores who sell a similar thing and having a look what they sell. As well as finding out what people want to find on eBay and realising I had not selected the right items to sell I also realised that most of the shop names had something to do with the product they sell in them. Mine didn't and so I started to re-model my stores image.

I changed the name from JMP All You Need to JMP Lingerie 4 You, I also re-designed my auction templates after seeing what the big sellers included on theirs. By the time this was all finished most of my items that were up for sale on eBay were finshed or almost finished. I waited a few more days until everything except my store inventory items had come to end. I then selected a single product so I could test out what I had found in my research. I listed the product and I am now waiting to find out the results.

Although, I am probably back where I started I have learnt so many new things and I know I still have much more to learn. I have to make a profit but the key thing is to keep working on it until I do.

I will bring you up to date on what happens with my test products tomorrow. So don't forget to check back or add our RSS Feed so you don't even need to visit my site.

Thanks for reading,

Jon

Blog Directory

So, in the last episode I talked about trying to find a reputable dropshipper the best way to do this in my opinion was to read the 100's of posts on www.dropshipforum.co.uk.

Now I had found a few reputable dropshippers I had to decide what to sell. This proved even more difficult than finding a reputable dropshipper. There were so many questions to I had to ask. What is the most profitable product to sell? Do you go for a popular product or try and find a niche? Which products sell most on eBay? these are just a few of the mant questions.

My first thought was to sell consumer electronics, MP3 Players, Playstations, X-Boxes etc... I looked into a few dropshippers of these products and found that the profit margin was quite small espeicially with other sellers shipping the same products in from China selling them for next to nothing. I decided to steer clear of consumer electronics and although I would give the same advice to any new starters I would also say it is entirely your choice if you think you can prusuade buyers to buy your item even though it is more expensive than the competitiors although, I were buying I would much rather purchase the product from the UK than China. nother note to add here is I would definatly not reccomend using dropshippers bsed in China although there will be reliable companies out there I feel it is way too risky and and on top of this there is the added cost of import taxes.

I looked through many other dropship sites selling many different items and I finally came to my decision to try and sell lingerie which is now available at stores.ebay.co.uk/JMP-All-You-Need. The dropship site I decided to use offered you membership for free but you have to pay £4.99 before you place your first order. The site I chose was highly reccomended to me and I actually met the owner on a forum and so I trusted them.

Since I had found my dropshipper I designed my shop logo and found a free auction template online. Using this template I and my logo I opened my shop. I decided to go for the basic shop at £6 a month with the first month free. This was my first mistake the advanced shop had the same offer, I now realise I should have taken advantage of the offer and simply downgraded at the end of the first month. Don't make the same mistake as I did if something is offered to you free then take advantage of it. It's an obvious piece of advice but so many people I have spoke to made the same mistake I did.

So, my shop is open. I then go straight to my dropshipper select a few items and list them using the template I found online. I log out of eBay and call it a night. The next day I get of bed do the normal thing and decide to check how things are going, I take a look on my eBay nothing has sold! I can't figure out why I still thought this was easy. I go straight to www.dropshipforum.com (DSF) and start searching.

A few hours after searching I realise I have done everything wrong. I have listed my items and I have expected an easy sale and it hasn't come. After reading another 100 or so posts I can see why. Here is a ist of things I still didn't know would get me more sales after hours and hours of researching.

Use RSS Feeds
Submit your site to search engines
Submit your products to Google Store Connector
Make buyers want your item
Put items in Fixed Price Auction Style listings as well as Shop Inventory listings
Write articles and blogs to promote your items
About Me Page

I found mounds of information about most of these topics I started with submitting my site to search engines. This turned out to be simpler than expected you simply go to a search engine such as MSN and add your URL and thats it. Simple.

The next thing i concentrated on was making buyers want your item, I looked through similar sellers items and realised that the template I had been using was nothing compared to there bright colours and very attractive listings. I searched the internet for more free auctions and couldn't find any that came even close to the other sellers listings. I started to think about spending a few weeks learning HTML. Then I remembered my ICT A-Level when we had to design a website using Dreamweaver, I could simply design my listings in design mode then copy and paste the HTML code. It worked. I now use this software to design any page I am going to put in my store and they all look pretty good although, I have reworked all my pages around 5 times.

I then decided to list more items I looked at the kind of things people were selling and decided to try and go with the trends, I list my items using the new template I have created and I gave more detailed item descriptions to try and pursuade my potential buyers to become buyers. This time I decided I would lista few auction items and mostly fixed price items in a bid to drive more traffic to my site.

At this point my shop has been open for 5 days but still isn't getting enough traffic and still haven't made a sale. Saturday proves to be quite succesful find out why in the next episode where I will talk about:

RSS Feeds
Articles and Blogs
About Me Page
Saturday 11/05/2008

At the moment we are one week behind where I am now so I will try and get you up to date by Monday.

Thanks for reading,
Jon

Visit stores.ebay.co.uk/JMP-Lingerie-4-You now!