The Store Is Open Now What?

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