The new Whine Seller mailing list will be about selling online, working form home and e-commerce. (If you still want to hear about my fiction and plays, you’ll have to join my other list.) But The Whine Seller list is getting an announcement before the end of the month that won’t go out publicly until the new year so, if you want in on the big news, make sure you’re signed up.

I’m also planning on turning the new list into a regular newsletter (always free and it would never be more than monthly, right now I’m thinking more like quarterly) and anyone on the mailing list will get a chance to shape exactly what kind of content the mailing list will feature so getting on that list early is your best chance of voting for what you want. So, sign up for the mailing list so we can stay in touch the way you want to.

This time of year is BANANAS for me so that’s all I’ve got at the moment but stay tuned for more as we move into the new year. As always, thanks for sticking with me and I look forward to what we can all do together in the future!

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

When you look at it on its most basic level, what is a webstore anyway? It’s some product listings, a few pictures, some text… all of which are pretty simple to set up without any fancy tools. What separates a webstore from just a list of products on a static webpage is the ability to purchase those products and that checkout process is almost always referred to as a shopping cart. At the least, a shopping cart functions like a buy it now button that directs the buyer into the payment and checkout process. On the more advanced end, the ideal shopping cart allows your buyers to add items to their cart as they shop, combining purchases, offering discounts for orders grouped together and more.

Because a shopping cart is really the meat of any webstore, a wide variety of widgets and add-ons exist that let you easily add shopping cart functionality to any website, even a blog or free site. Should forgo a whole webstore package and instead just you add a shopping cart to your existing website?

Let’s look at the pros and cons.

Advantages of shopping cart widgets

• Easy install. Copy and paste a few lines of code into your existing website and you’ve got the ability to sell. If you have multiple websites it’s simple to add your items to each of them.
• No need for customization, it already matches your brand. There’s no need to spend the time or money making your webstore look like your existing website if your website itself becomes the store. Since you’ll be hosting your store in your space instead of trying to figure out how to make an external storefront showcase your brand, your job will be that much easier.
• Lower costs than a webstore package. While every service varies, there are some cheap to free shopping cart options out there that let you turn your site into a store for a fraction of the cost of a website package. It makes sense since you aren’t paying for all the extras like hosting, domain and advanced features that you may not need. In most cases, the end product won’t look all that different from an expensive webstore package anyway.
• Works with just about any kind of site, including free sites like blogs. While you’ll need to check the Terms of Service to make sure you’re permitted to sell whatever wares you are looking to peddle, shopping cart widgets are the only way to sell from a free website such as a blog like WordPress.com, Blogger, or Tumblr. As long as you have the freedom to edit or add HTML, you can sell from your site.
• Save you time and money on marketing. You’ve already been bringing traffic and readers to your regular website or blog. Turning it into a store means you can benefit from your existing traffic instead of starting over from scratch with an external webstore.
• Sell from whatever pages you wish. Wouldn’t it be cool to let your readers buy those lamps you have up for sale directly from your blog post about interior design? Or your book from your testimonials page? Or your art from your sidebar? You’ll be able to insert products anywhere you can edit the HTML for the most seamless e-commerce integration you can imagine.

Disadvantages of shopping cart widgets

• Simpler, with less features. While many of these widget have a few advanced features such as sales, discounts and inventory management, most are limited to just a shopping cart’s most basic function: checkout. If you’re only selling a few items and don’t need a lot of bells and whistles, that may not matter to you but, if you have a need for some of the more advanced features a webstore package offers, they may be an additional expense.
• You’re still dependent on an external service. If your shopping cart widget goes down or otherwise makes a change that effects how you sell, you’re powerless. On the plus side, in the event of a cart outage, at least your store is on a website that you control so that you can quickly put up a message or activate an alternative.
• Just as with any standalone webstore, the entire burden of getting buyers to your store and to find your items falls on you and your marketing. But, on the plus side, instead of having to drive traffic both to your website and your store, these would both be hosted in the same place.

Want more? This is an excerpt from Beyond Amazon, eBay, and Etsy: free and low cost alternative marketplaces, shopping cart solutions and e-commerce storefronts.

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

Regular readers know I’m all about focusing on the big picture of your ecommerce business which is why I was happy to have Ronald L. Dod, CMO and Cofounder of Visiture.com, stop by with this great guest post on how to scale your eCommerce business as things change around you.

Scale Your eCommerce Business

Without adequate preparation and experience, scaling any business can be a road filled with wrong turns and potholes. eCommerce is a wonderful world where scaling a business from a few thousand dollars a month to a million dollars a year isn’t as uncommon as most people would think, but it does take a substantial multi-faceted understanding of what it takes to successfully grow a business online.

Significant obstacles and new challenges happen every day, and this guide is set up to help you take your business to the next level. 

Build a Scale-Friendly Foundation

Scaling your business is essentially a series of hurdles that must be jumped over. However, prior to jumping over a hurdle, you must be sure you are adequately prepared to keep on going. One of the biggest enemies to effective business scaling is building on a foundation that doesn’t give way for growth.

Envision a regular single-story house. It’s got the essentials: a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and even a living area space. What else could you need?

Let’s say your needs start expanding; you get married, have some kids, a few relatives want to move in. Now, you decide to build a few stories on top of it and a guest house in the backyard.

This might work for now, but you might start to see some difficulties. When the kids start having grandkids and their own families trying to move in, doing the same things to scale won’t work as well anymore. Your house’s foundation can only handle so much weight before things start to become dangerous and problematic.

An eCommerce business sees similar difficulties like a house quickly outgrowing its foundation. Things will break, frustrations will happen, and days off-line will lose customers.

Having a poorly equipped foundation for growth doesn’t necessarily mean you have a bad foundation; it just means that each effort to scale your business will start to see more and more friction until the foundation busts and a large change will need to be made.

Creating a scale-friendly foundation means optimizing every critical structural component.

1. Site architecture. Your shoppers should be, at most, within three clicks from the home page. Many business owners that create sites without a good architecture end up with a maze of content, product pages, and landing page content that only detracts away from the user experience and search engine optimization. 
2. Hosting. Check in with your hosting provider to see if your plan allows for growth. Many hosting plans are priced based on users, so plan appropriately. 
3. Security. More shoppers mean more information, which means more potential security problems. Make sure your sites are updated with the proper security certificates. 
4. Supplier relationships. If your business primarily relies on supplies relationships for its product fulfillment, make sure your relationships are water-tight. Additionally, creating a backup plan for alternative options in case something happens to your supplier could be a lifesaver in the future.
5. Analytics. Going into eCommerce without analytics is like fumbling around a dark room. Scaling an eCommerce business without analytics is like sprinting in that dark room. Thankfully, this step is usually easy to check off, thanks to Google Analytics. Make sure your site and shop analytics are working properly and learn how to analyze your site’s data in a meaningful way.Taking care of your site design needs could save you a lot of hassle in the future.

Choose a Good Site Design

Taking care of your site design needs could save you a lot of hassle in the future.

It’s important to have a great site design when you get started because site customization in the future could be pretty expensive. Taking 2-3 days to update your site design could mean thousands in missed revenue.

Many eCommerce platforms have aesthetically pleasing and functional themes. Shopify has 149+ premium design themes and 24+ free themes, and BigCommerce has 76+ premium design themes and 7 free themes.

While these designs may work flawlessly and at scale, some eCommerce merchants might be keen to get their site custom made.

Whatever route you take, be sure to benchmark your design for scale. Does your theme stand the test? Here are a few questions to ask:

1. How long does it take to load? Some premium themes are loaded with high-quality images and graphics that can significantly slow down the page load time. It only takes four seconds for page abandonment to jump to 25%. While your design may look fabulous, it’s not worth losing one out of every four shoppers. 
2. Is it mobile responsive? Mobile shopping has exploded in recent years, yet there are still themes that don’t function as well on mobile. Your mobile shoppers are not only using a smaller screen to browse your store, they’re also likely more distracted. It’s critical to make sure your theme works perfectly on mobile and delivers exactly what the shoppers are looking for. 

Build a Frequently Asked Questions Page

Scaling your eCommerce business is all about removing as much friction as possible.

A frequently asked questions page is essentially a landing page that could make the difference between a shopper becoming a customer. 

Thankfully, your frequently asked questions page tends to write itself. Here’s a simple series to get your FAQ page started:

1. Compile every question your shoppers have asked via email or chat. 
2. Sort the questions into categories. For example:
   1. Logistics:
      1. How long does shipping take?
      2. Do you ship internationally?
      3. Can you gift wrap it for a friend?
   2. Product:
      1. Do the shirts run large? 
      2. Could I get this design on a tank top?
      3. Can you custom embroider my name on it?
      4. What are the shirts made from?
3. Write them in a reader-friendly way. Investing in a copywriter to bring life to every part of your website copy, including your FAQ page, will help create a seamlessly consistent experience. 
4. Set up the page architecture to deliver curious shoppers their answer as quickly as possible. Creating a table of contents with sub-head links that shoppers can click on is a great way to streamline the process. 

This is a good start, but digging a bit deeper will yield more substantial results. It could even increase your conversion rate! You must account for shoppers that have concerns but don’t have enough urgency or willingness to send an email to ask. This is exceptionally true for businesses that are in highly competitive industries and which carry products that have many substitutes.

These questions can be found by personally forming conversations with shoppers to see if they had any concerns when ordering your products. Further exploration includes frequenting forums such as Reddit that are specific to your industry. This process could even pave the way to discovering new products your target market will enjoy, coming up with content ideas for your content strategy, and learning how your shoppers naturally speak.

Keep in mind that your product pages should already be answering some of the most frequently asked questions specific to those products, such as sizing, shipping, etc. 

Build Scaleable Processes

Your processes are going to be either your best friend or your worst enemy.

1. Support. Having the all correct and active email addresses for your site is a good start, but do you really want to be spending hours a week answering emails or answering phone calls instead of further growing out your business? 
   1. Have a FAQ page. 
   2. Hire and train a VA to handle low-urgency emails. 
2. Payment Interface: Most payment services are so seamlessly integrated that business owners forget this is a process in itself. Payment interfaces can also be a substantial expense in the future. For example, an eCommerce business taking in $1,00,000 in annual orders using a payment interface charging you 3.5% per order means you are paying $35,000. Finding a comparable and reliable alternative at 1.5% will essentially put $20,000 back in your pocket. It’s important to find the perfect payment interface to save you orders and money in the future. 
3. Backend Processes: Over time, these may seem to be automated, but it only takes a minor hiccup to derail a business scaling at high speed. Create processes for every step in the back-end product delivery to keep your attention focused on growth, and not maintenance. Some merchants have even gone as far as purchasing their supplier or product manufacturer to ensure everything is running smoothly. If you’re selling over multiple platforms (your site, Amazon, eBay, etc), order fulfillment and inventory management can get very confusing. 

Final Thoughts

With these four ways to help you scale your eCommerce business, you’ll be much better prepared for growth.

Keep in mind that every step of the way to scaling is going to involve removing as much friction as possible so you can continue to jump the hurdles and navigate whatever challenges the world throws at you.

Successful scaling is a combination of building a strong foundation, creating effective processes that untether your site and attention for growth, and constantly looking for ways to add value to your site at every touch point.

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

If you aren’t worried about the safety of your data online these days, you haven’t been paying attention! It’s a scary time for privacy and safety both! The following is a guest post from Karthik Reddy, Community Manager at  Webmastersjury.org that gives you a more detailed look at exactly how your favorite companies are using your data and how their safety stacks up!

How Important is Online Data Safety?

When people go online, they tend to take for granted the data and information that they give up to tech companies and social networking sites. It can be as simple as signing up to a website’s newsletter or shopping for clothes on an e-Commerce site. You provide your name and email address in order to join a network.

But where do all the information go? How are they collected and how are they used? These questions are not always asked by anyone who goes online. Online data safety is put in the back burner.

However, there are risks and dangers that one should never take for granted. The clever minds behind TechJuryl has shed light on the different aspects of online data security that many people are not aware of.

In this infographic, you will discover and learn how important data safety is by looking at the many cases where data breaches and leakages occurred.

Popular networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest have encountered the headache of stolen data and accidental violation of shared and collected data, from personal information, software and hardware information, and payment details to information from outside network like third party companies.

Data Breach and Leakage Are Commonplace

In 2013, Pinterest suffered a data breach. Their customer service provider, Zendesk, got hacked, resulting to the leak of thousands of user emails. Fortunately, no passwords were compromised.

LinkedIn has no such luck when in 2012, the network saw more than 6 million passwords of their users got stolen. In 2016, it was even worse. Details of 17 million LinkedIn users were put on sale on the Dark Web for around 1,500 pounds.

Some data breaches are due to unencrypted data. For example, WhatsApp location data was said to be vulnerable to being intercepted through a rogue access point or man-in-the-middle attacks. It was discovered by a cyber forensics research and education group from the University of New Haven in 2014. In 2019, those claims have proven to be right.

Tips in Protecting Your Personal Details and Information

Online security is mandatory, especially in the age of the Internet where sharing information is just one click away. Social network platforms and apps collect and share data in various ways that can sometimes lead to breach and compromise. That is why it is only sensible to take steps in ensuring your data is safe and protected.

One of the most common risks of online data is the hacking, stealing or leaking of passwords. Even security professionals are not immune. Statistics said that 50% of them have not changed their social network passwords for a year or more. And 20% of them have never changed it, ever.

So, if you want to start your data protection, the number one step is to protect your password. One way to do this is to avoid sharing your password to anyone. It is also advisable not to include your name or any common words when creating your password. Strong passwords are those that are a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols.

The next steps include login verification, use of extra security features, making your email accounts secure, running anti-virus software on your computer and blocking installation from unknown sources.

Another security measure is the requirement of email and phone number to request a reset of password link or code.

You could also do with a recovery email address and a specialized security solution against spyware threats.

Realizing the importance of online data safety is one thing. Taking precautionary steps to ensure its security and protection is another. It is up to you as a user to apply what you learn about data security in order to avoid compromise and possible disaster.

Infographic URL:https://techjury.net/blog/online-data-safety-stats/

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

Amazon’s the e-commerce big dog these days and we’re all trying to get our products in front of more eyeballs on that ever crowded platform. The following is a guest post from Gabe Nelson who’s here with tips and tricks on how sell products on Amazon.

When it comes to selling on Amazon there’s always something new you can learn about. Amazon is a huge marketplace that has been around for a long time. The ways you can be successful are varied but most strategies and tips have a common theme. Figuring out what works for you is essential when it comes to increasing your sales.

You can spend a lot of time searching online and find thousands of tips or tricks to use. Sometimes that many options can get overwhelming. You may not be sure which tips are outdated or too specific to be useful. If you’re finding yourself overwhelmed and unsure of what to try, you’re in the right place.

You can still find great tips without the stress of reading too many articles with advice that sounds too complicated to use. Sometimes reading about a very complicated fulfillment by Amazon fee calculator, or a highly detailed SEO tool is just too much. It’s understandable to want simple advice that is easily actionable.

If you’re hoping to find a narrowed down list of ideas to help you sell your Amazon products, keep reading. This list is narrowed down to just five simple tips and tricks to help you sell your products. You’ll be able to read it, grasp the concepts quickly, and get back to selling ASAP.

1. Always Use A Fulfillment By Amazon Fee Calculator

Using the FBA service is a great way to increase your sales. Customers have come to trust Amazon and are more likely to buy things that are fulfilled by the Amazon warehouse. While you’re using FBA services you will need to make sure you’re using a fulfillment by Amazon fee calculator every time you list something new.

FBA calculators help you accurately figure out the cost per item you’re listing. There’s so much that goes into what the cost is for your FBA item that you just can’t afford to guess at what the fee might be. With the calculator, every factor of the cost is considered and you get an accurate number every single time.

FBA fee calculators can also help you figure out that sweet pricing spot so you are still making a profit, but you aren’t pricing yourself out of the market. There are a variety of FBA fee calculators you can choose from. If you want one that’s basic and easy to use or one with a lot of data and information, it’s out there no matter what.

Find the fee calculator that works best for you and make sure you use it consistently. When you’re listing a new product or thinking about changing the pricing of a current listen, your calculator will be your new best friend. Find what works and keep using it.

2. Use AMZ Tracker (Or Another Keyword Tool)

Making sure your product’s listing is SEO friendly is a very important part of your success on Amazon. If customers aren’t seeing your product they aren’t going to be buying your product. To make sure you’re getting traffic to your listing you need to use the right keywords. AMZ Tracker is a keyword tool that can help you figure out what words to use in your listing title.

There are definitely other keyword tools out there, and if you find one that works better for your needs use that one instead. No matter which tool you use, the point of this tip is to make sure you’re using listing titles that will bring customers to your page. You want to make sure you’re using titles that match up with what your customer is going to search for to find your product.

A keyword tool is essential in helping you figure out what word or words your customers are using to find products like yours. Once you know what keywords are going to be the most important to use, you can make effective titles for your listings. Your titles don’t have to look like a list of keywords strung together, but you do want to make them SEO friendly.

A little extra research and time with a keyword tool could make a surprising amount of difference in your listing’s traffic and profitability. It’s worth the time you’ll spend to see such big changes in your sales.

3. Match Up Your Negative Reviews With The Right Orders

There are tools to help you do this. The reason this can be a challenge is because reviewers don’t always use the name you may have shipped their order to. You want to make sure you’re reaching out to customers who have left negative reviews because you want to help them if you can. But first, you’ll have to make sure you’re reaching out to the right customer.

Once you’ve matched up the right review with the right order, make sure you contact the customer with professional and workable solutions. If something was broken, offer a replacement. If shipping was delayed see if you can refund part of their order. Whatever their negative review talked about, be ready to offer help with that situation. 

The more proactive and professional you are when you reach out, the better the chance is that the customer will end up being happy with things and change their review. Since Amazon does allow a customer to change their review for up to 60 days after their feedback is left, reaching out can make a huge difference.

You want to keep your review scores as high as possible, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to change a negative review to a positive one.  Use a review matching tool and reach out as soon as possible. A negative review doesn’t mean all hope is lost.

4. Don’t Be Afraid To Copy Good Ideas

Your competitors can offer a lot of insight into what works to sell your products, and what doesn’t. If their product is identical to yours but ranks higher in search results and sales, figure out what they’re doing differently. Once you see what small differences their listing or sales strategy has, try using them yourself.

It could be a small change in keywords or a slight pricing adjustment. You might want to read their reviews and see if customers are complaining about something that your product offers a solution for.

All of the information you can gain from looking at what your competitors are doing is valuable. Don’t discount or ignore it just because it’s your competition. Put it to work for your own increase in sales and success.

5. Customer Service Is Still Priority Number One

This might seem like an obvious tip but it’s one that gets easy to overlook when you’re selling online. Because your customers aren’t right in front of you in a brick and mortar store, sometimes it’s easy to overlook good customer service practices. They can and will make a difference when you’re selling on Amazon even if it doesn’t seem like it.

When your customers reach out with questions make sure you’re answering them quickly, and with the right information. If it takes a little research to find the right answer to their question, put that effort in and deliver a good answer to their question. Customer service starts the minute they click on your listing, so being present for things like questions is important. 

You want to make sure you are offering everyone who comes across your listing the best experience possible. That means you offer good service to everyone, not just in reaction to a negative review or experience. Make sure your product images look great, make sure your product descriptions are accurate and be as available as you can be for questions. 

Conclusion:

As long as you’re always working to stay active in your success, you’ll be able to continue to see your products sell on Amazon. The danger comes when you think you’ve got it all figured out and become complacent. Make sure you are looking at tips like the ones you read about here and putting them to work for you no matter how long you’ve been an Amazon seller.

If a tip doesn’t work for you, that’s okay. Use the ones that do work to your advantage and keep making improvements. The more work you put in the more you’ll get out of the tips you try. Your efforts will be evident in your increased sales. Good luck, and happy selling.

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

While I sell a lot of collectibles, there are a few custom items we have made for us in bulk that we sell in our store. One such item are these car stickers which are popular in certain toy fandom circles. We don’t make a lot of money on them (and they actually hurt our DSR score) but I list them because they bring people into the store and encourage them to purchase other items while they are there. They’re also a great add-on item that people throw into their cart when ordering other things.

One day I got an email from a buyer asking if I stocked an alternate version of one of our stickers in a different color. I informed him that I did not, but that I could get one done up for him as a custom order if he really wanted it. But I warned him that the price would be higher for this special order than for the usual listing because I’d only be getting one made up and the usual listing reflects the bulk discount we get when ordering that item. He said he understood and would I please quote the price for just one sticker in the custom color?

I went to my printer, mocked up the alternate sticker and got a price quote. But just before I was about to email it over to him, I got another eBay message that made me pause. It was from a completely different eBay buyer asking me if I could offer a custom version… of the same sticker in the same color.

I was immediately suspicious. My very first thought was that this was the same guy, only on a different eBay account. He was pretending to be a second guy to get me to order more so I could offer it at the lower price (why oh why did I ever mention the bulk discount!) and then Guy 2 would disappear and I would be stuck with all these extra stickers. What a sneaky little scammer!

And then I stopped and thought to myself… that sounds kind of ridiculous now that I think of it. Would someone really go to all that trouble just to save a few dollars on a sticker? Isn’t it more likely that, instead of some vast conspiracy, that there’s some inside joke or upcoming event happening that has made a couple of people want this alternate version at the same time? Maybe there was a perfectly logical explanation.

I answered the second guy the same way I did the first one. He also agreed to paying more for the custom item just as the first guy did. Hmm.

I wavered back and forth. Was I being totally paranoid here and this was just two legitimate requests or was this the same guy trying to pull a fast one? I finally decided to pretend I never got the second email. I took the quote I got from my sticker printer for a single sticker, marked it up to the same profit margin I made on the other stickers and told both of them that price.

Both guys immediately said they wanted to buy it at that price, chose their color shade (and they chose the exact same shade… but it was also the only one that didn’t leave the text too light to read so it wasn’t that weird) and asked me to please get the item made for them. OK, I said, but I was going to ask that they pay upfront because I didn’t want to fork out the cash to get this alternate version made and then be stuck with it later. They both said they had no problem with this.

So I created a custom listing for the item with a quantity of two. I didn’t explain to either party why I was offering two of this item I had said I was getting exactly one made of and neither asked which, honestly, made me even more suspicious. But both guys used Buy It Now on the item anyway at the full price for a single sticker so, if they were running a scam, it was not a very good one because they were paying full price anyway.

The first guy paid immediately and that’s when I get a third email. This one wasn’t through eBay at all, but rather through a message board I’m on, one where I’d offered some of these stickers a few years ago. That account is barely connected to my eBay ID. But this third fellow wants to know if, you guessed it, I could possibly sell him a version of the sticker in THE EXACT SAME COLOR THE TWO OTHER GUYS WANTED.

So now I’m even more suspicious. Which weirdly makes me start to believe the innocence of this even more at the same time? Because, if this all is the same guy, how the heck did he even find me on this message board to email me? And why the heck would he even bother to go through all that trouble? He’s already paid for the item at full price! What does he possibly have to gain now?

Guy 3 asks for the price and my PayPal address, promising to send me payment at the end of the week when he refills his account (a common request).

I start to Google around, trying to figure out if these three identities are linked somehow but come up with nothing. It all looks legit from the outside. But there’s still something fishy about it.

I think about it for a long time and finally decide I must be being paranoid. Maybe this isn’t a scam. Clearly, there’s something going on in this fandom, be it inside joke or event or whatever, that I’m just not in the loop for and what I’m seeing it just an uptick in demand.

After a lot of deliberation, I decide to purchase ten copies of this new style of sticker. With three already sold, that only leaves me with seven left to sell and, surely, I can move those eventually, especially if there is some kind of increase in demand coming up.

The printed stickers come in. I send Guy 1 his since he’s already paid, let Guy 2 know his will ship immediately when I get his payment, let Guy 3 know I’ve got it on hand for when he pays. And I hear back immediately back from Guy 1 and he’s really nice and thanks me for all my trouble in getting this made up custom for him and I find myself feeling bad because now, having ordered ten of these stickers, I have overcharged him.

And a lot of you are sitting there rolling your eyes at me but I feel really guilty when I overcharge someone. Like if I make up a price for an item that’s maybe more than it’s worth and someone buys it at that price? I am fine with that. But if I charge them $10 shipping and end up finding a way to ship it for $3? I feel really guilty and dishonest if I don’t refund them that $7.

I know, I know. I’m a bleeding heart. But every time I’ve done it, I’ve won myself a customer for life who appreciated my honesty so, shut up, sometimes being a bleeding heart is good business.

So I start to feel like I charged him extra basically because I was being suspicious and thinking he was trying to run a scam on me when, really, he’s been nothing but nice and patient. So I send him an email saying, “Hey, it ended up costing a little less than originally expected, here’s the difference.” and refunded him a dollar.

He was very appreciative and thankful and left great feedback. So, happy ending right?

Um, no because Guys 2 and 3 both ghosted me. Neither ever actually paid for their items, even after filing a claim on Guy 2, and I ended up stuck with 9 freaking extra copies of this sticker. And this totally convinced me that Guy 1 had been playing me this whole time and, gah, I fell right into his hands and refunded that dollar! I was such a fool!

This whole incident was a thorn in my side for years. Every time I would fill an order for one of our usual stickers I would see those extra stickers I ordered and ended up stuck with in the box and just absolutely STEW about this guy who pretended to be three guys just to get me to knock off a dollar off the price. Because, at the end of the day, it’s not about the money or getting stuck with the additional inventory, it’s that I KNEW he was playing me from the start and yet I still went against my instincts, ordered those extra stickers and gave him that discount. It’s the principle of the thing, dang it, and it totally stuck in my craw.

He is out there somewhere, laughing at me. I hate him. He is my arch nemesis.

Though, as I write about it now, I have to wonder… if he really was running some kind of scam, he put in a lot of work for just $1 off. Isn’t just as likely that the other two just lost interest in whatever the joke of the moment was and that’s why they ghosted? And isn’t it just as likely I have thought wayyy too much about this and am maybe just losing my mind and should just let it go?

Now when I first wrote this story, I still had almost all of those custom stickers unsold in my inventory but in that funny way things happen sometimes, since I wrote the first draft of this, I got a bunch of random orders for those stickers in a row until I actually sold the very last one off a few weeks ago. So for all my gnashing of teeth over this guy… it all worked out in the end anyway. I sold all the stickers, recouped what it cost to make them, no harm done.

But even though it ultimately worked out fine, I have to ask you… What do you think that was all about? Were all three of those interested customers the same person or was it just a coincidence? Was I right to be suspicious or am I just completely losing my marbles?

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

We’ve talked about this before. Several times, in fact. Most recently here.

No, I am still not over it.

But you’re sitting there say, um, aren’t you the person who wrote that blog post? And, yes, I did write it. I wrote it in about five minutes in 2008 and freely admit it has absolutely no substance whatsoever. It’s basically me going, “Hey! Look at this thing! Weird, huh?” with literally no added analysis or value.

And yet it was very popular when I posted it. And it remained popular for years and years afterwards until now, right now, in this cursed year of 2019 it is still in the top five most visited pages on this site every single day. (I often wonder if that book has ever sold any copies and, if so, how many came from that blog post alone.)

But T. W., you say, is this not a good thing? Isn’t traffic the very thing we bloggers do all this for? If that post is bringing people in, shouldn’t you be happy about it?

Perhaps I should. And yet I am not. I despise it. For several reasons.

Firstly, I have come to realize that people are not stumbling upon that post very innocently as they look for ways to avoid eBay scams (as I told myself was happening for years), they are actually looking for ways to run an eBay scam. Dozens of people EVERY SINGLE DAY for 11 years are out there trying to get their crime on and ending up on that blog post. They are literally Googling “how to run a scam on eBay.”

Frankly, I was happier before I knew that quantity of people were out there actively trying to scam eBay buyers on the regular. I wanted to believe in the goodness of people and the list of most popular search term queries for my blog has shattered that belief for me. Way to go, guys. You killed my hope in the human race.

And that post is bringing those riff raff into my home! It’s attracting vermin! It’s bringing an unsavory element here to my own little web space and that irks me. I wrote that post to commiserate with other sellers about eBay scammers and instead lured those scammers here! And they don’t even really do me any good from a demographics, Buy My Book! kind of standpoint. I don’t want them here. Shoo, scammers! Shoo!

Also I feel kind of bad that I turned the rage of a bunch of random eBay sellers on that guy. I don’t know if all those angry reviews on there are from people who saw the book here on this blog… but it’s pretty likely that they are.

And even though it’s a scammy, sleezy kind of book about cheating people, as an author myself, I would not feel super awesome if a blogger riled up a hate mob and threw them at one of my books. Yet I sort of inadvertently did that here. In my defense, I had no idea that quickie blog post would have these kind of legs. Is it abuse to point out a book that purports to teach you how to cheat people? That’s a moral grey area for sure.

But there’s no such thing as bad publicity they say, though, so maybe I did him a favor? Yeah, ok, sure, let’s go with that.

The other problem is thatconfused souls somehow think I’m the person who wrote that book (and then wrote an blog post to decry myself, I guess) which is probably not great for branding in the big picture.

And, most of all, because it is a post that represents next to zero effort on my part which is getting all this traffic and attention while posts I spent a really freaking long time on making good and informative and stuff don’t get anywhere near as many eyeballs. This always seems to happen. I take several days to write a nice, long, well sourced post and there’s barely a blip but then I post an incoherent screed that I wrote in 10 minutes and it sets the world on fire. And it’s a good thing, I guess, to know readers are, well, reading but it’s also rather discouraging from a writing standpoint.

But, when it all comes down to it, no matter how much I dislike that post or how many misgivings I have about it, I haven’t taken it down. I actually just finished updating the Amazon Affiliate links in it because if those would be scammers are going to buy that book because of my post I am AT LEAST going to get a kickback for it, by cracky! (Why does blogging about e-commerce make me talk like a 90 year old sea captain? These are the questions I ask myself when I proofread.)

At the end of the day, it IS bringing people to the blog, for better or worse, and that has to be a good thing.

But I’m still allowed to be annoyed about it every single time I see it on the list of trending posts…

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

If you own and operate your own ecommerce store, or are considering starting your own, then you’ve likely figured out that a big success factor is staying up to date with the latest online shopping trends. While that sounds easy, the ecommerce industry as a whole is constantly changing, and online shoppers are savvier now more than ever.

So how can you stay ahead of the curve? One way is to update your store’s shopping experience so that it better suits your consumers’ behaviors and needs. For instance, the average ecommerce site can increase its conversions 35.26% just by improving its checkout design. While this doesn’t mean that your checkout web pages are badly designed, it never hurts to look into your checkout process to see if you could tailor it more to your audience.

Reading up on ecommerce stats keeps you updated about current consumer behaviors so you can adjust your site as needed. One common fix for many sites is optimizing their web pages so that they offer a better mobile experience. Not only does this improve your site’s SEO visibility, it also makes your ecommerce store that much more accessible to the 65% of online shoppers that prefer to use their smartphones when making online purchases

Once you start reading up on all the ways you need to improve your site, it can be become overwhelming (think about voice search, omnichannel opportunities, or even social media stats). That’s why it’s crucial to learn who your target audience and what would best suit them. To learn more about shopping stats and how they can help improve your site, check out the infographic provided by Wikibuy below:

Please include attribution to wikibuy.com with this graphic.

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

If you plan to include social media in your digital marketing campaigns, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are easily the top three choices for getting the largest reach.

With so many active users, Facebook still dominates the social media scene. YouTube is also a powerful tool not only for sharing video content but also for conducting online queries.

Meanwhile, Instagram is growing by leaps and bounds with a lot of features built to increase engagement, making it a great channel for showcasing products and services for any brand.

But there are dozens of other social networks out there. We understand that most small businesses don’t have the time or manpower to manage every social channel out there. The good news is that such a strategy is not necessary.

The infographic below put together by SERPwatch.io recommends the following three networks for 2019, in addition to the above-mentioned.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has always been the go-to social network for B2B marketing, but recently, the platform has been getting a little extra attention. This means that you need to do your best to get noticed on the network. Create a top-notch profile, communicate with other businesses and individuals from your niche, and make sure to frequently update your account with fresh content, which has recently become more relevant in Google search results.

Twitter

Twitter has been around for quite some time and continues to be popular not just among big companies, but also among many celebrities, industry leaders, and ordinary individuals.

The platform is perfect for direct communication between brands and users, instant feedback, and transparent public discourse. Lately, it has been considered a more trusted news source than the TV, where you can get the latest updates on developing stories or hot issues.

Pinterest

Pinterest is yet another great channel for businesses, as this social network is consistently growing in terms of user base.

Thanks to the curated Pinterest boards, users can easily decide what to buy. Pinterest users spend 50% more on average compared to other networks. Women and millennials, in particular, find this network very useful.

Bottom Line

Managing a presence on social media is just one aspect of digital marketing, as there are other things you need to include in your marketing campaigns. For more interesting facts and figures on digital marketing, have a look at this useful infographic.

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

And, as a writer, I was like YESSS at last! How I have longed for this day! Because there is nothing I like more than to just dive into a topic and wallow around in there for a good long while, really beat the thing absolutely to death with my words.

Going on and on? Rambling endlessly? I love it!

And, frankly, it’s easier too! I always think of that famous quote (of dubious attribution) where the letter writer apologizes for writing such a long letter as they did not have time to write a shorter one. Because writing short is HARD. It involves more editing, more forethought, careful word choice, all of which take time than just rambling the first thoughts off the top of your head. So longer blog posts mean faster blog posts, less time blogging overall even though you’re writing more words.

It also jives with my personal writing style. When I blog, I usually start out with one idea, then realize I need to write about this other idea for context so maybe I should write about that first… but then, oh!, I should also discuss this paralleled idea and then do a counter-point to my own point and, before I know it, what was supposed to be one short blog post is now five. But if longer posts are in vogue, now I can just take all those mental tangents and rope ’em all together into one monster of a post.

All good news, right?

In theory.

But the fact is, it’s one thing to set out to write a short post and get carried away and blow past 2k without breaking a sweat and it’s another altogether to plan to write something of that length from the start. Now you actually need an outline, some kind of roadmap for what you’re going to actually say with all those words. You can’t just sit down at the keyboard and start free-styling (which is how I write 99% of my blog posts). So while you may be saving time on the back end by having to do less editing because you can leave it long, but you’re trading it for more work on the front end with planning. 

And perhaps this is me but I CHAFE at being told what to do. When short blog posts were all the SEO rage, I kept overshooting and writing long. But now that long posts are what we’re supposed to shoot for, all I want to do is embrace brevity.

And more than that, writing long for the sake of long is uncomfortable. It’s like slogging through a muddy field miserable and wet and wondering why you have to still do this. Am I still writing about this topic? HOW many more words? UGH. Add the typical keyword flogging you’ve got to do to tempt search engines these days and if writing an SEO friendly blog post at any length is annoying (and it is).. writing one of that length is a nightmare.

Moreover, besides my misgivings as a blog writer, I have some as a blog READER too.

Because 2,500 words is long.

Really long.

Who the heck wants to read all that? Not me! And then I realized with growing horror THIS is why I have to scroll through someone’s entire life story just to get to the promised recipe for pumpkin pie smoothie or whatever I’m after. Just tell me how much maple to put in my blender I do not CARE how much you loved your Grandma’s pumpkin pie on her farm in Kentucky, MY GOD, woman!

THIS is why I’m seeing blog bloat everywhere I go and everything has become so insufferable to read.

As a reader, I’ve started to skim more than I ever remember doing before, using the find tool to jump down to the keyword I need, scanning headings until I get past all the word padding fluff to the actual content of the dang post that I was looking for in the first place. I’m certainly not enjoying the rise of the Long Ass Blog post and I’m a fairly long form, bookish kind of gal compared to the average reader with the attention span of a gnat, so why are search engines favoring them?

I suspect it’s just an algorithm thing, more words means more chances to use related keywords means you rank higher blah de blah. Maybe all that skimming we need to do to actually find the content we were looking for in that mess of text increases the time spent on the page and that makes them rank us higher too. But I have a pet theory that I think might also be a factor.

What if it’s backlash to micro-blogging? The rise of Twitter et al for a while there had everyone playing the short game and it wasn’t uncommon to get linked to a “blog post” that was just a few sentences but, hey, they got your ad views before you closed the page in a huff. What if this whole mess is the search engines overcompensating for that, instead favoring the longest pieces over the shortest, hoping for better reader satisfaction?

And, in a way, isn’t that the whole point of blogs? The whole advantage they have as a platform over everything else out there that lets you blast your thoughts into the world is that length, the ability to really delve into a topic in depth? I know everyone loves a good tweetstorm but it’s certainly easier to read the same content nicely laid out in a blog. So going even longer just makes sense, right?

Except that our shrinking attention spans mean it’s less likely anyone is going to read a long blog post in full. So does SEO actually favor skimming? Is that why there’s this rise in headings and subheadings in blog posts, splitting up the content into easily digestible chunks? Is it really all about making the posts easier to skim?

And if that’s the case, how does that change how we write them? Are we putting the real meat of the post up-front so the reader can get it and go on their way or are we burying it in the middle of our ramble, trusting the reader to skim and increase that coveted time spent on the page metric for us instead of getting fed up and leaving?

I don’t know but I’ll tell you this:  When I started this blog post, I thought I would make it 2,500 words exactly, just to be a little meta about this point but I’m right around the 1,300 word mark and saying, you know, actually, never mind. Because I could just keep rambling long after I said what I needed to say just to get this post closer to the magic number but it’s not my style. It feels artificial and cheap. I’m done… and so’s this blog post.

But as we’re simultaneously being told that people are willing to read less than ever before at the same time that search engines are favoring longer blog posts, I can’t help but wonder what the heck that is all about and what it means for blog readers and writers both. Is it really just a trick of the algorithm, more reflective of the reading habits of the average blog reader, or something else entirely?

So what do you— aw, who am I kidding? Even short of 2,500 words, there’s no way anyone’s actually read this far!

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

I use Trello’s Kanban style boards to manage the big picture of my life. Trello is where I collect every project on my radar, do all my long term planning and work on the overall structure of my business and my life.

But I use Todoist’s GTD (that stands for Getting Things Done which is a very aptly named productivity method) style to do lists to manage the minutiae of my life. Todoist has just enough advanced features to handle the complexity of the tasks I need to tackle day by day while style being a simple enough checklist app to stay out of my way when I’m knocking things off my list.

I’m happy with both (and I use the free program in both cases) but they don’t always play nicely together which seems silly as they are ideal to use in conjunction with each other. What are most indivudual tasks if not pieces of a bigger project? If you’re working efficiently, every one of your daily To Dos should be a step towards completing something in the big picture.

So why couldn’t I just sync the task lists form certain Trello cards directly to my To Do list in Todoist?

There are various IFTTT integrations available that are supposed to connect the two apps but most only go one way as if you’re using one as your main tool and the other as a back-up instead of using both in tandem as I do.

I tried a couple of things. First, I tried to make Todoist more Trello-like with the free Kanbanist that displays your ToDoist tasks in Kanban-like boards. It works exactly as advertised and has a lot of potential… but it would involve completely changing how I use Todoist which I’m not interested in doing. This is also why I’m not excited about the news that Todoist itself now has a kind of Kanban board functionality.

Then I tried to use Trello’s in card checklists to replace Todoist’s tasks lists and that didn’t work for me either. Trello is great for the big picture but was annoying to use for daily tasks. I know some people love it for that but it just didn’t work for me.

I like how I currently use both Trello and Todoist and, for me, each serves an important but different function. I needed Todoist to be Todoist and Trello to be Trello, not to turn one into the other.

What I really needed was something to sync the two with a lot of flexibility in how that sync would work.

Enter Pleexy. Pleexy is a neat, free tool that integrates multiple popular task and note apps together offering true sync between them. It works with popular apps like OneNote, Evernote, Wunderlist, Gmail, Outlook and more. Setting up a sync between Todoist and Trello was simple and fast and works great. There are also a ton of options that let you customize it to work however you need it to.

Here’s how I’m using it, to give you an example. As I mentioned before, I use Trello to manage the big picture so it’s a list of EVERYTHING on my radar, most of which I don’t need on my daily To Do list until it’s time to actually work on that project. Every project has its own card with a list of tasks and these cards are organized into boards and columns in a complicated way that makes sense to my brain and I won’t bother explaining.

Using Pleexy, I set up synchronization for a single column in Trello called “Hot Seat” that corresponded with a project of the same in Todoist. Whenever a project goes from my backlog to something I am actively working on that day, I move the card for that project into the “Hot Seat” column (which is the same as the “Doing” column for most Kanban users).

I set my Pleexy so as soon as I move a Trello card into that column, the project itself and all of its tasks automatically appear in the Todoist project as tasks. Whenever I check off one of those tasks, Pleexy makes sure to also check off the one in Trello and vice versa. And then, when I have checked off everything and finished the project, I check the project title itself off on Todoist and Pleexy helpfully moves the card on Trello into the “Finished” column.

This was exactly what I needed. Now I can still use Trello to manage the big picture and only when I’m actively working on a project do those tasks appear in my daily To Do list in Todoist. It keeps my Todoist list free of clutter from tasks that have nothing to do with the project at hand while still letting me develope those tasks list from the future in the background on Trello. I also love that I can check the tasks off in either program and Pleexy will make sure both are up to speed since sometimes I just happen to be in one or the other when I finish a task.

For me, Pleexy was the missing link between managing my day to day work in the context of my big picture plans and it was a real game changer.

For more information on Kanban boards and how I use them for writing projects, check out this post form my other blog.

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

• Talks and Workshops. I have been offering talks and workshops locally and via Skype and other video services for a while now about writing and publishing and have finally expanded that to include programs about e-commerce and eBay. While I will eventually set up a page on this site with that information, in the meantime, you can see all the information here.
• Name Changeover. We hit a snag with changing over the names on the books that delayed us so, if you were really keen on having a copy a book with “Hillary DePiano” listed as the author, now is really truly your last chance. Very soon all e-commerce or eBay related books currently under my name will be officially rebranded under The Whine Seller name with this website shortly to follow.
• I’m taking a class the next two months and juggling a bunch of fiction deadlines while still dealing with the never-ending nightmare that is splitting up our company (which I know I still owe you a blog post on but see previous about the crying baby) AND everyone over here is sick so it will be a little while until I can share some of the big news I have on this end but I’ve got some good posts queued up for you in the meantime and, as always, I thank you for reading!

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

I quit Facebook recently.

Which is to say I am still on Facebook because you can’t really quit Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has side-loaded it directly into our brains without our permission where it happily mines our personal traumas for ad revenue while soothing pop-ups jump in front of our childhood memories and assure us the Facebook values our privacy.

Do you know how many times I have Googled variations on “How to leave Facebook without really leaving Facebook?”

Do you know how many people out there are trying to figure out that exact same thing?

It can’t be done.

I don’t like Facebook. I have never liked it. The platform basically offers nothing that isn’t provided by the users themselves. It’s the most boring of the social media sites out there. Its algorithms are annoying, making you see the same posts over and over instead of the ones you’d actually like to see. It’s underhanded and shady about views and exposure for my business pages. It spreads disinformation, skewed our recent elections, violated user privacy in a zillion different ways and is generally evil, awful and bad. No one should be using Facebook.

And yet we do because it’s where everyone is.

I deleted the Facebook app over a month ago. (I’ve never used or installed Messenger which, given the recent spying revelations now seems like it was a very good idea on my part). I took Facebook off my browser speed dial, took it out of the rotation of sites I go to when I want to procrastinate, and replaced its shortcut with a link to a reading app so instead, I can go read a nice book. If I really need to use it, I used the web app on my phone which is such a nightmare to use I never linger.

But I can’t really leave the site entirely. Not really. 

Because I still have to run my business pages and they force you to maintain a profile to be able to administrate those.

Because there are some work things my employers run through Facebook groups and I have to pop in sometimes to deal with those.

Because my daughter’s school uses Facebook for most of their official communication.

Because there are some people I just don’t have a way of contacting outside of Facebook.

And so I still log in every once in a while just to update my business page or check something and I see the number of notifications in the double digits and I just shudder. (My mom has never looked at her notifications and before this always made me twitchy and, like, “How can you live this way with over 100+ unread notifications blinking at you like this??” but now I get it. I totally get it. There are so many now that I just don’t want to even attempt to deal with any of them so the little red number just blares angrily at me and I completely ignore it. It’s somewhat freeing.)

I never told anyone that I left Facebook, never did that “flounce” goodbye type announcement post that we all know because I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave for real. I was going to still have to maintain an account for all the reasons above so what would be the point in announcing that I was leaving when I wasn’t really? Apparently, Facebook doesn’t actually let you delete your account even if I had wanted to and I’ve had friends get caught in that endless loop of deletion and reactivation again and again. So I left Facebook without really leaving Facebook and I felt like that would be that.

Ah, but Facebook is a social space and leaving without telling anyone caused a social ripple all the same.

The problem with everyone being on Facebook is that they all assume you are too. She’s mad at me because, what do you mean I don’t know she had the baby already, she shared a billion pictures??? And he’s offended because I asked after his girlfriend, the one he specifically changed his relationship status with to “it’s complicated.” And my best friend’s having a complex because I didn’t post something supportive on her latest selfie like I usually do and now she thinks she looks like a troll, that’s it, isn’t it? 

Feelings get hurt, drama gets started simply because everyone else feels like they are broadcasting things out to the world and just don’t realize that it’s a world that no longer includes you. And you find yourself in trouble because even though all you did was stop checking a public message board, your friends interpret it as a personal slight. Especially when I do sometimes log in for work or business page reasons and randomly like a post or two… because then it’s a bigger slight that I didn’t hit the button on theirs.

And, frankly, it’s lonely. I like pictures of my friend’s babies. I would have liked to known what was up with him and his girlfriend because I actually hated her and was rooting for him to get back together that barista. You get invested in the stories of your friend’s lives because you care about them. And when 95% of my human interaction for the day is with two small children, I sort of live for the rare adult interaction even if it’s just a meaningless exchange on someone’s selfie. And I hate when I find out later this friend had this bad health scare or that this other friend had this good news and I didn’t know to reach out to either of them because Facebook is the loop and I was out of it.

Leaving Facebook is not just FOMO (that’s short for “Fear Of Missing Out”, mom) as it is cutting yourself off from an entire network of your friends.

Which is a big part of the problem for me. Unlike just about every social network out there that I use predominantly for business and networking, Facebook is the only one I use for my actual real life friends. Sure, I’ve got the occasional networking connection or internet friend on there but I keep my friend list small specifically because I limit it only to my real life family and friends from school and life. So even though I hate the site, hate the user experience, hate the evil policies and would honestly rather use just about any other site out there, I find myself missing, not Facebook itself, but the community on there. My people.

Which is the real problem with quitting Facebook. Until everyone else does, leaving feels like going against the grain. You know you’re doing the right thing but everyone’s weirdly annoyed with you about it so it sure doesn’t feel right.

Facebook itself is no great shakes. Its only product is us, the community, which it has done nothing to earn or deserve to keep. And yet, we’re all still there and so it continues on. And, frankly, I can see no end in sight because it’s become so integrated into our lives that quitting is unthinkable to so many people.

The sentiment I keep coming back to is: Why can’t they just stop being evil? It would make everything so much simpler. Just, like, knock it off, you guys. It would really solve the whole problem.

But, until then, I’ve quit Facebook.

In the sense that I am still on there and none of us can ever really leave Facebook and will be stuck on there forever.

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

The following is a guest post from Michelle Custodio from SupplySpy.com.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you already know the massive power of Amazon. After all, over 50% of eCommerce transactions happen on Amazon! It’s no wonder so many first time eCommerce entrepreneurs start selling on this platform. If you are reading this article, you are probably already an Amazon Seller.

However, it takes creativity and persistence to be successful. Gone are the days where you can just set it and forget it. To be successful you need a professional selling plan, coupon strategies, FBA set up, Buy Box ready and much more.  Below are a few tactics to boost your Amazon Sales.

Go with the Professional Selling Plan

If you are serious about selling on Amazon, the Professional Selling Plan is the way to go. It gives you the freedom to scale your business and comes with additional benefits like selling to CA and Mexico, customized shipping rates, premium placements on product detail pages, bulk upload, better reporting and more.

Offer a 2 for 1 deal

This is a sales velocity “hack” that will signal to Amazon that your products are popular. Here is how to set this up.

1. Select the product you want to rank for
2. Identify the ASIN and the Keyword you would like to rank for
3. Search for KEYWORD+ASIN in the Amazon Search Box. So if you were selling these headphones you would want something like this “Bluetooth headphones B018APC50Y” without the quotes
4. Note that your product already needs to rank for the specific keywords to qualify for this. Your URL in this case would look like this https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Bluetooth+headphones+B018APC50Y
5. Drive traffic to this URL from outside sources (social, search etc)
6. Raise your price a bit so that you don’t lose money but can offer customers a BOGO deal
7. Create a BOGO coupon either on Amazon or from a third party vendor

This tells Amazon that people are buying more of your product per session than others. I would not recommend using this for driving huge volumes of traffic. Amazon may or may not consider this ranking manipulation. However it is generally thought that, at low levels its ok.

Make sure you are taking advantage of Fulfillment By Amazon

Yes you can list your products on Amazon and ship them yourself, but unless it’s a made to order product, why would you? Amazon does such an amazing job of fulfillment, they have really changed the face of eCommerce. You can literally ship inventory to Amazon and let them do all the work. Yes there is a fee for this but, it’s worth it.

Amazon SEO

Just like with Google, Amazon SEO is incredibly important. Amazon decides when and where to show your product, based on the information you give them when you build your listing, combined with many other selling signals. Make sure to set yourself up with strong keyword choices, descriptive page text and great quality, clear images.

Automated pricing

If you sell a product that is sold by other sellers, your main goal is to Win The Buy Box! One way to do this is with Automated Pricing. There are many third party SAAS companies that will do this for you, for a monthly fee. Amazon also offers this type of automated pricing service. In Seller Central go to  Pricing > Automate Pricing and follow the prompts to set up automation. Basically you let Amazon know what ASIN to manage, and then set your parameters and let the machines do the work.

Win the buy box

This is related to automated pricing. If you are selling a competitive product that others are already selling, winning the buy box is the name of the game. Note, only Professional Sellers are eligible to Win The Buy Box. Winning the buy box is more than just price. Amazon also considers things like, relevancy, sales volume, account health, defect rate, customer feedback score, and number of positive or negative reviews. Also considered is how often you run out of stock (Amazon does not like you to run out of inventory if your product is selling well).

Get more reviews!

Once you are done getting reviews, get more! You can never have enough reviews, especially good reviews. It’s human nature to gravitate towards the Amazon products on a search results page with the most reviews. As humans we can’t help it, we want to “join the party”. Its just like the restaurant with a line out the door. There must be something good in there!

Advertise

There are countless ways to advertise your Amazon listings these days. Off Amazon, there are the big ones (Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest). But Amazon itself has very powerful and generally ROI positive internal advertising opportunities. In Seller Central, go to Advertising > Campaign Manager and start by clicking “Create Campaign”. Just follow the prompts from there. It is recommended to start with an Amazon Targeted Campaign for a few days. Once you have had a fair amount of impressions, run a report to show you which keywords Amazon used to trigger your ad and which ones resulted in sales.  You can then hand pick those keywords and bid on them manually.

Get a following!

Every brand needs fans, so make sure to build out brand pages on all of your social channels. Depending on what you are selling you might do better on one vs another. For example, Facebook tends to skew older and Instagram tends to skew younger.  Pinterest is a great place for creative products. Test them all and figure out what works. Share content and encourage users to “follow you”. As you build up your following you can push out coupons and specials.

Selling on Amazon is a process of continuous improvement. If you set it and forget it, chances are someone will leapfrog you and your sales will drop.  It takes creativity and persistence. To be successful as a seller on Amazon you need a multi-pronged approach. Check out each of these suggestions above and find the right balance for your business.

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.

If you were seduced by the idea of some of those full featured webstores we discussed but turned off by the price, there’s actually some alternatives with a price tag you’ll love. There are a variety of open source webstores that easily install onto any web host that are completely free. They all come with similar features, such as a robust shopping cart, professional looking ready made templates, and inventory management.

I used to be very intimidated by Open Source and now I’m a big believer so if you’re tentative about giving it a try, let me explain a little more about it. Open Source software is developed and supported in a community atmosphere. It’s offered for free but the trade off is that there’s little formal support. That said, the Open Source community is tremendously giving and I’ve never had an issue I couldn’t find a solution to either in a support forum or on one of the many informative blogs from fellow users. In short, if you’re willing to do the work to set it up and maintain it yourself, you stand to get a Do It Yourself version of a webstore package for $0 down. Just understand going in that the trade off for money upfront is extra work on the other end.

Some of the best known open source webstore packages are Zen Cart, Prestashop, osCommerce, and WordPress.org site plugins like WP-Commerce. All have a host of free or paid plugins that extend their services. Prestashop, for instance, has a free add on that supports import from eBay and the community has already offered a variety of tutorials on how to import items from Etsy as well. If you’re hearing me say free and picturing something very basic, you’ll be amazed at the advanced options and beautiful themes these webstores have to offer.

That’s one of the things I love best about open source: there are literally no limits to the software. If there’s something you want to do, there’s a way to do it, you just need to figure out how. If someone else has already tried to do whatever it is you’re after, there’s likely already a plugin or tutorial to walk you through the process. If you’re willing to work for it, either by doing the coding yourself or by digging around for the answer, you can have your store do exactly what you want.

But, as with anything, there are pluses and minuses to open source e-commerce software.

Advantages open source e-commerce software

• Free! There’s no way around it, there’s literally no other way to get an entire webstore loaded with features for free. You’ll still have costs such as payment processing, web hosting and marketing but at least your store itself is taken care of.
• (Probably) works with your existing hosting and domain. If you’ve already got some website and a dotcom, you can add the store onto your existing web presence without having to make an external shop and then figure out how to integrate the two. That said, some hosts don’t play nice with certain software so you’ll want to double check ahead of time.
• Infinitely customizable with no restrictions on how or what you sell. As I mentioned above, there is a way to make the software do just about anything you may want it to with a little tweaking. There are none of the selling or policy limitations of a marketplace either. You have 100% control over your store and your buyer’s experience. Of course, some customizations won’t necessarily be easy but luckily…
• A wealth of documentation, support and plugins are available online for free. Helpful support communities, free plugins, add-ons and tons of advice and how-tos are some of the hallmarks of these open source options. It may take some digging but you can almost always find someone to help you figure out how to do whatever you’re trying to do.
• Extremely powerful software at no cost. Not only can you customize open source e-commerce platform however you want, they all come with some pretty powerful features at first install. Things like sales managers, coupons, inventory tools and more all come standard with the free download at no additional cost.
• A variety of pre-made themes and templates to choose from. While the webstores will come installed with a theme or two, there’s also a wide variety of additional designs available elsewhere in the web many free and some for a one time additional fee. These pre-made storefronts are all as slick and professional looking as their expensive counterparts in a full featured webstore package and offer infinite customization to showcase your brand.
• Sell direct to your customers. No need to rely on a third party or go through a middle man. As long as your website is up and running, so is your store and the only fees are the ones that come with your payment processing.

Disadvantages open source e-commerce software

• Steep learning curve. Requires more knowledge upfront than any other option. If you are unfamiliar with editing code or web design, you’ll need to do a lot of self-teaching to get the software up and running how you want it. Speaking as someone with above average internet know-how and coding skills, it can often be overwhelming and frustrating to try to make what seems like a simple change. Depending on how tech savvy you are, this can be a dealbreaker. I don’t feel comfortable recommending an open source webstore to anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable popping the hood and mucking with code from time to time.
• Too many features, overly complex store. These options give you a pretty powerful store, designed for a wide variety of products. If all you’re selling is a couple of recurring items, say five of your paintings, this is a little like paddling around the local pond in a cruise ship. As tempting as it is to go for the service with the most features, you may find these webstores to be much more than you need. Might you be better off with a simpler solution?
• You may need to hire someone to set up your store or customize your theme. If you aren’t comfortable enough with code to do your install, store customizations or theme design, you may need to hire someone to do it for you. While this may be an unwanted upfront cost, it may be worth the initial investment as that will be a one-time fee that you’ll quickly make up in savings since you aren’t paying fees or a subscription fee. The only thing is…
• You’re on your own. What do you do if something goes wrong? If something breaks spectacularly in the middle of your busiest season, there’s no customer support or big company backing you up. While there’s ample support info available for all of these options, it’s still up to you to make the necessary changes and corrections and that can be time consuming. If you hired someone to do the initial set-up or customization, will you need to hire someone else to fix any new issues that crop up? It’s not an impossible situation to deal with but it’s still something to consider.
• May not be compatible with your hosting. You’ll need to research which option works best with your hosting and database options. Nearly all of these open source options don’t work with free hosting such as Blogger or Tumblr.
• Just as with any standalone webstore, the entire burden of getting buyers to your store and to find your items falls on you and your marketing. But, on the plus side, instead of having to drive traffic both to your website and your store, these would both be hosted in the same place.

There’s a lot to love about open source e-commerce software on paper but, in practice, you may find the tech elements to be too much of a hassle or the software too complex for your needs. Personally, I was intimidated by anything open source for years because I thought it would be impossibly hard and, while it did take me a while to learn and I still make mistakes and butt up against frustrations, it’s been well worth the extra work. I love the freedom to be able to have my site do anything I can imagine and I don’t mind doing some extra work for that freedom.

This is an excerpt from Beyond Amazon, eBay, and Etsy: free and low cost alternative marketplaces, shopping cart solutions and e-commerce storefronts.

This post appeared first on The Whine Seller.