Red Ink Diary

Sometimes we small sellers miss the obvious when it comes to promotion. We don’t have the cash flow to outsource, we get tired or run out of time for research to work out the best bang for the buck so we procrastinate.

We know promotion and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are essential because despite what the movie said, if you just build it they probably will not come, simply because they can’t find it!

Fortunately there are simple things we can do which will use people’s natural curiosity to bring traffic to our eCommerce site. This applies equally to those who sell in a marketplace and website operators. The goal is to stand out from the crowd without being a black sheep!

First, do use the free linking opportunities that abound all over the internet.

• Make comments on blogs if you have something to say on topic. Most blogs allow you a link back as it is mutually beneficial.
• If you offer something of value by way of thoughtful and reasoned comments readers are much more likely to click your links.
• Every email you send should have your links in the signature line.
• If you use Twitter, link in your profile.
• When posting on forums take the time to customize your signature with links, do check first to see if this is permitted on that forum.
• If you are using cropped or shortened links make sure they work!

Do not:

• Push in the social marketplace, nobody likes a pressure salesman.
• Fill your comment with links, the line between spam and discrete promotion is clear and obvious, honor it or run the risk of having your comment edited or moderated.
• Copy and paste the same comment to multiple blogs, it is rude and cheesy.
• Only use Twitter to push your promotional agenda. You will get lost in the social media clutter as your Tweets get skimmed over. Who reads every classified advertisement in the newspaper before the headlines?

Consider the value

If you sell shipping supplies or sales management software you would benefit more from directing your efforts to sites where sellers go, that is where your potential customers are.

Links from a site that has more traffic than you do are said to be weighted more heavily by search engine algorithms and thus improve your ranking. This is called Link Popularity.

Link Farms and other schemes

A link farm is a site that that links to other unrelated sites for the sole purpose of increasing their link popularity score. Google does not like link farms and sites risk being removed from the Google index if they’re affiliated with link farms.

Traffic generation sites which promise to boost your traffic if you will sit and click links while other hopeful site owners are also busily clicking links are (in my opinion) useless. Traffic which does not convert to sales is just traffic.

Directories are not link farms and will be covered in a future post.

Y’all come back!

Anyone can upload their product to Google. Doing it correctly and getting it found is the trick, followed by getting it seen before your competition’s items. So, as a small or micro-seller what can you do to improve your ranking?

First, the obvious

• Title - use key phrases, this is organic search. “Suggested maximum length of 70 characters”. For example the angel Christmas ornament shown below was listed for a long time as “Repro Victorian Die Cut Embossed Christmas Angel Ornament” all of which are good accurate describing words, but many do not rank high on searched words. I am hoping that using “Christmas Ornament Swedish Angel Tree Candle” will do better.
• Price - lower ranks higher among comparables
• Description - 150 characters and spaces will be your ‘hook’, what appears in the Google Shopping search. Use the key words and phrases you couldn’t get into your title, do not repeat within the first 100 characters and spaces. Bullets seem to gain brownie points. As an example here are the first 150 characters and spaces in my ad. “Large angel or Saint Lucia carrying a lighted candle and a Christmas tree This is a beautiful old fashioned paper ornament reproduced from an antique” note that I have eliminated commas and periods to be able to get in the word “antique”. Rules for Google Checkout Buy Now buttons are a little different, you put your 100 character description into the button maker so what you write next to the picture has very little weight.

No duplication: this is a new Google rule. You may list the same product on many venues, your website etc. but Google will reject the listing, even with different price, description, title etc. The policy is very clear.

“We do not permit duplicate products in the same account or between multiple accounts. If products are available on multiple sites under the same ownership, one site must be chosen to exclusively submit those products. For example, if you own two websites that sell the same product, you may not submit that product for both sites, regardless of pricing or promotional differences.”

Attributes!

Attributes are simply data written in a form Google can access and translate.

Here is where it gets tricky. Google has very strict rules and they are (oddly) not very good at making them easy to find. Here is a complete list of all attributes defined by Google Product Search in the new Merchant Center.

Some attributes are required, leave them out and your product is out. If you are selling on a Marketplace venue that submits feeds to Google they should, if they know what they are doing, submit the information you have included in your listing.

• condition - choose from new, used or refurbished
• description - Google says “Text, up to a maximum length of 10,000 characters. Ideally greater than 15 characters and 3 words. Do not include promotional or boilerplate text, such as “Free shipping!” or “Click here now!”
• id - A unique alphanumeric identifier for the item i.e your SKU If you sell on Bonanzle the site allocates an identifier if you do not.
• link - The URL of the web page associated with the item. This should not forward to another URL; it must point directly to the target page.
• price - fixed price only, use this format  4.95 or 20.00, free items do not appear in Google Product Search.
• title - Google does not like all CAPS, non relevant symbols like exclamation points, asterisks, more information is found in Editorial Guidelines

The not so secret search boosters

1. Offer Google Checkout; this should not come as a surprise. The argument that you only offer PayPal because it is required on eBay will cost you ranking on your website items.
2. Use the optional payment_accepted and payment_notes attributes in your website feed. On Bonanzle, which does xml feeds, add this at the bottom of your listing. [[ payment_accepted:Visa payment_accepted:Cash payment_accepted:Mastercard payment_notes:Google Checkout]] Be sure to leave no space on either side between the colon and the attribute but do leave a space between multiple attributes, which (on Bonanzle) must all be enclosed in the one set of brackets.
3. Reviews - Think of Google Checkout Reviews as Google Feedback. As Bonanzle sellers we all need to get into the habit of completing Google Checkout reviews on our eligible purchases on the site. They carry an incredible amount of ranking weight. The more sellers with positive reviews we have on Bonanzle the better we will all do.

To enable reviews on purchases check off the review box when you make a payment. Google will email you a review form after you have had time to receive the purchased item. To make reviews on past Google Checkout purchases and learn more about the Google seller review process click here.

Y’all come back!

Christmas Ornament Swedish Angel with Tree and Candle $5.00
Large angel or Saint Lucia carrying a lighted candle and a Christmas tree This is a beautiful old fashioned paper ornament reproduced from an antique. A complex die cut (with interior cuts, not just around the outside) she is printed on both sides, embossed, and has a gold hanging cord.

Shipping to anywhere in the USA is included in the price.

Size approximately 5-3/4′ tall and 4″ across

When I moved to Hawaii in 1980 you could find in any tourist shop a style of muu-muu no self respecting local would be seen dead in. They were one size fits all, vee neck and the sleeve was part of the whole enormous piece of fabric. They sold like hotcakes together with the matching aloha shirt for hubby.

If you were very large they clung in all the wrong places, if you were small you looked like an incredibly gaudy perambulating pup tent. Do not ask how I know this I am small now and I was quite a bit smaller then.

One size fits all is an oxymoron in clothing and also in sales venues.

Once upon a time

You could find anything you wanted on eBay. They built advertising campaigns on that theme and they were all true. One of my favorite eBay stories is of getting a phone call asking where an American lady could find a sporran for her son who needed to wear traditional Highland dress at a wedding. I found a telephone number for an outfitters in Edinburgh but their sporrans were very expensive. Just for fun I looked on eBay and to my amazement, there they were, I tell no lie, more than a hundred listed. She was able to choose the style, size and price and she was a happy customer.

eBay changed direction

This was a management choice and these people are paid big bucks for doing what they do. eBay’s preferred sellers are now large merchants, very high volume listers and those are the ones who are rewarded with final value rebates and customer service.

With fee increases, and the changes to search, many small sellers found that they were not able to be both competitive and profitable.

I was one of them. Because I live on an island my choice of product is limited. I must pay freight on anything I buy to sell unless I drop-ship. Freight alone can eat profit margins. What I have sold for years is low ASP (Average Sales Price), but lightweight. I was not “routed off the site” because I was a bad seller, I left because my profit potential was not worth the increased stress and risk to my feedback.

Some chose to stay

If you are happy and profitable on eBay I salute you. I know for a fact you worked very hard just keeping up with the 50+ platform policy changes last year.

Many of those changes, while burdensome (def.#2) to sellers were seen as necessary by eBay management to increase the perception of trust and safety for buyers. Only eBay knows if it is working.

However, while buyers may feel safer, there is higher risk for sellers. It is now much easier to defraud sellers with chargebacks once the goods are shipped and correspondingly harder for sellers, particularly smaller sellers to defend against. Those who are selling inexpensive collectibles are unlikely to be much of a target. Sellers of expensive goods are more vulnerable even if they follow every guideline and rule. This January story about Cornerstone Supply from Trading Assistant Journal is by no means unique.

Niche Sites

There are many choices for smaller sellers today. The trick is to pick the right one for your product. While building a cookie cutter website is comparatively easy, getting meaningful traffic without spending a lot of money is not so easy. It is possible, especially if you have a truly niche product but not instant. For those who need income a sales venue is the smarter way to go, perhaps while building the website traffic.

Apart from the niche sites there are any number of venues, all shapes and sizes, none of them have eBay’s traffic and for the most part none of them will have eBay’s sales, but, they do not have eBay’s fees or degree of risk.

If you go to any of these venues from Etsy to eFleaa expecting them to work like eBay and have eBay traffic you will be disappointed. Each sale venue has its own rules, payment methods and preferred inventory type.

I think we can agree

The person who is going to buy one of my exquisitely feminine limited quantity die cut Photo Mattes (yes it is a plug, click the picture to enlarge or click here to go to the item) might not be very interested in the latest miracle of technology, I probably should not list it on a site that specializes in electronics.

Even a part timer, hobby seller, or micro-seller should pick a venue where people go to buy things similar to what you sell and that allows you to make a profit, otherwise you might as well list it on freecycle.org or throw it in the trash.

It is your responsibility to read and understand not only the site rules but how it works and just as importantly how to make it work for you. Saying “I didn’t know I was supposed to . . ” is not going to miraculously get back the sales you missed.

Y’all come back!

Full disclosure: I am an ex-eBay seller currently selling on my own website and Bonanzle.com