NEW & NEED SOME ENCOURAGEMENT/ADVICE...

whatshotnow · Posts: 3

Hi,
I've got my store up and running, I guess? I'm getting lots of "looks", but no purchases, questions or anything. I've even done a little marketing on my own. What am I not doing? Or what am I doing wrong? I'm still selling on Ebay, but I can't seem to get anything going here......how long does it take? Help?

Judy Rolling Eyes

zickit · Posts: 21857

Having your very own online store is ALOT of work. YOU have to devote yourself to your business and get your shoppers and buyers into your store.

There are tons of topics about advertising and promoting.
I would start here - Solutions to Common Questions - ADVERTISING and PROMOTION

ElegantMemoriesPhotography · Posts: 26

Hi Judy! Welcome to ecrater! I too am new to this site and I really love it! I have yet to get any buyers as well. I think it will take some time to establish your new store as with any business. Hang in there and as advise by BigandTall Make sure you are promoteing like crazy. This site does not promote like ebay might do. But after looking around I do love the fact that when someone does a search here on eCrater, if you have the best suited catagories selected then your items will pull up in the search, so make sure those are the best for what you sell. If you have your own website, Myspace account, any other online sources make sure you advertise there too! I'm not sure if eBay will allow but if possible advertise there as well! Good luck and keep your chin up!

Regina

zickit · Posts: 21857

MaggietheCatsMeows · Posts: 2853

Welcome to ecrater.

Don't know how long you've been here but it does take a few days to weeks for Google to pick up your items. Early views are most often other ecrater sellers who may or may not be shopping.

You might want to add a few more lines to your home page blurb as to the contents of your store.

paulaspantry · Posts: 40

It was in an Ebay forum that I found Ecrater. Wasn't sure why her post wasn't pulled, but I'm glad I checked it out.

Seamless-Switchplates · Posts: 326

lol Paula, it might have been me who posted. I have been mentioning ecrater quite a bit lately.

BigTall as far as I know we are still allowed to link to our ecrater store from our ebay me pages. Please correct me if I'm wrong

zickit · Posts: 21857

retrojunkie · Posts: 337

But if you have a web site, you can link to that, as long as you're not selling anything on it. And if your web site has a link to your eCRATER store, well, it all works out. You'll need to have something on your site aside from the eCRATER link, so I don't recommend starting one just to get eBay traffic. But if you already have one with fun stuff on it, you may be able to make a "bank shot", as they say in pool.

zickit · Posts: 21857

From ebay -
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-aboutme.html

retrojunkie · Posts: 337

That's the sneaky part. Let's say I have the web site example.com. example.com is not part of any online selling site, for instance, eCRATER. It does, however, link to one. Because I haven't directly linked to an online trading site, I'm within the letter of the law. In my About Me page, I can just say "Don't forget to visit me at example.com" and it's all perfectly legal. However, example.com has to be a real web site. It can't just redirect to an eCRATER store, or contain nothing but a link to an eCRATER store. As long as it has other things, such as (for instance) animated GIFs, it can still have a prominently placed link to a specific store and eBay won't yell at you.

zickit · Posts: 21857

All I am saying is one of my ebay ME PAGE was removed because I linked to a "doorway" page nothing at all actually for sale on that page - just linked to my ecrater HOME PAGE (where again you can't buy anything)
eBay is NOT THE LAW
but ebay thinks they are higher then the law.
They do what they want to however they want when ever they feel it's what they want to do.
So I been told by the ebay employees that it is not ebay legal to link to a page that can take you someplace other then back to ebay! If the links on your own web page take you back to ebay then it's ok.

retrojunkie · Posts: 337

Yeah, I can see where you would have gotten in trouble for that one. That's a "shill" page and they're easy to spot. I probably got away with it because Retrojunkie's is a site up since 2003 with 23 gigs of content. So if you went to the menu you'd find a link called just "The Store", which was at the bottom of a list of links to celebrity pictures, old movies, jokes, ASCII art, and such. Visitors from eBay might well visit my eCRATER store, but it didn't stand out like a single link or a redirect.

Anyhow, I agree that eBay can pretty much make whatever rules they want, whether or not it's in their best interests. And I'll ignore whatever rules I can get away with ignoring. Smile

zickit · Posts: 21857

retrojunkie · Posts: 337

Oh, well, still no problem. A suspension from eBay would just give me an excuse to say goodbye to them forever. Lots of alternatives now, so I see nothing to worry about.

Have Fun.