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Newbie on eCRATER with Questions
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noladiscountshop



Posts: 22

PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 2:42 am    Post subject: Newbie on eCRATER with Questions Reply with quote

Hi, eCRATER community! We are in the process of opening a store on eCRATER. Some of this stuff is confusing to us. Here are a few of our questions:

1) What are google attributes? What do they do and how do you apply or use them?

2) How do you know which items are sold in the eCRATER marketplace and are subject to the 2.9% commission or sales fee?

3) Are we allowed to put a border on our item photos?

4) If you use flat rate shipping, then do you just put zero for the weight as this is a required field?

5) How do you add additional photos and does it cost a fee to do so?

6) Is there any other newbie mistakes that you can warn us about? Or do y'all have any recommendations or suggestions for a newbie?

Thanks for your assistance with these questions. God Bless!
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SheilaDeesPostcards
moderator


Posts: 4614

PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 4:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Welcome to eCRATER and to the Community Forums. Rather than trying to answer your questions, I would like to make a couple of suggestions to get you started.

1) Go to the home page of eCRATER, http://www.ecrater.com/, and click on the tab that says FAQ. On the next page, click on the the link Terms and make sure you have read the Terms of Service for selling on eCRATER. It may save you some work in the future.

2) Once you've read those, go back and click on the link marked Selling. Read through the answers to those questions. Not all will apply to you, but it will help answer a lot of your questions. The very last question is a full tutorial for the Administrative Tool. It is available in a Word docx or doc version that can be read online or downloaded to your computer. This will answer even more questions.

3) In your store admin you'll see many places where there are boxes with ? marks. Those boxes contain more information about how things work.

Once you have a better understanding of how things work, we'll be happy to answer specific questions. Welcome aboard!
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noladiscountshop



Posts: 22

PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 7:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi! Thanks for your response. It was very kind of you. We have read most of those and will try to do the other ones we missed.

Does it mention anything about borders on item pictures?

Thanks again.
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SheilaDeesPostcards
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Posts: 4614

PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 7:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When it comes to photos, there are several things to consider. First would be eCRATER rules, then suggestions for Google Shopping. You can't use a logo image or a general generic image for the first photo on your item. As far as I remember that is the only "required" photo rule on eCRATER. It is recommended that your photos be at least 800 px on one side. If your photo is smaller, your item will be shown after all the items with larger photos when presenting items in a search on the marketplace.

Now, Google Shopping has it's own requirements. Our items are submitted to Google Shopping, but it is our job to make sure our items comply with their rules or they won't show our items. Here's a link to information on Google Shopping https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188494. When you get there look for "image link" and click on the down arrow for the information. They recommend the photos be at least 800px on both sides and will not accept photos that have borders. It's your choice as a seller to decide what you want to do. If you are not interested is best placement in Google Shopping, add borders. However, it is not "against" any eCRATER rules.
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noladiscountshop



Posts: 22

PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 7:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Awesome. Thanks for your assistance and God Bless!
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MaggietheCatsMeows



Posts: 2853

PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 9:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nola, welcome to eCRATER.

Since you haven't listed items yet I have a suggestion.
If you store is going to be all about Mardi Gras and New Orleans you are missing a great promotional opportunity by having a non-specific store name. Mardi Gras and New Orleans are great tourist destinations. If I were you I'd play that up in a store name that plays on that.

If you want to change your store name, just open up a new store with the more appropriate name and then close this one. If you do it this way it will not cost you anything. If you try to change the name later after you have listings up, there is a fee involved.

Of course if you do not intend to specialize in N O and M G, ignore me.
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noladiscountshop



Posts: 22

PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 9:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maggie,

Thanks for your suggestion. We welcome any and all recommendations and advice as we want to limit the costly newbie mistakes if possible. We can't afford to make too many mistakes. Yes, it's definitely something to consider. Thanks again and God Bless!
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SammysSupplies



Posts: 1631

PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 7:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi and welcome, just a reminder, people don't bid here. You might want to change the message on your front page. Hope you have many sales!
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MoonwishesStore
moderator


Posts: 17389

PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 8:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hello and welcome!

Nope no extra fee for extra photos. You are allowed up to 10 at no charge. I see you are already working on using specific categories for your items and that helps a lot. Somw come from ebay and dump hundreds of items into one category called ebay and let it go at that. No one is going to plow through all that to find out if the seller sells for instance old Victoria Magazines!

As Sammy mentioned the mention of bidding on your home page. You also bring up things that are true with ebay but not here in your terms page, such as giving three days to pay. Here the site is set up to be charged and paid immediately via PP and/or Stripe. To note, if someone 'order's but doesn't pay, there is no blocking them nor any fee needing to be reversed, etc. like at ebay. On your About page, you have lots of mention of ebay. Other than saying that you have sold there with over 400 satisfied customers, that is all that is needed. There is no reason to discuss why or why not you have a store on ebay. You are ecrater now and whole world of difference. some newbies have a hard time of letting go of ebay in their brains when they first come.

When you are done reading all that Sheila pointed you too, you might also want to read through the forums posts here, specifically the newbie threads, the selling on ecrater on, the ecrater sellers only thread, and the Help threads. Many of the questions you have will have been answered within them.

You might want to take time to go visit the different stores that have been built here. They are easy to find as with each person's post you will find a button with www on it and if you click it you will be in their store. You may find some helpful ideas, and what they consider to be important on their home page and on their About and Terms pages.

That may seem like a whole bunch of 'homework' but if you think about the homework prior to starting a brick and mortar business, you are coming off easy.

After reading you will better understand what needs clarified, or what you still don't understand, like if you canf igure out how to use the matrix for your shipping prices and thus automatically discount your shipping without the need for back and forth emails to sort that out. Back and forth emails can end a sale so you want everything to be easy for the buyer.

Nobody bites here so feels free to ask what you need to!
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ArtistsUnion



Posts: 114

PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 11:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Welcome to eCrater and good luck!
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noladiscountshop



Posts: 22

PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 12:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Moonwishes, Sammys, and Artists,

Thanks for all of your advice and well wishes. We welcome any and all suggestions and recommendations as it will assist us. We have read a lot already and we know there is more to read. We have also looked at other seller's stores on eCRATER as well as the terms, FAQs, and everything else to get more ideas that fit well with our store. Yeah, it's always hard to get started and this has helped a lot.

How are sales on this site? Also, how are the buyers? Are they honest?

Thanks to everyone on this site. Y'all have been amazing. God Bless!
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MoonwishesStore
moderator


Posts: 17389

PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 4:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

How are sales? is a tough one to answer. When ths site first opened most sellers didn't have to do any promoting and the sales poured in. Each time google makes a massive change to how it does things or wants things to be, sales get even slower. Depending on the month I make 10-20% of what I did about 7 years ago Sad That being said, except for a minor MP fee for some sales, there are no other fees or costs to listing here. Of course PP charges the same whether the sale comes from here or ebay. Stripe charges the same as PP. After over $6k in transactions with Stripe, I haven't had any problems with it and at this point, they pay out my sales within 24 hours and usually the money is at the bank in 2 days. Just in case you might consider it as it gives a payment option to the PP hating buyer. Some have had problems, but like in some of those instances it is because the buyer doesn't seem to know there own address.

Customers 'being honest' or not I think depends highly on the product you are selling. Computers, cell phones, cameras are high stakes products that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I sell sewing patterns and in general most sewers are honest in that they aren't trying to scam anyone and will for the most part give the shirts off their backs when someone needs help, especially quilters.

You will have to promote your own goods in as many ways as possible. I don't pay for any pay per click advertising or anything like that. Your items would be very Pinterestable (not sure if that is a word). So far this month 3 of my orders have been through Pinterest. You can see the 10 main areas your sales are coming from on your order list. I personally track those so I can see an overall picture of the success and failure of my promotions.

I think people with a niche market tend to do a bit better than those with an eclectic bunch of products such as 1 listing for a toilet bowl brush, 2 listings for electric curlers, 3 listings for wrestling magazines, etc. How in the world to market all that? Pretty much everthing I sell
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MoonwishesStore
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Posts: 17389

PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 4:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yikes computer froze in middle of post.

Continuting on. everything I sell is related to sewing and needlework. So all of it can be promoted to the same places easily. You are doing the same with your Mardi Gras theme. If you don't have one yet, you should start a blog about Mardi Gras with links back to your store.

Well my computer won't let me fix all my misspelled words so will close this and sorry so long.
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noladiscountshop



Posts: 22

PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 7:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Moonwishes,

Thanks a whole lot. You are amazing. It's hard to get started and to get such excellent advice from you and everyone else is so much appreciated. We're trying to take it all in and have been doing a lot of reading. Unfotunately, we are not knowledgeable with social media as well as blogging. We'll have to learn a lot before we start up the store. It's also nice to hear the history of how sales are on eCRATER. It's give us a heads-up on what to expect and what works best. We wish we had more time so that we can start soon, but there is a lot to digest before starting and making too many misstakes. Thanks again!
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MoonwishesStore
moderator


Posts: 17389

PostPosted: Mon Jul 18, 2016 8:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
there is a lot to digest before starting and making too many misstakes


You will do much better by not doing the mistakes than having to spend your time correcting them after the fact or after finding you just charge someone $2 for postage when in reality it would cost $11! LOL

There are several older threads about Pinterest which you will find helpful. I usually give more than my 2 cents worth on Pinterest topics. So when you are ready to learn more about using Pinterest, look at the bottom of any of my posts and click on my profile. From there you can scan for posts about Pinterest (the word Pinterest is usually in the thread name) so hopefully that will give you a big boost with promoting. Sorry so many threads to plow through!

I love Pinterest! I've been waiting many years for something like that to come along so I could keep track of ideas for sewing/needle craft projects and now I have it! I read some info a few years back after I first joined which was very helpful in getting followers which is key to using Pinterest to promote your inventory.
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