Another Newbie- advice please

[abby-rose]

Another seller from you-know-where! I have a very specific buyer base- I sell Decorative Painting books and patterns- old and new. Just signed up today and have only 2 items listed but I thought I'd ask you pros to take a peek before I go any further.
I have thousands of books/patterns- I used to have a retail store and never had a going out of business sale- just took it all home with me LOL! This is a LOT slower listing than using Auctiva so any suggestions would be welcomed before I start seriously listing- I have to get a banner up, etc. on the front page, I know.
I still list auction-style on ebay- some of my patterns can be bid up very high. Can I give my ebay store link?
I've been reading the advice here on the forum - what a nice, friendly group. You're being so patient with all of us refugees LOL! Thanks!

[crystalrock]

Hey!

Welcome!

May you have many sales and enjoy every minute of it (even though it's a tad slower and you have to decrypt some HTML mumbo jumbo - it's still worth it, I think)!

Good luck!

Erez.

[LindasDollClothesandCollectibles]

Welcome to ecrater! It is alot different than that other place, but be patient. In the end, it will be worth it!!

[acread]

Hi, welcome to eCrater.

Just a few suggestions:
You are offering cash on delivery as payment method, please read
http://www.ecrater.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=3756

You have 100 characters available for title, make use of them.

You need to extend your discription. And make sure you put lots of keywords that would be used in searches.

If you have more that 100 items to list consider using the bulk lister.

Sending people who already arrived at your site to another site is not a good choice. Please see my comments on this in this thread:
http://www.ecrater.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=9345

[abby-rose]

Thanks! I had gone in and unchecked COD earlier- I must have left the page without saving that change. Should be OK now. And I'll add more description- I'm working on some templates on notepad so I can just change the item specifics. And I deleted the link- that's why I asked- I didn't know. Thanks for looking and your suggestions. Janice

[acread]

No problem, good luck with your store.

[makusan]

Welcome to Ecrater!
Good luck to your store.!

[busokelo]

I love that you said you just took your inventory home with you rather than having a going out of business sale. That is so cool! I think I would do the same.

We too used auctiva and found it tedious at first to make our listings here on eCrater. But we just opened our ebay listings and did a lot of copy & paste and once we got going it went pretty fast. Like other people have said it just took a little patience, and a little tv-watching to keep from getting bored while waiting for pictures to upload

Oh also, something I just found out that might be helpful is that that you can click on product pictures to enlarge them. (Everyone probably knows this, but I was pretty thrilled to find that feature!-- I'm a little slow, hehe) I have seen some sellers put, "Click on picture to enlarge" in the first line of their descriptions and I think that I might try that myself.

Your store looks really nice, and good luck!

[normasbathandbody]

Hey abby.. welcome
~Norma

[abby-rose]

Morning! How nice to come online and be greeted by welcomes and advice and just- well, good vibes. I had hoped to list more this morning but just had to attend an Art Show at my granddaughter's school (Abigail Rose, age 5). What fun! And yep, I named my store after her.
Thanks again for the warm welcome- and the suggestions! Now to get to work! Janice

[Periwinkles]

Welcome and best of luck.

Joyce

[SnowflakesBooksandCollectibles]

Welcome and good luck to you1

Susan

[goldfashionmine]

very nice books!!

painting berries!

welcome to ecrater!

www.goldfashionmine.ecrater.com

[fynderskeepers]

Your store looks great!! Just one idea for you .. instead of thinking about pointing people to your eBay store, point your eBay buyers to your store here. Because you have no listing/FVFs you can offer better bargains on this site and keep all the money yourself !

You can get your customers email addresses from paypal payments, and also if you click reply to eBay " ask a question " directly from your email in box (outside of eBay)

Try to incite your existing buyers to purchase by offering free shipping if they add something from this site to their eBay order, or offer a discount, etc.

You have to get in the mind set of promoting your ecrater store yourself with flyers, cards in your shipments and so on.

It's a great site once you get used to it. I find the listings go faster than on eBay. Also, read up on how to enter the google base attributes in your listing. They're free, and don't show up in the finished listing text.

Good luck!!

Tracy

[abby-rose]

Thanks for all those great ideas. I did remove the reference to my ebay listings- is it still showing up? And yesterday I sent out an announcement to 2 of my online groups- all decorative painters (my target audience) - about 2000 total. And no hits on the items that I have listed here. Yet! I'll see what today brings- I do offer free shipping here- when I offer it to my groups - twice a year- I can't keep up with the sales on ebay.
I do have an about me page on ebay- but I thought I couldn't link here from there? I'll go ask at the Delphi Forums Ebay Addicts and Boycott Ebay.
Thanks again! Janice