Free Online Marketing eBook Downloads

Quick post about an interesting holiday give-away happening over here at Sell Center.

Check out this link:
http://www.sellcenter.net/mvm/

We're giving away our Multi-Venue Management and E-Commerce Strategies eBook!

and other freebies too!

SEO Made Easy by Brad Callen and Adwords Made Easy by Brad Callen All For Free.

Our eBook explains various Multi-Venue Management strategies that will help you and your business thrive in the e-commerce 2.0 world. You'll learn:

• How website visitors view your homepage.
• How to drastically increase your website conversion rate.
• Using discounts to ramp up sales, increase order size & inventory turnover.
• Product Sourcing & Drop Shipping
• How to get website visitors using MVM & how to keep them coming back!
• Using Automated Shipping to save money and best use your time.
• Using analysis software to create superior eBay listings.
• Intro to Online Marketing - PPC, SEO, E-Mail and more!
• Shopping Comparison websites and Feed Optimization.
• PLUS: Links to dozens of other resources and partners!

Happy Holidays! Remember, that link is http://www.sellcenter.net/mvm/

List of Popular Shopping Comparison Sites

Hey Gang,

Here is a list of a ton of popular shopping comparison sites that I know of listed alphabetically. I made a comment on a few of them. These are a great place to either list any products you have for sale, or start your online shopping process! Check them out:

http://www.become.com/

http://www.google.com/products
Google Product search, formally Froogle, has an extremely robust product import feature if you're interested in advertising your products there. It's also a great place to start searching for items to buy.

http://www.idealo.com/

http://www.jellyfish.com
One of my new favorites. I'm a big fan of the Web 2.0 design style and these guys nailed it. Great search, relevant results displayed well after a search.

http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/

http://shopping.msn.com/
http://products.live.com/
Microsoft. Leave it to them to have two product comparison sites. I really like the products.live.com site. They have a decent amount of young competition and people who adhere to the product feed standards so the results are usually very good. They also accept feeds from Google Product search (usually) and their feed is easy to customize.

http://www.mysimon.com/

http://www.nextag.com/

http://www.pricecheck.com/

http://www.pricegrabber.com/
Simple, easy to use. Pricegrabber is a classic example of a large scale shopping comparison engine.

http://www.pricerunner.com/

http://www.productsifter.com/

http://www.reviewcentre.com/

http://shopwiki.com/

http://www1.shopping.com/
Shopping.com is a pretty standard comparison engine. Standard feed template. Not too differentiated from my point of view. Lots of traffic though, so very good for product exposure if you optimize your feed and have the budget.

http://www.shopzilla.com/
Another top comparison site. Tons of products, and a very easy feed system. Also, has a good amount of traffic so should be towards the top of your comparison site feeds optimization list.

http://www.tjoos.com/

Did I miss any? Comment and post your favorites. If you have reviews, good/bad experiences, anything to say - feel free to comment.

Some of my Favorite Websites & Online Tools

I get asked all the time about what my favorite sites are or what online tools I use for different reasons.

Search Engine Information
These are my favorite sites that I check constantly for updated information regarding search engines and SEO.

http://searchengineland.com
This is one of the best websites to track if you're interested in how search engines work and/or any updates to algorithms or the industry landscape. There is a ton of information here about SEO, Paid Search, and more. Definitely worth checking out.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
Matt Cutts is an SEO expert and Google Employee. His blog is constantly updated with SEO tips, updates, changes and other Google information. If you're interested in SEO, look at some of his posts and read the comments. Sometimes he might write about complicated topics but there are also great posts about straightforward ways to optimize your website and it's great if you want to stay up-to-date on what is going on with Google.

http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/
Most people spend $100's on tutorials and lessons about Google Adwords. There is NO reason to! Google has some of the best AdWords tutorials I have ever seen and they even have quizzes available to test your knowledge! Don't waste time and money about how to "beat the system". Adwords is fundamental and all of the information you really need to know is here.

Brad Callen Software
I've used all of Brad Callen's software in the past and it's FANTASTIC and not expensive for what you get. Check these out:

SEO Elite
SEO Elite is awesome. First of all, if you sign up for his newsletter, he will send you a series of SEO lessons that are great. The software is really cool too. It will show you where your competition has holes in their SEO strategy and along with his tutorials, you can see what to optimize on your website to rank in organic Google results.

Keyword Elite
Having trouble finding keywords for your website? Keyword Elite will help you build a giant list of keywords that you can use in your Adwords campaigns or for Long Tail SEO.

Research Tools
After learning all about search engines and SEO, here are the tools you can use to progress your strategy.

GTrends
One of my favorite keyword research tools is WordTracker. They came out with a tool called GTrends which estimates the searches per day for a given keyword and compares it to a known top result. This can not only generate a keyword list for you but let you know what keywords to go after in your SEO efforts.

HammerTap
Back to eBay research for a minute. Sell Center has been using HammerTap for a long time now and it's great. Their tool is great for finding trends in sales and figuring out what products to sell. It's definitely worth checking out to improve your eBay sales figures.

Social Media Marketing (Social Bookmarking)
There has been a lot of buzz about SMM or Social Bookmarking lately. If you want to make it easy to post your Blog articles to various SMM sites, the best tool is Social Marker.

Blogs
If you need a blog, there are a few ways to go. One is sign up for a hosted solution, like Blogger.
Blogger is very cool (that's why I use it) because it has a ton of design options and you don't need to worry about hosting. It's also good to get links from a source that isn't on your domain.

Otherwise, one of the best fully customizable Blog programs is Wordpress. Wordpress blogs are great and there are tons of add-on utilities you can implement as well. To use Wordpress, you should know a decent amount of HTML to customize it.

That's about it for now. I hope that these links and tools help you learn, research and market your products and website better. If you have any experience with these tools or want to post your favorites, feel free to comment! Thanks!

Using 3rd Party Insurance to Create an online Differentiator

I think that one of the most intriguing developments in the Shopping Comparison Site world is the overwhelming increase in competition. Feeds got more robust, and easier to use as well as the barriers to starting an e-commerce website virtually disappeared and these sites are flooded with products and small business.

Well, competitor is expected, and as a smaller seller, it's your job to overcome these obstacles. I have some differentiation techniques in my Shopzilla Feed Optimization post, from a while back.

Another idea, is to use 3rd party insurance to insure all of your shipments. It's much cheaper to use a company like U-PIC to insure all of your shipments, rather then using UPS or USPS insurance. You can build the cost of the insurance (which is rather low) into the shipping charge on your website (and shopping comparison sites) or eBay but advertise "free shipping insurance!". It can be a very useful differentiator that can drive clicks to your products over the tons of competition out there.

So check out U-PIC insurance. We have used them at Sell Center for years and they have been extremely pleasant to deal with as well as reasonably priced. Their customer service is stunning and we recommend them to anyone shipping items that might require insurance such as electronics, antiques, collectibles, etc...

Thanks for stopping by!

Improving your eBay business with Multi-Venue Management

If you have an eBay business or are looking into starting an eBay business, there are many strategies to consider. This post is mainly about the debut of http://www.multivenuemanagement.com.

One of the most important decisions in regards to your business, is what software you choose. There are many choices out there and they all work for different types of business models. Remember to consider the initial cost and the future cost.

For instance, if the cost is 2% of sales OR $1000/month, remember that as your business grows, the percentage can be very high. Is there a listing fee? If you're doing thousands of listings with a smaller sell through rate, then a per listing fee may not be optimal for you. Remember to add up all of your fees over a year, keeping in mind how much your costs will rise as your business grows.

Also, one of the most important considerations is if the software company you choose has the support staff and online help that will assist you properly.

Ok, so back to Multi-Venue Management.

There is a new website out (from Sell Center) that has an eBay Business Analysis Quiz. It's not really a quiz... there is no grade but it will ask some questions about your eBay business.

After the quiz analyzes your answers, you get some great answers that can steer you in the right direction. We're not constantly selling Laris either, every link is to a list of multiple software opportunities.

Check out the site : http://www.multivenuemanagement.com

Also, after the quiz, there is an eBook for sale. It's a 45 page eBook about various multi-venue management strategies. Take a look.

Thanks for checking out the blog. I know this post wasn't about Shopping Comparison Sites directly; however, properly managing comparison site feeds is a huge part of multi-venue management. See how well you're using MVM and check out the site.

http://www.multivenuemanagement.com

Google Trends "Hot Trends" Feature

Google Added a new feature to their Trends product called "Google Hot Trends". It shows the top 100 fastest growing search terms by volume for a given day. This could become more interesting if they integrate an API to the system. If we could aggregate this sort of trend data is could be used for keyword targeting (SEO or Paid Search) as well as keyword aggregation. If it could be for more then 100 keywords (via API) it could might be cool to integrate into a bid management tool that can forecast the clicks for the "Hot Trends" within your campaigns.

Just a few completely random thoughts... what do you think?

Check it out: http://www.google.com/trends

Shopzilla Homepage Redesign

Sorry for the lack of updates lately - however, I should be contributing much more frequently now.

Back to the topic at hand. Have you seen the Shopzilla Homepage lately? I know it's been over a week since the redesign but it's still worth mentioning. What a huge difference.

It's very clean and to the point - either search for what you want or find what other people are searching. The focus around the search box is a nice call to action for the page. Still, something is throwing me off and I think it's that the site itself is off center. Honestly, it draws your eyes straight to the search box but I would like to see it centered.

Also, from a feed optimization standpoint, it's great to easily see the top 10 searches right on the home page. If you are selling anything related to what people are searching for, make sure you analyze the competition who are ranking highly and adjust your product listings accordingly. It's a nice, public, market research tool (if it's honestly what people are searching for... it might just be what Shopzilla wants you to see... "Patio Furniture" has been #1 on that list since the redesign).

Do you think this i s good move for Shopzilla? Is this how shopping comparison sites should look? Should they just induce searches and not feature products?

What do you think?

Shopping Comparison Sites & Buying Computer Hardware

Interesting article about Shopping Comparison Sites & Buying Computer Hardware from the Ecommerce Times: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/56623.html.

To sum up the article, the author was describing instances of trying to purchase hi-tech equipment from the standard shopping comparison sites and had very little luck doing so. Shopper.com (cNet) came out #1 for their price comparison functionality during this test. Also, Shopzilla.com had an offering that no one else did (from Circuit City!).

Give it a read, it's pretty interesting.

Shopzilla Optimization

Shopzilla.com is a very large shopping comparison website with 100's of sellers. The competition for most products (even specific ones) can be very tough so when you're creating your feed, make sure to properly optimize each product listing so it can actually drive targeted traffic to your website.

I know this isn't extremely insightful, but here are some strategies that may work. You need to treat each product in your feed as a new 'listing' almost as if you were creating it for eBay. Some websites' feeds allow for extensive optimization such as Amazon Seller Central's product feed. Shopzilla only has a few ways that you can seriously optimize your feed.

Obviously, you can optimize your biding strategy.

SIDENOTE: In order to make good decisions about bidding, just like any PPC program, you need tracking. Depending on the size of your website you can check out analytics tracking such as Google Analytics which is very useful and best of all FREE. If you need a larger analytics program, you can check out Coremetrics which may be a bit expensive but is a great tool for this sort of analysis.

Back to the optimization. Utilize your analytics to check out which products are getting traction and how well they are converting. If they aren't converting, then you need to make a change. First, you can lower your bid to get less exposure and less clicks. You need to look at the page that you're sending traffic to - is it too long winded? Are there enough product pictures? Is the ad to cart button in full view? Is your website slow and hard to navigate? Keep all of these in mind when running any PPC campaign, and it works the same with Shopzilla.

In Shopzilla, you cannot specify a separate bid for each product so make sure that products with clicks and low or zero conversions are taken out of the feed category promptly.

Optimize your Ad Text

If you're not getting a bunch of clicks on your products in Shopzilla, maybe it's because your title isn't descriptive enough or has the best keywords. Go and check out the competition for this type of product and do something different; stand out of the crowd. If your listing looks exactly like everyone else's, why should someone click on yours?

Optimize your Photo

If you're selling a product that another 40+ sellers are also listing but with the same photo, try a unique product photo that could attract more clicks with a lower bid.

Utilize Promo-Text

Shopzilla has a field called Promo-Text that can be used for product promotions, website promotions or any sort of deals & savings that you can use to get more clicks on your products. If everyone in a certain category charges inflated flat rate shipping, make promo text saying that your website offers free shipping.


For this sort of optimization, you need a tool. Just as always, I personally rely on Laris to help me manage my feeds. You can tell the system which products to put into Shopzilla, choose your category (searchable), and specify promo-text. It's definitely better then starting with a blank feed file and filling in the blanks.

PriceGrabber Setup

All of my feed optimization strategies start by using Laris, an enterprise level e-commerce tool provided by Sell Center. The software makes the PriceGrabber feed extremely easy to set up and can help get through their editorial process faster. Here is how the Account Setup went:

• First, I simply filled out the form on PriceGrabber to become a merchant. Well, the "Submit" button didn't show up in Firefox, so I ended up clicking on "Have a sales representative help me set up my account".
  
  
• My sales rep was great, but there was an 11 page contract to fill out and fax back. Barring all fax machine malfunctions, the process was smooth. She was very good at responding to e-mails and calling me back. I had to deposit $50 / website I would be promoting.
  
  
• When my representative sent me the setup instructions it was generally daunting - there are four different text files full of categories and a blank feed file that needs to have all of the columns filled out for their editorial review. This level of data entry would take hours for the number of products that we're promoting.
  
  
• So I turned to Laris in order to help me create the feed file. After following the comparison site inclusion steps (maybe 5 min...), I mass updated the inventory that I wanted to include and the best part is, adding in the categories was a very short process. The system has a searchable PriceGrabber category list (in tree form) that allowed me to easily select the proper categories to promote the products I wanted to.
  
  
• Next, the system creates a text file that has all of the feed file filled out properly (it pulls in the pricing information, description, etc... automatically). Now I only have to split the file into different feeds for each website I'm promoting (currently, www.sc-lifestyle.com & www.sc-athletics.com).
  
  
• That's about it. I'm told that the editorial process takes a few days. I'll post again reporting on that process.
  

Welcome!

Welcome to my Blog! This particular site will contain knowledge and expertise about the development of Shopping Comparison tools, software solutions and feed optimization strategies. As I learn more about various different websites, I'll be logging my progress and sharing my experiences.

Also, since I am still in the Paid Search management industry, I may post interesting findings withing the industry.

Thanks for stopping by! I should have a post up every few days and feel free to comment.