Sunday, September 21, 2008

More on setting up the new website

Hi y'all!

I promised I'd get back soon!

Ok, here is the status of things now......

I have gotten quite a few items listed on our auction site at: www.iOffer.com , and this is under the name machine9dungeon also. I have had 2 sales on this site so far. One was a repeat customer from eBay.....THANKS GINNY!!! The other one was a new customer for me. If I haven't said so before, iOffer.com is a neat site. No listing fees, unless you want extras, like bold writing and highlighted box area, etc.etc. LOW final value fees also. NOTHING NEAR WHAT eBAY IS CHARGING NOW!!!! Oh God, don't get me on my FUCK eBay tangent!!!

I also found another auction site. This one is called eBid. It is located at: www.eBid.net . The great thing about this site is that for $49.99, you are a lifetime seller + !!!!! No, let me repeat NO listing fees ever when you pay this lifetime fee! They have been in business since 1999, and is worldwide! You get international exposure at no extra charge! Give them a try! I have started to post my inventory on my store, again, the same name....machine9dungeon .

Our website that we created is slowly getting there. We have fine tuned all of the information and what needs to be said, etc etc. We simplified the International Order Page for those folks, since GO DADDY's Quick Shopping Cart does not have International ordering implemented as of yet. The only have just added Canadian and AFO, FPO military addresses into the cart.

So, if a customer is abroad and needs to order, they click the link to the International Order Page, which is located on the main website http://www.machine9dungeon.com/International___Checkout.php
All they have to do is type in their address and phone #, the item/SKU #, and any additional information on the item, like color or size, if required. Then, there is a spot to list any discount or coupon codes they might have. Then they submit. There is a shipping and handling chart for them to figure out what the charges will be, if they want to know. Otherwise, i will fill out all of that.

When the order form is submitted to me, I will invoice them directly via PayPal to their email address. It will give them a link to make payment at PayPals secure site. So, I made it as easy as possible for the international folks to do business with us. ALTHOUGH, we have not had ANY international orders yet!

We have had only 1 sale via directly ordered through the website, since we were up and running on line, which was 8/19/08. Which brings me to the next subject I am going to cover now......
The old adage "If you build it, they will come" DOES NOT PERTAIN TO INTERNET SITES!!!!!! Your site may show up on some search engines eventually, but we did not have 6 months to 1 year to wait for it to MAYBE show up. I did not know this, but learned this REALLY QUICK!

You have to register your website and information, site by site, by your own 2 hands! Now, granted, there are MANY sites who will do this for you, for a SMALL FEE. Unless your last name is Rockefeller, this is not an option.

What you have to do is this. I bought 1 year of Traffic Blazer through GoDaddy.com, when I purchased my domain names and other stuff to start up the website. It cost $29.99 for the whole year, so I figured it was a good place to start without spending a fortune, which we do not have anyhow. The Traffic Blazer, which will be abbreviated with TB from now on, is a little hard to understand on some of the information. Especially for those of us who are new to websites and how they work, etc etc... LIKE ME!!!!!

Anyhow, TB walks you through finding the best keywords to describe your site, and creating meta tags, and a whole slew of information. It then gives you the main search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc) to register with. It then gives you several hundred other directories and search engines to register with. I did not even know that many existed in Cyber land. Some of the registrations can be done automatically in bulk, but most of them have to be done, one by one. This takes time, of course. Then, it takes 1-12 weeks for it to actually be listed on the engine.

I ended up also using engineblaster.com to register me on 500+ more search engines, AUTOMATICALLY! Including lots of international sites. I perceived this to be a good idea, and paid for one month of it, which was $29.99. I am going to keep it, because it keeps resubmitting your information to all these sites automatically once a week, which makes you rank higher on the different search engine pages.

ARE YOU CONFUSED YET?????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm almost done for this blog....

GoDaddy suggested republishing my web site daily, this resubmits your information, and helps you to rank higher. Also, purchasing your domain name for 5 years +, will rank you higher as well. Search engines will rank you higher than someone who only owns their name for 1 year.

I purchased machine9dungeon.com for 10 years, this was relatively inexpensive. Since money was (is) very tight, I bought machine9dungeon.net and machine9dungeon.org for 1 year each. I just bought these, so no one else could. They are irrevelant
to the .com website.

I am done for now.....this makes up for not writing regularly the past few weeks.

We have had only 1 direct sale from the website itself. I have sent out multiple email marketing newsletters with discounts and new item previews for all of our previous Customers from eBay. I have also created a few videos on you tube to advertise our items. I will be making a new video every couple of weeks to preview items, like one week I will do just gags, the next one, just lingerie, etc etc.

It can't hurt, and we are getting lots and lots of views on the videos. Over 5500 on the first one I did already. NO sales though........................why why why...............................
I have no patience, and no money left... We are tapped dry now. The website has gotta work. I know it will, it is just a matter of time. I have no patience, like I said......BUT SEX SELLS!!!!

ANYWHOOOOO. I will catch you all later on. Pray for business please!!!!

Many Thanks!
Kim


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