It might be tempting to post classified ads for that couch orcoffee table on more than one classifieds site at the same time to cast the
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widest net. If you do multiple listings, you run the risk of double-sellingan item and incurring the wrath of a disgruntled buyer. It’s more likelythat you’ll sell the item in one location and then have to remember thatyou had the same thing posted elsewhere so you can remove the listingearly. If you don’t remember, you could end up selling something that isno longer there. It’s simplest to avoid trouble by selling one item in onevenue at a time.
Yahoo! Classifieds
Yahoo! is one of the most popular websites, and if you already enjoy using its e-mail,yellow pages, and search services, you’ll have no problem learning to use its classifiedad service (http://classifieds.yahoo.com) as well.
Like other services on Yahoo!, Yahoo! Classifieds has its pros and cons. On theplus side, it’s free for most household goods. You do have to pay a listing fee forcertain categories, however. The classifieds categories listed in Table 10-1 carry feesfor a thirty-day listing. You are assessed the fee whether or not your item sells.
The ‘‘For Sale’’ category is a fairly inclusive one. It means you can post basic(not featured) ads for things like antiques and collectibles, boats, books, computers,furniture, office supplies, pet supplies, and video games for free. As you might expect,a featured ad is placed prominently at the top of a Web page full of search results.
On the downside, it’s not clear how many of your neighbors are going to turn toYahoo! Classifieds in order to find your ad. Among tech-savvy individuals, Craigslistis highly popular. If you live in a rural area where relatively few locals have Internetaccess, they’re not going to look on Craigslist or Yahoo! at all. You’re better off usingyour local paper to reach them.
Table 10-1. Yahoo! Classifieds paid listings.
Category
Autos
For Sale
Residential Real Estate
Rentals
Pets
Basic Ad
$24.95
Free
$49.95
$34.95
$12.95
Commercial Real Estate
Price Varies
Featured Ad
$34.95 (includes two free21-day renewals)
$9.95
$62.90
$54.95
$19.95
N/A
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Note: Another downside to Yahoo! Classifieds is that the basic listingslet you post only a single photo. Featured listings can include up to sixphotos.
Newspaper Classified Ads
Despite the popularity of the Web and the Internet, the fact remains that millions ofpeople simply don’t have any way of going online. Chances are you can name a fewpeople off the top of your head who don’t have an Internet connection at home orwho just don’t know anything about the Internet. They may not have the technicalknow-how to get connected, or they may not have the means to purchase a computerand get an account with an Internet provider. How do you reach this huge potentialmarket of consumers in your area? One effective strategy is to use newspapers.
Newspapers are still a trusted and popular medium for selling big-ticket itemssuch as homes, new or used cars, furniture, or major appliances. Many large citieshave a selection of alternative weeklies that list classified ads as well, often for acheaper rate than the big dailies, or even free. Pick up as many different kinds ofpapers as you can find, and read their classifieds to see if what you’re selling is offeredthere.
Turning to Your Local Newspaper’s WebsiteEvery newspaper has a website these days, and most of them post their classifiedsonline as well as in print. Posting a classified ad is usually simple, but there are twobasic things to keep in mind. Newspapers still run by deadlines, so get to knowexactly what hour they close their classifieds postings for the next day. Also, the ratefor ads is either by line or by word. Usually a paper offers a flat rate for a certainnumber of lines or words, and then an extra dollar or two per line or word after that.Learn to describe your item in the minimum amount of space, but don’t leave outanything pertinent. Reading a few ads in the paper should give you the sense of howto write your posting.
The most important thing with running a classified ad is to check it immediatelyfor typos and errors. One mistake on the telephone number or description and yourwork is wasted. Be aware of how long you’ve ordered the ad to run, and whether thisis a good time of the week or year to sell your item. Most miscellaneous items forsale get the biggest response over the weekend from garage sale shoppers and thelike, but vehicles do well throughout the week. Also, make sure you include a tele-
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phone number. It seems obvious, but you’re trying to reach people who don’t goonline, so an e-mail address is worthless to them.
Turning to an Advertising NetworkThere are many advertising networks online, like the Advertising Network of Florida,(http://www.national-classifieds.com) that offer the chance to post your classified adin many different newspapers all around your community. Usually these include themajor dailies in your area, as well as many of the local or alternative weeklies. Eachstate, for example, can sell you classified space in newspapers on a daily, weekly, ormonthly basis with prices adjusted accordingly.
Needless to say, using a large advertising network can only be justified if you areselling a truly expensive or exotic item, like a home or expensive industrial equip-ment. However, there are usually networks that can be tailored to your needs on amore modest level. For example, some statewide networks can place your ad just incampus and college newspapers, or just in the free weeklies around the state, at areduced cost. You can use these networks to reach millions of people for a few hun-dred dollars, so it should be considered an extremely powerful weapon in your salesarsenal, worth using only when the potential gain is high.
If you really need to reach a nationwide audience with a single, simple ad, try theNational Advertising Network (http://www.nationwideadvertising.com). They offermany different packages of advertising at fair rates, including the full national pack-age that reaches more than ten thousand newspapers. This is certainly not the mostexpensive newspaper advertising offer, but it is quite possibly the most thorough, andyou should bear it in mind for when your business really begins to expand.
Offering Your Professional ServicesWhen it comes to some professions like psychiatry or medicine, the Web may not bethe best choice. Consumers still turn to print media such as their local yellow pageswhen they are looking for professional help. As there are multiple yellow pages com-panies, you should shop around to compare prices and readership. Consider using anadvertising agency that specializes in yellow pages ads to increase your exposure. Ifpossible, keep track of how new customers reach your services. Your ad in the yellowpages should be one of their main reasons. Otherwise consider scaling back on thead or eliminating it.
Online yellow pages are often popular, such as Yahoo! Yellow Pages (http://yp.yahoo.com), so don’t ignore them entirely. You will probably not want to purchaseadvertising, but at least make sure that you are listed. There are also a large numberof sites that let people post reviews about their experiences with different kinds of
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businesses, like Yelp.com. Many of these have very small databases, but it’s an onlinephenomenon that seems to be growing, so it’s probably worth your while to at leastcheck if you are listed and see what people are writing about you. The way youpresent yourself online is important; one of the best ways to build trust is to partnerwith a big name company to host your storefront or your website, and options forfinding a prominent host are described in Chapter 11.
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P A R T (cid:3)III
Opening anOnline Storefront
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C H A P T E R (cid:3)11
Partnering with a Big Name
When you’re out shopping for an important household item, such as a refrigerator orother major appliance, how do you decide where to spend your money? Price iscertainly a consideration; you’re looking for the best deal possible. But when you setprice aside, what do you look for? Chances are you want to shop with a retailer youcan trust—a seller with a good reputation, known for providing customer service.Bigger and better-established sellers have extra benefits such as their own credit cards,rewards programs, and extended warranties, too.
It’s the same with auction sites. Although there is nothing wrong with small,niche websites (like the ones described in Chapter 9) that aim for a narrowly definedclientele, when you choose a well-known organization, you get extra benefits youwouldn’t find otherwise. You get access to customer service staff who might be diffi-cult to reach on smaller sites; you also gain a reputation as a professional who is‘‘worthy’’ of participating with the major players in the field.
This chapter examines options for expanding your sales operations beyond eBaywhile aligning yourself with some of the biggest names in e-commerce. You’ll exploretwo well-known companies that streamline the process of setting up your own web-sites: Yahoo! and Microsoft. You’ll also learn how to include your sales informationin the shopping database maintained by Google’s consumer search service Froogle.You’ll even learn about eBay’s ProStores option, in case you want to expand youreBay auction sales to eBay’s website-hosting service. I’ll explain why you might wantto consider selling on each of these sites as well as potential problems to watch outfor, too.
Setting Up Shop with Yahoo!
As I write this, Yahoo! is making some big moves in the online auction space. Al-though eBay may be dominant in the United States and Europe, Yahoo! is poised to
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become the dominant auction seller in all of Asia. Its Japanese version of Yahoo!Auctions already has 90 percent of market share in that country. In 2005, it pur-chased the Chinese auction site Alibaba (which is described in Chapter 21), whichdominates the potentially huge Chinese market. What does this mean for you, thelone auction seller or small business manager hoping to start selling at auction? Ifyou speak Japanese, you can start buying and selling on Yahoo!’s Japan auction site.The acquisition of Alibaba probably means that it will be progressively easier tointeract with Chinese merchants as well as consumers, who number in the billions.
What is the main reason to consider Yahoo! Auctions as an alternative, or addi-tion to, eBay auction sales? That is a reasonable question, given the fact that Yahoo!Auctions attracts far fewer buyers than eBay. There are two reasons: It doesn’t costanything to sell on Yahoo! Auctions; you aren’t charged a listing fee or Final ValueFee. The second reason is that, when you sell on Yahoo!, you gain access to a networkof related services that include:
•
The Yahoo! Newsgroups (http://groups.yahoo.com). Yahoo! has a network ofdiscussion groups that is lively and heavily used. It is free to set up a discussiongroup, and lots of people use it.
•
Yahoo! Shopping (http://shopping.yahoo.com). If you sell consumer merchan-dise in bulk, you can submit your product listings so they can be included in this partof Yahoo!, which resembles an online shopping mall. You can submit listings toYahoo! Shopping by going to http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/shopsb/index.phpand clicking the link PRODUCT SUBMIT in the left-hand column. You are assessed asmall fee if someone clicks on a product listing on Yahoo! Shopping and goes to yoursite.•
Yahoo! Classifieds (http://classifieds.yahoo.com). See Chapter 10 for moreinformation about this part of Yahoo!, which allows you to post a classified ad thatyou want local buyers to be able to find.
•
Yahoo! E-Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com). Yahoo! is one of the few service pro-
viders on the Internet to provide free e-mail accounts for anyone.
The truth is that you don’t have to sell on Yahoo! Auctions in order to use Ya-hoo!’s e-mail or shopping services. Anyone can make use of those services. But if youhave an account with Yahoo! and are comfortable using the site to find online re-sources, you’ll probably also be comfortable with putting some merchandise up forsale on its auction site as well.
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Registering at Yahoo! AuctionsYahoo! Auctions works and looks pretty much the same as eBay’s own auctions. Thedifferences are relatively trivial when it comes to the way the sales are presented onthe page, and the way you create the descriptions. One difference is that Yahoo!Auctions presents lots of ads along with auction listings: these are paid listings bybusinesses to include on the site. The ads make Yahoo! Auctions search results moredifficult to read than eBay’s search results because a good part of the page is takenup by ads, and the search results are presented in a narrow column in the middle ofthe page.
In order to put something up for sale on Yahoo! Auctions, you first need to makesure you are registered as a seller. If you already have an account with Yahoo!, youmay already be registered to sell. Go to the help page at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/auct/asell/asell-01.html, and click on the link REGISTER. You’ll either see a pageentitled Registration Completed or a form that requests more information. Once youare registered, you need to sign up for the Yahoo! Wallet service (http://wallet.yahoo.com), which records your credit card information.
Once you are registered and signed up for Yahoo! Wallet, you need to agreeto the terms of service presented at http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/legal/additionaltos.html. After that, the process of selling should be straightforward be-cause it is very similar to the process of selling on eBay. First, you choose a category;you’ll notice, furthermore, that there aren’t nearly as many categories and subcategor-ies as on eBay. I often sell shoes, for instance, and if I were to sell on Yahoo! Auc-tions, I would not have a subcategory actually called Footwear or Shoes. I would haveto sell in the following category: Clothing & Accessories -(cid:3) Men’s -(cid:3) Accessories -(cid:3)Other.
Next, you go to the Submit an Item form. Right away, you see one differencebetween eBay’s auctions and Yahoo! Auctions, because you are allowed to post threephotos to accompany your description at no charge. You also are required to describethe condition of your item from the ‘‘Condition’’ drop-down list (the options areAcceptable, New with Tags, New without Tags, Like New, Very Good, or Good).
Other differences between Yahoo! Auctions and eBay auctions are summarized
in Table 11-1.
There’s no doubt that many of Yahoo!’s auction features—particularly the auto-matic extension at the end of the sale, and the wider range of sales lengths—would bewelcomed by many eBay sellers. These unique features make Yahoo! Auctions wortha try—especially since there’s no charge for listing items. The problem is obvious toanyone who has done a search on Yahoo! Auctions for either current or completed
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Table 11-1. Differences between Yahoo! and eBay auctions.
Item
Yahoo!
eBay
Length of Sale
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10 days
1, 3, 5, 7, 10 days
Shipping Cost
Shipping Start
End of Sale
Buyer usually pays, though sellercan offer free shipping
Buyer or seller can pay
Seller usually ships on receipt ofpayment
Seller can ship on auction closeor on receipt of payment
Sale ends exactly 1, 3, 5, 7, or 10days after start
Seller can specify that the salecan be automatically extended by5 minutes if a bid is placed nearend of auction.
You can specify that Yahoo! willautomatically relist the auctionfor up to five times.
Relisting
You must relist sale yourself andpay another listing fee
sales: the range of items offered, the number of bids received, and the number ofsales is nothing like that on eBay.
Note: If you want to sell items in bulk, Yahoo! Auctions offers its users atool called Seller’s Manager (http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/promo/ysm.html). This tool is a software program you install on yourcomputer; it works with Windows 95 or later operating systems. The MacOS is not supported.
Microsoft’s Small Business Center
If you are familiar with Microsoft FrontPage and have used this powerful Web designsoftware to create and edit Web pages, you should consider having Microsoft SmallBusiness Center host your website. That’s because FrontPage is specially designed tohelp you create an online sales catalog, complete with BUY IT NOW buttons and anonline shopping cart—as long as you host your business site with Small BusinessCenter, of course. FrontPage has a special bit of software called an e-commerce add-on that lets you create a sales catalog that is connected to a database.
Besides its integration with Microsoft Office and Small Business Center, Front-Page gives you the ability to create forms that actually receive visitors’ input andprocess it so you can work with it. You don’t need to host your site with Microsoft
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just because you use FrontPage, of course. Plenty of Web designers create their siteswith FrontPage and find a Web-hosting service that supports the FrontPage ServerExtensions, the software components that help you create forms, and other featuressuch as discussion groups. But if you do choose Small Business Center, you can takeadvantage of the fact that it provides its customers with services that can help themtrack who visits their site so that you can develop ongoing relationships with them.These include Traffic Builder, which automates the process of listing your site withdifferent Internet search services; Customer Manager, which helps you manage con-tacts with your customers; and ListBot, which helps you assemble a mailing list fromyour customer names. Once you have a mailing list, you can market to people whohave already made purchases from you.
Small Business Center has several different levels of hosting, which are described
in Table 11-2.
Delta Pecan Orchard is operated by a husband-and-wife team, Mike and SuzannePowers, who moved to the Mississippi Delta from Cincinnati. They resurrected a pecanorchard with the goal of selling pecans on the Internet. The market for pecans inLouisiana is limited, so it’s essential for them to reach a worldwide audience throughtheir website. Their site, hosted by Small Business Center, is shown in Figure 11-1.
When shoppers make an order for a chocolate-covered pecan mix or other pecan-related product from the Powers’s online catalog (a catalog they created with Front-Page), they go to a checkout area provided by Microsoft Small Business Center andshown in Figure 11-2.
Become a Google Froogle Merchant
You’ve probably heard of Froogle (http://froogle.google.com), the Google search en-gine that is especially designed to help shoppers find consumer goods. If you operate
Table 11-2. Microsoft small business center hosting options.
Level of Service
Monthly Cost
Yearly Cost
Features
Introductory(Web hosting only)
$12.95
$119.40
100MB of storage space
Standard
$24.95
$239.40
Professional(e-commerce)
$49.95
$455.40
200MB of storage; includesCommerce Manager, which letsyou set up shopping card andcredit card payment system
350MB of storage; CommerceManager included; databaseaccess included
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Figure 11-1. Delta Pecan Orchard has been a Microsoft small business site since the early 2000s.
(cid:2) Delta Pecan Orchard.
an eBay Store, a Yahoo! Store, a Microsoft Small Business, or a brick-and-mortarbusiness you, too, can have your store listed on this popular search tool. Froogle, likeGoogle, uses computer programs called spiders to assemble content. The spiderscours the contents of millions of Web pages, indexing their contents and storingthem in a huge database. Web pages that offer products for sale are automaticallyindexed in Froogle; eBay Stores pages are indexed as well.
However, the very fact that you operate a small home-grown business means thatyou’re not necessarily going to have your pages indexed by Google. You’ll increasethe chances of being included by Google or Froogle if you make the effort to makeFroogle aware that you exist—and not only that, but transfer your sales catalog listingsto Froogle.
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Note: You cannot pay a fee to have your store listed on Froogle, or onGoogle, for that matter. You can, however, pay to purchase advertisingspace on the right-hand side of a page of Google search results. You placea bid on keywords that you think your customers will enter in order tofind your products. If yours is the high bid, your ad appears in the adver-tising column. The program is called AdWords, and it is described inChapter 17 along with other marketing strategies.
Figure 11-2. Microsoft provides its small business customers with shopping carts and otherfunctionality.
(cid:2) Delta Pecan Orchard.
Creating a Feed for Data-Hungry Froogle
Google, like the other websites described in this chapter, requires individuals to cre-ate a user account to use its services. To list your site so that it is included in Froogle’s
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search results, you need to create an account as well. If you already have an accountto use other services such as Google’s free e-mail service Gmail, you can use thataccount’s user name and password. Otherwise, you get started by following thesesteps:
1. Connect to the Internet and point your Web browser to the Froogle MerchantCenter page (https://www.google.com/froogle/merchants) where you can readgeneral information about the program.
2. If you don’t have a Google account yet, click the link CREATE AN ACCOUNTNOW. If you do, sign in with your e-mail address and password in the MerchantCenter Sign In box on the right-hand side of the page, and click SIGN IN.3. After you have signed in, go to the Merchant Center home page (https://www.google.com/froogle/merchants/home) and click the link CREATE AN FTPACCOUNT. You go to a page where you select a new login name and passwordso you can transfer your site feed to Froogle using file transfer protocol (FTP).You won’t need a special FTP application to carry out this transfer becausethe service is Web-based. When you’re done, click the CREATE FTP ACCOUNTbutton. A page labeled Success should appear when your account has beencreated.
4. Click the SHOW FTP ACCOUNT button. This page asks you to fill out a variety
of information about your store, including:• Store ID. This is a new ID that you create for your Froogle store. It’s an ID
you need to remember but the public doesn’t see.
• Store Name. This is your store’s name—the name the public will see.• Store URL. This is the Web address for your store.
5. When you are finished, check the box that indicates you’ve read and acceptedFroogle’s terms of service. Then click the REGISTER A PRODUCT FEED link.
6. You go to a page that indicates you’ve created a name for your feed and thatyour store has a home on Froogle. Make a note of the name of your feed;you’ll need to save the data as a text file and give it this name. Click theRETURN TO MERCHANT CENTER HOME button.
Once you’ve set up Froogle to receive your feed, the next step is to actually createa feed that you can send to the site. If you have a sales catalog, this is basically amatter of exporting the information to a text file that includes the fields shown in thefollowing list:
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•
Product_URL. This is the URL for the Web page on which the product ap-pears.
• Name. This is the product name.• Description. This is your product description.•
Image_URL. This is the URL of the image that illustrates the product.category. You need to list the category or subcategory in which your productappears. (If your products aren’t divided into categories, you need to createat least one with a generic name such as products.)Price. This is the price of your product.
•
Make sure the data fields are separated by tabs. Save the file with the nameindicated in Step 6 in the preceding set of steps. Then, you can upload the file asdescribed in the following section titled ‘‘Upload Your Feed.’’
If you run an eBay Store, you already have an easy way to create a feed for yourstore; but your store settings don’t allow you to save your data in the format desiredby Froogle. You need to open the file in Excel, adjust the data, save the file as a tab-delimited text file, and upload it to Froogle. Go to My eBay (http://my.ebay.com),log in with your eBay user ID and password, and click SIGN IN SECURELY to view yourMy eBay page. Click the MANAGE MY STORE link, log in again and, when the ManageMy Store page appears, click EXPORT LISTINGS. Make a note of the URL where yourdata feed will be listed, click the button next to MAKE A FILE OF MY STORE INVENTORYLISTINGS AVAILABLE, and click APPLY. Go to the URL to view your file, click SAVE AS,and save the file on your computer.
Once you have saved the file (which is in extensible markup language, or XML,format), open it in Excel. The file appears with each type of data separated intocolumns. Some of my store’s data is shown in Figure 11-3. For instance, I need tochange name of Column E to ‘‘Name’’ and reorder it to fit Froogle’s format.
Note: Whether or not you are registered as a Froogle merchant, you canparticipate in the Froogle Merchants discussion group, where you can askquestions and compare notes with other businesspeople who are trying toget more exposure for their merchandise.
Uploading Your FeedThe phrase upload your feed sounds like what happens after you eat something thatyour stomach finds disagreeable. But don’t worry; I’m just describing the process of
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Figure 11-3. You can save your eBay store’s data in XML format, open it in Excel, and edit it forFroogle.
(cid:2) Greg Holden.
transferring the data file containing your current sales listings to Froogle so that yourproducts can be included in its database. Once you have created your feed and savedit as a tab-delimited text file, you upload it to Froogle by following these steps:
1. Open the Froogle Merchant Center—FTP Instructions page (https://www
.google.com/froogle/merchants/ftp_instructions.html.
2. If you are familiar with using an FTP application, you can click Option 2; ifyou are comfortable with the MS-DOS language, you can click Option 3; forthe purposes of these steps, I’ll assume you want to use your Web browser todo the file transfer, so click Option 1.
3. Follow the steps shown in the page to enter the URL for the Froogle FTP site
(ftp://Hedwig.com), log in, and transfer the file you saved earlier.
Once you upload your data to Froogle, you need to keep doing so on a regularbasis. If your product list changes every week, you need to upload your data everyweek. Froogle itself requires you to upload at least once every thirty days to keepyour site in its database.
Tip: Do a search for your store’s name on Google; see if your store’sname turns up, and if so, where it appears in the search results. Ifyour site appears, you probably don’t need to go through the effort
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of listing your site with Froogle. If it does not, review the sectionabout creating an RSS feed and uploading it to Google. If your siteappears but it is many pages down in Google’s listings, you need tomake more links to your site’s home page. Get your friends and busi-ness colleagues to make links to your site; the more links your site