web site design – ebay stores design – small business websites

So many eBay sellers need to photograph small items and have them look good to compete with other sellers. So today’s hot topic is how to do it inexpensively.

Well first of all a milk carton will do fine. Basically you can remove the pour spout from an opaque gallon container and put your jewelry inside on a gift box. Then put two lights of about 100 watts diagonally on the back area, such as this example sitting on a table top.

In addition to making your own, you can purchase the dome tent type which can be pretty pricey. But we have a few listed here that are only about $30. dollars or so which we located on the internet.

Click any of the links to follow and find them for yourself.

Below: About 35.00 dollars:

Below: About 50 to 75. dollars:

Hugh 60″ Inch Light Tent Lighttent Studio Photography White Photo Light Tent – Digitent – Dome – Cube – Box + 4 Chroma Key Back Drop Black White Blue Red PB60 B

Photo Light Tent 30″ Professional Studio Quality by PBL

When I first met Dale Miller of CanvasesbeGone.com she needed a nice ecommerce website. It turns out that Dale is a terrific woman who is both  industrious and generous as she endeavored to make just the right website for her customers.  When I got the flu about halfway through the job, Dale sent yummy soup from one of the online sellers of comfort food. What a thoughtful gift!

I thought that this gift of wonder couldn’t be topped, it was both delicious and beautiful, and oh so convenient for someone who didn’t have the energy to get up and make dinner, or lunch for that matter.

But Dale has done it again..This afternoon Dale so kindly sent a care package of my favorite things… Chocolate! specifically Chocolate Covered Strawberries and Cookies dipped in Chocolate.

It’s rare to find a client so easy to work with, not to mention one so generous and thoughtful as Dale Miller. Check out her needlepoint canvases at her website. Thanks so much Dale for your kindness and generosity, you make the world a nicer place!  …. Suzanne

Most people can not make their own html, so what they need is an online What-You-See is What-You-Get type of editor. If you’re looking for one try this.  After you have entered in your paragraphs, and used bold or other things to make it look like it should you can click on the brackets <> at the top and get the code. Use that code to paste into your form where you need some basic html.

You won’t want to try to make a website doing this, but for fast and simple html, this is worth a shot.

When you start a campaign for Google Adwords, you might want to consider excluding certain types of networks. For example, if you are selling an ecommerce product, you’ll want to exclude places where people don’t normally travel to purchase goods. For example sites about crime and war. We used to tell our clients to simply use Search only, but in some cases you’ll want to get on networks. Some of the sponsored links on buying sites can be very important for some products.

Therefore, you may want to exclude things like Parked domains, error pages, crime sites, death and tragedy etc. To do this you should click on “Exclusions” and use the list under Campaign Level to exclude those places. This will get you into content areas and yet get you out of money wasters that can reak havoc on your advertising budget.

Email marketing is one of the most important aspects of ecommerce sites that are profitable. Of our top 100 customers, 90% of them use email marketing on a monthly basis to generate new sales from existing clients and their friends. There is nothing sweeter than generating revenue instantly by sending out a company newsletter informing of new products, sales and specials. Here are some must-do’s for email marketing:

1. Make your newsletter shine: Text emails may be fine, but a nicely done polished email marketing piece has no equal.
2. Send Monthly: Sending out your email on a monthly basis is a must. Even if you don’t have much to say you can shout the allocades of a fine product offering, or give your customers information on your service record.
3. Use a Call to Action: It’s not enough to say something about today, but make your efforts count by either offering a special that lasts a few days only, or by creating a sense of urgency in your email. Emails that ask readers to check out the offering online will more likely garner some real action than those that simply make a statement inside them. The “read more” or “click here to learn more” or “check it out on our website” is more likely going to give you some good clickthrough as well as a sale.
4. Customize your Message: Do you ever get emails that just say Hello Customer? Boring. Use a first name at the very least. If you require it in the signup, you can utilize it in programs such as aSending.com’s email marketing package with little effort.

Take a look at the offering at aSending.com for more information on how to put together a fabulous email marketing program. aSending has programs that start at just $9.95 per month and is a well developed program to generate great looking emails.

Yesterday we had a client call us to complain that he does not rank under a particular keyword. We had done SEO on his site as a kind of afterthought. So we went over and took a look. Under the keyword there are some decent sized competitors and of course, no backlinks to his site for this keyword. The good news is that his site is already a somewhat decently ranked site under other terms, like for example “Diesel Tools”. So we decided to give SEO a little bump and embellish the page for him for his specified keyword.

Someone else mentioned that he needed backlinks and plenty of them. But we didn’t have time for that.

And who said SEO couldn’t be done in a day. Here we are today, and wallah! He is ranking number 4 already under the chosen keyword, up from #11. This was done with on page search optimization simply by

1. adding the keyword term full name as an h1 header tag

2. adding a back link to it from his home page

3. adding another link to it from the #11 page that ranked under the term.

Now his site, and specificially the #11 page moved up 7 spots overnight.

It can be done if you do a little focused work.