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Free listing, spend some money on google adwords (built in option for google base listings)

base.google.com

I'll keep you guys updated. I have a very niched product where there really isn't any competition, so might work for me better than others. I don't know how much exposure you get without adwords. If anyone has got that information, let me know.

It does work, but I found it was alot of work setting up and keeping it going. You have to list several times a week just to keep up in the ranks. What do you think of it?

So far I love it.

The ranks thing I could understand, but for me when theres 4-5 merchants selling what I am selling, there isn't much to worry about.

Wondering how much google base by itself could bring exposure wise.

Good basis for gbay!

I've tried it in limited use to almost no success. Not sure I understand what you mean by "list several times a week to keep up in the ranks"? What if you only have one of an item? Do you need to cancel the old listing and create a new one several times a week, or are you only referring to continual items of the same type?

I think yes cancel and re-create.

Did you try the built in adwords feature on google base?

I didn't try the adwords, no. I wanted to first see how it would go without them. Very badly as it turns out. I'm still trying to figure out of the adwords would be worth investing in vs an ebay store monthly. Stores don't do TOO badly, it's just they take about a month to even start selling and then there's the high overhead per sale. Sometimes, if you catch the right promo, the actual auctions are cheaper to run for the same amount of time as the store! I'm still not sure about this "per click" business. Just because someone looks doesn't mean beans. I have plenty of "buyers" who don't even bother looking but they still buy....

I'm not sure what you mean here. If you do a search for pretty much anything, the first couple of pages are littered with ebay listings. Are you saying the listing ads stayed while they pulled the store ads?

ebay stores are only useful for the extended listing durations I think.


For google base, don't know yet since im waiting for ad to be approved in base.google.com


All depends I guess on the product you sell and financial figures (profit, etc.) adwords cost. For me since theres really no adwords competition for what I sell and the cost of the product I sell isn't you $29.99 thing, it looks atleast great. Will truly see after the adwords for my google listing is up. Its just crazy to think I would have pulled in thousands in eBay sales if I didn't get suspended just over a week ago or so.

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So do you actually get sales from google base? I can create a feed for my site (over 10k products) and automate the process, but is it worth the time and effort?

You should start out very slow with adwords. Create a campaign with limited funding of about $5 to $10 a day, and move from there. Choose keywords that are very specific to your products and you'll do fine.

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Those are not good conversion rates. Maybe you should look at your keywords again. Something isnt right about those conversion rates. I would look at using less competitive keywords

How are you arriving at conversion rates? And what does that really mean in regards to sales?

Modde Do you sell retail items? or you design them yourselfs

He won't tell you. And you guys are speaking another language to me. I feel like I'm in an episode of Numbers. Let me just pull out my pocket protector. ;)

SEO is an art. It's more about Internet Marketing then SEO. SEO is a part of it, but it's not the whole picture. Search Engine Optimization only means you're optimizing your website for search engines. That can be done within one day. Aspkin.com is optimized for search engines with its static URLs, updated content, targeted titles, and clean code. That's basically it for SEO. SEO is mostly on site changes that can affect your search engine rankings. After that there is internet marketing. Marketing your website so people will see it, and search engines will rank it better. Internet marketing mostly deals with offsite changes that will bring in traffic. This includes PPC, article marketing, creating backlinks, email marketing, viral marketing, and more. It's a bit of work if you want a really successful website. To me it's more of a hobby then anything else. I like challenges, and seeing progress with work I do. The money isn't too bad either.

But I guess the main thing is, you can't just do SEO and hope for the best. You have to keep adding fresh relevant unique content, you have to send out newsletters to past customers to bring in more sales, you have to build up your pagerank to help SEO, you have to tweak PPC campaigns, you have to tweak your website layout and design; all this and more for the best results. If you truly want to free your self from eBay, you'll want a successful free standing website.

Google Base worked out horribly for me unfortunately. Atleast I still have Google Checkout! and eBay!
eBay gets me 10,000x more interest in my items. I was also using adwords. eBay fees may be expensive, but adwords ended up being quite a bit more for a lot less in sales.

Can we use adwords for ebay auctions?

I guess its possible since you give whatever url in adwords you want. Though I don't know if it would really be worth it though.

I wouldn't be surprised if you can't use adwords for ebay, considering the rift between google and ebay right now. Although money talks so who knows...

George, thanks for confirming my suspicions that adwords aren't all that effective. What types of items did you say you were selling (in a general sense) ?

Maybe the problem stems from not really understanding Google Base. If anyone knows where to find a complete users guide (not the google base forum--it's terrible) please let me know. I'd LIKE to give them another shot, but driving blind is never a good feeling.

general sense, lol anything I say will practically give it away. I'll just say I sell something that history buffs and wealthy business / society individuals want and even sometimes investors.