Google Labs shows trends of keywords

Google has some interesting research tools on the web for tracking the trends of keywords. This article on popularity of hybrid vehicles show how the web matches the popularity of a given trend. You can also use the google trend tool on famous people to see important dates and events in their lives.

Ebay store doing well

I opened up an ebay store a few weeks ago at http://stores.ebay.com/Cross-Computers-and-Electronics. I signed up for the basic store, only $15 a month. It allows you to add new items, create categories, display promotions, and customize the site layout.

Its been very successful so far and I've had over 15 sales - mostly Weber grills and accessories.

I'm looking into buying some ebay market data, but not sure if its worth the money. I've struggled with determining what items to sell, how much to sell for, and finding the sales history available.

You can use eBay Market Data to:

• Conduct factual analysis -- explore pricing or product decisions
• Build pricing guides -- understand the fair-market value of goods
• Understand customer behavior -- understand what people are purchasing by
  demographic
• Identify market gaps -- discover where supply constraints exist
• Improve marketing effectiveness -- decide which merchandising features work
  best
• Provide consulting and training -- help eBay sellers better understand
  marketplace dynamics

adventures in ecommerce

I decided to try wordpress at an ecommerce solution because of the fantastic framework, adaptability and growing number of plugin. I didn't find a lot of good shopping cart plugins available when I embarked on builing my site, http://kitchenandlaundry.com a few months ago. The best available was the WP Shopping Cart (3.4.6 beta). Out of the box, it provides a lot of good functionality, a nice interface for adding products, paypal integration, and it’s easy to modify the layout using CSS.

All that being said, I've had the following difficulties with the plugin:

• SEO and indexing - I thought that this would be a big benefit for using wordpress but none of my product pages have been ranked by google and it appears that they overall structure is difficult for indexing. As a result, most of the traffic to my website kitchenandlaundry.com has been through Google adwords and not organic search.
• Compatibility with other plug-ins - There are some fantastic plugins available for Wordpress but they may not necessarily work with the wp shopping cart. The reason is that instead of using “posts” to represent products the plugin creates a new set of database tables and functions. As a result, Wordpress plugins designed to function on posts may not work.
• Tracking products - From the shopping cart control panel, its tough to see how many times a given item has been viewed, added to the cart, etc. You can do this through google analytics if you setup a funnel.
• RSS product feed - I'm sure this has been added, but at the time I installed it wasn't available.
  Documentation - If you want to modify the functionality of the plug-in, you are basically on your own. This is understandable as the company wants you to buy their upgrades in order to add functionality.
• User community - Still very small compared to oscommerce & zend cart.
• Users accounts - Oscommerce does this very well as customers can login and check their order status, address book, etc. It may not be a big deal if you aren't interested in repeat customers.
  

I’m sure a lot has changed since 3.4.6 beta and I’m interested to hear what other people’s experiences have been with wp shopping cart. Any suggestions?

amazon zshop

I was burned by amazon marketplace and I would not recommend their service to anyone. The review and comment system gives absolute power to the buyer and leaves the seller little or no recourse if dissputes occur.