For the last few months I have been getting heavily involved in ecommerce. I have taken one site from an average of $15k a month turnover to $23k this month. No money spent on adverts, although we did spend about $200 on links. I am going to do a short report on that as it really was what I considered to be obvious stuff.

However todays post is to cover two ecommerce platforms that I have been looking at and try to explain why I have picked the one I have.

The two platforms are

You can click either image above to go to their site. No affiliate links as I am not an affiliate of either.

• These opinions are mine and mine alone, no one at the companies knows I am doing it (not sure they would care)
• I have been using big commerce for a couple of months, I spent 1 day with magento (i will explain why)
• I will not compare these to any kind of WordPress butchery which people use, well not here anyway

I started to look at magento for a project for one reason, cost. I have less than 100 items to sell and Big commerce costs $25 a month for that amount of skus, magento is $15 a month (they do have a way to get it for free!). If both platforms are pretty much the same then why not save $10 a month, I believe in getting a business to be Raman profitable really fast if I can (the expression just means it makes enough to feed me Raman noodles) and then build from there.

Price
I think that it is a mistake to base every desicison for your business on price. This is why people use wordpress for ecommerce sites, they think it is cheap and that is good enough. In my opinion that is a mistake and it can cost you a lot of time and stress. Magento is cheaper than big commerce and offers more storage and bandwidth.
100 items
Big Commerce = $25 per month – 200mb storage and 2 gig bandwidth
Magento            =  $15 per month – 200mb storage and 4 gig bandwidth

500 products
Big Commerce = $40 per month -300 meg storage and  3 gig bandwidth
Magento             =$25 per month -500 meg storage and 8 gig bandwidth

1k Products
Big Commerce = $80 per month – 500 meg storage and 5 gig bandwidth
Magento             =$65 per month – 800 meg storage and 16 gig bandwidth
Templates
Big commerce = 100 templates – some of them are very plain , some are aimed at specific markets
Magento             = 11 templates    -Generally nice but not a lot of variety to my opinion

You can buy magento templates from various places http://themeforest.net/category/ecommerce/magento , but they cost, $70+ seems to be average. This kind of goes against my idea of being profitable quickly. I don’t want to pay $70 for a theme, yes I may do so later when I have an idea that my store is really going to be profitable (with the best will in the world there may well

Extras
I think this was the killer for me, to be able to sell on Facebook with magento I had to get an extension  - http://go.magento.com/extensions/ - that one was free but in Bigcommerce it is all built in.

Advanced Reports – I love my data and to be honest I think it is more important with an ecommerce store than any other store. Big commerce has all I need built in. With Magento I found out that I would have to buy an extension-$129 – hang on if I amoratize that over the 1st year that is $10 a month. Which is the amount I am saving by going with Magento over big commerce.

Big commerce Apps - http://apps.bigcommerce.com/ - they do have a marketplace for apps that offer extra functionality but so far I have never wanted something I have not found in the core. I do like the look of the abandoned cart plugin, but at $20 a month it does not meet my plans. One thing you could do once you have some traffic to your site is take them up on the 30 day trial and see how many new sales it brings. If the new sales are more than enough to cover the $20 a month, then it makes sense to buy.

Support
Both systems offer great support options. I have not had to use the phone support for them but their online support is good. They also have extensive videos and articles showing you how to do things.

Training
Both companies have great follow up training systems. It makes sense as they  want you to stay using their system. Magento have some superb books you can download and print out to walk you through the system. I have looked at opencart (which is free) and the only books they have available have to be purchased for around $30 so the free (and very detailed) books are a great thing.

Is it Just Personal Taste
It may well be, if you are just starting out and the $10 a month matters to you, you can work without the advanced reporting and you are happy to work with their templates  that Magento will be the ideal system for you. Out of the two I will choose Big Commerce.

My next test is going to be with opencart, is free the cheapest option for ecommerce software?

If you have questions or thoughts, or have been using some totally different ecommerce system with success let me know. I would love to see other options.

Well it is January so its time for another Google Algorithm change. This one was something that I think most of us saw coming but it is worth talking about. Basically they are going to start punishing sites with “too many ads above the fold” . They don’t tell you how many is too many, they don’t say what screen size we need to use to determine if we are going to fall foul of it.

Lucky enough I am not worried as I use wp-easy ads (link is at the bottom of the post) and that has so many options for placement that I know I can control my ads and keep out of trouble. Rather than trying to explain it all here I decided to do a video. I talk about adsense placement but also another plugin you can use to make your sites look better.

Magazine Style Plugin I mention in the video (it is actually 2 plugins, one for posts and one for pages), this is one of the must have plugins for any wordpress install in my opinion

Get Wpeasy ads for $17 instead of $27 using the button here

With all the updates that have been going on other the last few months this could well be the final nail in the coffin for a few adsense sites, don’t let this easy to resolve situation kill your site ranking.

Treat your site visitors with some respect and don’t blind them with ads is what they are after I think.

Please do leave a comment below with your thoughts and experiences

One thing I see mentioned a lot , and get asked about a lot, (probably because I had one of the first tools around to find blogs to comment on when I released Comment Hut ) is how do I do blog comments and why?

So I thought rather than keep on answering questions on forums – even my favorite forum WPG – I would do some videos, in this post I have included the video where I Talk about the why, what to look for and the where to find them. I also mention signing up a different email for each site and then setting up an account at gravatar, I will do another video on this but it really is pretty simple.

I hope you find the video useful, please do post your comments and questions below.

I talk in the video about link diversity and I truly think that the most important things in link building now are

• Link Diversity
• Link Value
• Link Velocity
• Anchor Text Variety

Some of the things I use:-
Social Bookmarking (for link variety)
imautoamtor
Social Adr

Guest posts (good link value)
Postrunner from the Keyword Academy
http://guestr.com I am just starting to look at this one
http://myblogguest.com/ another one I have heard good things on

I will be doing another post on guest blog posting, I am going to try and get Luke Moulton from Guestr to give me some insights and ideas to share

Blog Networks (good link value)
Build My Rank – they give you 10 free links so try them out

There are other blog networks, I have been in some terrible ones with 1k sites that are a week old and all get the same post at the same time, and I keep on looking for new ones to test out. The best ones are very expensive and are kept pretty secret so they do not get over exposed.

What I will do is make a guest post and then put that url into imautomator, I also collect them and then make a rss feed of them and submit that feed. There is no point making a guest post if Google don’t find it so i try and do my bit to push them.

I also use http://animoto.com/ to make videos which i then upload to you tube, viddler and just starting with vimeo. Youtube is for the traffic and the links, viddler or vimeo are used for when I want to embed the video on my sites as they seem to be better quality. This is really more about giving some variety to your site than about the links in my opinion.

Blog Comments
Less is more, better in my opinion to have 50 good ones done that will build your cred and reputation than to have 1k spun trash ones.

Balance
I think you need to look for balance in your link profile, I also don’t go looking for a million links at once, crappy links from profiles on sites that are going to break because they get spammed so much hold no attraction to me.

Where to read good info
People ask me where I find info and who do i listen to, I rarely (read never) look at any IM forums for anything to do with seo, I tend to read the stuff on

http://www.seomoz.org/

http://www.distilled.net/blog/ (their recent webinar on ecommerce seo was superb)

http://www.paddymoogan.com/

and I am starting to read a lot more from the guys at http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk, their podcasts are fun and I found this one to be superb (and not just coz the guy is baldish, with a beard and glasses , like me)
http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/blog/2011/11/22/interview-with-jim-sterne-podcast-episode-146/

Ok what was going to be a short video post has turned into a lot more.. Please do leave a comment below..and look out for more posts from me coming soon..

Ok calm down, I know I sound like some crazy radical.

Everyone knows that using Fiverr is the answer to all online problems, there have been at least a couple of wso reports talking about the best fiverr gigs and every forum I visit is full of how great the site is. But hear me out and let me say upfront that my feeling on the site can be applied to many other tools. It is how you are using Fiverr that worries me not the place itself.

Fiver is a superb idea, people make money by offering services in just about every niche possible.  The site  is a tool in your toolkit.

• You want some facebook likes, go to fiverr
• You want some tweets, go to fiverr
• You want some articles spun (really badly normally) ..well you get the picture

It's Only $5 Right

I feel I owe this post to all the people who have been asking where I am , and if you weren’t wondering about me don’t worry I am not hurt but I will share it with you anyway. For anyone that doesn’t know I am originally from the UK and moved to the states in December 2004 to marry the lovely and long suffering Kathy. Since I moved here I have worked online, doing my funky thing and generally it has been great.

Once thing I have noticed while working for myself is that it is quite a lonely life, I don’t have friends, I don’t mix with anyone and that is actually starting to get to me. I did try a couple of networking meetings but all the geek guys just get scared you are after their clients or they spend the time telling you how good they are at asp/php/biteme or whatever the latest thing is.

I also found that I am not really a person, well the banks don’t seem to think I am anyway. I have a green card (citizenship in 2012 and we shall be having a party when it is done, look out for your invite in the post) but as a non citizen and an internet marketer it is like I have 3 heads!

This personal stuff has been building up and it is all becoming a tad annoying, I am sure it will all improve next year when I get my citizenship, have to do an exam and be able to prove I can speak English, my daughter tells me..Daddy you need to speak American not English now you are in America…., But in the meantime it is causing me problems.

So that is the background to the big thing.. I got a job…

Forcey Family Photo

Yes after 7 years of working at home in my shorts I now get to work in an office in jeans.. I am working for a local internet company that has a few businesses on the go, they have programmers and designers but no one knows (or cares) anything about content or seo and that is where I come in. I share an office with one design guy who is very cool and most importantly doesn’t seem to mind my music and my talking to the computer.

It is strange working for someone else, very strange getting a pay check every 2 weeks, (and even with more money coming in I seem to never have any) it is nice to see that my knowledge and experience is useful and I really do like the people I work with. The first couple of months were hectic which is why this blog has been so quiet but I am used to it now and am

SEO
It is funny how differently you look on link building when it is your job and a whole company is relying on you to grow their online exposure and not to get them deindexed or slapped. It is great to be paid to watch white board Friday and to read SEO Blogs and posts by people who do not recommend that you throw a few thousand profile links at a site and see how it goes. I spend my time looking at the larger picture as I only have 3 sites to worry about, I also have access to people to make videos (live action and aniomoto), do infographics and any other graphics stuff I need done.

My online life
I am still here and am still working on my own stuff, I have new products coming up, I am still updating products and have some thoughts to share about Facebook/twitter/links and quality vs quantity and why passion may be the winner in the future.  I see so much when i spend time going through data that it would be a shame not to be able to share it all.

So I am going to be posting here and on Facebook again, I am going to finish up the manual for some software I have been using for a while and I also have an info product or 3 kicking around in my brain so i shall try and get all that out to you by the end of this year.

A real quick blog post here, I was going to put it on Facebook or Google+ but then thought it would fit better here.

I was in a office yesterday (yes I do leave the dungeon once in a while) having a discussion with a couple of web guys about google plus. They love it and the web designer had kicked the tweet me button off the site to put the google plus button up there.

I felt this was a mistake as “normal” people are just not using g+ yet, I know that the big G are probably using it as a ranking metric and it definitely makes pages get indexed fast if they are linked from your google but for real people it is useless.

We disagreed (put 3 web geeks in a room together and they often cant even agree on what to have for lunch)..

There were 20 people in the office, secretary/admin people and sales people (plus us 3 very out of place geeks)..

“Hi I need some help, which do you use every day, Facebook, Google plus one, Twitter”

So out of 20 people
18 =Facebook regularly
10 =have twitter accounts
2 =use twitter a lot
3 =have not used it since setting it up
5 = use twitter once in a while but dont really seem to know how to use it for personal stuff. “I just post everything to Facebook from my phone”

2 = none – hate the whole idea

Half of them (9 of them women) said “whats the google thing” , the others had kind of heard of it because there is the button on the company site but only 1 had actually looked at it. Even he admitted it was only because the web geek guy pushed him.

I did not ask what they use for personal email, my wife uses yahoo mail and that may well be part of why she has not heard about gplus.

Google plus is great if you are in IM/SEO/Something geeky , and i know the take up numbers are huge but i think numbers alone are misleading, but outside of that they are not there yet.

What does this mean for you and me, if you are using Facebook to build groups and followers in your knitting niche, keep on doing it. If you have time to do the g+ thing as well then start to build a presence but i would not swap out all my time from Facebook to Gplus.

As for twitter.. I love it personally but I do not know if it will ever be anything other than a great social signal..

I know this is a very unscientific study and i could of asked more questions but thought I would share anyway..

Paul

Update:- Patrick was asking about twitter info, and while this is not strictly info, it is interesting if you are a twit geek..

http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/twitters-t-co-link-shortening-service-is-game-changing-heres-why/

I hate to be a miserable so and so (I really do) but this has been niggling me for the last week or two and the niggle is getting worse not better. I mentioned my feelings on exact match domains a while ago but I think this may be worse.

I have been looking at more than a few Facebook products lately and more and more of them are about how fast you can throw up a Facebook page. They are often giving you ready made niche packages, so they may include a page for weight loss, make money at home, and how to become a pole dancer. The templates look lovely they include a video sometimes and something to give away to people who “like” you.

Great idea, it takes all the work out of finding a niche, making images and a video so it seems like a must have. But it means your page will be one of a hundred, two hundred or maybe even a thousand other pages that will look exactly the same with the same images, same videos and all aimed at the same market.

Couldnt find a pic of him slapping anyone

So rather than having a unique page that builds your “tribe” with your own unique brand you are just shoving up a page which will be exactly the same as hundreds of others. I can’t imagine that is going to be too hard for Facebook to spot and deal with.

Didn’t we see this kind of thing with Squidoo? Then they changed the rules and everyone moaned and groaned but dont seem to have learned anything from it.

The real worry here is not that Facebook will decide to shut the pages of people who just use the same mass produced template. Although that would be bad for people doing it obviously,  the real worry is that people (you know my wife and her friends, the normal Facebook users) will get sick of seeing the same page everywhere they go when they look for diets (not that my wife or any of her friends need a diet obviously) and stop taking notice of any pages at all.

Once the public starts to distrust everything they see on Facebook then it will become tougher to make any income from it.

Facebook Is A Tool
My dad was a master brick layer (I think you call them Masons in the USA) and he always talked about looking after your tools and learn how to use them. You can be the best bricklayer in the world but it is all a lot harder with poor tools and if you have good tools but dont learn how to use them it makes everything you do hard work.

When people start with wordpress they always look for the easiest way to do everything, and I totally understand, but the problems start when something doesn’t behave how they expect. That is exactly how it is with Facebook, you can slap up a templated page that you put together using a plugin or a bit of software but what happens when they change something in the back end (notice I said when not if)?

You do not need to become a codemaster, but you do need to keep your eyes open and learn things outside your comfort zone (which is a lot easier said than done in my personal experience).

Putting a page up on Facebook is simple enough that you do not need software (although I did just see a image program designed for Facebook which I thought was good but it is not available yet) to do it for you. But really learning how to use the site is not so easy (in my opinion)

• The privacy settings are complicated
• How do you get real friends
• Why do some posts get more impressions than others
• Do I still build links to my facebook page

Becoming A Master Is Not Fast
Becoming a mechanic is not quick, lots of hands on learning and plenty of courses to do. Becoming a bricklayer took my dad years where he spent time learning what worked best. He listened to people and tried things out, he worked crappy hours and ended up drinking too much (in IM I find that many of us drink to much Coffee or Diet Coke).

Why do any of us expect to be a Facebook expert after buying one course which features a 40 page ebook (first 10 pages are all about the author and the last 3 pages are resource links) and a video telling you that you need a facebook account before you can do a page and that there are lots of people on Facebook..

You should read, you can buy courses and ebooks until you have no more money, but at some point you have to do it. Set up a page and get your hands dirty, don’t worry that it looks bad (I know mine does, but the next one will be better) and that you are unsure of what to do. That is called learning! It is not easy and it is not overnight but you can do it and once you have mastered it you will be able to just about anything.

Manual is The Way To Go
You will learn more by building your Facebook page manually than by just sparking up some software and having at it. I love software, but I try and do stuff manually first. Learn how to put a page together and then look at software, you may well realize you don’t need it.

Its About Being Real
Yes you can fake just about anything , but when you are trying to build a tribe they will smell it if you are faking. I would love to do a Facebook group aimed at American football fans, I know they are rabid and will buy things that someone they trust recommends. The problem is I know nothing about the game and have never managed to watch a full game. Sure I could do some research but it is never going to be enough to make me seem real to people who truly know and love the sport.

I am just getting into Facebook and am trying to learn how to do things the right way. It won’t be going anywhere so I do not feel the need to rush into it all. There is a right way and a wrong way to do anything and the right way is not always the fastest or easiest way.

Thanks for reading this far please do feel free to leave a comment below or even go to my Facebook page and leave a comment there. I

What would you do if you woke up and your email account was closed?

I started using gmail a while ago and gradually over time I have stopped giving people the email addy that is through one of my own sites and instead I just give them my gmail address. All my other emails get redirected there anyway so it is just easier..

So now my gmail account has my life in it, all my business emails, receipts, contacts from customers and links to cat videos. So what would I do if that shut down? Someone mentioned on Twitter that their Google accounts had all been shut down and it made me think what would I do if the same thing happened to me..

• Panic
• Cry
• Scream
• Blame Google
• Beg for it back
• Rant

Tim left a comment that mentioned a program called Mailstore home – http://www.mailstore.com/en/mailstore-home.aspx and he said he uses it for backing up gmail. I haven’t tried it yet but will download tonight and see how it goes, if anyone else knows of any programs that will do it please do let me know.

Yahh there is a new version of wordpress out, and it looks nice and all my plugins work with it so all is good in the world..

I spent a couple of hours updating most of my sites (will do more later in the week was my thought).. Next morning I wake up log in to a site and ..what..what do you mean we now need to update to 3.2

I am not sure of the exact number but it feels like I have updated WordPress 3 times (at least) in the last month..I love the program and I understand why they need to do updates, and of course it only takes a few seconds to do it.. well if you have one site..

Say it takes 5 mins a site (open it up, log in..wait find the log in info, then log in, then do the updates, then log out and move to the next one). What if you have 10 sites, that is close enough to an hour you just spent.. even if it is only once a month that is not good is it?

Say you have 20 sites and they do two updates in a month..so you just wasted 4 hours.. and lets be honest running the updates is boring!

I was so pleased to see a different way of dealing with it. Dave Toomey has had a desktop tool made to deal with the (what seems like constant) updating that WordPress needs. Nice and simple to use and you can choose to just update wordpress or have it update your plugins as well.

Buy WpMass Updater

Is it perfect, well the only thing I can think of is that when you have some plugins which need something weird doing every time you update you would still have to log into your site. For me just saving the time it takes to update the sites I have makes it worth it for me. This is one of those tools that doesn’t seem to do exciting things, it won’t drive traffic or make you sell a load more products.

It gives you THE TIME to do all the exciting stuff instead of updating WordPress.

p.s I love WordPress and it is vital to keep it updated, if you only have a couple of sites then keep doing it by hand. If you have more than a few sites then you really do owe it to your brain to automate the process

** This post is in two parts, part one is my thoughts on the whole Amazon tax situation and the 2nd part offers some help for those affected

No one loves politics more than me but more and more I am thinking that one of the pre requisites to work in govt is to wear blinkers and be a bit nuts.

Late last night all Amazon affiliates in California got notification that they are fired. California want Amazon to collect sales tax from everyone who lives in California and buys through Amazon and Amazon doesn’t want to do it.

While I feel the pain of affiliates who are the pawn in the middle of this battle I want to share a thought which may be a bit different from the norm.

Amazon should suck it up and collect tax

Unless they feel they lose nothing by losing affiliates? Maybe they figure they are so well known now that they do not need affiliates anymore? They always talk about how it is the big box stores that are pushing this, well who employs the most people in your state  Walmart or Amazon.

I love the internet, it allows me to work from home and spend time with my wife and daughter and work when I want. But I am just one person, the local Walmart probably employs hundreds of people, so does kmart and many other stores in town. I do not love Walmart, but I bet they put more people into work and pay more taxes than Amazon do here in Utah.

I have heard this called a freedom of speech problem and how Amazon are having their constitutional rights trampled, rubbish! Amazon collect sales tax in Washington state so they can do it, they just don’t want to.

Are they scared that they will lose their price advantage? Or are they just trying to throw their weight around?

Two things in live are certain, Death and Taxes.

Help For Ex Amazon Affiliates

Ok now my rant is over lets see what we can do to help people who are being affected. This company have got a very good system that allows you to still use your Amazon sites – Skimlinks
You do have to add some code to your site and they do want to look at them to make sure your site is of  acceptable quality. The company are a affiliate for Amazon and they put your sales through their account. Since they get so many sales they are on the top payment tier.

Is it as good as having your own account, no. However until the tax situation is finally sorted it is well worth doing so you still earn from your sites.

Sell Your Amazon Sites
I think a lot of people will panic and just sell. This tax change is coming on the heels of Panda and it may well be too much for some people. If your life doesn’t depend on the income why bother with all this aggro right?

This may sound like the easiest way out but is it the best way? I think you should look at Skimlinks first , selling in a panic is never going to get you the best price. There may well be a flurry of sites coming up for sale and that will probably cause some of them to end up selling too cheaply.

Avoid the temptation to throw in the towel and keep on fighting the good fight!

Amazon Sales Tax Map
This post includes a map showing the embattled states
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11052898/1/amazon-sales-tax-the-battle-state-by-state.html

Other reading on Amazon Sales Tax Issue

As I find posts or comments that I think may be relevant and interesting I will add them here, feel free to suggest some in the comments

http://daggle.com/open-letter-jeff-bezos-terminating-amazon-affiliate-program-california-2584

Interesting Comment On Facebook

Amazon has deemed California and 11 (?) other states not worthy of their business; so be it – I refuse to make future purchases through Amazon – directly or through affiliate links – until they re-establish California associate programs.

Now if everyone in the 11 states already affected did that for a week.. what would the $$ affect be for Amazon? I know it would never happen but it is a idea to consider..