Good News about Research! (Keep on Keepin' on!)

A lot of the regulars here continually stress how important research is when it comes to your business. Researching what to sell. Researching where to get it. Researching price points, shipping services, your customers, the competition ("Comp Shopping"), listing formats, trends, return policies, marketing, and on and on. And doing it continuously. My job as friends Director (Sales Director) is basically to move inventory. Part of that job is marketing. When we opened our eBay store last December, I got serious about Google. I researched their advertising options, their Product Finder, GoogleBase, and how their search engine worked. I knew that we wouldn't be able to compete right now with the big toy sellers. So focusing on generic things such as 'Stuffed Animals' would not be the best strategy. Rather we focused on individual products, and niche markets within the plush toy category. We started using what I had learned immediately. After a couple of months, we're seeing results. Out of curiosity today, I did a few searches: Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Screenshot 3 I clicked on 'Shopping Results' on the last one and got: Screenshot 4 It was nice to see our store come up near the top. My father (The Boss, Owner of the business) was encouraged to see this as well. I was particularly pleased to see extra details come up for our store when buyers click to see more shopping results, as opposed to other sellers where the details did not show. Yes, I'm gloating a bit here. But I wanted to share this to show folks that all this research does pay off. We're starting to see more sales from Google. We've been able to better focus our product line towards our great buyers needs. We're able to write our policies focusing on our great buyers. We're able to price our items competitively, while offering low cost shipping. (Thanks again to posters here for pointing out our shipping discrepancy a couple months ago). All of that through continuous research. It's a lot of work. But it leads to better sales down the road. It takes time to build a business. We're still building ours. You may not see the results you want right away. But if you keep plugging away at it, in time you'll start to see the results. Some days it can be discouraging. Especially if you don't see any sales. But keep at it! We'll get there. My work with Google hasn't stopped. It's only started. My thanks to the regulars who post here. This board was one of the first places I looked at when we got serious about being in business on eBay. The knowledge you share is invaluable. -- friends Director,

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