Pros in having a Yahoo Store vs Auctiva Commerce Store

Hey guys,

Was wondering if anyone is or has had a Yahoo store? and if so have you had success with it? I currently have an Auctiva Commerce Store but its so horrible! lol they are constantely running into bugs with certain features of the site and the company just seems to fix things half way and also their stores are not very Google friendly. I hear one of the benefits of having a Yahoo store is you get free advertising with them.

Any feedback would be great!

i personally have no knowledge of either but have a couple questions tho, do you get decent sales/traffic w/ auctavia? how much $$ does a store run?
i checked out both sites, yahoo has way too much competition for what im selling, yet auctavia has no competition, though that doesnt necessarily = sales

Hey raiderjake,

I currently get very very low traffic and No sales yet but its partially my fault because I dont take advantage of all those free services out there to drive traffic. I mean yeah I could do google adwords but thats expensive. Its just Auctiva is always having some form of bug on their tools and website features. If you've used Auctiva's ebay tools then you probably know what I mean by that! lol . As for Yahoo they have a really good quality marketing tool in place which is all included for 39 bucks a month. It includes $100 credit toward google adwords, they automatically add your items to their shopping site and get you on google, yahoo search engines and other 3rd party. Auctiva Commerce currently is still FREE as long as you have a paid ebay Auctiva plan in place. If you want to just sign up for auctica commerce its $9.95 a month. I think by comparing the two your best bet of success would come from Yahoo just by their exposure and marketing tools included.

thanx dude, good to know
i checked out yahoo, to much competition for me, more than ebay really, but google adwords is the way to go. i'll probably try out yahoo once im up running better, with a good amount of inventory, but for now im stuck w/ ebay :-(

lol yeah same here dude i have no choice at this point but to stay on board with ebay but im getting rid of PayPal this year and going strickly with paymate.

i also have a store with AC and yes, there are too many bugs - i have gotten quite a bit of traffic from all over the world - thanks to an online marketing course i have been trying to complete - even got page rank 1 there for a while 'til I stopped submitting to google which I did manually since AC's automatic thing was just not working (one of their many problems) - great course - effective information which I will use to build an alternative platform - I admit, however, that sales were just about non-existent - think more to do with the economy and my product line - maybe i even need to make my prices more competitive - will do more research on that. I looked into Yahoo stores as well as Prostores. Yahoo charges 1.5% on sales which may or may not be offset by sales ? - depends on your merchandise and profit margins. Prostores only allows one picture and because of my product line, i need to have multiple photos which I could do I suppose by using an alternative service. I did find a great alternative platform - easy to use and set up without having to know all the html stuff... but will see how it goes - difficult to keep starting over - so some more research needed. I think, at the end of the day, marketing strategies are more important than platform used since you can drive traffic to any platform ...once you know how. Best of luck to all!

Thanks for the info Bizhope,

I sure appreciate it! yeah I still have my store running on AC but im about to cancel it and also stop my ebay 9.95 a month auctiva tools. Its just not worth it and if you pretty much just want a simple listing template then using ebays Turbo Lister is just fine and free at that! lol I still cant believe Auctiva went the fee route, im tired of giving my money away to these people! However I can understand them going to a fee route if eBay screwed with their way of these company making money.

dwm - u r most welcome - curious - do you have a store on ebay or do you just list items? i am still trying to figure the ebay end of stuff out for a new product line i want to launch. thank you for response. oh and by the way, i got the page 1 rank without using any paid services like Google adwords - just the information from the course on how to get organic traffic. have an awesome day!

I do have an ebay store however if you really dont have an item that is HOT and selling it with volume then having an ebay store really doesnt work as far as traffic and all. I check on my ebay store traffic daily and its really not worth it for me I mean I really dont have a real understanding as to where the free advertising is out there. Im really not much interested in attracting through social networking and blogs because I have heard sooo many people say that they get a nice amount of lookers but no sales. having an ebay store is 15.95 a month plus you still pay listing fees and FVFs. you can still use the Store Listing Format which is only 10 cents a listing but you wont appear in search results with that, plus I heard ebay is doing away with the store format. If I may ask, do you currently use a drop shipper Bizhope??

hi again dwm, thank you for your timely response - much appreciated. Yes, I am presently using a dropshipper. It is the only thing that would effectively work for my main product line. In the future, however, I may have other things for which I may do things differently.

Question - since planes have closed - will you be using artsnow, or someone else like urbanload - not sure where to go on this one for my new project. your input would be greatly appreciated. you may not want to answer this question - not sure where your threshold is...my reason for asking is strictly about reliability of supplier...not in anyway trying to steal ideas..besides i believe in the concept of plenty as opposed to scarcity...peace!

Hey Bizhope,

No problem at all. I am currently integrating over to ArtsNow, as for Urbanload, they are both the same and so as far as supplier reliability will be exactly the same. Now these independant sites that run off of the artsnow server can all offer different support lines. I was fortunate to have PLANES in the beginning to answer any of my questions at anytime. But as for ArtsNow you will be directly using the Parent Company so you might not get that personal support line. Overall I think the pricing and talent that you can do with your personalized products but in the end they still have a pretty poor shipping service. But if you play your cards right, you can improve that by ordering some stock a little at a time and just do that as a secondary option if all else fails.

thank you again dwm - i did get planes' welcome package as i had signed up just before he 'signed out' and it is very helpful. your input and time has been much appreciated. all the best to you. peace!

Hey guys,

I just want everybody to know that I found out AUCTIVA monitors what people are posting about their company! I just got an email from Chris the project manager over at auctiva and I am not about to even figure out how he got my email and so I asked him what his salehoo User ID was and he said he doesn't have one??? So anyways, he basically was not pushy in the email but rather he put his words in a way of asking for feedback to improve their services! LOL I know better then to know what he was getting at and that is pure PR work on his agenda. My question for anybody at salehoo is this....If a person does not have an account here, can they still find your email address on here by just doing a google search on salehoo topics??? This is just an honest questions because yes I have an account with Auctiva but how would this guy know to connect the 2 to find my email?


So again be careful folks what you say in these posts because this big guy is reading these! LOL

Thank you dwm for the heads up. However, if one speaks the truth, then one speaks the truth. We do live in a democracy, and, if we cannot be honest in our OPINION of a service rendered, etc. (and we may or may not be right in our opinion), then what do we have ? ... a dictatorship.... And, we live in fear. That is certainly not how I want to live. And, I do not believe that any one person, or company, etc, excepting the Almighty God, holds the power to my success. Therefore, if someone asks me for input on a subject, I will give my honest evaluation .... which is NOT gospel .... only an opinion. 'When one door closes, another opens.' Peace all and many successes for 2010 onwards !!!!!!

Amen to that Bizhope! lol yeah it was just very weird how Auctiva is doing their business these days...I take it this guy Chris which if you follow along with Auctiva's forum you will see lots of posts by him. He apparently is Im assuming doing google search, I guess anything like Auctiva bugs or poor auctiva service...thats again what I think how he found this topic but what still is tricky is how he found my email address. I would think twice before trying out the big 'AC' .

dwm: if people can be open with their opinion of ebay which we will all agree, like it or not, is a forceful company and one to be reckoned with, then why would we shiver in our boots for a newcomer to the e-commerce platform .... and I mean no disrespect of AC ... just saying, that if people can be open with stating how they feel about ebay, or google, or yahoo, (and don't take my word for it - just google reviews of any of these companies and you will find them) - then why should one be any less honest in their opinion of AC or whomever ..there is something called 'free speech' in this part of the world...as long as we maintain respect and dignity.

bacpro posted a great post today 'A Perfect Match'. take time to read it. I don't think that it is somehow a coincidence that he happened to post it today, when we are having this discussion....the universe creates 'magic' like that...all the time, if we but open our eyes to see. peace and all the best!

Hi, Im new to salehoo but not to auctiva, And im not afraid to speak the truth
AUCTIVA SUCKS!

LOL Thanks guys! and yes Auctiva does Suck!!

Hi again dwm,

...just spoke to a friend yesterday, whom I met actually through AC. We would both exchange ideas on how to improve out 'situation' so to speak. Last November, she closed shop at AC and moved to ProStores. In 7 months, she had not had single sale on AC. In the first week of ProStores, she made 2 sales. When I spoke to her yesterday, she informed me that her sale on ProStores were 4 times what she had on Etsy, her other store which she has had for 1 year.

The best online store & the easiest to post & maintain has been e-crater & its free. I tried Auctiva & there system is so difficult, to many hoops to post an item, and no sales.

I have also tried Pro-Stores which is Homestead, which is owned by Intuit and this one also sucks.

My 2 cents

John (aka bacpro)

Nobody has mentioned actually having a yahoo store. I didn't even know they existed. I'm very new to this still. I have sold on ebay, but I haven't made much. Does anybody out there have a yahoo store? Do they like it?
Balmor

Hi John,

Actually, ProStores is owned by ebay. Homestead whose website service I used some time back (and loved its ease of use-was just too expensive) uses the ProStores platform as their e-commerce platform, but it is not theirs. For anyone who wants to look into this, just call them, they will tell you.

I did look into using Homestead's version of Prostores, but as stated in earlier post, I would prefer a platform with the ability to use more than one pic in my listings without necessarily having to use an outside storage facility. Therefore, I don't know how it would be as I did not pursue this avenue with them.

As far as ecrater goes, yes it is easy to set up, and I think a great place to have an optional store and/or to get your feet wet, but use of this type of platform depends on one's long term goals.

Building on such a platform, your store is NOT technically yours....to expand...you could not sell it for example, if you wanted to later down the road..which many people do do..for great profits..check flippa.com, for example. They can also at any time they see fit, suspend your store, much in the way ebay does, leaving you to defend your position..just check their community board...I am sure you are familiar with this if you use them. Some will say that those who get suspended are for reasons such as selling fake products, which some do, but, it is not always the case. And, as with ebay, your product may or may not be fake...but you will have to prove that one way or the other if they decide that it is.

Another drawback is that they do not favor dropshipping and so many people depend on this type of service.

That being said, I respect your input and will actually look into ecrater again for an idea I have in mind. It is a great place to test a market before launching your own full fledged ecommerce store..which you can actually OWN.

One other thing, did you know that search engines are not as favorable to free stores as they are with paying stores, and, there are other limitations.... you cannot monetize, meaning you cannot add html codes to promote affiliate programs, or google adsense, etc., etc....to name a couple.

Another thing, I do not personally like, and others may not mind, is that I cannot right-click protect my photos, so anyone can just copy.

Peace! Have a wonderful day! Many successes to all!

Beaubeau,

if you are totally new to this, John's suggestion of ecrater is a great one, as the experience will teach you how to set up an ecommerce platform...it is a great place to get your feet wet in this area..and as John mentioned, it is FREE, so if later on, you decided this is not for you, you would not have lost a lot of money.

On the other hand, if you have a small bit to invest in the learning curve which will pay off in the end and are not afraid to take a chance, PM me and I may just be able to throw you a great idea...the rest will be up to you.

All the best! Peace!