Help needed for product pricing guide?

[Polly]

Bringing people to your web site may be easier than you think.  

If you have items that people are looking for, and you describe them well on your web site, and you get your web site into the major search engines and directories, then people will find you when they search in the Search Engines.  

To help do all that, and understand the importance of the words you use on your web site, visit this site:
    http://www.highrankings.com/
and subscribe to her newsletter.

Basically, what she says is this:  
- Use good, descriptive words and phrases to describe what you sell.  
- Write for your readers/visitors.  Include good information about history, uses, etcetera.  Search engines like informative web site, just as much as internet users do.
- Don't rely on your pictures to bring people to your site, even though the pictures may be beautiful and cause people to buy from you once they arrive.  Search engines can't see, so won't tell people what is in your pictures.
- Don't just list a whole bunch of key words / search phrases all over your pages. That looks bad to people when they visit, and many of the search engines are smart enough that they will ignore your web site if it does that.  (i.e., don't just make half a page that looks like "Warring States Beads, Glass Beads, China, Eye Beads, Fancy Beads, Bead, Glass" etc.)

You can also use your e-bay experience to your advantage (to help people find your web site).  I believe that e-bay doesn't mind if you link from your e-bay auctions to your web site, and vice versa.  I believe the main rule is:  
<I>You can't have items on your web site, that are **also** on e-bay.</I>  You can have similar items, but not the same items.
So you can try out brand new beads on e-bay, to see if they sell well.  You can also put "oops" batches of beads on e-bay.  And you can have a link someplace in your e-bay info: "For more beads similar to these, visit http://www.mywebsite.com".  This link probably needs to be in the seller info, rather than the product info, but I am not sure.  I bet you can find rules about it at e-bay, and you can also check out other (reliable) people's auctions, and see what they have done.

You can also have links on your web site, to your e-bay auctions.  If previous e-bay buyers have good things to say about you, this can help build customer confidence for you at your web site as well.  
Having the links back and forth, can build traffic for all your items at both locations.

Once you have your web site built, you may want to pay a company to submit your web site to the major search engines and search directories.  
But be careful, there are a lot of sloppy search engine submittals out there.  
I do not believe there is much benefit to submitting your web site to the search engines / directories every month.  So personally I wouldn't pay the ฤ - ์ / month that companies charge for that.
But I do think it would be a good idea to pay someone to do it for you *once*, when your web site becomes ready for business.

I believe that it normally takes about 3 months for the search engines to really start finding your web site, after you do the submittal process.

Once people start finding your web site, pay attention to your web site's stats.  You'll want to see what key words (search phrases) brought people to your web site.  They may cause you to change / update the words you use or way your write on your site.

I don't really have any advice about pricing, that you haven't already seen in other parts of our bulletin board.
2x - 3x markup is fairly standard, and can be adjusted up or down as necessary later due to a variety of factors.

Good Luck with your new Web Site!
--Polly

[limespiders]

Hello,

I have a few questions if I may.

Im in the process of building a wep page, but as I am based in S.E. Asia I am finding it difficult to decide at what price to I sell my stock at? Because I have the ability to buy from the source is there some type of an equation that I can apply? What about wholesale orders? Is there an appropriate system for rates? How about stock, rather then trying to get some of everything (which will be nearly impossible) if I choose 4 or 5 main beads to start up with how much diversity should I offer?

I have a years experience of selling through ebay and everything has gone very smoothly and now I would like to make the transition from selling things cheaply to gain experience to selling quality items at market value.
Part of me feels that I am the person that alot of people would like to get in contact with to supply them with beads, but where do I go to find them? And how do I present myself in a buisiness like manner to obtain their buisiness as their supplier and not let them take advantage of my lack of knowledge?

I think the bottom line is, that I would like to offer my beads at a reasonable market value but beacuse I do not live in N. America I dont know what it is...........

Please Help.