chris - other ecommerce gurus - in

**gargonzo** · 06-23-2005, 08:02 PM

hiya..

well, today i was offered an interesting business venture.. i've recently built a site (ecommerce) selling higher end bathroom fixtures, showers,sinks etc.. Items range from 300 -10k.

I was mostly a project manager - i implemented the shopping cart(xcart), helped/trained them on getting the products into the cart..and doing some basic adminstration when they were unsure of what to do next.

now, the site is built and they want to start making money.
I was offered today a base salary and 5% commision on all products sold on the website. The base salary is less then i'm making now.. but the possibility of the 5% could be fantastic. Where i currently work, we can knock out a website in aweek or two, build an estore and setup google/overture accounts and the new site could be selling within a few weeks of being signed up..

I've expressed that PPC (google& overture) should be setup and would help generate traffic/money. I've also thought about building some other sites that will send traffic there.

My questions to chris or other ecommerce gurus are as followed:
- how would you approach this situation?
- how would you formulate a good keyword/bidding structure?
- xcart sells an affiliate module, if i could offer 50$ per sale to affiliates, would this get lots of affiliates to signup thus sending alot of inbound links to the site and boost traffic/rankings? (granted its not as targeted as ppc would be)
- what could/would you advise?
- if you were in my shoes what would you do to make it a sucess?
- what are some pitfalls to avoid?

They will supply funds for marketing via PPC/inclusion, but i doubt it'd be thousands of dollars so there would be a semi limited budget. I'd be handling the website, and NOT doing fullfillment ( thank god ).. Work could be done from my SOHO or their location, up to me.

oh by the way i HATE my current job!

Ok.. i'm all ears!
regards
garz

**Chris** · 06-23-2005, 08:34 PM

As I'm on vacation I do not have time right now to address the promotion issues, I just want to address the payment issue.

Try getting equity (ownership) This way if the site is really successful and eventually sold you profit along with the rest of them. Otherwise if it is every sold you'll likely just get fired.

**Snowballer** · 08-04-2005, 08:40 AM

garz, any updates?

**gargonzo** · 12-20-2005, 09:48 PM

Update..

Been there 5 months now. I enjoy my co-workers and the job very much..
I've done a huge revamp of the website (xcart) and quite a few mods to the cart. Setup Adwords accounts. Implement Mod_rewrite. Export datafeeds for bizrate/shopping.com/froogle.

I've set up a blogger and add links/information about our products since google/SERPs seem to like blogs.

We spend 3-6k a month on SEO (ppc/comparison shopping sites)

I generally try to add us to directories/get back links as much as possible..

I've submitted to DMOZ repeatedly, but non of my cats have editors..

I need to converse with an ecommerce guru.. wish i could call chris!!

I'm constantly thinking of ways to increase business.. but am kind of at a plateau..

regards
garz