Sunday, March 28, 2010

Staples is Annoying

They keep sending me coupons for $25 off in Store purchases, and $25 off Online Purchases, when you spend $75 or more. My Problem is, The Local Store does not have everything I want, and the Online store doesn't have everything I want. The fact that the Copy/Print department does not count for the $75 or more, is just further insult to injury. In fact, I was at the copy/print counter, and told that my copy/print coupon, was only for stuff they need to print somewhere else. (?!?!)

I absolutely HATE that slogan "Easy". Using their services is NEVER easy. After this recent round of purchases, they have officially fallen onto my "Bad Business" list.

Business Cards

I would like to start by saying that I have been a professional printer for more than 20 years. So, I know a good, quality business card when I see it.

As I am changing the look of my company, it was time for new business cards. It was a toss up between Staples and VistaPrint. I guess Staples was having a 25% off sale, so I went with them. On the up side, submission online was quick and easy. They even had it ready by morning.

When I picked it up, I thought the paper was as thin (about 180gsm/45lb.), the blacks looked weak, color was dull (too much red added to the blues) and the glossy paper (cost extra) was barely noticeable. They cost $0.10 cents each for 500. I genuinely felt the proof paper I usually print on at home looked so much better, even without the glossy.

The only up side to paying $50, was that I did not have to waste my time cutting them out. Next time I will make sure to get the better quality (thick and glossy), even if it cost a little more.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Another Poor Experience

I clicked on a PPC link I saw somewhere. It was for http://www.packnboxnow.com and I had trouble with using the website. The wbesite is supposed to sell boxes. However, by default, it brings me to the custom page, where box prices jump from $0.34 cents, to over $7.00. So, I clicked on the Live Chat link. Read the poor customer service, and poor employee responsibilities that followed....

Chris: Hello, how can I help?
you: I selected 25 10x6x6 boxes. Your system says they cost $7.00+ each. Hmm... for laughs, I added a printed logo, and the price jumped to $34.00+ each. Now, given that I can buy the same box at uline.com for $0.34 cents each, and a stick on a label for another $0.03 cents... who actually buys your products? Clearly, I am missing something....
Chris: Yes, your missing everything.....
Chris: Do we have that size on our "Stock Box" page for the same price as ULINE??
Chris: Probably....
Chris: Do we have the same stock sizes as uline?? Probably not....
Chris: Do we have as many stocks sizes available as ULINE?? No
Chris: Does Uline make CUSTOM BOXES??? NO.
Chris: It clear that your size is a "Stock Box"
Chris: Not a custom box
you: But at a price jump of over $600 for 2 color, clearly, out of my league. I was really just looking for some boxes.
Chris: Yes, do you have any idea how much it cost for printing plates??
you: Worked in printing for 20 years. Yes, I know.
Chris: Great!
you: I thought it would be off a big digital press or something.
Chris: then you should know that flexo printing plates cost in the ballpark of $400-600 PER COLOR
you: Would cost less to buy a big rubber stamp.
you: Yeah, I know.
Chris: that's wjhat flexo plates are, big rubber stamps.
Chris: Rubber molds....
you: Well, I mean literally, a rubber stamp. Cost like $40 or so for a 4x4.
you: So, I assume you customers order large quantities, not 25....
Chris: Yes, you VERY correct on that.
Chris: Most people don't do custom printing on that small of a qty... WE do have the option to do it.
Chris: Clearly, it's going to cost a lot higher then pulling a bundle of "Pre-Made" boxes off the shelf!
you: Even your "bundle of boxes" cost just under $200. That was made me click the help button.
Chris: What??
you: Yeah, even standard 8x8x8 cost $190. Now I feel bad you had to pay for the click to get me onto your site.
Chris: CS-002 4 x 4 x 4 a bundle of 25 boxes cost $4.75??
Chris: are you on the "Custom Page"???
you: Not on the link I am at. says $182.00
Chris: You REALLY neeed to look at our "STOCK BOX" page
you: I dont know, I guess. I just clicked on the PPC link and this is where I went
Chris: http://www.packnboxnow.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductId=928e4174-b3e5-4c66-8a75-991200de7c4c&CategoryId=950565ee-4274-42ee-8cc3-9903015436a4&ISC_SiteName=StockBoxesNow
you: I click home, and it still takes me to the custom page
Chris: we sell 8 x 8 x 8 for $0.36/ea
Chris: DO you see a blue Tab that reads Stock BOXs??
you: that makes sense. You should see what your PPC thing is doing, because it seems to be a waste of mone sending people to take page.
you: Yes, I see it now.
Chris: OK!!!
you: Honestly, as a random customer, I am barely looking at it.
Chris: That's where you need to be looking!
Chris: A random customer should know the difference (if buying boxes) between what "standard" means and what "custom" means....
you: But I didn't realize I needed to make extra steps to get, where the link should have taken me.
you: I added the boxes I wanted, then added my zip code, and all my items disappeared from the cart.
Chris: maybe your should exit the browser then enter again and start over.
you: I think the "enter" key may be mapped to the remove button.... perhaps.
you: yeah, it is
you: when I type in the zip, and hit enter, it clears the cart
Chris: there is a drop down feild underneth the zip code are to choose method of transit it, are you doing that?
you: doesn't matter. point is, your website is in need of some serious redesign. You can upset, assuming that I am an idiot. And that's fine. But, assuming that I am, the site should be redesigned to make a sale from an idiot.
you: I just licked a link, and wanted to buy some boxes.
you: the fact that I am still here, not able to easily, means you are loosing customers.
you: How many others just gave up and went away.
Chris: you would be the 1st.
Chris: We get RAVE's eveyday about how easy our site is.
Chris: to navigate.
Chris: all the options
Chris: We have a stady gowth of 30% every year for the last 4 years.
Chris: We must be doing something right??
you: But... I just went to uline, typed in 8x8x8, the boxes came up, I gave my zip, and I am ready to checkout.... and they cost less.
Chris: Maybe you just need to go to your local UPS store and pull someting off the shelf?
you: Just think of the growth it could be if you listened to the one customer who was the idiot...
Chris: Then why search for a new vendor?
you: I just wanted to look at your boxes from the link I saw on a website.
Chris: OK, now you know who do go through if you need "Custom Boxes". meaning a size that uline doesn't carry, or if you want custom printed logos.
Chris: ULine is great to use if all you need is 25 stock boxes.
Chris: Everyone, everywhere can do that.
Chris: Thank you for your time.
Chris: Have a good day!

This is not about the price of the boxes Chris, this is about your company is paying for a link that goes to page that does not meet the customer needs, then has a serious problem with checking out. Rather than understanding that, and bringing it to a supervisors attention, Chris gets all upset at me. Chris, I am glad you are not on my payroll.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

PPC Final Thoughts

I have officially established that Pay Per Click advertising on Google and Yahoo, and other Product Search engines like Shopzilla, Bizrate, Pricegrabber, etc are a complete waste of money. For the past 2 weeks, I put about $150-$200 spread out across 5 or 6 different websites like that and discovered them to be nothing but garbage.

I would guess that only about 75% of the clicks they say I had, actually made it to my website... the rest just disappeared without any trace, except for the promise by these companies that the people were real.

Of all the hundreds and hundreds of clicks that I supposedly had, I made "0" sales. I make a ton more money from CraigsList. Despite eBay's outrageous fees, at least they brought in several sales.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

PPC Conclusion

PPC is a waste of money. I thought this a year and a half ago, and now I am positive. All it did was cost me a ton of money. It doesn't seem to matter which service I tried, they all sent me worthless traffic.

PriceGrabber

It is now like 2 weeks, and Pricegrabber.com STILL has not added me to their search engine. Not that it much matters. I am going to try and cancel the whole thing.

Shopzilla

Shopzilla's records say they sent me 165 visitors, but my logs only show 20. This is the same kind of garbage that Become.com was doing to me. Charging me for people who do not make it to my site, for whatever reason. Just as bad, it appears that 8 of the 20 that made it, were for non-USA countries, so they mean nothing to me anyway.

The Find

I had signed up with thefind.com a few weeks ago. I had trouble with their search engine, where it listed all my items with wrong addresses, so the links did not work. However, they seems to have fixed it. They did not send me any traffic yet, that I can see. So they are just as useful as all the pay-per-click sites. At least they are free.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Bonanzle

Last night I signed up with Bonanzle.com and misspelled my email address, so I could not sign in. So, I emailed the site managers. By morning, they had corrected the problem, and activated my account. It is so refreshing to get immediate results.

Shopzilla

Shopzilla took 5 days to list my items. In the 1st 24 hours, they sent me an amazing 3 visitors. Of course, my logs do not show that traffic. Nice.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

PreSchool

After many, many years of juggling work, business, and family, today my son finally started preschool! Despite the whole "Proud Dad" thing, this also means I get an extra 6 hours a day, 3 days a week that I did not have before, that I can now spend on my business.

Like, this morning, I have already gotten lots of junk cleared off my desk. I also plan on using this new found time to start exercising daily. Not that I am the fattest guy in the world, I definately feel old and out of shape (but wait, round is still a shape, right?)

GetClicky

I signed up with GetClicky.com which is a website analytics company. Same thing as Google Analytics, but much more useful. Personally, I have never found Google's to be perticularly good. I mean, the stats always seemed remedial. Now, even though GetClicky is free, I opted for the pay version at $9.95/mo, at least for now, to get better idea of who is coming and going. For example, Google says that very few people come to this blog. While that may be true, GteClicky points out that I get RSS Feed subscribers that Google never mentioned before. Also, I can now see what people are actually doing whne they get to my websites, mainly my store, which is very important to me.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Find

I sent an email to thefind.com letting them know that all the links to my products on their website are wrong. At some point today, I found that they corrected the feed. I now have one product listed as good, and one listed as bad. No worries.... noone is coming to my website from over there anyway.

Yahoo Search

After spending time today trying to get a refund from Yahoo, I get an email tonight telling me that I have been kicked off their service or Violating the terms of service. WTF?

Become.com

Become.com was the second to let my items go live (Amazon was the first). I was sent a personal email letting me know that the account was approved, and that I has entered the wrong intomation into a field, so tht it would display my name incorrectly. I was happy that someone took the time to notice, and tell me.

It is now several hours after I went live, and I have noticed a few things.

1. After I made the change, it was not reflected on live site, so everyone continues to see the company name wrong.

2. Someone used a keyword that technically shows my products, but in actuality, has nothing to do with my products. So basically, I am displaying for searches that my products will not work for. I just paid them $.75 for a dead click.

3. They gave me a phone number, that gets dropped into a voicemail / automated phone hell. The calls go nowhere.

4. It says I can change my bidding on a per item basis, but I can only see a category level change.

5. All my products are the same, but the system seems to have recategorized them into different groupings. Not sure why.

6. They say they sent 9 customers to me, but Google Analytics say they only sent 3. Hmm... Even worse, Become says they sent me a visitor since I last refreshed the window, but I am sitting here looking at my website live, and I saw no customer come in. Could they be skimming off the top? I will definitely confirm this, and let you know.

**UPDATE** - Yeah, I just refreshed the window, and it said I have another visitor ($.80) but no one came to the website.

So far, when my $25.00 expires, I will likely not renew. However, they did send 9 visitors in about 6 hours. However, I dominate in the search, as I have little competition. The bottom line seems to be, if they can get me a sale for $25.00, then I make money. If they can't, then it's not worth it.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Search Engine Analysis

I have started to push my products via Shopping Search Engines. I have done a little and there over the years, but I never did an actual analysis by signing up for several at once, and see how the experience is. Over the next few days, I will be documenting my results.

Google Base Feed - I've been using this one for years, because it is free. It's slow as dirt to get listed, there is no rhyme or reason to where your items get placed (sometimes I am in top 10, sometimes I am nowhere to be seen at all). From long time experience, I can say that it drives me 20-90 people per day. This is fine for Free, but I feel I need to do better. Much of the traffic is lookers anyway, only good for brand recognition.

Shopping.com - Took about 45 minutes to sign up, setup the customized feed, and pay them the $50 to start. It says I need to wait 24 hours to process the feed.

Become.com - Took about 45 minutes to sign up, setup the customized feed, and pay them the $50 to start. It says I need to wait 24 hours to process the feed.

PriceGrabber.com - Took about 45 minutes to sign up, setup the customized feed, and pay them the $50 to start. The real problem with them, is it says 3-5 days to wait for setup to be done. Given that they are pulling in all the Yahoo people right now, I assume this will be 4+ days before I get any results from them.

SortPrice.com - Took about 45 minutes to sign up, setup the customized feed, and pay them nothing to start. Not only was this refreshing, but so was the lack of PPC on the system. It was a flat rate of Free for a basic setup with limited items, or $145/mo. for all site items listed. I am looking to speak with them before signing up for anything, but based on what I see, as long as they can deliver traffic, this could be the best option.

Bing Cashback - This is the only website of this group that required State and Federal Tax ID's. This is because their system is for USA sellers only. The service, once accepted, is free to be part of. However, the cashback part means that after 60 days (or so) they will withdraw a percentage of the sale, that You decide, and give it to the buyer. So basically, they will list you on the search for free as a cashback particitent, you decide of you want to give back 1%, 5%, or 10% (completely your choice), and if you make the sale and there are no returns or whatever, then you agree to pay the customer that amount in 2 months. The money gets put into the customers Bing account, which gets saved until they request the payout. After supplying the information requested, I need to wait to be allowed to join in and be given a service representative. I'm not quite sure yet where Microsoft is making their money just yet, but I am sure it's in there somewhere.

Amazon.com - Even though I've had a rough history with Amazon, I figured business is business, so I signed up for their own search thing. Please note, this is not to be a seller with them, simply a generic PPC that happens on their system.

Their signup was by far the easiest, and fastest. There was no Up front fee, which is the only reason I chose to try them. It would be billed after the fact. They were also the only ones to accept the Google feed I already had.

Sadly, of the 660ish items I uploaded to them, they denied everything but 20 or so Bluetooth headsets. The reason, was that the category was closed. Sure would have been nice if the system told me that up front, instead of saying it was A-OK for me to list in Technology and Cell Phones. Once again, Amazon lied to get me in the door, and then left me with nothing in the end.

I decided to pull off the 20 items it did accept for 2 reasons. one was that my prices were considerably higher than the same items already listed on Amazon (one of the main reasons I won't sell on there again), and the other reason was that the system had it listed in the wrong categories (it put some bluetooth in office supplies,others went into sporting goods, etc).

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Yahoo Product Search

I took the time, about an hour, to sign up with Yahoo's Product Shopping Search Compare Engine. I signed up, collected a feed the way they wanted it, uploaded it, paid the $50 to start, and then when I was finally finished, I was greeted by a big red Alert box telling me that Yahoo Product Search would be shut down in 4 days. I would now need to sign up with PriceGrabber.com

Nice. Really fucking nice.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Adwords

I have added my Computer Repair Company to Google's ScamWords and DAMN that's expensive. I need to keep a tight watch on it for the next day to make sure I don't overkill. It is currently setup for my immediate area, and only a straight google search. But, despite all our hard work a few months back, I show up as #2 of Google Maps for a town that I am not even in. In my own town, I am #9 on page 2. WTF?? I couldn't find it anywhere else.
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