What platform should I use for quick seasonal shop?

expertc · Nov 25, 2009

Hi people,

I got generic product name .co.uk, very seasonal (winter), nice little niche, low competition. So I want to put a quick shop. I have all affiliate accounts including: CJ, TD, AW, Amazon, eBay, etc. I want to put a shop on autopilot, keyword-link it to 3 of my “spare” sites – PR2, PR3 and PR4 and let it run by itself.

Does anyone have experience with very quick shops? What would you recommend: eBay store, affilistore, etc. I don’t want to spend much time on design (hour or two on SEO – that all I can do now) or buy any feed parsers or anything similar.

Any thoughts?

expertc · Nov 25, 2009

Never mind... Will put McJiffy script on it.

Brassneck · Nov 25, 2009

Shame - I was also hoping somebody would share some wisdom on here.

Have you any experience using mcjiffy?

Stephen.

expertc · Nov 25, 2009

Brassneck said:
Shame - I was also hoping somebody would share some wisdom on here.

Have you any experience using mcjiffy?

Stephen.

I am still learning... My daytime job is B2B, so it's a bit different approach.

Mcjiffy I like more than BANS, it's freesource and as I know PHP I can do whatever I want with it. But the thing is: Mcjiffy works well if put against large listings - mainstream products. For small niche products it's not very good (BANS is no good either).

jwm · Nov 25, 2009

Don't know much about McJiffy bu if you are thinking BANS then I would maybe run wordpress with phpbay (ebay software) and phpzon (amazon) as its more flexible and google seems to hate BANs - site for both products is here phpBay Pro - Ebay Affiliate Program Software for Wordpress. I have both and they are decent products and the forums are good re help and advice.

If you are brave wordpress and this WP Robot - Premium Wordpress Autoposting Plugin might be an option. Never used it myself but google will probably provide some views on it

Skinner · Nov 25, 2009

I have used wp robot in the past, very good app but needs to be more predictable and discard more crap returns, such as images with a very short description, no image etc and be able ti adjust its layout.

They may have fixed some of these issues by now tho.

I keep meaning to write a script parser but money dictates my time

expertc · Nov 26, 2009

jwm said:
Don't know much about McJiffy bu if you are thinking BANS then I would maybe run wordpress with phpbay (ebay software) and phpzon (amazon) as its more flexible and google seems to hate BANs - site for both products is here phpBay Pro - Ebay Affiliate Program Software for Wordpress. I have both and they are decent products and the forums are good re help and advice.

If you are brave wordpress and this WP Robot - Premium Wordpress Autoposting Plugin might be an option. Never used it myself but google will probably provide some views on it

Using WP is tempting, I do like WP and SEO for it is very easy. But I don't want to buy a plugin for parsing. I can develop it myself, but want just a quick site. After considering some other options, I decided to go vor the Amazon shop based on A-o-M. I would never buy A-o-M, resons: "subscription" and IonCube. But trial then Lite will do.

Pros. Good parsing of Amazon feed through API, keywording, exclusions, etc.
Cons. IonCube Encryption (CPU intensive for large files like A-o-M. I am a coder myself and released quite a few things as freeware, done community projects. And you know, I think when using a community platform like PHP and then encrypting your code with lousy IC... I always like to go through code, make my own changes, etc. It's just not the PHP coder's spirit)
Subscription charge after initial cost.
Not much design changes or SEO are possible.

mally · Nov 26, 2009

How many products are there to sell in your niche? Does it warrant a big shop or maybe a few HTML pages?

expertc · Nov 26, 2009

mally said:
How many products are there to sell in your niche? Does it warrant a big shop or maybe a few HTML pages?

Not too many. But I also want to put some “related products”. Anyway, the “pilot” shop is up and running, done some basic SEO, will activate links today. Now going to check how it performs. Link is already in my sig.

jwm · Nov 27, 2009

expertc said:
Not too many. But I also want to put some “related products”. Anyway, the “pilot” shop is up and running, done some basic SEO, will activate links today. Now going to check how it performs. Link is already in my sig.

Now you'v gone public hope you don't find the niche suddenly becomes saturated

Good luck with the site

expertc · Nov 27, 2009

jwm said:
Now you'v gone public hope you don't find the niche suddenly becomes saturated

Good luck with the site

Thanks!

I always work against competition

But still, the generic co.uk is mine, would SEO / Link it-up. B2B skills are not a bad asset

Mike

FagEnd · Nov 27, 2009

Datafeed Studio works wonders for me. Cheap for a license and support is fantastic. You can throw up an SEO optimised site in 10 minutes.

expertc · Nov 27, 2009

FagEnd said:
Datafeed Studio works wonders for me. Cheap for a license and support is fantastic. You can throw up an SEO optimised site in 10 minutes.

I have seen good reviews about it. But you know, I've decided first to get some sales and then to buy soft. Or (just maybe!) code a feed parser myself.