Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies

Starting aYahoo! Business

FOR

DUMmIES

by Rob Snell

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FOR

DUMmIES

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FOR

DUMmIES

by Rob Snell

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Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright 2006 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form orby any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permit-ted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior writtenpermission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to theCopyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600.Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing,Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online athttp://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for theRest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, and related tradedress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the UnitedStates and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Yahoo! is a registered trade-mark of Yahoo! Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing,Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REP-RESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CON-TENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUTLIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CRE-ATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CON-TAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THEUNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OROTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF ACOMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THEAUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATIONOR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FUR-THER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFOR-MATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE.FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVECHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-8873-0

ISBN-10: 0-7645-8873-7

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About the AuthorRob Snell loves e-commerce and all things Yahoo! Store. He is totallyobsessed with search marketing and increasing his stores conversion rates.He is a small-business owner, online retailer, search marketing/e-commerceconsultant, Yahoo! Store developer, sometime bass player, and Steve Snellsbrother and business partner. This is his first book!

Rob has been in retail literally longer than he can remember. Growing up inthe family mail-order catalog and retail business meant summers and week-ends of unloading truckloads of 50-lb. bags of dog food, waiting on customers,designing catalogs and magazine ads, and even programming the point-of-salesystems. He was shocked when his sister-in-law informed him that most otherfamilies didnt talk about search marketing or conversion rates overThanksgiving dinner.

Rob has been into computers since 1981 when his mom bought him a TimexSinclair ZX81. Hes been online since 1990 and opened his first online store in1997 when his brother stumbled across Viaweb (now Yahoo! Store). Sincethen, Rob has designed, developed, owned, and/or marketed hundreds andhundreds of Yahoo! Stores that have sold millions and millions of dollarsworth of stuff. Rob has sold Superman comics, art supplies, Pokmon cards,refurbished Sun workstations, pewter dragons, dog supplies, car-top carriers,softball equipment, and even janitorial supplies.

Rob has a lot of experience as a small-business owner in many differentfields. He started freelancing as a graphic design student and was bookingand playing bass in several bands in college when he and his brother starteda small chain of five comic book stores (which they sold in 2001). Rob spendshis workdays helping his clients sell more stuff on the Internet and workingwith his family.

Rob now consults with retailers on improving their e-commerce sites andmaximizing their search-marketing campaigns and is a guest speaker and lec-turer on search marketing and e-commerce for small businesses. He postssomewhat regularly in his Yahoo! Store blog at www.ystore.blogs.com andcan be contacted via e-mail at [email protected]. For more information,visit www.Ystore.com or www.robsnell.com.

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DedicationThis book is dedicated to the memory of my father, W.C. Snell, who alwaysbelieved in me even though he almost never agreed with me.

Authors AcknowledgmentsThanks to all the people who kept things going so I could write this book.Thanks to my family for your endless support, especially Mom and Steve. ToKathy for taking care of all her boys (and stocking the fridge). To my sixnephews: Drew, Corey, Sam, Luke, Austin, and Cooper who always make mesmile! Always do your best! Thanks to Uncle Paul for the good MSU tickets(and that 1979 boat ride). Thanks to Aunt Margaret and Uncle Mick for 1999and for still holding my reservations.

To Rachel and Katie for your patience and understanding. To Nikki I reallythink you need some more coffee Ballard for all your help with the book andfor keeping me sane. To Deb WTFB Wells. To Alesha You really shouldwrite that book now Calvert. (Hey, Innes!)

Thanks to all my friends for getting me out of the office, especially Devon,John and Kay, Todd and Melissa, Brian, Andy, and Victor. To Copy Cow andGun Dog staff, especially Allen Giglio, Mike Yeager, and Selena for typing allmy notes. Special thanks to Annie Dancer. Meals provided by Jay & Co. at theVeranda and Shipley Do-Nuts. Special thanks to all my wonderful clients whokept paying me and who put up with me being out of pocket for almost ayear, especially Roy, Scott, Greg, John and Joe, Kevin, Leigh, John, Bobby,Larry and Jerry, Joey T., Mark, and Doug. Thanks to Craig Paddock, JoeMorin, Troy Matthews, and Mr. David Burke for keeping me in the loop andout of trouble. Or is it out of the loop and in trouble? See yall this searchconference season!

A very special thanks to Michael Whitaker, my good friend and this bookstechnical reviewer, for taking it easy on my redneck prose and making melook good by catching my mistakes. Thanks to Yahoo!s Paul Boisvert forreviewing chapters and providing valuable input. This book is much betterthanks to their comments, criticisms, and suggestions. I take completeresponsibility for any and all errors and omissions. See Ystorebooks.com forerrata. Thanks to the folks at Yahoo! Small Business who keep things runningsmoothly and make it almost too easy to sell stuff online (especially Jimmy

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D, Rich, Mike, Maria, Vince, and Randy). Thanks to Paul Graham and theViaweb folks for creating Yahoo! Store, but especially for getting me into thisway back in 1997.

How yall doing? to all my search conference folks, especially fellow authorAndrew Goodman, Jill Whelan, Scottie Claiborn, Debra Mastaler, Bruce Clay,Mike Grehan, Tor Crockatt, Christine Churchill, Dan Boberg, Misty Locke,John Marshall, Tim Mayer, David (baaa!) Warmuz, Leslie Drechsler, Mike Reedy,and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Brett Tabke and all of WebmasterWorld. Howdyto Champagne Jimmy, Shak, Oilman, Stuntdubl, DigitalGhost, WebGuerrilla,Mr. Bindl, Neuron, Calum, BakedJake, and SEOMike. Howdy to Istvan RTML101 Siposs, HarvestSEO, Chris Sims, David FindStuff.com Karandish, Stephand Ryan, and the MonsterCommerce volleyball team, Matt Inigo MontoyaCutts, Dr. Ralph Wilson, Sara Hicks, Roebuck, Carl, Kelly, Leigh Ann, Megan,and Jennifer Knight. Thanks to Lamkin, Mrs. Edon, Mrs. Werkheiser, DavidAllen, Harry Friedman, Jakob Nielsen, Seth Godin, Joe Field, Roy Wilson, andall the other folks who have taught me along the way! Apologies to the other17 people I know Ive forgotten.

Tonights show is brought to you by the fine folks at Wiley Press. Extra spe-cial thanks to my infinitely patient project editor, Kelly Ewing. To acquisitionseditor (and fellow bassist) Steve Hayes: Thanks for the gig! (to the WaffleHouse . . .)

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Publishers AcknowledgmentsWere proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration formlocated at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and MediaDevelopment

Project Editor: Kelly Ewing

Acquisitions Editor: Steve Hayes

Technical Editor: Michael Whitaker(www.monitus.com)

Editorial Manager: Jodi Jensen

Media Development Specialists: Angela Denny,Kate Jenkins, Steven Kudirka, Kit Malone,Travis Silvers

Media Development Coordinator:Laura Atkinson

Media Project Supervisor: Laura Moss

Media Development Manager:Laura VanWinkle

Media Development Associate Producer:Richard Graves

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth

Cartoons: Rich Tennant(www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Jennifer Theriot

Layout and Graphics: Carl Byers,Joyce Haughey, Lynsey Osborn,Erin Zeltner

Proofreaders: Laura Albert, John Edwards,Jessica Kramer

Indexer: TECHBOOKS Production Services

Special Help: Paul Boisvert

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

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www.dummies.com

Contents at a GlanceIntroduction .................................................................1

Part I: Finding Out about Yahoo! Store...........................7Chapter 1: The Nickel Tour of Yahoo! Store....................................................................9Chapter 2: Planning Your Online Small Business .........................................................17Chapter 3: Jump-Starting Your Store .............................................................................35Chapter 4: Anatomy of a Yahoo! Store Order................................................................63

Part II: Planning Whats in Store .................................75Chapter 5: Preparing to Build Your Yahoo! Store .........................................................77Chapter 6: Designing Your Store to Turn Shoppers into Buyers................................89Chapter 7: Exploring Store Navigation ..........................................................................97Chapter 8: Selling with Pictures....................................................................................109

Part III: Building and Managing Your Store................121Chapter 9: Store Building with the Store Editor .........................................................123Chapter 10: Pushing All the Right Buttons..................................................................143Chapter 11: Designing All Kinds of Pages....................................................................161Chapter 12: Creating Product Pages with the Store Editor.......................................177Chapter 13: Merchandising to Sell More .....................................................................197Chapter 14: Checking Out the New Shopping Cart ....................................................215Chapter 15: Mastering the Store Manager...................................................................227

Part IV: Profiting from Internet Marketing..................251Chapter 16: Searching for the Right Words.................................................................253Chapter 17: Driving Traffic That Converts ..................................................................271Chapter 18: Buying Your Way to the Top ....................................................................285Chapter 19: Discovering Search Engine Optimization (SEO)....................................301

Part V: Making More Money with Your Yahoo! Store ....317Chapter 20: Running Your Business by the Numbers................................................319Chapter 21: Converting Browsers into Buyers ...........................................................331Chapter 22: E-Mailing Your Customers for Fun and Profit ........................................347Chapter 23: Getting Down with Product Uploads ......................................................359Chapter 24: Mastering Domains ...................................................................................371

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Part VI: The Part of Tens ...........................................379Chapter 25: Ten or So Tools of the Trade....................................................................381Chapter 26: Ten or So RTML Resources and Recommendations.............................385

Index .......................................................................389

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Table of ContentsIntroduction..................................................................1

About This Book...............................................................................................2What Youre Not to Read.................................................................................2Foolish Assumptions .......................................................................................3How This Book Is Organized...........................................................................3

Part I: Finding Out about Yahoo! Store ................................................3Part II: Planning Whats in Store ...........................................................3Part III: Building and Managing Your Store .........................................4Part IV: Profiting from Internet Marketing...........................................4Part V: Making More Money with Your Yahoo! Store .........................4Part VI: The Part of Tens .......................................................................4

Icons Used in This book ..................................................................................5Where to Go from Here....................................................................................5Talk to Me, Johnny . . ...................................................................................6

Part I: Finding Out about Yahoo! Store ...........................7

Chapter 1: The Nickel Tour of Yahoo! Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9Exploring Small Business ................................................................................9Introducing Yahoo! Small Business..............................................................10Figuring Out Who Uses Yahoo! Store ...........................................................12Deciphering All the Parts ..............................................................................13Examining Merchant Solutions.....................................................................14

Chapter 2: Planning Your Online Small Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17Choosing a Business Model That Works on the Web ................................17Picking Products That Sell on the Web .......................................................19

Finding popular and profitable niches ..............................................19Promoting products with limited distribution .................................22Retailing quality products and adding value ....................................24Selling products that encourage repeat orders................................25Maximizing your margins and price points.......................................25Leveraging your knowledge and passion ..........................................26

Building a New Business from Scratch........................................................27Planning your business model on a napkin ......................................27Using drop-shippers for fun, profit, and market research ..............28Looking before you leap ......................................................................30

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Taking an Existing Business Online .............................................................30Creaming your most profitable products..........................................31Leveraging existing inventory to the Web ........................................31Maximizing supplier relationships.....................................................31Selling locally while shipping globally...............................................32

Migrating to Yahoo! Store from Another Storefront System.....................33Making the transition...........................................................................33Copying your old sites look and feel.................................................34

Chapter 3: Jump-Starting Your Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35Registering with Yahoo!.................................................................................35

Creating your Yahoo! ID .......................................................................36Creating a Yahoo! security key ...........................................................37

Opening Your Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Account...................................38Jumping into Store Building..........................................................................41

1. Sign in with your Yahoo! ID and log in to Store Editor.................412. Configure the Store Editor for store building ...............................443. Create sample pages ........................................................................454. Publish your site, and youre live on the Web ..............................53

Configuring Your Store Manager ..................................................................54Accessing the Store Manager..............................................................54Setting your sales tax rate...................................................................55Configuring shipping methods and rates ..........................................55Setting up your shipping methods.....................................................55Setting your shipping rates .................................................................56Setting your payment methods ..........................................................57Working with order confirmations and merchant notifications.....58Publishing store settings changes and placing a test order ...........60

Opening for Business.....................................................................................60

Chapter 4: Anatomy of a Yahoo! Store Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63Examining the Timeline of a Real Yahoo! Store Order...............................63

Finding the store in a search engine ..................................................64Landing on a section page...................................................................65Selling with a product page.................................................................65Pushing the Shopping Cart .................................................................67Checking out the Secure Order form .................................................69Confirming orders and shipping em out ..........................................70Taking care of details ...........................................................................73

Part II: Planning Whats in Store..................................75

Chapter 5: Preparing to Build Your Yahoo! Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77Choosing a Store-Building Tool ....................................................................77

Store Editor ...........................................................................................78Store Tags ..............................................................................................79

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Building a Store Yourself or Outsourcing It ................................................80Doing it yourself ...................................................................................80Outsourcing it .......................................................................................81

Gathering Elements and Assets....................................................................83Product data..........................................................................................83Design elements....................................................................................84Copywriting...........................................................................................86

Chapter 6: Designing Your Store to Turn Shoppers into Buyers . . . . .89Designing Your Store to Sell..........................................................................89Looking through the Eyes of a Customer....................................................91Choosing Logos, Colors, and Fonts .............................................................91

Looking at logos ...................................................................................92Compelling use of color.......................................................................93Finding fantastic fonts .........................................................................95

Chapter 7: Exploring Store Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97Introducing Store Navigation........................................................................97

Seeing how customers shop ...............................................................98You are here: Store Editor navigational elements ............................99Linking to optimize navigation .........................................................103

Shopping by Searching Your Store.............................................................105

Chapter 8: Selling with Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109Looking to Images to Sell More Stuff .........................................................110Deciphering Image Formats........................................................................111Working with Product Images in the Store Editor....................................113Uploading Images to the Store Editor........................................................115Finding Product Images...............................................................................117Tweaking Your Images .................................................................................118Working with Text Inside Graphics............................................................120

Part III: Building and Managing Your Store ................121

Chapter 9: Store Building with the Store Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123Getting Started in Store Editor ...................................................................123

Editing your store...............................................................................124Publishing your edits to the Store ...................................................125

Customizing Your Editor for Editing..........................................................127Switching to Advanced mode ...........................................................128Moving the Edit Nav-bar....................................................................128Meeting the Edit Nav-bar buttons ....................................................129

Navigating the Store Editor.........................................................................132Finding pages by knowing the ID......................................................133Bookmarking Editor pages with consistent URLs ..........................133Setting properties on the Config page .............................................134Setting the Controls for the Editor...................................................134

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Controlling Look and Feel with Variables .................................................135Colors and typefaces .........................................................................137Image dimensions...............................................................................137Page layout..........................................................................................138Button properties...............................................................................139Page properties...................................................................................140Store properties..................................................................................140Custom variables................................................................................142

Chapter 10: Pushing All the Right Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143Navigating Yahoo! Store Buttons................................................................143Exploring the Different Types of Buttons..................................................145

Function buttons ................................................................................145Contents buttons................................................................................148

Choosing Page-Format: Top Buttons or Side Buttons .............................149Side buttons ........................................................................................150Top buttons.........................................................................................150

Editing Your Navigation Buttons................................................................152Working with Function buttons ........................................................152Fiddling with Contents buttons ........................................................153Editing the text on the buttons.........................................................154

Editing the Appearance of Navigation Buttons ........................................155Button-Styles.......................................................................................155Home button variables ......................................................................156Button spacing variables...................................................................156

Creating a Custom Look with Icon Buttons ..............................................157Custom Function buttons..................................................................158Custom Contents buttons .................................................................158Making custom icons .........................................................................159

Navigation Bar Resources...........................................................................159

Chapter 11: Designing All Kinds of Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161Introducing the Home Page ........................................................................161

Optimizing begins at home ...............................................................162Designing your home page................................................................163Maximizing home-page Page-elements ............................................165

Selling with Super Section Pages................................................................168Top-level section pages usually contain subsection pages ..........168Subsections contain products ..........................................................170Use empty section pages for content ..............................................171

Contents, Contents, Contents, and Contents ...........................................171Exploring Other Function Pages ................................................................173

Editing your info page........................................................................174Creating your privacy policy page ...................................................175Editing your Shopping Cart...............................................................175Editing your stores Search page......................................................176Looking at your alphabetical index or site map.............................176

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Chapter 12: Creating Product Pages with the Store Editor . . . . . . . .177Exploring Store Editor Concepts................................................................177

Let me see some ID ............................................................................178Getting positive ID on products and sections ................................179

Exploring Parent-Child Relationships........................................................180Producing Profits with Product Pages.......................................................181Looking at Product Elements......................................................................186Maintaining Your Pages in the Store Editor ..............................................190

Creating new pages inside the Store Editor ....................................190Editing product and section pages ..................................................193Moving pages by cutting to the Clipboard......................................193Copying pages into more than one section ....................................195Deleting pages.....................................................................................195

Chapter 13: Merchandising to Sell More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197Specializing in Bestsellers...........................................................................197

Featuring specials ..............................................................................198Making something special .................................................................199Editing the look and feel of specials ................................................200Troubleshooting specials ..................................................................202

Picking What Products to Push..................................................................203Merchandising Top Sellers with Navigation .............................................204

Figuring out what to feature when you have no track record .......205Featuring products across the site ..................................................206

Finding $30,000 in Sales by Using Cross-Sell.............................................209Merchandising Products in Other Ways....................................................212

Chapter 14: Checking Out the New Shopping Cart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215Introducing the New Checkout Manager...................................................216

Exploring the Checkout Manager .....................................................216Testing your settings..........................................................................217Publishing your new cart ..................................................................218

Controlling Checkout Flow with Global Settings......................................218Flow settings .......................................................................................219Checkout Wrapper .............................................................................220Checkout settings...............................................................................221

Configuring Elements with Page Configuration........................................221Page Settings .......................................................................................221Page Sections ......................................................................................222Fields....................................................................................................222Advanced Settings..............................................................................224

Customizing Your Visual Design.................................................................224Global styles........................................................................................224Progress indicator ..............................................................................225Checkout buttons ...............................................................................225

Tinkering with Advanced Settings .............................................................226Jumping to the New Cart.............................................................................226

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Chapter 15: Mastering the Store Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .227Getting (Store) Help When You Need It.....................................................228Getting Anywhere from Here ......................................................................229Shipping and Managing Orders ..................................................................230

Low-tech order-management solutions...........................................230High-tech order-management solutions ..........................................231Power-user solutions .........................................................................232Third-party order-management software........................................232

Processing Orders Show Me the Money!..............................................234Taking orders all the way to the bank .............................................234Searching for that one special order................................................236Handling catalog requests.................................................................236Changing order numbers...................................................................237

Working with Credit Cards..........................................................................237Setting up credit-card processing ....................................................238Processing online orders...................................................................238Handling manual transactions..........................................................239Processing cards offline.....................................................................240

Configuring Order Settings .........................................................................240Customize Order Form (Checkout)..................................................241Fax/e-mail order notification.............................................................243Configuring inventory........................................................................244Payment methods ..............................................................................244Setting tax rates..................................................................................245

Setting Up Your Sites for Success ..............................................................245Setting Up Shipping Settings.......................................................................247

Shipment and order-status e-mails ..................................................247Shipping Manager...............................................................................248UPS shipping tools .............................................................................248Shipping foreign orders .....................................................................249

Part IV: Profiting from Internet Marketing ..................251

Chapter 16: Searching for the Right Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253Introducing Keywords .................................................................................254Considering Where Keywords Come From...............................................254Conquering Converting Keywords.............................................................257

Collecting converting keywords.......................................................258Digging keywords out of your orders ..............................................258Prying keywords out of product reports.........................................260

Working with Your Top Converting Keywords .........................................262Seeing How Your Shoppers Search ............................................................265

Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies xvi

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Researching Keywords ................................................................................265Overtures free keyword selector tool .............................................266Google AdWords free keyword tool .................................................266Wordtracker keyword research tool ................................................268

Tracking Converting Keywords..................................................................269

Chapter 17: Driving Traffic That Converts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271Fishing the Right Way ..................................................................................271Cranking Up Search-Engine Marketing ......................................................273

Driving free traffic from search engines ..........................................274Introducing search engine optimization..........................................274Buying search-engine traffic with PPC ads......................................275

Marketing with E-Mail Newsletters ............................................................276Directing Traffic from Directories ..............................................................276Heeding the Call of the Mall........................................................................278

Getting listed in Yahoo! Shopping ....................................................278Buying Text-Link Ads for Traffic and Link Popularity .............................279Sponsoring Forums, Directories, Nonprofits, and Clubs ........................280Commissioning Sales through Affiliate Marketing ...................................280Exploring eBay Auctions for Yahoo! Store Owners..................................281Blogging for Retailers ..................................................................................282Exploring Other Ways to Get Traffic..........................................................283Peeling One Potato at a Time . . . ...............................................................283

Chapter 18: Buying Your Way to the Top . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .285Introducing Paid-Search Advertising.........................................................285Deciding between Paid and Free Searches ...............................................287

Combining the one-two punch of SEO and PPC .............................288Planning Your PPC Ad Campaign ...............................................................289Buying Traffic with Paid-Search Ads..........................................................289

Picking keywords................................................................................290Creating clickable ads........................................................................291Coming in for a landing......................................................................292Determining bid amounts..................................................................292Choosing syndication and distribution options.............................295Content ads: PPC by any other name ..............................................295Setting different distribution options ..............................................295

Measuring Search-Advertising Results......................................................296Using free conversion tracking.........................................................296Buying third-party tracking tools .....................................................297Working with trackable links ............................................................297

Improving Your Campaigns.........................................................................298Nonperforming keywords..................................................................298Underperforming keywords ..............................................................299

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Chapter 19: Discovering Search Engine Optimization (SEO) . . . . . . .301Discovering How Search Engines Work.....................................................302

Order, please! ......................................................................................302Enter Google........................................................................................302Along came a spider...........................................................................303Uh, is this spam?.................................................................................304

Appreciating Yahoo! Stores for Ease of SEO .............................................304Optimizing Yahoo! Stores without Programming.....................................305Optimizing Your Store for Search Engines ................................................305

Custom RTML programming.............................................................305Keyword research ..............................................................................306SEO copywriting .................................................................................307Linked development ..........................................................................311Measured results ................................................................................313

Doing Your SEO Homework ........................................................................314

Part V: Making More Money with Your Yahoo! Store .....317

Chapter 20: Running Your Business by the Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . .319Discovering What You Need to Know........................................................319Introducing Yahoo! Store Statistics............................................................321

Page Views...........................................................................................322Sales .....................................................................................................323References ...........................................................................................324Store Searches ....................................................................................327Shopping Searches .............................................................................327Graphs..................................................................................................327Reports ................................................................................................328Click Trails...........................................................................................329

Chapter 21: Converting Browsers into Buyers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .331Getting Shoppers to Buy .............................................................................331

Increasing your sites traffic is not enough.....................................332Increasing sales by creating quality content ..................................332

Building Customer Confidence...................................................................333Employ trust symbols........................................................................335Offer better customer service ..........................................................335Improve product pages to increase sales .......................................336Convert more Shopping Carts ..........................................................337

Improving Your Stores Usability to Increase Conversions ....................339Understanding how little time you have .........................................340Revving up your sites load speed ...................................................341

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Looking at Whos Looking at You...............................................................343Operating system and browser software ........................................344Screen resolution in pixels ................................................................344So, how big can your pages be?........................................................345Focus on what makes money............................................................345Conversion and usability resources ................................................346

Chapter 22: E-Mailing Your Customers for Fun and Profit . . . . . . . . .347Discovering E-Mail Marketing Tools ..........................................................348

Thanking customers with e-mails ....................................................348Sending Order e-mails........................................................................349Taking advantage of personalized replies .......................................350Responding to e-mail addresses on your Web site ........................351Referral e-mail marketing ..................................................................351Advertising in e-mail newsletters.....................................................351Marketing products and services with autoresponders ...............352

Marketing in a Spam-Filled World ..............................................................352The CAN-SPAM Act and you..............................................................352Yahoos take on spam ........................................................................355

Managing Your E-Mail Lists.........................................................................355Sign em up! .........................................................................................355Weeding your list................................................................................356

Crafting Effective E-Commerce Newsletters .............................................357

Chapter 23: Getting Down with Product Uploads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .359A Word of Warning .......................................................................................360Introducing Database Uploads ...................................................................361Creating Products with Uploads ................................................................361Formatting Your Upload Files .....................................................................362Uploading Data in the Right Fields.............................................................363Doing Uploads ..............................................................................................363

Uploading Data with the New Upload button .................................364Reviewing your data ..........................................................................365Updating product data.......................................................................366

Troubleshooting Database Uploads ..........................................................368

Chapter 24: Mastering Domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .371Exploring Your Domain ...............................................................................371Registering Your Domain Name..................................................................372

Registering domains with Yahoo! .....................................................373Registering domains with other companies ...................................373Non-Yahoo! registered domains and DNSs......................................374

Mastering Your Domains.............................................................................374Determining your site entry point....................................................375Redirecting store URLs to your domain ..........................................377

xixTable of Contents

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Part VI: The Part of Tens............................................379

Chapter 25: Ten or So Tools of the Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .381Searching for All the Right Words ..............................................................381Searching Engine Queries/Filters ...............................................................382Using the Right YstoreTool for the Job .....................................................382Exporting Your Yahoo! Store.......................................................................383Checking Your Web Position.......................................................................383Tracking Trends with Analytics Software .................................................383Checking Out Other Cool Tools..................................................................384

Chapter 26: Ten or So RTML Resources and Recommendations . . . .385Know HTML before Playing with RTML ....................................................386Experiment with RTML................................................................................386Read Mikes Books on RTML.......................................................................386Read Istvans Books on RTML ....................................................................387Use Don Coles Template Transfer Utility .................................................387Read the YstoreForums.com RTML forum ...............................................387Look at Lots of Custom RTML Stores ........................................................388Add Missing SEO Elements .........................................................................388Add RTML Navigational Elements..............................................................388

Index........................................................................389

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Introduction

Thanks for taking a look at Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies. Whenthe folks from Wiley Press approached me about writing this book, I thinkI may have come off as more than just a little cocky. I boldly asserted, I amthe guy to write this book. Why? Ive lived Yahoo! Store since April 1997. Imnot saying I know more about Yahoo! Store than anyone else, but I do have asbroad an experience with the platform as anyone Ive ever met.

Around these parts, our Yahoo! Stores make the mortgage payments and thensome, so we pay pretty close attention to what increases sales. Working with300-plus retailers has opened my eyes to the myriad ways we all sell onlineusing the same exact platform. I learn something new from every retailer Iwork with.

Also, I think Ive worn almost every hat you can wear in the Yahoo! Store uni-verse as both a retailer and an online store developer and marketer. Ive beena new store owner, neophyte online store builder, entry-level HTML coder,graphic designer, product photographer, box packer, telephone order taker,shipping manager, e-mail marketer, customer service phone rep, RTMLhacker, search engine optimizer, and sales copywriter.

Ive also tried tons of different ways to sell online. Some have worked. Othershavent. Look, Im not embarrassed to say Ive made lots and lots of mistakestrying to stay on top of Internet marketing. Learn from them! If Im still doingsomething today, its because it works! Ive had some home runs with sitesthat have made some of my clients rich (and me fat and happy), generatingmillions and millions of dollars in sales.

After nine years, Ive found that it just takes a good idea, a little bit of luck,and lots and lots of good ol hard work to be successful online. The betteryour idea and the better your luck, the more successful youll be, but it reallyjust comes down to who wants it bad enough. Opportunity shows up in workclothes. In this book, I give you the tools and show you the path that workedfor me, but you have to do the heavy lifting.

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About This BookThis book is filled with more than nine years of proven Internet marketingstrategies and tactics sprinkled with online success stories and hard-learnedlessons from Yahoo! Store owners who have successfully competed with thebig online players. This book is paying a debt to all the retailers and other folkswho shared information that helped me stay alive long enough to figure outwhat I was doing. I expect you to pass this knowledge on to future retailers.This book is what I wish I knew in April 1997. Anybody got a time machine?

In this book, you find answers to questions about:

Creating an online store that sells

Driving more traffic that converts into sales

Profiting from keywords

Processing credit cards online and offline

Finding out whats really selling online

Maximizing sales on an existing store

What Youre Not to ReadThis book is about store building with the Yahoo! Store Editor, which hasbeen around in some form or another for more than ten years. I dont tell youhow to build stores with Store Tags, the other way to build Yahoo! Stores,which I loathe. If you must build a store with Store Tags because your prod-uct catalog never changes, or if you want to use SiteBuilder, take this bookback to the store and get your money back because about half of this bookdoesnt apply to you. On second thought, I get paid in royalties based uponsales, so, uh, keep this book and profit from all the marketing stuff in here.Store Tags users probably need Site Builder For Dummies (Wiley Publishing,Inc.) by Richard Wagner (or the specific For Dummies book for whatever soft-ware title youre using for store building). Every store owner can benefit fromYahoo!s free Merchant Solutions Getting Started Guide, which is available onthe Web at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/store/guides/index.html for you to download and print.

This book is also not revealing any of my trade secrets or those of my clients.Im not giving away the store here (pun intended). All the examples andscreen shots have had specific store information removed, or Ive been vagueenough to protect client info. This book is also not about how to get richquick; its about how to get rich slowly. Its also not how to game the searchengines for free traffic (which would make you a spammer).

2 Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies

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Foolish AssumptionsWhen writing this book, Ive made a few assumptions about you:

You have a computer (a Mac or PC) and have basic computer skills.

Youre connected to the Internet with a high-speed connection.

You either are a retailer or want to be a retailer.

You want to know how to sell (more) stuff online.

Youre tired of working for The Man.

Youre not a communist, and you want to make some money.

This book is written for the independent business owner who feels prettycomfortable with computers. You can handle sending and receiving e-mailwith attachments and are comfortable with software like Microsoft Excel,Microsoft Word, and QuickBooks. Some knowledge of graphics software (likeAdobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro) is extremely helpful for editing productphotos and creating store graphics, but its not required.

How This Book Is OrganizedThis book is organized into six parts. I describe these parts in the followingsections.

Part I: Finding Out about Yahoo! StoreDiscover the basic geography of Yahoo! Store: the Store Editor, the StoreManager, and the published site. Find out about the different ways folks makemoney online. You also see how to find out what products are really sellingand how you can save some time with a few simple tweaks to your Editor.Finally, its almost like an episode of CSI where I dissect a real Yahoo! Storeorder from start to finish, examining every gory detail to determine the realcause of conversion.

Part II: Planning Whats in StorePreparing to build and design your online store is almost half the battle. Inthis part, you find out about doing the work yourself or outsourcing it todesigners. I explore assembling the different elements before you start tobuild your store, designing your store to turn shoppers into buyers, creatingeffective internal store navigation, and using images to sell more product.

3Introduction

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Part III: Building and Managing Your StoreThis part tells you how the Editor works and shows you how to format yourstore with navigation buttons. You also discover how to create different typesof pages: sections, items, the home page, search pages, and shipping info andcontact information pages. You can read about how to sell more of the prod-ucts you have by merchandising your store more effectively. I also check outthe Shopping Cart and the new Checkout Manager. Finally, I cover the StoreManager, where you set all your tax and shipping calculations and processorders.

Part IV: Profiting from Internet MarketingThis part is my favorite. You need to be found when folks are looking to buywhat you are selling. I cover keywords and introduce the basics of Internetmarketing. You also find out about the specifics of paid search (GoogleAdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing) as well as how to drive free traffic fromsearch engines by optimizing your Yahoo! Store for Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

Part V: Making More Money with Your Yahoo! StoreThis is my other favorite part of the book. After you have a store up and run-ning, youve done the hard part: getting started. Improving an existing storeis so much easier than launching a new store. In this part, you discover howto improve your store (based upon your stats), convert more of your existingtraffic into buyers, e-mail your customer list to sell more stuff, and save timeand energy by uploading products by the dozens.

Part VI: The Part of TensI love The Part of Tens. These chapters cover Yahoo! Store tools, add-ons,and upgrades. You also find out a little about RTML, the proprietary customscripting language of Yahoo! Store.


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Icons Used in This bookLook for these helpful icons to highlight specific points I think you shouldknow about:

Im all about giving folks action items or takeaways. When you see the Tipicon, you know that Im sharing with you a way to improve your store or savetime.

When you see the Remember icon, Im reminding you that you need to knowthis bit of Yahoo! Store trivia for something to work.

Im pretty careful to not be an alarmist, so when you see the Warning icon,dont think CNN scroll hype, think, Danger, Will Robinson because yourevery close to something that could do you real harm like a man-eatingcarrot (remember that episode?).

This icon highlights all the technical details that you dont really have toknow to operate a Yahoo! Store, but you may want to know if youre a guru. Ifyoure not interested, skip the text marked with this icon.

Where to Go from HereUnlike a novel, you can read this book in any order. You can even skip parts,chapters, or entire sections within chapters, and youll be okay. Skip to theend of the book and read about conversion rate, and then back to the partwhere I introduce the Store Editor, and then over to the design chapter, andyoull be fine. You dont even have to read the whole book. Use the Index andthe Table of Contents to find what you want to read about and read only thatinformation.

Running a Yahoo! Store isnt that difficult, but there are so many things youneed to always be working on. The good news is that you dont have to mem-orize all of this stuff. Refer back to this book as often as you like.

5Introduction

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Talk to Me, Johnny . . .I need your feedback. Please e-mail me at [email protected]. Its really help-ful for me to know what works and what doesnt. If you catch a mistake, letme know, and Ill correct it. Visit www.YstoreBooks.com, which will haveadditional information I wanted to include in the book, but couldnt becauseEditor Kelly wouldnt let me have 600+ pages.

I also have a book-based newsletter, which you can subscribe to by [email protected]. I dont promise a weekly newsletter, but Ill e-mailyou as often as I have something worth writing about. Visit my companysYahoo! Store Marketing and Development Web site at www.ystore.com. I alsohave 100-plus posts about Yahoo! Store and search marketing at my blog atwww.ystore.blogs.com.


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Part IFinding Out about

Yahoo! Store

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In this part . . .Yahoo! Small Business, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions,

Yahoo! Search Marketing, Yahoo! Web Hosting,and Yahoo! Store. Wow! Sometimes starting a businesson Yahoo! can be confusing, but dont panic. I do this fora living!

This part of the book gets you started building youronline business with Yahoo! and fast! (I have a short atten-tion span.) First, I explain all things Yahoo!, like how allthese different parts work together. I also fess up andfinally come clean about why I still use Yahoo! Store afterall these years. (Because it works!) I also get you to planyour online business and examine different businessmodels for selling stuff online. If you dont already sellsomething, I help you figure out what products to sell andthen make sure that you can make a living doing so.

I like to get things moving, too. Chapter 3 is where the realaction kicks in because I show you how to jump-start yourstore. You quickly dive into the Store Editor, create somesample sections and products, upload some images, andpublish. You also publish your order settings and place atest order. Finally, I wrap this part of the book up and exam-ine a real live Yahoo! Store order from beginning to end.

Yahoo! Small Business gives you the tools to build a suc-cessful online business, but you have to take the initiativeand do the work. If you plan ahead, work hard, and takecare of your customers, with a little bit of luck, you canbuild your online business and accomplish your goals anddreams.

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Chapter 1

The Nickel Tour of Yahoo! StoreIn This Chapter Getting to know Yahoo! Merchant Solutions

Retailing as a lifestyle business

Opening a Yahoo! Small Business

Hey, Momma? Know what? If I take all my old toys that I dont play withanymore and sell them, I can take all that money and buy some new toys!

Sam Snell (my nephew), sometime around age 3

Ive always wondered whether independent retailers are born or made. Isself-employment nature or nurture? Maybe self-employment isnt in theblood as much as it is in the air. I grew up in my parents retailing business,so I can see where I caught the bug, but not my parents. Their parents taughtschool and sold insurance. I guess my folks saw opening their own store asthe easiest way to be their own boss, own their own business, and get theirpiece of the American Dream.

This chapter is your introduction to all things Yahoo! Store. Thanks to itssuite of online store-building and -management tools, Yahoo! makes it easyto start and run your own business. The Yahoo! Merchant Solutions serviceincludes domains, Web hosting, e-mail, and Yahoo! Store. This chapter alsoprovides you with an overview of the different parts of the Yahoo! universe,showing the different pieces and parts of Yahoo! I also discuss what Yahoo!Stores are, why I think Yahoo! Stores are swell, and the types of retailers whosell on Yahoo!

Exploring Small BusinessSmall business is really big business. Its an old story by now. The media havebeen all over it for ten years or more. Small business owners (and we dontlike the word small) are the dynamo that powers the American economy,

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creating 70 percent of all new jobs. More folks are starting up new businessesthan ever before, and the Internet makes becoming an entrepreneur easierthan ever.

Retailing is also big business in this country. Its a very big percentage of ourGDP. Americans really like to buy stuff, but how we buy is changing all thetime. Were buying more and more online every year. Brick-and-mortar retail-ing is pretty saturated, getting overcrowded with big-box category killers sell-ing everything from warehouse locations. Mom and Pop stores cant competewith the Wal-Marts on price or selection, so service is all you have whenyoure a little guy.

Retail customer service is pretty much dead. Im really impressed if I get acashier who smiles and thanks me for my business. Finding someone withreal product knowledge who can answer my questions is whole nother trick.Ive just accepted the fact that I have to become an expert about whateverIm buying by doing my homework. Theres this wide range of service in retailthese days from virtually none (the big-box boys) to great service (high-endboutiques and better independent retailers).

All this change and the vacuum of decent customer service and productknowledge create a huge opportunity. If you have product expertise, are asubject matter expert in your niche of the woods, and enjoy dealing withfolks like yourself, online retailing may be for you.

Get real for a minute. Youre probably not going to get rich selling online witha Yahoo! Store. You certainly wont make a killing overnight, but its a greatway to make a comfortable living. You get to be your own boss and have acertain flexibility of schedule. Being able to work from anywhere (even athome in your PJs) is a big, big plus. Small-business retailing is more of alifestyle business than a ticket for the IPO lottery. Retailing is an easy wayto start a business, and selling on the Internet is a perfect way to start. Youdont need mountains of capital, just a strong desire and a little bit of sweatequity, and youre in business.

Introducing Yahoo! Small BusinessWhen you open a Merchant Solutions account at Yahoo! Small Business, youhave a Yahoo! Store (which is what I call it, no matter what anyone else says).

Simply put, a Yahoo! Store is an online store hosted at Yahoo! a Web storewith your own domain name. Your Web site comes with a Shopping Cart anda secure checkout with a payment gateway. Plug in your merchant account (aspecial bank account for processing credit cards), and you can accept credit-card payments (and now PayPal payments). You also get tools to build and

10 Part I: Finding Out about Yahoo! Store

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manage your store. These tools include the Shipping Manager tool to config-ure your stores shipping methods and rates, a product database, online salesand traffic reports, stats, and graphs to see how youre doing. You also getthe Store Editor a Web-design tool for store building. Yahoo! Store also hasreally good customer support (both toll-free by phone and e-mail) and excel-lent online help files.

Yahoo! Store is a great choice for building your online store. The platform hasmore than 35,000 stores and has been around since 1996, before Yahoo! paid$49 million for Viaweb in July 1998. Theres a success track to follow. Otherretailers have done well on Yahoo! Store, and maybe you can, too. Yahoo!Store is also a recognized name brand for shoppers, so potential customersfeel more comfortable shopping with you.

Using Yahoo! Store also has secondary benefits: Theres a big enough Yahoo!Store user base for a community to develop (www.ystoreforums.com).Theres also a growing developer network of around 100-plus RTML guys and gals who specialize in designing and marketing Yahoo! Stores (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant/designdir.php). Lots of businessand design challenges have been met and overcome. Theres a clear path tofollow when building a Yahoo! Store, and many friendly folks are on the roadand dont mind sharing tips and tricks with fellow Web retailers.

Okay. Ill admit it. Yahoo! is a bit expensive compared to bargain-basementWeb-hosting and Shopping Cart software. Honestly, youll pay more for Webhosting when you have a Yahoo! Merchant Solutions account, but I believe thisexpense is actually a good thing because you really do get what you pay for.Table 1-1 lists the different monthly hosting packages, where you either pay$40, $100, or $300 a month plus a percentage of your sales. This revenue sharefee is 1.5 percent (ouch!), 1 percent, or 0.75 percent (depending on the type ofaccount you get), but because Yahoo! has resources other smaller companiesdont, you shouldnt mind sharing a little bit for what you get in return.

Table 1-1 Yahoo! Merchant Solutions PackagesStarter Standard Professional

Monthly hosting fee $39.95 $99.95 $299.95

One-time setup fee $50 $50 $50

Transaction fee 1.50% 1% 0.75%

Store volume < $12K $12K+ $80K+Source: Compare Merchant Solutions Packages: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant/compare.php

11Chapter 1: The Nickel Tour of Yahoo! Store

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For example, huge surges in traffic arent a problem when you have a Yahoo!Store. Yahoo! has an incredible load-balancing infrastructure so that youdont have to worry, for example, if your store gets mentioned on Oprah and10,000 people suddenly swarm your store. I really dont understand all of thispropeller-head stuff, but Ive seen stores handle tons of traffic (10,000 peoplea day) and not crash. Yahoo! Stores can also handle the huge spikes in traffic,for example, like the Christmas rush, where the entire Internet is swampedwith millions more shoppers than usual. If you have a very seasonal businesswhere you go from a 100 people a day in the off season to 4,000 people a dayin the peak season and 150 to 200 orders a day, Yahoo! Store may be for you.

Yahoo! is pretty serious about its Web-hosting business. Its not a sideline oran afterthought. Nowadays, anyone with a T1 line and a server can set up abox and be a Web-hosting company, but sometimes it takes a $45 billionmarket-cap company to do things right.

Yahoo! Stores have a great uptime record, too. One of the reasons I dontmind paying a little bit more for Yahoo! Store than generic Shopping CartWeb-development packages or Web-hosting packages is that Ive had a Yahoo!Store or Viaweb since 1997. I know of only two times that our store was eitherdown or really, really slow. I cant say that about any other product or servicethat Ive ever had, whether on the Web or not, including cell phones, air con-ditioners, 1-800 numbers, bank accounts, Lexus convertibles, iBooks, and soon. Im not saying that Yahoo! Stores are bulletproof, but if someone is shoot-ing at my online store, I would rather it be a Yahoo! Store than anything else.

Figuring Out Who Uses Yahoo! StoreLots of different types of people use Yahoo! Store to sell all kinds of differentthings online:

Brick-and-mortar stores: These stores include anyone from Mom and Popretailers to large corporate clients who dont want to spend $250,000 for acustom e-commerce solution. These retailers supplement their brick-and-mortar stores income by double-dipping, with their inventory sellingonline and offline. Sometimes the tail wags the dog and the real store issimply a warehouse for the online stores products.

Stay-at-home moms (or dads): These mompreneurs build their businessby taking phone orders and packing boxes between changing diapersand making trips to soccer practice. This new demographic is explodingand, man, are these folks competitive! I had a huge base of mom-clientsuntil a crop of stay-at-home mom store developers popped up. TheseY!Moms had no overhead and rock-bottom store development pricesand grabbed all the business! I love it when the breadwinning spousehas to quit his or her job to come home and help fill all these Yahoo!Store orders.


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Nonprofits: Ive seen everyone from church groups to museums tosocial activists sell online to raise money or accept contributions. Eventhe American Red Cross had a Yahoo! Store to take donations!

Drop-shipping Web marketers: These retailers only drop-ship, whichmeans that they forward orders to a wholesale distributor who packsand ships the order for the retailer. Drop-shipping means no inventory,no warehouse, no killer overhead, and (sometimes) no employees. Drop-shipping retailers probably pay more for their products than retailerswho stock and ship all their products, but drop-shippers have much lessrisk than traditional retailers. If you can find a great wholesaler who isalso a drop-shipper, you can focus on customer service and Internetmarketing (see Chapter 2). I have some great examples, but my retailclients would shoot me if I slipped and gave up their killer sources!

Mail-order catalogers: These old-school, direct-mail retailers are embrac-ing Internet marketing, and many catalog companies sell more throughtheir online catalog than through mailed, paper catalogs. Catalogs aretremendously expensive to print and mail, especially compared to therelative bargains of paid-search advertising (see Chapter 18) and free traffic from search engines (see Chapter 19).

Inventors, authors, and musicians: When you write a book or invent aproduct, no matter how cool it is, you cant sell it if shoppers cant buy it!Sometimes the Big Boys either wont carry a product or want big bucksfor catalog placement or space on store shelves. If you can create a virtual product where folks can download a file like a program (www.rtmltemplates.com), an e-book (www.ytimes.info), or an MP3 file(www.laugh.com), you dont even have to ship anything!

Selling your own creation is probably the hardest road to Internet mar-keting success, but if you hit a home run, youre rich! When you sell theproducts that you make, you usually have a killer margin because youkeep the manufacturers, distributors, and retailers share of the pie.

Manufacturers: Im a retailer who firmly believes that most manufactur-ers shouldnt retail! I believe its bad manners to compete with yourretailers for the very same customers, but some manufacturers want tosell direct. Its a free country! The best compromise Ive seen is when themanufacturer sells at full retail using its own manufacturers suggestedretail price (MSRP) and provides links to other approved online mer-chants who are free to sell at market price. See www.mailcarts.comfor a manufacturers site I did awhile back.

Deciphering All the PartsYour credit-card statement lists Yahoo! Small Business (YSB) as your onlinelandlord. Y!SB is the division at Yahoo! that you deal with the most.


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Here are the other parts of Yahoo! you need to know about:

Yahoo! Search (www.yahoo.com) is a separate part of Yahoo!. Justbecause you have a Yahoo! Store doesnt mean that your store will auto-matically rank in the top ten results at Yahoo.com when folks search forkeywords related to what you sell. Yahoo! doesnt play favorites withstores or hosted sites, which is confusing to some new accounts. SeeChapter 19 for tips on optimizing your store for all the search engines,especially the top three that drive 95 percent of Internet search enginetraffic: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search.

Yahoo! Shopping is Yahoo!s shopping portal and the public face ofYahoo! Search. To be listed in Y!Shopping, you have to organize andsubmit your products to Yahoo! Product Submit. If accepted, your prod-ucts get sucked into the Yahoo! Product Search database, showing upwhen customers search on http://shopping.yahoo.com. You payfor each click from Y!Shopping to your store based upon your industry(anywhere from 15 cents to $1). Yahoo! Merchant Solutions accountsdo get 20 percent off list prices, though. See http://productsubmit.adcentral.yahoo.com/sspi/us/pricing to read about Yahoo!Shopping and other ways to market your store in Chapter 17.

Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) is the paid-search advertising part ofYahoo!. You know what Im talking about those sponsored ads thatappear at the top and to the right on Yahoo! and lots of other sites. SeeChapter 18 on buying your way to the top with paid-search ads onYahoo! (and its competitor, Google AdWords).

Examining Merchant SolutionsYahoo! Merchant Solutions is the catchall marketing name for Yahoo! SmallBusiness divisions services package, which includes domains, businesse-mail, Web hosting, and Store. Domains lets you register and reserve yourdomain name and control where it points on the Web. Yahoo! Business E-mailgives you 100 mailboxes with spam control and 17 other things e-mail does.Yahoo! Web hosting gives you traditional Web-hosting space where you canupload your files via FTP or the File Manager with 20GB of disk space. Youalso get 500GB data transfer, PHP support, log files, and more.

The Store part of Merchant Solutions is what used to be called Yahoo! Storeand consists of the Store Manager and Store Editor. You can also use twocompletely different ways Store Editor or Store Tags to build and main-tain your store. The store-building part of this book is about Store Editor.See Chapter 5 for more on why I use the Store Editor, and why I think youshould, too.


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The Store Manager is your virtual back office. You can process orders(review, edit, and export store orders), view Statistics (all the cool reports,graphs, and statistics to help you manage your business), configure OrderSettings (Shipping Manager, tax settings, payment methods), maintain SiteSettings, and promote your online store. You can read more about the StoreManager in Chapter 15.

The Store Editor is both an online store builder and a product database man-ager. You can create, edit, and organize your products on the Web by brows-ing a copy of your online store. Here you can also design, tweak, and updateyour stores look and feel and see your design changes behind the scenes.When everythings perfect in the Editor version of your store, click thePublish button to update the public version of your store. Use the built-inproduct and section page templates and customize your store by editing thelook and feel settings on the global Variables page. Advanced users (or pro-fessional store developers, if you have the budget) can create a unique lookby editing copies of RTML templates or by creating custom RTML templatesfrom scratch. See Chapter 26 for more on RTML, the proprietary templatinglanguage and foundation of Yahoo! Store.


I still use Yahoo! Store and Store Editor today because they work

The reason I chose Viaweb (now Yahoo! StoreEditor) to build my first online store back in early1997 was because I wanted to sell stuff on theInternet, not code HTML or learn how to pro-gram CGI-BIN shopping cart scripts. Im aretailer and a marketer, not a computer scien-tist! I had many reasons for choosing Viaweb:

Viaweb worked for me because I could do it myself. Back in 1997, I literally had no Web store development budget, so Icouldnt pay a Web developer what, at thetime, was the outrageous price of $75 anhour to set up an online shopping cart. I wasalso highly motivated with the desperationthat only comes from your momma saying,Son, get my business online, and do it fast,or there wont be any business pretty soon.PetSmart is coming. . . . One thing I didhave was oodles of free time, thanks to my

business partner (and baby brother), Steve,who runs our day-to-day operations so wellthat I can disappear into a project (like thisbook!) for six months to a year when anopportunity presents itself!

Viaweb/Yahoo! Store was perfect for mebecause I also had no Web skills and vir-tually no online experience. I had neverdeveloped a Web site. I was a newbie tothe WWW in every sense of the word, play-ing on CompuServe since 1990 and postingin a few online comic book retailer forumsswapping marketing tips. I did have a back-ground in retailing and had owned mystores since I was in college. I also had mydegree in graphic design from MississippiState, but that was with tools from theStone Age designing things on paper.

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Viaweb also didnt require me to have anyspecial software (that I really couldntafford, anyway). I could build my storeonline in the Store Editor (over a 28.8modem dialup connection). All I had to dowas copy and paste some product informa-tion, upload some pictures, tweak a fewVariables, and I was online selling stuff,even though I had to learn store design andInternet marketing fast and in public in frontof our customers!

The reason I still use Yahoo! Store today isbecause it works. I have yet to find a better wayto sell online, and believe me when I say Imalways looking! To me, Yahoo! Store is theworlds best online store-building platform. Itsperfect for little guys who want to become bigguys. You dont have to be a Web developer oreven have an IT guy on staff. You build yourstore and then concentrate on building yourbusiness by taking care of your customers andselling stuff. Yahoo! takes care of all the pro-peller-head stuff behind the scenes.

Yahoo! Store can also scale with you as yougrow. Power users can always tap into the awe-some power of customizing store pages throughRTML templates (see Chapter 26), as well as

automating some order-processing functionality(see Chapter 15). Honestly, the only reason Iever learned custom programming with RTMLwas to be able to make search-engine-friendlychanges to the templates (to get more traffic)and to make design changes to the store toimprove sales (for example, moving my Add ToCart button higher on the page).

Paul Graham and Robert T. Morris (the RTM ofRTML) did it right the first time with the ViawebStore Builder software. The Store Editor hasstood the test of time. The Editor I used in 1997to build my first Viaweb store is remarkably sim-ilar to the Yahoo! Store Editor we use today. Youget to see how your store looks in real time asyou add products or make changes to the globalVariables.

Back then, there werent any WYSIWYG (whatyou see is what you get) HTML editors liketodays Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Back then,you wrote your HTML code and then had to lookin your browser to see what a page reallylooked like. Ive been using the Editor for overeight years, which is an eternity on the Internet.Maybe this old dinosaur is stuck in his ways, butI love Store Editor and all things Yahoo! Store.

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Chapter 2

Planning Your Online Small Business

In This Chapter Emulating successful online merchants

Picking products that sell and generate repeat customers

Looking at the different kinds of issues facing all kinds of retailers

There are riches in niches, whether with popular products, products withlimited distribution, or items that tend to generate repeat orders. In thischapter, I show you how to pick an online business model and how to doproduct research to discover which products sell on the Web. I also take alook at the different types of retailers starting a Yahoo! Store and coverbrand-new retail startups, folks taking an existing business online, retailersmigrating to Yahoo! Store from another platform, and existing Yahoo! Storeowners opening multiple stores.

Choosing a Business Model That Works on the Web

Retailers on the Web have to have a different business model than traditional,real-world merchants. A business model is just a fancy name for the way acompany actually makes money. What strategy works offline is probably notgoing to work online, which can make things complicated for folks who dobusiness in both worlds. Locally, you may have no real competition withinyour trading area, but online youll have a ton of competition. Your competi-tors are only a mouse click away, so you must be different. Differentiate yourstores products from every other store selling the same things. I tell you howto do that in this chapter.

Selling online gives the little guy a fighting chance against the big categorykillers because smaller retailers are more nimble. When youre small, youdont need approval from marketing, legal, and IT to make a change on the

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Web store; you just do it. The little guys can leverage their expertise, productknowledge, and enthusiasm, and provide a better shopping experience in manyretail categories. On the Internet, youre not limited by your how many storesyou have, your stores physical location, normal business hours, the size ofyour showroom, how much inventory you have, or the size of your staff. Yourelimited only by your creativity, your vision, your passion, and your work ethic.

Effective online retail business models remind me of cool retail shops I see inlarge metropolitan areas. These retailers tend to focus on these tight littleniches that are big enough to make a comfortable living from but smallenough to avoid the large discounters. For example, last year I was playinghooky wandering around in New York City. Instead of going to seminar pre-sentations, I went shopping and found several cool, geeky stores that I loved.These retailers could only make it in the big, big city and/or by selling onlineor by mail order: Toy Tokyo (selling the coolest imported Japanese toys! SeeToyToyko.c

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