Web and Technology

Setting up my first StoreStacker store

September 2, 2008 by Tricia

I spent part of this afternoon working on my first Storestacker store. I haven’t finished it yet because I’m watching the instruction videos as I install the software on my server and set up the site.

This is what I have so far … I made a store for my tech blogs – the blogs I haven’t been writing in very much lately, but plan to start adding posts to again soon. The store is simply called “The Tech Store” and it doesn’t have any products in it yet, but once I set up the categories I’ll be able to automatically fill it up with computer, gadget, software and tech related products. I have to figure out which store template I like best and tinker with it too. I’m not sure I like the default template all that much.

So far everything is going well. Once I’m ready the products that will fill up my store will be from Ebay, Amazon, Clickbank and probably RegNow. I’m hoping that I can use the Overstock plugin as well, but I think Overstock only allows US affiliates so i might not be able to add their products to my site.

If this store goes well and doesn’t use up too much of my servers resources I’ll set up a gardening store for my gardening blog, and maybe a more general store for this blog with home and garden, clothing and entertainment related items.

What I really like about the StoreStacker software so far is that not only will I be able to create niche stores, but I can add RSS feeds and videos that are related to the products I’m trying to sell as well as helpful on topic articles. Just those features alone should help draw some search engine traffic and will do it better than a plain store would.

I won my copy of Storestacker in a contest so I have nothing to lose by trying it. If you are interested in trying Storestacker you should visit their site soon as they just opened up for sales again this past Friday. They only sell a limited amount off store software when they open up so it’s still a fairly exclusive product that should give those using it an edge.

BTW I’m not an affiliate for Storestacker. I think they might have an affiliate program but I haven’t managed to find it yet! I’m just telling you how I’m using the software and if you have been interested in find a very easy way to set up a niche store you’ll probably like this program.

Update – my new store is doing great! I’ll be setting up other niche stores very soon. Oh and I do have an affiliate link for StoreStacker now so if you are thinking of buying this product I’d appreciate it if you’d visit the site through this StoreStacker link. Thanks!

I won a prize!

August 29, 2008 by Tricia

Guess what? I won a fantastic prize!

Big Jason from the Big Marketing Online Blog started what he called “The largest blog contest ever” sometime in mid-July. I entered the contest at the end of the month by doing several of the requested tasks in order to build up my entries and earlier this week Jason informed me that I was a prize winner.

Not only did he write to tell me that I’d won a prize, but a few days later he wrote to me again to list my top five choices. So I kind of picked out my own prize from the huge assortment of goodies he was giving away.

I decided that I wanted StoreStacker. It’s a program that allows you to build multiple affiliate stores. What does that mean? Well … you can set up an online store in minutes that will sell products from Amazon, Ebay, Overstock and several other large companies. You can set up a store (or stores!) that sell a wide range of products, or if you have a niche site, like say my gardening blog, you can set up a store that sells products that cater to your sites niche.

I downloaded my prize and all of it’s components yesterday, but I haven’t had a chance to install it or set up a store yet. I’m dying to try it!

I’ve just been too busy. Chris is on holidays and that’s kind of taken me out of my routine, plus our dogs been so hyper lately! It’s crazy here. With Midnight jumping around on the furniture and up at us I just can’t get anything done. Even worse, she managed to make a little rip in our leather couch yesterday! Grrr. Well … maybe with the new stores that I’ll be setting up I’ll make enough affiliate income that I’ll be able to got to a home furniture and pick out a new couch? Nah .. the rips only tiny .. I’ll spend my earnings on other goodies or better yet pay the bills!

I’m So Unspectacular

August 27, 2008 by Tricia

My Toronto blogger friend, Lyndon from Lyndonology, tagged me last week with the Six Unspectacular Quirks meme.

I don’t do this kind of meme very often, but sometimes they are kind of fun and I think they give readers a better idea of who the blogger is, so I decided I’d give it a whirl.

If you’d like to participate in this meme go right ahead. Here’s the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules.
3. Tell six unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. Tag six bloggers by linking.
5. Leave a comment for each blogger.

I’m going to leave out rule 4 and 5 because if I tag others I’ll just end up getting more tags! LOL

I think I have a lot of quirks so picking out just 6 won’t be easy! Let’s see …

1. I really like my feet being tickled. Not the tickle to make you laugh until you can’t breath kind of tickle … just nice gentle tickles with the tips of your fingers. It’s sooooo relaxing. I married Chris because he’s a good tickler. Ok I married him for other reasons too, but that was on the list. 😉

2. When I was a baby I went through a period where the only way my parents could get me to sleep was to put me on my stomach and pat my bum until I was bouncing like a basketball. I’d fall asleep that way and start crying as soon as they stopped! They’d have to take turns bouncing me for hours! Strangely enough I can now fall asleep without having my bum patted.

3. I detested – really really hated! peanut butter all my life. Just the smell of it would make me nauseated, but … a couple of months ago I got a craving for it and I now eat it regularly.

4. I don’t like most reality shows, but I think I’m secretly addicted to America’s Got Talent. I guess it isn’t a secret anymore.

5. My regular and casual visitors likely already know I like dogs and probably realize that I’m an animal lover, but did you know that I love reptiles? I kept reptiles for decades. We currently only have an Eastern Box Turtle and an Ornate Box Turtle, but we’ve had as many as 9 lizards and the two turtles at the height of our reptile keeping days. Back in 1995 I started my first website “Tricia’s Chinese Water Dragon, Reptile and Amphibian Care Page“. Yeah I’ve come up with better names for my sites since then, but that one’s accurate in it’s description. It’s a huge website that gets 1000’s of visitors each day and it’s had over 15 million page views since I started tracking stats. I’ll bet you never thought there’d be that many people seeking reptile care info, did ya? I’ll also bet that you didn’t know I’m a reptile guru!

6. When I was a child my parents had trouble getting me to eat my vegetables. Somehow my mom figured out that I’d eat some veggies, that most people like better cooked, raw. These days I’ll eat most veggies (cooked), but I still don’t mind eating things like Potatoes and turnip raw – in fact I think I prefer them that way!

Ok so was that unbelievably unspectacularly quirky enough for you? Feel free to do this meme on your blog or better yet leave me a comment with one of your unspectacular quirks!

________________________________________________

Earlier today I received an award from a blogger who clams she’s mainly a lurker. I love it when I’ve made a post that finally gets a reader to leave a comment or better yet, as in this case, give me an award that says:

Thank you Wendy! When I went to visit Wendy’s site, The Domestiquette I discovered that she’d given the award to 5 other great blogs which will now become part of my reading list, along with Wendy’s blog of course! BTW I’ve been to Wendy’s site before in my travels, but I’ll try to get there a little more often.

BTW Wendy I hope your internet connection gets better!

Like the previous tag I believe I’m supposed to pick out blogs I’d like to give the award to, but there are so many blogs that I really love! It’s too hard! So I think I’ll pass on that part of the tag, but if you’d like to award some of your favorite blogs with this award go ahead and copy the award image (do not link to it!) and give it out to your favs.

So what are your quirks? This inquiring mind wants to know!

I HATE spammers!

August 15, 2008 by Tricia

It seems that every single day I get more and more spam. By spam I mainly mean comment spam on my many blogs. I could just as easily complain about email spam, but that’s really another issue.

I’ve written about spam and spammers recently and the measures I’ve taken to combat spam on my blogs. Believe me I think I have the bots pretty much handled … it’s the human comment spammers that are driving me nuts.

Have you been seeing a steady increase in human generated comment spam on your blogs?

I think that one of the main sources of this comment spam is the free and paid comment software programs that have come out in the last year or so. These programs make it easy for people to find blog posts on certain topics, posts that are of certain page rank, and blogs that are dofollow. Now if people used these types of software properly – ie finding blog posts that related to their own websites or blogs and leaving real commentary on the post without trying to promote their own site or product it wouldn’t be that bad … but leaving “nice post” “I’m stumbling this” or “I’ve told all my relatives and friends about your article” type of comments while promoting a commercial site or commercial blog is just not right.

The other source of spam is of course all the do follow lists and directories. My own Do Follow Blogroll as well! Since I have several blogs is very easy for me to tell that someone is following a do follow list because they tend to hit almost all of my blogs one comment after the other from site to site. Some of the comments are fine … but the ones that are just quickly going through the list don’t seem to read the post they are commenting on and either copy whatever one of the last commenters said or leave the same comment on each blog! Bzzzzz – you’re deleted or worse – sent to akismet hell!

If you are interested in promoting your site and getting some back links do it properly! Either dip into your savings accounts and by some advertising slots or find sites that are similar to your own and build a relationship with the webmaster by leaving meaningful comments that add to the site.

Leaving comments that don’t make sense or self promote or that don’t add to the posts conversation will either be deleted from most blogs or ignored. Good comments that add to the conversation end up having their links visited by the site owner as well as those who read the comment.

So if you are coming here to spam my site(s) by leaving a comment that self promotes or that doesn’t add anything to the conversation ie “nice post” – be warned – I moderated heavily and I don’t like spammers. If you leave a meaningful comment and your site doesn’t lead to a sales page it will probably be accepted.

How do you handle spammers on your sites? Do you delete the comments? Mark them as spam by sending them to Akismet? Delete the url if the comment is semi-passable?

What’s happening with Adsense this month?

August 14, 2008 by Tricia

Do you use Adsense on your websites? Have you noticed that you’re making less money this month?

I have!

My Adsense income has been on a steady increase since last September and after making some changes to my sites in April I started to make truly decent income. However I’ve noticed that this month I’m only making half or even less than that of what I used to make each day over the last few months.

Today’s earnings took a real downturn. I don’t know if Adsense is being slow in reporting or what’s going on but I’ve only made a few dollars! I”m used to making quite a bit more.

I won’t say exactly what my usual Adsense earnings are, but over the last few months it’s been enough to pay more than half my mortgage, so it’s a reasonably decent amount.

Are the advertisers cutting their budgets? Are they on holidays? I don’t know what’s happening, but all month I’ve been earning at a much lower rate than I normally do, yet my traffic has gone up.

As I started out by asking – Do you use Adsense on your website? Have you noticed that you are making less this month than you normally do? I’m just curious if others are in the same boat as I am.

Setting up my first StoreStacker store

I won a prize!

I’m So Unspectacular

Meta

Search this site

Blogs I Visit

Meta

Search this site

Tags

Blogs I Visit