New DAZzle Interface DLL & Keep One Listed software released

DAZzle Interface DLL:
This DLL provides the Endicia integration for Order Integrator. You can download the dll and source code below. This is public domain software and you are free to use it in your own applications, modify it or do anything else you want with it. The latest update adds support for the large priority mail flat rate box.

This new version adds support for the large Priority Mail flat rate box.

Keep One Listed (for eBay Blackthorne):
Keep One Listed allows you to scan your eBay Blackthorne inventory items and automatically schedule new listings for any item that is not currently listed.

This release adds the option to use eBay fixed price 30 day listings instead of store inventory format listings for 'store listings' along with a option to choose which type of listings you want to process (regular, store or both).

The software and latest updates can be found on the Your Cable Store website at http://www.yourcablestore.com/Software_ep_38-1.html

Trying Out Google Adwords Conversion Optimizer

Last week I logged into my Google Adwords account and saw a new option called conversion optimizer. I had tried something similar with Yahoo Search Marketing a while back and the results were less than stellar but I figured hey maybe Google can do a better job so I will give it a shot.

Here are some screen shots showing the results

10/14 to 10/16 (from the week before turning conversion optimizer on)


10/21 to 10/23 (results of turning conversion optimizer on)


At first it looks good with double the clicks (190) at almost the same click through rate. The real problem is that more clicks and paying more per click does not translate into more conversions. During the 2+ days I had conversion optimizer turned on I paid an extra $38.13 for one more conversion and my cost per conversion went from $2.50 to $7.59.

The one bright side is that unlike Yahoo where I had to manually edit all my bids after turning their optimizer off turning off the Google optimizer restored all my old bids and my campaign was back to normal with a single click of the mouse.

Opening post / purpose of this blog

The advice I seem to get coming from everyone who talks about search optimization and what not is to create a business blog but I have hesitated to do so up until now because I didn't want to create another blog that is just outright shilling for my website, posting links to online articles that have little or no relevance to my business or posting affiliate marking links in every other post. I am not saying I won't do some of that, after all the whole point of doing this to help generate more sales for my website.

Why am I creating a blog now? In the month since fixed price 30 day listings has been rolled out my eBay sales are falling and sell through rates on my weekly fixed price 7 day listings have fallen below 15% the last three week (I will give some data in a future post). My sales are not all bad since the fixed price 30 listings are selling pretty well but this has been kind of a kick in the ass to get me motivated and try to make sure my business can survive without eBay. Right now it probably can't since 65-70% of my monthly sales are coming from eBay.

I don't really have any kind of plan just the general idea that I should stop spending so much time and energy chasing the eBay changes and concentrate all my energies into growing my business outside of eBay. To that end I have a few general ideas I am starting with and will go from there.

• Create a blog and write about eBay, google and other e-commerce related issues on a regular basis.
• Work on SEO and improving rankings in natural search results (blogging is supposed to help with this).
  
• Add more of my products to Amazon.com since it has been a great source of extra sales and should a fairly easy path to growing sales (at least in the short term)
  
• Finally get around to adding some new Google adwords ads and exploring some of more advanced options.