My muses are up on the web now comes the marketing

[neuromancer]

I have my muses up:

www.shortorderstudios.com
www.seductiveman.com

The first is my tee shirt site, the second is my lifestyle blog. Now I comes the marketing phase. Press releases, link directories and an email campaign. I have been doing forum posting Seductive man and it has done well so far in getting traffic. Let me know what you think.

[outofbandii]

I'm not a big fan of that blog theme (Hemingway) guess I prefer the more traditional!

Well done in any case, you're doing, and that's always good.

[FrozenCanuck]

Neuromancer,

I like your T-shirt site. I notice it is designed with Wordpress, a blog program?? How do you turn a blog program into a web store program? If you can explain I'd be grateful. I'm not very experienced in HTML. I knew some basics of formatting pages back in 1996 when I finished University, that was a long time ago and I have not created a website since. But I have installed Wordpress recently so that was cool.

Also, I notice you are using paypal for the shopping card and checkout process. I was also planning to do this for my muses. Question: For physical products what are you doing to calculate shipping and tax? Be honest! ARe you just ignoring it for now and charging $0 shipping? That is what it looks like. I'm just trying to figure out how to deal with this ... I live in Canada. I have to charge provincial sales tax (just like state tax) on most products sold in Ontario (my province) but not to other provinces ... and I assume that many customes will be from USA (it is simply a much bigger country) so I have to figure out how to differentiate shipping charges between Canada and USA.

Ideas?

FC

[neuromancer]

Neuromancer,

I like your T-shirt site. I notice it is designed with Wordpress, a blog program?? How do you turn a blog program into a web store program? If you can explain I'd be grateful. I'm not very experienced in HTML. I knew some basics of formatting pages back in 1996 when I finished University, that was a long time ago and I have not created a website since. But I have installed Wordpress recently so that was cool.

I will do a video on this. I think it will make a good blog entry. I may as well tell you here though. I signed up for pay pal and it allows to set different kinds of commerce buttons. What I did was choose the add to cart button and put in the information for the item. Paypal then produced the html code for me which I just plugged into the post and page when I created them in word press. It's just that simple. I later chose to clean it up by putting the code into tables which I did in Dreamweaver. It isn't necessary but it makes it look better and it allows me to plug and chug later for website updates. The shopping cart is automatically produced by paypal.


Also, I notice you are using paypal for the shopping card and checkout process. I was also planning to do this for my muses. Question: For physical products what are you doing to calculate shipping and tax? Be honest! ARe you just ignoring it for now and charging $0 shipping? That is what it looks like. I'm just trying to figure out how to deal with this ... I live in Canada. I have to charge provincial sales tax (just like state tax) on most products sold in Ontario (my province) but not to other provinces ... and I assume that many customes will be from USA (it is simply a much bigger country) so I have to figure out how to differentiate shipping charges between Canada and USA.

Ideas?

FC

I dig paypal because while they charge 3-5% plus $.30 per transaction, there is no monthly cost and they deal with all the hassles. That means if I don't sell, I don't pay for the services. They also make setting up a shop easy.

For the most part online sales in the US are tax free so If I run into a tax problem I will deal with it then.

Shipping is important. When doing shipping always try to keep it separate from the price. Price is defined by the market for the most part. $20 is the standard price for shirts just about everywhere. If you mix in shipping into that cost either your sales go down because you are going above the standard price point to pay for shipping or you keep it at $20 and eat the shipping cost. People expect a shipping and handling charge on shipped goods so telling them the price is $20+$5 shipping is excepable while $25 shipping included usually isn't.

That being said, my belief is get it done and fix it later so shipping isn't working the way it's supposed to on the site. it should show up as $5 for up to 3 shirts and $10 for up to 10 shirts. Bulk orders have different price structure so they are handled separately. I will make a custom button that I will email out to the buyer in that case.

Feel free to ask any other questions you have.

[DrifterInc]

Neuromancer,

I'll be watching this one closely so don't disappoint me. Being studying with some of the masters in this field I have good interest in how this goes for you. I have studied with RJ, spent sometime with both Project Hollywood and Project Chicago, sarged with Orion, Mystery, the guys at pick-up podcast.

The seduction community is a great place to build $$$, because it teaches primal instincts to people who feel a burning desire to learn more in the safety of their only home.

Not so big on the T-shirt thing though... it'll bring you to a sell out status really fast...