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Need help with starting a website for selling books.

Started by Old Fashion PB and J,

60 posts in this topic

snitzer

snitzer

Posted
Posted
I went with OSCommerce.

 

I was able to make my site and my wifes ( shameless plug - www.SiestaLane.com ) with my limited HTML experience. Thier help forums are pretty good as well.

 

And if anyone is interested in trading banners, send me a PM :wishluck:

 

OSCommerce is definitely one of the better shopping cart solutions around. It consistently ranks ahead of other carts in terms of usability. Also, it's one of PayPal's pre-integrated carts (thumbs u

 

List of pre-integrated PayPal shopping carts...

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/solutions_carts_wp_pro

 

Also, from an SEO (search engine optimization) standpoint, you'd be better off to ensure your domain name has comics/comic books in it somewhere (i.e. comicbooksforsale.com). See what, if anything is available, and go w/ that.

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richnerd

richnerd

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running some numbers for some good SEO names that will be easy for you to get #1 on google here is the first one.

 

comicbruce.com 2500 searches a month low competition

 

comicbooklife.net 33,000 searches a month low comp. (the actual search is comic life)

 

 

Will post more as I find them.

(I do this for a living so if you want any tips on SEO just ask)

 

Rich

 

I have a few others if your interested but I will pm them to you if you want them because if you don't want them I will be using them for my business to build sites and selling.

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snitzer

snitzer

Posted
Posted
running some numbers for some good SEO names that will be easy for you to get #1 on google here is the first one.

 

comicbruce.com 2500 searches a month low competition

 

comicbooklife.net 33,000 searches a month low comp. (the actual search is comic life)

 

 

Will post more as I find them.

(I do this for a living so if you want any tips on SEO just ask)

 

Rich

 

I have a few others if your interested but I will pm them to you if you want them because if you don't want them I will be using them for my business to build sites and selling.

 

Just curious, but how much influence on ranking does the domain (i.e. .com vs. .net) itself have? Any?

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richnerd

richnerd

Posted
Posted
running some numbers for some good SEO names that will be easy for you to get #1 on google here is the first one.

 

comicbruce.com 2500 searches a month low competition

 

comicbooklife.net 33,000 searches a month low comp. (the actual search is comic life)

 

 

Will post more as I find them.

(I do this for a living so if you want any tips on SEO just ask)

 

Rich

 

I have a few others if your interested but I will pm them to you if you want them because if you don't want them I will be using them for my business to build sites and selling.

 

Just curious, but how much influence on ranking does the domain (i.e. .com vs. .net) itself have? Any?

 

Yes the domain does have a small part in it. Not as big as your meta tags and your H1 tags and the inbound links from relevant sites. But if someone has the domain comicbooklife.com and the search is "comic life" you are a step ahead of joe blow who doesn't have any of that in his domain.

 

Google looks at web sites by relevance to the search term. And one of the ways to help get you ranked is to make sure your domain is relevant to your website. Just like it breaks down the geographical area of where your site is from by the extension used.

.com and .net = us company

.ca =canada website

 

and so on. But they even use that to break down the web sites.

 

hope I explained this clear enough if not let me know its saturday and I have been relaxing with some michelobs. :)

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comicwiz

comicwiz

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Concentrate on the website for now. As others have suggested, OS Commerce is one of the better open license shopping cart softwares, and if you go with a website provider that uses cpanel (fantastico), this will make the install painless. There is plenty of support and making modifications is usually very straightforward.

 

A domain name is also important - I PM'd you one that is available which I think would make a great name because its unique, strong, and available.

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sterlingcomics

sterlingcomics

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I've always wondered how lonestar/mycomicshop, mile high, etc, is how do they get their stock scans entered into their database. Do you have to scan them all yourself? Can you get stock images from Marvel, DC, etc?

 

For new books, definitely. Most of these sellers use stock photos, probably built in over time or from other sources. Most use actual photos for CGC books, as they are uniquely identifiable with the certification number.

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Old Fashion PB and J

Old Fashion PB and J

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I dont understand that?

 

Also where do I search domain names?

 

How do I link an ebay store to the OScommerce or a site like that?

 

I have an idea for a sweet name, ran a search on google but it didnt come up. But figure there may be a more thorough search to be positive.

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Topnotchman

Topnotchman

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A new question, why do you want your own web site? Why not just open an Ebay store and fill that with your comics? I've done both and I started this comic flipping back in 1998 when Ebay got off the ground. My personal web site just died a slow death year by year when Ebay launched there stores. Have you noticed Mile High and Lonestar both jumped to Ebay 3-4 years ago. There web site lost so many customers to the competition of Ebay stores. They were forced to move a large percentage of there inventory to Ebay because thats where the buyers are. Unless your inventory is very rare, valuable or something you just can't find on Ebay. Like Metro who has all those Goldenage comics, trying to compete against Ebay is a tough sledding. Starting your own web site is not cheap either, there is always hosting fee's and the site can crash. Hundreds of hours of time and labor to list items that do not sell, customer who do not pay because they don't have to. Heck I remember posting hundreds of auctions a week on Amazon and Yahoo back in what was probably 1999-2001 era, they were suppossed to be on the rise and take down Ebay, never happened. My advice, open an Ebay store. If you do get rare valuable CGC comics, than post those on Comic Link. Good Luck with what do you decide.

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