First Post...What do you think?

Hi...this is my first post. Excellent forums, I have read lots of amazing threads and I want to become active in these forums, posting questions and trying to help out others! Here is my problem. I currently run an Ebay Store, with Ebay auctions. My items are around 5000, mainly DVD's and Cd's. I rely solely on the Ebay Pre-Filled function, and the only database that I save only contains title, UPC and Price.

Now..I'm thinking about expanding to use Channel Advisor Merchant for an E*Commerce solution because they can make item pages (ie. images and descriptions) from my database using the UPC, similar to Ebay's Pre-Filled listings. What do you think, would Channel Advisor be good for me? I am familiar with Yahoo Stores and the Store Editor, but from my database, Yahoo doesn't support a pre-filled function like ebay...do they? Any suggestions?
Also, while looking at Channel Advisor's Case Studies...they show a company called Movie Mars...but as soon as you click on an item the url changes to stores.channeladvisor etc....the movie mars url is gone! Than i looked on Google and I can't see any item pages from Channel Advisor with any ranking, I think it has to do with the url change. Why aren't any channeladvisor pages ranking in the search engines? Does anyone know a high ranking channeladvisor site? Given my dilema of a small database, (title, upc, price) I will need the pre-listing feature....any suggestions?

can anyone try and help? please...

Please post here if you have used these products and can offer any help....

I don't have an answer but I do have a suggestion. Perhaps you can locate someone by searching online who specializes in Channel Advisor merchant sites and ask them.

Even if you had to pay them for an hour of their time it could be well worth it in choosing the best solution.

As for the urls, I know that Yahoo stores is currently changing how theirs display so there definitely can be differences in how that happens and how they're indexed by the search engines.

The problem is the same that many stores have, the store itself is hosted on Channel Advisors servers and they are using their website to drive traffic to the store. The spiders see that store (and any other store hosted on CA's servers) as being one in the same.

Before signing up with CA you will want to talk to them - their online documentation is not as robust as it could be and they leave alot out. Also your market has a low profit margin - do the math before you do anything else. Look at their fees (and anyone else you consider). You have to be selling a major high volume for CA to work for you. They are one of the best but you're going to pay for it so be sure your sell through will cover the costs and leave more than lint fuzz in your pocket.

I know why you are looking to off site avenues, along with many other eBay store owners. Take your time and review the facts of ALL of the options from Yahoo to CA to even ProStores and more. Don't panic and jumpship before you've done all your homework. Every option has pros and cons as you've pointed out. Make sure you jump in the right direction.

You want to find one that will allow you to use your own domain (even if you have get a specific one for the store itself) and doesn't force you into using somepopularecommercesite.com/yourstore - it can be done but why start with a brick wall that you have to knock down when you don't have to.

and, CA stores pages are indexed - do a search on ' stores.channeladvisor and you should see the problem these folks have. The only work around is not to rely on the store pages but to build another site that ties into the store, which can be done.

hi there, mediagangster - welcome to the forums...

I know why you are looking to off site avenues, along with many other eBay store owners.

Can you expand on this please...

eBay receintly announced that they are raising listing fees and final value fess for store owners (USA and Can only??), besides that they are taking back their promise to feature store listings as well as killing ebay express for stores by featuring auction style with Buy It Now before core store listings.

They are regretting their store push basically and the cost raise is forcing many to scale back their inventory or exit ebay all together due to the increases (they are steep - Bill Cobb's fuzzy logic says 6% but the reality is more like 150% or more).

Those who have built a business (part or full time) that they rely on, and are not in a position to let go, are looking to off ebay solutions for selling venues.

Prostores - now an ebay company - has an added attraction to ebay sellers as 1) you get a 30% discount on the monthly store fee if you own an ebay store - 2) prostores has the ability to submit your inventory directly to ebay (prostores is stand alone, inventory is not automatically tied into ebay as it is with an ebay store) and manage the ebay listing from within prostores

The drawback, like eBay Blackthorn (ebay inventory management software), ProStores is apparently buggy from the complaints I've read. But then what isn't.