Now I’m using their storebuilder tool to set up my site.

Gotta tell you, so far, I’m pleased. Their userinterface is pretty straightforward for the most part. This is really a tool that lets people who are not techie programmers get an ecommerce site up quickly. One feature I really like is that when you view your store in preview mode, you can then click a button to go into WYSIWYG mode where you can just drag an element to another place. Don’t want your search box in the left column? Just drag it to the right.

People have said that they stayed up to wee hours of the morning the day after the training and got their site live. I believe it.

Ok, so I know that getting the store up is easy (although I haven’t actually finished it.)

The true test will come if I make money…

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Well, I bit the bullet and ordered my 6 items. I thought a good goal would be to have my store ready by the time they arrive, but I don’t think that will be the case.

I’m going through their DVD on how to set up a store. It has a lot of good information in it.

Tried to set up a couple of sample products yesterday.

A comment about customer service. The great thing about it is it’s available 24/7 via online chat. So far I’ve used them four times. I’ve found, however, they haven’t always answered my question in the most direct way. I think it’s because they’re used to dealing with established merchants and they don’t always put themselves in the mindframe of someone who knows nothing about the software.

Here’s an example of what I mean. I got really frustrated a couple of times ago. I asked about a setting on the site-wide page referring to an icon. He gave me an answer, but I didn’t really understand. So then I asked a question about an icon. His answer was “What icon are you referring to?” I just stared at the screen for a moment in disbelief before I typed “…the one you just said xyz about.” He then said more things that made no sense to me. I tried to get clarification by asking “so you’re saying bcd?” but again his replies made no sense to me. He seemed to be contradicting himself.

It turns out they use the term icon in two different ways. From what I can gather, one is a visual representation that is used in the store builder interface (not seen on your live store). The other is the term they use for a product thumbnail. I think our failure to communicate was based on these two different uses of the same word. But it would have saved us both frustration if he just said “there are two different types of icons.”

Logged in tonight to tweak more products, but I kept getting an error whenever I tried to do something: "Maximum allowed database connections (50) reached. Unable to process request. "

This is the first time I’ve gotten this error. Perhaps they need to add more servers.

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This is the hardest part of the entire process: finding a product and a distributor.

I thought I knew what I wanted to sell. I already have a distributor for a really beautiful copper bird feeder. But when I used both the StoresOnline keyword tool and Wordtracker’s tool, I found that not enough people are searching for this type of feeder specifically. I’ve also tried it a couple of times on eBay with mixed results. That might be why I never see it on eBay.

So back to brainstorming and research I went. And I think I now have a product. It’s not a product I have ever used, but I’ve given a few of them as gifts at baby showers and I know it is a good product. The research shows that people are searching for them. A Google of the product brings up just a few sites that aren’t marketed very well.

Found the manufacturer by Googling the product and "manufacturer." Made the call and spoke with a very nice woman. They do dropship, but not blind. (Actually when I asked if they blind drop ship, she asked, "What’s that?" That’s ok, it may mean the product isn’t already saturated with websites).

The only catch with this manufacturer is that your first order has to be at least 6 before they’ll set up a drop shipping relationship. So I think I’ll buy the six (my husband supportingly said, "Don’t we already have hundreds of squirrel feeders in the garage that you never sold?") and try to sell them on eBay.

I don’t have any more room in the garage, so these really have to sell!

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