If you’ve been following my income reports for the last few months, you know that I was hit by Google’s Penguin update in late April. Well, nearly six months later, I can say that it’s been tough trying to get back to where I was. I put a lot of energy into increasing my Amazon sales, which has paid off somewhat, but I’m still disappointed to say that my Yahoo Store still hasn’t recovered. Google traffic continues to be quite low, which is very frustrating since I’ve always tried to run a white-hat site. After consistantly being on page 1 for my targeted keywords for over 10 years, I’m at a loss in terms of how to recapture my Google rankings.
So, I’m implementing a backup plan. I’ve always been a big fan of Yahoo Stores, mostly because it’s reliable and has always met my needs, which are admittedly fairly simple. I’ve thought about transitioning to other platforms over the years, but could never find one that seemed to be good enough to be worth the trouble of migrating everything over. Well, I figured now is as good a time as any to start exploring other options again. So, what I’ve done is created a niche site on the Shopify platform that focuses on a single product line that has always done well for me. This is a supplemental site as I plan on keeping my main site on Yahoo for the time being.
Most of the items on my new Shopify site are already available for sale on my Yahoo Store, but since the new site is very focused, I’m working towards making it the number one resource for this niche. This isn’t something that could easily be done with my existing site since it’s structured around a much broader niche.
I’m still within the free trial period with Shopify, but I have to say so far I’m THRILLED with it. There are a number of off-the-shelf templates available for purchase, but I started with one of the free ones to play around with. Modifying the templates does require some basic coding capabilities, but I’ve been so pleased with how the design has turned out, I don’t think I’ll have to purchase a premium template. The site looks great and is easy to use.
So far, I haven’t spent a penny on the new site, and I’ve already had a couple of orders come in. Once my free trial is up, the site will be costing me $59.95 per month for the Professional Plan (plus a 1% transaction fee). I’ll also be adding on the MetaFields app for another $7 per month. I’m currently only using PayPal and Google Checkout as payment options, but will likely set up a traditional merchant account shortly.
I’m hoping that this new site will be able to rank well in Google over time. I’ll see how things progress over the next few months, but regardless of the results, I may transition my Yahoo Store to a Shopify site sometime next year if I continue to like the platform.
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