Ideas on Promoting the Mini Mall and Forum

Maggie45

1. A Title for the forum - I put my logo in there because I had to put one - but I'd like to change it to a more generic Logo that would be more appealing. Help!

2. Get some more members - It would be great if you guys could invite some people. I think that this is a good idea - kind of a niche thing.

3. Ideas on promoting to shoppers. The Gallery I have installed can be beneficial - for linking photos of all your items to your stores - a bit time consuming, but it's a good place to host some photos. You can make subalbums to categorize your items. I'm still trying to sort it out myself, because there are a lot of features. But I'll devote some time to it and learn all about it. You can use the gallery link for your websites as well. Once I get more albums I'll submit a sitemap to Google for the gallery - so it's good to name the photos (which I have to do myself) then they should show up in Google images.

4. The reason I'm doing all this is because I feel that there are too many small sellers trying to do it all on their own. I see places like Ruby Lane and Cyberattic that do pretty well - but they are VERY expensive and not everyone gets the traffic there. I tried out Ruby Lane and you don't really show up well in their own search because the founding members get preference. So I'm trying to put together a free place where we can do the same things, but link to our individual website as far as purchases go.

5. You guys are all great, so any and all ideas are more than welcome - always!

Mishigoss · Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Washington state

Maggie -

When we invite others, are you saying here to this forum or to your Mini Mall -- both, I know, but where do they start? I would love to help promote this; just give me a URL to direct folks to!

Deb
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Maggie45 · Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 2:37 am Post subject: Yes it is confusing

I think I'd point people to the forum and mention that there's an option to join the Mini Mall, since they can check they'll probably checkout out the mall once they get here.

I want them to get the most help so this seems like the best place to start.

I know the idea of the gallery is somewhat confusing because many people won't know what they need it for - but it is, of course, optional. It's good for people who sell in all different places but want to email their customers a link to look at everything they have. If you look at the way I set up the photos of my trains you'll see how I linked them directly to the ecrater store where I'm selling them. (I still have to do it for the glassware - that was kind of a test just to get the photos up there).

The only thing I see different in this concept and something like Ruby Lane or Tias is that the people can't sell directly from my site (then I'd have to charge them). They just have a place to link to their own stores. I think they would get more traffic this way because there will be more items available. Therefore, more of an incentive for people to come by and look around.

What do you think? If I get a lot more people I can easily put the whole mini mall on its own site and I will be just one of the stores in it. Which is OK by me. I could also set up everyone with their own subdomain and they could upload their own webpage -- I'm not sure everyone knows how to do the FTP thing though.