I wonder how many dropshippers out there download info manually from a dropshipper with product info and inventory info in a file, do a manual conversion to fit the import setting of their website, and then upload that spreadsheet into their website.  I bet its a pretty large number of merchants.  If you are a merchant and this is a task you are regularly doing… then I suggest you do some research.

First, the task at hand as a manual task is tedious and at the very least is subject to human error.   Secondly, it’s a task that you would need to perform fairly frequently, possibly everyday.  If you have a website that has a lot of traffic and sales, you simply can not update inventory in this manner.  Most distributors out there provide files with inventory values that you can download regularly, or you can assess by way of an api method.  Doba, the largest dropshipping company in the world, allows for this, and with several shopping carts, they offer direct integration.  But what about the websites that don’t offer such an integration?  There are other options out there I assure you.

The First thing you need to find out is if your website is capable of an automated import, either by way of some kind of database upload or api method.  Some shopping carts that allow for this are Volusion (Gold or higher), ProStores, ShopSite,  and Magento, are just a few of the shopping carts out there that allow for this (there are several more).  And even if you run your own custom database driven website, there can almost always be a way to develop such an import that works for your store.

The key is to focus on streamlining your processes, especially the repetitive ones.  It really is amazing how many processes are done manually, that can be automated.  You should be focusing your time on sales, not on product maintenance.   Look into other ways of syncing inventory and adding distributor products instead of doing a tedious manual process.

Google has gotten a lot smarter, or stricter with their listings (depending on how you view it).  You can no longer list your stores products if you sell products mostly from a dropshipper.  The key here is mostly because many online retailers do dropship several products.  However, these merchants do stock many products as well and are not classified as a dropshipper retailer.  Essentially, if you get an account with a distributor, or a site that specializes in dropshipping such as Doba, and you simply create a website and dump the database from the distributor in it, you won’t be allowed to promote your site through Google Products.

Google is doing this because they are really trying to have a database of products from established resellers, or resellers that sell and stock products.  It is very easy for a seller to  dump a product database and then push it to Google  to get sales, or perhaps take away sales from merchants that actually stock items.

What has happened over the last few years is the number of retail websites that exist has ballooned over the last few years to a statistic of 1 out of every 30 Americans have a retail website.   Less than 1% of those websites actually generate sales, but these “deadbeat” sites still exist.  Google is just making an effort to try to eliminate these types of websites from their product listings to bring buyers the most qualified listings that they can.

The moral of this story, if you dropship, make sure its not your primary way that you do business if your goal is to gain traffic through Google product search.

Google listings over the years have had many identities.  Originally, listings were listed under the Froogle.com website, which still exists for those who don’t like going to google products.  Then in 2005, Google renamed Froogle to Google Base listings.  Many refer to these listings as Google Product Listings, located at google.com/products.  The other name you may see is Google Shopping, where you are doing a google search and you click on the Shopping link at the top.

Now, all these names are all rolled into Google Merchant Center where the Froogle/Google Products/Google Base feed can be used in several other ways to earn more revenue for Google.  For the longest time, Google Base was listed as a “Beta” program, because while it offered merchants a way to create free product listings on Google, for this company, it is all about opportunities for revenue.  Finally, it seems that they have figured out how to do that with these free listings.

As most Google Base users have Google Adwords accounts, why not combine the two to create Product Listing Ads.  For example, if you do a search of a product that you sell, you can see the listings with pictures and pricing to the right on the primary listings on Google.com search results.  These pictures are large and stand out on the page, enticing a user to click on these listings, and create further interest than the 3 search result listings that show in search results based on keyword rankings.  With product listing ads, you can of course bid up your listings and get visibility where you may not have previously seen.  This also gives Google an opportunity to list your products where product listing ads are relevant, if you are participating in Google’s Affiliate Network.

It seems that Google has found a way to cash in on their Froogle idea after all their years of free feeds.  Going forward, I am sure we will see Google Product rankings diminish for many merchants who are just submitting free Google Base feeds, and giving first preference to merchants that are using Google Product Listing Ads.  But honestly, did you really expect anything less?

If you are a US merchant and you are shipping outside the US, you may feed inclined to be able to promote your products outside the US.  Being that Google Products is free (still, for now), it only makes sense that you may want to list your products on Google’s other international sites.  If you take a look at the back end of Google Merchant Center, you will see that there are feed options for Germany, UK, Japan, and France.  It seems reasonable that you can just list your products the same way that you would with your US listing.  Think again.  To do this, you need a new domain, with your prices in the correct format for that country.  So, if you’re domain is http://www.domain.com, you will need to also buy domain.de, domain.co.uk among others.  You will also need a way to duplicate your site to that domain while changing the price format for that country.  If you can successfully do this, however, you can definitely list your products on Google internationally, and you should get some solid traffic.

In most cases, most US merchants do not currently list outside the US and there are few international merchants to begin with. Your big concern should be whether or not you think it is save to ship outside the US.  Credit Card issuers outside the US do not have as strict rules for verification and you can have an increase in fraud.  Depending your product line, it may or may not be worth the risk.

To try and compete with Amazon, Sears is now offering a Sell on Sears (CPA) and Sell through Sears (CPC) Models.  This could be comparable to Amazon’s Seller Central and Amazon Product Ads.  Sears has put fourth a valiant effort in trying to compete against Amazon in this market and they do have a legitimate shot of being successful.  They however,have made some major mistakes that hinder their success.

First thing’s first.  Data Formatting.  They have some strange rules when it comes to uploading product info.  For example, skus and Manufacturer part numbers can only be alphanumeric.  This means if you have, say a dash in a sku, which is quite common, your file will be rejected. Also, they created a separate template file for each sub category.  So rather than say a template for Jewelry (Like Amazon Has), they have a template for watches, necklaces, fine jewelry, and every other kind of Jewelry category.  To a new sears marketplace user, this is like a big road block because most merchants want a basic format that they can upload against.  Then to top it off, you have to upload in an xls format, rather than a tab delimited file.  on average with the same data, an excel file is about 5 times the size of a tab delimited file, which means that if you have 20,000 products you are uploading, this can be a 80-100 meg excel file that you would upload.  It takes that much longer to process such a big file, and no other marketplace uses excel files for uploading.  What were they thinking?

Secondly, with all those road blocks, there is no automated way to upload such a file.  They do not have ftp upload for their CPC or CPA models.  Amazon Product Ads even has ftp uploading.   I can understand how perhaps they don’t have it for their CPA model, because neither does Amazon.  Amazon uses a SOAP method for uploading, and returns batches with error log info that can be called through 3rd party software.  Sears saw this and duplicated their method for uploading.  The issue I have here is that Amazon warrants it.  They have a UPC requirement and many sellers match products against existing ASINS.  On Sears, there is no such requirement, and they don’t always do product matching.  Also Amazon has over 30,000 unique categories and 1000′s of merchants.  They have the demand and size necessary for a user to want to upload in that method.  Sears does not.

Assuming you can get through these road blocks, you can absolutely achieve sales through Sears Marketplace.  On Average expect about 10-15% of the order amount you currently achieve on Amazon as your sales goal for Sears Marketplace.  For some, that is definitely a worthy time investment.  For Sears to grow in this aspect however, they definitely need to iron these issues out first.

After 3 years working with SmartFeed Product Feed Manager, I finally got around to starting this blog.  It was always my intent to do so, going back to the company’s first few months.  We actually had a forum for a short while in the beginning, but that evolved into the support center.

I constantly get questions on what sites are good to market to, and how to optimize a feed, and this may be the best place to explain some of these issues.  So, for now I conclude my first post.  You can post a comment to this entry if there is something specific that you would like me to discuss.