In 2004, I read an article in AuctionBytes about ShopPal Stores. At the time, I was an eBay PowerSeller with a rating over 25,000 selling a variety of items, including solid color neckties. With fees on eBay going up and sell-through going down, I knew I had to turn things around.

The ShopPal stores looked good, reasonably priced and offered a free trial. I signed up in November of 2004 and began to put the site together.

ShopPal has a control panel that runs down the left side of the page making it easy to add new elements. The page editor is "what you see is what you get" and is simple to learn. With different backgrounds and color options available, there were many choices as to how the finished product would look. It was up and running within a few days.

ShopPal makes it easy to change the look of your site. I view my store everyday and often find some minor changes I want to make.

I was lucky to register the name solidcolorneckties.com for my site. A little long, but it perfectly describes what I offer. Sales were scarce those first months as I was busy with other items on eBay and did not take the time to learn to promote it.

When eBay announced more fee increases in early 2005, I still had not made much progress in promoting the site. I read up on web promotion and signed on with AdWords from Google. I was now paying for keyword searches. Within a few days, I had more orders coming in than I had experienced in the previous three months combined.

Dumb luck followed a few weeks later when an ecommerce seminar was held in my area and among the sponsors was Google. I signed up for a free one-on-one with someone from the AdWords team. They took about an hour to review what I was doing and explained a lot more about how to get the most out of AdWords. The session was one of the most valuable lessons I had had up to that point.

Sales took off in April and continued, with many months' sales doubling those of the previous month. By summer, I was selling more neckties on my site than I had ever done on eBay. I saw it continue to grow throughout the holiday season while adding new items from new vendors.

You can launch inventory from ShopPal to eBay by purchasing a $5 module from ShopPal. You can then direct customers through ShopPal checkout, giving them the opportunity to add items from your website. The module also allows you to display a tab to your eBay listings on your ShopPal shop if you choose.

I still use eBay on a limited basis, but the majority of my sales come from my own store hosted at ShopPal. The fees that I pay eBay and others are now less than half of what I paid only eBay a year ago, yet my sales have increased.

For others considering opening their own web store, my advice is to get started as soon as possible. There are many good vendors like ShopPal who can help you make it work.

ShopPal Stores
http://www.shoppalstores.com

Google AdWords
http://adwords.google.com