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Updates(This reads like a blog, with the latest posts at the top.) 1/31/12: We just got word of the decision by Skimlinks that we were denied use of their service for this site. The reason? Because we also sell a product directly. It seems that Skimlinks has a rule that says you can have as many other ads as you want, even by competing affiliates, but they must ALL be affiliate ads. If we put our own payment buttons on a site, then it goes against their rules. It seems strange, but I can only assume it has to do with pleasing their own affiliates and aggregators. You see, Skimlinks presently deals with roughly 18,500 different affiliates and aggregators, including Amazon, Commission Junction, Link Connector, Link Share, Avant Links, and many, many more, not to mention the individual manufacturers and distributors on their roster. I can only imagine the nightmare of trying to work with that many contracts and get everyone to agree to the same rules! I don't envy them one little bit. But all we can do is abide by those rules. Therefore, without being able to use them, I can't use Amazon (due to them denying service to their Associates in this state because of the sales tax nexus laws), which is the ultimate best vendor in many areas. First is the trusted name brand of Amazon. It's undisputable! Second is the selection they offer, which is over 17 times the inventory of Wal Mart worldwide! Thirdly is the consistency of their banner ads, allowing you to choose an ad format that works across all products. Fourthly, because they are a comparison shopping engine, so you can see the product from several different vendors in both new and used, and make up your own mind who to deal with. And that's all besides the background stuff, like ease of setup and use, the easy navigation of our account dashboard, and payout strategies. Despite the fact that I don't like what they did to their affiliates in states where Amazon refuses to collect and sort the sales tax, they still have the best affiliate program on the planet! But the only way we can still use it in those states is by going through Skimlinks, which is based in the U.K. and not subect to our sales tax nexus laws! So what to do? The only thing we CAN do is to set up a whole new "sister" site, where we can have only affiliate ads, and save this site for the products that we can obtain and either warehouse ourselves (not likely... been there, done that) or have drop-shipped from another warehouse. So little by little we will be condensing this site, while at the same time building another completely new site. In the process, the looks of both are bound to change, and improve. We haven't had time to do the research yet, but as soon as we get our ducks lined up, we'll let you know.
12/7/11: We received our new web building program, Serif Web Plus x4, a couple days ago, and I can already see there is going to be a "learning curve" with it. We have gotten through the second of several tutorials, and covered only the creation of logos and titles. There is still a long way to go before we can actually start building a new site. We have also sold off the last of our "over-sized" 40-inch drawer dividers, and will not be stocking any more of them, although we may offer them through other sources, where they can deal with the shipping. They were always a problem, because we normally use Priority Mail to do most of our shipping. The Post Office provides the cartons free of charge, and their triangular mailing tubes come in 24 or 36-inch lengths. In order to ship 40-inch items, we have to mess around with cutting and coupling two mailing tubes end to end with tape. If the post office would just wise-up and make the shorter tubes about a 1/4-inch smaller in diameter than the larger ones, it would be easy to telescope two cartons together and make things easier for everyone! But maybe they don't want to mess with over-sized cartons any more than we do! Anyway, we are glad the long rails are finally gone from our inventory! We also sold the roll of Poly-tube that we had on hand to make "bags" for the long items and for the over-sized drawer divider kits that were exclusive to our company. Although there was a need that Ernst wasn't filling, and we sold a lot of them, some things are just more trouble than they are worth. For now, it's back to learning that new web builder on an all new and up to date operating system. But by learning all this ourselves, it allows us to do much more than we could afford to pay someone else to do, such as creating immediate web pages with special pricing and hidden, secure URL's for our large volume companies, and for updating inventory and prices as needed. The time is well spent.
12/4/11: We had a chance to go through some of the videos and tutorials on Serif Web Plus x4 today, and the capabilities just blow us away! It has a fantastic photo editing program built right into it that does almost everything that the professional photo editors can do! And since we also got 100,000 graphic arts and photo clips with it, we'll have plenty of opportunity to try it out. There's also many site templates, which if we can find one suitable, will save us a lot of time. But first things first... we have to do the new layout for the site. Since we are nearly sold out of the Ernst products, we will probably put the remaining items all on one page, and then add other pages for the new products we will be offering. Less pages means less maintenance. We also may have to add a transparent background around our existing logo if we still use it. It's actually an image, rather than text, so we have to determine if we want to stick with that or go back to text for a site title. There's a lot of background work that goes into a site that most people don't realize. Keywords have to be rechecked to see if they are still relevant, and then copy has to be revised accordingly. The position of all components will change with the new web builder, but yet we want to keep the look of the site recognizable as "Toolsorter". It takes a lot of planning and time to get everything where we want it. And that doesn't even include learning the new web builder program! We will be building the new site on the new computer we just acquired last week, and when we have it all complete, we'll dump it on the web server all at once. Hopefully, we will have this done by the first of the new year, or at least in January 2012. 12/3/11: Our new web builder program arrived in the mail today. We're going to be using Serif Web Plus x4. This will give us the ability to edit web sites from any computer, anywhere in the world without the need to have the program on the computer! It also builds it's own blogs, forms, does its own photo editing and many other things. There are so many new features with this new program that it is going to take some time to learn them all. |
Update: Some items we stock are:
============= Accessories: Face Mount Side Mount
Socket Clips
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Azgrand Internet Marketing |
