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Am I Being Scammed?
I'm not quite sure if the content of this post violates the rules of this community, but oh well, only one way to find out!
Scammers tend to prey upon desperate people, and I confess that I am a desperate person. I opened my e-commerce website over two years ago, in October 2019, and I feel as though I've been beating my head against a wall ever since. I didn't expect to see results immediately, despite already having a few customers lined up (or so I thought). Of course, we all know exactly what happened three months later, and as a result, my steadily growing income from my already established e-commerce ventures was completely wiped out, thanks to everyone being... well, unless you've been living in a cave for the past two years, you already know. 2020 was my worst year for e-commerce, so I survived by buying and selling big pharma stocks (and had I the foresight to buy Novavax stock, I'd be a millionaire by now). 2021 saw some slight recovery on the e-commerce front, but my website's performance was still abysmal. I sold a single item in 2020 (@holovision bought a blueprint and shared it here) and only three in 2021. Three months ago, however, I was finally approached by a SEO/SMO company that offered to help promote my website. They even set up a Facebook page for my business, which has proven to be a huge boon. Now, however, I'm starting to get worried. The company has offered to build me a new website, but the minimum price tag of $4000 was a bit steep (since I don't have that kind of cash on hand anyway after already spending that amount on their services, and my landlord/business partner isn't going to cover my arse forever), and now I'm scrambling to reorganise my website to make it much more functional. Unfortunately, just as I was in the process of reorganising my Soviet tank catalogue, this message appeared in my inbox:
I am seriously concerned about this. I know that I'm not the greatest web designer (mostly because I'm an amateur, I can count the number of websites I've made on one hand), so they may very well be correct in saying that my site's design is so bad that no amount of fiddling within the confines of WordPress's StoreFront template will make it appealing to potential customers. On the other hand, I have no idea what a "professional" website is supposed to look like. I assume that a company such as Automattic (which owns WordPress) would create templates that facilitate the creation of websites that people will visit and stay at for a while, so it ought to be possible to simply change the visual design (which is terrible in my case) and fix the problem, but I simply don't know. What do you think? @taliakerch, since your 3D print shop is more successful than mine while being only half as old, I would especially value your input.
On a related note, I tried to share an update here on Hive, but I couldn't get SteemPress to connect, so my latest blog post from my website isn't showing up here. The plugin settings suggest that it's a problem on the WordPress end, but I'd like to exhaust all other options first. @thelogicaldude, since I'm fairly certain it was you who told me about SteemPress in the first place, do you know what's going on there?
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15 commentsThey changed steempress after the Hive fork to Exxp. Try installing that and see if it helps. Other than that, you will have to attempt to contact the devs on their discord.
Where do I find Exxp?
Exxp.io
Thanks! I just installed it, now I'll see if I can re-post my update. Fingers crossed!
On second thought, I decided to just make a new test post. It works!
I don't know Wordpress, or any other website development tool, but I suspect you will want to take some time to seriously analyze how you want your page to look in the end. Here's my free advice, and it may only be worth what you pay for it:
I recommend ignoring all the bells and whistles of current trendy designs and just focus on what your side needs for functionality first. Flair can come later once functionality is established.
The presentation hierarchy in that letter makes sense to me. As your collection grows, it makes sense to have a structured way for people to find what they want.
Don't have any background images behind your text. I do like the black background and white text, though. Contrast is important for readability.
All told, I don't think you need to pay money for SEO. See if your local library has a Wordpress for Dummies book. Use Firefox or Chrome to see behind the scenes and learn how other people solve problems.
Thanks, a lot of this I already knew. I can't change the font with my current template unless I pay $70 for the extension pack, but I'll worry about that after all the important stuff is taken care of. I got rid of my background image. My biggest problem, and this is the "beating my head against a wall" part, is getting people to actually buy stuff. I have ZERO marketing talent, as you may have noticed.
I know little about marketing myself, but I have sat through a fair few meetings and a couple training days. You have a niche market. A Facebook page might help draw attention. Cross-promoting between Facebook, HIVE, and your own sales site will help SEO on its own.
What is your audience? Armor enthusiasts? Wargamers? 3D printing hobbyists? What sets your prices for files or models, and are you aiming too high or too low? There are many factors to consider.
Niche market, tell me about it. I used to sell tonnes of these things on Shapeways, but ever since the price gouging began, the wargamers scattered to the four winds, and I have no idea where they went to for 3D printed miniatures. A number of former Shapeways shop owners took to selling files on either Thingiverse, Wargaming3D, or Minihoarder, since everyone and their mother has a resin 3D printer by now.
I thought I would already have customers back when I launched my website, since the price for 1:285 scale tanks tripled after Shapeways changed its pricing formula to be a flat $15 for everything below a certain size. No-one wanted to pay that, so I figured "if I can offer the same models at the old prices, people will buy them, and instead of getting only my markup, I'll keep all the money." Everybody wins except Shapeways. My pricing system isn't simply copying the old formula, I actually add up (resin volume x cost) + (print time x electricity cost) + (post-processing time x hourly labour rate) + tech tree bonus rounding up to the nearest five cents (because I'm a capitalist pig). Turns out, I'm about 27% cheaper than Shapeways old pricing system.
Other than World of Tanks or War Thunder, I never found out what games my customers played, though I could always tell the tabletop gamers, since they bought tanks in batches of 5-20 at a time. Guest purchases meant that I couldn't even contact my customers unless there was a problem with the order, so data gathering was out of the question. That's why I asked if anyone played in 1:285 scale a month ago in the Tabletop/DND community.
Just a note, WordPress is open source, nobody owns it. Automattic owns the com website, and the WooCommerce plugin. That means the themes range from dangerous to wonderful and everything in-between.
Interesting, I wasn't aware of that detail. I simply assumed that Automattic owned it because it's the hosting provider... which was a really stupid assumption, now that I think about it. That would certainly explain why my footer says "powered by WordPress and Storefront."
At least you know precisely how inept I am at this whole endeavour!
I’ve got to be careful what I say about SEO/web agencies work or quotes etc due to my day job but I’m happy to give tips if you need :)
Well, as I mentioned, I'm in the middle of re-organising it, so it's back to being a work-in-progress, but once I have that all done, I'll let you know. I'm getting a lot of input right now; not long after the group I'm referencing here set up my Facebook business page, another group reached out to me that does something similar, and they will conduct a "website audit" sometime next week. I just hope that I don't get too much conflicting information.
You will 100% get conflicting information because that is just how these things work ;)
Most important thing is to focus on the customer, which is your expertise, don't get too distracted with technology and tactics :)
Just noticed you print with formlabs printers? Whoah! :D
One of the maker spaces I am a part of has one formlabs, great machines but too spendy for me :)