Mike_McKnight - 5:47 am on Aug 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

>but instead became a landing for people who want to know >how to make handblown glass bracelets. hmmmm

who made the easy money? the masses panning for gold
or the merchants that sold the blue jeans, picks and shovels?

I have been running an ecomm site since '95 and get about
3,500 to 4,500 uniques/day much more after Thanksgiving.
But every summer I go crazy like you trying to figure out
what's wrong with my website , products, prices etc.
The facts is summer for ecom site that sell hard products
especially giftware SUCKS!

I can say that it's all a numbers game, you need to see
much larger numbers to get solid revenue streams.

One thing you might try is affiliate programs like shareasale. At least you will feel like you are trying accomplish something you may not have tried before.

I have had dozens of wannabes sign up with stars in their eyes , but they set up affiliate link farm sites and
most of them never get it that they won't get anywhere like
that. But I have two affiliates that send about 1,200 / day
to us and that traffic does convert very well, but they both
run sites that are very focused on specific topics and have tons of content about the topic and tons of links back to
specific pages on our site.

When it gets slow slow I try different things out of fear,
like this summer I setup pages with low priced items,
that have very high profit margins, thinking that because of high gas prices or the war or whatever is in the news that's bad , I'd sell more low priced stuff and still make good money.

It didn't happen like I thought at all. I didn't sell tons
of the low priced stuff, probably about the same number of
sales as any other summer , so total revenue didn't sore
because instead of selling two or three 75 dollar items
I'd sell two or three 7 to 9 dollar items.

My observation is that folks will buy quality crafted items
if they are presented well , good sharp photos and good
descriptions etc. if they have extra money , but folks won't buy even low priced goods if they don't have extra money.

Its not that I took all the expensive stuff off my website
and replaced it with low priced stuff, they were both there
but perhaps the presence of the low priced stuff turned off
the affluent buyers a bit, the folks that don't have a lot
of extra money are still reluctant to spend even on low priced stuff.
just my 2cents
Mike