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I wondered instead of forwarding the site that if I built a normally hosted site that said "An affiliate of Store X" enter her if this would throw off Yahoo Stores tracking. They are hitting us for about $8,000 a month.
Someone already told me no. Any suggestions. $100,000 a year ads up, especially since Yahoo Stores have nothing to do with Yahoo or a Directory listing.
Paid help for this situation if required.
The Yahoo Store has more features than anything you will find on the net and we get 15-20 sales through Yahoo Shopping.
What I need is something to circumvent the 3.5% that is tacked onto Yahoo Sales.
Have you heard of something called an E-Tail?
"Regarding circumventing Yahoo! fees, I would guess that the best solution is also fairly difficult to implement, but taking the longview, quite worth it. That is, simply create your own e-tail applications to track orders. This will cost $$, but probably less than what you're paying Yahoo! per year..."
Alex, what do you mean "Yahoo affiliate"? Does that mean for every sale made at a Yahoo store they charge 3.5%?
And what was the response you just posted, was that from an email?
Yes, any sale that comes through a Yahoo Affiliate, be it a directory listing, Overture on Yahoo, or Yahoo Stores. The amount of money we are spending is killing us.
We have purchased several sites with Yahoo Directory listings. Why can I not just make a one page site with the URL and float this by Yahoo Stores?
I am not sure why they should get $8,000 a month from us when they have nothing to do with Yahoo istelf.
I'm sure you don't want to make use of yahoos store infrastructure services without paying for them?
$10,000 a moth and it goes up each month is very steep for a Ecommerce business.
As I said earlier, can someone help with the question that was asked?
I wondered instead of forwarding the site that if I built a normally hosted site that said "An affiliate of Store X" enter her if this would throw off Yahoo Stores tracking. They are hitting us for about $8,000 a month.
I think that may be where we're losing the specific of what you're looking to find out.
You can have any number of sites that are affiliates of "Your-Yahoo-Store" but if visitors to those sites go to the Yahoo store to actually make the purchases, it still may incur the fee. I'd think it would.
An alternative is to take another domain you've got and develop and promote a site, which is what I think you're asking about, and instead of sending people to the Yahoo store to make the purchase, have a shopping cart like MIVA that tracks orders, keeps inventory and also might handle affiliate tracking, and use a regular merchant account and secure certificate with hosting that's altogether separate from the Yahoo store.
If the Yahoo store includes a merchant account, it may not be all that much different than a regular store hosted elsewhere, since there would be fees for purchases for the credit card processing. Hosting is only about $50 a month including the Miva cart, the certificate is purchased, and there are choices for the merchant account with different fee structures. You could also use Americart, which is remotely hosted, though I don't believe it has inventory tracking, which some don't need anyway.
You might want to check the cost of different options, and in your place I think I'd try one other store arrangement just for a cost comparison.
The Yahoo Store has more features than anything you will find on the net and we get 15-20 sales through Yahoo Shopping
Is it worth3.5% ?
Theres a good calc [protx.com ]
to compare costs of some well known alternatives
I love the Yahoo Store. It's features are unmatched and we get about 15-20 sales from YAHOO SHOPPING a day. I would like to keep the store but $10,000 a month is steep.
If I hosted www.widgets-widgets.com somewhere esle and when Yahoo's Directory sent a customer that way, it would not go directly to the store but a seperately hosted domain. Is there a way to prevent the tracking of this?
As a side note:
Can someone link me to Brett's Article's on Alternate Traffic and 26 moths to a successful site on GOOGLE?
I pay $299 for a listing in the directory.
Yahoo Shopping charges me .10 a product, .05% a sale, and 3.5% for each Yahoo Network and Shopping Sale. This is robbery.
I can have as many domains pointed at my store as I want. Suppose I move www.widgets-widgets.com to a seperate host and buy another domain - www.widgets-4-sale.com and point it at my store.
A Yahoo customer clicks on www.widgets-widgets.com and it takes them to a sperately created site hosted elsewhere. Each link on that site points to www.widgets-4-sale.com, which is now pointing at my Yahoo Store. Will this work?
So say you have a yahoo store called blue-widgets.com, and used it as a sale/clearance front for widgets-widgets.com... at the bottom of every page is a graphic or banner reading "For our FULL SELECTION of Wdigets of ALL COLORS, visit widget-widget.com".
Keep maybe 10% of your total available items on the blue-widget yahoo store domain, and direct people to your regular domain.
However, the regular domain store wouldhave to have it's own non-Yahoo shopping cart system, etc. You couldn't host a site on Yahoo Stores' servers, and duck out of paying Yahoo their fee...
www.widgets-widgets.com
Once you are on the seperately hosted site there would be links to buy
Blue-Widget-a
Green-widget-c
etc..
Yahoo Stores only started this crap about six months ago.
widgets-widgets.com is a Yahoo Store.
Currently, blue-widgets.com is listed in Yahoo, and redirects directly to widgets-widgets.com.
You are being charged a fee every time a click on blue-widgets.com leads to a sale on widgets-widgets.com
If you build a page/small site for blue-widgets.com, hosted somewhere other than Yahoo, with links to the widgets-widgets.com store (instead of redirecting immediately like it does now)... you are hoping it will enable you to not pay the yahoo fee on the directory referrral?
Sounds like it would work. Can't hurt to try it anyhow... considering how cheap webhosting is these days.
It's referenced in the Google Knowledgebase, along with
a ton of other goodies:
[webmasterworld.com...]
www.widgets-widgets.com would point to a site that my Yahoo Store now has a domain pointing at it called www.widgets-widgets.NET?
Will it work?
$10,000 a month is stealing especially when they drop this bomb on people who have been customers for three years.
I think (and I can't prove any of this, 'cause I've never tried it) if you did what I suggested above... build a separate small site at Blue-Widgets.com, where all the product info linked to corresponding pages on Widgets-Widgets.com, that would get around the directory referral tracking, because there would be a non-Yahoo referrer on the last click leading to the Yahoo Store.
The Yahoo Directory referral click would lead to Blue-Widgets.com, but the link to Widgets-Widgets.com (the Yahoo Store) would have Blue-Widgets.com as a referrer. You'd essentially be acting as your own affiliate.
I wouldn't do multiple-step domain redirects leading to a site. That would seem too shifty if anyone really looked at it.
the directory listing goes to blue-widgets.com and the affiliate listing from the links on that small site go to blue-widgets.net.
Get it, Got it, Good.
I have a website outside of yahoo. This was my original website from way back from before I got a yahoo store. When I attempted to get my site listed in yahoos directory I submitted my url [sitename.com...] - After I was listed in yahoos directory - (AND out of the whats new section of yahoo listings) I changed the product links to point INTO my yahoo store.
Here is an example:
Someone types in the keyword phrase I am listed in under into yahoo directory.
When they click on my link, it brings them to my index page which is TOTALLY SEPERATE from yahoo [sitename.com...]
Once on my index page if they click on a product to order it brings them into my yahoo store [store.yahoo.com...]
Since my yahoo directory listing did not point directly to my yahoo store I do not get charged the 3.5% revenue fee. I only get charged that when someone finds my store thru yahoo shopping ... why?? because the link in yahoo shopping is a direct link to INSIDE my yahoo store.
For those who already have a yahoo listing and it points directly to their yahoo store, you will get charged 3.5% on all transactions because it goes directly into your yahoo store.
This has been my experience, I hope it helps.
One theory would be to create a new domain with a fully working site and get it listed in yahoo. Once your site is listed in yahoo and out of the "whats new" sites in yahoo, swap out the links on your index page so instead of going to the order pages in your site they go to order pages inside your yahoo store. In theory this should bypass the yahoo 3.5% revenue share.
Although time consuming, if you are paying several thousands of dollars per month in revenue share charges it would certainly be worth a try. My strong suggestion would be to read planet ocean communications unfair advantage book and follow the directions exactly. There are some very specific directions you MUST follow if you are going to try to create a new company name and get it listed in yahoo. If you dont do it correctly your listing will get rejected by yahoo and you will be out the $299 fee.
I was unsuccessful in getting listed in Yahoo for almost 3 years. I read the book and followed the instructions to the letter and got listed #3 in yahoo under my keyword.
Good luck!
[edited by: Marcia at 7:32 am (utc) on Aug. 11, 2002]
[edit reason] sorry, no url's please [/edit]
Every customer who finds you via yahoo.. whether the yahoo shopping, yahoo directory or anywhere on yahoo.. they get a cookie put in their browser.. for 30 days if they visit your site for any reason and buy yahoo charges you that extra 3.5 percent. The only way to avoid this is i think like others are saying.. build a whole nuther site and try to feed them into your store..the cookie I dont think would land via your store cause they found you through yahoo yes but first landed on a non yahoo store to buy from you cause you had your new site that then said to buy, come to my yahoo store. The one thing i like is yahoo stores are always live and their servers are never down. Before my yahoo store I had a miva store hosted by hostway.. not reliable enough... went down, had alot of problems and as we all know.. if your down when mr googlebot or any of the searches come along.. your up the creek for a month. They kill me with their yahoo store fees but until someone finds something that can be done.. i think its worth it. If you know of any other way around this.. please stickymail me..Thanks
PS I really would like to put in a script that cleans out ones cookie cache before they get to the shopping cart so the yahoo 30 day cookie would be cleaned out. But then again, if their was such a script and yahoo found out you had this, wouldnt they kick you out right away?
