I've been doing online sales for about ten years. I haven't gotten rich, but it's been a decent living. A year ago I built a new site for my online store, and increased my products from about 300 sku's to nearly 6,000 (hunting and sporting goods-related, not weapons). Things were doing well enough, then a few things happened:
1. In September, Google changed their policy on prohibited items, and since my site sells some of those items, I'm no longer allowed to advertise on Google.
2. Weeks later, Bing informed me that they had also changed policy, and my site would no longer be allowed.
3. Paypal notified me that my products violated their policy, and I could no longer use Paypal for payment.
4. The two manufacturers whose products make up the bulk of my profits began enforcing their MAP policies stringently. I had to stop showing my prices and instead show the MAP prices, with a message to Add to Cart to see the discounted price. In my ads for these products on other sites, I had to come up with coupon codes. However, the manufacturers have told me that I cannot tell the customers how much they'll save. I can only tell them that there's coupon codes and tell the customer to add to cart to see the price.
My sales have dropped like a rock. Without Google and Bing ads, traffic has dropped tremendously. The "add to cart to see our discounted price" method isn't working. People are scared. And, without some indication of how much somebody can save by using coupon codes, traffic from those sites where I advertise them has dropped off.
On other product lines I sell, I have good prices, but the big retailers who buy in large quantities have much lower prices. (Ironically, it's these same retailers who push my main two manufacturers to enforce MAP prices, as the manufacturers don't give volume discounts).
I've tried a number of different advertising venues over the years, but Google Adwords and Google Shopping, and to a lesser extent Bing, were the best performers. Google organic results were the absolute best, but getting back to the first page isn't working out for me.
I've been racking my brain as to what to do, and the only thing I can think of is to thrown in the towel. I just can't think of another way to attract buyers.
Any suggestions?
