Life of an Online Business – My Pillow place

New Specials

Well, I’ve just added a new Kid Sized Faux Leather Bean Bag to both My Pillow Place and My Bean Bag Place.   This product is exactly like the Adult Sized version I added last week.  The product is called the Jaxx Tomato…I guess if you get the red one, it looks like a Tomato.  Anyways, now we have a My Pillow Place Tomato, and a My Bean Bag Place Tomato.  Here, here!

The next thing I’ve done, which I’m really excited about, is that starting in September 2010, I’m going to feature various products on Sale via special, individual coupon codes.  If you go to www.my-pillow-place.com you we see on the home page, a button on the top right of the page.  This button (which I made with a cool, rollover image swap) takes you to a page that features 2-3 products that will have coupon codes.  This My Pillow Place Savings Page is just what the doctor ordered in this economy.

P.S. if you click the Savings Page link in August, there will be no products there yet….Sometime in early September…thanks for clicking.

My wife mentioned that people, in this economy are all looking for savings.  So, if we feature a couple of things each week that we can put offer at a lower price, it may help people put that add to cart button.  I look forward to seeing if it helps.

Now to My Bean Bag Place

My Bean Bag Place is about bean bags…so naturally, the Faux Leather Bean Bags that I put on My Pillow Place last week have made their way over to My Bean Bag Place this week. My Bean Bag Place is starting to see an increase in traffic.  After months of stagnant traffic levels ranging from 25-35 per day, we’re starting to see a growth to the 45-55 visitor per day range. 

This is good.  I think at the 8 month mark for My Pillow Place, we were only averaging about 30 per day.  So these stats tell me that we’re ahead of the game.  This is good, but I’d like to start seeing more sales for this site.  We’re definately ahead in sales, but we really didn’t hit any sort of stride until October.  I’m hoping that this trend continues for My Bean Bag Place so the holiday season brings us more sales.

PayPal Shops

Since I added Paypal to www.my-pillow-place.com last week, we’ve actually got a few sales from that already.  It doesn’t tell me, however, if people would have bought with a credit card anyway.  But I’m glad to see that the method is already working.

One of the benefits I’ve found in joining Paypal, is the ability to submit my site for free to Paypal shops.  In addition to being put in their home & garden directory, I’m exposing my site to thousands of people who use paypal and shop this venue.  Its like a little shopping mall online.  The best part is getting my site listed on a page that has a Page Rank of 7.  A one way PR 7 link is an amazing thing.  I can’t think of another place where you can get a high value link like that….I’m anxiously awaiting for the 3-5 day waiting period while Paypal reviews my site and then places in on this page…I’ll be pinging that page as soon as I see me site listed.  I’ll be posting a link in this blog to that page so Google knows asap that  I have a link on a page of that magnitude.

This could be a game changer with my pursuit of some of the keywords I’ve been targeting and deep linking to.  It would take hundreds of page rank 1 links to equal one page rank 7 link.  So you can see the value there.

Paypal

I’ve made a new change to My Pillow Place.  One that I hope will expand our audience of wonderful customers.  I’ve added Paypal as a method of payment.  There’s a huge ebay crowd out there that loves paying with paypal because its easy and safe.

There’s also a huge contingent of people that are still weary about using credit cards on the internet.  And with all the fraud in the world, I don’t blame them.  So, I’ve done my visitors a solid and have presented this new method of payment.  (new to My Pillow Place, not the world).  Within a day of installing the Paypal account to the back end of our site, we got a sale using paypal.  I’d really like to track over the course of a whole year, what percent of our sales will come from Paypal. 

I’m really hoping that this brings in a whole new contingent of customers and makes My Pillow Place a very successful online store.  We’re growing and changing and evolving every day.  I spend lots of time keeping up with trends and changes in the internet.  Let’s hope this one pays off, even if I’m a little late to the Paypal party.