Even Lower Fees

In our about us section we have made a promise to keep our fees as low as possible. Due to our strong growth in our first few months of operation we have reassessed our objectives and decided it was possible for us to decrease our fees even further. Under our old fee structure, free stores were able to list up to 10 products at one time and were charged 2.9% per transaction while premium members were able to list unlimited items and charged 0.9% per transaction. Now free members can list unlimited items and are charged 2.9% per transaction while premium members can list unlimited items and all transaction fees are waived. We would like to thank all the merchants that have signed up and made this possible. As we grow and generated more revenue we will try to pass any savings as possible to our merchants. Our goal is to create the best selling experience possible, we hope this move is one step closer to that goal.

Ways to help you Customize

IndieMart is adding features every week, which is a good things because your free store can look as good as possible. However we understand that customizing your store can be a difficult task so today I will write a few quick tips on how to customize your store to start selling online as quickly as possible. Some people might ask if customizing your store is even important? It is one of the most important things you can do for your IndieMart store. Before customers see you product and buy online, they look at your store, this first impression is very important.
Currently we have premade themes were you can choose colors and displays for your boxes, or create your own customization. When choosing premade themes you still have the ability to move around modules and add or delete any modules you may have. These themes are more to help you choose combinations that look good and flow with your website.
The modules can be moved around or changed in the customized layout tab. This tab is very important because it will help customers stay on your page. You can upload or write a blog, put a introductory text about your product, attach your social media sites on this page or move the modules around. You want your web page to be as informative as possible and at the same time having them create a attachment to your page. By adding social media sites, even if the customer doesn't buy from your site, they might add your Facebook fan page or start following you on Twitter. This is very important as you not only want sales but also to create brand awareness for your product.
The add product tab is where you can add your products to the website. You have the ability to upload multiple photos of your product and we suggest you take a look at it. The more photos you upload, the greater the probability of a customer buying your product
The last topic today is the Google Analytics tab on your dashboard. It is important to add a Google Analytics code because knowing your traffic volume and where your merchants are from will help increase your sales. Using Google Analytics was an easy choice for us to incorporate because their statistics are extremely complete and offer a great geographical description.
By spending some time on these tabs, you will be able to increase the attractiveness of your store, and more importantly the time people spend browsing your site. Which will hopefully lead to increased sales, which is probably the reason you wanted to sell online in the first place.

Highligthing products

Every once in a while I like to highlight certian products on the site that I feel have caught my eye. Now to be fair this is usually going to be something handmade and for some strange reason I have a love affiar with glass or ceramic objects. I have no idea where this came from, but I really enjoy looking at handmade trinkets. Today I am going to highlight a store out of Bolivia which you can find here.
They make hand crafted minature homefronts out of ceramics, which in the stores own words can be best described as latin folk art. There are over 10 products to choose from so picking onve you like shouldn't be too difficult. The close up photo reveal very nice detail on the homes. If your into these sort of trinkets, this would be a nice pick up for yourself or gift for someone you know.

Recent Success and Milestones

First of all I would like to thank everyone who has made our first 6 weeks very successful. I am very proud of the growth we have achieved over this little bit and hope we can continue to growth from there. We have been featured in two prominent internet websites. Killerstartups.com and Feedmyapps.com both gave us great feedback and it is encouraging to get some recognition from other sources around the web. You can check out the killerstartups here and the feedmyapp here. Secondly today we are in the top 325000 website worldwide as traffic measured for the last week by Alexa. Considering we Started off in 4 millionth positon 6 weeks ago, this is growth I am very excited about. I hope our growth can continue at this pace and that some of you are able to become a part of it.
Thank you from the entire Indiemart team!!!

Big Stuff on the Horizon

Without giving away exactly what we are going to do, I am going to share with you a couple of improvements that we will be doing to our site over the next couple of weeks. Our goal it to create the best shopping/selling experience possible. While we feel we are off to a good start with our website, we made a promise early on we will never be content with he statusquo. One improvment which we will be implementing is to help you market your site as soon as it is launched. Once you decide to put your site live, you will be able to send dozens of people to it. Another improvement which we are working on is a step by step guide in how to customize your store. It can be a little overwhelming seeing all the features for the first time in IndieMart. We want to guide you through the store creation process as easily as possible. Dare I say it, we even want to make creating a store a fun experience for you guys. There is a whole lot of stuff coming down the pipe as well, but I am not going to lie, some of it is top secret stuff and I can't talk about it just yet!!!! But when it does come out, you can be sure that I will be the first one to tell you about it.

The Shirtjunky Store

Today I will do a feature on one of our merchants. To call their t-shirts funny would be an understatement. I really like their sense of humour as the t-shirts are affordable, look like they are really good quality and are very witty. My personal favourite is I eat out, it is really cleverly done. They have been selling online pretty quickly, and at $15 it appears to be a pretty good value. Their blogs states that the quality of their cotton is "Our fabric is 100% mercerized poly/cotton for a extra soft hand feel, wrinkle resistant fabric. Guaranteed to be the your softest most comfortable shirt you ever wore."
I am a big fan of high quality soft t-shirts, as I love vintage feel. Hopefully they will be able to grow as I always enjoy small companies with different ideas trying to succeed.

New Music Podacast by DJIAM

Recently DJIAM got a free store on Indie Mart. This is truely one of the more talented DJ's I have had the pleasure of listening to. THe podcast is a little long but you can download the song for free here. It has a really cool Euro beat to it, and from what I am told this style is all the rave in Europe now. I haven't heard this catch on in North America yet, but these guys have a really fresh sound which I think will take off. I really like the way they customized their store and I think they have a future in the North American Market.

Importance of Website Promotion

I thought I would share a summary on why website promotion is so important and the benifits it can bring. Not only do you increase traffice to your website but the right type of promotion will greatly help by increasing traffic that search engines send to your site as well. It has been documented that search engines account for over 90% of the intial traffic to a website, this is a valuable tool which should be exploited to it's fullest. The following summarry is taken from SEO providers and their take on how to quickly and effectively start your website promotion
Beginning a website promotion, you should start by listing your website with the web’s most popular directories. This way you are able to hook a large amount of traffic and visitors and it has a hand in ranking you through the search engines. You always want to be sure that your website is listed with as many of the major directories as possible. The second step you will want to take in website promotion, is get to know the search engines and make them work for you in a way that brings in more visitors and traffic to your website, If you have already placed your website with directories and have started to see an overall increase in traffic, then you have laid an important piece of the website promoting puzzle.
Next, you need to familiarize yourself with keyword optimization, SEO and Meta tags. I know these words may seem a little like their out of your league at first, but they really are not that difficult to understand what each one means. They will all lend help to your website and the number of visitors that will be drawn to visit it. You will also want to understand why links that are popular are used by search engines and how it determines your pages and their rankings.
After you feel you have learned all of these things and how they can make for a website that is high in visits, keep in mind that there are still even more things that you can do to increase the amount of traffic after the fact. Website promotion is also associated with keeping your website updated with fresh, informative content. This will keep the visitors you already have, returning often to your site and will keep your traffic up. Promoting your website is easy and you will learn the ropes in time.
Following this advice can help you on your www.indiemart.com site or any site which you may own. The amount of sales you are able to generate on your website will be a direct result of any work you perform promote your site. These are just a few quick easy steps to get you started to good sales growth. Building your online site is a slow process, but like anything after you put in the work, you should start to see slow growth over time.