The Chatterbox

Yahoo! Stores

A question has recently been pestering my (marketing) mind a bit. And that is, Are Yahoo! Stores a viable, or possibly even a better option for the average iEntrepreneur (Internet Entrepreneur in Randy-speak) who wants to open their own business on the Web?

Here's the way I've been looking at it when researching the question, with positives and negatives.

The Negatives first...

1. A Yahoo! Store, at $39.95 per month with a $50 setup fee for their basic account, is a bit more expensive on an ongoing basis then regular hosting would be for many. Note that this is looking at it from an ongoing, hosting/software only perspective. From a start-up perspective it is likely going to be less.

2. You have a bit less control over a Yahoo! Store than you would otherwise, if you were a code junkie and liked to tweak things. You also have less control over the type of Statistics you can gather since you're basically locked into what is offered, instead of being able to choose your own stats package.

Some things are just harder to do because of this lack of control.

That said, Yahoo! have recently taken some pretty healthy strides to overcome these types of deficiencies.

The Positives...

1. A Yahoo! Store does not require the type of technical knowledge that most other shopping cart software would. They've done a very good job of making it easy to get a store up and running.

2. They've even removed a lot of the hassle out of the process where getting a Merchant Account is concerned. Though you may pay a bit more for their integrated merchant processing solution than you could get on your own, it's easy. That said, pretty much any merchant account can be integrated. So it's not something that you're locked into.

3. With Yahoo's recent improvements, you can gain back some of the control over your site that simply wasn't there before. It used to be extremely difficult to SEO a Yahoo! Store. These days it's not. If you know HTML you can even totally customize your site.

4. As a Yahoo! Merchant you are privy to some pretty decent discounts on various advertising packages through Yahoo! This could certainly help a person to gain quick exposure with a reasonable advertising budget. Another money-saver is that you don't need to concern yourself with purchasing an SSL (Secure Socket Layers) Certificate for secure transactions.

5. Ease of Use. Simply put, getting a store up and running is a breeze, even without one having a technical background. This may actually end up being a money saver since an iEntrepreneur would not have to hire a Design Firm to design the site and a Tech to deal with your shopping cart software.

6. 24 Hour Support. You're simply not going to get this from the average design firm, tech or host. They even give you 30 days of Free Consulting to help you get off to a good start quickly. If nothing else, the folks at Yahoo! are absolute wizards at Marketing on the Internet. They have years and years of experience across multiple markets. It would certainly be nice to have such expertise on your side.

7. Access to the Yahoo! empire. That's right, if you don't mind spending a little money you can get access to all of those Yahoo! visitors, as well as visitors to Yahoo! partner sites. For those who may not know, Yahoo! is a behemoth in the Internet World. Their reach is everywhere.

8. Yahoo! has become much more open with data over the last year or so. This could be a key issue, since Information can not only make or break your business, but if used correctly could lead you to emerging, very lucrative markets before they become overwhelmed with compeitition.

9. They've made Yahoo! Stores options easily expandable. Meaning you could start out with a basic $40 per month package to test the waters, then expand your options easily and quickly when needed.

10. Possibly the most important, though intangible advantage is having the ability to immediately build Trust.

Building Trust between yourself or your site and prospective customers is one of the most difficult things to do, and is an absolute requirement if you're going to get the sale. This is just Human Nature. People are concerned about all sorts of privacy and security issues when purchasing something online to one degree or another. As they should be.

So let's say for example that you opened Joe Blow's Surf Shop on the web. Nobody is going to know anything about Joe Blow or his shop, so he's going to have to expend significant time and energy --which translates money-- to build Trust.

But what if Joe opened up his online shop as part of the Yahoo! Shopping Network? It still has Joe Blow's Surf Shop graphics and everything, but Joe's site is now also part of one of the more recognizable and most trusted Brands in the world! Is this worth a few more bucks per month?

After taking a new look at Yahoo! Stores, I'm pretty well convinced that the positives far outweigh the few negatives that still exist. Definitely for someone new to Internet Marketing because of the ease of use and limited cost of start-up. But even for old fogey's like yours truly who doesn't have a technical barrier and already has server space (so no cost hosting) available to him.

I've decided to start doing a little testing to see how well the perceptions I've based upon my research match up to reality. I'm going to do it a little bit differently. Rather than start a shop that I already have a product in mind for, I'm going to attempt to identify some products or services that are In Demand, then see if I can source someone or several someone's who will be willing to partner with me to function as a Drop Shipper.

I really don't want to have to --and frankly don't believe in having to-- stock a bunch of inventory. Sure I could probably get the products at a little better price, but I would then have an initial cash outlay to purchase the stock, have a place to store the inventory and have to deal with all of the shipping.

I want to stay away from that business model. Not only because I want to see how expensive or inexpensive it will be to get up and running (I'm guessing somewhere in the $500-$800 range) but because I want to come up with something that will be repeatable. Meaning coming up with a solid system, using Yahoo! Stores, to enable a person to diversify to both reduce market shift risks and also to expand their business.

I'm really convinced making use of a system like Yahoo! Stores is could ease the entry concerns of those who Have The Dream of owning their own home-based business or who want to become more independent finanacially. But somebody needs to work out the kinks and come up with a method that is as foolproof as possible.

I've got enough experiene and expertise in Internet Marketing to know if something is working or not pretty quickly. So when (not if) I make a mistake I should be able to identify and correct it before too much damage is done. You'll probably see me brainstorming with myself here in the near future.

Once I've nailed down the details I intend to release them so that they can serve as a guide for burgeoning iEntrepreneurs with little or no experience who want to Live The Dream.

As for me, I prefer to use Yahoo!, moreover, I use it every day, but I have never thought about its advantages or disadvantages. According to this fact, your information is very useful.