Are you living off your OsC store?

[grwolf]

Our online sales makes up a large part of our business. We have processed $490,307 in online orders since March of last year. We also sell wholesale to dozens of distributors and retailers across the US. I have been a long time user of open source software, and we are continuing to use OsCommerce.

 

Visit our site to learn more about our product: www . smartshopperusa .com

 

I'm just curious about how many of you guys are making a living off the sales you make through your OsCommerce powered websites.

 

Do you collect any money at all or do you use it for marketing?

If the earnings does not cover all of your income, what else do you do?

 

Me, I have had the store up for a couple of years now.

The company has good economy and all income comes from the site.

We have yet to take out salary from the business as we are building fundings for expansion.

We have taken out stuff mostly, as salary so far.

 

What are your stories?

 

Zipper

[mmart621]

I just finished my site for health supplements and other health products (http://www.nutritionalmart.com). Now I am looking for the best marketing ways to implement and generate more traffic so I hope the company can grow, as we are not drop shippers or anything like that and our items are in stock. But generating good traffic is a challenge and takes a lot of time. For those of you who were able to generate good sales online, how did you start off your internet marketing to get traffic? Did you use a lot of marketing dollars, or are there some cost-effective methods that work well?

[homewetbar]

I was just re-reading this forum and I just thought I'd post something you all reading this forum considering an osCommerce store may find interesting that happened to us awhile back. We've managed an oscommerce site for about 3 1/2 years now and it's been great, so great in fact one of our largest competitors actually switched to osCommerce from their previous provider a year or so ago after seeing our site, and they are a big catalog company! That should tell you something if you're on the fence, yes even bigger catalog companies like our competition run sucessful osCommerce stores, so it is very possible to grow with osCommerce.

[Luciel]

Well i just started using OSC seriously, basically i´ve had a physical shop for a year now and i figured i´d go online and start selling, i´ve had a few troubles here and there (i know it sounds stupid but getting the SSL all set up on the server was a pain in my ass), still adding products and working on the design, but i had my first sale yesterday so i´m very pleased.

 

My shop is a computer shop that specialises in modding and "gaming" computers and products, for what i´ve been looking i can tell that i´m pretty much the only one in spain, in fact in ciao.es, the biggest ciao site of em all, my shop is the only one with a lot of modding products, so i´m really happy about this, i hope it can help me with the shop, as since it´s a very specific field, it can´t succed just depending on the real shop.

 

In any case i´m very gratefull to the OSC team, there´s a few things i´d like them to fix (like compatibility with apache 2.2) but other than that i´m really happy.

 

Thanks OSC!

[adam777]

Hi Adam,

 

Just for the record, I'm using cDynamic Metatags, not the header tags contribution. :)

 

I don't do much marketing at all, to be perfectly honest. The bulk of my business comes from search engine hits (easily 90%). My company also sponsors a number of Clans (teams of online gamers), and they in turn give my business publicity on their web sites. It's important for my business to support the Australian gaming community. Indeed, the primary goal of Aussie Clans Pty Limited (the company that owns Games Depot) is to help Australian Clans grow. By maintaining a positive and consistent presence in the Australian gaming community, Aussie Clans, and therefore Games Depot, receives great word of mouth referrals.

 

Having said that, I do intend to start marketing the business through more traditional channels over the next 12 months. I think a small print campaign would do to start with (my Dell colour laser printer will get a workout!). It's difficult to compete against the likes of EB, who are well established in the market and seemingly springing up in every shopping centre known to man. Still, I believe excellent customer service and overall lower prices will help my business compete in this arena.

 

Will I earn a living from it? One day, I hope so! Will it happen in the next 12 months? Probably not. Give it time :D

 

Max

 

Hi Max

 

Is that a contribution that puts the preorder button in your product description? If so, which one?

 

Thanks

Adam

[maxxxie]

Adam, it's something I knocked together myself. I won't give you the full code, as this file is heavily modified, but here's something that should get you started:

 

Code snippet from product_info.php - this produces the orange text "Due for release on xxxxx - taking pre-orders now" text that appears next to the product's picture:

			if (futuredate($release_date)) {
			$qty = "<b>Due for release " . sprintf(tep_date_long($release_date)) . " - taking pre-orders now!</b>";
			$qty_colour = 'f79429';
		}

 

There's also another bit in product_info.php which replaces the "add to cart" button with the "preorder" button. Note that the preorder button is one I created by modifying the add to cart button's PSD (it was from a downloaded contribution). Also, you'll need to define the IMAGE_BUTTON_PRE_ORDER constant (I think this is in includes/languages/english/product_info.php, but don't quote me on that).

		<?php
		if (futuredate($release_date)) {
			?> <td class="pageHeading" align="right" valign="top"><?php echo $products_price; ?><br><?php echo tep_draw_hidden_field('products_id', $product_info['products_id']) . tep_image_submit('button_pre_order.gif', IMAGE_BUTTON_PRE_ORDER); ?></td>
		<?php } else {
			?> <td class="pageHeading" align="right" valign="top"><?php echo $products_price; ?><br><?php echo tep_draw_hidden_field('products_id', $product_info['products_id']) . tep_image_submit('button_in_cart.gif', IMAGE_BUTTON_IN_CART); ?></td>
		<?php
		} ?>

 

 

The futuredate() function is one I yanked from someplace I can't remember, and resides in includes/functions/general.php:

function futuredate($t) {
if (strtotime($t) < time()) {
	return false;
} else {
  		return true;	
  }
}

 

You will need to do some fiddling to get this text and picture etc to appear where you want it to (HTML tables are involved). Be sure to test this offline first, and backup everything so you can restore if it all goes pearshaped. Good luck :)

 

Max

[Guest]

Our oscommerce shop has been up for 2 years and we are on our 2nd version. We don't have a bricks and mortar store.

 

It doesn't pay me an income but I do pay part-time wages to two people and it is supporting the development of several other sites.

 

It's slowly but steadily improving and we look forward to an exciting future.

[Guest]

Well I can honestly say I know I will be able to make a living off my OSC store. ONLY been up a month and 10 days and have made $2320.00+ In Profits. Atleast and that's just from my credit card orders. Yesterday alone I made $945.00 in Gross.

 

Since I signed up for a merchant account the orders have just been rolling in. I've started other stores before and I didn't have this much success at all. It takes trial and error but I'm finally getting it.

 

Goodluck to everyone here just know it can be done.

[digilee]

donald > from this one? www.detaildirectory.com

[Guest]

nope not from that one, I would've if my host didn't actually hack it so much. That site has been gone Digilee. :-"

[chimol]

nope not from that one, I would've if my host didn't actually hack it so much. That site has been gone Digilee. :-"

 

So, can you PM me the link to your site? I'd like to see what a good profitable site looks like.

Steve

[luckyno]

So, can you PM me the link to your site? I'd like to see what a good profitable site looks like.

Steve

 

me too I'm interested... thank you.

[Guest]

Sending now guys!!

[luckyno]

Sending now guys!!

 

nothing received until now...

[Guest]

nothing received until now...

 

Just sent it sorry been busy as heck.

[Guest]

I would also be interested in that link

[warleb]

I Started my company in 2005, gave up work in 2006.

 

We have a good brand and great products but owning an online business takes a lot of hard work. You need to work at it all the time. You can see the results.

 

We are in partnership with some big manufacturers from around the UK and Europe. Google ads are costing a small fortune so need to improve our google rankings for out particular brand of product. any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Let me know your thoughts.

 

Cheers

Steve

 

www . fyhl . co . uk

[homewetbar]

I Started my company in 2005, gave up work in 2006.

 

We have a good brand and great products but owning an online business takes a lot of hard work. You need to work at it all the time. You can see the results.

 

We are in partnership with some big manufacturers from around the UK and Europe. Google ads are costing a small fortune so need to improve our google rankings for out particular brand of product. any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Let me know your thoughts.

 

Cheers

Steve

 

www . fyhl . co . uk

Nice site but you should have a larger default image on the product page. Start a new topic in the site critique section though, this is not the appropriate forum for a site critique...