Starting a Yahoo! Business for Dummies

By Rob Snell

Book Overview

Turn browsers into buyers, boost traffic, and more Build your store from scratch, or make the one you have more profitable His online business has been paying his mortgage for years. Now Rob Snell is sharing his Yahoo Store secrets for planning, building, and managing an online store that delivers the goods Here's how to profit from keywords, handle credit-card payments, find out what's hot in other stores, maximize your marketing efforts, and much more. Discover how to Use the Yahoo Store Editor and Manager Plan effective store navigation Use better images to sell more products Build successful advertising strategies Generate more traffic from search engines

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764588737
• ISBN13: 9780764588730
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 436 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Must read for those considering starting a Yahoo! business

The idea of getting involved in a Yahoo! business has been both exciting and overwhelming, however Rob's book has provided a wealth of information. Besides helping to better understand the intricacies of a Yahoo! business, this book provides a comprehensive checklist to ensure that you don't miss any steps in the process of starting your own store, maintaining it, and growing it... Thanks!

Profitability in Plain English

One would expect that a "For Dummies" book would have lots of straight-forward information about the subject matter, as this one does. But the added bonus are the witty insights and personal touches that the author shares to bring you close and make you comfortable with the subject. One gets the impression that, "Hey, maybe if this guy from Mississippi can master this and make some money, so can I!" Rob Snell has obviously gone all-out to make the reader profitable. This isn't just a book of basics that leaves the reader somewhat short of fully equipped. Instead, even an experienced Yahoo store owner can page through the book and pick up advanced profitability tips that can be implemented immediately. The layout is outstanding. Besides providing a information that can be used in a step-by-step manner, it lends itself to usefulness as a follow-up reference. From investigation into what a Yahoo store is all about, through the planning and building process, right up to fine tuning profitability, this book has it all. Even the index is impressive--very comprehensive. That is extremely useful when you've read the book and want to refer back to a specific feature or control. I would recommend anyone considering a Yahoo store start by consuming this book. If you already have a Yahoo store, don't be put off by the "For Dummies" moniker--there is much information in here to make experienced owners smarter and more profitable.

Must Have Book For Yahoo Store Owners

Have operated a Yahoo store for 7 years and although I feel fairly versed in the ins and outs of the Yahoo Platform was glad to have a book that gives me a complete overview of how to operate, maintain, and improve our sites. This is a great book for beginners and mature owners; it can be used as a reference guide for what you have forgotten and what you have not yet learned. To me Robs keyword secrets and data mining is the most important section, I have used it to lower my CPC on keywords by using terms the customer actually buys with. By using his techniques I have found some cheaper, yet more relevant keywords that are bringing in sales and have discarded some broader keywords that cost a lot money but did very little to improve my bottom line. I was very pleased with his book and keep it by my computer where I am always looking through it as a great reference guide, my recommendation is buy it if you have a Yahoo store, will make your business life a lot easier and more profitable.

Great Book - a Must Have for anyone who wants to start a Yahoo Store

I have been a yahoo store owner since 1997 and I feel that I know Yahoo store pretty well, but I still made myself read Rob Snell's book Yahoo Store for Dummies from cover to cover and I found information that I didn't even know existed. Needless to say I implemented some of the tips and tricks right away. Chapter 15 on customizing the check-out page is invaluable for lowering your shopping cart abandonment rate. Chapter 17 on driving traffic that converts, where Rob does his magic with pulling the keywords from within Yahoo's data to convert them into Google Adwords campaign. He teaches you to use the data that you already have and how to mine these keywords effectively. I'm still working my way through the book and adding in features like cross sell at check-out. I could go on and on about what a wonderful resource book it is, but you have to read the book for yourself, I'm not going to share all his secrets in this review. Shirley Tan [...]

Not just for beginners. This book is solid gold for pros too.

First of all, let me start by saying that I have been using Yahoo Store since 1998, and have run an ecommerce business full time since 1999, when I quit my day job. I picked up a copy of this book to give to a friend who was starting up a Yahoo Merchant Solutions site to sell online. I figured it would be a good way to give them a reference guide so that they wouldn't have to ask me 10 million questions about how to add a new product, or how to upload a photo, etc. I bought the book without even looking inside. But I started flipping through it the day before I was going to give the book away. Once I realized how great the book was, I ended up keeping it and buying a different copy for my friend! This book covers all the basics for people who don't know much about getting started. But more importantly, it has a ton of really great high level strategies and tactics that even someone like me who has been using Yahoo Store for almost 10 years can use. In fact, one specific part of the book about the cross selling feature made me realize I was approaching cross selling all wrong. I spent about two hours making some changes to my Yahoo Store, and the store made an additional $10,387.42 in cross sells in the 90 days following those changes. (Yes, that's a real number. Any Yahoo Store will run a simple report to look it up, and that's what I just did.) That's just ONE thing I learned from the book. I have a list of 16 other changes that I am starting to implement because of what I learned. Ideas like optimizing my photos better, creating more buyer guides, improving my About Us page, improving the checkout pages, etc. And I haven't even re-read the book yet. In summary: This book is not just for beginners! You're going to find good stuff in it even if you're a pro. Rob Snell, you are my Yahoo Store hero. Thank you for writing this book.