Finally after several hours - 6 to be exact - I'm in and searchable.

Now, how do you all know when you have received the sale from GB. My links are set up to go the the item in my store so I don't know how I will know.

After realizing that they go to the store I don't think I would have needed the shipping field I later put in. does anyone know?

Mary
www.blujay.com/cuteasabug
www.cuteasabug.biz

Mary:

Congrats!! GB can be very daunting, glad to hear you are "in like Flint"!

You should be able to use your site counter to see where people enter your store from, who the referrering URL and engine was - if they came from GB, you should see that in your reports.

Trying out Google Analytics, pretty comprehensive reports, but I still prefer AddFreeStats Used to use statcounter, but they haven't figured out yet how to keep your own visits from logging on a regular basis. You have to keep adding the cookie to block your visits, who wants to do that everytime you are working on your site??

As for shipping, I gave up on the bulk load, am now just spending half an hour or so every day, adding things by hand to GB. This way I know the shipping is RIGHT.

Why not add the shipping and a buy now button in addition to the link to your store? Get 'em coming and going Just started doing this:

Google Base Items

I'm out!

Last evening they sent me a review email stating that the title and description had to be cut/pasted from the store.

Now whether that is the short or long description - who knows.

I'm determined and have started working on the file to update it.

At this point I am convinced that entering one by one is the simpliest and least time consuming!

Here I am with only 57 items in and still having to correct.

My suggestion is this: Do a bulk upload with only a couple items - send it and wait a couple days before sending anything else. Their review process takes a couple days before finding anything wrong with the file. Then and only then can you celebrate!

Mary
www.cuteasabug.biz
www.blujay.com/cuteasabug

I went through this same thing a bunch of times before I got it right. I think your advice to try only a few items at first is a real time-saver.

And again, once they okay your file name, keep using that name! The OK applies to the file name, not to you or your items (that's so weird, I think!).

Once your items are live, you will see hit counts and page views in your Base item page. And when you sell, they send an email to let you know, so watch your spam filter!

I'm sorry you had trouble getting okayed, but not surprised. Keep at it!

So far so good on getting that dreaded email from the Google B. Team. I haven't seen any further activity on my items.

Published and searchable should mean available, but it also could mean they have to review first?

I still have to wonder if I am going to get an email - the way my items go - they take them to the web page where they would select the size and checkout just like any customer hitting the site?

Mary
www.blujay.com/cuteasabug
www.cuteasabug.biz

I've got about 400 items in g-base. They get viewed but I don't see any clicks. So far I don't think it has generated sales. But it was free. Of course this is what FEEBAY charges you for. That's the big advertising budget for store owners.

Took me about 3 weeks to bump FEEBAY's listings of my stuff off.

I have had 7 clicks on 57 items. I would think this defeats the Adwords portion of Google, but I'm not complaining since Adwords has not done but around 3-4% clicks/impressions.

The pageviews are high on these items considering the low click rate?

I'm just thankful to no longer be hassling with format and now feeling somewhat comfortable with adding to the bulk upload.

Mary
www.cuteasabug.biz
www.blujay.com/cuteasabug

I was running adwords. But my budget would get eaten up in 1 day. I mean thousands of views and I had a 20% CTR on some ads. I couldn't affoard it since it didn't generate much in sales.

The review email has arrived (sigh).

I thought Froogle was going away, but during this process I was told to make sure not to use a custom category are when submitting GB or it won't be published in Froogle.

So I used the existing "product" category on my re-submit.

They also stated in this review email to update once a week is recommended and to use the same file name as mentioned in another post.

It is going to be interesting to see if there is more traffic to items since the Published and Searchable comes a couple days ahead of this email I have been thinking they don't release the file until after review.

Mary
www.cuteasabug.biz
www.blujay.com/cuteasabug