Thankyou, Zap, I'm just getting started in this and want to make it work. This post gave me some really great hints.

Thank you... all of this has been extremely helpful!

Yeah, this is a great post to help fledgling store owners. Like me I really think this will help me out. Cheers!

Mandy The British American Store

One comment about google. With the right meta tags on your external website and your website address planted on as many other sites as possible such as forums you will find your site at the top of the google list pretty quickly.

That's true to a degree. Placing your url in forums may help you get some traffic, but the effect on your Google ranking depends heavily on the weight of the page in which your url appears and forum signatures don't count for much. Now that being said posting your url in your signature can help you get traffic by getting people to click on it, but the actual jump in your site's ranking is going to be minimal from forum postings.

I enjoyed your article

quote:

ZapGraphix

Useful and on target! Greetings!

Zap-
Newbie just read your original post- thank you very much! Incredibly useful, and always appreciate the time and effort others take to write out and share their knowledge and info.

Thanks for that.....http://www.mysticsoulscafe.com

I just got started....

just a note to thank you for sharing your shop keeper experience. it valids what I am trying to do with a new premium shop.
Dakota Territory Trading Post
best of continued success with your shop!

This is some really great stuff. Thanks so much for your comments about how to promote your shop.
As most of you know, Google is just about the only game in town. Then Yahoo! and then MSN search. Here are the best places to make sure you're "in":

Google has a wonderful webmaster's section here:
Add your URL to Google

Yahoo! is here:
Adding your site to Yahoo!

MSN Search is here:
Submit your site to MSN Search

Hope this helps some of you. Patience and good metatags on your main page are good advice.
I've helped a lot of webmasters for many years, and the one thing they were doing wrong when I met them was they had no central theme. No one specialization to their website. That's what I liked about your website was you have one central purpose that is easily figured out when someone visits your store.

Thanks again,
Lynne
Author "The Little Website That Could"

One more comment...
We get all our main websites from Yahoo! Small business because you can get one for $10.00 a month, and the tools are awesome. Their security has always been top-notch. I've been doing business with them since 1998)
Here they are:
Yahoo! Small Business

Hope this helps. Cheers!
Lynne

Curious question... My "main site" is not yet developed, aside from the "placeholder" page I stuck there with our logo and a link to the CP shop. Would I: a) submit my "main" URL to Google, Yahoo, and MSN; or b) submit my CP URL?

Great Post! This might just work after all...
Novel_tee

Hi TulsaTees.
Cool! I'm from Tulsa. Drove from there to Alaska in January 2003.
I would wait until you get the main message of what your website is, at least on the front page. If you look at a listing of Alaska My Heart in Google, for example, you'll see that Google lists the text from your front page as the leader comment of what your website is about. So, if you can at least get a few lines of text up there saying what your website is for, then just put a link to your store that says you know whatever you want it to say...that's much neater for them.

Also, I forgot to put the link for the Yahoo! submit in my post reply to the Zap article. Here it is for you:

Yahoo!'s submit page..
Psst...use the free basic one. It's good enough.
Take care and snowflakes from Alaska,
Lynne

My apologies earlier, TulsaTees. Forgot to answer the second part of your question. The search engines prefer that you submit only the root web address (ie cafepress.com - which is already submitted). So, my suggestion would be to get your own domain going and submit it instead. Hope this makes sense.
Lynne