Progressing my Ranking Campaign for my 60k Store

Progressing my Ranking Campaign for my 60k Store

This week I worked on videos and articles. I was able to get 2 videos published in under 2 hours using Animoto.

Here's my category keyword video: 

Here's a product specific video 

Here's my news release on bodybuilding:  News Release on Bodybuilding

I am also working on another article that is likely to break down into 4 or 5 blog posts. I'm still deciding what type of articles I should have on my blog and what type of articles I should have under my knowledge-base section as permanent pages. 

All of these various resources on bodybuilding link back to my website and category pages. The news release has a little sentence about me that links back, the videos both have the category page in the video descriptions. That starts to give that category authority. 

May 16-21 Category descriptions

The entire week I worked on product category descriptions. I found that I had a lot of crazy categories with only 1 or 2 products in them and even had some categories with no products that were created when a product failed to upload. I spent the week reorganizing my descriptions. I also wrote descriptions for the categories. The purpose for this is to add additional unique content to my site and to make it more informative for visitors.

First Order!!

So I got my first order last night. Technically it was my third order, but it was with the same person and all 3 orders were for 1 order and to cover shipping. I had to create a special product to make up the shipping differences so I could charge her and ship the product. We have been communicating via Skype and she's been approving the shipping charges.

Here's what I learned:

1) Shipping to the Tropics: If you need to ship to a country call St Kitts (Its actually a country and to think I never heard of it before!!) You need to use Tropical Freight. They ship cargo and are way LESS expensive than Fed Ex, DHL or UPS. I was quoted $130-150 shipping for a 4 lb dumbbell with UPS and FedEx and $110 with DHL. Tropical freight will charge $25, but take a week to get there on the boat. (Plus it only leaves every Wed so the shipping takes almost 2 weeks because it won't get there until Wed and the cutoff is Monday.)

PS. Her $14 set of dumbbells is costing her $35 in S&H and will cost another $6 in customs charge.
The St Kitts Custom's office is:(869) 466-7227 Its local on  my cell phone (I don't have an international plan set up and it called just fine). Also for that small island, they don't have house addresses or even street addresses. Everything comes into the port (Basseterre) and they pick it up there and bring it through customs.

Tropical Shipping Website: 
https://www.tropical.com/external/en/

2) Accepting Credit cards through a Business Pay Pal account: BigCommerce partners with BrainTree for credit card charging. BrainTree links to PayPal, but requires a Privacy Policy and a Terms of Condition to set that up. I already had a business Pay Pal account set up , but no Privacy Policy or Terms of Conditions.

Big Commerce's resource on Terms and Conditions: 
https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles

SEO Toaster  has a great Privacy Policy generator that asks several questions and then generates a privacy policy specifically for you. I would highly reccomend it!
SEO Toaster's Privacy Policy Generator

These guys also give a free Privacy Policy. You answer questions as well, but at the end they give you an offer for free Chat, customer review, etc
http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/?utm_expid=87121688-80.WFRRlatZQLGGIJusHTGtdA.0 
Their offer page for $47 a year for chat, reviews, and more. . .
http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/index-single-sales.php

Terms and Conditions Generator:  This charges for each little thing. I chose to copy and past my suppliers terms of service for now. . This will be a follow up item so I don't get pulled off track.
https://termsfeed.com/terms-service/generator

Also-- Here's an article on setting up your BrainTree account to a Paypal account. I found it useful:
https://articles.braintreepayments.com/reference/security/ecommerce-website-requirements

Gateway:
Paypal CC processor.
Direct CC transactions- Those go to BrainTree gateway processed by another processor and are paid directly to my bank account. 2-3 days to appear. Amex 3-5. BrainTree auto deposits into my bank account directly. Paypal only pays into the account if the customer pays via PayPal.

Also if you want to change the Direct Deposit account, change it first with PayPal and then call BrainTree to update the deposited $$.