e-commerce site almost 5 year old

this is the 1st time I am selling a site, so I am not exactly sure how this works.

I have had the site for almost 5 years: http://techawave.com

The site's focus is computer related products. It was built using zen cart. Site URL: http://techawave.com.

why am I selling the site? I am tired of selling online - too much hassle on customer service. I have had over 10+ sites selling and I am shutting them all down.

I stock some of the items (laptop parts including AC adapters, keyboard, LCD inverters and fans). Other items are from 4 dropship suppliers. most of them, I just pay by credit card when I need to order.

I have put in some link building effort. However link building is really unpredictable with Google. The site started with a PR-4 with no link built and went down from there! I am a non-believer when it comes to SEO for e-commerce sites.

So where do sales come from? Google Base (Merchant center) mostly. I do not pay to use all the shopping comparison sites (nextag, pricegrabber, etc.) or affiliate marketing. (These are 2 of the major channels for e-tailing sales. however, I was never into the PPC risks. which also includes Google Adwords.) i have had a few return customers once in a while.

The most delivered by Google Base is about 10 orders a day at one point. (It was pretty nice profit as I profit some $30 for an order of a little computer parts, like 8 times of my cost.) My problem is that I never understand the concept of making $1-$2 off each order and having hundreds or thousands of orders a day.

Google base (GB) is still a very powerful free tool, especially if you know how to rank high there. 2 years ago, my Google Base account was suspended "alleging" that I use dropship which violates their TOS. (of course Amazon, and buy.com do not dropship - yeah right!) I however discover that you can always easily set up another google base account!

Google base ranking has a lot to do with your customer rating, so I had to start over. Another problem comes in - I got my Google checkout (GC) account suspended. You have no idea how important GC is for GB! sales dropped by about 60% after the GC account is gone.

Another thing I discover is that accepting credit card directly (other than using paypal or GC) increases sales by 100%. That's right. 50% of my customers chose to pay by credit card directly. It is however up to you to safe guard your sales/transactions.

The point is that I have had enough of online selling and I want to see how much I can sell the site for.

 

Could I get your supplier list as I am starting this and the more the suppliers the better

 

if you buy my site, i'll can give you a list of about 10 suppliers. only 1 of them requires membership fees.
I think you dont really need that many suppliers. I have another site with about 120K items, and i have fewer than 10 suppliers.

 

Could you pm me some revenue and traffic figures for the last 6 months? Thanks

 

Basically I kinda "abandoned" the site for over a year now. Below is a screen shot dated back to mid March. I have not updated inventory for a long time, and some items were out of stock so I had to cancel quite a bit of orders. I do not have it listed on Google Base for 2 years now, and I do not have it listed on TheFind and bingshopping (which are the 3 major free portals).
Traffic stats can be seen on semRush.com or Alexa.com.

 

It is well known that taking credit card payments on your site versus just using PayPal will, at minimum, double the sales. Usually, it results in three to four times as many sales. There are many of us out here that are so fed up with PayPal, that we refuse to buy from any website that even displays a PayPal logo - regardless of whether they offer another payment method or not.

 

My experience is double+. I am not sure where you get the idea of so many people hating paypal that much.. I believe I still got more Paypal customers than Google Checkout.

 

Google Checkout has very few members, so it is no surprise that PayPal does better than them. I am talking about a real payment processor not some unregulated one like PayPal, 2checkout or Google Checkout. People only add Google Checkout to their list of accepted payment processors because it gives you a nice little badge if you advertise with AdWords, making your ad stand out in the crowd. Like all merchants, your day will come. So far, you've been lucky to avoid the fraudsters out there. PayPal WILL NOT back you! People can claim that they never received the merchandise and you can show PayPal a signed receipt and they will still side with the end customer every single time.

 

if paypal sides with buyer every time, then buyers probably would like them. i understand that you hate them as a seller, but you dont know what buyers think. i doubt that buyers will shun a site just because they accept paypal.

 

In almost every case you are absolutely right. Unless, of course, one of those potential buyers is part of the tens of thousands of merchants who got burned by PayPal and who refuse to use them or support any site that uses them. In most cases, it isn't an issue, though.

I am a member of many forums and there is not a single week that goes by where I don't read a thread of someone getting totally screwed by PayPal. someday, it will happen to everyone who uses them as a merchant.

The real problem with PayPal from a customer's perspective - especially one that is unfamiliar with PayPal or with purchasing on the internet, in general - is that they imply that you need to setup a PayPal account, even though you don't have to in most cases. Quite a few people do not want to setup an account, don't realize that it is not mandatory and bail during the PayPal checkout stage.

The bottom line, though, is to get a real payment processor even if you are also going to take PayPal. If you don't, I guarantee you that you are losing well over half of the sales you could be making. It's been proven time after time after time after time. That is one of the main criteria I look at when I consider purchasing an existing website. If they only take PayPal, I know they are undervaluing it because their conversions are not nearly as good as they could be. PayPal-only websites tend to be great purchases.

You should do a split test and see for yourself!

 

I already have a blog showing the effects of accepting credit card:
http://creditcardvirtualterminal.org/