GoogleBase Your Products... Now.

Let's be friends, Google!

Another free service from Google is GoogleBase. You don't even need a website to list your products. If you have hundreds, even thousands of products to sell, you may do so by uploading a spreadsheet from excel. For the more advanced programmer, you can utilize the API built in from your website to Google's servers. You can learn more about it, and with documented help from Google by clicking on this link here.

You will need to do this procedure once a month, every month, every 30 days. I repeat, keep it up and make this a regular monthly "chore" for your business or products you are selling.

From the website:

Product Search connects your products to the shoppers searching for them, helping you drive traffic and sales to your store. Your products will appear on Google Product Search and may even be displayed on Google.com, depending on your items' relevance.

Using Cafepress and Googlebase Together

Those of you who are selling books, gifts, or other products such as tee shirts at Cafepress - listen up carefully. There are a variety of tricks you can do to get your products listed quickly and effectively on GoogleBase...

There is a free tool you can use called CafeToolbox. This is a service written and maintained by a Cafepress shopkeeper, so support him and donate via Paypal if you are a fellow shopkeeper using his tools. If you do not have a Paypal account (it's free), you can still support him by purchasing a product from his official store, CafeToolbox. Create an account (also, free) and plug in your Cafepress store details. Depending on the size of your shop, it will create a downloadable file you can send to GoogleBase.

Large Cafepress Stores

If you are a large store, you will most likely hiccup the CafeToolbox web server, and have a 20 MB text file to download, such as myself. GoogleBase starts running into problems when you upload a file greater than 6-7mb. I do a little playing around in excel and notepad to split my file into 2 smaller files.

Personally, I'll tell you what I do, and maybe this can give you some ideas of your own. This is a really big secret I don't think others have tried out besides me. I haven't seen anyone else do this method yet...

I am a Foxpro programmer. Anybody heard of that? It's an ancient archaeic programming language Microsoft used in the early 80s. I became proficient in it by learning and coding a bill collection agency's database that was written in FoxPro 2.6. This language is so old and ancient that nobody uses it anymore...except me.

Keep in mind, you have to know a little bit about rows, columns, excel, and some programming to do this trick. This is a really ugly and nasty way to do this.... Maybe you personally know Visual Basic, or Visual Studio, C+, Visual FoxPro, or even MYSQL... In theory, you could import everything into an online MYSQL databse and inject your code or strings using the following methods....

SUPER DUPER HOT MEGA TIP! First I download my 20mb text file file from CafeToolbox. I then put it in an incoming directory on my computer and run a program I wrote. It imports the file into these columns and rows, much like MS Excel. I figured out a way to go back and rename key products to give more search engine spotlight. For example, all my Callahan Auto Parts tee shirts are sucked out, renamed to "Tommy Boy Movie Callahan Auto Parts Tee Shirt" . The renamed products are injected right back where they were inside this comma delimited text file.... This program looks for certain strings and I wrote logic that renames and adds the corresponding movie or tv show's name - and affix it to the prefix of each product name. Brilliant, no? It is, especially when you have to go back and rename 32,000 products! Here's an exact string from my code: replace all title with "Seinfeld tv series "+title for title="Jackie Chiles ". There is a field named "title" and my string searches for text I ask for. There's hundreds of better ways to do this, but I've been trucking along ever since and have been too lazy to write a better program. As I make a new design, I go back into that program and add it's new movie or tv product, and what I'd rename it to...

The Name of the Game is to Rename

HOT TIP! I rename my products for search engines to find me better, outside the Cafepress engine. You can apply this technique so you can be more descriptive in the titles of the products. Why? Because sometimes Cafepress fields for product titles aren't long enough. What if you have a "Official Super Duper Awesome Product With a Really Long but Necessary Title" Dark Blue Short Sleeved Tee Shirt? Is all that text going to fit in the Cafepress word box when you are creating your product? Exactly.

After my crude renaming program runs, it counts all the records, divides in 2, and copies out 2 split up files for me. I then log into my GoogleBase account and upload my 2 files, kmyke2.txt and kmyke3.txt. I now have my 32,000 products renamed with my own titles, in 2 smaller txt files. Within hours my thousands of products are listed for free at GoogleBase.

You Mean There's Other Search Engines?

HOT TIP! Next, put it over at MSN Live Product Search, for free. Again, CafeToolbox has a MSN product file creator as well. However, I do not modify that file. I immediately download and then upload to MSN. For some reason, my crude programming techniques corrupt the file for MSN and Mr. Gates doesn't like my file. So, eh., oh well, click, send, upload. Google's nicer to me than MSN anyways.

Did you take my previous advice, fellow Cafepress shopkeeper? Did you also get a PrintFection account? Again, CafeToolbox has a PrintFection tool generator. (This guy's awesome, donate to him, please.) For that one, I have a modified FoxPro program again, this time conforming to PrintFection file layouts for GoogleBase. I rename those products and spit out a modified PF file for GoogleBase.

HOT TIP! Wait a minute here, you can't have but one website profile per GoogleBase account. I know! My GoogleBase account for my Cafepress files are with my KaptainMyke (at) Gmail account. I signed up for another account at GoogleBase and set up another website profile for my PrintFection store, called KaptainMyke2 (at) Gmail.com. Sign in, upload the PF file, log
out - log back into my primary gmail account.

All of these techniques invole a little understanding of excel, text files, some programming and understanding file layouts. If you know Foxpro, Basic, or any flavor of MySQL, and are into the Cafepress way of making money...then hopefully I just gave you a brainstorm. ;-)

No Website? No Problem

HOT TIP! If you don't use the advanced techniques I covered, you can still go to CafeToolbox, download your Cafepress file, then upload it at GoogleBase for free, without even owning your own web site.

HOT TIP! If you are a large store, and don't understand the tips I covered, open your 6-20mb text file in wordpad and go somewhere in the middle of the file and CUT half the file out and PASTE into a new wordpad document and save as 2 seperate smaller text files. Be sure to keep your formatting and word wrap OFF. Don't touch or do anything else. I mean it! Another alternative is to create an FTP account and upload your files via secure FTP protocol.

HOT TIP! Use Adwords and drive traffic to your products posted at GoogleBase.

HOT TIP! CafeToolbox has tools for MSN Live, iOffer, Yahoo, and Google. Get to it! Go, sell then, now!

Conclusion

HOT TIP! This article covered using Cafepress and GoogleBase together. You can use GoogleBase and list any products you have to sell. These tips and tactics were for large stores, large numbers of products you are trying to sell, and sales with a high volume. If you are much smaller, your methods will be simpler and easier with fewer products to deal with.

You can use GoogleBase to sell and use the file uploads by using APIs from almost anyone, such as Ebay or any other website. Most likely, each third party company will have their own API generators so you can develop custom links that work between you and whatever your business needs. Use Google Checkout as another alternative for increasing online sales.

Happy uploading! Good luck to the webmaster and creator of CafeToolbox. I speak for most of us currently using your tools when I say, "We hope you reach your goal, and keep it up!" Thanks!

More information can be found by going directly to the official website, CafeToolBox.com.