In conclusion to my last post titled “My Drop Ship Design regret?”… I am posting this in response to the reply I received from them. The short of it is the following… they quickly agreed to leave my site up till the duration of my already paid in full term, but they have refused to refund me any money for the time they had taken me offline which was about 5 weeks.  I will follow up with the Better Business Bureau and possibly a few other places that appear to “endorse” them.

What do you think?

Okay…I’ve cooled down a bit. But I was hot a little bit ago! You see, I did my homework last year- looking for a dropship business to work on from home. I found one I thought I could believe in.  DropShipDesign.com. I’m not even going to give them a  link in the post. I’m not saying they are a “scam”…though I don’t believe in them now. I only ever sold one thing from them…though apparently many people have been happy with them it would appear from their website testimonials.  I bought their one year plan for $149.99  on  August 31, 2008..I have my credit card receipt in front of me right now. So what went wrong?

Well, I filled in the Meta tags, added Google Adsense, added some other affiliate links…lots of them.  It came down to a place where I was realizing…I may not be able to really optimize this site like I needed.  I even published some coupon codes, lowered my prices, and  got me a button for advertising and to see anything else I did to help you can click on “Hall of Fame Products” in the category section to see my posts from last year.  Still, I only got one sale besides the one item I bought for myself. Then- I got some coaching from Kelly McCausey who also thought it was a losing battle to continue putting effort into this dropship company’s website they sold me for  what was to be  one-year for my $149.99.

So, I hung my hat up for the most part and I worked on other things. Then a few days ago went looking for my site… HallofFameProducts.com….it was gone!  No where! I had to contact DSD (Dropship Design) who got back with me saying that they had sent me emails once a week about their change in terms and  since I didn’t agree to them they canceled my account.

What emails?  Did they send them to my Yahoo email or my DSD email? Because I was accustomed to receiving their emails to my Yahoo account. Maybe they did, maybe not. But for sure I never realized they were changing their terms to this…  the new terms say I need to  fork over almost $30 more a month in order to continue keeping my online store. Can I hear someone say…”Hello?!”  I just paid them almost $150 for a year with no monthly fees and now they were demanding an addition monthly fee or I was getting the boot?  Mmm, mmmm, mmmm. That doesn’t go over well with me.  Would you like that? Well, its not alright with me and I am demanding they either reimburse me for the months they cut me off ( starting April 16, 2009)  till the fulfillment of my “agreement” which I signed up for back in August 2008 (officially my store wasn’t online till September) or reestablish my online store like I had it before they cut me off.

I’m waiting now for word back from them.  In the meantime…I caution anyone who is thinking about doing business with Drop Ship Design.com or any other drop ship business similar to them. Who woulda “thunk” they could change their terms and expect you to hand over more money than what you originally agreed to before the end of the term you signed for to begin with!

PS- I will warn you…once you sign up, at least this was my experience…they do try to sell you on their ways of optimizing your site, etc…. they had all these ways to get your site going on the web but it would cost extra!  Thats why I opted to do it myself…but it didn’t help my sales. So, buyer beware!

Yes, thats what I worked on today. I had registered with Google awhile back to do this and finally had some time to focus on learning how to implement it today. If you visit my site you’ll see Google Ads in a few places. Its free to use Google Ads and you can make money off of them as well. BUT, there are rules. As the owner of the site you cannot manipulate link clicks in any way since that is part of how you get paid. I think it makes my site look more “real” which it is without Google but there is something about advertising that makes it look a little moreso. I think I will be adding some affiliate ads on there soon. When I decide who I want on my site. I did have a few on there but took them off.  If I never make much money off the site it has been a good learning experience for me regarding marketing, copy/pasting codes, learning a thing here and there about the techy side of having a web-site. Of course, I do hope to make money…that was my intention afterall in purchasing it!  Oh, my website… www.HallofFameProducts.com .

Just a quick update from the computer service at the local library.  Yes, who would’ve “thunk” Ohio would see as much hurricane as it did this weekend! Oh my goodness…we’ve had tornadoes around here and I don’t remember that much wind! It literally sounded like the ocean waves were crashing into our house…of course we had wind and no rain. We lost power Sunday for about 3 hrs or so but fortunately we got it back late that night. What we didn’t get back and still haven’t  was our cable tv and cable internet. Not good for a WAHM. Well, good in the sense that it forced me to take a long break from the distraction that working online creates and I was able to do some other things around the  house. But here it is Tuesday evening and still no internet. I had a feeling my email was probably getting scary…and yes…I have around 80 or so in one box and I dare not look in my other… I dont’ have enough time on this computer to deal with it right now. So…I can’t complain…I believe there are people around here still without power. We at least have that. I may be posting some links to some of the news stories. Here’s a biggie…Sarah Palin was to be here yesterday in our area! How exciting! Of course, I couldn’t go see her as I don’t have $2500 to get in…I think that was the minimum you had to raise or pay maybe? I think its a fundraiser for the Republican National Campaign. But I really getting at the news stories of the area storm. So, enough said. You know why I’ve been so quiet lately!

One more thing…last week I did get what I ordered from Hall of Fame Products. I ordered a cordless headset/microphone. If I haven’t told you already…well, I’m pretty techy-illiterate. I didn’t pay much attention to the details I guess because…I was looking for one I could plug into my computer…the one I bought is for a cell phone. Oh well… I may be able to send it back, but I may also just list in my ebay store. It is very nice, I’m disappointed I didn’t get one I could use…Its also by AT&T, brand new, packaged nicely and came UPS to my door! So…whoever is spamming me with messages that say something like…”all dropship companies are fraud or whatever word they used”…you can stop now. Okay? Like, it looks like I obviously picked a good reliable company. Their customer service is very good and the cost is a real deal considering everything they do for me. So, let me get back to my marketing…as soon at Time Warner gets my cable internet working again! Please hurry Time Warner… the internet is my job!

Well, I’ve done some touring of my new website and checked out the control panel. Since I have no budget for technical expertise I have to do my own research and ask around for help with getting my website into search engines, etc.. I’ve found some very helpful people on Twitter. I  highly recommend using it. Its a great resource and its free! If you don’t have extra money to pay others to do your work just start following some of the people on my Twitter network. There are other women & men there who’ll answer questions for you. Go to www.twitter.com/tzdelar. Play around a little bit once you’ve registered and you’ll find your way around. I have to do that  when learning new networks.

Now, I’m also taking SEO Powerup by Michelle Waters of Waters Web Solutions. You can find the link on my “Resource Links” page. I know, I’ve changed the name of my page 2-3 times now, but I only have 2 pages. You’ll find it! She definitely gives lots of info that you can download and save to your computer and  print out for convenience. I do that, put the pages in sleeve protectors and in a 3 ring binder to review when I have the time to focus on it. This is a year long course, right now the price is $10 a month but I heard the price is going to go up. At this time you can quit whenever you want but you can’t restart where you left off so its recommended to hang in there and she does promise some “treats” along the way!

Today my focus has been getting into the search engines. I’m a “researcher” at heart so its not hard for me to get into this. I just need some help at times knowing what to look for or how to understand and utilize the technical aspects. I have no professional skilled computer training so to speak…I learn on the job and I’m not too afraid to click here and there. Last Sunday in church Pastor Tom (www.fbcj.com)  pointed out that problems are opportunities in disguise. Well, thats absolutely the truth! I’ve learned much about anything having to do with computers and the internet by the obstacles I’ve faced. I’ve learned to disk defragmentize, disk clean, that there are free antivirus, spybot, etc programs to use on your personal computer (THANK YOU!…Rob, Eric and Keith! my techy friend/family)! I’ve learned to delete programs, etc … Okay, so back to the point. I Twittered to my followers for some help on free engine submission and a couple of my Twits answered! So I’m passing it on to you…you can submit your website to these engines or at least get started here… www.dmoz.org , www.directorycritic.com/free-directory-list.html and I was told that most search engines will have an “add a link” feature you can use. Apparently there are over a thousand directories, maybe there are thousands… I don’t know. I pretty much just use Google and Yahoo these days when I’m looking for something. Best wishes today to you moms or dads or singles or whoever  you are trying to make a living on a little or nothing budget. I’ll be sharing more tips as I’m learning!

TTFN!  (Ta Ta For Now…as Tigger would say)