NevBlog

A new venture I am working on is another ecommerce business which will be based on a Yahoo Store Ecommerce platform.

It will be called www.BodyMonkey.com

The name came from a body jewelry store I was going to create, but my lack of interest left the domain for dead. I then needed a temporary domain name to let the Yahoo designers build the site, so I used BodyMonkey and then started to really like the name. It’s catchy and can eventually become a brand. ……and the name just makes me laugh!

A setback on this business is of all the shopping cart platforms out there, the one I know the LEAST about is Yahoo Stores. Another setback to the process is the limited number of Yahoo Store designers out there, because Yahoo uses their own custom programming language called RTML. This means a specialized designer must be hired, and “specialized” always equals “more money.” I’m not a fan of spending a lot of money on a business until its proven itself….but I had to suck it up on this one.

So far the rough shell of the site has been posted, and work is about 30% done on the site. Currently the site is a duplicate of my House Of Rave business, but that will somewhat be changed in the coming weeks. I will focus more on the design and layout in the coming weeks.

BodyMonkey will work much like my first online business, but this time I can correct a lot of the mistakes I’ve made in the past, and implement new features the HoR software doesn’t have. Something I’ve been having a lot of fun doing is making product videos and taking product photos for all the products that will be on the site. The supplier carries over 2,000+ products which I will eventually also carry, so this is no small undertaking and will be an ongoing process.

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I’m trying to find some sort of logo for BodyMonkey, and maybe even a character. When the site is running I want to rotate the logo every two weeks. Customers will be able to submit their logos, and if they’re used on the site, they get a free t-shirt or something like that.

This will be the first time I’m commissioning art for a website, which should be interested. It’s interesting to watch a talented artist use their creativity. So far, this is all I’ve come up with on my own:

The reason I think this business will do well is because I have so much fun doing stuff for it. Getting artwork done by caricature artists, learning a new ecommerce platform, taking product photos, playing with the products myself, making product videos etc…

The reason BodyMonkey never turned into a body jewelry store is because I don’t care or know anything about body jewelry. The whole project would have been half-assed and therefore never become anything big.

I wrote about taking product photos a short while ago which is challenging and fun, but even harder is making product videos. My first few were horribly cheesy, and I realized the need for proper camera techniques and proper editing. I may eventually invest in some expensive video editing software.

Here is one sample of a product video for these really neat Luna Candle things:

I’m sure I’ll get better at these product videos as time goes on.

So over the next few months, BodyMonkey.com will be transformed from just a simple shell of a site, to a fully functional Ecommerce store.