As Coffeesh0p gets bigger and bigger, I’m getting more and more worried about promoting the psychoactivity of the plants we sell. Recently, the hyped up sales talk all over EveryoneDoesIt has resulted in them removing Salvia divinorum from their shop, so in response, we’ve slapped “not for consumption” labels in a few of our product descriptions. One problem still remains however – our articles section, which contains cannabis recipes, extraction teks and info on proper usage. While I’ve always been a supporter of providing proper information, these articles are making me more and more uncomfortable as the days flit by. As any Internet marketer should know, article writing is one great way to boost traffic and get links back to your site, but any Internet marketer worth his salt also knows, you shouldn’t take unnecessary risks.

The substantial traffic gained from these articles is also pretty poor when it comes to e-commerce – people looking for information probably aren’t ready to buy anything, so “convert” poorly. But those information seekers make great blog readers, so moving those articles to this blog makes perfect sense. It’s tempting to look at overall traffic and feel good as you see it increase, but traffic that converts poorly is actually more of a cost than a benefit. More people = more hosting bills!

Over the next week or so, I’ll gradually be transferring those articles onto this blog (with a 301 redirect, naturally), so keep an eye out!

It’s been a long couple of weeks. Not only did new images need making for all of my sh0p’s categories, but several important deadlines are looming just around the corner.

As the title says, I finally finished recategorising all our products. Take a look! I dare say my photoshop skillz are improving daily. I’ve basically reorganised the entheogens and legal highs into their own separate categories, so people who want to legally batter themselves don’t try smoking some dream herb and wonder why they’re not stoned off their arse. Also DIY shamans tend not to like the association between their sacred plants and other, more suspect “herbs” like Spice. And rightly so, hence the reshuffle. The next big step will be to expand both sections considerably.

For the legal highs section, we should be getting some new big brand smoking mixtures and maybe some more pills. We’re hoping to expand the entheogens section the most though. We’ve got loads of new herbs coming, as well as some extracts of a couple we stock already. Very exciting, but a lot of work! Writing descriptions and taking multiple pictures of everything is probably a more daunting task than rearranging the categories in the first place.

I’m still not ready to properly advertise on E-Dot. I want to make sure everything’s top notch before I post about Coffeesh0p there.

I’ve also finally rearranged the legal pills by effect rather than by brand. Initially, when I only stocked two or three brands, it made sense, but now we have so many! Someone who’s never encountered legal pills before may be put off by having to chose by brand, and would instead prefer to buy a product based on it’s advertised effect. Hopefully now, we can expand these effect categories indefinitely.

What better way to celebrate all my hard work than a pack of Trip E, a pack of Spice Diamond and a massive free fireworks display!

On a more technical note, the easiest way I found to move all the products around on the site is to first calculate what the product’s URL should be based on it’s product ID (also in the URL). If the script isn’t at the calculated URL, it then forwards you to it using a 301 (permanent) redirect. Hopefully then the search engines will consider the new URLs as the original products and not new ones, so they’ll retain their rankings. As well as the search engine benefits, anyone that clicks an old link from another site to get to yours will be redirected to the URL behind the scenes. This way certainly seems more simple than filling your htaccess file full of redirects!

In other news, I’m thinking of running a competition here on this blog very soon. I have some things to give away…