Ramblings from “The Mad Wizard” about eCommerce, Yahoo! Stores and other random thoughts

Okay, so everyone in the world has a blog, and I guess this is our entry into that world. Besides simply being too busy, I really didn’t want to just throw a bunch of words out there without any value. My goal with this blog is not just to give you my random thoughts, but to actually write articles of interest and value. I want this blog to be a resource of information. So I’d like to get input on what topics you’d like discussed either by posting here on the blog itself, or you can drop me an email.

Now I guess I should start out with a little information about myself. Most of you reading this probably already know me or my work, but for those that don’t, here’s probably more information than you wanted to know.

My name is Don Cole, and I’m the self proclaimed “Mad Wizard” behind YourStoreWizards.com . I haven’t always been “The Mad Wizard,” but depending on who you talk to, I’ve always been a little bit on the quirky side. Always a geek, just not always geeky.

I started working on computers and programming back in 1982, and my world was never the same since then. I’ve programmed in numerous languages, a number of different databases, and through all of it the challenge of problem solving on a daily basis is what has always made it fun and exciting for me.

Then back in 1999 I decided that I should be making money on the Internet. After all, wasn’t any self respecting geek supposed to? So I poked around for ideas, which by the way I’m always full of lots of them, and decided to open my first store. At the time I knew virtually nothing about eCommerce, and while researching my choices I came across the old Yahoo! Store Owners Club. I quickly joined, posted my newbie questions, and soon found a home for my store. Not only because of Yahoo’s capabilities, but also in large part because of the club and the other helpful store owners.

Little did I know that within 2 years, I’d be moderating the Store Owners Club, and due to all kinds of changes, we’d slowly transition, transform, and grow into what is now the Your Store Forums. I’ve dealt with all kinds of issues, but most importantly I’ve learned so much over the past 9 years as part of the group (has it been that long). With over 260,000 posts and growing, it’s amazing how much you can learn from reading that much.

Well, soon after joining the group and operating my store, I got tired of all the tedious work. Being a programmer, I decided to find a way to automate. I hate doing anything more than twice. So, soon afterwards I started Y Store Tools which offered software to help automate operating a Yahoo! store.

As I saw opportunities and ways to help out store owners, we expanded into other offerings that could help out. RTML Templates and add-ons, which was a small market at the time, became a good portion of our business, in large part due to my creating the RTML template transfer utility, which allowed templates to be downloaded, uploaded, and created offline. The geek in me loved creating the first multi breadcrumbs template for Yahoo! Stores, all on my laptop in excel, while I was sitting in parking lot. Of course Yahoo’s added new commands to make it much easier (probably because of how draining my template had to be on their servers), but at the time it was exciting to me.

A few years back we started doing data backups and data feeds for Yahoo! Stores. Not only for shopping comparison engines like Google Products/Google Base/Froogle, Shopping.com, etc. but for affiliate programs, RSS feeds, Alternative shopping portals (Amazon, Shop.com and others), and just about anything you can do with the data. We’ve got a system built now so I can pretty much build a feed for just about anything and make it do whatever we need it to. With over 100 different data formats, it’s quite a data geek’s playground. I love being able to not only add a new format for a customer within a few hours but to be able to take existing ones and tweak them to maximize the data specific for that customer. But, I digress.

Well back in 2006 we changed from Y Store Tools to Your Store Wizards. We’re still focused on helping out store owners, providing data feeds, RTML and other automation and information needs, but with the new branding we get to have a bit of fun with it as well. As anyone who has worked with us knows, we’re incredibly capable but also very down to earth when it comes to communicating with us. We’re proud of our Yahoo! Ratings as well as the Reviews we have on the Forums.

I love helping out store owners, and there’s never quite a rush as being able to race in and save the day when they need help. Hopefully this blog will just be another way for all this information in my head to get out and help someone out there.

I’m sure there’s more I could say but I’ve already written more than I expected to. Keep an eye out as I’m going to start off with a few topics that come up often in the forums (image uploading, database uploads, Google Analytics, and others). Please let me know what you’d like to learn about, what information would help you out, and basically what craziness you want to hear me ramble about.

Don “The Mad Wizard” Cole