There are many pre-built websites for sale. Usually you buy a package deal that promises a fully functioning website that you just sign up for, and they do all the work. Packages come with wildly enthusiastic testimonials, and the products are talked up as being perhaps more desireable than they are - sometimes they are marketed as a Drop Ship Store. It usually takes only a few months to realize that it is not working. By then, you have no options though, because the company has your money, and you have a worthless site that does not get traffic, or does not get purchases from the traffic it gets.

First of all, it is helpful if you understand what caused it to fail in the first place. Often you have not received even a single order after months of having the site. You give the URL to friends, and still no sales. You call the company and complain, they make renewed promises, and still no sales. You have done all you know how to do, and have no idea what to do next. Human nature makes us reluctant to walk away from it.

Such sites almost never work. There are several reasons for it, some of which you can do something about, others which may or may not be fixable. Here are the most common reasons for failure.

1. Lack of marketing. The company says they will register your site with the search engines, or that they will employ a rotational system for distributing hits among their member stores. Getting one hit in 10,000 is not going to help you. And site registration is totally ineffective with these stores, because there are so many like it that the chance that someone will click your link is very slim (some search engines even ban listings of these sites). Other marketing which might help is not done by the company, because it takes time or money to do it, and they don't want to give you any more of either.

2. No differentiation. When you have 200,000 cookie cutter websites, what is going to set yours apart? Being able to change the colors won't help, because your site still sells the same things, in the same way, and has the same feel as the original store did. You simply get lost in the masses, and people click on something more popular.

3. Name brands mean nothing. If I want to purchase from Staples, I will go to www.staples.com and purchase. I won't find a virtual mall to buy from. It does not matter how many name brands you carry, people won't look for you to buy from your store, because they will look for the original name brand site instead.

4. Bad products. Ok, this is where I get in hot water. No one likes to hear that the thing they thought was such a good idea isn't. Certain things consistently fail in a virtual mall - Coupon books, eBooks, and access to major name brands is not enough to build a store on. No one will bother to buy from you, there is no compelling reason to trust you, and you don't have anything they need that they can't get from somewhere more familiar. People DON'T buy coupon books, and eBooks have a low sales rate, a bad image (anyone can write one, and they have not been screened by a publisher, so they are perceived has having little or no value), and eBooks also have a very high chargeback rate - people buy them, then cancel the credit card payment through their card issuer. The result of chargebacks is that it makes YOU look bad. Often the eBooks you are given to sell are commonly available free elsewhere anyway. Coupon books have such a bad reputation, and frequently the merchants listed on them won't honor them, that nobody will buy them. Even when they were a new idea people did not want to pay for coupons they were not sure they would use. Coupon users are notoriously frugal people. They won't spend a dime for something they can get for free just by watching the newspaper.

5. Lack of individual trust. Ok, to sell online you need one of two things: A major trusted name, or accessibility and believability as an individual. A virtual mall has neither, and people feel suspicious without knowing exactly why. It takes a feeling of trust for someone to hand over their credit card number and believe that you are going to send them what you promise, and not take their credit card number and rip them off. Having major name brands on your site is not the same as BEING the major manufacturer who has been in business for years and has a reputation to protect. Anyone can pretend to sell those products, so selling the major name brand products is not an asset at all here. Since you have no major corporate reputation to instill trust in your visitors, your only other option is to be very personal and to help the customer feel they know you a bit so they can trust you. A virtual mall utterly fails at this also, because site design is usually cold and gives the buyer no idea of who is really behind it.

6. Too many products. When you come to a site with thousands of products, it lacks personality, and you get lost in the mire of stuff. In this case, more is NOT better! When you say you have a store, and people ask "what do you sell", they will not be interested if you say, "everything". You know what they say about people who try to please everyone? They end up pleasing no one. Online mall sites are the same. People don't like them because they are only looking for one thing, they don't want to have to wade through a bunch of stuff to get it unless it is a site from a vendor they trust.

So what can you do about all this? Maybe a great deal, maybe nothing. But here are your options:

1. Aggressive marketing. Check out the Web Marketing Handbook ( http://www.skinnyshoestring.com/sohotools/webmarket.htm. Then go to work making your site more visible. This will take WORK. Nothing pays without it, so if you really want to rescue your site, you are going to have to put in a few hours a day for several weeks, if not months, to get it noticed. If you are not willing to do that, one way or another, then you really didn't want to make money all that much anyway, because no business can make money without work.

2. Products that actually sell. This is tricky. You have to find something that is wanted by your customers - so first you need to figure out who your customer is going to be. The real trick to a corner store is finding something that people want, that they can't get just anywhere. Now, that does not just mean product, that means also how you present the product, and what you offer in personal service along with it. Figure out what kinds of things you really WANT to sell - not just what you are willing to sell because it is there and easy. You can sell things you are enthusiastic about much better than things you don't care about. Some of these stores have the ability to remove items from the inventory, or to add items. Now, most DO sell some things that are good for online sales, but you need to get rid of the dead weight. That means figuring out what WILL sell, and what won't. A good way to tell is to go do a search for the item on eBay. Look at the ending auctions. If there are a ton of them without bids, remove that item from your store. If most of the end items do have bids, and the prices are more than what you have to pay for it wholesale by more than 10%, then it is reasonable to keep it in the store - otherwise ditch it. Now, you won't have time to do that with thousands of items, but do it with some from each category. Pretty soon you'll know that some of the entire categories aren't worth keeping, and you can remove the entire category. Then narrow down what is left. If one product is not selling well, unless there is a big difference between them, a similar item is not likely to sell well either, so you can delete both. Keep whittling down until you have a specialty store instead of a mall, which is filled with items that actually have a chance of selling.

3. Differentiation. You have to figure out how to make your store unique. And more importantly, how to make it reflect YOU. Your individuality is the most important tool in differentiation. How are you going to help people feel that even if they can buy your product in hundreds of places, they want to buy it from you instead of one of the other stores? Changing the color is not enough! Going through the steps in the previous paragraph will help, but you need to figure out how to make your store individual.

4. Personalization. Make the site yours if you have the ability to do so. Colors, textures, arrangement of items, and other things can make it more personal. Make sure you have an About page that helps people feel they know you, and that they WANT to buy from you. People will feel like purchasing from someone whom they can identify with.

5. Hire a pro. You can hire someone to assess the site, and give you recommendations for specific improvements. We offer this service for $25, just email us and ask about it (we won't try to sell you anything, we will just recommend what could be done, and help you learn how to do it). You can also hire out the improvements - we do this also, on a per task, flat rate basis (no open ended per hour charges).

6. Cut your losses and go on to something that has a better chance of working. This is hard. No one likes to feel they got scammed, and if you decide to abandon it, that is how you will feel. If you decide to do this, you can try our Free Customizable Website package as a starter. While it IS a prepackaged website, we DON'T do it all for you. You have a range of choices, so you can pick something that fits you, and you get instructions on how to personalize it, a schedule for making changes (so you do it in the best order to get it to make money), and it has the potential to earn money for you, while helping advertise for me also. It takes time to do, and time to build momentum, but it can eventually return a nice income that goes on earning after it starts, whether you keep to a work schedule or not. You can do it without having to pay for web hosting (paid space does look better). In fact, you can do it without any cash outlay at all, you just have to be willing to put in work instead.

If you bought into a canned website and now feel angry and like you got taken, take heart. You are not alone. Producers of these things make it sound very good, and like it is foolproof. Having failed at it does not make you a fool. You were deceived. That is a different thing.

The question now is, what are you going to do about it, and is the website be able to be changed if you choose to change it? If you cannot make changes to it, then cut your losses, because it is never going to work, no matter how much time or money you throw at it. If it can be changed, and you are willing to do the changes or pay to have them done, then it has a chance of redeeming itself.