I see a lot of people saying: update your info in Wiki.. now seriously.. Who checks wiki for that kind of info? I mean.. there's also a part where you can see infos about soc a nd players, but who really uses/ckecks it? Practically noone, and if so, it's most probably a 1 time thing. I know i don't and don't know of anyone who does.
People i know of only uses wiki to check loots, damage types, infos about tools, weapons, armors, and locations..
The bottom line is: there is still no effective method of attracting the masses to your booth or shop. You can advertise ingame, and capture the attention of a few.. You can do it here in the forum and hope that someone stumbles upon your thread, therefore increasing your customers to perhaps a couple per week. You can advertise again ingame making a team with friends and your shop name/location... but at the end of the day, the auction will always beat you by far.
Why? we are all more or less lazy. Even if we're people who work hard on a daily basis, and especially then, do you really want to loose your precious time looking for an item for hours?... i mean.. time is limited, and do we have 2 spare hours to loose running around the malls and shops to look for anything when browsing auctions will display everything and you can choose + buy in less than 2 minutes and be ready to go hunting/mining/crafting for the rest of night, until you finally get too tired to continue and go to sleep so you can wake up the next day to go to work? Naah...
Society evolved on the concept of getting life easier, faster, i.e. on the "lazy" concept. Ex: cars vs walking; tv control vs getting up from the couch and changing manually; boats vs swimming
; airplanes vs.. well.. icarus
, the guy who flapped his fake wings and got burned; current watches vs solar watches which you could not carry.. so u'd have to walk to the place; Computers vs libraries, walking to the bank, stopping to buy a newspaper; hookers
.. etc etc...
So, if it's not a couple of clicks away, you have no chance to be effective against the regular auction customer. To drive people off the auction, you have to be way more competitive, i.e., prices ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO BE LOWER than auction, always keep a good supply of those items, get a shop as close as possible of a tp, auction and storage, and promote your shop as often as you can with a short, clear and direct message.
Every pub message i see is too vague and distracting, people lose imediately interest, especially when the message is too damn long or has too many slides. PUB inside EU is not for entertainment purpose as in tv. Messages have to be directly to the point.