Creating Ebay Selling Opportunities By Communicating With Your Buyer

One thing many eBay sellers neglect is to actually communicate with their buyers – not with some automated ‘suggestion’ system, but with actual person-to-person contact. If you can be friendly and sound nice, then you can make them think you’re doing them a favour while you make a few extra sales.

‘I Could Throw In…’

When you receive an order for an item that costs a lot for shipping and needs some kind of equipment, this is an ideal opportunity to make a ‘friendly’ extra sale. For example, if someone has just bought a computer, you could send an email like this:

“I’m just emailing you to ask if you’d like a mouse or a keyboard – since you’re buying a computer from me, I can throw in any accessories you want without charging any extra shipping. If you’re not interested though, then don’t worry about it – it was just a thought.”

Note how informal this email has to be. It can’t stink of sales, or the whole ‘communication’ thing will be ruined. Would you rather buy something extra from someone who says “you might as well, since you’re paying shipping anyway” or from someone who says something like “our valued customers will also love our GREAT DEALS on mice – check it out!” I know what my answer is.

Know Anyone Else?

Here’s a simple thing to try: when you thank your buyer, simply say that if they’re pleased with you then you’d really appreciate it if they could spread the word. Many eBay buyers feel like they’ve got a real bargain, and combining this with good customer service could be enough to make your customer go out and start writing down your eBay store’s address on pieces of paper for their friends. If you notice a lot of orders coming from the same town, then you’ll know that this technique is working.

Any Problems?

If you contact the buyer a few months down the line to ask if their product is still working fine, you might find that they’re having a problem you can fix, by sending a spare part or an upgrade. This is another opportunity to make a sale – not to mention helpful for them.

Anything to Sell?

If you’ve just sold them a brand new item, ask your buyer if they have an old one that they might like to trade in. They will often be delighted to take you up on your offer, since they were wondering how they were going to get rid of their old one anyway. Give them a fair price for it and offer to pay their postage and you won’t believe how happy they’ll be – and the chances are you can make a good profit on what they send you.

When everything is going to plan with your buyers, it’s nice to be able to spend a while every week leaving them all big chunks of positive feedback. But how do you make this feedback the best it can be? We’ll take a look at the dos and don’ts of leaving feedback for buyers in the next email.

Making Easy Profit With Public Domain

Public domain is the world of knowledge that is freely available to the public. You can find literally tens of thousands of books free to download online from public domain. The vast majority of these books are usable commercially. This means that you can make a profit from these resources, leveraging the original author’s work for your own income. Once a copyright expires, the book becomes public domain. It is completely legal in most cases to resell these works for your own profit.

One easy way to make money with books you download from public domain is by selling them for use on PDAs and iPods. More and more people want to have books available to listen to on their PDAs and iPods. It makes commuting easier, it helps while standing in long lines, and it’s simply fun to
always have a book available to enjoy any where you happen to be. It is so incredibly easy to profit from public domain in this manner because the format most books are downloaded in is .txt. This is the same file type required for use in PDAs and iPods, so you do not need to convert the documents before selling them. This can be so much quicker and easier than creating a typical ebook in a format such as pdf.

Another great way to profit from public domain books is by creating audio ebooks. You can read public domain books out loud, recording them into your computer, and then convert the files to MP3. We all know how popular audio books are, and how popular downloading audio is, so put the two together and you have an unlimited audience of potential buyers. Think of how many high-school and college students had rather listen to the great classics than to have to read them. If it worked for Cliff’s Notes it can certainly work for you!

To make lots of money using public domain books, you can build your own web site, or even sell on ebay. If you can’t build a web site, or you do not want to build your own web site, you can easily outsource this task cheaply. You can also cheaply outsource having your downloaded public domain
books read out loud for conversion into an audio ebook. This is a very easily executable idea that you can start using right away to create an income steam.

I do have to give credit where credit is due. This idea came from the great marketing minds of Alex Mandossian and Armand Morin. They discussed this idea in detail, along with other great ideas, on their Big Seminar 7 preview
teleconference call. I felt that this particular idea was so easy and such a great moneymaker that it stood out above all the other ideas I heard listening to to call. Certainly there is a large market, so let’s all take this
great idea, run with it, and create great profits.

Four Questions Before You Look For Affiliate Programs

I’ve been receiving emails from people asking for my advice on which affiliate programs are the best, who pays the most and most often, and many other basic questions. I’d like to answer those questions on this forum, but I can only type so fast.

I went out this weekend looking for content that I could publish here temporarily while I got down to writing. I had a hard time finding unbiased content. Most of the so-called reviews out there are infomercials, and that’s not what I was looking for with this blog. So you’re going to have to bear with me. I’ve been looking and learning and reading and talking, and I’ve got a lot to say. I just need the time to write it down, and I will, starting tomorrow. No, really I will.

In the meantime, you need to ask yourself this — are you ready for an affiliate program, or Internet Advertising in general? I put together four questions you should ask before you embark on your affiliate program or any Internet advertising.

Before I get to the four questions you should ask before you enbark on your affiliate program, I am going to review two concepts that I use often here on Affiliateblog. The first is what I call the macro view of your Internet presence:

Incoming visitors – Internet Presence – Sales or Actions

You are really running two campaigns with your Internet presence — the first campaign is concerned with getting visitors to the site, and the campaign is ongoing. The second campaign is to get those visitors to do something. That something may be just to spend more time at your site, or it may be to sign up for something or buy something.

The other represents the process of Internet advertising:

Impression – Click – Action

Most affiliate programs pay publishers in the last part of the process, the Action. I’ll be using both of these concepts in my questions. So here we go…

1. Do you know enough about your visitors?

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. While some affiliate marketing hubs are experimenting with context-sensitive serving of affiliate banners and banner rotation on affiliate sites, YOU will be the one to decide what kind of products and services you want to offer your visitors. This seems like a minor detail, but it is a major factor in your success.

If you haven’t already, take a look at the stats for your web site over the past month or so. Where do your visitors come from? Have you paid for Google, Yahoo or other search engine traffic? What are the keywords that people used to get to you? More complex and specific search terms tend to result in more immediate conversions, while broader search terms may result in sales later. If people get to your site using what you believe to be broad search terms, you need to be sure that the cookie life (the amount of time that passes between someone from your site visiting the affiliate merchant’s site and the sale) is long.

Do you have textlinks or other advertising on other sites? Do you know the demographics of the visitors from those sites? Have you spoken to the webmaster, owner or manager of the sites on which you advertise and asked him or her about their visitors? Do you know the websites? Have you visited the sites that advertise on the same sites as you? When you investigate all of these things a profile of the visitors to your site should begin to emerge.

Which search engine brings you the most traffic? If it’s Google, the user is slightly more apt to be male, and in the middle (of MSN, Yahoo and Google) as far as propensity toward buying something (42% more likely than the average user). There’s a terrific article on marketingvox.com if you want to see more details. You can also find some interesting demographic info on the major search engines from AQABA.

You should pay particular attention to the domains of your visitors. If you have a lot of AOL traffic for example, you should consider that the profile of the average AOL user is 35 or older (77%) and married (62%).

If you have trouble with textual representation vs. graphical representation (as I do), there is a terrific product called VisitorVille that takes your web logs and animates them. The text is represented as pictures (buildings, people, buses for the search engines, etc). You can see it here. Disclaimer: I am a VisitorVille affiliate.

After all this you should be able to sit down and come up with the profile of a typical visitor. This profile should hopefully include estimates of age, country of origin, education and income.

Try to think like your visitors. Try to anticipate their interests and the products and services they might want to purchase. Affiliate programs raise the bar from PPC — your payment comes at the end of the Internet marketing process (the Action) rather than at the beginning (Impression or Click) like Google Adsense or Doubleclick. You need to apply more brainpower to the process, and you’ll make more money if you do it right.

2. Is your site perfect?

You’re asking someone to buy something from your site. If the pages have sloppy html code, broken links or instability from a bad Cascading Stylesheet, it makes you look cheesy. We’ve all been uncomfortable buying something off a cheesy website. You don’t want to be that website.

Let’s start with the html code. Are you sure there are no errors in it? Have you used an html checker like the one at W3C? I find mistakes in my code all the time. Unless you check your code on several browsers in several resolutions you might not catch an error. The validator will. If you use Cascading Stylesheets you should also visit the CSS Checker.

Speaking of validators, you should check your links often. W3.org also has a link validator.

The site should also be optimized for search engines, be easy to understand and navigate, and should have a sitemap for people (and spiders) to find their way around. You should have had ten of your closest friends take a look at the site and give you their feedback, and you should always listen to unsolicited comments from users with an open mind and place value on them. If someone takes the time from their busy day to send you an email about your site, they feel strongly about it and you should take a close look at what they’re talking about.

Understand that if your Incoming Visitors campaign is not working right, you’re wasting your time with your Sales or Action program.

3. Do you know what kind of ads you’re going to use, and where the ads are going to go?

People have been ignoring banners for ten years. That’s why they shake and make sounds (someday I’ll tell you about the screaming match I had with a creative director the day we put out the first talking banner ad) to try to get your attention. Where you put it on the page is going to make a huge difference. Briefly — banners need to go somewhere the eye naturally rests (next to the masthead, near the navigation, at the bottom of the page).

Placement of any ads is a huge part of getting them noticed or clicked.

A lot of people (including me) believe that text ads should be placed at natural breaks and be close to the same in text size and color as the text. You need to surf around and look at where people place their ads, and you need to figure out where you think they would work on your site.

If you plan to create pages for some of the products you endorse (a great idea), you need to figure out how prominently you want to place the advertising. Most people won’t buy something if they believe you’re shilling for a particular company. They will buy from someone they believe honestly endorses the product or service. You need to figure out how to keep the distinction.

4. What’s your hunch on the right kind of offers for your site?

I ask this question a lot. Now that you have a better idea of the demographics of your visitors, try to decide on which action you think they would be more apt to take — pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale or even pay-per-click (hard to come by) on your site.

If you have a general interest website that gives away free stuff it’s probably going to be difficult to sell people products from that website. It might be smarter to try to get them to sign up for a free products newsletter from one of the affiliate programs, or you may want to look for offers that target the age group of your site rather than offers that target a specific interest. You might be looking for smaller-ticket sales or only leads. Leads get the user to the end of the advertising process chain, but require less of a commitment.

Try to come up with the four, five, six or fifty ways to slice this all up, by type of action, by type of sale or lead, or any other way you can come up with. Then you can go out and find the different offers that might appeal to your visitors. When it comes time to place the ads, try to put different ads in similar spaces on the same pages, and see how they do.

Get your questions answered and you’re ready to take the plunge into affiliate marketing.

Free Affiliate Programs – how students or anyone can work part-time at home

Are you a college or high school student who only has time for a part-time job but can’t find one that pays enough? Hate your boss and/or can’t stand your co-workers? Have you been searching long and hard for a route to financial freedom that doesn’t involve any bosses except for yourself? Do you have a web site? If you have a web site with some traffic (or even if you don’t, on my blog you can learn how to make an online living without one), you can make money by having links to online merchant shops appear on your web site. When a visitor to your site clicks on the link pointing to the web site of the merchant you are affiliated with, and then proceeds to buy something, you get a commission of that sale. Depending on the merchant, this can range anywhere from 5% – 75% of the sale. There are also some merchants who will pay for each click or each lead generated from your site. A lead is a new visitor to the site or shop that inquires about information, prices, or prize/coupon offers.

By having these links on your web site, you are called an affiliate, and the links are called affiliate links. An affiliate program isn’t literally a program it’s a business arrangement or agreement. Affiliate programs are also commonly known as associate programs, associates programs, partner programs, referral programs and sometimes bounty programs.

For anyone new to Internet marketing and work at home businesses they provide an excellent, high value opportunity in that it’s a way to earn money without producing your own product!

To register into an affiliate program is almost always free, and through the affiliate program merchants control panel all you need to start making an income is the linking code, a way to monitor the traffic through your links, and to see what commission you have earned. Visitors who click your link to the merchants& site are called “click-throughs” and the percent of click-through visitors that purchase something on the affiliate merchants& site are called your CR, your Conversion Rate. Likewise, your CTR, or Click-Through Rate, is the percent of visitors to your site that end-up clicking on an affiliate link.

An affiliate program is not a MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) program, since the affiliates only earn from sales, leads or clicks. Some affiliate programs offer what is called a “Two-Tier” program and this is in most cases not considered a MLM program. MLM programs are sometimes called a “Matrix” or “Downline” program and often have an unlimited number of sub-affiliates you can sign up under you. Your downline is everyone who has signed up under you and likewise your “upline” is everyone who signed up above you.

There is also networks operated by third-party companies and individuals where multiple merchants and affiliates use a common software and administrative infrastructure (usually just a simple admin section of a web site) to recruit affiliates and monitor the traffic from their sites. These types of networks are often called affiliate networks. Both the merchants and the potential affiliates need to register with the network. Usually most affiliate networks are free to join because they get a part of the commission but some do charge a fee. Affiliates can find links to the online shops of hundreds of merchants to use on their affiliate driven web sites. Examples of affiliate networks are Commission Junction and ClickBank. You can find links to affiliate networks on my blog (link at end of article).

I am of the opinion that the best affiliate web sites are the ones made from a high demand, low supply niche dedicated to one of your hobbies or interests and something you know a lot about and can provide good value to your visitors. However, if you are not great at writing articles you can find article directories and content sites. Visit my blog to find links to article directories and content.

What will work best for you wont necessarily be the same thing that works for others, you have to experiment and diversify your methods. The most important factor will however depend upon the kind of traffic you have and can generate and the interests of the individuals visiting your site.
——————————————————————————————–

Online Shopping for Newbies

Everyone is talking about online shopping. It’s easy and takes a lot less gaS & Hassle than a trip to the mall. Online shopping puts unbelievable choice right at your fingertips. From large department stores to specialized boutiques, the latest designer fashions and closeout specials, it’s all there. You’ll find toys, high-end art and collectibles, cutting edge computers and electronics, flea market finds and auctions galore. In fact, you can find just about anything imaginable online, and some things that truly are not.

Online shopping is a godsend to shut-ins, busy working folks and anyone who, for whatever reason, cannot get out and do heavy-duty shopping. Now you can have a world-class selection of gifts at your fingertips and get most of your shopping done in a single evening without ever venturing into traffic, or trudging through crowded malls.

In many ways, online shopping is a return to the good old days when delivery services were a given. This alone can make the difference between sending token flowers and dispatching something great on special occasions. Your selections can be wrapped and on the road to delivery in less time than a drive to the mall. And for the times when flowers really are the right choice, you can now actually pick what you want and those selections are incredible.

Shopping online beats catalogue shopping without any trouble, too. Online you have incredible choices with far less time and effort than pouring through stacks of catalogues and sitting with a phone on hold only to be told that your color or size is not available. Formerly tiresome ordering tasks can now be done in minutes with the click of a mouse.

Although gift delivery is certainly a plus on special occasions, it doesn’t stop there. You can buy a whole new wardrobe, even a wedding or prom dress, office supplies, a new computer, you can redecorate your home, or shop for a new one, dabble in the stock market, balance a checkbook, pay your bills and even buy a car at your computer. So, what’s the catch?

Street smarts are the rule online and off. Everyone already knows when you go shopping, there are certain things you do and don’t do when it comes to your money and your personal security. Online that goes double.

At the Computer:

In addition to a set of well-honed cyber street smarts, when shopping online you should first and foremost be comfortable with your computer. There are a few things to remember if you are new to online shopping. The first is to click the BUY button only “once.” It may take a couple minutes for the transaction to process. If you click buy twice, you will be making the same purchase twice. There is not generally too much of an issue in clearing up the double purchase, but it can be a hassle. Double clicking is a common error for first-time online shoppers.

The second big rule is to keep copies of everything relevant to the transaction. Print out the pages with the description and prices of the items you order. Print out your credit card receipt. Most companies will email you a copy of the receipt as well. Keep that too, and make sure it matches your online information.

As all computer users know, sometimes a glitch will derail the best-laid plans. If your printer is down or goes down when you try to get your print outs, find the “Print Screen” key on your keyboard. Press it. Then go into your word processing or paint program and click “Paste.” You should now see a picture of what was on your screen at the time you made your purchase. This is the next best thing when a printer is not available.

Okay, you are comfortable with your computer already. All possible glitches are covered and you are ready for some serious shopping. What about those so-called cyber smarts?

Cyber Street Smarts:

Smart online shoppers, just like those in the physical world, know there are certain things you do to take care of yourself. They know to be aware of the neighborhood where they are shopping. They know to be aware of the reputations of the places where they do business. They know to watch their wallets, and first and foremost, when they are around strangers, they know to be aware of who might be scrutinizing them just a little too closely.

Know Who You are Doing Business With:

Do a little research. Anyone can build a website. If you encounter an unfamiliar company where you want to shop, find out who they are. Look for an address. Be wary of any company that does not list one. An address is no guarantee, but you can use it to check references with the Better Business Bureau, BBB. Their online site at http://bbb.org/ has nationwide listings.

Sometimes you may want more information than the BBB provides. In this case, after the BBB check, use your favorite search engine and try an “about search.” The difference in an “about search,” and just looking for the site, is that you already know where the site is; now you want to find out what people are saying about it. Generally, just putting “about” in front of the company name will get you started.

For a very small purchase, you might want to dispense with all this investigating. But do use a low limit credit card. That way if anything does go awry, it isn’t that far awry. Yes, we all know about the $50 liability limit, but the low limit card can be a hassle saver online.

You may choose not to use a debit card online at all. Many debit cards do not offer the same protections against fraud as credit card companies. You could be putting your whole bank account at risk.

While you are at it, be sure to check out the return policy and guarantee. Online and off, most good companies do accept returns, either by providing a cash refund or product exchange. Note, however, shipping costs are typically not refunded for online purchases.

Online Security:

After you’ve found exactly what you have been looking for, checked out the seller, and their return policy; the next thing you need to do is make sure the site is secure. Secure means your personal information is encrypted in transit to the seller’s server. This prevents unauthorized (hacker) access and possible misuse of your credit information.

Examine the URL in the address bar. If the site is encrypted you should see an “s” directly after the http – like https://… The whole site will not be encrypted, but the order page for the transaction should be.

Other things to look for – depending on your browser, you may see either an open or a closed padlock, or a whole or broken key. If the key is broken or the lock open, you should assume that the site is not encrypted.

Sometimes security issues get tricky. Suppose you personally know the owner, it is a solid local business, but there is no encryption system in place and they expect you to transmit your credit information online. With small businesses, this is most often a case of not knowing better, that does not, however, mean that you do not. In cases like this, look for a phone number and call in your order. If there is no phone number and no mailing address, you should seriously consider whether you want to risk an unsecured online transaction.

Common sense is the rule online and off. Guard your personal information, including Social Security Number, bank account information and passwords. No reputable merchant has a need for your Social Security Number and it is not standard policy to ask for it when you buy your groceries for instance. Requiring this for a routine purchase should send up a red flag and you should immediately take your business elsewhere.

Some online crooks will do whatever they can think of, in all kinds of official looking ways, to get your private personal information. If you call, they may personally assure you that they do indeed need your bank account and password to sell you that computer game. No way, just because it looks good, and they sound sincere, doesn’t mean that it is or they are, and you may not know there was ever a problem until you see your credit report.

Remember:

Online and off, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t let the heat of the offer lull you into abandoning your good common sense. Of course, you could miss the deal of a lifetime, and that is exactly what the unscrupulous want you to think. Likely as not, online and off – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Shopping the net is destined to change the way we do business, but it is still a new frontier, with many of the uncertainties that go with it. The only way to really be secure online is to develop your cyber street smarts and sometimes, even that may not be enough. It will certainly level the field though, and by keeping your cyber smarts well honed, you should be able to safely shop the net.

Copyright 2005 Regina Pickett Garson

Google Adsense Profits Mixed In With Affiliate Marketing

Are you a webmaster who needs funds to keep your website running? Or is your website the only way for you to earn income? Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you. With affiliate marketing, you may get a lot of cash pouring into your bank account easily. And if your website is rich in great contents and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Well, simply because affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the best way to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other businessman’s products on your site. But even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.

Affiliate marketing, simply said, is a relationship or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant’s website and the other being the affiliate’s site. In the relationship, the affiliate agrees to let the merchant advertise his products on the affiliate’s site. The merchant, on the other hand, would agree to pay the affiliate in whatever method they have agreed into. This would generally mean easy income for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer’s ad on his site. This would also be very beneficial for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.

There are a variety of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy cash. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most preferred by affiliates, for their site’s visitor would only have to visit the advertiser’s site for them to gain money. The other two methods, on the other hand, are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.

Getting much profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method is it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

What about Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is actually some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.

So, where do all of these lead us to?

Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant’s side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.

10 Sure-fire Ways to Kill Your eBay Business

It’s surprisingly easy to kill your eBay business, if you’re not careful – sure, you can start over from scratch without it costing you anything, but do you really want to? Still, if you want your business to end up dead in the water, here are some simple ways to do it.

Lie about an item: Say it works fine when it sometimes doesn’t work. Say it’s in perfect condition when it has a scratch. Your customers will hate you!

Post whenever you feel like it: Make sure to leave your customers hanging around, wondering when their item is going to turn up. This makes sure they buy from someone else next time.

Let items end anytime: Few people will be around to care about your auction if it ends in the middle of the night. Why go to the trouble of working out whether auctions will end at a good time?

Don’t bother with email: Customers are just timewasters anyway. eBay businesses are supposed to run themselves! Never give informed responses to questions about your item.

Sell rubbish: Really, it’s just eBay. You can just sell any old tat from the market for a 200% profit. Let quality be someone else’s concern – I mean, really, what do they expect for that price?

Refuse to give discounts: You know what your items cost, you know what your profit margin is going to be, and you’re not going to negotiate. Remember that giving customers special deals might make them feel good and come back to you again.

Make your listings ugly: As many colours, flashing lights and animations as possible will really give those customers a headache. Write as much in CAPITALS!!!! as you can. Preferably big, red capitals. Be sure to use the fonts Impact and Comic Sans. For an extra special touch, see if you can figure out a way to add some music.

Don’t take photos: It’s such trouble, after all. If buyers are picky enough to actually want to see items before they bid on them, then screw ‘em, that’s what I say.

Write short descriptions: Be as brief as possible, and use lots of mysterious abbreviations. This obviously makes you look very cool. You can even just write the title again in the description box. Think of the effort you’ll save!

Use reserve auctions: Now, this is a fairly controversial final choice, but it really is one of the best ways to scare away your customers. They’ll see ‘reserve not yet met’, and click that ‘back’ button before you know it. Luckily, they can always bid in a normal auction for the item somewhere else.

Now that you know the ten ways to kill your eBay business, how about we explore what to do if you want to do the opposite, and make a success of it? The next email will give you ten steps to successful selling on eBay.

4 Techniques To Sell A Site With No Traffic

As more and more Internet users are coming online to generate passive income, they start to look into websites that could help them to create passive streams of income either through commissions, user clicks or page impressions. Internet Entrepreneurs are now starting to build or acquire potential sites and flip them over to the buyers for a nice profit.

Although traffic is the key area when most people are considering when buying a website, other criteria are also important for the site to run and stay profitable in a long run. This article will help you to sell your site if you do not have much traffic flow.

The first technique is to mention how easy it is to maintain and run the site after the ownership transfer. An ideal site would be able to update its content automatically and using unique and fresh content. Some Webmasters use RSS feeds to dynamically load their sites with fresh content so that search engine will index their sites more often. Most buyers will be more than happy to buy a site that does not require them to write content and maintain. It is highly advisable not to have a site that contains 100% RSS feeds as this will not yield good results in the search engine rankings.

Another useful technique is to stress on the earning capabilities of your site. All website buyers are looking for an easy way to generate passive streams of income. For example, I normally incorporate Google Adsense, ClickBank and Amazon products review in my site and make sure that the new owner can easily change the affiliate id respectively. This is a very effective method that most buyers do not mind paying for.

The third technique is the ease of transfer. Most website buyers are not technically trained and hence, some may not even know how to install a database on a web server. It is always easy to sell a site that does not require a database and the buyer will appreciate it as they may resell these sites in future as well. If the site you are selling includes database operations, you may need to provide support after the deal to make sure that everything runs smoothly.

The last technique will assure the buyers that your site will proof worthy after the deal. This require you to have one or two profit generating sites with the same model of the sites that you are selling. When selling your new sites, quote the examples that you are now generating passive income from your old sites and show proof when necessary.

The above techniques are extremely powerful especially when you combine them with excellent sales pitch.

As Google gets fatter there is more to love. I do.

What Google did for Christmas? In short: Twain news on the same day simply melting the ice. Vacuum discovered.

Their new services spur others in turn, their sympathies can affect some huge increase. Finally, wealth is spreading, from young billionaires to you and to a baby boomer like me.

A few days ago, I ran into an article about them that claims they build a safe net for themselves, and all of us to use. How does one figure? Google silently buy left-over fiber optics at the lowest prices. Something nice for the future…

Yesterday, I went to Mozilla Firefox to get a referral button for my upcoming ezine. Have been using Firefox after a 2-week spy and worm attack back in June. At that time, my desktop had been invisible from pop-up windows and the volume muted for virus alert sirens and my poor computer could not breathe using IE…. Then I ran into Kaspersky, but that luck only lasted for 30 days as well; they wanted $70… Since free Firefox NOTHING not one single intruder. I have peace. IE now sits and ruts…, while the FF plug-ins make beautiful music.

So, I go get the button, and what do I read? They, Google, now not only have a referral system for adsense with neat little buttons, but they will take Firefox under their wings with something like ‘Google recommends Firefox’. I am touched! It’s the best thing to happen for us, for these guys operate in a speed that suits me, compared with MS. They’re livin’.

But, listen to this, on the SAME DAY, yes, yesterday, I get this article from Jim Edwards of http://simurl.com/wonderwords named ”Google’s Next Step: Are Print Mail Order Catalogs Dead?”

He describes how any respectable US print catalog is being listed and the graphics of each page shown in their catalog database for free, and permanently. Google even update it manually. My favorite feature is that your objects on scanned print pages will be linked to their twins on your site.

I’d call that traffic. Yep, the top quality traffic is free. Been saying that.

So, last night, I stayed up, had to anyway, because I was on a watch. Uploading my large files to
http://simurl.com/showcase, when ms automatic XP update suddenly wanted to restart the computer. Took me a while to find the way to switch that off.

Don’t you envy the life of those, who spend their days in a dialogue with heartwarming Microsoft-warez. Have we created a monster buying Bill’s stuff? My day swishes by enduring Frontpage crashes and Word peculiarities I may never get used to, and yet I somehow am.

No, that’s not the reason why I wrote this. What I wanted to say is:

“Get your print catalog to Google in time for Christmas.” US only.

1- Download this Free: http://www.techsrl.com/easycatalog/English/download.htm (Demo-limited to 10)
2- Upload your Files Here and pay very little: http://www.printpelican.com/ (Very little! Minimum 25 Catalogs)
3- Go to http://catalogs.google.com/googlecatalogs/catalog_vendors.html and get the mailing address.

I give you 10 days.

So, then I think, what about the guys from Australia, New Zealand, England, Canada, South Africa, India?

Easy, last night I stayed up and made a site to let them in on it. Maybe you would like to do it, too; Get a permanent spot on Google’s new catalog beta site, I mean.

Come look. Gotta be subscribed.

Ebay Description Writing Tips.

Once you’ve drawn the buyers in with your title, the next thing to do is to tell them all about your item with the description. But just what should you write in your description?

At its heart, your item description is an ad. Without making it too obvious, you should be writing sales copy. You’re trying to get buyers excited about your products, and that’s usually hard – but on eBay, if you have the right thing to sell and give enough details, the buyers almost excite themselves.

Technical Details.

Include every technical detail you know, including the item’s manufacturer, its condition, how big it is, where and when it was made, its history, and anything else special about it. Don’t be too boring, though: the best descriptions are written in friendly, conversational language, and show a real knowledge of the item. Whatever you do, make sure you tell the truth!

Remember that most of the people who’ll be buying your item will be just as knowledgeable about it as you are, if not more – this is their hobby, and they’re experts. Don’t feel like you need to explain the basics of the item: just go into as much technical detail as you can. As a rule, don’t write anything in the description if you don’t know what it means, as the chances are someone will, and if you’ve got it slightly wrong then you’ll look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Interesting Details.

You might find that you enjoy writing a few things about how you got the item, why you’re selling it, and who you think might like it. This isn’t strictly necessary, but it gives your auctions some character and a personal touch, and can make people more likely to trust you. People might wonder what you’re doing selling 500 CDs all at once, and if you tell them the reason, then they’ll feel reassured that nothing dodgy is going on. If you’re selling them because you’re having a baby and you need the space, just say so.

Write as Much as You Can.

Leave nothing out of your description, even if that seems to you like it makes it cumbersomely long. There is no way you can be too thorough: someone, somewhere will appreciate that you took the time to write the extra information.

Don’t assume that anyone who wants extra information will email you to ask a question: many buyers are shy and won’t do it. Think of questions that buyers might have and add the answers to your description, as people generally tend to ask the same questions over and over again.

Each time a buyer does email you with a question, you should both answer their question and update your description so that it will include the answer next time. If people ask questions that are answered in the description, try putting these parts of the auction on a line alone, or in bold, to make them easier to notice.

In the next email, we’ll focus on increasing the number of buyers who respond to your auctions.

Introduction to SEO Strategies and Techniques

If you are a webmaster then you might have heard this bantered around quite often and you might have some idea of what it is. If you are not actively involved in your website or have had little exposure to the Internet then you probably have very little understanding of what SEO actually is. Your current knowledge level is not really an issue as SEO is something that very few people have chosen to learn and up skill themselves in. While it is not common knowledge and you are willing to learn there is a competitive edge that you can exploit. It means with some small modifications to your website that you can achieve higher results in search engines than your lesser SEO savvy competitors.

In this article I explain what SEO is and I take you through some of the most important Search Engine Optimisation techniques to help improve your website search engine rankings.

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
SEO is search engine optimisation. Essentially Search Engine Optimisation is the art of creating or modifying a website to make it search engine friendly. Search engines are the gateway to gaining huge amounts of website traffic. Imagine if you sold Blue Widgets, then placing as number 1 in a search for “Blue Widgets” would gain you far more traffic than placing number 100 – This should be obvious. To gain rankings and places in the search results your website needs to be better search optimised than the websites that are currently showing above yours in the search results. The more search engine friendly that your website is, then the greater the chance that the search engines will rank you more highly. By using certain SEO techniques you will increase your website in the rankings and hence increase your website traffic. This is why SEO is probably the most important thing about having a website – after all, you can have a very good website but what is the point if no one visits it and buys your product?

Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
SEO can be performed site wide but the way we do this is by using the same SEO techniques on each page one at a time. So although it is common to say a website is search engine optimised in fact we mean that each page of the website is search optimised. Okay, so it should be clear now that SEO for your website is vital for your websites success online. Now, the question is how do we start optimising a website? As there are so many SEO techniques that we could implement in this article I take you through the three that are generally considered the most important by SEO experts.

Search Engine Optimization Technique 1: Identifying Keywords and Key phrases
This step sets the scene for the web page we are about to optimise. We need to do some research using keyword tools, like Google Adwords and Overture Inventory keyword tools. Using these two tools we can input our main term used on the current page we are trying to optimise. We should record the results from these and then order by search volume. We then weed out any irrelevant terms and are left with a list of highly searched and highly relevant terms to this page.

Search Engine Optimization Technique 2: Titles
It is common opinion among SEO professionals that the Title of a webpage is THE single most important SEO aspect of a webpage. The title of the webpage is the first thing a search engine views and tries to interpret. It is vital to ensure that the title is unique across your whole website and that it is highly related and relevant to the content of the webpage. We like to use between 4-10 words in the title tag and we always use the leftward rule. Leftward rule is where the most important words are closer to the left. In this case, the most highly searched on terms we identified in SEO technique 1.

Search Engine Optimization Technique 3: Duplicating Web Page Content
Often websites reproduce information that is copied from other websites. This is a very bad thing to do and search engines are so smart now that they check to duplicated content both within the same website and across all websites pages within their index. It is very important to ensure your website has unique content across the whole Internet. You can write unique articles or howto’s or you can find someone who will write unique content for you. If you currently find that a lot of your pages are listed in the supplemental index on Google then making sure the titles, descriptions, meta keywords and all of your on page content is unique is how you would pull them out of the supplemental index.

This brings us to the end of the Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation. Having covered a few of the basics of SEO you should be well on track to having a few of your web pages optimised.

Increase Website Traffic with SEO Services

Website Traffic:

Increasing web site traffic and Revenues have always been the aim of all internet marketing strategies. At the end of the day, you create a website so that people can visit it and you can get the desired result. You can do it by selling a product or a service and this could be your own or for another company. But if there is no traffic then there will be no sales, which means no profits. When we say traffic, it doesn”t mean just about anyone visiting the Internet but a targeted traffic that consists of visitors who will buy your product or use your services.

There are of course many ways or methods to bring traffic to your website but we are going to look at only the ones which have proven to be successful. In all, you can use three internet marketing strategies to get targeted traffic to your website and they are:

Pay-Per-Click/PPC: This is a perfect plan if you have a marketing or advertising budget. Pay-per-click campaigns offered by Google or yahoo don”t need you to spend too much money but it all depends on how effectively you are able to choose the right keywords for your advertisement. In a Pay-per-click campaign, you have to create an advertisement that is relevant to your product or service and place a bid on the keywords you select. So the primary concern is the keyword. You will have to do some research to find the right keywords and also understand how each keyword is associated with your product or service offering and how they can actually drive traffic. If you have a website selling travel tours, you can use keywords like trekking and hiking, honeymoon packages. If a visitor is looking for a travel tour company and sees your advertisement with the right keywords then he will definitely click on it and you will have to pay for every click.

Link Building: The second method of effectively bringing traffic to your website is through link building. Link popularity startegies can be free and also paid. In the paid method, you will be either paying a membership fee for submission of your website link to multiple directories, and ezines. It can prove to be costly if you are approaching too many vendors. To cut down the cost, you need to approach only those ezines, which have a higher page rank and where there are more than 500 visitors a day or more than 500 members. The free linking method on the other hand requires a lot of hard word and you will have to search for them. Again remember, don”t just go around putting your website link in just about any directory. Relevance is important hence approach only those directories or ezines, which have your product or service as one of their sections. There are many ezines where you can even submit optimized articles with your link free. These ezines probably have thousands of such articles but it will help in the long run to create visibility.

Organic Search Engine Optimization: The third and one of the most effective methods of increasing web traffic is Organic search engine optimization or SEO. Organic SEO is basically a method by which you can optimize your web pages so that you can start with a decent ranking by the search engines, and then work your way up. As the ranking increases, so does the web traffic. It is a long process but quite effective. Your website can be search optimized only when you use strong and relevant content on your website. The content should not just be attractive but will also be informative and keyword rich. If you are selling a service then provide as much information as possible without making the page too long. Again, try to keep the content within 500-700 words a page. Any longer than that, people will start losing interest. No one really has the time to read so much. People have come to your website to find a solution and hence you should focus more on providing the solution through good navigation, great content and refined information.

Once you have applied the three methods, your work doesn”t end. You need to also monitor if your website is getting the relevant website traffic or not. There are times when you may get only 40% of the relevant traffic and the 60% are visitors who came to your website out of curiosity or by accident. You can have a form on your website that visitors can fill so that you will get to understand their psychology.

Do it Yourself or hire a SEO Services Company?
Web optimization techniques are pretty complicated but anyone dedicated and willing and able to invest time to learn them can acheive a certain level of expertize. Certain competitive keywords will require professional help. If your site is a business and your budget allows you to do so, It is suggested you hire a professional SEO expert as doing it yourself will be extremely time consuming and may not even lead to noticeable outcomes.

Moe Tamani is a senior search engine optimization expert and copywriter for SEO 1 Services based in dallas,Texas.

Affiliate Marketing – And the Learning Curve

When you put up your first website – you have to admit that you are pretty green to the ways of the Internet World. You think that once your website is up, and you have put your links in place, you will be in the money. I, and I am sure many, would love that to be true. Just think how many Super Affiliates we would have. I will give you a small sampling of what to truly expect.

The Begin of the Begin

You will be excited at first, and you will have a sense of pride in your accomplishment. Granted, it is no small feat to getting a website up and online. But this is just the beginning of your Internet Marketing experience.

Once you have your website up, you should be asking yourself — where do I begin, or, what do I do now? If you are short of cash, which, in most cases people in the beginning are — you can begin by:

1. Writing articles
2. Optimizing your site for the search engines
3. Putting Adsense on your site

All this takes time and work. But, when you first begin, you do have time to optimize, to write articles, and to put adsense ads on your site. Why? It has been said that for the next six months or nine months, Google, and possibly, the other search engines, may put you in the Sandbox. Some say the Sandbox exists, some says it does not. Whatever it is called, you will see a degree of dormancy in your site.

My own thinking is that there may be a pre-set time of six months before you see a rise in your unique clicks – I know I did. I feel that there may be several reasons for this:

1. It’s a great way to protect the Internet community against unscrupulous sites – I figure that these sites have a lifespan of six months before people give them the boot. It only takes one person to feel the blunt of a scam, before talk in the online forums begins.
2. Websites go up and go down daily. The search engines are looking at saving themselves time and money. If you are still on line after six months or nine months, you’re paying your dues, and they may figure you are serious about maintaining a business online.

What Do I Do During That Six or Nine Month Period

First, and foremost – since I have supplied you with this information – do not get frustrated and throw in the towel. Granted, at first the only clicks you may see is your own, but that will change.

Second, start positioning yourself, so when your dormancy with the search engines ends, you have the quality content, and the quality products to begin to fly. That means, writing articles, getting your name out to the masses, and learning to utilize Adsense.
And when you have spare change, try your hand at advertising on Adwords.

In the beginning your learning curve is just out of the starting gate – take this time to read, buy appropriate ebooks, experiment and research. All are important to moving your learning curve to the expert level.

To conclude, a website is just a small part, but an important part, of becoming an Affiliate Marketer. The other important elements, is persistence, hard work, and marketing. And finally, if you still have the passion after the initial exhilaration of becoming an online entrepreneur wanes – then you’ll make it.

Selling Second-Hand Goods Online: A Lucrative Business

The internet has virtually changed the way we certain aspects of our lives. It has changed the way we view where we get the latest news, how to communicate with one another, how we play, how we shop and even how we trade and make money.

The internet has made these aspects of our lives more instantaneous and, with regards to shopping and trading, brought these activities to our door steps. It now allows us to shop and purchase items that we like by just looking at the items offered in different websites. Ditto for trading, where we now have the opportunity to sell and trade products and, thus earn money, from the comfort of our homes.

The potential for online trading is so great that there are now people who do this professionally. They have quit their regular jobs and instead work and support their families by buying and selling various products online.

One of the most lucrative and interesting aspect of online trading is the buying and selling of used or second-hand goods. Through the power of the internet, web based marketplaces have sprouted all over where visitors can browse around for various second hand goods and purchase them online. It is like a virtual flea market where you can browse through different items of interest that have been owned previously by other people. The significant difference between doing this in an actual flea market and selling it online is the number of people of potential customers that will see your items. Potentially, the people that will be able to see your items online can number in the high thousands, and that is just a conservative estimate. What’s more since you sell your items online, you won’t have to man any stalls or booths. If there is a person who wants to buy your items, then you just get notified by email. Isn’t that convenient?

People who would like to try selling their used goods online don’t even have to set up their own websites – which can be quite difficult especially since you will need to install a payment gateway which can be quite hard and expensive to set up. They can always go join online communities that encourage the buying and selling of used goods. Communities like http://www.usedjunction.com make the task of selling used goods so much easier. These websites already have their infrastructure in place that can accommodate both the buying and selling functions of a virtual marketplace. Another benefit of joining these online communities is that you get to take advantage of the marketing muscle of the website. With minimal marketing efforts from you as a seller, you can be assured that prospective customers will still be able the items that you are selling. This is a tremendous benefit that should not be overlooked. Just make sure that you give a good description of your item, and more importantly good quality pictures of the items that you are selling so that you can be noticed by prospective buyers.

Getting Links To Your Site Free and Easy

Getting Links To Your Site Free and Easy
by Andre Best

If you’re the least bit serious about promoting your website(s) online then you have probably heard the recent cry that one’s website needs links coming into it. Lot’s of links. And without these many, many links one is the proverbial billboard in the desert waiting to be seen by those thirsty for sustenance.

Well after these several years that I’ve been on the internet I too heard the call and have followed the many internet bandwagons that have rolled into e-town touting the next ‘latest and greatest’ snakeoil software to get one traffic that they won’t believe.

You know the cry… ‘The traffic explosion your favorite web guru gets – and it’ll only cost you $795 to attend this three-day conference to learn how to play with the big boys (and girls) online.’

Sound familiar? To most owning one or several websites it will.

But after being dragged around the reciprocal linking millstone over the last several months in a valiant attempt to obtain many reciprocal link exchanges and closely monitoring all completed link requests I can truthfully say that that job in itself is a bugger to track and stay on top of.

Why?

Because for the most part one has to rely on one common denominator in that equation… people.

I finally realized that this tactic of getting traffic ‘for free’ and having it prove itself as viable was indeed true. Link-exchanges do work. But they ARE work too.

But with me being the type of person who writes with my eyes closed (literally), I was told by a couple of e-friends that I should pursue ‘articles’ more vehemently. I didn’t know what they meant so what I did was find out about a couple of the bigger article directories on the Net and I submitted a couple of my writings to them. And then I promptly forgot about this process because it was extremely labor intensive.

And with me being a relatively lazy fellow at times I ‘moved on’ to other tasks that seemed more to my liking. And ease of use.

But after getting relatively burned out with this link-exchange stuff and dogging real live people to honor link exchange requests after I had ‘nicely’ place an unexpected link to their site on my site, I was tired of this whole process.

~~~~COMMENT~~~~
Yes, I know there are automated processes and software out there that will do this linking stuff for one, but again, I’ve also read how the SE’s are ‘onto’ these tactics and reciprocal links aren’t as effective as they used to be.

But they are still effective, that’s why I still honor the odd link exchange request I get. I just don’t spend all my time doing this anymore.

But getting back on track to the actual subject of this article…
~~END COMMENT~~

Back a couple of months ago, I somehow received an email about a new software program that would do ‘article submissions’ almost automatically.

But let me first digress somewhat and tell you what ‘article submitting’ is.

Article submitting may sound kind of formal and only for ‘writers’, but it isn’t.

Essentially, anytime one writes something of extended length, even a longer webpage, they’ve written an ‘article’.

Think about it. If you have a website that you’ve personally written, then you have written articles related to the subject of your website.

So, if your website is all about the best way to burp babies, then you have a whole bunch of ‘articles’ that you’ve written about parenting, specifically, burping babies.

What you can then do is submit these articles throughout the WWW and get yourself known as a baby burping expert.

But even more importantly, you can take each of the webpages you’ve written on your website and turn it into an ‘article’ – add a link BACK to your site in the footer of the article – and voila! you have written an article and ALSO obtained a link back to your site whenever someone else uses that article.

And all this without having to hassle with e-chasing that non-compliant link partner to honor their link exchange with you.

Sound cool? It is.

Now, like everything else, there is a downside to all this article writing.

It takes time to do.

First you have to have written YOUR OWN articles/webpages. And then you have to personally submit them to any of several hundred article directories floating around in cyberspace.

And of course there is the whole idea of you having the motivation to do this submission stuff too, so let me share a little bit of motivating statistics with you.

Remember how I mentioned earlier about having piddled with submitting a couple of stories/webpages I had written to several of the major article directories? Well, that was about 14 months ago. And remember how I told you that I did this and then promptly forgot about all this article submission stuff?

Well, over those 14 months since I did this, which by the way only took about one hour to do, I now have about 300 STATIC, incoming links to my site from those two articles being posted around the Internet. Yes, 300 incoming, NOT reciprocal, links.

And so what I did was after I received that email from someone touting this article submission software was to do some research on this whole article submission automation software process.

What I came out of this research with was that as of now there are two main article submission software programs that allow one to automate most of the process of doing this sometimes laborious task.

And since it is so repetitive and sometimes painstaking to do manual article submissions I thought that this would be one way to get me back into this process that I think is well suited for the way I like to promote my business online. With words, that is.

After much mental deliberation, and financial detailing, I opted to go for an article submission software that was released during the summer of 2005. Besides it being almost one-third the price of the other main player in this article submittal software e-competition going on, it also appeared to have a lot going for it with a money-back guarantee and a manual and good developer-support.

So I bought it several weeks ago and have been using it everyday to promote several of my websites by submitting ‘articles’ I’ve written to the several hundred article directories included in the automatic submissions this software does for the user.

And to say the least, the results, so far, are extremely impressive.

One little statistic. Remember those two articles I submitted 14 months ago and obtained over 300 incoming links from doing so? Well, I’ve used this software to continue submitting them to other article directories included in the software program.

And now that 300 incoming links number now numbers almost 700. Yes, 700 incoming links from just those two articles. An increase of approximately 400 incoming links, in just five weeks.

To me, those are some GOOD results. Especially without having to chase other humans to reciprocal link with me, building link webpages, tracking linking emails, checking links, buying tracking software, and all that stuff that goes along with the reciprocal linking process.

So, if you’re tired of buying links and chasing other website owners for reciprocal link exchanges, do consider using content you’ve written as a way to get links, and eventually traffic, into your site.

94YR2ZP7DZRR

Your Rights As An Ebay Buyer.

When you buy things on eBay, you pay the seller before they send you anything. This means that you, as a buyer, are vulnerable to all sorts of problems. You might not get the items you have paid for, or they might be damaged or faulty. Luckily, you have two very important rights when you buy on eBay.

The Right to Receive Your Item.

Maybe the seller never sent the item, or maybe it got lost in the post. Whatever happened, you paid for the item. If it doesn’t arrive in the post as described, you have the right to a replacement or a refund, whether it’s the seller’s fault or not.

The fact that you bought something on eBay doesn’t mean that you don’t have the exact same rights that you would have if you bought it in a shop (these rights are pretty much the same all over the world). Plus, under eBay’s rules, the seller isn’t allowed to change their mind about selling you the item: once the auction ends, it becomes a contract – you must buy and they must sell, or face eBay’s penalties.

The Right for Your Item to Be as Described in the Auction.

Sometimes sellers don’t wrap items properly, and so they get broken. Occasionally they write descriptions that are misleading or just plain wrong to begin with, leaving out vital details that would have caused you to change your mind about buying. If this happens to you, you again have the right to a replacement or a refund.

So How Do I Use My Rights?

First, you should take it up with the seller – most will be responsive, as do not want to have their reputation damaged when an upset buyer leaves negative feedback for all their future buyers to see. If that doesn’t work, report them to eBay.

While eBay don’t have many people handling complaints, they do have a relatively effective set of automatic process to handle common problems buyers and sellers have with one another.

Finally, if that doesn’t work, then you should seek advice from consumer groups in your country, and as a last resort from the police. You should never have to get this far, though: problems on eBay that can’t be resolved easily are extremely rare.

Don’t Be Too Quick.

Remember not to get too annoyed and be unfair to the seller: nice sellers have agreed to give me refunds for undelivered items, only for me to find out a few weeks later that they were being held for me at the post office! Always try your best to communicate and think of everything that might have gone wrong: eBay works best when buyers and sellers sort out their problems together, instead of reporting each other to the authorities straight away.

More often that not receiving what they paid for, buyers have an altogether different problem: they knew what they were paying for, but didn’t realise that what they were paying for was overpriced, low quality or a scam. The next email will give you a list of tips on how to avoid being ripped off on eBay.

How-To Get Your BLOGS Site Feed Listed In Yahoo! and MSN Within HOURS, Is Easier Then You Think

BLOGS… they seem to be the talk of the Internet marketing world these days, and for good reason.

Not only do the Search Engines love them for there Content Rich pages, you also have the ability to plug your Blogs “Site Feed” into an RSS feed and then have it syndicated to thousands of websites and directories giving your content more exposure to your target audience.

RSS(Real Simple Syndication) is a very Powerful technology that has been around for quite some time and when used correctly, can build an audience overnight.

If you want a crash course on what RSS is, in more depth, since the nature of this article is to show you how to get your Blogs “Site Feed” listed in Yahoo! and MSN, I’ve provided a link to a page full of articles on RSS related issues. http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-articles.htm

Now, depending on where your Blog is hosted, whether its through a free service like Blogger.com — http://www.blogger.com or hosted on your websites server you should have a “Site Feed URL” that has the .XML extension.

This is your “Site Feed URL”.

You&ll usually locate it within your Settings area of Blog control center.

Here’s what mine looks like as an example:
http://theiwe.blogspot.com/atom.xml

This URL is intended for a RSS News Reader, so disregard its appearance.

Once you find your “Site Feed URL”, copy and paste it into Notepad because you’ll need it for the next steps coming ahead.

Now, what you need to do is go and set-up an My Yahoo! and My MSN account.

I’ve provided the links for you below.

– My Yahoo! ==> http://my.yahoo.com

– My MSN ==> http://msn.com

It should only take you about 15-20 minutes at the most.

If you already have accounts with My Yahoo! and My MSN, read on.

This is assuming you already have your accounts set-up, so your next step is to Login to your My Yahoo! account.

When you login, you’ll be taken to your Yahoo! page immediately.

What you want to do next is go look under the Yahoo! search box to the left and click on the “Add Content” link.

This will bring you to a new page.

From there, over to the right by the “Find” button you’ll see an “Add RSS by URL” link, click on it.

A new window will open with a “Web Form”. Simply copy and paste your “Site Feed URL” from Notepad into the web form and click on the “Add” button.

Now, you should see your Blogs name infront of you. Simply click on the yellow “Add To My Yahoo!” button and your feed will be added.

The next thing you should see is your “Site Feed” with your “Headlines”.

Click on one of them, it should take you to your Blog, to the desired Headline you chose.

Your My Yahoo! page should Now have your Blogs “Site Feed” Headlines listed at the bottom.

Scroll down to check. If you don’t see them, it sometimes takes up to 24-48 hours for them to appear, so just check back later.

Now that thats done, everytime you update your Blog with NEW content, it&ll “Automatically” update on your My Yahoo! page and everybody else&s pages who have subscribe to your feed, plus, within 24-48 hours your feed will get Spidered and Indexed by Yahoo!.

Talk about getting the word out in a HURRY with very little effort on your part.

This is “Viral Marketing” at its Best in my mind.

And… it’s so simple to implement.

Okay.

Now it’s time to do the same to your My MSN account as what you did above to your My Yahoo! page.

Here’s the link to go login(click on Sign In from main page): http://www.msn.com

Once your login to your My MSN account you should see an “Add Content” link under the MSN logo to your left. Click on it.

A pop-up should now be displaying. Simply copy and paste your “Site Feed URL” from your Notepad into the web form provided and click the Search button(the green button with the arrow).

You should now be looking at Check Box with your Blogs name beside it. Check off your “Site Feed URL” and then press the OK button at the bottom.

PRESTO! Like magic… your Blogs site feed has now been added to your My MSN page which will then be spidered in the next 24-48 hours and Indexed by MSN.

That’s the Power of BLOGS(Web-Logs) and RSS(Real Simple Syndication)combined with two Internet giants.

The only thing you have to bring to the table IS, fresh, quality content that your audience WANTS, and do it on a regular basis.

I post my articles that I write on a weekly basis, making my Blog called… The Internet Wonders Blog – http://theiwe.blogspot.com – a search engine Magnet!

You can do the same because I just showed you HOW.

In conclusion, creating BLOGS and using RSS as a vehicle to syndicate your Blogs content is a Sure-Fire way to get your content spidered more frequently by search engines and the exposure it deserves, which in turn, will build you a large audience of buying customers that TRUST you.

eBay Auction

eBay – the World’s Online Marketplace – is the place to go when you want to buy or sell anything on the Internet. eBay lets its members sell items on the Internet via Auctions, which entails bidding, and through the Fixed Price Format, which means that there is a set price for items on sale. eBay Auction is the more popular selling method between the two.

Selling on eBay

When selling on eBay, whether it is through eBay auction or the fixed price format, a person has to first register to be a member and then create a seller’s account. Credit card details or being ID Verified is needed to create a seller account. The next requirement is a picture of the item to be sold. This is required since most buyers want to see what the item actually looks like before buying anything.

The next thing to do is to get your item listed by clicking on the Sell Your Item button. After clicking on the button, be sure to give all the necessary information such as the item category, the title, item description, and the price, payment method, shipping costs, return policy, and payment methods. For your item to have a greater chance of being viewed by more prospective buyers you can list the item under more than one relevant category. Another effective strategy would be to have a very specific title that would most probably typed by prospective buyers as their search string.

To keep track of all your listings simply go to My eBay since it keeps track of all the items you’ve sold and are currently selling along with all the bids made on them as well as all the items you have bid on and are currently bidding on. My eBay also has a summary page, a favorites page, and your accounts page. As soon as the item is sold eBay will notify both the buyer and seller through email. Make sure that you communicate well with your buyer and notify the buyer that the item is being shipped as soon as you receive the payment.

In case you plan to sell your item through eBay Auction there are three prices you need to set before putting up the item n sale. First is the Starting Price. The Starting Price is simply the price you want the bidding to start. It is also usually the lowest price you feel that you can accept as payment for your item. Next is the Reserve Price. In case your starting price is lower than the amount you are willing to accept as payment you need to set the Reserve Price. Having a reserve price means that if the bidding ends with the highest bid still lower than the reserve price then your item will remain unsold. This price is concealed from buyers.

Last is the Buy It Now Price. The Buy It Now Price is the amount a buyer has to pay to get the item you are selling without having to bid. Both the Reserve Price and Buy It Now Price are optional. The reserve price can be advantageous since it will protect you from having to sell your item at too low a price but can also be disadvantageous since it may discourage buyers from bidding. The Buy It Now Price, on the other hand, is advantageous for buyers who really want to buy the item you are selling since there is no risk that they will be outbid if they automatically buy the item. It is also advantageous for you as the seller since it can hasten the transaction since you don’t have to wait for the bidding period to end. However, it can also be disadvantageous if there is much demand for the item you are selling since having a Buy It Now price will limit the amount bid even if some buyers might actually be willing to bid beyond that set price.

eBay charges the following fees to seller. The Insertion Fee, Additional Option Fees, and Final Value Fee. The Insertion Fee is a non-refundable fee charged for each item listed on eBay Auction. Insertion Fee ranges from $0.30 to $4.80. Additional Option fees are charged if you opt for additional features like the Buy It Now and if you want your item to be a Featured Item. The Final Value fee is charged depending on the closing price your item manages to garner after a successful close at eBay Auction.

Bidding on eBay Auction

To bid on an item in eBay Auction, click on the item you wish to buy to get to the item page. You can then place a bid by simply clicking on the Place Bid Button found on the right side of the picture. In case there is no such button it means that the item can only be bought at the set price and isn’t up for auction. When you place a bid the only price you will see is the starting price since the amount bid by other people will not be visible to you. Enter the maximum amount you will be willing to pay for the item you wish to purchase the click on the Place Bid Button. eBay Auction will automatically compare your bid with others and won’t bid the maximum amount you entered. Instead it will bid only what is needed to outbid the last bid. eBay Auction will do this automatically until it reaches the maximum amount you entered or you win the bid. In case another buyer outbids you eBay Auction will send you a notification so that you can enter a larger amount or at least know that you’ve been outbid.

In case you are bidding on a Reserve Price Auction check whether the current price bid has met the reserve price. If your maximum amount has been reached but the reserve price still hasn’t been met then you know for sure that you need to increase your bid since the item won’t be sold until the reserve price is met.

If you are nervous about bidding on an expensive item keep in mind that eBay has measures to protect both sellers and buyers from fraud. If you are simply nervous since it is your first time try bidding on cheaper items first before going on to more expensive stuff. You can actually find items for less than $1.00 on eBay auction.

Web Business: What’s In A (Domain) Name? For Casino Sites, A Lot

You’ve seen them before and wondered what the heck they were thinking: small businesses with domain names like “http://reallylonganduniquebusinessname.biz”. Half-out-loud you say: what, was “http://reallylonganduniquebusinessname.com” taken? A new advertising technique of “illegal” casino websites helps prove that your snickering is absolutely justified.

Cheapskates and Johnny-dot-Com-Lately’s

If you’ve consulted for small business websites as long as I have, you have probably encountered more than a few whose owners decided to save three dollars at Godaddy by buying a dot-biz domain name. Or a dot-net, dot-info, or dot-whatever was on sale that week.

Whatever it is, forget trying to tell them that they may have lost out in thousands of dollars of business from type-ins. That is, from all the people who will type in the dot-com version and get an error message–or a parked domain advertising naughty-naughty pictures. Nor should you tell them that everyone who knows a dot-biz from a dot-com knows that the former is usually offered on sale and is the beast-mark of the most extreme kind of penny-wise-pound-foolish cheapskate. The obviousness of the truth of the observation will only make them hate you more.

Then there are the netrepreneurs who wanted that keyword-perfect domain name so badly that they took a dot-biz, dot-org, dot-cc, or dot-what-the-heck-does-that-stand-for? when the dot-com version was already taken. You know what I’m talking about: a one-man-band bookstore that buys the “book” domain with the Vatican’s top-level domain extension because Barnes and Noble has http://book.com, and every other possible variant was also already taken.

Again, don’t bother telling these people they’re just sending type-in traffic to Barnes and Noble. You are arguing against a cottage industry. Pitcairn Island, population under 100, has its own top-level domain name extension. No doubt they can cut back on their rare coin and postage stamp production thanks to the hundred bucks (US, not Pitcairnian) per domain paid by wishful Johnny-come-lately’s. And GoDaddy is no doubt raking in the credit card digits from .us domain names that are worth their weight in gold pixels. This is the web version of small business owners paying thousands to put their kids in their TV commercials. If you’re a business consultant, you correct their error at your peril.

Why Casino Sites Know Web Businesses Need Dot-Coms

In case you have some justification for a dot-whatever lurking in some self-destructive corner of your brain, let me write this as clearly as possible. For a US or international business, the only suitable domain name extension is dot-com. Nonprofits can get by with dot-org, schools with dot-edu. Non-US country-specific businesses can use their own national domain name extensions. No, my fellow Americans, there is no justification for dot-us, even if your shipping area does exclude Canada and Puerto Rico and military addresses to boot.

Why? Here’s solid evidence the dot-whatevers are so bad.

1) Type-in traffic.

Yes, many people really will type in the dot-com version of a non-dot-com business website. I discovered powerful proof of this once after I saw a television commercial for a website with educational information about gambling. Curious how they were making money on this deal, I typed in the domain–and found a website with actual gambling right on the homepage, which would be flagrantly (though perhaps technically) illegal for me to use. Only later did I realize that the TV commercial had advertised the dot-net version of the domain, and I had typed in the dot-com version. The dot-net version has the educational material.

How would a no-membership-fee content website–with little to no advertising–recoup the expense of television advertising? Only if a vast number of the visitors to go to the money-generating dot-com version.

2) Prestige

You may think I’m completely off-base and a business’s domain name choice is none of my dot-biz-ness But the fact is those opinions are my opinions, they’re not going anywhere, and if you want to impress me, a dot-whatever domain name won’t do it. And I’m certainly not the only one who feels that way. Maybe you can just devote your dot-whatever website’s homepage to refuting the snickerers like myself?

3) SEO

True snobs, search engine algorithms are suckers for anything that smells of respectability–and dot-whatever does not smell like that. How often do you see a high-ranking dot-whatever business site? The irony is that many dot-whatever domain name owners hope that having the keyword in their unique domain name will help them in search engines.

In the end, I have to admit there’s one good thing about the snobbery against the dot-whatever domain names. They provide a way for web business consultants to sort out the serious inquiries from the slush, just by looking at the “from” address.

Invasion of the Blogs: Is a blog right for your business

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. Guess what happens after a little while? The blogs die.

In managing a list of many Web sites, most of which are blogs, I deleted countless sites from the list because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place.

How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how blogging tools can be used for more than blogs.

Blog content is king

Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each medium has one thing in common: content. Having a blog connects your newsletter and your business with all of these readers and delivers important content in a particular style.

I’ve been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog entries in meryl&s notes, you’ll notice they&re more personal. When blogs first hit the scene in the late &90s, they were personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog has transformed from personal to business speak, although I still add personal notes here and there.

A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans want to know everything about them, but it doesn’t work for the average business person. Other business people want information on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products offering information of no value, few people will return. The people whose products sell well are the ones who provide valuable information. Readers already know what kind of information they&re getting, so they trust that when they buy something, it will be of the same or better quality. This value must be reflected in their blog. It’s much like people who only sign up for a newsletter after first seeing an example.

Who should venture where one has not blogged before?

No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn’t black or white (what did you expect?). Ask these questions:

• Can you regularly update it — at least five times a week?
• Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?
• Do you read other blogs or feeds?
• Can you provide information of value to others not just to yourself?
• How large is your newsletter subscriber list?
• How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or month?

The big decider is whether or not you can write in the blog almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to other sites doesn’t give visitors much reason to make the effort to come to yours. Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog discussions are common, and that&s where trackback comes in handy.

Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog&s comments page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and pasting in your blog&s trackback box.

Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good indicators of what kind of reaction you’ll get when opening a blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a long road ahead and lots of work to do. There is no magic formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity, your blog can engage many prospects and clients.

Pick a niche

Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and keeping an audience. meryl&s notes focuses on three areas: webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much. What I need to do for my readers is create three separate blog entry points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the geeky content.

I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl&s notes. It’s about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the geeky category, but it’s a personal blog and doesn’t belong in meryl&s notes. This blog is written for a different audience.

The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read the content through the software. For an explanation of syndication and feed readers, refer to What Is This RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom Business? When sending a new issue of a newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases are covered.

Blogs in disguise use the same tools

Blogging tools aren&t just for, well, blogging. Such tools are an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of tableless Web sites. Using blogging tools is much easier than the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand. Though using a blog tool, it isn’t a blog. In this case, the blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).

Small business owners don’t have a need for the fancy and pricey CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their site.

Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and metrics. They&re used for knowledge management. With information pouring in, blog tools provide a way to share, organize and process the information.

Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best practices won’t help, since the decision to blog is based on the organization&s mission, needs and goals along with its target market&s desires and needs. A blog about lemmings? There is one, sort of. Or maybe you&d like to start your own and talk about dumb business moves.