The Five Things You Must Do Before You Can Start Selling On Ebay

Many people make a full-time living on eBay. This is not only possible but it is also quite easy once you know what you are doing. Some people just make a little extra money through eBay auctions simply because it is fun – it becomes a hobby.

Whether you just want to sell some old items lying about your house, or you want to build a business by becoming a PowerSeller, there are five things you absolutely must do before you can start selling on eBay.

1. You must Register. Begin by registering as a member of eBay.

This registration is free, and it will allow you to participate in auctions – as a buyer. As soon as you have completed your registration as a buyer, you can register as a seller simply by logging into your eBay account and clicking on the ‘Sell’ tab at the top of the page. The information that you will enter is very basic information, but as a buyer, you will need to enter a credit card number, or sign up for a paypal account.

2. Sign up with paypal.

Paypal has become one of the most popular payment gateways on the Internet. This website allows people to transfer money from their bank accounts or credit cards, and to transfer money from one Paypal account to another. Signing up is quite easy, but you will need to verify your account with a checking account, and you can optionally add a credit card to the account. Paypal is very secure. As long as you don’t give your password out to anyone, you shouldn&t have any problems.

Paypal is not required to sign up with eBay, but it is highly recommended. This will allow you to give your buyers more payment options. Signing up with Paypal is free.

3. Find items to sell. You may already have items that you want to sell.

For instance, if you have recently cleaned out your attic or your garage, you probably have tons of stuff that you want to get rid of. Some items won’t sell well on eBay, while others will sell like hot cakes! So a little research to see what sells well before you set up any auctions.

You can also find items to auction by going to yard sales around your area.

Many eBay PowerSellers sell brand new items through drop shipping companies as well. It is all just a matter of determining how you want to profit from eBay, and what items are hot sellers.

4. Set up your auction. Once you are signed up, and you are ready to set up your auction, eBay has a form for you to fill out.

Here, you will determine how you are going to sell the product. You can choose to sell a group of items, or just one item. You will have a list of categories to choose from, and these categories determine where your item is listed on eBay. Choosing the proper category for your item is essential – this is how people will find your auction.

You must choose a title for your auction. You want to use your title to catch the buyer’s eye. Coming up with a great title isn’t always easy, and it does require some thought. Look at some past successful auctions to get some ideas. Make sure that you follow eBay’s guidelines for titles!

Make sure that you use the form to add as much information about your item as possible.

The more information you can include, the more successful your auction will be.

Look at the history of past auctions for items similar to yours. This information will help you determine your title, your description, and even your reserve price. The reserve price is the absolute minimum bid amount that you are willing to accept.

You will be allowed to include pictures of your items, and it is very important that you do so.

Make sure that the pictures are clear, and take several different shots from different angles. Pictures will help make your bid more successful. Many bidders won’t even look at auctions that do not include pictures.

You will also need to determine how long your auction will run. Don’t make the auction too short – give bidders time to find your item and place their bids – but at the same time, don’t make it too long. Force bidders to act by getting their bids in before the auction closes!

eBay has many upgrade options that will make your auction more noticeable.

Depending on the reserve price of your item, it may be well worth it to take advantage of these upgrades to get your auction noticed more easily.

5. Communicate with your bidders.

Make sure that you monitor your auction, and keep the lines of communication with your bidders open. Bidders will have questions about the item you are selling. Make sure that you respond to the questions and comments in a timely manner.

Think of yourself as a shop keeper, and reply to the bidders just as you would to a customer who was standing in your shop!

CopyRight Ian D. Major 2005

Online Auctions: 10 Secrets You Should Know Before Bidding

Yes! You know many online auction sites.

&Course you may have participated in some of the biddings.

The next time you decide to bid for a product or a service, do remember these vital online auctions secrets and tips.

1:Important to know the value of the product you plan to bid. Product is new? Check the price retailers are charging for it. It helps in two ways, you’ll know the original cost and helps you to pay way less than the retail value, if it is old or re-conditioned.

2:To ensure that you get a good product, get the complete information and picture of the product from merchant, if the details are incomplete on the site.

3:Decide your maximum paying limit and stick to it lest you may end up caught in the &bid war& and end up paying more than the actual cost.

4:It is always good to check a few auction sites for you may find the same product at a much lesser price in some unpopular sites simple because of the fewer number of buyers in those sites.

5:Make a note of the auction begin and end time. And the shipping time as well. This helps you to calculate the time when you want the product at a certain date.

6:Payments: Check the various payment modes the merchant offers. If checks and money orders are accepted, the delay in delivery will invariably be delayed for the payment has to clear. If the credit cards are accepted, ensure they have secure server.

7:Find out if the merchant offers a warranty or money back guarantee before the bid. Surely you don’t want to be bogged down with a non-working or unsatisfactory product.

8:Always good the check the track record of the merchant, if offered one. See if you can bump into any complaints from the past customers.

9:Start your auction early to convey a message to other that you’re interested in the product. If someone outbid you, you do the same. Always remember your maximum bid limit.

10:The reason to know the bid time – it helps you place a last minute bid, assuming that other bidders may not have kept track of the bid time

Role of Meta Title Tag in SEO

By: Prashant K Shukla, SEO Consultant

Do you want to secure a top ranking in search engine result pages(SERP)?

I think every one is going to answer – Yes. And a very common belief is that add lot of most searched keywords in the meta tags of your web pages and see your site skyrocketing. But it feels highly frustrating when this magic proves of no avail. Remember, meta tags alone don’t do a magic in getting better placed in the search pages. These meta tags sure help you to describe your web pages to a search engine and gain a better place in its results. But at the same time they help search engine too to prevent indexing of improper web pages. Which may have good weight keywords in their meta tags but having no relationship with the contents of the page.

Meta tags are the blocks which contain information about the contents of your web page and they exist into the head area of your web page. They are basically meant to communicate with the search engine. Most of the Meta tags are visible to the search engine only and not the visitor on your web page. But, Title tag is one which is visible to the search engine and the visitor as well. Most importantly, it attracts the search engine and the visitor very aggressively. Most search engines consider this tag as the primary information about the site and also an human visitor sees this information as the first thing on top left corner of the browser. Moreover, when one bookmarks the site, the text in this tag appears in the bookmarks list.

In this article, I have tried to focus mainly on ‘Title Meta Tag’ that how a good Title Meta Tag can render a great help in optimization of a website.

What is the significance of Meta Title Tag

Amongst the three major Meta tags (Meta Title Tag, Meta Keywords Tag, Meta Description Tag) the Title Tag is one which is given the most weight by search engines’ algorithms. In fact, this tag should be written so that it should give the idea about your site instantly. A perfect written Title tag can generate quick and appreciable traffic to your site. The text written in this tag appears as clickable text in the search engine result page (SERP) and if it is really meaningful and conveys most about the web page, more clickthroughs will be the result.

This small example explains the function of Meta Title tag better. Suppose I need to visit San Francisco and need a road map of the city and go to a book store to find the same. There are lot of books on tourism and travel with different titles but my attention will go to a title which says something like “”Latest Road Map of San Francisco”" rather than a title “”All about San Francisco”". May be the second book contains better information about the subject I am looking for. But the title of first one speaks exactly about what I need. This how a better title gains priority over the other because of the contents of its title. This is exactly what happens with search engine. It picks the most matching title with the query and places in its result page as clickable text.

Should the Company name appear in Title Tag

Well, I would say sure if your company is really a big entity like IBM, Microsoft or Cisco or some well know brand like Sony, Phillips etc. Because people may want to search for those companies or brands with their names. But in normal cases it should not be so.

Suppose, your company is “”Larry Tours and Travels”" in San Francisco. Instead of writing “”Welcome to the home of Larry Tours and Travels”" in the title tag it would be better to write something like “”tour operators, travel agents, car rental,bay area tours, san francisco tours – Larry Tours and Travel”". Do a good research to find best keywords and phrases which describe your site best. My suggestion is that the length of the title tag should be between 15 to 20 words making it attractive enough that it looks interesting to the person searching for your business and he clicks through.

Few tips for writing good Title tags.

Try including the content relevant keywords in the title tag. This would help placing your site better in search engine result page (SERP) when someone searches those keywords.

Also do not use repeating keywords and phrases in your title tag because this may be treated as spamming by search engines and they may affect your ranking.

Either don’t include your company name in the title tag or add it after few most relevant keywords, phrases into the title tag.

Write different title tags for each web page of your website instead of writing a common title page for the complete site. Make sure that each title tag has relevance with the contents of that web page where it appears.

Try to keep the length of your title tag small (between 15 to 20 words). Some search engines allow small title tags only and truncate the extra part of the longer ones which at times may render your title tag completely meaningless.

I would say that write very meaningful, impressive title tag they are a really powerful can be best tool to optimize your site. The title tag has most dominant role while the search engines make their decision about the theme of the website. When a search for keywords is conducted, the Title tag is given heavy consideration by most search engine algorithms. As I said earlier, since each page in your website is unique so it needs a different Title tag.

So, Writing relevant and meaningful title tag is something which may achieve high rankings in search engine result pages (SERP) and result high clickthroughs to your site. The Meta Keywords Tag and Meta Description Tag also need to be taken care of and optimized equally in addition to that of Meta Title Tag to secure a place at the top of the search engines and in convincing a search engine that your site’s contents are more relevant than that of your competitor’s.

Ecommerce Shopping Solutions for Ebusiness

E-commerce shopping solutions are available to act as bridge between online businesses and the consumer. By serving a link with the customer, the E-commerce application of your website is a basic feature of your Ebusiness. Searching the complete
E-commerce solution for your business is quite important, and it must be both users friendly and secure for customers to feel safe passing on their details. With uniqueness theft and credit card fraud on the increase, it is critical that your E-commerce shopping solution is trustworthy and safe, which can make it quite complicated to find the proper one that fits within your budget. On the other end, the importance should be given more on the quality, usability and scope of features served by any given package.

E-commerce is current update trend of business process special by majority and it is the internet through online business done. E-commerce is divided in three most factor listed bellow….

B2B (business to business)
B2C (business to customer)
C2C (customer to customer)

B2B Ecommerce: B2B is the selling and buying between companies, wholesale rather than retail. B2B involves widening the circle of suppliers (for safety and competition), and of centralizing control (for records and discounts).

B2C Ecommerce: The B2C E-Commerce Refers to a business communicating with or selling to an individual rather than a company. Most of business to customer in the US report tracks the trends as online selling moves from its youth to early adulthood.

C2C Ecommerce: This is new type of facilities given by internet to C2C, even if it is essential to note that type of commerce, i.e. the form of exchange, yard sales, flea markets, swap meets, and the like — has existed since time immemorial. Simply, good example of C2C is EBay. Moreover we can define it as, where consumers advertise their services and goods to other consumers.

Searching for an ecommerce shopping solution for your business might be some difficult, given that most providers like to offer individual opinion in favor of their own solutions. It is essential to try to consider precisely what your needs are, and what you’re searching for, you consider before taking decision yourself. It is more important to search an option that is best suited to your requirements, regardless of budget. So long as the ecommerce solution is within your price range, and provides the features that you require for your business, it is best to part with several hundred extra if it means finding the perfect solution for your business.

Consider using an ecommerce solution provider that offers the ability of developing websites and online shopping in any language. This will help to reach a global community of e-business and fetch in more sales. Take benefits of sites that provide quick search features and graphics and online promotions.

Usually, you can develop these types of storefronts and databases in any programming language, including Perl, PHP, ASP and C++ developing environments. When taking this approach, the database will have to be designed from scratch and integrated into the store along with modules to support tax, shipping and payment processing software.

E-commerce website design and development is both services need more friendly solution. Website designing services India and Web development staff is knowledgeable in the latest technologies available today at India designers.

Website Design for E-commerce Shopping Solutions

Your site should have not only an attractive but easy user interface. It should be a practical, handy and user friendly website. Just have a look at the following points that can help you.

*Attractive and Eye Catching Layout

*Clear and Logical Presentation

*Straightforward Navigation System

*Working Hyperlinks

In short, your website should be simple to search and informative enough to keep your visitors stick to it preserving their interest.

E-commerce offers buyers maximum flexibilities. They can visit the websites of multiple vendors round the clock a day to compare prices and make purchases, around the globe. In some cases, consumers can immediately obtain a product or service, such as an electronic book, a music file, or computer software, by downloading it over the Internet.

How To Post Your First Auction On eBay

It’s very easy and simple to get started posting your first auction on eBay. This article will cover the steps you need to follow to get your first auction up.

The first thing you need to do is set up your eBay seller’s account. If you have already bought things on eBay in the past, then you already have an account. Just log in and click “Sell” on the toolbar at the top of the page and then click “Create a seller’s account”.

If you have never bought or sold on eBay, then you need to create a new account. First click on the “register” link beneath the toolbar, then click “Sell” and “Create a seller’s account”. From there the eBay website will guide you through the process of getting set up. For security reasons, this may involve including providing your card and banking information.

You can register for your eBay account here: eBay.com

Now that you’re registered, you need to decide what you want to sell. It doesn’t really matter what you sell, this is just your chance to get your feet wet. Check your garage and attic, I’m sure you can find something that you’re not attached to and something interesting. Small items like books and CDs are great for your first time.

Once you have your item picked out, it’s time to submit it. Just click “Sell” and you’re on your way. The first thing you need to do is choose the best category for your item. eBay makes this easy, you just type in your item, and eBay suggests the best category for you. It’s usually best to just go with the category that eBay comes up with.

The next step is writing the title and description for your item. You want to make sure to include any keywords that people might use when searching for your item in the title. Include all the rest of the information in the description.

Now you need to set your starting price. In order to draw people to bid on your auction, set a starting price of $0.01. Don’t worry because items almost never end up as such a low price. Next set the duration of the auction. You have the choices of 3, 5, 7 and 10 days. This is really up to you, the longer the auction the more bids you are likely to get. Add a picture to your auction because items with pictures always sell for more.

Great, now you’re ready to select the payment methods you want to accept, and where you will post to. I would just go with PayPal for now, and limit yourself to the country you are in. Just click the “Submit” button and you are done!

Now you can just sit back and let eBay work it’s magic. Potential buyers will search for your item and submit bids on it. Some bidders may email you with various questions about your item. Just do your best to answer the questions as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Don’t worry if your item doesn’t sell the first time. The great thing about eBay, is that if your item doesn’t sell the first time, you can list it again for free!

Once the auction closes and you have a winning bidder, eBay takes care of all the work. eBay will send your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item your are selling. Just make sure you have the money in hand before you send the item.

eBay prefers that you use PayPal to send and receive your payments. PayPal is very safe and secure and you will get your money instantly so it’s a good idea to use them. It’s also free to create an account with PayPal.

You can create your free PayPal account here: PayPal.com

As soon as you have received the payment, all you have left to do is pack up the item and send it to your buyer. If you’re not sure of the best way to get this done, just take your item to your local post office and they can help you. Use the buyers address from the confirmation email that eBay sent you and write it on the package. That’s it, you’ve made your first successful sale on eBay!

Your Website Really Needs a Physical Address

I see it happening all the time… websites with no physical mailing address. It’s as if they don’t exist anywhere but in the scary world of cyberspace. I say scary because that&s exactly what a high percentage of the web browsing population thinks of the Internet. When these people are looking to purchase a product and don’t see a physical address, they get scared, and very likely abandon the purchase. And don’t think that a typical email address for your contact information cuts it. People want a physical location.

So, what do you do? Simple. Use a physical mailing address as a contact option in your &Contact Us& page and/or website order form. However, if you’re a website owner that operates from your home, don’t go and attach your home address to your website just yet, you might want to think about your mailing options.

Deciding where to have your business mail sent is not as straightforward as you might think. There are a few factors that you have to take into consideration – quantity of mail received, length of time at location, convenience, and of course, cost. The good news is that you have several options that are available to you:

1. Your Home Address
2. Mailing Services (Mailboxes Etc., The UPS Store, etc.)
3. Mail Forwarding
4. Post Office Box (P.O. Box)

Using your home address:

Using your home address is definitely the cheapest option. To the small to medium size website owners, it is probably the best option. However, if you tend to grow rapidly, or if your website already has a large user-base, then your home address may not be the best option for you.

If you are selling products from your website and allowing customers the option to mail in their order (which is good practice – and many do), then you could potentially get a lot of mail, depending on the user-base of your website, of course. If this is the case, then your home mailman will not be happy with you at this stage! And you may also find yourself spending a half hour out of each day prying your mail out of your tiny home mailbox that is not big enough to accommodate all that mail. Furthermore, if you ever move you will need to forward your mail to your new location, which never seems to be as smooth as you&d like it to be.

Then there’s the fact the all of your customers can easily find out where you live. Not that you’re hiding from anyone! But you could find yourself in the situation where you have a few inquisitive customers that don’t mind “stopping by” to ask a few questions!

Using a Mailing Services (Mailboxes Etc., The UPS Store, etc.):

The use of a mailing service can be quite expensive ($25-$45 per month). However, there are some benefits. You can assign a suite number or have a real street name assigned to your business address, instead of a P.O. box. This can give the potential customer the impression that your business has an office or building that resides at the location. However, I have found that the cost of this service usually outweighs the benefits associated with it. Nevertheless, the money you pay to use a mailing service is tax deductible as a business expense.

Using Mail Forwarding:

Now, if you REALLY want to get fancy you can opt for the mail forwarding option. Here you can pay a company in a “big time” city like New York or Chicago to accept your mail and forward your mail to you. This is EXPENSIVE! And there is another major drawback – you are always getting your mail about 2-5 days late due to the forwarding time.

Using a Post Office Box (P.O. Box):

The use of a P.O. Box is, in my opinion, the best choice for those that run high traffic websites out of their home. Not only does your mail get to the P.O. Box more quickly, but also the cost is relatively cheap (about $50-$125 per year). Again, this cost is a business expense, so save your receipt and write it off!

In my opinion and experience, most people are accustom to the P.O. Box and do not mind sending orders to it. In fact, many big companies use P.O. boxes as a matter of conveniently keeping the mail separate.

There you have it, four good ways to make your customers feel more secure by adding a physical address to your website. Pick the one that suites you and your company’s needs best – everyone is different. The important thing is to give your customers a place to send physical mail.

Good luck! And be sure to come back to visit VictoryKey often for more online business tips and discussions!

Sincerely,

Michael Ellis

eBay Training Courtesy of LearnKey

As we all know, eBay is the world’s largest trading community. eBay has millions of transactions conducted daily. Knowing how to find your niche on eBay entails several eBay training so that you’ll know how to make money on eBay and build a store on eBay

Making Money on eBay training and Build a store on eBay training are brought to us by Learnkey. We will have an overview here of these eBay training courses for us to know what&s
more applicable and bring us on the road to success for our own eBay selling business.

In Making Money on eBay training course you’ll learn the keys to online auction success. Adam Hersh, an expert instructorfor eBay trainings reveals bidding tips and pricing strategies. He also unveils how to title, describe, photograph and present your items which is guaranteed to fetch top bids.

Here in Making Money on eBay training, you’ll also learn how to authenticate items and securely settle transactions to protect yourself from fraud. This course&s conclusion let’s you understand the concepts of confidently buying and selling on eBay.

In Building a Store on eBay training, the introduction delves and explains that many small business owners are reaching a marketplace of millions of potential customers by building online storefronts on eBay.

By building a storefront on eBay, you suddenly face the tremendous responsibility of inventory, pricing, packaging, auctioning, etc. In the Building a Store on eBay training course from LearnKey, you’ll quickly learn the critical steps to set up and operate your own successful eBay store.

Erica Wadley, the expert instructor for this topic, has created an eBay store that has sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of products while generating more than 99% positive customer feedback. She takes you step-by-step through the process, such that at the conclusion of this eBay training course you have a clear understanding how to easily build and manage your own eBay store.

eBay SuccessKit
Learnkey hands out this eBay Success Kit, as part of the two-part eBay training course. The eBay Success Kit includes everything you’ll need to know about starting and operating a profitable eBay business.

This kit contains two complete LearnKey video courses on DVD – Making Money on eBay and Building a Store on eBay along with the workbooks you’ll be needing. With this kit you’ll learn step-by-step how to run a successful eBay business from experts who have done it!

eBay is the world’s largest trading community with millions of transactions conducted daily, it is necessary that we go and have a piece of the eBay pie.

Want to have a complete overview of this eBay training courses?

eBay Training Course Outline
Session 1
Section A: Online Auctioning Keys to Success Adam Hersh Online Auction Sites eBay Auctions Other Market Places
Section B: eBay’s Site Home Page Exploring Categories Searching Buying Auction Items Placing Bids
Section C: Auction Items Event Auctions Charity Auctions Memorabilia Big Ticket Items Prohibited Items
Section D: Listing Auctions Creating a Sell Item Advertising Real Estate Choose Category Suggested Categories Category Strategies Titling Items Abbreviation Create Title
Section E: Auction Description Details Purchase Conditions Appearances Description Text HTML Text Controls Reuse Scheduling
Section F: Pricing Price Options Fees Starting Price Reserves/Low Prices Buy It Now
Section G: Auction Features Private Auctions Pictures Picture Layouts Listing Upgrades Counters Payment Methods Shipping Feature Statics Session 2
Section A: After the Auction Follow up Shipping Non-paying Bidders Bidder Management 2nd Chance Offer Relisting Payment Services
Section B: Feedback Core of eBay Responding Getting Feedback Feedback Violations
Section C: eBay Services Benefits Conveniences Promotions Services Tab Buying/Selling Tools Trade with Confidence Authenticate Items ID Verify
Section D: eBay Stores Benefits Store Levels Featured Store Anchor Store Store Section
Section E: Auction Management Marketplace Integration Inventory Management Image Management Sale Management Storefront/Checkout Tools Order Management Preferred Solution Provider
Section F: Powersellers eBay Recognition Levels Benefits Maintaining Status
Section G: Trading Assistants Requirements Finding Clients Fees Limits
Section H: eBay Life eBay Community eBay Plans

Making money on eBay Training – eBay Training, Course 2 Sessions – 4 Hours of Training

eBay Training Instructor – Expert Adam Hersh has sold more than 50,000 items on eBay and other auction sites. He was the first named eBay trading assistant. He has sold more items, received more positive comments. He&d been an eBay member longer than any other trading assistant in New York City. His business has been featured already on several publications, including Smart Money, Readers Digest, and Business Week. He was selected as eBay’s collectible seller of the month in September 2003, and featured in the Collectibles Sellers Newsflash.

Make eBay training through Learnkey count. It will also be a good opportunity for you to attend more eBay training and help you become successful in the eBay business.

Tips for getting your website listed on yahoo

Treat Yahoo as both a directory AND a search engine. Yahoo offers a number of different search results. Part of their search results come from an actual search engine, and some of their results come from human editors, called surfers.

Every Yahoo directory submission is viewed by a person. (Search engines use spiders and indexing software). Admission into the Yahoo directory is entirely at the discretion of the Yahoo surfer viewing your site. That’s why the free submission lead time can often be 8-10 weeks, without using the Express Submit service.

Unlike search engine submissions that accept multiple pages from the same site, Yahoo surfers prefer to view your home page, and they will navigate your site from there.

With directories, the site owner selects the most appropriate directory categories for his/her site and writes descriptions that concisely and accurately describe the content of the site. Factors that affect directory placement are selecting the right category and writing a good description.

Always differentiate between the Yahoo search engine and the Yahoo directory whenever you speak to a search engine marketer. The strategies for getting listed in search engines are different from the strategies for getting listed in directories.

Fill out the Forms on Yahoo Exactly as Requested

We know this seems obvious, but some sites don’t get listed because the submitters do not follow directions when filling out the forms. When Yahoo asks for a telephone number, give only one telephone number including the area code. When Yahoo asks for a 25-words-or-less description, don’t try any fancy word stacking or keyword tricks. Stick to a concise, accurate description of your site’s content. Yahoo surfers often change your site description after it’s listed in their directory.

Although some fields are optional, try to fill in all of the fields in the form, especially the fields asking your company name, address, and telephone and fax numbers. Yahoo wants to know that you have a legitimate business that will be around in years to come.

Select the Categories (only 3) That You Want to be listed under Very Carefully

To select your categories, type in your selected keywords in a Yahoo query, and study the results. Your site does not belong where you believe your target audience is searching. Your site’s actual content should accurately reflect the category or categories you wish to be listed under.

You will probably be listed under the same categories your competitors are listed under. Study your competitors’ directory listing. See what their descriptions are, and then modify your site’s description to show the Yahoo surfer that you definitely belong in the categories you selected.

If you are a U.S. company, under the category Regional/United States/ in Yahoo, all 50 states are listed. You should include your site in one of the regional categories, if applicable. Don’t be surprised that most of your traffic from Yahoo is local. Many customers need to hear your voice or see your face to feel secure about hiring you or your company for a project.

Category listings are also at the discretion of a Yahoo surfer. You need to spend the time selecting your categories and studying your competitors so that you do not get listed under an “undesirable” category.

Have Unique Content and Point This Information Out in Your Submission

A web site is of no value to the Yahoo directory if the site contains the exact same information as other sites in the same categories. So to add value to the Yahoo directory, and to call attention to the unique aspects of your online business, make sure you have unique content on your site.

You can point out any unique content to the Yahoo surfer via your 25-word description or the extra comments field in the submission form.

Get a Virtual Domain Name

Yahoo tends to recognize virtual domains (http://www.yourcompany.com) over others. Why is this? Yahoo wants to have legitimate organizations and companies in their directory. They do not want a small start-up company that won’t be around next year, thus resulting in a dead link to a URL in the directory. A virtual domain shows that you are serious about your business.

Try to Get Listed in One of Yahoo’s Regional Directories First

At the bottom of Yahoo’s home page are some of Yahoo’s regional directories. If you are in one of the regional areas, you can often get your web site listed much faster in the regional directory than in Yahoo’s main directory.

Commercial web sites must pay an annual fee of $299 (currently) to be listed in the Yahoo directory. Sometimes, a Yahoo surfer might discover a content-rich commercial site without you ever submitting.

“Design for Speed” (Quotation from a Yahoo Surfer)

Yahoo is looking for sites that download very quickly, preferably within 30 seconds on a dial-up modem.

Of course, exceptions do apply; such as if you are an online video game company and use Shockwave on your site. Then it is understandable that your web site might take longer to download.

Lastly, the rule “Content is King” applies to getting listed in Yahoo. If Yahoo editors don’t feel your site looks or sounds like a legitimate business, they don’t have to list your site. So make sure your web site is easy to read, easy to navigate, easy to find (on search engines), shows consistency in design and layout, and is quick to download. Above all, have unique content to add value to the Yahoo directory.

Looking To Buy Or Sell For Free?

OK, so you want to get into the business of online auctions. Maybe you want to sell, or maybe you are looking to buy. Either way, it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune. Actually, it doesn’t have to cost you anything. That’s right! There are many free auction sites online to choose from.

You’ve heard of eBay (unless of course you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years), but there are alternative free auction sites online to choose from. For example, AuctionFire.com charges no listing fees and allows sellers to link to their auction page straight from their website for free. They have tons of item categories to choose from, whether you are a seller or a buyer, and claim to be open to new category suggestions. Similar in its item categories is Bid-Alot.com where buying and selling is free, though they require sellers who sign up for free account to provide credit card information. They also offer a how-to-trade guide for their beginners. Baymore.com offers pictures of their home page featured items as well as message boards for both buyers and sellers.

Other free auction sites include BuySellTrades.com which offers free listings, classifieds and trading, secure shopping and bidding, free store setup, community forums for buyers and sellers and even a chat community. BidMonkey.com also offers communities and even ChatMonkey IM. Users have the opportunity to earn Monkey Bucks and purchase items without paying anything but shipping. Also, sellers have the chance to be featured on the main page—a guarantee that everyone who logs in will see your name!

Whether you want to buy or sell, there are free auction sites out there for you with extra bonuses such as free store setups and community forums and chats to help you along your way.

Historical Development of Electronic Commerce

The meaning of the term “electronic commerce” has changed over time. Originally, “electronic commerce” meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, usually using technology like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI, introduced in the late 1970s) to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically.

Later it came to include activities more precisely termed “Web commerce” — the purchase of goods and services over the World Wide Web via secure servers (note HTTPS, a special server protocol which encrypts confidential ordering data for customer protection) with e-shopping carts and with electronic pay services, like credit card payment authorizations.

When the Web first became well-known among the general public in 1994, many journalists and pundits forecast that e-commerce would soon become a major economic sector. However, it took about four years for security protocols (like HTTPS) to become sufficiently developed and widely deployed (during the browser wars of this period). Subsequently, between 1998 and 2000, a substantial number of businesses in the United States and Western Europe developed rudimentary Web sites.

Although a large number of “pure e-commerce” companies disappeared during the dot-com collapse in 2000 and 2001, many “brick-and-mortar” retailers recognized that such companies had identified valuable niche markets and began to add e-commerce capabilities to their Web sites. For example, after the collapse of online grocer Webvan, two traditional supermarket chains, Albertsons and Safeway, both started e-commerce subsidiaries through which consumers could order groceries online.

As of 2005, e-commerce has become well-established in major cities across much of North America, Western Europe, and certain East Asian countries like South Korea. However, e-commerce is still emerging slowly in some industrialized countries, and is practically nonexistent in many Third World countries.

Electronic commerce has unlimited potential for both developed and developing nations, offering lucrative profits in a highly unregulated environment.

Online purchase of flowers

To a great extent our day to day life has a great relation with the existing and developing computer trends which has in many ways made our life a bit easier in some sense of the term

To particularize on this context I take the opportunity to focus on the online shopping system which offers more or less every kind of thing on sale.

The online sale of flowers is a great opportunity which everyone should grab as it remains only a buttons distance away. Cotton products in the virtual market for sale with an easy payment mode and in all varieties, sizes and colours is a news which everyone will be interested in and will check in and can make their shopping experience feel real.

There are also helpline to assist on special choices made with special colour and special designs.

The type of products on sale ranges from items like bouquets,gifts,chocolates, to teddy bears,greeting cards and other gift items.

Free shipping facility is provided for delivery of domestic orders. You are also given the facility to send flowers the same day and can get a refund if not satisfied with a money-back guarantee scheme.

The payment policies are made convenient and easy for the customer. The online shopping has emerged successful with its customer friendly approach. Payments can be done by credit card which is handled via secure server and a high level secrecy is maintained. With developments rushing in, the payment mode will be done easier with “electronic cash” transfer service.

Accepting Credit Cards on your Website

If you are building an online shop, you will need to address the question of taking payments for orders. You can, of course, request that a check payment be sent to you in the mail. Most shopping basket software allows you to select this option when you are setting it up. If you already have an offline, bricks and mortar business, you may simply wish to accept credit card payments over the phone.

However, there are some basic problems with these solutions and it all comes down to the way people shop on the internet. Customers expect to be able to add items to their basket and proceed to the checkout to pay. If they then find they must telephone you or print out and send their order, they may simply abandon their order and hop over to another website. Shopping online is all about convenience and if you are unable to provide this, you may be losing customers without even being aware of it.

So, what are your options and what is it all going to cost? Well, the good news is you can do it all very simply and cheaply. Paypal does not have a set-up charge and is a large and trusted online payment processor servicing 78 million accounts worldwide in 56 countries. Your only cost is a small percentage on each sale; a transaction charge. Payments from your website go straight into your Paypal account from where you can transfer amounts to your bank account with the click of a button.

Once you sign up with a payment processor, you can either link to their secure server from your shopping basket facility or build &add to basket& buttons via a simple web query form. The html generated is then pasted next to items on your web page and your customers will be transferred to a secure server when they go to checkout.

Traditional merchant accounts are normally set up through your own bank and will become integral to your business account. Having your own merchant account gives you the choice of many different online payment gateways. Most, however, do charge a set-up fee, monthly fee and transaction charge. Just as you would offline, do make sure you research any company you sign up with on the internet. Print out and read their terms and conditions. Take particular notice of where they are operating from, their fees, when and how you will receive your money into your account.

Another point to consider is the question of chargebacks. This happens when a buyer requests a refund of an amount already paid to you. Reasons include not receiving goods ordered or items arriving faulty, damaged or not as described. Sometimes requests are made if the buyers card was used fraudulently.

If the chargeback request is successful, your merchant payment processor will charge you a processing fee. However, some companies will now provide you with insurance against chargebacks inclusive in your monthly fee. It’s certainly worth shopping around for the right solution for you but knowing you have done your research will give you some peace of mind.

Successful Search Engine Optimization Needs Effort, Not Quick Fixes

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

It would be nice if we could master search engine optimization, and procure high rankings simply by editing Meta tags, but that’s just not going to happen. The reason is because, in order to achieve SEO success, a combined effort of different, long-term methods is required. There is no “one quick fix” that will solve the problem.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that there are no easy solutions, people still insist on using various techniques to try and find them. For instance, it is possible to quickly generate high rankings from words that no internet users will search for. However, even if you rank number one, if no one uses the words, your business will flop.

In addition, the following are some more quick fixes that many people try, and fail at:

Changing or Adding Meta Tags – Search engines are limited when it comes to deciding what sites should be shown in the result list of a keyword search. Meta keyword tags assist search engines and help them select the pages with the most relevancy that pertain to the keyword of a Web surfer.

Of course, there is a difference between a public search engine, like Yahoo, and an internal search engine. A public search engine contains virtually every webpage they are aware of. Therefore, they can’t trust all the Meta tags they find, as not all website have been designed to provide the internet users with relevant information on the keyword they are searching for. Some website have been set up for the sole purpose of advertising and generating traffic. Thus, the goal of a public search engine is to weed out these “irrelevant” websites and help searchers find exactly what they are looking for.

An internal search engine, on the other hand, consists of only a small amount of web pages or products. Therefore, it is less difficult for the search engine to produce the most relevant pages. Moreover, the Meta tags that are present on the internal search engine on your site are trustworthy; because your goal is to help your visitors find what they are looking for.

When all is said and done, by adding or changing the Meta tags on your website doesn’t quickly or slowly fix anything. The bottom line is this method will have not effect on the result of your SEO traffic.

Increasing Web Content – Increasing web content can boost your SEO success, but this is something that takes plenty of time. Sure you can quickly increase the content by writing useless puff pieces, using auto-generating software, or ripping off content from other sites, but none of these methods are actually going to improve your business profits in the long run.

The only web content that is going to secure your success is information that is relevant and valuable. It takes time and experience to generate this type of information, so don’t try to cheat your way to the top with wasted words or words that are not your own. Stay true to your business and keep your integrity.

Link Popularity – One of the most popular quick fix methods out there are link schemes. Anyone who does business on the internet knows how valuable links are. Links are what help to increase web traffic and increase website visibility. That being said, you will want to avoid becoming a “link farm”, because if your goal is to only get links to increase your SEO rankings, you’re not going to take your business anywhere.

As tempting as it might sound, you need to ignore link popularity. Your focus should be on your target market, and how you can reach them to let them know your website exists. Thus, you need to market your website, which means you may have to dish out a little money to publicize your website in local newspapers, magazine, or even in a television ad. The more your site is recognized, the better chance it has of ending up in the right niche markets to attract the right attention.

If you want to be successful with search engine optimization, you need to commit yourself to achieving long-term results. This does take patience, but is necessary if you want to come out on top. The following tips can help bring you closer to your high ranking goal:

Tip 1: Conduct thorough research for keyword phrases – use effective keyword programs such as KeywordDiscovery or WordTracker. The paid programs of their software will help you generate the best keyword phrases for your business.

Tip 2: Valuable web content – Don’t create a website that is overrun by graphics. SEO spiders will crawl right over these graphics and pass you by. Your website needs a reasonable amount of web content that is pumped full of valuable information. It needs to be clear and concise, and should also convey your website message which needs to include the keywords you’ve selected to rank high for.

Tip 3: Relevancy – Ensure that all your link anchor text and title tags are relevant to one another, as well as to the web content that is presented on your site.

Tip 4: Patience is a virtue – It will take almost a year, or even longer, before you begin to see any traffic from the natural results of search engines. Try not to let this get you down. Take this time to continue to improve your site and give the competition a run for their money. Eventually, your persistence, patience and positive thinking will pay off.

Always remember, it doesn’t matter how well you market your website, you are not going to achieve overnight success. Just like most things in life, taking the easy way out when it comes to marketing your business online isn’t going to create you long lasting success. If you want an impressive future that provides you with plenty of reward, you need to spend the time and money, and do things right the first time.

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

Building Your Online Store

The Internet is great at leveling the field for businesses. Where else can you put up a site and immediately compete with huge companies on an international basis?

What It Is

E-commerce, clearly termed as web commerce, basically means selling of merchandise or services over the Internet with electronic transactions and also through a secure network. E-com is not merely buying and selling or providing services but it is also a method of advertising and marketing through an electronic system as well. E-com also means facilitating the progress of commercial transactions electronically. Right now e-com is a well-established technology in all major countries. In most cases internet marketing requires you to have your own E-commerce store for maximum return.

Requirements of an E-commerce Store

Building an online store is not an easy job. Software is required that can manage customers as well as their needs. E-commerce software should be able to handle inventory, shipping and handling costs, taxes, dispatching and payment processing of client&s orders. You may encounter many options when setting out to build an e- commerce store. Before choosing any of them it is important to have a clear view of your requirements. Technical requirements might include coupons, tracking systems, customer login options or any number of other things. Other requirements include what type of impression you want to provide to your valuable clients.

Study the Sales and Marketing Cycle to Determine Your Needs

Before you opt for any of solutions for building e commerce store, study the basic model of e commerce that represents the entire sales and marketing cycle. The first building block of this cycle is audience in which you define what type of customers you will target. Second are commodities, in which you characterize the types of products you will put on the market. Third is customer support where you will answer the questions and offer solutions to clients& or potential clients& problems. Next are advertising, marketing and endorsement where a business promotes the products or services. Then there is transaction processing, the most important technical phase of the cycle, which will handle orders, taxes, payment processing and order delivery. Transactions may be automatic or manual. In manual processing you have to enter credit card information manually through an offline terminal. In the case of automatic processing a client&s order form will be setup with a program that processes and charges the credit card for you. After that there are post-deal services regarding how you provide solutions and services after the sale. Last but not least is brand name with which you will create a distinctive business image to correspond with customers. Nobody is going to pay attention to your online store unless something catches their eye.

Research Your Options

Once you have defined your needs, you can then begin researching your options. There are two basic paths you may follow when building an e-commerce store – either buy ready made software or build a custom system with components and parts according to your requirements and budgets.

Flexibility

Some business firms offer gifts and well placed impulse products for better marketing approaches. This requires an e-com solution to be flexible enough to allow various give-aways, coupons and promotions. Also, if your product comes in a variety of models or styles, with different options and different prices then you must communicate these factors and portray them distinctively in your online store. A true businessperson will certainly follow the patterns of his or her usual clients as well as those who directly visit the site. Web statistic tracking tools can be a great help to this end.

Ease of Use

Some e commerce stores are very easy to use and require only a few minutes to learn while others are more complex with so many features that they can be overwhelming. Being able to see a demonstration of software before buying it is a great help to determining ease of use.

Scalability

Being able to grow with your company is very important. If you choose a very simple solution now, then require a more robust solution down the road, you will lose time converting your store. If the URL structure of your store is not consistent, you can also lose search engine rankings by changing e commerce solutions. Therefore, it is important to choose an e commerce solution that can grow with you. For example, some stores owners may not want coupons in the beginning but then down the road decide it is a good idea. Some stores may also have limits on number of products, inventory control and tracking that down the road will be very important.

Security

Of utmost importance to online stores is transaction security. The priority for any business firm should be secure transactions. Thanks to Netscape for introducing SSL (secure socket layer), data can be protected by online store owners. SSL is an encryption technology that encrypts a message and the receiver decrypts it by using RSA security. To enable SSL on your web server you need a digital ID (a form of identification that will recognize you). Many web hosts provide SSL installation for anywhere from a few bucks to a few hundred bucks per year.

Overall, you want flexibility, ease of use, security and scalability in your store. Research your options before you make a final choice, and whenever possible, get a free trial of your solution before you buy.

One Day That Changed Every Day

Every day was the same. Wake up, go to work, come home, eat, go to bed, wake up, go to work, come home, eat, go to bed, wake up….. You get the picture. This is how it was for Jeremy Palmer in 2003 but now he earns over a million dollars through affiliate schemes.

Bored and underpaid in his day job as a Web Developer he lived form pay-day to pay-day and dreamed of a better way to make a living. Not content with just dreaming he made several attempts to set up his own business. He ran his own e-commerce site and built websites for local businesses but never saw the breakthrough he yearned for.

Then one day at work he discovered affiliate marketing. The company he worked for had set up an affiliate scheme as part of their internet marketing strategy. Intrigued, but not fully understanding how it worked, he kept an eye on how the scheme progressed. A few months later he noticed that some of the company’s affiliates were earning thousands of dollars through the affiliate program. Astonished at their success and even more so when he realised that all they were doing was referring visitors from their website to his company’s website and being paid a commission when a purchase was made. He decided to find out more.

What he discovered changed his life.

He found that there were thousands of online merchants, including big names like Wal-Mart, Dell and Amazon that had an affiliate program. The affiliates didn’t have to buy anything, make anything, deliver anything, deal with customers or secure the transaction and merchants were paying the affiliates millions of dollars every month in commissions. This discovery persuaded him to try affiliate marketing for himself and within two months he was making more money from his affiliate websites than he was in his day job. Within six months he was making twice as much so he decided to quit his job and focus entirely on his affiliate business.

Within two years he was a millionaire!

He now runs over 100 affiliate websites promoting several advertisers in various different categories. He&s recognised in the affiliate marketing industry as a leader and advocate receiving accolades from Commission Junction including their 2005 award for innovation.

“Every day” has changed forever.

Anyone seriously wishing to enter the affiliate marketing business would do well to learn from him and indeed you can. He has written a 140 page guide which is immediately available at www.ebiz-info.co.uk.

10 Secrets You Should Know Before Bidding

Yes! You know many online auction sites.

Course you may have participated in some of the biddings.

The next time you decide to bid for a product or a service, do remember these vital online auctions secrets and tips.

1. Important to know the value of the product you plan to bid. Product is new? Check the price retailers are charging for it. It helps in two ways, you’ll know the original cost and helps you to pay way less than the retail value, if it is old or re-conditioned.

2. To ensure that you get a good product, get the complete information and picture of the product from merchant, if the details are incomplete on the site.

3. Decide your maximum paying limit and stick to it lest you may end up caught in the &bid war& and end up paying more than the actual cost.

4. It is always good to check a few auction sites for you may find the same product at a much lesser price in some unpopular sites simple because of the fewer number of buyers in those sites.

5. Make a note of the auction begin and end time. And the shipping time as well. This helps you to calculate the time when you want the product at a certain date.

6. Payments: Check the various payment modes the merchant offers. If checks and money orders are accepted, the delay in delivery will invariably be delayed for the payment has to clear. If the credit cards are accepted, ensure they have secure server.

7. Find out if the merchant offers a warranty or money back guarantee before the bid. Surely you don’t want to be bogged down with a non-working or unsatisfactory product.

8. Always good the check the track record of the merchant, if offered one. See if you can bump into any complaints from the past customers.

9. Start your auction early to convey a message to other that you’re interested in the product. If someone outbid you, you do the same. Always remember your maximum bid limit.

10. The reason to know the bid time – it helps you place a last minute bid, assuming that other bidders may not have kept track of the bid time

e-sourcing – choosing the right tool and category is vital to success

e-Sourcing is the use of internet technology used by purchasing professionals to find suppliers and negotiate prices or reduce cost for a wide range of goods and services. A variety of online negotiation tools are used – including RFI (Request for Information, RFQ (Request For Quotation), RFP (Request for Proposal) and electronic auctions.

It is important to understand when and how each should be used to achieve the best results. Incorrect use can bring about unsatisfactory experiences and can lead to “bad press” for e-Sourcing.

This article focuses on the criteria which should be applied to determine the most appropriate e-sourcing tool to use.

Strategic importance of the category
An auction is generally recommended for those products with a high value and a minimum or small risk. High spend, low complexity is the ideal scenario for this type of price negotiation. The level of spend which will attract suppliers will differ from category to category but as a rough benchmark we generally look at spend over £150,000.
In nearly all other cases, requests for quotations (RFQ), requests for proposals (RFP) manual negotiations will be much more appropriate.

Is the specification clearly defined?
Clear and unambiguous requirements must be specified so that suppliers are competing on a ‘like for like’ basis and not working to different assumptions. A clear set of requirements (commercial, technical, logistical etc) will allow suppliers to work out the cost of servicing the account prior to the auction. If requirements cannot be clearly specified then the RFP is likely to be more appropriate.

Are the market conditions favourable?
An auction requires competition in the marketplace. The more potential suppliers there are available, the more likely a good auction result will be achieved. Also consider the marketplace dynamics – are there new entrants eager to win market share? How profitable is this sector to suppliers? Depending on the category these conditions may change quite frequently so holding the auction at the right time is crucial. If the category does not pass this test, other sourcing strategies will be more appropriate and will probably involve the need to work closely with suppliers to secure supply and will focus less on price but on total cost.

Cost/risk of changing supplier low?
A category may not be suitable for auction if the time taken to change supplier, the risks associated with change or the cost of changeover is high. Switching costs should be clearly understood in relation to the length and value of the contract.

It is possible to auction certain complex categories but this is generally done after a thorough tender / requirements definition process has been undertaken. This ensures that both parties understand the cost and implications of doing business. Good e-sourcing platforms will cover both the tender and auction aspects and allow suppliers who have passed the non-price evaluation be ‘rolled over’ into the final auction.

In summary, e-sourcing can bring considerable benefits to optimising purchasing costs. Certain categories will work well by simply running an auction, other categories will require a more detailed tender process and others will rely on more traditional purchasing techniques. By considering the criteria above, buyers should be able to make an informed decision

SSL Certificates Offer Website Security

What is Secure Socket Layer (SSL)? Basically, it is the standard security technology used to encrypt online data. SSL offers encrypted communication between the web server (server-side) and the customer&s web browser (client-side) when transmitting personal information such as credit card number, name and address. The SSL protocol uses Certificate Authority (CA) to issue &digital certificates& to the authenticated company.

The whole SSL process involves authenticating the server&s identity, the website&s identity and once the authentication is verified, the message will be sent in the form of encrypted information to the one who asked for a certificate. Usually, a browser requests a SSL certificate and in turn the web server supplies its public key with the requested certificate. Then, the browser has to verify whether the certificate issued is valid (certified by the authorized parties) and also should verify whether the SSL certificate issued comes from the particular website for which the request has been made.

An SSL certificate contains important details of the owner like his e-mail address, validity period, Distinguished Name along with the Common Name and also the certificate identification of the person who issues this information. The Certification Authority (CA) maintains an extensive list in which we can find names of the signed certificates and also more information about the revoked SSL certificates. Additionally, SSL increases the accountability and visibility of the company and creates goodwill and positive image among the customers. The certification maintains the integrity of the data passed to and fro between the browsers and web server (this is private and confidential). Thus, it’s a good tool to meet the security, privacy, safety standards required to protect sensitive and personal data.

SSL is especially important when we give our credit card, personal information to e-commerce websites. SSL certification cannot easily be accessed by hackers because the certificates have the proper key to encrypt the data. Therefore, the security of the certificate is taken care off in all aspects so one can really rely on the Certificate Authority (CA).

The internet has undoubtedly created new opportunities for e-commerce. However, that development is also attracting an ever-increasing number of cyber criminals. A fraudulent web site made to look very alike to a legitimate website may try to entice innocent customers into revealing personal information unknowingly. The only solution to this problem is to take advantage of the Secure Sockets Layer technology and implement it on your website. On the bottom line, every website that deals with sensitive information like credit card numbers or any other critical person information should have proper SSL certifications in place to protect them and their customers.

How to Sell Your Products on eBay

Founded in September 1995, eBay is The World&s Online Marketplace for the sale of goods and services by a diverse community of individuals and small businesses. Today, the eBay community includes more than a hundred million registered members from around the world. People spend more time on eBay than any other online site, making it the most popular shopping destination on the Internet.

Did you know that most eBay sellers are full time workers in a huge variety of work domains? You may see eBay as a great opportunity to supplement your income, or you may see it as a modern form of a garage sale. Regardless of your views, you can make the most out of eBay’s offer and reach an extensive audience for whatever it is that you wish to sell.

Selling your product on eBay is a user friendly, simple process. The first thing that you need to do is to create your own free eBay account. In order to do this you need to provide the site with your credit or debit card number and your checking account information. You needn&t worry about security issues, as eBay has some of the most secure servers in the world.

The second step is to choose to have your fees deducted from your checking account with eBay Direct Pay or to pay for them with your credit card. EBay charges you an insertion fee, for each item you post for sale, and a final value fee when the item is sold. The fees are low and if the item isn’t sold you don’t have to pay the final value fee. In case you do not have a credit card you can still participate to the buying and selling activities on eBay by verifying your identity for $5.

When you eBay account is ready you will have to follow these steps: • Decide on your selling format. There are several ways to sell items on eBay and you will have to choose the one that suits your need best. • Select a category – place your ad in a relevant context for better exposure. Its like selling them in the right place inside a huge mall. People will likely to search at that category, just don’t forget to emphasize on categories. • Write a concise title. Titles sell the best, one-liners or what you think is best. You can make things appealing considering you have the merchandise; they can instantly pull of another sound made by cash registers on a sale. • Describe your item as clearly as possible. EBay users search of the best image for the merchandise, you can have to improve your camera skills to attract probable customers. And of course add photos of the item in all angles. This is a very convincing argument for most buyers as they will trust your product more when they get to actually see it. • Set your price and the duration of your auction. Having to decide on this might be a good idea when the bidding closes off, as some schemes let the possible buyers choose the buy it now option if the conditions apply, try to experiment on things that may entice them to actually buy the product at a high price. • Make your item stand out from the crowd by using the numerous listing upgrades. Upgrading your listing makes them fresh and on top of the competition. this is fairly optional, but if you have the time to update your list, might as well do them. • Enter Payment and Shipping Information and specify who will pay for the shipping and how your buyer will release funds for it. These conditions are critical to state. Often, confusing your prospects and make them walk away from the deal if you give them a horrible shipping condition. Try to build their trust; after all, what you really want is to sell your items.

The steps mentioned above will take only minutes to complete, making your eBay selling experience a pleasant one. You will be asked to review all of the information you provided and then submit it. Your eBay listing begins from that moment and you can start watching the buying process unfold.

How To Sky-Rocket Your Profits By 267% With One Simple Sentence

If you have even a passing interest in the topic of boosting your profits, then you should take a look at the following information. This enlightening article presents some of the latest news on the subject of boost your profits.

Don’t think it’s possible to jump sales by 267% with one sentence? I’ll show you how I did it and you can implement the same strategy in less than 5 minutes on your site!

This strategy is so powerful that it can literally jump your profits OVERNIGHT!

All people doing business on the Internet are always trying to find ways to get their offer the the most targeted prospects available. Always trying to figure out, “What do I offer my proven customer next?”

Here’s what I did to BLAZE profits 267% overnight:

When my customers would click order they would be taken directly to a secure order form to enter their payment information. I came with the following strategy when brainstorming one late night….

Instead of sending them directly to the payment page I setup a page that offered a discount of 10% of their order if they would answer one simple question:

Once you begin to move beyond basic background information, you begin to realize that there’s more to boost your profits than you may have first thought.

What would you be most likely to purchase in the next three months?

I then had a drop down menu with three products I was selling at the time.

All the customer had to do was enter their e-mail address and then choose an answer and they would instantly be taken to the order form with the 10% discount.

Why did I give them 10% off for that one simple question?

When they submitted that question it was automatically entered into a data base with all the other customers that took me up on the offer. Two months after implementing this one simple question I pulled up my database, filtered it to the products customers expressed interest in and send a special customer offer to each of them.

What happened? Out of 120 customers, 96 bought! can you belive that? An incredible 80% response rate on a sales letter is unheard of…but these customers where so targeted because of the simple question I setup that the response rate was unreal!

Jump on this strategy now, you just can’t afford to pass up that kind of profit!

How To Not Get Lost In The SEO World

The ever-increasing level of competition in the Web these days is like a mad scramble for most businesses, with thousands of sites and affiliates boxing-out each other for niche markets, increased traffic, and higher sales.

Website and business owners who spend money on optimizing their websites in the search engines want to know they are getting a good return on their investments. SEO firms and experts need concrete numbers to show that the campaign is working, and that they should continue to invest in optimization.

According to the experts, there are several good reasons why you should measure your SEO efforts, so that you wouldn’t get astray in terms of direction or investment. First, you need to justify how much you’re spending to management, your client, or whoever holds you responsible for getting traffic to your website. Second, is to make sure that all the time and funds you’re spending on SEO is actually working. Third, to enable you to secure more money for next year’s SEO budget. And lastly, to enable you to stay competitive always.

It is also notable to take note that you should understand industry averages, such as how much the average website owner spends on outsourcing SEO, and this could range from $100 to $500 per web page for example, and what sort of return you can expect to receive for paying premium cash. In finding out these spending averages, you are fully equipped with the knowledge when formulating a plan that will convince yourself, or the higher-ups, to spend the money on SEO.

Tips On How Not To Get Lost In The SEO World

It is far better to get started on your SEO journey of learning and make a couple mistakes, than to let months go by, never make a mistake and never get started. Here are a few tips on succeeding, and in preventing yourself from getting lost in the wide, and sometimes tricky world of SEO.

* Make a firm decision to get started. There are a lot of people who will buy a program or purchase a product, but for some reason have difficulty in getting to know how to use it: as a result, they never do.

* Gain self-confidence through experience and constant practice. Far too many people hesitate to try out their ideas. The sooner you strengthen your confidence, the sooner you will realize the potential for what you can achieve and do. In the beginning, start with a few of your own sites where you have full creative liberty without encountering the demands or pressures that come from a client.

* Gather advice from the SEO community by visiting respected forums and discussion groups. Although at times you may not get leading edge stuff, since most of that costs a lot of money, however you will get an awesome amount of pertinent information. Plus, you’ll also hear both sides of a story, both the pros and cons, from the debates that seethe within the community.

* Subscribe to reputable newsletters and learn from what the experts say. Many of them are free to sign up to and they can be a wonderful venue to start learning.

The Values of a Link for Search Engine Optimization

Since most link building campaigns are done to support ongoing ranking strategies, it’s important to know where and how to look for “link traps” that keep you from your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts and goals. Websites that employ the use of robots.txt, JavaScript or certain redirects should be avoided. Websites that show no meter of Google green (PR) should be thoroughly checked. It’s important to secure links from a venue a search engine can spider. Links from websites outside your industry niche won’t hurt your link building effort; however they don’t provide a good ranking boost contribution since it doesn’t reinforce any relevancy of your keywords.

Overview

Reciprocal linking is an effective way of generating targeted, topic related traffic to your website. By increasing the amount of websites that pass a vote to your web page through the use of a backlink, the more important Google’s will deem your website, which with time will lead to higher Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s).

What we will focus on is determining which link exchange partners have links that are worthwhile of your time and effort. When looking for link exchange partners you want to look at multiple factors to ensure you are receiving a quality link exchange that allows a vote to be passed back to your web page. Intense Development is going to review 3 factors that qualifies the link as a good exchange:

1. Passing a vote
2. Passing traffic
3. Passing PageRank

1. Passing a Vote

This factor is more virtual than materialistic since this would at most times be based on your personal opinion. The quality of the vote passed on to your web page consists of multiple pointers that you have to ask yourself:

• Is it informative to your websites topic? Does it provide a quantity of quality content? Stick to websites that provide unique content that provides additional insight and is relevant to your websites topic.

• How long has the website being in existence? Has this website being in existence long enough to build itself up to be considered an authority site?

• How many outgoing links does the link page have?

Web pages that have less than 50 outgoing links are still considered effective enough to exchange with. See it this way: A Search Engine will provide (example) 100 points to each page outgoing links. If you have one outgoing link it will get the full vote value. If you have 50 outgoing links to other websites, than you vote count is only 2 points. Web pages with limited amount of outgoing links are favorable.

The placement of the link: Will the link partner allow a submission of your link within a paragraph of keyword related / informative text? This way your outgoing link does not follow the webs usual linking exchange pattern, which overtime could become devalued with Search Engines? The surrounding text reinforces your links keywords and might provide additional boost in the keywords relevance.

2. Passing Traffic

Serves good for targeted and high-volume traffic which could convert to clients. Many times the position of the link is what it takes to get more traffic from the website. On good way to determine the hotspot where visitors look most often is by checking out this site EyeTracker

3. Passing PageRank

PageRank (PR) is Google rating system of the quality of the website. The bar runs between 1 to 10 and the closer to 10 you can get the more valuable the exchange. In the past, Page Rank has been the main focus point in many webmasters and Search Engine marketers. Page Rank has overtime become less important in Google’s overall ranking algorithm, and now it determines the interval of the Search Engines spider / bots return to the website, for faster indexing of new content.

A Banned Site Re-indexed By Google and MSN Live within 24 hours – EASY!

So it seems it is possible and over at http://www.omg-1.com the experiment is proving itself.

The question was ‘Can we take a banned site – No pages indexed in google, yahoo or live and can we give it life and PR rank?’

Well it took 2 days for a banned domain to enter the MSN Live and the Google Indexes. Now thats fast.

But how was it done

Actually the website is set up as a tutorial on how to succeed with SEO seach engine optimization. It is a step by step guild to soring in the SERPs ranking.

Just take a look at all the free tools offered all over the internet that practically force the search engines to index you. Take a hint and follow the links on this site, they take you to amazing free optimization tools.

So here are the basic steps that got this domain re-indexed after being banned.

20 September 2007 -

1. Added content- index.php | experiment.html | report.html | paid-directories.html

2. Put together an article about the ‘Website Directory Submission Experiment’

3. Submit the article to digg.com, please if you are a member please then digg this story!

3. Wait as long as I can to submit our article below to 640 Article Directories with Article Submitter.

I want this website submission experiment webpage to be indexed by google first! This will secure that http://www.omg-1.com is the original source article and then we will not go into the googles suplimentals index. We do not want google to assume an articles site which we submitted to is the article source. Make sure you get your articles into the big article directories!

4. Continue to submit to the web directory database, placing the site into eg. http://ww.webdirectory.za/business/internet/promotions/

5. SEO TECHNIQUES

– Placed TARGET=”BLANK” on all outgoing links I have so many outlinks to very reputable sources. It is smart to keep people on your site, so let them view your suggested outgoing urls, but always leave your site page open. I even placed TARGET=”BLANK” on affiliate links such as

Website Submitter | Article Submitter

Then I went ahead and placed up meta tags with an off beat title to the site

<.title>That is only 10c for a permanent link pointing to your website!<.title>

its actually a one line sales pitch. In the description i just cut a block of text out of my main body

<.meta name="Description" content="We will hand submit YOUR site to 2000 FREE DIRECTORIES for $200 US That is only 10c for a permant link pointing to your website! Compare that with adwords | SEO search engine optimization is link building." /.>

and pasted it straight in as the meta description. I also use this description across all directory site submissions and acticle site submissions.

Also FORCE GOOGLE to visit your site in everyway possible

1. Reinclusion request.
2. ADD URL.
3. Place Adsense.
4. Place a google search form on your site.
5. Set-up adwords campaign and force google to scan your sites keywords! How?

Use the capaign keywords tool and select the option ‘Site Related Keywords’

Here is what Google scanned, so we can see an insight into what Google thinks about this site, and it’s a perfect result!

5. Setup an Adwords Campaign using the suggested keywords, create some Adwords Adds. I have posted my Adds below!

6. I added the very important OnlyWire button

7. Place http://www.omg-1.com to these directories ASAP!

8. Free email subscription service set up on the site for you to sign up to receive our SEO strategy techniques and discounts.

9. Placed a free translation script on the site to cater for foreign language visitors. 10 x the pages to index for the engines.

PS. please note that we are already indexed in Google and MSN Live after one day, 20 September 2007.

Will it last?

Probably not as we will be indexed but now categorized and themed and adjusted within the SERPs.
So we will come and go – but indexed for two major engines within two days is very good!

Selling On eBay: What You Should Know

Hoping to build your own small business? Today, millions of Americans are turning to eBay, where online selling is fast and simple when you’re armed with time-tested strategies for success. Follow these simple best practices used by eBay’s most successful sellers and watch your sales soar.

1. Register. You need to register and create an account before selling on eBay. Register by clicking the “register” link at the top of any eBay.com page. Registration is free and only takes a few minutes. To begin selling, click the Sell link at the top of the page and follow the prompts.

2. Sign up for PayPal, an online payment service that enables any individual or business with an e-mail address to securely, easily and quickly send and receive payments online

3. Do your homework. Before listing an item on eBay, it’s a good idea to research similar items that have already been sold successfully on the site. You can find great information on pricing, features and key descriptions that attract buyers.

4. List your item. Choose your title carefully, using keywords that will drive traffic to your listing. Also provide clear return policies, shipping policies and pricing.

5. Create buyer confidence. The more customer-friendly your policies, the more you will be able to convert potential buyers into customers. Offer policies that make it easy for buyers to purchase your items.

6. Price it right. Getting that first bid is critical, as other buyers are generally more likely to jump in if they see there are already bids on an item. Also available are fixed-price options, such as the “Buy-It-Now” feature.

7. Merchandise. Maximize your sales through effective merchandising. A savvy title, well-written description and clear photos can give your item the edge!

8. Shipping. Sellers who offer shipping via a trackable method will increase their success.

9. Pay attention to your feedback. Listen to the feedback you get from your buyers and announce any changes from what is said. This represents your online reputation and paying attention to what is said can result in a greater volume of sales.

10. Grow your business. Learn from small-business experts in the eBay Community at eBay Live!, a three-day celebration of learning and fun. It will be held June 13-15, 2006 in Las Vegas and offers insightful classes and hands-on labs that give you the real-world experience to take your success to the next level.