Blog about easy money making on the net

Guaranteed Page Rank

2009-08-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

With the help of spectacular people and hard manual work you will get PR results in a given deadline.

What are times and costc of the services?

From PR0 to PR1, 2 months - $29.90
From PR1 to PR2 , 2 months - $39.90
From PR2 to PR3, 3 months - $59.90
From Pr3 to Pr4, 3-4 months - $69.90

Special offer: from PR0 to PR3 for only $99.50!

Why do you want a better Page Rank?

- “Page Rank reflects our (Google) view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we (Google) believe are important pages receive a higher Page Rank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.”

- Googlebot crawls a high PR website more often. If you are a webmaster who update your websites frequently, your sites newly added content and links will be greatly benefit from the Gooblebot crawling. It helps your fresh content and links to be shown faster in the search engine and indexed. Not only that, If you are a webmaster who has other new websites that linked to your own high PR website, it will help your new websites been crawled by Googlebot more often and improved the new websites in search engine results.

- A high PR website will raise its virtual real estate value. You may often see people selling links and advertisement spaces like banners in their websites. The higher the website’s PR value, the higher the selling price. Due to the reason that there are many people willing to pay high price buying links and ads from high PR websites, many webmasters are making good residual income every month by just selling links and ads spaces. It is exactly like collecting monthly rental income from property investment in the real world.

- A high PR website will bring many visitors. Especially webmasters who just want to benefit from getting back links (like leave comments) from your websites. Like I mentioned in point 2, leaving a comment at your high PR websites will bring Googlebot crawls to their websites more often. Therefore, you may see many “hard-working” commentators leaving comments on your websites very often. It is good in a way that you will see a lot of responses every time you make a new post.
About 90% of the websites are approved for Page Rank increase. If your website isnt´s approved its because it has no relevant content or its on Goolge “Black List”.

What are times and costc of the services?

From PR0 to PR1, 2 months - $29.90
From PR1 to PR2 , 2 months - $39.90
From PR2 to PR3, 3 months - $59.90
From Pr3 to Pr4, 3-4 months - $69.90

Special offer: from PR0 to PR3 for only $99.50!

How to Make First 10 Bucks Online Within First Month

2009-07-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

In this article we going to summarize what do you need to do to earn first 10 bucks from blogging within one month without spending a penny:)

We assume that you already know how to create a blog and how to plug in Google AdSense. If not - read articles AdSense Myths and How to Create a Blog.

1) Choose theme. Common beginners mistake is choosing too competitive theme for blog. Please do keywords research first and find less popular themes as for example our blog's theme is one of the most popular blog themes on the net and we find it very difficult to achieve our blog's visibility on Google's search results.

2) Register your newly founded blog on main search engines: google, yahoo, msn, ask. Even if you didn't finished your blog and wrote only one post - register it anyway because it will take some tame for search engynes to crowl your blog.

3) Submit your blog on: digg.com, fasebook.com, technorati. com, simpy.com, globeofblogs.com and other social bookmarking sites. It will give you first good quality links.

Note: do not use any blackhat techniques until you will get first google page rank. Later you can try some but it's important to fallow main principles:
- do not build more the 5-10 links a day or 100-200 links per month.
- do not buy backlinks or place free backlinks on link directories (Why you should'nt do this you can find in article Sandbox)

All first three steps you should do within first day of your blogging. And by the end of your first day you should write second and third article:)

Further:

4) Create a podcast and/or video about one of your articles - it is better to choose more original one. Submit it to as many podcast or tube-video sites as possible. You can use automated submission sites but most of those services are payable.

Note: Do not ignore this step as your video or podcast (with right theme and keywords) will appear on search results within next few days!

5) On fourth day you can choose - write more articles or crate another blog. Submit all your articles to ezine sites like: ezinearticles.com articlesbase.com and similar.

Note: Articles you should write constantly. This means that you cannot buil hundrets of blogs and abandon them concentrating only on links building. It's very important to refresh your content frequently.

So you living fifth day creating blogs, writing and submit content. By this day you should have already one or two blogs containing few articles and published few videos, podcasts and ezine articles.

What should you do next? Repeat the process!
By the first month you should have 5-10 blogs with 30-100 visitors per day. And this will generate you about five dollars per month. What strategy you will choose further? It depends on your capabilities - if you're strong on writing - you concentrate on filling your blogs with a lot of content, if you learned more about backlinks building techniques the - build as many backlinks for your blogs as possible.

Good Luck!

The Google Sandbox Series Part 1

2009-07-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

In "The Google Sandbox Series" we publishing articles from other websites witch sources you will find on the end of every article.
We decided to pick out the best articles on "Google Sandbox" theme because rumors about Google Sandbox are so many but only few had been argued and checked facts properly.

So, here we are - thye first one:

"Jumping Over the Goggle Sandbox"

It's never easy for newcomers to enter a market and there are barriers of different kinds. For newcomers to the world of search engines, the barrier is called a sandbox – your site stays there until it gets mature enough to be allowed to the Top Positions club. Although there is no direct confirmation of the existence of a sandbox, Google employees have implied it and SEO experts have seen in practice that new sites, no matter how well optimized, don't rank high on Google, while on MSN and Yahoo they catch quickly. For Google, the jailing in the sandbox for new sites with new domains is on average 6 months, although it can vary from less than a month to over 8 months.

Sandbox and Aging Delay

While it might be considered unfair to stop new sites by artificial means like keeping them at the bottom of search results, there is a fair amount of reasoning why search engines, and above all Google, have resorted to such measures. With blackhat practices like bulk buying of links, creation of duplicate content or simply keyword stuffing to get to the coveted top, it is no surprise that Google chose to penalize new sites, which overnight get tons of backlinks, or which are used as a source of backlinks to support an older site (possibly owned by the same company). Needless to say, when such fake sites are indexed and admitted to top positions, this deteriorates search results, so Google had to take measures for ensuring that such practices will not be tolerated. The sandbox effect works like a probation period for new sites and by making the practice of farming fake sites a long-term, rather than a short-term payoff for site owners, it is supposed to decrease its use.

Sandbox and aging delay are similar in meaning and many SEO experts use them interchangeably. Aging delay is more self-explanatory – sites are “delayed” till they come of age. Well, unlike in legislation, with search engines this age is not defined and it differs. There are cases when several sites were launched in the same day, were indexed within a week from each other but the aging delay for each of them expired in different months. As you see, the sandbox is something beyond your control and you cannot avoid it but still there are steps you can undertake to minimize the damage for new sites with new domains.

Minimizing Sandbox Damages

While Google sandbox is not something you can control, there are certain steps you can take in order to make the sandbox effect less destructive for your new site. As with many aspects of SEO, there are ethical and unethical tips and tricks and unethical tricks can get you additional penalties or a complete ban from Google, so think twice before resorting to them. The unethical approaches will not be discussed in this article because they don comply with our policy.

Before we delve into more detail about particular techniques to minimize sandbox damage, it is necessary to clarify the general rule: you cannot fight the sandbox. The only thing you can do is to adapt to it and patiently wait for time to pass. Any attempts to fool Google – starting from writing melodramatic letters to Google, to using “sandbox tools” to bypass the filter – can only make your situation worse. There are many initiatives you can take, while in the sandbox, for as example:

Actively gather content and good links – as time passes by, relevant and fresh content and good links will take you to the top. When getting links, have in mind that they need to be from trusted sources – like DMOZ, CNN, Fortune 500 sites, or other reputable places. Also, links from .edu, .gov, and .mil domains might help because these domains are usually exempt from the sandbox filter. Don't get 500 links a month – this will kill your site! Instead, build links slowly and steadily.

Plan ahead– contrary to the general practice of launching a site when it is absolutely complete, launch a couple of pages, when you have them. This will start the clock and time will be running parallel to your site development efforts.

Buy old or expired domains – the sandbox effect is more serious for new sites on new domains, so if you buy old or expired domains and launch your new site there, you'll experience less problems.

Host on a well- established host – another solution is to host your new site on a subdomain of a well-established host (however, free hosts are generally not a good idea in terms of SEO ranking). The sandbox effect is not so severe for new subdomains (unless the domain itself is blacklisted). You can also host the main site on a subdomain and on a separate domain host just some contents, linked with the main site. You can also use redirects from the subdomained site to the new one, although the effect of this practice is also questionable because it can also be viewed as an attempt to fool Google.

Concentrate on less popular keywords – the fact that your site is sandboxed does not mean that it is not indexed by Google at all. On the contrary, you could be able to top the search results from the very beginning! Looking like a contradiction with the rest of the article? Not at all! You could top the results for less popular keywords – sure, it is better than nothing. And while you wait to get to the top for the most lucrative keywords, you can discover that even less popular keywords are enough to keep the ball rolling, so you may want to make some optimization for them.

Rely more on non-Google ways to increase traffic – it is often reminded that Google is not the only search engine or marketing tool out there. So if you plan your SEO efforts to include other search engines, which either have no sandbox at all or the period of stay there is relatively short, this will also minimize the damages of the sandbox effect.

Publisher: webconfs.com

Increasing traffic to your websites is the best Adsense trick

2009-06-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

This article will give you several different ways to increase your Adsense income. The first step is to log into your Adsense account and look at your last months states. There are three key areas that contribute to your earnings: Impressions, Clickthroughs and Effective CPM.

Improving your stats in any, or preferably, all of these three key areas will increase your Adsense earnings.

Impressions are the number of times your web pages with Adsense ads have been viewed. You improve impressions by creating more traffic to your web pages.

Here are several ways to increase traffic to your pages:

Create more web pages, with relevant, focused content.
Create more links to your web pages.
List your website/s under relevant categories in more directories.
Set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant reciprocal links.
Write relevant articles, with your site information in the 'resource box' at the end of each article, and submit them to article directories
The next area that will improve your earnings are increasing your "Clickthroughs".

Clickthroughs are the percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase Clickthroughs by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placing of your ads.

Although you can't dictate which Google Adsense ads show on your site, you can influence the relevance of the ads by maintaining a tightly focused website. If every page on your site focuses tightly on the site topic, its more likely that the Adsense ads will too.

For example, if every page of your site is about fishing, and the word 'fishing' appears several times on every page, its likely that your Adsense website ads will relate to fishing.

The best way to tweak your ad format and placement is to invest in an Adsense Tracker, and test, test, test! People who have done this tend to suggest that the best format is the large rectangle, with background and border the same color as the page behind it, so that the ad blends into the page.

The best placement is towards the center or top left of the first screen of the page. Try these suggestions first, and then track and test, to be sure of what works best for your pages.

The next way to make money with Adsense income to generate effective CPM.

Effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings, per thousand clicks. You can increase your Effective CPM by selecting topics that attract high bids from Adsense advertisers, and building pages and whole websites on higher paying topics. Look for top paying keyword adsense words to use for your campaigns.

Although Google doesn't release information on Adsense bids, you can get a good idea of the top paying topics by looking at information on Adwords bids, or, for that matter, bids on pay-per-click search engines like Overture.

There are a number of keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that can help you find high paying topics.

So now you have the basics of increasing your Adsense income. Here is the basic formula:

Build pages and websites on high paying topics for the best Effective CPM.
Format and place your Adsense ads for maximum Clickthroughs.
Promote your sites to drive targeted traffic to your Adsense web pages for maximum impressions.

Our team

2009-06-02T11:59:00.000-07:00

Do what you like and get paid!

Our team has been making money without leaving home for five years now (since 2004). During that time, we earned so much expertise in various ways of earning money online it would be a sin not to share it.

The internet contains so much information about making easy money it is more than easy to get lost, let alone the enormous amounts of time you have to spend processing the information. Besides, the internet is a space where plenty of swindlers suggest logging on to unreal systems, purchasing “magic” information about successful trade in “eBay” auctions or trying to milk your money otherwise.

This blog provides ALL topical information for free!

We divide all ways of making money into three main groups:

a) The development of strategies of successful trade in “eBay” auctions, acknowledged by powersellers

b) Money-making solutions taking advantage of browser flows on your websites – Google AdSense and other affiliate programmes (we will also teach on how to create websites fast and free of charge)

c) Other remote work (home office) opportunities, such as free-lancing in various fields etc.

Google Ranking Tips

2009-06-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Google is by far the most popular search engine available today for both ordinary surfers and webmasters alike. Surfers like it because of the highly relevant results it gives and the speed at which it delivers them. This is due to its complex text matching algorithm and of course the Pagerank™ system that this engine uses. More on the Pagerank™ system later.

Google is popular with webmasters and Internet marketing companies due to the highly workable ranking system it uses. Unlike other engines where information about how the results are obtained are sketchy at best, Google actually publishes information on its site about the results it produces. Hence webmasters have things they can do to produce higher rankings.

What also makes Google popular with webmasters is the speed at which they will spider and list your site. If you're not listed in Google and submit your URL you're usually indexed within two weeks. If however your site is already listed in the index Google should reindex once every month, but more frequently if you've a high Pagerank™.

This indexing and reindexing time is much quicker than most other search engines. This allows webmasters to edit their pages properties such as title, first few lines of text, headings, keyword distribution and of course the number of incoming links to their site. They can then discover quickly if the changes they made were successful or not.

It's because of this popularity that you need to know the workings of the Google search engine. Without knowledge of it you'll be ranked lower than all other sites that are only slightly familiar with the Google algorithm and hence could lose lots of potential customers.

Google ranking algorithm

Let's now continue onto the main part of this Google rankings report by indulging ourselves in the Google ranking algorithm. Well there are two main parts to the algorithm Google uses, the first is its text matching system whereby Google tries to find pages relevant to what the searcher has entered in the search box. The second and equally important part of the algorithm is of course the Google patented Pagerank™ system.

I'll first go through how to make your pages relevant by discussing the text matching part of the algorithm.

Google gives a lot of "weight" to the title tag when searching for keywords. It is therefore vital to make sure your most important keywords or keyphrases appear within this tag. It seems to work best if you've other words in your title tag too after your keywords, but try to remain under 35-40 characters.

I imagine many of you know this already but Google does not use meta tags such as the keywords meta tag or the description meta tag. This is because the text within these tags can't be seen by visitors to a website. Therefore Google feels these tags will be abused by webmasters placing lots of unrelated words in them in order to get more visitors.

This lack of support for meta tags means that Google creates your description from the first few lines of text on your page. This in turn means that you've to have your keywords and phrases right at the top of your webpage, if Google finds them your page becomes more relevant, if however it doesn't find them the rest of your page has to work harder to become relevant. To see an example of what I mean scroll back to the top of this page and you'll notice keyword rich wording similar to:

Google submitting tips, ranking high at google.com, Google ranking tips, pagerank algorithm, Google algorithm guide.

The above text includes keywords and keyphrases related to the theme of this page. Now when people search for any of those keywords or keyphrases this page is much more likely to be near the top of the results than a page that doesn't imply this technique.

Google considers keyword density in the body of a page for determining relevancy too, so make sure your keywords and phrases appear a couple of times throughout the whole page. Don't go overboard though, a density of 6-10% seems to work best.

Google has recently been noticed to give a substantial amount of "weight" to words appearing between the various header tags. These are tags designed to help you split up sections of your page, so this approach by Google seems to make sense. The header tags go from h6 the smallest to h1 the biggest, the bigger the heading tag the more relevent your page will become for the words within it. It is for this reason that you should always try to have your most important words within these tags as often as possible throughout your page.

Other advice about making your page relevant would be to make as many keywords appear within bold tags as you can. In the past Google has been known to index text in alt image tags, whether they still do or not I don't know but it couldn't hurt to include keywords in these tags anyway.

One final tip on page relevancy is the point on having your keywords and phrases in links which point to your site. It's a good idea to have the linking text contain your keywords as Google even says itself in its description of its Pagerank technology that it analyzes pages that links come from.

How much keyword laden links matter is anyone's guess. I have however noticed a lot of sites which give the HTML code to visitors who want to exchange links do include keywords in the actual linking area. You should do this too on your links page, say something like "if you want to link to this site, please use the following code". The code would of course have your most important words in the actual link text and your less important words in the accompanying description of your site.

Google Pagerank

In the above section of the article you've learned what areas Google uses and looks at when looking for a relevant site, but what method does Google use to determine which site is better, the answer is the Pagerank system.

Pagerank is as the name suggests a ranking system of pages. It works on the basis that if a website ABC.COM has been linked from a website XYZ.COM, abc.com must have some good content and therefore Google will count the link from XYZ.COM as a vote for ABC.COM. You can check your Pagerank on Google by downloading the Google toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com

The Pagerank™ scale goes from 1 to 10 on the Google toolbar and from 1 to 7 beside listings in the Google directory. A less important site is of course a site with a PR of 1 and a very very important site is a site with a PR of 7 or 10, in the directory or toolbar respectively.

The more links or votes a site has the more important it must be and therefore the higher it will rank for search words which it is relevant to, right?, WRONG!.

Google does not simply count the number of incoming links a page has, if that was the case every webmaster from Iceland to Vietnam would try and exchange links to every Tom, Dick and Harry website that would let them. In Googles own words:

"Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Hopefully your beginning to get the idea. The idea is to have your page linked to by as many high quality and high pageranked sites as possible. Right? RIGHT and WRONG.

WRONG BECAUSE, you see the Google Pagerank system also takes into account the number of links the page that has linked to you has. The reasoning for this is that a page X has a certain amount of voting PR, if your site Y is the only link from that page X, then Google feels confident that page X thinks your page Y is the best link it has and will give you more PR. If however page X has 50 links, page X could think your only the 50th best link. Hence the more links a page has the less of a PR boost your site will get.

RIGHT BECAUSE, linking to a site with a 6+ PR will provide a significant boost to your PR in most cases, but in cases where the site also links with 100 other sites the boost will be almost zero. Likewise if a site has a PR of just 2 but you and only one other site are linked from it, then the PR boost would be more than the site with 100 links and a PR of 6.

Google Pagerank formula

It's beginning to come complex isn't it, just wait till you see this formula. It looks scary for non math's people.

First let me explain what the damping factor is. The damping factor is the amount of your PR which you can actually pass on when you vote / link to another site. The damping factor is widely known to be .85, this is a little less then the linking pages own PR.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

In layman's terms PR(A) is the Pagerank boost your page A will get after being linked from someone else's site (t1). PR(t1) is the pagerank of the page which links to you and C(t1) is the amount of total links that (t1) has. It is important to know that a pages voting power is only .85 of that pages actual PR and this voting power gets spread out evenly between all sites it links to.

Imagine http://www.akamarketing.com was linked by XYZ.COM's link page which had a PR of 4 and 9 other links, here's how the formula should look like:

PR(AKA) = (1-.85) + .85*(4/10)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85*(.4)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .34
PR(AKA) = .49
To sum up my site would get an injection of .49 PR after being linked from a page with a PR of four and 9 other links.

Let's say I was linked from a site with a PR of 8, double the previous example's amount, which had 15 other links, a total of 16 outbound links, my boost would be:

PR(AKA) = (1-.85) +.85*(8/16)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85(.5)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .425
PR(AKA) = .575

The above two worked examples show that not only is the PR of the linking page important but what is also important is how many other sites are also linked to from that page.

I think we've had enough maths stuff for now, just remember that the name of the game is to get as many links from pages with high PR and few other links. The more of these links you get the more your PR will grow and the more your rankings will improve for your relevant keywords.

Google Pagerank™ and web directories

The best thing you can do for your PR seems at the moment seems to be getting listed in Dmoz.org. Dmoz.org is home to the Open Directory Project which is a human compiled directory of websites.

Pagerank™ is widely known to be biased towards big name directories such as Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart.

This is true, especially in the case of Dmoz.org. These ODP links are treated like gold by the Pagerank™ system. It doesn't even matter what the individual PR of the category page is. I have seen sites gain a large PR boost on the toolbar as soon as Google updates its directory with the latest one from Dmoz.org. This is because Google uses its own version of the ODP for the Google web directory.

Don't believe ODP links are very important to Pagerank™?
Don't believe a listing in the ODP will boost your ranking?

Well they are and it will. Perform a search for almost anything on Google and you'll discover that 75-80% of the top 10 results are also indexed in the Google directory and therefore also listed on Dmoz.org. The fact of the matter seems to me to be if your not listed with the ODP, you shouldn't expect much traffic from Google.

Getting a listing is not difficult, it does sometimes take time but it's not difficult. Just make sure your site has good content and follow the guidelines for adding a URL. Try to get your index page listed at least. I say at least because although ODP claims only to list your index page, there are plenty of sites with 5 - 10 pages listed.

Therefore if your site has very distinctive sections you can submit each section, beware though that this must be done slowly, otherwise you may be banned from the directory altogether for spamming. Once Google updates its directory these listings could do wonders for your sites Pagerank™. My article entitled Open Directory Project guide is a complete guide to getting into the ODP, I highly recommend you read it.

Regarding Yahoo and Looksmart, Pagerank™ will usually allocate a more than normal amount of PR boost for any sites listed. Tips on getting listed in Yahoo can be read in Yahoo submitting tips.

If you're a non-commercial site or have a site that's almost completely non-commercial you can get into the Looksmart directory through http://www.zeal.com. I really love this site, just like Google obtains its directory results from ODP, Looksmart obtains its non-commercial listings from the Zeal web directory. Without Zeal I would have to fork out hard earned cash and all my site does is provide free information in the form of articles and tutorials.

To continue, I submitted AKA Marketing.com on a Tuesday and was listed in Zeal by Thursday morning. On Monday I checked my logs and found lots of referrals from Looksmart, I was in Looksmart already. I looked at my logs later only to find MSN had updated its database from the Looksmart database and was sending me loads of visitors because of the good listing I got. My site was listed in Zeal, Looksmart and MSN within six days. Needless to say I highly recommend you get over to Zeal.com and submit your site.

Before you can submit a site however you must pass a member quiz, the quiz is a fairly simple straightforward one, you might however learn a thing or two while doing it.

If you happen to be a webmaster that has a listing in all three of Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart then I'm guessing your site has good to very good PR and rankings.

Google ranking tips - Conclusion

In closing I would like to recap on some of the main points you have just read. Be sure to have your main keywords and keyphrases in your title tag and well spread throughout your page, use header tags wherever possible. Get as many links from as many high PR low number of outbound links pages as you can. Get listed with Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart.

Well that's it. I hope you have enjoyed reading this Google Ranking tips article as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing it. I also hope that you can put this advice into use and help get yourself some real traffic.

By David Callan

Add a Social Bookmarking Button to Blogger

2009-05-29T04:04:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial you will learn how to add a free Social Bookmarking button to your Blogger (Blogspot) blog. By adding this feature to your website you will enable visitors to your blog to create links to popular social bookmarking sites such as Google, Technorati, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Delicious, Furl, Yahoo etc. Adding personal bookmarks enables visitors to share these links with others thereby helping your attract more traffic to your site. For more information on the benefits of social bookmarking please refer to my article - Benefits of Social Bookmarking for Blogger bloggers.

Add This Share ButtonThis tutorial shows you how to place a social bookmarking button on your site by accessing a free social bookmark and feed button builder service called Add This. Add This will supply you with a simple piece of code which when placed in a widget will insert a button either at the end of each post or in the sidebar. If you wish you can do both as I have done on this site. For those new to blogging don't worry if this sounds complicated as this article gives you step by step instructions suitable for any Blogger user including beginners.

How does an Add This Social Bookmarking Button Work?
The code from Add This places a button on your site which when clicked on by a visitor to your site opens a menu of the most popular social bookmarking services. When a selection is made by a visitor eg Delicious, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, MySpace, Stumble Upon they are given the option to submit your blog to their online bookmarks. Once a visitor submits your blog to a social bookmarking service Add This can provide you with useful analytics about bookmarks, feeds and emails depending on which buttons you enable on your site. This kind of statistical information from Add This will help you gain greater understanding of your site traffic and your most popular posts.

Steps for Adding a Social Bookmarking Button from Add This to Your Blogger Blog

1. Register for a free account with Add This

2. Once you supply a username, email address, password and your website address sign up is pretty much instanteous.

3. After sign up is confirmed click on Get Your Button. This will take you to the Create Your Button Page

4. On the Create Your Button page you will be asked to make some selections about your button.

What kind of Button? Select Sharing/bookmarking button

What Look? Choose any of the six button choices. For this example I am going to select the share button

Where? Select on a blog

Blogger Platform? Select Blogger

At this point the information your have entered should look like the picture below:

Once you have confirmed that you have entered the correct information click on the Get Your Code button and you will be taken to the Get Your Code page.

5. From the Get Your Code page you will be given the option to Preview your button. Do so if you wish or move on to Step 6.

Having generated the code for your Add This Social Bookmarking button you now need to decide where to position it on your blog. You may either place your new Social Bookmarking Button beneath each post (see below) or in a sidebar.

Instructions for Placing a Social Bookmarking Button Beneath Each Post of Your Blogger Blog

Click on Blog Post Button option.

Highlight the Javascript code supplied by Add This

Copy the code to the Clipboard of your computer using Ctrl + C command

In a new window open your Blogger Blog and sign in

Navigate to Layout > Edit HTML

As a precaution Backup your template in case you inadvertently overwrite some code.

Once you have backed up place a tick in the Expand Widget Template checkbox

Use the Ctrl + F command to open the toolbar which will appear at the bottom of your page while using Blogger. You can close this at any time using the Ctrl + F command or by clicking on the blue cross in the lefthand corner.

Now highlight the following line of code and using the Ctrl + C command copy and paste the code into the Search Box on the toolbar at the bottom of Blogger. This action will quickly locate the code for you in your Blogger template. You will be placing the code immediately before this tag.

<div class='post-footer'>

Return to Add This and highlight the Javascript button code supplied. Copy the code to your clipboard using the Ctrl + C command.

Reopen the Blogger window and place the cursor right before the tag that you located earlier.

Paste the Javascript code from Add This into the template using the Ctrl + V command.

Your code placement should look like that pictured below

Click on Save Template

Now click on View Blog from the top menu and navigate to the end of your first post. If all instructions have been followed you will now have a social networking button at the bottom of each post.

Instructions for Placing a Social Bookmarking Button in a Sidebar of Your Blogger Blog

Follow the Add This automated process by clicking on Add the Menu to My Blog button. This will place a button in a widget in your sidebar as you see on this site.

This Blogger tutorial has covered the steps involved in adding a free Add This Social Bookmarking Button to your Blogger (Blogspot) blog. Grow your Blogger (Blogspot) site today by adding a free Add This button which will enable visitors to bookmark your site and share your posts with others. Add This will provide statistical tracking of bookmarking activity on your site and help you determine your most popular posts.

Make Money from Banner Ads on Your Blogger Blog

2009-05-29T03:31:00.000-07:00

One of the things that makes Blogger such a great blogging platform is the facility to add advertising to your Blogspot blog and make money from it. In this article I will be discussing how banner advertisements on your Blogger blog can make money for you. By banner advertising I mean advertising in addition to Google Adsense or Adbrite that you may have already added to your Blogger blog. For information on adding Google Adsense to your blog please read my articles on Google Adsense.

Banner advertising is FREE. And Banners Do Make Money.
It is no secret that banners make money provided you choose your merchant program carefully and have enough traffic accessing your site. In my experience once you reach around 100 visitors a day is a good time to add a few banners to your blog.

How Do I Make Money from Banners on My Blogger Blog?
Affiliate marketing banners make money for the publisher - that's you. When you place a banner on your blog the affiliate program gives you a snippet of code to add to your template which makes the banner display and identifies you as the publisher. When a visitor clicks on a banner on your website that click is recorded as originating from your site and you make money as a result of that click. Depending on the merchant program that you have signed up for you can earn a commission for providing a lead, or receive a percentage of the sale.

An Example of How Banners Work
After having placed your banner ad on your Blogger blog your site gets 100 visitors in a day. Out of that 100 people 5 people click on a banner which takes them through to the merchant's website. From those 5 people one person makes a purchase of around $100.00. Assuming your commission is 10% of the sale you have just made yourself $10.00. It's that easy.

Making the Most Out of Advertising Banners
To make money from banner ads you need volume as only a small percentage of your visitors will take any notice of the advertising on your blog and only a much smaller percentage of that pool will actually buy anything once they click. That's why it is really important that you focus your energies on building site traffic. If you need to grow your traffic read my articles on tips to increase traffic to your Blogger blog.

Of course you do need to choose your affiliate banners carefully as obviously some advertising will have more appeal than others. To some extent this is a matter of trial and error as you can never be completely sure how a banner will perform until you try it. You can increase the odds of success however, by choosing merchant programs that are related to your blog in some way. For instance if your blog is about cars then advertisers of car accessories like audio units would be a good place to start.

How Do I Add Affiliate Banners to My Blogger Blog?
Adding affiliate banners to your blog is pretty easy. Pretty much copy and paste stuff which anyone can do. Please read my article providing step by step instructions on how to Add Affiliate Banner Ads to the Blogger Sidebar of your Blogger blog if you are unsure. If you want to place a banner in the header of your blog please refer to Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Header

Disadvantages of Banner Ads
Too many banner ads can give your visitors the impression you are just in it for the money. So make sure you don't go overboard with too much advertising that will overshadow or detract from the content of your blog. Remember less is more so place your banners ads strategically on your blog. I like a small cluster of about 4 banner ads usually 125x125 somewhere fairly close to the top in the sidebar and a 468x60 banner in the header. The header is a prime position for an effective banner advertising campaign. Read more about how to place a banner ad in the header of your Blogger blog in my adding banners to Blogger series of tutorials.

The other main problem with banner ads is that they encourage visitors to leave your site and as we all know one of the hardest jobs is to attract the visitor in the first place. Do you really want them leaving your site before they have had a chance to look around? I don't think so. Only place banner ads on your blog that you are confident will reap you some rewards otherwise forget it. You might actually lose traffic if you provide too many inducements to leave your site.

Bloggers Guide to Google Adsense Myths

2009-05-29T03:22:00.000-07:00

Bloggers Guide to Google Adsense Myths

I get a lot of interest in my articles about Google Adsense on Blogger Blogspot blogs. In this article I discuss 6 common myths about Google Adsense that will help you get real about placing Adsense on your Blogger blog.

Google Adsense Myths Every Blogspot Bloggers Needs to Know
There are a number of myths about Google Adsense which can lead new bloggers in particular into believing that they need only slap a few Google Ad units on their blog and they will become instant millionaires. The reality can be a lot different especially when you consider that 95% of all blogs receive less than 100 visitors per day. Adding Google Adsense to your blog can generate some income but there is a need to be realistic. Here are 6 myths about Google Adsense that every blogger needs to know:

Myth 1. Google Adsense is a Get Rich Quick SchemeGoogle Adsense is Not a Get Rich Quick Scheme
False. Only a small percentage of bloggers actually make a living from their blog. It is definitely possible to make some money from Google Adsense Ad units but bear in mind that making money from your blog is commensurate with many factors such as types of advertising, placement of advertising, quality of your content, regular posting, number of articles, SEO, backlinks to your site, number of visitors to your blog to name just a few. The more articles you write, the more posts indexed in search engines like Google and Yahoo which may lead to increased traffic but not necessarily. The bottom line is that for your ads to be effective your blog needs to receive traffic so concentrate your efforts in this area and make sure that your blog is worth visiting once your visitors get there.

Do Your Sums
As Google Adsense itself says it is difficult to predict earnings however there are some general pointers to guide you. For instance if your blog receives 100 visits per day your likely revenue from Google is probably about 10 cents per day assuming that 1 in 100 people click on some form of Google advertising on your site and the page CTR is about 0.20%. Over a year that equates to about $36.50. Not a fortune in anyone's book. Likewise if your blog is fortunate enough to receive 1000 visitors per day you are looking at an annual income from Google Adsense of $365.00.

100 Visitors per day = Earnings $36.50 per year

1000 Visitors per day = Earnings $365.00 per year

5000 Visitors per day = Earnings $1825.00 per year

10000 Visitors per day = Earnings $3650.00 per year

The above figures are an optimistic view. I have not allowed for the fact that many of your visitors will be repeats so the likelihood of a repeat visitor clicking on an ad unit is less than for that of a new visitor. On this basis your earnings could be much less.

Google Adsense and Affiliate Marketing
About 95% of Bloggers would have less than 100 visitors to their blog a day. If your blog is in this category then Google Adsense alone will not allow you to quit your job and become a full-time blogger. You will need to display other forms of advertising on your blog as well before your blog will start to pay. Check out my article on other forms of advertising that may be suitable for your Blogger blog including displaying Affiliate Marketing banners.

Affiliate marketing banners can work as a form of advertising. Consider that if 1 site visitor in 100 actually buys something worth $50.00 you will immediately earn $5.00 assuming you receive 10% of the sale as a commission. Even if only one in 500 clicks through to the merchant and buys something you will still be ahead of the revenue earned from Google ads for the same number of visitors. $5.00 from Affiliate Marketing versus 50 cents from Google Adsense. In many ways Affiliate Marketing is a more profitable marketing strategy than having heaps of Google ads on your blog. However, in my experience a good mix of both is the way to go

Myth 2. Displaying More Ads on My Blog Will Earn More Money
False. Some bloggers mistakenly believe that placing more Google Adsense units on their blog will yield higher earnings. Sadly this isn't the case at all. By putting more Ad units on your blog you may actually reduce your earnings. There is a risk that the highest performing Ad units will shift to positions that are less frequently clicked on. For instance while the top right hand corner is a prime place for an advertising banner because it gets viewed by the most eyeballs it is also a spot that tends to get disregarded by savvy visitors who recognise it as an advertising zone and avoid it. At the same time a 336x280 Ad unit with a higher CTR is likely to display Google Ad units which pay less because the highest CTR has been transferred to the 468x60 Ad unit.

Myth 3. More Traffic Equates to Higher Google Adsense Earnings
Not necessarily. Depending on your blog's content it might not always be possible to drive a lot of new visitors to your blog and you rely more heavily on your repeat traffic. However, due to the familiarity of the ad placement on your blog repeat visitors are less likely to click on your Ad units than new visitors. While you can expect more clicks on your ad units as traffic increases there is no guarantee that Google Adsense on your blog will deliver the kind of earnings you might expect.

Myth 4. The Ad Format of Google Adsense Ads is Not Important
False. The ad format you display on your blog is very important. You can earn more from some ad formats than others. For instance it is generally considered that the wide Google Adsense ads (336x280, 300x250 or 250x250) perform best. I like to position one of these directly above my first post.

Link units can be profitable too if strategically placed. One of the best locations for link units is in or just below your blog header as many people are used to looking there for a navigation menu. A 728x15 linked ad unit just below your horizontal navigation menu will very likely yield good results.

Myth 5. Placement of Google Adsense Ad Units Doesn't Matter
On the contrary where you place Google Adsense can be critical to earning revenue from your blog. One of the best places to position Adsense is above what's known as the fold. The fold is the top area of your blog visible to your visitors without them having to scroll down. A 336x280 ad unit in this space works well because on arrival at your blog the visitor sees what they are looking for and clicks on it. For instance if your blog is about mountain biking then Google Adsense will very likely serve up ads about cycling equipment, cycling tours etc. For the visitor seeing exactly what they are interested in on arrival is a definite bonus which may lead them to click on your Ad unit.

Myth 6. To Make Money from My Blog I Need to Add Google Adsense
False. While Google Adsense is by far the most popular Advertising Network it is not the only advertising option. There are some good alternatives like AdBrite and Chitika. Let the type of blog you have govern your decisions around which advertising mix you employ rather than just going for Google Adsense because its the easiest.

In this article I have explored 6 common myths about Google Adsense that every Blogger Blogspot blogger needs to be aware of when placing Google Adsense on their blog. This article will hopefully help you do a reality check and help you recognise that while you may be one of the 5% of bloggers sitting on a goldmine Google Adsense won't transform you into a millionaire overnight.

Common Blogger Mistakes

2009-05-29T03:13:00.000-07:00

If you want your Blogger blog to sizzle and really take off there are some pretty important blogging pitfalls that you need to avoid. In today's article I will be talking about 6 of the most common mistakes new bloggers make on their Blogger Blogspot blog and how to avoid them.

1. Avoid Poor Content
I can't emphasize enough that the standard of your content will make or break your blog. Poor content = few return visitors. Good content on the other hand will attract visitors and keep them coming back to check out what's new.

Successful bloggers write clearly, know their subject and develop their own unique voice. A conversational style is often recommended but I suggest just write naturally and that naturalness will shine through.

Post quality well researched content that is interesting and topical. To do this you need to know your audience. Who are your readers? Do you know? If you don't know your target audience it will be hard to put yourself in their shoes which is exactly what you need to be able to do when you sit down to write a post. Ask yourself what are my readers looking for that would make them visit my site and read my post. Are they looking to be entertained, informed or a bit of both? Sign up for visitor tracking such as Google Analytics if you aren't already so you can get an idea of your visitor base. For help with implementing Google Analytics please read my post on adding Google Analytics to your Blogger blog.

2. Avoid Hopeless Headlines
I've seen some pretty hopeless headlines that don't give me enough of a clue about what a post is about to entice me into reading the article. If you want to attract readers to your site you need to grab them. That means putting some thought into crafting headlines that have punch. Remember your headline needs to reel your visitors in so make sure it is well thought out and punchy. Your headlines have to stand out to be noticed as so many people read headlines in RSS feeds.

Another important consideration when deciding on a headline is SEO. Consider what your readers might search under to find your post. "Blogging pitfalls" and "common blogging mistakes" are more likely keyword search phrases than "bad blogging practices." So knowing your keywords will help you craft headlines that are keyword rich.

3. Avoid Posting Too Infrequently
Once a visitor has found your site you want them to keep coming back. One way to ensure repeat traffic is to post frquently. Many new bloggers start a blog but find it hard to maintain a posting routine that is frequent enough to retain traffic.

Just the other day I had someone comment that one of the reasons why they liked my blog was the frequency at which I post. I try to post a new article every second or third day if possible. I usually am working on lots of other articles in the background so that I might have two nearly finished and half a dozen or so at various stages of completion. Using this system I have some flexibility and a cushion if anything comes up to interrupt my posting schedule.

Whatever you do don't make the mistake of posting just for the sake of posting otherwise your readers will see through this and you will lose readership.

4. Lack of Overall Focus - Trying to Paint the Whole Wall
So many new bloggers start their site without a clear focus. What kind of focus you may ask? Well making money is not enough of a focus. I am talking about identifying your niche and sticking to it. If you try and paint the whole wall your visitors will be confused about what your blog is about and you will very likely lose traffic rather than gain it.

Having a focus is important. On Blog Know How for instance, I concentrate on helping webmasters of Blogger blogs get the most out of their blog. I particularly aim my site at the new blogger and provide detailed step by step walkthroughs with them in mind. At the same time, however, I cater for all Blogger webmasters who access my blog. What I don't do though is go outside the theme of Blogger by writing about blogging in general. Instead I write articles that may be general in nature but are tailored to Blogger webmasters.

Yes I could get more traffic perhaps if I widened the scope of my articles to include Wordpress or blogging in general put what would then make my blog stand out from a whole heap of other blogs giving advice on blogging? Having a niche earns me traffic that is focused. Site visitors come with the goal of becoming more informed about using Blogger. If they go away having learnt more than when they arrived my site will have done its job and I may have just found myself a repeat visitor.

5. Avoid Too Much Advertising on Your Blog
New blogs need to build traffic and too much advertising can be a big deterrent in
achieving this goal. When your site is very new it doesn't pay to have too much advertising at all. Err on the side of less advertising rather than more. Bear in mind of course that Rome wasn't built in a day and your site won't be either. Have faith that your traffic will build and you can gradually introduce more advertising like Google Adsense as visitor numbers increase.

6. Avoid Too Many Social Bookmarking Buttons
Too many social bookmarking buttons can clutter up your blog and slow it down. Many people still don't know too much about social bookmarking so avoid the temptation to overuse these icons. Rather than use a whole bunch of popular icons like Digg and Technorati which can lead to a cluttered look and feel I use a single consolidated button like Add This. Share This is another popular button for sharing your posts.

This article has discussed 6 common mistakes new bloggers make when developing a new Blogger Blogspot blog and given suggestions on how to avoid them.as visitor numbers increase.

Motion TV

2009-05-29T02:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.motion.tv

Motion.TV Shares ad revenue with members. Earnings depend on the popularity of your videos. Minimum payout is $20.

Atom Films

2009-05-29T02:43:00.001-07:00

http://www.atomfilms.com

AtomFilms is looking for original short videos, cartoons and web shows. If your work is accepted, you’ll be offered a distribution contract and royalty payments that increase every time your movie is played.

Revver

2009-05-29T02:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.revver.com

Earn money for uploading and sharing videos. Revver pairs your videos with targeted ads and revenue is shared 50/50. The more views your videos receive, the higher your earnings. Earn 20% for sharing other members’ videos.

Current TV

2009-05-29T02:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.current.tv

Current TV accepts pods (non-fiction and satirical shorts about what’s going on in your world), mobile footage of funny or newsworthy moments, documentary shorts and more. Pays a flat rate based on submission type and airing. (see FAQ for details)

Metacafe

2009-05-29T02:36:00.001-07:00

http://www.metacafe.com/producer_rewards/

Share your original videos and earn $5 per 1000 views. Payment starts after the video has received 20,000 page views with a rating of 3 or higher.

Spymac

2009-05-29T02:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.spymac.com

Spymac.com is a media-sharing network that pays for original pictures, short films and audio files. They run daily and monthly jackpots and share revenue among contributors who upload the best content.

The system depends on ratings, total comments, total views and total revenue of each upload to determine who gets a share of the jackpots. Members also receive a share of their referrals’ winnings at the end of the month. Spymac pays by check when a minimum of $25 has been earned.

Blip tv

2009-05-29T02:31:00.000-07:00

http://blip.tv/about

Submit your original shows to blip.tv, choose a video advertising company, and earn 50% of generated revenue.

123 Royalty Free

2009-05-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.123rf.com

Sell your photos on 123 Royalty Free and earn 50% of net proceeds from each photo downloaded. Earn 15% of revenue when someone you refer buys credits or subscribes to 123rf. Refer photographers and earn 10% of theÂ priceÂ of each of their photo downloaded, as well as a free complimentary credit.

Zoom and Go

2009-05-28T08:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.zoomandgo.com

Earn points for sharing your photos, videos, hotel reviews and for performing various other tasks (such as booking a hotel through the site). Redeem points for cash and/or prizes.

fotoLibra

2009-05-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.fotolibra.com

Trial fotoLibra Members can upload ten images for free, but these can't be changed until they upgrade to a paid membership. Full Members can upload up to 4 GB of images and Platinum Members have unlimited storage. fotoLibra takes 50% commission and pays by check.

Fotolia

2009-05-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.fotolia.com

Photographers set the price of their photos (based on photographer ranking, chosen license and exclusivity of the image). Commission ranges from 33% to 80%. Free Membership.

iStockphoto

2009-05-28T08:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.istockphoto.com

Photographers earn 20% of royalties or up to 40% if eligible for exclusivity. To apply and upload photos at iStockphoto, photographers are required to upload a piece of government issued identification. Photographers also have to submit 3 sample images for review. iStockphoto will send a notification of their decision via email. Free Membership.

Break

2009-05-28T08:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.break.com

Break.com accepts original flash games, videos, and pictures. Receive up to $2000 if your video makes it to the frontpage and up to $25 if your picture is placed in a gallery. They pay by PayPal within a week.

Share a Pic

2009-05-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.shareapic.net

Shareapic.net allows members to share unlimited pictures and earn money. They pay $0.22 per 1000 image impressions or views. Members can also make money from Google ads displayed in their picture galleries. Shareapic.net pays via Paypal within 7 days of request if earnings are over $20.

eSylvan Online Tutoring

2009-05-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.esylvan.com/About/AboutCareersTeachers.aspx

“eSylvan provides online tutoring to students in grades 3-9. It’s live real-time instruction provided over the Internet from home. Using a headset, digital pencil, and digital writing pad, as well as their home PC, teachers talk to their students, voice-to-voice, and write on a shared virtual white board space. eSylvan designs a personalized program for each student, complete with lessons from eSylvan’s skills-based, fully-developed curriculum. For our teachers, this means no lesson planning (we’ve already taken care of that) and flexible work hours to fit your busy schedule.

Job Requirements:
-You need to have a current teaching certification. (A previous certification will only be considered if the certification has lapsed, not if the certification was revoked.)
-You should be comfortable using computers, and have a current Windows-based PC.
-Broadband access to the Internet (DSL, cable modem, or ISDN) from your home is required.

Work Hours:
Since we offer sessions throughout the day, working hours are flexible–morning, afternoon, evening, and Saturday hours are available. Teachers work a minimum of 8 hours/week, up to a maximum of 29 hours/week.

Training:
You will participate in six hours of paid online training. Our academic development team will prepare you to teach using our technology and our lessons.”

Education To Go

2009-05-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.ed2go.com/teach.html

Education To Go (ed2go) provides online courses to a network of over 1,500 colleges, universities, and other training organizations - from the State Universities of New York to the California State University system, and everywhere in between.

ed2go is currently seeking courses in programming, computer applications, allied health, languages, writing, law/criminal justice, workforce development/career skills, small business, business certification, certification prep and continuing education for teachers.

Earnings will depend on the number of courses you teach and how many students enroll every month. Checks are mailed once a month.

ETS Onlien Scoring Network

2009-05-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.ets.org

“ETS (Education Testing Service) employs raters to evaluate essays online for numerous testing programs. Prospective raters are trained to apply scoring criteria and must complete a certification test.

“ETS also needs qualified individuals to evaluate open-ended responses for these paper and pencil programs: Advanced Placement Program (AP), National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTSSM) and Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers Program (PRAXIS).”

MyTutor24

2009-05-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.mytutor24.com/career.htm

At MyTutor24, we are always looking for talented tutors to support students in Grades K-12. You can work from the convenience of your home and part time as well! All you need is broadband Internet access and at a minimum - a Pentium III PC (500 MHz or above.)

Our current requirements are in the following subject areas -Math & Reading; Sciences - Physics, Chemistry, Biology; Reading, Writing and Language Skills; Analytical Skills - Critical Thinking & Reasoning; Test Preparation.

Qualifications:
Undergrad degree in subject area applied
Minimum 2 years of teaching/tutoring experience in focus subject areas Strong teaching skills and ability to engage with students
Good familiarity with computers and Internet
Preferred - state/nationally certified teachers, experience with online tutoring

Universal Class

2009-05-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.universalclass.com/teachonline/index.htm

Universal Class is an education company that allows certified teachers, course writers and video/multimedia specialists to earn money for teaching students online, creating coursework and creating video instruction content.

Universal Class requires online teachers to have a four year (BA) college degree accredited by an agency recognized by the Department of Education, have four to six years work experience (outside of school) in the area of interest being instructed and have excellent use of the English language & excellent writing skills. They also accept online teachers for non-academic courses that require more personal experience & less traditional modes of education.

Hands-on online instructors can expect to earn $9.50 to $20 per hour on a part-time basis depending on their area of expertise. Instruction video producers can earn up to $10 per minute and course writers can earn 4 to 6 cents per word.

Tutor.com

2009-05-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.tutor.com/apply

“Help a student ace an algebra exam, understand Moby Dick, or finish that tricky chemistry problem right from your home computer. Online tutoring offers a rewarding, challenging and fun work-from-home opportunity.”

“Tutor.com has been creating on demand homework help and tutoring services since 1998. Our tutors have completed over 2 million one-to-one tutoring sessions with students in grades 4-12. We offer a comprehensive training and certification program and ongoing professional development and support for all of our tutors.”

Tutor.com only accepts people currently enrolled in College & college graduates who have strong knowledge in English, math, science, or social studies, specifically for 4th grade through first year college level. Online tutors must currently reside in and be eligible to work in the United States and Canada.

As part of the registration process, applicants will be asked to submit a writing sample and pass a content exam in their subject of expertise. Accepted applicants will have to pass a mock session with a mentor, pass an exam on instructional videos, and pass criminal & education background checks. All training is paid and rates are disclosed after the application has been submitted.

What is AdSense?

2009-05-28T06:55:00.001-07:00

What is AdSense?

Google AdSense is the program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website—with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources.

AdSense delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content. And when you add a Google search box to your site, AdSense delivers relevant text ads that are targeted to the Google search results pages generated by your visitors’ search request.

Earn more revenue

You can maximize your revenue potential by displaying Google ads on your website. Google puts relevant CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) ads through the same auction, and lets them compete against one another. The auction takes place instantaneously, and, when it’s over, AdSense automatically displays the text or image ad(s) that will generate the maximum revenue for a page -- and the maximum revenue for you.

Get started in minutes

Becoming an AdSense publisher is simple. All it takes is a single online application. Once you're approved, AdSense takes only minutes to set-up. Just copy and paste a block of HTML and targeted ads start showing up on your website.

Access thousands of advertisers

With Google's extensive advertiser base, we have ads for all categories of businesses-and for practically all types of content, no matter how broad or specialized. And since Google provides the ads, you have no advertiser relationships to maintain.

Google grasps the meaning of your content

AdSense can deliver relevant ads because Google understands the meaning of a web page. We've refined our technology, and it keeps getting smarter all the time. For example, words can have several different meanings, depending on context. Google technology grasps these distinctions, so you get more targeted ads.

Make extra money with a Google search box

Place a Google search box on your site, and you can start monetizing the results from web searches. Not only does this keep your users on your website longer—since they can search from where they are—it takes just minutes to implement. And you pay nothing to participate.

Show only appropriate ads

Google's ad review process ensures that the ads you serve are not only family-friendly, but also comply with our strict editorial guidelines. We combine sensitive language filters, your input, and a team of linguists with good hard common sense to automatically filter out ads that may be inappropriate for your content. What's more, you can block competitive ads and choose your own default ads. It's your show from start to finish.

Competitive Filter
Enables you to filter out specific competitors or specific advertisers

Contextual Filter
Eliminate delivery of ads that would be inappropriate to serve on pages

Editorial Review
All Google ads are reviewed and approved before being served on your pages

Customizable default ads
In the unlikely event that Google is unable to serve targeted ads on your page, we provide the option to display a default ad of your choice:

filters keep out inappropriate and competitive ads.

Customize AdSense for your site

You can customize the appearance of ads, choosing from a wide range of colors and templates. Ditto with your search results page. Your reports are customizable, too. Flexible reporting tools let you group your pages in any way you want so you can view your results by URL, domain, ad type, category and more to learn where your earnings are coming from.

See what Google customers say

“Instead of spending money to hire an additional sales rep to sell ad banners, Google ads have become a virtual sales tool for us. Now we’re able to reap thousands of dollars in additional advertising revenue each month that we would very likely have missed without Google AdSense.”
- Robert Hoskins, Editor and Group Publisher, Broadband Wireless Exchange

“Google shows targeted ads reflecting the sorts of information and services SeatGuru visitors want. For a small business like mine, this is the best approach to advertising. You set it up easily, it automatically serves relevant ads, and it takes very little of my time.”
- Matt Daimler, Founder, SeatGuru.com

“At the beginning I was very concerned that I might lose traffic to competitors. I only used AdSense on a limited number of the site’s pages, and I watched the stats very carefully. If the traffic, pages per visitor, or conversion rates dropped I knew I could easily pull the ads...Since implementing AdSense, our ad revenue has increased more than tenfold, and 100 percent of my available inventory is now sold through AdSense.”
- Vik Kachoria, Entrepreneur, Real Adventure.

By Google.com

About AdSense

2009-05-28T04:53:00.000-07:00

This programme for placing ads is one of the simplest ways of making easy money without investing. Of course, “easy money” is a conditional phrase. You always need to put effort to it; however, if the work is interesting and enjoyable it is not tiring. Well, that is essential – doing what you like, and you can’t exactly call it a job, right? Pure leisure:)

So start from a list of your favourite activities. Perhaps you have knowledge in a certain field you can share? Create a website or a blog (blogs are completely free!) where you and others could write. Actively promote your website/blog (find an articles on online marketing “xxxx”) and the profit in the form of money will come before long.

That’s exactly what we did! This blog is a simple example of making easy profit without spending a trifle. Our team knows how to make money using web-browser flows. So we started a blog about it, received huge publicity, connected to the Google's AdSense and now (after 4 weeks since teh blog was created) we earn $1500 a month – and the amount is growing!

AdSense is Google's content-targeted advertising program. This means that you don't select keywords or categories for your ads. Instead, Google's servers determine what your posts are about and display the most relevant ads to your readers. So, if you blog about baseball, there might be ads for Major League Baseball memorabilia next to your post. If you blog about painting, there might be ads for art supplies.

For more information - go to articles in "Google Adsense" section

Exodus 3000

2009-05-28T04:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.exodus3000.com

Exodus 3000 is an online strategy game. Members earn Mars Dollars (MD) for performing actions in the game, such as mining volcanos, searching ruins, and attacking other players. At the end of the month, you can exchange your MD for real cash.

Blogger Jobs

2009-05-28T04:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.bloggerjobs.biz

Check out Bloggerjobs.biz for regularly posted jobs for bloggers. RecentÂ posts include jobs for a search engine blogger, tennis blogger, home designÂ & architecture blogger, music blogger, Los Angeles entertainment blogger & political blogger.

Also, find advertising jobs, blog design jobs, BlogMedia, Inc. jobs, marketing jobs, media jobs, podcasting jobs, tech jobs, job resources and more.

Gabopia Blog Network

2009-05-28T04:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.gabopia.com/bloggers-needed.html

Gabopia Blog Network is hiring bloggers to write about a variety of topics including television, technology, consumer products, celebrities, sports and general interest.

Gabopia pays at least $100 for 30 posts a month, plus a bonus of $1.50 per post afterwards. They also pay a performance incentive of $1.50 per 1000 page views.

Cheez Head

2009-05-28T04:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.cheezhead.com/cheezads

Own a blog about employment-related topics? Join the Cheez Ads Network and get paid to place permanent text links on your blog posts. As a member, you’ll receive emails when offers are available and are under no obligation to accept them.

CheezHead pays an average of $5 to $35 via PayPal (or check, if necessary), typically within 24 hours. Earnings depend on your blog’s link popularity, age, frequency of posting and more.

LinkWorth

2009-05-28T04:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.linkworth.com

Join Linkworth.com and earn money for reviewing products and services on your blog. Linkworth partners can also make money by placing text-based advertising on their site(s) including in-content pay-per click ads, in-text ads, hosted content ads &Â multi-URL rotating ad, and earn 70% of revenue. They pay via Direct Deposit, Bank Wire Transfer, PayPal or check on a monthly basis.

Wise Bread

2009-05-28T04:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.wisebread.com/make-money-writing-for-wise-bread

Wise Bread is looking for articles on topics such as savvy shopping tips, frugal living, financial advice, career advice and money-making advice. Writers earn 100% revenue from Google advertising revenue generated from their articles.

Wise Bread is also working on placing other text links and site wide ads on the site, allowing writers to earn a share of revenue based on the amount of traffic their articles bring.

Craft Gossip

2009-05-28T04:07:00.000-07:00

http://craftgossip.com/write-for-us

“CraftGossip is an independent craft website and provides information about everything new and craft worthy. We are a network of blogs, each of which is managed independently by an editor. Each sub-blog concentrates on a particular craft topic or idea and we are always looking to start new sub-blogs and editors to manage them.”

CraftGossip pays bloggers on a revenue-sharing basis. Visit the site for more information.

Pay Me To Blog About You

2009-05-28T04:05:00.000-07:00

h ttp://www.paymetoblogaboutyou.com

PayMeToBlogAboutYou.com is an online marketplace that allows bloggers to earn money for reviewing advertiser products & services and placing links on their blog. PayMeToBlogAboutYou uses a messaging system that allows bloggers and advertisers to negotiate on price and ad placement. They provide a secure way for bloggers to receive payment, which is via PayPal.

The News Room

2009-05-28T04:04:00.001-07:00

http://www.thenewsroom.com

Join TheNewsRoom and earn money for providing video, audio, text, and image news content on your site or blog. Members earn a share of advertising revenue whenever site readers view or pull up the embeded news.

TheNewsRoom pays $4 per 1000 views for video feeds, $3 per 1000 views for video stories, $1 per 1000 views for text stories and $1 per 1000 views for images. They pay via check once a minimum of $50 has been earned.

Smorty

2009-05-28T04:02:00.001-07:00

http://www.smorty.com

Smorty pays you to give your opinion on products, services and websites on your blog. Each blog post must be between 150 to 400 words and include a link to the advertiser.Â

They send an email to your account when adÂ campaigns are available and you have 72 hours to respond. Smorty accepts multiple blogs but eachÂ one must be under its own paid domain name to be approved. They pay weekly by PayPal.

Blog Her Ads

2009-05-28T03:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.blogherads.com

Own a blog for women? Join BlogHer’s Ad Network and get paid for placing ads on your blog. BlogHer accepts blogs that are at least 90 days old and updated 2-3 times a week.

You determine the size of the ads you’d like to run and earn money based on the number impressions or page views of your blog. BlogHer also helps bloggers increase traffic and visibility by promoting their blogs across the network.

WireTap Magazine

2009-05-28T03:47:00.001-07:00

http://www.wiretapmag.org/about/write

WireTap Magazine is a magazine dedicated to publishing journalism by, for and about young people. They accept articles from all generations but mostly from youth and young adults, ages 16 to 28.

Submitted stories should discuss issues important to young people today such as youth activism, war and peace, civil and human rights, race, immigration, education, environment, culture, sex and relationships, media and more.

WireTap publishes news reports, features, investigative stories, personal voices, op-eds, reviews and interviews. Stories should be between 800 and 1,800 words and pay is between $50 to $200.

aPIFfunnies

2009-05-27T08:21:00.001-07:00

http://www.epiffunnies.com

ePIFfunny pays $10 for funny epiphanies. If your submission is chosen as an “ePIFfunny of the Week”, you will also get a free copy of a previously published ePIFfunnies book. If your submission is published in a future ePIFfunnies book, you will receive a free copy of the book.

An ePIFfunny must be funny, clever or insightful, original and based on actual experience. It should be significant, inoffensive and help the reader gain an epiphany.

The Dabbling Mum

2009-05-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

http://thedabblingmum.com/writersneeds.htm

The Dabbling Mum is an online publication with a Christian undertone. They are currently in need of articles on the following topics: business ideas, family vacations, direct sales, marketing & advertising, fiction writing and recipes.

Articles should be between 500 - 1500 words. The Dabbling Mum pays up to $40 per article upon acceptance. They do not pay for articles that have been or will be distributed for free.

HubPages

2009-05-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.hubpages.com

HubPages allows members to write about their favorite topics and earn a share of revenue from Google ads, Amazon.com ads and eBay ads. Google automatically places ads on published content and it’s up to writers to decide what product ads they want on their pages.

HubPages shares revenue based on impressions (or page views). Basically, they receive revenue for ads 40% of the time, while writers earn revenue 60% of the time. Writers are paid directly by Google, Amazon.com and eBay when minimum payouts have been reached.

Ground Report

2009-05-27T08:14:00.001-07:00

http://www.groundreport.com

Ground Report is a news site that shares 50% of its advertising revenue with contributors. Members can publish original articles, images, and videos and earn revenue based on the number of views their submissions receive.

Ground Report is currently running a contest where the story with the most page views this month wins $1000. Contributors are paid via Paypal.

Squidoo

2009-05-27T08:13:00.000-07:00

www.squidoo.com

Squidoo allows anyone to create pages of information and earn a little bit of money from advertisements. Here’s how it works: Members share their views or give recommendations on a topic/product of choice on one page (or squidoo lens). Squidoo places affiliate ads from Amazon, eBay, CafePress and/or SuperStore on the page and anytime a reader purchases a product through the ads, the contributor receives 50% of the royalties.

There are also Google adsÂ on each page. Revenue from these ads are placed into a pool and half the amount is distributed to contributors based on the popularity of their lenses. Members can also donate earnings to charity.

Landscaping Ideas Online

2009-05-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.landscapingideasonline.com/hiring.php

LandscapingIdeasOnline is looking for gardening/landscaping articles that are between 600 - 1500 words in length. Pay may be per article or on a profit-sharing basis. They are also hiring Photographers and Sales Associates.

Looking For Clues

2009-05-27T07:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.bkserv.net/LFC/WriteForLFC.aspx

LookingForClues buys articles and reviews on a variety of topics. Submissions must be a minimum of 600 words and pay is between $10 and $30 via Paypal.

Rewind the Fifties

2009-05-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.loti.com/writers_wanted.htm

Loti.com is hiring content writers for short articles on the 50s and 60s. Topics include fashions, hairstyles, food prices, music, furnitureÂ & household items, salaries, TV & movies, slang & language and more.

They pay $10 for articles between 250 to 500 words, $15 for 500+ words, $20 for articles with 1 copyright-free photo, and $25 with 2 or more photos.

LetterRep

2009-05-27T06:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.letterrep.com/Writer/writer_index.php

Join LetterRep.com and make money writing letters. Writers may respond to letter requests or upload their own letters and earn $10 each time someone buys a letter, press release or speech.

Writers also earn $5 each time a referral purchases any letter in LetterRep’s inventory. They pay by check, Western Union or PayPal within 30 days of each sale.

Build an eBay Business Part 1

2009-05-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

Develop a Business Plan

You don’t have to hire a $250-an-hour consultant to create a business plan for
you. Unless you are seeking funding from financial institutions (in which case,
see the “Getting Professional Help” QuickFacts later in the chapter), a business
plan can be simply a written statement, coalescing your vision and goals,
financial resources, and a description of the products you want to sell and the
customers you want to reach. Many experts today think that spending much
time on a business plan instead of getting in and experiencing what is needed
to sell your product is counterproductive; that is, the plan itself is not the real
value. Rather the planning itself—finding and working
through potential problems and obstacles you may
encounter is the value of a business plan. That said, the
plan offers a sanctuary to return to when you find yourself
buried in the trenches of day-to-day eBay selling. When
time is of the essence and decisions that affect the longterm
success of your business come up, it’s nice to be able
to dust off that business plan and refer to the principles
that got you going in the first place.

Planning Your eBay Business

Create a Business Plan
If you’ve never created a business plan before and are daunted by the prospect,
don’t let that stop you. Like many other first-time endeavors, the hardest part
is just starting. Start by creating broad strokes, and then fill in the details as
required by external sources (such as loan officers and vendors) and by your
own needs.

OUTLINE YOUR EBAY BUSINESS

So what are you really trying to accomplish by ramping up your current eBay
sales or moving your current traditional business to eBay? Three common tools
that businesses use to help clarify their raison d’être (reason to be) and where
they see themselves in the future can help you focus your ideas for a business
plan. In fact, coalescing your ideas into a few categories may be all you need for
a business plan that doesn’t require external financing. In The One Page Business
Plan by Jim Horan, these categories, along with a few others, could comprise
your business plan:

• The Vision Statement lets you dream on paper. Place your idealistic thoughts as to what you want your business to be into words, for example, “to create a presence on eBay recognized as the go-to seller for vintage women’s clothing.”
• The Mission Statement, at its core, describes the purpose of your business, for example, “to provide quality, interesting, and functional articles of vintage clothing.”
• Goals and Objectives list what you want your business to accomplish in specific, measurable terms, for example:
• Maintain a minimum of 100 items for sale on my eBay Store and 25 auction listings at all times.
• Reach PowerSeller sales volume within one year (see the “Becoming a PowerSeller” QuickSteps).
• Reduce returned items by 20 percent.
• Become a trading assistant in six months.
• Attend eBay Live!

INVESTIGATE RESOURCES

• Learn as much as you can from free resources, such as the library and government
or business Web sites. The Small Business Administration (SBA) (www.sba.gov) and
Entrepreneur.com, Inc. (www.entrepreneur.com) offer a plethora of information on starting
a business and creating business plans and include links to supporting resources.
• Practice writing a business plan by using tutorials. CIT Small Business Lending
Corporation (www.smallbizlending.com/resources/workshop/sba.htm), an SBA lender,
provides a two-part tutorial.
• Purchase business plan software or templates. Sample
plans get you going, and most packages provide
supporting documents and other assistance. Business
Resources Software, Inc. (www.businessplans.org) is a
popular choice.
• Gather all required documents and data.

Implement Your Business Plan

The business plan is a living document. You cannot simply click Save and
place the file four layers deep in your Documents folder, or pull the final
draft from the printer and file it away in the back of a file cabinet drawer. For
the document to be effective, it needs to be presented to others, periodically
reviewed by you, and assessments turned into actionable changes.

1. Review the plan internally and externally, with business professionals, such as loan
officers, SBA online counselors, and SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives)
volunteers, taking a look at it.
2. Before providing the plan to others whose money, resources, or assistance you seek,
create a professional presentation package:
• Create a cover letter to introduce the business plan to the recipient. Summarize
any prior communications and the purpose of your proposal.
• Create a title page that provides key information about your eBay business (see
Figure 1-2). Also, if your plan includes any information you consider proprietary, add
a confidentiality or copyright notice.
• Include a table of contents to help readers understand the scope of your plan and
assist them in navigating through it.
3. Post elements of the plan where you and your employees will be constantly reminded
of its underlying principles.
4. Update the plan whenever major changes occur or new ideas are brought forth.
5. Review the plan periodically to measure how close you are toward reaching your goals
and objectives.

QUICK FACTS:
DESIGNING A BUSINESS PLAN
The basic sections of a business plan are:

• The Business includes a description of your eBay business, marketing plans (see “Market Your Business” earlier in the chapter), your competition, operating procedures, personnel, and business insurance.

• Financial Data describes any loan applications, capital equipment and supply lists, a break-even analysis, and financial statements, such as a balance sheet, profit and loss projections (out to three years; by month the first year, by quarter for years two and three), budgets, and a cash flow report.

• Supporting Documents includes copies of a franchise (for example, Worldwide Brands X, an eBay drop-ship wholesaler), leases or purchase agreements for building space, licenses and other legal documents, letters of intent from suppliers, and résumés and personal financial data on all partners.

Market Your Business

As part of the business plan, or as its own plan, a marketing plan, along with a
timetable to carry it out, clarifies your big-picture marketing strategy, identifies your
target market (or audience), and helps you match your product to that audience.

Fortunately, eBay does a great deal to help its sellers make buyers aware of the
products and services they offer. You can distinguish your business by using
the tools provided by eBay, using third-party tools and services, and harnessing
your own creative efforts summarized in a marketing plan (see Chapter 2 for
specific selling strategies).

Apply a Marketing Strategy

The foundation of any marketing strategy is known as The Four Ps. The
following sections describe how to apply these to a potential eBay business.

DEVELOP YOUR PRODUCT

It’s always best to sell a product that people want. (It tends to increase sales!) In
order to determine what to sell:

1. Research your customer base (eBay members) and see
what people are buying:

• View Completed Listings for products you’re
thinking about selling.

• Check out What’s Hot on eBay (click Site Map; under
Selling Resources, click What’s Hot). You’ll see the
categories of merchandise that will be promoted by
eBay on the home page and via e-mails, as seen in
Figure 1-4.

2. Sell what you understand. Become knowledgeable
about a product line so people come to rely on you as a
source of expertise.

3. Sell what interests you. The passion for your product line
will become evident in every facet of your business.

4. Sell what makes you money. The purpose of a for-profit business is just that, making a
profit. If you run the numbers and determine you cannot sell the product for more than
your acquisition, shipping, and overhead costs, it’s time to change products.

PLACE YOUR PRODUCT

eBay defines your primary sales channel, but there
are several ways you can leverage your eBay business
with other selling venues. Developing synergy
between your eBay business and a traditional retail
business, for example, allows you to combine the
two separate sales channels into a common profitgenerator.

PROMOTE YOUR PRODUCT

Promotion gets the word out about your product to your target audience. In
eBay, you have several promotional upgrades and features you can apply to your
listings (see Chapter 4 for general information and Chapter 10 for eBay Store
promotions). Examples of other promotional actions you can explore include:

• Use the cross-promotional feature available in eBay Stores to promote your auction
listings along with your Store inventory items as a PowerSeller (see the “Becoming a
PowerSeller” QuickSteps).

• Use eBay’s Marketing Tools found in My eBay to customize your responses to
buyers, such as Customize End Of Auction Emails or Custom Invoice.

• Enhance your About Me page, to provide in-depth information about you, your company, and your product (see Chapter 10 for information on creating an About Me page).

PRICE YOUR PRODUCT

Pricing strategies are not unknown to an eBay seller. Most of the same
considerations apply to selling an occasional item as to selling many. Whether to
set a reserve price, where to start a bid price, and whether to add a Buy It Now
option are familiar to anyone who has climbed the eBay selling ladder. And, as
we all know, there is no perfect answer—if there were, we’d all be doing it.

NOTE:

When pricing your product pay particular attention to the
shipping price. eBay is offering incentives for sellers to
have free shipping for the products they sell. Also, some
products, such as books, CDs, DVDs, video games and
similar products are limited in how much the seller can
charge the buyer for shipping. Investigate this thoroughly.

TIP:
To really dig deep into selling trends for a particular
product, such as patterns, market size, competition,
pricing and profit margins, and other marketing research,
consider subscribing to eBay Marketplace Research, a
market research company that provides advanced data
on market opportunities

TIP:
The About Me page is like free advertising for you as
a seller—an opportunity not to be missed. You have a
chance to give potential buyers information about you
and your business, your products, your policies, and
other selling information. You can even have a link to your
Web site on the About Me page (with several eBay policy
caveats). Chapter 10 describes how to create an About
Me page.

Create a Marketing Plan

The marketing plan combines your product analysis and research into a
document that provides a road map you can use to implement actions, schedule
events, and quantify costs.

1. Target the plan to its audience. With a marketing plan used to procure financing, an
executive summary covering your marketing strategy should suffice. A more detailed
plan is needed for internal use and decision making.
2. Start with a narrative overview of your plan. Include a summary, a market overview as
you see it, your marketing strategy, and goals and objectives (see “Create A Business
Plan” earlier in the chapter).
3. Develop a marketing budget.
4. Set up a system to evaluate the effectiveness of the plan.

Choose a Business Entity

When you establish a business, government entities at all levels will want
to share in your success, from the $10 local municipality business license to
the double hit the federal government imposes on collecting Social Security
tax. The type of entity you choose will have serious tax, reporting, and legal
consequences, so take the time to consult with professionals and business
people to see what makes the most sense for you.

Establish Your Business Entity

Key steps in setting up your business entity are:

1. Choose a business entity based on several factors, including:
• Tax considerations
• Legal protections/liabilities
• Ownership issues
• Time involvement
a. (See the “Understanding Business Entities” QuickFacts for information on how
these factors are incorporated into various entities.)
2. Obtain an EIN (Employer Identification Number) or federal Tax ID number for your
entity by submitting an IRS Form SS-4. (Sole proprietors use their Social Security
numbers.)
3. Register your entity with your state department of revenue or analogous office. This will
also get you on board with state unemployment and Labor & Industries (L&I) offices.
(Sole proprietors don’t have to worry about unemployment and L&I.)
4. Understand the taxes and reporting required of your business entity—for example,
payroll (FICA, FUTA, and Medicare), federal and state income, state unemployment,
and sales. Know when each is due, and do not fail to file on time. (Corporate filings are
taken quite seriously by the IRS and other affected offices.)
5. Obtain city or other local municipality business licenses. Consider zoning laws—for
example, if you sell large items that require shipping trucks to pick up and deliver
goods.
6. Set up business financial accounts, such as a
checking account and credit/debit cards.
7. Join or subscribe to associations or other business
societies to be recognized as a viable business in
that industry.

QUICK FACTS:
UNDERSTANDING BUSINESS
ENTITIES

The typical business entities recognized by local, state,
and federal authorities include the following.

SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP

This is the simplest entity to establish for a single
owner, typically requiring only state fees to obtain a
business license to get a business started and few, if
any, recurring fees. Tax preparation is relatively easy, as
all income is treated as personal income. Easy setup
and maintenance is offset, however, by lack of special
business income tax benefits and exposure of personal
assets to business liabilities—for example, if your
company is sued, so are you.

PARTNERSHIP

Easy to set up and maintain, a partnership agreement
should be crafted to consider all eventualities, including
dissolution, departure of a partner (this can be tricky; it’s
good to think things through early), and management
control. The main difference between general and limited
partnerships is the classification and liability of members:
• General partnerships are comprised of two or
more members who share individual responsibility
for taxes and liability of the business concern.
• Limited partnerships provide for two classes of
partners: general and limited. General partners
share similar responsibilities to those in a general
partnership. Limited partners do not share in
the management of the partnership and are not
personally liable for any more than their individual
investments in the company.

CORPORATION

Corporations are the most expensive entities to create
and maintain (think board meetings, minutes, issuance
of stock, and so on), but can be bought and sold, either
privately or publicly (although this is not really practical
for an S corporation due to a limit on the number of
stockholders), and enjoy some favorable tax treatment.
Corporations are a separate legal entity and generally
shield owners (called shareholders) from personal liability:
• C corporations are what govern the largest
companies in corporate America. Not generally
associated with small startups, these corporations
are taxed at the entity level, and shareholders are
also individually taxed on dividends.
• S corporations provide the personal liability
protection of a C corporation but “pass through”
the corporation’s income to the shareholders’
personal tax obligation, avoiding the “double-tax”
issue. This is usually a better option for most
smaller businesses.

LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY

A limited liability company (LLC) combines many of the
favorable tax treatments of a corporation with personal
liability protection and the management structure of a
partnership. The rules governing LLCs vary state to state,
so check with a tax or business professional in your area
to see if an LLC might be a better option in your case
than an S corporation. Key differences between the two
are that an LLC can be owned by non-U.S. citizens and
nonresident aliens, while an S corporation can be owned
only by U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens; and
an LLC may have any number of shareholders, while an
S corporation is limited to 75.

Build an eBay Business Part 2

2009-05-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

Solicit Help

Everyone who started an eBay business was at one point an eBay “clueless
newbie.” For those who persisted to reach PowerSeller status, a great deal of
time, effort, and probably some money was expended to make that transition.
The experience of those who have traded before you is a great resource to
utilize, especially since much of it is free. To avoid many of the pitfalls of setting
up a business, consider free sources of professional assistance, but don’t totally
dismiss hiring paid professionals when needed to fill in any coverage gaps.

Tap into the eBay Community

Don’t be afraid to ask questions and get advice from other eBay business
people.

JOIN DISCUSSION BOARDS AND GROUPS

Online discussion boards and groups provide focused topics that you can join
to communicate with others and share selling and business ideas.

TIP:
Many banks will provide a business account for you
and will also provide you with credit card processing
services. Prices for these services can vary widely, so
check all costs and fees before opening an account
for your business. It is not widely known, but many
banks will negotiate some of the credit card processing
costs, and in some cases, you can get them to provide
the necessary equipment at no cost. Also, check out
aggregators, such as Costco Business.

ATTEND WORKSHOPS

Workshops are a special form of a discussion board that covers a particular
eBay topic during a scheduled time. If you cannot be at your computer during a
workshop, not to worry—workshops are archived for several weeks.
1. Click Community on the Bay header.
2. On the Community Hub page, under News, see the workshops that are being
scheduled. Under Education, click Workshops and click the link to join a workshop in
progress.
–Or–
On the Workshop Calendar page, click Archives on the sidebar to view a listing of past
workshops.
–Or–
On the Workshop Calendar page, click Host Your Own Workshop on the right sidebar
to e-mail a request to the eBay staff to run your own workshop.

QUICK FACTS:
FUNDING YOUR eBAY BUSINESS

There’s nothing terribly unique about funding an eBay
business as compared to other businesses. Some of the
types of equipment you use will be particular to selling
online (for example, computer equipment and auctionmanagement
software), and possibly your inventory will
be unique to the types of items you sell.

FUNDING OUTLAYS
Where your startup money’s going to go:
• Equipment (computer system, camera/mini-studio,
auction-related software)
• Inventory (merchandise and items to sell)
• Operating capital (rents, payroll, phone, utilities,
professional fees, shipping fees, listing fees)

FUNDING SOURCES
Where your startup money’s coming from:
• Self-financing
• Investors
• Borrowing

ATTEND EBAY LIVE!

eBay Live! (see Figure 1-9) is the love-event for all things eBay. The convention
lets you access eBay staff; attend classes, lectures, and forums; visit vendors and

exhibitors; and rub elbows with others in the biz. Attendees at eBay Live! are eager
to share their experiences with other sellers. This is your chance to get information
that will not be available again on a face-to-face basis until the next event.

Get Personal, Free
Consulting

The Seller OnRamp feature within eBay provides
a great free consultation service for those who
do not have much eBay selling experience. Simply call a toll-free number
during normal business hours, and speak with a live Seller OnRamp marketing
consultant. Once you explain your situation, the consultant will start you on a
program to reach your immediate goals.
1. Click Site Map on the eBay header; under Selling Resources, click Seller Central.
2. On the Seller Central page, click Advanced Selling. Under Seller OnRamp in
Business Solutions, click Schedule Your Appointment. The Seller OnRamp page
displays, as shown in Figure 1-10.

TIP:
You can keep abreast of the most current trends and
activities on eBay by simply listening to eBay Radio a
few hours every week (see in Figure 1-12). Using the
multimedia equipment on your computer (speakers,
soundboard, and media player), you can listen to the
live show with “Griff,” the dean of eBay University, or
play back a show from the archives. The live show is
broadcast Tuesdays from 11 A.M. to 1 P.M. PST. This is
followed from 1 to 2 P.M. by an “eBay Radio PowerSeller
Show.” Then, too, there is an “eBay Radio Ask Griff” every
Thursday from 5 to 7 P.M. PST. To attend the live shows
or to listen to past shows, check the Calendar Events on
the Community Hub to access a link to the site.

Build an eBay Business Part 3

2009-05-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Developing Selling Strategies and Inventory

To operate a successful business on eBay, you need to
consistently offer items for sale that buyers are interested
in purchasing. The key to consistent selling is to have a
steady stream of product available to list and to develop
selling strategies that keep you one step ahead of the eBay
competition. These concepts are true whether you sell unique
and hard-to-find items or if you volume-sell a single product.
In this chapter you will learn how to develop and apply
strategies to help you sell your product and stand out from the
competition, and how to become a good buyer (or purchaser)
and procure items (or inventory) to sell beyond the yard sales
and thrift stores where many of us started finding items to sell.

Develop Sales Strategies

Two basic sales strategies are employed on eBay, although there are an infinite
number of variations on these two central themes:

• Sell fewer, more expensive items, where each sale provides the opportunity for a
high profit.
–Or–
• Sell more, less expensive items, with each sale providing a small profit.
For example, you can sell one antique Oriental rug and retain a profit of
hundreds of dollars, or you can sell hundreds of battery-operated bug swatters
and net $1.50 per sale. From a profit standpoint, the businesses are a wash, but
there are other factors to consider:

• Selling unique items requires you to be a specialist in that genre, or at least highly
knowledgeable. eBay buyers want reliable and accurate information on items, and your
inexperience with an item will be obvious to an informed pool of bidders. Also, there is
typically a smaller pool of buyers for unique items than for mass-market items. If you
are a specialist in a specific area, you are more likely to develop repeat customers.
If you want to be a specialist in one area, you should be flexible enough to consider
other types of merchandise outside your current area of expertise.

• Volume selling can be labor-intensive. Each transaction requires time to process, ship,
respond to inquiries, deal with buyers who don’t pay, and all the other details involved
in completing a sale on eBay. You can use certain techniques to minimize time spent
on a transaction (see “Use Drop-Shipping” later in the chapter and Chapters 4 and 5
for information on using software tools, such as Turbo Lister and Selling Manager/
Selling Manager Pro), but many charge a fee for the services provided.
Ultimately, there is no right or wrong, better or worse, sales strategy to pursue.
Depending on your interests, merchandise availability, and the time you have
to devote to the eBay business, you can successfully employ either strategy or a
blend of the two.

Sell by Volume

Volume sales concentrate on selling a lot of a few items. You can achieve several
economies of scale by selling more and more of the same item:

• Negotiate better prices with your supplier. The price per item you pay is lower if you
buy in bulk.

• Listings are similar, if not the same. You can leverage the work you do creating a
listing, thereby lowering your transaction costs per item.

• Packaging becomes cookie-cutter. The item’s weight, dimensions, insurance,
and other packaging considerations are static and allow you to obtain quantities
of packaging material at a lower cost. Labor time and cost are also reduced as the
process becomes rote and more efficient.

eBay offers several features that help you sell similar or multiple items (see
“Acquire Inventory” later in the chapter for information on finding multiple
items to sell).

SELL MULTIPLE ITEMS AT A FIXED PRICE

In a fixed-price listing, you sell all items for a fixed price. Bidders enter the
number of items they want at your fixed price. After each sale, the quantity
of items is reduced by the number sold in that particular auction. The listing
remains active as long as there are items to sell; it closes when the quantity of
items is zero.

SELL LOTS

Lots are packages, groups, or collections of the same or similar items.
For example, you could sell 200 scarves in groups of ten. You can choose
to sell items at a fixed price, such as $8.99 per lot, or you can list them as
auction items. Enter the number of lots and the number of items per lot in the Quantity area of
the Sell Your Item form.

You may need to click the Add Or Remove Options link to find the Lots entry
box. Some pointers to consider when selling lots:

• Don’t add too many items per lot. Although people like buying in Costco-sized
quantities, there is a point of diminishing returns. For example, in the field of collectible
magazines, you often see a single issue sell for $15. At the same time, another seller
will offer a lot of 20 similar issues that only sells for $25. Typically, the buyers of such
lots are dealers, who break the lots up and sell them individually.
• Keep the lot starting price low to attract bidders.
• Add the number of items per lot and the most commonly searched keyword for bulk
items—“lot”—to the listing’s title. For example, “Entire Lot Gone to Dogs—50 Brand
New Nylabones.”
• Package lots to sell in the sweet spot of lot sales: $150–$1,500 (source: eBay Live!).
• List in the Wholesale subcategory (available under many categories, using Search).

Target Selling with Your Sales Data

To assist you in analyzing your sales data so you can make listing decisions, such
as which sales format to use (bidding or fixed-price), what listing durations and
ending times seem most effective, which categories are doing best, and several
other sales metrics, you can receive Sales Reports from
eBay. The basic (although limited) Sales Report is free
(your seller’s account must be in good standing, must
have sold at least one item in the last four months, and
must have a feedback rating of at least 10). The more
robust Sales Report Plus incurs a $4.99 monthly fee but
doesn’t have minimum requirements to subscribe.

1. Click Site Map on the eBay header.
2. Under Selling Tools, click Sales Reports.
3. On the Sales Reports Overview page, view the side-by-side comparison of
the products:

• To sign up for the basic Sales Report, click the Sales Report Sign Up Now button, click Sales Reports (Free), and click I Agree To These Terms. If you don’t meet the requirements for a free subscription, you
will be offered only the Sales Reports Plus option.

• To sign up for Sales Reports Plus, click the Sales Reports Plus (Free)
Sign Up Now button, and click the I Agree To These Terms button.
After accepting the terms and conditions, you’ll receive a congratulatory
page and an e-mail with welcome information.

4. View your report from My eBay (your initial report might take up to three
days to generate). Under My Subscriptions on the sidebar, click Sales Reports. Your Sales Summary will look similar to Figure 2-4.

Gain a Competitive Awareness

eBay is a highly open market—there aren’t many secrets associated with a
transaction. This can be a proverbial double-edged sword at times. If you find
an item that sells extremely well, it won’t be long before others pick up on
your good fortune. It may be simply the product you are selling that increases
your sales, the category where it’s listed, the appearance of your listing, or a
combination of these and other factors. Conversely, there’s nothing stopping
you from mining competitor information on eBay (and beyond) and picking the
best-of-breed data to emulate. To this end, eBay goes out of its way to share best
practices, lessons learned, and success stories. (eBay makes money, regardless
if you or your competitor succeeds, but they would rather see you both do well
and pass along those listing and final value fees!) Consider integrating these
practices into your eBay business:

• Research Completed Items listings in the categories where you sell:

• View other listings and see if your listing looks as professional as theirs (see
Chapter 4 for information on improving your listings).

• See what type of listing format seems to be getting top dollar. Are top sellers using
fixed-price listings or letting the bidding process do the heavy lifting for them?

• Check the return and shipping policies of your competitors. Especially in lower-priced,
competitive sales, shipping costs can quickly sway a buyer from one listing to another.

• Stay tuned to the pulse of eBay by visiting the Community Hub and browsing
discussion boards, workshops, and the latest announcements.

• Determine current trends:

• Check out the eBay Merchandising Calendar to see what categories eBay will be
highlighting on the home page in the next few months. Click Site Map on the eBay
header, click Seller Central (under Selling Resources), and click What’s Hot on the
sidebar.

• See what buyers are searching for by
category. From Seller Central, click
Category Tips. Scroll to the category
you’re interested in, and click the In
Demand link. Top searches are listed
according to subcategories.

• Read trade periodicals (for example,
Antique Trader, Sports Collectors
Digest, Hemmings Motor News, and
Comics Buyers Guide) for insight into sales from storefront businesses.

• Peruse retail catalogs (Williams-Sonoma) to see what Madison Avenue is telling
everyone will be the latest must-have items.

QUICK STEPS:
MAKING IT EASY FOR YOUR
BUYERS

A timeless sales strategy and competitive advantage is
to make the buying experience easy and straightforward
to entice buyers to return to your sales outlet. eBay offers
several features you should consider that relieve the buyer
of anxiety and make the purchasing process simpler.

USE COMBINED PAYMENTS

To make it more convenient for repeat buyers to make
payments, you can combine the payments on multiple
purchases so the buyer only has to make one payment.
Besides the ease of making just one payment, the buyer
might then qualify for discounts you offer based on the
final purchase amount (and you can save in PayPal
fees). To offer combined payment, follow these steps:

1. In My eBay, under My Account, click Site
Preferences.

2. Under Selling Preferences, click Show
for Shipping Preferences. The Site
Preferences window expands to show
shipping preferences.

3. Click Edit to open the My eBay:
Combined Payments And Shipping
Discounts page.

4. On the Combined Payments rule, click Edit:

• On the Edit Combined Payments dialog box,
verify that a check mark is next to Allow Buyers
To Send One Combined Payment For All Items
Purchased.

• Set the Time Period For Combined Purchases
to the time period you want.

5. Click Save.

USE SHIPPING DISCOUNTS

You can combine shipping discounts by specifying rules
for flat shipping (when your items are combined into
one package using the flat-rate shipping costs) or for
calculated shipping (where your buyer’s shipping cost
is based on his or her ZIP code, promotional shipping
discounts (where you may offer special discounts to
promote your listings), and insurance offerings.
To enable the shipping discounts features for existing
listings:

1. In My eBay, under My Account, click Site
Preferences.
2. Under Selling Preferences, click Show for Shipping
Preferences. The Site Preferences window expands
to show shipping preferences. Click Edit.
3. Under the Combined Shipping Discounts area,
click Create to open a specific shipping rule pane.
4. On the specific shipping rule pane, either open
the drop-down menu and click the option you
want, or click the option buttons. Follow the tips to
set your shipping rules.
5. When you have selected the option you want,
click Next and a message will be displayed with
the options you have set.
6. Click Save.

Establish an eBay Brand

Ask anyone in Outer Mongolia if they’d like a Coke, and they’ll probably smile
and say, “Yes, thank you.” They may never have drunk one, but chances are they
know what it is. Ask these same people if they’d prefer an “Acme Cola,” and
they will probably give you a blank look. The difference is that Coca-Cola (and
its variants) is one of the world’s most recognized brands, while Acme Cola isn’t
well known beyond the bathtub it’s made in. The classic definition of a brand is
a name, design, term, or symbol that identifies a product. As an eBay business,
chances are you didn’t make the product you’re selling
(although there are many craftspeople who sell their
wares on eBay), but you still can work on establishing
an identity on eBay that buyers will remember and
trust. Brand loyalty can be a powerful prime mover for
repeat sales. Four areas exist where you can personalize
your eBay business’s presence and create a branding
aura for you and/or your product.

DESIGN A KILLER LISTING TEMPLATE

Just as many books are judged by their covers, the fortunes of many eBay sellers
are made or lost based on their listing templates. A template that has too few
pictures, doesn’t show enough detail, lacks depth in its description, or whose
layout conveys amateurism can quickly turn off a prospective buyer. Develop
the skills to work with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the language
used to create Web pages, or get someone to create a listing template for you.
eBay provides many templates you can use for free, but much like clip art,
it tends to lose its effectiveness when viewers notice it used elsewhere. See
Chapter 4 for an in-depth dissection of eBay listings.

CREATE A LOGO

The easiest way to personalize your business or product is with a logo.
Consistency is the key element in establishing a brand. That is, consistency
in how your design complements your business, product, or organization
(nonprofit charitable organizations are discussed in Chapter 9). The design
should be simple and small enough to see clearly on eBay promotional venues,
such as About Me pages and eBay Stores.

EMPLOY AN ABOUT ME PAGE

An About Me page lets you showcase your brand. You can add information
about your business, display listings you have for bid, show feedback you’ve
received, and provide links to off-eBay Web sites, including your own (see
Figure 2-5). Chapter 10 describes how to create an About Me page.

CROSS-PROMOTE

The adage “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” aptly applies to the
use of cross-promotion in eBay to build a branding sense among your bidders
and buyers. A free eBay feature lets you advertise other items you have for
bid or sale when a buyer bids on or views a purchased listing (or, for eBay
Stores, when a buyer views your item), as shown in Figure 2-6. Also, if you
have an eBay Store, items you have in the general listings are integrated with
your store items, and you’ll have a unique Internet address (URL—Uniform
Resource Locator) for your store’s home page that you can use off-eBay to drive
customers to your items. See Chapter 6 for more information on eBay Stores and
Chapter 10 for more information on using cross-promoting, in and outside of
eBay Stores.

You can tailor your cross-promotions to match your items. For example, if you
are selling gold rings, you can display other gold rings when a buyer bids on
or views a purchased item, or views a gold ring listing in an eBay Store. To
customize your cross-promotion:

1. Click My eBay on the eBay header.
2. Click Marketing Tools in the sidebar.
3. On the Marketing Tools page, click Edit next to Cross Promotion Defaults.
4. On the Cross Promotion: Defaults page, click Create New Rule.
5. Click Select An eBay Category under either of the two selling situations, and then follow the prompts to tailor your categories.

Build an eBay Business Part 4

2009-05-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

Acquire Inventory

To keep your eBay business engine fueled, you need merchandise, which can
come from a myriad of sources. Inventory can be procured from traditional
eBay sources, such as garage sales, but to ramp up your business to higher sales,
you’ll want to explore sources used by retail businesses, including buying from
wholesalers, using drop-shipping outlets, and buying from abroad.

Find Items the Old-Fashioned Way

Not all eBay businesses tap into manufacturers’ sales representatives, import
from China, or otherwise buy from traditional wholesale markets. Many eBay
businesses just improve on obtaining items from the traditional sources they
used when they started out, except now they do it more efficiently:

• Basements, attics, and closets provide the most readily available and lowest-cost
items (you already own them). Include items of friends and relatives that can be had
for nothing or next to it.

• Thrift stores contain hidden treasures that can be ferreted out with a sharp,
experienced pricing eye and persistent scouring. Go (early) on promotion days to
obtain even deeper discounts.

• Garage sales are typically announced in your local paper and on your
nearest telephone pole. Get out early, map out your route, and be done
before brunch. Seek out sales that start on Friday—you’ll avoid many
amateur buyers (they have day jobs) and get first look at the freshest
merchandise.

• Estate sales liquidate the contents of a household. The quality of
merchandise can range from the trappings of the rich and famous
to items more commonly found in Dumpsters. Depending on how
the contents are sold, you can purchase individual items, as in a
garage sale; or you can make a bid to purchase the entire lot. Check
the auctions section in the classified section of your newspaper for
upcoming sales. To find leads on buying an entire estate, network
with estate-planning lawyers and other professionals who often assist
survivors with liquidating family assets.

• Live auctions provide great experience in the world of bidding and
overall auction psychology (see Figure 2-8). Check out your Sunday
paper for upcoming events. Most cost very little, if anything, to
attend and provide invaluable pricing data, networking, and usually
entertaining auctioneers.

CAUTION: Buying the contents of mini-storage units whose owners failed to continue payments is a classic example of caveat emptor (buyer beware). Typically, the storage unit management periodically hires an auctioneer to sell off their inventory of unpaid units. By law, in many states, management cannot open the unit until the auction, at which time the lock is cut. The bidders, in real time, then get a chance to view the contents from the door and place a bid on all the contents. So what really is in that box labeled “Guns” or “Jewelry?” There are stories of people who, in cahoots with the storage management and auctioneer, seed a unit with junk, hazardous materials, and other hard-to-get-rid-of items, and then apply deceptive arrangement and eye-candy labeling to sell these items to unsuspecting bidders.

Acquire Wholesale Sources

A classic way to run an eBay business is to buy at wholesale and sell at retail
(or at what the highest bidder is willing to pay). Unfortunately, until you’ve
established yourself as a high-volume seller, many wholesalers do not want to
bother with smaller accounts. That’s not to say they won’t sell to you—they just
don’t seek you out. Consider these issues when trying to line up a wholesaler:

• Research the manufacturer for the product you want to sell. Many companies simply
place their brand name on a product made by another company. The classic example
is the Sears Kenmore brand—Kenmore washers are actually made by Whirlpool. You
may have to do some sleuthing to locate the manufacturer, as most branded products
don’t generally advertise their true roots. Check manuals, nameplates, and service
centers to find the OEM (original equipment manufacturer).

• Contact the manufacturer’s sales department and ask for a list of their wholesale suppliers.

• Contact the wholesale suppliers and request to set up an account. Prepare for
questions about your business and sales potential. Give honest answers and, if
rejected, move on to the next supplier on your list.

• If you don’t have the success, time, or desire to do the leg work, consider purchasing a list
of suppliers that have been screened and are willing to work with online sellers. Be aware
that a Google search will turn up legitimate as well as questionable providers. The eBay
Solutions Directory lists several providers of wholesale items whose reputations have
been verified; however, you won’t be the only eBay business trying to sell their products.

Buy Wholesale on eBay

You’ve got to love the marketing folks at eBay. Not only do they provide the
mechanisms for you to sell your items in an efficient and inexpensive manner
to a worldwide market, but they also provide you a channel to buy your items
wholesale on eBay “in an efficient and inexpensive manner from a worldwide
market.” To find items to buy in quantity and at a hopefully lower wholesale
price each:

1. On the eBay header, click Categories, and the All Categories window will open.
2. Look through the Category items. At the end of
many of them will be “Wholesale Lots.” If you click
this line, you will see a listing of all the wholesale
lots for that category.
3. You will need to narrow your search considerably, as many eBayers use wholesale lots
to sell their single items.

Import from Abroad

Buying from outside your borders opens your buying opportunities to markets
where other eBay businesspersons don’t often venture. Many businesses avoid
global transactions for a good reason, but if you’re willing to learn the ropes,
there are untapped buying opportunities. You can import through traditional channels on your own or use eBay to help you in the process.

UNDERSTAND IMPORT FACTORS

Many headaches and costs are associated with an import business, and for most
eBay business with relatively low sales volumes, it may not be worthwhile. The
main limitations to buying abroad are determined by:

• What you buy:

• Many items do not adhere to U.S. safety, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
and other standards. For example, several news accounts have highlighted the toxic
lead that was contained in toys made in China.
• Items of cultural importance may not be allowed outside the borders of a country.
For example, in Turkey, items more than 100 years old are not generally allowed to
leave the country.
• Some items just have higher duty rates than others (as a twist on the previous
bullet, antiques more than 100 years old can enter the United States duty-free).
• Heavy items may incur prohibitive per-item shipping costs, unless you buy in very
large quantities.

• Where you buy it:

• Duty rates are broadly assigned by country. Duty rates for goods entering the
United States are extracted from the Harmonized Tariff Schedule Annotated
(HTSA) of the United States, published by the United States International Trade
Commission (www.usitc.gov/tata/hts). Most countries enjoy “Column 1 of the Duty
Rates,” or favored nation, rates. Items from unfavored “Column 2” countries pay a
higher rate, as shown in Figure 2-9.

• How you bring it into the country:

• Bringing them with you is the easiest way to bring items back to the United States.
You can simply produce the items for inspection, and informal verbal declarations
when driving across a border or simple Customs forms used when arriving by plane
or boat are painless.
• Shipping by mail is an acceptable entry method because you don’t need to be
personally present at the point of entry. When the United States Postal Service
(USPS) receives an overseas package that contains dutiful items, it’s passed to a
Customs agent, who reviews Customs forms on the package and determines any
duty fees. The package is given back to the USPS, where, upon delivery to the
recipient, the duty and Customs handling fees are collected.

• Freight shipments are how most international trade is conducted and is not
generally recommended for businesses new to global shipping. You or your agent
(to whom you will need to pay fees) will need to quickly arrange movement of
the merchandise from the shipper’s warehouse to Customs to avoid demurrage
(warehousing costs) and then produce invoices, bills of lading, and Customs forms
to determine the duty owed. In the post-9/11 world, shipments are being visually
inspected more and more, and you will be responsible for associated costs to open
containers and remove shipping and packing materials.

BUY GLOBALLY ON EBAY

Many eBay users avoid global transactions because of the extra work and
potential pitfalls involved with conducting business outside the borders (see
“Understand Import Factors”). Their reluctance can be your opportunity to
acquire unique items that every other eBay business isn’t fighting over. The
“At a Glance” statistics on eBay’s Global Trade page show you the monetary
incentive to consider eBay’s global potential. eBay provides searching to its
worldwide sites and offers a lot of useful information to help you navigate the
labyrinth of currency fluctuations, shipping costs, language problems, and other
issues.

1. On the eBay header, click Site Map.
2. Under Selling Resources, click Sell Internationally
3. On the Global Trade page, shown in Figure 2-10:

• Type keywords to search global sites for items
(see “Buy Wholesale on eBay” earlier in the
chapter for keyword hints for wholesale listings).
• Click an eBay worldwide site’s flag or link to
display that country’s “Hot Items” and “Hot
Categories.”
• Scroll down and click one of the many resource
links to learn more about the aspects of buying
and selling internationally.

Use Drop-Shipping

So you want to become an eBay business, but you live in a studio apartment without a square
foot of space to store inventory? Not to worry—you can conduct a successful eBay business
without ever buying, seeing, or touching your items. Using drop-shipping, you establish a
relationship with a wholesaler, who will package and ship items you sell directly to buyers (even
with a mailing label using your company name). As far as the buyer is concerned, the billiard table he or she received came from your studio apartment. You pay the drop-shipper
the wholesale cost of the item and shipping and handling costs. Of course, the trick to making
this work is finding a reputable and reliable company with which to partner. Doing a search on Google will produce pages of potential drop-shipping sources, but as with most things on the Internet, it’s best to get a second opinion before you do business. To find companies vetted
by eBay that drop-ship or that provide lists of companies that do:

1. Click Site Map on the eBay header.
2. Under Selling Tools, click eBay Solutions Directory.
3. In the Solutions Directory, under Selling Solutions, click Sourcing.
4. Click the links of the solution providers that indicate they offer drop-shipping services,
as shown in Figure 2-11.

Build an eBay Business Part 5

2009-05-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

Creating eBay Business Processing Centers

From garage sale seller to PowerSeller, you have to accomplish a sequence of operations and processes to sell on eBay. It doesn’t matter if you work off a legal pad or if you use commercial auction-management software. All merchandise on its way to eBay buyers requires a certain
level of attention from you during its tenure under your ownership or control. The better organized and more efficient you become, the more time you will have to pursue other
eBay selling opportunities and, ultimately, you will become a more profitable business. In this chapter you will learn that no matter what level of selling you are at, you can benefit your eBay business by utilizing the concept of processing centers to handle the various tasks necessary to acquire, list, sell, ship, and finalize a sale.

Process Incoming Items

Chapter 2 describes several strategies you can use to acquire items. But once
you’ve purchased the merchandise, what do you do with it? Quite a bit,
actually, although the norm is closer to just placing the item in the nearest
available space on a shelf or on the floor. The more time and energy you devote
to get merchandise properly introduced into your system, the greater the
efficiency dividends you will receive during the time the product spends with
your business. The upfront time to establish inventory controls and attend to
accounting details will quickly become the “gift that keeps on giving.”

Capture Purchase Data

In the zeal to acquire and purchase merchandise, it’s easy (and tempting) to
throw all of the receipts and other documentation into a file folder or shoebox
and deal with it when the need arises (usually April 14). Though this method
might serve casual eBay sellers, as your eBay business volume increases, you
will need a more systematic approach to documenting your purchases. The best
time to do that is close to the time of purchase, when your memory is fresh and
any paper trails are still close at hand. Whether your system is a notebook with
lined columns, an Excel spreadsheet, or accounting or auction-management
software, you have to dedicate the time to log the captured data.

SET UP A SIMPLE SYSTEM

With a program such as Excel, you can create a basic spreadsheet that lists the
key information you need when purchasing an item. Create columns to record
data on each item you purchase for resale. Table 3-1 describes the columns, and
Figure 3-2 shows an example of a sample spreadsheet. (See Microsoft Office Excel
2007 QuickSteps, published by McGraw-Hill, for information on creating and
using spreadsheets).

USE AN ACCOUNTING PROGRAM

Keeping accurate records of inventory costs, selling prices, shipping and
handling, overhead, and other associated costs is the foundation to satisfying
government reporting requirements, as well as keeping on top of the
financial health of your business. Some accounting programs (such as Intuit’s
QuickBooks Simple Start/Basic/Pro/Premium series) do extremely well at the
business of accounting, but aren’t typically geared toward the business of listing
items for sale on eBay. Although you may find you can “force” one to do this,
it’s best to look at these programs as part of an overall suite of tools you might
employ and not the sole solution.

RESEARCH YOUR ITEMS

To create accurate listing titles and descriptions,
determine the best selling format (auction or Buy It
Now), and price your items where they will sell for
the best price-to-volume ratio, you need to know
your items:

• Search for the item on eBay to determine an item’s
value by checking the Completed Listings for identical
or similar items. View Completed Listings by opening
a category’s listings, clicking the Completed Listings
check box on the left sidebar, and clicking Show Items.

• Search for the item using search engines, such as
Google, to cast a wider net and see what you can find
in other auctions, brick-and-mortar stores, classified
ads, and wherever else the search engine mines
information. Or use specialized Web sites that feature
your type of item.

• Visit libraries, antique malls, and shows to purchase or borrow reference books on
antiques and collectibles, and to network with other dealers. Collectors’ shows are
one of the best places to gather information (and inventory) in any of the collectible
fields. You will be able to network with both dealers and collectors. This will allow you
up-to-the-minute information on trends, buying and selling patterns, and additional data
that might enable you to enhance your eBay listings. Your eBay sales will be greatly
enhanced when buyers can tell from your listings that you have knowledge of your field.
If you are a collector, you might find it productive to start your eBay business with sales
in your area of expertise.

• Contact others who sell, collect, manufacture, or use the item you’re trying to sell. You
will be surprised at how much information you can get from other eBay sellers.

• Use grading and authentication services to bolster your customers’ confidence in the
condition (grading) and authenticity of an item by having an independent, experienced
professional examine it (see the “Finding a Grading or Authentication Service”
QuickSteps.)

PREPARE AND SUBMIT THE LISTING

After researching and collecting the raw information for an item, the data
needs to be incorporated into a selling form that will ultimately become the
listing Web page. The technical knowledge required of the person preparing
the selling form will depend on the method you use to create your listing and
how much customization you add to it. For example, listing items with the
simplified Create Your Listing form (auction listings only) and the standard
Sell Your Item form that allows you to customize your listing, using eBay
Picture Services to host images, and using prebuilt templates requires little but
fundamental computer skills. However, if you create your listings from scratch
using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), host your own photographs, and
use custom listing or management software, the new computer user would be
challenged. Chapter 4 describes how to create listings to maximize sales using
tools such as Turbo Lister, shown in Figure 3-8.

TIP:
Find the most inquisitive and creative person or
employee in your business and put him or her in charge
of researching items and preparing listings.

TIP:
To a receive a quick and inexpensive appraisal of an item
you’re selling, click the What’s It Worth To You link at the
bottom of the Opinions, Authentication & Grading page
(see the “Finding a Grading or Authentication Service”
QuickSteps). After creating an account and providing
basic information, such as category, description, and
pictures, and any amplifying
information required by their
appraiser, you will be able to
download an appraisal certificate.

SET UP THE PICTURE ZONE

As a casual seller, you probably spent an inordinate amount of time preparing
the background to take pictures of your items, putting the equipment away
when you were finished, and then repeating the process every time you
listed a new item. A necessity when you are limited by space and equipment
constraints, but not a process you want to continue as your listing volume
increases. To streamline the picture-taking process, dedicate the space you
need—commensurate with the type and size of items you’re selling—and leave
the “studio” intact so you can quickly introduce subsequent items. When setting
up the picture area, consider:

• Lighting. Use natural lighting, light bars, and other light sources you can install and
leave in place once you’ve found the illumination satisfactory, as shown in Figure 3-9.
Avoid using a flash if you can. Pictures taken with a flash tend to produce undesired
results, such as creating reflections off glass or other shiny surfaces. Some items lend
themselves well to outdoor/natural light photography. Consider this option with smaller
and more portable items, if it’s convenient—you probably don’t want to climb up and
down five flights of stairs to shoot photos outside.

• Camera mounts. Set up a tripod on the floor or a table, and adjust it for optimal
picture taking. Remove the camera for safekeeping at the end of the day, but leave the
tripod in place for a quick setup for the next photo opportunity.

• Scanners. A good place to set up a scanning station is with your photo studio. Set up
a computer in your studio with your scanner and digital camera software and memory
card readers, and connect it to other networked equipment in your business.

• Backgrounds and backdrops. Whether your items are small or large, you will want to
place your items on top of or in front of appropriate backgrounds to accentuate them.
For example, for large items, you could install rods similar to curtain or shower rods on
a wall so you could easily slide on a different background from your stock.

Access Shipper Services

Shipping packages through eBay gets easier all the time as better relationships
are developed between eBay and its shipping partners, currently United States
Postal Service (USPS), UPS, and freightquote.com (for packages over 150
pounds). These relationships develop into the tools you can use in the various
selling forms that let you easily select mailing options and services from the
shipping partners, relieving you of many time-consuming tasks. Depending on
the tool or service you employ, you can:
• Choose the carrier and level of service you want to offer
• Show customers their costs upfront through flat-rate or calculated rates
• Print for-free shipping labels and Customs forms for international shipping
• Track packages
• Link with an inventory control system
For more information on eBay shipping in general and each of its shipping
partners, eBay provides a great clearinghouse at the Shipping Center, shown in
Figure 3-13.
1. Click Site Map on the eBay header.
2. Under Selling Resources, click Shipping Center. On the left sidebar, click links for
information on several shipping options and features.

–Or–
On the right sidebar, access information on how the individual shippers are set up to
ship within the eBay system.
–Or–
Review the Top 10 Shipping Tips at the bottom of the page.

Cut Shipping Costs

One of the slicker features eBay has provided over the years is to offer buyers
a combined shipping discount when purchasing multiple items from a single
seller. The seller sets up rules that govern costs for calculated, flat-rate, or
promotional shipping, and life is good (set up combined shipping in My eBay’s
Site Preference page). Well, it’s good if you’re selling commodity-type items
that have a standard weight and size that you can plan for in advance of your
packing needs. However, if you sell distinct items that come in all shapes, sizes,
and weights, you can run into situations where the anticipated package will
not conform to the combination of items purchased and added expense will
be required. To avoid these potential headaches, many sellers simply work out
a “worst-case” shipping cost to the most distant state and apply that flat-rate
cost to each item. (If contacted by a buyer located close to the shipping point,
adjustments can be made to their invoice for the reduction in shipping charges.)
One of the first questions that comes up when speaking of eBay shipping is,
of course, “Which carrier is cheaper, USPS or UPS?” Well, it depends. One rule
of thumb is to use USPS for lighter items, say, under three pounds and UPS
for heavier items. Another plug for UPS is their Special Pricing Program
for eBay sellers that provides significant savings over USPS pricing when
shipping is processed through eBay and PayPal. You simply need to have both
a UPS and PayPal account (go to http://pages.ebay.com/ups/home.html).
For even greater cost efficiencies, if you’re shipping regularly, consider getting
a UPS Daily Pickup Account. If you incur at least $60 a week in shipping
charges, a mere $8 per week can get you a driver to stop by daily and pick
up your packages. At the current price of gas (and not to mention your time)
that’s quite a deal. Contact the UPS New Accounts Sales Group at 800.877.1509
to investigate other pricing options and get a daily (Monday-Friday) visit
from Brown.

QUICK FACTS:
GETTING FREE PACKAGING

You can get a lot of free packaging items from the three
main eBay shippers delivered to your door (packaging
material is labeled for its intended level of service, for
example, USPS Priority Flat Rate boxes):

• United States Postal Service (USPS). The USPS
provides limited materials from their local post
offices. On the USPS home page (www.usps
.com), under Shipping Tools, click Supplies. On the Postal
Store page, select the items you want delivered, and
proceed to checkout, where
you will need to establish an
account (forms, labels, and
Priority/Express boxes and
envelopes are free; other
items incur a charge).

• UPS (United Parcel
Service). On the UPS home page (www.ups.com),
click the Shipping tab, and then click Get UPS
Labels, Paks, And More on the sidebar (you must
log in with your UPS account information to access
these free items).

• FedEx (Federal Express). On the FedEx home
page (www.fedex.com), under the Package/
Envelope tab, point to Manage, and click Order
Supplies (requires a FedEx account). FedEx is
not one of ’Bay's preferred shipping partners, but
when you need to get a package to someone
yesterday morning, FedEx is there for you.

• eBay. Click Site Map on the eBay header, and under
Selling Resources, click Shipping Central. Click
Find Shipping Supplies On eBay on the sidebar
to display “almost free” listings in the Shipping &
Packing category.

Build an eBay Business Part 6

2009-05-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

Setting Up an eBay Store

Beyond your listings, the eBay marketing machine provides
a great avenue you can use to supercharge your business’s
presence on eBay: eBay Stores. An eBay Store allows the
beginning eBay businessperson a quick, inexpensive, and
effective way to sell merchandise online. You can do this
without having to commit resources for new technologies
or learn new procedures beyond the eBay basics you
are already using. eBay Stores are an online storefront,
providing a permanent location within eBay to help you sell
your Store Inventory and eBay items, and to develop and
grow a customer base. eBay Stores allow you a wide range
of creativity and flexibility, including adding custom pages,
highlighting promotions, and setting up categories. The
basics of setting up an eBay store, along with these features,
are described in this chapter (marketing tools and crosspromotional
options, such as offering sales and sending
e-mails to interested buyers, are covered in Chapter 10).

Start an eBay Store

An eBay Store (or just Store) is designed for you to display quantities of merchandise for longer durations and in a less costly manner than with a traditional eBay listing. Creating the Store is a simple online process of choosing a layout; providing basic Store information, such as a description and logo; and selecting a level of service. The low overhead of $15.95 per month for “rent” to eBay should be easily covered with sales if you are determined to see your eBay activities as a real business.

QUICK FACTS:
UNDERSTANDING THE FEATURES AND BENEFITS OF AN eBAY STORE

Some of the basic benefits and features of opening an eBay Store include:

• Create eBay Store Inventory listings (Buy It Now format) that run for greater lengths of time than standard listings (30 days or Good ‘Til Canceled) to help minimize relisting headaches. No minimum number of listings required.

• Save money on eBay Store Inventory listings—for example, the insertion fee for a 30-day listing for an item that sells for under $25 is only $0.03. Though the insertion fees increase for items selling for more money ($0.05 for items selling between $25 and $199 and $0.10 for items selling for $200 and greater), they are still less much less than other listing types. Of course, a final value fee and listing upgrade fees, such as bolding, also apply.

• Display standard auction and fixed-price listings within your Store along with your Store Inventory listings (Figure 6-1 shows auction and Store Inventory listings). Your Store acts as an aggregator for all your eBay listings, while the reverse isn’t true. That is, your Store Inventory fixed-price items don’t show up in non-Store eBay category pages or searches, except when there is a lack of standard auction and fixed-price listings to display that meet the search criteria.

• Organize your Store items in up to 300 custom categories and sub-categories.

• Obtain your own Uniform Resource Locator (URL), such as http://stores.ebay.com/all-thingspaper, that you can provide to potential buyers, both in and out of eBay.

• Customize your Store’s presence by selecting themes and inserting your own logo. Chapter 5 describes management aspects of a Store using auction-management software and reporting:

• Get Selling Manager for free at the Basic Store subscription level.
• Get Selling Manager Pro for free at the Premium or Anchor subscription level.
• Obtain monthly sales and traffic reports from eBay, breaking out your sales into several metrics, such as the number of unique buyers, how buyers got to your listing, and bids per listing. Determining where your buyers come from can make a big difference when targeting and promoting your Store to potential buyers. The Store subscription you choose determines whether these tools are free and what level of sophistication you receive. Chapter 10 describes managing items on sale using the free Markdown Manager (limited to 250 listings per day for Basic Stores, 2,500 per day for Premium Stores, and 5,000 per day for Anchor Stores).

Open an eBay Store

1. To open an eBay Store , first ensure you meet the minimum requirements. You must
maintain a seller’s account with a credit card on file. Also, you must have a feedback
rating of 20 or higher

–Or–

Be ID Verified

–Or–

Have a PayPal account in good standing

2. On an eBay page, click Stores on the eBay header.
3. On the eBay Stores home page, click Open A Store on the right sidebar.

4. On the Stores page, review the informational links on the
sidebar. When you are ready to begin building your Store,
under the eBay Stores Login sidebar, click the link next to
Open A Store. Log in if prompted.

Select a Subscription Level and Name Your Store

1. On the Subscribe To eBay Stores: Choose Your Subscription Level page, select the
Store subscription you want. Unless you have experience running an eBay Store,
it is best to start with the Basic Store. You can always upgrade your subscription to
a Premium or Anchor Store (see Figure 6-2) when your sales volume justifies the
increase in the monthly cost.

2. Review eBay’s opinion of the key benefits each subscription level provides.

3. In the Choose A Store Name text box, type the name you want for your Store. Besides
the Don’ts listed in the accompanying Caution, do choose a name that is easy for customers to remember, easy for them to type, as your Store’s name becomes part
of its Web address (or URL), such as http://stores.ebay.com/mikes-books (blanks are
hyphenated), and describes what you sell.

4. When ready, click Continue. Sign in if prompted.

5. When you have successfully named your Store (if you didn’t abide by eBay’s rules, you
will be notified how to correct your mistake), review discounted features available to
you based on the subscription level, and click Continue.

6. On the Subscribe To eBay Stores: Review & Submit page,
shown in Figure 6-3, look over the monthly cost, review
the terms and conditions, and click the I Accept The User
Agreement check box. Provide eBay a little marketing
feedback by selecting the means by which you heard of
eBay Stores.

7. When finished, click Subscribe to finalize your application.
If you develop a severe case of post-decisional dissonance
(also known as buyer’s remorse)—not to worry, eBay
provides the first 30 days free for Basic and Premium
Stores for first-time Store owners, so you can cancel either
Store without incurring a subscription fee (listing and final
value fees will still apply).

8. If you want to get a basic look-and-feel Store set up quickly, click Start Quick Store
Tuneup (see the “Setting Up a Store Quickly” QuickSteps).

–Or–
You can customize your Store’s layout and design from Manage Your Store links
on several Store and eBay pages (see “Modify Store Settings” in the next section).
Several Store features you can set up or change to customize your Store are covered
in “Customize Your Store” later in this chapter.

QUICK STEPS:
SETTING UP A STORE QUICKLY
When you first subscribe to a Store, you can choose to have eBay provide you a generic Store to get yourself up and running in short order (of course, you will need to add inventory to stock your Store).
1. After clicking Start Quick Store Setup (see “Select a Subscription Level and Name Your Store”), the Quick Store Setup page opens. To create a Store with all the recommended settings, simply click Apply Settings at the top of the page (at a minimum, you will want to create your own Store description, either now or later in the “Modify Store Settings” section).
2. To use the recommended settings as a baseline from which to modify, scroll down the page, click Edit in the area you want to modify, and make any changes, as shown in Figure 6-4. When satisfied, click Preview Settings beneath the store design mini-mockup to see how your changes will look.
3. When ready, click Apply Settings to have your Store accept the changes. –Or– Click Restore Defaults at the bottom of the page to return to eBay’s initial recommendation and continue working on your design.

Build an eBay Business Part 7

2009-05-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

Selling for Others

As an experienced seller on eBay, you’re probably always
bombarded with questions from friends, relatives, and cocktail
party acquaintances about how they, too, can join in on
your eBay success. One option is to spend hours with them,
teaching them the ins and outs of your business. Alternatively,
you could buy them a copy of this book. Your best option in
terms of continuing to be a profitable eBay business is to
offer to sell their items on eBay for them. Selling for others on
eBay as a business, or consignment selling, can be as simple
as selling items for friends out of your home, or it can be as
involved as opening a brick-and-mortar storefront location.
You can wing it, using the same tools you do for your current
eBay business, or you can add software, join affiliations, and
open a franchise. This chapter explores the avenues you can
take to add to your bottom line using this selling opportunity.

Become an eBay Trading Assistant

eBay provides a program whereby sellers who meet minimum qualifications
and express an interest to sell items for others can list their profile in a Trading
Assistant Directory. eBay users can search the list and find trading assistants
in their locale. Although there’s nothing to stop you from selling on eBay for
others without becoming an eBay trading assistant (or TA), there’s really no good
reason not to become one. As with other eBay-structured programs, the eBay
marketing wizards circle around you, help you generate sales, and expand the
symbiotic relationship that benefits eBay along with your business.

Apply to Be a Trading Assistant

You must meet certain qualifications to be accepted as an eBay trading assistant.
These qualifications ensure that you have demonstrated maintaining a certain
level of eBay values and experience:

• Recent sales experience. You must have sold at least ten items in the past three
months and maintain that rate of sales of ten items each three-month period.
• eBay buying or selling track record. Your feedback score must be at least 50.
• Good customer relations. Your feedback rating must be 100 percent, maintaining at
least 98 percent positive comments.
• Financial responsibility. Your eBay account must be in good standing.
• Maintain eBay values. You must agree and abide by the Trading Assistant Style
Guide, which provides detailed instructions on using the eBay trading assistant logos,
the required disclaimer on any TA materials you produce, authorized taglines, and
proper identification of yourself, that is, “Trading Assistant on eBay.”

To apply to become a TA:

1. Click Site Map on the eBay header.
2. Under Selling Resources, click Trading Assistant Program.
3. On the eBay Trading Assistant Program page, click
Trading Assistant Requirements And Sign-Up on the
left sidebar.
4. On the Sign Up page, click Trading Assistant Terms
And Conditions on the left sidebar to review the terms
of the program.
5. Back on the Sign Up page, click Sign Up on the left sidebar.
If you are lacking in qualifications, eBay will quickly let you know, as shown in Figure 7-1.
If you do qualify, you will continue to set up the profile page that displays in the Trading
Assistant Directory and advertises your services.

At first glance, most people seem to think eBay trading assistants are a highly select group of PowerSellers who have warehouses, super auction-management programs, and other top-tier business characteristics. Although some do match those qualifications, the truth of the matter is that virtually any eBay seller with moderate feedback can offer to sell for others. How each trading assistant does it, however, is another matter.

Trading assistants differ in:

• What they charge
• What items they will sell (in addition to standard eBay guidelines)
• What drop-off/pick-up conditions they offer
• How they want to be contacted
• How they market themselves eBay sellers become trading assistants for a variety of reasons:
• Friends, relatives, and neighbors ask them to sell items for them
• They’ve run out of inventory and need to look for other sources
• They enjoy the mechanics of selling but don’t have the time or interest to search for items to sell
• They want to add another sales channel to their overall eBay business plan If you want to explore this rapidly growing aspect of eBay, give it a shot. Anyone with an eBay seller’s account can sell an item for someone else, but if you want to be listed in the Trading Assistant Directory so that buyers can easily find you and have eBay provide other marketing assistance, become an eBay trading assistant (TA). (See “Apply to Be a Trading Assistant” later in the chapter.) If you have a physical storefront and want to provide walkin services, become a registered eBay drop-off location (see “Open a Drop-Off Store” later in the chapter).

Complete a Trading Assistant Profile

You advertise your TA services on eBay by being listed in the Trading Assistant Directory, a searchable listing of all registered eBay TAs. Since the profile in the TA Directory might be the only information a potential customer has
when deciding to choose you from a crowd of other TAs, it’s imperative that you present your services effectively. To simplify the process, eBay collects most of the information by having you select options from prepared lists (see “Apply Trading Assistant Profile Strategies” for more information on setting up
your profile).
1. Continue from the previous section when first setting up a TA account (see “Apply to Be a Trading Assistant”).

–Or–

Log in to your TA account.

In either case, the Trading Assistant Home page displays, as shown in Figure 7-2.

2. Click Edit Your Directory Profile on the sidebar (you may see Create Your Directory
Profile instead). Complete the first page of the form with your contact information. Click
Continue when finished.

3. On the Your Profile: Services page, select the primary and secondary categories of items
you will sell, along with subcategories of items, as shown in Figure 7-3.

4. Identify the drop-off hours you will be available, if offered, and the pick-up range you
will travel to collect items, if offered.

5. Identify your trading specialties, for example, consumer/household goods, charitable
donations, and auto parts and accessories. In the Languages Spoken area, indicate
the languages you speak.

6. Type a description of your services, your fee arrangement, and your terms and
conditions. Click Continue when finished.

7. On the final page of the profile, preview your selections and click Save when
completed. Your profile will be added to the Trading Assistant Directory and will appear
to potential clients, similar to the profile shown in Figure 7-4.

Apply Trading Assistant Profile Strategies

You can probably complete a TA profile form in less than five minutes, but
as with most things, you’ll get out of it what you put into it. There are many
subtleties embedded in the selections you make and in the text you provide.
Consider the following points when setting up or changing your profile:
• Numbers count when it comes to your eBay feedback score. Boost your score (and
the attention you garner in search results) by buying or selling several cheap items
(a recent change to eBay policy provides positive feedback credit for each positive
comment, regardless if it’s from the same buyer or seller that submits one for you).
• Be careful when selling from your home. Divulging personal details, such as your
house number in the Address field, is like offering potential malfeasants a flashing sign
that says, “Large inventory of valuable items for grabs—and I’ll provide a map for you!”
• Offer a drop-off service judiciously to avoid problems at your home. For much of the
same reasoning as the previous point, you should prescreen prospective clients at a
neutral location or over the phone before inviting them to your home. Of course, if you
have a place of business, such as a drop-off store, whether or not you are a registered
eBay drop-off location (see “Open a Drop-Off Store” later in the chapter), you’ll want to
encourage across-the-counter traffic.

• Toot your horn in the Service Description area. Much of the information in a TA
profile is limited to choices provided by eBay. The Service Description area is the
one place you have to distinguish your service from others. Emphasize experience,
due diligence, and extra services you offer (research and estimates of value, on-site
consignment sales, and other value-added opportunities for your clients).
• Simplify your fee structure to make it easy for clients to understand. Try and
structure your costs in as streamlined a manner as possible to avoid listing a string
of seemingly endless fees your clients need to pay. It might all work out the same
mathematically, but first impressions count. For example:
• Charge a modest flat fee upon receipt of an item to cover your research and listing
costs in case the item doesn’t sell. Average item-receipt fees are in the $15 to $20
range.
• Add a commission percentage based on the final value fee. A
decreasing commission percentage based on a higher final value fee
is fair but adds more complexity to the fee structure. By streamlining
your fees, you make it easier for the consignor to make a decision.
• Charge the buyer actual shipping costs plus a small amount to cover
your time. This part of the transaction is between you and the buyer,
and is transparent to the consignor.
• Absorb eBay fees into your commission rate so you don’t have to list
another set of fees to the client.
• Keep your terms and conditions brief. State a few relevant points to
protect yourself against 99 percent of potential problems. For example,
include a statement that you have the right to refuse any item, and
declare the limits to your responsibility (you’re not liable for shipping
problems). Don’t try to cover every possible scenario or you’ll turn off
potential clients with your overzealous legalese.

Market Your Trading Assistant Business

eBay provides a tremendous amount of marketing materials, information, and
education to assist TAs. The central repository for links to all things TA is the
Trading Assistant Home page (only available for current TAs who have logged in).
1. Click Site Map on the eBay header.
2. Under Selling Resources, click Trading Assistant Program.
3. On the Trading Assistant Program page, click Trading Assistant Log-In on the left
sidebar. Sign in with your normal eBay User ID and password.
4. On the Trading Assistant Home page, on the left sidebar, view a list of topics covering
various aspects of being a TA. The following sections describe some of these
resources in more detail.

QUICK STEPS:
USING THE TRADING ASSISTANT TOOLKIT
eBay has assembled a collection of marketing information, templates, and other examples of marketing deliverables and organized them in a convenient “toolkit” that you can use to find what you want.
1. From the Trading Assistant Home page, click Trading Assistant Toolkit And Logos.
2. On the Toolkit page, shown in Figure 7-7, review the list of resources that describe best practices, tools, and ancillary information. Click the links to the information you want. Many documents are in PDF format so you can save them to your local computer system and start building your own business library.

Learn the eBay Trading Assistant Business Cycle

eBay provides information in a five-step process to help you develop a selling strategy, find and retain clients, and sell items.
1. From the Trading Assistant Home page for current TAs, click Trading Assistant Toolkit And Logos.
2. From the list of TA resources (see Figure 7-7), click Trading Assistant Tutorial. A PDF document will open (assuming you have Adobe Reader, Adobe Acrobat, or a third-party PDF
viewer program).
3. Click a step on the TA Business Cycle graphic, as shown in Figure 7-8.
The five steps are as follows:

1. Plan TA Strategy provides information on foundation business practices, such as developing business and marketing plans (see Chapter 1), tracking sales and accounting data, and branding and integrating your TA business with other eBay and off-eBay selling channels.

2. Generate Client Leads helps you develop traditional marketing materials and techniques, such as flyers, press releases, and phoning, as well as Internet-age avenues, such as e-mail, using keywords effectively, and enhancing your eBay listings, eBay Store, and About Me and My World pages. Chapter 10 describes several of these marketing and promotional tools.

3. Qualify And Close Leads offers pointers to quickly assess prospective clients and determine if they are a good match for you. Sales techniques to help you expand your relationship with clients and to finalize transactions are described. Also covered are ways to protect your business from items that might be counterfeit or copyright-protected, as well as setting up contracts.

4. Sell Client Product reviews information on running a conventional eBay business. Best practices on finding the best selling categories, listing techniques, shipping information, and managing the business are also covered.

5. Retain Clients provides tips on how to keep your clients returning after you’ve
completed a sale for them.

Add the Trading Assistant Logo to Your Listings

It’s a snap to add Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code to your listings descriptions, advertising to buyers and bidders that you are a TA. eBay will display the TA logo as well as a link to your TA directory profile.

1. From the Trading Assistant Home page for current TAs, click Trading Assistant
Toolkit And Logos.
2. From the list of TA resources, click HTML Code For Logo And Link. A TXT document
will open.
3. Copy and paste the code at the end of your item description in your selling form.
4. Substitute your eBay User ID for XXXX.
5. Preview the listing to ensure the logo and link appear correctly and that clicking the link
displays your TA profile. Submit the listing. The link to your profile and eBay’s official TA
logo are displayed in your listing.

QUICK FACTS:

GAUGING HOW TO MARKET YOUR
TRADING ASSISTANT SERVICES
eBay conducted a survey a few years ago to gauge what
marketing techniques TAs used to attract customers and
how customers actually learned about the TA marketing
efforts.
FOCUS YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS
Thirty-one percent of TAs use other sources of marketing besides their TA profile page to make potential clients aware of their services.
The top marketing techniques used include:

• Flyers and other offline marketing materials (54 percent)
• E-mails to friends and family (42 percent)
• TA logo in listings (39 percent)
• Newspapers (28 percent)
• Online advertising and keywords (18 percent)
• Social networks (9 percent)

ENABLE CLIENTS TO FIND YOU
The most effective way to attract clients is to provide superior service to existing clients and let them market your business.
The top means of finding a TA are:

• Word of mouth (66 percent)
• Flyers and other offline marketing materials (27 percent)
• TA logo in listings (19 percent)
• E-mails from friends and family (19 percent)
• Newspapers (17 percent)
• Online advertising and keywords (6 percent)

Interact with Other Trading Assistants
As with all aspects of eBay, there is a plethora of support available from other members who operate TA businesses.

JOIN A TA GROUP

eBay groups are forums for members who share a common interest to exchange information and experiences. The Trading Assistant groups cover the business of selling for others based on several interest areas, such as geographic location, types of items sold, and experience level.
To access the TA groups:
1. Point to Community on the eBay header, and click Groups from the drop-down menu.
2. On the eBay Groups page, under Groups, click Seller Groups.
3. On the Seller Groups page, scroll down to the Trading Assistants area. The first three of the several TA groups are shown. Click More In Trading Assistant to access the full list of groups and click any that interest you. The group’s home page, as shown in Figure 7-9, will tell you more about the focus of its membership. 4. Click Join Group to join a particular group and have access to the group’s activities and its members. If you haven’t already, you will need to sign in. If the group is private, you will also need to request membership to the group by sending a message to the group leader and providing a reason why you want to join the group. Once accepted to a group, you will receive an e-mail confirming your acceptance and providing links for other group-related announcements, as shown in Figure 7-10.

REVIEW THE TA DISCUSSION BOARD

A great place to review comments and questions by both TAs and eBay members who are interested in using TA services is the Trading Assistant Discussion Board.
1. From the Trading Assistant Home page, click Discussion Board on the left sidebar. Click to provide direct access to the Trading Assistant discussion board.

–Or–

Point to Community on the eBay header, and click Workshops/Discussion Forums. Under Community Help Boards, click Trading Assistant.

2. On the Trading Assistant page, scroll through the list of discussions, as shown in Figure 7-11, and click the topic that interests you. Sign in if you want to submit a topic.

ATTEND OR VIEW TA-RELATED WORKSHOPS

eBay workshops allow members to interact online in real time with moderators who present information on various topics. If you cannot make the scheduled workshop, you can view past workshops from the workshop archives.

1. Point to Community on the eBay header, and click Workshops/Discussion Forums.
2. On the Discussion Boards page, under Workshops, click Calendar to review the current calendar for any upcoming or recent workshops that interest you as a TA. Click the link to learn more about the workshop or to review past comments.
3. To see workshops from past months in the current year, as well as the prior year, click the applicable archive on the left sidebar, and click each month to see a list of the workshops held.

Open a Drop-Off Store

A drop-off store is a physical storefront where customers bring you items they want to have sold on eBay. A drop-off store operates much like a trading assistant who offers drop-off hours at a personal residence, except a drop-off store is in a business or commercial setting and staffed during normal business hours for drop-in customers. While it may seem like an extension of your current trading assistant business, a drop-off store brings you fully into the fold of retail businesses and their associated concerns. As a true brick-and-mortar business, a drop-off store requires a serious look at a number of considerations that go well beyond the plans, models, and experiences you’ve had with eBay-only selling. However, eBay doesn’t leave you completely on your own. You can aspire to become an eBay-sanctioned Registered eBay Drop Off Location (REDOL), a drop-offstore designation for bonded trading assistants with a demonstrated sales record.

Understand Drop-Off Store Considerations

If you are contemplating opening a drop-off store, you need to consider all aspects of running a retail business in addition to those that are more closely related to running an eBay business.
A few of the more salient issues you will need to think about include:
• Location, location, location is critical, perhaps not in the classic sense of real estate investment value, but in the site’s ability to attract and retain a customer base. Does its size meet your needs? Is there adequate parking? Can customers easily transport larger items from their parked location? Will the square footage of the building provide enough room to store inventory and set up processing centers to handle a steady and voluminous stream of merchandise?
• Zoning, business restrictions, and other governmental influences come into play. Is the site properly zoned for the business classification under which you’ll be licensed? Some municipalities place restrictions on businesses considered “secondhand stores” by placing holding periods on items you sell and requiring documentation of sales. Are you willing to put a public face on your eBay business and incur the exposure, and perhaps scrutiny, that your eBay User ID has shielded you from?
• Build your own store or work with a franchise. A few national franchises (see the “Starting a Drop-Off Store Franchise” QuickFacts) can deliver everything you need to get you started and help you build the business. Do you have the experience, time, and entrepreneurial spirit to bring all the facets of the business together and act as your own general contractor, or do you need to spend the upfront and commission costs for an all-in-one solution? One approach is to diversify your business with a few different product lines to spread the risk. For example, Figure 7-12 illustrates how one business combines espresso/ice cream shop retail sales with consignment transactions, both onsite and online.

NOTE:
A company called AuctionDrop (www.auctiondrop.com) brought an interesting twist to the franchise and dropoff- store concept. In partnership with The UPS Store franchise, AuctionDrop provided a service that allowed an owner to sell an item on eBay by simply dropping off the item at any UPS Store. The UPS Store packaged the item and sent it to AuctionDrop, which then opened the package, wrote a description, took pictures, and listed the item on eBay. Due to an extensive list of item requirements, including weight, age of the item, and minimum value, as well as low margins, the concept and partnership was dissolved in 2007. Sometimes a better mousetrap is not a profitable mousetrap.

Start and Maintain a Registered eBay Drop-Off Location

A Registered eBay Drop-Off Location (REDOL) is to trading assistants as PowerSellers are to other eBay sellers—they represent the top-tier businesses that maintain drop-off locations. The registered designation provides two major benefits:

• Your profile is highlighted with the REDOL logo when potential clients search the
Trading Assistant Directory for TAs with drop-off locations.
• The REDOL logo can be used on the physical storefront (certain restrictions apply, as
noted next).

To qualify to become a REDOL, you must first be a TA and adhere to the requirements to be TA (see “Apply to Be a Trading Assistant” earlier in the
chapter). Additionally, you will need to abide by a separate user agreement
specific to REDOLs (see Note). Some of the requirements include:

• Minimum general liability insurance of $1,000,000
• A $25,000 bond to ensure seller payments (see the “Becoming Bonded” QuickFacts)
• Adherence to the REDOL Style Guide (access the guide from a link in the REDOL
user agreement)
• Maintaining entry requirements and being subject to eBay scrutiny through review by
customer-satisfaction surveys.

To apply to be a REDOL:

1. From the Trading Assistant Program page (Site Map | Trading Assistant Program), click Trading Assistant Requirement And Sign-Up on the left sidebar.
2. On the next Trading Assistant Program page, click Registered eBay Drop-Off Location Terms And Conditions on the left sidebar.
3. Review the terms of the user agreement, and click the embedded link to also review the style guide.
4. When you are ready to apply, log in to your TA account, and click Edit Your Directory Profile on the sidebar of the Trading Assistant Home page.
5. Click Change Status at the top of any of the directory pages.

Build an eBay Business Part 8

2009-05-26T07:44:00.000-07:00

Using eBay Sales Outlets

eBay.com provides many ways for you to sell your inventory.
This chapter discusses three more sites within the eBay
empire: eBay Motors, Half.com, and Kijiji. eBay Motors
provides a platform for selling motor-driven vehicles and
parts. This includes cars, motorcycles, boats, powersport
vehicles (such as ATVs, go-karts, scooters, and
snowmobiles), and even airplanes and buses. Half.com
provides a venue for selling books, CDs, videos, video
games, and game systems at great discounts. Kijiji allows you
to place ads for items you want to buy or sell in your particular
city or state (similar to Craigslist).

Use eBay Motors

eBay Motors is where you can sell any motorized item, part or accessories. It is
the world’s largest online market, attracting over 11 million viewers a month.
Over 2 million vehicles have been sold to date. Cars, common vehicles—not the
collectible or expensive specialties—make up 70 percent of the cars auctioned.
To list a car on eBay Motors, you must have an eBay account and must register
with eBay Motors.
On the eBay home page, under the eBay header, click Motors.

There are advantages to selling on the Internet:
• There is a huge customer base.
• eBay offers ways to protect both buyers and sellers, making it a safe environment.
• eBay provides links to lenders who can arrange financing for buyers.
• Sellers can expect to get more for a car selling it on eBay than they would get for a
trade-in on a new car.
• Sellers can be a vehicle dealer, a dealer assistant, or a trading assistant selling other people’s cars.
But using eBay Motors has some drawbacks as well. Sellers have to consider
legal issues and a state’s rules and regulations, and deal with problems
associated with higher prices (such as the buyer’s need for escrow and
financing). Buying a car online is complex with regards to inspecting and
verifying the purchase, handling the shipping, and clearing the title process.
Getting ready to sell has two important stages: gathering information and
putting it into eBay Motors.

QUICK FACTS:
RETRACTING A BID OR BEST OFFER
If you have an eBay business, it’s almost a certainty you will need a vehicle to acquire merchandise, go to the post office, meet with clients and suppliers, and everything else that goes with running a business. Why not use your knowledge of eBay to help find yourself a great deal on eBay Motors? Just be careful in your exuberance in that you realize this is not the same type of transaction as buying a used CD on Half.com. We’re talking big money here (at least to us!) and there can be consequences if you get cold feet. Retracting a bid is considered an exception and is generally not permitted.

CONSEQUENCES OF RETRACTING A BID OR BEST OFFER
Retracting bids is a serious matter, and eBay may investigate if a bidder has had several retractions within the last six months, if bids are continuously retracted during the last 24 hours (could be bid shilling, which is an attempt to raise the bid amount), or if a seller has complained. If a buyer is found guilty of misusing the retraction feature, he or she can be suspended and the number of bid retractions over the past 12 months will be displayed with his or her feedback.

TIMING CONSIDERATIONS
• A buyer can retract a bid if there are more than 12 hours until the auction ends. In this case, all bids made by the bidder for the listing are retracted.
• With less than 12 hours in the auction and without the seller’s okay, a buyer cannot retract a bid.
• Within 12 hours of an auction’s end and within one hour of placing a bid, a buyer can retract that bid, but only that bid will be retracted. Other bids made remain in effect.

REASONING CONSIDERATIONS
A bid can be canceled for these reasons:
• The description of the listing has changed so that it is no longer what the buyer wants. It must be a substantial change, however.
• The buyer has entered an incorrect bid amount. The buyer must retract the bid, giving this as a reason, and then reenter the correct bid amount at once.
• The buyer has a question about the item but cannot contact the seller by e-mail or telephone. This is not about the seller not answering the e-mail or phone; this is about the e-mail being returned as undeliverable or the phone number being incorrect.

Organize to Sell Vehicles

To sell vehicles on eBay Motors, you will need to organize your resources.
1. Create both an eBay account and a seller’s account. If you already are registered with
eBay and have an eBay seller’s account, you are good to go. If you do need to create
the seller’s account, you will need to provide credit card and bank account information
so that eBay Motors can verify that you are who you say you are and also determine
how you will pay fees.

2. Organize information about the item(s) to be sold:

• Complete the Sell Your Vehicle Checklist, as seen in Figure 8-2. Get as much
information as you can about the history and condition of the car or vehicle, tires,
and so on. The more information you have, the more comfortable the buyer will feel
about making a purchase from you. Itemize all damages, dents, and dings.

• Have the descriptive and legal information you need, such as the make, model,
year, engine details, standard and optional features, vehicle identification number
(VIN) number for cars after 1981 (and for some cars before 1981), and the mileage.

• Do you have a clear title? Disclose any liens against the vehicle. What are the
requirements in your state for transferring the title to a car? Will you have to pay
taxes or obtain a smog/emissions check before selling the vehicle? Find out your
requirements from the department of motor vehicles for your state.

• Get a vehicle history report for the car that provides a detailed history of the vehicle.
You enter the VIN and pay a fee, depending on whether this is a one-time report or
one for multiple vehicles. eBay offers a history source: AutoCheck Vehicle History
Reports by Experian Automotive. The fee is about $8 for one vehicle report and
about $15 for up to ten reports.

• Is there a manufacturer’s warranty on the vehicle? Does it qualify for comprehensive
warranty protection?

3. Research the prices:

• Use Search in the eBay Motors header to research vehicles similar to the one you
are selling that have recently sold. What was the price range? How did the condition
of the car resemble yours?
• Do research with Kelley Blue Book (www.kbb.com), Edmunds.com (www.edmunds.
com), or National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Guides (www.nada.com)
to know what buyers will be expecting to pay for a similar car.

4. Determine pricing and strategy for your vehicle:

• What is the lowest price you will accept for the vehicle?
• Will you require a reserve minimum payment, no reserve, fixed price, or best offer?

5. Take photos of the vehicle. Use at least a dozen photos in a listing. Use them to:

• Show various angles of the car, inside and out.
• Show the engine, tires, interior, odometer, and inside the trunk. Let the buyer see
everything he or she would want to look at if inspecting the car in person.
• Highlight defects clearly in the photos so the buyer won’t be surprised.

6. Determine what your terms of sale will be: payment procedure and timing, vehicle
inspection, vehicle pickup or delivery, and title transfer:

• Examine how other dealers handle the terms of sale, and decide what works
for you.
• Will you ship worldwide?
• What is your price? Are state taxes required? Will you charge a “prep fee” to
perform final preparations to the car before shipping? How can payments be made?
Do you require a deposit? How much? How soon must payment be made? Do you
provide financing, or will you help the buyer get financing? What will be your refund
policy if the buyer feels the car is not what he or she expected?
• If the buyer wants a vehicle inspection, how will you help that happen? Will you
suggest eBay’s recommended services by SGS Vehicle Inspections or Pep Boys, as
many buyers prefer?
• What are your options regarding shipping or delivery of the vehicle? Will you get
an auto-shipping specialist like DAS (Dependable Auto Shippers) to deliver the
vehicle? Do you require the buyer to handle shipping?

NOTE:

On the eBay Motors site, we learned that a car is sold
every 52 seconds on eBay Motors; a motorcycle, every
five minutes. More cars are sold before noon than are
sold in a year for an average dealership, with 75 percent
of them sold across state lines.

TIPS:

Your buyers can also get car history reports and use
Kelley blue book pricing. So assume that the buyers will
have much the same information you have.

Reserve-payment listings can reduce a buyer’s interest in
your car if the reserve is too high. So if you choose to sell
with a reserve, make it the lowest price you will accept for
the car. This can be true of a Buy It Now listing as well. If
it is too high, you may not get any bidders.

QUICK FACTS:

PROTECTING THE BUYER
eBay provides several programs for protecting the buyer
and thereby encouraging confidence in bidding for a
vehicle on eBay.

PUBLICIZE THE VEHICLE PURCHASE
PROTECTION (VPP) PROGRAM
eBay offers a free and automatic program to all buyers
for vehicles purchased on eBay Motors. The transaction
is protected for up to $50,000 or the purchase price,
whichever is lower (to include up to $800 in transportation
expenses for the buyer to get to the vehicle). This protects
the buyer against fraud and, for some vehicles, against
misrepresentation by the seller. There is a deductible
ranging from $100 to $500. It is not insurance or a way to
get out of a sale you no longer want.
1. Click Vehicle Purchase Protection
on the eBay Motors home page
under 3. Buyer Protection.

OFFER A CONDITION GUARANTEE
Sellers can also offer a Condition Guarantee to buyers,
guaranteeing that the vehicle will be as they described
and that they will work to solve any disputes and make
right any misrepresentations or misunderstandings.
This reassures buyers that the sellers are reputable
and that they have the buyers’ interests at heart. This
is not a means by which buyer’s remorse can undo a
commitment to buy a vehicle.
To find a description, click Site Map on the home page,
and then click Condition Guarantee By Seller under
Buyer Services & Protection.

Enter Information into eBay Motors

After you have accumulated all the information needed for listing the vehicle,
you enter it into the Sell Your Item form for eBay Motors.
1. From the eBay Motors home page, under Sell on the eBay Motors header, click Sell
Your Item.

2. On the Sell page, click Sell Your Item. You may want to check the reminders about the
listing checklist or the tips about selling a part. You may have to sign in.
3. On the Select Category page, you will specify the category path that someone
will follow to find your item. Click the category your vehicle is in: Cars and Trucks,
Motorcycles, Other Vehicles and Trailers, Powersports, or Parts & Accessories.
4. Continue to select categories until you reach the last possibility, such as seen in
Figure 8-3. Click Save and Continue.
5. On the Sell: Select Your Market and Format page, click whether you want to sell the
vehicle at an online auction or at a fixed price. With an online auction, you may get
more than you expect or less. With a fixed-price format, you only get paid what you
ask, and it must be a competitive price for the car to sell at all.
Click Save and Continue to go from page to page.

6. The subsequent pages will vary, depending on what you’re selling. Enter the detailed
listing information. This is where using the preprinted form will come in handy.
• Enter the VIN for newer vehicles to get pre-filled information about your vehicle.
–Or–
For older vehicles, click Let Me Specify The Details Myself. You can then manually
enter detailed information about the item being sold.
In either case, then enter Title and Description information.
• Set your price requirements: your starting price, reserve price, or Buy It Now price
and auction duration and item location.

• Identify and download photos to be used. Make sure your photos are clear, with adequate
lighting, and of all parts of the car (see Figure 8-4).
• Choose a theme, layout, and upgrades, such as bolding, highlighting, or Featured Plus!, or a
listing icon.
• Enter your payment and shipping requirements and terms. Enter any terms, such as a required deposit, whether you accept only PayPal or checks, and so on. Identify how you
want to communicate with the buyer, who is responsible for the pickup and shipping, and whether you want to block any particular buyers, for example those who live in foreign
countries.
7. Review what you have entered, make any changes if necessary, and then click Submit Listing.

QUICK FACTS:

MAKING THE SELL
While the auction is active, there are some items you
should consider to stimulate interest in bidding:

• Be prepared to remove or lower the reserve if few
are bidding on your vehicle. This will lower the
minimum bid amount as well. If you remove or
lower the reserve, the high bidder will need to bid
again to indicate that they are still interested; they
may have bid on another car when they could not
meet the reserve on your car. If you have a bottom
line below which you are unwilling to sell, keep the
reserve at that amount. Rethink the lowest price
you are willing to sell the vehicle for.

• Consider getting a vehicle inspection performed
by a third party. You can arrange an inspection
through SGS Automotive (www.sgs.com), which is
available nationwide and performs consistent and
thorough inspections. They provide interior
and exterior photos of your car as well.
• Use upgrade features. eBay’s statistics show
that using the $19.95, Featured Plus! will draw 28
percent more people to your auction. Upgrading to
Highlight for $5, Bolding for $4 (increases final sales
price by 25 percent), Border for $4, or Gallery for
free will be worth the money for higher-priced items,
such as motorized vehicles. These upgrades seem
like bargains when you consider the alternative of
running an extended classified ad in the used car
section of your local newspaper. Remember, you
will receive worldwide exposure for your auction.
Use a Listing Designer to make your listing more
professional and creative. To find the most recent
eBay Motors vehicle listing upgrade fees, go to
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/motorfees.html.
• Considering changing to Buy It Now format.

NOTE:

The more like a bargain you can make your vehicle appear, the more activity you will have. In the collectible field, heavy bidding can draw additional attention. Many buyers are looking for a vehicle as an investment, hoping to resell it at some future date. Heavy bidding will often draw the attention of this type of buyer. Sometimes an item looks better if someone else is about to get it, and a no-reserve auction assures bidders that someone will be successful with this auction. If you must start an auction with a reserve, you can ignite a bidding fire when you reduce it or remove it.

Pay eBay Motors Fees

eBay Motors has three basic fees: an insertion fee, a transaction services fee, and
feature fees:

• Insertion fees depend on the vehicle’s category. The first four listings in a 12 month
timeframe have no insertions fees. As of the fifth sales, the fees are $20 for passenger
vehicles and other vehicles (which includes a large assortment of vehicles, such as
aircraft, commercial trucks, and RVs), $15 for motorcycles and power-sport vehicles.
• Unless your vehicle received no bids or the reserve price was not met, you will be
charged a transaction service fee, whether or not the transaction is finalized. The fee
for passenger vehicles is $125, for motorcycles and power-sports vehicles is $100.
• Feature fees are ways you can emphasize or enhance the basic listing. They include
listing upgrade fees, which vary from $99.95 for listing the vehicle on the eBay Motors
home page to $1 for a Buy It Now listing or for a custom scheduled auction. These
options include fees for placing the listing for exceptional exposure to enhancing the
title and subtitle or the listing itself so that it is more visible in the standard placement.
Vehicle reserve fees allow you to list with a reserve. Picture services fees present
options for various photo features (ranging from $0.15 after the first photo to $2.00 for
Gallery Plus). Fees vary, depending on the item.

Use Half.com

Half.com is where you can sell books, music, movies (DVD or VHS), video
games, and game systems. This market is huge, consisting of thousands of used
items sold at high discounts. As a seller, you can easily list and sell items here.
This is a fixed-price market. Half.com collects the money and deposits it to your
account. A Half.com fee is charged when you make a sale.
From the footer links on the bottom of the eBay home page,
click Half.com.
Or, as the name implies, type half.com in your browser’s
address box and press ENTER.

Research the Price of Items

Before you sell your books, you will want to research the prices currently
offered on the market. If there are not a lot of books already listed, you can
charge rates up to 50 to 60 percent of the publisher’s price for new, unused,
popular books to about 25 to 35 percent for used books. However, if there are
books already listed, you’ll have to follow their guidance to be competitive.

1. From the Half.com home page, click the Search All Categories down arrow, and click
the category you want to search. Click Go to the right of the Search text box.
2. Again, click the Search text box and click how you want to search—for instance, by
Title, Author, or ISBN.
3. In the text box to the left, type the title, author’s name, the ISBN (for books only), or the
UPC (for all other products). Click Go. A list of items matching your search term listed
for sale by all sellers is displayed, as shown in Figure 8-6.
–Or—
To focus a search, click Advanced Search, where you can define a search by Title,
Author, ISBN, and the type of media.

List an Item to Sell

There are several paths to getting to the Sell My Item pages. If you have
previously searched for an item, you can follow these steps. Use the Note
to go directly to how you can sell an individual item without searching for
comparative prices first.
1. To list an item to be sold, from the search results page, click the Sell Your
Stuff link above the title bar in the upper-right area.
2. If this is your first time selling an item through Half.com, you will have to register first.
3. Depending on how you elect to sell your item, you may need to click a category to get
to the Describe Your Item page. (If so, enter the identifying information (ISBN, UPC,
product name) your category requires and click Continue.) You may be already there if
you first searched for the item. On the Sell Your Item | Describe Your Item page:

• Click the Condition down arrow, and choose an option. (See the “Determining
Conditions” QuickFacts.)
• Under Comments, type up to 500 characters describing your item. You may not use this area to advertise or type other information, such as directions to your other items for sale or to your Web site.
• You may also enter an expanded description of the item. Click Preview Your Description to see what it will look like.
• Click Continue.

4. You now set the price for the item and formally list it. On the Sell Your Item | Price And
List Your Item page:

• A Pricing Information table is displayed next to the pricing text box. The Average
Sell Price and Last Sold Price are displayed. Under Your Price, type the price you
want for your book. It should be consistent with the other books being sold.
• Type the quantity you have if it is different from the default of 1.

5. Click List Item. The Congratulations, Your Item Has Been Listed message is displayed.
6. At this point, you can list another item, list multiple items (only used if you are entering
books by ISBN or other items using UPC numbers), manage your inventory, or
continue shopping.

QUICK FACTS:

DETERMINING CONDITIONS
It is important to be accurate and not try to make your
item appear to be in better condition than it is. Your
customers may be dissatisfied and leave negative
feedback otherwise. If an item cannot meet the
“Acceptable” condition, it cannot be sold on Half.com.

DETERMINE CONDITIONS FOR BOOKS
• Brand New: Unread, new, in perfect condition.
• Like New: No missing or damaged pages, no
creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting,
binding undamaged, cover undamaged, dust
jackets not missing for hardcover books.
• Very Good: No blatant damage to the cover,
dust jacket not missing for hardcovers, all pages
undamaged, no underlining or highlighting, no
writing in margins, very minimal wear and tear.
• Good: Very minimal damage to the cover, dust
jacket may be missing, minimal wear to binding,
no highlighting of text, no writing in the margins, no
missing pages and most are undamaged.
• Acceptable: Some damage to the cover and
binding but book still holds together, possible
writing in the margins, may have underlining or
highlighting, no missing pages. The book has wear
but is readable.
DETERMINE CONDITIONS FOR CDS
• Brand New: Unread, unused, unopened, and
undamaged CD, video, or game in perfect
condition.
• Like New: Item still in shrink-wrap or looks as if it
is just taken out of it, all components present, no
missing parts, no damage.
• Very Good: No damage to the case or item cover,
all parts present, no scratching on CDs or DVDs or
fuzzy frames on VHS tapes.
• Good: May have some damage to the case or
cover, instructions still included, no scratches on
a CD or DVD or fuzzy VHS frames, cover art and
liner notes are included.
• Acceptable: May have a tear or hole in the cover
or box, video game instructions

List Multiple Items

If you are listing several books, CDs, or other items and you can identify the
item using an ISBN or UPC number, you can quickly and easily enter several at
a time. If you have material that was produced prior to the use of the UPC or
ISBN, you probably should list them on the eBay site instead of the Half.com site.

1. On the Half.com home page title bar, click Sell Your Stuff.
2. Click Multiple Item Listing; or, on the last page of listing a single item, click List
Multiple Items. The page shown in Figure 8-7 is displayed.
• Type the ISBN or UPC codes.
• Click the Condition down arrow, and click an option.

• Type any comments that go with the item.
• Continue with these steps until all your items are entered.
• Click Continue.

3. Each item will be displayed on the Multiple Item Listing | Price And List Your Item page.
Review your shipping information. Verify that the default price in the Your Price text box
is correct; change it if you want. You can check the current pricing by clicking the ISBN
in the book information.

4. After verifying each item, click List Item. The Congratulations, Your Page Has Been
Listed message is displayed.

Use Kijiji to Post Ads

Kijiji is where you can post an online ad for the city closest to you. It is similar
to Craigslist, and is another way to sell your items. Posting an ad is free, and
there are no fees if you sell or buy an item. You can post up to 25 ads per
day. But if you want to post more than 25 ads, you can contact Kijiji and get
permission. Kijiji is simply a way to exchange information about what is for sale
or available.

Post an Ad

To post an ad for an item:
1. On the eBay home page, on the second links bar at the bottom of the page, click Kijiji.

2. Before posting or viewing an ad for the first time, you will have to select a state on the
map, and select a city or enter a ZIP code (see Figure 8-10). Click a state on the map
and then a city, or click the Select A State down arrow and click your selection, or click
a city link beneath the map.

3. On the Kijiji home page header, click Post Ad.
4. Click a category on the Select A Category page.
5. Complete the form:
• Click whether you are selling or seeking the item.
• Give your item a short title.
• Type the price or click the down arrow, and select another way to offer the item.

• Type a description.
• If you want to add images, click Browse and find and select the file image.
• Type your e-mail address.
• Type the name of a main street close to you, type the city, and ZIP code.

6. Click Post Your Ad when you are ready. You will receive a confirming e-mail.

CAUTION:

There is little redress if a transaction goes badly. If you
feel you are defrauded or cheated, you must handle it
yourself by going to the police. You should contact Kijiji
so they can track and block repeat offenders, but their
actions will be limited since they do not get involved in
any transactions.

TIP:

To improve your hits on your ads, you should include
pictures of the item. Another aid is to offer “Best Offer”
to give some flexibility to your pricing. Your description
and title should be very clear to enable to the reader to
understand exactly what it is you are offering.

Build an eBay Business Part 9

2009-05-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

Market and Promote Your eBay Business

A key concept of eBay marketing is to help you promote your
items across all your eBay content, including listings, Stores,
notifications, and even off-eBay locations. The ultimate
goal is to drive customers to your eBay presence and keep
them in your sphere of auctions, fixed-price listings, and
informational pages, such as your About Me page. While all
sellers have access to a foundation of promotional tools, it’s
when you open an eBay Store that eBay really rolls out the
red carpet so you can fully take advantage of the concept of
cross-promoting your items through sales, flyers, e-mailed
newsletters, and more (see Figure 10-1).
This chapter addresses several key promotional considerations
you will want to explore to better integrate your business into
the overall marketing phenomenon that eBay provides.

Highlight Your Merchandise

In the first quarter of 2008, eBay sold in the neighborhood of $16 billion of
merchandise among 84 million users. So the $64 question is: How do you direct a
greater percentage of those users to help you gain a larger piece of that revenue?
Since you’ve created an eBay presence, you’ve adhered to the adage of location,
location, location. What you have to do now is distinguish your items to those
millions of buyers from the other sellers and 547,000 eBay Stores. eBay provides
several ways you can customize your selling persona to accomplish that goal.

Place Items on Sale

To attract buyers and move inventory in your eBay Store, you can discount
items and hold what is analogous to “a sale.” You can discount selling prices on
your Store Inventory and eBay.com fixed-price items, though items in auctions
are not eligible for selling-price discounts. (You can also offer free shipping,
a sort of sale). You manage the items you place on sale and the discounts you
offer using eBay’s Markdown Manager.
1. From My eBay, on the Selling Manager sidebar, click Marketing Tools. On the
Marketing Tools page, click Markdown Manager on the sidebar under Item Promotion.
–Or–
From your eBay Store home page, click Seller, Manage Store. On the Manage My
Store page, click Markdown Manager on the sidebar.
In either case, then click Create Sale.

2. On the Markdown Manager: Create Your Sale page, provide a name for the sale (for
your own use), and select start and end times.
3. Under Choose Your Discount, select whether the discount applies to price and/or
free shipping. If offering a price discount, choose whether to offer a percentage or set
amount from the original selling price. The final discounted price must be at least $1.00.
4. Under Choose Your Listings, select whether you want to include listings by one specific
category and/or by listing format, or by selecting individual listings. To select individual
listings, click Select Listings Individually, and select the listings you want to discount
from the Create Sale: Select Listings For Sale page, as shown in Figure 10-2. Use the search functions on the top of the page to locate listings, and then select the check box to the left of each listing you want in the sale. Click Continue to return to the Markdown Manager:
Create Your Sale page.
5. Under Promote Your Sale, if you have newsletter subscribers, select which categories
of subscribers you want to be notified by e-mail of your sale (see the next section for
information on creating marketing e-mails).
6. When finished, click Create Your Sale to place your items on sale. The nature of
the discount for on-sale items will be identified in listings and in Stores, as shown in
Figure 10-3.

NOTE:

Purchase-amount sales only apply to fixed-price items. You can apply a sale to auction listings only by offering free shipping. Also, any items currently on sale that are included in a new sale will assume the characteristics of the new sale.

Create E-mail Mailings

You can communicate and market your listings to buyers who have expressed
an interest in your merchandise line when they add you as a My Favorite Store
and subscribe to e-mail newsletters you create. Your mailing lists can promote
your more robust-selling Store categories. For example, if you sell electronic
entertainment items, you could have a mailing list for DVDs, one for CDs, one
for entertainment devices, and so forth.) You can add a message to the e-mail
you broadcast, as well as showcase and list your items, similar to the listings
buyers see when searching items. An example of an e-mail your subscribers
might receive is shown in Figure 10-4.

CREATE MAILING LISTS

1. From My eBay, on the Selling Manager sidebar, click Marketing Tools. On the Marketing Tools page, click Email Marketing on the sidebar.
–Or–
From your eBay Store home page, click Seller, Manage Store. On the Manage My Store page,
click Email Marketing on the sidebar. In either case, the Email Marketing Summary
page opens, as shown in Figure 10-5, which lists pending and sent e-mails, and mailing and
subscriber lists (whose individual sections can be accessed directly from the Marketing Tools
sidebar—see Figure 10-1).
2. In the Mailing Lists section, current mailing lists are displayed along with the number of subscribers in each. Click Create Mailing List to create a new mailing list.
–Or–
Click the Action down arrow, and click Edit next to an existing mailing list to change its name.
3. On either the Email Marketing: Create Mailing List or the identical Edit Mailing List page, type a new or revised name. Click Save. The change is reflected in the Mailing Lists section. Now you are ready to create the e-mail and distribute it to your mailing lists.

CREATE THE MAILING

1. On the Email Marketing: Summary Page, click Create Email.
2. On the Email Marketing: Select A Template page, click the Type Of Email down arrow, and select the topic of the e-mail you’re sending. Select one of the predesigned layouts or select Custom to create your own layout. Click Continue when finished.

3. On the Email Marketing: Create Email page, you compose your message by selecting options from several sections, as well as composing your text:

• Under Recipients, select the mailing lists whose subscribers you want to send the message to. Also choose whether to limit the mailing to those who have made a certain quantity of purchases from you in the last 90 days.
• Under Send Recurring Email, choose whether to send e-mails on a recurring frequency and the day of the week to send it. Also, select the Email Limit check box to ensure you don’t send any message over the free limit set by your Store subscription (see the “Understanding E-mail Messaging Fees” QuickFacts).
• Under Subject, which determines the subject line your subscribers will see in their incoming e-mail, accept the default text determined by your choice in Step 2, or edit the text as you want. To avoid any chance of having your message kicked into junk e-mail folders, it’s safest to accept the default text.
• Under Header, if you have previously created a listing frame, you can have that header also included in the message. (see “Create a Listing Frame” later in the chapter.)
• Under Personal Message, type and format the text portion of the e-mail using the text-editing tools on the Standard tab.
–Or–
Click the Enter Your Own HTML tab, and include text with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags.
• Under Item Showcase, you can select up to four items to highlight in the message or choose to have them displayed based on criteria you establish. Click Change To Manual Selection to
start adding individual items.
–Or–
Click Change Criteria to set up display criteria. In either case, choose whether to display the
items in a horizontal or vertical format.
• Under Item List, click Change Criteria to modify the default criteria used to set up
and display a list of your items at the end of the message, such as those items with certain keywords in the title, certain categories of items, items sorted by ending date or price, and so on. Click Save Criteria. Then select a layout and number of items to display, up to a maximum of 50 (more isn’t always better, as the e-mail message will, at some point, get too large for many viewers to tolerate).
• Under Show Your eBay Feedback, select whether to include your feedback
statistics in the message.
4. Click Preview And Continue. On the Email Marketing: Preview Email page, review
your monthly e-mail account to ensure you have a sufficient number of emails available
to be sent and preview how the message will appear. Click Edit Email to make changes, and click Send Email when done.
–Or–
Click Save Draft to save your settings and add the draft to your list of pending e-mails
displayed in the Pending Emails section (see Figure 10-5).

QUICK FACTS:

UNDERSTANDING E-MAIL
MESSAGING FEES
In the vein of membership having its privileges, the more
“skin” you have in your eBay Store subscription, the
greater the number of free e-mail messages you can
send per month. The number of e-mails is determined by
how many subscribers you have in each mailing list that
you select to broadcast during a month:

• Basic Stores receive 5,000 free e-mails.
• Premium Stores receive 7,500 free e-mails.
• Anchor Stores receive 10,000 free e-mails.
At all subscription levels, if you exceed your free allotment
of monthly e-mails, you are charged $0.01 per e-mail.

Create a Flyer

Promotional flyers are designed to be printed and distributed to
buyers in their packages, posted in areas such as shows and auctions
where potential buyers lie, and can used as a type of greeting or
business card.

1. From My eBay, on the Selling Manager sidebar, click Marketing Tools. On
the Marketing Tools page, click Promotional Flyer on the sidebar.
–Or–
From your eBay Store home page, click Seller, Manage Store. On the
Manage My Store page, click Promotional Flyer on the sidebar.
2. On the Promotional Flyer page, if you are just starting out, click Create
Promotional Flyer to create a new flyer. If you have already created a flyer,
you can view the summary of current settings for a flyer, preview it, and
print it. Click Change to edit the default flyer that eBay pulls information
from your eBay Store to initially set up.

3. On the Store Promotional Flyer: Create Flyer page, select the Store
components you want to include in your flyer (see “Create the Mailing”
earlier in the chapter for an explanation for most of the flyer components).
Note that adding more content than what’s offered in the default settings
may increase the size of the flyer beyond a single 8.5-inch-by-11-inch sheet
of paper.
4. Click Preview Flyer when finished. Review the flyer and make any changes by clicking
the relevant link at the bottom of the preview page.
5. Click Save Settings And Print Flyer to retain a copy on eBay and print a copy you
Seller can send to purchasers (see Figure 10-6).

Cross-Promoting Across eBay

Cross-promoting between your eBay listings, eBay Stores, and off-eBay Web
sites and traditional businesses allows you to integrate your business outlets
and leverage the marketing potential of each selling channel. eBay provides
several cross-promoting techniques and tools that help you drive potential
buyers to your eBay listings, but, understandably, not much in the opposite
direction that encourages off-eBay sales.

Leverage Your Off-eBay Web Sites

If you have a business in the 21st century, you probably have a Web site
that supports it. Business Web sites are set up to satisfy two major goals and
typically blend the two, as shown in three unique Web sites in Figure 10-8:
• Informational Web sites provide details about products, services, contact information,
and other details of the business. Informational Web sites are typically the entry-level
foray by a new business into setting up an online presence. They don’t require a high
degree of sophistication with online technology or tools and can be cheaply hosted.
Although, as the Internet matures, more and more users expect an increasing level
of features and tools to make their online purchasing more robust, safer, and more
closely aligned with traditional shopping and buyer experiences.

QUICK FACTS:

UNDERSTANDING CROSSPROMOTION
The idea of leveraging marketing opportunities between
different business lines, known in marketing circles as
cross-promoting, is not a new concept developed by the
eBay marketing wizards in San Jose. eBay has refined
the cross-promotion concept, however, productized its
delivery, and integrated it throughout its business model.
eBay cross-promotions are free merchandising ads that
display select examples of your other merchandise for
sale and that encourage buyers and bidders to check
out your other listings, as shown in Figure 10-7. Probably
the most successful example of cross-promotion in
modern business practice is Harpo Production, Inc., the
business end of daytime TV host, author, actress, and
magazine producer, Oprah Winfrey. She consistently
cross-promotes her various outlets: her magazines
advertise her Web site, which heralds her TV show,
which highlights her book club, which points to affiliates
(for example, Dr. Phil), which in total have enabled Oprah
to become one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential
People in the World. Now there’s a high bar to which you
can aspire!

NOTE:

Your eBay Store pages are an example of how
informational and e-commerce aspects of online marketing
are combined so you can provide a more balanced
buying sense to your potential customers. Just as when
a customer walks into your storefront location, you want
to provide purchase decision-making information, as well
as offer the ability to exchange goods and services for
payment and complete the transaction.

• E-commerce Web sites provide users with the ability to purchase items online. More
than simply listing items for sale, these Web sites typically have shopping basket-type
software that allows the user to select and buy items using credit-card and shipping
information that was integrated into the purchasing process.
• Combined Web sites blend informational and purchasing features. These sites are
exemplified by an eBay Store, where you deliver items for sale, but can also provide
ancillary information to your buyers through the use of custom pages.

LINK TO eBAY LISTINGS

eBay doesn’t go out of its way to encourage links from your listings and other
eBay pages to promote off-eBay sites (see “Cross-Promote from eBay” for a few
exceptions). However, eBay does encourage you to link to your listings on eBay
from whatever external online presence you have.
To drive “outsiders” to your eBay listings, you can use the eBay logo to provide
links to the eBay home page and to your listings.
1. Click Site Map on the eBay header, and under Sell | Selling Activities, click Promote Your Listings With Link Buttons.
2. Select the links that you want on your Web site. You can link to the eBay home page or to a page that displays a list of items you have for sale or bid.
3. Type the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) of your Web pages that will contain the links.
4. Read the eBay Link License Agreement, and click I Agree (if you don’t agree, you won’t be able to continue).
5. On the Instructions For Installing Buttons On Your Site page, copy the HTML code for the link you want, as shown in Figure 10-9, and paste it onto your Web page.

LINK TO eBAY STORE CATEGORIES FROM OFF-eBAY

You can link to your eBay Store categories pages from your business Web site
and get customers that much closer to viewing your listings.
1. Open the business Web page where you want to create links to your eBay Store in a Web design program, for example, Microsoft Expression, or even in a text editor, such as Notepad.
2. Create a navigation bar or a set of links using labels that closely match the names of the category pages you created for your eBay Store, as shown in Figure 10-10. Leave the design/editor program running.
3. Open your eBay Store, and under Store Categories on the navigation bar, click the first category you want to use.
4. In your browser’s address bar, select the URL for the page. Right-click the selection and click Copy from the context menu (you don’t need to copy the URL beyond your category name).
5. Switch to your design/editor program. Create the A HREF hyperlink tag for the link to the category page you just opened by pasting the URL into a Create Hyperlink–type dialog box or directly into the HTML code for the page.
6. Repeat Steps 3 through 5 to create links on your business Web page that target each Store category in your eBay Store that you want to display.
7. When finished, save your business Web page, and upload it to the server where your business Web site is hosted. Now, any time a potential customer views your business Web page, he or she will have the opportunity to view the listings you have within your Store category pages.

CREATE AN eBAY STORE MIRROR SITE

One way to work around eBay’s listing policy (see the “Reviewing the eBay
Links Policy QuickFacts”) is to create an off-eBay Web site that contains only
eBay listings. While the site itself shows little association with eBay, any item a
buyer clicks takes them to eBay and the eBay listing. While this might seem like
a duplication of efforts, and it is, it provides several benefits:
• You get another URL that doesn’t appear to be associated with eBay. Compare www.
vickisgoodies.com with http://stores.ebay.com/Vickis-Goodies.
• You increase the odds that search engines such as Google will direct searches to your
items.
• There are Web sites that offer free tools to set up your mirror site (though they often
charge a small fee for the optional domain name registration giving you your unique
URL), and they do all the heavy lifting of setting up the Web interface. Figure 10-11
shows one such mirror Web site. (see Chapter 5 for more information on the suite of
auction management products offered by Auctiva, www.auctiva.com).

Cross-Promote from eBay

You can use a number of techniques to display your listings and information
about your items and eBay business from eBay pages. The most commonly used
cross-promotional tool is a display featuring 12 other listings, but you can also
link to certain off-site Web sites (see “Create an eBay Store Mirror Site” and the
“Reviewing the eBay Links Policy” QuickFacts earlier in the chapter) and to
other eBay Stores.

DISPLAY YOUR ITEM LISTINGS

This cross-promotional feature available to eBay Stores allows you to display your listings on your promotional flyer and custom Store pages. You can display as many listings as you have that matches the criteria you establish on custom pages in your Store pages (30 listings per page), but only six listings will show on your flyer. If you don’t have enough listings that match
your criteria, the list simply doesn’t appear. You can choose a List or Gallery View.

USE THE eBAY CROSS-PROMOTION FEATURE

This is one eBay marketing feature that is available to all sellers. You can set up rules to establish which eBay categories are searched to find their items to promote. Up to 12 matching items are displayed in a four-at-atime scrolling list box (see Figure 10-7).

1. To set up or change cross-promotion rules, click Marketing Tools on the My eBay
sidebar, and click Cross-Promotion on the Marketing Tools page sidebar under Item
Promotion.
–Or–
From your eBay Store home page, click Seller, Manage Store. On the Manage My
Store page, on the Marketing Tools sidebar, under Item Promotion, click Cross-
Promotion.
2. On the Cross-Promotion: Summary page, click Manage to set up rules for
when someone bids or wins one of your items and for all other situations
(Store owners can also set up rules for when someone views an item). For
each of the choices displayed in the tab, click Create New Rule to be led
through a series of criteria.
–Or–
Click Edit under the Action column to modify an existing rule.
3. When finished setting up a rule, click Save Rule.

SHOWCASE ITEMS IN A STORE

In addition to the cross-promotional feature available to all eBay sellers, Store
owners can further highlight items using a feature called item showcase. The
items will appear in Store promotional flyers you create and in marketing
e-mails you send to subscribers. You can select specific items to display, or you
can set criteria that choose which items to use, much like selecting criteria for
cross promotions (see the previous section). Information on creating flyers and
marketing e-mails in eBay Stores is covered earlier in the chapter

TIPS:

To see your current cross-promotion settings for
participation and how your items appear, click Settings
under Cross Promotion on the Marketing Tools sidebar.

One way to showcase your items beyond what eBay
offers is to use third-party features that basically add a
showcase to all your listings. Figure 10-12 shows one
example you can add for free. Chapter 5 describes how
to integrate Auctiva into your eBay arsenal of tools.

CREATE A LISTING FRAME

To more readily expose buyers and bidders to your eBay Store, you can apply
layout elements to all your listings in a listing frame. The frame situates your
Store header above the item description and can apply your Store navigation
bar on the left side of the listing.
1. To set up a listing frame, click Marketing Tools on the My eBay sidebar, and click
Listing Frame on the Marketing Tools page sidebar.
–Or–
From your eBay Store home page, click Seller, Manage Store. On the Manage My
Store page, on the Marketing Tools sidebar, click Listing Frame.
2. On the Listing Frame page, select the elements and links you want to appear in your
frame. Elements and links are divided between the header and the navigation bar, as
shown in Figure 10-13.
3. Make your selection and click Preview Your Listing Frame to see how it will look.
Click Apply when finished.

Add Search Engine Keywords to Your Store Pages

More and more people use the Internet to research and locate items they want
to buy, typically by typing keywords in search engines, such as Google. You can
take advantage of this growing phenomenon by making sure your eBay Store
listings have keywords and tags that best describe your Store and products,
and that they are readily available to be mined by the search engines’ “data
crawlers.” eBay will display the current keywords found on your Store pages
and let you add others.

VIEW YOUR KEYWORDS

1. On your Store’s home page, click Seller, Manage Store.
2. On the Manage My Store page, click Search Engine Keywords on the sidebar. The
pages in your Store are listed with primary and secondary keywords.

ADD CUSTOM KEYWORDS TO A STORE PAGE

1. On the Search Engine Keywords page, click Edit next to the Store page for which you
want to add or change keywords.
2. On the Edit Keywords page, change the current keyword or add new keywords in the
New Custom Keywords text box next to a particular primary or secondary keyword.
3. Click Save when finished. Changes will be made to the TITLE and META tags on the
Web page, although eBay might not include all keywords you added or changed.

Create an About Me Page

You can create a page about your business (or self), known as an About Me
page, that others can reference when researching your eBay activities. If you
have an About Me page, a special icon will be displayed next to your User
ID and in your eBay Store header.

1. From My eBay, click Personal Information on the sidebar. Under Account Information,
click Edit to the right of About Me Page.
2. The About Me introductory page describes what the page is used for. Click Create
Your Page.
3. Select how you want to create the page: by using eBay’s step-by-step method or by
adding your own HTML code. Make your selection and click Continue.
4. Add content to your page by using the supplied tools, such as standard eBay text-entry
boxes for paragraph text (or copy and paste, or enter you own HTML), eBay Picture
Services for adding pictures, and labels and links to Web pages (see the “Reviewing
the eBay Links Policy” QuickFacts earlier in the chapter for general linking do’s and
don’ts). Figure 10-15 shows some of the tools that are available for you to easily add
content to the page. Click Continue when finished.

5. Choose a layout, preview the page, and click Submit. Figure 10-16 shows a sample About Me page. Your About Me page will be available from your profile on your listings and from your Store’s pages. Click the About The Seller link in the Store Pages area on the left navigation bar.

Use the eBay Affiliate Program

Ever hear of a fee-less eBay program that not only charges you nothing but also can pay you
serious money? No, this is not a lure from an infomercial. The eBay Affiliate program pays you
to drive users from your existing Web sites to eBay.com, several of its international sites, and/or
Half.com. The payment set up for an eBay site is two-fold. You get paid:
• A percent of revenues on winning bids or purchases by customers who purchase
within seven days of clicking your link to the eBay site.
• A fee for each new user who registers on the eBay site within 30 days of clicking your
link and who places a bid or makes a Buy It Now purchase. The more users you drive
to eBay, the more you are paid for each. For example, if you drive up to 49 users in a
month, you get $25 each; increase that to between 50 and under 2,000 users, and you
get $28 each.

TIP:

If you want to easily create an online storefront with
tools to handle Web site hosting, marketing, payment
and order management, and inventory and reporting,
eBay ProStores might be your answer. ProStores are
eBay Stores on steroids and provide eBay integration
without being overwhelmed and totally controlled by
eBay. You will even receive a 30 percent discount on the
subscription fee if you also own an eBay Store. Click
Site Map on the eBay header, and click
ProStores under Sell | Web Stores to see
if this is something you can use to expand
your eBay and online selling business.

The payment for Half.com is based on a percentage of total sales your
customers spend within 30 days of clicking your link.

To learn more about the eBay Affiliate program:

1. Click Site Map on the eBay header.
2. Under Community | More Community Programs,
click eBay Affiliate Program.
3. On the Affiliate Program page, shown in
Figure 10-17, review the material available from
the links on the four-step How It Works section.
4. Click one of the several Join Now links.
5. On the Join The eBay Partner Network, accept
the eBay Partner Network agreement and
privacy policy, and select the programs you
want to be affiliated with. Click Continue.
6. On the next page, fill out your personal
and business contact information, and click
Submit Application when finished. You will be
contacted as to whether you are accepted into
the program.