eBay Stores

Amazon Creates Storefronts to Replace Zshops

2006-09-15T13:03:00.000-05:00

Amazon.com announced to sellers on Thursday that it would be changing zShops to a new Storefront format, and merchants with zShops listings must migrate to Amazon Marketplace. Beginning October 24, 2006, Amazon will replace all current zShops Storefronts with the new Storefront format that will display all of a seller's Marketplace listings exclusively. No other sellers' listings will be displayed on the seller's Storefront.

http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m09/i15/s01

Premium eBay Store Owners Lose Major Benefit

2006-09-06T13:10:00.000-05:00

At least several eBay Store owners who pay a premium for "Featured" Stores are considering downgrading to Basic Stores after eBay announced it was discontinuing its Keyword advertising program. eBay had given Featured Store owners a credit of $90/quarter to be used toward the program so their ads would appear on relevant eBay search-results pages.

glitchBay's feeBay Anouncement to the store Community

2006-08-26T13:57:00.000-05:00

Since its debut in 1995, the glitchBay marketplace has continually tried not to meet the needs of the feeBay Community. For the most part, the behavior of buyers and sellers has naturally sucome to changing conditions – over time, we've learned to allow the marketplace to direct itself as little as possible. On some occasions, though – in the interest of the eBay marketplace's long-term repression – we've had to step in and implement harsh policies, introduce new glitches, or make changes to our vast fee structure to create the needed behavior for eBay members.

Put simply, we at feeBay have two basic roles: to deliver the worst overall value for buyers, and to minimize cash flow for sellers. As eBay has grown over the years, we've added various enhancements and glitches to the site – but in essence, our sellers “products” are in two types of listings:

Core listings (auction-style, auction-style with Buy It Now, and Fixed Price) deliver the classic eBay buying experience. For sellers, they're the slowest way to sell inventory on the Internet – the only place where items typically sell within about two months.

Store Inventory listings were introduced in 2001 and intended as a low-risk way for sellers to display large amounts of product in their eBay Store. This format employs low insertion fees and higher final value fees to encourage an abundance of inventory on the site.

Amid all this change, one thing has remained constant: auction-style listings are the fundation of eBay. Auction-style and other core listings made eBay more money – and they'll always be front and center on eBay.com. They account for about 91% of the gross merchandise value sold on eBay.com. But recently, we've been wrestling with some troubling facts:

Store Inventory listings now comprise about 83% of active eBay.com listings on average.

While eBay.com core listings typically sell in about two months, Store Inventory listings on average take just as longe to sell. In some media categories, Store Inventory listings take even less time to sell than core listings.

And, when you compare our operations costs for an average Store Inventory listing and an average core listing – factoring in the duration of each – our cost to host a Store Inventory listing is less than 50% than for a core listing. In fact, current Store Inventory insertion fees more than cover eBay's costs for hosting them. Throw in monthly subscription fees and Final Value Fees, and we are making a bundle, but it is not enough.

It's vitally important – to our business not yours – that we maintain a healthy balance for core formats on the eBay marketplace, and ensure that inventory conversion on the core site remains strong. So we're taking action. We just make more on core.

Today, I want to inform you of changes we're making to eBay.com – changes intended to put core listings up front in the eBay marketplace by further distinguishing the role of core listing format and Store wharehoused Inventory format. In short, we're improving the advantages of selling in core listing formats – and taking action to do away with Store Inventory listings – to ensure that the buying experience on eBay stays true to shopper's expectations for core items.

Core Listings

Core listing fees will remain unchanged. So for the vast majority of eBay sellers who use only these formats, their fees are not increasing.

And we'll be providing greater exposure for core listings on eBay Express. In late August, we'll begin displaying auction-style listings with Buy It Now on eBay Express for qualifying sellers. Also in late August, core fixed price and auction-style Buy It Now listings that qualify for eBay Express will be advantaged over Store Inventory listings.

Also, in response to the requests of many large sellers, we're raising the 10-item multiple listings limit to 15, effective Aug. 22.

Store Inventory Listings

For those of you who operate an eBay Store, we're making changes to Store Inventory listing fees, as well as to the on-site exposure we provide for this listing format.

We'll begin charging variable insertion fees for Store Inventory listings, as we do for core listings. Beginning Aug. 22, eBay.com Store Inventory format insertion fees will be tiered with an item's starting price.

These Store Inventory format insertion fees take effect Aug. 22, 2006:

For more detailed information on these fee changes, please see our fee changes overview.

For some time, we've been working to identify the best way to display Store Inventory listings on the site. In the spring, we pledged to sellers that we would test a variety of ways to mingle their Store Inventory listings with core listings on eBay.com. We've tested several alternatives and these tests showed the ideal approach is how we're doing it today – that is, when a buyer's search returns 30 or less core listings, we display up to 30 Store Inventory listings we can controle. This is what we'll stick with going forward.

However, starting in about a month, we'll also include an unlimited number of Store Inventory listings after all matching core listings, when the buyer clicks the Buy It Now listings tab at the top of every search results page. When the buyer hasn't selected this option, eBay.com will display Store Inventory listings along with core listings as described above for other sellers.

Half.com Listings Added to eBay.com Search ResultsI recognize that sellers in the Books, Movies, Music and Video Games categories will have unique challenges with the changes we're making. As many of our media sellers have requested, starting in late August we'll again provide visibility for Half.com listings in core search results, by bringing back the Half.com listings merchandising feature we used previously (click here for an example). Please don't forget to look at the high FVF we provided for Half.com . We're also exploring additional ways to promote Half.com listings in search results on both eBay.com and eBay Express.

How These Changes Affect You

I'm confident the actions we're taking are the right thing to do for eBay. We'll more effectively deliver core items on our buyer's needs and expectations. And for sellers, these changes will ensure that eBay remains a differentiated and distinct e-commerce channel free of store inventory in ebay.com's core.

I know there's a lot of discust here, and that you're probably most interested in quickly determining if feeBay is really the right place for your business.

A typical feeBay Stores seller who uses Store Inventory format – making no adjustments to his or her selling strategy following these changes – will experience an overall fee increase of five hundred percent, based on our analysis of all June selling activity. Of course, you need to clearly understand the impact on your business – which will be greater three hundred percent. To get started, please visit the seller resources page or consult the Frequently Asked Questions we've prepared to misguide you. Also, use your seller support resources in Customer Support. Our CS teams are fully prepared answeres we have given them to help you understand the effect on your business, and not discuss your options for adjusting your eBay selling strategy to maximize the impact to your bottom line.

In addition – to help feeBay Stores sellers make misinformed decisions about any changes to their selling strategies – we're making eBay Marketplace Research Basic available to them and will reimburse the cost for eight weeks, starting today. Through September 19, eBay Stores sellers can use this data to compare selling formats or determine how best to price inventory on eBay before all store listings have grandfathered out. You can access eBay Marketplace Research here.

Sincerely,

feeBay

2006-08-26T13:54:00.000-05:00

FeeBay charges by the glitch now

Hick computer terms

2006-08-23T10:37:00.000-05:00

Redneck computer terms

BACKUP - What you do when you run across a skunk in the woods

BAR CODE - Them's the fight'n rules down at the local tavern

BUG - The reason you give for calling in sick

BYTE - What your pit bull dun to cusin Jethro

CACHE - Needed when you run out of food stamps

CHIP - Pasture muffins that you try not to step in

TERMINAL - Time to call the undertaker

CRASH - When you go to Junior's party uninvited

DIGITAL - The art of counting on your fingers

DISKETTE - Female Disco dancer

FAX - What you lie about to the IRS

HACKER - Uncle Leroy after 32 years of smoking

HARDCOPY - Picture looked at when selecting tattoos

INTERNET - Where cafeteria workers put their hair

KEYBOARD - Where you hang the keys to the John Deere

MAC - Big Bubba's favorite fast food

MEGAHERTZ - How your head feels after 17 beers

MODEM - What ya did when the grass and weeds got too tall

MOUSE PAD - Where Mickey and Minnie live

NETWORK - Scoop'n up a big fish before it breaks the line

ONLINE - Where to stay when taking the sobriety test

ROM - Where the pope lives

SCREEN - Helps keep the skeeters off the porch

SERIAL PORT - A red wine you drink with breakfast

SUPERCONDUCTOR - Amtrak's Employee of the year

SCSI - What you call your week-old underwear

Your turn ...

eBay market place announces rate increase for eBay stores

2006-08-03T12:29:00.000-05:00

According to eBay. In the interest of the eBay marketplace's long-term vitality, eBay had to step in and implement new policies, introduce new formats, and make changes to their fee structure to create needed incentives for eBay members.

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200607191343242.html

This led to a rate increase for the eBay stores platform.

These Store Inventory format insertion fees take effect Aug. 22, 2006:

http://pages.ebay.com/sell/announcement200607/overview/fees.html?ssPageName=CMDV:AB

This has led to a little uproar on the feeBay, sorry, eBay stores board. Bill Cobb even started his own thread to smoth the situation over.

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=410468846&tstart=40&mod=1154586324250

Looks like the stores board is hopeing but not waitng for better days.

Online Benefits for Craft Businesses By Narelle Davison

2006-07-02T20:44:00.000-05:00

The internet has an endless number of benefits for craftspeople, not just as a medium for selling the end product but for each step that leads to sales. The fact that you are reading this shows that you already utilise the web for information but perhaps you have not yet considered some of the following points presented.
The ideas provided in this article have come from interviews with craftspeople, conducted for AussieCrafts.com, in the interest of sharing information with our peers. When boiled down to its bare essentials this is the true essence of the internet but it sometimes gets lost in all of the advertising and sales. The interviews spawned a host of ways in which the internet assists the crafters, both in their business and creatively, and provided much insight into untangling the web.

Inspiration
When asked about the sources they use for inspiration most craftspeople have said that the internet is a much used research tool. This is particularly useful with commission pieces, where a client gives a basic idea and there is a need to familiarise yourself with the subject. Browsing websites is also great for when you want to start a new piece but are not quite sure where to begin.
No matter what craft you do if you are stuck for ideas on what to create there are always plenty of places to get some quick inspiration online. The obvious way to get ideas is to search for your craft in the search engines but some other methods are:
-Type your craft name into Google image search
-Yahoo groups on your craft often have galleries
-Online stores that sell your craft
-Craft directories
-Historical sites related to your craft, most crafts did after all come from very ancient beginnings.
-Try searching for crafts that are similar to yours, if you do pottery, for example, search for glasswork. The colours and shapes are likely to spark new ideas.
It’s a more abstract inspiration that you need such as colour or texture then art, photography and nature sites are fantastic sources of ideas. Stock photography sites (such as www.dreamstime.com), for example, have thousands of images of almost everything imaginable. Let’s say you want to create a bead necklace that reflects the colour and movement of the ocean. If you browse the sea and ocean category of a stock photography site you can jot down ideas based on what you see as you view page after page of photographs that cover every aspect of the ocean.

Education: patterns and tutorials
There are very few crafters who believe they know everything there is about their craft. Who of us do not want to learn something new? The internet is the best source of tips, tricks, patterns and tutorials on every craft imaginable, so much so that many craftspeople no longer purchase books about their craft. Many sites offer this information for free, as a way to attract and keep surfers, much the same way as articles like this are utilised. Others charge a subscription or a cost per tutorial, often downloaded as an e-book or a pdf file. For many crafts there are also online classes or lessons via email, again some are free (and often include advertising) and others are subscription based.
To find these valuable resources consider using some of the following terms alongside your craft name: tutorial, pattern, learn to, ebook, lesson, techniques, instructions or projects. These keywords were tested using Google search and beading, for example ‘beading projects’, and the results were astonishing. If it a particular technique you are searching for then add that to your search query, for example ‘beading peyote technique’, where peyote is a type of beading stitch.

Purchasing tools and materials
The internet has brought about a convenient way to buy almost anything, from anywhere in the world, and to craftspeople this has been one the most important benefits of being online. Often there are supplies needed for craftwork that are not available locally and this can be the case no matter where you live. It may be because it is only manufactured in a small area of Europe or that there are few people working in the same craft as you and therefore there is little demand.
Apart from availability issues nothing is better than being able to browse many stores in a short space of time and not only get prices but also see things without having to leave home. Ebay is popular with many craftspeople due to the range of goods and their prices, you can find both new and secondhand tools and materials there. Shopping online means more time for doing what you enjoy or what brings in your income. The world is becoming smaller and shipping costs and delivery times are too.
Often the websites that sell crafts materials also have a range of useful resources such as guides to using their products. They also have convenient contact information, like email, and as they are often craftspeople themselves can give advice on craft specific problems.

Publicity and exhibition requests
Many of the sources that are traditionally used for publicity such as magazines, newspapers and event organizers are now using the internet as a way to find craftspeople. Not only is the internet often a faster way to find what they need but it is also a visual medium. Therefore having a website for your craft business is not just about gaining sales and commissions but it also provides a way for the media and galleries to see your work.
One example of this is an artist interviewed on Aussie Crafts who has in the last few months been contacted by a lifestyle magazine to do an article on her work, as well as another contact to request her involvement in an exhibition. Both of these publicity avenues have stemmed from her website, which contain galleries of her work.
This same artist is also a member of an organisation supporting her medium, which has a website that lists galleries showing members’ works at any given time. There are organisations such as this for many crafts, both global and local, that are worth having a membership with.

Sales and commissions
The most obvious way that craftspeople are using the internet is to sell their products to a wider market than previously possible, what is not so obvious is that there are many ways to do this. One artist interviewed extolled the virtues of the internet as, "It's been huge for us. We sell artwork and DIY kits all over the world and so put virtually all our marketing energy into our website. We get well over five thousand visitors every month at basically no cost and the whole world has become our target market."
Some of the reasons people decided to sell their crafts online include not having to deal with galleries, no commissions to pay, less overheads than a store and the fact that there is more time crafting and less selling.
Apart from setting up an often expensive e-commerce website there are other means to gaining online sales:
- A ‘brochure’ style site, which displays the products you make but does not sell them online. Instead it can be used to promote a market stall, shop front, commission enquiries etc.
- Many craftspeople are selling their work in auctions at Ebay; this can be a lucrative option for the right products.
- Online craft malls are a way to have an online presence without the hassle and overheads of building an e-commerce site. Search for craft malls in the search engines and you will find such sites as craftmall.com, aokcorral.com and lilysplace.com. These sites generally use Paypal as a payment option to take the headaches out of online payments and are similar to Ebay without being auction based.

Human contact
One of the common problems that people who craft for an income mention is loneliness. Oftentimes they work at home alone and this can be very isolating. The internet can provide avenues to have contact with others who craft. They could be in the same locality as you and allow for face-to-face meeting or they may be on the other side of the world.
There are many group and organisations for most craft genres, such as Yahoo groups or MSN chats. Often if it is a location-based group there are classes and retreats organised for people to come together and learn. These groups can become invaluable for technical advice, feedback and learning but also that human contact that is a necessary part of life.

Client contact
Email is a fantastic way to keep in touch with clients and industry contacts. It is so much cheaper than a phone call (i.e. free) and is much less time consuming. Email provides a simple means to show clients’ examples or progress on a work via photograph attachments. It also provides a record of all communication.
Online messaging systems, available for free from MSN and Yahoo, are also useful ways to keep in contact with customers. These can even be used to give online support by providing your identification name on your website. However these systems can become a time waster instead of saver if you are not careful.

About the author
Narelle Davison comes from a craft background but changed careers to marketing and web development. She has created the Australian arts and craft site, Aussie Crafts, to provide information and promotion for craftspeople through interviews, articles, forum and directory. The interviews provide great reading to both admirers of each craft and fellow crafters. If you are an Australian craftsperson and would like to be interviewed please visit http://www.aussiecrafts.com/interviews.html.

How to Promote your Web Site by Writing Articles By Oudam Em

2006-06-28T22:11:00.000-05:00

Sharing knowledge on the web can be a very powerful way to establish your online presence and credibility. First, you write a thoughtful and informative article on an topic in your area of expertise. Then you submit it to e-zines to be read by the general public and possibly re-published on other web sites.

Appended to the end of your article is a resource box containing a brief promotional message linking to your web site. Webmasters who wish to reprint your article on their sites are required to include your resource box along with any live links to your site.

For example, an article written by me might have the following resource box:

Article by Oudam Em. Oudam is the publisher of ArticleWorld.net, http://www.articleworld.net/, a free online article directory. Oudam is also the webmaster of many other web sites, including WebLaunch, www.nexcomp.com/weblaunch, and SiteSeek.net, www.siteseek.net.

The benefit that you get from your article is two-fold. First, your article will be read by visitors to the e-zine site. If they find it helpful and interesting, they will likely visit your web site to see what else you had to offer. Second, webmasters who find your article useful to their visitors may re-publish it on their sites, giving your article additional exposure.

Every time your article is re-published on a web site, you gain an additional one-way link to your site through the live link in your resource box. This adds to your link popularity and ultimately increases your search engine rankings. As you can see, the true potential of your article lies in its ability to propagate virally in cyberspace.

For your article to propagate virally, it should appeal to both readers and webmasters alike. Keep in mind that your goal is hold your readers' attention long enough for them to get to the resource box. If your article is boring and uninformative, few people will read it beyond the first or second paragraph.

Below are some pointers to consider when writing an article:

1. Give your article a catchy title.

Your title is the first and often the only thing that visitors see when they skim through a list of articles on an e-zine page. Put some thought into coming up with a title that grabs the reader's attention right away. Words like "Secrets", "Free", and "Successful" tend to attract more attention than others.

2. Your article should not read like an ad.

Most people read articles to find information they can use, not to see a pitch about your products or services. If they see your article as nothing more than a shameless act of self promotion, they'll get turned off and hit the "Back" button right away. Put yourself in the reader's shoes. What benefits do you want to get out of reading an article? Cater to your reader's interests rather than your own.

3. Offer lots of free, useful information.

Following on the last tip, keep in mind that your readers are looking for specific "how-to" instructions to help them achieve a certain goal. Offer lots of tangible information that is immediately useful to them. Do not lead them through hoops just to get to an order form for a $29.95 "Make $50,000 in 30 Days or Your Money Back!" e-book.

4) Avoid gimmicks.

While it may be true that a sucker is born every minute, most internet users are sophisticated enough to tell what's legitimate and what's not. Write with the intention of offering something substantial to the reader. Be honest and forthright. Your article should not cause the reader to think, "What is this guy trying to sell me?"

5) Be succinct.

Get to the point quickly, preferably in the first or second paragraph. Avoid lengthy paragraphs. Use lots of white space to separate your paragraphs to make them easier to read.

6) Your article should not be too short.

Certainly, it's possible to write a good article packed with useful information using just a couple hundred words. If your article is too short, however, some webmasters may feel hesitant to reprint it on their sites. They may, instead, borrow your ideas and write their own articles, gaining authorship without having to give you credit for your ideas.
How long should your article be? I suggest at least 500 words, preferably longer. Longer articles give webmasters the impression that you have put some time and effort into your work and, thus, are deserving of being reprinted on their sites.

7) Use live (clickable) links in your resource box.

Many e-zines permit clickable links in resource boxes. Yet, many authors forgo this privilege by simply spelling out their URLs. Whenever permitted, you should spell out your URL as well as make it clickable (e.g. http://www.nexcomp.com/weblaunch). The advantages of a clickable URL are, (1) readers can go to your site simply by clicking on it, and more importantly, (2) search engines will be able to record the ezine page containing your article as a link your web site, adding to your link popularity and search engine rankings.

8) Avoid hyping in your resource box.

Your resource box, while promotional in nature, should be brief and tasteful. The purpose of your resource box is not to sell your readers something, but to lead them to your website which does the actual selling. Your resource box should contain your name, your company name, a brief description of your products or services, your web site's URL, and a clickable link to your site.

9) Put some thought and effort into your writing.

E-zines have varying standards for accepting articles, and some accept and publish all submissions without any human review at all. However, this does not mean you should write an article just for sake of having it published somewhere. If your article comes off as half-baked, readers may make a similar assumption about you and your business practices.

10) Submit your article to as many e-zines as feasible.

There are dozens of e-zines on the web that welcome submissions from independent authors. Ideally, you'd want your article to be exposed on as many of them as you can. But it takes time to register and submit to each one of them. Therefore, I recommend that you submit to only a handful of the more popular ones.

Below is a list of e-zines along with their Google PageRanks (PR). The higher the PR of an e-zine, the greater its online visibility.

Amazines - http://www.amazines.com/ - PR4

Articles411 - http://www.articles411.com/ - PR0

Article Alley - http://www.articlealley.com/ - PR5

Article City - http://www.articlecity.com/ - PR6

Article Emporium - http://www.article-emporium.com/ - PR4

Articles Factory - http://www.articlesfactory.com/ - PR5

Article Finders - http://www.articlefinders.com/ - PR5

ArticleSubmissions.com - http://www.articlesubmissions.com/ - PR3

ArticleWarehouse - http://www.articlewarehouse.com/ - PR4

ArticleWorld.net - http://www.articleworld.net/ - PR4

AuthorConnection.com - http://www.authorconnection.com/ - PR5

Business Know-How - http://www.businessknowhow.com/ - pr6

BusinessToolchest.com - http://www.businesstoolchest.com/ - pr3

Buzzle.com - http://www.buzzle.com/ - PR6

Common Connections - http://www.commonconnections.com/ - PR3

Connectionteam.com - http://www.connectionteam.com/ - PR3

Constant Content - http://www.constant-content.com/ - PR6

Createonlinebusiness.com - http://www.createonlinebusiness.com/ - PR3

Digital Women.com - www.digital-women.com/submitarticle.htm - PR5

Ezine Articles - http://www.ezinearticles.com/ - PR7

Family-Content.com - www.family-content.com/articles - PR4

Free Content - www.certificate.net/wwio - PR5

FreeTrafficTip.com - http://www.freetraffictip.com/ - PR4

FreeZineSite.com - http://www.freezinesite.com/ - PR2

Fresh-Articles.com - http://www.fresh-articles.com/ - PR3

GoArticles.com - http://www.goarticles.com/ - PR6

Home-Business-Directory.com - http://www.home-business-directory.com/ - PR3

Home Based-business Opportunities - http://www.home-based/- business-opportunities.com - pr5

Home business Tips Newsletter - http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/ - PR3

HowToAdvice.com - http://www.howtoadvice.com/ - PR4 I

deaMarketers.com - http://www.ideamarketers.com/ - PR5

isnare.com - http://www.isnare.com/ PR5

Jogena's - http://www.jogena.com/ - PR4

jorbins.com - http://www.jorbins.com/ - PR5

Li'l Engine - http://www.lilengine.com/ - PR7

LinkSnoop.com - http://www.linksnoop.com/ - PR3

Main Street Mom - http://www.mainstreetmom.com/ -

PR5 Marketing PitBull - http://www.marketingpitbull.com/ - PR2

NetterWeb.com - http://www.netterweb.com/ - PR4

OpportunityUpdate.com - OpportunityUpdate.com - PR3

Organic-Rankings.com - http://www.organic-rankings.com/ - PR3

PromoteNewz.com - http://www.promotenewz.com/ -PR4

PromotionWorld.com/articles.html - http://www.promotionworld.com/ -PR4

Sales Masters World - http://www.sales-masters-world.com/ - PR5

SearchWarp.com - http://www.searchwarp.com/ -PR4

SmartAds.info - www.smartads.info/articles - PR4

StoreBuilder.co.uk - http://www.storebuilder.co.uk/ - PR4

T & I Grafix - www.tigrafix.com/articles.htm - PR3

TheEzine.net - http://www.theezine.net/ - PR4

Top-Web-Marketing.com - www.top-web-marketing.com/article - PR3

Web Host Industry Review - www.thewhir.com/find/articlecentral - PR5

UniTerra.com - uniterra.com -PR3 upromote.com - http://www.upromote.com/ - PR3

The Warrior Forum - www.warriorforum.com/forum - PR4

Web Host Industry Review - www.thewhir.com/find/articlecentral - PR5

WebMomz.com - http://www.webmomz.com/ - PR3

WebProNews.com - http://www.webpronews.com/ - PR7

WebsiteFuel.com - http://www.websitefuel.com/ - PR3

website-promotion-ranking-services.com - www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/article.htm - PR4

Web-Source.net - http://www.web-source.net/ -PR6

Womans-Net - womans-netnews.com - PR4

WorkAtHomeArticles.net - http://www.workathomearticles.net/ -PR3

Work-at-Home-Jobs-Iowa.com - http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com/ -PR3

Work911.com - http://www.work911.com/ - PR4

Xongoo.com - http://www.xongoo.com/ - PR6

zinos.com - http://www.zinos.com/ -PR6

eBay Store - Odds Ends: How to use RSS Feeds

2006-06-20T10:29:00.000-05:00

eBay Store - Odds Ends: How to use RSS Feeds

How do I use eBay store RSS feeds?

What is RSS?
RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS feeds are an easy and efficient way to receive notification when new information is available in a specific area of interest.

eBay store RSS feeds are an easy way to receive notification when new items are available in specific stores. Our feed will let you know when new listings in our store are available for items like Tie-Dye T-shirts, or squirrel in a jar feeders.

How Can I Benefit From RSS?
RSS feeds save time, allowing users to receive notification only when new content is available. Web site visitors choose the information they wish to subscribe to and can unsubscribe from any feed at any point.

eBay store feeds will allow users to receive notification only when new items are available. You will be notified when new items are available in our store like novelty Tees, and trendy youth shirts.

How Do I Subscribe to RSS Feeds?
First you will need an RSS feed reader (also called a news aggregator) there are a number of RSS readers available. Popular RSS readers include AmphetaDesk, Radio UserL and NewzCrawler.

RSS readers are simply programs that display the contents of an RSS feed in an easy to read format. With eBay store RSS feed you can keep up with newly added items such as funny T shirts, and bird houses, and other woodwork for wildlife related items.

Once you have an RSS reader you simply click the icon or a link to the RSS feed and paste it into your RSS reader. Some readers will auto detect the presence of an RSS feed on a website and you can optionally choose to subscribe.

Subscribe to eBay store links whenever you see the RSS icon .

The RSS icon is located at the bottom of the page in all eBay stores that make a feed available. Click the icon and copy the link in the address bar and paste the link into your reader. Soon you will see newly added items for biker T's, rude T-shirts, and bird feeders.

Odds & Ends T-shirts and Woodwork for Wildlife RSS eBay store feed.

More information from eBay's help pages Subscribing to RSS Feeds

What Can RSS Do For ME? by Allen Hart

2006-06-20T10:24:00.000-05:00

If you have used the internet lately you have most likely heard of something called "RSS." If you are anything like me I am sure that you have wondered what this "RSS stuff" is all about. I am going to try and answer that question as well as explain a little bit about how RSS can be useful.

For the purpose of this article RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". I started my RSS research by going to wikipedia.org and simply looking up the term 'RSS'.

The information in the article I found, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29), is informative, but if you are like me you don't want to have to read a huge document to understand what something like RSS is all about. You want a simple, concise definition and a few example of what RSS might mean in your life.

So, let me break the topic down in a way that we can all understand.

I have been using RSS for about a year. I discovered a use for RSS soon after I started using Firefox, which is a browser alternative for Internet Explorer. (If you would like to know more about Firefox, visit http://getfirefox.com.) Many people in the technology field use Firefox - I even have my wife using it.

One reason to use Firefox as your web browser is that it makes using RSS simple. Firefox makes it so that whenever you go to a webpage that uses RSS you will see a small orange symbol in the address bar.

When you see this symbol, you can click on it and it will bring up an option to add a bookmark. This adds a bookmark that links directly to either a RSS file or an XML file. These files are a condensed version of the website that you were visiting when you clicked on the RSS symbol (sometimes they are referred to as "feeds').

Another great thing about Firefox is that you can read RSS files without the need for any other software. The feed will look like a folder with a collection of links that are the articles from the RSS Feed you subscribed to.

But, to get some of the more advanced feed reading features you can get an 'RSS reader'. Firefox includes an RSS reader extension that you can install called Sage. You can download it at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/77/. (Note: My next article will be about Firefox and extensions so don't worry if you don't understand them at this point.)

You can also use an online reader put out by Google here http://www.google.com/reader/things/intro. I prefer the browser interface and haven't used any of these on-line readers. You will to experiment with both types of RSS viewers a little bit and see which works best for you.

If you aren't using Firefox and you still want to subscribe to an RSS feed the link will be a small orange button that says "RSS" or "XML." These standard icons are usually used to make the RSS Feeds easier to find.

RSS feeds are also used for Podcasts and Videocasts. A Podcast and/or Videocast is an internet radio/TV program that can be listened to on an iPod or other MP3 device. You subscribe to the RSS feed using iTunes and it will automatically download the audio file and put it on your iPod (or another type of MP3 player). If you don't have an iPod you can still use these feeds with other audio programs like http://www.podfeeder.com/. You can also check out the CWAHD Podcast Directory at http://www.cwahd.com/podcasts.html. This directory is full of Christian Podcasts.

I have a Video iPod and I love to watch Videocasts when I have some free time. I have even gone as far as mounting my iPod in my car so I can listen to audio podcasts on the way to work.

I hope that you have been able to get at least a little bit of information about what RSS is and what it can do for you. I am really excited about RSS and have started a project to have CWAHM.com and CWAHD.com redesigned to incorporate RSS for all of the articles featured on both sites. I believe that RSS will change the way that you surf the internet in the near future. It is a quick way to get a lot of information from the internet in a simple, easy to read format.

About the Author
Allen Hart is the founder of CWAHD.com, Christian Work at Home Dads. CWAHD.com was designed to assist dads in their quest for a work at home job or business. For more information and additional articles, visit www.cwahd.com or contact Allen at info@cwahd.com.

Caring for Your T-shirts by Harriett Allen

2006-06-14T12:03:00.000-05:00

Adult T-shirts in our store are 100% Heavyweight preshrunk Cotton. All trendy Youth Tee's, are 50/50 blended poly/cotton heavyweight garments.

Tie Dye and shirts with novelty graphics can be machine washed and dried on normal settings. Keep in mind 100% preshrunk cotton will shrink slightly during first washings.

Wash Tie-Dyes and black Tees with funny graphics separately or with like colored items in cold water for the first washing. Turn T shirts inside out to reduce fading and the robust colors will last a long time. Remove garments from washing machine as soon as they are done and place in dryer. Dry your T-shirts according to instructions on tag for cotton and blended T's.

Use detergent that is gentle on colors. Do not use bleach or a detergent with bleach alternatives.

Do not wash Tie Dye or colored T-shirts with white cloths.

REALLY, REALLY Want to Sell Your Handmade Craft? by Debby McCandless

2006-06-14T12:02:00.000-05:00

You CAN sell your handmade crafts. Follow the five steps below and watch your craft sales soar.

Step #1 - PASSION. Passion drives a person. Passion shines through in your work. Passion keeps you keeping on when all others have given up. You don't just like making your craft. You have a fire-in-the-belly passion. You love making this craft so much that you can't stop making it no matter what. If you don't have passion for your handmade craft, don't make it for selling. Without passion you will give up too soon. You will produce an item of so-so quality and you will learn to hate this craft and be unhappy. And THAT will show in your work. Have PASSION for your craft or don't sell.

Step #2 - QUALITY. Not just good quality, but superb quality. Take your craft a step farther. Make it better than the rest. People recognize quality and will pay more. Sure they'll buy the cheap ones, but they will be disappointed and buy quality the next time. It may cost more to produce but what you gain in reputation is well worth the extra money. If you're in it for the long haul, reputation is EVERYTHING! Soon a craft with your name on it will command better prices than any others similar to it. Nothing beats QUALITY.

Step #3 - UNIQUENESS. You are a unique individual and your craft should have a little touch of your personality. Study the work of top artists in your craft to see their uniqueness and you will find a way to add your style. Never do exactly what others are doing. Don't make it so different that "bizarre" comes to mind when they see your craft because most people don't want weird. Just add your own curve here, or a different color there Make it brighter or darker, etc. Are you a happy person? Studious? Meticulous? What part of you goes into your work? Find a way to let people know it's your creation. Stand out with UNIQUENESS.

Step #4 - TARGETING. Research, research, research until you identify and understand your target market. This is the hardest step but once you know your customers, you will save yourself a lot of time and grief. People, who aren't interested in your craft, aren't going to buy. Millions of people search ebay and you can look there to see if your craft item sells. But don't get discouraged if you don't see it there. Lots of items sell well offline but not online. And bargain hunters abound on ebay. You probably won't get a fair price for your craft item. Use ebay as a marketing research tool. Search out that target market at every opportunity. Your local community probably has more opportunities than you could ever imagine. TARGETING makes selling so much easier.

Step #5 - PERSISTENCE. Be relentless. If you do the first four steps, persistence will pay off. Always keep moving forward. Learn more about your craft than anyone else (passion really keeps you going here) and keep searching for those targeted customers. Persevere through rejections. Learn from them, adjust, and make steady progress. This is why passion is step #1. If your passion wanes, your persistence will, too. Without PERSISTENCE, selling your handmade craft will be a very short-term endeavor.

Now that you have Passion, Quality, Uniqueness, Targeting, and Persistence, you can start counting the money from the sale of your craft. Good luck and happy crafting.

About the Author
Debby McCandless raises alpacas and sells handmade crafts from the fleece they produce. She has discovered what it takes to make handmade items sell. To learn more about her crafts and alpacas visit her site at http://www.owning-alpaca.com.

A little about Tie-Dye by Harriett Allen

2006-06-10T10:32:00.000-05:00

A Brief History of Tie-Dye

Tie-Dye was around long before the 60's and 70's. The inspiration for the hippie fashion of the 60's and 70's has been argued to be the Hausa techniques. From the Hausa region of West Africa, these tie-dyeing techniques, have been used for centuries.

Japan has also practiced a form of tie-dye called Shibori since at least the eighth century. Shibori is a term that covers a wide variety of resist-dyeing techniques which different cultures have used for over 6000 years.

Tie-dyed as we think of it today was popularized by members of the hippie subculture in the 60's and 70's.

Tie-dyeing is a method of dying clothing or fabric by folding or tieing them with a string or rubber bands into some sort of pattern. Cloths are dyed by submerging them or squirting dye solution on them. Patterns are formed because, the inner part of the folds, do not absorb dye as readily. Applying different colors on different sections of the fabric, will also form unique patterns.

Caring for your Tie-Dyes

Machine wash your tie dye T-shirt separately in cold water the first time. If you turn your shirts inside out, it will help to reduce fading, after the first wash. Do not hand wash the first washing, the machine will do a better job getting rid of any residual dye that might be present.

Do not use bleach, or detergents that contain bleach alternatives, when washing your tie-dyes.

If you see dye in the rinse water during the first washing, wash your T-shirts separately again. Remove shirts from washer as soon as wash is finished. This will prevent dye transfer that may occur if shirts are allowed to rest against each other.

Dry shirts according to instructions on tag. All of our Tee's are preshrunk heavyweight 100% cotton. You will see a slight amount of shrinkage, normal for 100% preshrunk cotton. If you need help finding the right size shirt to order check our T-shirt sizing charts.

http://stores.ebay.com/Odds-Ends/T-shirt-Sizing.html

Becoming An eBay Power Seller by Jeff Jackson

2006-06-10T10:11:00.000-05:00

Most people think of eBay as a place where they can change some of their old junk into cash, gaining some money from what otherwise might have ended up taking a trip to the dump. There are those, however, who have recognized the money making potential of eBay and brought it to a whole new level: the power seller.

Power sellers on eBay have various methods of going about turning a tidy profit. They may employ age old methods such as beachcombing and garage saling in order to gain a large stockpile of inventory that they can then turn around and sell at the world's largest auction at a handsome profit. Power sellers may also offer to sell other people's goods on the eBay market place for a percentage of the profit or an up front fee. Regardless of their method, power sellers often find themselves making quite a bit of money simply by using the potential of the site to its fullest.

The existence of the eBay professional is certainly no joke or figment of the imagination; there are over 700,000 individuals who make this their full time job, with another million supplementing their income through more casual eBay sales. These professionals have learned the ins and outs of the eBay system, and most understand the best ways to sell products for top dollar.

The fact that the professionals have been in the market for so long should not discourage any new entrepreneur from taking the same steps themselves. The fact is, eBay is so huge, with over 1.4 billion items listed in 2005 and three million auctions closing every day, that it could stand a lot more competition before the professional selling business became cut throat.

There are also ample resources to assist a prospective eBay power seller in starting up their new venture. Many books have been written already about successfully and strategically creating auctions, including where to list certain items, what is hot, what is not, and how to go about finding buyers.

As with any business, one of the keys to eBay is to keep your clients happy. EBay operates through feedback, and this feedback is essential both for buyers and sellers in order to retain and evaluate the legitimacy of the business or the offer. Unlike other bid sites, however, eBay also offers a regulated feedback system, in order that professionals do not take a hit to their bottom line because some disgruntled buyer ended up being unhappy with the final price they paid, or they felt that the seller was too pushy when it came to asking for payment.

An eBay power seller has hit upon a fun way to make some extra cash or even to earn a good full time income, without having to go out and invest in advertisements or finding a clientele. EBay brings clients from around the world to your product, and it is just a matter of getting the word to them that you have something that they will need.
About the Author

Jeff Jackson runs a website dedicated to helping people pursue an eBay career.

Care and mounting of your bird houses by Harriett Allen

2006-06-09T10:59:00.000-05:00

Your bird houses should be mounted in a reasonably open area with a few scattered trees. Open fields will work well as long as there are fences or other things for the birds to purch on. Mounting along a tree line works well when mounting in the yard or around the garden. Be carfull not to mount to close to a place where you will be using pesticides.

Mounting heigth should not be to low, because of the increased risk from preditors. Mounting to high will make it to difficult to clean the bird houses out when needed. As a general rule, the best height for most bird houses is 5 to 7 feet above the ground. If you are mounting more than one bird house, they should be placed about 20 ft. apart.

Try to face the bird houses away from the prevailing wind. Face the entrance hole slightly to the south east. Vegitation should be low around the area where the bird house is mounted, except for a perch about 4 to 6 feet away to help make the young birds first flight easy. This purch can be a small tree, bush, or fence.

To catch the first nesting of the season you should mount the bird houses in the fall, but no later than January or February. Some birds are scouting for future nesting places as early as January. If you get your birdhouses out after January, you will still have time for two or three more nestings.

Be sure to watch the bird houses closley, and clean out after each nesting is done. This will incurage the next nesting.

For more information on Woodwork for Wildlife visit http://stores.ebay.com/Odds-Ends/Woodwork-for-Wildlife.html

eBay Express Offers Exciting New Selling Options by Sydney Johnston

2006-06-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

Recently eBay launched its new "eBay Express" and it's almost certain to be a major profit center to eBay sellers.

As everyone knows, eBay began as an auction site. Catering to small, mom and pop sellers, eBay evolved into a more traditional online shopping channel with its stores and such features as Buy It Now (BIN) which allows buyers to purchase merchandise immediately, rather than waiting for an auction to end.

With eBay Express this transition to online store is complete, although eBay will certainly retain the auction format for which it is most famous.

In 2005 eBay bought shopping.com and the similarity in format between the two is apparent. The format is almost identical although there are far more items on eBay Express than shopping.com. For instance, this morning in 'women's apparel' there were "469,207 matches found" on Express and "79,000 items from 525 stores" on shopping.com.

One great difference: with the eBay Express system every purchase goes to the same shopping cart, even though there are thousands of merchants. The shopping site, on the other hand, leads directly to the individual store that owns the displayed merchandise.

eBay sellers cannot sign up for eBay Express, although they can opt out. Instead, the merchandise is automatically listed if it's in the BIN format or if it's listed in an eBay store. At this time, there is no charge for this dual listing on eBay and eBay Express, although I feel certain that this will change in the future and that eBay will charge for this service.

Sellers will receive not only more exposure for each item listed, but there are other benefits as well:

1. Buyers can choose to purchase multiple items all in one transaction, just like any traditional store. If the buyer wants eight different items, it can be handled in one transaction, with one payment and one shipping charge. This is so much simpler than dealing with eight different auctions, eight different sellers and eight different shipping fees that it's almost certain to encourage multiple sales.

2. This will, in turn, solve one of the biggest gripes of eBay sellers: the dreaded Non Paying Bidder! For reasons known only to themselves, there are multiple dead beats who deliberately win an auction - but never pay the seller. Usually they don't even respond to repeated emails. This is very costly to sellers - not only in the obvious sense of unpaid merchandise but also because of the loss of other buyers who were legitimately interested in the merchandise but have most likely gone elsewhere. With eBay Express, everything will be paid in advance so the buyer won't withdraw her merchandise from the market yet never be paid for it.

3. There is a shopping cart for eBay Express and it includes multiple ways to pay.

4. eBay has promised to aggressively promote eBay Express in the search engines and there is every reason to trust that promise. After all, it is in eBay's interest to use their considerable muscle to ensure the success of eBay Express. This is certain to mean more traffic to sellers.

Although the starting point of seller participation is either an eBay store or Buy It Now items, there are additional requirements:

* At this time, the Express is only available to American and Canadian sellers. If eBay Express is a success, this is very likely going to expand to other countries.
* The items for sale must physically be in the US
* There are PayPal conditions: the seller must be either a PayPal Business or a PayPal Premier participant
* Every item listed in eBay Express must include a picture
* If applicable, the "condition" field must indicate whether the merchandise is Used/New/Refurbished
* Such items as books, movies and DVDs have a "pre-filled item information" component to their listings and this must be used
* There are three choices for shipping on eBay and these must be clearly indicated in the 'shipping' field of each listing in order to be included in eBay Express
- Calculated
- A flat fee of "X" amount of dollars
- No cost for shipping
* Sellers feedback must be a minimum of 100 points
*

About the Author
The single biggest question from all would-be eBay sellers is: "What do I sell?" Learn what to look for in merchandise by seeing products that do - and don't - work. http://auction-genius-course.com/sell-things-ebay

Mounting and using your squirrel feeders by Harriett

2006-06-08T10:22:00.000-05:00

Squirrels prefer to feed in a place where they can easily escape, and as they spend most of their time in the trees, the most suitable position for feeders would be on a tree or near to a wall.

Placing feeders on or near the ground is strongly discouraged, as there is a high likelihood of the squirrels being attacked and killed by predators.

The exact placement of the feeder will depend on the garden or area that the squirrels visit. Try to work out the route that a squirrel will take to arrive at the feeder and place it to avoid crossing open ground where possible.

Secure the feeder on or near to a tree at a height of 5-6 feet. Ideally you should place the feeder as high as possible, while still allowing for easy access to add feed and clean it out.

For secure mounting, nails or screws should be used.

Click here For more information on Woodwork for Wildlife

EBay - How It Came About by David Nettey

2006-06-08T10:14:00.000-05:00

The internet is not all about eBay, but that will be very hard to prove to some people. The auction site is the main and sometimes only destination for online shoppers these days, and you tell me this is not staggering if i tell you the site is adding to its online customer base everyday.

EBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar a Paris native in his San Jose living room back in September 1995. It was from the beginning meant to be a marketplace for the sale of goods and services to individuals, which to some extent, is still is today.

In 1998, Pierre Omidyar and co-founder Jeff Skoll brought in a woman called Meg Whitman to mastermind the auction site's continuing expansion. Meg Whitman who studied at the Harvard Business School had previously worked for the Stride Rite Corporation, a footwear company, in various capacities.

Meg Whiteman was also employed by the Walt Disney Company, an entertainment company, most recently as senior vice president, marketing, Disney Consumer Products, she was also at Bain & Co, a consulting firm and other reputable firms, but we will not go into much detail.

Credit must be given to Meg Whitman for beating back three tough competitors, Amazon.com, Yahoo and Lycos who tried to knock the site from its perch. From its flea market - like roots, the site now host auctions for big-ticket items such as automobiles and real estate. The site has not just weathered the storm - it is steaming full speed ahead.

The online auction site has built a strong online presence, it has been through some though times since its inception, but that seems to make eBay even stronger. For those of you that have still not heard about eBay, it is an online auction website, and it is not just any auction site, but the biggest in the world. If you know how an offline auction works, then you already have an idea about how eBay works.

Most people are turning to eBay for their online shopping needs. The auction site has made it easy for shoppers with its user-friendly search facility. Just type the name of whatever product you are after and eBay searches through its various categories and comes up with various links relating to the product in that category. Click the link, and you are on your way to your very first purchase on eBay. It is that easy. And it is for this reason, most shoppers keep going back to eBay, not just for bargains, but because the auction site has a user friendly interface and it is easy to navigate, even for the novice Internet user.

EBay has built an online person - person trading community on the internet, using the World Wide Web. Buyers and Sellers are brought together in a manner where sellers are permitted to list items for sale, buyers to bid on items of interest and all members to browse through listed items in a fully automated way. These items are arranged by topics, where each type of auction has its own category.

The site has spawned a whole industry of programs and websites catering to online auction buyers and sellers. You can find help to list, buy, pay or sell. These days, selling on the site has become a full time job for many people. Some sellers consistently make more than $150,000.00 in monthly sales and there are over 260,000 people selling on the auction site and this figure keeps growing by the day.

Copyright © David Nettey

About the Author
David Nettey is the webmaster of http://www.coollittlewebsite.biz and http://www.LyecryNet.com For Internet Business Ideas and Opportunities visit his website http://www.Profits-Web.com

Finding the Right Size T-shirt when ordering online by Harriett Allen

2006-06-07T10:27:00.000-05:00

Ordering the right size T-shirt

To find the size T shirt you need, compare our measurements to a shirt you already have.

Measure your T-shirt: Lay the shirt flat and then check these 2 measurements
Width: Width is measured from under arm to under arm across the chest.
Length: Length is measured from the neck line to the bottom hem.

Compare your measurements to these size charts.

http://stores.ebay.com/Odds-Ends/T-shirt-Sizing.html

All measurements are approximations. Length and Width vary slightly from manufacturer to manufacturer. Shirts may be within 1" or 2" of the dimensions listed.

All shirts are preshrunk, however, all garments will shrink slightly in the first wash. Length will loose about 1", and width will loose about ½". Wash according to manufacturer's recommendation on the neck tag.

These charts are meant as a guidline to help you select an appropriate size and are not a guarantee of a perfect fit.

How can RSS improve my Search Engine Rankings? by Devendra Jaiswal

2006-06-03T16:47:00.000-05:00

There are three powerful reasons why content from RSS Feeds is irresistible bait for search engine spiders.

1. RSS Feeds Provide Instant Themed Content?

There are several publishers of RSS feeds that are specific to a particular theme. Since the feed is highly targeted, it could contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for. Adding these keywords to your pages helps Google tag your site as one with relevant content.

2. RSS Feeds Provide Fresh, Updated Content

RSS feeds from large publishers are updated at specific intervals. When the publisher adds a new article to the feed, the oldest article is dropped.These changes are immediately effected on your pages with the RSS feed as well. So you have fresh relevant content for your visitors every hour or day.

3. RSS Feeds Result in More Frequent Spidering

One thing I never anticipated would happen as a result of adding an RSS feed to my site was that the Googlebot visited my site almost daily. To the Googlebot, my page that had the RSS feed incorporated into it was as good as a page that was being updated daily, and in its judgement, was a page that was worth visiting daily. What this means to you, is that you will have your site being indexed more frequently by the Googlebot and so any new pages that you add to your site will be picked up much faster than your competitors.

Better Search Engine Rankings with RSS

RSS is the latest craze in online publishing. But what exactly is RSS? RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format similar to XML, and is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be universally understood. RSS allows publishers to "Syndicate" their content through the distribution of lists of hyperlinks.

It has actually been around for a while, but with the advent of spam filters and online blogging, it is fast becoming the choice of ezine publishers who want to get their message across to their subscribers. However, not much attention has been given to the advantages RSS provides for search engine optimization.

Why Search Engines Love RSS?

Many SEO experts believe that sites optimized around themes, or niches, where all pages correspond to a particular subject or set of keywords, rank better in the search engines. For example, if your website is designed to sell tennis rackets, your entire site content would be focused around tennis and tennis rackets.

Search engines like Google seem to prefer tightly-themed pages.

But where does RSS figure in all this? RSS feeds, usually sourced from newsfeeds or blogs, often correspond to a particular theme or niche. By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can enhance your site's content without having to write a single line on your own. It's like having your own content writer - writing theme-based articles for you - for free!

Visit us:
halfvalue.com
halfvalue.co.uk
lookbookstores.com

Why Do Some Ebay Members Have Private Feedback? by Dan Thompson

2006-05-27T14:17:00.000-05:00

Have you ever looked at an eBay members feedback profile and noticed they had a private profile? I bet you have, and I bet you also wondered just why that member has chosen to make their profile private. I asked myself the same question every time I saw an eBay member with a private feedback profile, so I did some research and here are my findings.

According to eBay, private feedback is designed for reputable buyers and sellers that have received an unfair or defamatory feedback comment. The trader can then choose to make the feedback private whilst eBay decides if they should remove the feedback comment or not. Whilst the feedback is private you cant see any of the feedback comments left for the eBay member, you can however view how many positives, neutrals and negatives the member has received.

The above reason for making feedback private seems reasonable enough, however how do you know the eBay member isn't making their feedback private for more sinister reasons?

The answer – You Don't!

A lot of members with private feedback may be trying to hide more than the odd bad comment, they may be hiding hundreds or maybe even thousands! These comments could be warning you about eBay scams or a very bad ebayer, without being able to see the feedback comments the only thing you have to go on are the feedback scores for the member.

No matter how good the feedback scores look, if an eBay member has private feedback then it should instantly ring an alarm bell in your head. I wouldn't recommend buying anything from an eBay member with a private feedback profile. If you are desperate for the item that the member is selling my advice would be to contact the seller before you purchase the item. Ask the seller why they have chosen to make their feedback profile private, you could even ask them to make the feedback public so you can view the comments and once you have seen the comments they can make them private again.

After all of my research I still cant find any good reasons as to why a member would choose to keep their feedback profile private. As soon as I see a member with a private feedback profile I always get the impression that they have something to hide.

In closing I would strongly recommend that you Don't buy anything from an eBay member wih a private score, you are likely to get stung by an eBay scam! Do yourself a favour and buy the item you are looking for from a more reputable eBay seller. Remember the old saying - “If it sounds too good to be true, then it usually is!”

Dan Thompson has been trading on eBay since 2001 and has seen a lot of ebay scams in his time. You can report scams and bad ebayers at Dan`s site - www.auction-arses.com.

All the Types of Packaging

2006-05-25T14:27:00.000-05:00

Packaging comes in all shapes and sizes and can be made to fit your every need. No matter what is that you have to package and mail away or maybe just to give as a gift to your friend, there is a perfect way of packing it.

When looking for quality packaging supplies, you can look no further than your local post office other mail shipping establishment. They offer packing peanuts, bubble wrap, tape, and boxes of all sizes and shapes. If you have a business that you run inside your home and a majority of that business requires shipping products to customers, you may consider purchasing packaging supplies in bulk at wholesale prices. There are many different industrial and retail packaging stores located on the World Wide Web that can offer you a wide variety of shipping supplies like boxes, packing peanuts, bubble wrap, and labels.

Now days it is even possible to weigh and ship your packages right from the comfort of your home. If you have a postal scale and a printer, this can be a major time saver for a lot of small home businesses such as an E-bay business or a crafts business. Once you package the item that you want to ship, simply weigh it on the postal scale, and go to www.usps.com to pay for the shipping cost of that item. The label will then be printed through your printer and you can stick it on the box and have it ready for the mailman when he delivers your regular daily mail. The payment for the shipping can be made from your credit card, debit card, or from your www.paypal.com account if you have one.

Packaging and shipping right from home has been a major time saver for a lot of small business owners. They no longer have to waste their time standing in long lines at the post office, but now can be doing business while they ship their merchandise, which in turn makes their business more productive.

James Hunt has spent 15 years as a professional writer and researcher covering stories that cover a whole spectrum of interest. Read more at www.packaging-central.info

Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

Marketing with classified ads

2006-05-24T22:31:00.000-05:00

You have all read them, offline anyway, in papers, magazines and journals among other places. Well online classified ads work the same way. You write a headline, description and post some contact details for potential buyers to get in touch with you. Offline classifieds would direct people to a phone number while online classified ads would contain your URL and an email address.

Offline you'll have to pay for almost all classifieds you post, however online there are thousands of free sites which will allow you to post your ad and of course there are plenty of low-cost sites which will also except your ad.

Apart from the fact you can get free classifieds online, online ads have a few advantages compared to offline ones.

The Internet has a much much larger audience than your local or national newspaper has so more people can potentially see your ad and act upon it.

You can post your ads online and you could have feedback and sales within a very short time as usually people just have to click on your URL for more info rather than make a phone call or send a letter.

Ads that are placed online are much cheaper than their offline counterparts, this is because space is not tight on the Internet as it is in a magazine or newspaper.

A user looking for a particular product can usually perform a search for a particular word or phrase from the classified ad site whereas offline people have to manually scan through the different categories.

A disadvantage of online classified ads to the webmaster is that it can be quite time consuming to do especially if you want any sort of success with them, which you obviously do. However many good pieces of software are becoming available which can automatically submit your ad to lots of these sites, they aren't cheap but if you're interested try doing a search for 'classified ad software' or something similar on Google.com or Yahoo.com.

Let's get on to the good part, how to make the most out of posting to classified ads. Stay specific, always post to the most appropriate category or categories there are, this way you'll be posting to an area where people will actually be interested in your product, this is vital.

Remember especially with free classified sites that a lot of other webmasters will be trying to promote their products and websites with ads too so you'll have to repost your ad regularly to stay near the top of the bunch, nobody will even see your ad if it's at the bottom of another 50 ads, will they?

Now on to the actual copy of your ad, since few classified sites allow you to post graphics you'll have to rely on your headline to grab the attention of the people scanning the ads in front of them. You can do this by using words like 'free', 'secrets', 'how-to' and other words which will make them curious to find out more. If you can, include your keywords in your headline as some classified sites will use the headline as the link to your site this in turn will help you when the search engines examine your link popularity.

Always target your market, if you sell a product for webmasters mention 'webmasters' in the headline and body, next you should mention what your product will do for them (i.e. the benefits of it. - how will it make their life easier).

I have read this in numerous places and now you're going to read it too, the idea with classified ads is to generate interest and not to actually sell anything there and then, that's far to hard to do, you want to get the reader wanting more information and you should give this to them through your website or autoresponder. This is why your ad body should always be short, concise and to the point, a big long page sales letter will scare people off.

Follow the above few tips and you should see some results, before you go I want to put this to you. Which is better paid or free classifieds? Well for me paid classifieds have always produced much better results, I think this is because advertising in "Free Classified Sites" has now become an almost automated task which means not many people actually visit and respond to classified ads. Submission spiders are wonderful creatures but aren't often interested in clicking on your well-crafted classified ad.

Two of the best places where you can place fee based ads which do bring results are AOL.com and Yahoo.com. Good luck!

Article by David Callan. David is an Internet marketing professional and webmaster of AKA Marketing.com webmaster forums. Visit his webmaster forums for the latest discussions on search engines, website authoring and Internet marketing related issues and topics.

Promote Your Blog

2006-05-19T10:55:00.000-05:00

Promote Your Blog
Well, you've joined the others and have created a blog. It is time to tell the world about your online journal. Most blog services generate an RSS feed. If your blogging software does not create an RSS feed, consider using software like FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com to create an RSS feed. Like blogs, RSS is growing in popularity and is a great way to spread the word about a new blog.

Syndication is conceptually simple. It allows publishers to distribute content that can be displayed in another location or context. Using RSS, publishers are able to easily create and disseminate content feeds that include news headlines, blog summaries and related links. RSS is the defined syndication standard that has become mainstream. All types of information are now available in a syndicated format.

1. Blog Submissions / RSS Submissions
There are a number of blog directories and blog search engines where you can submit your blog. A large list of sites allowing blog submission and RSS feed submissions can be found in the left column at: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm

Similarly, there are RSS feed directories and search engines like http://www.rss-network.com . Be sure to submit the URL of your RSS feeds to the RSS search engines listed on the RSS specifications website.

If you wish to automate your blog and RSS submissions consider using Dummy Software's Blog and RSS Submit Software http://www.dummysoftware.com .

Like a website, its important to select the appropriate category for your blog. Use a clear title that contains descriptive details but is not excessively long. The Blog description should further expand on the purpose and general theme of the blog. Incorporate important keywords related to the blog's theme in both the title and description. This will help bring targeted traffic that is genuinely interested in the contents of the blog.

2. Post Press Releases to Online Resources
Write a press release announcing your blog to the world. Keep it factual and submit the release to the free press release directories. This will provide incoming links to the new blog and get it started on its way to popularity. There are a number that allow for press release posting free of charge. The releases on these sites are occasionally picked up by publications looking for information or filler content. Another side-benefit to these listings is increased link popularity, which helps with search engine ranking. A list of sites that allow for press release posting can be found under 'press release posting' . A number are available at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/pressreleases.html

3. Post Announcement on Usenet
A number of Usenet groups allow for posting of announcements or press releases. Most of the announce groups in Usenet contain 'ann.' in the domain address. If your blog is focused on a specific topic, search Usenet newsgroups. To locate topic-specific announce groups, consider searching http://www.newsguy.com to locate groups specific to related topics.

4. Post to Forums
Forums also contain sections in which you can post announcements. If the application is a niche product, consider searching for topic-specific forums in addition to the general software announce forums listed below. Be sure to post any announcements in the appropriately marked 'announce forum' . The following are related blog forums, some of which allow for posts.

Favorite Feeds - http://www.feedforall.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3
Your Blog Announcements - http://www.forum4bloggers.com/viewforum.php?f=12
Got Blog - http://www.blogomania.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=7
Announce Software, Blogs or Relationships - http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5

5. Promote & Auto Detect Blog Feeds
It has become a standard that nearly all websites that have RSS feeds available use colorful graphics to indicate the presence of an RSS feed. The graphics were initially bright orange rectangles, but as the popularity has grown, webmasters have bent the rules a bit. NotePage has made a free online RSS graphic tool available that allows users to quickly customize buttons by selecting the text on the button and the color scheme of the button. Once the color and text is entered, a custom graphic is instantly created. Webmasters can easily match the style of the RSS button to a website's theme.

Graphics experience is not required. Simply select alternative colors and insert text to personalize RSS feed graphics. The RSS graphics tool can be used by clicking the following URL http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm or choose ready made graphics from: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-graphics.htm .

Include information in the HTML code of a website so that RSS Readers automatically detect that an RSS feed exists for the material contained on the site. Aggregators will automatically detect RSS on a website if you add a small bit of code in the header field of an HTML page.

After publishing an RSS feed it is important to let visitors know that the feed exists. Aggregators will automatically detect RSS on a website if you add a small bit of code in the header field of an HTML page. [link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml"]

Be sure to replace http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml with the URL to the RSS feed and replace the brackets with "<" (less than) and ">" (greater than) symbols.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.
Article Source: ArticleWorld.net

EBay: No Way…Yes Way (Ten Seller Themes) by Barbara Snyder M.A.

2006-05-11T12:47:00.000-05:00

Hearing that there are more than 1.2 million registered eBay users, that more than 25,000 members make five figure income as full time eBay entrepreneurs, and that more than 250,000 part timers make several thousand dollars a year of supplementary income from eBay enterprises would make anyone comment in disbelief with, “No Way”. But the correct response to this is, “Yes, way.” In fact, it has also been reported that the number one eBay entrepreneur makes over a million dollars a year. As Austin Powers would say, “Yeah, Baby.” Or should we say, “E-Baby.”

So what’s the deal with eBay, anyway? There is a lot more to it than one would think. It can be simple for an occasional buyer, but it gets increasing complex as users/sellers become more entrenched at deeper levels of use. Here are 10 key ideas or themes for sellers to consider about this phenomenon called “eBay”.

1. What ‘s for sale? While some sellers are out scavenging the garage sales and their own garages, others are purchasing quantities of items wholesale to put up for auction. One would think that the right product is of paramount consideration, and most sellers agree that the unusual or the hard to find is the best bet. However, this is not always true either. Timing, meaning the right person at the right time seeing your item, is where it is at. You have to be visible and be out there with a clear message or product that seems like a steal, or at least reasonably priced. With the thousands and thousands of items for sale, there is no shortage of competition. However, the good thing is that there are a lot of buyers out there which should enable the sale of just about anything.

2. Communication and descriptive details about your product is a key in getting noticed. The description of your item and the pictures to display it will get the buyer’s attention. If a person is a serious seller, having an adequate digital camera is a must. Again, photos are extremely important.

3. The well written detailed description to accompany the item is of great benefit. Being open and honest about the item will demonstrate integrity as a seller and will keep people coming back. Being available to answer questions for prospective buyers and remembering to be courteous and helpful follows along with the never-to-be forgotten premise of “the customer is always right.”

4. With customer feedback being a key element in the ratings statistics that will promote you or haunt you during your eBay career, it is important for a seller to be professional and kindly in all business dealings. People like and appreciate personal attention. Take the time to give it. Being positive, accommodating and helpful is a winning combination for good customer relations.

5. Shipping information and how you present it can win over a customer because they notice when a buyer is tying to take advantage and ask an unreasonable amount for shipping. Of course, a seller must take into account time spent, the handling charge, when pricing the shipping. Time is money, and a seller should be compensated for all aspects of the service that is provided.

6. Some advice about setting up your auction items would be to consider having your item run seven days with an end of bidding time somewhere between 7 PM and 9 PM on a Sunday night. That seems to be the consensus amongst the top sellers. There has been much dialog on just how to increase the amount and number of bids, but there are too many variables to consider. Suffice to say, it really comes down to the product itself. It depends on the condition of the item and on how much competition is out there.

7. Some of the most unique aspects of selling have to do with the seasonal items that permeate the auction block at certain times of the year. If a seller wants to work year-round, he or she will have to broaden the horizon by finding seasonal items for all seasons. Yes, you can sell Christmas items and move right into Valentines Day and Easter and so on. Why not? These are what people are looking for.

8. One controversial topic is drop shipping. If a seller is getting a product from a third party, drop shipping is a convenient way for the seller to deliver the product. It keeps them out of it entirely. However, that means that a back ordered item could result in a poor rating for the seller because the item was delayed. Most buyers picture the item in the hands of the seller and expect to receive it within a few days. The pros and cons of this arrangement need to be carefully considered.

9. Now to the fun part. How do you get the money? More and more people are using PayPal. It is quick, efficient and simple. A seller can make other arrangements and accept a check or money order, but the wave of the future is setting up an account with PayPal. In addition, setting up an online account with the United States Postal Service will also save you countless hours of waiting in lines at the post office. Work smarter, not harder, etc., etc.

10. A seller can look at other things to sell besides a physical product or item. Many are getting into self publishing or offering a service. Some expanding entrepreneurs are opening up a consignment shop situation, which helps those who want to sell but “don’t do computers.” The possibilities are unlimited.

Selling products and services from a home-based business can be an exciting, and hopefully profitable, situation. Go into it with a solid plan based on accurate information and with the knowledge that it is going to be hard work, just like any other job.

Barbara Snyder may be contacted at http://www.EducationResourcesNetwork.com barb@sbmag.org
About The Author:
Barbara Snyder is a retired California Distinguished School Principal and Coordinator For Human Resources. She has a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction. She holds elementary education, secondary, community college, and administrative credentials. She is currently the publisher of http://EducationResourcesNetwork.com, co-publisher of Strictly Business Magazine, http://www.sbmag.org and Student Teacher Supervisor at Chapman University College.

Recent bug strips store name from long time eBay store users

2006-05-11T12:42:00.000-05:00

A bug affecting store owners during the first week of May, allowed others to sign up new store names that were the same as store names already in use for a long time. AuctionBytes wrote an article that reports the bug has been fixed.

AuctionBytes also reported, how one seller documented the trouble they were having with eBay and their store name, on eBay's store discussion board.

Yes we are the ones who documented this on the store discussion board. We also hope eBay truly has this problem fixed. We would hate to see someone else have to go through this. You are definitely at their mercy with a problem like this.

Beware: The Dangers of Selling on eBay 101

2006-05-02T12:02:00.000-05:00

It's obvious that eBay provides internet users with an online flea market where buyers and sellers from around the world meet to conduct trade.

However, like most traders who are faced with an innovation of this sort, the first question will always be: It is safe?

The answer is yes, but devious scammers seem to be plotting daily to forward their dastardly schemes and take advantage of eBay's power.

So, what is the user's recourse? The users of eBay must learn to gather information and take meticulous care in dealing on eBay. Only then can they be less gullible to scammers.

A common consensus is that bidders are often scammed by sellers. But it is possible for things to be the other way around.

Here is a list of the common problems sellers encounter and the means to handle them.

Fake Escrow Services

A winning bidder may request that an escrow service be used to assure both parties of a fair transaction. Unfortunately, the seller is sometimes duped into using a fake escrow system.

To avoid this situation, the seller must always verify the authenticity of an escrow service. eBay recommends the use of escrow.com. If the bidder insists on his or her escrow service, chances are, that person is a scammer.

Victims of this fraud find it difficult to reclaim their items. They may, however, appeal to the legal system afforded by the state they live in. They must also contact eBay regarding the matter for any assistance they may be willing to offer.

Deadbeat Bidders

Deadbeat bidders (a winning bidder who doesn't pay for an item at the auction's close) are more common on eBay. If the winner of your auction does not pay, you may leave that person a negative feedback.

As for the listing fees the seller shells out, eBay lays out a four step procedure that sellers can use to potentially recover lost selling fees. If sellers complete the process to eBay's satisfaction, they will receive a Final Value Fee credit and a re-list credit. Filing out an Unpaid Item dispute is the first step toward eBay reimbursing such fees. A person can report an unpaid item up to 45 days after an auction's close.

Trade Dispute

This occurs when the seller and bidder disagree on some terms of the sale. This may also happen if there is a purported violation of any of these agreements.

If communication between both parties does not help, they may consider availing of a third-party dispute resolution outfit to help. SquareTrade.com is one of these outfits that eBay recommends.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

A seller's life may be made terrible because of the constant scamming attacks unscrupulous individuals undertake. But, with proper information and care, he or she can continue trading on eBay with relative safety.

Payment Methods on eBay

Gone are the days when only cash (or cattle in some cases) was the only accepted mode of payment for trades. As the concept of trading evolved, so did the means of paying for items.

Today's electronic world pushes the envelop further. With the advent of online trading systems such as eBay, many new forms of payment have flourished.

First of all, on eBay, the mode of payment depends on the agreement between the buyer and the seller. Most often, the seller will specify his or her desired payment method. In these cases, the seller often has primacy in the decisions regarding payment modes. However, the buyer may still communicate with the seller regarding a viable alternative if it suits both parties.

The following is a list of common eBay payment modes.

Cash On Delivery

Cash is, after all, still cash. This payment method can be done through a third party courier system or by the buyer and seller meeting each other at an agreed place. The advantage of a cash transaction is that the exchange of the item for payment is done in the presence of the buyer and the seller (or the seller's representative). However, some people will not accept the risk present when two strangers meet.

Personal Check

One popular method of payment is personal check. Writing checks is easy and safe. However, many sellers do not like accepting check because they are easy to cancel.

PayPal

PayPal is the payment of choice on eBay. In fact, eBay owns PayPal.

Using PayPal is easy, convenient, and relatively safe. PayPal acts as like an internet 'wire transfer.'

After signing-up for PayPal, one may send cash to anyone with an email address using the PayPal system. PayPal also has security features that safeguard against fraud in case there is a dispute between the seller and the buyer. This system is best for transactions up to $1000.

Escrow.com

Escrow.com is the payment of choice for purchases over $500. Escrow.com holds the buyer's money from the seller until the seller delivers the item. Only then will the funds be released to the seller. This system makes for a very safe, although highly procedural transaction.

Wire Transfer

This is the payment of choice for countries that do not carry the PayPal service. Wire transfers are risky because the buyer usually has to wire over the funds before the seller sends the items. The chance for non-delivery of items is high.

Other Payment Systems

The number of third party payment services is steadily on the rise. Their systems for payment vary. However, to be successful they must be convenient to use and safe as well.

Brad Eden is a Entrepreneurial Sciences expert with 14 years of industry experience in real estate, marketing and technical communication. He currently consults with IBM in CA. Brad owns & operates a free traffic resource for entrepreneurs. http://www.americanfreetraffic.com
Article Source: ArticleWorld.net

12 Items You CAN'T Sell On eBay by Sydney Johnston

2006-05-02T11:43:00.000-05:00

Millions of would-be entrepreneurs want to sell things on ebay. eBay is the #1 home-business opportunity in the world right now, so it's natural that many are eager to find highly profitable items for re-sale on eBay. However, it's important to know that there are certain items that can't be sold. Here are a dozen of them ...

Some items are copyright infringement and can actually land a seller in federal prison:

1. Knock offs of music, TV shows or movies. The "bootleg" movies, for example, are often made by guys who sneak a movie camera into a newly-released movie where presumably, they crouch behind a seat and make a crummy copy. There is a large production of these counterfeit items in Asia where US laws have no power.

2. Software and computer games can likewise be copied and their sale is illegal by all US laws.

Naturally, the items above may be sold if you have a copy that you purchased legitimately and no longer want.

3, The so-called "replica" market for handbags, designer sunglasses and clothing is definitely forbidden although these items are often sold in physical stores around the US. Ironically, when attending eBay Live In New Orleans in 2004, we found a store in one of their famous markets selling replica purses that were not allowed on eBay.

4. Lazy and less-than-honest sellers often steal copyrighted material from other sellers. This has happened to me many times and eBay has a program called VERO (Verified Rights Owner) that will remove offending auctions, although there seems to be no penalty attached to the seller, which is unfortunate.

5. Alcoholic beverage sales are not allowed although a beverage "container', especially those of wine, may be sold for its value.

6. Cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco or coupons for such items are not permitted on eBay.com.

The Ebay rules for collectible tobacco and alcohol containers are the same:

* The value of the item is in the collectible packaging, not in the wine/tobacco itself.

* The listing description should state that the package has not been opened, but that the twine/tobacco within is not for consumption.

* The collectible tobacco packaging must not be available at any retail outlet, and packaging must have a value that substantially exceeds the current retail price of that wine/tobacco product in the package.

* Sellers must take steps to ensure that the buyer of these collectibles is at least 18 years of age.

7. Firearms are strictly regulated by US law and may not be sold on eBay.

8. Satellite and cable TV descramblers are forbidden by the Federal Trade Commission.

9. Animals and wildlife products may not be sold, which includes stuffed birds and pelts from endangered species. There are limited sales of ivory, tortoise shell, marine products and other items relating to animals. This area is quite complex and any would-be seller needs to thoroughly understand the various laws before getting involved in these sales.

10. Event tickets have state-by-state laws that make their sale complex. Some states, for instance, forbid anyone to make more than a few dollars in profit (or no profit at all) on the resale of tickets. For instance, Florida law states that tickets can be resold at no more than face value plus $1. In such states, these regulations apply only to buyers and sellers located in the same state as the actual event, meaning if a seller lives in Florida, he can't profit from ticket sales to Florida events. However, if he lives in any of the other 39 states, this restriction doesn't apply.

11. Listing a catalog of items that a seller offers for sale is forbidden. The only catalogs legally sold on eBay are collectible kinds, such as an old Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Wards catalog that is memorabilia and doesn't offer current merchandise for sale.

12. Raffles and prizes are 100% prohibited. According to eBay, such promotions are highly regulated and may be unlawful in many states.

There are other kinds of merchandise that a seller may not sell on eBay, so carefully check eBay rules before listing anything. It's much better to know the rules in advance of spending money that can't be recouped.

About the Author
Learn how to sell on eBay with 16 hours of online instruction taught by a 10 year eBay veteran. Own an eBay business instead of an eBay hobby.

Understanding Ebay's VeRO Program. by Kirsten Hawkins

2006-05-02T11:25:00.000-05:00

'VeRO'? What on Earth is that? Well, it's a very scary eBay program that can get your auctions shut down, that's what it is.

VeRO stands for 'Verified Rights Owner'. It is the eBay policy that deals with complaints about your auctions from companies who own copyrights, patents or trademarks on the items you are selling. Unfortunately, it is often abused to remove items from eBay that are perfectly legitimate to resell, simply because the copyright owner doesn't want people getting their hands on them.

If the copyright of something you're selling is owned by one of eBay's 5,000 verified rights owners, be prepared for trouble. eBay have given these companies the right to remove any auction from eBay that they see fit, and, say eBay, "eBay cannot require the rights owner to provide you with the exact reason of the request to remove your listing". Worse, eBay may even suspend your account, or give your real-world contact details to the company in question.

Why Do eBay Do This?

Basically, they do it to avoid getting sued, or even getting threatened with being sued. There is a law called the DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) that means that eBay must either take these auctions down when it asked to or take full responsibility for them from that point on. eBay doesn't want to take any responsibility for your auctions.

It's not worth worrying too much about it - 99% of the VeRO program is aimed at stopping fake brand-name goods or pirated media being sold through eBay. Big companies also seem to get quite upset when eBay sellers take the company's ad copy, logos or professional pictures and use them for selling on eBay.

If you'd like to take a slightly patronising quiz about copyright to help you understand eBay's policy, go here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/tutorial/verotutorial/intro2.html.

So Who Are These Companies?

There's a complete list available here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/vero-aboutme.html. This list includes everything from the Microsoft and Adobe to Chanel and Nike, not to mention the RIAA (recording industry association) and MPAA (motion picture association). Most of the companies, understandably, deal in software, media or fashion.

eBay Say I Violated VeRO and I Want to Appeal.

Use the link at the bottom of this page: http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/vero-removed-listing.html. That'll get you to eBay's VeRO Seller Appeal Form, where you can put your case to them directly. You are supposed to take it up with the company that complained about you first, however - and sometimes you might find that they just back down, which makes the whole thing a lot easier.

If you have no luck getting any response from eBay by email, it's not really worth trying to phone them - you'll find they're most responsive if you use the 'Live Chat' feature or write them an actual, real-paper letter. You're best off being nice to eBay: they have absolutely no obligation, after all, to ever let you sell anything at all.

On a happier note, have you ever heard of eBay Anything Points? No? Well, you're not alone. The next email will explain what these little-used points can do for you.

About the Author
Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit http://www.auctionseller411.com/ for more great tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other online auctions.

Writing Ebay Titles That Really Sell by Shari Ode

2006-04-27T14:22:00.000-05:00

What are titles? They are the headings above eBay auctions.

It's my opinion you write a better title after you have written out your auction information. After all, you have all the product information right in front of you, well organized and well written. Writing the title is then straightforward and easy.

Writing titles is not for selling and not necessarily for marketing or advertising. Writing titles is purely for getting "found" by the eBay search engine.

Simple & Straightforward

What does a title for one of your eBay products need to do?

The title should:

* Completely identify the item * Contain appropriate keywords for the eBay search engine * Indicate exactly whether the item is new,2nd hand and if used, indicate the condition that the item is in.

It's that simple. Don't try to make it more complicated. Notice that I didn't say the following:

* Attract attention * Hook prospective buyers * Start the sales process

Indeed, the need to use hype is a misconception that many eBay sellers make. They are not clear about the purpose of the title therefore tend to offer information in the title that is NOT needed. Let's say you are selling a Canon Powershot Digital Camera, a well known brand with several models. Prospective buyers get to the list of digital cameras via the eBay search (i.e. keywords = digital and camera) If a potential buyer is looking for a Canon Powershot, you want him to be able to immediately spot your title in the very long list of titles for Canon digital cameras.

The following title says it all:

"Canon Powershot Digital Camera New"

A prospective buyer can read the list quickly and spot this title easily. You've done your job well. Once prospective buyers have found your ad, they will read your ad copy. That's where you make your sales pitch. Anything that detracts from potential buyers finding your auction ad easily will result in fewer bidders and ultimately lower sales prices.

For instance, look at some of the following titles:

CANON CAMERA POWERSHOT FABULOUS DIGITAL CAMERA!!! ***Great Fast Action - digital camera, new in box **** Fast Action camera !!! - Canon - award winning !!! - in the box!!

The first is in all caps, which is hard to read. The second uses characters that interfere with skimming. In addition, it doesn't say much that's concrete. It doesn't even include the brand. The third is difficult to read due to the exclamation marks. And what does "in the box" mean? It probably means new, but it could mean used but put back in the box. "Award winning" is OK for an auction ad but not for a title; it doesn't help identify the product. These titles will cost you potential buyers.

There's no reason to make an art out of writing titles. They are straight forward. Just identify what's for sale using words that potential buyers will use to search.

About the Author
Shari Ode - Ebay, Clickbank marketplace and Adsense web publisher. Check Out My Cool Little Website That Makes Me Money With Every Click! For details visit: http://www.moredollarsonline.com

Top 11 Paying and Most Searched Keywords on Google and Yahoo by David Maillie

2006-04-22T13:16:00.000-05:00

If you have a website, write articles, or want to profit through an affiliate program than this is gold to you! These keywords are the actual top 11 on the internet. Use them and you are on your way to increased traffic, profits and results. Here they are and a little about each to help you on your way.

1) Paris Hilton. Whether we like it or not Paris and her wild lifestyle are here to stay as she is now considered one of the biggest stars. She is sought after by almost every fashion designer and her keywords will do well with any fashion or clothing content.

2) Google. Well, this one is obvious as Google is the largest search engine (regardless what Yahoo says). Being that Google is a search engine it can be used in any content, but works best with relation to websites, search engines, computers and software.

3) Yahoo. The second largest search engine and distant second on Pay per Click campaigns - very, very distant at that. The same will work for Yahoo. Stick with computer related material and you will do well.

4) Ebay. The worlds largest marketplace and auction. Ebay, for the most part is a wholesale marketplace. It is ruled by feedback and can give you a good idea as to the real value of a car (check Ebay motors). On Ebay anything goes including people selling tattoo advertising on themselves. In other words, anything can be linked to Ebay in one way or another. Yes, there is even porn on Ebay.

5)Eminem. Yes, the real slim shady is back. According to R and B and rap he never left as he is the number one rapper currently. If you need content on current music or teen and young adult topics Eminem is sure to bring you visitors.

6) Britney Spears. She was the hottest pinup for teens and preteens, but now she is probably pregnant again. I wonder why Kevin Federline didn't make the list - is it that he isn't a good singer? Britney is great for adolescent or music related content.

7) mapquest. Want to know where something is or how to get there. Being that we are getting closer to summer people are plotting out there vacations. Or, maybe, due to increasing gas prices thanks to George Bush, maybe they are figuring that its too far and will cost too much in gas. I bet if Hillary Clinton were President these gas prices wouldn't be any higher than $1.60 per gallon. These high gas prices have to do with the Bush family and their ties to big oil and energy. See, Mapquest can be linked to just about any content you want if you just try a little.

8) Tsunami. Even though the big one is over. Relief efforts are still in effect and so are the relief efforts for Katrina. Hint - these people still need lots of help. Tsunami is probably a big keyword due to the recent specials on TV about the next possible tsunami that might hit America. People are concerned and interested over these large scale natural disasters. When is the next earthquake going to hit California, will atsunami hit New York, and what will this hurricane season bring?

9) Girls. Yes, of course. There are millions of perverts and closet perverts out there that are a little over-fascinated with girls. As Donald Trump once said, "sex sells." Yes it does and nothing sells better than women or girls. They can sell anything including the worst items in infomercials and complete scams. A beautiful girl just needs to show a little cleavage and TV ratings soar. Just think what girls can do for your content.

10) American Idol. This is the top rated TV show and its in its 5th or 6th season. It has launched one star - Kelly Clarkson and a bunch of duds. Randy, Paula and simon have now become household names along with Ryan Seacrest. Any content you can tie into the current cast will do well. The previous casts should be avoided as they will soon go back to karaoke and such at local bars.

11) Skin care and skin treatment. This has always been a big one with women. It has been rumored that women will go without food before they will go without makeup and such. Just ask any department store how important skin care and skin treatment products are to their bottem line. Watch Shop NBC - almost every product on there has something to do with skin care and skin treatment for women. There are a wide variety of topics you can easily talk about here from the latest in laser therapy at dermatology offices and at home TCA skin peels for treating acne and wrinkles. Acne is and always will be a big topic as will wrinkles and their respective treatments.

There you have it the top 11 keywords on the internet from Paris Hilton to skin care and skin treatment to Google and American Idol. All with tips on how to use them to make your content have more impact and drive more traffic.

About the Author
David Maillie is an alumni of Cornell University and specializes in biochemical synthesis for public, private, and governmental interests and manufactures various skin peels and other for doctors offices and medispas. He can be reached at: Bestskinpeel.com

Avoid These eBay Mistakes and Make More Sales by Daniel MacDougall

2006-04-18T12:51:00.000-05:00

When Marie and I first started selling on eBay we made some
very common mistakes. Experience has taught us a few things.
Here are some tips that have helped us succeed
in our eBay business.

Many first time sellers have one thing in common – they
often fail. Many of them fail time and time again, never
understanding what is going wrong. They do hours of research
looking for the perfect item to sell, get the auction set up,
and wait for the bidding to begin. Hours go by and no bids
are placed. Days go by, and there are still no bids – or
there are very low bids. Finally the auction ends, and it
turns out to be a total failure. Considering the huge number
of sellers who run eBay auctions, there are specific things
you must do, and specific things you must not do if you are
to be successful.

There are many reasons why auctions fail. The most common
reason is that the item is not in high demand. This problem
can be avoided by doing the necessary research to determine
which items sell well, and which items should be avoided. This
research takes a great deal of time – but in the end, you will
find that it is time well spent.

Another reason for eBay failure is pricing. If you set that
opening bid too high, most people won’t even click the link to
read the description for your item. Another pricing problem is
lack of research. Before you set your reserve price, you must
determine what the item is really worth, and the price similar
items have sold for in past eBay auctions. Avoid using a reserve
price if you can. Reserve pricing can often discourage bidding.

Poorly written descriptions are another cause of failed
auctions. Poor grammar and misspelled words drive people away.
Failing to post a picture of the item will also keep people
from visiting your auction page. Make sure that your description
is well written. This is essentially your ‘sales copy.’ The more
information you can provide, the more comfortable people are in
buying. Tell a story about the item if you can. People like to
be involved and can make an item stand out from the
crowd.

Shipping prices scare people away from auctions if they are too
high. Find the lowest shipping prices that you can find, and
consider paying for the shipping yourself if it won’t cut into
your profits too much. Do not charge handling fees.

Offer great ‘customer service’ for all of your auctions, and
ask your buyers to give you feedback. If the items that you
sell are everything that you said they would be, and you offer
great customer service, you can expect wonderful feedback – and
this feedback will help a great deal in your future auctions.

Daniel MacDougall is an writer, speaker, and artist. He and partner Marie, make their living online. http://earnmoneywithauctions.com . Go to http://attracting-wealth.com and learn more about how you can have all the wealth and abundance you desire in life. Free newsletter available.
View their website at: http://attracting-wealth.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

Web Site Traffic - 5 Inexpensive Ways to Generate it! by Brian Hunter

2006-04-15T10:12:00.000-05:00

It is quite obvious that even the best optimised site with the best copy written sales page will not make a dime without one very necessary addition. That 'addition' is Traffic.

Whilst there are many ways to generate traffic most of them cost money with no guarantees that a profit will be made once you have parted with your cash. However, there are also many ways to generate good targeted traffic which need not cost the earth and, in some cases, are even free. Here are five of the best ways to generate low cost traffic; they do involve some input but are well worth the effort.

1. Exchange Links

This is a proven way to generate traffic and a careful study of the top ranking sites on the search engines will show all of them with considerable numbers of links. It is to your advantage to ensure that all sites to which you link operate within a similar niche or theme as your own site. If you share a similar subject you will be more likely to get traffic as your site will be seen as a recommendation by the site they are on.

Another benefit to linking in this way is that your site will increase its chances of a higher ranking with the search engines. This, in turn, can help with eventually getting traffic from the search engines in addition to that from the linking site.

2. Writing Articles

There are many sites on the internet where you may submit articles (newsletters, directories, etc.) Many of these are free of cost so if cash is tight you can start submitting to these initially. If you want to save costs, you can write the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to do the articles yourself if you can.

You should write articles that closely match the theme of your site. Try to write about something you know well. Give tips and guidance learned from your own experiences. In this way you will come across as an 'expert' in your field and this, in turn, can encourage your readers to then visit your site. Always include a resource box at the end of your articles which should be a short bio about yourself and include the URL to your website.

3. Traffic Exchanges

This is a form of link exchange except that members of a traffic exchange view each others pages by surfing. Each time you view a page you gain a credit so the more pages you view the more credits you receive. Your own page is then shown to other members normally using one credit per show. Once you have exhausted your credits you may earn more by again surfing. You also have the option to purchase credits if you wish.

Traffic from exchanges is not generally well targeted and does not produce many sales but it can be used quite successfully to capture names for your subscriber list with the use of a 'squeeze' page.

4. Your Own Newsletter

Once you have subscribers (via the traffic exchanges or other means) will need to send out your newsletter on a regular basis either weekly, monthly etc. This may sound a little daunting in view of the fact that you will need to write many articles on a consistent basis. However, this should present no problem as there a many writers and sites that are more than willing to provide you with free articles so long as their resource box remains at the end of the article. Any promotions you make in your newsletter will inevitably bring traffic to that promoted site and as your list of subscriber grows so, too, will your traffic.

5. Forums

Online forums and communities abound in just about any subject you can imagine. Find several forums that relate to whatever site you wish to promote and, after joining, you should carefully study the topics under discussion and then submit your own offerings by way of answers to published questions or even a question of your own. Make sure that the forum allows you to append your resource box at the end of your posting as this is where your traffic will come from. It is important to know that you are not permitted to blatantly advertise on these forums and to do so will usually mean you will be barred.
So it is important that you are allowed your bio at the foot of your posting. Do not bother with any forum where your resource box is not permitted.

Each of these methods can generate a great deal of traffic and, with the exception of the traffic exchanges, the traffic will be very targeted. The method of using articles can, over time, build traffic to really large numbers. However it is important to remember that there are no free lunches in this world. If you do not pay with money then you must substitute with time. The great thing about these five methods is that you will never waste your time - they all get results, proven time after time.

Brian Hunter has been active on the internet since 2002 and works from home promoting one of the largest traffic building information centers on the net at: http://www.clicksilo.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

Advertise Using Articles by Hans Hasselfors

2006-04-11T11:53:00.000-05:00

A very efficient method to advertise your professional services, the products you are selling or simply to help you find a better job is writing targeted articles.

These articles that enclose at the end a short presentation of you or your business can be about various solution to actual problems, about everyday life ect. There are many sites to which you can submit these articles to, or if you have a database of your customers’ emails, just drop them an email containing the article and a link to your personal site or professional site.

The articles can generally be copied from one article submission site to the other as long as the content belongs to you and you are not stealing someone else’s work. The only condition is that they must keep their original form, no altering, along with your presentation. This means actually more visibly and it is exactly what you need.

The more interesting the article is, the more people will read and remember it. Even if you don’t have experience with writing, there are some aspects that can make you try it:

- Writing a technical article puts order in your ideas. You will have to coherent and state clear ideas and proper explanations.
- It will make you improve the way you speak.
- It will bring you visibility.
- If it’s written well it will surely help someone.
- You can prove your knowledge in your professional areas this way.

Publishing articles means they have to contains mostly useful information and just a little bit of advertising. If they don’t follow this rule, you might end up with an un-publishable article, which you can only put on your homepage.

There are other things you could do with articles if you are willing to spend some money. There are different publicity sites, ranked high in search engines that for a fee will publish your article on their site for a limited period of time. The fee is not high usually, and you get much more visibility this way. But if this choice is the one that appeals to you the most, you must make sure the article is really good, so good that it can compete with all the other articles on that site. The user can see them all at the same time and you must think of ways to make him choose to read yours. If you have tried and you are not confident you can do it on your own, you can always hire a professional.

About the Author:
Hans Hasselfors is the founder of http://www.SubmitYourNewArticle.com. Learn about the many benefits of using our article directory.

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

How Blogs Can Help You With Your Online Business by Brandon Hong

2006-04-08T10:40:00.000-05:00

1. With a blog, you can easily brand yourself as an expert in your subject area and promote yourself all over the net. Blogs have taken a life of its own, and there are many blog directories springing to life.
Each blog directory is classified according to various topics of interest, and you can submit your blog to the major blog directories.
You can then easily attract readers to your area of specialisation, and slowly brand yourself as the expert from the many readers who visit these blog directories each day.
2. Search engine will rank your web site higher if you have a blog on your site. This is because search engine "spider bots" like fresh content, and with a blog, you can just spend 5 - 10 mins per day posting what you want to share for that day and that's it.
Do that on a consistent basis, and the search engine spider bots will come back to your site more often. Having a blog on your own site is so simple my 9 year old cousin can do it, and you will learn how in my multimedia course.
3. Blogs allow you to build and foster a closer relationship with your visitors and readers, building trust and rapport. Blogs allow readers to post comments, and it promotes interaction.
With good relationship with your readers it will be easier for you when it comes to recommending products and services because they trust you.
4.Blogs are a one stop push button publishing system.You can easily set up a blog with Google's Blogger in three easy steps. Likewise, now that Wordpress has offered free Wordpress blog accounts, you can again easily set up your free Wordpress account.
With a blogging account, you can easily publish anything online, unlike the usual way of publishing where you have to create and edit the page using some web site editing software and uploading it to your hosting account.
And with Wordpress, you can instantly link all your posts and pages together, unlike your standard web site where you have to link web pages manually.
Blog saves time and is a quick and easy way to build an online presence.
5. Incoming LinksBlogs, especially Wordpress blogs has a feature called trackback. Trackback basically allows someone to post a comment on another person's blog with a linkpointing back to your own blog.
This is one way to get incoming links to your site. And we know that the more incoming links you have to your site, the higher your site will rank for certain keywords.
These are just some of the powerful ways Blogs can help with your online business.
These are just some reasons how blogs can help you in your online business.

Brandon is blogs & rss author. He'll show you business strategies to get more responsive visitors, more sales, plus obtaining quick listings in Google, MSN, etc with Blogs and RSS.(C) http://www.wordpressvideos.com
Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

How To Use Your Blog to Market Your Business by Biana Babinsky

2006-04-05T10:10:00.000-05:00

Have you just started blogging? Or have you been blogging for a while? As you may already know, a blog is an excellent tool to let the world know about your business or your product, to connect with potential customers and promote your expertise. But how can you maximize your blog's impact? Here are five tips to do just that:

- Blog Consistently. Many business owners get excited about blogging, post 3-6 times, and then promptly forget about the blog. I have seen many blogs that were started a year or two ago, have a grand total of five posts, and haven't been updated since sometime last year.

To get the desired effect (search engine and human traffic), you need to update your blog on a regular basis. Search engines love new content and keep coming back to index it. Potential customers also like new content; it's what keeps them coming back to read your blog.

- Use Your Blog For Branding. Your blog is an extension of your business, so make your blog have a look and feel that mirrors that of your business web site.

If your blog is hosted on the same domain as your web site, you should match the look and feel of your web site exactly. This will be more difficult to achieve if a third party provider hosts your blog. However, you should still aim to present the same brand image.

- Use Search Engine Optimization To Optimize Each Blog Post. The purpose of your blog is to get people who are in your target market to read your posts and enter your sphere of influence. Traffic from search engines does not cost any money, and it is a great way to get potential customers to your blog.

Treat each one of your blog posts as a separate file to be optimized for search engines. Use a keyword research tool to find phrases that are related to the main subject of the post, and weave them into the content of the post.

- Have A Special Offer On Your Blog. Do you offer a free special report? Do you offer a mini course as a bonus for new newsletter subscribers? Add the offer to your blog. This will transform people from casual surfers who just happened to find your blog to newsletter subscribers.

- Share Information About Your Events, Products and Seminars. You might think that everyone has already heard about your upcoming teleclass on life and work balance or your e-book about achieving financial success. Not so! The person reading your blog might be hearing about you for the very first time, so they have no idea about your teleseminars or products unless you specifically tell them.

Avoid overselling, as it will dramatically reduce the number of your blog readers. Do, however, let your blog readers know about your seminars and products. If you don't tell them, nobody will.

A blog is an excellent tool to generate additional web site traffic, get new newsletter subscribers and sell more products. Use your blog to introduce potential customers to your business.

Biana Babinsky is the online business expert who teaches business owners how to make more money online. Learn how to use blogging and other online marketing techniques to drive more traffic to your web site and make more money online in Biana’s Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course at http://avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zcourse

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

Advertising Does Matter in Your Business by jim mack

2006-03-31T12:59:00.000-06:00

Advertising Does Matter in Your Business by jim mack

When advertising, you need to sell your opportunity, your products and yourself. What sets you apart from everyone else? Maybe you produce a newsletter with a specific content where there is a demand from a particular group of people, or you promote your own special product that no one have not yet seen. That´s a huge benefit! That´s what you need to sell in your ad campaign, and those are the things you need to do in order to become successful.

You don´t have to be worried that network marketing prosperity is difficult. It isn´t. In fact, it has never been so easy to make a decent second income or even a full time. But it takes time, persistence and uniqueness.

The people looking at your ads and reading your follow up letters are going to judge you and your whole business not only by what the materials have to say, but also by their appearance.

Be sure you send a powerful, positive and convincing message. Invest some time and money on your marketing materials, the payoff will be well worth it. Look at others ads on the Internet, see what´s attracting you, this will most likely attract others too.

Do you see what I have in mind? Your advertising campaign will be the propel to your business success. By now you think "How do I create one of those successful ads" After all, It´s the words that sell your opportunity. Write a good ad and It´s taking you to the top. Read others ads, get some good ideas from it, don´t copy it, that´s theft. Just get some inspiration from it.Let your friends take a look at your new written ad and say what they think about it, honestly.

Now where to put your ad? If you place your ad in a pets publication and the ad is promoting toys for children you might not get a single response. But placed in the right publication it will be a winner. It´s very important that you from the beginning know exactly where to put your ad. Just think about you having spent hours on that ad and then you put it in the wrong publication and get no response at all, that´s a big waste of time and effort.

My best advise is that you always work on your ads. Write them down, leave them for some time, go back to look at them again, let others look at them and after a while you will see the picture of your ad and you will se if it´s working or not. If not then you have to start from the beginning and write a new one and follow the same procedure again. But now it´s easier because you are deeply involved in the process.

The Internet are full of ads, start clicking around and read others ads, this is the best way to learn what is working or not. You probably can tell instantly when an ad is good or not at least after a while.

Jim Mack is the leading authority in teaching actual methods - proven, practical strategies that work. In fact, Jim truly lives the principles he teaches and is the epitome of leading by example. See him at http://www.whoisjimmack.com and http://www.passivecashcow.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

Can You Make a Living Online? by Daniel MacDougall

2006-03-25T13:59:00.000-06:00

Is it possible to make a part time or full time living on the Internet? Can you really make enough money to make your time worthwhile?

Is all of this hype really true? The answer is yes and no. It really is true that a stay at home Mom or a student in need of extra income or a full time worker needing a part-time income can make money on the Internet. It is also true that a lot of people are making a full-time living and even becoming rich on the Internet.

The question is, "Can you do it too"? The answer is yes. But don't be fooled. It all depends on how much time you are willing to invest in studying the techniques and learn the methods you need for Internet Marketing (IM) success.

The fastest way to earn extra money online is to sell on Ebay. You can start right now, today, and in 3 days be paid online for items you sell. There are a lot of "get rich quick" tutorials for sale on how to make it on Ebay, but you don't need one. You can simply register at the Ebay site, read their tutorial and get started selling items you have around the house.

A lot of people make a few extra dollars to a few hundred extra dollars a month on Ebay. Others make a lot more. Ebay or any business you get into online or in a physical business location has the potential to make money. Lots of people succeed in business and a lot fail. Your success or failure will partially depend on how well you prepare, how much you study and how much energy you put into the project.

The great thing about online businesses compared to brick and mortar stores is it usually costs a lot less to get started. For instance, getting stared selling on Ebay doesn't cost anything. You only pay fees when you run an Ebay auction ad.

Internet Marketing can be as easy as creating a simple website and putting other company's ads on the site. You get paid when someone buys a product or even when someone clicks on an ad. You don't even need a product to sell; you only have other's ads on your web pages.

For most people, Internet Marketing is a get rich slow process. Yes, some people make money within days or weeks of starting on online business. Most take a little longer to get established.

There are no hard and fast rules on how long it will take you to make money online or how much you can make. It all depends on how hard you are willing to work and how much time you are willing to devote to creating a new business.

Daniel MacDougall is an writer, speaker, and artist. He and partner Marie, make their living online teaching people how to live their dreams. Their free newsletter at http://homebusiness.visit-now.com teaches others how to make their living from home and live their dream.
View their website at: http://homebusiness.visit-now.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

Marketing Benefits Of Using Rss Feeds For Businesses by Brandon Hong

2006-03-23T12:52:00.000-06:00

Marketing Benefits Of Using Rss Feeds For Businesses by Brandon Hong

What are the marketing benefits of using Rss feeds for businesses?

Before the advent of blogs and rss feeds, common marketing strategies used by businesses include:

- pay per click
- articles or ezine
- search engine optimization
- press release
- 'viral' marketing
- email marketing

With the advent of blogs and rss feeds, we are now presented with a new form of marketing which businesses can use in marketing their services or products.

Rss feeds are not meant to replace the strategies discussed earlier, on the other hand, it can be used to compliment and support existing marketing strategies like email marketing.

Perhaps you still don't realize or fully understand the power of RSS Feeds as a marketing tool.

After all, email, articles, pay per click and so on work fine, don't they?

Unfortunately, the truth is:

1. It's getting harder to send e-mails to the prospect's inbox because of SPAM filters. This means your marketing message is not read by your subscribers, which translate to lost opportunities and profits.

2. People are getting numbed by the amount of e-mails they receive everyday.

3. People are not reading their e-mails, again affecting your marketing campaigns.

4. It's getting harder to get people to opt-in or subscribe to your newsletter or content.

With RSS feeds, this changes the playing field:

1. RSS feeds can bypasses email - Eat your hearts out! Rss feeds can be read by desktop software and delivered right to your prospect everytime they turn on their PC

2. RSS feeds allow you to syndicate content rich news in your niche market and attract targeted prospects

3. People who subscribe to newsfeeds are generally in the higher income bracket and educated. They want to find news and information to solve their problems. Can that person be YOU?

4. E-mail doesn't allow yourself to be branded all over the Net. With RSS feeds, your content gets circulated/sydnicated and you can brand yourself as an expert.

5. RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS feeds directories, which will list your site within 24 hours which measn more traffic for you.

Did you know that with Rss feeds, you can also gain a backdoor listing in three major search engines, namely Google, Yahoo and MSN?

6. If you have many products, you can turbo charge your Affiliate program by offering data feeds to your affiliates. This way your affiliates can get notified of the latest product changes.

As you can see, Rss feeds offer a new dimension and benefits for businesses wishing to grow and expand their market.

Brandon is blogs & rss author. He'll show you business strategies to get more responsive visitors, more sales, plus obtaining quick listings in Google, MSN, etc with Blogs and RSS.
(C) http://www.marketing-rampage-with-blogs-and-rss.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

Branding Your Business Online by Biana Babinsky

2006-03-16T13:55:00.000-06:00

Let me tell you a story about Pete and a pizza. After a long day of fighting uncooperative pipes and fixtures, Pete P. Lumber, of Pete's DuperRooter, was looking forward to a nice, hot, decidedly Atkins-disapproved pizza — the stuff of which dreams are made. The week before, Pete was doing a bathroom remodel at Bob's historical Chicago bungalow. The house had only one bathroom, so Pete had to complete the project as fast as possible. Due to a series of unfortunate events, some of which involved a repeated, forceful application of a rather large hammer, Pete stayed much longer than he initially anticipated. To bungalow owner Bob's delight, Pete completed the remodel the same day.

Bob decided to take Pete out to dinner to show his appreciation. Bob knew that Pete liked pizza, so he took him to the MostDeliciousPizzaEmporium across the street. The restaurant was small, unassuming, and had the charming aura of a hole-in-the-wall. And it had the best pizza that Pete has ever tasted. Just the memory of that pizza he shared with Bob made Pete's stomach growl. The crust was browned just right. The sauce had the perfect balance of tomato sauce and spices. And the toppings....there were over 20 toppings to chose from.

It's no wonder that this week, Pete was looking forward to having pizza delivered from MostDeliciousPizzaEmporium. By the time Pete got home and was ready to pick up the phone, he could almost taste it. But, (these stories never seem to end well, do they?) he realized that he didn't have the pizza place's phone number. Pete didn't remember the name of the place either — the sign above the door had been tiny and hard to read.

Even if Pete had been paying attention, he would have had a hard time figuring out what the name was, since most vowels fell off the neon sign sometime around the Roosevelt administration (Teddy, in case you were wondering). It gets worse. As he and Bob were leaving, Pete had asked Kate, the hostess, for a take-out menu. She apologized profusely and said that they ran out four months ago and nobody bothered to reorder new ones.

The phone book turned out to be useless — remember, Pete couldn't recall the name of the pizza place. Scanning the restaurant pages didn't ring a bell either. The only thing Pete could recall was the approximate address (across from Bob's bungalow). Pete was too tired to go out and drive again, since he had just returned home. To add insult to injury, the weather person on Channel 5 news was gleefully pointing to the latest Doppler radar and cheerfully informing his audience that yet another 15 inches of snow were going to fall in the next hour.

That sealed it. Pete, who almost never surrendered, gave up. He ordered pizza from his usual joint, OKPizzaParlor. Pizza there was nothing to write home about. However, the proprietors always stocked a four-year supply of take-out menus and business cards. As an added twist, they gave out 4x6 magnets with "OKPizzaParlor" emblazoned on them with three inch high neon green letters with every order. Pete's fridge was plastered with at least 20 of these.

OKPizzaParlor also sent their customers coupons and specialized promotional flyers. OKPizzaParlor even sent their customers a free 16 inch thin crust pizza coupons for their birthdays. Finally, all advertising materials prominently featured OKPizzaParlor's contact information.

The MostDeliciousPizzaEmporium, didn't get an order that night, even though Pete vastly preferred their pizza, and desperately wanted to order from them. MostDeliciousPizzaEmporium committed one of the cardinal sins of marketing: they didn't bother with branding. The proprietors figured that their superior product would speak for itself, and decided not to waste their money on pointless advertising. Little did the MostDeliciousPizzaEmporium owners realize that skipping branding is like leaving the cheese off the pizza!

Don't make the same mistake. Here are a few ideas you can use to make sure your marketing plan doesn't follow in MostDeliciousPizzaEmporium's footsteps and to remind your customers of your business long after they leave your store or web site:

* Create and maintain consistent corperate branding. A logo, font and a color scheme are the three crucial elements of an online image. Once created, use the same color scheme, logo, and font everywhere else — on your brochures, business cards, newsletters, and signatures. Menus, magnets, employee t-shirts, name tags should all be consistent with your brand.

* Don't dilute your brand. Having a web site and business cards with an inconsistent look and feel will confuse your customers.

* Reinforce the corporate branding in all communications. Every mode of communication should provide information about your business. This includes letters, invoices, e-mail, and so on. At the very least, include the business name, web site address and e-mail address.

* Use a signature with every e-mail. How many emails do you send in a single day? Wesend around 75 on a typical business day. This translates into 75 opportunities to remind customers about our brand every single day. Keep the signature short: your business tagline and URL or a link to your latest blog entry will do. The point is to do this consistently, early, and often.

Make sure that your business is the first thing that pops into your customers' minds when they need products or services you provide. Make your brand memorable, and take advantage of every change to reinforce it. Not every customer is going to be like Pete, who drove out to the MostDeliciousPizzaEmporium the next day, and wrote down their name and phone number. Incidentally, that day he came home with 6 pizzas.

Biana Babinsky teaches business owners how to get more clients and make more money online. Biana is the author of Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course, the how-to guide to marketing your business online. Get the course at http://avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zcourse and learn how to make more money online.

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

New Features in Google Sitemaps by Philip Nicosia

2006-03-11T14:53:00.000-06:00

New Features in Google Sitemaps by Philip Nicosia

The Google Sitemap program has brought a high level of assistance to web developers, web designers and business owners who want to optimize how their website’s web pages are seen by the Google search engine. We all know how important page ranking is for a web page. The higher your page rank in Google, the more chances that it will be clicked and visited by visitors. Increased internet traffic is what drives sales and awareness for products and services.

The Google Sitemap program has become very popular because it made the task of submitting web pages to Google so much easier. A web developer or designer does not even have to worry about making frequent changes to the web pages because it is more easily known by Google. By presenting a constantly fresh index of web pages for your web site you are assured that what is presented in Google is the latest pages that you are maintaining.

The very high popularity of Google Sitemap has encouraged Google’s team of engineers to develop and add more features to the program. These additions seek to make Google Sitemaps more intuitive and effective in its functions.

Google recently announced that it has again added a bevy of new features for the Google Sitemap program that just made certain aspects of the program so much easier to understand and maintain.

Here are the latest new features of the Google Sitemap program:

Query Stats. Knowing the top position of your website is important. With Google’s Query Stats, you will now know the top search queries where the results included your website as well as those that Google searchers actually clicked on. The position given is the average statistic posted over the last three weeks.

Top mobile search queries. Google acknowledges that there is a growing number of people who use mobile devices for browsing the internet and also consider it as a separate “demographic”. For this reason, the top mobile search queries feature shows web designers and developers the top search queries made from mobile devices in which the results showed their website. Web designers and web developers will see both the mobile searches of all web sites as well as the mobile searches of mobile-specific web sites. The results given by this feature will only appear if it is available in your web site. At this point of the development of this feature, Google only shows the top search queries and not the clicks made for those queries.

Downloading Sitemap details, statistics, and errors. Your Sitemap account now also contain additional information. You can now download information in the form of a comma separated value file. This type of file can be opened by using any text editor or spreadsheet program. You can decide to download the information on a per table basis, or you can opt to download Sitemap details, errors or statistics for all of the web sites in your Google Sitemaps account in one convenient file.

Philip Nicosia is the webmaster of XML-Sitemaps.com which provides a free site map generator which produces sitemaps in XML format for Google together with Yahoo site maps and HTML sitemaps for human visitors.

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

Tips on Creating a Site Map by computerincome

2006-03-11T14:49:00.000-06:00

A quick search on Google for advice on creating a site map initially threw up many links to software you could buy or download for free to create a site map.

But why do you need a site map?

Basically as websites get larger and more complex both the human browser and the search engine spiders need an easy to follow map to find all the pages within your site. A site map gives them a simple navigational tool.

Site maps have 3 main benefits:

1) A site map allows visitors to easily find what they are looking for by simply visiting your site map and clicking on the link to go directly to the page they want to visit.

2) Often technologies employed to assist in reading webpages such as web page readers and screen readers can only follow text links. For practical reasons it may not always be possible to show a text link to every other page within your site on your main page and other pages within your website and so use a site map.

3) Search engine spiders like text and text links. If they cannot follow a text link to a page of your site it may not get indexed. Make it easy for the spider to index all your pages through a site map.

A site map consists of the two things search engines love - text and keywords. To build a good site map combine relevant keywords with a hyper text links. For example on your site map you may have a link to your webpage about website promotion so your hyperlink should contains the words 'website promotion' and link directly to that page within your site.

A site map does not need and indeed should not be fancy, but should be clear and easy to navigate.

Here are some tips for a good site map:

1. Place a prominent link to your site map on every page and lable it SITE MAP.

2. It should show all your webpages through different levels as basic text links.

3. Use standard colours for links and visited links.

4. It should show a quick, easy to follow over view of the site without the need to scroll around in the web browser.

Google started allowing people to submit site maps to their account as a way of letting google know about all your webpages and updates to your site. It does not increase your page ranking at all but is worth taking the time to set up properly.

You can find free software for creating site maps at:

http://www.likno.com/sitemap.html
http://www.freesitemapgenerator.com
http://www.sitemapspal.com

And when you are done, don't forget to tell Google about your site map so they can trawl and hopefully index all the pages of your site.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

A well planned site map can ensure your Web site is fully indexed by search engines.

(c) Rachel Gawith
Rachel runs her own homebased business website at ComputerIncome.net
which recommends a couple of excellent online businesses and promotional tools.
Subscribe to Rachel's free weekly newsletter FreeDailyCash
for more tips and information on working from home and get FREE advertising.

Submitted with Article Distributor.

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

Which Type of Ebayer Are You? by Eric Spence

2006-03-09T09:45:00.000-06:00

I realise that this may come as no great revelation to you, it may not even be news. What it is, in fact, is a word which describes most ebayers. And here it is:

Procrastinator!

I think that describes most of us to an extent. You see, I um-and-ah... and generally delay on making decisions. Right now, for example, I'm umming-and-ahhing about finalising my grocery list. And I really need to get out and tidy the back yard….
But I find myself procrastinating once again. There's always an excuse.
Now, I have to admit: this 'procrastination problem' is nowhere near as bad as it used to be, but it's still not right. You see, I've learnt that the less I procrastinate, the more gets done, and the better I do.

What does this have to do with eBay? I'm getting there.

Let me hazard a guess: if you're reading this, I'm betting you've procrastinated on one, two or more of the ideas... and that's bad. Very bad! Because even if you'd tried something, that 'something' would have given you some feedback - even if it was only 'failure' feedback, which can be very useful in itself.
But before you decide to do anything on eBay - even before you decide to procrastinate - you need to make a decision, if that... er... makes sense. A decision on which, I hope you won't procrastinate!

And that which you need to decide is simple: what kind of business you're going to go into. Or, more specifically (to start with), what type of model you'll follow.

See, there are only really two main models of business that you can go into on eBay. The first is where you're selling the same product(s) over and over... and over. .. again. The second relates to buying one-shot items... rare stuff and the like... one-off items that you buy, the onesy-twosy approach. You then resell each individual item in turn for (hopefully) big profits.

You just have to make up your mind which 'model' you're &oing to opt for.
There's pros and cons to each. As always.Let's consider, first of all; the onesy-twosy approach. We'll call this 'Model 1'.

Model 1: The 'Ones And Twos' Approach

This is a perfect part-time approach towards eBay success. You can do it when you want. You can create customers that stay with your forever... apd who will LOVE you. You can virtually see the smiles on your customers' faces as the latest offers arrive.
And you'll get great returns (often) on each item that you auction off. Ten times your money is far from uncommon. Even 20... or even 100 (or more). These are all perfectly attainable returns for your auctions. Not much money invested = great return gotten out.
But there's a downside, too. Your income is more variable and, quite frankly, it's a much more time dependent business model. You'll have to know the market, and as such you'll be the one hunting for 'product' every week. Not that there's anything really wrong with that, especially if you really like what you're trading in.
There's a corollary to all this too...
And that's this: your earnings will probably be capped. Because of the time-dependency factor. And the fact that YOU will virtually 'be the business' so you'll never build a really big business. Probably not, anyway.

So what's the other approach?

Model 2: The “Sell The Same Items Over And Over Again”Approach

This method involves buying a stock of the same item and floggings said item(s) over and over again. Again, there are pros and cons.

The pros? Well, you can build bigger. Once you've got the source of supply, there's not much work thereafter. You just list, then relist. And then go and sunbathe, particularly at this time of the year. What's more you can build BIGGER, because the business can be less dependent on you. Sounds great, huh? Actually, it is.
So what are the downsides?
Firstly, there'll be much more price-based competition. It can be quite cutthroat. If there's a big market for what you're selling - and there probably will be if you're going into that market - then there will probably be people already there who will be competing against you. Unless, of course, you've got a truly unique product that no one else has.

Secondly, there'll be lower returns available. Let me explain what I mean. Let's say that you've got a selection of items for resale with 'Model 1'. This means that you might have bought these 'onesy-twosy' items for £40 each. And you might sell them for £120 each, or one for £300, some for £80, and so on. But the point is that you'll be getting an outstanding return on your money.

Well, with the 'other' approach...well, it's a lot less likely that you'll get a big return on your stock investment. You might make 20% on your stock. Invest £500, get back £600... BUT you'll sell more product, and more often. And you can build very big (in eBay terms).

So Which Approach Is For You?

Depends on you, what your free-time situation is like, what you want to achieve from your eBaying, and so on. So you need to know where you're coming from, and where you want to go. If you're short on time, wanting to make money fast, and just want a part-time eBay business, then it's probably best to start with Model 1 (the one-off approach). If you've already gotten some eBay experience under your belt, have more time and are up for the challenge that lies ahead, go for Model 2. Of course, feel free to disagree too!

Here's something else to think about...

Let's say that you start with Model 1. You go along nicely, making some profits. You're still part-time. You can then use that basis to work from, and launch other eBay businesses as you go along. Make sense? You start part-time, build up your knowledge and capital base, and then work from there.

Or how about running two of these side by side? It's totally doable, believe me. But that again will depend on YOU, and it certainly wouldn't be recommended if you were just starting out. And, of course, you'd reed the time to do this. There'd certainly be quite a bit of work involved. It wouldn't be for everyone.

But that would be something, wouldn't it? That way, you'd be spreading your risk - diversifying if you like because you'd have two separate streams of income. You'd build up two individual supply sources, customers, e-mail lists and so on, and you'd be lowering your risk should the worst happen in one of your 'mini businesses' .

Ideally, you'd also trade under separate ID's for the two trading approaches. It might seem a bit strange to your bidders if you're telling them to 'Check your other items!' when they're looking at your stereo equipment. They check your other items and find a bunch of old dolls that you're auctioning in your 'Model l' business! Not a very good idea. So you'd (ideally) want two separate ID's.
But I think I'm getting ahead of myself here. Because, coming back to what I was saying at the start...

None Of This Can Happen if you continue to procrastinate! So what are you waiting for?
You at least need to think about which approach is right for you, in line with your current circumstances, and how maybe you want to see them change too. Just don't procrastinate too long on the path you want to follow.

Sign up for my free newsletter and free 7 day e-course 'How to make more money on eBay' at http://www.proebayer.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

Ebay-A Business or a Hobby? by Keith Anthony

2006-03-08T14:57:00.000-06:00

1. First you need to decide if you want to make a business out of selling on Ebay or not. If you do, then you do not want to be greedy in trying to make the biggest profit all at one time. By this I mean the reserve price. The reserve price is a price that you set at the beginning of the auction that you will only sell if your bidders reach this price. By setting the reserve to high, most likely you will not sell the item. Another error in alot of sellers is no reserve but the starting price is to high which will run buyers off. If you have to put a reserve on the item, start low and hopefully it will hit your realistic reserve price.

2. Determine what products you want to sell. Research different products that you might have an interest in. This could be sporting goods, clothing, jewelry, electronics or a number of items. Finally narrow it down to one or two different items. I decided to just stick with the electronics field which seems to do very well consistantly.

3. Suppliers are going to make you or break you. I found this out years ago. You need to find a good reliable supplier with good prices and hopefully dropshipping available. I try to find a supplier where I can make 10%-20% profit off of each item after my Ebay fees. This is what I was talking about earlier. You don't want to be greedy and try to make it all at once. Say you are selling a $100 camera, and you make $15 profit after your listing fees. Selling 10 of these a day calculates to over $1000 a week. It just keeps adding up if you don't try to get it all at once.

4. Finally I would like to talk about customer service. On Ebay, quite a bit of customer contact takes place before a sale is made, and it mostly is answering questions by people who have placed a bid or are considering placing a bid on your item. Customer service on Ebay, to a large extent, is a matter of checking your e-mail and responding to it in a professional an timely manner.
After a sale, customer service means making sure the merchandise is sent out quickly and that it arrives in good shape as described. One last piece of advice I would like to give is--1. Try to sell things that you know a little something about. 2. Try to sell items for which there is a demand on Ebay. 3. Always be there for the customer to answer questions.

I hope some of these tips will help you get started in the Ebay business. Just remember to have fun with it and don't stress yourself out.

Keith Anthony has done quite well in the Ebay business. He currently makes this his only source of income and continues to master the art of selling on auction sites.
This article is free to reprint or post on websites, just include the URL below.

http://www.bestwholesaleelectronics.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

How to Prevent Disappointing eBay Auctions by Greg Lietz

2006-02-17T10:47:00.000-06:00

You should be able to find several indispensable facts about eBay in the following paragraphs. If there's at least one fact you didn't know before, imagine the difference it might make.

The information about eBay auctions presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what you know about eBay or it will teach you something new. Both are good outcomes.

Many first time eBay sellers have one thing in common – their eBay auctions flop. Many of them flop time and time again, with the seller never understanding what is going wrong. The seller ends up doing hours of research looking for the perfect item to sell, gets the auction set up, and waits for the bidding to begin. Hours go by and no bids are placed. Days go by, and there are still no bids – or there are very low bids. Finally the auction ends, and it turns out to be a total failure. Considering the huge number of sellers who run eBay auctions, there are specific things you must do, and specific things you must not do if you are to be successful.

There are many reasons why eBay auctions fail to produce. The most common reason is that the item is not in high demand. This problem can be avoided by doing the necessary research to determine which items sell well, and which items should be avoided. This research takes a great deal of time – but in the end, you will find that it is time well spent.

Another reason for eBay auction failure is pricing. No matter what your reserve price is, your opening bid price should never be more than $50. A low starting price is how you will attract potential bidders to your auction. If you set that opening bid too high, most people won’t even click the link to read the description for your item. Another pricing problem is lack of research. Before you set your reserve price, you must determine what your item is really worth, and the price of similar items that have sold in past eBay auctions.

Poorly written descriptions are another cause of failed eBay auctions. Poor grammar and misspelled words drive people away. Failing to post a picture of the item will also keep people from visiting your auction page. Pictures show the buyer exactly what he or she will be getting and give them an idea of the true condition of the item. Make sure that your item description is well written. A well written description with enough detail about your item is essentially your sales copy.

Exorbitantly high shipping prices scare people away from eBay auctions too. Find the lowest shipping prices that you can find and consider paying for the shipping yourself if it won’t cut into your profits too much. Do not charge handling fees.

Offer great customer service for all of your eBay auctions, and ask your buyers to give you feedback. If the items that you sell are everything that you said they would be, and you offer great customer service, you can expect wonderful feedback – and this feedback will help a great deal in your future auctions.

Those who only know one or two facts about eBay auctions can be confused by misleading information. The best way to help those who are misled is to gently correct them with the truths you're learning here.

Greg Lietz is an internet businessman and frequent eBay user. To make a recurring passive income with eBay auction items, Adsense and Clickbank combined visit The Ideal Auction Site.

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

RSS Tools by S. Housley

2006-02-09T12:11:00.000-06:00

RSS Tools by S. Housley

Considering the ever-increasing support for RSS in online communities, we have compiled a list of resources and products that will benefit webmasters, web surfers and publishers in their quest to understand the power of RSS. RSS has rapidly become an alternative communication venue. In order to understand the full benefits, consider utilizing some of the following tools and resources.

1.) RSS Tools - RSS feeds bring automatically updated information straight to your desktop. You can monitor or promote news, job listings, personals, and classifieds using RSS. The following tools assist webmasters in using RSS to maximize their time.

RSS Readers - RSS readers are designed as tools to view RSS feeds, making it easier for users to view and manage the content of a feed. Feed readers make it easy to mark feeds as read or flag items that are important. The following are some of our favorite RSS readers:

FeedDemon - FeedDemon is a client that can retrieve and organize RSS feeds from the Internet. It comes pre-configured with several news feeds, and you can easily add your own by adding the URL for an RSS feed of your choice. FeedDemon offers an attractive and easy-to-use interface with integrated web browsing. http://www.feeddemon.com

FeedScout - Feed Scout is a RSS/ATOM/RDF reader that can be used directly from Internet Explorer. Feed Scout enables you to view RSS/ATOM feeds from different sites directly in Internet Explorer. You can even set your Home Page to show your favorite feeds. http://www.feedscout.com

2.) RSS Creation Tools - As RSS feeds have increased in popularity and breadth publishers and webmasters have struggled to find a solution to create RSS feeds. The following tools will assist webmasters in creating RSS feeds:

FeedForAll - Desktop software used to create, edit, manage and publish RSS feeds. New RSS feeds can be quickly and easily created with FeedForAll. Advanced features enable you to create professional-looking RSS feeds quickly. Existing RSS feeds can be repaired and enhanced with FeedForAll. RSS feeds generated by other means can be automatically repaired, so that they conform to the RSS 2.0 specification. Existing feeds can be enhanced to contain advanced feed properties, and give them a more professional look. http://www.feedforall.com

3.) RSS Articles and Tutorials - Articles and tutorials based on RSS and designed to demystify Really Simple Syndication for users and publishers. RSS Specifications - RSS Specifications contains a collection of articles related to RSS and news feeds that assist both publishers and users in deciphering Really Simple Syndication.

RSS Specifications - RSS Specifications contains a collection of articles related to RSS and news feeds that assist both publishers and users in deciphering really simple syndication. http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-articles.htm or the articles can be read in an RSS feed. http://www.rss-specifications.com/article-feed.xml

Make RSS Feeds - Step by step instructional tutorial detailing how to manually create an RSS feed. http://www.make-rss-feeds.com

4.) Ebay Monitoring Using RSS - Monitor online auctions for specific items of interest. As eBay has grown it has become difficult to discern and locate specific auction items. By using RSS tools users can easily recieve instant notification when a specific item is being auctioned.

Free Bidding Tools - FMonitor online auctions for specific items of interest. As eBay has grown it has become difficult to discern and locate specific auction items. By using RSS tools users can easily receive instant notification when a specific item is being auctioned. http://www.freebiddingtools.com/

5.) Web Monitoring - Monitor the Internet for specific news items or blog topics of interest. A number of free online RSS tools make web monitoring very easy.

PubSub - Monitor the Internet for specific news items or blog topics of interest. A number of free online RSS tools make web monitoring very easy. PubSub - Every day, PubSub's matching engine performs billions of matches of new items against user subscriptions. The instant a match is made, PubSub alerts the user via RSS. PubSub monitors more than 6.5 million blogs, as well as 50,000 USENET newsgroups, all SEC/EDGAR filings, press releases from major wire services, and FAA airport delay alerts. http://www.pubsub.com

Google News Monitoring Using RSS - This free online tool turns a Google news search into an RSS feed. http://www.justinpfister.com/gnewsfeed.php

6.) Other RSS Tools - Alternative tools for creative webmasters.

RSS2Wap - The RSS2Wap site is meant for online conversions of RSS feeds into WML for access on WAP devices (RSS2WML, RSS WAP or RSS-to-WAP). It's free and you can make a link on your web site. http://www.rss2wap.com

7.) RSS Graphic Tool - Websites that have RSS feeds available use colorful graphics as flags to indicate to web surfers that RSS feeds are available for specific content.

RSS Graphic Tool - Websites that have RSS feeds available use colorful graphics as flags to indicate to web surfers that RSS feeds are available for specific content. RSS Graphic Tool - Customize RSS buttons. If you have limited time and lack artistic abilities, use this free online RSS graphic tool to create an RSS button. The button's color and text can be customized to suit the look and feel of your website. http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm

8.) Displaying RSS - Many webmasters display the contents of RSS feeds on their web pages as a fresh source of content and information that changes on a regular basis.

Javascript Options - Using Javascript to display RSS feeds is a very easy way to provide dynamic content with very little effort. Unfortunately, when you use Javascript to display RSS feeds, search engines do not see the feed's content, so the content is not spidered and ultimately will not help with search engine optimization.

Quick RSS Feeds - Free online tool that allows you to simply enter the URL of the RSS feed, define the number of items you would like displayed, and the Javascript will be automatically generated. http://www.quickrssfeeds.com

FeedRoll -A free service for syndicating popular RSS and ATOM news feeds on your website or blog. Select a feed, customize the design, then copy and paste the code provided onto your page. http://www.feedroll.com/rssviewer/

RSS to Javascript - RSS-to-JavaScript.com was designed to easily convert any valid RSS, RDF or ATOM feed into easy-to-implement Javascript. No XML or programming experience is necessary. http://www.rss-to-javascript.com

PHP Options - The benefit to using a PHP script to display RSS on a website is that the content dynamically updates but search engines see the content as static.

FeedForAll's rss2html.php - If you are technically savvy and wish to host the script yourself, check out FeedForAll, as they have a free PHP script available that will display RSS feeds on a website. http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm

FeedRoll Pro - A fee-based professional service that tracks statistical information for publishers displaying feeds. FeedRoll Pro incorporates a number of display options for publishers wishing to syndicate their content, giving users the choice of PHP or Javascript. http://www.feedrollpro.com

RSS2HTML - Display RSS feeds by selecting layouts and color schemes on this free resource. http://www.rss2html.com

9.) RSS Blogs Stay informed about the latest RSS industry news by monitoring RSS blogs. Daily posts bring readers current news, industry announcements and general RSS information.

RSS Specifications - Everything you need to know about RSS. The RSS Specifications blog contains daily posts and RSS tidbits. http://www.rss-specifications.com/blog.htm

KbCafe - Daily posts and editorials related to RSS and new RSS products that have emerged. http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/

10.) Publishing List / RSS Newsgroups New RSS-Publishing List for publishers. The list is focused on marketing/publishing/operational issues rather than hardcore technical details of RSS, meaning that coding issues and disputes over the merits of RSS vs. Atom are not the focus. If you wish to participate in the list and receive e-mails of posts, simply subscribe by sending and e-mail to: rsspublishing-subscribe@topica.com

RSS Syndication - Collection of RSS related news feeds displayed in an easy-to-read format. http://www.rss-syndication.com/rss-news.htm

11.) RSS Related Forums - Forums can be a useful for anyone doing business online, both in terms of reading the content and actively participating in the discussions. If you want to learn more about RSS consider participating in the following online RSS communities:

2RSS - RSS forum for feed and related RSS discussions. http://forum.2rss.com/

FeedForAll Forum - RSS forum for RSS and feed creation-related discussions. http://www.feedforall.com/forum

German RSS Forum - German RSS forum for feed discussions. http://www.rss-forum.de/

12.) Locate RSS Feeds -

Syndic8 - RSS and Atom news feeds on a wide variety of topics. Designed with a directory structure and search functionality. Syndic8 also tracks statistical information related to RSS feeds. http://www.syndic8.com

Feedster's FeedFinder - Use Feedfinder to search by keyword or by URL or a combination of the two in order to find feeds on that topic or by that organization. . http://feedfinder.feedster.com/

RSS Discovery - The websites you already read may have an RSS feed. Use the BlogStreet's RSS Discovery tool and enter in a website. If there is a feed available BlogStreet will provide the URL. http://www.blogstreet.com/rssdiscovery.html

RSS Locator - Directory and search engine for RSS content including weblogs, newsfeeds, forum feeds and related content feeds. Locate topic-specific RSS feeds for syndication. RSS Locator displays feed content in an HTML format so users can preview the feed's content. http://www.rss-locator.com

12.) Submit RSS Feeds - As more and more people get involved with the Internet and as more Web sites, blogs, news services and other online resources continue to grow in number and variety, it becomes increasingly important to maintain high visibility and exposure for the content being generated by closely following the major distribution media. As a rapidly increasing number of content sources, new and old, migrate or add RSS as a key distribution channel, and as more people utilize RSS newsreaders and aggregators to keep themselves informed, the ability to maintain high exposure and visibility is gradually shifted from complete attention to major search engines and content optimization techniques to an increasing awareness of RSS feed directories and search tools.

RSS Submit - Save time and automate RSS submissions with RSS Submit from K-Soft. http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html

RSS Specifications - Submit RSS files to the large list of RSS directories and expedite your RSS content syndication. http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm

RSS Submission Service - A fee-based blog submission service that will submit your blog or RSS feed to more than 70 blog directories. Submissions are done manually, and this service is primarily designed for blog feeds. http://rss-submission-service.notrivia.com/

RSS Top 55 - Top websites for RSS submissions. Premium service is available for a nominal fee that will prioritize the RSS site submissions in the order of importance. http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Using RSS tools, publishers and webmasters can increase productivity and efficiency. RSS monitoring can often automate many of the procedures that are time-consuming and monotonous, freeing up time.

About the Author
About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing and publishing RSS feeds and NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a wireless messaging software company.

2006-02-03T10:04:00.000-06:00

How to Get Your Blog Noticed Quickly and Widely by Greg White

1. Submit your blog to all of the directories listed on http://pingomatic.com/. Pingomatic will ping 15 services all at once.

2. Ping your blog after every post at http://pingomatic.com/

3. Here's a real gem: Submit your blog to http://www.pingoat.com/ Pingoat will ping over fifty blog ping services all at once. So you don't have to hunt for ping services and manually ping them. Pingoat pings over fifty blog ping servers (growing) with just one click.

4. Ping your blog after every post at Pingoat at http://www.pingoat.com/

5. Sign up for a free account at BlogExplosion.com and register your blog there: http://www.blogexplosion.com/

6. Submit your blog to all of the directores listed at http://www.rss-feeds-directory.com/blog_lists.html

7. Sign up for a "My Yahoo" at http://my.yahoo.com/ and attach your blog to your own "My Yahoo" account. This will get your blog included in Yahoo very quickly. This is worth the effort to stop what you're doing right and do it, since Yahoo has a PR 9.

8. Use this code: "http://add.my.yahoo.com/content?url=http://www.yourblog.com/urblog.xml" in your blog to allow others to put your feed on their own "My Yahoo" account.

9. Sign up for a "My MSN" at http://www.my.msn.com/, and attach your blog to your own "My MSN" account. This will get your blog included in MSN very quickly. This is also invaluable because MSN has a PR 8.

10. Use this code: "http://my.msn.com/addtomymsn.armx?id=rss&ut=http://www.urblogfeedaddress.com/urblog.xml" in your blog to allow others to put your feed on their own "My MSN" account.

11. Place the link and description of your blog in your signature, so that any posts to Forums, Outgoing Emails, Autoresponder Courses, etc, will promote your blog.

12. Post a link and description of your blog on each of your sites.

13. Place your blog on all the major search engines. AddMe.com will submit your blog free to the top 14 Search engines here:
http://www.addme.com/submission.htm

SubmitExpress.com will submit your blog free to the top 20 Search engines here:
http://www.submitexpress.com/

14. Use Article Directories as a resource for articles to post on your blog. Here are a few:
http://ezinearticles.com/
http://goarticles.com/
http://www.knowledge-finder.com/
http://www.informit.com/articles/

Also check out Article Marketer at http://www.articlemarketer.com for a quick and easy way to reach article directories and ezines.

15. Locate blogs with a lot of traffic and place useful comments in their comment box. Be sure the blog and your comments are relavent to both your blog and theirs. Senseless posts won't help you, they'll hurt you.

16. Once you get around 5 to 10 posts on your blog, start a PR campaign and announce it to all relevant channels.

17. Make a blog post as often as possible. More than once a day is not really necessary. Remember, if you can't write that much, go to step # 14.

Greg White, Internet Marketer, Author, and Proj Mgr has run successful web projects since 2001.
http://www.blogmarketingtactics.blogspot.com/
http://www.blogmarketingtactics.com/

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

2006-01-29T13:43:00.000-06:00

The Secret to Ebay Store Successby Jason James

If you care to take the time to look, there is more advice out there on the Internet about how to be successful with your Ebay store than you could ever possibly read in a lifetime. Ebay itself offers plenty of advice for newcomers to the world of online auctions that can be quite useful. But at the end of the day everything will really boil down to just one thing: excellent customer service.

Living and Dying by Reputation

When you are first starting out in any business it is absolutely vital to generate positive feedback from customers. This not only helps you get their business in the future, but it also helps generate word of mouth advertising about your company. An Ebay business is definitely no exception to this rule.

A company offering the absolute cheapest product or service possible will still die if it treats customers poorly. Although you cannot please every single person that uses your Ebay store to buy something, it is definitely possible to keep the vast majority pleased with the services you provide.

Accurate Descriptions

Since the customer cannot physically touch or see the actual item you are trying to sell at your Ebay store, descriptions are absolutely critical. Misrepresenting an item may yield you a few dollars more on the winning bid but the negative feedback can absolutely destroy your reputation and any chances of true success using online auctions to make a living.

Also, you want to write your descriptions so that you anticipate most questions a customer may have about the item. You still have to respond to customer questions as soon as possible but you certainly don't want to be bogged down all day shooting e-mails back to people. Try to think of all the questions a customer might have before writing your description so you can write it so that almost all of these questions are answered in the description itself.

Clear Photos

Never be tempted to use trickery or odd angles to misrepresent your item with a photo. Again, negative feedback kills more Ebay business owners and their dreams than you would ever believe. Look carefully at the picture you plan to post with your listing and ask yourself if it accurately represents what you are selling. If it does not, take another picture that does.

Transactions

It can honestly be intimidating for customers to use the Internet to buy the things they want and Ebay auctions can be even scarier. People want to believe that they are buying from a reputable and honest seller who is professional in every respect. You send this very message by making the transaction as convenient as possible.

All of your terms should be clearly listed up front so that there is no chance for confusion. Inform customers about your shipping charges and consider including the Ebay calculator in your listing so that they can figure them out themselves and cut down on questions that you will have to respond to.

Be certain to include your return and warranty policies so that you did everything possible to inform the customer of precisely what they are getting should they decide to buy from you. You may want to consider making an occasional exception to your policies in the interest of avoiding negative feedback, but that is something you, as owner of your Ebay store, have to decide on a case by case basis.

Include as many payment options as you can reasonably accommodate. Fewer options generally means few bids and less profitable online auctions for your Ebay store.

By following these simple guidelines and being sure to make the customer feel as special as possible, you will build a great reputation on Ebay. In the end, this will help grow your Ebay business and keep your business thriving.

Jason James website 'The Auction Resource Network' reveals his inside secrets and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 a month on eBay.

Claim your FREE 'Top 10 eBay Selling Secrets' eBook:
www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

2006-01-26T10:15:00.000-06:00

If Only I Had Known Then What I Know Now! by Randy Fogg

Hindsight, we all know only too well, is a wonderful thing. For example, if we had only known that the ceiling on membership at a popular site was going to be subscribed so quickly - we would have joined up the minute we heard about it.

If we had only known that niche marketing was going to be so wildly popular we would have focused on that instead of MLM.

If we had only known that Google was going to change its algorithm and the rules of AdWords were going to change we would have...

Stop.

Stop, stop, stop.

In the world of Internet marketing, you can safely bet that the only constant is the rate of change! There's always news of the latest product dropping into your email inbox. There's always another promise of quick and easy money. Google will keep changing its algorithm, and new search engines are quite likely to pop up to challenge Google.

What can you do about this? Four main things:

(1) Continue To Educate Yourself.

Understand that those who rise to the top of any field - whether it's internet marketing or something else - are good at what they do. This means that they never stop learning. There are always new materials, new techniques and probably new 'experts' showing the way.

Most of us learn in three main ways: (a) from experts who specialize in a certain niche related to our field; (b) from others who are following the same path as we are, and (c) by trial and error, from our own results.

You will find that the more you immerse yourself in the world of internet marketing, the more you will be able to analyze which products, services and opportunities are right for you.

(2) Focus. Pick One System And Give It A Fair Go.

Countless people who start out on the internet with high hopes follow the same pattern. They get excited about a new product or system. They throw themselves into it and invest long hours (and potentially quite a bit of money) in getting it up and running. It might be e-books sold from mini-sites; it might be setting up an eBay business; it might be directory-type sites with text manipulators; it might be AdWords or content sites optimized for AdSense.

Then one day they get wind of another new system (probably one created by someone who claims "the gurus are angry with me for giving away all their secrets..."). Discouraged by the lack of results with the first "opportunity", they decide to let it rest for a while and try the new one. Back they go into the cycle of try-the-new-product, get-discouraged, discard-it-and-try-the-next-thing.

And so it goes on. Months pass. Perhaps years pass. They struggle to pay the credit card bills mounting from buying into every new system that comes along... with very little money coming in to offset their 'investment'. As they look back, they start muttering "If I had only known then what I know now..."

If you can recognize yourself in this scenario, the good news is this: Now you DO know better. You don't know what the next new product will be that's going to set the internet world abuzz, but you do know enough to choose a system that's right for you and stick to it.

(3) Take The Time to Plan.

Give yourself from two to four weeks to regroup. Go through all the products you have on your shelves or on your computer. Make a list. Decide which products you now know (so wise with hindsight!) to be worth keeping. Then analyze the 'keepers' and pick on the best system for YOU to use at this time. (This will depend upon your level of knowledge and which one you would enjoy most. Work with your strengths.)

Finally, devise a game plan. You are going to focus on this ONE method and devise a practical time-line to achieve results. Don't be in a rush. Make sure you give yourself enough time to see it 'take hold' so the money starts flowing in. That will give you the motivation to continue.

Clear the decks, physically as well as mentally. Put all the products that don't fit in with your plan in boxes or on disk for safekeeping. You may return to them one day, but if you've chosen the system that's right for you, you probably won't.

4. Don't Get Distracted by New Products.

Resolve to buy ONLY products or services that will save you time or money in implementing the system you have chosen. Never buy anything on impulse. Print out the sales letter, read it through, then put it aside. Read it through again the next day. Does it still seem so appealing? Check out a few forums to listen to the buzz. If a product doesn't deliver, you'll soon hear about it. If it is exceptional value, you'll hear about that, too.

Some questions to ask: "Will this help me to streamline the business I have chosen? Is it worth the money? Will it make a significant difference?" And above all, "Do I need this, or is it just another distraction?"

Resolve to make this the year you will succeed. No more pocket change. No more "If I had only known..."

You DO know.

So make it work.

About the Author
About the Author: ------------------------------------------------------- Randy Fogg is a serious entrepreneur hoping to help you achieve your OWN success in the internet market. ------------------------------------------------------- To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: http://www.ABEAffiliates.com ------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full p

2006-01-14T10:53:00.000-06:00

How To Use Feedback On Ebay by Jason James

As an Internet savvy ebay business owner, you have undoubtedly had a friend or family member come to you at some point to ask whether or not it was okay to purchase from a certain Internet business. You might have found this humorous. As someone who regularly makes sales and payments online, you aren't even remotely afraid of being scammed. If something is a scam, you can spot it from a mile away.

However, to people who are considerably less experienced-- perhaps members of your family or your friends--this is a serious obstacle to shopping online regularly. They will probably think twice and consult a friend before buying anything.

This is why ebay's feedback system must be a crucial part of your strategy as an ebay seller: it gives people the unique opportunity to hear what ebay buyers had to say about your products and service.

If potential customers see anything sketchy, you can bet they will hit the 'back' button and shop somewhere else.

On the contrary, if they see dozens of positive responses from your customers, you will immediately gain their trust as a professional ebay seller.

Luckily for you, keeping your feedback record positive is relatively easy if you adhere to the following rules:

1. Avoid posting negative feedback at all costs.

If you encounter a negligent buyer, do everything in your power before leaving negative feedback. Most disputes on ebay revolve around miscommunication, so make an effort to resolve communicate clearly with the buyer. Even if they still wont respond positively, you are better off leaving no feedback at all than leaving negative feedback, which can prompt retaliatory negative feedback.

2. Create feedback rules (written or unwritten) and follow them consistently.

Many ebay sellers have a written feedback policy. They will only leave feedback after the buyer pays and leaves feedback. If a buyer knows upfront that he has to leave feedback to get feedback, he will be more likely to give you feedback after the transaction (provided he cares about his feedback rating).

Not only will this get you more responses, but it will give you more control over feedback. If the buyer gives you negative feedback, you can use your future feedback opportunity to bargain a withdrawal. Some ebay sellers use an unwritten policy. As soon as payment clears, they respond with positive feedback. When the customer sees positive feedback from the seller, they have a higher chance of posting positive feedback in response, even if they haven't received the item yet.

3. Communicate clearly with the buyer.

As I mentioned above, the majority of problems on ebay are caused by miscommunication. Make sure you create a consistent set of rules, post them with every auction, and follow them to the letter. If you have any problems with a customer, you can point to the rules. At the very worst, they can disagree with your policy; however, they cannot disagree that they entered into a contract with you with fair access to your policies.

In addition to using rules, you should also send follow-up emails after your auction ends. You should thank the buyer for purchasing from you and make sure he knows how to complete payment and when he can expect his item in the mail.

Jason James website 'The Auction Resource Network' reveals his inside secrets and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 a month on eBay.

Claim your FREE 'Top 10 eBay Selling Secrets' eBook:
http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

2006-01-06T11:59:00.000-06:00

Search Engine Optimization for Affiliate Marketer by Emmanuel Aubrey

There are no secrets on how to rank high with the major search engines because effective search engine optimizations are now immense. What is search engine optimization? Before we discuss that thing, you have to understand first how search engines work and a bit of know-how.

Search engines are into providing their users with the most relevant and up-to-date information to match the search term that was used. They are sophisticated pieces of technology which allow users to quickly find relevant websites by searching for a word or a phrase. Search engine results are useless to users if the information doesn’t relate to the search term, or if the results are old. People expect the most up-to-date and fresh information that is useful to them.

Updating your website everyday and adding some materials will help you get noticed by the search engines. So, if you are going to sell any type of product or service online, you have to optimize your website for the search engines, in order to boost traffic and sales. It is because over 90% of your business will likely come directly from search engine results. And for that reason, it is absolutely important to optimize your site for search engines for you to have the greatest deals in the entire world.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which webmasters or online business owners utilize strategic copy to augment their website’s status. It is certain that the internet has grown so fast over the years and the competition for the best search engine position has created an enormous market. Therefore, better understanding the fundamental elements of Search Engine Optimization is vital for an online business’ success.

Making use of effective search engine optimization techniques will improve the page rank of your website. There are many tricks that can be used to increase page rank; the most effective method is to provide high quality content consistently. This seems like a simple concept but there are many websites that fails to provide content that visitors find interesting. Sites which provide content that are interesting, well-written and regularly updated create highly engaged visitors who are more likely to return to the website in the coming days. So, if you can set your website apart from those boring, lifeless sites then do it. You’ll surely have a step closer to achieving high page rank through search engine optimization.

The next significant factor for an effective search engine optimization is to include keywords and phrases within your content. To make sure that you are properly targeting your market, you have to make sure that the keywords and phrases you have on your site are the keywords and phrase that your site is actually optimized for. The more keywords you use in your content, the more likely it is that online visitors will find your site when they do some research with those words. If you are unfailing with these techniques, then your overall search engine optimization will increase, boosting your page rank.

You should also have to develop a linking strategy as a part of your search engine optimization. Not only does this provide free advertising for your site, but it makes the impression that your site is imperative because of its affiliated links. For each link that you have pointing back to you, that is another chance for your potential customer to find you. The more inbound links that you have pointing to your site, the higher you will be ranked in the search engines.

Another is to develop a content stratagem. People who get to search from the internet are looking for information. The more information you provide for them and the more helpful it is, the more likely you will make the sale. Writing articles is the most effective way to build up content for your site. When writing articles to post on your site, make sure that you develop a clear means of arranging their content. You can do this by simply adding a new page to your site. This will allow room for extra articles to be added as you write them, and will allow you to build up an archive of articles which will maintain to draw online visitors. Make sure also that you have included your archived articles in a directory that is next to the root web of your site so that the search engines will catalog your online articles.

Always keep in mind that search engine optimization methods are important in developing your site’s status. With that thing in mind, make sure that you write high-quality, keyword rich content and link your site to and from a deliberate family of other sites. These things will help improve your site’s popularity and coerce increased business through your online business.

Emmanuel Aubrey Website Creator/Power Affiliate.
My website is www.emmanuelaubrey.com if you wish to profit in the affiliate business vist http://www.graburl.com/x.php?1hv or go to my site under business. my email: emmanuel@emmanuelaubrey.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

2006-01-04T14:40:00.000-06:00

Boost Your Search Engine Rankings With RSS Feeds

I'm here to teach you about how RSS Feeds can boost traffic for your website. You may have heard of it, but I guarantee you are not harnessing the full power of the tool. RSS Feeds are very hot, and the marketing pro's are getting their websites listed in Google within 2 to 3 days.

What is an RSS Feed?

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." Think of RSS this way: Whenever a writer who belongs to a syndicate writes a column, they don't just write it for their local paper, every article goes up on the newswire and any paper who belongs to the syndicate can reprint it.

First, you have to download an RSS Reader, a program that combines all the news online in one place. You can download a reader for free at www.RssReader.com. Once you've downloaded a reader, you can click any topic that suits your need, and only those topics will be delivered right to you.. Why would I put RSS on my website?

An RSS feed can be thought of like this. Let's take five news sources (Yahoo, MSN, CNN, ESPN, FOX). An RSS reader would scan all five news sources and take each headline and create a summary of the article. Now, you can actually sort the news stories and have only the ones you are interested in delivered right to your website from all five news sources. Search Engines are crawling websites and looking for fresh content. If you have an RSS Feed, you are getting up to the minute news stories. These constantly change whenever a new story comes out. The Search Engines will give you a higher Page Rank because it thinks your page is updated on a regular basis.

How do I add one to my website?

I tried an RSS Feed for the first time, and it took less than five minutes. Here's what it looks like:

Bush Celebrates Shuttle's Launch (AP) NASA sends shuttle back into space after long pause (Reuters) Shuttle Discovery Blasts Into Orbit (AP) NASA's aging workhorse returns to space (AFP) NASA Returns to Flight as Discovery Reaches Orbit (SPACE.com / LiveScience.com)

As you can see, this is my very first RSS Feed. All the news stories within the last hour regarding the shuttle launch are now listed for me and my visitors to read. Guess what? It took less than 5 minutes, and I instantly have an RSS Feed. Why do I need one?

Search Engines are crawling your site and if you are not providing quality, up to the minute content then you are getting placed further down the rankings. Your competition who has this information is getting FREE advertising from the Search Engines who are placing their page 1st or 2nd when users search for a particular keyword.

How do I put an RSS Feed on my site?

You can now place an RSS Feed on your website in THREE easy steps.

Step 1: Search for topics that you are currently interested in (use Yahoo).

When you see an orange RSS or XML box like the one above, you know that article is compatible with a feed. Copy the URL of the webpage.

Step 2: Go to http://www.feeddigest.com and paste the URL in the digest for them to create a two line code for your webpage. You can also copy and paste the long page of code if you understand programming.

Step 3: In Frontpage, Go to Insert - a web component - html markup and paste the two or three line script that RSS Digest gave you. Check it out! Your first RSS Feed! Try it yourself right now, create your first RSS feed in under five minutes, FREE! The only way you can truly learn about them is for you to JUMP in FEET FIRST!
This article was found at Site Reference.

2006-01-02T15:06:00.000-06:00

The Top 5 First-Year Mistakes

Even once you’ve got past the starting-up stage, there are still plenty mistakes to be made to build a home business, and most of them are going to be made in your make-or-break year—the first one.

Here are the top five things to avoid.

Are you waiting for Customers to Come to You?
Too many people wait for their customers to phone, or come to the door, or whatever. They get one or two home business customers through luck, but nothing like enough to even begin paying their costs. These people sit around, looking at their competitors doing lots business, and wonder what they’re doing wrong.

You can’t be like this. You have to go out there and actively try to find customers. Talk to people, call them, meet with them—whatever you do, don’t just sit there!

Spending Too Much on Advertising for your Home Business.

So everyone tells you that the only way to get ahead in home business is to advertise. Well, that’s true, but you need to make sure that you stick to inexpensive advertising methods when you’re starting out. Spending hundreds of dollars for an ad in the local newspaper might turn out to get you very few new customers, and you will have spent your entire advertising budget on it.

Make your money go further with leaflets, direct mail or email—these are easily target able campaign methods with high response rates and low costs. Remember that it is always better to spend money on an offer than on an ad, and always better to spend money on an ad than on a delivery method.
Being Too Nice?

When you’re running your own home business, it can be tempting to be everyone’s friend, giving discounts at the drop of a hat and making sure that you don’t hassle or inconvenience anyone. That’s all well and good, until you find that your Good Samaritan act has just halved your profit margin without lowering the cost to the customer by very much at all.

Sometimes, you need to realise that you’ve got to be harsh to make a profit. Give people discounts to encourage them to buy or to come back, not because you like them or feel sorry for them. Don’t be afraid to be ruthless in your pursuit of home business success. Nice guys don’t finish last, but they are running in a different race—one with much less prize money. If that doesn’t bother you, of course, then feel free to go for it.

Not Using the Phone for your Home Business?
You’d be surprised just how common phone fears are—if you’re scared of the phone, you’re not alone by any means. Many people are terrified of making phone calls, and avoid them wherever possible. I have seen more than one home business owner reduced to tears on the phone and trying desperately to hide it from the customer.
You need to try your best to overcome your fears, as talking to customers on the phone is almost as good as meeting them for real. Letters and emails are useless by comparison. The best way to overcome phone fears varies from person to person, but it can often be as simple as making the phone fun, by calling friends and relatives often for a while and getting used to it. Alternatively, try working in telemarketing for a while—if that doesn’t make normal phone use look like a walk in the park by comparison, then nothing will.

Hiring Professionals for Everything?

It can be tempting to think that, since you’re starting out, you should just find a company or person to do every little thing you need. People seem to especially overspend on design services.
You might think it’d be great to have fancy graphics all over your website, but would it really increase sales? If I saw it, it would put me right off. Likewise, a slick brochure often fails to say anything more than ‘I’m going to charge you a premium to pay for my expensive brochures’. Don’t hire someone unless you can demonstrate that the service they’re going to provide will increase your profits by more than the amount you’re spending—if you’re not sure, try it yourself first, and you can always upgrade it later.

The fact’s for your Decision!

The fact is building a home-based business isn’t for everyone. Some people like the commute. They
really do enjoy having a boss who tells them what to do, and they like the routine of working nine-to-five for an ordinary salary that can barely pay the mortgage. Personally, I think they’re nuts.

More reasonably, there are people who are concerned about the risk of starting up their own business. They’re not sure it’s worth the investment of time and money, and they’re scared of the responsibility that comes with running their own company. They wonder if there is another way to escape the rat race.

What can you do?

Take all information about the home-work-business and make a business plan which give you answer on your estimated profits. Don’t pay a dime for any e-book marketing course or software programs or anything else, until your have read the groundbreaking document you can download.
This article was found at Site Reference.

2006-01-02T13:28:00.000-06:00

Succeeding as a Seller on E-Bay by Nicky Pilkington

Being successful is almost everyone’s dreams this day and being successful in E-Bay could be a reality once you set your heart into it. Like in any other business, patience and perseverance in the world of E-Bay are factors needed to ensure that you are going to be successful here.

Aside from those virtues, a lot of strategic planning is needed to ensure one’s success in E-Bay. The first thing that you could do is to mark your territory. This means that you should be able to determine on what kind of specialization you would like. For example, your area of specialization is books therefore you should focus yourself first in establishing a name in the books category before eventually branching out your items. This would help you in establishing a name through categories thus forming a solid foundation for your business. In terms of products, remember that a wide margin market is important therefore products should not be too expensive. Products that are easy to dispose of as well as in demand are great investments for people that are planning to be successful in the world of E-Bay.

Customer service also plays an important part in being a successful seller on E-Bay. This is because customers always know if you are the type of seller that prioritizes the needs of their customers. If the first transaction with a seller made an impact to them then the tendency of customers is to buy and purchase again. Aside from that, customers that are truly satisfied with a transaction made from a specific seller would be able to recommend the products as well as the services to other potential customers without paying anything to the customer. This is a good way to expand your horizons as a seller which could have a great impact to customers. As a seller, you should always seek feedback regarding the transaction that they made with you as well as the state of the product. This is important because customers would feel that they are very important in your line of business. It is important to have more positive feedbacks in E-Bay because most customers would rely on a seller because of their good reputation on the web.

Last but not the least, always hold honest transactions so that people would learn to trust you and in return, you would be able to maximize the benefits of E-Bay.

Find out more about ebay auctions at http://auctionhelper.info

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

2005-12-30T20:17:00.000-06:00

Have You Got eBay PowerSeller Potential? by Darren Yates

What exactly is a PowerSeller?
PowerSellers are the eBay members that have made it, you can recognize them by the ‘PowerSeller’ badge next to their name. You’ve probably seen these people across eBay as you go about your usual business – to succeed on eBay, you need to think the way they do.

How do you get Awarded PowerSeller Status? eBay decides who can be a PowerSeller and who can’t, and they have strict rules. To get in at the minimum PowerSeller level, you must have a feedback rating of at least 100 (minimum 98% positive) and sell at least $1,000 worth of items every month for three months in a row.

There are different levels of PowerSeller membership as you sell items of greater value:
$1,000 is bronze
$3,000 is silver
$10,000 is gold
$25,000 is platinum
$125,000 is titanium

If PowerSellers ever fail to meet the required amount of sales, or their feedback falls below 98% positive, then they lose their PowerSeller status. Essentially the only eBay users that get to be PowerSellers on eBay are the users that have been successful for a while and are on track to stay successful.

The Marketplace and the Shop.
This is the most important part of understanding how PowerSellers think. They don’t see what they’re doing as being some random bazaar, or a hobby – instead, they see themselves as a business.

For example, if you run a stall in a marketplace, the chances are that you have a general area of business, but you mostly just sell whatever you can get your hands on that week. If your dodgy buddy got his hands on a job lot of something at a discount, then that’s what you’ll be selling. This might be fun – and when you have a good week, you’ll have a really good week – but it’s no way to run a real business in the long-term.

PowerSellers think far more like shops. They sell the same things again and again, every week – regular stock for regular customers. They do ‘boring’ business things like keep inventories and budgets. They know what they’re going to be selling, how much they buy it for and how much they expect to sell for. Just like a real shop, there can be hard times sometimes, but their income is stable and their business can grow slowly.

The best advice I can give you on thinking like a PowerSeller is this: don’t take long-term risks for short-term gain. Look after your reputation, manage your selling properly, provide good customer service and the rewards will come to you in due course. And you’ll get a little badge next to your name that makes people trust you more!

One option that you may of missed is - What can eBay do for any other businesses you have. Millions of people visit eBay every day – why keep everything separate when you’re starting to tap into that kind of power?

In fact $14 out of every $100 spent online is spent at eBay!

Darren Yates has learned of a guy, Brandon Dupsky, that makes $22,000 a DAY! on eBay selling everyday stuff. Do you think you could too? - http://www.how-to-make-money-online.inf/eBay-millionaire/

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

2005-12-27T14:29:00.000-06:00

Blogging for the Niche Marketer by Paul Duxbury

The whole concept of Blogging first appeared in the 1990’s when it emerged as a way to make comment on a webpage. It was an opportunity for visitors to make their opinions known. For something which started as a way to make one or two comments on a webpage it has evolved into something which enables people to talk about their own views and experiences at great length.

Understandably internet marketers and others have seen the potential in this new online environment and they have tapped into the blog’s potential.

So how can you easily make use of “blogging” as an Internet marketing tool.

1.First and foremost blogging is easy! The easiest way to get your thoughts or information onto the internet is through blogging. No particular skills are necessary beyond the ability to type and construct an intelligible posting. It’s like having a virtual notepad on which you can write your ideas, experiences, new products, and encourage your readers to take up your offers and your products.

2. Blogging is Real. Nowadays advertising pervades so many different aspects of our lives to such an extent that we filter much of it out. However, in blogs, we perceive that real people are sharing their real-life experiences, without being tainted by paid advertising. It feels as if reading blogs about products is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. Many of us want to buy a tried and tested product with real testimonials.

3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webspace is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up.

4. Blogging can build credibility. As you get more and more comfortable with writing about your particular products or niche, your readers come to recognise that they can depend on your posts. As this starts to happen they are more likely to start to take up your recommendations. As such, you start to be perceived as an expert on your niche and as a consequence, your blog gets more visitors and other bloggers may start linking to your blogs.

5. Blogging can help to build your market. You might like to consider some of the following ways to build your market through blogging:

By using subscription.

A relatively easy way to get your readers e-mail is to encourage them to subscribe to your blog. Keep some exclusive information for your subscribers to entice readers to subscribe and give you their e-mail address. Ensure that you treat their email address in a responsible manner in using it, because the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer.

Get to understand your visitors.

Conduct a simple survey for your visitors to understand their profile and advertising preferences. Ask them to give you feedback on a post, a link, or a trial that you shared. In this way, it is like interviewing your readers without the commitment and intrusion of a face-to-face interview.

Joining blog networks

XA network of blogs maybe a collection of blog sites that share the same niche, interest, readership base etc. Visitors find credibility and convenience in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a subject.

By using RSS.

RSS is the fastest growing technology on the Internet today. As such, having RSS feeds to your blog is definitely another means of generating awareness for your readership base. Having a variety of feeds can add interest to your blog site.

Give your business a boost by effectively using blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

Paul Duxbury is a successful online marketer who has recently launched http://www.web-success.co.uk the first port of call to those new to Internet Marketing. In 2006 he will launch the http://www.informembership.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

2005-12-27T14:17:00.000-06:00

Google vs eBay, or Google vs YahooBay? by Sramana Mitra

The media is full of stories and analysis on Google’s announcement of GoogleBase, a user-database, that predict thet Google is taking sure steps towards eBay’s turf.

eBay is slowly and surely falling prey to its supremely powerful, but easy to copy and rather narrow core business model of facilitating B:C and C:C e-commerce. Needless to say, Google’s entry into their turf will be a big blow. Google will, no doubt, hit eBay where there is a low-hanging fruit waiting to be picked: eBay’s sordid user interface. In the 10 years of its existence, eBay has not bothered to address this glaring weakness. Google does clean User Experiences very well, and my bet would be that they will cream eBay on this topic. Also interesting is their introduction of a user-generated database, which will enable applications such as Yahoo! Stores easily, too. Potent combination.

I said once before, that Yahoo should acquire eBay. eBay’s market cap is $52 Billion, whereas Yahoo’s is $50 Billion. It would roughly be a merger of equals, but I believe Yahoo’s future is far more promising than eBay’s. Hence, judging by futures, Yahoo ought to acquire eBay.

Product Search and Search Engine Marketing are key areas that, as industries, need to reside together. Amazon realized it, and launched A9, their very own search engine. However, Search is a competitive business, and an overnight search giant will not be created at this stage of the game. I don’t recommend, therefore, that eBay also follows suit.

However, at least 5 different properties that Yahoo has could tremendously leverage eBay: Small Business, Stores, Search, Shopping, and Overture. Finally, as Yahoo unfolds its content and personalization strategies, there will be a tremendous further opportunity to build value on top of their existing framework.

Not the least, but last, Meg Whitman has indicated that she wants out. Terry Semel, however, is dedicated and focused.

Then?

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur and Strategy Consultant Sramana Mitra writes about Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Emerging Technology, Market Moves, and sundry other topics in her Blog "Sramana Mitra on Strategy". Read more of her writings at http://www.sramanamitra.com.

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

2005-12-27T13:52:00.000-06:00

The rules of linking from your Ebay auctions by Jason James

Because ebay is such a busy place of merchandise sales with many various ebay stores and markets selling thousands of items, there must be a few rules that are set in place to insure that everyone is playing fair. Ebay auctions are a gift for us to make easy money without having the overhead or the stress of running other types of businesses so it is ideal that we all adhere to their policies.

Very few other issues will get ebay sellers arguing about the rules no more than the rules on linking to and from your ebay auctions. Ebay has some very firm rules when it comes to liking and it would be wise of you to follow them to insure that your ebay auctions stay online and profitable.

Below are the following links that you may use in your ebay auction description:

1. On your ebay auction, you may have one link to an additional web page for information. This web page is to be used exclusively for further information about whatever ebay item that you are selling from you ebay auction.

2. Your ebay auction may have links to more photo images of the merchandise that you are selling on ebay.

3. If you want your customer to click on a link from your ebay auction that opens up to separate window to send you an email, then that is ok. In fact this little ebay auction email window may increase inquiries of your ebay selling item.

4. Ebay auction links that connects to your other ebay auctions or any of your other ebay auctions stores is also permissible.

5. You may have one link that links to your ebay About Me page. This is in addition to the link next to your user ID that ebay provides for your ebay auction.

6. Ebay authorizes you to have links to your vendors' websites that help you with your auctions. Ebay considers any type of listing services, payment providers, and software programs to be 3rd party vendors.

In addition to the above Ebay linking rules that are authorized for your Ebay auctions there are also links that are not allowed with ebay.

1. You cannot have any links that link to other websites that offers to sell, trade, or purchase merchandise outside of Ebay. This should be obvious but many new sellers to Ebay auctions break this rule.

2. Links to any other websites that encourages ebay bidders to place their bids outside of ebay are not authorized in your ebay auctions

3. Your ebay auction cannot have links that link to outside websites that offers to sell merchandise that is considered illegal at ebay. 4. Links that connect to websites that solicit ebay user Ids and passwords is also unauthorized to have within your ebay auction.

When it comes to linking from your About Me page the ebay rules are pretty much the same overall with your ebay auction. Because ebay gives you this page to self promote your business, then linking to your website from it is allowed.

On the other hand, you need to be sure that the link does connect to other trading sites or to website businesses that sell the same product or merchandise at the same price or lower price than what is advertised on ebay.

Jason James website 'The Auction Resource Network' reveals his inside secrets and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 a month on eBay.

Claim your FREE 'Top 10 eBay Selling Secrets' eBook:
http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com

2005-12-09T13:01:00.000-06:00

Make Money Online with RSS Data Transfer by Peter Tarrida del Marmol

Copyright 2005 Peter Tarrida del Marmol

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site

Summary. It also has been referred to as a "pull" technology rather than a "push" technology. And, in fact, this feature is what makes RSS so popular in terms of today's Internet usage.

It's probably hard to argue that anyone who uses the Internet today hasn't heard of spam. If they have an email inbox it is probably full of it.

Spam, for the uninitiated, is the receipt of unwanted emails from people whom you did not request to receive information. Spam represents the "push" technology. That is, people "push" their email message at your inbox, whether you have asked to receive the email or not.

And that aspect of "push" technology is what many have come to believe is the death of email. It's arguable that email will still be around for quite a long time, even though there are still people who continue the illegal spam process. In fact, companies are making millions now just providing everyday users as well as huge corporations, solutions claiming to solve their spam problem.

RSS, on the other hand, can be said to be the exact opposite of the email "push" technology. Because you cannot "push" your message to subscribers. In fact, the only way that people can subscribe to an RSS feed is to do so voluntarily. And, at the same time, they can unsubscribe whenever they want.

That's why it's called a "pull" technology. Because subscribers "pull" information into their readers and, if the content isn't what they expect, they can unsubscribe whenever they'd like. So, unlike the email "push" technology, there is no one using RSS that is experiencing an inbox full of spam. All they have to do is to unsubscribe and they will never receive another message from the person who provided the feed.

RSS has become a popular way to make money on line too. And that is due in part to the popularity of the RSS "pull" technology. Here's one way of monetizing a website using RSS feeds.

Imagine setting up a static one page web site - a minisite if you will. Now, add either Google Adsense code or the new Yahoo version of the Google Adsense style ads that, when clicked by a visitor - you earn cash.

This gives you a nice starting point and, if you optimize your web page properly, there is a good chance you will get a high ranking in the search engines. And, the more people who see your page, the more likelihood they will click on one of the links on your web page and you'll earn revenue from the click.

But RSS provides an even greater potential. Because by adding an RSS feed to that same web page, you turn a static web page that only contains the information you placed on it, into a dynamic ever changing web page that others will likely come back more than once to read.

After all, once someone has read a one page web site, what incentive is there for them to come back? Plenty, if you use RSS feeds on your web page. It is possible to add 5, 10 or 15 feeds on your once static web page and now, you've got a page that automatically updates itself and provides something that people will want to come back to read time and time again.

You can easily convert any web page into a dynamic web page using free RSS creator software. One of the most popular free versions is called Carp and you can download it at this web link: http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/.

Once you've set this program up on your website and added the proper code to your website, then you will need to collect RSS feeds that relate to the topic of your web page.

Let's say that the topic of your web page is flower gardens. You could go to Google News and get their RSS feed code, place it into the appropriate position in your Carp coding you put on your web page and then adjust the code as follows: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=flower+gardens&ie=UTF-8&output=rss

You can also get a similar feed from Topix.net and you'd adjust the code like this: http://rss.topix.net/search/?q=flower+gardens&xml=1

Now, once you have uploaded your web page, your site will automatically pull in fresh information from Google and Topix about flower gardens. Simply follow this illustration for any web page you'd like to monetize and watch your search engine ranking soar and also your bank account!

About the Author
Peter Tarrida del Mármol is a spanish internet marketer. To learn more about making money online go to: http://www.auctionearnings.com

2005-12-09T12:50:00.000-06:00

FC + RSS = SEO by Larry Westfall

No, this is not the new math. It is the formula for getting your web site recognized by the search engine spider.

The formula is Fresh Content + Really Simple Syndication = Search Engine Optimization. This is an easy way to get the search engine spiders to come and visit your site on a regular basis, see that "updates" have been made, and get you ranked higher in the directories.

It isn't that difficult to write a 300 - 500 word article about your favorite subject matter. What works for me is to set aside a couple of hours a week and knock out 5 - 7 articles at one time to use during the upcoming week. The articles are all different but are similar, so writing them in one sitting is a bit easier. Writing your own content is still the best method but article submission sites can help you out when you have "writer's block".

Getting fresh content can be easy with the many article submission sites available on the Internet. All you have to do is search for articles related to your site, copy them and add them to your site. Ensure that you credit the author by leaving the resource box, along with a live link, intact. You can grab many articles at one sitting and save them for later updates. Add some content to your site on a regular basis - preferably daily. You will be amazed at how quick your new site gets indexed and happy with the rankings of your current site as it goes higher and higher.

RSS is an XML formatted style for syndicating content. Users that have RSS readers can then pick up your content and read it at their leisure. Your content will then be all over the Internet giving you maximum exposure.

One additional tip is to add a news aggregator to your site. This will put current news headlines and snippets of the articles on your site. Again, this adds fresh content, making the search engine spiders happy.

So, a few simple adjustments to your web site can bring more visitors, happy spiders and fame and fortune to the authors of the original articles.

About the Author
Larry Westfall is the owner of http://www.keyword-article.com

2005-12-03T15:02:00.000-06:00

Ebay - The Power Of Words by Jay Bauder

It is a known fact that a business could never be successful without the aid of advertising. In fact, it is considered as the lifeblood of almost all kinds of businesses. That's why sellers and entrepreneur wannabes on eBay understand the impact of an effective advertising technique on their items listing.

Basically, the sale of an item on eBay is dependent on the so-called eBay keyword program. This program asserts the fact that the probability of an item to be sold is based on the keyword used by the seller.

The eBay keyword program suggests that the maximum number of keywords to be used in an eBay ad is 100, the least is 50. This is because the essence of the description of the product or the ability of the ad to promote the item against a thousand similar items is lessened.

This does not necessarily mean that the sellers will also limit the amount of keywords that they will use. The eBay keyword program further suggests that the number of keywords should be congruent to the identity of the product. That is, it should be very specific even down to the last details of the product.

For example, one seller may make his or her descriptive title and ad using the word "mobile phones". Then, another seller posts the same item but used the words "Sony Ericsson mobile phones". And lastly, another seller does the same but used the words "Sony Ericsson k700i". Applying the keyword principle, the third seller will most likely gain more exposure than the other two, such that when a person search for a Sony Ericsson k700i, that person will most likely be lead to the third seller's listing.

Choosing the best category for the product is another effective advertising technique.

There are those online shoppers who search items on the category first. The reason behind this is that they don't have any specific product in mind. For example, a buyer may be looking for a mobile phone but doesn't know what brand to have. So, it's a must that the seller places his or her item in a category that is active or is frequented by most buyers.

But the most important advertising technique of all when selling an item on eBay is to create a sales pitch that comes from the heart. Clich? As it may seem but, in reality, it is the basic concept of selling. A good seller believes in the product that he or she is selling, other wise, he will have a hard time convincing people if he personally doesn't accept it as true.

About the Author
Jay is the web owner of http://www.the-lowest-prices.com Online Shoppping, a website that provides information and resources on online shopping malls and discounts. You can visit his website at: Online Deals

2005-12-01T11:14:00.000-06:00

Ebay Shipping - 10 Tips To Start Right by Mason Hipp

There are about as many different ways to ship ebay items as there are ebay sellers. That being said, there are many eBay sellers who don't ship using the correct packaging or the least expensive service. These 10 tips are written to help sellers get started shipping their ebay items correctly.

1) Always Pack the Item Properly The biggest mistake you can make when shipping an item is to go lightly on the packaging and send an unprotected item. Buyers will instantly leave negative feedback if the item arrives damaged due to bad padding. Make sure you look into the proper packaging for the item you are shipping - a book is different then a china doll, and both require proper materials.

2) Never Pay For Packing Materials Right behind improper packing is over paying for shipping materials. There are far too many sources of free boxes and free padding to need to buy them. I have been a powerseller on ebay for 4 years and not once have I paid for packing materials. EBay and USPS offer free boxes, UPS offers free shipping labels. Local retailers will generally have old boxes lying around also - this is perfect for those large items.

3) Ship Promptly After the Auction Closes So you've just spent $400 on the newest game console - purchased it from an eBay Seller. Do you want to wait a week just for the seller to ship the item? Neither do your customers. Always ship the item as soon as possible after the auction is closed.

4) Box the Product Before the eBay auction is Over It is a good habit to get into packaging your items before the auction is finished. This makes it exceedingly easy to ship within a day of the buyer paying. Shipping quickly will grab good feedback more than anything else.

5) Use UPS Ground Shipping for Large Items It is generally the best to use UPS ground for anything that weighs more than 10lbs. It is very inexpensive to ship large items with UPS. Though slower than USPS, it is far more cost effective on larger freight.

6) Use USPS Priority Mail for Sending Small Items Anything less than 10lbs is best shipped with priority mail. Priority mail is very fast, and very inexpensive for small things. Shipping with priority mail is also very good for your buyer, as it will get them their item quickly and effectively.

7) USPS Media mail is Best for Shipping Media Items If you are shipping a book, cd, dvd, or any other item that fits in the media category - it is probably best to ship with media mail. This is a very cheap service, and is great for the items it is meant for. If your item is expensive, however, it may be better to use priority mail to please your buyer.

8) Include a Thank You Note in Each Package This is one of the most overlooked methods of creating return customers. You need to ship the package anyhow, why not attempt to get another eBay purchase out of each customer? Almost all of the big players on eBay use this tactic.

9) Use Paypal to Print Shipping Labels Printing eBay shipping labels from Paypal is one of the easiest and most time saving features available to new sellers. Larger eBay sellers might want to look into further automation, but for everything under 50 packages per week - electronic labels from Paypal are the way to go.

10) eBay Shipping Takes Getting Used To - Don't Quit Not everyone gets into a rhythm immediately. Shipping on eBay can be a trying task - but keep going and you'll soon be rewarded with happy customers and efficient practices. It is important to learn and rethink and establish you're own personal best practices. With time, anyone can ship like a PowerSeller.

About the Author

Mason Hipp has been an eBay Powerseller for over 5 years. During the last two years he has dedicated most of his time to helping people learn to sell on ebay. More information can be found at his website. Click here to learn more about eBay Shipping.

2005-11-15T13:41:00.000-06:00

eBay Business - 5 Hot Tips When Writing your eBay Auction

Author: Jason James

Article:
Of course you got into EBay to have fun, right? Of course you
did, but business is still business and if you want to stay in
the EBay business then you are going to have to tighten up ship
a little bit. I'm not talking about taking the fun out of your
EBay business but rather treat it a little more customer
friendly.

I don't care what an EBay business is selling, in order for it
to become successful then it takes repetitive quality customer
service combined with merchandise that people want to buy.

Ok, so you've got the product part down pat, but you are
probably thinking "How can I provide fantastic customer service
over the computer?" Well that is what we are going to talk about
in today's article - conveying the image of success in your EBay
business through your email, your ads, and your auctions.

Believe it or not your entire EBay business image rests in the
way you communicate through your emails and your ads. It's the
only thing that your prospective customers have to go on. That
information tells your customers whether the EBay business is
legitimate or if it is trying to hustle them. It tells them
whether you have an EBay business that is trying to sneak away
with hidden fees or if you are honest.

So what if you do not have the most outstanding products to
sell. Why? Because good, clean, honest customer service conveyed
through your auctions is what counts in the end. Sure you have
to have the product they are looking for but what is going to
separate your EBay business from the rest is the way you connect
with the people whom are viewing your ads.

The first thing that you have to consider with your EBay
business is that most everyone who is shopping and bidding on
EBay views all sellers as individual people as opposed to a
'business'. Yes I realize that there are indeed many businesses
that sell on EBay but even still, that is the psychological
perception of the shopper.

So what does this have to do with you and your EBay business?
Well taking this information into account should tell you that
you need to play off of the "home seller" image as much as
possible with your EBay business. People like to support other
people whom are trying to make a living. Even though your EBay
business is actually a business, do not display that image.
Rather, come off as an individual working hard trying to make a
living on his or her own with a small EBay business.

I have a question for you; what is the very first thing that the
buyer sees after clicking on the title of your auction?

They scroll down through the description! That my friend, is
where your EBay business either fails or succeeds. And below I'm
going to share with you a few nifty trade secrets that will
explode your EBay business sales into new horizons when you
implement them into writing your EBay business auction.

1. For starters make sure that your description is not full of
pointless dribble. Nobody likes to finally find a title of a
product they want, click on the EBay business link, and then get
slammed in the face with page after page after page of verbiage
that puts them to sleep. Keep it short but concise! Your EBay
business is counting on it.

2. Write a true description. Do not fluff it with unnecessary
wordage and sentences. List down everything you know about your
item, all of the facts, every valuable point. Try to imagine any
questions that your customer might have and answer them in the
description. People want to know everything they can before
contacting your EBay business. So take care of them!

3. Be nice. Yes, be nice, be friendly, be easygoing in your
auction description. Shoppers want to feel relaxed and trusting
of your auction style. Write your information as if you were
exchanging a conversation with your prospects. Let your EBay
business show that you can communicate with literally anyone.

4. Take advantage of the "My EBay page". Every EBay business has
the chance to put friendly personality to their profile to show
their customers that they are people too who care about them.
Shine through by keeping this page updated. Your EBay business
will thank you for it in the long run.

5. Who likes too many rules? You know what I mean! Do you like
it when you see an EBay business list down a ton of rules and
regulations in their auction? I certainly don't and in fact it
turns me off to any EBay business that seems so uptight. Of
course you have to have rules but keep it light. Don't come off
so firm.

6. Last but not least keep your typeface size to an average
size. There are many different people viewing your EBay business
and some people may still be looking from an 800x600 display so
be careful not to design your auctions higher like 1024x768 or
else you just might be causing someone to click off of your EBay
business auction due to the need to scroll and scroll to find
the details.

About the author:
Jason James' website 'The Auction Resource Network' reveals his
inside secrets and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 a
month on eBay.

Claim your FREE "Top 10 eBay Selling Secrets" eBook: href="http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com">www.auctionresourcen
etwork.com

2005-11-15T12:57:00.000-06:00

Free cross promotion tool from free auction scripts

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Please also visit our Ebay Store

Cross Promotions by Free Auction Scripts eBay Cross Promotion Tool

2005-10-23T14:01:00.000-05:00

Increase Your Ebay Sales With A “SquareTrade” Seal.

By Kirsten Hawkins

SquareTrade are eBay’s chosen provider of dispute resolution services. If you want your buyers to have a little more confidence in you, you can get a SquareTrade seal, and put it on each one of your auctions. The chances are that you’ve seen these seals around. They show SquareTrade’s blue and green logo, along with the eBay user’s ID and the current date. This is followed by the text “SquareTrade Verified Seller, Click to Learn More”. SquareTrade is also used on sites other than eBay, for example Yahoo and eLance – it’s an Internet-wide trust system. So why will this little seal increase your sales? Well, it signals a number of things to your buyers. Your identity has been verified. Before you can get a SquareTrade seal, you need to let them confirm your real name, address and phone number, which they can do in various ways. They can check you out with a credit reference agency, ask you to fax them a utility bill, or send you a letter in the real mail with a code you need to enter online. You are committed to resolving disputes through SquareTrade. If you ever refuse to resolve any dispute with a buyer through SquareTrade, then they’ll take away your seal, and you’ll never get it back. This lets buyers know that there’s someone independent they can go to for help if you prove not to be trustworthy. Real people will review their case. Buyers like that someone will actually take the time to read the emails, establish the facts and all the rest of it – they feel like eBay normally traps them in a chain of automatic responses. You meet SquareTrade’s criteria. SquareTrade monitor your feedback, and if they feel you’re not up to scratch, they’ll take your seal away. They also operate an anti-fraud ‘early warning system’, which keeps track of the kinds of items you buy and sell, and takes action if your account starts doing unusual things. Buyers are covered for an additional $250 against fraud. This is very important to buyers – eBay’s standard purchase protection isn’t very much, and this more than doubles it. If they get PayPal’s fraud protection as well, then they’re covered for quite a lot overall. How Do I Sign Up? If you want a seal of your very own, all you need to do is go to http://www.squaretrade.com, choose ‘eBay seller’ under the ‘eBay seal services’ heading, and click ‘Apply’. Enter your name, address, phone number and eBay details here. You should note, though, that SquareTrade costs you $9.50 per month – it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it. Ultimately, it is often worth signing up just to get the facility to effectively dispute and remove negative feedback. If you think you can maintain a good record alone then it might not be worth subscribing to yet another service to use with eBay. Here’s a warning: there’s one thing that, if you don’t do it, could land you with an awful lot of negative feedback. Make sure you read all about it in the next email.About The Author:Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit http://www.auctionseller411.com/ for more great tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other online auctions.
For more articles on this topic and others visit http://www.article-directory.net

Kirsten Hawkins E-mail:dave@kathoderaymusic.com

2005-10-23T13:37:00.000-05:00

Woodwork for Wildlife

Hand Crafted Wood Products for Wildlife. Rustic Wooden Bird Houses, Cedar Bird Feeders, Fun Squirrel Feeders, even the popular and comical Squirrel In A Jar Feeder. These are sure to attract lots of furry and feathered friends to your yard for your viewing pleasure.

You are sure to enjoy these while you are sitting on your porch or patio watching birds and squirrels in the yard. These also make great gifts for the wildlife lover.

2005-09-21T09:21:00.000-05:00

7 Great Ways to Lose Your Shirt Using Google Adwords! by Keith Thompson

Google Adwords is a great tool! Careful use can lead to
legions of highly targeted visitors breaching the moat
around your site, and demanding to pillage your products! On
the other hand...

Adwords is also a great place to drain your advertising
dollars if you're not careful. Like any other automated
system, it requires constant feeding and attention to keep
you from wondering just why you spent hundreds of dollars
and received a paltry return on your investment. Here's 7
great ways I've found to do just that, (and yes I've been
guilty of several of these to one degree or another.)

1. - Not getting enough keywords, and I don't mean just
numbers. Good ones. A lot of people run a search on their
favorite keyword tool and pick the top ten or twenty words
or phrases getting the most traffic, thinking somehow that
THEY will beat all the others using these keywords. There is
a reason why these keywords are so popular: everybody and
their grandmother are bidding on them! A much better
approach is to come up with at least a couple hundred,
better a couple thousand words that you have a shot at
getting a high ranking for. After all, if you have 1800
keywords and can get a top 8 (first page) position for most
of them, you'll see a lot more clicks than you will chasing
the top dollar words. If you get a hundred of the lower tier
words giving you a couple of visitors a day, well, you do
the math. Not only that, but often the less expensive words
are altogether more specific, delivering far more targeted
visitors.

2. - Not creating adgroups. You should use this function! It
can help you focus your advertising much more effectively.
By arranging your keywords in tightly focused groups of 10-
30 phrases, and writng a keyword-specific headline for each
of them, you have a much greater ability to see what's
working and what's not. Also gives you a chance to test
different headlines and text copy.

3. - No negative keywords. This you gotta do. And it's so
easy. Simply add -free (or whatever else you don't want
associated with your searches) and you won't end up paying
for a lot of clicks for people who weren't interested in the
first place.

4. - Using only broad keyword searches for their keywords.
When you're paying for this stuff, you want to be as
specific as you can, particularly if you're playing in a
very competitive market. Why hope that a broad search will
return someone interested in what you're selling? Better to
get as focused as you can on the words they may be searching
for. Google helps you with this by giving you more
information on the impressions and click-throughs than you
can handle, but be pro-active, and prune the dead wood after
100 or so impressions. If they haven't produced by then, the
odds of them improving by leaps and bounds are not great.

5. - Not testing and rotating your ads. Even a small change
in a headline or ad text can make a HUGE difference!
Particularly headlines. Your ad text won't be read if the
headline is boring or uninviting. Learn to write killer
headlines, and do not be afraid to test and rotate your ads.
Also don't be shy about deleting ad groups if they're not
clicking through enough. Remember, you've got a list of
several hundred words; either these aren't right or the
headline/text need tweaking. Test, test, test!

6. - Not using the content targeted feature wisely. This is
a tricky one. Google, in it's infinite wisdom, seeks out
alternate avenues to show your ads, thus delivering
substantially more clicks to your campaign. Trouble is,
though, you have no control over this, and it IS your money.
If you are attempting to run a tightly focused campaign on
limited funds, this one is a potential budget buster. It can
easily rack up a lot of clicks, but are they of worth to
you? In my experience, the CTR is ALWAYS a lot lower. I
guess it could make sense for large campaigns with a very
popular product, but for the most part, you'll want to be
very careful. Which leads me to my last, and most important
dollar-drainer of all.

7. - Not having a GREAT sales page. This one is the hardest
to fix, but without doubt the most important. All the clicks
in the world won't mean a thing if the sales page you're
sending your hard-earned visitors to doesn't get the job
done. If it's your product, there's hope! You can address
these issues, and after testing and more testing, can
correct and come up with a page thst sings! If you're an
affiliate, you might consider a separate landing page, where
you might offer a sincere testimonial in an attempt to
presell the product more effectively. (That is not a bad
strategy even with a good sales page, as personal
recomendations go a long way!)

There you have it. 7 Great ways to lose infinitely more than
your shirt!

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in your ezine or site, so long as none of text or links
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Get the latest and best in internet marketing tools and
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at http://www.internetmarketinghere.com
Contact the author at: keith@internetmarketinghere.com

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2005-09-10T16:19:00.000-05:00

I Malls & eBay stores

Internet malls created by eBay members for eBay stores and more, could be good for eBay store fronts. Submitting eBay store URLs to these sites is another outside means to point to eBay stores. Everyone wants to optimize and market their eBay store but the means to do so are limited.

There is not a great deal of these out there, and the ones that are don't seem very good or hard to get your URL into. Some of these sites claim to be under construction, but yet they have stores listed in their search. Try to list your store URL with them and it will never show up and they have a PR of 5 or better, construction, PR of 5 or better(WHAT).

We have found one out there that is created by an eBay member and based around eBay stores. ListMyStore Virtual Mall is working hard to put together a great site to list eBay stores. Here is a typical listing and how eBay store listings will look.

If anyone knows of any other great places to list eBay stores, let everyone know here. This blog is open to discussion.

2005-09-08T10:06:00.000-05:00

Count down the days till Christmas

2005-09-05T10:46:00.000-05:00

If you don't have an eBay store yet, you might want to give it a try. Listing your items will only cost $.02 per 30 days and a Gallery picture is only $.01 more. Basic eBay stores start at $15.95 a month and the first 30 days free. You can look at Stores overview for more information on eBay stores, or you can Open your Store today!