5 Ways to Drive Traffic Away from Your eBay Auction

by: Jason James
Copyright 2005 Auction Resource Network

eBay is a one-stop solution to any one who wants to make money online. Whether you just selling a few unwanted items from around your house or your want to develop a work from home business, eBay removes many of the obstacles for you. Not many other websites can help you drive targeted traffic towards your sales, process the order on your behalf and accept payment though paypal. All you need to do then is dispatch the item to your winning bidder.

And let's not forget the biggest advantage over selling on eBay. The majority of users have money in their hand just waiting to find the right item.

So if eBays so great why would you want to drive traffic AWAY from your auctions?

Well there are a few reasons why you'd be better off selling from your own website, rather than though eBay. Firstly & most importantly, think of all the listing fees & final value fees you could save if everything you sold on eBay you could sell on your own website. Personally it would save me thousands of dollars per year alone in listing fees.

Secondly, you'll be protecting yourself from eBay policy change. Imagine you were selling thousands of ebooks weekly and then suddenly eBay policy changed to prevent any ebook listings.

Overnight your business would simply disappear & your income would vanish. It's the same with listing fees - A sudden hike in fees could wipe out your business & profit overnight.

With any business, especially an online one you need to safeguard yourself against measures that are out of your control. So by driving traffic away from your auctions to your own website you'll slowly start building up an alternative source of revenue. The following methods can be used on eBay. Some are on the borderline of eBay policy & you should check out any policy violation before using them. Saying that, a huge proportion of sellers use these on a daily basis.

1) Image Hosting

All the best sellers have auction templates developed to maintain a professional listing. And of course those sellers ALWAYS use images or graphics to accurately show the condition of the items their offering.

eBay itself allows you to upload the images to their servers, other commercial & free services are available. However really you want to store any images on your own server. Not only will search engine robots follow the links from your listings to your site (helping in improved visibility in any search engines), but many browsers will show the address of where the images are loading from in the status bar - For instance "Loading Image From http://www.visitmyshop.com" or "Waiting For http://www.visitmyshop.com". This is a great way for your visitors to see to become familiar with your site.

2) Feedback

Many sellers include their own website in the feedback comments they use. Strictly it is against eBay policy but many Powersellers use comments like "Thanks for your custom from http://www.Visitmyshop.com" as standard. This is perhaps one of the widely violated policies on eBay. I've never known of anyone receive a warning for this policy, but use it with caution as you could be the first.

3) Email Address.

eBay allows your listings to contain one email link address, in addition to the "Ask The Seller A Question Link" they already provide. Use the opportunity to show the an email account associated with your domain name for example sales@visitmyshop.com. The only condition about showing your email address is the one shown must also be your registered email account with eBay. Before you list it, make sure they match up.

4) About Me Page

eBay actually allows you to link to your own website from your About Me page, as long as the actual page does not directly offer to sell items. Therefore make it an information or about us page that you link to, BUT one where visitors can easily navigate to your catalog of items for sale. Additionally drive traffic to your About Me Page by including a link on every listings, for example "Click here to learn about me". An average basic shop on eBay will get over 1500 item views within a month. If you can drive just a small proportion of these to your about me page & then to your site you'll certainly see a difference in your non-eBay sales.

5) User Id

While eBay does not allow your user id to be that of an website, you should have it as closely to resembling your site name as possible. You CAN NOT attach .com, -com or *com to the end of your user id - this is strictly against eBay policy. However nothing would stop your id being VisitMyShop. The idea is to get your eBay visitors comfortable with dealing with you away from eBay.

I hope these tips help you drive traffic away from your auctions towards your site & lessens eBays grip on your business. Remember, Ignorance is not an excuse eBay accept if you do violate their policy. While you initially get a warning for policy violation continuous offences may result in your account being suspended. Having said that, eBay mostly rely on policing from other users to enforce their policy so as long as no reports you should be in the clear.

Good luck with your eBay activity.


About the author:
Jason James is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay Power Seller of 4 years. His website "The Auction Resource Network" reveals his inside secrets and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 a month on eBay. Get your FREE 14 Day "eBay Secrets" eCourse here: http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

5 Secrets To Make A Killing on eBay

by: Jason James
Copyright 2005 Auction Resource Network

Secret #1: Find a ‘real’ wholesale and drop ship company

Do you know what one of the biggest problem is to be successful on eBay? ‘What should I sell”? I can tell you, I get many emails per day from eBay sellers, asking me what they can sell. Let me explain this more in detail.

Let’s take John and David for example. Both are sellers and try to make money on eBay. Let’s start with John. He mainly gets his items from garage sales. So, every Saturday morning he gets up very early, hops into his car and drives around the neighbourhood to check out the garage sales. So he went last Saturday. John did not buy anything on the first two garage sales, but on his third garage sale, he found a little treasure. An old book from 1897 - for a bargain price of $10. Bingo! John was proud! ‘I can sell this for huge profit’, he thought and he went home. He took his digital camera and he made a high quality digital photo. It took quite some time but finally he was happy with the result. Then he had to upload this picture to his computer and he spent some time writing the sales copy. Late Saturday afternoon finally he was finished and launched this book onto eBay. 7-10 days later his item got sold for $75!! John is excited. He packs the item, labels it with the buyers address and then he drives to the nearest post office. Oh no, what a long line. After 15 min of waiting he could finally post this item to his customer! Wow, a lot of work for $65 profit? Don’t you think?

Let’s look at David. He usually gets up very late – usually at Saturday around lunchtime. He is still in his pyjamas and he makes himself a nice cup of coffee and gets onto the Internet. He logs into his drop ship account and browses through some hot selling product. ‘Yes, I can sell that” - A nice laptop for a bargain price of $550 (wholesale price). But David does not have to pay upfront for this item, so he just downloads the professional digital photos offered by his drop ship company to his computer. ”Oh wait”; David has just discovered that this drop ship company has also a ‘ready-to-use’ auction sales letter available. That’s really cool …and David copies and pastes the source code of this letter into his eBay listing and he launches his auction. A Dutch auction, since the drop ship company announced that they have more than one of this laptop currently available. Great, David could sell 6 laptops. He hits the submit button for this Dutch auction of 6 laptops and enjoys his coffee (which is still hot by the way). After 7-10 days David has sold all 6 laptops for $830 each. All what David does is the following: He waits until he gets the payment from his 6 customers in his paypal account, sends the address of the customers together with 6 x $550 (wholesale price) to his drop sip company via paypal. He has made pure profit of 6 x $280 = $1,680 in about 25 min of work – total. That’s why David is a smarter eBay seller than John. I think the idea is clear …drop shipping can be the answer to your problem what to sell on eBay and it can saves you a lot of time too. No packing, posting etc.

Secret #2: Have a professional auction listing

A professional eBay auction site is like your business card. If you are serious selling on eBay you should show your potential customers that you are a professional seller and that you are selling high quality products. Please, don’t just upload a photo and type the text in the description box. Do your homework and learn some HTML. Look around there are many professional tutorials and ebooks around helping you in that matter. It’s definitely worth it. And you’ll be surprised, because if your auction listing looks nice and professional potential buyers stay longer on your site and usually it’s more likely that they place a bid.

Secret #3: The money is in the follow up

“Yes, I’ve heard this before”, you may say. But, this is a very important aspect of your successful eBay career: Follow up with your customers. Send them an email ~10 days after they have purchased the product and ask them how they are going with the product and if everything is all right. Invite them to have a look at your other auctions. (You have to be careful though not offending anyone, but if the products are related and you ask how they went with the product, that’s fine). I never got complaints by doing that and your customers are happy to get some “insider tips”. You’ll be amazed how many customers will buy from you again, since they value you as a seller. Keep in mind that it is easier to keep an existing customer, instead of getting a new customer. You could also send them a thank you gift in form of a downloadable digital information product. That’s easy for you and they get some valuable information. You’ll see that your existing customers will be very thankful and they feel good that they have bought from you and will do again in the future.

Secret #4: Sell internationally

This aspect is often neglected by many eBay sellers: Sell internationally! First, check with your drop ship company in which countries they are shipping and how much postage they charge to send the item overseas. If you have sort out these details, you can go ahead and list your item internationally. You’ll be surprised how many more items you are selling when the potential buyers see: Ship worldwide. Don’t miss this opportunity or you are leaving big bucks on the table.

Secret #5: Be creative – Be different

How do you think your listing will be stand out from the crowd? Good question isn’t it. In my 4 years of being an active Power Seller, I have tried and tested a lot. First have the photo in the gallery; it just costs a bit more to list but these additional cents are well spend. A recent study has shown that people almost ignore listing without a picture in the gallery. So that’s mandatory! The next step is your title. Do you know that only the title is spidered by eBay when potential customers are searching for specific products? So, you have to make sure that your title includes as much keywords as possible. But be careful here, eBay does not like “keyword stuffing”. So, be creative and come up with 2-3 different titles for the same item. Try them all and you’ll see what works best.


About the author:
Jason James is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay Power Seller of 4 years. His website "The Auction Resource Network" reveals his inside secrets and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 a month on eBay. Get your FREE 14 Day "eBay Secrets" eCourse here: http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

5 Reasons Why Playing Music On Your Auctions Is A Bummer Of An Idea

by: Sydney Johnston
There are 147 million registered users on eBay, and tens of millions of those are desperately fighting to make sales on eBay. When trying to make their auction listings as powerful as possible, many sellers use ill-advised tactics. They think that if they entertain buyers, they are more likely to get a sale. And as the Internet becomes more multi-media, there are many temptations thrown in our way, especially the use of sound.

Using background music or sounds, unless you're selling music, is probably a bad idea. If you are going to include music or even an audio product pitch, you are wise to include a command panel that will allow the viewer to listen or not as she pleases. Do not! Do not! Do not! set up your auction listing so that a potential customer is greeted with loud music as soon as they click on your page. Here's why:

1. Potential buyers are there to see your Gucci handbag or Oakley sunglasses, not to be entertained. Making a buying decision is serious business and you to do not want to take their attention away from your merchandise. Instead, the entire focus of your page should be directed at whatever you are selling. Music is simply a distraction.

2. At this time, we cannot count on the quality of audio technology. Buyers have different browsers, different connections and possibly antiquated equipment. Even worse than unwanted music is unwanted music that sounds terrible, that is scratchy, too loud or of awful quality.

3. You will most likely not know what kind of music your perspective buyer wants to hear. If you are selling to teens you can be reasonably certain that they do not want to hear Big Band music. But can you know whether they prefer Eminem or Travis Twitt? Obviously not.

4. Consider the situation of your buyer. He might be prowling eBay while he is at work and is not supposed to be surfing the net. Sudden blaring music as the Vice-President of the company walks by is the last thing he wants. Or a Mom might have just gotten her colicky baby to sleep and when your music wakes up a cranky infant you can be certain you will never get a sale from that irate parent.

5. Audio files take longer to download than text. If your prospective customer has dialup instead of a high-speed connection, they will most likely be gone before your auction page has even loaded.

Ignore the temptation to make your auctions 'more exciting', and instead, concentrate every element on the page on your merchandise. The last thing you want to do is distract a serious buyer who might decide to purchase. Let them find their entertainment elsewhere!


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.
http://www.auction-genius-course.com

5 Instant Income Streams That No One Knows About

by: Tukshad Engineer
Something truly dramatic has happened over the past couple of decades. The world has made a transition from the industrial age to the information age, and the income rules that used to apply a few decades ago have now been blown apart. Possibly the biggest myth in personal wealth creation today is that you should focus on one thing for your income. We are all trained into believing that in order to be successful you need to train in a chosen profession. Then get a “good job” within that industry and slog your way up the corporate ladder. In other words we are all programmed to compete and succeed at the rat race by our parents, the school system and our peers. The simple truth however is that very few people gain either happiness nor financial stability by using this cruel, tired old formula. And whichever way you look at it, the problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still just a rat.

If you wish to gain happiness and financial independence then you need to find new income sources and this insiders report will help you do just that. I am not advising that you rush to work tomorrow, throw hot coffee at your boss’s face while quitting to start up new ventures – everything takes time. But you should certainly consider using a wide number of different methods to provide income streams for you. Do not fall into the trap of depending on one source of income for your livelihood. Look around and you will discover that there are hundreds of different and very feasible ways of making money. The key is to educate yourself and then take action.

So what are the five income streams that you can set-up immediately to earn a constant stream of income? We’ll look at these one by one:

(1) Arbitrage – Do you know that the internet age has resulted in thousands of online bookmakers all competing for your money? Now if you are not a gambling man do not worry because arbitrage is an investment concept that can be used to derive a guaranteed 5% to 20%+ profit within a few hours with no possible chance of losing your original cash. How is this possible? Well online bookmakers often have huge differences in opinion on the same sporting events – this creates some incredible anomalies in the way that certain sporting events are priced between different bookmakers. This is great news for us because everyday these anomalies allow us to invest money on all sides of a sporting event so that no matter who wins/loses/draws we can walk away with a risk free and guaranteed profit. These arbitrage opportunities are present many hundreds of times each week and the beautiful part is that you can find them in as little as five minutes per day once you know how. This is one of the least known and used income sources around and one that you should certainly set-up and profit from.
(2) Recycling Cell Phones For Profits – Last year over 100 million cell phones were replaced. Only a tiny fraction of those were recycled. Many end up tossed away at the bottom of peoples attics, or are simply thrown away. Did you know that each old cell phone is worth upto $70 (although on average this is closer to the $20 mark)? Cell phones are a multi-billion dollar business and that trend is growing on a global level – governments are beginning to offer incentives for those who are willing to recycle their phones and recycling companies are now setting up and offering a decent level of cash per phone that they receive. As an individual there are some very powerful ways of collecting hundreds of phones per week and selling these on for some monster profits. The start up costs are practically zero and this is a business you can operate from home.
(3) Importing Goods From India And China – If you want a very solid, profitable and enjoyable work-from-home business then this is it. Some of the most popular goods cost a fraction of the cost that they are available for in UK/USA/Europe – for example I regularly have access to top quality items from India that cost me 95% less per item than in the UK. One of the best things about importing for profits is that once you setup a product and find a supplier, you have secured an income stream that lasts, often, for years into the future. There are literally MILLIONS of products that can be imported profitably into your home country – finding suppliers is not very difficult and you can boost your income further by selling them on auction sites such as ebay. There are also other benefits when you operate an import/export business from home – you can write off travel expenses against profits and the set-up costs are actually very low. Get involved today.
(4) Reselling Works In The Public Domain – Have you heard of the public domain? Maybe. Did you know that there are literally millions of books, videos, plays, courses, music and more that exist within the public domain that you can legally take, brand as your own and sell to keep 100% of the profits? Did you know that there are online sites that actually GIVE you text documents of public domain works – you just download the document and you’re ready to repackage it into your own product. Not a lot of people know that Walt Disney created the Disney empire out of a story that he found on the public domain – it is simply a treasure trove of cash waiting to be discovered.
(5) Ebay – I know it is hardly “unknown” but it really had to be mentioned - If you have not ventured into this incredible opportunity, you really ought to. Receiving over 1.5 billion page views a month and 9000 new customers everyday, ebay is a sellers dream. No matter what you wish to sell, there is a buyer waiting for you on ebay. There are powersellers who are making $100,000 and more per year with ebay – and if they can do it the simple fact is so can you. Simple, addictive and fun you should setup your eBay income stream today.

So there you have it – five instant income streams that you can setup today to earn an immediate online income with little or no capital. Now that you know about them the next (and most important) step is to actually start (something that sadly 95% of the readers statistically will not do). Remember, that once you set-up a new income stream it will derive cash for you years (if not decades) into the future. Don’t be lazy – get started today!


About the author:
Download the groundbreaking “5 Red Hot Income Streams That No One Knows About” ebook for F-R-E-E and set-up your internet income streams today:
http://www.global-ebooks.com/incomesecrets.htm

5 Hidden Resources For eBay Users

by: Jason James
Copyright 2005 Auction Resource Network

Many thousands of people making a living both buying & selling on eBay. Currently ranked as the 37 biggest site on the net (according to Alexa figures) eBay shows no signs of slowing down, even fortune 500 companies are opening eBay shops to sell surplus & unwanted stock. The following are five resources that I use personally & encourage you to use them to increase your eBay profits with ease.

Reports show that over 90% of searches on eBay are done using the search facility. What users do not know about eBays search factility is that by default it only searches the item titles - not the descriptions of the items. Remember this fact as it will show the significance of some of the resources listed below.

1) FatFingers

How professional a seller are you? Do you check your listings before submitting them or even does someone else proof read them for you? With millions of listings on eBays networks of sites at any one time, a small proportion of these listings contain errors - & a misspelt word is about the biggest error you can make.

Imagine your selling a Sony Television for example. What if you misspell the item as Sony Televisoin. Anyone who searches for the term "Sony Television" simply isn't going to be presented with your item. Only those eBayers who search manually though the category will find your items. Needless to say that if people can't find your item, they're unable to bid on them.

FatFingers is a service you can use to find all misspelt variations of a term. Why would you need such a service?

Well obviously if an item has low visibility on eBay it's also likely to have zero or few bids enabling you to snap yourself up a bargain. I've known people use this service to make a full time living, purely buying items cheaply and relisting them without errors.

Details at: Fatfingers.com

2) eBay Pulse

Back to the search facility eBay pulse shows you the top 10 searched keywords in every category. It's a real gem of a service, obviously by looking at the most widely used search terms you can see what eBayers are after. And if your selling in this category, by inserting some of these keywords within your title your items will be seen by more users.

The only thing to watch out with this service is make sure the keywords are relevant to your item, IF NOT DON'T USE THEM. How many times have you saw listings such as "SONY PANASONIC LG WIDESCREEN DIGITAL TELEVISION GUIDE", - listings such as these are well thought out to earn high visibility from the way users search. Anyone searching for the items with any of the keywords will uncover your listings.

While it may lead to a high number of views, firstly fellow users will get annoyed if they find your item completely unrevealed to what they searched for, Secondly keyword spamming as it is known, is against eBay policy and will lead to your item being pulled. I use pulse daily with all my listings but make sure it's relevant to your item first.

Details at: pulse.ebay.com

3) Keyword-Pro

Keyword-Pro is a commercial subscription service which is similar to eBay pulse. However, the main difference is Keyword-Pro offers a much more in depth list of relevant keywords. It lists the top 50 keywords for every category for both eBay.co.uk & eBay.com. This is a great addition, especially if any of the terms found in eBay pulse are not relevant to your item.

Keyword-Pro is available as both a web service or as a small program that downloads the list onto your P.C. It's data is updated weekly to keep you informed of the latest search terms.

Details at Trading-Web-Solutions.com/keywords

4) Selling Manager

When you first open a selling account on eBay, options listed under the sell tab of eBay are enough to get you by. However, you can upgrade to a more in depth service known as Selling Manager. As eBay describes the service "eBay Selling Manager is our online sales management tool for medium to high volume sellers". It allows you to track every eBay sale, customise your feedback comments, print shipping labels & much more. It saves me about four hours a week tracking orders and watching my sales.

Selling Manager is FREE on eBay.co.uk & has a small monthly charge of on eBay.com (after one a month trial free). Once I moved over to Selling Manager, there's simply no way I would go back.

Details at: Click on services once you've logged into your eBay account.

5) eBay Popular Products

Here you can see, directly from eBay, what the most popular products are in several categories. an invaluable tool for an eBay seller.

Details at: http://product-index.ebay.com/best_selling_1.html

I hope you find these services useful & time saving in your goal for a successful home business on eBay. Remember, your most important resource is your time when your starting or building up an online business & if you discover any site, person or opportunity that can save you time give it the attention & serious consideration it deserves. Every top Internet marketers constantly educate themselves by purchasing & reviewing almost every new product released. The way I look at it, if an ebook costs $197 and the information within the ebook saves me this or allows me to make an additional $197 it's well worth it - once you can do it once you'll be able to repeat the exercise over and over again making repeated profits. If you discover a precious eBay related resource let me know & I'll consider revising this list for future editions.

Good luck with your eBay selling.


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 14 Day "Learn How to Sell on eBay" e-Course Here: http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com