"EBAY SELLING" EZINE
April 10 , 2007
In this issue:
* New Site: AuctionGeniusWealthPlan.com
* The "Popemobile": Protecting Yourself
From Thrill Seekers & Non-Paying Bidders
* 5 Reasons Why You Might Want To Invest $1
* Learn How To Use MSN's Ad Center For FREE
And Receive $50 Worth Of Free Ads
* The Biggest Single Mistake I've Made With My Business - Are You Making It Too?
* NEVER! NEVER! NEVER! Complain
About Computer Problems Again! {A True Story}
New Site: AuctionGeniusWealthPlan.com
If you want to change your financial situation in life, the first problem you MUST solve is cash flow! I solved that problem for myself with eBay.
But ... once you can pay your bills, you will most likely start thinking about wealth. What's the difference? To me, wealth is money that comes in without my constant participation & effort. Yep, lots of cash flows in but I have to keep working to make that happen. So I've been looking for ways to get that money coming in while I go on vacation. About six months worth of vacation.
I solved my problem with the Auction Genius Wealth Plan and we just opened our new "doors", so to speak. And I had a professional designer do a book cover for me. What a change from my past pitiful efforts. :-)
If you haven't seen this and would like to get a free copy, please do.
http://AuctionGeniusWealthPlan.com
Here's the pathetic job I did!
I think I have a dim future as a graphic designer. :-)
The "Popemobile": Protecting Yourself
From Thrill Seekers & Non-Paying Bidders
If you're wondering what to sell on eBay, consider the used car of a pope. Back in May of 2005, there were 8,500,000 hits to an auction of a Volkswagen Golf that was formerly owned by Pope Benedict XVI. The car was won by the Golden Palace casino for €188,938.88 and was dubbed "The Popemobile" by the news media. The Golden Palace has achieved a certain notoriety just for buying weird stuff like a haunted picture and the famous cheese sandwich.
Now this Volkswagen is for sale again, so if you're interested in a famous car here's your chance. Currently, there are 66 bids and the current price is US $202,900.00, which hasn't met the reserve. Personally, the fact that somebody famous has used or owned an item means nothing to me, but I know that isn't true for many people. Perhaps this is one of those famous 'pieces of history'?
Auction for a 1999 Volkswagen Golf
The most interesting part of this auction is that the seller is protecting the auction from publicity seekers by allowing pre-approved bidders only. {"Note: This listing is restricted to pre-approved bidders or buyers only. Email the seller to be placed on the pre-approved bidder/buyer list."}
I don't know what qualifications the seller has for approving bidders, and I can't know unless I email and ask. I'm not going to do that because I have zero interest in buying this car, but eBay does allow ways to police buyers. You can:
* Block bidders and buyers for any of your listings
* Pre-approve a list of bidders/buyers for a particular listing
* Cancel bids for your item listing
The rules on pre-approving buyers state:
"You can create your own pre-approved bidder/buyer list for any item and only allow those on your list to bid or buy.
- Each pre-approved list specifies the eBay members who can bid on your item or purchase it with Buy It Now. Any user who is not in your pre-approved list will be asked to contact you by email before they can place a bid or purchase your item. Each pre-approved list only applies to one item, so you can restrict bidding or buying on one of your listings without changing the others.
- You can add and delete pre-approved bidders/buyers until your listing ends."
This is a very high-profile auction with a unique item. The auction counter currently displays 154,870 and a historical car like this might bring the nuts out of the woodwork. So for this auction, pre-approval is most likely a wise idea. Anyone who can afford this car, and truly wants to own it, surely won't mind this extra step.
However, in general this isn't such a great idea. And it's a real bummer if there are others selling the same merchandise as you. After all, if you have a choice of several auctions and one requires pre-approval, and the others don't, which one would YOU choose. Use this tool cautiously and only in certain very specific situations where your merchandise is:
1) Unique
2) High profile
3) Expensive
5 Reasons Why You Might Want To Invest $1
I don't hang out on public discussion boards. Especially those on eBay. If you want to get depressed in a BIG hurry, hang out and read the negativity and griping that goes on. You will feel your energy decline by the second!. Recently Perry Marshall said:
"You know what I hate about online discussion forums? Too many boneheads bellyaching and moaning instead of solving real problems ..."
Amen, Perry. So I only participate on four forums - and one of them belongs to Keyword Avalanche. Here are a few of the reasons that I like the Keyword Avalanche site:
1. One of the instructor/partners is a military captain named Tim Gorman. Quite simply, Tim is THE best article marketer I know. I use articles heavily in our business and I've learned so much from Tim that my process is much more effective. At this time, he doesn't have any courses, eBooks, etc. - you can only learn from him inside KA. I'm going to meet him at the Systems Seminar in a couple of weeks and I'm really looking forward to it. Tim has a full time job in the army - and still has created a part time Net business earning $20,000 a month. No tricks, no 'black hat' search engine tactics, no sneaky stuff. He's doing things the right way and being richly rewarded for it. Gotta admire that.
2. You get credits for Nichebot. If you're not familiar with Nichebot (nichebot.com), it's one of only two keyword tools I use to play the search engine game that Brad Fallon & Andy Jenkins have taught me. I love the keyword research - which is too involved to explain here - and I also love the ROI tool. This is, of course, Return On Investment and it works like this ...
The ROI Tool
+ Total Clicks: (Total monthly clicks from publisher)
Let's say you've chosen a keyword that costs $.12 and you set a limit of $1.20/day, or 10 clicks. Using the standard of 30 days in a month, you would then receive 300 clicks.
+ CPC: (
Estimated average cost-per-click)
+ Conversion rate: let's assume, for this example, that your conversion rate is 5%
+ Profit: you're selling an ebook for $9.95
Would this be a worthwhile campaign? Judge for yourself ...
This handy dandy little tool has saved me from a lot of mistakes.
3. There are currently 254 videos on every possible topic you can think of, like how to FTP, set up webhosting, email accounts and autoresponders, copywriting, setting up a sales page, testing, ezines, keyword research, ebooks, pdf, blogs, shopping carts, feeds, easy & instant web design tricks, traffic, getting links, and ... whew, you get the idea.
4. There are a ton of freebies, including articles & templates each and every month. They also negotiate discounts on many of the latest software and info products. I've learned to never buy anything without checking on KA first.
5. Here is a list of what's coming in the next couple of months:
| * The Guts and Step-by-Steps of Article Marketing * How to Wisely Pick a CPA Offer * List Building 101 * Step-by-Step List Setup at Aweber * The Psychology of an Opt-in Page * Dissecting the Mind of a Copywriter and Good Copy * Adding Viral Elements to List Building * Why Just Any OTO You Slap Up May Not Work! * Writing Offers and Writing Powerful Offers * Creating And Launching Your Own Software Product (The Pitfalls to Avoid or Suffer) * The NEW Ins-and-Outs of Reciprocal Linking * Power Reciprocal Linking (High Volume - Low Risk) * Emailing Writing Strategies and Psychology Behind It * Power-Positioning Your Site for a Corporate Acquisition * Creating True Joint Venture Deals (not list marketing) * Recruiting Super Affiliates, Joint Ventures Partners and First Contact Secrets You Should NOT Be Without * Keyword Research Insights and Tips to Using NicheBOT 2 * Psychology of Dissecting Your Prospect and Profiling Your Prospect or Customer * How to Write Sizzling Hot Web Copy (videos and interviews) * Do I really need the Butterfly Marketing Script or can I use a cheaper alternative? (How to structure your entire sales process) * Step-by-Step Creating Your Own Membership Site * How to Setup $1 or FREE Trial Offers to Achieve Your $$ Goals * How to Setup And Easily Track Your Visitors for FREE including Conversion Tracking as Well * How to Think a Step Ahead and Increase Your Revenues Before You Ever Launch Your Site/Idea/Product/Service * Proven Launch and Re-Launch Strategies that You Can Copy and the Psychology and Flow of Each Process Used * How to Structure Your Site For Maximum Impact (Salesletter or Content Site - With Actual Case Studies) |
* How to Streamline Your Customer Service or Inquiries and Respond Most of the Time Within Two Mouse Clicks Live Tele-Seminar Trainings that we have planned: * How to Get Your Own "Self" Out of Your Way and Position
Yourself for Certain Success |
There is lots more but this is what I personally use the most. Your interests might be different and you will find other items to be more valuable. But the good news is that you can check all this out for one measly dollar!
http://onedollar.auctionknowhow.com
This is a protected area, not available to the public, and you need the information below to access it:
Username: kashe
Password: vault
Keyword Avalanche is NOT accepting new members at this time and won't allow any new members until August, 2007 so you have to go in this back door - or wait till the end of summer.
http://onedollar.auctionknowhow.com
Username: kashe
Password: vault
Learn How To Use MSN's Ad Center
& Receive $50 Worth Of Free Ads
"Do you need more traffic to your websites and auctions?"
Of course, I included the picture above because the question is so absurd. We ALL want more qualified potential customers looking at whatever we have to sell, no matter how well we're already doing.
One major source of traffic on the Net is the pay per click search engines. I admit to NOT being an expert on this subject and the only one I've actually tried is Google AdWords. However, I recently decided to give the new Microsoft AdCenter a whirl and was delighted to receive an offer from Jeremy Palmer, author of "Quit Your Day Job". Jeremy is one of those super affiliates and drives traffic to his goodies via the new kid on the block - the MSN Ad Center. What I like about pay per click is the ...
SPEED! SPEED! SPEED!
I love getting free search engine traffic but it truly does take time. So a good strategy is to set up a site to get traffic from the search engines - AND EBAY - but use pay per clicks in the early days of a site. Up till now, I've only used AdWords but have recently been looking in the direction of Yahoo Publisher Network and MSN.
So ... it was timely when a friend offered his free video on MSN. Here's some of what I learned:
* I have an intense interest in autopilot. I learned some cool ways to more easily manage my MSN campaigns
* Keyword & bidding tips
* How your traffic can be highly targeted
* How MSN is different from Google - and from Yahoo, naturally, although I don't know Yahoo at all, either
*
Best of all, he offers a live demo that shows how to use the MSN Ad Center
What I think I will like the most about the MSN ads: we can link directly to an affiliate site without building our own pages. We can't do that at Google, anymore.
If you want to see the free class and get the $50 credit, go here:
Points to note:
* The offer is only good to customers in the United States
* The $50 credit only extends to new Microsoft AdCenter accounts
But while the offer is only good for new US-based customers, everybody will benefit from the free training.
The Biggest Single Mistake I've Made With My Business - Are You Making It Too?
Outsourcing 101
In one of the dozen so-called careers I had before I figured out the Internet (well, sort of, anyway :-) I had three employees. I have a large daylight basement and I carpeted it, added workstations, some phones and computers and I became "An Employer". Drum roll.
I have to say that I didn't much care for that experience. There were a lot of reasons like the time involved in training, the government regulations and paperwork, the expense. But my main gripe was that I seemed to have a J-O-B again! Cripes! I started my own biz to get OUT of the job market and here I was back in it, because I mostly needed to be there or things didn't run as smoothly as I liked. Yes, it's true that perhaps my employer-skills needed some improvement, but nevertheless I felt an overwhelming relief when I deliberately shut down that enterprise and became a mere home business owner again.
I've avoided outside help ever since which has been a GIANT MISTAKE!
Recently, though, we've started hiring help and it's wonderful. We have a full time employee named Gwen and before 2007 is up, we are hiring two more employees. Gwen gets links for us and gives us webmaster support as well. We are going to hire a full time writer and another 'Gwen' soon.
The experience has been wonderful in every way. For instance, one of our problems was that we had a large number of articles ready to go on our websites - but not enough time to get them online. Result: a huge number of relevant search-engine-friendly articles just languishing on my hard drive. Gwne has now formatted dozens and dozens of articles for us and that awful backlog is beginning to clear out.
In addition, she gets links for us and does all kinds other chores. She's currently getting links for 8 of our sites, from a huge list of directories. Just keeping up with what sites she's gone to and what sites of ours she's submitted to the directories is a massive chore! I'm so glad she's handling this for us.
Here's the help that Gwen's company offers:
Link Builder: $575 per month
* Directory Submission
* Search Engine Submission
* Article Submission
* Signature Linking
* Researching for Link Partners
* Emailing bloggers
* Link trading
* Banner trading
* General Link BuildingWebmaster Support: $625
* Forum moderation
* Website Testing
* Software Testing
* Installing CMS software
* Encoding
* Keyword Optimization
* Content Optimization
* Site Architecture Optimization
* PPC Software Management
* Website Maintenance
* Researching
* Blogging
* Blog / Forum Creation
* Online Customer Contact
* News Letter Generation
* Affiliate Marketing
* Website Promotion
* Tracking Website Statistics
* Search Engine OptimizationProgrammer: $775
* Turbo C / C++
* Turbo Pascal
* HTML / XHTML
* Perl
* Java
* Java Script
* CSS
* PHP
* Auto CAD
* SQL / MYSQL
* Visual Basic
* MS DOS
* Oracle
* Assembly languageGraphic Designer: $675
* Print / Graphic Designing
* Website designing
* Banner designing
* Logo Designing
* Layout / picture editing
* Chart / graph creationWriter: $625
* Article Writing
* Post Writing
* News
* Business Letter Writing
* Keyword Research
* Press Release Writing
* Advertisement Generation
* Website Content Writing
* Script Writing
Questions About Hiring An Employee
* What country does your helper come from?
The Philippines. The employees work our hours, though, which means they work at night.
* Do the employees work at home?
No, they work in a regular office. They have work stations, computers and an office manager.
* What are their hours?
They work a 44 hour week, which means we're paying less than $3 per hour. My partner discovered that the average annual income in the Philippines. is $1300 American dollars/year. So, even though the company takes a large part of the salary, this is a really good job for her.
* How do you communicate with your employee?
Via Instant Messenger, email and telephone.
* What are their duties?
This is YOUR employee. They will do whatever you direct them to do - within their level of expertise, of course. A writer can't do programming for you.
* What if I can't yet afford, or don't yet need, a full time employee?
We have helped several people find a partner, someone who also wants a part time worker. If you will let us know what you want, perhaps we can help.
* If I share an employee with someone else, how do we work out the hours?
That is entirely up to you and your partner. When I first started working with this company, I shared an employee with another person. We simply alternated weeks.
If you're seriously interested in some help, we'll be glad to direct you to the company office manager so that you can talk with her directly. Please go here and let us know what you need, including
1. Full time or part time?
2. What kind of help do you require? Link master? Writer? Programmer? Graphic designer? Webmaster support?
http://cs.cyberws.com/assist/desk/general
Register ===> Log in ===> Submit A Ticket ===> Outsourcing Assistance
About Computer Problems Again!
{A True Story}
"Hello, technical support, how can I help you" ?
LADY: "Last night my computer started making a lot of hissing noise at me so I shut it down. This morning when I turned it on the computer started hissing and cracking, then started smoking and a bad smell, then nothing".
SUPPORT: "I will have a technician come over first thing this morning, just leave the computer just like it is, so they can find the problem and fix it, or change it out with another computer. Give me your address; phone number and the technician will be there just as soon as they can".
When the technician got there, the lady showed the technician where the computer was, explained what happened and this is what the technician found wrong.
And you thought you had computer problems!
