eBay News – Reviews of Upcoming eBay Changes
eBay’s Seller Updates
Spring 2009
During the past year I started selling on eBay, obtained PowerSeller status, stopped selling on eBay and I am back selling on eBay. It has been one heck of a ride, but one thing has remained constant about eBay: some people embrace eBay as the world’s largest market place and use it to their advantage and other despise eBay and bad mouth the site every chance that they can get. Most of the negativity comes from sellers or people that cannot stand all of the rules and fees that eBay has in place and they “boycott” eBay for this reason. Well, that is just plain dumb!
Does eBay sometimes make changes that hurt the sellers? Sure, but we have to remember, it is eBay’s playground and they make the rules we must follow and it is up to us to adapt and adjust to these changes. In case you were unaware, eBay has recently announced a set of changes for the spring of 2009. According to eBay these changes “are designed to drive more buyers to eBay and more sales for you – while making it easier and more
profitable for you to sell.” These updates are scheduled to take place the week of June 15, 2009. Here is quick review of some of the changes.
Easier, more visual shopping—plus buyer incentives to drive more sales
To enhance the buyer experience and reduce seller’s cost, eBay is introducing new item page, new product page, multi-variation Fixed Price listings and the introduction of a buyer’s loyalty program. Though all of these stand out as great changes, from a seller’s standpoint the multi-variation Fixed Price Listing and the buyer incentives seem to stand out the most. Depending on what you sell on eBay, the Multi-Variation Fixed Price
listing could be very useful. Instead of having to create a listing for every color and size of an item, all variations of the same basic item can be condensed into one listing – thus saving you money on listing fee which increases profits! As far as a buyer’s incentive/loyalty program, well it seems long over due. Every store in the world seems to have some type of reward card, so it is about time eBay got on board.
Key information to set buyer expectations and help reduce your costs
eBay is adding tracking into the My eBay section. This way a buyer can check on the status of their order very easily. The buyer will not have to go to the invoice or order details pages to find out the status of their
purchase. I have already used this service with my resale rights products that I sell on eBay. I recently switched how I ship my products from doing it myself to a fulfillment company and since I am not printing my own
shipping labels, I can now easily add the tracking number to the order. This has two benefits. First, for the buyer it will allow them to easily and quickly find information regarding their purchase. For sellers it will cut down on
the number of “what’s up or where is my with my purchase?” questions.
Other changes to make selling on eBay more efficient
eBay is working to move the dispute resolution process exclusively to eBay. When I first started to sell on eBay, I was unaware that disputes could take place on PayPal and I unknowingly ignored a customer’s request for a
refund for several weeks. By moving the dispute process to eBay it will eliminate the seller from having to monitor both eBay and PayPal. This will save the seller time.
I have saved the best for last. eBay is making their Selling Manager subscription free for all sellers starting on June 15, 2009! Though this does not have all the advantages of the Selling Manager Pro, but will help any seller not wanting to store inventory information on eBay.
Overall, the new changes eBay has schedule for the spring of 2009 seem to be a great benefit for both buyers and sellers!
A History of eBay
eBay Seller ID Complete-Home-Business-Guide
eBay is starting its second decade of business. eBay was created in the fall of 1995 by Pierre Omidyar. At the time eBay was called AuctionWeb. He wanted AuctionWeb to be an online market place and was only one part of Omidyar’s plan for his company Echo Bay.
eBay became extremely popular in a short period of time. People were selling all kinds of odd items and people were actually buying! There was a trust factor between buyer and seller and it could be left to run itself (talk about the ultimate automated business). Much like a live auction house, eBay was designed to collect a fee on each sale completed. Like any good business owner, Omidyar invested the money eBay was generating back into eBay.
He decided to quick his full time job once the site was earning him more and he could dedicate more time to the development and usability of eBay. In 1996, Omidyar at the seller and buyer feedback system. If you do not know, great feedback score is how a seller develops trust on eBay. It was one of the greatest additions to eBay ever.
The official name change to eBay was in 1997. It was changed to eBay because the users were already calling it that for a long time. Talk about the name finding the site! During this time, a great deal of time and money went into promoting eBay. Omidyar branded his site with the now famous eBay logo.
During the dotcom boom of the late 1990’s eBay became big business. The Internet’s growth during this time directly correlated to the success of eBay. People were starting to sell more than junk and collectibles on eBay. It was a viable source with enough traffic for individuals and companies to sell new items for a profit. Unlike many of the web sites that did not survive the dotcom crash, eBay is still standing strong.
eBay was a US based company Up until 1999, when sites were launched in UK, Australia and Germany. eBay expanded by purchasing half.com (which is similar to Amazon) . Now having sites in over 15 countries.
How that you know the history of eBay, perhaps you’d like to know how it could work for you? Or you could share how it has worked for you!
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing can be completed in many ways. Affiliate marketing provides many individuals and companies with opportunity to make money. For affiliate marketing to work a partnership must be developed between the affiliate and the merchant. You can achieve long term results with affiliate marketing. It is easy to make mistakes.
The first mistake many new affiliates make is they try to sell the product. As an affiliate you job is to pre-sell the product with good content. You can get paid as in affiliate in many ways.
- You can refer a visitor to a website for a product for sale and you will be paid a commission per sale.
- You refer a visitor to an opt-in box. You may get paid for that action. Some Internet marketers know they will make a certain amount of money off of every opt-in, so they are willing to pay for just the op-in. Plus you may get paid on the back they customer buys or upgrades later.
- This seems crazy, but there are services that will pay you for just sending visitors to a site. Now that is cost per action at its easiest.
There are some things you must understand about affiliate marketing before you go jumping into to this head strong. I know you are excited to start, but… the merchant is the creator or owner of the rights to a product, service or action that is being paid. The affiliate or affiliate marketer is the the person or company promoting the said products services or actions.
You want to make sure you are promoting products, services or actions on your site that are related to your site. You would not want to be linking to a site that sells maternity clothes to a gardening web site. A good match would be a stay-at-home-dad’s site be online job options.
Affiliate marketing has many advantages for the merchant and the affiliate. Done correctly on both ends makes promoting others products a viable income source.
Increase Your Productivity with Private Label Rights Articles
Filed under: Internet Marketing, Private Label Rights, Social Networking, Your Internet Income Advisor
Do you have a hard time creating content for your blog or website?
In a previous post, I discussed how to write high quality blog content using the different types of essays styles. In this post I would like to discuss another way to develop quality web content.
In the world of Internet marketing, creating a quality web content one of the keys to attracting repeat traffic to your site. The more traffic you can have coming back to your site, the more likely these people will come to trust you and buy the products that you are recommending. Another reason for developing original website content is to improve your rankings in with search engines.
There are all kinds of information on the Internet concerning duplicate content versus original content when it comes to search engine rankings. Even though the algorithms the search engines use does change all of the time and there are conflicting opinions about using duplicate content, it seems that a site or blog full of original content has more value than a site full of reused private label rights (PLR) products.
Now, what are PLR’s? PLR products are eBooks, articles or essays that you purchase and can claim as yours. No matter what kind of product you have you can slap you name on the product and claim the content as your own. When using PLR articles or essays for your website I suggest you rewrite the content with your own voice. Even though some people and experts claim that using duplicate content will not hurt your search engine rankings, I say why take that chance with your website. By rewriting PLR articles you will increase your productivity by decreasing the amount of time you spend creating quality content for your website.
By decreasing the amount of time you spend on creating quality content for website, you can spend more time promoting your website. Owning, operating and monetizing a website is not all about the on page factors. You should concern yourself with the off page factors part 1 and off page factors part 2. With more time to concern
yourself with building relationships with other marketers and bloggers you can establish yourself as an expert in your niche.
Why Sell Information Products on eBay?
Filed under: Internet Marketing, Resale Rights on eBay, Selling on eBay, Your Internet Income Advisor
eBay Seller ID Complete-Home-Business-Guide
The Internet has been called the information super highway since it has started. I remember the early 90’s, while I was working on a degree in mathematics and my college’s library got 6 computers that had access to the Internet. Web pages were very basic and graphics were very limited, but it was great place to get information and because of the Internet, regular people like us can make money by selling or promoting products. Since the Internet is a wealth of information, I started my home based Internet business by selling information products on eBay. What is an information product you ask? Well it is an electronic book or eBook. It is just like a book that you would get at any local or national chain book store, but you download it onto your computer and you do not have to worry about getting any paper cuts. If you like tangible items, you can always print the eBooks out from your printer, but with today’s movement of “being green”, it is best to just leave the eBooks on your hard drive or flash drive. There are three main reasons to start selling on information on eBay. First, eBay has a ton of targeted traffic. This means there are millions of visitors to eBay that want to spend money. Nowhere else in the world will you be able to get that kind of exposure! Secondly, selling on eBay is safe and the financial risk is minimal. Basicly, you do not need to risk alot of your hard earned money to start an eBay business. Third, the experience selling on eBay shoud lead to selling and promoting products on the Internet. Selling eBooks or information products on the Internet is virtually an auto pilpot business where you can literally make money while you sleep and not have to do anything. In fact, eBay can be an auto pilot business with the eBay software Auction Acrobat. If you decide to use Auction Acrobat to automate your eBay business, you will gain email leads that can be logged into aweber or getresponse. I personally use aweber and I have no problems with the software at all. Many of the emails I recieve from other marketers use one of these auto responder services. Once into your auto responder, you can email market these customers and turn them into customers off of eBay.
How to Write High Quality Blog Content
Click the image for good brain storming ideas.
The look of a blog or website is not the only factor that contributes to the amount of traffic a website gets. The content on a website plays a major factor keeping traffic engaged for more than one page. I have been to several websites that were very plain and had very limited graphics if any at all, but these blogs were very active, because they were filled with great content.
The trick is being able to write website content consistently and related to your niche. You do not need to update your blog everyday to get consistent and quality traffic, but you should post a few times a week. If you were to make a post at least 3 times a week, you would be making 12 posts a months. That is the equivalent of writing 12 essays per month. If you are anything like me, writing does not come that naturally and you are going to struggle making 12 informative well written posts per month.
One way to write original website content is to write try and write using the different types of essays:
- persuasive essay
- argumentative essay
- narrative essay
By using these types of essays as a guiding force, you will be able to continually write quality content for you website or blog. The persuasive essay can be used to convince a reader to purchase a product. The argumentative essay should be used to present and argue a side of a controversial topic in your niche. The narrative essay (which this post is) is used to give information to your reader.
If you keep this in mind as you are developing content for you blog or website, you will have an easier time producing content.
Your Internet Income Advisor | David John
Filed under: Internet Marketing, Your Internet Income Advisor
A Stay at Home Dad's Blog Logo | David John
As I started my Internet marketing business, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I started selling on eBay with the guidance of John Thornhill’s 90 Day Power Seller Challenge and JL Scott’s Cracking the Auction Code. I have seen the Make Money on the Internet ads all over the Internet and thought they were all scams, but I have realized several things over the past year:
- You can make it big online
- It requires actual work
- It will require some learning and there are great information products to help you along the way
Statement number 3 is where I fit in to the equation. I want to be Your Internet Income Advisor and I want you to learn from me. I do post how to videos on YouTube about internet marketing skills that I have learned. I plan to post and maybe host videos on this blog. I would like the videos to be well done and about what my readers want. If you do not know how to do something, use my Contact Me Form to send me questions or video ideas or post a comment.
If you want to make money online without doing any work, then you are going to think many of the information products out on the market are a scam. No matter what the product is or what the product claims, it is going to require work, at least at the beginning to implement the money making strategy. Once many of these systems are in place, the work to maintain them is minimal and you could even earn money while you sleep.
Products That I Recommend
Rob Benwell's Blogging to the Bank
Rob Benwell is only a mere 22 years old and has already made a fortune using this method. Early last year he sharing his secrets with the world in his highly successful Blogging To The Bank ebook and has made making money online a whole read more.
The 90 Day PowerSeller Challenge v3.0
John Thornhill is one of the top information sellers on the Internet. He consistent makes $100's per day from just selling eBook on eBay (R). In his book he reveals his eBay seller ID. This is virtually unheard of in the world of eBay, click here to read more.
Buying and Selling on eBay and the WWW
This is eBay (R) PowerSeller Richard Fenn's Complete Newbie's Guide To Selling on eBay and the World Wide Web. In it you will learn how to create and operate 2 sources of income! To find out more, click here.
