Buying online at auction websites such as ebay is becoming ever more popular and there are some great bargains out there to take advantage of. There are however risks involved and in this article I am going to write about a bad experience a friend of mine went through, an experience which would cost him a lot of money.

I have used ebay many times in the past and have not only bought a great many items but have also sold a few. I have to say it is quite a buzz and is a great way of offloading some of the things that I no longer have a use for. I have even been surprised at the amounts of money some of these items have sold for.

During a recent evening out, I was discussing ebay with a friend of mine, his name is Ian. Ian has recently attempted to make money from online auctions and was hoping it would earn him a type of second income. He would buy a particular item at what he thought was quite a low price and would then re-list the same item a couple of weeks later, hoping he would make a tidy profit and some easy money.

One of his ways of attempting to pull off a good deal was by phoning or e-mailing the seller and offering them a price to close the auction early. In fairness to ebay this is something they strongly advise against and Ian is aware that he was taking a risk by doing this. In his first few transactions everything went well and all of the items arrived safely and in good condition. He eventually made what he called a small but worthwhile profit on most of the items. In his mind, the more he could buy and sell, the more he would make.

As no doubt you have gathered his luck was about to run out. He contacted via telephone, a seller of a camcorder. Ian offered a price which was duly accepted. The seller advised him where to post the money to and agreed to post the item via registered post. Ian then posted him the amount in cash, also registered post and then waited for the item to arrive. The camcorder did not arrive and Ian started to become slightly worried. He waited a number of days but still it had not been delivered. He contacted the seller who stated that he had posted it. Ian asked him for the registered postal number and to his horror and annoyance the seller stated that he had not sent it registered post, but had sent it first class.

Ian argued, that what they had agreed to, was that he would post the item via registered post due to its cost. The seller denied agreeing to this and put the phone down in disgust at being called a liar. Ian tried by e-mailing and phoning the seller to obtain a refund but the seller just kept saying that he had sent it, so he had no reason to pay him his money back. Ian will never know whether the camcorder was posted, however strongly believes it had not been.

Ian is aware that he had been a bit of a fool and had taken an undue risk. It is a lesson he has learnt from. There was no real comeback apart from possibly travelling two hundred miles to the address of the seller. Even if he had paid via paypal, he had bought the item outside of ebay, which again ebay advise you not to do.

In conclusion if you are going to purchase items on online auction websites such as ebay, use your head and do not let greed cloud your judgements. There are many people out there who are more than happy to take you for a ride and to con you out of your hard earned money. Follow the guidelines set and you are more likely to have a positive experience.

Ian now still uses ebay but not as a way to earn extra cash, he merely uses it for enjoyment. He can not quite believe what he did and actually believes that he deserved it. He realises that if it had not have happened when buying the camcorder that it would have happened eventually.

Stephen Hill helps to promote a number of websites including:

free poker help

anti aging advice

stuttering information

You may have very valuable and unique information or products in which I am intensely interested. However, remember that I receive a zillion offers and recommendations a week so I’m going to read your sales letter carefully before I make any commitment.

Quite apart from the product quality I expect, I also demand that your offer and description show care, respect for my time, and an attention to detail that suggests you have really thought through what you are selling and haven’t just “thrown something together” to make a quick, minimal effort, sale.

It starts with the initial e-mail about an exciting new offer. I receive dozens with the salutation “Hello, %FIRSTNAME%. Of course I know your marketing missives are coming from an Auto Responder - I’m not stupid and if you’re sending out hundreds of e-mails you are hardly going to craft each one individually. But at least take the time to ensure that you have used the correct coding and have taken the time to test your handiwork to identify errors. The way to nurture our relationship, and my vanity, is not to call me “FIRSTNAME” - it brings to mind those awful “occupant” direct mail letters.

In the body of the e-mail, grammatical errors and fuzzy sentence structure trip up the flow of my reading. I’m not looking for wording that would stand the test of an eighth grade grammarian but I do expect correct spelling and clear concepts. If I have to re-read a sentence three times to figure out exactly what you mean, then why on earth would I think that your product is clear and concise and readable?

If there is something in the e-mail that strikes a chord, I may follow the link to the sales page, shuddering a little in the knowledge of the long-winded puffery I am going to have to endure to obtain the facts I need. Now, consider, sales pages are on a website. That means that someone had to compose the page in a software program and then load it onto the site through FTP or similar mechanism. That all takes time - writing the message, selecting the logo or graphics, setting up links, order pages, download pages, contact information and privacy statements. The domain name has to be registered and a hosting company selected. These days, with the simplified and semi-automatic templates available, an experienced webmaster can put up a complete mini-site in a matter of hours. Those of us who go through the exercise rarely, or newbies to the process, may take days or weeks to have everything up and running.

I cannot understand why (nor ever forgive the distasteful results that ensue) someone would expend so much time, effort and money to end up with a mistake-riddled sales page that is designed to convince me that I am dealing with an experienced, knowledgeable source. How dare you highlight a phrase to draw my attention when there are major errors in the sentence? If your language skills are poor, find a proofreader! If the error is due to carelessness, I must ask myself why I should be more careful about reading your stuff than you were in writing it.

It is one thing if you are selling a physical product where you were not involved in its production. In that case, your inattention to detail and lack of quality control does not necessarily reflect on the product itself (although some lingering doubts percolate in the back of my mind).

It is quite another thing if you are selling me your own expertise and information. Despite your repetitive and undoubtedly exaggerated claims, I just cannot accept that anything you have to say is going to be meaningful for me if it’s something you threw together without focus, thought, and clear organization. Before I whip out my credit card, I have to make a judgment about whether what you are offering is worth my hard-earned cash. Unless I know you through prior interactions, all I can base my judgment on is the sales copy you present. If I am less than enthusiastic about its accuracy and clarity, I am going to put away my card and move on.

A good portion of the sales spiels online concern products being sold by affiliates. Typically, the originator of the product encourages others to join as an affiliate to increase the size of the sales force. To streamline the process, the originator creates sample e-mails, ads, and other marketing materials which the affiliates then use as is. It is not unusual, sad to say, that such materials are riddled with errors. To compound the original irresponsible carelessness, the affiliates simply send out the uncorrected messages as if they didn’t care either. The result is an inbox clogged with the same letters, all touting the same product, in the same fractured language that starts to irritate like fingernails scratching across a blackboard.

Correct your errors before you intrude on my valuable time. I’m not interested in flawed material tossed at me by a self-satisfied but disrespectful guru.

Thanks, but I’ll pass. You may think I’m the problem but physician, heal thyself.

Dr. Bola, a clinical psychologist, sometime marketer, and
consistent consumer is offering complimentary copies of her
book “Seven Super Simple Tips: I Am Your Customer” from which
this article is taken. Feel free to download at:
http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsCustomer.html

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Each day more companies are turning to the Internet to provide a targeted way to market their product/services and generate leads and sales. Marketing on the Internet provides a greater return on investment and is more cost effective then most traditional marketing avenues. It can be incorporated with conventional offline marketing to result in lower cost, expanded reach, better measurement and accountability.

For companies to be successful they need to concentrate first on the foundation of their business - their products, services and customers. A combination of specialized technology and skills is required for Internet marketing due to the ever changing markets.

Any search engine marketing firm that you choose should concentrate on two key areas that have a direct impact on your business and have access to the latest commercial seo tools. The first area of concern should be helping your business increase the number of relevant visitors to your website. This can be done thru optimizing your site for the search engines or pay-per-click advertising on Google Adwords for example. Sponsored or paid advertising on such sites as Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing can provide an immediate flow of targeted website traffic provided one has properly chosen the right keywords for your business offering. The second area of focus should then be on what I call “conversion optimization”. This is basically increasing the percentage of those visitors that respond to your business offering before leaving your website.

Here’s a list of questions a search engine marketing company should be able to help you with

Which search terms really matter when it comes to attracting the maximum number of relevant visitors to your website?

How does your company’s website stack up against your competitors
for those terms?

What specific type of action do you want your website visitors to do? Examples: Sign-up for newsletter, download company brochure, schedule a live demo, etc.

Where is your company dominant and where do you have opportunities to grow?

If you choose the paid advertising route in the beginning to generate immediate targeted traffic then a good search engine marketing firm should be able to help you streamline the process from the impression of your ads to conversion, testing the offer that is presented at each step, and boosting overall conversion rates. A Web Analytic tool is absolutely essential in helping you better understand visitor behavior, identify user experience issues, time spent on your site, and overall campaign conversion tracking. Be sure a web analytics tool is part of the seo services you decide to invest in.

Market-Vantage LLC - A Search Engine Marketing Firm - specializes in Integrated web marketing, helping B2B and B2C companies develop and implement effective Internet marketing strategies for positive impact on business. Please call us at 978-448-4333 or email us at drd@market-vantage.com for a free initial consultation to discuss your specific situation in confidence.

On May 7, one of the doctors speaking at the yearly meeting of the AFA needed some quick information on train schedules from New York to Washington. He had his cell phone, so he tried Google Short Message Service (SMS). It didn’t work too well, and he was in a hurry. In the end, 1-800-USARAIL did the trick.

However, one does get the feeling that internet searches from remote devices such as cell phones are in our future. To make these more consumer-friendly, one is looking for a more effective return of results on the internet search end. On regular computer searches, a user typically does not go beyond the first few pages of result. On a cell phone, a user is not going beyond the first few results, the downfall for the doctor in New York. On the user end, one is looking for more recognition of voice input, and less work with fingers and the stylus. The 800 number worked pretty well because it accepted voice prompts.

At a different level, one wonders if the success of the “master librarian” (the search engine) will continue. The search engine provides no content, but merely links content-providers to content-seekers, and derives income from the linkage itself. If the content-providers were more effective in reaching content-seekers (as with the 800 number), the middleman might be squeezed.

Lawrence B. Ebert is a patent attorney located in central New Jersey.

Building your website with search engine appeal - or search engine optimization - is more art than science but experience has shown that there are some very useful guidelines. The question is, why bother? With effective optimization you’ll attract free website traffic that the search engines will send you. Free traffic goes a long way towards not only making your site income-generating but, hopefully, profit-generating as well.

With search engine optimization you might even receive a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you have a conversion to successful sales with 5 to 10 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good number of sales already. If you get only twenty or so hits a day, you only get one or two sales if any at all. Higher traffic, especially if it’s free, means potentially higher revenue.

Search engine optimization involves a variety of methods for making your site appealing to the search engines, such as having relevant keywords, title and content. It also helps to have other similar sites linking to yours. The aim is to have your site listed in the search engine results and apearing in, preferably, the first two or three pages. The higher the better. This will ensure that your site is displayed in answer to public inquiries as being possibly relevant. In turn, this increases public awareness and directs more traffic to your site - traffic that could lead to potential sales, revenue and profit.

There are many locations on the internet that can help you improve search engine optimization, including those that help in tracking keyword phrases. For instance, the free Yahoo/Overture Suggestion Tool, as well as many commercial keyword analyzers. There are also some content writers and article directories that can provide suitable keyword-laden content for you.

However, most people performing a search examine only the ten top results, which are on the first page. Those entries further down the list languish, with little attention. So making it to the top three pages is a barometer of a site’s success in search engine optimization as you will get more people clicking through to your site when you have a higher ranking on these pages. And, as mentioned, more traffic means more business for you.

As you might have guessed, search engine optimization may require a fair bit of work to be fully realized. For instance, researching the keyword phrases that are popular for your niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your site’s contents so that you get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too awkward to read. There are useful guidelines that can be followed to assist with this.

Also consider collaborating with other web sites to obtain link exchanges and page transfers. Having inbound links definitely increases search engine appeal. Possibly the best way of gaining these is to write quality articles on the subject of your website and submit them to article directories for others to use. This generates desirable one-way links from those who post your articles on their websites, and they have usually selected your article because of its relevance!

When you need help just search the internet. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are abundant and easily found. There are also many articles freely available that can help you optimize your website. Just posing the question on Google or inquiring at your favorite article directory will quickly locate some of these. The more informed you are the better. But resist the temptation to buy ebooks when so much free information is available.

This all helps in getting those high rankings. It may require a little time and effort but the benefits can be astounding.

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the knowledge and tools needed to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites clamber for higher rankings and, if you get careless, you may just get trampled and be left in cyber dust.

In recent years, and in the foreseeable future, search engines have been the most widely used internet sources of information. Use them well and prosper.

However, even with effective optimization in place, don’t just rest on your laurels; it is a continuing process. Check your ranking from time to time and also have a good look at what the top sites for a keyword are doing. Why do they have a higher ranking? What do you have to do to secure the top spot? Each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites or, as Scarlet O’Hara said: “Tomorrow is another day!”

Ivan Kelly managed a Direct Mail business with extensive mailing lists for ten years and has designed and promoted many websites. He also provides a quality f’ree course on Search Engine Marketing. For details go to: List Of Topics

Accessing the Internet has always been a problem for all of us. There have been a number of times when was necessary to log in onto the Internet for an important reason, but it just won’t happen. You feel frustrated, because you’ve missed out on an opportunity to meet a friend in a chat room, or apply for a job someone told you about.

One innovation that is currently changing the world of Internet users s is wireless Internet access. Wireless Internet access provides you easy access to the Internet without having to go through the usual trouble of setting up your computer with wires and cables, as well as checking if these cables are connected to the right places. This type of Internet access saves you from the usual trouble of untimely disconnections. Without any wires and cables to cut off, disconnections are not a problem.

Wireless Internet access is a good option for those people who become quite restless when it comes to staying in one place for too long. This type of access to the information super highway gives you the convenience of hopping from one place to another, while doing your work on your personal computer or laptop. If you choose to do your reports out in your backyard, then you can and not have to worry about cables not reaching your location.

Downloading information and sending out data is not difficult with wireless Internet access. Accessing the Web through this method provides users a quick and easy connection. Data from Internet providers show that transfer of data using wireless Internet access is much e greater and faster than the usual way of hooking up to the Internet.

Wireless Internet provides detailed information on Wireless Internet, Wireless Internet Access, Wireless Internet Services, Wireless Internet Providers and more. Wireless Internet is affiliated with Configuring Wireless Networks.

When we buy physical items on line, there is obviously the need to wait for delivery. Make it as fast as possible, surely no problem in a world where things have to “absolutely, positively, get there overnight.”

And forget those shipping charges and express delivery upgrades. Are you aware that the biggest discouragement to online buying is shipping costs? Increase the price of every item by a dollar and make shipping and handling free. I’m not going to not order something because it’s a dollar or so higher in price and the lack of hassle on shipping will make me purr with satisfaction.

Even on an item that must be shipped, give me something immediate. Not just an e-mail that my order has been received but some information about what I’m getting, how smart was my decision to order, and where I can get additional information about related items that might interest me.

If I’m buying a product that doesn’t need to be shipped, such as a report or book, give it to me now. As soon as I’ve paid, or taken you up on a free offer, I want to right click, download, and read. I don’t want to have to go into my inbox and click to activate something.

If I receive a zip file that opens up to show a bewildering array of mysteriously labeled icons, I want clearly labeled instructions so I can go there first and learn what all the other stuff is. If it’s “so easy to use a child could do it” software, don’t make me feel stupid because I can’t figure out what to do next and the instructions are vague or non-existent.

If it’s a marketing report, I want to be able to read it first and decide whether I like it, not be immediately confronted with a page urging me to brand the book so I can resell it - how do I know I want to be associated with it before I’ve completely read it?

If you’re giving me a mini-course over a period of days, make sure each lesson is totally self-contained or indulge my impatience by allowing me to click onto the next chapter. If I’m interested, I want to read it now. By tomorrow morning, I may have forgotten that I ordered it, no matter being able to recall what was in part one.

There is real joy in reading something and feeling an immediate internal reaction: “I like that.” Those are the books we print out and pore over with our yellow highlighter. We take notes and write between the paragraphs, interacting with the material and thereby making it our own.

Give me something so engrossing that I can’t stop until I’ve devoured all of it. If I get to page 3 and decide to exit thinking that “I’ll read it later when I have the time,” you’ve already lost me. I may occasionally open it up again but if I couldn’t get into it at first read, I doubt that I ever will.

Mark it up to experience but it leaves a bad taste about the author who probably shouldn’t count on my continued patronage.

Dr. Bola, a clinical psychologist, sometime marketer, and
consistent consumer is offering complimentary copies of her
book “Seven Super Simple Tips: I Am Your Customer” from which
this article is taken. Feel free to download at:
http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsCustomer.html

According to a 2005 survey, close to sixty percent of Americans reported that they dreamed of starting their own business, both to increase their income and their independence. It appears that, more than ever, Americans are turning to eBay to fulfill that dream. According to the same study, almost three quarters of a million Americans are considered professional eBay sellers, using their eBay sales as their primary or secondary source of income. Another 1.5 million Americans reported that they use eBay to supplement their income. With annual eBay merchandise sales at around $20 billion, the eBay economy is a force to be reckoned with. If you haven’t yet dabbled your toes in the eBay waters, it may be time to consider marketing your merchandise on eBay.

If you don’t know what to sell, begin by looking around the house. If you’ve ever perused eBay’s various sites, you know that sellers move everything from gifts and garments to cars and real estate. Selling on eBay isn’t difficult once you get the hang of it, but there is a rather steep learning curve. It’s best to start small, with items you have around the house that you’d normally sell at a garage sale. After that, all you need is a digital camera, a computer, and some time. eBay provides online tutorials and will walk you through the process of listing your item.

Once you get a handle on the basics, you’ll be ready to sell more valuable merchandise. You can buy merchandise at store sales, from liquidators, or - if you’re a weekend warrior - at garage sales. You can also sell on eBay and use a dropshipper to deliver your merchandise to your buyers.

You can spend as much or as little time as you’d like marketing your merchandise on eBay. You can opt to use only auction style listings, or open up an eBay store and sell items at fixed prices. eBay is launching eBay Express, which provides shoppers with a more traditional online buying experience, complete with shopping cart and check out.

Part of your marketing efforts can include developing an “About Me” page, which gives your buyers the chance to get to know you. You can also use eBay keyword campaigns, special listing features, advertising outside of eBay, and other marketing strategies that sellers typically use.

eBay’s feedback system, where buyers rate sellers and sellers rate buyers, should be a crucial part of your marketing strategy. Your excellent customer service will garner positive feedback from your buyers, which in turn gives other buyers confidence when trading with you.

Whatever type of merchandise you decide to sell, you can be sure that your marketing efforts will be rewarded.

Chris Robertson is an author of Majon International, one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing companies on the web.
Visit this Business and Entrepreneurs Website and Majon’s Business and Entrepreneurs directory.

Any successful SEO implementation should include the following:

1. Extensive Keyword Research - Research specific keywords or keyword phrases that will most likely bring the most relevant/targeted traffic to your website. Compile a list of relevant keywords/keyword phrases to optimize for on your home page, landing page, and any other pages of your website. Never try to shoot for very general keywords such as “jewelry” or “furniture”. Rather, shoot for more targeted keyword phrases such as “M2 design Bracelets” or “swivel recliner”.

2. Site Design Geared Towards Targeted Audience - Design your site content and navigation according to your keyword research and for your target market/audience. Never design your site just for the search engines, rather design your site for your “live” audience (visitors). When it makes sense to do so, plug your keywords into your navigation or web content. Your keyword research will reveal what people are searching for in various ways. Make sure your sites navigation and content showcase the various ways in which people are searching for what you have to offer. Make sure you also include your keywords/keyword phrases in the title/meta/keyword/ALT/Heading tags.

3. Website That Is “Spider/Crawling” Search Engine Friendly. - Use a Free HTML Validator to ensure your site is browser friendly and has no broken links. Having links that don’t work will greater reduce your credibility with any potential prospects that tour your site. Make sure your site is more rich in content and less in fancy flash animations/javascript and images. Its not that these don’t serve a purpose or should never be used its just that search engines cannot interpret Flash and graphics. Having a large number of images can also slow down how fast your site loads. Use the Website Speed Test found at www.iwebtool.com/speed_test to see how fast your site pages load. Its also a good idea to use HTML links in the top-level main navigation on each of the pages of your site.

4. Descriptive Anchor Text (visible text within a click-able text link) For All The Internal Links Of Your Site - Good descriptive navigational links will help your visitors find their way around your site and find what their looking for. Make it as easy as possible for your visitors to find their way around and use “call to action” links/buttons to get your visitors do what you want them to do once they find what their looking for. Do this and you will see a vast increase in conversions/sales and a greater ROI (return on investment) for your business.

5. Site That Is “Link-Worthy” - Having other sites link to yours is a vital element of any successful search engine optimization, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your sites overall link popularity.

Finally, is your site full of great content and information about your products/services? Does it clearly state the benefits and how it solves your target market/audience problem or problems? Is it a great resource for others? As a visitor can I easily find my way around your site? Does it capture my attention enough to keep me on the site or will I get bored and leave right away? Will other website owners be inclined to link to your site? These are the type of questions that you must answer in order to have a site that others will want to link to.

Any good web analytics tool will measure these results and give you a good indication of how your site measures up to desired results. If you hire an SEO consultant or SEO firm make sure they set you up with one. Eliminate the guesswork as much as possible and make decisions based on monitored website behavior.

Market-Vantage LLC - A Search Engine Optimization Company - specializes in Integrated Web Marketing, helping B2B and B2C companies develop and implement effective Internet marketing strategies for positive impact on business. Please call us at 978-448-4333 or email us at drd@market-vantage.com for a free initial consultation to discuss your specific situation in confidence.

There is a huge amount of material available free on the Internet. Part of the reason for that is tied to the beginnings of the Net when it was merely a source of information that was freely exchanged among interested parties. As the commercial potential of the cyber world started to become recognized, merchants gave away information to entice the public into using the new medium and becoming familiar with moving around the web instantly and effortlessly.

As the use of credit cards, merchant accounts, and secure payment processing programs such as PalPal, ClickBank, and StormPay (now defunct) increased, the public became ever more comfortable with online purchasing. Despite the fears of identify theft and scams, annual expenditures on the Internet have reached billions of dollars and increase every year.

But some residue of its origins remains and free samples of materials and information remain popular. The advent of unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) quickly grew into a deluge that threatened the entire system. Spam controls and blockers forced the marketers to restrict their offers to those who had agreed to receive them by “opting in” to someone’s mailing list. Free e-books, reports, newsletters, and mini-courses proliferated as a means of seducing surfers to opt in to those lists and thereby become a target for ongoing marketing efforts.

How useful is this stuff they give away? If it is information of interest to me, great. If it is something I want, thank you. Unfortunately, so much of what is available is either just not very good (rehashed information, secret tips that are universally known, step-by-step instructions on how to make a fortune that just don’t work) or falls into the “bells and whistles” field: endless software programs that are neither as easily installed and operated as the sales letter suggests or that simply don’t work very well.

Anyone who has spent considerable time online has a computer packed with reports, zip files, software packages, and applications that are merely gathering cyber dust. I start clicking on the documents and shortcuts on my computer and I’m amazed to find all sorts of stuff I don’t remember ordering. I see something interesting, sign up, and receive a popup telling me I already have it. That must have been something truly memorable!

Yes, I like getting things free or at a discount. But just because something is free, doesn’t mean I want it. I know there are freebie-holics out there who measure their success in life by how much they can acquire without spending any money. You are welcome to have them on your interminable lists because they will never buy anything anyway.

I don’t mind spending money for things I want and can use. I’ll pull out my credit card any day (actually it’s already out, sitting in a bowl next to my keyboard) for something that catches my eye. I just ask that what you give me, or sell me, is useful, valuable, and delivers what it promises. If I purchase a service, I don’t want to then learn that I have to “upgrade” to get what I thought I was already getting. I don’t want to give you the e-mail addresses of three of my friends to obtain the balance of the information I ordered. I don’t want to sign up for a free report and get hit on the head with a “one time” offer for some overpriced item and then be told that I am an idiot for passing it up. Give my choices the respect they deserve!

For something to be really useful, it has to be easily and immediately understood. I don’t have time for a long learning curve before it becomes workable. There may be a short period of trial and error as with anything new, but make the directions clear, leave out the jargon, and make sure I know who to contact if the darn thing doesn’t work. If not, I’ll put it away and just see if I ever order anything from you again!

If you are giving or selling me information, make sure it is clear, accurate, and complete. I don’t want to read a 40 page e-book only to find out that I need to order a bunch of other reports to really understand what you’re telling me. Cut out the fluff and the historical filler and give me what I ordered!

Two pages of specific, focused tips are a lot more helpful than endless ramblings about your own success record. Give me tools, not trite homilies.

Dr. Bola, a clinical psychologist, sometime marketer, and
consistent consumer is offering complimentary copies of her
book “Seven Super Simple Tips: I Am Your Customer” from which
this article is taken. Feel free to download at:
http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsCustomer.html

Yes, I am going to pull back the curtains and unveil information regarding the current state of trying to earn a full time living selling products on eBay. I will now detail 5 important reasons you should not take the time to sell on eBay.

Reason Number One: Ebay has reached market saturation in terms of new small businesses trying to earn a full time living on eBay. This means there are many more sellers competing for the customer, which drives down the selling price and incurs additional fees to keep the same ad running several times before a sale is made.

Reason Number two: Ebay has increased listing fees and has also increased the amount of fee’s you will pay should your auction end successfully.

Reason Number three: Ebay has a customer service record which is very poor, eBay has a proven track record of not responding to the needs and questions of small business owners.

Reason Number four: Ebay has added too many levels of complexity to the process of selling. To list a simple item on eBay can take up to 15 minutes of your time due to the seemingly endless series of options you are given.

Reason Number Five: Craigslist, you can sell your items on Craigslist at no charge, and they have made it very simple to add a photo. Along with the fact you are targeting your local market

You may wonder, why would I reveal these startling facts when in fact I promote an instructional DVD on how to sell on eBay.

The Ebay market has changed, and as you can see not for the better. The information I provide will still give you the nuts and bolts regarding how to sell on eBay. This can be valuable information should you want to reach a wider audience than the Craigslist

Visit Tim Gilberg at his website Make Money on eBay.

You have already paid your bills. You have ordered r your next meal. You have checked how much money you still have at the bank. You have discovered that your high school best friend is now doing well in some country in Europe. You have already ordered some flowers for your mother’s birthday this week. You have already confirmed your tasks for next week with your boss who is currently in Singapore. You also have read the latest news. You have done all this through the Internet.

Interestingly, the Internet has been one of the major avenues for getting, receiving, sharing and uploading information. Information is considered as one of the basic commodities to man at present.

However, you can’t stand your current connection to the World Wide Web. Your connection takes you a lot of time to download information that you need for your meeting. You find it hard to stay by your computer watching the information transferred to your computer slowly.

Thanks to innovations in the world of the Information Superhighway, there are wireless Internet services available for consumers. Companies and businesses are marketing and offering wireless Internet services for people who are interested in using it. Information is available on the Web.

The benefits of having wireless Internet services is that you can be very flexible. As long as there are hot spots, or places where your computer can receive a signal, you can access the Internet. You also don’t have to wait for your computer to establish a connection to the server.

Some companies claim that wireless Internet services are cheaper than the usual way of getting connected in the Internet. They claim that with wireless services, a customer only needs to pay the service fee. This is probably be true, because compared to the other means of connecting in the Internet, you have to pay for the services, as well as the phone line, and the cable you use to get connected.

Wireless Internet provides detailed information on Wireless Internet, Wireless Internet Access, Wireless Internet Services, Wireless Internet Providers and more. Wireless Internet is affiliated with Configuring Wireless Networks.

When it comes to sales of technology products over the Internet, there are now two factors that potential buyers must consider as possibly ‘too good to be true’. In the past, there was only price to worry about. If the price was too low, buyer beware. But now a second factor has emerged, in the form of a new kind of company for web surfers to consider as possibly also ‘too good to be true’. For if this company is ‘good’, then a new revolution on the web is about to occur. Because if this company is ‘true’, then the cleansing of the internet of corruption and lies has finally begun in earnest, with one company willing to police itself.

Enter TheHonestCompany.com, a website where its founder posts his experiences with internet fraud and his motives for fighting back against a corrupt web right on their home page. A trip to this companies ‘about us’ page serves to quickly establish their position as the anti-fraud internet company, numbering abusive tactics used by hoaxsters and detailing their humble beginnings from an LA area backyard garage to a B2B powerhouse that now offers almost 100,000 computer related items from a network of 23 distribution centers nationwide.

This may someday be ‘made for the movies’ stuff if it’s true. Move over Microsoft, Apple, and HP - here’s what could (hopefully) be the beginning of another rags to riches story with an ‘honest’ plot twist! An honest reseller bashes Internet scammers, preferring to do business the hard way - the honest way. Are we dreaming? Could this be real? Could the days when ‘The Customer is King’ be making a comeback in of all places, the web?

TheHonestCompany.com expects to earn a significant portion of the home and SMB computing technology markets web-based sales over the next few years.

“Top-tier technology resellers like CDW and CompUSA will not bother us as we will not impact them. They have decent reputations, loyal customers, and higher prices. It’s the second-tier, priced-based 90% of their smaller competitors that we are fighting,” says the founder of TheHonestCompany.com, David Johnston, “Those guys have corrupted the Internet and seriously hurt honest companies like ours. Every-time some scam web company rips off a customer, somewhere else a real person at a real company gets hurt too. By using honesty as a weapon, we intend bring the web consumer something they are starving for by making the web a better place to shop - it’s a dirty job that no other company was willing to be the first to start doing.”

According to David, Internet technology consumers have no idea of the great extent that fraud permeates the web. He says that if every web consumer knew what he knew about the extent of internet fraud, they’d pick one or two honest, technology web sales companies to do business with and lay low for awhile, because he says he’s got some serious mud to start slinging as his company gears up for an upcoming advertising and marketing blitz. “There’s a massive pack of internet companies pretending to be real when they are not. Most other legitimate web companies have been acting rather sheepish. I intend to kill wolves by exposing them as what they really are to the Internet public.”

David is a man on a mission, passionate and articulate in his vision of his companies place on the web and their future. He leaves no doubt about this as he summarizes his company’s identity.

“TheHonestCompany.com is transforming the web purchasing experience by providing web shoppers with a trusted, reliable source of technology products along with prices far below those of most traditionally recognized web retailers. With a staff of top-notch industry professionals at its core, offering prompt and full service to each and every customer, The Company encourages phone calls from any customer with questions or comments before, during, and after a purchase. TheHonestCompany.com does not outsource, does not spam, and does not sell or share its customer’s personal information. The company operates as a safe-haven for the price conscious customer leery of unbelievable prices from no-name websites, restoring confidence in buying over the web. This is business done right.”
Bravo, David. Honestly, it’s about time!

Derek Kadonaga has worked in the retail technology industry for over 10 years, first as an executive with CompUSA. In the past several years he has applied his industry knowledge to helping technology start-ups.

That’s the question that everyone seems to be asking lately. How to make money on ebay. Well, this article will hopefully answer that question for you. I will tell you how to find hot selling items for you to trade and some of my tips for you to make as much money as you can on ebay.

The first thing to do is to find out what the hottest selling items on ebay are. There are a few steps to take when doing this. Sit down with a pen and paper and write down a list of all the products you think would be good sellers. Write down as many as you like but I would suggest at least twenty. The more you have then the more chance there is of finding a really hot seller. When you have your list, you should go to ebay and search to see how many people are selling the items on your list and how much feedback they have. Do this for every item on your list and see which ones are being sold by the most sellers, then take a look and see if the sellers have got a lot of feedback as this would indicate that they have sold a lot of items. As you are searching for the hot sellers on ebay, you should be noticing which items are getting bids. If an item has a lot of bids then it shows that people are interested in it.

Narrow down the list to about five items. With your five products, do a search on ebay for each one but this time tick the completed listings box on the left hand side and this will show exactly how many of each item has sold and for how much. By now you should have a very good idea of which items are hot sellers on ebay. If you are unsure just research into this deeper and for longer until you are sure.

Now that you have a good selling product. You should look into getting yourself some inventory. There are many wholesalers and drop shippers on the net, simply search google until you find one that you are happy with and that can supply you with the product you need to sell to make money on ebay.

When you have your stock you should understand that it’s not just as easy as getting items and putting them up for auction. You have to promote your auctions with every chance you get. Here are a few tips to help you make money on ebay.

Write articles on a topic relevant to your items. Write good quality information and submit it to article directories. Doing this should drive targeted visitors to your auctions as you can include a link to them in your resource box. However, you should write good quality articles and offer people good advice with every article you submit.

List a few lower priced, but also good selling, items as this will bring in visitors to your higher priced auctions on ebay. If you link to your items through the lower priced auctions you should get some extra visitors.

When you are just starting out selling on ebay, you should list quite a lot of items as you will want to build your feedback up and try to get power seller status. When you have a good amount of feedback you will see an increase in sales and when you become a power seller you should see another increase in sales.

Start a free blog . In your blog you can record your progress and give readers good information. This will help you in a few ways as recording your progress will help you keep track of how well you are doing, posting good, original information to your blog will result in more visitors from the search engines and you can link to your auctions from your blog therefore generating visitors to your ebay auctions and hopefully sales.

Niall Mehaffey is an ebay seller and internet marketer. He also runs a website dedicated to selling on ebay which can be viewed by clicking here ==>make money on ebay

Have you received emails spam emails from people promising to increase traffic to your website by making you rank high in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages)? We get them all the time. As a matter of fact Google states they even get these unwanted solicitations. Here’s an example of an email Google received in the past:

“Dear google.com,
I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”

Funny huh? But how many people are responding to these ridiculous emails and spending lots of money with hopes that they can increase traffic to their website? What’s worse, many of these companies are actually able to brainwash their clients into thinking they really are benefitting! Companies that use these unethical business practices give the entire SEO (Search Engine Optimization) community a bad reputation.

Two Point Enterprise writes this article about what NOT to look for when shopping for SEO so that you may arm yourself to make an informed choice. We know of no better way to illustrate this article for you than to present a spam email we received from one of these rogue companies. Carefully read the email in the capture below, and then see our comments afterwards.

Click here to see a capture of the email

The subject of the email was “Do You Want Referrals from you Website?” (I guess they were in such a hurry to fire this email off they didn’t even take time to check the spelling.)

The first red flag is your receipt of the email in the first place! Check out Google’s Information for Webmasters and you’ll see that the very first thing they tell you is “Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue.”

The next thing the author of this spam email tries to do is make a feeble attempt of identifying themselves with real estate agents. Hence the words, “Location, Location, Location”. (Sorry partner, you ain’t jumping in bed with me.) Then they pay credit that you might already have a nice website, but if traffic could be increased could potentially drive millions of customers and billions of dollars to your website. They rule out pay-per-click services apparently without giving credit that real estate is actually one thing pay-per-click can work fairly well with, namely in large cities. Finally, as with all spam emails like this, they believe they have the solution you’ve been looking for!

We couldn’t help but chuckle a little at the next line where they increase the font size and announce, “It’s Here!!!! & Satisfaction is GUARANTEED!!!!!!!!” (One more exclamation point and I think everybody in the office might have wet their pants.) Seriously though Mr. Spam Email Author, what’s here? Is it SEO services with a perpetuating monthly fee to guarantee yourself recurrent income? I hate to crash the party, but SEO was around a long time before you registered your domain on September 24, 2004. And monthly fees were invented a long time ago too. I will give them a little credit for putting a guarantee on your satisfaction rather than your ranking. Rule #2 from Google is, “No one can guarantee #1 ranking.” They don’t tell you how they guarantee your satisfaction in the email though. I’d be surprised if it’s a 100% money back guarantee. I’ll bet they have it set up where they end up pocketing money some way or another. If they can brainwash you into thinking they are doing a good job they don’t have to give any money back.

The next thing this spam email does is make an attempt to establish credibility for themselves. They want you to go to a search engine and search for the massive, non-competitive five keyword phrase “neighborhood prospecting websites for realtors”. If the reader hasn’t deleted the email and flushed it through their recycle bin by now they’ll see that the company that sent this email currently ranks #1 for this search. We plugged the five word phrase into a Google Adwords campaign and put a bid of $5 on it. After submitting, Google automatically adjusted the price down to $0.02 (because that’s how much it’s worth), assigned it the top position on the page (because there is no competition for that phrase), and estimated that our cost per day for the phrase would be $0.00 (because nobody in the world would be searching for that). So big deal guys if you are the #1 result for “neighborhood prospecting websites for realtors”. That’s because nobody else wants it!

Now look down a little further and see what we have here! Well if it isn’t an intellectual property and trademark infringement against the search engines, Google, MSN, and Yahoo!. I’d be willing to bet that these search engines didn’t authorize any use of their registered trademarks. Also I don’t see any notice at the bottom identifying the rightful owners of the trademarks, nor do I see the author disclaim himself from any affiliation with these search engines. Subtle little images like this can mislead the reader into thinking some kind of special relationship, or affiliation, has been radified with the search engines. Google says “beware of SEOs that allege a ’special relationship’ with Google”. My guess is that Google has no plans of entering into some sort of strategic partnership with these whiz kids any time soon.

Next we have the sign-up button where we can make our monthly donation to these people. How thoughtful of them to make the button so nice and big. We don’t want to miss when we try to click it with our mouse!

At the very bottom they try to stay with the rules and offer you and itsy bitsy link to opt out of future emails from them. Unless they are conpensating you, why should you have to take time out of your day to opt out of this email you didn’t ask for in the first place? Good luck with that, by the way. Two weeks ago we received this email and we asked them to stop sending us spam. They replied and told us we received it because we signed up for something, which we know damn well we didn’t. However, we cut them some slack and dismissed it. Then on 3-2-2006 we received this same email again after we told them 2 weeks before to stop emailing us!

Hope you enjoyed the article! Good luck with your SEO!

Two Point Enterprise