Archive for November, 2008

EBay is a big market where you are able to sell almost all kinds of merchandises. You can go to eBay and browse through all the product categories to have an idea what are the products on sales. However, to sell merchandise on eBay, you will need to know about the characteristic of the product you intent to sell, in particular the product life cycle.

If you intent to sell a fast moving consumer product such as digital camera, PC, handphones, etc, you will need to know about the product life cycle as these products evolve very fast. Typically, the product life cycle behavior as a normal distribution curve or a bell shape curve. It consists of four phases, namely the Launching Phase, Full-Retail Phase, End-of-Life Phase and Liquidation Phase.

In the Launching Phase, this is the time where the product is just introduced into the market. It is new to the market where everybody is very interested about it and wants to get hold of it. As time goes by, the product will go into the Full-Retail Phase where you can find it selling everywhere and at the same price. During this phase, most of the people would have already purchased the product if they intent to have. And the purchased is usually done at retail shops. As times go further, the product will go into the End-of-Life Phase, where the sales and interest of the product start to decline. And finally, the product goes into the Liquidation Phase whereby the interest almost reduced to zero. Usually, at this final phase, a new product will be launched.

So how does these information helps you on the product selection? As can be seen from the behavior, there are two phases during the product life cycle you can exploit. They are the Launching Phase and the Liquidation Phase. In the Launching Phase, this is the time where the interest in high where buyers are looking for something new and hope that they can get a good bargain from eBay. At times, due to the great interest, the buyers do not mind to pay a little more.

Whereas in the Liquidation Phase, the buyer is really looking for some big bargain. They do not mind that the product is a bit out of fashion as long as it can still function. They do not mind the reduced in features as compared to those newly launched. So, you can see, if you are selling consumer products, these are the two phases where making a sales is more likely than the middle two phases. This is because, there are no reasons for the buyer to buy from eBay when they can get the products anywhere and at the same price.

However, this product life cycle may not be applicable to antique or collectibles. For this category of merchandises, there is really no time line tag to it. The buyer will buy as long as they like what you are selling.

So as you can see, knowing the product life cycle and the way how it is being marketed in the market is crucial in your eBay product selection. Choosing the product to sell when they are in the middle two phases may not be desirable whereas choosing the product at the two extreme phases may be the best option. It is reported that buyers are expecting a reduction of between 20% to 50% off the retail price when buying on eBay. You can only give these offers most likely at the Liquidation Phase as you are able to get the product at much lower cost. This is because, the manufacturer or whole seller are trying to dispose whatever stock they have to prepare for the new model.

It was also reported that liquidation product sells for 10% to 20% of cost. This means that, they are making a lost of 80 to 90%. It was also reported that for items that are in the Launching phase, they can sell anywhere from 10 to 100% above the retail price on eBay. This is particular true that during every holiday season, popular items such as toy are typically sold out at department stores and you can generally get it at eBay. This is the time whereby you can fetch a good price for your product.

Understanding the product life cycle will definitely help you in deciding what and when to sell your product in eBay and make profit. Knowing the right time to sell your items in eBay is crucial.

(Note: Figures taken from eBay Strategies by Scot Wingo. Prentice Hall 2005)

Whether you are aware of it or not, your customers, potential clients, business associates, competitors and employees are already engaged in business blogging. They are conversing in real time about your products or services, news and developments in your niche. They are discussing about your new product release. Sad to say, if they have not spread it already, they are definitely gossiping about the customer service blunder you hoped you could keep hush-hush. Word travels fast in the blogosphere. Blogging gets you noticed and referenced, favorable or not, in your industry’s conversations. Business blogging has its benefits but, alas, it also has its share of pitfalls.

A business blog can help build your company’s reputation and credibility in your niche business area. It is a cost-effective way to communicate with targeted audience. It provides business feedbacks through comments. A well-executed blog can boost search engine rankings thus raising chances of potential customers visiting your site and ultimately generating sales.

More importantly, you should be aware of the pitfalls or perils that accompany business blogging. If you have finally figured out how blogging can work for your targeted market, then, seriously consider the technical pitfalls of creating a blog that might befall you especially if you are a newbie in the field of blogging.

Before embarking on blogging, you must have read and read some more blogs to familiarize yourself with the blogosphere especially your specific niche. Reading other blogs can spur ideas for blogging topics. Not doing any research will leave you writing in futility. You don’t know what questions your target audience wants answered and what they would like to read. More so, you might not even have a clear-cut goal. What is the purpose of your blog? What problem does it want to solve or gap to fill? You have not determined what is it you are trying to get done. You definitely will not have good topics to write about because topics should be in consonance with your business objectives. Writing without a purpose will get you nowhere. It will just turn readers away.

Not knowing how to use your blogging software properly will, in most cases, produce a non-professional-looking blog. A blogging tool goes to great pains to ensure that your blog will look good, the text look beautiful and the html code it generates follow web standards. It will be to your business advantage if you understand how the vast and sophisticated features work to increase your blog’s chance of being found on the Internet. Keep in mind that first impressions count with readers.

Not optimizing keywords, categories, subscriptions will make it difficult for readers to find your blog. The primary purpose of a blog to be successful is readership. Search engines are a great source of readers. If you are writing a blog post that you want to be read, bear in mind that readers will use keywords to find your blog entry. Keywords are vital to high search engine ranking. Top ranking equals traffic and traffic is readership. Categorizing your blog will also make it more user-friendly and make the content more search engine ranking friendly. Subscribing to an RSS feed allows readers to receive automatic updates whenever you publish fresh content. Not making frequent posts makes readers lose interest in your blog as there is nothing new to peruse. You have to make it a priority to post consistently. The more you post the more reasons the readers will come to read some more.

Finally, you have sorted out how to avert the technical perils of business blogging. Brace yourself; there are even deeper pitfalls with much more severe repercussions to consider. For one, businesses that allow misrepresentations – faulty or misleading information to appear on their blogs can create a public disaster. Some business companies keen to develop one-to-one links with customers, set up character blogs. A character blog is typically conceptualized by marketing people to promote a product or service using fictitious character. This kind of blog is quite risky as some ardent bloggers regard them as an insult to the blogging community. A classic example is the Vichy case. As part of its marketing launch for its new anti-aging cream, Vichy’s advertising team created a blog featuring a bogus author named Claire who incessantly whined about the travails of aging using the same wordings as the Vichy print ad. It elicited a flurry of negative reactions from around the blogosphere condemning Vichy for passing off a phony on their turf. Blogs are about real conversations with real people.

Turning a deaf ear to what the blogosphere is saying can be fatal to a company. Kryptonite, a lock maker company did not respond quickly to a blog comment and cost them millions of dollars. Engadget, a highly trafficked blog published a video file showing how a Bic ball pen can easily open a Kryptonite lock. Kryptonite took its time before issuing a statement that did not assuage the thousands who bought the lock in good faith. Bloggers lambasted Kryptonite and caused heavy traffic to the Engadget blog site. Finally, Kryptonite succumbed and replaced the locks at a staggering cost of $10 million. Take heed; monitor what others are saying in the blogosphere. Your blog is part and parcel of a dynamic conversation. You should track your image in the blogging arena. Reputation risks can surface if your company pays no attention or misjudge the opinions in the blogosphere.

Business blogging can expose your company to legal problems that can cause serious damage to your business reputation. Irresponsible blogging can subject your company to libel, slander and even harassment lawsuits. Off-hand comments may offend customers. Disclosure of confidential corporate information and trade secrets will definitely place a company in jeopardy. Several instances of indiscreet blogging have caused employee terminations. Ellen Simonetti, A Delta Air Lines employee was fired for posting inappropriate images of herself in uniform on her blog. A system administrator at the Manitoba Health Sciences Centre was sacked after posting on his blog “Sitting around doing nothing for three hours while being paid – priceless.” Needless to say, companies should draw up corporate blogging policies that will state clearly acceptable and unacceptable blogging practices. Companies should educate its employees about the business and legal risks involved with blogging.

In a nutshell, do not blog for the sake of blogging. A clear business goal is a must. See to it that your blog reflects your company’s desired image. Carefully weigh the implications of anything you post. Be wary of potential consequences and be reminded that with blogging, anything that appears on the Internet is instantly available to a global massive audience.

You are working hard creating good and quality content for your Google AdSense web site. You carefully plan a good link building strategy for your Google AdSense web site. Google started to realize, though, that all clicks were not created equal.

In the beginning of Google Adsense when someone clicked on the ads you would earn a percentage of what the people were paying for adwords per click, today the percentage is calculated differently is kept a secret. Google Adsense terms and conditions require that earnings are kept secret.

Everyone dreams of making money online more quickly. There are plenty of Adsense make money videos being peddled all over the World Wide Web. You see it everywhere on the web, people create these ad sites that draw people in and direct them to click on Google ads to make their living. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites.

This is a basic tip, but many people haven’t figured it out yet. Google Adsense has opened the door for everyone to make money without inventory, employing sales people or selling anything, someone clicks on a ad and you get paid, its that easy. Because the ads look like normal web links, and people are trained to click on these types of links.

Anybody can make money with adsense, but unless you have traffic you will not have enough income to support yourself, you can make extra money but I wouldn’t quit my day job. Having the ads on your sites is a positive thing because you will earn money when the ads get clicked on, you will make a substantial amount of money if you have high traffic or low traffic on many sites.

It can be shown that with all else being equal, the likelihood of a click conversion is proportional to the amount of exposure to a particular ad block. Ensure that your navigation is easy to understand and that the user will intuitively know where to click to get to where he wants. So the webmaster’s game plan is to enable visitors on his site to navigate to the links which webmaster wants the visitor to click on, and not the other way around.

There are many individuals who have created a lot of money and know the ins and outs so most of them have many tips that can be followed to help get into this type of work. Many other people are now putting the code onto their own sites which can help them to pay for hosting and domain renewal costs. Signing up for an Adsense account and copy-pasting some codes into your website’s HTML code is all that is needed to start serving Google Adsense ads and make some money.

Signup is free and all you have to do is put the ads on your site. Many internet webmasters who use Adsense do not believe in free information they feel it has no real value. These webmaster are wrong, many Google Adsense affiliates, have increased their revenue by having free content and giving to everyone for free, so this is a debate that will go for a long time.

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Hi,

I just received a request to do a link exchange on a blog roll? How exactly do you do that? Do I just send in the link of my website? I use wordpress.org.

Thanks.

You give the person you’re exchanging with the following information

Website Title:
URL (Website Address):

He will do the same to you, go into your admin panel and add the information he gives you to your blog roll.

Are you a webmaster who needs funds to keep your website running? Or is your website the only way for you to earn income? Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you.

With affiliate marketing, you may get a lot of cash pouring into your bank account easily. And if your website is rich in great contents and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Well, simply because affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the best way to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other businessman’s products on your site.

But even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.

Affiliate marketing, simply said, is a relationship or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant’s website and the other being the affiliate’s site. In the relationship, the affiliate agrees to let the merchant advertise his products on the affiliate’s site. The merchant, on the other hand, would agree to pay the affiliate in whatever method they have agreed into.

This would generally mean easy income for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer’s ad on his site. This would also be very beneficial for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.

There are a variety of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy cash. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most preferred by affiliates, for their site’s visitor would only have to visit the advertiser’s site for them to gain money.

The other two methods, on the other hand, are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.

Getting much profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method is it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

What about Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is actually some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products.

These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest.

The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount.

Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.

So, where do all of these lead us to?

Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant’s side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms.

For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.

For those planning to test the waters of the eBay business, whether for the fun of making some extra money or for seriously considering it as a business opportunity, there are several pointers you ought to learn and understand. There are several basics to learn once you join in the fray of eBay sellers. One of the most important of all is being constantly informed of the best thing to sell on eBay.

Of course, we will not give you particular listing on the best thing to sell on eBay. Since in eBay you can sell virtually anything! You name any product and eBay most probably has it up for sale.

This does not mean, however, that once you become a seller, you can sell anything at all.

Remember that you decided to become an eBay seller in order to earn profit. Thus, master the primary secret in eBay selling – getting to know the best thing to sell on eBay.

Once you have an idea of the best thing to sell on eBay, you also learn how acquire this thing and just what it takes to attract customers to buy it.

You may think that the best thing to sell on eBay would be the latest consumer products, well, think again.

Selling latest consumer products is a good idea if you do not have such enormous competition like established online sellers and other big online companies that put up eBay.

These companies have already taken first opportunity in flooding the online markets of latest consumer products. You will not stand a chance against them.

The best thing to sell on eBay is an item that’s already used but still in good condition. A very specialized product is another option. This kind of product is not common and chances are only a few are selling them.

Chances are many used items that have potential to be a best thing to sell on eBay are practically lying about your house, taking up space in the attic or burning a whole in your closets.

Books, toys no longer cared for, outgrown clothes, equipment or gadgets already replaced like computer, DVD, radio, stereo, etc. You can even bet that your stacks of collectible items that do not interest you anymore might make a good sale on eBay.

Instead of just letting them rot away or disintegrate, you can earn a handsome profit for these used items while they are still in good condition.

Finding the best thing to sell on eBay from used odds and ends in your house is a very risk-free way of getting into the eBay business.

But you may also need to put up some cost. Repair, shipping and storage costs are things you need to consider.

Let’s say you don’t want to sell any of your used possessions but is still interested on entering the eBay scene. What’s the best thing to sell on eBay, then?

You can still opt for selling used items by buying them where they are sold cheap. Garage sales and flea markets are some of the sources for these items.

If you prefer selling brand-new goods, these can be bought from companies that offer closeouts, clearance sales or discount stores. The best thing to sell on eBay may just come from the overstock, non-moving and seasonal items up for discounts.

Another best thing to sell on eBay is consumables. The concept is to have customers, who buy from you on eBay, do repeat business through your own web site.

Once you run out of sources to get the best thing to sell on eBay, you can always log on to the Wholesale Buying System (WBS).

This gives out tips on what products to buy and where they can be bought. It has direct access to thousands of wholesale companies, that’s why.

There are other ways of putting up the best thing to sell on eBay. Selling specialized products calls for a sales strategy.

Know exactly what types of persons you’re targeting to buy your products and defining the kind of product you are going to sell.

The best thing to sell on eBay may not be the most popular, the trendiest and the classiest items. Just know what the people buy and be resourceful.

Once affiliates begin to sign up, even if you are automatically approving them, its in your best interest to audit your network on a regular basis. Now, the FTC is making marketers responsible for the actions of their affiliates.  If your affiliates get out of control, it could cost you a lot of money.

You’ll have hundreds of affiliates sign up for your program.  Hobbyists, spammers, webmasters and even marketers.  It’s very important that you review each one on a regular basis to ensure the way they are promoting you is acceptable to your company and above all – its legal.

Below, you’ll find some tips when screening:

            1.  All affiliates must have an active web site.  If not, they may be spammers.

            2.  The affiliate site content must relate to your products or services.

            3.  The site should have appropriate levels of content. 

            4.  Misuse of content.  Be very clear withyour affiliates and what content they can use from your website. 

Affiliate fraud

Fraud with affiliates has been increasing over the last several years, which is another great reason to screen your affiliates on a regular basis.

With fraud, there are two main types:

Malware – Some affiliates out there have developed software that is installed on a machine, normally as part of a free download.  When someone clicks on the affiliate link, the true affiliate ID is replaced with the fraud. 

Fake purchase – If you have a product of high value that returns large commissions for affiliates, you may notice some bad parties signing up, then using stolen or fake credit card information to purchase products via their links. 

Communicating with affiliates- Good affiliates are normally busy, as they can easily forget about your services and products. As time goes by, your offers can wind up less in less visited areas or accidentally deleted.

Contact. It’s extremely important to stay in contact with your affiliates, even more so with the high performers. Do not wait for them to contact you, as if you do, it normally means they are reporting a problem. By taking the time to contact them, you are showing that you are interested in the partnership.

You don’t need a new product as an excuse to contact your power affiliates.  Even if it’s just a quick note to ask if they need anything.  You can also use the opportunity for feedback on your program as well.

Virtual Training. The most important thing you can do to reduce problems is to train your affiliates well. This need not be a difficult or expensive task particularly if you out source it.  Such a service is provided by Virtual Affiliate Trainer.  You can check this out for FREE.  It shows you the massive benefits of having well trained affiliates.  So if you are running an affiliate program and want to attract good affiliates who can produce significant sales with little or no problems then go to Virtual Affiliate Trainer.

Managing a successful affiliate program is not an easy task you can fully automate, as you’ll have to get involved.  Happy well trained affiliates are more productive, and the more money they make – the more money your company makes as well.

As most vendors offering Affiliate Programs realise that normally 80% of their sales come from just 20% of their affiliates.  Well this no longer need be the case. 

There’s a video that shows you how web sites using this simple System went from zero to five figure daily earnings . It’s worth a look and doesn’t seem like its going to cost you anything to do this.
 
Train Affiliates Virtually and cost effectively to explode your sales.

For more information on this website about Virtual Affiliate Trainer.