So you’ve got the buyer in front of your auction, and they’ve read the description. They’re must be interested, or they wouldn’t be looking… but just how can you push them over that line and make them leave a bid? Read on for some tips.

Improve your picture: In all that description writing, you might have missed the vital importance of your item’s picture. A picture with bad lighting or an intrusive background looks amateurish and won’t make anyone want to buy from you.

Add an About Me page: You’ll be surprised how much you can reassure bidders just by creating an About Me page and putting a little bit about yourself on your business on there. You can also have a few special offers there for people who bother to look at the page, and let people subscribe to your mailing list so that you can email them updates.

Use SquareTrade: Signing up at SquareTrade and displaying their logo on your auctions shows that you are committed to have them resolve any disputes that arise. You always see this on PowerSellers auctions – it makes you look more professional.

Write terms and conditions: Have the ’small print’ clearly visible on all your auctions, giving details of things like shipping times and prices, your refund policy, and any other business practices you might have. This helps build confidence with buyers.

Show off your feedback: Copy and paste a selection of the feedback comments you’re most proud of to each item’s description page, instead of making bidders go and look for it. If you have 100% positive feedback, be sure to write that on every auction too.

Add NR to your titles: If you have extra space in a title, put ‘NR’ (no reserve) on the end. Bidders prefer auctions that don’t have a reserve price, and doing this lets them see that yours don’t.

Benefits not features: Make sure your description focuses on the benefits that your item can give to the customer, not just its features. This is a classic sales technique. If you have trouble with this, remember: ‘cheap’ is a feature, ’save money’ is a benefit.

List more items: If you want more people to respond to your items, then list more items! You might find you have better like listing items at the same time, instead of one-by-one. There’s no need to use a Dutch auction – you can just keep two or three auctions going at once for an item you have more than one of in stock.

Accept unusual payment methods: To reach those last few buyers, accept payment methods that many sellers don’t, like cheques.

Buy some upgrades: The best upgrade is the most expensive one, which makes your item appear first in search results. In crowded categories, you might find that this is worth the money.

Once you’ve got some buyers, you want to keep them coming back to you. The next email will show you how to turn one-time buyers into long-term customers.

One of the most pressing questions for anyone wanting to sell on eBay is, “What should I sell?” It may seem easy to grab some stuff from around the house, or maybe even go to a yard sale and buy something cheap to sell, but that won’t bring you in a consistent income.

Finding out what to sell on eBay involves research. You really need to search throughout eBay and find the top selling items on eBay. This is actually not too difficult. The eBay site itself gives reports on what is selling the best.

However, if you really want to make a profit, you need to do more of an in-depth research of eBay. This could take hours and hours of your time. Searching through completed auctions, studying listings, and trying to find hit counts and what a seller did to get bids so high.

You can make it a whole lot easier on yourself though. I know a way you can thoroughly research eBay that will take you a fraction of the time. It will give you the total number of bids and page hits; you can research within any category or with a particular keyword.

The research you come up with will be vital to your eBay business success. You can use it to find the best selling items on eBay and learn the best way to list them and bring in the most amount of bids.

Finding out what to sell on eBay is the most vital step to profiting on eBay. With my eBay top selling technique, you’ll be miles ahead of the competition.

To find out what sells on eBay, visit Real Income Auction. You’ll learn how to find the top selling items on eBay that will bring you in a load of money.

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eBay has recently jumped on the blog bandwagon. They have opened a new section of the website called eBay blogs. This allows a registered eBay user to sign up for and maintain a blog. This is a wonderful new feature and if you are serious about growing your eBay business then you should definitely consider signing up for an eBay blog. It is a very simple process that almost anyone can navigate through and easily set up your own blog. You do not have to have any special html knowledge. Just go to the following url http://blogs.ebay.com/ and click on the large button that says “Start Blogging”

What Are Blogs

Blogs are basically an online journal. They provide a place where you can easily write news and information about yourself and your auction sales on a daily basis. The word blog is a combination of web and log smashed together to make a new word called blogs. They are one of the latest crazes on the internet because they allow anyone to easily publish their own thoughts and content on the internet.

Blogs are also wonderful for creating a ton of extra traffic and visitors to your auction listings. If you frequently post great content to your blog it will quickly be picked up by the search engines which will create more visitors to your blog and your auction listings for free.

What To Blog About

Many sellers will instantly see the benefit of having a blog. It provides an easy way to interact with your customers. You can provide updated information about your auctions, the products you sell and general info about your business. It might take a little while tog et used to blogging but typically it is very addictive and once you start writing a blog it can easily become a fun daily activity. To get the most from your blog you want to think about writing content that is useful to your customers. For example a eBay sellers that typically sells in one category or one type of product can provide more information about what thy sell. For example a seller who specializes in model cars might take some time to write a few articles or posts about building model car tips. Another seller who sells wedding related goods might write blog posts about wedding planning. The point is you want to make the content useful to your customers so they will come back often. The more you write good quality content and inform your customers the more they will want to purchase products from you. In this way you can quickly establish yourself as an authority on the subject.

One thing you will want to stay away from is having a blog with very little useful content and a lot of sales ads for your auctions. Sure you can occasionally write a blog post to plug a new item you have up for auction but if that is all you do no one will visit your blog. eBay is a very community oriented platform and the more community friendly information you provide the more potential and past customers will come to your blog and possible visit your auction listings.

Promoting Your Blog

Like any other site on the web your blog will have its own unique url or website address. You will want to make sure that you keep this hand and start promoting your blog. There are a variety of ways that you can promote a blog. Some of these would include submitting your website to major search engines, and blog/website directories. You can easily further promote your blog by taking the content or articles that you write on the blog and submitting them to some of the major article directories like this one.

Blog Comments

Another great way to promote your blog and build traffic to it is to comment on other people’s blog. You want to be a little careful about this and only post to other related blogs and post meaningful comments. If you start leaving a bunch of random comments that have nothing to do with the blog or the post in general then people will see this as blog spam also known as splog content.

Blog Tags

Another useful feature that eBay has added is blog tags. When you first set up the blog there are some options to leave details about it. You can also select tags that people will use to find your blog. These tags are basically keywords that people might use to search for your blog. Using the example from above of the seller that sells wedding related items the seller would want to use common wedding keywords in their tags section. They could include tags like wedding, invitations, cake toppers, and wedding planning. Then when another eBay user searches for wedding related blog this blog will show up in the listing and again bring some free traffic to the blog and potential to the seller’s listings.

So if you don’t already have a eBay blog now is the time to get started.

Chris is a successful Webmaster and publisher of Auction Power Seller He provides more Auction selling tips and tricks on the website. To Learn more about Auction Listing Tips and other eBay help you can check out his website.

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Your eBay reputation is everything you are on eBay – without it, you’re nothing. Your reputation is worth as much as every sale you will ever make.

If you’ve ever bought anything on eBay (and the chances are you have), then think about your own behaviour. Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands doesn’t require any thought or fear – it feels just like buying from a shop.

A Bad Reputation Will Lose You Sales.

In fact, a bad reputation will lose you almost all your sales. If someone leaves you negative feedback, you will feel the pain straight away, as that rating will go right at the top of your user page for everyone to see. Who’s going to want to do business with you when they’ve just read that you “took a month to deliver the item”, or that you had “bad communication and sent a damaged item”? The answer is no-one.

Your next few items will need to be very cheap things, just to push that negative down the page. You might have to spend days or even weeks selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback to make anyone deal with you again.

It’s even worse if you consistently let buyers leave negative feedback – once you get below 90% positive ratings, you might as well be invisible.

You Can’t Just Open a New Account.

Besides eBay’s rules about only having one account, there are far more downsides than that to getting a new account. You literally have to start all over again from scratch.

You won’t be able to use all the different eBay features. Your existing customers won’t be able to find you any more. Your auctions will finish at a lower price because of your low feedback rating. Opening a new account is like moving to a new town to get away from a few people who are spreading rumours about you: it’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

A Good Reputation Will Get You Sales.

When a PowerSeller tells me something, I tend to believe them. They can be selling a pretty unlikely item, but if they guarantee it is what they say it is, then I trust them – they’re not going to risk their reputation, after all. This is the power of a reputation: people know you want to keep it, and they know you’ll go to almost any lengths to do so.

This is true even to the point that I would sooner buy something for $20 from a seller I know I can trust than for $15 from someone with average feedback. It’s worth the extra money to feel like the seller knows what they’re doing, has all their systems in place and will get me the item quickly and efficiently.

You really will find selling on eBay so much easier, and there’s only way to get a good reputation: make sure you please your customers every time. But some customers can be, well, just a little difficult to please. In the next email, we ask: is the eBay customer always right?

eBay are a little strict about letting you withdraw your bid. They call it a ‘bid retraction’, and have a stringent set of conditions that you must meet before you are allowed to do it. Here are eBay’s three acceptable reasons for withdrawing a bid.

You made a typographical error: This means that you accidentally typed the wrong amount into the bid box, bidding a far higher price than you meant to. This can be scary: imagine bidding $100 and accidentally adding an extra ‘0′! You are entirely allowed to withdraw your bid in this situation, and bid again if you want to.

The item’s description changed: If you bid on something and then the seller updates the description, you have the right to withdraw your bid. It wouldn’t be fair, after all, to force you to take something that you now realise you don’t want.

The seller is uncontactable: If emails to the seller bounce and they don’t answer their phone, then the auction obviously can’t continue, and you can cancel it.

So How Do I Retract My Bid?

eBay hide away the bid retraction form a bit, because they don’t like people using it. You can find it by going here: http://cgi1.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?RetractBidShow.

Now all you need is the item number from your auction: this can be found on the item description page’s top right corner. If you can’t see it on the page, look in your browser’s title bar, and in any emails eBay have sent you about your bid on the item. Choose one of the three allowed reasons, click ‘retract bid’, and you’re done.

Are There Any Consequences?

Well yes, there are. The more unethical among you might have considered that you could just cancel bids anytime you feel like it by saying that you accidentally entered the wrong amount. eBay are one step ahead of you. Each time you retract a bid, it is counted on your feedback page for all to see – and anyone with a lot of retracted bids looks more than a little dodgy. eBay also say that abusing the bid retraction feature could get you banned.

So is there a way to retract your bid without facing a penalty? There is if your seller is nice, and most are. Sellers can cancel bids on their auctions at any time, and if you email them with a half-decent excuse then most will be more than happy to do this for you. After all, it’s not in their interest for their item to go to someone who won’t like it, as you might leave negative feedback.

Of course, retracting your bid should still be a rare thing: you won’t win auctions that way! If you’ve followed us this far, the chances are you’ve won an auction by now, or you’re close – but you might be a little puzzled about what to do next. Our next email will give you a few pointers.

Making money online is most peoples dream. Some people made millions on the internet and other’s start to work at home in their spare time and sometimes earning enough from it to quit their jobs. There are many ways to make money online, but the most common, and most lucrative ways are listed below.

1. Promoting Affiliate Programs

If you do have a website, you can easily make money online by promoting affiliate programs. All you do is put advertisements on your site and wait for the people visiting your site to take some action that benefits the merchant you’re affiliated with.

2. Writing Articles

You can make money online by utilising your writing skills. Whether you are a professional writer or complete beginner you could earn a healthy monthly income by writing high quality and informative articles. One place you can do this is through Ezine Articles. You don’t need any formal qualifications to write online. You just need to be passionate about the subject which you write about.

3. Writing Ebooks and Eguides

If you have great idea for a book or guide that you wanted to share with others, then writing ebooks and eguides is a fun way and rewarding for you to make money online and fullfill your passion in writing. You could write and publish your own ebook for profit. You can actively promote your ebooks and eguides to the global audience with no experience or technical knowledge and earn money online.

4. Blogging

If you enjoy writing you could start from which writing a blog . A blog is simply a shortend version of a web log, which can be created by anyone but usually takes a personal perspective on a subject. Blogging is no way to get rich quick but can be a way to supplement your income. You don’t need to be a skilled writer to create a blog, although good english and grammar skills will clearly be hugely beneficial and make your blog more readable.

5. Make Money Through Photography

If you got a camera sitting at home and if photography is your hobby you could sell your stock photos for money. Even if you make just a little cash, you can help offset your costs of spending hundred of dollars for new camera lenses. Whether you are a seasoned professional photographer or just enjoy taking photographs and earning a second income from your passion, then the internet offers some great ways to earn money online from your creations.

6. Make Money on eBay

eBay is getting bigger, better and more popular every day and cannot be ignored if you really want an easy way to make money online. You can make money by selling your old stuff, selling other people’s stuff for commission or write an eBook and sell it on eBay.

7. Make Money Selling on Amazon

Amazon is well known for books, but you can buy just about anything from Amazon. Use the power of Amazon’s product inventory and technology to sell through your own customizable web store. As an affiliate program, it pays bloggers a percentage of sales, beginning at and more depending on the number of items sold each month. You can insert text links into posts or banner ads to promote just about anything.

8. Dropshipping

Drop Shipping, is very popular online using ebay or your own website . This is great as you don’t need any products or money to start. Just drop ship them, find your self a nice range of dealers that will do dropshipping.

9. AdSense

Google AdSense is the most popular money making online contextual ads system in the world today. You can earn with Google AdSense by starting a website up, this website doesn’t even have to cost as there are lots of free hosts out there, then you just write lots of interesting content and have the AdSense adverts within the page. Every time one of your web visitors clicks on one of those ads, you make money. Now this might not be a lot of money, but it can add up over time AdSense.

10. Make Money From Your Website

Website is ultimate money making machine, it earns even when you are sleeping. Making money from web site is really exciting, which has been explained from making of your web site to web promotion and tips and tricks. A properly monetized website can generate income ranging from supplemental to a full time living income depending on how much work you are willing to put into promoting your website.

It is best to discover what is the powerful secret to do system building tremendous amount of traffic to your website and put your products and services in front of millions of customers, and set this up completely on an Auto-Pilot.

How would you like unlimited hits to your website 10 minutes from now? Learn more about this make money online strategy and know whats new and most searched affiliate product to promote at http://makeawesomemoneyonline.com/

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The global internet is not as global as small business owners may think it is, in fact the global internet can be extremely effective for local markets. Small business web site design is important to how successful your company will be online. Small business web site is one of the largest market sectors in the business. With the revolution of the internet, smaller businesses are able to reach more audiences with their web site. If you are a small business or a home-based business, you can do to have small business web site. Web site hosting is not expensive and finding the right business is easy on the internet.

Starting a small business but don’t know where to look? Want some great ideas for generating income online? Here are 2 small business web site design typies that I recommend for small business owners.

1. Blogging Blog is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal or business website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the business, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects. Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments. All this ensures that online conversations can be maintained painlessly among various site users and web sites.

For small business owners without the time to learn both html web and php web, blogging offers an inexpensive method to get the business’s name out on the internet. Business blogs provide a small business with a chance to share some expertises and knowledges with a larger audience. A powerful benefit for consultants and knowledge workers.

As with most things in life, blog platforms come with a variety of price points ranging from free through to more expensive options. There are three main things that you might pay for: the blog platform itself, hosting for your blog and domain name. Here are 2 biggest blog platforms:

Wordpress – This is an open source, community supported tool available 2 flavors, the free, fully hosted version with limited control (Wordpress.com) and the free, unhosted version with unlimited control (Wordpress.org) Blogger – This is the granddaddy of platforms. Blogger helped launch the blogosphere and was later snapped up by Google.

2. Ecommerce Owning and operating an online store is now easier then ever. Thank you to the developers of many ecommerce web site, just about anyone with some basic computer knowledge can manage a busy online shopping web site and still have time for the important things in main business.

Most stores use an online catalog type of format organized by category. An ecommerce web site must not only present the merchandise effectively, it must provide a safe and easy way for customers to order. Your customers will browse at your web site, select some items, and then pay for them. When you set up an e-commerce shopping cart, you’re providing a way for your customers to bring their purchases to the cash register. The program you choose will allow you to enter your products in the database and allow shoppers to choose products when they click on ‘Add to cart’.

Store owners can set up their online stores using ecommerce tools. For small stores, it has all the features you need for an online store. For example: OScommerce, Zen Cart, PHP Auction, Cube Cart, Open Realty, Miva Merchant, etc.

RT Design Group is providing small business web site design and web marketing services in Florida, US. Or call 239 – 913 – 0279.

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How to find, fully test, and setup new Wordpress themes on your blog without anybody knowing. Don’t put it live until it’s ready!

One of the worst things about Wordpress is that when you hack your blog, or your theme, or try a new plugin or theme you’re doing it “live”. In other words – everybody sees it. So if you want to try a new theme you have to switch them live while visitor are going to your posts and pages. I hate that. I’ve heard of guys keeping a “test” version of Wordpress installed in another folder just to test new themes and hacks – and that’s not only more effort than I’m willing to do, it’s just a bit rediculous.

I have a one web site where the Wordpress theme was causing too many problems, it was old, and not worth hacking and fixing anymore. I have too many web sites and way too much to do to create a new theme from scratch. So I went theme shopping, and within 10 minutes I found one that really impressed me. You’d be amazed what you can find just googling “wordpress themes”.

Next, I downloaded the free open source Theme Test Drive Wordpress Plugin, and installed and enabled it. This plugin allows you to set a theme for your entire blog that only the administrator will see. In other words, when you are logged into your Wordpress dashboard as the admin account, you can test any post or page in your site under a theme and nobody will be the wiser. You can hack the test theme pages and nobody on your site using your normal theme will see what you are testing. Of course, if you make changes to widgets or plugins, everyone will see them on both the public and test themes. Once you enable the plugin all you have to do is go do “Presentation -> Theme Test Drive” in your WP Dashboard and enable the theme you want to test.

So in another browser window I went to my dashboard, and one by one enabled and tested 6 new Wordpress themes I had uploaded to the server. I found and settled on one that I really liked. Luckily in this web site I use theme widgets, so everything updated beautifully because I didn’t need to make any changes to the sidebar. Now, all I’m missing are any customizations I made to my current theme pages manually by adding code. So I looked at the code for my Main Index, Single Post, Archive, Comments, etc., to see what I’ve added over time to make a list.

It turns out I added quite a few things, but they’re easy to put into the new template:

Print this page

Ratings

Threaded Comments

Post Views

Feedburner Flare

Breadcrumbs

adSense

Then I went through the pages in my new theme and added in the code to add these functions one by one. I tested each one as went, because with “theme test drive” installed as admin I could view any page in the site with the new theme and see these changes as I went. After I added the code and uploaded the updated theme files to my site – I tested everything one last time. Looking through the pages the only other thing that I saw was in the sidebar(s) of my new theme the category pages weren’t listed, and in my current theme they are. I did a little shuffling of the sidebars, and then I set the theme live! So instantly when I enabled the theme for the first time, people saw a fully functional ready to go blog with nothing broken! I did all the testing and updating behind the scenes on my Wordpress blog without anybody knowing it, and when I put the new theme live – voila, there is was! Now that I have this routine I’ll do this every time I update to a new Wordpress theme, and I’m so happy I no longer have to do it “live” where current visitor’s see!

John Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his used cell phone!

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Most webmasters use RSS and a lot of people would like to know what it actually means, well this is a friend’s explanation about RSS:

“I think, the basic idea of RSS is used (in this instance) for a website to provide a link that I can use by a cute-looking little chicklet that will feed my blogs. I believe that (whatever) technology is taking updates on a certain website, formatting info as RSS or Atom or something like that, to be consumed by collective software”

This poor fellow is not alone. A large number of people are still baffled by the many wonders of the Internet. For those who want to start blogging, the usefulness of the RSS concept must be fully understood.

The general idea of the RSS feeds is very simple indeed. It is tool that you use to help the spread and the exposure of your blogs to all corners of the Internet. Through RSS, anyone who subscribed to your blogs will be regularly informed about the new blogs you published and other updates. You can put the different websites you visit every day in one place using RSS.

Without RSS, people will waste a lot of time pursuing their daily dose of fresh news and updated information. Websites are impractically constrained on their publishing activities because they have to wait for availability of new content.

RSS (a.ka. Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is the process of spreading content from a website to another website using a feed reader program; thus, the nickname RSS feeds.

Atom is a type of feed reader and it is another form of RSS. Both are children of XML technology. Simply put, XML technology is a form of language used to build blocks that create website pages.

RSS feeds are often viewed on websites. The programs that can be used to read feeds are called Readers or Aggregators. These programs are often found in browsers, on websites, or on email software. Feed readers also indicate what feed you have and have not read.

The Firefox browser from Mozilla was the first to include a blog feed (a box-shaped symbol with color orange), which is often found at the right side end of the address bar.

Feed Demon, Feedburner, Technorati, Google Homepage, and Bloglines are just a few popular online readers. These feed websites create your feeds for free. Some websites, like Blogger, come with automatic feed reader. Some have charges for feed reading service because it comes with advanced features regarding visitor traffic, statistics and even IP addresses.

Through RSS feeds, web syndication is now possible where Internet browsers to link together as many websites as they want.

Providers of Web Based Project Management Software and Intranet Software Solutions

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Many moms and young kids make money working from home, do you wonder where they get the money? How they manage to earn enough money not only to sustain their living, but totally changed the way they live – The Internet Lifestyle! Let me share with you their secrets…

Method #1 – Blogging

Anyone can do blog, but there are differences between profitable and not profitable blogging, you must learn the proper way to blog, know what to blog, how to blog and when to blog.

Method #2 – Affiliate With Article

Anyone can write an article should be able to write the article! The real value of article is not how good they write, but what do they write. You must know what niche is profitable before you can be leverage the power of article. Use article to get visitors to your website and sell the affiliate product is one of the most profitable businesses!

Method #3 – Receive Job

If you have special skill, such as accounting, programming or graphic design, you can easily bet for jobs at elance.com, ifreelance.com, odesk.com and guru.com.

Method #4 – Take Survey

Many companies offer visitor to fill up the survey and get paid, they are collecting valuable marketing information and might eventually sell you something.

Method #5 – Surf The Websites

Mostly provided by web traffic company, you install a toolbar on your browser and get to pay every time you visit a website. Just don’t expect to earn lots of money from surfing the web, this is the worst way ever to make money working from home.

Method #6 – Ebay

Ebay is not just an auction website, you can start your online store, selling physical goods with Ebay.

Method #7 – Stock Exchange or Forex Trading

You need money to trade Forex and Stock, the return can be very high, so is the risk!

Method #8 – MLM Program

You can join any Multi-level marketing program and help bringing in more members, I personally don’t like any program with more than 2 levels, because I don’t think is ethical!

Method #9 – Sell Information Product

You can create e-book, audio and video courses to sell information, this is proven to be the largest and the most profitable online market!

Method #10 – Sell Software Product

You can easily create any software product from hiring professionals at outsourcing website as mention before, and sell them hundreds or even thousand times! You only have to pay once and earn for the lifetime!

As a conclusion, I personally love blogging and affiliate marketing with the article, selling the information product and software are all my choice. If you want more than make money working from home, I would suggest you follow my choice to build a solid business… At the end of the day, still your passion and your own choice that make dreams come true!

Visit my blog to leave a comment, and you can find more information about building a solid business online: To Make Money Online – http://www.ultimate-iwealth.com

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