Why It's a BAD Idea To Promote Hot Selling Products on eBay

Do a quick search on Google, Yahoo, or your favorite auction resource site, and you'll quickly discover there are several software programs targeted to vendors who want to promote hot selling products on eBay.

The infatuation with hot selling products exists because sellers believe if you target items that have a robust sales pattern, you'll have a better chance at profiting on eBay. This is both true and false.

Yes... hot selling products can improve your bottom line. But unfortunately by the time the average eBay seller (a) realizes what the hot selling products are, (b) purchases stock to sell on eBay, and (c) actually puts the items up for sale, the demand is already being met by other eBay sellers who probably started the hot selling product trend some time ago.

Not only that, with thousands of people also having access to the same hot selling product lists, you'll have to contend with other eBay vendors who have the exact same ideas that you do. So you'll be up against the original sellers who are currently feeding the demand, AND doing the tango with newer sellers who have jumped on the same hot selling product bandwagon that you did.

Okay maybe this won't happen to you.

But suppose it does.

What if competition becomes so great that prices start dipping below the wholesale cost that you paid for the item? (It happens all the time on eBay.) And what if you lose $100, $200, or even $1,000 on inventory that you thought would be flying off the shelf? Suddenly that hot selling item is looking rather cold sitting in your garage collecting dust.

So if not hot selling products on eBay, then what?

Do what the majority of PowerSellers do. Sell what you want, instead of what's hot. Repeat after me, "Every day ordinary items sell extremely well on eBay... Every day ordinary items sell extremely well on eBay... Every day ordinary items sell extremely well on eBay." Allow this to become your mantra, because it is very much true.

I know this from first-hand experience as I analyze top sellers instead of hot products. And my research has continuously shown me that mediocre products don't necessarily translate into mediocre sales.

For instance, there's a seller right now who clears about $1,000-$2,000 a week selling magnets. And that's AFTER eBay and PayPal fee's. Another seller promotes homemade CD's to a specific audience and clears $900-$2,000 a week. A few sellers make $500-$700+ a week - after expenses - promoting public domain information. And the cool thing about public domain information is that anybody can sell it because it's free. So that's pure profit by selling something they never paid for. Talk about the ultimate arbitrage opportunity!

The ultimate key in succeeding no matter what product you end up selling, is to build a successful strategy. To figure out 'how' to profitably market what you have, instead of chasing after the next great thing. Because once you have the strategy part down, you can sell anything on eBay and make it a hot seller to your bank account.

The Perfect Home Business For Moms!

The important role that women play as a wife and mother at home can not be overemphasized. They organize home life to ensure things run smoothly. From cleaning the home, making the meals, taking care of the children, and running a host of other important errands and tasks. For a wife and mother who works outside the home these tasks can take on the organization skills of Super Woman. And, while some women are content to take on the daunting challenges of career woman, wife and mother, others would prefer to work at home.

Looking for a work at home business can be a task in itself. We often need to search through several opportunities before we settle on one that has possibilities and appeals to us. One Work at Home Business that has worked out very well for me is eBay. eBay recently reported $14.87 billion in annual merchandise sales with over 100 million members. 400,000 of these are making their living from eBay. Why? Because a Work at Home Business using eBay is so easy to operate and maintain.

Since technology has become much simpler over recent years, learning curves have become less severe than they once were This has made operating a computer easier than ever. With this, people have been flocking to the Internet and eBay to create a Business of their own. The main draw of working online is that you can Work at Home. No long commutes to work. No 9 to 5 either, your hours can be flexible so you can still enjoy time with your family.

eBay lends it self perfectly as a Work At Home Business. There are no special skills required other than the confidence that you can be successful with an online business regardless of your business, computer or Internet experience and skills. What skills? you ask. Well, just very basic skills. The ability to surf the web, read and send emails, create auction pages (webpages) and upload them. And most importantly and ability to learn and the want to succeed.

The easiest way to start your Online Auction Business would be to use Dropshippers. The great thing about Dropshipping, as outlined in my book "eBay Marketing Wholesale SourcePak", is that it will allow you to operate a Home Based Business as an Internet Marketer with out ever worrying about storage of inventory, packaging of inventory, or even shipping of that inventory. The Dropship supplier will look after all of that for you. And even greater still is the fact that your auction business will cost you very little to get started The fact is, most Dropshippers charge you nothing to become a member to sell their products. While others may charge just a nominal administration fee. Plus, you
can list your item on eBay for approximately .35 cents. So, as you can see your eBay Auction Business will cost you very little to get started. With such a low financial risk the only thing you have to lose is a bit of your time.

How does one put together eBay and Dropshipping? It's really very simple. First, browse eBay to see what kind of product(s) you would like to sell. Then sign up as a member with eBay. Once you have decided on a product(s),locate a Dropshipper for that product(s). Sign up with that Dropshipper and then place an auction on eBay for the item.. Once your auction is over and you have a buyer for the product email your Dropshipper the required information. The Dropshipper will ship the product directly to your customer as though it came from you. Then the Dropshipper will charge your account the wholesale price for that product. The difference between the wholesale price and your retail price is pure profit!

To run a successful eBay Business you will need to sell what the public wants to buy. Always research any product before you decide to sell it. Make sure it is popular and you can get it at a great price. If you have something worth selling, you are bound to find someone on eBay who wants to buy it..

Happy Selling!

When AdSense Goes AWOL

No matter how hard you work to optimize your page, there are going to be times when Google just can’t figure out which AdSense ad to deliver, so it defaults to delivering a PSA (Public Service Ad) instead.

Now I don’t have any problem with charities, but I give to the ones that I choose to give to. Since I don’t have a non-profit license of my own, the goal of my web site is to make money and I depend on Google AdSense revenues to help pay my bills. Someday I want it to fund my retirement as well, so I can’t afford to have non-revenue PSAs showing up on my site.

The good news is the Google understands the human’s basic greedy nature, so it provides us with an alternative to donating our precious web real estate to charitable organizations. That alternative is known as AdSense Alternate Ads.

As strange as it seems, this feature allows you to let Google competitors into your site. Don’t worry, Google is allowing it with their eyes wide open. They even tell you how to set up the alternate ad code to work on your site and they let you do it right in your AdSense control panel.

Once you add the code to your site, Google will pull ads from whatever service you defined rather than serve a PSA. Google will do that even if those ads are coming from Yahoo, or Overture, or your grandmother’s attic.

This goes a long way towards ensuring that you never lose an opportunity to monetize a visitor’s time spent on your site. How nice it is of Google to gives us that opportunity.

Who do you choose?

Ah, now that’s the big question. Most people head straight for Overture or Yahoo, but there are other fish in the sea worth considering. In fact, some of these fish make their living almost solely by serving replacement ads for PSAs. Run this search (http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&hl=en&q=google+psa+alternatives&btnG=Google+Search) on Google and you’ll have plenty of options to choose from.

Why bother?

Sometimes Google doesn’t have any ads in its inventory to match your site’s keywords. Sometimes Google gets confused and can’t figure out which ads to deliver, so it grabs a PSA ad.

Google also has a not-so-readily-available list of what it calls “stop words”. When the Google AdSense spiders detect these words on your page they automatically trigger PSAs. Some of the more commonly known words include severe profanity (think: George Carlin’s 7 Words You Can’t Say on T.V), as well as other words which may very be quite legitimate for your site such as pharmaceutical, drugs, death, dying, abortion, and the list goes on and on. At least we THINK that it goes on and on but no one really knows for sure outside of a trusted few Google staffers.

But no matter what the reason, you don’t want non-revenue ads running on your site. There’s no excuse when Google makes it so easy to keep the revenue flowing.

Traffic Arbitrage- The new kid on the block

A near risk-free and immediate way to create residual income [part one}

The Internet is a dynamic and ever evolving market place. It is full of promises and opportunities. It has the potential to turn people's fortunes around in very short orders. If you have been on the net for any reasonable length of time, such names as Yanik silver, John Reese, late Cory Rudl, Mike Filsame, Simon Garbowski and Mark Joyner to name just a handful, would not be unfamiliar to you. And if you are not familiar with these names, do not worry about it, you will soon be. These are regular folks that have leveraged the power of technology- the Internet to change their fortunes.

Apart from the big wigs, there are smaller folks out there who are raking in bundles of dollars everyday, using one or a combination of the various opportunities and income models the Internet has to offer. These income models range from Affiliate marketing, Resell rights, and Downline builders, to Auctiions, Dropships, Permission marketing, Google Adsene and now Traffic arbitrage.

Of all the income models, I like Traffic Arbitrage the most. It is simple, easy and can be implemented in very little time, even by those who know nothing about doing business on the Internet, once they get the hang of it. Making it even easier, is James Jones using his new Traffic Arbitrage page builder at Click Profit Pro.

Traffic Arbitrage? I am glad you noticed. Yes, Traffic Arbitrage! I would not say "Google Traffic Arbitrage" as many would, because Traffic Arbitrage goes beyond Google. Google is mighty and powerful, but if I could achieve the same results using cheaper search engines, why not. It does not always have to be Google. The cheaper the Cost Per Click, CPC, the better for our purpose. Remember, we are not looking for FREE traffic. We are buying traffic in one market to be sold in another market. And targetted traffic is targetted traffic whether it is coming from Kanoodle or from Google. However, for our purpose, we are using Google Adwords and Adsense.

But what is Traffic Arbitrage? Coming from education, I am sold on the idea of breaking concepts down to their component parts. To answer that question, let's look at the definition of Arbitrage. According to the Encarta World English Dictionary, Arbitrage is "The simultaneous buying and selling of the same negotiables or commodities in different markets in order to make an immediate and riskless profit".

Looking at our keyword phrase, and the Encarta definition, it is clear that the commodity of our trade is internet or web traffic. Also looking more closely at our Encarta definition, three operative phrases emerge, namely: simultaneous buying and selling, different markets, and immediate and riskless profit. Now, I do not know about you, but of all the three operative phrasology, I like the last best: immediate and riskless profit. Wow!

Immediate and Riskless! I am SOLD. Going, going and gone.

I don't know about you, but I do not know any businesses where you can make immediate and riskless profit, other than Traffic Arbitrage. Even in Traffic Arbitrage, there is a miniscle element of risk. Very minute. I just have to be hornest with you.But in the real sense of it, the profits can be immediate and near riskless.

How does Traffic Arbitrage work? I am glad you asked. It is simple once you understand it. And good a thing, it is not rocket science. If I do it, anyone one can do it PERIOD. It is as easy as that.

Now Google in her never ending wisdom, created two very compelling and successful campaign platforms- Adsense and AdWords. On the one hand, Adsense offers advertisers a way to reach deeper into their market without breaking their bank, by having Google place their campaigns on participating sites with content related to advertisers products and services. It also allows content creators a way to make a little money for making their webpage available for dispaly of these adsense ads. The advertiser wins because he is getting perfectly target traffic and deeper market penetration, and the content creator wins because he is making a little money doing what he loves to do.

On the other hand, AdWords offer advertisers a quick and cost effective way to drive immediate and targetted traffic to their sites. Like Adsense, Adwords are on a Cost Per Click basis, but unlike Adsense, they appear only on search displays on Google. The advertiser bids for a position on Google search results, and when a searcher clicks on the advertiser's ads, he the advertiser is charged the bid value of his campaign.

In part two of this two part series on Traffic Arbitrage, will look at the process of setting up a Google Adsense account and Adword account. We will also bring the components together to demonstrate how this genius technique can be use time and again to create residual income.

What Does It Take to Make Money Online?

What a loaded question! Let’s narrow that down a bit and take it from the perspective of someone who wants to work from home and make money online in a home business. That will make it an easier question to answer.

Let’s assume you’ve never had a website, don’t know how to get a merchant account, don’t know html, and are pretty much stuck with being an expert on sending and receiving email.

What’s there for you to do online to make money? Lots, in fact! These days are not at all like a couple of years ago or even six months ago. If I only had all the opportunities to make money online when I started marketing!

Here is a list of things you can do with just a website and a hosting account today:

Sell affiliate products (products like reports, ebooks, hard goods of every conceivable make, model, size, shape and function, and much, much more).
Sell services (do you know how big a business being a Virtual Assistant is these days? It’s quite amazing what you can do for people without ever meeting them face-to-face, anywhere in the world!)
Online auctions (Ebay has made thousands and thousands of people full-time incomes from auctioning collectibles, antiques, and even brand new equipment and gadgets of all imaginable types. You name it, it has been sold on Ebay!)
Membership sites: Know of any groups of people that would love to get insider information on virtually any topic? You could make money online with a membership site!

The list is a long one and one I am not prepared to detail here. You have found your way onto the net and if you have been surfing for very long at all you know it is a gigantic super shopping mall. Who to you think is making the most money online? Aside from big corporations, most of the web is made up of sites put up by little businesses people work from home.

I sell information and I love it. Most of the products I sell are other merchants’ products. I just drive traffic to my site, provide information, and point to relevant products related to the information I provide people looking for a way to make money online. I love helping people make their first few sales.

After that, they are always hooked and cannot do enough to learn everything there is to know about how to make money online. Many people I have worked with now have a couple to several websites selling everything from reports to hard goods that can be shipped direct to their customers. Most people start out to make money online as affiliates of
certain products or authors. This is a great way to get your feet wet and learn what making money online is all about. People then either work to create their own products (which they get 100% of the profits from) or expand their website into other related niches.

Tools for Online Tracking

In order to determine which advertising and marketing efforts are effective you must have ways to measure the results of those efforts. Alerts and instant notifications can be instrumental in monitoring search engine position, trademarked terms, monitoring competitors and staying abreast of online occurrences. And, of course, the notification can be used for "ego searches".

Ego Searches
What is an ego search? Find out where your name or company is mentioned, view forum posts or online articles that mention your name or company.

Trademarks
The best offense is a good defense. By monitoring newsgroups or search engines for trademarked terms, you often head off a future conflict. As a trademark owner, it is your responsibility to actively protect your mark. Otherwise, you could lose your trademark rights. Monitoring tools send immediate notification should any suspected trademark infringements occur.

Search Position
Statistics show that more than 85% of Internet users find web sites with the help of the search engines. Therefore, a website's search engine position is crucial to its success. Prudent webmasters regularly check their search engine position. Monitoring fluctuations and re-indexing of major search engines affects keyword terms and phrases. Monitoring of positions will alert webmasters to any shifts before sales decline.

Competitor Watch
Monitoring newsgroups for mentions of competitors may allow you opportunities to chime in and offer an alternative solution in a helpful, friendly way. Knowing exactly what your online competitors are doing provides a competitive edge that can be used to your advantage.

Website Downtime
Accessibility is the most critical measure of your website's performance. If customers can't access your site, they can't shop; and if they can't shop, they can't buy. More important, your business could gain a bad reputation among your customers, which translates into negative word of mouth and even worse, if you're highly visible, negative press. So regardless of what else you monitor, you want to monitor websites for downtime.


Take a look at the various tools available and how they can be used to keep you current on relevant issues.

WebAlerts - Recieve email updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your choice of query or topic. Alerts can be sent based on information in Google News, Google Searches or both.
http://www.google.com/webalerts

PubSub - PubSub matches your requests against new information as it appears real time. Searches can be categorized to search, blog entries, SEC/EDGAR Filings, press releases, news group posts or flight delays.
http://www.pubsub.com

Ego Alerts - Google news search turned into an RSS feed.
http://www.justinpfister.com/gnewsfeed.php


Ebay Alerts - Ebay Alerts monitoring will create an RSS feed to monitor Ebay auctions for specific keywords or phrases. When a new item that contains those keywords is added to Ebay you will receive notification via your RSS feed!
http://www.freebiddingtools.com

Amazon Alerts - Generate a URL which you can use to automatically search Amazon.com with your favorite RSS news reader. It will automatically update you when new items meet your search criteria. I personally use it to look for new books on topics I'm interested in, and I have the defaults set to do the same, but you can adjust it to search any of Amazon's stores. You can also adjust the search order and what kind of items you wish to search.
http://www.oxus.net/amazon

Internet Seer - InternetSeer remotely monitors your website to insure that your site is available 24/7. If InternetSeer is unable to reach your site, we will send you an immediate e-mail alert that your site is unreachable.
http://www.internetseer.com

NetNewsTracker - NetNews Tracker is a clipping service for Usenet newsgroups. Newstracker searches newsgroups twice daily for any specified words or phrases and delivers alerts via e-mail. Newstracker can be used to monitor newsgroups for names, company names, products, URLs, or any other topic of interest.
http://www.netnewstracker.com

Other Suggested Resources -
Monitoring Tools - Monitoring Tools is a directory of online monitoring tools and applications
http://www.monitoring-tools.net

Monitoring Software - Monitoring Software is a collection of downloadable monitoring software solutions.
http://www.monitoring-software.net

Google Adsense Page Positioning

Correct positioning of your Google adsense ads can make or break your success with the Google adsense program. Why is this true? Some studies suggest that eye positioning on website gravitate to particular sections of web pages. And if you don’t have the necessary ads in these positions you will not get the clicks.

I talked to countless people that have great traffic, some with 300 to 1000 new visitors a day that say that they only make approx. at max $10 to $20 dollars a month on the adsense program. What a shame. But when I look at their websites the ads are either buried in wording that no one usually pays attention to or the ads are located in positions that just don’t call any attention to their presence.

So were the best locations for you Google adsense ads. Well, I have found the number one best place for the ads are near or in proximity to your main menu. Why near your main menu. Because you know that visitors eyes will and always look for the menu structure of your website. So the common places for placement should be to the top right, the very top under your menu, or the top left. These are the most common locations for you main menu.

But what about the color scheme of the Google adsense ads? Yes, color is very important. You have to make the ads looks as seamless as possible. Here is an example on one of my website http://www.pottery-barn-outlet.com. Here I decided to position the ads at the very top right under my main menu. In direct eye contact. Also, remove the borders; just these two changes will increase your adsense proceeds one hundred percent.

By using these tactics I was able to increase my adsense click through rate significantly depending on traffic level and people's interest.

Take my advice and give it try. I believe you will see a change and hopefully make adsense a more pleasurable experience.