What I’ve Learned My First 2 Years in Internet Marketing
September 29th, 2008When first starting out in IM a couple of years ago, I was totally confused and experienced information overload daily. Warriors were talking about stuff way over my head and it often felt like making money online was something I could only dream about but would never achieve. But the longer I hung around the more things started to make sense. I’ve had many “aHah” moments, and still have them!
This is what I’ve learned in the past couple of years in IM:
To make money online, you must have a product to sell. It can be your own, or someone else’s product, and it can be a service that you provide, but you must have something to sell.
Your own website is a must, and you need to have some knowledge of HTML. Many will disagree with this, but I’ve found it essential. HTML is easy to learn; there are many free online courses and books in the public library that teach it. Although many people start out with free blogs, etc., that’s fine to get your feet wet but when you get really serious about IM, get your own website.
You need an autoresponder as soon as you can afford it to start building lists and keep your customers for future marketing campaigns. You’ll need squeeze pages for this, too, to get people to sign up. The best way to get people to sign up is by giving away free information, like a free ebook.
Learn how to turn a Word document into a PDF document so you can create your own products. This is a lot easier than it was 2 years ago, maybe because I discovered Open Office.
Set up one campaign after searching for a good niche and finding keywords, including long tail keywords. The campaign should have at minimum your website, a product or products to sell (remember, these don’t have to be your own, they can be affiliate products), a squeeze page to get people to sign up to your list, and a download page.
When you have one successful campaign going, start on another one. If your first campaign makes an average $200 a month, then you can build one after another until you reach your goal. The potential is unlimited!
Stick with something until it is completed, and don’t let yourself get distracted while reading posts here, and elsewhere. It’s good to set aside some downtime to browse and learn, just be careful, or you’ll end up spending your entire day browsing and getting nothing accomplished.
Write articles every day, and do other marketing every day. You can have great products and a wonderful campaign set up, but if you have no one going to your website or squeeze page, you’ll sell nothing and make no money.
Accept the fact that you’ll never know everything there is to know about IM. Nobody else does either. Those who try to learn everything before getting started often never take action because trying to learn everything becomes overwhelming.
Just get started with what you know and go from there! It’s okay to make mistakes; some of my mistakes have been the best teachers.
How to Find the Top Selling Items on eBay
September 8th, 2008Knowing how to find the top selling items on eBay is an important skill for sellers who want to maximize their profits on the world’s most popular marketing site. Millions of products change hands every day by being listed and sold there. Of those millions of products, a relatively small percentage are hot selling items.
Successful sellers find items to sell that are popular with buyers. In fact, some hot items are so popular with buyers that they find themselves amongst stiff competition to win the auctions of these hot products.
So how do you find the top selling items on eBay? The best – and most time consuming way – is to do research on the site and find the most popular products yourself. The way to do this is to use the advanced search feature and go through each category looking for hot items.
There are some paid websites that allow members to search sold listings on eBay, and some feature hot product lists. The eBay website itself offers Marketplace Research, a fee-based program that allows members to search specific products and obtain statistics about average pricing and completed sales.
eBay Pulse is a tool used by many sellers to find popular items on eBay. Pulse shows the top ten keyword searches for each category. Keep in mind that this includes searches only and does not include statistics about completed listings.
Another option is to pay someone who has already gathered research and found the most popular items among eBay buyers. Some people actually enjoy strolling the virtual streets of eBay and discovering the hottest products that sell the quickest and for the most money.
Those eBay sellers who make the most money do so by finding and selling the top selling items in hot, lucrative niches. They either do the research themselves or pay someone else to do the research for them.
Selling popular products is the most important factor when it comes to maximizing profits on eBay. Lots of sellers make money on the site, but those who earn the most are those who know how to find the top selling items on eBay.
How Do I Sell on eBay?
June 11th, 2008Before eBay sellers become successful, each individual has to start somewhere. Most ask this question at some point: How do I sell something on eBay? Sometimes the hardest part is just getting started. This information will hopefully give you that extra push to get you started in the right direction and start making money on eBay.
The first thing to do when starting out on eBay is to register on the site and obtain a User ID. To do this, simply go to www.ebay.com and register as a new user. You should also register with PayPal because that is the accepted form of payment, and PayPal makes it easy for buyers to pay and for sellers to get their money.
The second thing to do is just start buying some items on eBay in order to get your feedback score up. It is difficult to sell items with a zero feedback score. Once you have your PayPal account set up, it will be very easy to buy stuff on eBay. Make sure the seller accepts PayPal; believe it or not, some do not accept it. Once your feedback score is above 10, you are ready to start selling.
The first thing to determine is what you will sell on eBay. Most sellers start selling stuff around the house and garage that they no longer want or need. Get a good-sized box and just start putting stuff in that you find around the house and want to sell.
Once you have some items to sell, sit down and do some research on the eBay site to determine what price you can get for each item. You do this by searching “completed listings.” Go to “Advanced Search” and click the box beside “Completed listings only.” This will show all the listings that have ended within the past 14 days, and will show you what has sold and what has not sold. Those listings that sold will show the price in green. Those that did not sell will show the price in red. You can then get an idea of what the item is selling for, and whether it is a popular item.
As you are doing research, pay attention to the item descriptions of those items that sold. It will give you a good idea of what kind of description to write for your own item. Don’t copy someone else’s description word for word, but you can get an idea of what to put in your own description.
Take pictures of your item with a quality digital camera in good lighting. Sharp, clear pictures are very important when selling stuff on eBay. Buyers cannot see the item in person, so they must rely on pictures to determine whether they want to bid on it.
When you are ready to list your items, simply click on the “Sell” tab to get started. The eBay selling form will guide you through listing your item; you will price your item, write a description, upload pictures, and specify shipping costs.
After the listing ends and your item sells, package it carefully and mail to your customer. If the item does not sell, then you can list it again. The average selling rate on eBay is 33%; this means that for every three items listed on eBay, one item sells.
After you get some sales under your belt, it will be time to take your eBay business up a notch and try to obtain products to sell. Those sellers who make a ton of money on the site sell products in hot, lucrative niches.
How to Sell on eBay: Find a Hot, Profitable Niche
June 7th, 2008Selling stuff on eBay is one of the fastest and easiest ways to make money online today. Millions of people are selling stuff on the site and making money doing it. Most of them just make a few bucks, however. Most sellers who make a ton of money on the site sell products in profitable niches.
If you want to make a full-time income on eBay, the first thing you must do is find popular products to sell in hot, profitable niches. There are a number of ways to find these hot niches – they all have certain characteristics. Here are some characteristics of profitable niches.
There will be at least several bids on the majority of the auctions in a hot, profitable niche. When you sell in a hot, profitable niche, there is a lot of action in that niche and all the auctions will get attention from buyers searching for the items.
Most auctions in a hot, profitable niche will end with the item selling. You will see very few auctions end without the item being sold. Usually those that don’t sell are due to a starting price that is too high.
In a hot, profitable niche, you will see buyers competing with each other to win the auctions. As they compete to be the highest bidder, they often become emotionally attached to the auction and sometimes drive auction prices beyond what they would pay at the local mall!
EBay is a huge marketplace with new buyers and sellers signing up every day. That means there is fierce competition, but there are also millions of buyers for you to target. Wise sellers find ways to use this extraordinary marketplace to put money in their pockets.