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Archive for April, 2009

If you’re at all familiar with eBay, you know that some seller’s
listings always seem to end at a higher bid than other seller’s
listings. Do they have secret knowledge that gets them higher
bids? In a way, they do.

There are some tried and true secrets that, when put into
action, will allow you to sell your items for more money than
you would have if you didn’t have this knowledge. Below are 5 of
the easiest ways to make sure that you sell your item for the
best possible price.

Secret Number 1 - Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!

I’ve seen it a million times. Someone has a valuable item for
sale but there’s not a picture to be seen anywhere in the
auction description. That’s a BIG problem. People like to see
what they’re buying and if you don’t post any pictures, you’re
not going to be getting top-dollar for what you’re selling.

Whenever you list an item to sell, always include at least one
picture. The more pictures you post, the better. There’s no such
thing as too many pictures. Post as many as you can.

Secret Number 2 - End it on a Monday afternoon. It used to be
that ending your auction on a Sunday night was your best bet.
However, everyone caught on and now there’s so much competition
on Sunday night, your item is likely to get lost in the shuffle.
End your auction on a Monday afternoon and you’re likely to see
your bid price soar.

Secret Number 3 - Use the Gallery Option

When listing your item to sell, eBay has a gallery picture
option. This means that a thumbnail photo of your item will
appear next to your listing description in the website search
results. If you want top dollar for your item, use this option.

Secret Number 4 - Encourage Competitive Bidding

If you have a popular item for sale and you know a lot of people
will be interested in it (such as the hottest toy of the year
around Christmas time) start the bidding out at $1. You can
either put it at $1 with no reserve or if you’re not comfortable
with that, list it at $1 with a reserve price of as low as
you’re willing to sell the item for.

Secret Number 5 -

Accept payment by credit card. People like convenience and if
you want top dollar for your item, you’re going to want to
accept credit cards. There are a number of payment processing
services on the web, like Paypal.com, who will allow you to
process payments via credit card.

Jamie Dale
http://www.articlesbase.com/advice-articles/ebay-auctions-listing-for-top-dollar-194.html

Introduction

It takes more than mere information to engage website visitors. They need a reason to make an inquiry, subscribe to your newsletter, or buy your product. So how can you get the visitor to stop skirting around the edges and come right on in? Take a look at the following 10 ways that can help convert your site visitors to leads.

1. Improve your Web Copy
As with all good web copy, trim the fat and give them the cold hard facts. Visitors want to know how the service or product will fulfill their want or need. Compelling, interactive, well written content will pull the reader in. How can you make sure you have good web copy? Follow some of the basic principles of good copywriting and you’ll be fine. Make the copy concise, and speak to the target audience. Remove all the hyped up marketing lingo such as ‘we have a fantastic product’ and ‘we’ve had overwhelming results.’

2. It’s About the Customer
Everyone wants to know “What’s in it for me?” The customer may have a problem and want a solution, or they are looking to invest in a product but need to be convinced it’s a good choice. Your goal here? Show them the solution. Tell them the benefits of the product or service, rather than highlighting the features. The features won’t get their problem solved or make the sale, but the benefits will.

3. Be Approachable
Use an active and friendly voice to engage the customer and keep them motivated to continue through the process of clicking on your newsletter link or making a sale. An active voice is energetic and approachable, and ultimately, it’s more personal.

4. Trust is a factor
Trust is a big factor, so create plenty to go around. A visitor can’t see you, so the issue of trust is even more important on the internet. I’m paid every day by a person I have never met, now that’s trust! How do I know I could trust him? The first time I worked with him, he outlined the process and followed through with my expectations: I was paid on time and in full.

If you are exchanging personal information online, privacy also comes into play. Assure customers you will maintain their privacy. Tell them why you are collecting data and make them aware of what you are using it for. Place your privacy policy on your website so it can be clearly accessed. And if you are engaging in online sales, increase the trust factor by offering a variety of ways to order your product, such as via email, by phone, over a secure payment system such as Paypal.

5. Look professional
Almost half of website sales are lost because the website fails to provide the trust test with the customer. A website with an unprofessional look and feel makes the customer uneasy and gives the illusion that you are not trustworthy. Bye, bye sale.

6. Make an offer
Make the customer an offer they can’t refuse. Provide them with something for free, such as an information package or set of articles: For example:

•5 great advantages to using a virtual assistant at invesp.com. Receive our special report on 5 advantages that will reduce your expenses and increase your bottom line.

•The best web copy ever in a short time with a small investment. Join our “VIP Club” at www. invesp.com to beat others with new killer web copy.

7. Position yourself
Tell the customer what makes you special and different from the other guy. Why should they do business with you? For example, my position as a writer is that I am diverse and able to write in a variety of mediums. This makes me unique, because some writers love writing copy but hate writing proposals, or they’ll write a sales pitch but won’t write a sales manual. Stand for something and make it known.

8. Forms
Give the customer a reason to fill out a form or sign up for a newsletter as a way to continue to communicate with you. Once you have their permission to contact them, you can start offering tools, information, and benefits to communicating with you. Maybe you are sending them information packages, or keeping them in the loop with special offers. Whatever it is, getting them to sign up will increase the likelihood of a lead.

9. Maintain loyalty
You can build and maintain customer loyalty in a variety of ways. Perhaps one of the most important way is to keep your promises. Are you offering a durable product with free shipping or a solid service with a money back guarantee? Stick to your promise and follow through and your customer will remember it. All customers like to be valued, and value builds loyalty.

10. Track it
Track what your customers are looking for. Did they find their information or product? Ask them how they got to you? What words did they use to search and find you? Ask the customer what they liked and what distracted them. Your customer is a great tool to gauge success. Use it.

Ayat Shukairy
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/10-ways-to-convert-visitors-to-leads-138713.html

By now everybody has heard of some horror story about identity theft from TV shows or magazine articles. In the popular culture, references of identity theft are found in the novels and movies, notably Frederick Forsyth’s novel, “The day of the Jackal” and the 1995 movie “The Net.” In real life, the Identity Theft Resource Center (http://www.idtheftcenter.org) reports 8.9 millions identity theft victims in 2006.

So, what is an identity theft? An identity theft occurs when somebody steals vital pieces of personal information, e.g. your social security, credit card numbers, etc. and uses that information for financial gains by taking your identity. The most common form of identity theft involves credit card and mortgage frauds. But it can also be used for vicious crimes like drug dealings, terrorism, etc.

You may be surprised to know that many minor identity thefts are committed by someone you know. So, don’t make it an easy job for a person to steal your personal information from your wallet, checkbook, etc. Avoid leaving things containing your personal information lying around for others to have an easy access to that information.

Shred, shred, shred. Buy a cheap paper shredder from an office supply store and shred all your paid bills, used check books, etc. before tossing those into the trash. Put aside 30 minutes every Saturday morning for shredding anything that contained your personal information and you intend to trash. Make it a habit.

Never give out your personal information like your social security number; birth date etc. over the phone when the call you received is unsolicited. Your financial institutions have those information and they will not ask you for that. Sometimes, for verification purposes, they make ask you the last four digits of your social security number.

Don’t pay to get anybody to get a copy of your credit report. Because of a congressional mandate, all three-credit report bureaus will give you a copy of your credit report for free every year. Go to AnnualCreditreport.com to obtain your free credit report every year from TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. While obtaining your free credit report, these bureaus will push some paid services. Just ignore those.

Don’t get your free credit reports from the three bureaus all at the same time. Then you have to wait one year before you can get your reports again for free. In the mean time, some unwanted stuff may show up in your report. Get your free report every four months from each bureau. If you are using a PDA, password protect it to prevent others from accessing it.

Phishing is a popular method to steal sensitive information for identity theft purposes. Don’t be a phishing victim. Avoid clicking on any link that comes to your way through e-mails or IM. The e-mail will disguise itself coming from your financial institutions (your bank or PayPal accounts) and will urge you to click a link to verify your accounts or resort to such other tricks. Sometimes, it can be outright threatening. If you click the link you will end up in the thief’s website. And if you enter your user name and password, the thief will have enough information to log into your actual account.

Open online accounts for all your credit cards and financial accounts. Online accounts are not only convenient for faster bill paying, paperless transactions, etc.; they also help monitor your accounts frequently, instead of waiting for the monthly bill or statement to arrive. Monitor your accounts online every week and if you see any suspicious charges, checks, etc., call you banks immediately. Also setup e-mail based account alerts, if available, to alert you when charges are made to your accounts.

If possible, avoid putting your outgoing mails containing bills and checks in your mailboxes for easy access by a thief. Drop them in mailboxes located in the post office or street corners. Better yet, setup online bill payment with your bank and avoid the snail mail for bill paying.

You also need to keep your computer safe. Thieves can get into computers through spyware and unsecured wireless or network connections. Use anti-spyware programs and turn on your Windows default personal firewall program. To prevent viruses infecting your computer, use an anti-virus program. Setup accounts for each user of your computer and ask them to use strong passwords that include a combination of letters and numbers.

Another way to prevent anybody, including you, from opening any credit in your name is to freeze your credit. This option is not available in all states. If it is available in your state and you opt for this option, you need to lift the block before you allow anybody, e.g. an employer for a new job, creditor for a car loan, etc., to access your credit information. Though it is almost like a foolproof system to prevent identity theft, it is the also the most inconvenient method.

Deepak Dutta
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/identity-theft-you-can-prevent-it-84423.html

For UK not US

I would suggest using clickbank.com i use them a lot for affiliate sales put it can go through your link it doesnt have to be with an affiliate link. The set up is the easiest you will find. Customers still have the choice to pay by paypal so you are not loosing customers and the 1st three payments are sent through the post and then you can set it up to pay it straight into your bank account.

Bidvertiser (http://www.bidvertiser.com/)
Like AdSense, Bidvertiser displays text ads in your page. But the difference lies in the fact that advertisers bid over your advertising space, ensuring you earn as much revenue as you possibly can. This also means that bids will increase over time, earning you even more cash. You also get a great way to customize your ads with a very easy to use tool and detailed reports on your site’s status.

Quigo AdSonar (http://www.quigo.com/adsonarpublishers.htm)
Quigo AdSonar achieves relevancy by placing a filter according to your site’s categories. It also offers you on-line reports of your site’s status and the possibility to add your own custom ads replacing ads that don’t gain you any revenue. The setup is very simple, in a similar fashion to AdSense’s and quite customizable as well.

Vibrant Media IntelliTXT (http://www.intellitxt.com/site/web_01a.html)
Vibrant Media IntelliTXT offers user-activated ads, highlighting certain words within the content of the page and presenting relevant ads when a user hovers his mouse over them. It uses a pay-for-performance pricing scheme and can easily be used along with other advertising methods, because it is unobtrusive. It places you in full control, allowing you to easily integrate it within your site with some simple JavaScript.

Nixie (http://www.nixxie.com/display.php?section=Partners)
Nixie claims to hold a technology that can read and understand your site, enabling it to display the most relevant content to your site. Besides text ads, Nixie also features price comparison listings as well as live auction advertising. It’s very easy to implement and has a good payment policy as well.

MIVA AdRevenue Xpress (http://www.miva.com/us/content/partners/arx.asp)
MIVA AdRevenue Xpress is targeted towards small and mid-sized publishers. It implements Search Box functionality and also features things like a Category Directory as well as the handling of 404 error pages. It can be integrated with your page using a simple on-line wizard.

Fastclick (http://www.fastclick.com/publish.html)
Fastclick offers you an impressive 65 percent of what it makes from a click on your website. Payments are done monthly, via PayPal or through checks. The ads can be formatted as you wish, and Fastclick even offers a free support serice for its members and no fees are required to register with the service.

contextWeb ContextAd (http://www.contextweb.com/Corporate/publisher/publisher.shtml)
ContextAd offers the possibility of contextual ads for dynamic pages, meaning ads will change as soon as your page does. It’s very easy to use and free to sing up for and offers a transparent payment policy. The ads are fully customizable and real-time reports are available 24/7.

AdBrite (http://www.adbrite.com/)
AdBrite offers publishers the possibility of integrating text ads in their pages. These are done on your own rates, with the websites you approve by hand so it bares some similarities with a classic advertising scheme. You also have the option of adding a “Your Add Here” button that buyers can immediately click to ad space on your page. It can also be used in conjunction with Google AdSense, maximizing your CTR and offering advertisers the possibility of showing their links in your Google AdSense space. You have full control over the look and feel of your adds and finally, you get an incredible 75% of what the advertiser pays for on every click.

So, as you can see there are many offers for this kind of advertising, and many hybrids based on AdSense like advertising. Also, a lot of services can work together with AdSense to earn you an even greater amount of revenue for your ad space.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

John Ugoshowa
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/adsense-alternatives-2-76515.html

China has been thriving in recent years and has been named as the “World’s factory” because of its high production and low labor cost. It seems to be a trend now to import goods from China directly since there will be middleman in between and hence one can get the latest and cheapest products.

“But how? I don’t speak Chinese and China is thousand miles away from my home”, you may wonder. This is still valid for a few years ago.

Things have changed and now you just need a few clicks online and you will have the latest qualified products to your home/office directly from China, thanks to the appearance of online wholesale shops in China in recent years.

Though it is much easier to order goods from China, a few things you should still need to be noted:

1.Products Quality
Products quality is always the primary concern of an importer. Many of the wholesalers claim that they will do some quality-checks before the products are sent out. This is a good service but I’d suggest you, to be safe, to find a site that offers samples so that you can have a check on the product yourself.

2.Delivery
Delivery time is another concern for an importer. Sometimes a product would become useless if it takes 2 months to be shipped. Try to find a company that locates in a large city, like Hong Kong, and at the same time they offer express courier service like UPS, EMS, etc.

3.Payment Gateway
Bank-wire was the only option before the internet times. Now different payment gateways based on transferring money through credit card have appeared. Paypal is one of the examples. Make sure the wholesale company offers Paypal-like payment gateway and charge-back and buyer protection are available.

4.Tax
Import tax can make your cost significantly increase. Almost most of the overseas online-shop will not be responsible for the import tax. But some of the better ones will try to lower the tax as much as possible for the customers. They will try to separate the goods into smaller packages, state the goods as gifts and a lower nominal value in the custom form so that the charges would be minimized.

5.MOQ
Many ebayers and small local shops would care much about the minimum order quantity. Only a few online wholesale shops (like http://www.asia-product.com) would offer no MOQ limit to the customers.

6.Drop-shipping
Drop shipping is a type of retailing in which the retailer does not keep goods/product in stock, but instead passes customer orders and shipment details to wholesalers, who then dispatch the goods to the customer directly. The retailer makes their profit on the difference between the wholesale and retail price. With the proliferation of online auctions, drop-shipping has become an important function of a wholesale site. However, only a few online wholesale shops will have drop-shipping function.

Kenny Lam
http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/how-to-import-goods-from-china-successfully-and-securely-67342.html

If you are thinking of getting into marketing products on the Internet, PLR (public label rights) is one of the easiest ways to go. However it is downloadable informational products that are all rage and offer you the most profit for the least amount of investment. There are currently thousands of internet sites selling all kinds of PLR products including e-courses, e-books, individual articles or series of articles, graphics, website templates or scripts and programming source code so you have plenty of products to choose from.

The easiest most clear cut way to make money selling PLR content is to find stuff in the Public Domain and simply compile it and sell it as an online e-book. However remember that to make money your e-book must contain unique or niche content that people are willing to pay for. This means that your PLR material must be unlike any information found for free on the Internet. Nobody is willing to pay for information that they can get for free because it has fallen into the Public Domain. You also need some kind of security when you sell it so others don’t copy your PLR idea.

Selling PLR content as an e-book is simple. You create the e-book and format it in a way that is easy to download but difficult to copy and paste, such as a locked PDF file. You then write your PLR sales letter and post it on a site with it’s own unique URL. You can accept payment for the product directly through Paypal or ClickBank so you don’t even have to have your own merchant account. You then market your site URL using Google Adwords so that people know where to find your information. This is one of the easiest ways that you can simply make a living using search engine optimization techniques to sell something that is already free!

Chris Angus
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/seo-marketing-plr-with-seo-95594.html

If you have a domain name that you are not using, or a site that
you have to take down for some reason, then the traffic that
goes to that site is doing you no good at all. Instead of
leaving the domain blank, or letting your hosting company (Like
GoDaddy) get free publicity on your page, you can make money off
your pages by letting a domain parking company place ads on your
page that will be displayed to any visitors. You still own the
website and the domain, you just let them put ads on the pages
for however long you want.

Just simply park your domain on sedo, then point your domain
name to sedo server or redirect the domain to address something
like :

http://www.sedoparking.com/yourdomain.com

Then, Conveniently receive your monthly payments via Paypal once
your earnings have reached only $20! If you do not have paypal
sedo will send you an international wire transfer, anywhere in
the world at no additional cost (earnings must reach $50 for
wire transfer payments)

Dorry Mitchell
http://www.articlesbase.com/domain-names-articles/proffiting-from-domain-investment-898.html

Buying Wholesale The Right Way

By now, if you’ve been on the Internet for just a little while (and I was a late-bloomer), starting in 1997, you know the land mines.

Not everything that is advertised is what it claims to be. That can be from products to services.

I didn’t start out to be in wholesale, in fact, I didn’t start out to have anything to do with the Internet at all. I was a cartoonist (still am), and founder of Londons Times Cartoons. That launch was in 1997 in a small Mississippi warehouse that I used as my studio as I could not afford much more and launch the cartoons without a full time job. I took odd jobs as I continued this creative venture.

A Google of Londons Times Cartoons has hundreds of articles, reviews, etc. and even the real story of how we got started We’ve been at it a long time and are top-rated (bragging rights here) on Alexa.com and Netcraft.com.

It was not until 1995 that I realized I also had a business as I was getting emails from webmasters, newsletter publishers, etc. asking to buy the rights to my images. That was my start.

Then I was approached by a manufacturer wanting to create my merchadise from tee shirts to
wall clocks. We struck a deal for both retail and wholesale. My attorney, a very precise man who dots every “I” and crosses every “T” made sure it was written out to where we both benefited equally.

Then the manufacturer revealed he really didn’t understand the wholesale business. Being a back-to-college adult student at a very good university, and having worked in wholesale many years growing up, I volunteered to teach him. He had no interest.

Then started my hunt. Who could manufacture and wholesale my now top-rated cartoons onto products and do so meticulously, at affordable prices, and keep the word of a contract? It took another year and I found a company in Denver that was well-funded. I asked to see samples and they were expedited two day delivery. They were perfect. They were not silk-screened but directly digitally transferred which makes them look like part of the product, not an iron on decal. Perfect! Now to find out about customer service, guarantees, etc. All there. I signed up. A year has gone by and things
worked out very well.

The secret to this business is not so much knowledge (though of course knowledge IS power) so read all you can, but persistence. There are some good wholesalers out there. I sell from my a little shop that I set up on the net. My products show the suggested retail price on them but then inside,
after clicking on the product is another hyperlink that says pricing and shows the wholesale table.

I set up a real business plan and went to work. I consulted with my business professors and other wholesalers who I knew had been in the business a long time.

Rick Londonwear was born, the first line of “designer” cartoon clothing for men, women and children. We also make other cartoon products such as mousepads, coasters, cutting boards, tote bags, and all sorts of other funny items bearing our copyrighted cartoon image.

Things worked out perfectly, the service is great, I was able to keep the prices way below the competition, and my cartoon team ten years later still creates the best cartoons on the Internet (so say the critics) which appear on the merchandise.

I have a staff of twenty three, I sell to Ebay merchants, brick and mortar store owners, e-store owners, and traveling salespersons. Whomever wants to turn a very good profit on very hot items, they come to me. I love the business.

I make it very easy for the buyer. I accept all major credit cards, Paypal, checks and money orders. We drop-ship on any pre-paid order or directly to you. We don’t gauge on shipping, what it costs is what we charge; same cost to Canada and ship worldwide. Generally 2-3 day USPS Priority. Everything works out. I don’t know how but it does.

We made our mistakes. That is how we learned and became established. We still make a few, but they are few and far between and when we do, we make it right immediately.

That is the kind of company you want to deal with. I hate to brag but it is. Someone who has “seen it all” on the Internet and knows the land mines and will help you through them. It doesn’t have to be us, we might not even offer the niche product that excites you. But whomever it is, make sure they have experience, are established, have references, and can make it happen for you. If you make money (they/we) do too!

Rick London
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/buying-wholesale-the-right-way-and-the-wrong-way-108453.html

Have you fell victim to identity theft? If you have your not alone as identity theft is now the number one crime in the U.S. There is an array of different forms of identity theft, but internet identity theft is by far the biggest problem. With hundreds of thousands of credit card transactions going through the internet on a daily basis and hackers becoming increasingly knowledgeable, it is getting to the point where it is risky to shop online.

There are several ways you can go about preventing identity theft to make sure you don’t add to an already astounding stat. One of the biggest ways people give in to identity theft is by submitting personal information through scam emails. You probably have seen them and have maybe even fell for them, but thousands of scam emails claiming to be from the IRS, banks and Paypal are circulated throughout the internet every day.

Inside these emails, they want you to submit personal information such as a credit card number or your social security number. The purpose of the email is to get you to submit your information to renew your account or check your bank status. All they are doing is trying to get your personal information and use it against you, thus identity theft.

As hard as it is to believe, it is possible for you to make purchases without truly making them. It is vital that you check your credit card statements every month and look for any unidentifiable purchases. If you make any purchases online, there is the potential for your credit card number to be hacked and for the hacker to go on a shopping spree.

Identity theft is a scary crime because it is possible for you to be a victim of it without even realizing it for several months. By that time it may be too hard to find the person. Although you are not held responsible for any of the unauthorized charges, it is a major pain to work everything out. You have to work out your credit report, replace your credit cards and even potentially close and open a new bank account.

Identity theft is just as bad of an inconvenience for the credit card companies as it is for you. Every year credit cards experience losses of 50 billion dollars a year. In an attempt to solve this, many credit card companies are coming out with new software that can better detect identity theft and internet identity theft. Some software now checks for unusual purchases, such as large expenditures in a short amount of time.

While there are various ways you can fall victim to identity theft, internet identity theft has become increasingly troubling over the past few years. With a rise into the number one crime in the U.S., it is vital that you are careful when purchasing or submitting any personal information because you never know if you may be the next victim of identity theft.

David Tanguay
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/are-you-an-identity-theft-victim-121703.html