Updates...Updates...Read all about it

Wow, time is flying! It's Halloween already and before you know it, New Years Day will be here!

So updates are in order...

Let's see, LowPricedMags, my primary eBay user ID...we just hit 13,000 total positive
feedbacks...almost 9000 unique positives. I've got my eye on that big 10k...the flying star.

Our other eBay store All_that_and_More! where we sell just about everything, but mostly sell Adidas Golf Clothing, has been doing very well, very consitant.

We have a few other user ID's we're working on some different projects with, and will keep you updated as things progress on that front.

Let's see...other sites...

Well, my site www.HookupyourMySpace.com is literally busting at the seams with traffic. Checkout out this screen shot from my awstats page in cpanel...

Can you believe the growth? Would you like to have nearly 30,000 unique visitors to your site this month? Of course you would. It's MySpace marketing folks.

I'm using MySpace to drive this traffic and the traffic I spoke about in my last post, for Vtag...is continuing to grow week after week.

With that success on the MySpace resource site, I decided to expand on that success and I started and/or bought 5 more resource sites. I now have www.RapRnBlayout.com, www.SpaceTagger.com, www.ClearSpaceLayouts.com and a few others I'm still tweaking.

All the other sites are hanging in there...holding their own.

What else...the eBay car business is steady...still shooting cars for dealerships and posting around 100 listings/month for them.

Oh yeh, just remembered something else I've been working on ( of course... ). I had a custom checkout built for my magazine business. The problem is that when people order magazines on eBay, they typically want to send them to multiple addresses as they're a very popular gift item.

Well the challenge is that neither eBay or PayPal, or ANY other checkout system on the market allows the user to enter more than one shipping address. Then my customers send emails and leave notes in PayPal and at the end of the week, you end up with literally a thousand emails and notes to reveiw...not a good scenario. So, I solved the problem and had a solution built.

Here's a link to the main page https://www.search4mags.com/checkout/ though you can't get in much further without a transaction pending.

I had to outsource it to a company from India and it took several weeks, but the result is awesome! Now my customers can enter as many addresses as they want, and they can select new or renewal for each title as well. Then they can pay through PayPal or by Money Order. It gives them a receipt and gives my customers all the information I'm trying to convey to them in automated emails.

It is more efficient, and more accurate. Better for me and my customers.

The checkout had to be certified by eBay, which it was and I'm now in the Solutions Directory and in the Developer's Program.

But the big plan is to spend a bit of time using it, work out any potential bugs and then I'll offer it to other magazine sellers for a monthly fee. It'll save everyone time, trouble and make a bit of money for mui!

MySpace Marketing

Ok, I promised an update on what I've been up to. MySpace

I know you don't have to look very far to find someone who will tell you "I hate MySpace". You'll have to look even less to find a concerned parent when MySpace is mentioned.

These are valid positions to take...though neither affects me or what I have to do with MySpace.

I started using MySpace around 8-12 months ago. Using it, meaning exploring it. I actually got involved helping my kids work on their profiles. My teenagers were 'pimping' their profiles, and I thought I could either forbid it, or get involved and try to understand it and keep them safe. I'm more the educator type, so I got involved.

A few months later, I had my own MySpace resource site, www.HookupyourMySpace.com. It's a site that gives you all the tools to 'pimp' your profile for free. I was trying to drive traffic to the site, but was having a bit of trouble. I figured that MySpace itself had to be a the place to find the intended users of my site, but how to reach them was another issue.

So I started doing some reading. I searched the Internet high and low for MySpace marketing information. I read any blog post or discussion forum thread that had to do with the topic. Eventually I found the Warrior Forum where Internet Marketing is the mainstream, and I ran into some savvy marketers. Turns out they had been doing the same thing. Trying to figure this MySpace thing out.

Well I bought and absorbed anything and everything I could find in the next few months, and tried out a hundred different tactics and ideas for marketing on MySpace. Some worked great and others...well they just stunk.

But after that many months I had some great successes as well. Along the road I had learned how to market effectively on MySpace. Well as fate would have it, others were looking for someone who had done what I did. Someone who knew even a little about how to get traffic from those 61 million registered users to their site or products.

I was contacted by many and have worked with a handful of great companies creating marketing campaigns for them, and implementing and executing those plans. And again, success was had. The Vtag company that I spoke about in my last post was actually one of them, and I continue to work with them.

You won't believe how their traffic has EXPLODED!

Literally in 6 weeks we took their site traffic from less than 100 unique visitors per day to nearly 150,000 UV per day! I wish I could take all the credit, but this is truly the perfect product for MySpace an completely viral (spreads from user to user "like" a virus). Their great product coupled with our marketing efforts has launched the product nicely.

Remember the MySpace site of mine I mentioned before... www.HookupyourMySpace.com ? Well I was getting about 5-10 visitors a day 3 months ago. Now, I'm getting around 2500 unique visitors per day. And I don't have a viral product persae.

The marketing tactics work. So, a partner and I decided that with all the poor information out there, we could do better. And www.SpaceHogs.net was born. Spacehogs is a whole members site built around MySpace marketing. We have a huge eBook full of marketing tactics and "secrets" . We have over 8 videos showing you how to do what we do...not just talking about it, but walking the talk. We're having our own adder bot built and it will be included too. But probably the best part of the whole site will be our members discussion forum, where you can get coaching and help with your MySpace marketing. And you can share with others what is and isn't working for you. The forum will be invaluable.

The cost? Not enough in my opinion. My partner... Mr. Black has it set at $47 right now I think. That's a 1 time lifetime membership. I think it should be like $9.99/month but we're working on setting the price. Bottomline, if you want to learn about marketing on MySpace, there is NO better resource.

If you want to hire someone else to do your marketing for you, then drop me a note and I'll get back to you.

Your voice on the web...MySpace, eBay, my Blog?

I haven't written much about MySpace in my Blog, but it's become a big part of my Internet Marketing life recently.

I have dozens of profiles, bots, Myspace resource sites and much more. I will need to bring everyone up to speed on this whole MySpace deal. I have also been actively marketing for several companies on MySpace and driving tremendous amounts of traffic to thier sites and products. Again, big update is needed.

In the meantime, I wanted to tell you about one of the products I've been marketing. It's FREE to use, of course, but is really valuable for MySpace or eBay or dozens of other places.

What is it? It's called a Vtag. It's your voice on the internet. How? You call an 800 number and record what basically amounts to a voicemail. So your phone is the microphone. Then you go the the Vtag website and grab the code they provide you and paste it where you want your voice to be heard. When someone clicks the button...poof your voice plays.



Think of the possibilities...you could do audio blog posts from the field, record a song at a concert, make an audio profile for MySpace, use it to describe something on your eBay auction...it's so cool..and FREE.

Ok, example time...so you can figure out what the heck I'm talking about!



Allright, if you didn't click it, go back and do so. This is one of a several different skins available. They come in a few colors, sizes with the scrolling text and without it. There are even a few fun ones.


How do you get a Vtag? Go to www.Vtag.com and register (FREE), and get started making your own and get your voice on the web.

Yikes! Too Long...gotta' FOCUS

It's simply been too long since I've posted here on my Blog. I've been so incredibly busy, you can't imagine. In the past month I've launched or purchased/rebuilt 5 new websites. I've been very busy shooting cars and listing them on eBay for dealerships, I've been doing quite a bit of marketing on MySpace for a few different companies...and that's just work.

I've got 2 boys playing baseball and I coach both, and my daughter is playing Softball to boot! That's life, right? I know everyone is busy. Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed.

Anyway, I found a fantastic article that I though I'd share with you all. It's helped me tremendously...well not exactly. I think it has the potential to help me if I will only follow the advice given in it.

I'm pasting the article below. I got the article from The Warrior Forum, one of my favorite forums for Internet Marketing information. The original post was writtne by Internet Marketing Guru John Reese. It's long, but very wise.

------------------------------------------------

"DOUBLE Your Profits Now!"
By John Reese of MarketingSecrets.com

I just thought I would share a little "wisdom" with you
that I learned the "hard" way over the past 12 years
of running online businesses. Hopefully, some of you
will be able to benefit right away from what took me
YEARS to figure out and finally DO. It was the major
difference in finally finding big success online.

1. Have many Internet projects you are working on?
Have many ideas you are developing that you want to
make money with?

YOU'RE IN DEEP DOO-DOO AND YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW IT.

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn was that
working on several projects at the same time was
literally the KISS OF DEATH for my online ventures. I
was under the impression that if I could create TEN
little online ventures that could each make a measily
$2,000/month, then when the day came that they were
all online I'd be making $20K/month.

Take it from me, that will NEVER happen.

I once had over 20 projects being developed at
the same time. I even had a TEAM of employees
at that time to do it. It still FAILED.

FOCUS. THAT'S THE SECRET TO MAX PROFITS.

Just as you cannot make a million dollars without
making just ONE DOLLAR first (there's no other way
around that order) you really can't succeed online
unless you work and FOCUS on just ONE PROJECT and work
on it until it's profitable. Then and only then should
you work on Project #2.

It's too easy for entrepreneurs like us to surf around
the Internet and see opportunity everywhere. It's too
easy to come up with yet another new "plan" to create
yet another little venture -- often sidetracking us
from our original project.

So stop working on multiple projects at the sametime
-- at least not until you have ONE project making you
enough money that you can sitback and relax and "play
around" with a 2nd and 3rd and 4th project. Until you
create just ONE project that is able to support your
lifestyle you have no reason to be working on other
projects. YES, many people will disagree with me, but
it's a FACT.

The way to succeed online is to FOCUS. It's better to
do one thing "great" than to do many things "fair". If
your primary project is just not growing to the size
you want it to to support your lifestyle, then you
should probably focus on another project instead. Pick
another market. Do some research. Don't be afraid to
try something else.

DON'T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR PROJECTS.

If you give them an honest effort and they prove not
to be as profitable as you want, don't be afraid to
DUMP THEM. Online ventures are very inexpensive to
start. Don't be afraid to bail out on a failing
project and start another to focus on.

You'll make a lot more money by making one project as
best as you possibly can. Instead of spending your
time trying to get another project going, work on
GROWING your original project -- go out and get more
affiliates or test more advertising campaigns. THEN
work on creating a backend product that compliments
your initial product/service.

MILK YOUR MARKET.

Work on making your original project as big as possible.
When you can't do anymore, THEN considering starting a
second project.

2. Make Lists And Prioritize Based On One Thing -- PROFITS.

You should do "brain dumps" often. Pour everything in
your head onto paper. Get everything off your mind. We
all get a gazillion ideas everytime we surf around.
Don't clog your mind with these ideas, write them
down.

THEN RELAX AND STOP DWELLING ON THEM.

You don't need to let these ideas encompass your thoughts --
they are safe on paper or in a computer file you've created to
note them.

Make a list of "tasks" you need to work on for your
business. Write down every conceivable thing you'd
like to accomplish. Then prioritize this list from top
to bottom based on what will you make you the most
money or have the biggest impact on your bottom line.

It's funny how we often will spend a lot of time on
tasks that don't necessarily bring in new profits for
us. So work on those things that will most directly
affect your bottom line FIRST -- then work on the rest
of the list.

Also work with a better PRODUCTIVITY "BALANCE". Plan
to work 3-4 hours a day working only on some tasks on
your list. As Internet entrepreneurs it's too easy to
surf this site and other sites and PROCRASTINATE. The
Information Age makes it too easy to procrastinate --
because we can NEVER know everything there is to find
online, so we can surf INDEFINITELY.

Kill your web browser for a few hours a day if you
don't need it to accomplish the work you need to do.
Surf only when you've accomplished your day's tasks.
Same with email. Close your email client if you don't
need it.

(AND HERE COMES A "BIGGIE")

3. STOP TRYING TO COME UP WITH THE NEXT "BIG THING".
LET OTHER PEOPLE *SHOW YOU* WHAT'S MAKING MONEY.

For many years of my life as an entrepreneur I was
trying to come up with the next "Big Idea". I was
always trying to innovate. I was always trying to
invent something. I finally realized that it's much
easier to make money THE LAZY WAY.

Let other people do all the hard work for you. Let
other people figure out what people want to buy. Then
you can DIFFERENTIATE yourself and offer something
similar to the same market. No, don't copy off of
people. But create a product that compliments a
popular product/service. Not only have you created
something to offer to that same "hot" market, you have
also created something that makes for the perfect JV
for that original person that "showed you" the market.


Online, you can find out ANYTHING about any business.
Do some research and check out other successful people
online. Notice what kind of ad copy they use.
Subscribe to their ezines or autoresponder series. See
what they send you -- realize WHY. Buy your
competitors' products. See what they sell you on the
backend. Figure out HOW they are making money.

THEN EMULATE SUCCESS.

Stop trying to do things the HARD WAY. Keep an eye on
people that have already figured it out.

OBSERVE ADVERTISING

Check out the keywords for your market. Notice the
companies that are bidding for your keywords. Keep an
eye on these listings for at least a couple of weeks.
The companies that remain at the top are most likely
MAKING MONEY with that advertising or they wouldn't
keep paying for it (unless it's some Fortune 500
company just wasting money). Go to their site and see
WHAT they are selling. How much they are selling their
product for. What autoresponder series they might be
using. What their offer is. Buy their product. Figure
out their backend.

Do a little RESEARCH and you can find out the exact
"blueprint" for success in any market.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST...

4. Be proactive.

If you want more subscribers, go get them. If you want
to bring more traffic to your site, go find some
partners that can send it to you. If you want more
email subscribers, create more ways for people
to opt-in and take more advantage of the traffic you
already have.

Don't sit back and "hope" your business grows, MAKE IT
GROW. No matter what your goals are, you CAN make them
happen if you TAKE ACTION to make it happen.

This is your year to do it. Make it happen.

-----------------------------------------
John Reese is an Internet Marketing pioneer that has
been actively marketing online since 1990. John has
sold millions of dollars worth of products and services
online and his network of Web Sites have received over
1.4 BILLION Web Site visitors since their inception. You
can learn more about John, his home study courses,
and subscribe to his free ezine by visiting:

http://www.marketingsecrets.com

(c)2003 MarketingSecrets.com. All rights reserved.


Hope you enjoyed it and you learned something. I know I did!

Favorite Thingz and How To Make Money on MySpace

Are you a member of any affiliate programs? Chances are you probably are somewhere somehow. It's an opportunity to make some money by referring a potential customer to an advertiser.

Well here's an affiliate program of sorts, made specifically for MySpace. It's called FavoriteThingz . You go to the website and browse through Bands, Teams, Companies, TV Shows, Websites, Players, Games, Movies and you can even upload your own images and url's. Talk about a great way to advertise your sites!

Check it out below!

" allowScriptAccess="never">

There are NO GIMMICKS, NO SPAM, ABSOLUTELY FREE!

It's cool all by itself, just to display your favorite things to your Profile viewers, but You have the opportunity to make some money while you do it!

Let's say you add a video game to your favorite things like the one below:

When others are viewing their favorites they can click on them. They can actually be redirected to an advertiser that sells that game and others. If a purchase is made you get a referral commission.

Awesome isn't it! It is the first of its kind on MySpace. It's perfect for Blogs too. They make codes for Friendster, MySpace, Hi5 and a bunch of other Social Communities. Click HERE to get started on yours and start making some money for hanging out on MySpace and Posting all those comments and bulletins!

Awesome tool...check it out!

This is a really cool little tool I found today. Actually I heard about it at eBay Live, but finally got around to checking it out today. It's called FilmLoop. It's completely free and it does a few different cool things.

You create these neat little scrolling images and then you can post them in email, blogs, on eBay, MySpace...wherever you want. You can have it go and get all the images from eBay by username or others usernames or upload your own images and make screensavers. Awesome tool.

Check out the Horizontal scroller below:



You can also create the type below. I've put this into one of my eBay listings to show you how powerful it can be! Talk about cross promoting your items!



Here's a link to this looplet in one of my eBay listings. Click Here

There are tons of other ways to use these, be creative. And don't forget....they're FREEEEEE! And FREE is a very good price!

Official Review of The Auction Resource Network...FREE

Hey there! My buddy Chris from 3RiversAuctions just released his newest eBook. I have it for my Blog readers...absolutely FREE.

It comes with full resell and giveaway rights and there is even a link to watch a free video inside the eBook!!!

If you want to go straight to the video you can check it out here:

http://www.3riversauctions.com/videos/auctionresourcenetwork

The ebook also comes with an auction template making selling it on eBay a breeze - there's even a mystery bonus included...

Download the ebook here:

http://www.blackandwhitesprocket.com/ebooks/arn-review.zip

The eBook basically reviews a pretty cool tool. I use the site myself and visit it a few times a week. With the free download you also get another FREE ebook (again with full resale rights) called Top 10 tips for eBay Sellers.

Go check it out, you've got nothing to lose!

Secret technique for getting your eBay listing ranked at the top of Google!

Here's a little known secret about how to get your eBay listing in Google's top 3 ranks for the keywords in your eBay listing title.

How? Make it a featured item.

Usually items in the last 2 or 3 days will show up in the top 3 ranks on a Google search for the keywords in your title.

Example: I found this item on the featured listings list: Life-size Bob Daddy-O Wade Longhorn Herd Sculptures

Now Google "life-size bob daddy-o wade longhorn"

Top postion on Google!

Here's another: 150 Acre SW Oregon Mining CLaim Property

Google it: "150 acre sw oregon mining claim"

Number 1 again.

Now it doesn't always work...for instance an item where there is a lot of competition for the exact description like:

sony cyber-shot dsc-w7 7.2 megapixel

It shows up as number 10 on Google. Still remarkable exposure don't you think?

So, it may not always be worth the price of "featuring" your item, but in some cases, HOW CAN YOU BEAT A #1 RANKING ON GOOGLE for your eBay item?

Hope that gets the wheels turning!

eBay Education Specialist - eBay University

eBay U...it's just what is sounds like. A place to learn about eBay.

I've been teaching people how to use eBay for probably the past 6 years or so. For the past several years I got a lot of teaching referrals from my Trading Assistant listing on eBay.

We'd teach individuals, families or businesses how to buy & sell on eBay for $20 an hour. It was always informal and based largely on the individuals experience level and the topics they desired to know about.

For the past few years I've been seeing those "Learn How To eBay" class advertisements in the Learning Annex magazine and even local Community College handouts. I always marveled at the fact that whenever I looked at the Bio of the instructors, they always seemed to be business people, but with very little eBay experience. With only a bit of investigating, I found many have fewer than 100 feedback points, yet they're teaching others as an "expert" in their field.

Well at the recent eBay Live event in Las Vegas, they had a seminar on the eBay Education Specialist program. For a nominal fee, eBay would instruct me on the art of teaching about eBay. They include videos, a Powerpoint presentation, handouts and student books.

After I got home from Vegas, I jumped in with both feet. I knew a lot about eBay, but I always like to learn new things, and I did learn quite a bit during the online class I took to become a certified eBay Education Specialist.

Now my name is listed on the instructor database, so I can be found by potential students looking for a "Basics of eBay" curriculum. I set up a simple website so my students can learn a bit about me and register for my classes. I'm ready to roll.

My classes will likely be held in small conference rooms at local hotels or schools. I'd love to work my way into the local Colleges. It has the possibility of providing a decent part-time income as well. I'm able to charge whatever I want, but I think a fee of $50 for the 4-hour class with a $10 materials fee (certificate and student manual) is a reasonable amount. With say 20 students on a Saturday afternoon, that's $1000...not bad for 4 hours work.

Once I've had some student feedback (much like eBay's regular feedback system), I will qualify to be certified for a "Beyond the Basics" class. Again, with more feedback I can teach a Business Specialist class as well.

I think it's a great opportunity to share what I know about eBay, which I already enjoy obviously. I searched my area in San Diego & Los Angeles. There are maybe 50 people in all of San Diego and Los Angeles certified to be instructors and guess how many have a class scheduled in the next 3 months? No one within 50 miles, and about 5 people in the entire Los Angeles area. Sounds like potential to me!

Anyway, I'm fired up about it. Check it out, it might be for you too.

eBay Guides

What the heck? An eBay guide...what's that?

That's what I hear from most people I tell about my guide and others. It's not a guide "about" eBay. It's actually a guide about buying a magazine on eBay, written by me, but hosted on eBay.

eBay has created a way for members to share their knowledge on just about any subject with other members. You can find out more about it HERE . You can review a book, DVD movie or MP3 player, or write a guide about something.

Well, I wrote a guide about how to buy a magazine on eBay. I know, it seems simple enough, but you wouldn't believe the miriad of questions I get about it. So, I wrote my guide Buying a Magazine Subscription on Ebay .

It's really a broad overview of what to look for as a buyer. But it answers many of the questions I used to get asked daily. I still get the questions, but hopefully it helps some. At the bottom of the guide eBay asks you to tell them if the guide was helpful or not. So far 103 out of 109 people have found my guide helpful. That's good news for me.

Out of the 22,242 or so guides on eBay (you can see them all HERE ) I rank number 729 as a ration of helpfulness votes. They actually give you a little icon next to your user ID and feedback score...mine says "Top 1000 reviewer". Here are the available rankings.

Anyway, I invite you to read my guide, whether you've purchased a magazine or not. Hopefully you'll learn something about the process and can vote that - yes, my guide was helpful. Once again, you can visit the guide here: Buying a Magazine Subscription on Ebay .

A side benefit of this is traffic generation for your eBay store and listings as it does share my user ID and store location with the visitors to my guide. The guides are also submitted and indexed by Search Engines, further increasing the opportunity for more traffic.

If you have some knowledge about any topic, share it with others. Make the eBay community a better place for everyone by sharing what you know. Also right now, there is a big promotion where eBay is giving away $100,000 in eBay Gift Certificates divided between 500 people over 10 weeks, for those who write a guide, review or eBay Blog. Check it out!

Don't forget to visit my guide and let eBay know if it was helpful...of course it is! :o) Buying a Magazine Subscription on Ebay

Buying on eBay - How to find the best deals

How do you find the best deals on eBay? Well one of the best ways is to be the only bidder, or have very little competition.

"And how do I do that Jay?" Well, as you may know I have a website called http://www.sweetdealfinder.com . It has lots of cool links and tools for doing business online and finding great deals. But one of the lesser known tools is the "eBay Misspelling Tool". You can find it in the top left hand corner of my site.

The super simple explanation: People misspell words in their titles. If they spell Apple Ipod Appel Ipod, it might not ever get seen by 99% of eBay shoppers. But you can find it easily.

Anyway, I could explain how to use the tool, but my friend Chris from www.3riversauctions.com has put together a sweet video that explains it so much better than I ever could.

He even tells you how to have eBay email you when someone has made a mistake on the spelling of one of the words in their title so you can swoop in and buy it cheap!

Check out the video, totally FREE here:
http://www.3riversauctions.com/videos/not-just-another-ezine.htm

How to deliver eBooks? E-Junkie of course!

One of my goals over the past year is to slowly get away from selling a physical product. Physical products have to be purchased, photographed, inventoried, then when sold, packaged and shipped, sometimes insured and occasionally they get returned...sheesh! So long term goal...sell electronic products or ones that are drop shipped.

So let's get right to it. I sell eBooks on one of my sites, and on one of my eBay user id's. The site is www.best-ebook-store.com . Nice url huh? :o) I also use it for delivery my eBooks from my site www.bestskytv.com and on my eBay auctions for eBooks.

So an eBook is still a product that needs to be delivered to your customer once they've paid. At first I would just email the eBook once I'd received notification that a customer had made a purchase...but after a bit I realized that long term, this wasn't going to do. What if I went on vacation, or my email went down?

I actually have an eBook I sell about how to get your products delivered to your customers electronically through your email for free...but there are some challenges involved in this. First you must of course have your computer on and your email program open. Again I'm thinking...vacation. Come to think of it, I think about vacation alot...hmmmm. OK, I'm back.

Anyway I started looking and asking around and came across a great product that has worked out exceptionally well for me. I don't ever recommend stuff I haven't tried or items that don't work, so take my word for it, this works.

The product is called E-Junkie and you can find it at HERE . What is E-Junkie? They explain it so much better on their site than I ever could, but I'll give you the basic overview. You upload the product to their site, they generate a link for you. You can put the link on a webpage and when the purchase is made and the product is paid for, they customer is immediately given the product to download. It works with eBay too and PayPal! And it's VERY affordable. Starting at $5 a month, it's well worth the investment. They don't charge a commission, there's no per transaction charges...really they're the bomb!

I use it for eBooks, but you can use it for selling Mp3's, eBooks, software, photos and digital are, games, templates, scripts, icons, phone cards and more!

They supply stats on your sales, downloads and it's all customizable too. Again, they can tell you much more and much better than I can, check it out for sure if you are even considering selling and delivering electronic media. Click the logo below to find out more!

Blog Blog Blog

So I've had my blog for a few months now, so I thought I'd touch on they why and how of it.

Why get a blog? Some people enjoy writing. Some people get good therapy for themselves out of writing about lifes goings on. Others do so strictly for business reasons and others to educate the masses. Google has one, HP, Sony...just about everyone it seems is blogging. Businesses use Blogs to communicate with its customers.

But me...why did I start a Blog?

Well a bit of all of the above. I do enjoy writing, even in my matter of factly style. I wanted to educate anyone willing to read it, on a miriad of subjects that I've endured in my pursuit of making a living online. And I too, want to communicate with my regular readers.

Has it worked? Who knows really? You're reading it right? Why? You may have gotten here via my email signature. It appears this is the way most of my readers find their way here. The first month around 70 visitors total, then 80 the next, thn it dropped off a bit...down to 60. Then this month boom, back up to over 100. Ok, I'm not the New York times, but I have had a few people email me about what an "interesting" blog I have. I'm not sure that means they like it or not, but I'll take interesting. :o)

I'm trying to touch on eBay, websites, email marketing, and any other online endeavours I've run across. But if you have a topic you want to see my comments on, let me know. Chances are better than not, that I've tried it or at least given it some thought.

Feel free to post your comments on any posts you like or dislike too.

$5 Banner creation

Banners...what are they used for? Normally you think advertising. Now when you need a banner you have two choices...make your own or hire someone. I've done both. Now I like to think of myself as a fairly artistic and creative guy, but my skills are still limited and my time is even more limited than my skills! Below is a banner I created for eBay keywords advertising.




It's not bad, but even as simple as it is, it probably took me an hour to make.

Well through my searching and doing business online, somewhere in a forum I found a guy that does fantastic work, and dirt cheap. His name is Justin and he owns 5dollarbanners.com . You can check out some of the hundreds of banners he's done at his site, and I'm going to paste a few below. I really like the animated ones he's done for me. $5.00! And he usually has them done in a day or two. He does all different sizes, whatever you want.

Justin also does eBook covers, CD's and website headers.




Anyway, that's my shameless plug for a guy that does super work at great prices. Check it out the next time you need some work done.

eBay Live...come and gone

eWow, it seems like I was just writing about eBay Live 2005 not so long ago...and BAM!, Live '06 has come and gone. The recent event held in Las Vegas actually sold out at just over 15,000 attendees. It was the first time that has happened in the brief 5 year history of the event. They actually didn't allow "at the door" registration because of maximum capacity.

The show was great! We always have a great time. I heard so many people griping about having to pay $50 for the three day event, or simply refusing to go on the grounds of "I'm not paying eBay another cent" type mentality. Honestly, the entertainment alone is worth the admission price, not to mention the show itself.

It's always great to meet people you've chatted with on the phone, including eBay employees, account reps, PayPal staff and others that we indirectly work with every day. On more than one occasion I've leveraged my past relationships with people I met at eBay Live to help me work through an issue I was having.

I realize not everyone makes their living on eBay like I do. But I always want to learn more, and would always take any opportunity to do so.

I did learn a lot. Some I'll share in future posts and others I'll touch on briefly here today.

So what's new? eBay Blogs! Yes, if you didn't hear, eBay has a blog now. It's free and is another way to drive traffic to your listings. They're new, and their future is not yet determined, but at this point, why not, right? Check 'em out here http://blogs.ebay.com/ .

Shipping terms are going to be enforced better. That's the promise from Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay. We saw her at the "Keynote" speach. You can see her below. What does that mean? It means when you see a listing with a Buy It Now of .99 cents for say a $50 item, then you see Shipping & Handling $49.01. This is what eBay calles excessive shipping and is really designed to save the seller money on eBay fees. You see, if you're unfamiliar with the eBay fee structure, the way it works is, the higher you start an item at, and the higher it closes at, the more eBay charges you in fees. But, that doesn't include shipping. So, they're paying next to no eBay fees, and still making the sale. Smart, but it's cheating and in the past it's gone on un-patrolled.

This is the view from our seats. I guess Meg and others are fans of the Monkees - the old "hey, hey with the Monkees" band. And yes, the lead singer Davey Jones of the Monkees and his new band were there to put on a short concert at the end of the speaking. It was really fun. Snack foods, soft pretzels, soft drinks, hot dogs, pop corn and ice cream bars were all free for everyone at the event that around 10,000 attended.

By the way, you can listen to the Keynote speach by visiting here: http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk.cfm/radio/ebay-keynote-2006.html

One of my favorite things at eBay live is the "Seller Scalability" area of the show. This is where you meet one on one with an eBay account rep and they go through your listings, and store and give you immediate feedback on things you can do to improve your sales, appearance and effectiveness. It REALLY helped me out last year. I especially liked this year when I was told "wow, this looks great. I wish there were something I could help you with" . Now while I appreciated the compliment, I really wanted someone to pick my work apart and show me what to improve, but this was beyond the scope of the show meeting.

The show was very large and took us about a full day to walk through at a fairly brisk pace. Then the second day we re-visited particular booths of interest and the last day, really just fooled around. :o) There are also educational seminars and guest speakers going on all day everyday for all abilities on all manner of subjects. Jerry, from Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream was there. The PostMaster General from the Post Office was there. There were classes for newbies and for PowerSellers alike. Again, we got SO much out of those classes last year, but were much more selective this time around.

Speaking of the PostMaster General...he informed everyone that you can now print International labels and fill out customs forms all online and at home, like you already could the regular and priority postage before. This will be a huge time-saver for anyone doing International shipping on a regular basis.

Of course there is always the collecting to do at the show. Last year they had the trading cards I mentioned in my past Live post, but this year it was a mini deck of playing cards...Vegas Baby! And the ever-present lapel pins to trade and save too.

The closing ceremonies or GALA Event as it is called, is always a great bash. There are literally a thousand eBay employees lined up on both sides of a red carpet and they all cheer, clap and give you high-5's as you enter the event. There is food galore everywhere, all part of the $50 you paid for the whole show. There are give-aways, entertainers, and always a headliner band. Last year B-52's, this year Huey Lewis . It was fun. Also it wouldn't have been a Vegas event if they didn't have about 20 Elvis impersonators running around and show girls for numerous picture opportunities.

All in all...definitely a great time. I didn't get quite as much out of it as last year, but I'll definitely go next year. And by the way, the show is heading back to the East Coast...Boston! Should be a fun time and will feel like it's just around the corner.

Hey...who's that dude below? YES! It's eBay Jay himself. :o) Yeh, that's me.

Hope to see some of you in Boston next year!

MinuteProfits.com Review

I think I've mentioned it before, but I'm kind an info-product junkie. I always get sucked in by the "make thousands per week, buy now" hype. I do always look for the ones with the money back guarantee, and I've often exercised that option when the products turn out to be less than advertised.

Anyway, I thought I'd start reviewing some of the products as I buy them, use them and find out what they're all about. I'll share with my readers what I find out, good or bad.

Tonights venture... Minute Profits.

Following is the basic speal they sent me in an email.

----------------------------------

From: The Desk of Sebastian Foss

Subject: Profits in 15 Minutes ?! MinuteProfits!

Hi! My name is Sebastian Foss and I thank you for taking the time to read this!

How would you like to make $50 - $250 every hour - starting minutes from NOW ?

http://bubba76819.incomesite.hop.clickbank.net

Many people ask me everyday - "Sebastian, there are so many 'make money on the net' guides out there - which one shall I buy -
which one really brings in money - I finally want to start making money on the net". Don't believe any hyped promises - you won't be making thousands of dollars every day and you won't be a millionaire by next year but my System is a surefire method for everyone who wants to start earning online ".

http://bubba76819.incomesite.hop.clickbank.net

If you are ready to finally start making money online this is the right System for you.
I have developed the "MinuteProfits" - System that allows you to stark making money on the Internet 15 minutes from now - without any investment or advertising!

All you have to do is click your mouse and go shopping! I will give you access to thousands of shops that pay an average $50 - $75 per hour. That's right... up to $75 an hour for being an " undercover eye " for the company. So if your ready to get started then we are going to take you through the process of getting paid to shop!

My shopping company database is so large that you can make thousands every single week by only shopping a few times.

And believe me - I'm going to give you access to a lot of shops that will give you $50 - $75 every hour!

I put in about 2 hours a week and I make between $500 - $750 a week! My personal best was $800 in one day and Im going to show you how you can make an incredible income with very little effort, too!

http://bubba76819.incomesite.hop.clickbank.net




Make an extra $500, $1000 or even $5000 per week with 15 Minutes of your time!

-------------------------------

Ok, so that's the basic ad.

My initial impression is that it's some kind of "mystery shopping" online type thing. Sounds interesting enough. I've done quite a bit of service review jobs, being a secret shopper. I understand the need for it as a business and I get the importance of doing it right as the "shopper".

Overall the ad is pretty cryptic, not really telling you too much about it, but I'm a sucker for this stuff so I'm "all in". I pay the "introductory price" of $49.97 and away I go.

I'll edit this article and publish my results shortly. Hopefully I'll be raking in the $50 - $250 per hour they're quoting us. :o)

UPDATE: Ok, it's about 10 minutes later. That was quick huh? It's a 75 page e-book on mystery shopping. The ad is very misleading in my opinion, and like I said before, I've done quite a bit of mystery shopping so it was of no interest to me. You can get all this information for absolutely free on the internet or even buy an eBook for a few dollars off of eBay with the same information in it.

That's why you look for the 100% moneyback guarantee. I know if it's through Clickbank, like this was, that I can get my money back.

So, my review is...don't waste your money. If you have a "mystery shopping" question, I'll be happy to answer what I can.

Adsense Arbitrage...My EADD exposed

It's been a few weeks since my last post...I've been super busy! I've been working on some websites, where I'm using Adsense to make some money. And just to reinforce the fact that I seem to have Entrepreneurial ADD I'm onto something new...again.

The idea is called Adsense Arbitrage. On one side you make a website that provides some valuable information on your site. And of course you have Google Adsense ads on the site to hopefully generate some income.

Generally the websites are small, from 1 page to several pages. And they deal with niche's. A niche is a very specific area of interest. Example: Hobbies is a big area of interest. Model airplanes is a bit more specific. Remote Control airplanes is even more specific. And gas powered 1/4 scale remote control airplanes is a pinpoint niche.

If you build a site around a very specific niche, chances are you won't have too much competition for the keywords you're trying to target, and will be able to get search engine ranking and traffic.

Traffic of course is the key.

On the site, you can also have affiliate products, or perhaps a product of your own...maybe an eBook. Here's a site I created recently. BestSkyTV.com

You'll notice this is a 1 page site. It has a few different income generating areas. First of all there are the Google ads at the top and near the bottom. Then there are the descriptions for my two eBooks which I'm selling. These descriptions provide the text needed to pull the desired Google ads that are related to SkyTV. And then at the bottom, I have a search feed where I get paid a very small amount per click for the searches performed.

Ok, so that's the revenue generation side of Arbitrage. Like I said before though, Traffic is the key to success.

Now I just made this site a few weeks ago, so how do I get traffic to this fairly unique little niche? Google ads of course!

I use Google adwords to create a campaign as an advertiser. What am I advertising? My eBooks. So I create a campaign with a few hundred keywords having anything remotely related to satellite tv and SkyTV and I bid very low...2-3 cents per click.

Then it's a numbers game. If I get 1000 impressions a day, and 100 clicks, that's a 10% CTR or click through rate. Not bad. Then how many people will click one of the ads on the site? How many will buy one of my eBooks? How many will click the search links from the RSS feed a the bottom? And also important to consider... How many people will visit and do nothing?

Let's presume I set a daily budget of $20 for my campaign. It's not a ton, but if I'm only paying .02 cents per click on average, that's a 1000 clicks from my Adwords campaign to the site. If I have that CTR of 10%, or 100 people visit my site, then it becomes a numbers game. The revenue depends on many factors. What are the advertisers on the site willing to bid to display their ads? The quality of information Google feels my site is offering, and several other factors. But at the end of the day, if the clicks (Adsense revenue) generate more than it cost to drive the traffic (Adwords campaign), then the difference is my revenue.

If I net $5 at the end of the day, it's a success. It's not a killing, but $5 a day is $150 a month and there really is next to no work once it's set up. What if you made 10 profitable sites? $1500 a month. 50 sites? You get the idea.

This idea works well with blogs too. Here are the sites I've been working on.

Magic Site
Sky TV Site
Pet Information Site
Botox Site
Ticket Site

There have been many others, some I won't share, some I may share later. I don't want to give away all my secrets. :o)

On another post I'll get more into the nitty gritty of how to research what profitible niche is, and how to find it. But that's a topic for another day...

eBay & Entrepreneurial ADD and more about Trading Assistant work

"What the heck is he talking about?" I can hear you all now. I'm sure I have it. I have so many things going on, it's hard to stay focused. I'm working on several new sites, still running my eBay busniesses - which entails answering over a hundred emails a day, and investigating new online business opportunities all the time. I am constantly telling myself to focus on one thing at a time...at least for a short amount of time, to get something done. Every day it's a battle, but it's a war worth waging. Ok, enough whining. I'm sure we all go through it. At least I hope it's just me! Anyway, I wanted to go back in time a bit, back to the Trading Assistant gig. If you've read my previous posts, you'll recall the post "My Best Trading Assitant Deal Ever" . Well I'd been very busy with that when another deal fell in my lap.

I had posted my Trading Assistant profile on eBay, and a local car dealership found it. The parts manager called me and explained he had a large quantity of car parts to sell. We met for lunch to discuss it, and it turned out great.

It turns out, that a fairly common practice at these car dealerships, is they buy parts, and after a few years they become "dated". So, they write them off the books and literally toss them in the dumpster.

Well this internet saavy parts manager would take his marked down parts and sell them on eBay. But it had become too much work while he was also trying to manage a multi-million dollar parts business. So, we came to an arrangement.

The deal - I would come to the dealership, photograph and log all the items. I'd go home and create the listings, and launch them in a store/and under a username I had created just for them. They paid all fees and they did all the shipping. I got a flat 20% of the closing value for my work. Again if you look around this is quite a departure from what most Trading Assistants do or what they charge, but it worked great. I didn't have to pack or ship the items, or store them. They felt comfortable because if it didn't sell I didn't make anything.

Was there an opportunity for me to do work and not get paid? Absolutely! But it built an incentive for me, and a relationship. A year later it turned into a multi-dealership car listing business with this same dealer group...but more on that later. So was it worth it? You bet!

I did learn a valuable lesson I'd like to share with you. As many of you know...just about anything can sell on eBay. And this dealership taught me just how true this was. One day I was in the parts managers' office, and on his desk was a standard sales brochure for a new Ford Mustang.

I was flipping through it while waiting for the manager to do something. When he saw me looking at it, he mentioned how the brochures were hard to come by, and he'd just received a box of 1000 or something like that. He laughed and said "we should sell them on eBay".

Well if you knew me, you'd know what I did. I jumped on his computer. You know what found? Car brochures for sale. Old ones, new ones. Every make and model. We weren't the first ones to think of it, but we put a twist on it. I told him, there were quite a few online already and they were selling for a few bucks. Not really worth the work to mail it out, after fees and my split.

Then the light came on. I went to the manufacturer website. They had the auto brochures for download in a .pdf format. Check one out HERE. What could be easier? We sold tons of auto-brochures on eBay, that were electronically delivered via email. No packing/shipping, nothing. An email - that's it! Then we started selling the accessories brochure in .pdf format and along with that we included a price list of what those accessories would cost them, and the special "internet" price we were offering them. This resulted in the sale of the brochure and then the accessories. I still got a cut of the accessories and I never had to even take a single picture or ship anything. A few clicks of the mouse. That's the power of eBay! Then I went crazy. I found brochures for every make and model of car out there, domestic and foreign. Everything from Hyundai to Maseratti, Toyota to Ferrari. Many are even available in several languages including Spanish, Chinese adn Korean and more. There were very few people doing at the time so we listed them as store items and it cost us only pennies to do so.

I love that story, because it truly exposes what's possible on eBay. Something for darn near nothing! That's my kinda' job. :o)

::Side note... I'm not sure if I was infringing on some copyright or anything like that. The dealers do give them away, but that's how it went down.

Something for FREE...for real this time!

Hey, I'm like you probably...in the fact that I'm kind of leery of anything that's offered free. Of course nothing is free right? I've visited 1000's of websites and joined 100's of mailing lists all for what? Information. Information that has educated me, and given me the opportunity to make my living without ever having to go to work for someone else, ever again. :o)

Anyway, in this pursuit, I came across something that is free. It's a program called Niche Profits, that will show you exactly how to make money with your own ideas. And like I said...it's FREE. Check it out below!

I'm not making any money on it, it's just something I think can help just about anyone who is interested in making money online, either on eBay or on a website of their own. How? It's called "Niche Marketing". What is it? It's finding a market that is already existing, that needs to be filled. Think general. Let's say you like cats. So you want your "niche" to be about cats somehow. That's your niche. Then you need to find out what people want to buy. This product will help you find this out. Then it will help you find out how to get it to your targeted customer for as little as possible with the greatest perceived value.

It's just below....check it out!

Get your hands on Joe Cooper's Niche Profits Course. This is a
$97 valueand worth the price of this package alone.

This incredible course shows
step by step method of how to make a killing selling
info products online.

Including the simple technique that you can use every time you create a new product that brings in
thousands of dollars in a very short period of time!

Click Here To Download Now For FREE!

That's it...it really is free. Shortly I'll be giving you some products you can use to develop those niche's. Free of course! :o)

Mailing Lists - You have to build one

List building is a method of direct advertising. You get to place an advertisment or offer in front of someones face. This is the most responsive type of advertising around.
The power of direct marketing is amazing. I did over $20,000 in sales in under a week with one eMail to my optin list.

If you are interested in growing your own optin list you should visit: http://www.ListExplode.com/index.php?referid=bubba76819 You will be able to virally grow your list to over 100K members in 30 days. Once you have a large list you can advertise your own products or affiliate products.

I recommend starting by selling affiliate programs. Once you get the hang of it and know what people are buying you can start creating your own products and selling them.
Good luck building your list, and get ready for it to Explode at:
http://www.ListExplode.com/index.php?referid=bubba76819