Bicycle Jerseys and more!

They finally arrived! If you've been reading my posts you know I've been having my own cycling shorts made and imported to sell online. Well I ordered jerseys quite some time ago and they've finally arrived.

They're selling fairly well on eBay in both men's and women's styles.

I also got some bib short samples as well as arm and leg warmers so we should be stocked up for winter.

eBay Dance?

If you own your own website you've probably heard of the 'Google Dance'. If you haven't, let me explain.

Google updates it's search engine index periodically. This normally turns the whole ranking of sites on the world's most popular search engine on end, wreaking havoc with site owners as their rankings are disrupted. This is the 'Dance'.

Ina Steiner of http://www.auctionbytes.com/ reported that eBay will soon be delivering it's search results by 'Best Match' results by seller quality (PowerSeller status and selling track record) instead of strictly by relevance. eBay did not explain what selling track record meant, but it seems likely to be based on Detailed Seller Ratings that were rolled out recently in Feedback 2.0.

Currently, customers see default search results by "Time Ending Soonest," so everyone has an equal chance of showing up at the top of results as listings end. But I believe eBay may change the default sort to Best Match in an effort to serve up more relevant, quality listings. (Currently shoppers on eBay may select Best Match from a drop-down menu on results pages.)

This is apparently being tested in a few categories on eBay France.

I think this means, your item will show up, but rather than showing up at the top of results when your listing is about to end, it may be buried on a lower page throughout the entire duration of your listing.

Steiner says "If eBay implements Best Match as the default sort, I think some sellers will be devastated. Shoppers, too, may be annoyed, particularly in some categories, and it will be interesting to see if they change their preferences to "Time: Ending Soonest," though eBay is not likely to share this information with us.

My advice is to be sure and do your best to optimize your listings for whatever changes eBay plans to roll out in the next few months, and get ready for a rocky ride."

You can read the entire article here http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y207/m08/abu0196/s01

Preparing ahead of time sounds like the ticket. I've already begun myself. Pray for the best and Prepare for the worst.

AuctionSelling101.com

Yup - it's live! We launched a few weeks ago and have had a great response to our initial offer. We already have several hundred members and the discussion forums are active. This past weekend we also had our first live conference with around 30 members in attendance.



Very cool stuff. We're getting ready to add another 8-10 videos in the next week or so. We have more convferences lined up in our virtual classroom, and will be breaking them up into ability levels. Check it out if you get a chance HERE .

eBay Jay?

A good friend of mine left me a voicemail the other day and she asked me "What's the point of being eBay Jay if you never post to your Blog?". Good point.

She was right. I haven't posted here for literally 6 months! That's ridiculous isn't it. It's not like I haven't been busy, but who isn't? We're all busy.

So as that little girl in Poltergeist says... "I'm baaaack" or something like that. :o)

Ok down to business. Have I been busy? Absolutely!

I updated my links on the right. I removed a bunch and added a new one. The new one is http://www.auctionselling101.com/ . What is it? It's a entire membership site devoted to teaching other people how to successfully sell on eBay. It's going to launch soon, but we had an initial membership available for SpaceHogs members and members of the Warrior Forum as a WSO. We let in 100 early birds to get some feedback on the site, get some affiliates to help us promote the official launch and get some activity going in the discussion forums.

The site is really awesome and our greatest project yet. I say "our" as in me and Chris. That's Black & Blue Marketing, our Corporation and the team that launched the super popular http://www.spacehogs.net/ . Anyway, we're very excited about it.

What else is new? Still doing the magazines though sales have slowed over the past 6 months. There is soooo much competition it's crazy! I did finalize some tools specifically for magazine sellers. I offer them on a subscription basis on this new site of mine http://www.magazinesellersresources.com/ . If you sell magazines, these tools I had custom coded will turn days of work into literally 1/2 hour - literally!

On my other eBay username we have been going through some changes. First as some of our Adidas stock was slowly dwindling we decided to source some new stuff. First we got some Nike shoes, which sold very well, but we had a few issues with customs from importing them and then had some claims of them not being genuine Nike products. Now we did get a smoking hot price on them, but they look like Nike's, they feel like Nike's, I even wore mine for 6 months with no problems, but we didn't want to take any chances or possibly mislead anyone so we just pulled the plug on that whole project.

Next we decided we needed another line of products. Something that wasn't a name brand. Something no one could say wasn't genuine. I've been selling bicyle clothing for years off and on, mostly from my own stock and then stuff I'd find at the thrift store or swap meets. So I started looking overseas in Taiwan, China and places like that. I found a great supplier that would make me my own line of bicycle shorts and other cycling apparrel for a super price. I've ordered and received several orders of a few hundred pieces each with great results. Our cost is low so I can price them right on eBay and they're selling very well. Here's a picture of the men's shorts:

The JN is for Jay and Nicole...awwww sweet isn't it? :o) Anyway, hopefully it's the start of something great and profitable as we grow the line into triathlon gear, jerseys, arm and leg warmers, tights, gloves...all the cycling specific clothing.

I think that about wraps up the update. Still need to get back to SpaceHogs.net and get it updated, and keep plugging along on the other fronts. Hope to see you online!

Shooting Star... 10K

So they call it the flying star. You get one when you get 10,000 unique feedbacks on eBay. And I got mine. :o)

I know it's a small picture, but if you look closely it says 10,006. I actually have over 14,700 positive feedbacks, so that means over 4700 returning customers. Not bad.

What does it all mean? Not much really. Just a milestone I'd been shooting for, for quite some time. According to eBay it puts me in the top 1% of all members...for feedback that is.

25,000 anyone?

Entrepreneurial Spirit: Alive and Well

Wow, I'm almost embarrassed as I see I haven't posted to my blog in 2 months. Of course it was the two busiest months of the year. Not just for me, but for most of you too I'd imagine. We went from Halloween, straight into Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas and then shortly thereafter New Years.

During that time I launched a highly successful website with my partner "Mr. Black". We're Black & Blue Marketing Corp., and the site is www.SpaceHogs.net . It's an entire membership site dedicated to teaching others how to market to the Social Networking crowd - a.k.a. MySpace.

My eBay Education Specialist Certification has been put the test as I've been teaching literally 2-3 private lessons a week lately. I have a new Trading Assistant client, a new car dealer to list cars for, another new site of my own I'm working on, developing more tools for magazine sellers ... what else. Ah yes - I've started importing products from China too. People always ask me how I keep track and I have no good answer. I just do. And sometimes... I just don't :o)

If you've read my blog before you'll probably recall a previous post about what I called EADD, or Entrepreneurial Attention Deficit Disorder. Well I was reading an old Forbes magazine today....June of '06. That alone should tell you how many directions I'm headed...I'm reading 6 month old magazines 'cause I can't keep up!

Anyway, in the Forbes there was an article by Rich Karlgaard. He writes a regular article called Digital Rules for Forbes. He also has his own blog at http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules or you can check out his homepage at www.karlgaard.com . ANYWAY, he wrote a great article called "Blessed Are the Hypomanic".

I won't go into the whole thing, but I wanted to quote a bit of it...that explains so very eloquently what I feel about myself and this whole EADD thing I've tried to explain to others, but feel I muddle through.

Rich writes:

Last week our Preacher spoke about Spiritual Gifts. She identified a dozen or so, Leadership, evangelism, empathy and faith were at the top of the list - just what you'd expect in a church sermon. She surprisingly also mentioned entrepreneurial personality. "Some people are gifted at starting things," she said. "Sadly, we anal-retentive types are too quick to come along and criticize entrepreneurs for not finishing their projects. That's wrong. The entrepreneurial gift isn't to manage and administer. It's to start things."

Very true. Some entrepreneurs I know are good at managing and administering, but not many. Most are a mix of visionary and hustler, with a dash of attention deficit disorder thrown in. They see opportunities the rest of us overlook. They are driven by a breathless energy to assemble resources in pursuit of those opportunities. Then soon after their baby is toddling, they get bored."

Rich goes on to explain more about where some people feel that entrepreneurial spirit comes from, but I won't quote the whole thing. I just really felt like he was talking about me in many ways...and it felt good to not feel like I was the only one who gets things going and moves on to the next...

Anyway, that's my thought for the day...actually my quote of someone else's thoughts, but I still recognized the brilliance in his writing, right? :O)

I'll try to get some more regular posts going here shortly. Have a great week, and try and stick to those dang resolutions you made a week ago!

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.