4 Mistakes That You Should Avoid in Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a proven profitable online business that enables many affiliates live in wealthy lifestyle. If you are not making any money or money that is good enough to replace your day job, then there must be somewhere wrong in the way you do affiliate marketing. Check out whether you have made any of these 4 mistakes which you should avoid if you want to success in an affiliate business:

Mistake #1: Not selecting the right product

Not all affiliate products will make you money, you need to select the right product that demand by the consumers and generate enough commission to make profit out of each sale makes through your affiliate link. In selecting a product to sell in affiliate marketing, you need to take into a few considerations:
Merchant's landing page. It must be able to convert the visitors into buying customers. Commission must be high enough to cover your marketing or advertising cost based on an accurate estimation of traffic-to-sale conversion rate. The product should have good market demand. This can be estimated by analyzing the related keywords search volume.

Mistake #2: Lazy to test the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns

You have setup a number of marketing campaigns through Google Adwords and other pay-per-click advertising media, but you never keep track on how your campaigns are performing. Hence, you don't know which campaigns make money and which are not. When you encounter losses in affiliate marketing due to the cost of marketing is more than the revenue generated, you quit. If you have tracked your campaigns performance, most of time, you can turn the loss into profit just by removing ineffective campaigns.

Mistake #3: Do not own a website

Most affiliates use direct-linking method to channel the traffic generated from their pay-per-click ads to merchant's website. Direct-linking may work well in the past, but not in today's competitive affiliate marketing environment. Moreover, people hate to be hard-sell, which is done by most merchant websites. Instead, the customers prefer to be soft-sell or pre-sell where they get more details information about the product or service they are interested in, and then they will follow the recommendation or refer link to the merchant website if they are interest to buy it. Therefore, you should have a website to pre-sell your visitors before you direct them to the merchant website.

Mistake #4: Sign up too many affiliate programs

Many affiliates especially those who are new tend to sign up with many affiliate programs and try to promote every of them. This action most like do more harm then good. When you try to promote too many affiliate products from too many affiliate programs, you tend to lose focus and direction, making you unable to apply effective marketing strategies that make you profit from affiliate marketing. Sign up with too many affiliate programs and promoting too many affiliate products will lead you to nowhere.

Summary

Affiliate marketing is a proven business model and you should be able to success making money from it unless you have made the common mistakes done by most affiliates who have failed in their affiliate marketing efforts.

By : Scott Bamboo

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An Effective Website!

Affiliate marketing is making it possible for virtually anyone to come online and make money with little or no money You do not need to create your own product or service so it simply comes down to being able to generate sales. Learning how to sell online can be a great challenge for many people.

Unfortunately most affiliate marketers try one or two approaches to sell and they usually fail and then quit. Do not be part of this group. You must learn from your mistakes because people that are making big money online do things very similarly and people that do not make much money also do things very similarly. Sometimes it can take a bit of time and a few failures before you figure out the game of internet marketing. For more details go to www.writing-fast-cash.com most people want to make money online and they want to do it overnight without any effort. The problem is that this lure of trying to make quick money causes you to use strategies that are simply not effective. An example of this is throwing up a Google ad words ad with a direct link to an affiliate page and then targeting any general related keywords. This strategy rarely works and can cost you a lot of money very quickly.
Remember that most people look at the internet as a free information resource and not a shopping mall. They do not make searches on their computer with the intent to buy something. Certainly there are a few searchers that do have clear intentions to buy so if you do want to target these then make sure to only bid on keywords that have the term 'buy' in it. However this is a small percentage, it appears that most people buy things online by being referred from sites they trust.
The kinds of sites people like and trust are simply those that help them and offer them either free information or a free service. For instance article directories can be great for selling products because people will read an article, feel like they have done some research and then maybe they may switch into buying mode when they encounter your links at the bottom of the article which means your conversion rates will be much higher.
This is why creating content rich sites is very important because you must be able to keep the visitor on your site long enough for them to potentially switch into buying mode before they click on your affiliate links. People buy based on emotion and not logic and most people will not purchase something unless they feel that they have done some research on the subject. If your site can offer the research information then people will be much more likely to buy after they click on your links.
Make sure you create a content rich site related to your niche and add your affiliate links either to the side or the bottom of your articles. Also try to make sure your articles are unique and written by you as search engines are becoming stricter with duplicate content. You can use ad words to promote your site but also be sure to use article marketing too as it can be very effective at driving free traffic
From both the article directories and also the search engines as your sites ranking increases due to increased link popularity. For more information logon to www.article-submitters.com also make it a point to learn about search engine optimization. The biggest key to getting high rankings with the search engines is to create good quality unique sites that offer free useful content for its visitors. Ask yourself whether or not you would find your site useful if you were a visitor. Always try to give your visitors the best possible experience as this is also the goal of the major search engines too. You can do reciprocal linking or article marketing to help increase the visibility of your site on the internet as this is also important to better rankings. Build a site and do it well and in time you are sure to find affiliate marketing success.

By : Anu G Khurana

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Affiliate E-book Marketing

Getting an affiliate Ebook is an excellent way to increase your affiliate sales. You can actually take benefit of this trend in affiliate marketing, but you still have to have a good quality marketing approach.

Online the largest tool a business has is their website. A website is the equivalent of a store. The website is the sales platform. It not only acts like the store front, but also the sales force. That is why using a website for affiliate ebook marketing is an ideal idea.
Affiliate ebook marketing on a website can be tied in with the marketing efforts for the website. This will also help cut down on time spent marketing. Instead of having to market both the website and Ebook a personality will only be doing marketing once. The key to marketing an affiliate ebook on a website is good placement. In order to truly market the ebook it has to be a prominent feature on the website. It has to be seen and be obvious.
To do this it should be on the home page and for maximum advantage it should be on every other page. It can also help to add it to the checkout as a suggested item with each purchase or as a additional benefit gift. This can catch people's eye very good since they are likely to pay closer attention to their order details then anything else on the website.
If the ebook is being given away for free this makes it even easier to 'sell' to people. It should be obvious that it is free. If a person sees something for free then they are really likely to give it a second look and even sign up for it. Affiliate ebook marketing through a website is something that everybody can do. A person probably already has a website if they are into internet business and so it is natural to add the affiliate ebook to the website. It is also a free technique of marketing. Free marketing options should not be passed up.
It is simple to add the ebook to a website. All it takes is a little time to put it up on the website and then there is really nothing more to do. The whole process can be automated just as other aspects of the website. It is a free and speedy marketing way.
In the search for ways to market an affiliate ebook a person may easily overlook the obvious - their website. While it may not seem to be the place to catch a lot of fresh customers, it will still help to bring in some business. Depending on the popularity and traffic of the website, it could turn out to be the best marketing option.
By : Smita

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Seven Tips to Success You Own Affilate Programs

Joining an affiliate program is a neat way to make money from your users. However, create your own affiliate program is in fact one of most important strategies for an Internet marketer to achieve his/her success of earning money online.

Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs or Partnership Programs) are essentially commission-based sales schemes. As you can join someone else’s affiliate program, so you can set up your own program and invite webmasters to sign up.
Here are some tips to succeed with your own affiliate program.

1. Think carefully about the process of affiliating your product, do some planning and you should begin such before you launch the actual site for the product. The planning for such a program includes: determining the price point for your product, determining where you are going affiliate, and determining commission rates for those affiliates. .

2. involve relationships, such as affiliate marketing, because one of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in finding new affiliates.. You should always make friends who could potentially be your affiliates before you even consider launching a product or service.

3. Provide useful marketing materials. If your affiliates do not have good pre-made advertisements, including solo ads, classified ads, and pay per click advertisements, they may not be able to effectively market your product, especially if they haven't purchased it.

4. Make it extremely easy for your biggest partners to participate. If a potential partner will have to spend 10 hours in order to make money with your offer and only 30 minutes with another there is a good chance he will simply go with that other product. You would more than likely do the same exact thing.

5. Find related content sites. There are many sites that do not sell any kind of product or service but are mainly content oriented sites. Such sites promote an idea, concept, study or belief. Content sites that are used as a resource for your target market are ideal affiliates.

6. Find complimentary sites to your product. “Complementary” sites are sites that sell products or services that compliment your offers. If you sell“gardening tools”, a site that sells books on “gardening tips” would be a perfect affiliate.

7. Finally, there are several sites on the Internet dedicated to listing affiliate Programs. Get your program listed in these directories.

As a conclusion, it is important to know that even earning online money you are still working with real people here. Treat them well and you are on your way to victory.

By : Alien

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5 Things You Must Have to Succeed in Internet Based Affiliate Marketing

The idea of being mere passengers on a ship meant to sail to the farthest points does not appeal to people who like to put their destiny into their own hands. They have the desire of maneuvering the ships themselves, of being able to be the ones to take it anywhere they want to. Being aboard a ship on its way to a particularly great destination is something each and every one of them dreams of, and the knowledge that they have the capacity to steer it themselves is what makes them actually want to.

Perhaps this is the reason why more and more people are succumbing to one of the most popular businesses around – internet based affiliate marketing. It is because in this business, there are no bosses to order the employees around. There are no deadlines to meet and no clutter of work do to. One only needs to be equipped with the tools needed to succeed in a business such as this, and he is bound to get what his heart ultimately desires.
Just what are the things needed to be able to succeed in internet based affiliate marketing? What must one have within himself to be able to do well in this industry? There is a lot of competition involved in internet based affiliate marketing, and to be able to rise above the norm, one must be equipped with just the right stuff necessary to propel him forward. There are five things one must ultimately possess if he wants to achieve the glory he is yearning for in this business, and these five things are a must for him to possess to be able to stand out among the rest.
The very first quality one must possess if he wants to try his hand in internet based affiliate marketing is the willingness to learn and be trained. Treading through unfamiliar territory is scary stuff if one is not properly equipped, and he might get lost amidst a jungle of the unknown. Learning the tricks of the trade is also an important aspect of the game, and one’s willingness to know it all will give him far better advantages in the business than he could ever imagine.
The second quality one must possess is the willingness to invest time and effort even if direct results do not seem at all apparent. Although several months may pass without good news, it is important for one who has his foot in the industry to hold on and wait. It is this quality which would save him from giving up after investing a lot of himself in the business.
The third quality one must possess is self-determination. If one wants to conquer the internet based affiliate marketing world, he must have the ability to push himself ahead. Never having to say die is a quality each and every internet based affiliate marketer should possess, and the ability to motivate oneself into scaling greater heights is an ability which would actually take an internet based affiliate marketer there.
The fourth quality one must possess is discipline. If one knows how to teach himself to work everyday with all the energy he can muster, then he is close to achieving what he has set his heart to having in the first place.
The fifth and last quality one must possess is optimism. Negative attitudes and hearsays should not discourage an internet based affiliate marketer from pursuing what he has to in order to make life better for himself and for everyone concerned. Neither should anyone influence his attitude toward the business, because once in it, it is a must for him to be the captain of his ship and the master of his soul.
The ingredients to success in a business such as internet based affiliate marketing are diverse and manifold, but the most important thing one needs to be able to make it big lies in himself alone. It is he who has the capacity to do everything to be able to realize his prospects, and the desire which fuels his heart in doing so is the gasoline which should keep the engine going.
Internet based affiliate marketing is all about putting one’s fate into his own hands. The right attitude is the key to being able to steer one’s ship into that part of the ocean where a certain kind of serenity can be found, one that permeates the atmosphere as the ship sails calmly on.

By : Alexander Gorbachev

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Affiliate Commissions

Your affiliate commissions are your earnings. Each sale you make for your sponsor will earn a percentage of the sale. This will be your commission. In order to make your affiliate business grow you will need to be sure you earn a decent commission from every affiliate program you join.
Safeguarding your commission: it is important to know how to safeguard your commission. You can do this in several ways.

Checking out the companies:
It is critical to your success that you check out the company that you are proposing to join. Be sure they are reliable and are an established business. You do not want the company to fold before you can get paid your commissions. Also you do not want to work for unreliable unscrupulous companies.
• Decent sales page: Your sponsor should always have a great sales page. It is no good if you send lots of warm ready to buy visitors to your sponsor’s website only to find that the sales page does not convert well.
• How much percentage: the percentage of any purchases made by the visitors you send to your sponsor’s site will be your commission. Be sure it is a reasonable percentage, at least 30 to 50 per cent so that it will be worth your while.
• Reliability in payment: make sure that you are paid monthly or bi monthly and on time. You want to be quite sure that the company will not delay your payments. You do not want to work for free.
• Tracking system: Be sure that your sponsor has a reliable tracking system. This will make a record of all the traffic you send to your sponsor’s site and all the sales. You can then see how your visitors are converting and how much you should be paid that month.

Cloaking your affiliate link: There are many people who wil literally steal your sales commission from you. They will either cut out your code from the link and buy direct from the company or replace your code with theirs. Either way you lose your commission. In order to prevent this you will need to use software to disguise the link or have a link that redirects your visitor to the sponsor’s sales page.

Checking that your links work: This is something that many affiliates forget to do. It is no good sending traffic to a broken link. There can be a number of reasons for broken links. Sometimes it is temporary other times it is permanent. If you find your link to your sponsor’s site is not working it is very likely one of 2 things. Your sponsor may be having some web site issues, which will be temporary, or if you are using a redirect service for that link, it may have broken and you will have to remake it or use another company.

By : Michael John Arnold

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Affiliate Profits

Affiliate profits for your business will depend entirely on you. There are two common ways that you can use affiliate programs to increase your overall business profits. You can be selling your own products and then supplement your earnings with affiliate programs. Another way to do this is to sell only affiliate products.
Supplementing your income with affiliate programs:

Adding affiliate programs are a good way to increase profits. It is simple to implement and can be very profitable if done right. Here are the easy steps:

Find a niche market: This will be a market that is popular and in great demand but has very few websites servicing the market. This means that you can sell more in demand products with less competition. In this way you will get maximum profits.

Understand the needs and wants of that market: Find out their greatest problems. Do your market research properly so that you know exactly what your market is looking for.

Sell a product that solves this problem. This will be your in demand product and should sell well.

Join affiliate programs that provide products that will also help your visitors solve problems.

Build a theme content website: This is a website built around a certain theme. Your product and affiliate programs will be part of this theme. You will pre sell your visitors with all sorts of articles to make them curious about the products.

Add a newsletter: build your list and sell a couple of affiliate products with an informative newsletter.

Drive quality targeted traffic to your website. It is very important to drive as much traffic as you can to your website.

Google Adsense: this is a great way to generate passive income. All you have to do is all of the above and simply put the Google Adsense code on your site. Google will target the ads for your content and you will earn money every time somebody clicks on the ads.

Selling only affiliate products:

You can do this in 2 ways; firstly you can sell multiple affiliate products that all point to one market through a theme content website as described above. Write different articles like reviews and info articles for each product to pre sell your visitors and warm them to the sale. Make sure that all these programs are related so that one promotion will work for all and reach the same market. This will save you a lot of money. Remember to do multiple promotions for maximum traffic.

Secondly you can make mini sites. These little sites will only promote one product at a time. You can join any high demand affiliate program for this and then drive traffic to these sites. Rather than spending a lot of money on promotions for traffic you can easily and cost effectively use Google Adwords , article distribution and blogging.


By : Michael John Arnold

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10 Ways to Get Targeted Traffic

Every website needs more traffic. This traffic needs to be as targeted as possible to the site you are promoting, whether it is your own web site or an affiliate program. This is the lifeblood of the business. No traffic - No business, More traffic - More sales. The question is - How do you get this highly targeted web site traffic. There are quite a few ways. I will list some of the most popular.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Of all the pay per click search engines, Google Adwords is the largest and most popular. This method, when done correctly, will increase your exposure, and give fast results. You must keep up to date with Google's rules, so be sure to read them.

You pay a one off fee when you register and set up your campaign. You can have your campaign up and running in minutes. There is a minimum bid, but of course you will have to pay more than this. But the beauty of adwords is you can set a daily budget of how much you are willing to spend. You can create as many campaigns as you want, test your ads (changing the headline for example). Google provide tools to help you with your campaigns, and have exellent tutorials that walk you through everything from signing up to creating your adword campaigns.

Link popularity

This is where other sites have links to your site. If a high traffic site has links, the search engines perceive both sites must be popular. The important thing is to have quality web sites linking back to your site.

Why should anyone want to link to your site? If you have quality content, this adds perceived value, makes your site popular, so others will want to link to you. The type of content could be:-

Free downloads
Free reports, articles, ezine or newsletter
Video
Links to other good sites

Reciprocal Links

This is where you exchange links with other quality sites. You can create a links page on your site. This create a resource that visitors will want to return to.

Find quality (there's that word again) web sites related to your subject, contact the webmaster about exchanging links.

Ezine advertising

Most ezines accept advertising

Ezines are online or email newsletters. They are used to build a relationship between a webmaster and a web site visitor, with news, updates special offers etc. But as always they should have quality content. You place an ad in ezines that are highly targeted towards your niche. Prices depend on the ezine, and also the position of the ad. The most expensive is the solo ad, where yours is the only ad.

Article Submissions

Submitting articles is a great way to build back links and web site visitors. Your articles can become 'viral' when others want to re-publish them on their sites, or use them in their newsletters and ezines.

You include links to your site in the author resource box offering more free information. The resource box is your chance to convince the reader to visit your web site. Two of the most poular places to post your articles is EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com.

Forum Posting

In order to be successful using forums there are some things that are required. Do Your Homework: Prior to joining any forum, you must do some research.

Join relevant forums that are in some way related to the promotion’s primary sales market.
Choose popular forums. There is no point in wasting your time and energy on forums that few members and few posts. Page raking and the amount of active members are two good ways to check for this. Choose forums that allow sig tags. Read the rules before joining and pay attention to them.

You've Joined: now what?

Keep your sig tag short and update it regularly. The ideal thing is to limit yourself to one link, preferably to your main website. Never create posts that are nothing more than an advertisement. This is a universal rule. At best this kind of post will be deleted by the monitors….at worst, you will be banned. Be an active member on the forum. Plan to spend at least an hour each day there. Get to know the users. Iintroduce yourself with intelligent questions depending upon the forum’s topic.

Use Your Sig file to the best advantage and within the rules. Some Forums have places where you can advertise and give special deals to members.

Social Bookmarking

In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are both accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.

Social Bookmarking can bring immediate traffic to your website, as web 2.0 community websites such as Technorati, Digg, Reddit and Tailrank provide almost immediate information on various topics. These type of Bookmarking sites index and categorize content usually faster than the major search engines.

People looking for the latest information on certain topics usually refer to these
types of services.

Bookmarking Accounts To Check out

http://digg.com
http://technorati.com/

You can increase your Bookmarking using the free submission site OnlyWire.com to bookmark many accounts at once.

When you signup to www.OnlyWire.com you can use many bookmark accounts and with one simple procedure bookmark your blog post to all your accounts at once. OnlyWire.com interfaces with

Backflip
Bibsonomy
Blinklist
Blogmemes
Blue Dot
de.lirio.us
del.icio.us
Diigo
Furl
Jots
Linkroll
Looklater
ma.gnolia
Markaboo
Rawsugar
Shadows
Simpy
Spurl
Wink

If you don’t have a Bookmark Account for the ones listed go and sign up.

Viral Traffic using free reports - ebooks etc.

Directory Submissions

Submit your website url's to the search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization, (SEO), is making web pages attractive to the search engines. The better optimized your web page is, the higher a ranking it will achieve in the search engines. Most people searching the internet only look at the first couple of search results.

So optimizing for the search engines focuses on techniques such as making sure that each web page is using the appropriate title tags and meta tags, and that the keyword or key phrases for the particular pages are distributed throughout the content.

Search engines find and catalog web pages using spidering software,

These are just a few ways to get more web site traffic

By : John Leigh

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Useful Tips for Affiliate Marketing

Today, many of us want to pack up our jobs and be our own bosses. The idea of working for you attracts many. However, the reality of making it happen soon stops most. In fact the vast majority of us cannot get a business off the ground due to 2 main factors; the first being money and the second being risk.

Starting even a small business takes a fair amount of money. You need to buy or rent premises, purchase your stock and equipment and pay staff if you have them. You will also have other outside expenses such as advertising. For more information logon to www.ppc-profit-marketer.com .Risk is the factor that kills most businesses off. Even if you're lucky enough to get the capital to start, nearly 90% of all small businesses fail in the first year. If yours is one of the lucky ones, you have to keep reinvesting your time and money to build up the businesses reputation. It could be anywhere from 5-7 years before any significant profit is seen. Most of us cannot wait that long which is what makes affiliate marketing such an attractive offer.

Affiliate marketing involves you, working as an affiliate for a merchant or company. You sell either goods or services and you’re paid on how much you produce. There are no costs and no risk. You put in what you choose and are rewarded accordingly.

Running an affiliate marketing business is challenging. You'll have to work very hard to build it up. However, you'll be rewarded for your hard work not someone else. Getting an affiliate marketing program going may seem difficult. The truth is it is down to you and how much you want to put in. There is no sure fire way to success but there are some good tips that you can follow to make you affiliate marketing scheme as successful as possible.

There are literally thousands of programs for you to choose from. However, to get started you may want to choose something that you are familiar with. This product or service may not be the hottest thing on the current market or make you a millionaire, but you will come off more confident and sincere with something you know and believe in.

This will also help when it comes to creating your site. Something familiar will allow you to be personal and creative. Trying to create a site around something you know little about will soon become boring and tedious. To know more logon to www.boost-website-traffic.com .Working with something familiar will also give you the some experience in the program. You can always expand at a latter time when you are more familiar with how things work.

Another good piece of advice is to watch the number of banners that you put up. A site full of banners will make the site look ugly and put off potential buyers. Carefully place your banners and use them to accent your site. Stuffing it full will not help.

Remember, in the world of affiliate marketing there is no such thing as the perfect program. Any particular program will be stuffed full of varying testimonials. Some will be great will others will have not done so well. You need to decide for yourself and not be put of by a few bad experiences. In the end it is down to you and how much you want to put in.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money and work for you. The risk to you is minimal and there is no start up cost. There are many great affiliate marketing programs out there and choosing the right one may seem like a daunting task. When you first start out remember to stick to what you know. Find something you know about and have an interest in. Make your site attractive to others and resist the urge to fill it with banners. This may end up having the opposite of your desired effect. Finally remember, there is no perfect program. Some will have success where others have failed. It is all down to you. Don't give up.

By : ginfo gsix

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The Top 7 Overlooked E-bay Success Tips

Last year alone, millions of people made a profit on e-bay. Some were just selling odds and ends, while some ran huge businesses exclusively on e-bay. The amount of commerce done on the internet is only expected to increase, making prospects for e-bay users bright. You very well may be one of the people who's discovered the great benefits of making money from e-bay auctions. I myself have been an e-bay user for a little over a year and have had great success with my auctions.

When my friend began her business on e-bay selling high end purses, it started out quite rocky. Her auctions weren't getting the hits she wanted and usually sold off of one bid, instead of creating the bidding frenzy that beautiful bags like she had should have!

So, she called me up knowing I had been successfully using e-bay for almost a year at the time. She gave me her login information (we're best friends- she trusts me!) and asked me to check her her sales and current auctions and see if I noticed where the problem was. When I saw her current auctions, alot became obvious!

So, I compiled a list of things that I had used which had made me successful which I suggested she implement into her own auctions. I even revised the auctions she had active at the time. One of those auctions- a gorgeous brown Coach purse- sold for $546.00. She had listed it for $125.00. It was her biggest sale yet and she was thrilled.

The funny thing is, the methods I use are not some internet guru secrets. They are just things I picked up during my time using e-bay, but seem to be overlooked alot of the time. Here are what I have found to be the top 7 overlooked tips for successful e-bay auctions:
1. The Importance of a Good Title- When you're creating a title for your auction, you've gotta think like a buyer. When I checked my friend's listings, she had a beautiful, brand new brown patchwork Coach purse titled as 'coach purse'. This is way too general! A buyer knows what they want; in your title, include color, any brand name, main keywords that people will search, and condition is possible. I changed her title to "Brown & Beige Patchwork Coach Purse-Brand New". By the next day, it had over 100 new hits. Previously her auctions were hardly even reaching 100 hits throughout the whole 5 days.

Another mistake people often make is writing things like 'The best wristwatch ever!!!!" Even if you do believe you're selling the best wristwatch ever, is this really what a buyer is searching for? Of course not. Use a more descriptive, detailed title like 'Gold Armani Wrist Watch w/ Leather Band-New".

One more thing when it comes to titles: make sure keywords are included. For example, whatever the item you're selling actually IS, include that in the title. On e-bay, I mostly sell high end women's heels. I always make sure to include in my title 'Womens Shoes" because this is a common keyword. An example of a title I would use is:

"Brown Marc Jacobs Womens Silver Stud Pumps Shoes"- I know that 'pumps shoes' sounds awkward, but many women will search for "marc jacobs womens shoes", and I want to be sure my item shows up in the results. Use these tips when creating your title and you'll be sure to see increased traffic to your auction.

2. Give honest descriptions- Sure, that stain, tear, or other defect may be sooo small that it's almost impossible to notice. Still, mention it in your auction. If you send an item out and a buyer realizes that the item has a defect that you didn't mention in the auction description, they will be disappointed and very possibly leave you negative feedback. Anyone familiar with e-bay knows that feedback is everything. It is what makes people feel comfortable buying from you and proves that you are a trustworthy, reliable buyer.

It's best to provide a photo of any defects so potential buyers can see what they're getting. And believe me, if you say that there's a defect but don't show a picture, people will e-mail you asking for some. I have sometimes had a defect so tiny on a shoe that I couldn't even get it to show up in a picture. If that's the case, say it! Provide a picture of the area where the defect is and also explain in your listing that it's so miniscule that you can't get it to show up in the picture. Buyers will trust you much more and be way more willing to buy from you in the future. You also won't have to deal with an unsatisfied customer who can damage your feedback rating and make future potential buyers hesitant or even completely dissaude them from buying from you.

3. Offer International Shipping- So often I see sellers who are providing great products but don't offer international shipping. Let me tell you- about 30% of my sales are to international buyers, and very often international buyers will pay more for products. I never understood why people are restraining their own sales potential by not offering international shipping.
Remember, the buyer is the one who pays the shipping, not you!! Even though international shipping is expensive, you are not paying it! And don't be discouraged thinking sending things internationally is difficult- it's super simple and not much different then sending things within the country. If you use USPS (the method I find most efficient for prices and service), you may have to fill out a short customs sheet that takes no more than a minute. Don't be lazy! Offer international shipping and see your sales soar!

4. Send a Thank You card with your purchase- You can get packs of black decorative cards from any general store, WalMart, or even discount chains like TJ Maxx. Buy a couple packs and with people's packages, send a nice thank you card.

You don't have to write a dialog, just a simple "Name of Buyer, Thanks so much for your bid! Enjoy your purchase, and I hope to do business with you in the future! Your Name or Business Name" If you want to really go all out and rake in some super feedback, include a small free gift. When I sell a pair of shoes I usually include a free headband or pair of earrings. If you'd like to try this out, try to find something that compliments whatever it is that you're selling. You could also include a little bag of candy or some tea light candles (go to the dollar store for great knick knacks and free gift ideas). Use your imagination to make your customers satisfied and loyal!

5. Offer combined shipping Buyers love combined shipping. If you offer a good combined shipping deal, and have more than one item they're interested in, they're ten times more likely to buy both items. Some people choose to determine combined shipping depending upon the two items the buyer is interested in, while others have set shipping rules. A good example is to charge $_.__ for the first item and offer to send the second item free, or for $1.00-$2.00 more. Usually the additional weight of the package isn't much so it's possible to offer combined shipping without losing any profit at all. Determine your own rates depending on the weight of the items you sell and the shipping service you use.

6.Keep communication with Buyers open and offer more pictures upon request. Of course in your listing you must include good pictures to attract buyers. Most people include 2-4 pictures per listing, depending on the size of the items and any special details you've got to show. I always include at least 3 pictures, and more if I feel the item needs more pictures of some detail it has that is unique.

Even though you have already provided your buyers with good pictures, it's helpful to write in your listing "Contact me with any questions or for more pictures. (with your contact info)" This is another method that makes buyers instantly trust you more and feel more comfortable placing bids. They feel that the communication lines are open and that they can get more info on the item if needed. And don't be discouraged thinking that you'll spend the whole day responding to e-mails requesting more photos; If you've already included good pictures, most people won't bother asking for more. Of over 50 listings where I've written this, only one person ever asked me for additional pictures. Check your e-mail though at least once a day to see if you've got any questions, people love quick responses and will reward you with good feedback for your effective communication.

7. Always use Delivery Confirmation- This is a biggie! Make sure that when you post your shipping costs, delivery confirmation costs are included so buyers aren't questioning the extrra expense when they receive their invoice. Delivery confirmation is a cheap effective way to ensure both your own and the buyer's investment.

First of all, you do not want to get scammed. What? Scammed? Yes, it happens. I know that most of the scamming referred to on e-bay is about sellers who scam their buyers, but don't be naive; we sellers are also at risk. Although the majority of the e-bay community is good people who are just trying to conduct legitimate transactions, there are those rotten apples which make it hard for all of us.

The usefulness of delivery confirmation was brought to my attention my an acquaintence of mine who does some selling on e-bay. He sold some very high quality digital remote for around $250.00. He shipped the item using delivery confirmation, and after about a week told me he received an e-mail from the buyer saing she'd never received the product. She filed a whole complaint with e-bay and made a big fuss about it. GOOD THING he had the delivery confirmation number and was able to prove that the product had been shipped to her address. Don't let one of these scammers get a chance to cheat you out of your money.

Making delivery confirmation a requirement is also something that will make serious bidders trust you more and see that you're a legitimate business person who wants to secure shipment. Think about it; if someone requests NOT to use delivery confirmation, you can guess where their intentions are. The extra .75 is not breaking anyone's piggy bank, so don't feel bad about it.

There you have it! Use these highly useful yet highly overlooked tips to generate more traffic to your auctions and enjoy higher sale prices. To e-bay success!

by: Jamie Sloan

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