Today on out eBay class we talked about how to create a good listing. This is more so a process of steps then anything but very very important that you do all of the steps and do them correctly. By not following the steps in the process you can set yourself up for a negative feedback from a buyer or for your item to not sell at all.

1. Put in a good title - Your title can be 80 characters long, this was recently raise from 58 characters use all of them. This title does not need to be a sentence and I would suggest not putting in punctuation Ex ( *** !!!!! $$$ & <<<>>>) These are not characters that a person on eBay searches with so don’t wast a place for a good keyword.

2. Take good photos - Your image of your product is most likely the thing that will sell your item to the consumer. DO NOT crop anything of your item out of the picture. You are only causing doubt in the mind of your buyer. Questions will come up like Ex ( Is the item scratched there? or Is the items damaged?) Don’t give your shopper any reason to think something is wrong with your item. Make sure your picture is clear and not blurry. Lastly if you are taking a picture from around the house please make sure you are not taking a photo of a messy house. You always want to look professional.

3. Write a detailed description - You need to tell the buyer everything about your product. Explain your photos and reassure them that there are no scratches or bumps. If the item does have some issues let the buyer know so they are not surprised when they get the item. By leaving important information you can set yourself up for a negative feedback real quick.

Follow these three steps and you will put yourself in a good position for your item to sell but also in a position to receive good feedback.

What is email marketing? Email marketing is the process of promoting a product, service or idea by sending direct emails to a targeted audience.
• Don’t confuse Email Marketing with Spam.
• Email Marketing can be very powerful if done correctly.

What is the difference between email marketing and spam?
• Spam is defined as the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.
• Most big time marketing consider email marketing a big part of there business. They focus on capturing email addresses.

How email marketing can grow your business?
• Establishes a relationship
• Zero to little cost to send email

Capturing Email Addresses
• Creating an irresistible offer
• How to write an irresistible offer
• Adding an opt-in form

Creating an Irresistible offer
• High Value
• Unique
• Free
• Downloadable

What are auto responders?
• Automated email messages that are triggered when a specific action is performed
• Out of office replies
• Free subscriptions

Sending email basics
• Types of email basics ( Aweber, Constant Contact)
• Costs associated with mail programs
• Subscribes and Unsubscribe

Writing your email message
• Helpful information
• Sales material
• Testimonials
• Length of email
• Call to action URL’s

Emails Do’s and Do Not’s
• Do include helpful and informative articles
• Do build a relationship of trust
• Do send emails on a consistent basis
• Do follow all Can-Spam compliance guidelines

• Do not include attachments
• Do not make the email too long
• Do not treat your subscriber like a cash machine

Can-Spam Compliance
• Include a return address
• Include the ability to unsubscribe
• Email “headers” cannot be misleading

Making money from your email list
• The money tree
• Promoting your products
• Affiliate programs
• Get repeat customers
• Joint venture opportunities

Two additional marketing topics that you can pursue are guest posting, and link building.

Link building: The idea with link building is getting as many links as you can out on the World Wide Web pointing back to your site. (See adobe example)
You can start generating links by submitting yourself to directories. The most popular directory is www.dmoz.org. Choose a category then submit. Make sure to use a keyword phrase when asked for the title, as that is what they create the link through.
To find other directories go to www.directoycritic.com and click on the free directory link at the top.

The next is guest posting. This is the idea on creating a free account on blog/sites that already exist and communicate in the online community. Make sure you create a signature that includes your web address as that is how readers will know you own the site.

Be mindful of potential joint venture opportunities that you can find there.

When selling on eBay the most common problem that people run into is what someone wants to sell and is f people on eBay want to buy the items that you have. There are two great ways that eBay will help you with this problem and they are both free. I will also tell you the benefits of paying for tools that will help you break down the eBay world for a different way to look at information.

The first eBay tool that you can use is the “Ideas For What To Sell” page. This page is found in the Sellers Information Center. This page will help you break down your home and point out popular things that people sell on eBay everyday. This tool breaks down your home room by room from your bedroom to the garage. This tool will eventually get you back to the eBay completed listings where you can see what the final cost and possibly sales percentage .

The next free tool that you can use the eBay pulse page. You can simple go to Pulse.eBay.com to find this tool. The eBay pulse page tells you what the top ten most searched words for each category on eBay are. I always suggest that students go down more then two levels with this tool before trying to establish what items they want to sell from around the house or from outside suppliers. Again this tool will get you back to those completed listings on eBay so that you can find the important information like sales price and sales percentage.

The two tools that people and myself us to find things to sell on eBay are either Terepeak.com or Hammertap.com. Both of these tools you will have a minimum of 20 dollars per month to subscribe to each. Both are great tools and can really help the research go much faster. They will tell you what the average sales price is and the sales percentage of each item without you having to do any of the work on your own. I always suggest my students look into tools like this if they can afford it because of the time that it will save you in the long run.

Guest posting is one of the areas of blogging that gets overlooked the most. There is a lot of value and benefit to guest posting. This class is designed to teach you how and where to guest post. The following steps illustrate this process.

• The first thing you need to do is find some blogs that you can post on. The easiest way to do this is to Google blogs in your market. Google will bring you back the most relevant blogs in your particular market.

• From there nail them down to the top 2 or 3 blogs you want to participate in. There may be more, but you want to focus on the best 2 or 3. Set up your FREE account on those blogs. Once you have done that make sure to setup a “signature” with those blogs, so your website address will automatically appear at the end of each post you make

• Start commenting on blogs that suit your website. Remember to do this strategically and pick the blog posts (threads) that best fit what you offer. Be helpful and informative when you make comments on other blog posts.

• Look for joint venture opportunities with blogging. This is a great place to try to find people in the industry you can sign contracts with (refer to the light bulb example from the class)

• Lastly remember to BE CONSISTANT. The only way this is going to benefit you is if you do this on a consistent basis.

Start by using Yahoo and msn at www.adcenter.microsoft.com

Keyword Research
• Bidding on the right keyword phrases
• Word Tracker https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Buyer search behavior
•
Organizing your PPC Campaigns
• Break them into ad groups.
Campaign 1 = Ad group 1 a. Keyword phrase 1
b. Keyword phrase 2
c. Keyword phrase 3

Campaign 2 = Ad group 2 a. Keyword phrase 1
b. Keyword phrase 2
c. Keyword phrase 3

Budgeting & Cost Per Click
• Setting a daily budget
• Setting a maximum Cost Per Click (CPC)
• View traffic estimator

Finish up by Testing
• Test
• Test
• More testing

When you want to get started on eBay there are things that you will need to do to insure that you will have the greatest amount of success. The first thing that you will want to do is create an account with eBay. To do so you will need to go to www.eBay.com and click on the register button. You will then have a form to fill out asking for name address and phone number. Towards the bottom of the page eBay will ask you to create a seller id. Don’t be afraid that the name you pick doesn’t reflect the product that you will be selling a year from today. The user ID is something that can be changed every 30 days.

Once you have your eBay account set up, the next step is to create you PayPal account. This is the preferred merchant account used by eBay. You will want to sign up for a premier account. This account is free and will allow you to move money from your PayPal account to your bank account more frequently without risk of penalty. Keep in mind that you can only have one PayPal account per bank account.

Now that you have a PayPal and an eBay account created the next step is to look around the house for things to sell. eBay has a section on the site called the eBay Seller Central. This tool will help you break down your home and see what other people are selling from around their homes. Once you pick the room that you want to sell out of the eBay tool will allow you to look at completed listings. Completed listings show you what happens after auctions close. Completed listings show items with Red and Green prices. Red price means that the item closed with out a sale and a Green price means it has sold. The last step is to list the item you have done the research on, remember that duplicating your competitors listings can be a great way to get an idea of how to create a listing.

Blogging is a very effective way to drive traffic to your site. However it can also be a bit of a waste of time if it isn’t done right. Always make sure you blog with a purpose. What we mean by that, is choose blog topics that help people solve a problem or meet a need.

Follow these guidelines…
• Create a calendar of pre-emptive blog topics
• Plan at least 3 months in advance
• Watch for current events to help with topic. (example: Website selling baseball products, may do a blog post about world series)
• Make sure to title blog posts. Title them with what you think people are going to search for.
• Make sure each blog post is at least 150 words
• Include in blog post any affiliates that pertain to the blog topic.
• Be Consistent

Remember to concentrate on Fresh Relevant Content, to get max exposure to search engines.

Choose what builder: Bluehost or Hostgator for hosting. Both have hosting packages that will work for what you will need. Make sure you get the packages that give unlimited hosting.

Use Word Press Platform and install through host.
Word press is an open sorce program. Best of all it is FREE to use. It also has the tools you will need to be able to fully operate your site.

Choose domain name – When choosing a domain name for your site, there are several things you want to consider. Keep your name….
Short
Easy to spell
Easy to remember

Rough draft of homepage
Plan it before you build it. Know what you like and don’t like.
Choose style, Landing page or website.
Create pages Home page, sub pages if applicable

Today I want to point out some very important facts about eBay stores. Most people think that is it a must to start a store as soon as they start selling things on eBay, this is really far from the truth. You should really ask yourself some questions before choosing to pay $15.00 extra each month.

Do you have a feedback of at least 15?

Do you have any items that you are selling repeatedly and can have a constant inventory?

Do you have 10 to 15 items that sell on a regular basis?

If you can answer yes to these three questions it may be a very good time to start opening an eBay store. eBay stores can really help you with saving money on fees. The biggest fee that you will see change is your listing fee.

Each item is 0.02 plus gallery picture 0.01 = 0.03 cents
10 items with gallery pictures = 30 cents
100 items with gallery pictures = $3.00
1000 items with gallery pictures = $ 30.00

One of the biggest reasons that people often times like to create an eBay store is because of the fact that it will start to rank on google. Your eBay store will become it’s own website with a sub domain name of stores.ebay.com/yourstore. You will have the option of putting keywords through out the page like any other website. You will want to have around 5% saturation of your keywords on the site. You may also see that because you listings can run for 30 days or as eBay words it good till canceled eBay will sometimes run PPC traffic to your adds. eBay can do this because they are the number one customer of google, and because of that their adds are put up at a discounted rate and will even get more exposure. These are all great reasons that you should open an eBay store but I would always suggest talking with your coach to make sure that you are ready.