31 Aug 08 Ebay Business: How Ebay Sellers Can Protect Themselves From Auction Scams

How Ebay Sellers Can Protect Themselves From Auction Scams?

Are you an eBay seller? If you have been conducting your business in this widely popular online auction site, then chances are, you would’ve experienced some fraudulent activities perpetrated against your enterprise. Scam artists are everywhere, it seems, and the sheer anonymity provided by the World Wide Web makes the virtual world a paradise for all sorts of unscrupulous folks.

Condemning them is one thing. But you do need to positively act on the real perils of getting scammed. You have take some precautionary steps and adjust the way you operate your online business to minimize, if not completely eliminate, the risks that these scam artists present.

Let’s enumerate the more famous, or should we say infamous, of these eBay scams and discuss some ways by which you could avoid them.

• Bid shielding. Bid shielding greatly compromises the profit you could derive from your auctions. Bid shielding occurs when a bidder uses two eBay accounts. One account would bid a low price for your auction. The other account would bid a very high price for the same, thus dissuading other people from competing for the same item. When the bidding period nears its end, the second account would withdraw his bid, leaving the first account to win the item at a very low price. Bid shielding gravely jeopardizes the integrity of eBay itself. This is why the site promptly acts on any reports about possible occurrences of this scam. Pinpointing possible bid shielding is quite easy. If the current bid is grossly higher than the most recent bid, then bid shielding is probably in operation. Report it immediately to eBay, so that they could conduct an investigation while the auction is ongoing. Additionally, add a disclaimer on your auction, allowing you to cancel any winning bid whenever bid shielding is apparent.

• Bad checks. If you will take checks as payment for your auction, then you will have to live with the danger of encountering checks that would eventually bounce because of lack of funds. The solution to this scam is simpler than the rest. Do not ship your items until the checks you received have cleared. It’s the most prudent course to take. Add a notice in your auction that payments made through checks would have to clear before the items can be delivered. This would serve as due earning for your bidders that they would have to wait longer for the auctions they have won.

• Stolen payment information. Credit card fraud is rampant these days, what with new hacking technology and the abundance of spyware all over the internet. A winning bidder may pay you trough a credit card which is not his. He’ll ask you to ship the item to a P.O. box. Once the item is delivered, he’ll then close the P.O. box address to cover his tracks. And you’re left with no means to retrieve what you have lost. The best way to protect yourself against credit card fraud is to require payment from confirmed addresses only. Since PayPal accepts credit card payments, you could easily inquire from the service if a payee has entered a verifiable address. You have the option to cancel the bid of someone who’s not paying with a confirmed address.

• Drop shipping scams. There is no denying the popularity of drop shippers in the eBay business. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, wants to contact a drop shipper to increase his eBay offerings and profit. Some “enterprising” individuals have started to offer a list of drop shippers in eBay itself, as one of the many auctions in its pages. But eBay warned against these lists. 99% of them, according to eBay, would be filled with junk details like broken links, outdated information, and even fabricated entities. The solution? Do not purchase these lists. Look for your own drop shipper. You’d realize that finding one would only entail a little research of your own.

For many of us, eBay offers great income streams that serve us well. We must strive to protect the opportunity we have been given by being vigilant against scams and combating them through the implementation of precautionary measures for our every auction.

Popularity: 10%

29 Aug 08 Online Ebay Business: Establishing an Ebay Store

The Pros And Cons In Establishing An Ebay Store

Ebay has provided some amazing opportunities for many people to earn online. This widely popular auction site has become the primary destination for users who wish to purchase anything – ranging from tangible products to digital items – hence making eBay a website visited by millions of people every day. Because of the volume of transactions happening in its pages, eBay has also become a virtual market place where thousands, if not millions, of dollars exchange hands on a daily basis as well.

Do you want a piece of that big, big pie?

Popularity: 13%

24 Aug 08 Techniques 2008: How To Make Solo Ads Worth Your Investment

“Make Solo Ads Worth Your Money via Business Ezines”

Sometimes, advertising can be quite expensive.  Though it is true that in the Internet, there are a lot of marketing channels you could avail of for free, often, you’d be competing with countless ventures in the said venues.  This would result in difficulties with regards to having your business message stand out among the rest.

Hence, quite a number of Internet marketers have tried paid options.  One of these is paid solo ads in electronic magazines, or eZines.  It is widely believed that having a certain space in a popularly distributed eZine would be a very effective way of sending out your business message.  Let’s analyze further.

The Power Of Ezines

People subscribe to eZines because they want to avail of the information that would be shared by the said publication.  Basically, they DECIDE to receive the eZine issues.  This points to a desire on their part to be able to read about the subject catered to by the said eZine.  This is why an eZine’s subscriber base is usually called an opt-in list, because users opted to subscribe to the service.

How could this benefit you?

Popularity: 10%

21 Aug 08 HowTo: Affiliate Marketing Without a Website

Become Professional Affiliate Marketer Without A Website!

Time and time again, internet marketers have claimed that to do business in the World Wide Web, you’d need your own website. Your own website, they say, is your headquarters in cyberspace. It’s your very own digital store where you could lead potential customers and where you offer the products you have for sale.

Though it’s true that having your own website can greatly aid you in your quest to achieve success in the online field, a website is not the end all and be all of internet salesmanship, particularly in the line of affiliate marketing. Yes, you could make a living online as an affiliate even if you do not have the benefit of your own website!

How is this possible? How can this be done? Read on, dear friend, as we discuss alternative strategies that will allows you to make the most out of your affiliate marketing campaigns without having your own webpage on the net.

Affiliate marketing is a program whereby the affiliate can earn some generous commissions for every successful sale they manage to refer to the affiliate merchant. The affiliate’s task is merely to pre-sell the affiliate merchant’s goods. The sales page, the payment processing, the digital delivery, and post sales services shall be the responsibilities of the affiliate merchant.

The affiliate only has to refer people to the affiliate merchant’s sales page. This can be done by making people click on the affiliate links exclusively provided for the affiliate. Now, these affiliate links are very important. They are like the markers for the affiliate program. They will tell the system that a visitor was actually referred by the appropriate affiliate.

Marketing the affiliate merchant’s goods without the benefit of a website entails marketing the affiliate links in a variety of channels that would serve the affiliate in lieu of a website of his own. This can be done through the following techniques:

• Article marketing. We all know how powerful affiliate marketing can be in link building campaigns. But instead of providing for links to your own website, you could provide your affiliate links instead. Article directories allow you a resource box per submission, where you could tell your readers about yourself as well as leave a link of your choice. Now, you have to remember that some article directories do not allow affiliate links in the bodies of the articles themselves, but affiliate links are perfectly allowed in the resource box. Great places to start your article marketing campaign are www.ezinearticles.com , www.goarticles.com and www.isnare.com .

• Forum marketing. Online communities, or forums, are likewise great channels where you could promote your affiliate links. Membership in pHp 2.0 based forums gives you a signature box where you could advertise your links. Use this to advertise your affiliate links. For every post you will make, your signature box would appear. Post a thousand messages, and you’ll have a thousand pages advertising your affiliate links! Want to know the forums which are relevant to the subject serviced by the affiliate products you’re promoting? Use the tool at www.link-advantage.com/search to find the appropriate online community.

• Advertise in eZines. This may cost you some cash, as many eZines charge for advertising space. Nonetheless, you could expose your affiliate links to highly targeted prospects using this approach. Imagine if the eZine has a list of 10,000 people. You’d immediately be able to reach 10,000 quality leads with one advertisement. Again, you don’t need a website. Simply use your affiliate link in your ads.

The absence of your own website is never a bar to online success. Most of the strategies we have discussed here can be accomplished without spending a single cent. If you do not have the financial resources to register a domain or to subscribe to a web hosting service, you could still achieve success with affiliate marketing. Joining an affiliate program is free. Promoting your affiliate links can likewise be availed of without any charges. Good luck!

Popularity: 18%

15 Aug 08 "Steal" Traffic and Clients from Your Competitors!

How To Study Your Website’s Competition And Steal Their Spot

Many things can be said about the benefits of having an online business. Inexpensive marketing platforms, a global audience, automation and the likes are just some of the top answers whenever online businessmen are asked why they decided to establish their enterprises in the World Wide Web.

But there’s one factor that is often left undisclosed. The online field would also require you to compete with hundreds, if not thousands, of other businesses jockeying for the same market. It’s a virtual race for sales, or for clicks if you’re engaged in a PPC venture. And since any given market is finite, the number and strength of your competition plays an important role in determining your success in the internet marketing industry.

Competition is said to be at its highest level in the search engine game. As you may very well know, 80% of the traffic that can be generated from any website would come from the search engines. If you are competing with 100 other enterprises, this means that you should try your very best to beat all 100 of them for the top spot in the search engine results page for every relevant query. This is the best way to ensure that you’ll get first dibs on a prospect before they could grab a hold of him.

As is usually the case, search engine optimization (SEO) techniques abound to help you gain good position in search engine results. Mastering these techniques would give you a greater chance of succeeding in the online industry.

At least in theory….

In practice, however, things aren’t that easy. What remains unsaid is the fact that most of your competitors would be doing the same thing. You’d still have to compete with the tactics that they themselves would employ. And if all of you would be implementing the same strategies, then it’s back to square one. If you can’t get ahead of them in the search engine positions before, there’s no reason why you’d get ahead of them after employing the same tricks that they likewise employ.

So what should you do?

Here’s an unorthodox strategy. Instead of competing against your rivals, you could actually learn from them. And in the process, you could steal their spots.

Competition is always about figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents. The keys to victory lie in replicating what your opponents are doing correctly and correcting what your opponents are doing wrong.

And these can only be achieved by studying their performance.

Let’s give it a shot through an example.

Supposing your online business has something to do with dog grooming. A cursory look at Google would reveal that you have around 10,000,000 pages servicing the same subject. An approximation based on averages would tell us that around 2.5 million webmasters are engaged in the same field.

On the number one spot in the search engine results would be petgroomer.com. This website’s spot is your aim. Your goal is to dislodge this website from its number one position.

How are you supposed to do that?

Let’s try to study the website. On your Internet browser, go to VIEW then select SOURCE. You’ll be taken to a text file that would reveal the source code of the said website. Now study this source code and answer the following questions:

• Are you doing the SEO techniques the website is employing?
• What is the website implementing that you’re not doing?
• What are you doing that the website is not implementing?

For example, the said website is employing META tags. Are you using the same META tags? Does he have more META tags than you do? The website also hosts a variety of content pieces. Are its content pieces better than yours? Are there any keywords in such pieces that you have failed to capitalize on? The said website is also using ALT tags. Are you using ALT tags for your pages with same level of proficiency?

Again, just as a reminder, the trick is to determine what your competitor is doing right so that you’d know what to imitate, and to determine what your competitor is doing wrong so that you’d know where to beat him.

Now go to www.linkpopularity.com and run a check on that website’s URL. You’d know that the said website has 1,927 MSN back links and 2,760 Yahoo back links. The next step is to acquire more back links than what this website has. This is where you should employ off page SEO tactics so that you’d be able to beat the aforementioned number one website. If you will manage to get more back links, then chances are, Google will consider assigning your website a higher page rank.

These are the secrets to studying – and beating – your competition, even if the playing field is fairly built. As Arie De Geus did say, “the ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage.”

Popularity: 15%

12 Aug 08 Email Marketing Software All-In-One Pack

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Popularity: 14%

06 Aug 08 Top 99 Social Networks. From A to Z!

We have compiled a list of 99 Social Media networks that you may find interesting.

1. www.aboutus.org
2. www.activerain.com
3. www.aeonity.com
4. www.autospies.com
5. www.ballhype.com
6. www.betamarker.com
7. www.bibsonomy.org
8. www.blog.co.uk
9. www.bloghop.com
10. www.blogetery.com

Popularity: 16%