Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category

Ebay, the number one auction site in the world, lots of fun and often a place to score some great bargains. But, can you really make an income from being an Ebay retailer?

What you sell on Ebay is not nearly as important as how you sell it. The art of making money on Ebay is all about the pitch and the customer service you provide as a seller.

How much you can make on Ebay is just as much up to you as it is in any retail business. There are thousands of listings posted everyday on Ebay and in order to get your product sold you of course have to get them noticed. That does not necessarily mean paying extra fees to eBay for featured listing banners and bigger photos though. A well worded ad with a catchy headline works just as well. Photographs are a must, as most people will simply bypass an auction that does not have a visual representation of the merchandise on offer.

Price is key on Ebay and not just the cost of the item but, shipping and handling too. Keep shipping costs to the buyer as low as you can to attract more bidders. You can always add a more expensive option for a winner who wants their merchandise shipped quickly if they request it but, if not stick to the most economical option available.

These days the Ebay system is completely geared towards using PayPal as the preferred method of payment for an auction. Although you may be tempted to accept a check or money order to avoid PayPal fees it is not the best idea, as such transactions are hard to dispute if something goes wrong.

When shipping any item, even a very small item, always use a tracking number. In the event of a dispute when a buyer claims they have not received their merchandise from you, if you do not have a tracking number to prove you sent the item Ebay and PayPal will almost always decide in the buyer’s favor. There are quite a few dishonest people out there willing to take advantage of a seller’s lack of documentation to claim an item that they received was lost and receive their money back too.

Good feedback is critical to an Ebay seller’s success. Create a simple thank you email to send to your buyers and include a handwritten note of thanks in the package too. Little things like that really make a seller stand out in Ebay buyers’ minds and can improve the quality of your feedback immensely.

Twitter is the “buzzed up” social network these days, and just as with MySpace and Facebook before it, small businesses and individual entrepreneurs are trying very hard to put it to good use in the marketing of their products and services.

But how useful is it really? Well everyone and his granny is on Twitter these days, so you or your business probably should have a presence as well.  In order for it to bring you sales or web traffic though you need followers, and lots of them. Many people begin by following the followers of a business rival or someone in the same field in the hope that those who were interested enough to follow the competition will follow them too (boy that is a lot of following.)

Once you have achieved a decent number of followers like any other web page you will need to provide interesting content to ensure repeat visits. The beauty of Twitter is of course that the updates are so short, so that often a simple link to a relevant or interesting article, review or product will suffice.

Do not expect a big flood of business right away from your Twitter page. In other words do not neglect your other promotional techniques in order to devote a huge amount of time to Twittering. But with one or two interesting tweet outs a day it can be a quick and easy way to gain more than a few extra customers.

You can claim a number of quite valuable tax deductions for a home office, but in order to do so it has to meet certain guidelines set by the IRS. For most the IRS will never come anywhere near their house, but in the event of an audit everything needs to be in order.

According to IRS rules your home office must be a part of your house that you use on a regular basis for the exclusive purpose of running a business. That means setting aside a room, or even a part of a room that is visibly set up as an office of some kind.  You must also be able to demonstrate that your home office is your principal place of business or at least that you regularly use it to meet with clients.

If you can meet these guidelines you can then claim part of the general expenses associated with your home such as utilities, rent, homeowners insurance, mortgage interest and even general repairs. For more information on IRS guidelines visit: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=108138,00.html

Even if your home office does not meet the IRS standards for “exclusive use” it may qualify as “regular use” and a portion may be tax deductible. In addition, there are various business expenses the self-employed can claim. These can include: Internet connection, a separate telephone line that you use for work, equipment (computer, fax, copier, etc.), basic supplies, office furniture, computer software,  Social Security taxes (1/2 of self-employed contributions), and health insurance premiums. Of course there are certain stipulations to qualify for deductions. Those operating a daycare out of their home or who are not self-employed but, a telecommuter also can benefit from certain deductions. Consult your tax professional and visit the IRS website for additional details.

Knowing how to use Search Engine Optimization to gain available traffic for your site is important for your success.
More and more people these days are using websites as a way to help pay their bills. Some people are even using them as their sole source of income! Creating a thriving, successful website isn’t easy and it takes a lot of hard work. One of the keys in making a website successful is to know how to execute SEO, or “Search Engine Optimization” properly.

What is search engine optimization? Simply put, it’s basically the process of increasing and improving the quality and volume of traffic to a specific web page. When someone types a specific search term into a search engine, that search engine begins scanning its internal database, looking for that specific phrase, or “keyword.” Then the search engine returns reference to the web pages that best match the search terms. The higher up in the search results a web page is, the more likely it is to improve its traffic flow.

Search engine optimization is a strategy web designers and SEO specialist use to ensure a web page is one of the first web pages returned on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). SEO really becomes important when the competition for a given product or service is high. You may have the best thing going for consumers but if your search engine placement is low your traffic will suffer. So to give a web page an edge, people employ SEO tactics to place keywords within the content of their pages to improve their chances of getting traffic.

Here are some great guidelines to follow when deciding to implement SEO.

- First choose your keywords or key phrases carefully, keeping in mind that you should select only one, two or three at most for each page you decide to optimize. The keywords/phrase must be relevant to the page and must be terms that people will use to search for your product or service.

- SEO is done on a page by page basis. Each and every page of a website can be optimized but you should concentrate on 1 – 3 pages of your site (more if the site is large). No need to do SEO for an About Us or Contact Us type page.

- If possible select a URL for your site that contains the main keyword/phrase for the Home page of the site. It is difficult to find the perfect URL these days so consider being creative by using dashes (-) in the URL. I.E. ( my-site-is-the-best.com)

- Make full use of Meta Tags. There are three important Meta Tags (Keywords, Description and Title). Search engines use the information defined in these tags to help determine what the page is about. Place the most important keyword/phrase as close to the front of the Meta Tag definition as possible. Keep keywords/phrase to a minimum, using too many keywords will dilute the value.

- Use the keywords/phrases within the content of the page. When you place text on the page, be sure to use the main keyword/phrase often but without excess. Overuse of the keyword/phrase can be deemed spammy by the search engines and make the page hard to read by the visitor.

- Use the keyword/phrase in main headers, Alt Tags of images or graphics on the page and if possible as anchor text links from other pages within the site.

- Something called semantically related words and or synonyms to the keywords can be extremely effective to SERP. For instance, if your main key phrase is “wooden chairs”, words like stool or bench or seat will give additional value to the main keyword/phrase and will aid in boosting your SERP. A very good tool to assist you with the selection of semantically related words can be found at http://labs.google.com/sets. Once you find additional related words use those in the content often but again without excess. Strive to keep the written content on the page natural sounding.

SEO is an extremely powerful technique used for the sole purpose of getting available traffic for a given keyword/phrase to a web page. By careful selection of keywords/phrase and using those words appropriately on a web page, additional free traffic can be obtained.  SEO does not guarantee sales success, once a visitor makes it to the website it becomes the responsibility of the site content (text, graphics, layout, etc) to make a sale or conversion.

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