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December 31, 2005

Make Money On eBay By Paying Attention To Details

Recently, a furious seller sent me an email indignantly arguing that eBay had cheated him! According to his story, he had failed to sell an auction when it was first listed for sale, so he re-listed it, and it sold. All well and good. But, he goes on to tell me that he wanted credit for the fees for his first listing but eBay wouldn't return those monies.

He wanted me to join him in condemning eBay - but unfortunately, he was totally wrong. In fact, he hadn't followed two of eBay's rules for repayment of listing fees. In fact, he broke not one, but two of eBay's rules. Of course, we all make mistakes, but if we're going to be successful in business, we simply must pay attention to details. Here's what he did wrong:

Make Money On eBay By Knowing The Rules

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 10:58 AM | TrackBack

December 30, 2005

Sellers On eBay Can Forget Live Animals

Sellers on eBay won't be able to offer up live animals! YEAH!!!

In December, eBay invited members of its discusion forum to express their opinions about an eBay plan to launch a live pets classified service in 2006 that would allow sellers to advertise animals for sale. The service would not be "transactional," meaning eBay would not take part in actual sales or permit bidding, the notice said.

The plan touched off a virtual uproar on the discussion board, with more than 3,000 responses. Most people posting messages opposed the move, saying the sale and adoption of pets over the Internet is generally a bad idea.

"Critics of eBay's plan worried that it would help support irresponsible breeders, or 'puppy mills,' that treat animals poorly. And without meeting animals before purchasing them, pet owners may end up with problem animals, which can lead to abandonment, said Karin Jaffie, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco SPCA, a pet adoption group."

As an alternative, eBay is discussing a partnership with PetFinder, an online listing service for pet adoptions through local shelters. Craigslist, partially owned by eBay, includes live pet ads now.

eBay has a powerful effect on the Internet world and I'd like to see details of the proposed deal with PetFinder before I applaud too loudly. We humans mistreat animals in horribly cruel and shameful ways now. Hopefully, this won't allow even more abuse.

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 10:41 AM | TrackBack

December 29, 2005

Holiday Spending & An eBay Auction Business

According to Goldman, Sachs & Co., Nielsen/NetRatings and Harris Interactive, online holiday spending during the week of December 10 -16 was $25 BILLION. Yep, that's right ... "B" not "M". This is 25% more than the same time last year.

We spent money on:

* Computers: $3.75 billion
* Consumer electronics: $3.67 billion
* Clothing: $4.68 billion
* Toys: $1.91 billion

Now here's the really interesting part for us eBay sellers: 23.4% of shoppers went directly to eBay. Is eBay in the public consciousness or not? Does that translate to sales? It's gotta. Happy 2006, fellow auction sellers!

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 1:49 PM | TrackBack

December 27, 2005

Today On eBay: 10 Cent Listing Day

Today eBay USA is holding a 10 cent listing day, so if you have anything you want to sell, this is definitely a day to list. It is, of course, a way to stimulate post-Christmas sales.

The listing fee for all regular auction-style and Fixed Price listings is 10 cents on eBay USA and on eBay motors for non-vehicles listings. This includes listings created before 27 Dec 2005 but that are scheduled to start today, 12.27. For details ...

10 Cent Day On eBay USA

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 12:23 PM | TrackBack

December 26, 2005

Infant Cribs & Crib Mattresses Sell Well On eBay

Infant cribs and crib mattresses are a great market on eBay. Most folks are foolish about their babies and want only the best for them, which is exactly how it should be. Smart eBay sellers promote the safety angle of their products, like this seller (sellingibm600e):

The seller offers this information about her crib mattress for sale:

* Repels liquids like urine and sweat
* Allows body vapor to breathe through protector
* 100% Natural Cotton surface (extra soft and absorbent fiber
* Polyurethane film backing is water proof, breathable and breathable and acts as a barrier
The seller offers this information about her crib mattress for sale:

This is incredibly smart marketing and crib mattresses is a growing and highly popular market with a high sell-through rate.

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 11:48 AM | TrackBack

December 19, 2005

Thick Mattress Pads Sold In Quantity On eBay

I have been obsessed lately with creating a more luxurious and comfortable bed. That's partly because I have insomnia at times (I used to think that people who complained about insomnia were big babies. Not anymore!) Another reason is that a great bed seems to be one of the ultimate luxuries. Where better to spend our money?

At any rate, I've bought incredibly luxurious new sheets and have picked out a new down comforter for after Christmas. I already have a very hard magnetic mattress so have been looking at mattress pads. Do you know how many options there are? I didn't until I started this research project. The only thing I know for sure right now is that I want a thick one. Very thick. Maybe like this 4" heated one I found on eBay:

Regardless, I will buy from eBay because the prices are just better. After all, who objects to saving money? Certainly not me.

Thick Mattress Pads

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 10:48 AM | TrackBack

December 16, 2005

Try A Manolo Blahnik Store To Save Money On Shoes

OK, I admit that I don't get the whole "designer" thing. Paying inflated prices for clothing, shoes and the like just because a celebrity has her/his name on them hasn't ever made sense to me. But when a friend showed me her new Manolo Blahnik shoes I was really taken aback.

First of all, the shoes look as though they were designed by the Spanish Inquisition. The heels are so high that her feet are perched at a dangerous angle. Not only must they be incredibly uncomfortable, but the damage it does to your back has the chiropractic industry moaning in horror.

Another danger: the straps that hold the shoe on are ... hardly there. It seems to me as though it would be extremely easy to teeter, loose your balance and break an ankle.

When she told me the price I was aghast! These Manolo Blahnik things aren't cheap. I immediately went to eBay and showed her 131 stores that are selling Blahniks at lower prices than she paid for them.

Of course, what do I know? I wear nothing but clogs and athletic shoes. Clogs are the closest and most acceptable alternative to bedroom slippers and I love them with all my heart. My criteria for shoes is:

1. Comfort
2. Comfort
3. Comfort

If you're going to buy designer shoes, check out eBay stores first so at least your wallet doesn't hurt as much as your feet.

Manolo Blahnik Store

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 6:47 PM | TrackBack

December 14, 2005

A Trip To The 'Unclaimed Baggage Center'

Sometime between Christmas and New Year's, I am planning on a trip to the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsdale, Alabama. The Baggage Center buys truck loads of unclaimed baggage and cargo from airlines, rental car companies, hotels and the like.

According to the store, there are two main kinds of goodies:

1. Unclaimed BAGGAGE items are usually priced at 50% to 80% off retail because they are typically used items.
2. Unclaimed CARGO is mostly new and many times in the original package; we usually price these items at 20% to 50% off retail.

What kinds of products do they carry?

"Over one million items pass through the store annually. About 60% of the merchandise is clothing with the balance of the store dedicated to cameras, electronics, sporting goods, jewelry, designer optical, books and of course, luggage. The vast majority of items are from unclaimed baggage which, after at least 90 days of intensive tracking by the airlines, are declared unclaimed. However, lost and unclaimed cargo is also now available in special areas of the store."

Based on a quote from the Wall Street Journal, the place is huge: "The public can't get enough of it. What began as a few pieces of luggage sold from card tables 24 years ago is now a sprawling glass and granite complex that takes up more than a city block."

Here are some of their more ... interesting ... items:

* A 40.95-carat natural emerald
* A full suit of armor
* The life-size face of Hoggle from the Jim Henson movie Labyrinth
* An old, well-worn Gucci suitcase filled with Egyptian artifacts dating back to 1500 B.C., including a mummified falcon and a shrunken head
* A special camera designed for NASA’s Space Shuttle
* A 5.8 carat diamond ring set in platinum
* A complete, neatly packed parachute
* A Barbie doll with a roll of $500 hidden inside
* A guidance system for an F16 fighter jet valued at a quarter of a million dollars
* A LIVE rattlesnake

They have a website, but it won't do you much good when it comes to shopping. The reason is that they put out 7,000 items each day, up to 20 times per day. Therefore merchandise isn't listed on their site because it's sold about as soon as it comes in.

They are about 150 miles from my house. Not a bad drive - maybe. If you live anywhere near the area, you could most likely get a profitable eBay biz going with the goodies in this store.

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 12:46 PM | TrackBack

December 13, 2005

A Message To Brad Fallon: A True Southern Wedding

I have a message for my friend Brad Fallon ... Hey, Brad, do you think this lovely couple would be interested in some wedding favors from your site?

A picture of this lovely couple was was sent to me by a student and the title is "A True Southern Wedding". As a true southerner and a lady who was the major participaant in two southern weddings, I can truly say that I never looked like this blushing bride! LOL

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 12:15 PM | TrackBack

December 11, 2005

eBay Sellers Profit From Dead Celebrity Memorabilia

eBay sellers take note: memorabilia from dead celebrities is a thriving and dynamite business!

We all know that Elvis made more money after he was dead than while he was alive, and the fascination with the famous shows no signs of dying. In fact, once they're dead, some prices skyrocket. Note this Johnny Cash artifact:

eBay now has a category called Entertainment Memorabilia and it's often featured on its front page.

Personally, I find this fascination rather pathetic, but I'm not the one buying this stuff. And obviously, I am in a minority. As I often (usually) am.

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 11:43 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 9, 2005

Expert Search Engine Optimization & The Future With Google

Expert search engine optimization has always been a question of 'what expert'? Recently, for instance, I read a newsletter from an 'esteemed and respected' SE source, one who has been around for years. He was citing articles he had written that are so out of date that they're in another era.

By contrast, Glenn Murray has written a lengthy, but highly accurate (as best I can tell) article that needs to be read by ebmasters who are serious about ranking their sites with the search engines. Like me.

BTW: this article is about the recent Jagger" update ... we did stunningly well!

- - -

Jagger, Google Analytics, and the Future of Search & SEO

By Glenn Murray
SEO Copywriter & Article PR specialist *

Two big things have just happened in Google-land: Jagger and Google Analytics. Together, these two events may have changed the face of search forever.

JAGGER

First, let's discuss Jagger... Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they're universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a website's ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.

Why was Jagger such a fearful update? Simple... With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients' money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While there's nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. they're not considered 'black-hat'), they don't really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.

In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant, important sites, not sites that merely appear to be relevant and important. To this end, Google invests millions of dollars and employs the world's smartest mathematicians to create algorithms which identify sites that are trying to trick them. And that's exactly what Jagger did; and when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance. (Unfortunately, it also demoted some sites which actually deserve a high ranking. It is hoped that these mistakes will be ironed out with future minor updates, but that's a topic for another article...)

From a technical standpoint, Jagger was well described by Ken Webster in his article,'Google's Jagger Update - Dust Begins To Settle?' To summarize, Jagger:
1) Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy?
2) Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy?
3) Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to #1 & #2)?
4) More weight thrown back to PR @ top domain?
5) Increased importance on AdSense placement relevancy?
6) Possible introduction of CSS Spam filtering?
7) Overall Blog demotions?
8) New and unresolved "canonical" issues?

Some more interesting effects were reported by WG Moore who runs a number of test sites for SEO purposes. By monitoring the links to his test sites as reported by Google, he established that:

"all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way... During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business."

In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands - if not millions - of people! As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.

Interestingly, article PR (article submission) came through Jagger seemingly unscathed. My SEO copywriting website, for example, went from no.4 to no.1 worldwide for "copywriter", and I've employed article PR almost exclusively. Whether it was promoted or the sites around it were demoted, one thing is clear: article PR is one of the best ways to obtain a high ranking.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

The second monumental event to occur recently was Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free web-stats solution which not only reports all the regular site stats, but also integrates directly with Google AdWords giving webmasters and insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. According to Google, " Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site."

Why is this such a landmark move? Because for the first time ever, Google will have access to your real web stats. And these stats will be far more accurate than those provided by Alexa . Furthermore, Google's privacy statement says: " We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services."

Now let's put two and two together:
1) Google is 'giving' every webmaster in the world free access to quality web-stats.
2) Millions of webmasters will accept this 'gift', if only because it integrates directly with their Google AdWords campaigns.
3) Google will then have full access to the actual web stats of millions of commercial websites.
4) Google will have the right to use these stats to develop new technologies.
5) What's the next logical step? Google will use these statistics to help determine its rankings, of course!

It should come as no surprise. It's been on the cards - and frequently discussed - for a long time. For example, Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen, recently published an article on She quite rightly asserts that:

"Google's "democratic" vision of the Web will never be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms."

In fact, the Jayde Online network already owns and operates a search engine, Exact Seek which incorporates user popularity statistics in its rankings.

THE FUTURE OF SEARCH AND SEO

To date, ExactSeek is the only search engine which uses visitor stats as criteria for its rankings. But Google isn't far behind. We all know that Google specializes in taking a good idea and implementing and adapting it brilliantly. This is exactly what we'll see in this case. By combining link popularity and user popularity statistics, Google will be the only major search engine to consider both what other sites think of your website and what your visitors think of your website. And because they have the most advanced algorithms for assessing link popularity, and will soon have access to the farthest reaching, most accurate web stats to assess user popularity, its competitors will be a long time catching up.

So if that's the future of search, what's the future of SEO? The future of SEO is undoubtedly one where:
* one-way text links from relevant pages continue to be the most valuable links
* reciprocal linking continue to decline
* the 'shotgun' approach to link buying declines
* mass email link requests decline
* free directory submission declines
* niche directory submission increases
* article PR (article submission) increases
* article submission sites play a much bigger and more important role in helping online publishers locate quality articles (due to the increasing article volume)
* user popularity is just as important as link popularity, which means:
**the quality of article PR improves in order to increase site traffic, credibility, and loyalty
** the quality of website content improves in order to convert traffic and encourage repeat visits

Clearly, the choices for SEOs will be pretty much limited to paying for links at niche sites and/or engaging in article PR. Being an SEO copywriter, I may be a little biased, but for mine, article PR is the hands-down winner in this comparison:
* It satisfies Google's criteria for relevance and importance. Linking site owners include your article and link because, in doing so, their site becomes more useful to visitors, and their business gains credibility and authority.
* It generates hundreds of free links quickly enough to make it worth your while, but not so quickly as to raise red flags at Google (in the form of link dampening).
* Links are permanent and you don't have to pay to keep them there.
* You get a lot of qualified referred traffic who already trust you and your expertise. This satisfies Google's visitor popularity criteria, while at the same time bringing you a lot of extra customers.

CONCLUSION

The lesson from Jagger is, don't try and trick Google! They've got more money and more brains than virtually any company in the world. It'll only end in tears! Don't spend time and money trying to make your site look important and relevant. Instead, spend that time and money actually making it important and relevant! Content - the real content behind the optimization - is the answer. After all, whether it's an article or a web page, it's the content that keeps 'eyes on paper', and that's what it's all about.

Happy optimizing!

Glenn Murray

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 11:48 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 8, 2005

Auctions Online? Why Bother?

Why should you or anyone bother with auctions online? After all, they're crowded, competitive and frequently frustrating. Actually, there's only one reason ... millions, MILLIONS! of eager online buyers. In fact, Herb says it all!

Posted by SydneyJohnston at 12:14 PM | TrackBack

December 7, 2005

Auction Software Offers Powerful Data

Trying to sell on eBay without auction software is like being blind. You are literally reduced to guessing, hoping and praying, which is not the mark of a professional seller who will be earn money on eBay or anywhere else on the Net. My favorite eBay research tool is Terapeak and here is a tiny part of the reason why: