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Posts in category eBay Tips & Help

Add Auto Updating Content to your Website – RSS

Mar29
2009 2 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall



I have been doing a fair bit of research lately into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to brush up on my knowledge before I jump into posts.  During my travels I have become aware of the amazing possibilities of RSS feeds and what they can do for your site.

An RSS feed (an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated Internet material, such as a blog, news headlines and even audio and video.  People who subscribe to RSS feeds are automatically aware as soon as something changes on the site that they have subscribed to.

For example if you subscribe to my blog (which runs an RSS feed, click the icon to subscribe to my RSS feed mini_rss1 ) you will know as soon as one of my cracking articles is published online, you can even read it without having to go to the site, by using an RSS reader.  I have placed a FREE RSS reader on my FREE Stuff Page. <—–Click There

The benefit of an RSS feed is that it is always changing.  So how can you use this ever changing RSS content, to benefit your website and make you money?  Why would you want to have someone elses content on your website anyway?

It all comes back to the search engines, and offering your readers fresh new content.  Search engine prefer those websites with constant changing content.  If your site is changing all the time, Google for example has to keep sending their spiders to your site.  This is good for you and promotes you site ranking significantly.

So what would you have to do to get a RSS feed displayed on your blog for example.  Well first of all you would have to go through the process of converting the RSS feed into HTML (very difficult coding issues to over come here) so it could be displayed on your site.  It would then need to be formatted, and re formatted each time the feed changed.  Sounds difficult and time consuming yes?

Well, it is, believe me to convert and RSS feed being a .XML  file type to correctly formatted HTML is very difficult.  However, there is a little program out there that does all this for you, simply and effectively…it is really quite an amazing achievement on the programmers part.

If you can get an ever changing RSS feed displayed on your site, the search engines will love you.  I have struggled about whether I should do a post about this program because it gives a website such an advantage over others or if I should keep it all for my self.  However, as you can read I decided to spill the beans and tell all…..

rss

Have a look at an entire website I have created using only RSS feeds – its called Dawi News and focuses on World Business News and Finance.  I never have to change this site because it is updated automatically as soon as a feed is updated.  Fresh new content is placed on the site all the time.  It is a very popular site and works very well indeed.

dawi_news_homepage

Adding your own RSS feed (duly converted into HTML) on your own site is also a very beneficial trick.  Not only will it display different parts of my blog to you the reader, but doubles up on my content and keywords, and tells the search engines my site is changing again and again…….

If your interested in doing the same I would strongly recommend you download the below guide all about RSS feeds and how to turn RSS in money;  it is a great read, easy to follow (even if your not a wizard with HTML etc).   I simply love this product and hope you will too!!!  Any questions on it then post a comment.

Got go get my plane now…..UK here I come…..thanks for reading

Download the RSS Guide here – Downlad Here

Posted in Internet & SEO, Miscellenous Topics - Tagged , , , ,

The Two most important eBay Seller tips you will ever read!!

Mar23
2009 9 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall

 


I spent this morning creating a Video Tutorial to add to my guide on how to install Google Analytics to your Word Press Blog, I will upload it later today.  In the meantime I thought I would mention the two most important aspects of eBay selling you need to know!

The two most important tips for selling on eBay I can offer is: -

  1. How to create an eBay title; and
  2. The duration of an Auction.

No 1 eBay Listing Tips – eBay Title

The eBay title is how your bidders find your item, it is therefore very important that you get this part of your listing right!  When I started listing on eBay back in 1998, eBay didn’t have the automatic tool built into their search engine which would suggest listings if you spelt the name wrong when you searched for something.  Back then it was up to your to get it right.  Now however, just like Google if you search for something popular and spell it wrong, the eBay search engine will list suggestions for you.  For example, I searched for “ecomerce” spelt with only one “M” and eBay suggested and listed  “ecommerce” items with two “M’s” .  This only works properly for popular items however, if you are listing something outside the norm then you may have trouble.

ebay_search

Ultimately you want as many people as possible to find your listing, you want to stand out from the other twenty thousand sellers listing the same type of item;  so how do you do that?

The first thing you need to do is to find out what are the Keywords in your category of product.  Lets say you want to list an ebook on the history of the monitors  (I know what your thinking, yet it was the best I could come up with).  We will use eBay US of this post. To find out the Keywords for this type of item,  I would go to eBay pulse at www.ebay.com/pulse and click the category drop down menu until I find monitors and projectors.  Here we can see that the top keywords searched in this category are:  lcd monitor, monitor, computer monitor, projector, lcd, touch screen, monitors, computer monitors, touchscreen and flat screen monitor.

pulse1

Next we want to see what are the keywords used for “eBooks“.  You can either go to “Books” or “Information Products“.  We will use books, and I won’t go right down to the sub catergory of books, just keep it at the top category “books”.  As you can see by the below image, the top keywords in the books category are: twilight, computer, books, easton press, harry potter, stephen king, 1st edition, nancy drew, bible and chess. Notice that eBook is not a keyword in the books category.

pulse2

So now we have our keywords.

lcd monitor, monitor, computer monitor, projector, lcd, touch screen, monitors, computer monitors, touchscreen, flat screen monitor.

twilight, computer, books, easton press, harry potter, stephen king, 1st edition, nancy drew, bible and chess

So what would our listing title be?  Now eBook are predominately .pdf files which means they will work on PC, Mac, Linux (I think) etc.  You could go back to eBay pulse and repeat the above, using these words also.  For example Mac would become Macbook, iMac, iBook, Powerbook etc.  However, I will not go nuts and for this post just stick with PC Mac and Apple.  Obviously you could continue to pulse keywords.

We are listing an eBook on the history of monitors.   eBay gives you 55 characters to use in your title, so using common abbreviations like NIB, NR etc significantly helps describe your item without using up precious characters.

MIB: Mint in box

OOP: Out of print

NIB:New in box

LN: Like new

HTF: Hard to find

LTD: Limited edition

NR: No reserve

BN:  Brand new

Also, avoid using silly wasteful words like Look, Wow, Cool etc.  Buyers don’t search for these words and they really don’t entice Buyers to click on your item.  You want to get your Buyers attention and to do that you describe your item the best you can, using as many keywords as you can squeeze in, while not appearing to just through up keywords.  Further, don’t worry above creating a grammatically pleasing Titles.  You want IMPACT and DESCRIPTION. For example if your selling an iPod don’t put iPod New for Mac Apple iBook Powerbook.  There are so many of these silly titles that Buyers just turn off.

So using the above keywords we obtained through eBay Pulse and the few simple rules I have mentioned, our title could be: -

Limited 1st edition books – History Flat Screen Computer Monitor OR

BN 1st Edition Book Bible of LCD Computer Monitors NR

And that’s it.  Remember, don’t use wasteful words, check your pulse keywords, don’t over Capitalise words, use a few abbreviations (but not too many) and don’t worry about your Grammar.

No 2 eBay Listing Tips – Listing Duration

I started listing on eBay in 1998, to get some extra money while I was at university, and after it turned it into a business I noticed that there were certain days of the week that I sold more things and I had spikes in the number is watchers on my listings.  This was very important information as it told me what days I should have my listings out there; a sort of eBay analytics.

Thursday, Saturday and Monday were the busiest days.  Now the longest duration you can list an item for on eBay is 10 days.  In order to get the most exposure, (and forget about 3 or 7 days auctions), list your items on a Thursday.  Why?  If you list your item on a Thursday, for 10 days your listing will be current for two Thursdays and two Saturdays, significantly increasing your chances of being seen and getting bids.

Also start your listing at a time when people are at home.  Don’t start it a 5pm or 6pm when people are leaving work and are going to miss the end of the auction if they wanted to drop a bid in at the last minute.  Start the auction at 8.00pm.  This is after dinner (tea, supper….whatever you call it), people are home from work, and are starting to have some free time…..perfect time to remember to hop on the Internet and place that bid.  If you start your item on a Thursday at 8.00pm it will end at 8.00pm on Saturday.

Now if your item doesn’t sell or meet the reserve, don’t just re list with the same title.  Change the title a little!!!!! Google, Yahoo, MSN love fresh new content not old content.  If you use a new title when you re list, your more likely to get picked up by the search engines again.   Also, if you check your original source code of your listing you will find that the original end date will be the same as the first time around (IE before you re-listed) and hence another reason why the search engines won’t pick your listing up.

Hope these tips works for you….more coming soon so why not subscribe to this blog…..and get a bunch of free eBooks, on SEO and eBay.  Until next time……………………..

Tagged , ,

Minimizing eBay Selling Fees

Mar19
2009 7 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall




eBay selling fees have always been a little steep, more so now as they put them up (and lost a load of users in the process).  One of the most frustrating things when selling on eBay is that your get slugged three times.  Once when you list the item, once when you sell the item, and then as you get paid (as you are now required to accept Paypal,).   Even more so is when an item doesn’t sell!

Working out exactly what your profit will be when your selling many items on eBay is a rather trying procedure.  When you really start to list many items on eBay and your eBay business starts to take formation, calculating the bottom line is paramount to your starting price.  Auctions make this difficult, however setting your happy price for all your auctions will certainly help with this calculation pickle.

During my eBay days I had at times 150 items running (and that’s not eBooks), physical items that had to be packed, photographed and taken to the post office.  Very time consuming.  Working out the bottom line (my happy price) was very important so I decided to design my own eBay calculator using a combination of Excel and Visual Basic Pro.  It took hours and hours to do……..The final product wasn’t as polished as I had hoped, yet it did the job and gave me a nice neat figure at the end, calculated my eBay fees, Paypal fees (if the winning bidder used Paypal) and it certainly took away a lot of my pain.

I’m not saying that you should go out and design your own eBay selling calculator (I will be offering free online access to mine to all my subscribers in the coming weeks), I’m just making a point that if your selling on eBay for profit, knowing all costs associated with the sale is crucial.  Just because your business is on eBay doesn’t mean it is not governed by the same general principles of accounting and good business management.

Ebay Sales Pages That Get Attention In order to make your eBay listing successful, you need to write good sales pages because this is considered to be an important factor, especially when different sellers are involved in the sale of similar products. Your salespage should be very effective, as it can persuade your buyers to bid on the items you offer [...]
Flipping Websites On The Internet Could Be Pretty Profitable If You Know Wher... Choosing websites to flip can be time consuming should you don’t know exactly where to look. Purchasing and flipping websites can be a popular way to generate money or even a part-time business for individuals who take pleasure in flipping websites. Flipping online websites essentially implies buying sites that you’ll yield returns as soon as [...]
how realistic is it to think i could make money off an EBAY business? I started to sell some items I didnt need anymore on Ebay. Does anyone know anyone who has been successful at doing an Ebay business?
Promote Your Business With Wholesale Halloween Products I manage a store in a smaller town that has a reputation for selling wonderful Halloween goods at the right costs. It is really surprising just how lots of persons are shopping for Halloween goods and solutions and normally not even at Halloween! However, our success is partly due to employing great wholesale providers of [...]
Some Tips For A Beginer To Choose A Good Hosting Plan If you chart to get a website of your own, it is a great surety. Nevertheless before you can do so, you hardship to do two crucial clothes. First, you will have to get a province name and moment, you will have to determine a hosting idea. Your area named is your character on the [...]

Turn your RSS feeds into money on your site – with auto updating web content – Start Now This is by far the best program I have found to date to increase traffic to one’s website.  Highly recommended.

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Free e-book on managing websites

Mar12
2009 1 Comment Written by Clayton Wignall



Subscriptions to Clayton Wignall.com – Free website resource.

Getting information out takes time, and I have a lot of information I would like to share about all things internet and SEO etc;   so I thought I would offer all new and existing subscribers to the ClaytonWignall.com blog a free 130 page ebook to help.

The e-book is all about organizing, building and maintaining websites;  it also contains loads of tips, tricks and ideas to help you get results.

This e-book will be offered for a limited time only and will be emailed to you once you have subscribed.  Please note that I am a firm believer in personal privacy, and hence will not disclose any of your subscription information (name & email address is all you need to subscribe) to any third parties whatsoever.  This information is used for my purposes only to identify my audience spread etc.  Subscription to this blog is free.

All existing subscribers will be emailed this e-book over the next few days.  Hope you find it as much use as I did.  Enjoy……

the-internet-in-2005-croppe

The above image is a wicked representation of the internet in 2003, pretty amazing stuff, courtesy of The OPTE Project who have been mapping the internet for years.  Excellent work guys.

High resolution images available below.

Internet in 2003 – 700×700 resolution

Internet in 2005 – 1024×1024 resolution

Posted in Internet & SEO - Tagged , , ,

Guide to adding Google Analytics to your Blog

Mar09
2009 4 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall

Traffic is everything, traffic is what makes your site successful and what gives you incentive to carry on, traffic is rewarding and hence data on traffic is of paramount importance to the success of a website.

Google Analytics lets you know where in the world your visitors come from, what they do whilst on your site, how long they spent on a particular page and what keywords they used to find your site and a host of other great features.  If you run an e-commerce shop Google Analytic is as important as your choice of shopping cart.   From a bloggers point of view Google Analytics can tell you if a particular post or category of posts will generate more traffic than any other, and whether there is any pattern to this increase in traffic.  Data is everything……and so I have Google Analytics running on all my websites.

For example, in this blog ClaytonWignall.com I have done a post on how one can convert a DVD of 4.6 odd Gb into a nice high quality 800 or 900mb Divx file to play on your computer, media player etc.   It was quite an effort and took the beter part of a day.   I have also done an article on eBay selling tips (one of many to come) which talks about increases in email spam, the terrible eBay messenging system and a few recommendations to optimize and automate your eBay selling experience.   Behind these posts sits my little friend Google Analytics.

Now there is no shortage of sites out there that will tell you how to make a million dollars on eBay within the time it takes me to make this cup of coffee, so I thought that this one article wouldn’t really get noticed, at least until I had an arsenal of posts about eBay to increase my search engine worthiness. Nevertheless, this little article has been very popular indeed.  The Divx post gets its share of traffic but nothing like the eBay post.

According to Google Analytics people are finding my eBay post:

  • organically (that is not through links, ads, referrals etc),
  • using the Google search engine,
  • with spikes of interest on Monday’s and Tuesday’s (probably as the mind starts to drift off at around 3-4pm),
  • and have found the site using the keywords phrases: ebay selling tips, selling your stuff in 2011 and eBay home business.

I enjoy trolling through all the data Google Analytics gives me and analyzing it to better my websites, it does hurt my back though!.

In addition, Google Analytics tells me that 77% of people are using Firefox, 87% have DSL connections and most are viewing my blog from the US and they spend an average on 9.23 mins on the site.

So if you are writing a blog and one or two of your blog posts are getting way more hits that the others, Google Analytics has just told you what you should write about.   Don’t write about cutting the grass with a ride on mower, if you find your readers are more interested in your Friday night ballroom classes.   In my case it looks like I will have to write about eBay and SEO if I want to get my two cents out there…..

It would be quite easy to write a book just about Google Analytics, and I’m sure there are probably a few out there already,  I’m not going to write a book, yet I will try and share as much as I can about the Google Website Optimization Toolbox (G-WOT) as often as I can and try not to get too excited about it.   For now however, if you run a WordPress blog and would like to know how to incorporate Google Analytics into the back end of your Word Press blog then read on.

Getting Google Analytics on your site is very easy due to the excellent programming skills of Ronald Heft Jr of CaveMonkey50.com.  Ron has created the Google Analyticator plugin which is Word Press 2.70 and below compatible.

Getting your Google Analytics setup

First you need to download the plug-in to your desktop.  To do this click here.  Once you have downloaded the plug-in, you should see it on your desktop (assuming that was where you saved it);  now you have to extract it as it is a compressed file.

To extract the file – right click on it and pull down to Extract All.  Follow the on screen instructions.  It should only take a few seconds as the plug-in is very small.  You should now have a folder on your desktop called google-analyticator.2.40. Inside this folder there is another folder called Google Analyticator.

extracted_file

Once you have extracted the file you need to upload it to your blog.  Use FileZilla to do this, if you don’t have it get it from our Free Stuff Download Page (click here to go there).

Run FileZilla (once installed) enter your Host name, Username and Password.  Once logged in you will see all the domain files (file tree) on the right.  Word Press is usually located in the WWW folder or Public.html folder.   For the purpose of this post we will use the WWW folder.

filezilla

You need to navigate to the WP-Content/ Plug-in Folder.  To do this double click: WWW folder, WP-CONTENT, PLUGINS

Inside the plug-in folder will be all the plug-ins currently installed on your site.  Drag the Google Analyticator folder into the Plug-ins folder.  Filezilla will automatically upload the full folder contents (should take about 1 mins depending on your connection) to the plug-ins folder.

filezilla_upload1

Once that has finished you need to sign up for Google Analytics.   Go to www.google.com/analytics and click sign up.   Follow the on screen instructions.  You will get sent an email verification from Google, which will have a link in it.   Click that link and you are now verified;  now you will be prompted to add your domain information.

google_analytics

Once you have added your domain, you will be funneled through a few more pages until you get to the Analytics Tracking Instructions page.   This is the important part.

new-analytics-domain

Click the Legacy Tracking Code tab.   Halfway down the page, within the legacy tracking code there is a UID number.   We need this code for your newly installed Google Analyticator plug-in to work. It is very important that you write this code down correctly.  I would suggest the easiest way is to simply copy the code and paste it into the Google Analyticator plug-in (see instructions below).

analytics-uid-code

Once you have either copied or written down your Google UID login to your WordPress admin page, and go to the Plugin tab, find Google Analyticator and click “Activate” .

Then click Settings tab and find Google Analyticator and click it.  At the top of the page there is a blank box where you Paste your UID code.  YOUR MUST ENTER THIS CORRECTLY OR GOOGLE ANALYTIC WILL NOT WORK.

The number will start with a U and end in a number.  Don’t enter UID, just the UA-xxxxx-x number you got from the Google Analytics tracking page.  Once you have entered the code, scroll down to the bottom and click save changes.

analytics_config

Now all that is left is to activate the plugin.  Still within the Word Press admin page click Installed (under the Plugin header).  Towards the bottom of that page under the heading Inactive Plugins you will see Google Analyticator. Towards the right click Activate.

google_plugin

Google and the Analyticator will now have a conversation and within 12-24 hours you should start getting some excellent useful data that will help you prompt and target your blogs.  If you have any troubles please feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to assist you.

Phew……………………….





Posted in Internet & SEO - Tagged , , , ,

The Road to Optimizing Website SEO Bliss – Part 1

Mar05
2009 5 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall




Recently I have found myself very interested in the many different ways one can optimize a website.  There are so many tools and special offer packages out there it is difficult to know where to start and who to trust.  I started where most people would by researching keywords, and where did I turn to first?  eBay Pulse believe it or not.  As I have said in other posts, eBay pulse is an excellent place to see what the millions of registered eBay users are searching for.  This information is very useful if you run or own an online shop, or would like to find a product niche.  The favoured products really do go in waves.  For example leading up to Christmas, there was a spike in people searching for GPS Navigators, Sat-Navs and portable DVD players.  I happened to be selling these items in my eBay store and online shop desktopshopper.com.au so I optimized my product listings to reflect the keywords being used in eBay pulse.

These items are still very popular, but interest in them has levelled off as new products come onto the market.  The top search item on eBay today March 5, 2009 is….wait for it……Wii.  After that its iPod xBox 360 and the iPhone.  Apple must be so proud!!!  The poor Newton.  If you go to most of the eBay pulse pages around the world you can guarantee the iPod or iPhone will show its face in the top 5 of eBay Pulse.  So the moral is sell nothing but ipod gear….well not necessarily, yet people still want ipod related merchandise, so discussing iPods etc in your website will help certain aid their optimization.

After eBay pulse and getting a little confused with all the other products out there to optimize my site, I went to Godaddy.com and signed up for a product called Traffic Blazer.  Traffic Blazer is very reasonably priced, costing about $29.95 USD for a year for the basic package which I signed up for.  There are more advanced packages such as the Traffic Blazer Deluxe and the Traffic Blazer Premium.  But for me I was just starting out and didn’t want to drive in with a premium package.

Traffic Blazer has a simple interface and facilitates the submission of your site to hundred and hundreds of search engines and directories.  About 40% of your submissions are done with the click of a button, the rest mainly directories and some of the larger search engines require a manually entered site submission and some also require you to register (such as Yahoo).  It is a good idea to set up a new email account called submission@domain.com etc because you will get a lot of email asking you to confirm your website submission.

Overall I was very happy with Godaddy.com Traffic Blazer and I did get a increase in traffic after about 4 weeks.  Traffic Blazer also helps you create properly coded meta tags, analyses keywords and your site generally, create robots.txt and sitemap.  Once a month you will get a report on the submissions, page rankings etc.   I found it to be very useful as a newbie.

One thing I have since discovered is that you can only really submit your site to search engines etc once every 6 months or you have a chance of being over looked/ banned.  So the 12 month subscription to Traffic Blazer will only give me two SEO submissions to the hundreds of search engines, and directories out there.  I know I paid for it, but being new to optimizing back then, Traffic Blazer gave me an easy way of submitting my site without fuss.  It is the ease of use I feel was worth the money.  Nevertheless, I have now found a way of getting the same results and tools for free.  Which I will discuss in a later post.

I will be putting up more information on my website optimization SEO roller coaster shortly.  Please subscribe to my blog and you will be the first to know when I post.

Posted in Internet & SEO - Tagged , , , ,

eBay tips and tricks to help you Sell!

Mar05
2009 1 Comment Written by Clayton Wignall




In a previous life I was an eBay PowerSeller, drop shipping all sorts of consumer electronics worldwide. I started selling on eBay in 1998 as a means to prevent starvation while at university. I would go to markets, car boot sales, and tender centres and try and find things that were interesting and hence resellable. A lot of the time I looked for vintage electronics and old Mac gear, which I just loved. I found that there was always someone who wanted to buy a cool old Mac, Mac parts, perhaps an Apple Newton, eMate or maybe an old vintage Tomy game. As I got more experienced, I made more sales, and really starting automating the whole selling process.

When my time at University finally came to an end I continued selling on eBay but ventured into brand new items. Computers, laptops, hard drives, CD & DVD drives, USB everything, memory, printers, weather stations, radios, portable DVD players and mp3 players all sorts of things which were sourced from various suppliers. At one time in 2004 I had 246 items listed on eBay at one time . It took me years to get to PowerSeller status, and it was quite a thrill when I finally got that email from eBay inviting me to the PowerSellers club. If you want to fast track your PowerSeller status then click here and find out how you can become an eBay PowerSeller in just 90 days.  Such high volume selling generated a load of incoming email. The first thing you notice about selling on eBay is that as soon as you start selling a lot of items (say 10 plus) you will get a load of spam email mostly from China trying to get you to sell on ebay their electronics, and the classic “where is my item is this fraud”. Ignore these emails please!!! Do not click on them, nor reply to them. Let them fester inside the eBay messaging system out of the way and more importantly away from your inbox.

First series Apple Newton H1000 released 1994

First series Apple Newton H1000 released 1994

If you are considering selling on eBay as a home business, my advice to you is do not use the internal eBay messaging system and turn off email notifications (for when you receive a message). Why do we say this? It is because the messaging system gets so clogged with spam, and rubbish it becomes practically unusable.  Most of the spam is from Asia and is sent by email bots which send out millions and millions of messages daily.   In addition, make sure you have a decent anti-virus and junk email scanner.  Try Symantec for anti virus or AVG and try Thunderbird for running your email.

AVG has an excellent free virus program which I have used for years and has never let me down. If you would like some further information on keeping control of your inbox and preventing spam and viruses, then click here. Also, I am compling a list of free essential software for download, which includes email software, recommended virus scanners etc – click here to see the list so far. Thunderbird (a free program from Mozilla) has a great junk email scanner and automatically moves rubbish to a junk folder for you.

To download Thunderbird from Mozilla’s homepage – click here.  Apart from Thunderbird’s great junk mail abilities, Thunderbird also has the potential to run numerous separate email account from the one screen.  Usually if you have numerous email accounts and are not behind a Microsoft Exchange Server, all email just goes straight into the global mail folder. What you get is one large folder with email to all your different accounts – it gets very confusing.

Download Thunderbird for Free.

Download Thunderbird for Free.

The worst thing is each time to go to send an email you have to make sure you are using the right account, otherwise an email address which you may not want to use will be disclosed to the recipient.   If you are using Microsoft Outlook, you can run numerous email accounts also but there is just one main global folder.  What you have to do is create seperate folders for each of your email accounts and then configure complicated message filters which redirect the email to the applicable folder of your choice.   It’s do able but a little time-consuming.

Thunderbird on the other hand just lets you do it.  Go to tools, account settings, add account and go through the process (making sure you untick “use global store”) and you have a completely separate email account within the one program.   If you create numerous accounts you will end up with a section of folders on the left each holding all your emails for that specific email address, so there is no need to worry about which address your sending from; just click the email account you want to send from and then click “Write”.

How to Add Numerous Email Accounts in Thunderbird

How to Add Numerous Email Accounts in Thunderbird

I got a little off track there – sorry.  What I was talking about was not using the internal eBay messaging system. At the peak of my eBay business I probably spent about 3 hours a day four times a week placing orders, responding to emails, checking money had been received, bookkeeping etc. I didn”t have the benefit of Thunderbird and it took me a while to work out not to use the messaging system, so what happened was I got loads and loads of emails.

It was really difficult to find any real email in amongst the rubbish.  What was even more surprising was the rapid spike in junk email I recieved as soon as I started listing more and more items.  The computers that send out this spam are programmed to use the eBay messaging system,  so if you simply just tell your buyers to contact you directly (by email) you will find that this means you will get a lot less rubbish and a lot more potential Buyers.

Selling on eBay is great fun and if done right can become a full time job.  However, to keep you on top of your game and really impress your Buyers, install eBay’s toolbar into your browser.  The tool bar notifies you in real time when questions are received, items sell, and even when items don’t sell.  It is a great tool and very customizable.

Download the eBay toolbar.

Download the eBay toolbar.

Communicating with your Buyers is so important I can’t begin to stress how much this will impact your business, just a quick email acknowledging a question can mean a great deal, and shows your buyer or potential buyer that they are dealing with a person and not a computer.   So try to answer all questions, even if you don’t have the product the buyer wants, send emails when items sell, when money is received, items posted etc.   It not only shows your buyer that you care about their business, it also makes tracking a sale a lot easier.

Last but not least is eBay’s Selling Manager Pro. Sign up for it, go through all the settings one by one and enter as much detail as you can. You will find after a while even a standard Google search will pick up items you are selling.   It helps track you items, automates the whole selling process, creates sales and profit reports (integrated with paypal), email marketing and a whole lot of other features. It is definitely worth the $9.95 a month.

There are also lots of great books available on eBay selling and online home based business. It really helps to know how other sellers have become successful and how they pick the products they sell. Here is a small selection of some recommended eBay selling books: -

* Make Money Tearing Up Old Books & Magazines And Sell Them On eBay.
* How To Rescue Vintage Prints From Old Books And Sell Them For Incredible!
* Follow A Real Life eBay PowerSeller On The Road To Success.
* Verified, Legitimate Wholesale Distributors Of The Hottest-selling Brand-name Electronics On eBay

eBay pulse is another great way to see what the top searched items on eBay are at any time. It is probably the single most important tool anyone wanting to successfully sell on eBay can use.   eBay pulse lists to search rankings for all eBay categories.    If you selling GPS system, then you can find out what your potential customers are searching for.    Same for computers, home wares, absolutely anything; each global eBay site has its own eBay pulse. Its an excellent keyword tool also.

I have listed a few global eBay pulse sites below.   The Apple iPod is usually in the top 5, however you can find out what are the top searched items throughout all of the eBay categories. So if you’re interested in selling clothes , find out what the public are searching for at eBay pulse. There is nothing worse than putting up a perfect listing only to have the item not sell.

* eBay Pulse Australia

* eBay Pulse US

* eBay Pulse UK

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