Affiliate Programs
July 18, 2007
There are plenty of ways to make money online. The obvious one is to sell items on eBay. Of course, if you have a great source for items then you have overcome one of the larger obstacles of doing business and making money on eBay. There are still plenty of others obstacles to overcome. Having a great source for merchandise isn’t enough. You need to have merchandise people want and those items must be priced competitively.
What of I told you that you can make money on eBay without selling a thing? Sounds too good to be true, but it’s not. eBay has an affiliate program that allows you to earn money from the items other people are selling on eBay.
An affiliate program is a program in which you promote, drive traffic and otherwise affiliate yourself with other peoples products or services. In doing so, you earn a commission on the sales of those items. There are some complexities to affiliate programs and it is definitely NOT a get rich quick concept. Some people have, but by and far you must dedicate time and effort into getting affiliate programs setup.
eBay’s program details are located at http://affiliates.ebay.com/. There you can get all the details and see how easy it is to sign up. If you already have a website that gets a good deal of traffic, you have a head start. The key to success in an affiliate program is being able to drive traffic to the locations were these products are being sold, and having that traffic click YOUR link to get there. Each time your link is click and the user follows through in a purchase or sign-up(depending on the program) you can earn money.
Clickbank.com is probably the largest affiliate site that provides plenty of merchandise that can be sold. The great thing about these sites is that you aren’t responsible for contacting customers, collecting money, emailing, shipping, fulfilling orders or anything that you traditionally need to do with typical selling. Your main object is getting traffic to your links to be click.
Driving traffic to your link can be done through pay-per-click advertising, search engine marketing, search engine optimization or combination of all them. I’d suggest looking at the AffiliateMillions.com website. Not only is the website a huge resource for information on affiliates, but the book is very well written and provides great information.
All in all, I personally think people can make money from affiliate marketing. I know people have, but I don’t think it is for everyone. You cannot do this overnight and it will require hard work, research and some dedication to get it going. If you want to make money online, I’d suggest a combination of selling and affiliates programs.
An iRobot Roomba put to the test
July 15, 2007
We’ve been very busy this past week. Between eBook reviews and reviews of Affilate software we somehow managed to run a few tests and review an iRobot Roomba 4230.
As you may have noticed, we have a few websites that we run in addition to the webposter.com website. VacuumEmpire.com is our little niche for providing great deals and reviews on vacuums. Since everything that starts with “i” is hot, we figured it was time to write a little review on our experience with the iRobot Roomba.
Now, this little vacuum may not be the latest craze like Apple’s iPhone, but it is impressive none-the-less. For a the complete review, check out Vacuum Empire.com There we review the Roomba 4230 scheduler. Most of the review also applied to the iRobot Roomba Discovery as well.
Building your Niche on eBay
July 12, 2007
To build or niche or not? That’s a tough question to answer since there is a large mix of successful generalists and niche sellers on eBay. It’s something we have been struggling with since the start. Really, our struggle has been what niche to get into. We have had very successful sales on all the items we have listed, but they have all been in different categories. Since we are buying mostly from liquidations, it makes repeat sourcing difficult.
eBay trading assistants typically do not specialize as they are selling what their customers bring in.(To a certain extent). They’re successful in many cases because they choose what items are worthwhile to sell and typically only list items they know will sell above a certain price. If your ambition is to become a trading assistant, having a niche may not be as important, especially if you have a brick and mortar storefront.
On the other hand, having a niche is extremely helpful for those without a storefront. Picking a niche can be difficult. Sometimes the areas and subjects that you are very passionate about are extremely competitive. Don’t get me wrong, you can succeed in those areas, it will just take a lot of hard work.
You’ll have an advantage if you are a subject matter expert since you’ll know what your customers are looking for. Additionally, having a niche makes it easier to cross-sell and upsell your customers on other related items. It also helps in getting repeat customers.
So, what tools do you use t find your niche? There are plenty of eBooks available to help you identify your niche. I’ve reviewed a handful of them and none seemed to really have any earth shattering ideas. Start with a pencil and paper and begin jotting down ideas and topics you enjoy. Then drill down deeper into each of those topics.
Research your niche with keywords. You’ll need to find how much competition is out there in your niche. You can use search engine results to determine your competition and there are lots of free tools available to assist with this as well. Check out SEOBook tools for a great list. Later you can begin driving traffic to your site based on those keywords. SEOBook is a great resource and can be purchased here.
I recently came across a software package that offers to help analyze what buyers are looking for on eBay’s WantItNow! section. The software is called Auction Inspector and can be purchased here.
Over the next few days I’m going to review the software and post my comments on the blog. At first glance it looks like a good product with potential. I haven’t seen anything else on the market that claims to analyze the WantItNow section of eBay.
If you have seen anything else, or have used this software, please post your comments.
How to become an eBay Powerseller in 90 Days or less
July 9, 2007
The first post in our blog was June 29th. In that post I mentioned hoping to have our eBay PowerSeller status with the next few days. Well, we WOULD HAVE had it by the first of July, however, the invitation process is automated.
Let me explain a bit more. To qualify as the minimum level PowerSeller(bronze) you need to have a 99.8% feedback rating or higher, at least 100 feedback from unique users and a 3-month average sales of $1000. Silver requires a $3000 three month average. eBay doesn’t provide the details in their help file on how/when the invite process works, but I was told by a PowerSeller rep, that an automated process runs between the 2nd and 3rd week of each month. If you qualify, you’ll get an invite.
I emailed them directly and they were kind enough to review my account ahead of that process and offered our earned status the next day.
Now, how can you become an eBay PowerSeller in under 90 days? There are plenty of eBooks online that you can purchase to show you how to do that. However, it really isn’t worth paying for that information. I’ll give it you for free.
First and foremost, you need to have the feedback rating and at least 100 unique feedbacks. Buyers/Sellers who have been on eBay a while may not have an issue with that. If you do, and you want to ramp up your feedback by ways other than selling you can try the following:
- Buy items on eBay that you use everyday or will need to replenish overtime. Ie Toothpaste, soap, cleaning supplies etc. You may find yourself a bargain online as well.
- Buy some eBooks(good ones) and some of the inexpensive ones. There are plenty of very good eBooks that are not get rich quick schemes. I’ve purchase a few great recipe eBooks that have had some really good information.
The next big step to becoming a PowerSeller is sales. You need to meet that minimum requirement average for three months. Some people can hit this just by selling 1 item, others it takes a lot of work. It all depends on what your selling and your commitment.
It seems my recurring them lately has been eBooks. Resist the urge for the get rich quick schemes, buying eBooks with resell rights. Chances are, you aren’t the only person selling them. Obviously since you bought it from someone. Not too mention, you probably won’t hit your mark selling that type of product.
Look into Drop Shipping. That will provide you a great source of product with no money out of your pocket. I mention below a good resource for liquidators and surplus, the same resource has some information on drop shipping as well.
The alternative is looking into liquidations and wholesale. Beware, this isn’t something you should go into if your are not serious. It requires a real commitment, some investment of both time and money and risk.
This is how we got started and how we were able to accomplish our PowerSeller status. We actually MORE THAN MET our sales goal before we met our feedback rating.
I also can’t say enough about the Ultimate Surplus & Wholesale Guide. This little gem really helped us understand the process. The other great resource for us was this liquidation web site. In fact, this is were we ended up getting our first set of products to sell. Like I mentioned before, you need to go into this having done your research.
Your buyers will also help raise your feedback rating. This should go without saying, but customer service is critical to being successful. You can achieve the sales level and have terrible customer service and never become a PowerSeller. In fact, you’ll lose repeat customers and any new customers. Always put yourself in the customers position. Quickly answering emails, proper packing, fair shipping costs, good turn around times all contribute to your success.
Good luck and let us know how you progress.
