Goodbye eBay Marketplace Research, hello Terapeak
September 11, 2008
One of the most important steps that I recommend to all of my clients and everyone I know that sells anything, regardless of whether it is on eBay or not, is to research your niche. Really, it’s more than just your niche, it’s your products, how you list them, when you list them, for how much, what format… this list goes on.
eBay introduced it’s market research tool to help sellers, and saavy buyers understand the eBay marketplace by providing a peak into the tons of data within the eBay system. This included the hot catagories and products, what features to use ie gallery, bold etc., and when to sell. eBay not only use this data themselves, but they sold it to other companies so they could create data mining tools as well.
The amount of data available was astonishing. The question really was how to use it. Terapeak, purchased eBay’s data and provided a free website to slice and dice eBay’s marketing place data. They did it so well, that eBay began buying back their data from Terapeak.
Still, eBay decided to sell their Marketplace research tools as a seperate subscription and also offer it to eBay store owners. I imagine that they saw the writing on the wall as new 3rd party developers began popping up and creating their own research tools. So, eBay has decided to phase out the eBay Marketplace and recommend Terapeak as the preferred vendor.
This is a huge slap in the face for other vendors like Hammertap, which is Terapeaks closest competitor. But none-the-less, this works out great for those that choose Terapeak. Why? Because we are going to save money…!
If you are not already a subscriber, actually, even if you are already, you can take advantage of a nice savings. I was paying on monthly basis for Terakpeak. Now, they are offering a 60% discount for anyone that signs up and pays for a year in advance. I’m not sure how long they will be running this special, but it’s definately worth checking out.
If you are already paying on a monthly basis, you cannot directly upgrade your account. You actually need to cancel your account, signup for the yearly account and then get your discount.
If your not sure what TeraPeak is all about, check out their free version. The full version gives you some very nice features and in an upcoming product launch I’m going to show you how to use TeraPeak to make some serious money… more on that later. For now, my recommnedation, buy a yearly subscription to TeraPeal now.
Automate your eBay CD and DVD Listings
August 20, 2008
Automate Your eBay Digital Product Sales
I was going to hold off talking about this product until later but it’s something I’m so excited about I can hardly hold back.
When eBay did away with the digital download of information products it nearly killed off thousands of eBay sellers. They now had to find other products to sell or turn their digital products into a physical products. Granted, selling a physically product can generate more income, it has more overhead in terms of the physical product and your time to manufacture and ship it.
LOOK NO FURTHER! Auction Acrobat makes your life so much easier it is amazing. This little software package will walk you through step by step. You simply create your digital product as it would appear on CD/DVD and use Auction Acrobat to do the rest. It will completely automate your information product business!
I can’t say enough about these ingenious idea. Not too mention that this amazing product is priced SUPER CHEAP, but not for long. It was just released and I know the price will be going up and may even be taken off the market.
Here’s a link to the Auction Acrobat website, I strongly suggest not missing the boat on this one.
Get Auction Acrobat Now
eBayLive! 2008 and getting the most out of eBay
May 16, 2008
What do I need to know about eBayLive! ?
eBayLive! 2008 is just around the corner and it looks like it will be another great conference. This will be my second eBayLive! event and I think I’ll get the most out of this one. My first eBayLive! event was very overwhelming. So much to do, see and take in and I wasn’t really sure where to start. Now with almost another year gone by, I’ve honed my needs and strategies to just a few topics. It’s much like building a niche for yourself on eBay.
So many people want to get on the eBay bandwagon and become the next eBay millionaire. It’s not easy, but some people do stumble upon instant success. The rest need to really think through what they want to accomplish and how to accomplish it. It took about 10 different niche’s until I found one that worked. Since then, I’ve found several others, but I use the same process that I painstakenly learned the firstime.
Anyone planning on going to the eBayLive! event should be prepared. If you haven’t registered you need to do it quick as it’s scheduled for June 19-21st. Once registered, look at the sessions and pick the areas that you really want learn about. It’s going to be impossible to take in everything, so plan to attend those sessions that are most important to you.
Vendors
There are going to be hundreds of vendors that are offering great one time only show deals. Be careful! While some really do have some good deals, they are there to make money. If you buy, find out what their guranatee or money back/return policy is. It will also be critical to detemine what your game plan is as well. If you don’t have one, start working on it now. Otherwise it is like going to the grocery store when your hungry. You’ll end up with a bunch of junk.
Network!, Network!, Network!
I can’t stress the networking aspect enough. Last year I was able to meet up with a great group of PowerSellers. I wasn’t a PowerSeller yet, but had the urge to become one. I sat in on 2 networking sessions and learned more from those sessions than ANYTHING ELSE at eBay Live!
Why? Because these were real-world people that weren’t trying to sell me anything. They were just like me when they first started. It was surprising that I had marketing and strategy ideas that the PowerSellers never even thought of. In return, they shared some of their ideas on how and where to get started. Had I not networked and met those people I may not be where I am today on eBay.
eBay as the starting place
One thing everyone should realize is that eBay is just the stepping stone to growing your business. Many people only focus on eBay selling and miss out. There are several tips and tricks that users can use to boost not only their eBay sales, but their off eBay business as well. Make sure that you pay attention to those little marketing tips and tricks that are provided. eBay won’t openly share them with you, but if you read between the lines, it’s quite obvious.
Contact me if your going to eBay Live!
If you plan on going to eBay Live! let me know. I’ll put putting together a few round table open discussions were we can share our successes and failures. I’ll be inviting those that are on my marketing list (signup found on the first page of the site) and then those that contact me otherwise. If you want to be included, my recommendation is to signup for the newsletter.
Hope to hear and see you there!
Jeff
eBay listings in your blog using PHPBay and affiliates
January 14, 2008
Every since getting involved in blogging I’ve been intriqued with how the search engines seem to eat up new posts and get blogs indexed quickly. It’s truly amazing. I’ve read time and time again from eBooks and marketing websites that blogs are one of the best ways to get traffic to your site.
Once of the other amazing sources for traffic is eBay. When I first gotted started with eBay I quickly realized that the secret to making money online was using eBay as a traffic generator. If you have popular listings you can gain some additional traffic by driving those shoppers to your eBay ME page and then to your off eBay website.
Those are great tactics if you have several products you’re selling on eBay. How can you make money using eBay and a blog if you have nothing to sell? Well, if you haven’t heard of the eBay affiliate program you need to. Using Commission Junction, eBay has created an affiliate program that allows you to display eBay listings on your personal website. Additionally, you can post eBay signup links and drive traffic to eBay. Each method allows you to collect money for driving traffic to eBay. See the complete eBay commission schedule and signup for the affiliate program.
Once you are an eBay affiliate you can now begin your campaign and drive traffic to eBay and get commissions. How you ask?. Blogging. Find a niche you’re interested in on eBay. Whether that is knitting or gaming. If it is something you enjoy, have an interested in, and is not over saturated, you have chance. You can start a blog on Wordpress.com for free and begin posting articles about your niche. Include links using some of eBay’s affiliate tools like the Flexible destination tool or the Editor’s Toolkit. You can also use the eBay editors kit to post actual auction listings on your site. Each time someone clicks on one of the auctions and wins that auction, you get a commission. Those are all nice options.
Then I stumbled on PHPBay. PHPBay allows you to integrate eBay listings into your Wordpress blog by simply adding a few tags in a post. What’s amazing is how easy it is and how well formatted the results look. Unlike the typical eBay editors kit, PHPBay produces results that fit into your blog and look like an extension of your post. You can further narrow down the results by filtering by number of items to show, keywords, categories, seller names and prices.
To put it all together and really drive traffic to your site and eBay you can try the following. Create a short article/posting in your blog with about 250-350 words. Inside the article, add a small PHPBay section that includes 2 items related to your article. At the end of your article include another PHPBay section that display 10-20 items related to the article contain. The combination of the article and eBay listings should help shoot your article posts up the rankings.
