Julie Anna Schultz has been a full-time powerseller on eBay for 6 years, ultimately bringing her husband home as well with her eBay income supporting a large family of 13. She mainly sells older hard-to-find children’s books, as a homeschooling mom of 11 children herself…

Julie Anna’s Powerseller Profile:
http://myworld.ebay.com/bookjewelsforchildren/

Julie Anna’s Personal story:
http://familybusinessideas.com/the-booksellers-page/

Julie Anna’s service for aspiring book sellers:
http://lynnwsn.booklists.hop.clickbank.net

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If you missed the original post in this series, see: How to Make Money on eBay. You’ll find the link to our eBay Webinar in that post, as well as a special offer from Lisa Suttora to access all of her eBay training for only one dollar (normally $47). It’s a great deal! About Lisa Suttora’s website, Jeff Jones said:

My first online business model involved full-time selling on ebay.

It wasn’t until I joined WhatDoISell that I had a legitimate business and made regular income on ebay.

I can’t recommend her coaching and information products more highly. You’ll make the money you spend back in short order. source

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Jenn Cangelosi – aka @Jennwahm on Twitter – replied to say: Not only do I sell on eBay, I teach others to succeed at BoutiqueBargains.com. Jenn’s success with eBay started out as a hobby on the side while she was still working at her full-time job in corporate banking. When she lost her job unexpectedly she turned to eBay, and to helping other mom’s with eBay, full time. Read Jenn’s story here

Jenni Hunt, who is part of Jim Cockrum’s expert team, says that she has consistently doubled her profits every year since starting her eBay business in 2003. Jenni specializes in researching trends with selling children’s items on eBay, and like many others now teaches others her eBay secrets. See her website at http://www.jennihunt.com

Rebecca Wilcox uses eBay to increase the reach for her local “country general store” in Arkansas. She has owned the business since 1988, and opened the online eBay Store in early 2005. You can see her profile on eBay at http://www.rollingtstores.com or follow her on Twitter @RollingTStores.

And of course, the ultimate eBay success story is Jim Cockrum. If you’ve ever researched how to make money on eBay, you’ve no doubt run across his name. You’ll find his tips & resources on his blog at: http://www.jimcockrum.com/blog/ (thanks to @ExtremeEzine for sharing the link on Twitter!)

Have an experience of your own with online auctions? Share your eBay success stories in the comments section below!

Best,

p.s. You can still get access to Lisa Suttora’s eBay training at WhatDoISell.com for only $1 by using this link: http://whatdoisell.com/lynn. This is a special page to bypass the usual $47 sign-up fee

The fourth method for making money online that Jimmy D. Brown shares in his free report (link above) is to sell products on eBay (pages 14-15). He mentions that you “won’t find hotter leads than people who are browsing eBay, because they are obviously looking for products to buy“.

Tapping into a marketplace of buyers is a smart move. People search Google for information. YouTube for videos. eBay… for products and deals.

So how can you tap into this marketplace? Jimmy suggests one of two ways, or a combination of both: sell products for direct profit, or use eBay strictly as a lead generator to funnel buyers into your sales funnel.

Most of you know that I used to ‘work’ eBay heavily back in the 90′s. Not only did I train powersellers, I also parterned with two local wholesale companies where we were selling $20-$30k/month in merchandise on eBay. That was physical products of course, not info-products.

Jimmy points out an important note about selling info-products:

If you’re selling downloadable products like ebooks, eBay now requires you to mail the product, which means you’ll either need to make a print product, or you need to put the product on a flash drive, CD, DVD or other device.

Just this week I got an email from Alan Petersen with a link to download his free report on this topic: Selling Ebooks on eBay. It’s an in-depth 30-page report, so if this interests you then you’ll definitely want to download the report and give it a read.

Alan goes on to give more tips for selling info-products and building your list by using eBay, without having to create physical versions of your info products. See: Can You Still Build a List on eBay?? Oh Yeah! (be sure to check out the other video he links to there as well)

That should get you started with virtual products, but let’s get back to the topic of selling physical products on eBay. As I mentioned I have quite a bit of experience with that, but I quit selling on ebay years ago. So I decided to pull in a more current expert on the topic…

Meet Lisa Suttora

Lisa Suttora is an ecommerce expert and successful information marketer. Online since 2002, Lisa first created a thriving ecommerce businesses selling physical products in two of today’s top marketplaces, eBay and Amazon.com. A featured speaker at eBay Live! for 4 years running, Lisa has taught more than 175,000 people how build unique, remarkable & profitable online businesses.

Lisa’s website www.WhatDoISell.com is one of only 34 eBay Certified Providers worldwide and has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Practical Ecommerce and Shop.org, the premier ecommerce trade association.

With a unique blend of more than 15 years of both online and offline retail merchandising experience, Lisa brings a fresh approach to the topic of what to sell and how to sell it.

Join Us Live: How to Make Money on eBay

Lisa has agreed to join us live for a Free Webinar this week to go into detail about how to make money on eBay. Since there are only 100 spots on the live webinar, you’ll want to make sure you’re signed up for the notification list so that you can get a link to the recording emailed to you in case you miss it.

Date: Tuesday June 9th
Time: Noon EST

Join us live, or listen in to the recording to find out:

• How Lisa Got Started Selling Online
• Why an eBay Business is Perfect for People Just Getting Started
• The 3 Physical Products Business Models
• Creating an ECM (eBay Cash Machine)
• Finding Products to Sell
• How to Get Started Selling on eBay Right Away
• Tips for Selling Successfully

The live webinar is Tuesday, June 9th at Noon EST. If you can’t make it, I’ll send the recording out via email. I’ll also have more resources to help you make money on eBay this week as well – so stay tuned

Best,

p.s. Make sure you’re signed up for my free weekly webinars. The link is: http://www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/webinars.htm You’ll want to log in a few minutes early – the room fills up pretty quick!

p.p.s. Lisa’s site is normally $47 to access, but she has set up this special link: http://whatdoisell.com/lynn for you to have a $1 trial. Enjoy!

- – - – -

If you are not already familiar with BANS, it stands for Build A Niche Store and its a cool new product for developing affiliate sites that is getting rave reviews. It is super simple and incredibly fast to get a website up and running with this program. Click here for more information on BANS

Once you have your first BANS site created, its time to dig in and add your personal touch to it. In this third and final phase of the BANS Review, I’ll walk through some of the customization options and share some tips to help you make the most of your new niche website…

In Part Two of this review, I walked through the setup and installation of my first niche affiliate store using BANS. In less than 30 minutes I had a brand new site up about Musical Instruments:

As I was getting familiar with the BANS features, I began to realize that this program works very much like a CMS – a Content Management System. You can add your own static pages easily, customize each of the pages the script creates for you, and basically create a fully functional affiliate site out of the tools & options in the Admin panel of your BANS setup.

In short, this system ROCKS!

I’m not a big fan of automated systems or site builders with limited functionality. They usually generate websites with very little unique content and very limited features. That could even be said about BANS if you whipped up a site real quick and tried to market it “right out of the box”.

That said, BANS is incredibly versatile compared to most site builders on the market, allowing you to customize the entire site – even the product pages it creates – to suit your needs. As I said, it works more like a CMS than a turnkey site builder and offers plenty of room to grow.

BANS definitely gets a thumbs-up from me for being easy to set up, easy to use, and as a super-fast way to create affiliate sites…

Developing Your BANS Site

Once you get your new niche site up and running, which should only take about 30 minutes at the most, it’s time to flesh it out a bit and start customizing it. We’ll take a quick look at some of the features and options that BANS offers, and the elements you should consider adding to your core site…

I started out with the basic site that you see in the screenshot above. The first thing I want to do is customize the template, and basically just make it look nicer. As you can tell, my basic colors are black, red & white. I created a quick graphic header and changed the page background to black – so now its time to make the rest of the site match that theme.

I’m not really a creative type, so I headed over to the BANS site to check out some of the styles that other users created. (You can see them by going to BANS and clicking Customer Stores). In addition to picking up some great ideas there, I checked out the Template Guide offered in the members-only area. This is an awesome detailed resource for every modification you can imagine!

Making changes is pretty much as simple as changing out the color codes in the style sheet. Even if you are not familiar with CSS and stylesheets, the Template Guide has simple instructions and screen shots for every kind of change you might want to make.

In fact, with a few simple changes to that one file, I got a whole new look:

Like I said, I’m not all that creative. But the difference between the before and after images you see here took all of about 10 minutes of tweaking. That’s it!

Making Your BANS Site Unique

We now have a fully functional niche affiliate store. You could easily start promoting this site through Pay-Per-Click advertising, article marketing and other means. But in order to truly make your site unique, and ultimately rank well in the major search engines, you want to make it unique.

In addition to fleshing out your BANS site for good Search Engine Optimization, you also want to consider Visitor Optimization. This just means making it the best resource possible for your target market (your ideal visitor).

As you’ve probably already guessed, I know nothing at all about musical instruments. So writing up a bunch of cool unique content on the topic is not going to happen. But that’s okay – there are other options

I’ll start by doing some keyword research to find out what my target market is looking for, in the way of information. I’ll choose some keyword phrases and create new content pages around them. This is easy to do in the BANS admin panel of course – you can create as many content pages as you like, and put whatever you want on them.

Ideas for new pages on my musical instruments site might include: Instructional Guides, Learn To Play Guitar, Musical Instrument History, Antique Musical Instruments, etc – honestly I am just guessing at the moment.

Once I do the in-depth keyword research to get a feel for what my market wants, my next step will be to locate content. I’ll need content for the site, for a free report I may want to offer, for articles to submit, and even for an autoresponder series.

As for the actual content, my first task will be in locating PLR (Private Label Rights) Content that I can modify and use. Second is to outsource the writing to a freelancer. I might have them create resource pages, write reviews (based on reviews shown on Amazon, for example), and do the research to write How-To articles.

Of course, if you choose a niche you are familiar with, you can do this type of work yourself.

Adding New Streams Of Revenue

The basis for the BANS site is to build a niche store that uses the eBay affiliate program. While this is a great way to monetize the site, you’ll want to add additional revenue sources to your new site as well.

Ideas include:

• Google Adsense
• Books/Products from the Amazon.com affiliate program
• Affiliate Programs for Related Products
• Your own Reports/Info Products

I’ll be looking heavily into PLR, and also into info products related to the musical instruments market to see what kind of JV’s I might be able to strike up. At the very least, I want to put together a free report to encourage visitors to get on the mailing list for the site.

I havent set up the mailing list yet, but that’s definitely on the list. You MUST have a mailing list

I hope this overview helps you decide whether BANS is right for you. If you are looking for an easy way to set up your very first niche affiliate site, I would highly recommend you go with BANS. Even as a seasoned affiliate marketer, I am absolutely in love with the system and will be using it to create new niche sites… over and over and over.

This ranks right up there in my tool-set with WordPress!

Best,

P.S. If you want to see my BANS Site, to get an idea of the end result, you can check it out for yourself: www.SearchMusicalInstruments.com

I decided to print out the 74-page User Manual when I sat down to begin the actual installation and set-up of my new BANS site.

If you are not already familiar with BANS, it stands for Build A Niche Store and its a cool new product for developing affiliate sites that is getting rave reviews. You can read my initial thoughts and also Part One of the BANS review for more information…

The Installation

The installation was actually pretty simple. The manual guides you through the process step-by-step, including detailed screen shots of each step. Things like uploading files, changing file permissions, etc, are like second nature to me – but I really loved the detail in the manual. Anyone can set up a niche website with these instructions in front of them – its practically foolproof!

While the files were uploading, I read ahead in the manual. You only have to change the permissions on one file – or actually one of the directories. That only took a second.

Next was creating the MYSQL Database for the script to run, which also included step by step instructions and screen shots. Again, it only took a few seconds to have that step completed.

Within 10 minutes I was logging in to the Admin area of my new BANS site! And honestly, what took the longest was waiting for the files to upload, and then reading along in the manual to make sure I didnt miss a step. Amazing!

My basic BANS site was set up just as quickly as they said it would be…

Now it’s time to start customizing!

I have to confess – I’m really enjoying this.

Lesson 3 in the User Manual walks you through each of the areas within the Admin panel, explaining each of the options and how you use them. The Admin area was pretty much self-explanatory, but the instructions certainly dont hurt!

Lesson 4 walks you through setting up your online store (your niche site). At this point I’m still only 15 minutes into it, at the most (and that includes me typing this as I go, with laundry running and dinner in the oven lol).

Niche Site Development

Customizing your new BANS site is as easy as following the on-screen instructions, step by step. There are 14 fields to fill out that relate to your store’s niche and your preferences (and the manual walks you through every single one – there is NO guesswork here). The process took less than 5 minutes.

If you read Part One of this review, you’ll recall that I chose Musical Instruments as my general niche for this niche store.

This is how my new site (SearchMusicalInstruments.com) looks at this point in the setup process:

Lessons 5-9 walk you through selecting a template and fleshing out the details for your new online store. Just 15-20 minutes into it, I’m already ready to select a customized template for my new site and begin customizing the look and feel.

This section of the User Manual gives you many customization options, including creating your own templates or modifying the templates that are provided. The documentation for each of the options is excellent – very detailed, and including screen shots for each.

I want a custom header graphic for my musical instruments site, so I headed over to iStockPhoto and found a cool graphic to use for that. I didnt spend a lot of time on this step, so I may create something a little nicer for the site later on. For now, I just wanted to get through the steps and check it out.

I am now part way through Lesson 6, and ready to customize the Home Page. Already the site is starting to shape up nicely:

I am VERY impressed with the Build A Niche Store system already, and looking forward to continuing to work on this project. The admin panel is super easy to use, the entire process is lightning fast and super simple, and there is no end to the customizations you can do – including editing category pages, adding new pages, adding new content to existing pages, etc etc etc…

In Part 3 of this review, we’ll look at the next steps: fleshing out your BANS store for the highest ROI, as well as other ideas and options to make the most of your new BANS site …

Best,

I was in and downloading the product in less than a minute. Its set up through ClickBank, which takes PayPal, so I didnt even have to whip out a credit card – I just paid for it out of the affiliate commissions in my account.

The download file included a 74-page detailed User Manual, the templates & files and access to the BANS member-only forum. I unzipped the files, opened the manual for a quick scan (very impressive!) and headed over to the private forum…

In addition to the User Manual which is included in your BANS pack, there is the BANS member area which contains a community forum made up of a large knowledgebase of over 25,000 posts covering just about everything from installation to traffic generation and a growing selection of BANS related tutorials.

I have to say, I’m really impressed with the BANS site. Its not the typical one-page salesletter that you see for a software program or info-product, but instead an entire community and resource. I love the model, as it really gives you a sense of the support they offer. Instead of feeling like a buyer, you click the order button ready to become a member. Very “Web 2.0″ for a sales letter…

The BANS Member Forum is impressive as well. There are over 30,000 posts already, so its pretty active. I headed over to the Tips & Success Stories section first – just to see what I’d find there. Exactly what I expected – lots of happy BANS users

I set up my profile at the Member Forum, added it to my bookmarks, and headed off to dig into the User Manual…

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the software it will not take you longer than 10 minutes to build a basic store leaving you with plenty of free time to use the built in features of BANS to develop your store and employ effective marketing strategies to bring relevant people through to relevant products…

Lesson 1 of the 9 lessons went into detail on how to set up hosting, choose a domain name and join the eBay affiliate program. Since I am not a new user, and am already an affiliate for eBay, I simply scanned this section and focused on choosing a niche and selecting a domain name.

Picking a niche – Hmm… where to start Well the obvious, of course! I headed straight over to What’s Hot on eBay’s Seller Central. Since these niche websites revolve around eBay products, I want to get an idea of what’s hot on eBay these days.

The affiliate program pays a percentage of the high bid, so I definitely take an interest in higher priced product types. I also want to choose a niche that has a wide range of product listings – to ensure there is plenty to build a site around.

Another idea is to look at product types that would attract new people to eBay, as their affiliate program pays up to $25 for new registrations. In this case, the price range would be less of an issue – and while it might take a little creativity, you’d want to target a market that may be new to eBay. People who are into electronics and computers for example, most likely already have an eBay account.

I started by looking over the Buyer Behavior Report, and then checked out the Hot Items by Category. Again, you can find both of these in the What’s Hot section on eBay. The current report is for November 2007, so it’s very up-to-date.

Looking over the categories, the first two that caught my attention were Musical Instruments and Business & Industrial. Both of these just might fit my criteria of reaching newer users and having higher prices.

There’s no magic to that, really. Its kind of a “go with your gut” thing. I’m sure no two people would select the same categories or make the same decisions right off the bat. At any rate…

Between the two, Musical Instruments interests me more. My son plays bass and I love live bands (again, no magic – no science). A quick search on WordTracker shows 1252 searches a day across the major search engines for the phrase “musical instruments” – so that’s a good start.

Related keywords in the “Super Hot” section of the What’s Hot report for Musical Instruments – like electronic keyboards (88/day), trumpet (2012/day), flute (1906/day), vintage guitars (211/day), drums (3534/day) etc – have decent numbers of searches as well.

I like the idea of working with such a wide range of related products, as this will get wider exposure in the major search engines. And in addition to eBay’s affiliate program, there will be plenty of alternate revenue sources to work with as well – affiliate programs, Google Adsense, etc.

So the niche for my new BANS site is now chosen: Musical Instruments. That was easy . Obviously you can get more specific with your niche, or work with a combination of niches. For the sake of this example, and my first BANS site, I just went with an easy choice.

Next on the task list is choosing a domain name. I start by looking at my base keyword in WordTracker to see if I can find a good combination of words to use in the “dot com”:

1252 musical instruments
158 used musical instruments
91 discount musical instruments
88 homemade musical instruments
84 yamaha musical instruments

MusicalInstruments.com, UsedMusicalInstruments.com and DiscountMusicalInstruments.com were all three already taken – as expected. I settled for SearchMusicalInstruments.com (I love an action word in a domain name!) and registered that through GoDaddy.com.

Now that I have the niche chosen and the domain name registered, I’ll simply set up my first BANS site on my HostGator account (you can host unlimited domains & sites on one hosting account for less than $10/mo).

Keep an eye out for Part 2 of this BANS Review where I’ll show you the site I created, and let you know if it was really as easy as they claim…

Best,

What interests me most about testing BANS is the success I’ve had with eBay’s affiliate program in the past. eBay is like Amazon in that it ends to convert well simply because it is a household name. And not only do you get paid a percentage of every sale your site generates, but you also get paid $25 commission for every new eBay registration.

Obviously eBay covers a wide range of niches, so there is no end to the potential. You could get really creative with this one. I’m planning to sit down over the weekend and do just that .

Several people have already asked for my opinion on BANS, so I’ll post a full review and also show you the niche store that I create once I walk through the program. Keep an eye out for it here at ClickNewz, as I’ll publish full details here in the review section.

Best,

Tags: bans, build a niche store, ebay affiliates, ebay affiliate program, ebay stores, niche marketing, make money online, create a website, affiliate sites, affiliate marketing

I have been talking with him about his success with Auction Ads over the last few weeks, and convinced him to share those details with you as a Case Study that you can use as a model to duplicate his success.

This case study is chock full of nitty gritty detail. One of the most interesting things about it is that Michael used a brand new website to earn over $5,000 in under 3 months…

Auction Ads Case Study: $5,000 in 3 Months…

I published Michael’s in-depth Case Study at Self-Starters Weekly Tips. You can read it online at the link above.

Enjoy!

Tags: auction ads, auctionads, ebay, affiliate programs, case study, case studies

This free event is part of the Hot Seminar Series hosted by Kelly McCausey, and features successful women in the Internet Marketing industry that are each sharing some valuable insiders tips from their own experiences at making money online.

You can join in by phone or you can join in online where you can listen in to the call, participate in the chat and the polls, and watch the presentation in webinar format.

Just go to http://www.hotseminarseries.com/lynn and sign up to get the details. Listening in live is free, but if you miss the live event (or just want a hard copy to reference later) you can purchase the MP3 and the transcripts following each event.

To quote Kerry: “eBay is more than just a garage sale. Every business should have an eBay division to boost sales and grab gobs of new customers.”

I look forward to picking up some ideas on how to use eBay to funnel traffic into my niche sites. There’s certainly enough traffic on eBay to make any online business owner consider creative strategies to funnel even a trickle of that traffic their way

Best,

Tags: kerry beck, online auctions, selling on ebay, free teleseminar, webinar

Discover new, innovative ways to blend eBay, PayPal, ProStores, Shopping.com, and Skype—and boost your success…

If you purchase a pass to the eBay Developers Conference, you will get a free pass to eBay Live!. You can also get a pass to eBay Live! separately…

See Registration Page for more information.
As of today (June 7th), registration is still open.

I havent been to one of these events personally, so if you have been to eBay Live or the eBay Developers Conference in the past I would love to hear about your experience. I did hear them speak at the Affiliate Marketing Conference put on by ABestWeb a few years ago though, and it was an excellent presentation. Expect to learn a lot!

Best,

Tags: ebay live, ebay developers conference, ebay affiliate program, ebay sellers, powerseller

If you have never sold products on eBay before, I would suggest that you start with your own household items that you are ready to get rid of. You probably have things in storage, items in the back of your closet, things you dont use anymore, etc – and you can generally get a lot more for them on eBay than you can by having a “yard sale”.

Once you get your feet wet with the selling process, and exhaust your own personal resources, you can look to Local Auctions for more items to turn a profit with. Most of them specialize in property, personal estates, antiques, nascar and other collectibles – just to name of a few.

The goal is to buy low and turn a profit. What I have done in the past, and would highly recommend, is that you “team up” with your spouse or a friend. One stays at the computer, the other attends the auctions and can reach them by cell phone. You want to keep this “under your hat”, by the way – so step outside to make the calls, or be as inconspicuous about it as you can.

The person who stays at the computer can look items up on eBay that you are interested in bidding on. What you need to know is how well that product has sold on eBay in the past, and what types of bids it usually brings. This helps you to bid more accurately at the Auction, instead of guessing and “bidding in the dark”.

If your partner is quick on the keyboard and familiar with eBay, they can see how many auctions are currently running for that item – and also search the completed auctions to get an idea of what it usually goes for. After a few trial runs, you can get your ‘teamwork’ down to an art.

Without this “invisible partner”, you may bid too high for an item that brings a lower price on eBay. Or you may end up buying something that eBay is already flooded with. Unless you know your product, and know your market (super well), it pays to have someone checking on things behind the scenes.

Being “the invisible partner” is a great little local business idea, too

You can usually find out about Local Auctions by checking the newspapers. But there is a great site called AuctionZip.com where you can find live auctions as well. All you have to do is put in your zip code, tell it how far you are willing to travel (within 30 miles, for example) and it will give you a calendar of Auctions in your area.

A quick search at AuctionZip.com tells me that there are 9 local Auctions going on in my area this weekend (and I live in a very small town). Some of them are for properties, others are entire personal estates (ie estate auctions), and some of them are your run-of-the-mill antiques & collectibles.

If you need to turn over some cash, this is a quick way to do it!

Best,

Tags: ebay, auction, online auctions, estate auctions, resell products

There is a quote from the Postmaster General in an article published on Yahoo! News this morning:

Postmaster General John Potter has said that even with the higher prices the agency expects a deficit this year as it struggles to compete in a swiftly changing communications market.

For me personally, there is very little impact. I use the postal system less and less each year. Bills can be paid by automatic debit or bank draft, messages can be sent online, etc. I generally only mail one item per month, for a total of a dozen stamps used each year.

It’s easy to see why the US Postal Service is suffering in the “swiftly changing communications market”.

On the other hand, I order products online more and more. And while the shipping charges are generally free for me (the customer)… they are paid by the shipper. With the rise in online shopping and therefore package deliveries, you would think it would offset the decline in the use of first class mail.

For those of you that use the US Postal service regularly for mailings and shipments, I would be interested to hear how this will affect you directly.

But envelopes that don’t bend or are thicker than normal — such as eBay purchases — will cost more.

It’s the first time the U.S. Postal Service is charging by the shape of the mail, and many mail-intensive businesses will take a big hit. (source)

Your thoughts are welcomed…

Best,

Tags: 41 cents, forever stamp, ebay sellers, us postal rates, priority mail

But there is a hidden profit potential behind those .01 ebooks…

The cheap ebooks people sell on eBay are often sold with resale rights. This means that you can always find plenty of inexpensive ebooks to sell, but it also means there are hundreds of people already selling it. But by utilizing the sales in another way, a workable list can be built in order to generate sales for the real items you are selling.

Buyers on eBay these days are looking for incredibly cheap ebooks. So to get the customers you need, your books will have to be priced similarly. By having a low price, you will get more customers, making your list grow quickly. Once the sale is made, you can talk the customer into subscribing to your newsletter or other targeted marketing that you have available. One way to convince buyers to join is to offer them more ebooks for free. With that carrot dangling above them, buyers will jump to join your list. It’s a great deal for them- free ebooks. It’s a great deal for you- a cheap customer list. And with a list in hand, the door opens for countless other ventures.

There is yet another way to create lists using eBay itself. If you don’t have a newsletter autoresponder already set up, you can actually send newsletter through the site. The site now has its own newsletter system that can be subscribed to by any of your customers, making the whole venture impossibly easy.

If you are really creative, you might even come up with two newsletters, and get buyers to subscibe to both- one through your own ezine or newsletter, and one through the eBay system. If both newsletters have complementary information, both newsletters will be of interest to buyers and both will have subscribers. This keeps your products and information firmly in the mind of the buyers, likely leading to future sales down the road.

So, think of eBay as simply the first step on the road to ecommerce, instead of the end result. Hook them there, and then release them into your own site, where the real profit potential is much higher. If you have a content site set up (and if you don’t- get one), the newsletter can direct them to your site to read the new information you will post each week or month. This drives up your site’s page views, leading to increased AdSense dollars, as well as having the items you are selling right there for the buyer to look at. It may hurt to sell something for less than the transaction costs, but you’ll be feeling a lot better when those affiliate checks start arriving.

Guest Article by Gray Rollins – - Gray Rollins writes for AuctionConversionSecrets.com. If you’re looking to make money on eBay, then be sure to get the free report on the site. If you need stuff to sell on eBay, get Salehoo.

Tags: ebay, online auctions, list building

It used to be that you had to at least sign up for a free trial account with them to view their product listings. This way you can get a sneak peak into the products and specs to determine if they offer items you would like to sell.

They do still offer the Free Trial, of course. Doba is one of the more popular Dropshipping companies online, simply because they are eBay Certified. You can even list products on eBay directly from your account…

Relisting these items correctly is a great way to turn a profit. Searching for these items is also a great way to get a sweet deal on something you are looking to buy for yourself.

Up until now, I’ve always relied on my own imagination to come up with possible misspellings when doing a search for these kinds of hidden auction deals. But today I ran across SpellingSearch which is a free eBay misspelling search tool!

The site offers full instructions for making the most of their search tool, as well as suggestions and general details. It’s a pretty cool site actually, complete with some nice branding – I can see this one really taking off.

Testing out the search box, I was surprised to see how many sellers mispelled “playstation” – geez. The next search I tried was for “collectible”. Of course you can get much more specific than that, which is great if you are looking for certain items or something related to a particular niche…

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Tags: ebay, auctions, misspellings, misspelled, spelling search, online deals

Some of the features include:

• A completely new AJAX enabled keyword search to help you find the right category.
• Unlimited free image hosting
• A partnership with Photobucket
• Templates that actually make your listing look good

Here’s a cool screen shot of the List’d interface:

If you’re looking for an eBay listing tool, check this one out. It looks like it will make the process a lot easier

Tags: ebay, online auctions, auction listings, ebay tools