Article Site Goes Social
It has long been recognised that submitting articles to any of the many article sites on the Internet can be an effective way low-cost marketing. In fact, all it costs is the time it takes to write and submit the article.
Most people use article marketing to get themselves a number of backlinks to their own sites to help promote their rank in the search engine results pages. However, Article Marketing is, and can be, a lot more than just backlinks.
By submitting excellent quality articles, you are not only promoting your products, you are also promoting yourself. After reading a few of your articles, some people will begin to regard you as an expert in your field and will trust you. In any kind of marketing, Trust is probably the most important thing. A customer is more likely to hand over their hard-earned cash to somebody they trust than to anybody else.
Trust is based upon good experiences, but can also be reinforced by recommendation. If a friend recommends a plumber to you, will you follow their recommendation, or just pick on the first plumber you find in the Yellow Pages?
When you follow your friend’s advice, you have effectively been a participant in “Social Networking”. The plumber did a good job for your friend, and he was then recommended to you.
The term “Social Networking” is very popular today; used to describe sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Digg etc. These are sites that allow the members to interact with eachother.
Now when you read an article on an article site, how do you know whether what it contains is honest, accurate or truthful?
The guys at Article Content King have been hard at work adding “Social Networking” aspects to their article site. Articles that are submitted undergo moderation by a minimum of 5 members before they appear on the site.
Articles of poor quality can be rejected along with recommendations on how they can be improved.
Articles of excellent quality achieve a higher profile on the site.
And as an added bonus, by moderating articles on the site, you earn advertising credits enabling your own advertisements to be displayed on the article pages. You even earn advertising credits when your articles are viewed, and when articles belonging to your downline (to 10 levels!) are viewed.
So by adding social elements to their site, Article Content King are also improving the quality of their article content. This in turn generates trust of the article authors.
Whether you use Article Marketing or not, why not add Article Content King to your arsenal of marketing tools?. Not only will your articles become part of a high-quality article site, you’ll be earning yourself advertising credits at the same time.
Top Tips for Selling on eBay
I’ve been buying and selling on eBay and other auction sites for many years now. As I browse the various lots up for sale, I never cease to be amazed at how badly some people present their items.
Having created a really terrible auction, these people wonder why their item goes unsold or for a ridiculously small amount of money – well below its true value.
So I’ve written this short article to give a few hints and tips for making a sale on auction sites.
Auction Title
This is very important. Most buyers don’t use the Advanced Search options, or even check the “Include title and description” box. This means that the search is carried out based on the words found in auction titles. If buyers are going to find your item, you will need to keywords that that most people are likely to use in a search.
Think about what you would use to search for that item if you wanted to buy one. Try searching in eBay using those words to see if you can find items similar to yours. Check the keywords that other people are using.
The title space is limited in length, so think carefully about the words that you use. Check spellings before you submit your auction. Thousands of items have gone unsold, or sold for the starting price because the seller mis-spelled keywords in the title and very few people actually found the auction.
Category
Choose your Category carefully. Some people seem to choose the first category they see that relates to their product. As an example, I have often seen accessories for PDAs listed under “PDAs” instead of under “PDA Accessories”.
Some Categories on eBay contain some fields that you can select from to provide specific information in a standard format. For example, Womens Clothing has fields for Size, Material, Colour etc.
My previous example, PDAs, has a field for screen size. If you don’t specify these fields, buyers become frustrated and move on.
Description
I have seen some incredibly bad descriptions of items – some consisting of a single line of text or even less. You’re trying to sell this item to people who can’t actually see it, touch it or pick it up. In your description, you need to be their eyes and ears. If you don’t provide the information, people will want to ask questions, or they will just ignore the auction and move on to one with a better description.
Another common mistake is to write a single block of text. Divide your description into paragraphs, with each paragraph covering a different topic.
If your item is available in a variety of different variants, specify details. Colour, size, model number etc. Using my PDA example again, I have seen auctions for a “Pocket Loox PDA” with no details as to the model number (there are many – each with very different specifications). Usually the photograph isn’t good enough to determine the model number, either.
Details. Make sure you know as much about the item as possible before typing in your auction details. Continuing the PDA theme, I have seen an auction advertising a “Dell X51v PDA” with a screen size of 640×480. The Description then went on to say that it was a “Dell x50″, which is a different model with a much smaller screen size. The seller had then blindly pasted in the specification from the Dell website which contained information about both models.
Photographs
Always, without exception, provide a good quality photograph of the item you are selling. Remember, buyers cannot see the item you have for sale.
Take several pictures and choose the best one (or more).
There are a lot of common mistakes made with regard to photographs on eBay auctions.
Focus. All digital cameras have autofocus. Learn how to use it properly and make your picture as sharp as possible. A blurry image tells the buyer nothing except that you couldn’t be bothered to make a better picture. Use a proper digital camera or the camera in a mobile phone if it’s of decent quality – borrow one if you don’t have one. Webcams are notoriously bad – they’re not really designed for taking high quality images.
Lighting. If you take a photo of your item indoors under artificial light, the colours in your image may look strange. If possible, set your digital camera for the relevant lighting conditions – incandescent light (conventional light bulbs), fluorescent (including energy-saving compact fluorescent) or daylight.
Use natural light if possible – take your pictures during the daytime, near a window, or even outdoors.
Rotation. I have seen many pictures on eBay auctions that are rotated by 90 degrees because the seller turned the camera to fit the item in. Many digital cameras come with programs to rotate images. If not, there are plenty you can obtain for free or at very low cost.
Size. A thumbnail image the size of a postage stamp is no use to anybody. Ebay allow you to use large images. Use that facility.
Presentation. Before you take the photo of your item, take a look what else is around the room that might end up in the picture. Buyers don’t want to see a pile of junk lying around. Tidy up so that only your item will appear in the picture.
If you’re selling clothes, put them on a hanger – maybe on the back of a door. A picture of a skirt lying on a bed doesn’t sell anywhere near as one with it on a hanger. Even better – use a mannequin (dummy) or a live model (You don’t need to take a picture of the complete person – just the item for sale). Clothes look so much better on a body than when flat.
Details. If the item has some distinguishing feature that is a selling point, why not add a close-up of that feature.
Will Your Online Business Idea Work? – Beat the Credit Crunch Part 2
Is your business idea worthwhile?
Ok, so you’ve shortlisted a number of possibilities for an online business. Now you have to determine whether your idea or ideas will turn out to be a money-maker or not.
If you’re from the UK, you might have seen a TV programme called “Dragons Den”, or in the USA, one called “American Inventor”. You’ll have seen some really crazy ideas that nobody is prepared to invest in, and quite rightly. The inventors have spent thousands of pounds or dollars on the developmentof their product, but have lost sight of the fact that nobody would ever buy it. They will never recover the costs of developing their idea.
Similarly, you could spend a lot of time, effort and money developing and promoting a website to sell something that has such a limited market that you will only make a loss. Therefore, it is extremely important to ensure that there is a market for your product.
So, you need to do some research about whether people will buy your product or not, how much competition you have and at what level. Some markets speak for themselves – you know how popular they are – but what sort of competition are you up against? Can you obtain your products cheaper than the national or international vendors who have huge buying power? It’s unlikely in most cases.
Are you producing your own products? If so, is there a demand for that type of product, and does your version have a USP (Unique Selling Point?).
How can you find out what people are buying and selling? One obvious starting point is the search engines. Google and Yahoo tell you how many sites contain the keywords you search on. Examine a number of sites that are competing in your proposed field. See what they are selling, and how they compare with your own products.
Another great source of information is eBay. Search for items in your field. Don’t just take note of the items being sold, but check out the vendors, too. Look at their Feedback scores. A vendor with a Feedback of 42,763 is obviously making a lot of sales. Read through their feedback listings to see what they have sold, and how often. The amount that items sell for can also be a useful reference for pricing your own products. For example, if a particular item is regularly selling for around £70, and you know you can obtain those products for £55, you know you could be making a reasonable profit.
Visit your local shops and stores. See what’s on sale and watch what people are buying at the checkouts.
If you are trying to sell a completely new invention, then market research is a lot more difficult. You need to ask a lot of people (not just your family and friends) whether they think your idea is viable, and more to the point, whether they would buy such a product. Unfortunately, carrying out such research could result in your idea being given away to other people who are in a better position to market it.
Don’t underestimate the need for market research. It could save you a lot of time and money.
In the next article, we’ll cover sourcing your products.
Choosing an Online Business – Beat the Credit Crunch Part 1.
At the time of writing, the financial situation all over the world is not good. Credit is hard to find, and companies and individuals alike are beginning to find things difficult.
As companies struggle to continue operating, they are laying off more and more people. This is turn results in more people with severely reduced income, which means they have much less buying power. If the people aren’t buying, then the companies are not making any money, so their situation gets worse. This downward spiral continues untile the companies cease trading completely.
This won’t affect everybody of course; there are many companies who remain largely unaffected by this situation, at least for the time being.
But who knows when your company or your employer will be affected?
Don’t wait until it’s too late! Start thinking about alternative and supplementary incomes now. There are many opportunities available to you in the form of home-based businesses which you can run part-time, requiring maybe one or two hours a day. If that business is Internet based, you have the best of both worlds – a worldwide marketplace, low startup costs, low running costs, and relatively low investment of time and effort.
That’s not to say that it’s going to be an easy ride. There really is no instant cash system, no get-rich-quick scheme, or set-and-forget business. Any kind of business needs some thought and effort to get going, and continual input and further effort to maintain and expand it.
This series of articles, Beating the Credit Crunch, will take you step-by step through a logical and organised approach to starting an online business. Don’t worry if you don’t have a clue about computers, websites etc. Everything you need to know will become clear, and as your confidence grows you’ll wonder why you ever worried about it.
The first thing you need to do is decide what sort of business you want to run. Unless you always dreamed of running a particular type of business, that isn’t always as easy as it first appears. Throw away any predjudices or fears that you might have about running any kind of business, and don’t think that anything is going to be too difficult. If you start small, you’ll stay in control, and you’ll be able to expand at a controlled rate.
The whole point of setting up an online business is to make money. You offer one or more products or services, and people pay you money for them.
Now I know what you’re thinking – “If I sell xyz product, where on earth am I going to store my stock?”. That needn’t be a problem and ways around it will be covered later in this series.
So, sit down with a notepad and pencil and scribble down any ideas that you have. Go for subjects that interest you – you don’t really want to run a business that you have no interest in.
Talk it through with your partner if you have one, but also try to come up with ideas independently of eachother. Don’t be shy about it. Any idea could turn out to be a huge money-maker.
Once you have your list of ideas, whittle it down to a short-list of the strongest ideas.
As a computer programmer, my obvious choice for products to sell is software. It’s the business I know, and if I write my own software, all the profits made on that software are mine. Having said that, I have other hobbies which are totally unrelated to computers, and I could just as easily set up online businesses in any of those fields.
In the next article in this series, we’ll be covering the next step – determining whether your business ideas are going to be viable.
ScreenRuler
When you’re designing websites and graphics, have you ever wanted to measure the size of something on your screen in pixels?
You can do it by grabbing the screen and loading it into an expensive program such as PaintShop Pro or Photoshop.
Or you could measure it using ScreenRuler.
ScreenRuler is a useful tool for measuring anything in pixels on your PC screen. You can set the transparency level of ScreenRuler so that you can see what you are measuring.
Coming soon to this site, at an incredibly low price.
Article Marketing
