Five Ways To Detect Shill Bidders On eBay So That You Don’t Pay Absurd Prices

June 2nd, 2007

by: Sydney Johnston

There is as a lot of buzz about shill bidders on the eBay forums. But in actuality, shrill bidding isn’t that common and is rather easily detected.

A buyer will sometimes attempt to use shill building to raise the price of merchandise he is selling. The idea is that the shiller will bid increasingly high prices, in the hope that legitimate buyers like you will top the artificially high prices in an effort to win the goodies for sale.

Here are five ways you can recognize a shill bidder:

1. Few shill bidders will have any feedback. This is because they never follow through with transactions and therefore don’t have anyone to leave feedback. If the shiller does have legitimate transactions on ebay, he is usually smart enough to use a separate ID, because he does not want to get caught shilling and lose all buying and selling privileges.

{It is important to note, however, that just because a bidder has no feedback that does not mean that he is necessarily a shrill bidder. This may simply be a new account that has not had time to build a feedback reputation.}

2. Generally, a shiller only bids on the auctions of a particular seller. When in doubt, you can check the current and completed options of a seller and see if this shiller has bid on other auctions by the same seller.

3. Shill bidders are most often newbies. You can check the feedback, and the date that the eBay account was created, for any ebay member. If the bidder’s account was created two days ago and he is bidding on several auctions of the same seller, you can be pretty certain about what is going on.

4. eBay has ways of the tracking shillers. Of course we don’t know everything they do (and if I did know I wouldn’t tell!) but some clues all are dead giveaways. For example, if the seller and the bidder have the same IP address, eBay knows to take a closer look.

5. Shill bidders retract many more bids than normal buyers. eBay does allow any buyer to retract a bid, although this is only supposed to occur for specific reasons. But in actuality, a retraction is rarely challenged and ultimately what can eBay do? It cannot force a person to pay for a particular item.

It is wise not to use this option on a frequent basis. Remember that your eBay behavior deal is constantly tracked. A retraction is considered to be a “black mark” on your reputation so don’t do it very often. Shillers, on the other hand, don’t care because they’re unconcerned about their reputation. If caught, they simply open a new account.

Sometimes a shiller is the high bidder at the end of an auction. In that that case, the seller and buyer can agree to cancel the bid, rather than retract it. However, all this takes a lot of work, planning and effort. In the end, shill bidding is rarely worth the trouble and time. Instead, smart sellers spend their time finding products and writing listings - the two basic moneymaking activities of an ebay business - instead of plotting how to raise profits on individual listings. Success in business is about efficiency.

About the author:
Learn how to sell on eBay with 16 hours of online instruction taught by a 10 year eBay veteran. Own an eBay business instead of an eBay hobby.
http://www.auction-genius-course.com

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10 Free Bonuses That Can Ignite Your Profits

May 29th, 2007

money
By Cody Moya
1. Interview Articles - You could compile an ebook
or report of interviews you’ve given to experts from
your particular industry.

2. Coupon eBook - You could compile an ebook
full of coupons from other products you sell or from
other businesses you’ve made coupon deals with.

3. Online Gallery - You could compile a free online
gallery of pictures, graphs, charts, or graphics that
is related to your target audience.

4. Webcam - You could set-up a webcam so your
customers could view a particular environment or
place they are interested in.

5. E-zine Archives - You could bundle all your old
e-zine issues together into an e-book or member’s
web site.

6. Survey Results - You could compile together the
results of all the surveys you’ve taken from your web
site visitors. It could be an ebook or reports.

7. Personal Journal - You could publish a personal
journal of daily actions you take that’s related to
your particular industry.

8. Calendar Of Events - You could publish a list or
ebook of events related to your target audience, It
could be trade shows, seminars, fundraisers, etc.

9. Top Lists - You could publish a list or ebook of
top ten lists that your customers would be interested
in. It can be about related products, people, etc.

10. Email Discussion List - You could make a private
e-mail discussion list only for people that purchase
your product.

Monetizing Your Website With Adsense Is Profitable!

May 23rd, 2007

money

How do you maximize your site?

By earning some few dollars per click from displaying Adsense ads on it. Many are now realizing that good money is made from this source of revenue. Try the simple mathematical computation of multiplying those clicks for every page on your website and you get a summation of earnings equivalent to a monthly residual income with that little effort you have made.

Google Adsense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant and text-based Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money in the process. The ads displayed are related to what your users are looking for on your site. This is the main reason why you both can monetize and enhance your content pages using Adsense.

How much you will be earning will depend on how much the advertisers are willing to pay. It will depend also on the keywords required. If the keywords the advertiser have chosen are in high demand, you could receive more dollars per click. On the other hand, low demand keywords will earn you just a few cents per click.

How can you start making profits out of your website using Adsense?

1. Sign up for an Adsense account. It will only take a few minutes of your time.

2. When the site is accepted, you will be receiving a clip code to include in your web pages. You can insert this code on as many pages or web sites that you want. The AdWords will start appearing immediately after.

3. You will be earning a few cents or some dollars per click when someone starts clicking on the AdWords displayed on any of your web pages. Trying to earn false revenues by repetitively clicking on your own ads is a no-no. This will result in a penalty or the possibility of your site being eliminated. The money you have already earned may be lost because of this.

4. View your statistics. Adsense earnings can be checked anytime by logging into your web site account.

Once you got your account working, you may still want to pattern them to the many sites that are earning more money than you are. It is important to note that there are factors affecting how your website will perform and the amount of money it will give you.

It is a common practice that when a site earning money, the tendency is for the owner to want to make more out of what they are getting already. It usually takes some time combined with trial and error to attain what you want for your Adsense contents.

Time and some important factors that you can practice and use.

How do you increase your Adsense earnings?

1. Choose one topic per page. It is best to write a content for your page with just a few targeted phrases. The search engine will then serve ads that are more relevant which will then result in higher clickthoughs.

2. Using white space around your ad. This can make your ad stand out from the rest of your page so visitors can spot them easily. There are also other choices of colors you can use, provided by search engines, which can harmonize the color of your ad with the web page color.

3. Test your ad placement. It is recommended to use the vertical format that runs down the side of the web page to get more positive results. You can also try both horizontal and vertical formats for a certain period of time to see which one will give you better results.
4. More content-based pages. Widen the theme of your website by creating pages that focus more on your keyword phrases. This will optimize the pages for the search engines. It can not only attract traffic but also make them more relevant for the AdWords to be displayed.
5. Site Build It. This is the perfect tool to be used for creating lots of Adsense revenues. Site Build It has all the tools necessary to quickly achieve a keyword-rich site that can rank high in the search engines. This will also produce a flow of traffic to your site of highly targeted visitors.

‘Bad Blogs Have Got To Go, Blogging Could Be Really Cool If

May 22nd, 2007

blogging
by: M6.Net

There’s a lot of blogs out there on the Web, most of which don’t entice one to go back regularly to read updates. What is missing from these on-line journals that would essentially make them ‘good’ blogs? Well, the answers in life usually come down to simplicities. So let’s look at the problem like we were children. Children don’t complicate life with miscellaneous information, and when they speak they tell you straight to the point exactly how they feel and think about a subject.

First of all, we should ask the questions,” Why do blogs exist? And what are they here for?” Well, in an ideal world ‘good’ blogs would help people connect, sharing knowledge and feelings about issues in life. As they are journals written by individuals we would hope that they’d be readable and open to comment by all other people, not just a select group of friends. The key is speaking in a way that is understandable by the masses, get rid of acronyms and local slang that only few will comprehend. Keep the sentences grammatically simple and generally short and concise.

Try to write in your blog as often as possible because if people enjoy reading your thoughts and ideas they’ll want to communicate or at least be filled in regularly on ‘your world’. Ask questions, comment on other blogs of similar content, start communities with others you’ve never met, based on your interests. Keep focused; if your blog is about thoughts on war and peace, keep your thoughts on the latest movie and how hungry you are for somewhere else. The idea is to incite intelligent communication so that in time our collective stockpile of knowledge and wisdom will gradually grow like a tree in fertile soil.

I think of most importance is the fact that you want this journal to be ‘good’ reading. Of course we all have ideas about what genres and styles we like, but writing from your heart and soul is imperative for the connection with others that you’re looking for. Share yourself; don’t hide behind walls of fear of ridicule and judgment. In real life relationships trust, respect, intimacy, and unity are all necessary for a bond to form. It’s the same in the ‘virtual’ world; people want to hear from real people-not just one-sided, highly opinionated arguments from egos that don’t want to hear the ‘other side of the coin’.

Now, in my last article I really tore apart most writers out there, and here I’m giving some pretty complex ideas on how to fix the problem of ‘bad’ writing. In my next article I’ll attempt to go back to the simple basics of how to write for beginners. I hope I haven’t come across as too judgmental, I just truly believe the ‘blog world’ could become a real asset to humanity, and at the moment it’s missing the mark.

Ideas about sentence structure, grammar, paragraphing, using a thesaurus (varying terms used so as not to sound repetitive), whether or not your blog is suitable for a personal or professional approach, are all important to creating a simple and enjoyable read for the blogging visitor. If you are a beginner, please check out my next article on the basics.

By Jesse S. Somer

M6.Net

Jesse S. Somer is a concerned human attempting to inform his fellow people of the real possibilities hidden in the Internet.

www.thepowerofeverythingthatis.com

Creative Search Engine Optimization - A Case Study

May 20th, 2007

seo

by: Halstatt Pires
Search engine optimization this and search engine optimization that. You read and hear about it all day, but what about your site? While there are plenty of articles providing useful information, this article shows you how a real world example met with success. The point of this article is to emphasize creativity when approaching tough optimization situations.

Problems for BusinessTaxRecovery.com

In November of 2004, our firm took on the seo marketing for BusinessTaxRecovery.com. The site was being promoted through offline activities and pay-per-click campaigns. No effort had been made to achieve high rankings in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Keyword analysis revealed that combinations of the root keywords, “business” and “tax” were going to be difficult to attack. The primary problem concerned government agencies with web sites. The IRS site, for instance, had roughly 9,680 inbound links and an absolute ton of content. State agencies weren’t far behind. The California tax agency site had roughly 7,000 inbound links and, again, tons of content.

For a final nail in the coffin, the client informed us the business was cyclical with the busiest months being January through April when people focused on taxes. The site absolutely had to rank highly during this period. We had two months to achieve results.

Gulp!

The Solution for BusinessTaxRecovery.com – 140,000 Hits

After staring at a Salvador Dali painting for a few hours, we came up with a solution. It involved a combination of internal site page focus, meta tag optimization, link exchange and massive article promotion. The results produced 145,828 hits from January through April, with only 5,000 coming from the pay-per-click program.

The first step was to change the focus of the site from the home page to the article page. Jumping the tax agency sites on keywords such as business tax and taxes was impossible in two months, so we didn’t even try. Instead, we decided to focus on the keyword phrase “business tax articles” and bring people into the site through the article page. Meta tags were optimized and a link exchange program undertaken. The key to campaign, however, was a strong article promotion campaign.

Since taxes are confusing, it seemed obvious that an article campaign focusing on tax information would meet with success. Boy, did it. Approximately 35 articles were written, published and submitted to article directories. Since the articles were timely, they were snapped up and published. The articles produced direct traffic to the site as well as numerous inbound links because of the link created in the article byline.

As for the search engines, we focused on everything but Google. We expected nothing from Google because the major content and meta tag changes would take six to eight months to show results per the usual practices of Google. In reality, it didn’t matter. The Yahoo and MSN search engines produced big time.

In mid-January, the site went to number 1 on MSN under “business tax articles.” By the end of January, Yahoo was also listing it as number 1. MSN started listing it at number 1 for “tax articles” in February. The combination of these listings produced a significant amount of traffic, conversions and a very happy client.

Can we go on cruise control now? No! With the end of the tax season, the traffic to the articles page of the site has dropped by 75%. Nobody is looking for tax information after April 15th, so this is hardly surprising. The promotion of the article page was simply a short-term solution to a difficult situation. While it should produce traffic during the first quarter of each subsequent year, it is not a year-around solution.

Over the next six months, we will focus on the long-term goal of jumping over the tax agency sites for keywords such as “business taxes”, etc. It is going to take a lot of patience, but will eventually produce a significant amount of business for the client.

Creativity is often the key to conquering seo situations. Blindly slapping up new meta tags and links isn’t always the best answer. Sometimes, a little pre-emptive consideration can yield amazing results.

It did in this case.

About the author:
Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com- an Internet marketing and advertising company. To read more marketing articles, visit MarketingTitan.com

7 Secrets To Top Search Engine Rankings (Yes, Even #1 Positions!) For SEO Dummies

May 19th, 2007

SEO
by: Ewen Chia
There’s hope for the ‘little guys’ in the search engine ranking game, even if they can’t tell the difference between the title and keyword meta tag!

You can achieve high rankings for important keywords simply by applying certain rules
that stand the test of time and even technology…and the number one rule is really to…

…Help the search engines provide relevant search results!

How do you do this? I’ll reveal the ’secrets’ soon.

While I’m far from being an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert and am just sharing experiences here, I’ve achieved some phenomenal results by following these basic rules and without resorting to ‘tricks’. Importantly, these are rankings that last.

- side note -

I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t learn about SEO or use genuine software that helps, in fact you should.

To learn about SEO, some sites you can check out:

http://www.selfpromotion.com : shows you how to construct your webpages and submit
them to hundreds of search engines and directories absolutely FREE.

http://www.searchenginewatch.com : everything you need to know related to search engines.

For software to facilitate your website positioning, this one’s the best: http://www.turnkeymoney.com/te.htm

- end side note -

For example (at this time of writing), here are my rankings for http://www.Marketing-Make-Money.com in
Yahoo alone (remember these are extremely competitive keywords):

‘Make money online’ | rank: #1 of 33.9
million sites Proof:
http://tinyurl.com/2wtr9

‘Make money’ | rank: #27 of 85.4 million
sites Proof: http://tinyurl.com/35cc3

‘Web marketing’ | rank: #4 of 113 million
sites Proof: http://tinyurl.com/yv8de

‘Web marketing tips’ | rank: #6 of 10.2
million sites Proof:
http://tinyurl.com/388a6

How did I achieve such incredible rankings without being some SEO guru or even obsessively optimizing my site?

Recall the number one rule? It’s to help the search engines provide relevant search
results.

Now I honestly believe there are only two MAIN things which support this rule and in
the process, reward your website with the high rankings you desire.

These two things are Keyword Rich Content and Targeted Back Links which we’ll talk
about later…

Here then are 7 powerful secrets you can use to model your website after to explode
your high search engine rankings!

Step 1: Determine Highly Searched Keywords

Determine highly searched and targeted keywords/keyword phrases related to your
site and put them into a list. Here’re the tools to use:

http://instantmarketingsecrets.com/keyword.htm : compares results of keyword searches from Overture and Wordtracker and displays them side by side.

http://smtek.info/cgi-bin/keywordtool.cgi : allows you to find relevant hot keywords
with a single click…very cool very useful.

http://www.goodkeywords.com : excellent software to find targeted keywords in
Overture and various other engines.

Step 2: Register Keyword Rich Domain Names

While there’ve been contrasting arguments about whether having keywords in your
domain helps, I strongly feel it does. The same goes for dashes between words in the
domain.

Use these to source for domain name ideas:

http://www.nameboy.com
http://www.deleteddomains.com

You can also register your domains for
peanuts per year here:

http://www.namecheap.com
http://www.registerfly.com

Step 3: Use Your Targeted Keywords In Your Copy

Use the list of keywords in step 1 within your website copy, especially in the title, headline and first paragraph. The important thing is to make them flow smoothly within the context of the copy so prospects will not find it weird.

Step 4: Insert Keyword Rich Relevant Content

Next, build up your site’s content with relevant topics containing your keywords.
Don’t worry, here are some ways to get instant content:

- Posting suitable articles that contain your keywords. These can either be your
own or from article directories like
http://www.ezinearticle.com ,
http://www.goarticles.com or
http://webpronews.com

- Posting newsletter issues in an archive online if you write any

- Do reviews and commentaries on related
products and services in your market as
content

Step 5: Aggressively Acquire Targeted Back Links

This is the second most important (some say it’s the first) factor to note after
targeted and relevant content.

Get as many good quality incoming links from other sites as you can, believe me,
this will really make a huge difference to your rankings. These links should come from
sites in your market and preferably those with high PageRanks of 5 and above.

Use http://www.webmasterbrain.com/prog/ to search for sites with top rankings in
Google for your specified keyword/keyword phrases. It also reveals their individual
PageRanks next to their listings.

An excellent resource to check PageRank can also be found at http://rankwhere.com.

Alternatively, you can download Alexa toolbar from http://ww.alexa.com as it also
shows Alexa traffic ranking for any site. This is very useful for seeking high
traffic link partners.

If you are looking for mind-blowing linking strategies and tricks, the best guide I’ve
ever seen must be “Power Linking 2:
Evolution” at:
http://www.turnkeymoney.com/powerlink.htm

Step 6: Hand Submit Your Site To The Top Directories and Search Engines

There’s no point in using those ’submit to millions’ services as only a few search engines really matter.

Using those services may actually cause your site to be penalized by these major
engines.

In fact if you’ve done enough important reciprocal linkings, you don’t even need to
submit your sites as spiders which crawl your link partner sites (already indexed)
will pick up your link easily.

However, if you must submit, do it by hand at these directories and search engines
here:

Ask Jeeves: http://tinyurl.com/467y
LookSmart/Zeal: http://tinyurl.com/2uzan
Mama: http://tinyurl.com/38gdb
Open Directory: http://tinyurl.com/2jk82
Google: http://tinyurl.com/hlzz
Yahoo: http://tinyurl.com/fq32
All The Web: http://tinyurl.com/2hq24
Inktomi: http://tinyurl.com/26cgu

Step 7: Tune Your Site For Maximum Optimization

The final step would be to constantly monitor and analyze your website traffic
against rankings. This is so you can review and tweak for further improvement in your
rankings.

I hope this article will prove highly useful to you. Do not be scare away by SEO, it’s simple once you follow the above system. While these steps are not everything you can do, it’ll be enough to get your site ranked very well for the targeted keywords you chose.

Again, remember the number one rule of giving relevant content and establishing
good back links. Help the search engines provide relevant results for their customers and your rankings will automatically skyrocket to the top!

About the author:
(c) 2004 Ewen Chia All Rights Reserved
http://www.marketing-make-money.com

“Download $6,997 and 117+ hours worth of
rare marketing audio recordings, exclusive
interviews and 5,673+ pages of word-for-
word marketing transcripts FREE!”
http://www.InstantMarketingSecrets.com

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2 Surefire Ways To Maximize Your Adsense Earnings

May 18th, 2007

google adsense

Most webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional advertising income. That is why most of them use it to go after high paying keywords. They have with them the lists that tells what the keywords are and have already used various methods of identifying them. And yet, after putting up these supposed-to-be high paying keywords into their pages, the money they expected to come rolling in is not really coming in.

What is it that they are doing wrong?

Having the pages is with the proper keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking.

The thing is, to get visitors to your high paying keyword pages, you need to optimize your site navigation.

Stop for a moment and think about how visitors are using your website. After a visitor has landed on a certain page, they have the tendency to click on another page that sounds interesting. They get there because of the other links that appears on a page that they initially landed on. This is site navigation. It is all about enabling visitors to move about your site. And one way of maximizing your Adsense earnings.

A typical website have menu links on each page. The wording on these links is what grabs a visitor’s attention and gets them to click on one of the links that will take them to another page of that website. Links that have “free’ or “download” are oftentimes good attention-grabbers.

This navigation logic can also be applied to driving traffic to your high paying pages. There are some websites that are getting a lot of traffic from search engines, but have low earnings. The trick is to try and use come cleverly labeled links to get the visitors off that pages and navigate them to the higher earning ones. This is one great way of turning real cheap clicks to real dollars.

Before you begin testing if this same style will work for you and you website, you need to have two things. Something to track and compare and some high earning pages you want to funnel your site traffic to. An option is to select a few of your frequently visited pages. This is ensuring fast result to come by.

Now, the next thing to do is think of ways to get visitors viewing a particular page to try and click on the link that will take them to your high earning pages. Come up with a catchy description for that link. Come up with a catchy and unique description for the link. Think of something that people do not get to see everyday. That will trigger their curiosity enough to try and see what that was all about.

You can also use graphics to grab your readers’ attention. There is no limitation to what you can do to make your link noticeable. If you are after the success of your site, you will do everything it takes just to achieve that goal. Just be creative. As far as many Adsense advertisers are concerned, there are no written and unwritten laws to follow regarding what they write. Just as long as you do not overstep the guidelines of the search engines, then go for it.

Also remember that it is all about location, location and location. Once the perfect attention grabbing description has been achieved, you have to identify the perfect spot on your page to position that descriptive link to your high paying page.

There is nothing wrong with visiting other websites to see how they are going about maximizing their site navigation. “Hot pages” or “Most read” lists are very common and overly used already. Get to know the ones that many websites are using and do not try to imitate them.

Another way of doing it is to try and use different texts on different pages. That way you will see the ones that work and what does not. Try to mix things around also. Put links on top and sometimes on the bottom too. This is how you go about testing which ones get more clicks and which ones are being ignored.

Let the testing begin. Testing and tracking until you find the site navigation style that works best for you site.

23 Ways To Use An Ad Tracker

May 17th, 2007

ads tracker
by: Harvey Segal
The ad tracker was originally developed to provide a record
of all hits to a site resulting from ad placements. This
article shows a host of different ways to utilise an ad
tracker.

FOR AFFILIATES

#1. The Long Url Problem

Have you ever seen an ad where you are asked to click on an affiliate URL so long that it stretches over 2 lines, like this

http://www/anysite.com/cgi-bin/dir1/dir2/.cgi?code=123RT&type=102
35&subid=89715

Do you think your reader will bother to do the necessary cut and paste to put it in a browser?

Probably not.

And that’s probably one lost sale.

And even a one line affiliate link may exceed the permissible length for some ad posting requirements.

The solution: use a short tracking URL.

#2. Losing Your Affiliate Code

As an affiliate you may have your affiliate code embedded in a link something like this:

http://www.abc.com/123

Some customers will bypass the affiliate code and just type in the home URL http://www.abc.com (possibly because they think that they will be paying extra for an agent’s commission)

The solution: use a tracking URL - so that your affiliate code number is never seen.

#3. Make Your Ad Stand Out

You may have seen search engine results showing near identical listings for the same product, differing only in an affiliate code appended to the URL.

Your listing here will be just one of many unless you make it stand out. So bypass the standard affiliate URL and use a tracking URL.

#4. How Effective Are The Links

You can measure and compare the effectiveness of the different banners or text links the affiliate programs provide you by using a tracking URL.

#5. Changing Links

If an affiliate company change their links then your existing ads, wherever they are posted, become worthless. But if you use a tracking URL you simply revise the affiliate URL at the tracking control centre.

#6. Affiliate Program Discontinued

Similarly if an affiliate program is discontinued you just change your tracking URL to a new page where you explain the circumstances and point your visitor to your other promotions.

#7. Better Affiliate Stats

Not all affiliate programs provide you with stats about visitors. And if they do are they adequate ?

Compare a basic monthly figure say
- Jan: 39 hits

with a detailed analysis such as

- Jan 12: 10 hits
- Jan 13: 2 hits
- Jan 20: 21 hits
- Jan 21: 6 hits

where you can relate those dates to particular ad campaigns.

Tracking URLs will give you these improved figures.

#8. Checking Affiliate Stats

Even if you do receive good stats from your affiliate program it still makes sense to use tracking URLs so that you can compare your figures with theirs.

A large discrepancy could mean errors in their software or (hopefully not) fraudulent activity on their part.

An alternative reason is that their measurement takes place when their page is fully loaded rather than at the start, indicating that visitors are clicking away because it is taking too long to load.

FOR EZINE PUBLISHERS

#9. Win Advertisers With Tracking Reports

If you sell advertising space in your ezine you can offer to your advertisers to replace their URLs with your tracking URLs and Email them the results.

Tell your advertisers about these benefits in your advertising guidelines

- They will know the number of clickthroughs their ad has generated. They can then decide how to improve the ads for better performance

- If they use a tracker program with your own domain name in the tracking URL your ezine subscribers will be more inclined to click

- They can use your ezine as a test centre, modifying their ads until they are happy, before launching with other publishers

#10. Use Tracking Report Results

The tracking reports above will provide you with information on your subscribers’ interests, influencing your editorial content and helping you select which potential advertisers to approach.

Also, once your advertisers have seen for themselves the benefits of an ad tracking program they will be inclined to purchase one. So set yourself up as an affiliate for a program and promote it to them.

#11. Measure Your Readership

You may know how many subscribers you have but how many actually open and read your ezine and which parts of it attract most attention ?

Here’s how to find out if you distribute your ezine in HTML Format: include an image on your page, e.g a banner or logo or a single pixel GIF. Then reference this image with a tracking URL.

For an ezine distributed as plain text it is not possible to see if it is actually opened or read. But what you can do is insert tracking URLs at the appropriate points, such as product offers or special articles, and get comparative figures for which items are being read.

AT YOUR WEB SITE

#12. The Problem Of Permanent URLs

Web sites are continually evolving and changing.

You may want to rename a page to make it more consistent and logical but there’s a huge problem. You have given out the URL in an ebook, or a directory submission, or an article or wherever. There’s no way you can undo this.

The solution ?

Never provide the actual URL, just a tracking URL. You can then just edit the link at the tracking centre whenever a page is moved or renamed.

The external links, in your ebook for example, stay the same but they will redirect to your new page.

#13. What Are Your Visitors Doing ?

You have text links all over your site, links to your other pages and links to recommended sites.

Where are your visitors clicking ?

Where are they leaving your site, why, how can you stop them ?

Which graphic do they click on the most ?

Do they click on the text link more than the graphic link?

Your log files may tell you at best which are the most popular pages at your site but it is vital to know how your visitors move through your site and what is tempting them.

Use tracking URLs to replace actual links wherever you need to monitor click activity.

#14. Sell Website Advertising Space

You can offer tracking reports to your advertisers in the same way as for ezine publishers (above).

#15. Stop Piracy

If you have invested man-months of time setting up a vital resource site involving a directory of links it’s very easy for a pirate to simply copy your page and provide useful content for his own site.

If you use tracking URLs for those directory links you can detect this copy - because the ad tracking program will record the referring URL.

At the same time of course you can measure the popularity of the directory links.

USING PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES

#16. Better Click Activity Reporting

Pay per click search engines will report to you click activity on your URL. Engines vary in the frequency and format of the reporting so you can use tracking URLs instead to obtain better information.

#17. Prevent Fraudulent Activity

You can compare your figures with the engine’s and should query any large discrepancy.

If click activity is unusually high you may have a competitor clicking on just to incur costs against you. You may be able to detect this by comparing the figures for unique hits and actual hits (several hits per visitor).

OFFLINE MARKETING

#18. Check How Successful

If you have ever wondered whether it was worth advertising off line because of the supposed impossibility of measuring the response then ad tracking URLs will answer that problem. Just include them in your ads in

- newspapers
- magazines
- flyers
- billboards
- press releases
- shop notice boards
- and so on

#19. Use The Time Reports

The date and time when clicks are made will allow you to check the progress of your ads, for example

- has your newspaper ad been submitted yet ?
- has your billboard notice been removed ?
- how long does a magazine ad stay around ?

For a long running ad you can study the response and switch the link midstream if necessary to an improved web page.

EBOOKS

#20. Do Free Books Work ?

The main purpose of a free ebook is to get the reader back to your site. But how successful is it proving ?

Put tracking URLs in the book and you will find out.

#21. Maintain Control After Download

Once your ebook is downloaded it would appear that you no longer have any control over it. Not so. You can redirect the reader to other pages of your site by changing the tracking Url links.

OTHER WAYS

#22. Become An Ad Tracking Affiliate

Since ad tracking programs are high demand marketing tools you can profit by joining their affiliate program (if they have one).

Owning the product that you promote always gives that extra advantage e.g you can give an example of how you use it or a personal testimonial as to how it has benefited you.

#23. Privacy

You may want to post an URL somewhere and - for reasons of your own - not let it reveal your website. You can do this with an ad tracking program where the supplier domain name is used in the tracking URL.

About the author:
For more details about the above tips and yet more ways to use an ad tracker see Harvey’s free ebook Ad Tracking SuperTips

http://www.ad-tracking.com/adbook.html

Publishers can reproduce this article and change the URL to point to their own rebranded version.

Circulated by Article Emporium

Fed up with eBay?

May 15th, 2007

by: Richard Grady

For many people, their first experience of working online involves selling products on eBay. This was how I got started back in 1998 and I know countless other people that have done the same.

However, it is important to remember that eBay is not the ‘be all and end all’ - there is a much bigger online world out there. My reason for mentioning this is that I have spoken to three people this week who each make a decent full or part-time income on eBay but who are fed up with it and looking to move in other directions.

Having sold on eBay myself, I can understand why sellers do get tired/bored/frustrated with the auction site - it is highly competitive and it takes an incredible amount of hard work to succeed. In addition, it is normally the case that the more successful you become, the harder you have to work. Listing auctions, handling customer enquiries, packing, shipping, sourcing/buying stock, keeping up with feedback, monitoring the competition - selling on eBay is a tough job and it is no wonder that after working in this way for a few years, many people wish they were back in the land of the employed!!

Don’t get me wrong, there is good money to be made on eBay for anyone willing to put the effort in and many people enjoy trading on this huge auction site. But it isn’t for everyone.

Having spoken to numerous eBay sellers in the past, it seems to me that of the ones that don’t enjoy working on eBay, the particular task that they enjoy the least is the packing and shipping of products. Funnily enough, this is exactly the bit of trading that I grew to dislike too.

I (and the sellers I have spoken to) didn’t have a problem with creating sales descriptions, dealing with emails, collecting payment (naturally!) and the other administrative tasks involved in running an online business. But wrapping things up and taking them to the post office is something completely different and for me and many others that’s where it all started to fall apart :-)
As I said at the beginning of this article, if you are getting fed up of doing the eBay ‘thing’ or if you just don’t fancy the idea to start with, there is a wealth of alternative opportunities available online. My own solution was to get rid of the one aspect of eBay trading that I didn’t enjoy - the packing and shipping - and start to produce and sell digital products which could be delivered to the customer automatically. I still have to write sales pages and build websites, I still have to deal with emails etc but I don’t have to handle any physical products (neither do I have to deal with payment collection because that too can be handled automatically by software).

Of course my products are very relevant to eBay sellers and indeed, there are numerous individuals and companies out there that have made a fortune off the back of eBay without ever having sold a single product on the auction site. I am sure that there are numerous other problems that eBay users have that could be solved with a new piece of software or a particular service and if the idea takes off, there are 135 million registered users on eBay to market to!

eBay provides a wonderful opportunity for hundreds of thousands of people but it isn’t for everyone and if you find yourself frustrated/bored with the same old routine everyday, start to look for something outside of the eBay world.

About the author:

Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which is published every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim your free gifts), visit: http://www.thetraderonline.com/newsletter.html

Ebay Secrets Revealed

May 10th, 2007

by: David B. Ledoux

It is rumored that the top affiliate at eBay made over $1 million dollars in January 2004. Who wouldn’t like to know his eBay secrets? In fact, it is estimated that the top 10 eBay affiliates all earn over $100,000 per month.

In a world where average men and women commute to jobs they hate, knowing eBay secrets to generating extra income is of major interest. If at least 75% of people hate waking up to an alarm clock and commuting to work, then learning to make extra income part-time from home with online auctions is a big deal.

Can you really make extra income learning eBay secrets? Over 25,000 people make their FULL TIME LIVING with online auctions like eBay, Google, Yahoo and more. A whisper number of part timers is over 250,000! Imagine, a quarter of a million people are putting extra income in their pockets with online auctions.

Raise your hand if you’d like to join the ranks of the thousands of smart people making extra income in their own home-based business thanks to online auctions!

About the author:
David Ledoux is a freelance writer for http://www.best-online-auction-links.comand http://www.free-palm-programs.com