6-Money Makers

		E-Bay and Auctions:   Making money with online auctions: There are a few sites you might want to check out if you are really  interested in selling on auctions.             http://www.ebay.com             http://www.amazon.com              http://www.yahoo.com/auctions   http://www.ubid.com   If you are familiar with E-bay then you know that this is the biggest  "garage sale" going and from all user feedback, the best. You can  go on as a BUYER  and find products or items to buy and either  buy them right out or put in your BID if it is an auction. Or even  better, go in as a SELLER and sell items or products either directly  or through the auctions.    START HERE:   http://www.ebay.com   You will need to register and get a User Name and Password (be sure to mark these down because you will be using them a lot).  It is easy. there is a registration form you  just fill in your name and the information requested.  Be sure to  have your USER NAME and PASSWORD ready. If you have a  website and it corresponds with what you are selling then be sure  to use that because that gets you FREE advertsing.   If you don't have a WEBSITE  -  GET ONE!!!  If you plan to make money then you need one.                                       http://www.websitestepbystep.com                                      Click on FREE WEBSITE BANNER    Fill in all the information requested.  Read and if you agree with  their policy then "ACCEPT" it.  They will send you an e-mail  welcoming you as a Ebay customer.  You are now registered to  sell or buy on Ebay.   Do you have your products or services ready to sell?  Do you have an unlimited supply or do you need to find more?  Here are a few places you might want to look.  Garage sales, Thrift shops, Estate sales, and wholesale clubs.   (use Clickclub)   OK, all set, here we go: E-bay has tutorials on how to do anything and everything you want.  These are easy to follow and are excellent programs.  Go here and get yourself educated so that you know all the in's and out's and how to save yourself time and money.  Find out what it costs to put in pictures and how to price your items.  You don't want to price your items and then find out that the costs on E-bay is more than you got for your product.  That's no fun!!  After all, you are there to MAKE MONEY.   Good Luck! and Good Fortune!   Be sure to come back to Website Step by Step for the next STEP.

		E-Commerce: E-Commerce is a blanket term to cover any business transaction made electronically.  For the average person, this means buying or selling over the internet.  A much wider application includes business to business buying and selling, much of it in a specialized or wholesale level, but here we are only concerned with the retail side, or business-to-business consumer commerce. In E-Commerce there are usually three or four parties involved in a transaction;  the seller or website, who offers and promotes the product;  a supplier, (drop shipper, catalog sales outlet, bookstore, etc)  who do the actual picking, packing and shipping;  a merchant account, doing the financial processing of the transaction;  and the network servers, who channel all this information between the parties involved. On the surface, this seems a very complex chain of events but E-Commerce has progressed to the point where all this is now handled in seconds, world wide.  This speed and simplicity is what makes E-Commerce such a powerful force.  When you start selling on your website you have access to the whole world as potential customers.

		Merchant Accounts:   Merchant accounts, like Affiliate and/or Associate accounts, can be a good source of "Back-end income" to you, meaning that you can get paid for referrals to their services. In the "statement of agreement " you have with one of these, it will show the amount paid for these referrals, which can range from a few dollars to many dollars and sometimes hundreds of dollars. This is how it works:   On your site, you will have a link to the affiliate or service, and when a visitor to your site clicks on that link, they will be transferred to the affiliates site, with you being credited for the sale if they purchase. Cookies also come into play here - the visitor clicking through from your site may not BUY the service right away, but if they do purchase within the time span of your cookie, you get the credit and the dollars. If not, your cookie has crumbled.   The link you show for this can be a text link, a banner ad or an image with a link, depending on the service you are promoting. Also, you may just show their link or you may actively promote or recommend it.   HINT: Never put these links at the top of your pages because that causes your hard earned visitor to click away before even recognizing what YOUR SITE offers them. Keep links and banners at the bottom of your pages.   One downside with this type of link is that once your visitor has linked out of your site, they may not come back. You have to decide which is better for you, keeping your visitors in your site, or the chance of a referral fee.   To get this -                                   MERCHANT ACCOUNT COMPARISON

		Pay per clicks: This is a quite different way to increase your website visibility on the net. STEP 4 showed the importance of KEYWORDS and how they can influence the search engine ratings. STEP 6 pointed out the value of links for the same reason.  With Pay-for-clicks, you can actually pay to boost your site visibility. With Pay-per-click, when a search engine sends a visitor to your site, you pay the search engine a fee, called a BID,  It is a fairly complex subject, but essentially, the higher your bid, the higher up on the list of competitive sites you are; and so likely to get more click throughs, or traffic, to your site.  When shopping and comparing search engines, you can see what others are bidding and then decide on the level of your bid.  Bids per click may range from .01 cent or less per click, to multiple dollars per click.  Whatever price you bid, you pay that amount for every click through to your site, whether you make a sale or not. One nice feature is that you can set limits, on number of clicks per month, or dollar amount per month.  Suppose you set a monthly budget of $25, and a bid of ten cents.  After 250 click through, the search engine will stop sending visitors, until the next period starts.  You have tight control. Here is another way to do it. Add your website's URL to this one then you go on and work through their "remote control" area and earn points. As you earn your site is displayed. Easy way to get traffic but a little time consuming. http://www.Clickthru.com Keep in mind that most advertising has to be paid for, but here you have a chance to directly influence the amount of visits to your site, particularly when you are starting out, or are one of many fish in the big pond. Some search engines worth looking at for this are: http://www.overture.com http://www.Kanoodle.com Http://www.FindWhat.com http://www.7Search.com http://www.inktomi.com http://www.looksmart.com http://www.yahoo.com

		Affiliates and Associates: An affiliate (or associate) site is another websdite that you send or link your visitors to, with the goal of you earning a commission, if the visitor buys from the affiliate.  These are called "affiliate programs" and give you another opportunity to earn commissions.  "Conversion rate" the percentage of vistors who buy from the affiliate, versus how many click through to the site may be only one in one to two hundred.  This may seem low, but as in many other ares of net marketing, volume counts. Your success rate in the conversion rate game can be improved by having good, relevant products to link to, and being able to recommend them, preferably from your first hand knowledge.  When comparing potential affiliates, you will find tht the commission range from a few percent, to 50 to 60% of the sale price, but such numbers may not mean too much - is it better get one or two at 50% or 25 at 5%.  There are a numer of other important factors involved in choosing associates, beyond the scope of our discussion here, and if you are seriously thinking of this as a course to take, we strongly recommend you get "The Affiliates Handbook" by Rosalind Gardner.  SEE BANNER:

		E-Books:

		Writing for Your Websites: When you write for your website, as compared to most other writing needs, there are several major differences to keep in mind. Most visitors to your site will be casual browsers, so you must grab their attention, then hold it.   When a reader looks at a hard copy article, they are usually dedicated to reading it. On the web, however, it is easy to click out, so you must give them a reason not to.   Most writing is content based, but web writing needs to get the message out fast, short and sweet.   In the visitor's sub-conscious, there is always the question "what's in it for me?" You need to answer that as soon as possible, to hold them.   People reading hard copy articles do so for information or relaxation, but here you need them to do something - BUY, click to a catalog or list, or take some other action. Tell them. Make it easy to do. Reward their needs. Make them feel good about what they do.   The majority of web sales are made by women. Use this fact. Unless your site is specifically geared to men, consider that most of your visitors will be women. How can you best appeal to a women's mind? Use an emotional approach, stress benefits, rather than cold hard facts. Certain colors are more appealing to women than to men. Develop a mental picture of your customer, and write one-on-one to them.   Writing for the web is a complex and specialized subject. A full treatment is far beyond the scope of this brief article, which is only an introduction to the topic. To do this full justice, here are a few websites where you can get great deal more information and guidance.   We recommend: An excellent FREE e-book by the name of "Netwriting Masters Course" written by Ken Evoy, President of sitesell.com. This is a 50 page article and can be downloaded from: http://www.sitesell.com   Another good source for writing content +++ you will find at: http://www.jessett.com   Back to Top                          OR                                      BACK TO HOME OR