Category: Business, Investing & Finance

POV (Point-of-View) Marketing

There are many different types and ways to marketing something, and I’ve read many books on the subject, including “buzz” marketing. Two categories of marketing are advertising and PR. Advertising is expensive. Getting mentioned in a popular blog can be expensive (to hire good PR people) but it doesn’t have to be. Pitching news to a journalist to write about your story / information is usually where people get things wrong. I just came across this article on what the author calls POV marketing. It’s a pretty nice summary with examples of how you should pitch your stories to bloggers if you want to get a write up.

Why Your Marketing Campaign Sucks

 

How To Add SEO Keywords to a Website Without Cluttering it up

Adding keywords optimized for search engines is extremely important for getting good rankings in Google. But, what do you do when your website’s home page or any other page looks exactly the way you want it without many keywords or you prefer it to mainly contain photos with little text. Well, here’s a “white-hat” way of adding a bunch of text with keywords to your site which will get noticed by Google but not so much by your visitors.  Continue reading How To Add SEO Keywords to a Website Without Cluttering it up

eBay / eCommerce Selling Tips

Here are some tips I picked up while experimenting with selling physical goods online and on eBay.

  • Include value-added items for free
    For example, if you’re selling something that requires batteries and your competitors say “batteries not included”, sell yours with batteries INCLUDED. You can buy batteries two AAA Duracell batteries in bulk online for $0.28 each including shipping. That’s practically free and will save your customers the hassle of having to look for or buy batteries.
    Example 2,  if you’re selling kites, write a tips and tricks guide and save it in PDF format to email to your customers as a free digital download. This way you don’t have to waste paper and ink printing it and extra shipping costs due to a heavier weight.  Then, promote it as a free value-added item.
  • Offer a variety of combinations
    For example, if your’re selling batteries, don’t just sell one. Sell packs of 2, 4, 6, 10, 20, etc.  Of course, the bigger the set, the cheaper you sell for. And that’s OK. It never hurts to offer a wide variety of packages. Just don’t go crazy like they do in Asia where you they offer you so many options you can’t never make up your mind. Continue reading eBay / eCommerce Selling Tips

eBay Tricks for Success

Yesterday I got a call from eBay’s Seller Outreach department. They gave me some useful tips on improving my sales. Here they are:

  • Optimized Title 
    Put keywords closer to the beginning of your listing titles than at the end. e.g.
    BAD:  8GB RAM Quad Core Processor T420 Thinkpad Laptop by Lenovo
    GOOD: Lenovo T420 Thinkpad Laptop Quad Processor, 8GB RAM, other selling points
  • Offer FREE Shipping
    You can price an item $5.00 and charge $2.50 for shipping or you can price the item $7.50 with FREE shipping. By offering FREE shipping, eBay will automatically give you 5 stars for your shipping and handling rating category. Plus, people like “free”. Of course, free could just be for the cheapest shipping. You can charge extra for priority or overnight shipping.
  •  Custom Fields
    When creating a listing you can add many custom fields  like Condition: New, Material: Wood. Adding custom fields will help you get found.
  • Put Links To Your Website From Your “About Me” Page
    eBay doesn’t allow external links in product listings. But, you can put external links in your “About Me” page.
  • Offer Discounts
    Create a Facebook Fan page and link to it from your “About Me” page. In your product listings, tell customers they can get 10% off by going to your “About Me” page and “fanning” you. Then, they can notify you when that’s done so you can apply the discount before they pay.
  • Use 30-Day Good Till Canceled and Don’t Let Listings Expire
    Each listing shows the number sold. The larger this number, the higher the listing gets in search results. Don’t let listings expire so that this number continues to grow.
  • eBays Apps
    Browse eBay Apps and use some apps like the “Analytics” app to help you manage.
  • eBay Advanced Seller Guide
If you sell at least $3000 worth of items in a 12 month period and have an overall rating of no lower than 4.6, you will automatically get “Top Rated Seller” status which pushes your listings to the top of search results. This will obviously lead to increase visibility and potentially more sales.

Best Way To Label and Ship Your Packages

When shipping an item, there typically are 2 pieces of information you need:

  1. Return Address (usually your address)
  2. Recipient Address (your customer’s address)

If you’re selling on eBay, you can print an invoice including shipping labels for the return and recipient address. You could then cut the printout on the dotted line, insert the invoice into your package, and tape the return and recipient address on our package. I did this at first but the result was unprofessional and time-consuming. I could never cut my shipping labels into perfect rectangles and I could never apply transparent tape on the labels perfectly. In addition, some times the tape would not stick to certain types of plastic bags. This method also required that you wait in line at a post office which can be very time-consuming. I have since discovered a better, faster, and cheaper way to print and apply shipping labels. Continue reading Best Way To Label and Ship Your Packages

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