The Wholesale Forums

[Dave Berriman]

Watch eBay Sales Sky Rocket With These Tested and Proven Marketing Tips

How to Get Free Advertising

I probably don’t have to tell you that the internet is full of advertising. It comes in many forms, from websites that advertise other websites, to text-box ads on the sides of pages, to spyware, spam, blogs, bookmarking tools, & auto-surfing… There are almost too many ways to get visitors to your website or blog now, because creative entrepreneurs are figuring out new ways to do it daily. This industry has grown so large in fact that there are even many FREE ways to get traffic to your eBay auction. Legitimate traffic for free… and plenty of it, too. This represents an awesome opportunity for new business owners without a huge advertising budget.

Blogging

These great tools act as duplicate websites that are extremely easy and free to set up, and can generate traffic very quickly. All you need is some content, not even very good content, and you’ve got a great “Second site” for the search engine to follow your links to and from. Ever since Google bought Blogger.com, Googlebot (a search engine robot) has paid a lot of attention to what’s happening in “the Blogosphere.” Search engines still love to spider Blog content more often than other types of websites, since blogs were invented to be easy for search engine spiders to traverse in the first place. Search engine spiders crawl the internet to decide how to list search engine results. An important point to know if you haven’t paid much attention to blogs. A unique feature of even the free blogs like Blogger is that you can set them up to automatically “ping” certain Search Engines or even social bookmarking sites to request that the spider comes out for another visit every time new content is added. Here is the address to Blogger and a couple of other free blog web sites. • Blogger - http://www.blogger.com/home • Free Advertising Blog - http://free-advertising-blog.com/index.php • Squidoo - http://www.squidoo.com/ukbusinessblogging Of course, you wouldn’t want to miss out on posting blogs directly to people interested in making eBay purchases. eBay runs their own blog web site at http://blogs.ebay.co.uk/ An effective way to drive traffic to your auction or classified ad is by encouraging readers of your blog to ask questions. You respond by answering other people’s questions that can be solved with your products.

Other People’s Blogs

Don’t just depend on your own blogs to create traffic to your auction site. Respond to other peoples blogs also. Add comments on other people’s blogs with a link to your auction. Finding blogs that are on a topic about your goods is as easy as going to: • Blogger’s search: http://search.blogger.com • Technorati: http://technorati.com or • Google’s whole web Blog Search at: http://blogsearch.google.com. Once you’ve found a blog that is on your topic, I recommend bookmarking it and the others you find into the same folder so you can watch them from time to time. Directory Submitter

This is the perfect solution for sending your auction and classified ad web sites to a multitude of preconfigured online directories with an easy and fast process. Directory submitter comes with more than 2000 directories to send to. What does this mean? • You'll increase your site popularity. • You'll receive more traffic by having a better position in search engines. • You'll stop wasting time manually submitting. • You won't have to search for themed websites. A quality directory list is already provided. • Your site will be free of reciprocal links. The directories included in the software require NO backlinks to them. • You'll cut down the number of directory rejections. • You don't have to upload anything to your website. Everything is done from your desktop. • You can submit all your sites by using multiple profiles. • It will be a breeze for you to use the software. All there is to it is: 1. Create a profile (common data you usually have to repeatedly type by hand: your site address, link title, description, etc). This is a one time process. 2. Select the directory you want to submit to from the list along with a category/subcategory for your site. Directory Submitter will fill all the other details. 3. Submit You can download it free at: http://directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com/

AdWord and eCoupons

AdWord is the name that Google gives to their pay per click program (PPC). If you have used a search engine much at all you have probably seen the “sponsored links” that appear at the top of the results or along the side. By far, Google’s AdWord program is the most popular PPC program on the internet although there are several other versions. This is such an important marketing tool that more details about it will come in a lesson in the near future. It is a very simple advertising program to use. You create a small text ad that includes a link to your eBay auction. You also enter keywords that people are using to search. These keywords are very important. They trigger when Google will display your sponsored link. People entering the key words will find your short advertisement displayed at the top of their search results. You pay a set amount for the ad only when someone follows it to your auction. Hence, the term “pay per click”. Better yet, there are often free ecoupons available that you can redeem for a free AdWords campaign. Simply type “Google AdWords Coupons UK” into the Google search engine to find them. People searching Google for antique beer bottles see sponsored links that look like this. About those keywords. Try using the same keywords that worked best for your classified ads and as titles for your auctions. Remember that you studied other people’s auctions for effective titles that can now be used as your keywords. You can start an AdWord campaign at this wed address: http://adwords.google.co.uk/select/Login There are six simple steps to setting up an AdWord campaign. 1. Enter the URL to your auction web page 2. Write the ad a. Headline (maximum of 25 characters) b. Line 1 describing your goods (max. of 35 characters) c. Line 2 describing your goods (max. of 35 characters) 3. Enter your keywords 4. Select your currency 5. Select your monthly budget 6. Submit billing information It is that easy and in about one hour your AdWord campaign will begin running. It will quickly send thousands of visitors to your auction. Once set in action the ad campaign will automatically run until your ecoupon budget is gone. Yahoo and MSN Live offer very similar search engine advertising under different names. These are the 2nd and 3rd most popular search engines after Google. You can also find free coupons to advertise on these two highly popular search engines. Sign up for an account at these web sites. • Yahoo Search Engine Marketing: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/en_GB/ • Microsoft Ad Center: http://advertising.microsoft.com/uk/microsoft-adcenter

Article Marketing

Article marketing is one of the most effective types of marketing that one can do – it is also one of the least expensive ways to market a business. In fact, it can even be free, costing you nothing more than your time. Writing short articles about your goods can be a great way to capture peoples’ interest and link them to your auction sites. There are many benefits to article marketing. Because articles become viral, your message literally travels far and wide, increasing traffic to your auction site. Think of viral in this sense as a message that is so compelling that readers forward it to family, friends, colleagues, post it to forums, and otherwise spread the word far and wide. Here is a short formula for writing and submitting articles. As always, the keywords are critical for the search engines to find your articles. 1. Use three or fewer key words or short phrases per article. Include the most important word or phrase in the title. Keywords should be used again within the first 90 characters of the first paragraph. Also, include them in headers and sprinkled throughout to the body of the article. 2. Keep the articles short in length. Between 300 and 600 words has proven the most effective. You want to give readers enough information to bring them to your eBay website but not so much they think there is no additional value visiting your site. 3. Key words should be repeated so they make up between 2% -5% of the article. The important key here is to repeat the words often enough that search engines easily find them without making the article sound repetitive. Anything above 5% search engines will ignore as blatant advertising. Tip: Think about which search engine you are using when looking for coupons. Use Google to search for Google coupons, Yahoo to search for Yahoo coupons, etc.

4. Include a short “About the Author” section to build your credibility as an expert. 5. Suggest the reader send the article to a friend. 6. Be sure to include at least one link to the specific webpage you want visited. This is often done in the About the Author paragraph. It should read something like: Readers will find more valuable information about this subject at http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/myauction. Some of your other articles should be on your auction web page along with your goods. 7. Below are links to websites that publish widely read articles. They will publish your articles free. These also allow you to use other people’s articles on your website free. • www.contentdesk.com • www.ezinearticles.com • http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/submit.asp • www.goarticles.com • www.ideamarketers.com These short articles drive people to your auction webpage where they find in-depth articles and product information. Remember, people are looking for the solutions that your products provide. All of these articles put those solutions in front of potential customers. When you make a forum posting don’t forget to mention articles that you have written on related subjects and include a link to the article on your auction site. This way you begin tying all of your marketing efforts together.

PodCasting

There are free places online for people to download MP3s about any subject. Naturally, you can also upload to them for free. Many people are audio-centric and prefer to learn by listening on their iPods, usually so they can multitask or not be bored during a commute. Giving them free content is an excellent way for your name and relationship to their favorite subject matter to be presented. Much the way an article works, effective PodCasting depends on your content being interesting enough for them to want to download it, but at the same time, you must include your sales message and of course end it with a “Call to Action” that motivates the listener into following up in some way such as visiting your eBay website. If your content is interesting enough, fans will pass them around to each other by word of mouth and drive more traffic to your auctions. Remember they are listening to this but not on the internet. You need a strong call to action that they will think about later when they are on the internet. Still, of much of this is about Brand Recognition. If you are marketing solely by advertising through PPC and articles, then the fact of the matter is that you won’t be reaching a good portion of people out there that respond solely or much better to another form of contact. Whereas you might not have ever reached the “Generation Y” crowd using traditional methods at all, something like PodCasting will get your foot in the door, and your Brand Name will become known. From there, the Gen Y individuals will look for the rest of your work by themselves if you’ve done your job right. To get started in PodCasting, all you need is a Microphone on your computer and some free software that allows you to save & convert your voice into MP3 format. For software to create MP3 files there is nothing better than a free software called Audacity. It even comes in Mac and Linux flavors. You can download it at: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Simply take an article or some interesting copy you’ve written and read it into your computer’s microphone while running this software. Practice your speech first to work the bugs out. When finished, you simply need to name the file with some good keywords that are likely to get searched. Upload the recording to all the best free download sites. There are literally hundreds of PodCast Directories out there now, with the most popular one being http://www.podcastalley.com/ Don’t forget to offer your cast from your auction website, Squidoo, blogs, or forum postings as well. Multiple media formats containing your wisdom builds professionalism. Good Luck Dave

[hardwareheroes]

Interesting read again Dave - thanks!

Am interested in adwords when I set up my new website

[Inferno House]

Nice one Dave!

Copied & pasted to my word doc. incase i can't re-locate this topic - great stuff!

[Dave Berriman]

When I get a little time I will post up some more info on adwords, a lot of people seem to get adwords wrong but there are a few basic rules to follow and you should do fine.

[hardwareheroes]

Originally Posted by Dave Berriman

When I get a little time I will post up some more info on adwords, a lot of people seem to get adwords wrong but there are a few basic rules to follow and you should do fine.

That would be something I am keen to read.

[shipmania]

Originally Posted by Dave Berriman

When I get a little time I will post up some more info on adwords, a lot of people seem to get adwords wrong but there are a few basic rules to follow and you should do fine.

Looking forward to it.
Again a great read Dave

[roseo]

good read.
Thanks!

[GLS Games]

Nice post mate, a good read, alot of good marketing/promotional information there which is free and useful if you are willing to put the time in. i.e podcasts/blogs.

[cbeebies]

Very helpful info.

Nice job!

[Wizard]

Good info, thanks