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Guest Post by Thomas Westling

With many services and Web sites available today for consumers to sell products or services online, it can be challenging to figure out which one will work best for you. But regardless of where you decide to sell online, there are basic sales principles you can follow that will make a difference between achieving a profitable sale and having a prospective customer skip right past your product listing. Following these rules will help call attention to your listing and put your offering in the best possible light to prospective buyers.

1. Be honest. If your item is five years old, don’t call it brand new. Describe how long you’ve had it and what wear it has gotten. Otherwise you are wasting the potential buyer’s time and creating distrusting.

2. Do your research. When selling a product or service online, spend some time researching similar items for sale and how they are being advertised. This will help you decide which information to include in your listing, what features to highlight and what price to ask for your item.

3. You’ve gotta see it to believe it. People want a chance to see an item before offering to buy it, so include a high-quality photograph showing the item. If it’s a large object like furniture or a car, use more than one photo with multiple angles in your listing. Research by the advertising industry proves that photos catch more buyers’ eyes and increase sales.

4. Pay atention to speling and grammer. See what we mean? A successful listing is written and proofread carefully. Is all your spelling and grammar correct? Many sites allow you to preview your listing before posting, which could save you from losing a potential buyer.

5. Don’t forget this is a business deal. Respond to all customers promptly and politely. Answer all emails with a greeting and closing, full sentences and your name. Be clear and complete in your descriptions of the product, price and delivery options. If you meet a buyer, be punctual and courteous, no matter how the negotiation goes. If you send your product to the buyer, be sure to package it securely to protect against damage and make sure it arrives to the buyer promptly. You are selling yourself just as much as you are selling your old things, so pay careful attention to how you deal with potential buyers.

Author Bio:
Westling is the founder of AmericanListed.com, a new online classifieds site presenting consumers and businesses with a more effective way to sell and buy products and services within their cities, towns, or even within the ultra-local confines of their neighborhoods. AmericanListed.com is the only free site offering a user and family-friendly online selling arena.

from Make Money Online

The advertising tax (née Amazon tax, affiliate tax, and Internet tax) issue is a threat to affiliate marketers across many states these days, but where did this legislative menace originate?

For the uninitiated, the advertising tax is essentially a plan to tax any Internet transactions from merchants who have affiliates in a given state.

The origins of the advertising tax were among the dubious achievements of disgraced former New York state governor, Eliot Spitzer, back in November 2007.

After an uproar, Spitzer backed down on the plan. But then he started working on it again just before the hooker scandal that bounced him from office.

I had hoped his departure from state government would take the plan to scapegoat affiliates with it.

But his successor, David Paterson, was interested in the plan, too.

And so, the wheels on this runaway train of bad legislation were back on, thanks to Governor Paterson, though his political life appears to be short lived, too.

Maybe the next Governor of New York can reverse this poorly conceived legislation, which has proven to worsen state budgets and deter business.

Video: Advertising Tax

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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from Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

Selling advertising deals is one of the most profitable ways to monetize your website. Some time ago I wrote an article titled How to Find Advertisers for Your Website, where I covered the pros and cons of using this method, what you need to have in place before getting started, how much you should charge and so on.

The most difficult part of the process, however, is to actually find the advertisers. I included some places where you can look for in that article, but I felt that it would be useful to have one post listing all the ways you can use to find advertisers for your website. That is what the list below is all about.

Leveraging Your Own Site

Your own website should be the first port when it comes to finding advertisers. Why? Because people who are familiar with your work will be more willing to discuss possible advertising deals.

1. Put an “Advertise” link on the menu bar

If you have a navigation menu bar, you could include an “Advertise” link there, making it point to a page where you describe the advertising options of your site. This link will help you in two different ways. First of all it will allow interested companies to quickly find the page where you display your advertising information. Secondly, it will also let all visitors know that you do accept advertising deals.

2. Use an “Advertise Here” banner as placeholder

If you have unsold ad spots, you could include an “Advertise Here” banner as a placeholder on one of them. This banner will act just like the “Advertise” link on the navigation menu, but it might be more effective because it will show potential advertisers exactly where their ads will be displayed. Just make sure to not use an “Advertise Here” placeholder on all of your unsold spots, as this would send a negative message to advertisers (i.e., no one is buying any ads on your site, so why should they?).

3. Write a post welcoming advertisers

If you have a blog, you could write a post inviting advertisers. This technique works pretty well because it allows you to elaborate your offer. On the post you’ll be able to explain what kind of audience your blog has, what kind of traffic it gets, what are the advertising options available and so on.

4. Email your list

Do you have an email list? Then send the same information that you posted on the blog to these subscribers. The only thing you should not include is the price. Why? Because if you don’t include it interested people will email you asking for that, and this will give you their email addresses and an invite for a conversation, where you’ll have better chances of convincing them.

5. Put a message at the bottom of blog posts

If you post often on your blog you could attach a message at the bottom of every post. Something like “Want to showcase your product to our audience? Then check our advertising options.” Obviously you should include a link to your “Advertise” page on that message. If you are using WordPress, you’ll just need to edit the single.php file to make this message appear on all your blog posts.

6. Put a message at the bottom of your feed

Similarly, you could also put a message at the bottom of your feed. This will make sure that both website visitors and RSS subscribers will see it. If you are using WordPress, you can create easily create a custom message to be displayed at the bottom of you feed with the RSS Footer plugin.

7. Examine who is leaving comments

It is a good idea to examine who is leaving comments on your blog. You are basically looking for people who work at companies that have relevant products to your audience. Once you identify someone who does (either by the link he will leave or by the domain on his email address), you’ll just need to contact him, asking if his company would be interested in becoming a sponsor. This technique works well because the person will already be a member of your community.

8. Examine who is linking to you

Apart from examining who is leaving comments on your blog you should also check the people linking to your blog posts. If you notice a link from a company blog, you could again contact the company asking if it would be interested in becoming a sponsor. If they liked your content enough to link to it, they will certainly consider an advertising deal.

9. Reply to all press releases and review requests

Once your website gets somewhat popular inside its niche you’ll certainly start receiving many press releases and review requests via the contact form. Instead of sending these to the trash bin, you should reply to all of them, stating that you found their product/service interesting, and that you believe they could benefit from advertising on your site because your audience would be a good match. Then give all the details about the advertising options, and wait to see if they are interested.

Exploring Ad Networks

If you can find companies that are already spending money on online advertising, your job will be halfway done. Advertising networks represent an excellent opportunity to do this.

10. BuySellAds.com

Just by visiting the homepage of this ad network you’ll be able to see a list of “Sample Advertisers.” Most of those are big online spenders. After that you can also check the publishers listed on the directory. Just click to visit the homepage of each site, and check what companies bought banners there. You’ll be able to find hundreds of potential sponsors.

11. AdBrite

On the navigation menu of this ad network you’ll find a link titled “Site Directory.” It is basically a list of all the websites that accept ads through the network. You’ll just need to browse through them, checking what companies are buying banners there. The interesting thing is that you can also filter the websites by niche, making sure you’ll only contact relevant companies.

12. ClickBank

ClickBank is not an ad network per se, but rather an affiliate marketing one. That being said, you could still signup as an affiliate and browse its marketplace looking for sponsors. Just avoid contacting the top selling products, because those already have hundreds of affiliate promoting them. Focus on the middle range of the marketplace.

13. SponsoredReviews.com

Once you signup as a “Blogger” on this ad network you’ll be able to browse its marketplace, which contains a list of companies who are willing to pay bloggers to review their products/services. Guess what? After that it will just be a matter of contacting them.

14. ReviewMe

This network works pretty much like the previous one. You’ll find fewer offers here, but it is still worth a look once in a while. Additionally, if you setup a low review price for your blog you’ll be contacted by interested companies on a regular basis.

Vising other sites in your niche

A very effective way to find advertisers for your website is to visit other sites in your niche, looking for companies advertising there already.

15. Contact the banner advertisers

First of all you’ll want to contact the advertisers who purchased banner spots. Usually these are companies who contacted the site owner directly, so they will be more open to discussing new advertising opportunities with you.

16. Contact the AdSense advertisers

If the site you are visiting uses Google AdSense, you could check the companies that are putting ads there and then contact them . Mention on your email that your saw the company ad on the XYZ site, and that you believe your site would be a good match for their products/services, too.

17. Contact the site owner

If your website is larger than the one you are visiting, you could also contact the site owner to see if he is not interested in purchasing one of your banner spots. This could help him to get more brand awareness and new readers. Secondly, you could also try to establish a partnership, where you refer advertisers to each other.

Using Google

Whenever you need to find something online, Google can help.

18. Search for relevant products and contact the organic results

Companies that sell products or services relevant to your audience will certainly consider the opportunity to advertise on your site. If that is the case, all you need to do is visit Google and start searching for these companies. If you have a site about baseball, for example, go to Google and search for “baseball bats”, “baseball gloves” and so on.

19. Search for relevant keywords and contact the AdWords advertisers

Apart from finding companies on the organic results you can also look for the ones already spending money on Google AdWords. These are the “Sponsored Links” that will appear on top and to the right of the organic search results. Notice that you don’t need to search for products here. Searching any keyword that is related to your niche should already trigger the sponsored links.

20. Search for websites thanking their sponsors/advertisers

Many websites publish periodic posts thanking their sponsors. You could use Google to find these posts, as they will come with a list of companies you can contact. For example, you could search for “thanks sponsors” on Google. Alternatively you can also filter the search to specific websites that are related to your site. If you have a tech blog, for example, you could search for “site:techcrunch.com sponsors”, which will give you a list of all the posts on TechCrunch.com that talk about sponsors.

Using Social Networks

Social networks are among the most popular websites on the Internet these days. As such, companies are starting to direct their advertising efforts there, and you could use that to find sponsors for your site.

21. Sponsored Tweets

Twitter created one of the fastest growing online platforms, and many companies started to leverage the “sponsored tweet” idea. They basically pay a certain amount of money for people willing to send a message talking about their products or services. Most of these companies require people to disclose the ads with hashtags. Two popular ones are #ad and #sponsored. If you search for those hashtags on Twitter, you’ll be able to find a huge list of sponsored messages. After that you’ll just need to contact the companies who sponsored them.

22. Facebook Ads

Facebook is the largest social network on the web, and they also have a self-serving ad platform that works similar to Google AdSense. As a result many companies are purchasing ads there, and you could try to find some that are related to your own niche. You just need to browse around the site (while logged in), and the ads should appear on the right sidebar. On some pages you’ll also find a link titled “More Ads,” which will send you to a page with a list of advertisers relevant to your profile.

Bonus Tip

This tip helped me find dozens of advertisers over the years. It is a really simple but very effective one. The tip is: create a folder on the bookmarks of your browser named “Potential Advertisers” or “Potential Sponsors.” After that you’ll just need to pay attention while browsing the web to companies and/or websites that have something related to your website and that could be interested in advertising there. Whenever you come across one, bookmark it. If you use the Internet a lot you’ll find that this bookmark folder will grow very quickly, and it will just be a matter of getting in touch with the companies listed there.

Do you know another way to find advertisers that is not listed above? Drop a comment and I’ll update the list. If you liked the article make sure to bookmark it on Delicious or retweet it.

from Daily Blog Tips

I am guilty of buying domains on a frequent basis, and never doing anything with 95% of them.

I’ve heard about various services that would enable me to monetize the majority of my domains that just sit parked or forwarded to another domain, but which is best?

The one option I looked over was CashParking from GoDaddy, but I don’t care for their payment structure.

They offered to let me to pay them $3.99/month to earn 60% of the advertising revenue on my parked domains or $9.99/month to earn 80% of the advertising revenue on my parked domains.

I am now trying out Google AdSense for Domains, but the results are modest so far.

One of my domains, badware.com, is pulling up ads for silverware and china, and nobody is clicking, as you might expect.

Come on, StopBadware – just make an offer already. You know stopbadware.org is inferior. And you’ve got your badwarebusters.org community – I’ll throw in badwarebuster.com.

But I digress.

Anyhow, don’t be like me and let domains sit around unused for years. Start testing different things with them, forward them or just stop renewing.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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from Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

If you enjoy making money online by promoting products or services, then the chances of you being in affiliate marketing are fairly high. You might have signed up as an affiliate with one or more online businesses, who then give you a specific affiliate ID. Many of the online businesses that are involved in affiliate marketing might have provided you with a simple marketing package like banner or text ads and your affiliate sales page link. The only thing you really need to do now is to use these great tools and drive traffic to your affiliate sales page.

This is the strategy almost all affiliate marketers follow, but there is a problem here. Though this is a good strategy, in order for you to make a decent amount of money, you will need to have thousands of people visiting your affiliate sales page before even one product/service is sold. That being the case, you can imagine how hard it can be to actually make a $10 commission. Even if you succeed in doing so, the amount of time and effort you would have spent in earning those $10 would be huge!

Not just this, there is another problem with earning these commissions too. If you look at the terms and conditions of your affiliate marketing program, maybe they don’t pay commissions till you have earned at least $30. That means another thousand or more visitors and then, you might just have a chance at looking at those $30.

But here is something you need to consider without getting discouraged. Internet marketing is an excellent way for you to make extra cash on the side, and it honestly does not need much of an investment.

Four Step Affiliate Marketing Process:

Instead of advertising your affiliate program directly, make use of this four step process.

1. Providing value-add: Before getting down to advertising, provide something valuable to your potential customers. The simplest ‘valuable’ thing that you can provide without much effort is free information. You can provide this free information in the form of a series of email courses, eBooks and so on.

2. Give when you get: Don’t give away your free information till you get the email addresses of your potential customers. It is vital to know the name and email address of all the prospective clients, so that you can move on to the other two steps in the affiliate marketing process.

3. Earn trust: The next step in this four step process is to earn the trust of people, due to the valuable information that you have provided.

Just as you would closely monitor information provided by someone who gives you good advice on managing money, time or effort; others will start trusting you, provided your information is trustworthy. Since you have the name and email addresses of the potential customers, you can send them occasional emails with valuable information. Remember, don’t spam their mailbox. Else, they may block you and you will lose sales.

4. The actual sale: If you have been providing the potential customers valuable information regularly, they will trust you enough to buy a product/service you recommend. The sale is easier, if you can somehow make them realize that what you are recommending is worth the amount they will be spending.

In affiliate marketing, try to sell products and services that have helped you personally. This way, it becomes easier for people to trust you and you can share your experiences with them too!

from Make Money Online

Download audio file (Frank_Roche.mp3)

Frank Roche, who is a writer, businessman and well known expert on HR matters, was a speaker at the first Audience Conference on Friday, November 6, 2009 in New York City.

He is the author of Know HR, co-owner of iFractal LCC with Sarah Chambers, and a regularly-featured speaker on HR matters. He presented at WorldatWork’s 2007 national conference on “HR Consulting or Corporate: Which is the Right Choice for You?” He was named One of the Top 25 HR Influencers in 2007 by HR World Magazine.

Get details on the Audience Conference at http://www.theaudienceconference.com/.

More Audience Conference audio available at http://geekcast.fm/archives/category/audience-conference/.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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from Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

I always keep an eye on the sales of websites and domain names, and it looks like the marketplace is heating up.

The first evidence comes from Flippa. Sometime ago a reader sent this question to the Q&A section: Where And How Can I Sell My Blog?. As you can see from that post, one of the places I recommended was Flippa. Some readers argued in the comment section that Flippa lacked big buyers, so that it was not suitable for selling big websites. I mentioned that this was not the case, and this week we got some hard proof.

The Retweet.com website was listed for sale there. The auction received 45 bids from several buyers, and most of the bids were over $100,000. The winner ended up using the “Buy It Now!” feature, paying $250,000 for the site. Not bad huh?

Another auction to keep an eye on is that of Sex.com. The most valuable domain on the web will be auctioned this coming Thursday, March 18. The starting bid will be $1 million. Interestingly enough if you want to attend the auction you must present a certified check for that amount, else you won’t be allowed in.

For those who remember well, the domain had already set a record when it was sold for $14 million in 2006. How come it is so valuable? Well, just consider that they never developed a real site there, and yet it was making over $15,000 per day in 2008.

I suspect the number of high profile deals will increase in 2010 and beyond, and the marketplace for smaller websites should become more active as well.

Time will tell!

from Daily Blog Tips

Guest Post by Stephen Phillips

You can easily make money using the internet. There are various useful methods which will help you to make reasonable money online. You can take online surveys, turn a blog in to a cash machine or sell other’s products (affiliate marketing) thus making huge commission. There are other methods as well but affiliate marketing is considered as one of the most trusted ways to make money from the internet.

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is all about selling the products online and getting commission on each such sale. If you are good in marketing, you will be able to make a lot of money from the affiliate marketing. You will need to setup a website, although you can use free blogs also. Three best things about Affiliate Marketing are:

1. You don’t need to have a product of your own.
2. You need not to worry about technical support and customer complaints. Product owner is only one responsible for that.
3. You need not to spend money to start. You can start it for free.

3 Steps of Affiliate Marketing

1. Product Selection
In order to succeed in the affiliate marketing and making money online, you will need to select the proper product. A product that suits your marketing style and at the same time is in demand will surely give you a great start. If you want a head start then you should select a product which you know a lot about. This will allow you to market it even more effectively.

2. Landing Page Creation
You will also need a high quality landing page with a good sales letter on display. Remember that the sales letter and the landing page play an important role to increase the number of conversions. You should also make sure that you are building a list from your landing page as well. You can offer things like free eBooks etc in return for subscription. This will help you build a wonderful list for the future prospects.

3. Online Marketing
You should ideally market your products on all the fronts. You should use the paid advertisement and at the same time you should also try out the free methods. Some of the free methods are more beneficial than the paid advertisement. For example, you can create a product page on all the front runners in the social networks. This will help you to market your product directly and without any cost. It will also help you to develop brand recognition among various sectors of online society.

It is easy to make money online especially from the affiliate marketing but for this you will need two things i.e. hard work and smart work. It is a hard truth that most of the affiliate marketer fails because they don’t work in right direction. While hard work plays a role, the smart work enables you to take the lead. Smart work will save you a lot of time and effort and will also make sure that you are getting the maximum from your resources.

About Author:
Stephen Phillips is an experienced affiliate marketer. Read how he turned from a struggling affiliate to making 5 figure monthly income at his blog, Affiliate Marketing Masters. Here you can also read his personal review of Maverick Money Makers.

from Make Money Online