I’ve been busy revamping my eBay ebook sales to comply with the ban on digital delivery. I finally got a system set up and have been getting sales. It appears that many - maybe most - of the sellers of ebooks haven’t made the transition to getting their books onto CD. Demand for the books is there, folks are buying and willing to pay a bit more plus postage. Now it’s a matter of getting my listing numbers up. So, I’m just busy, busy, busy!

I’ve been concerned about the quality of some of the information being put out there on the eBay changes. The eBay rules about links from anywhere on an eBay page - their classified ads, sales pages, about me pages, any page you have on eBay - are now crystal clear. As of July 1 you CANNOT include a link off of eBay to your web page, nor can you have an opt-in box for your newsletter. You can’t even show your web site URL information with no link. One fellow in a forum related how he’d had his listings pulled because the picture of the CD he was selling had his website address on it.

Be very clear. eBay wants no promotion of any business but eBay to appear on their site. Your business promotion to your customers will have to be through included material you send to your buyer.

So, if you see a product being promoted that promises secrets and tips for classified ads, approach with caution. If there’s any mention of placing a link or opt-in box or even paypal button, you know the writer didn’t do any homework. Actually, I’ve unsubscribed to a few lists because of these kinds of product offers. How could I possibly trust their information on other subjects? One promoter got quite snippy with me when I pointed out that the product she was promoting was clearly giving information that would get an eBay seller in trouble. After waiting through several issues of her newsletter to see a correction (which didn’t come) I unsubscribed. I think that’s incredibly irresponsible marketing.

There was another package being heavily promoted through teaser videos. In the first video, this guy bragged on how he was able to increase the price of a training package being offered on eBay by $20, simply because of the perceived added value of a physical product. No problem there. He lost me, however, when he also bragged that he was able to add a $6 handling fee. I think that’s going to get him into trouble with eBay, as one of the things they are harping on with the changes is to clamp down on folks overcharging on postage and handling. Again, very bad information to be promoting. On top of that, his course on how to do this was being sold for a whopping $1,500!

There have been a couple of new products offered to help in the transition to getting your products onto CDs, but the focus seems to be on using a packaging/mailing service.  If you’re selling a whoop-e-do package, I can see where you’d want the spiffy jewel case and label. And the cost of $1.75 for processing and additional postage charges would certainly be justified. But I’m not selling those, and I want the control of doing the mailing myself. So I was delighted when John Thornhill, through my Mentorship Monthly subscription, set out a very clear and beautifully put together package for producing my own professional-looking CD package. It includes a great header that I easily modified to include the SmilingPartners name, files and pages that take little editing, a place to put a bonus or two, and even a great upsell offer. This package alone is worth many times the $10 a month subscription.  

I spent some time yesterday reading blog posts from attendees of eBay’s gathering in Chicago. Not a pretty picture. There is a great deal of concern about the new feedback rules, especially the detailed seller rating system. eBay admits there’s some work to be done, but the attitude seemed to very much be “this is our sandbox, we make the rules.” Not quite to the point of telling sellers to take their toys and go home, but the presenters didn’t seem to be overly involved with the concerns. Search YouTube for eBay Live videos for some interesting moments.

I’m back to my listing chores. I have something like 50 items in my store and/or auctions, and my goal is to at least double that this week.

Be well - and look out for those eBay gurus who don’t know what they’re doing!

We listen to a lot of CSPN in our house. My husband is retired and feels it’s his patriotic duty to keep an eye on what our National Government is up to. Right now, drug company representatives are being asked about thier televison ads, and it isn’t pretty. Listening to these executives explain how they’re manipulating laws and regulations, skating up right next to unethical or illegal behavior, my dislike of them is intensifying to a level I didn’t know was there! Watching them squirm is fun, but disturbing. It appears to me they know very well they’re skating on thin ice and thought they could get away with it.

How does this relate to us?

I’m sure you’ve seen  products offered that made you feel a little uncomfortable. Systems that sound too good to be true or that carry information you know is borderline, if not plain wrong. I’m not necessarily talking about the products that advertise themselves as “black hat,” although I tend to discard those immediately. I don’t think a marketing method that’s built to convince me I’m going to “get away with something” is a good idea. It may be on the up and up, but I’ll never know because of the presentation.

However, I have seen offers for products that fly in the face of what I believe is ethical. Perhaps they’re even illegal. I don’t pretend to know all the relevant current computer/internet law, but I do know when something smells bad.

I have a friend who’s getting started in internet marketing who is always sending me stuff about how to bend the rules. I’ve tried to tell him that I am extremely not interested, but he continues. I think one of these days he’s going to find himself out of business or in court, probably both. And I don’t think the few dollars he’s making by skirting ethics and regulations will help him very much when he gets a judgment against him.

There are plenty of ways to make money on the internet, but they require work. Listen to the gurus who tell you about the years of effort it took for them to get to the level they enjoy today. Even their offers of helping you cut corners, so you don’t make their mistakes, don’t diminish the need for your attention and diligence in building your business.

I tend to be an optimistic person - except when it comes to breaking rules. I am absolutely convinced that if I try something shady, I am going to get caught. So, I can’t say that it’s a high sense of morality that keeps me on the straight and narrow, so much as it is fear. However it works for you, internalize the thought that taking the low road will offer you a path to trouble.

Enough of the preaching. I’m back to watching extremely high paid drug company executives get their come-uppance.

 Be well.

A common theme for me, as you know, is my struggle to quit trying to get things right long enough to just do the darn whatever-it-is. I remember sharing a quote that said in effect the perfectionist will tweak and worry and never get anywhere, while the successful person just goes for it and fixes stuff later if necessary.

Well, I got slapped up the side of my head with a reminder of that today when I went to eBay to see what one of my favorite sellers was doing about getting digital products online to sell.  Turns out, as of today, he has 188 items listed, all ebooks on CD, and he’s sold more than 50! So while I’ve been diddling, worrying about trying to put packages together, worried that buyers wouldn’t see value in buying just one book on a CD, he’s been making money. (Check out seller PlanetSMS with the advanced search option).

Once again, that quest for perfection bit me in the behind! I need Nike’s slogan “just do it” tattooed somewhere!

This also points up the fact that there just aren’t that many ebook sellers who have made the transition to physically delivered products. Now, John is a PowerSeller, and has great feedback, so I’m sure that plays a part in the number of sales he’s making. But more importantly, he took the new eBay regulations in stride, figured out how to make them work for him, and he’s off and running.

So, I’m going to pull myself together and get these things going. I only have three listings in my store, two of them compilation packages, which I’m going to pull. I finally realized that I have all the listing stuff saved and will just have to do a bit of tweaking to get them slapped into TurboLister and posted in my store and for auction.

What a dope I am! Almost two full months of steweing, considering, investigating, yadda yadda yadda. No more! I’m off to get those darn things up and selling for me.

 Stay well.

I downloaded a WordPress blog package the other day, for free, followed along with the tutorials, and after a few tries and a few communications with my webhosting tech folks (who are great!), I got it installed. I’m quite pleased with it, and when it’s ready for public consumption, I’ll share it.

All the installation and utilization information is posted on a blog, and as I was reading the posts, I was reminded of just how scary I found working with programs and HTML was when I first started working on the web. The thing is, no matter how great wysiwyg html editors are, you really need to buck up and learn at least the rudimentaries of coding. By that I mean, try to figure out how things work. You don’t have to know coding itself, but at least take a look at html versions of what you’re working on.

I use Nvu as my editor, and it has the capability of showing the code for what I’m doing by way of a button at the bottom of the working page. I would imagine that most editors have this. So, take a look at what’s going on and how things are structured. Highlight a part of what you’re working on and see where it fits in your page in the code view. You probably want to save your document, then “save as” document 2 so you can play around.

If you have a program you’ve downloaded, you most likely had to unzip it to start using it, as I did with the blog program. That means, no matter how badly I mess up the unzipped one, I still have the original to go back to. Simply delete the one you screwed up, unzip the original again, and start all over.

There are lots of free books out there that will tell you about html, but I found them intimidating. Much easier just to get in and muck around to see how stuff works. That may not suit your style, and the books may be very helpful for you. The point is just that you need to get over being afraid and let yourself learn. You might find the same great sense of satisfaction that I did in figuring out something and having it work!

I signed up to be a contributor to Reed Floren’s IM Giveaway last week. Unlike so many solicitations for giveaway events, he promised this one could work for someone who doesn’t have a huge list already. Don’t know if you’ve looked into these things, but most are a kind of catch-22. We’re told giveaways are a great way to grow a list - but when you go to sign up you’re told if you don’t get a bunch of sign-ups from your list, you’ll be booted from the giveaway. I have a tiny list, most of whom signed up from a cookbook giveaway, so I’m lucky if 1 or 2 are interested enough in internet marketing to participate.

Anyway, this looked like it could work for me, so I signed up on Monday, nearly two full weeks until the event opened. Plenty of time to put together a book and get all my ducks in a row (I’ll tell you about the ducks are in a minute).  Then the gods said “Hah!” My 18-year old nephew, who’s been using our second car, got distracted (by the two young women riding with him - don’t get me started!), misjudged a red light, and totalled the car. Luckily, no one had any serious injuries, but if you’ve been through this, you know how it takes over your life for a few days. We’re well insured with a company that provided great service - but still…

So, the last few days have been a scramble! These are the ducks: 1) write, edit, rewrite book (topic eBay’s new rules about digital delivery and how to work with them); 2) set up sign-up page (sign up for my newsletter so you can get the book); 3) set up autoresponder for confirmed, or double, opt-in; 4) figure out what the upsell is going to be (since my book’s about eBay, I decided to put together an all-eBay package); 5) build the download page; 6) put together the sales material for the ebook package (gather and resize the ecover images and then list all the books - all 45 of them); 7) package the books for download - 4 zipped packs of books so the download isn’t too burdensome;  8) upload; 9) test, test, and test some more to be sure everything works. Phewww!

Got it done last night, and the giveaway started this morning. 9 signups already!

Click here to take a look at the giveaway. I did a spot check on it and there seems to be a lot of new stuff, of course mixed in with the old. There’s a staggering 51 pages to look through, so I’m going back when I have a couple of free hours. It can be tedious - you’ll have to give up your name and email address to get the gifts - but it’s also a great resource for collecting good information and books to sell.

Now, about my new bookstore. I’ve been struggling to put a store together, mostly in taking the time to do all the picky things you need to do to get stuff online (listings, download/thank you pages, payment buttons, etc.), so when I got email from John Thornhill that his ebook store price was going to go up, I decided I’d go ahead and buy a store from someone I knew as reputable and successful. This, of course, the middle of dealing with insurance and trying to get my giveaway stuff done. I downloaded the store and played around with it a bit, but figured out that I’d best wait until this weekend to actually get it uploaded. But this time, the gods had good news for me. John just released his new store, and it’s amazing!

I don’t know how many books are on it, ’cause I haven’t looked all the way through it. It has a nice look, and I know there are quality books that should sell. But the really amazing thing is how spot-on dead-easy it is to install. You upload everything (takes awhile because of the tons of books), then you go to an admin panel that is astounding at what it includes and how easy it is to use. Click a button on the side panel, enter your information (paypal, google adsense, clickbank, an audio bookstore affiliation, and more) and everything’s done for you. In fact, I worked through all the steps while I was watching Grey’s Anatomy last night.

The store has to be in a root directory, not in a folder (www.yourdomain.com, not www.yourdomain.com/bookstore). I’m not ready to buy more hosting and more domain names, and I really didn’t want to mess with what I’ve already done at www.smilingpartners.com, so instead I went for a subdomain: www.ebooks.smilingpartners.com. My hosting account allows a bunch of subdomains, and since I’m not off putting up a bunch of niche/adsense sites, it just makes a lot of sense to use the subdomains. The EBook Market link on the side of www.smilingpartners.com, then goes to the subdomain.

 Go take a look at the bookstore. If you think it’s as great a deal as I do, look at the right column, in the members log-in box, and click to join up (it will take you to the ebook store sales page). Or you can go here to be taken directly. John’s raising the price on Tuesday, May 20, so before then it’s a terrific bargain! The increased price is actually more in keeping with the worth of this great product.

Be well, and have a great weekend!

Kind of a silly headline, but not really.

As you know if you’ve been reading for anytime at all, my biggest thing is research. To a fault, actually, because I’m often stuck in the research mode and forget to move onto the actual doing mode. However, this time I jumped directly into the doing before the research. What a dope!

It started when I picked up a public domain tool. Public domain, if you don’t know, is information available to be used without limitation because copyrights and patents have expired, whether because of time passed or no action taken by the rights holder. It’s a tremendous resource for anyone interested in information marketing. One very famous use of public domain material is that of the The Secret. Rhonda Byrne built a billion-dollar empire that started with a reworking of the 1910 book, The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles. So you can see the power of this.

Anyway, I got the tool and was looking around the Project Gutenberg site. Their mission is to make all the public domain material they can available on the web. It’s an amazing collection, and it’s growing daily. I was looking at the top 100 downloads and came across The Encyclopedia of Needlework, and I was stunned. It’s over 600 pages of information, and it has more than 800 illustrations to go with it. Wow! I decided that I needed this, and that I would organize it and sell it.

I downloaded everything, spent a few days on formatting and getting a table of contents with links, to avoid the need to scroll through all of that to get where you wanted in the book. It’s beautiful and I love it and nobody seems to want to buy it at eBay.

In my own defense, I did do a little research on eBay. There are physical copies of the book that do sell, but apparently the sales have more to do with buying an antique book than with getting the information. I did not do any research outside of eBay. I still haven’t, to tell the truth, but I’m thinking I won’t find a lot of demand for the product. Oh well…

One thing that was reaffirmed in doing this work was how much I love OpenOffice. It’s an alternative to Microsoft Word, and is a free program. I’d used it before, but it’s a huge program and I had to remove it from my old computer. Now that I don’t have a problem with disc space, I’m using it as my word program. But the really incredible thing is how easy it is to use to write books. A number of the features mimic those of a wysiwyg html editor: I can insert images and have them stay put, links are easy to add, and it’s just generally fun to use. The help section can be a little funny (a geek’s take on the problem doesn’t always match the way I’m searching for an answer, but so far I’ve been able to find what I need). It’s certainly no more difficult to work through than Microsoft. The crowning feature is that you can save your work to .pdf with a click of a button, and all your stuff stays where it’s supposed to stay (pictures, boxes, links, etc.).

Oh, and did I mention it’s free? Completely free! I’m using it instead of Word and haven’t found a single thing lacking, certainly not for my needs.

All right. Moral of the story is that you really do need to research your ideas to see if there’s anyone out there willing to pay money for what you want to share. And try Open Office.

Enough for today. Be well.

I’ve finally taken my email in hand and started unsubscribing from lists I find annoying or unhepful. I’m surprising myself at feeling a little sad at doing it, especially lists I’ve been on for awhile, but my inbox is simply getting unmanageable. And, no matter how hard I try to find it, so far that magic bit of information I need to make a gajillion dollars on the net has not presented itself. I’m beginning to believe the only way this whole business is going to work is through hard work and attention from me. Oh, well…

The obvious eliminations - marketers only offering the latest launch or package of books I’ve already accumulated through giveaways - wasn’t that hard. I kept track for a couple of weeks of all my email and whether there was any real help or information being offered. If it was only sales, I hit the unsubscribe. Today I also hit that button for just generally being annoyed at the tone.

For example, one marketer told me had a bunch of free stuff for me to download - and then nagged that he really did expect a donation for his time and trouble. Three times before I stopped reading! Hello??? Either give me the stuff or put together a sales package, but don’t whine at me that I should give you money for doing something I did not ask for.

Another list I’ve been on for quite awhile does offer some good information from time to time, but he almost as regularly berates his readers for not taking advantage of an offer or freebie, telling us how hard he’s working on our behalf. I do appreciate the hard work necessary to regularly put out a newsletter, but come on! What am I, twelve years old and in need of nagging? Don’t think so - and I don’t need a mother for this business.

If I have recieved more than one “watch out for my new stuff, I’m sending you an email soon about this next big thing” email, I leave the list. Does that really work? Do people anxiously check their email because they need to see the marketer’s next offering before anyone else? Do I need to hear three or four or five times that it’s coming soon? Not me.

There have been a few “I really need to raise some money” email lists I’ve left. I’m sorry for the circumstance, but I’m on the list because you’ve said you can teach me how to make and grow a business on the internet. When you tell me you can’t come up with a few hundred dollars to pay your rent or your hosting fees or whatever, you just told me you know about as much as I do, and you are not more successful than I am. How can I feel you’re able to give me any good information?

One thing that the gurus tell us is to pay attention to what other marketers are doing and to note both good and bad. These newsletters certainly are providing me with a good list of what not to do.

I’m trying to look at the positive side of things with the ebay changes, but it’s difficult.

 I actually wrote those words a week or so ago. I’d finally figured out how to get a CD burned properly (after a little fiddling on my new computer), and I had put together two packages of ebooks to set up for auction. I have one package of books about making money on eBay and one that’s a package of health and diet books. I decided to check on the auctions before finishing the post here, and found that both of them had sold!

Again, as I started this post, I checked my listings on eBay. One item, again the eBay make money package, has a bid, and so will be sold. The listings I have posted for auction don’t end until tomorrow evening, so I’m still hopeful that the others will sell.

Perhaps eBay isn’t done with my business, after all.

I do admit that I was depressed for some time. When eBay made their announcement about disallowing digital delivery products, my ebook business was starting to pick up, and I was feeling optimistic about getting into a net gain situation. I’m still not sure of the viability of building a powerseller rank with selling these books, but I’m looking for smaller steps. My goal now is to get back to being able to see that my fees will be paid! It does seem more doable today than it did a couple of weeks ago.

I think working on making good packages of related materials is a good way to go. And I need to start playing around with price. The two packages I have up now have a minimum bid of $1.97. A CD with 13 or 25 books on it should be worth more than that. We’ll see.

Putting the packages together is helping me finally sort through all the crud I’ve collected on my hard drive, to say nothing of the 5 or 6 or 7 copies of the same material. And I’m finding that I own quite a number of books that contain exactly the same material, but that have had the titles and graphics changed. Wouldn’t do much for my seller reputation to sell someone 5 seemingly different books that all contain the same content!

I’m also finally working on getting http://www.chefjudi.com into some shape. I slapped some pages up and didn’t do anything else for way too long. So far, there are pages that have video drawn from YouTube, some artwork relating to cooking and food, and an eBay-linked page of kitchenware auction offerings. I’m left with getting recipes, cookbooks for sale, and some pages about gluten-free cooking. Should keep me busy for a good while!

I think that’s it for tonight. Dinner needs to be dealt with - although after researching and writing about food for awhile, what I really want is to go out and have someone else do the cooking.

Be well. Be productive

Well, that was a total waste of my (and most of the other participants’) time. The fellow who was supposed to be answering questions didn’t show up until 9 minutes past the hour, and then he must have been overwhelmed with the questions, because it took a good long time after that to start seeing his responses - or non-responses, I should say.

 The beginning statement was that the policy is a done deal, so there’d be no further discussion of that. Most of the rest of the replies were restatements of what they have listed as policy - not really clear, but I’ve pretty much decided that I’m staying away from ads, at least until I see there are clear guidelines and some rational use for them. I just don’t see much of a service in a potential customer needing to email me to get information on the product, especially when I’m paying a fee for an ad that should include the necessary information. Oh well…

There were many questions about the sellers who are still listing their items for digital delivery, although I am seeing fewer and fewer of those. I don’t really want to be a narc, but if I’m forced to charge more for my product because of the cost of putting it on a CD and into a mail container, it just isn’t fair. I don’t plan to spend a great deal of time at it, but since doing research on how stuff is listed and how much it’s selling for is a part of what I see as good business practice, I am going to attempt to let eBay know about improper listings. This, though, has its own challenge, as eBay hasn’t changed the categories in reporting abuse.

It still seems kind of odd to me that they’d implement these policies waaaay before they’re ready to deal themselves with the changes. But sellers are supposed to suck it up and adapt in minutes.

Must be in a cranky mood. Sorry about the rant. I think it’s best that I go back to getting products ready to list for the weekend.

 Best to you.

I’ve been working on getting set up to start selling my ebooks on CDs and deciding what kinds of packages I can put together so there’s some good value. I just can’t see that it makes sense for someone to pay $.93 in postage to get just one ebook, although I do see there are listings for that. Of course, for higher priced products, it’s okay. But most of my sales were books in the $.99 to $1.99 category. I’ll try all sorts of combinations, of course. Since I’m producing the CDs myself, I can see what sells. Can you tell this is lots of thinking out loud?

There’s a great blog post I want to share with you today. It’s from Mike Enos, a platinum power seller, and he’s written an open letter to eBay about their policy changes, reminding them that it was the mom and pop sellers who really got eBay established. The link is below. Also, if you’re interested in doing anything on eBay, you really should subscribe to his newsletter.

http://208.69.123.136/eBaySellingSuccessSecretsVideoBlogNewsletter/?p=815#respond

eBay is holding a workshop in just a little while that is supposed to be about clarifying their new policies, and I’ll report back on what they have to say. Their initial notice that digitally delivered products were going to be discontinued suggested that we could use eBay ads to replace our listings. Problem is, no one, including eBay, seems to have a clue about their policies on those ads. Some sellers were able to successfully get their ads up and running, but many others had their ads denied or were told they were doing something against policies that were undefined! What a mess!

If you’ve tried to post a comment and were unsuccessful, please forgive me. With all this eBay stuff, I can’t get my head areound trying to figure out where I mucked up the programming. If you’d like to contact me, please email me at admin @ judimehrens.com (sorry about the spaces there, but I don’t need the spammer messages!).

I’m back to figuring out my stuff. I’ll let you know if eBay makes things any clearer. Be sure to read the Enos post.

 Stay well.