When I first started looking at getting into an online business, it was with every intention that my efforts would focus on cooking and recipes. After all, I am a trained chef, I’ve cooked in restaurants and owned my own catering business, and cooking seems to be the only place I seem to have any creativity.

I got myself off track after seeing how many cooking and recipe sites there are out there and deciding I needed to learn more about doing business on the web. You know how completely I got sucked into that pit!

Kindle actually has been the impetus for me to venture back into the food niche. I am told that cookbooks rank in the top 10 for downloads of Kindle books, so I’m spending some time with that.  I’ve edited a couple of public domain books, and now I’m writing one about meringues (no, not just the fluffy stuff you put on top of lemon pies - when you flavor the meringue and bake it crisp, it’s very good!) I’m hoping to have it offered for sale on Kindle in a week or so. And of course, it will be coming to a web site near you, as well, for the non-Kindle readers.

And article marketing will be a part of the marketing program.

I’ve been really lazy about doing article marketing - which is just plain stupid, given how effective it is to getting traffic to your site. I did a few articles about my Ireland site and actually saw some traffic generated, even though that’s another over-saturated niche. But then I got distracted (surprise!) by the newest shiny thing and didn’t follow through.

I do have roughly a bajillion articles/article packs sitting on my hard drive. Many of them are duplicates, I know, and it’s just plain annoying to have to go through a file simply titled “900 PLR Articles” to try to figure out what they’re about. But who do I have to blame? I am making myself spend an hour each day doing just that, though. Most of the articles are on internet marketing topics and most of those are awful, so I’m clearing up some space on my hard drive. And, the ones on other subjects are often pretty bad, too. I’m thinking that for most of the giveaway article packs, ‘you get what you pay for’ is especially true.

I have found a new offering, though, that I’m thinking is pretty impressive, especially for free. A fellow named Mike Steup, who seems to have found his niche in everything to do with articles, is offering a free daily set of 5 articles. He cautions that they are very rough and need editing/rewriting work, but they are a starting point. I just got my first set (they’re about aerobic exercise, and I’ll be able to use them on one of my sites, I think), and I am impressed. They will need some rewriting and editing, but only to get around the duplicate content thing and to maybe add some content (they run a bit over 400 words per article). They are good enough to use as is.

Of course the reason he’s giving these away is so he can tell you about his other products, but I’m thinking it’s well worth a little sales copy to have access to this quality. You should take a look by clicking here.

I’m back to my recipes. Have a great weekend - a great holiday weekend, if you’re here in the U.S.

The sale of information products on eBay continues to be slow, very very slow, and it’s not just for me. I don’t look at sellers of physical products, so I don’t know if it’s a universal slow-down because of the economy. I suspect that’s the case, tho; it’s hard to imagine there’s some universal “don’t buy ebooks from eBay” message out there!

I have been busy with other projects, so I haven’t been exactly on top of doing what I need to do for my eBay listings. Actually, I pared my listings down to just the products that have sold in the past and kept them just in the store. I really need to relist for auction, tweak the listings, and take more care of the categories I’m putting the listings into.

Problem is, it’s hard to get motivated when I see so many sellers doing all the right things and still only making a few sales per week, for most of them, not enough or barely enough to cover their fees.

I did note a few  weeks ago that I was looking into using classified ads, and there are some excellent guides out there about that. There are a lot of sellers using the ads to collect names for their lists by giving away free reports, presumably then being able to sell to that list later. You can also give away a report or sell it for just a few dollars, but have an upsell or two.

You need to start with good information and be prepared to do the follow-up, and that’s where I’m being lazy. Ideally, you start with a very good informative book, write a condensed version that you offer for a few dollars. You then collect the email information to add the buyer to your list and send upgrade offers. You only need to sell a few of the condensed versions to make up the $10 you’re spending with eBay for the ad, and you build your list.

Whatever happened to “make money easily from your computer without doing anything”? Were they lying to me?

I am working on a couple of books to add to Kindle. I believe the best format is html, because you can add clickable links for the table of contents (especially important for something like a cookbook), so there is some work involved. Some Kindle products are getting bad reviews because the seller just slaps up the PDF without any clickable links. Scrolling through pages and pages and pages on a Kindle is not a fun thing.

I am told the Internet Selling For Newbies free CD offer is almost gone, so if you’ve been thinking about taking advantage of the offer but haven’t acted yet, now is the time.

Back to work for me. Be well.

I was given a copy of Internet Selling For Newbies, a new program being offered by Mike Filsaime and Omar Martin, 2 of the “names” in online business (once in awhile there’s a great benefit to being on a bunch of internet marketing lists).

Martin and Filsaime have been involved with internet marketing for years, and they’ve been very successful. Their credentials in the field are impeccable. And that experience shows in their new product.

I just wish I’d had access to something like this when I was a beginner. I have a hard drive full of “how to” materials that don’t come close to being this clear and this comprehensive. And, even though this is geared toward beginner, I found good information that kind of pulled a few things together for me. And I’ve only just started a full reading. The modules having to do with social sites, media, traffic, and joint venturing promise to teach me a bunch!

Oh, and the price is unbelievable. I’ve seen courses offered for 10 times this much that don’t come close to this amount of information.

As you might have guessed, I’m giving this program a huge thumbs-up recommendation. You can read more about it at my Internet Selling For Newbies Review site.

So, I gave into my 12 year old inner self and spent an afternoon reporting digital delivery violations to eBay. What an incredible waste of time! There are a few vendors who are no longer listing, but the majority haven’t changed a single thing on their listings.

All was not completely wasted time, though. I did find some vendors who are actually selling ebooks on CD; I mean, they’re actually making sales. So I’m taking a closer look at their businesses and plan to emulate what they do.

I did see that there aren’t many offering free shipping. It’s more likely that they’re selling at auction with a beginning $.99, but charging full bore for shipping and handling ($2.95 to $3.95). Their offerings are also much more specifically listed to category, something I’ve not paid that much attention to.  And they don’t sell from stores, they auction their CDs.

I am still working through the eBay Classified Ad manual and will let you know. There have been a couple of personal life issues that got in the way of finishing that book and implementing the concepts. One of the advantages of working online from home is the ability to take that kind of time away.

I just realised that I’m talking about doing research on eBay without talking about the how. I’ve been doing this so long, I forget that what seems easy to me can be confusion to someone.

So here’s what I mean about checking on how other vendors are doing, and what they’re doing. Log into your eBay account, and then click on the “advanced search” spot next to the search box. You’ll see all kinds of ways to do searches; by seller and completed listings are the two I find most useful.

Just be careful. It’s easy to get lost looking at what’s working and not working - useful, for sure, but not to replace action (that was to remind me as much as you!).

All right, I’ll admit it. I’ve totally given in to that 12-year old inside of me. You know, the one that yells “It’s not fair, you can’t do that, I’m gonna TELL!” And I am telling.

My continued research shows this business of digital delivery for regular listings is widespread. In looking at one category - information products > how to guides > how to make money - with just 180 listings, there were almost 20 sellers offering digital delivery, and most of those with multiple listings.

Initially I only looked at the $.99 and below listings, but after accidentally opening a $9.99 item and finding “email delivery” just big and bold in the listing, I decided to check them all.

Yeah, I know, not exactly a productive use of time, except that in a way it is. If we can get eBay to enforce the digital delivery prohibition, then it should have a direct impact on my sales.

So, I started reporting the listings, a tedious process when you use the “report this item” link at the bottom of the individual listing. But today I did find that there’s a way to report multiple listings - limited to 10, but still - although it’s by item number, so you have copy the number from each item. But I have to open the listing to be sure it’s a digital delivery offer - some sellers have the language in some of their listings, not all of them.

This is the direct link to the reporting page:

http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ContactUs&wftype=2023&rcode=BN%25P10122&subject=Digitally%20Delivered%20Goods&bcrumb=%20Home%20%3E%20Help%20%3E%C2%A0Membership%20%26%20account%C2%A0%3E%C2%A0Rules%20%26%20policies%C2%A0%3E%C2%A0Digitally%20delivered%20goods&instruction=&expirationDate=

Or it can be found by going to the A-Z help index, to D, to downloadable media (policy), then to contact customer support at the bottom of that page. You are presented with a box in which to put the listing numbers of items that are non-compliant.

It is frustrating to think that eBay will just tell the offenders they can’t offer digital delivery other than for classified ads, because we certainly know they’re not doing any checking on listings to be sure policy is followed. And there are still the listings that offer “pick up” for the free shipping, and I don’t know that eBay will do anything about that kind of uncertain language.

I do encourage you to report offenders when you find them. If you sell information products through anything other than classified ads, then you know the kind of expense that entails, for supplies and postage, if you’re being honest and in compliance with eBay rules. When folks cheat, it takes a big bite out of your income.

Another thing I found in some of the listings was an exorbitant shipping price for folks who actually wanted the CD - $10 in a couple of cases. I guess eBay wouldn’t have noticed, since the actual listing itself says free shipping.

I also found someone selling 4 brand new fiction bestsellers (The Twilight Saga) on CD for $.99 and offering resale rights. I don’t think this person understands the concept of copyright, but I’m afraid they’re going to find out soon and in a very expensive way. I know there’s some confusion about public domain and the way the copyrighted material is delivered. This seller apparently thinks because they can put the books on CD, the copyright for the book itself is negated. Hope they have a good lawyer!

All of this nonsense did provide some good research on what is actually selling and what the good, compliant sellers are doing to maintain their businesses. This is research that should have been ongoing for me, but now has slapped me upside the head. This certainly doesn’t negate the need to diversify my business, but there are things I can do now to help the eBay part of my empire add financially.

Enough of the rant. I have eBay sellers to report! And a lot of work to do on my own listings.

Be well. Be successful.

I’ve mentioned in the last few posts how slow the ebook selling business seems to be on eBay, but I confess to not having really taken a close look to see what’s been happening - or rather not happening.

Well, I did yesterday. It ain’t pretty.

I bought a new book about using eBay classified ads to sell products and build a list. I’m not done with it, so I won’t review it here yet, but it did get me looking at eBay Pulse to see what information products are being sold. I searched completed listings and found ebooks that had been sold for pennies - with free shipping.

Excuse me. If you are complying with eBays rules prohibiting digital delivery, how can you be selling a CD and mailing it and making money from it all for a total sale of $.20? Hmmm, I don’t believe that can be done, do you?

Looking at the listings, I found several that flat out said they’d email the link for the book, lots that offered free shipping for “pick-up” and many that didn’t specify anything other than that you need Adobe to open and read the file.

Looks like eBay doesn’t really give a rat whether sellers are defying the digital delivery ban. This after ruining/sending away a number of vendors, causing a lot of worry and angst as the rest of us tried to figure out how we could change our businesses to be in compliance and still make a few cents.

I’m not sure what to do about this except to continue trying to find other ways to make money. I do think classified ads for products that can’t be sold for a few cents is one possibility, and I’ll be giving a review of the new book I bought in a few days.

In the meantime, I’ll be pulling a lot of my listings from my store and saving some pennies.

More later. Be well.

I’ve been working on other projects and shamefully ignoring this blog. I guess because I’ve named it eBay Diaries, I tend to overlook it when there’s so little going on at eBay, at least where my business is involved.

Sales are slow, probably understandable with the economy in the shape it is, although there have been spurts of business. I thought the ebooks about making money online might become more popular, but not so. I just took a quick look at completed listings using the “make money” search term, and there weren’t very many sales.

I confess that I’ve not been paying much attention to my eBay biz. As I mentioned last time, I’ve decided it’s a very good idea to try to develop other sources of income. So, I’m working at building small niche sites, adsense and Clickbank sites, with the hope that they’ll generate regular revenue streams, even though they may be small revenue streams. The key is to have a lot of sites, so I’m working at getting a lot of articles. I’m actually finally being forced to look at and organize the gajillion or so article packs I’ve accumulated, as well as all the private label rights books.

I am so far staying away from the internet marketing niche, so that eliminates a ton of the stuff I’ve accumulated, but I have found some useful information in my collections, especially for the natural healing site, and I’m finding that I have lots and lots of the same packs. I’m rewriting some and tossing a whole lot more.

Since my last post I’ve also had some small success with Kindle listings. I’ve only made a few dollars, but then I only have a few listings. I am rereading my Kindle Profits book; I do think Kindle is a good place to put some priority. Amazon is pushing the newest Kindle, and the owners are buying books. I am paying attention to getting the index done right; I’ve seen a few negative comments about messed up or non-existent indexes or tables of content. It takes a bit more effort, but this is a do-it-once and you’re done kind of deal, so worth it.

I’m going back to my article packs and sorting. It’s tedious but has to be done. As I mentioned above, there’s a lot of junk. But then when I get to a point of thinking all I have is junk, I find a jewel. So it goes.

Be well and just keep plugging away.

Well, they’ve been very quiet for me. Sales are waaay slow. I thought for a minute that the trend in the books I am selling was toward the “make money online” kind. But then I sold some cookbooks, so who knows? I also admit I’m not giving enough attention to my listings. Definitely need to look at listing titles and see if I can’t do a whole lot better. And, as is always the case, I need to continue adding new ebooks.

And, of course, I’m continuing to work on diversifying my online stuff. I have several new blogs that I hope will draw in some adsense revenue, and I’ll be looking to add affiliate products there.

I stumbled across some information about a new system for getting started online that looks quite interesting. It’s called The Guru Assassin, and it’s being released on Thursday. I was very tempted by it, but then I remembered my promise to myself not to buy anything new until I got my blog system completely in place. I did ask for a review copy, and I’m very impressed. (They vary with each marketer and product, but review copies are generally more of an outline or part of the program so a reviewer can get a sense of what the product does.)

Anyway, not to take too much of your time, The Guru Assassin looks to be a pretty near perfect vehicle for folks new to internet marketing to get started, and get started making money quickly. The developer of the course, Jonny Andrews, says the “gurus” have it all wrong, that they tend to just rehash and recycle old information, and don’t really help folks. Having purchased a number of these new shiny things, I can attest to the truth of that. Andrews approaches this whole thing differently - even backwards according to the guru common knowledge - and gets results. If you’re struggling with how you want to get started, take a look at The Guru Assassin. It’s pretty inexpensive for all that’s being offered, too.

I’m off to work on my other blogs, hopefully to be more productive that I’ve been in the last few days!

Be well.

I’ve been working on a new site, so I apologize for ignoring the Diaries. In my continuing quest for diversity, I’m going to be setting up more blogs. The idea is to find the small niches that aren’t being serviced very well on the web and filling that need. The trouble for me, though, is my complete and utter lack of imagination! I know there are folks who can look at a long-tail keyword and instantly see dollar signs. I get hung up with my research - and distracted by following a new trail for more information! Oh well, as with all things, I’m reassured that all it takes is practice.

My new blog is http://www.glutenfreelifeonline.com, started because my sister and niece have both been diagnosed with celiac sprue disease. I’m still working on the long-tail, underserved keyword thing. I am working on incorporating video, pictures, articles, and other blog posts into it. It’s built around the FirePow system I told you about last month. Check that post here.

One note about keyword research. There are tons of ebooks and tutorials out there about how to do it, what tools to use, how to find profitable markets, etc. But the one I’ve found to be an absolutely fabulous tool is MicroNiche Finder. It’s from a fellow named James Jones, and he really knows his stuff. This tool gathers together all the niche/traffic sources, gives you the traffic counts, the competing pages both for broad and exact search terms, and even has a red-yellow-green light feature to tell you whether the keyword looks profitable. Although I bought it some time ago, I’m just now finally using some of the features that go way beyond simple keyword research. I’ve gone on enough about this, but I did want to suggest you check it out. At the very least, watch the free videos; they’ve give you some good keyword hints (and James is fun to listen to).

So finally to eBay. If you’re signed up with them, you’ve probably received the email about their fee specials. If not, here it is: for the month of January, the fees for 1 and 3 day auctions are half off. They’ve also extended their free subtitle offer through March. You are also reminded that your payment method can no longer include accepting checks or money orders. If you ship books, music, DVDs & movies, or video games, be sure that your shipping charges are in line with what eBay now allows. This has been a bone of contention for buyers, and eBay has responded by setting maximum charges. They say if you violate their new guidelines, they’ll remove your listings.

Back to my research. Be well.

First, a warm and hearty wish for a good Holiday season to all of you.

We have lots of snow here, very unusual for our part of Oregon. We’re part way up a hill, with just enough elevation that we get more snow than the valley floor, and it’s very pretty. We haven’t been able to get out for several days, but we’re warm and have plenty of food, so life is good!

I wanted to share some words of wisdom from John Reese’s blog. In this post, he talks about a concept of “time units” for getting things done. It’s basically the concept that you look at the tasks involved in a project rather than the overall giant package that can be daunting. It’s not a new concept at all, but as usual, he pulls it all together in way that sticks.

http://tinyurl.com/736smu

This really resonated with me. I know, intellectually, that the only way to get anything done is to take that first step and just keep going at it. But I do find myself staring at the directory of all the ebooks in my “ebay to be listed” file, with my brain pumping away at “OMG, that’s too much. I can’t take all this on right now. Guess I’ll play an online game for awhile.” Or watch the food channel, or cruise my email…

If any of that sounds familiar, check out the post and read the excellent comments. I’ve bookmarked the page with a resolve to reread it when I get an OMG moment.

Wishing you all a great Holiday Season and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.