My husband and I went to Las Vegas for a few days, and all I brought back was a major cold. I think I’m well enough now that I can make some sense, but if I sound blurred, please understand it’s because I am!

Speaking of Las Vegas, did you know there is now an eBay slot machine? I found it in one of the downtown casinos, so of course I had to play. Guess what? It didn’t do anything but take my money. Surprise!

Maybe they need the marketing push and income, given this:

The AuctionBytes Newsletter of November 21 reported that “eBay Page Views Drop Off Dramatically in October.” According to the article, Nielsen Online data shows a disturbing 30% drop in page views this past October compared to the same time last year. You can view the article here, and see the charts, if you can stand to look at them.

I do know that my sales have been meager, as have the sales of the other sellers I watch. Certainly the dour economy has a lot to do with this, but I can’t help but wonder if it hasn’t been brought on some by the turmoil of all the changes at eBay. Logic tells me that in bad times folks are going to be looking for bargains – with eBay a logical place to begin. And even with gas prices falling, shopping online should still be more attractive than running around to the mall or several stores.

eBay has contacted store owners about promotions they’re implementing – coupon offers and a cash back partnership with Microsoft Live Search, for example. They’re also pushing store owners to use their email marketing tool. What I’d really like to see, though, is the kind of ad campaign they ran a while back that emphasized the fun and ease of using eBay.

With all that, we come back to diversifying our online businesses. I’ve found a couple of reports I thought you might find helpful, both gifts from one of my favorite subscriptions, Pirates Of The Public Domain. (Check out the site and free newsletter for a boggling amount of information about using public domain information to make money!)

Click on the images below to download your free pdf books.

Niche Hunter

Public Domain 6 Step Formula

With that I leave you for my couch and blankie and hot tea. Happy and profitable reading.

I signed up a few weeks ago for some training by a marketer who’s list I’ve been on awhile and who seemed a regular, up-and-up guy. He’s young and apparently has built himself quite an empire. His instruction so far is in line with all I’ve been learning. I joined the traning, hoping to get a little kick in the backside on my journey to creating my own product. No rocket science concepts, just straight-up do this, then do that, then do the next thing kind of information.

Apparently somewhere in the registration process I entered my real phone number, and today I had the pleasure of speaking with a young man in the employee of this empire. We had a nice chat, and I waited to see what it was I was going to be sold. Turns out it’s mentoring, a perfectly reasonable pitch as a continuation of the free information I was getting. I explained that I understand how valuable mentoring could be, but that I’m not ready to make a financial commitment right now.

That’s when the conversation went a little sideways. This nice young man asked if I knew the concept of OPM. Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do understand the concept of Other People’s Money. However, my understanding of it and his understanding of it don’t quite jibe. He seemed to be under the impression that using a credit card constituted using somebody else’s money.

Ummm, no it doesn’t. And I do hope he and the rest of that organization truly are just confused about the concept and not trying to con folks into feeling safe about using their credit cards/credit lines to pay for their mentoring.

You see, you can call your credit card company and ask them if, once you authorize that charge, they consider the obligation yours or theirs. Go ahead, ask. Just don’t tell them who you are or what your account is, because I’m sure they’ll have some pretty serious questions about your ability to understand the terms of your agreement with them.

Once you authorize a charge, the money is yours, as is the debt, the requirement that you pay it back with interest. This is no way constitutes using anybody’s money but your own. It’s the very basis of credit and borrowing, no matter how a sales person may try to change the wording to make it seem something it isn’t.

Now, I would have been okay with the fellow suggesting that if I had credit available, investing in myself and my education might be a good use of those funds. That’s fair and true. But trying to turn that expenditure into something that it clearly is not is distressing.

I will be canceling my participation in the training. Even if it was giving me new and great information, rather than reinforcing concepts I already know about, I just don’t want to have any association with a program that either doesn’t understand money (best case) or that is purposefully trying to fool me with misrepresentations.

Be well.

I had every intention of getting into some heavy-duty niche research today, finding something profitable away from the IM niche to start my blog empire diversity program. Current events – our election of a new President and some close U.S. Senate races – got in the way! I can’t seem to make myself ignore all the news today! And somehow I’ve squandered hours…

I started my quest for niche information at Google Trends, then moved to Yahoo Buzz. In a few days, when the political news calms down again – or I develop a little more self-discipline, I’ll go back there to do some serious research. The top stories are generally current news or celebrity silliness, but by digging a bit, you’ll find both sites very useful tools to see what information folks are actually looking for online. You then want to use your favorite keyword tool for more ideas and to get started on your quest for more information.

There are useful free keyword tools (i.e., wordtracker), but for a tool that does some real digging, I’m totally in love with Micro Niche Finder. It helps you dig deeply into a niche, shows not only the searches but also the competition. It even gives a green, yellow, or red light to show you whether it’s a good niche to get into. The developer has some great videos on just what this product can do. Click here to check things out. Oh, and there is an option with the tool to check google trends, which I’m doing my best to stay away from!

Be well.

I finished my first reading of Blogging To The Bank 3.0 and can recommend it to anyone who’s thought about getting into blogging for cash. This isn’t a wildly excited two-thumbs up product, but it does give a good grounding to get you on your way.

This system is all about selling affiliate products through your blog, something the author has been doing with good result for a number of years. He explains the hows and whys of research quite plainly, and it’s enough to get you started.

This third version in the Blogging To The Bank series was updated to include more information about generating traffic from social networking. As you probably know, that aspect of online marketing seems to change every hour or so, with new networks and new strategies. In that, I think he’s done a good job in explaining the concepts and pointing you in the right direction.

Benwell recommends using Google’s Blogger rather than Wordpress blogs and shows how to get everything set up clearly, with a number of screen shots, and including the steps you need to take to make the blog search engine friendly. He talks about putting ads on your site, how to find them, and how to get them placed. There are tips for search engine optimisation, and he spends a lot of time on getting traffic with traditional methods, as well as Web 2.0 tactics.

This is a good place to start if you’re just getting into money blogging, but there are a few things in the book for folks who have some knowledge or who have started their own blog empire. I have some new SEO things to do and a few new ideas about generating traffic to put to use.

I also picked up some nice bonuses: more reports, some blog templates, and a couple of tools that I think will be useful.

The book is priced at $37 on the sales page, but as I write this you can get $10 off that. You have to try to click away from the site, so that one of those “wait, don’t go” boxes pop up, where you’ll be offered the discount.

The $27 is reasonable, I think, for all that is included. It got me thinking about another avenue of income for that all important diversity I’ve talked about before, and I’m certain that if I use the plan, I’ll more than make up the cost of the book with new income. You should at least take a look.

View the sales page and see the bonuses here.

Be well.

I’ve certainly noticed a slow-down in my eBay business, so I decided to check on some of the other sellers I know generally do a pretty good business. Not so good for them, either. I only check on ebook sellers, so I’m not sure about folks who sell hard goods.

I kind of thought information products about getting started on internet selling might become more popular, but it isn’t so. I’ll just keep plugging away.

Being in the information product niche, I’m still fumbling around with how to do any substantive research on what folks are buying. Besides checking on the completed listings of folks I know are selling ebooks, I’ll often do an advanced search for completed listings for “ebay business” or “how to make money.” This also can add to the list of buyers I keep track of.

I’m continuing to add books to Kindle, but they’re taking an incredibly long time to get the listings added. Perhaps the book I recommended last time, Kindle Profits Exposed, sold so well and got so many people listing that we’ve gummed up the works.

I am experimenting with formatting for the Kindle listings. One format that’s accepted for uploading at the site is html. I use Nvu as my html editor and have found it to be very easy to insert a table of contents with only the chapter headings and sub-headings, as oppposed to having the page number included, which is pretty useless in the Kindle format. You need to designate the headings from the drop-down menu on the tool bar – heading 1, heading 2, etc., if you go that deep. Then simply insert your cursor above the beginning of your book, use the “insert” drop down and select table of contents. It’s pretty nifty, and I hope the Kindle formatting picks up the linkability. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a Kindle myself to check it. Maybe at Christmas!

I bought Rob Benwell’s Blogging To The Bank 3.0 today. It would be nice to find ways to monetize this site. I’m going through it tonight and will give you my thoughts tomorrow.

Be well.