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.

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.

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.

I have books listed on Amazon! Not books that I wrote, but books that I own the resell rights to. So far, it’s only a few of them, but that’s going to change quickly.

Want to know how I did it? I discovered Kindle, the mobile reader that Amazon has been marketing. I don’t own one myself yet, but I am listing books for others to buy and download from Amazon. Then Amazon will pay me.

Pretty nifty! And now I’m diversified.

I learned about this process because I’m on James Jones’ mailing list, and he sent me a video about how he’s making recurring income from Amazon, a video you can watch by clicking here. (James is a very creative and successful eBay seller.)

The program is called Kindle Profits Exposed, and I give it my highest recommendation. It’s from a woman named Rebecca Cooper, and she really knows her stuff. The package includes a clearly-written manual and 6 excellent videos, plus she’s included another book about listing with Mobi (which I haven’t even looked at yet).

So, I read the book, watched the videos, and started listing books! Once you get this information, you’ll be amazed at how simple Rebecca’s made the whole process. I really don’t think I could have figured it out very easily from Amazon’s own information; in fact, I tried navigating their information for a question I had and ended up frustrated.

I’ve talked before about all the books stored on my hard drive, many that I sell on eBay. However, I also have a goodly number of really good products that explicitly prohibit selling on auction sites. Now I’ve found a way to sell them without the need to put up hundreds of sales pages and trying to figure out how to drive traffic to them. Amazon’s traffic, after all, is mind boggling.

Adding Kindle listings to your business plan makes good sense, and now is a great time to do it. The holidays are right around the corner, and Kindles are going to be on a lot of folks’ gift lists. And it doesn’t hurt that Oprah recently announced Kindle is her new favorite thing!

Take a look at James’ video, look over the sales page, and see what you think. If you’re like me and just haven’t happened on that extra thing to add to your business, I think you’ll like this.

Stay well.