Ways To Use The Internet To Earn Residual Income

Urban legend is rife with tales of people becoming millionaires overnight by launching Internet ventures. Legend, of course, is almost always a convoluted mix of truth and lore. However, entrepreneurs with realistic expectations and tenacity may be able to earn residual income using the Internet.Residual income can be defined in two ways. Economists refer to residual income as money that is leftover after paying one's monthly bills. It's often referred to in a household budget as "mad money" or "extra money."
It may also be defined as money that is earned on a continual basis with little time invested. A person who earns residual income this way expends effort at the beginning of the venture. Money begins to trickle (or roll) in as the business begins to get off the ground. Eventually income will continue to flow with little or no ongoing effort to generate it.An example of this type of residual income is an actor who works on a commercial. The actor's contract may state that every time his commercial is played he receives payment. The actor may spend 10 hours working on the set. However, he may keep receiving payments for months or even years after filming the commercial. Every time his commercial airs, even decades later, he earns residual income for it.Most people who earn residual income through Internet ventures do not become millionaires. Some have, and it's possible to do so with an ingenious idea and good business sense. It is possible though to make a significant amount of money this way.Starting a full-fledged Internet business can be complicated. The average person may want to stay away from this. But even the average citizen can earn residual income using one or more of the following means:1. Internet auctions. Sites such as eBay have brought garage sales to a whole new level. Average people who initially turn to Internet auctions simply to lighten their attic loads become hooked on the earning potential. Anyone with an eye for a bargain or the unusual may find success with an Internet auction business.2. Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a broad term. It usually refers to receiving payment for driving website traffic from one's own website to someone else's. You provide a link (in the form of an ad or button) from your site to another. That website pays you a commission for each customer that clicks the link. The more affiliates you have, the more you can make.3. Blogging. This one takes a bit of practice and a rudimentary handle on basic grammar and spelling. Start a blog devoted to a particular niche or subject. Familiarize yourself with how to use keywords effectively to garner quality search engine rankings. A bit of work is required to keep your blog fresh and updated. However, you need don't need to do this daily. You may be able to get good rankings with as few as three to six updates per month. Next, sign up to host pay-per-click advertisers (i.e., Google AdSense.) Ads will be targeted to the subject of your blog (keywords). You get paid whenever a visitor clicks on the ads.These ideas can help you earn residual income and give you experience making money on the Internet. You can expand your virtual empire as you learn more and hone your expertise. You'll enjoy the extra cash and may even eventually amass those elusive millions after all.

Ways Of Making Money As An Affiliate.

Who is an affiliate?An affiliate is person who makes money either online or offline by selling or promoting other people or company product(s) or service(s). Joining affiliate program is one of the easiest ways of making money on the Internet especially for a new Internet user for it may take him months or years before developing his own product(s). It can also be additional revenue (multiple streams of income) for somebody who has his own product(s). As an affiliate, no research, no development, no transport and no customer care for all these will be taken care by the vendor or merchant of the product. Also, you have no restriction for you can join as many affiliate programs as possible.
What to note before joining an affiliate program?(a) How many people are using or will be interested in the product or service i.e. the more the people, the better the product.(b) Does the product or service for a group of people? If yes, are they thirsty? If you can be selling water for thirsty men in desert, they will surely appreciate it than giving cold water to Eskimos free of charge.(c) Can the product sell online or offline? This will guide in promoting the products.(d) The commission rate: the rate should be reasonable possibly more than 35 percent. The money should be paid monthly. (e) The sale page of the vendor should be convincing enough to make the visitors to buy.(f) Do people have alternative for the product or service? If yes, what makes your product special? Is it reduction in price? Does it have unique features? (g) Does the vendor put machinery in place to prevent theft of affiliate identity? This is very important for what will be your joy if you loose your money to online thieves.Ways to make money as an affiliate. Pay per click.This is a partnership with advertising companies that places their clients' adverts on your website. This will be paid for. Examples of pay per click sites are Google.com, Bidvertiser.com, etc. Pay per click is free to join. Pay per action. This is selling other people's products and be paid on commission. It is also called pay per sale i.e. no sale, no pay. You can put these products on your website for your visitors to buy or promote them through different methods. Be a referrer. An affiliate will be paid a percentage for referring visitors to their website or company i.e. if you follow my Google referral code to sign up for Adsense, I will be paid a percentage of your earning for referring you to participate in the Adsense. This is passive income for it requires little or no effort. Some companies only pay their referrers for a year while others for a lifetime for as much as the people they refer are still making money

In Your Part Time Making Extra Money Online

There are some really great ways to make some good money online and it isn’t just a dream. You will have to design a web page that will draw a steady and growing stream of highly targeted traffic. Once you have accomplished this goal it is now time to offer products and/or services to your avid consumers. They are paying close attention to your site and now they want more. The first challenge you will face will be converting your visitors into buyers. This is the focus no matter if they are buying a product directly from you or an affiliate product. People always visit sites and are looking for something free. To help persuade your visitors to consider buying anything you will have to make advertising like the content that attracted them to the site in the first place. Two of the best ways to turn your traffic to cash with out having to develop or promote a product of your own are attracting paid advertising and affiliate products. Attract paid advertising can be used with great success when your site is getting a lot of visitors interested in a specific topic. You will be able to sell ad space to businesses that have related products. The business will pay you a specified amount to be linked on your site. To make any real good money you would have to have many advertisers and many web pages. Many of the old advertising schemes don’t generate the high business they used to and so the fee is much smaller now than it was in the past. If you are not interested in having to search out advertisers that would possibly be interested in your market. Then go Google. Google’s AdSense program is a great market place. It evaluates the content on your site and serves ads it thinks will be of interest to your readers. When someone clicks on the ad Google gets a fee from the company and then pays you a portion of it. This is an easy hands free moneymaker. This will definitely give you some cash from your site traffic. Ad brokering companies offer similar services. Companies like Real Media and Burst Media are popular companies who offer these services. Make sure to look at the terms and conditions of any company because they all are different.
Promoting affiliate products is a fabulous way to make good money on line and very easy to set up. This is basically a no-risk partnership between you and the product producer. You will want to find a product that is related to what your site content is about. You will promote this product on your site and every time one of your visitors buys the product you will a percentage of the sale. When you sign up for the affiliate program you are issued a special affiliate URL that tracks the visitors you send to the company’s web page. If sales are generated from the people sent on your URL code then you get paid.

Web Art Sense Generating Traffic To Meet Business Needs!

Just having a website is not enough. It will only solve your purpose, if you have huge traffic falling on your website, knowing your services and opting for them. Web Art Sense is amongst very few modeled online marketing, website design and development companies that offer cutting edge marketing strategies to give a phenomenal addendum to your business. Our web based marketing solutions are ideally designed around your businesses. The prime focus is to get quality traffic to your ecommerce website and later transform them into sales lead.The online marketing strategists at Web Art Sense know how to maneuver and drive the quality traffic on to your business website. We design multifunctional marketing solutions for any type of business. Starting from online advertising to the popular online marketing campaigns, we do it the right way. The complete marketing specialist team works for the clients’ in order to get the job done effectively and rendering widespread reach to their businesses.
Web Art Sense as premier online marketing strategy developer offers low cost solutions for online branding and development of the product. The company implements popular online campaigns like AdSense, Adword, PPC, PPA etc. to increase the visibility of our client’s business activities over the Internet. Furthermore, as the part of our search engine optimization, we design effective blogs, describing your products and services to the online audience. Not only this, we post them on popular blog posting sites, as a means to keep the audience aware about your products and new launches. Web Art Sense also helps in boosting the business sales by offering affiliate marketing solutions too. We make sure that you get high scale online publicity, at affordable prices. It is because your business is our business!

9 Ways Social Media Can Expand Your Online Marketing

When every news report warns of global doom and gloom, the business owner’s first instinct is to cut all extraneous costs. You run your production team lean, run your sales force lean, and everything else goes into the deep freeze. Too many people see marketing as something irrelevant, as vague feel-good fluff that neither makes the product nor closes the sale. That’s crazy talk.When the sales pipeline is running dry, or at least no longer gushing, it’s marketing that fills that pipeline, and even in lean times, targeted efforts can keep your name out in the marketplace and create a conversation (and hey, maybe even hype). This shows you’re a thriving player, not one of many recessionary casualties, and prepares potential customers for the closing move your sales team will execute. We’ve come up with ideas for marketing yourself through the latest social media and the old-fashioned general Internet:
Social Media Optimization:1. Are you on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and other social media sites? If not (or if so, and you’re overwhelmed with all of it), you may want a Social Media Optimization (SMO) expert to put your message into the newest and fastest-growing Internet arena. Have her create a Facebook or LinkedIn group for your company and invite your users; every one of their friends will see that they are related to your company and there is just nothing better than that for word-of-mouth.2. Keep that SMO expert onboard to troll conversation on Twitter about your company and your industry, so she can send responses and begin threads. Use Google Alerts to be notified when terms relevant to your business are mentioned.3. Other social media your expert can monitor: Forum and blog commenting, LinkedIn and Yahoo Answers, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and GetSatisfaction.4. Launch video tutorials for your website. In addition post them to YouTube. Hire a personable, well-spoken provider to help you convert your script to a professional-looking online video using tools like Camtasia or Snapz.5. Get a blogger to maintain a company blog and to reach out to other blogs to keep your message in the conversation.6. Do you have a community forum on your website? When users post questions, are they getting an answer? Bring in a moderator for your community forum to make sure that when users take the time to post a comment, they get a response that will encourage them to come back.7. Hire a writer to create articles relevant to your industry and syndicate them to Squidoo, Business.com and EzineArticles.com.8. Get a writer with exceptional PowerPoint skills to prepare a presentation that is highly relevant to your industry, and post it on SlideShare.com.9. Recruit an analyst to prepare a few charts and data about your company and business and post on swivel.com.

Affiliate Program-7 Ways To Identify Extremely Profitable Affiliate Program

Afffiliate Marketing is really a good business to do online IF you can easily Identify highly profitable Affiliate Program online.There are essential things to consider when starting Internet Marketing with Affiliate Program.This article will open your mind to some ways to identify extremely profitable affiliate program.7 ways to identify extremely profitable affiliate program
1.Is the product desirable? As a matter of fact,if you seriously want to make any money from an affiliate program,youmust have to sell it to lots of people.This implies that the product you are promoting must be desirable.If the product is good,then it will sell itself the only thing you will need is to present it to customer.2.Is the website reliable? You will have to make sure that the company has established a presence online,that they have been online for a while and are trusted.This is important since you would want to be paid what you have earned and on time too.3.Consider a multi-tier program. Actually,selling products or having people sign up for a product through you,are not the only ways to make money from affiliate programs.Someone can actually make a living without having to sell a single product.How?You can join a multi-tier affiliate program and recruit other affiliates to promote that product.Under this type of arrangement,you earn a commission when any one of these affiliates you recruit under you make a sale.Below is an illustration of the benefits of a multi-tier program:Level 1: (10 sales)= $20 x 10= $200 (when commission for each sales=$20)Level 2: (25 sales)= $10 x 25= $250 (when 2nd level commission= $10)Level 3: (30 sales)= $2 x 30= $60 (when 3rd level commission= $2)Here you earned only $200 from your personal effort and a whooping $310 came from the people you recruited.4. Do they offer real time online statistics? You need to be informed continuously on how your hard work is paying off.If you'll have to wait a long time to see your starts,then you'll be more likely to lose interest in the program.You will have to look for affiliate programs that offer you real-time,instantly updated stats that you can access online anytime.It is always very encouraging and morale boosting when you see how your sales and commissions are pilling up.It gives you the encouragement to promote the program further.5. Do they offer opportunities to earn residual income?: Earning residual income means your ability to earn commissions on the subsequent times a user you brought to a site earlier comes back to make another purchase.It is in your best interest to look for programs that offer opportunities for residual income.6. Do they use 'cookies'? Cookies are small computer programs a website uses to save information on a visitor's computer which can be recalled whenever the visitor comes back to the website.Affiliate website will normally save cookies on every visitor's computer which indicates who referred the visitor to the website.What this means is that if the visitor doesn't buy immediately,you will always be credited with the sale whenever the visitor comes back.7. Are the terms clear? A legitimate and trustworthy affiliate program should spell out clearly what you will earn for you effort. Unless a merchant spells out exactly what you will receive for your effort avoid them.Believe me, if you follow all these steps,making money online will not be difficult at all.

10 Steps For Starting An E-newsletter

1. Subscribe to ConstantContact. ConstantContact, the most famous program for creating and distributing an online newsletter, only costs about $30 per month depending on the number of email addresses you wish to include. The program is recognized by major search engines so your transmissions to multiple addresses avoid categorization as spam.
2. Choose a template.ConstantContact provides a series of templates and then lets you adjust the color, add pictures and links, and manipulate blocks of text. You should choose a professional style with at least two columns so you can provide company information in one column and original articles in the other.3. Organize your contacts.ConstantContact accepts a list for distribution with the relevant names and email addresses in an Excel file, but it is even more powerful when you integrate it directly with your Outlook address book. Outlook lets you categorize each entry in your address book, and once you have done this, ConstantContact lets you select only those categories you wish for sending your e-newsletter.4. Write an introduction.The beginning of your newsletter should contain a short one or two paragraph note introducing the topics to be covered in the current issue. If possible, you should “sign” the note with your signature in an electronic format, created through a personal scanner or at a copy store such as Kinkos.5. Choose and draft the articles.Think of two interesting articles to include in each issue. I like to choose professional advice for one article and exposition of an interesting book for the second. Each article should be about 300-500 words and should be written in a vendor-neutral (non-promotional) format without mentioning your company name. You should strive to find topics of genuine interest to your readers.6. Continue the articles with links to drive traffic back to your web site.The body of the newsletter itself should only contain the first two paragraphs or so of each article, stopping at an interesting point with a link reading “To read the rest of the article, click here.”7. Using Dreamweaver, create a new web page on your site with the full article.When the reader clicks on the link, he will see a new web page with the full article, and this new page will be an integral part of your web site with the same active navigation bars and structure as your main web site.Creating these pages is easy to do using a user-friendly software package from Microsoft known as Dreamweaver. The program costs about $300, but it is well worth the money because it will give you the capacity to add new html pages to your web site for any purpose.8. Add your company boilerplate at the bottom or in a side column of your e-newsletter.While your articles should be vendor-neutral, you can promote your company in a short two-to-three paragraph standard description. You should also include a short bio of the CEO or President of your organization.9. Include archives on a newsletter landing page.Using Dreamweaver, you should create a separate page on your web site with a list of the date and issue number for each e-newsletter. Each e-newsletter will also reference this “landing page” through a links labeled “Archives.”An e-newsletter, for inclusion on the landing page, should be distributed once every eight weeks. This interval will maintain sufficient visibility with your prospects so your company’s services will be in the back of their mind should an opportunity arise.10. Use ConstantContact’s reporting function to track your results.ConstantContact provides a list of the email address of every person who opened your newsletter as well as a list of those who clicked on the interior links. It also keeps track of people who “unsubscribed,” and any transmissions bouncing back due to a non-existent or inactive address. On average, about 30 percent of the contacts will open the newsletter with a significant reduction for interior links.

How Article Marketing Can Increase Your Ranking And Traffic

In today's world, and considering the current economic scenario, everyone wants to earn money by some way or the other. People working on the internet want to attract more and more traffic to their websites to gain popularity, and one of the most popular ways to do so is to by marketing and distribution of articles. One has to also think and analyze and then write articles. Though it may seem easy to type and display the articles on the website, it is very important to keep in mind the most common keywords so that you can attract more traffic towards your website.Some of the main benefits we can enumerate: Link Popularity – Popular articles will attract more visitors to your website. If more and more links point towards your website then more traffic will be directed. If many sites link to yours it helps boost your search engine rankings with the effect of increasing traffic and thus gaining more sales or subscribers from your site.
Free Advertising - Due to heavy traffic one can place ads after some time on websites. After some time people would want to place articles on your website and pay you a heavy amount.Making your goodwill – The Internet is a wide medium and it is not easy to trust people. So one has to build a reputation in this field and make goodwill in the market. If your article has good and sensible information then people will respect your opinion and trust you. So quality articles are a must.Make customers regular – Since the article you write is not going anywhere and will remain in the search engines and attract traffic for years to come. So one can term is as a long term. Appropriate keyword will keep attracting traffic.Search Engine Rankings - When marketing your articles you are allowed to place a resource box at the end of the article that contains a link back to your site. If you have a high quality article that is read and placed on thousands of sites you automatically get thousands of links pointing back to your site which will increase your search engine rankings. So write such a bombastic article so that people get automatically pulled to your website. Gaining Web Popularity – It may sometimes take months for a new web site to get a high page rank by the search engines. If you write and market articles related to your web site content, you won't have to wait for web site traffic. Instead you gain immediate traffic plus you build content that will help boost your rankings for the future.In the successful launch of a product or a commodity the marketing of the article plays a very important role, and one can without any doubt say that writing articles and placing it on the Internet is one of the most successful ways of marketing. One has to though keep in mind the audience that is to be targeted and place and write articles accordingly. Half the work is over once a commodity is successfully marketed. Closing the deal from there is the responsibility of your website. Combine these two effectively, and your online sales will dramatically improve.

Online Business the Easy Way

Starting an online business is some thing that can be very rewarding. It can also be very discouraging if you don't know where to start. There are certainly several ways to make money online. If you have an email address you already know there are thousands of so called experts telling you they have the magic solution to make money online The single most popular way to make money online is affiliate marketing. This is a technique that is quite easy to get started in. Basically you advertise someone else's product and if someone purchases that product through your advertising you get a portion of the sale to keep for yourself. The steps to starting are finding an area to specialize in, finding products to promote, advertise, and finally make money online.

Finding an area in affiliate marketing is the real key to success. The most important thing to do when doing this step is to choose something you have a passion for. Making money online can take some time, so if your not interested in what your promoting it is easy to lose focus. To find out if your interests are going to make money online do a search on the internet for it. Check out how many pages show up relating to your interests.

Once you found an interest that you think will make money online. The next step is to find products to promote. You probably have some ideas and don't even know it. Go to the websites you visit the most and do a search for affiliate on them. There are also plenty of affiliate program networks out there that you can sign up with and use their directory to find programs in your area of interest.

Now comes the part where you have to do some work and have some patience. Advertising and promoting your affiliate program takes time to see results. This is where most people fail. They spend time setting up websites and products and then people never see what they did. Some strategies don't require a website to make online money. However some are easier if you do. PPC stands for pay per click, this is the fastest way to get traffic. How it works is you make an ad and post it on a PPC engine and it is shown when other people search the internet. You only pay for these ads if people click on them. Another way to generate traffic is article writing. This is a much slower way to produce traffic, however it is usually free. There are plenty of article directories out there to put your articles on with links to your website or affiliate product.

An Explanation of Affiliate Marketing

Millions of individuals are searching the internet daily, searching for a legitimate home business. During their search, they get hounded with web sites stating how easy it is to make money with a home business. These sites are usually selling affiliate programs.

For those individuals, unfamiliar with affiliate marketing
, it can seem like the "old pyramid" system. While there are some similarities, there are also major differences.

The pyramid system was based on one individual, at the top selling to others below them. Those people in turn sold to people below them. So on and so on. The person at the top of the pyramid capitalized on the money made from those at the base of the pyramid. Very few pyamid systems worked and very few were profitable. Pyramid systems, usually involved selling door to door, to family or friends. During the sale, part of the pitch was to recruit the purchaser to also start selling.

With the invention of the computer and the advent of the internet, selling door to door became obsolete. Now, an individual or a corporation can sell or buy over the World Wide Web. As computers became more accessible and the use of the internet became more common place, the use of these tools by marketers also became more prevalent.

As the internet grows, affiliate marketers are on the front lines of this growth. As technology grows and trends change, so does the affiliate marketer. If an individual wants to earn any kind of income, he has to be on the cutting edge of technology.

So, while affiliate marketers may seem like the "Amway Man" or the "Fuller Brush Man", there is a huge difference. Affiliate marketers, may work from home but there are working on a global scale. Affiliate marketing is not a pyramid system, but a teamwork solution to making money on line.

Instead of driving door to door and selling, affiliate marketers are utilizing online marketing to drive traffic or customers to other websites. This type of marketing plays a huge role in e-commerce.

Top Rated Affiliate Marketing Tips

Make great product reviews as this is what many will be looking for while searching for the next best opportunity, product or service they want. It's very easy to forget about writing great product reviews and that's why you should make sure that you are always providing the best reviews possible. This is how your content will make it to search engines and how you can really make an impact on your traffic statistics!

2. You need to build a list of leads so you can follow up every lead as each and every of them are important and valuable to your success. Make a follow up by building an opt in box using some sort of follow up system and this can even be used before they make it to your main website, this is sometimes the first page they will see and usually makes a lasting impression because now you have their information to follow up whatever way you feel necessary.

You can encourage them to join your newsletter by offering free downloads or a free report making it easier for them to freely provide there name and contact information because they will receive your free merchandise for doing so!

3. Avoid traffic frenzy! Some marketers will go all out to encourage traffic their way sometimes even paying to have traffic directed to their site. I can assure you this is a quick fire way to end up losing money rather than gaining because having traffic that makes no sense to your niche market means that it makes no sense to generating sales. So when producing results for traffic don't go overboard and start losing money right away because it is possible to pay for traffic much later in your campaign and once you can really afford to lose money to that non-targeted traffic source.

Sticking to these affiliate marketing tips should be essential and you should never forget them because anyone involved in affiliate marketing will tell you lots of different methods but above all recommendations please do not venture into the unknown or somewhere that is sure to make you pay for traffic.

Step 5: Build a Brand on eBay On eBay

Build a Brand on eBay On eBay, sellers are offered a number of tools to help establish their brand identities, including:

* ABOUT ME: A free page that enables you to describe your business and any relevant information that would make buyers feel more comfortable buying from you.

* EBAY STORES: A virtual storefront that puts all of your current auctions together in one place, so buyers can see everything you're selling at a glance. You'll pay a monthly fee based on the level of store services you want, plus additional fees for items listed and sold.

* CUSTOMIZING TOOLS; A number of features (accessible from your "My eBay" page) that enable you to make your pages stand out from others offering similar merchandise.

Like any marketplace, eBay is constantly changing. "A lot of people get set in a comfort zone, especially if they have an initial rush of success," says Griff. "If you get to the point that you really feel comfortable you know what you're doing on eBay, I guarantee you there's a brick flying at the side of your head at 80 miles an hour that you're not seeing because you're not looking in that direction."

You can expect pricing and demand on eBay to change over time. As more and more people start operating on eBay, competition will increase and prices may decline slightly. Still, keep in mind that eBay has reached only a small fraction of its potential worldwide market. And it will continue to grow even faster as internet access becomes more readily available worldwide. "EBay is the leader in internet auctions," says Morphy. "It has such a strong hold on the market and such a huge following, you can't beat it."

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: For more information on starting a business on eBay, log on to our eBay Business Center at www.entrepreneur.com/ebay. If you're new to doing business online, we've got you covered. Check out our free downloadable PDF, "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Doing Business Online" by Rieva Lesonsky, at www. entrepreneur.com/ebay/paypalguide. It discusses marketing, customer service, shipping charges, payment methods, helpful resources and more.

Step 4: Provide Great Customer Service

Buyers will ask you questions about your merchandise, and if you don't respond promptly, they won't bid. Top-notch service also means shipping your goods to the winning buyer within two to three days after the auction closes, or as soon as you receive payment.

When an eBay auction is completed, the goods shipped and payment made, you and your buyer can comment on each other in eBay's Feedback Forum. Buyers rely on the Feedback Forum to determine how reliable a seller is. But watch out: If buyers aren't happy with your customer service or your merchandise, they will post negative or neutral feedback. Many buyers will not deal with a seller who has less than a specified number of positive feedback postings in the forum, or a seller who has too many negative feedback postings.
Unfortunately, some customers will threaten to leave negative feedback if you don't do what they want, even if they are being unreasonable. Most of the time, you're best advised to meet their demands because "the customer is always right," and because you want to avoid negative feedback on eBay at all costs.
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In cases where a buyer posts negative feedback that is inaccurate or unfair, eBay affords you a limited opportunity to respond to the negative posting and tell buyers your side of the story. In extreme cases, eBay's SquareTrade service helps mediate disputes between eBay buyers and sellers.
Step 5: Build a Brand on eBay On eBay, sellers are offered a number of tools to help establish their brand identities, including:
* ABOUT ME: A free page that enables you to describe your business and any relevant information that would make buyers feel more comfortable buying from you.
* EBAY STORES: A virtual storefront that puts all of your current auctions together in one place, so buyers can see everything you're selling at a glance. You'll pay a monthly fee based on the level of store services you want, plus additional fees for items listed and sold.
* CUSTOMIZING TOOLS; A number of features (accessible from your "My eBay" page) that enable you to make your pages stand out from others offering similar merchandise.
Like any marketplace, eBay is constantly changing. "A lot of people get set in a comfort zone, especially if they have an initial rush of success," says Griff. "If you get to the point that you really feel comfortable you know what you're doing on eBay, I guarantee you there's a brick flying at the side of your head at 80 miles an hour that you're not seeing because you're not looking in that direction."
You can expect pricing and demand on eBay to change over time. As more and more people start operating on eBay, competition will increase and prices may decline slightly. Still, keep in mind that eBay has reached only a small fraction of its potential worldwide market. And it will continue to grow even faster as internet access becomes more readily available worldwide. "EBay is the leader in internet auctions," says Morphy. "It has such a strong hold on the market and such a huge following, you can't beat it."
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: For more information on starting a business on eBay, log on to our eBay Business Center at www.entrepreneur.com/ebay. If you're new to doing business online, we've got you covered. Check out our free downloadable PDF, "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Doing Business Online" by Rieva Lesonsky, at www. entrepreneur.com/ebay/paypalguide. It discusses marketing, customer service, shipping charges, payment methods, helpful resources and more.

Step 3: Manage the Auction Process

There are several types of eBay auctions. In a basic auction, you post your item with a starting price and wait for bidders to drive the price up until a closing time, which can be three, five, seven or lo days later, when the auction ends. You are then obligated to sell to the highest bidder.
You can also set a reserve price, which is a hidden minimum price that is the lowest amount you're willing to accept. Buyers are not shown the reserve price, and if it is not met, you are not obligated to sell the item.
If you have two or more identical items for sale, you can post them in the same auction by using a Dutch (or Multiple Item) Auction.
If you don't like auctions, eBay also has a "Buy It Now" feature that gives bidders the option to buy your item immediately for a set price. Or you can choose a fixed-price listing, which simply puts the item up for sale at a set price, with no bidding allowed.
To sell on eBay, you'll pay a listing fee to post your merchandise and a final value fee (a small percentage of the sale price) when the item sells. These fees change from time to time, so be sure to check the eBay site to make sure you can pay all the fees and still make a profit.
A number of books offer advice on reducing the amount of time and effort necessary to create eBay auction pages, such as Marsha Collier's eBay Timesaving Techniques For Dummies, Janelle Elms' eBay Your Business and Joseph T. Sinclair's eBay Business the Smart Way. Entrepreneur magazine's Startup Guide #1824, How to Start a Business on eBay, is available at www.smallbizbooks.com.
Software can also help you streamline the auction management process. Listing programs, such as Turbo-Lister (available for free from eBay) and Zdrop (www.ztradingpost.com), enable you to create multiple auction pages on your PC and upload them as a "batch" to eBay. Full-service auction-management programs like AuctionHelper (www.auctionhelper.com) and Zoovy (www.zoovy.com) handle almost everything, from inventory management to label printing.

Step 2: Find Stuff to Sell

This can be the biggest challenge in setting up an eBay business. Keep these points in mind:
* PICK THE RIGHT PRODUCT. Select something you'll enjoy selling and that stands a good chance of making a profit. Avoid merchandise you know absolutely nothing about, that's difficult to describe in a short paragraph, that won't photograph well or that's tricky to ship without damage.
* CONSIDER COST AND SALE PRICE. "Buyers and sellers on eBay set the price--you don't," says Melissa Sands, 35, who started selling on eBay in 1999 to help her husband, a comic-book dealer, get rid of excess inventory. Today, Sands runs Sands-o-Time (www. sands-o-time.com), an eBay store selling pottery, porcelain, glass, silver, costume jewelry and more with sales averaging $8,000 to $12,000 per month. Before you buy anything, find out what other similar items have sold for on eBay and ask yourself if there's a good chance you will make money.
* SELL RELATED MERCHANDISE. "If you make it easy for people to buy something, they will want to buy more from you--and you have to have related merchandise in stock," advises Cash. "So, for example, if you're selling collectibles, you should also carry the display racks, books and other accessories those particular collectors will want to have."
* MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH STORAGE SPACE FOR YOUR MERCHANDISE. Don't start ordering pallets of large items if your basement or garage is small, or if your front door isn't big enough to squeeze the crates through.
* LEARN HOW TO PACK AND SHIP GOODS. Calculating shipping costs properly is also important. To help you with this, eBay, FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service all offer shipping calculators on their websites. Buyers really hate it if they think you're gouging them on the shipping and handling fees.

Step 1: Register Your Business

Getting set up as an eBay seller is a simple process that takes just a few minutes. You'll be required to provide your name, address, e-mail and phone number, as well as a credit card number and your checking account information. This information is used to confirm your identity--which protects the integrity of eBay's operation--and to collect auction fees.
Since every eBay business is a retail business, you should also register your business with federal, state and local tax authorities and consider forming a corporation or an LLC to protect you against legal liability. (For more legal issues you should know about before you start, go to www. entrepreneur.com/ebay/legaltips.)
Most eBay sellers are also encouraged to open an account with PayPal, an online payment service owned by eBay that enables buyers to pay you by credit card or by debiting their checking accounts, without you having to obtain merchant card accounts.

eBay made easy: ready to start an eBay business?

Ten years after being formed in 1995, eBay has become the world's leading online marketplace for all sorts of goods. At any given time, 29 million items are available worldwide on eBay, with more than 3.5 million new items added every day and $1,000 worth of merchandise sold every second. The online auction site has 135 million registered users in 32 international markets, and more than 430,000 people in the United States alone make a full- or part-time living on eBay.
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If you think eBay is just about bobblehead dolls and Pez dispensers, think again. While $2.2 billion worth of goods in collectibles were sold on eBay in 2004, antiques and collectibles ranked only No. 6 among eBay's sales categories. The five highest were: automobiles and auto supplies ($11.1 billion); consumer electronics ($3-5 billion); computers ($3.0 billion); clothes and accessories ($2.9 billion); and books, movies and music ($2.4 billion).
Real people are making big bucks on eBay--and thousands have even reached PowerSeller status by maintaining at least $1,000 per month in sales for three consecutive months. Case in point: Angle Cash, 37, a stay-at-home mom who started selling on eBay nearly six years ago because it was "something I could do and watch the kids at the same time." Today, her Kennesaw, Georgia, company, Cashco1000 Inc. (www. cashco1000.com), sells thousands of home-decoration and other items each month on eBay and expects to break $500,000 in sales on eBay this year.