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July 20, 2005

In this issue:
* New Fall "Live" Auction Genius Course
* November Live Seminar in Atlanta
* eBay's Acquisition of Shopping.com Goes Through
* Feature Article: Generating Online Sales With Sitemaps To Google
* eBay Statistics That (Should) Make You Pause
* From Our Humor Department
* Recent Blog Entries

Announcements
1. New Fall "Live" Auction Genius Course

We've taken the summer off from our auction teaching, but our live classes will resume on September 10, the Saturday after our American Labor Day. The thing is that the price will be going up on Labor Day, so get signed up now to avoid paying more.

http://auction-genius-course.com

2. November Live Seminar in Atlanta

I am pleased and proud to announce a live seminar to be held in Atlanta, the weekend of November 11. Your teachers will be:

1. Brad Fallon: Brad is a search engine and conversion expert who is generating an astronomical amount of money from his sites, especially myweddingfavors.com. Brad has also started his own wholesale business and is up to 30 employees.

2. Andy Jenkins: Andy is the author of 'Yahoo Store Profits' and knows more about online stores than anyone I know.

Together, Brad and Andy are the co-authors of 'Stomp The Search Engines', the single biggest reason for my increasing success with the search engines:

http://stomper.auctionknowhow.com

3. Me, of course

4. And Todd Taylor, my most spectacularly successful auction student who is currently selling six figures a MONTH on eBay.

The focus of our seminar will be selling on eBay and expanding into your own websites and stores, using the search engines to build traffic. My friends and partners, Brad, Andy and Todd are experts in this subject. And of course, I know one or two things, myself. :-)

This intensive learning experience will be fun and enormously profitable for everyone and I can't wait. Also, it will be cooler then. Hallelujah! This horrible heat and humidity is getting me ...

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eBay's Acquisition of Shopping.com Goes Through

On June 1 of this year, eBay announced plans to buy shopping.com. According to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, the Justice department has 30 days to investigate this kind of transaction, and possibly disapprove the deal. The deadline for such action has now expired and so the sale will go through.

How will this affect sellers like us? eBay isn't providing much in the way of details yet, but some pretty interesting possibilities open up. Shopping.com is a comparison shopping site which helps online buyers find the best deals on products. Since eBay is a price-driven model, eBay sellers ought to compare favorably to other online merchants.

In addition, shopping.com owns "Epinions" with approximately two million product reviews generated by about a community of about 400,000 users.

The best scenario: it will open up new sales venues and give us an opening to many new buyers.

Worst scenario: it's too soon to tell yet.

Let's watch this closely. This is the most exciting eBay purchase in years in terms of its effects for us eBay sellers.

Feature Article: Generating Online Sales With Sitemaps To Google

Lots of eBay sellers have online website and stores. Especially more experienced and successful ones. If you don't have any yet, you probably will because the temptation to expand on your success is irresistible to most folks.

Obviously, the #1 problem for succeeding with any online store is traffic, traffic, traffic. That's the single biggest reason (in fact, the ONLY real reason) for eBay's success - it handles the traffic problem for you.

But if you don't have eBay to send you customers, one of the most popular ways to acquire them is with the "free" search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN. Of course, they aren't really free because the search engine game requires an enormous amount of resources, time and energy to get high search positions.

Still ...

It's a game worth playing, if you know what you're doing. Google is currently Top Dog and so getting into its index is the most important beginning. It used to take a couple of months to even be listed, but they've just made it easier with their new Google Sitemap program. Here's how it works:

1. You use designated software to build a sitemap according to Google's directions (in XML, although there's supposedly a way to do it with a text file)
2. Install your Google sitemap on your store
3. Notify Google as to where they can find it

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html

Is it hard to do? I must admit that I don't know because I have a tech partner who handles this kind of 'stuff' (lucky me!).

The one thing I do know is the result ... we're getting indexed in a week or less. Some gurus are saying they've been completely indexed in 24 hours, but I don't know if that's moonshine or not. It hasn't happened nearly that quickly for us, but we're not complaining. A week surely beats two months!

This program was recommended for sites under 500 pages:

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com

Is the Google sitemap worth bothering with? In our experience: absolutely.

One thing is certain - the faster you're in the Google index, the quicker you'll be making online sales. And with the Christmas season only a few months away, NOW is the time to get started - if not months ago.

eBay Statistics That (Should) Make You Pause

Here are some cool tidbits from eBay ...

* More than 1/3 of all US Internet users visit eBay (Wow!)

* eBay reaches more people each month, in the US, than any other "pure ecommerce property" (whatever that means)

* Traffic is heaviest on Monday & Sunday, so eBay suggests timing your auctions so that they close on one of these two days

* Visitors spend more time on eBay than any other shopping site (and it's increasing)

* The majority of visitors enter eBay through the home page (not too useful for us sellers) but the second most visited way is through a search page. Now that does matter!

* The most visited categories are:
1. Collectibles
2. eBay motors
3. Computers
4. Electronics
5 + 6. Clothes/Shoes + Toys

* Demographics for eBay users are:

1. Age: 45-54 (28%); 35-44 (26%); 55+ (22%); 25-34 (17%); 18-24 (7%)

This tells us who to focus on, doesn't it? And this statistic surprised me. I would have thought younger people would spend more time on eBay, but 3/4 of eBay users are 35 and up.

2. Income: $35-75K (31%); $25-50K (23%); $75-100K (19%); $100-150K (14%); $150K+ (8%); $0-25K (5%).

3. Gender: 53% male, 47% female

Fascinating stuff, although I always figure that income figures are suspect. But it gives us clues about where to focus our efforts. If your choice is between a teeny bopper product or clothes suitable for a 40 year old, choose the clothes.

From Our Humor Department

All I can say is ... eeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuwwwwwwwwwwwww!

On a special teacher's day, a kindergarten teacher was receiving gifts from her pupils.

The florist's son handed her a gift. She shook it, held it over her head, and said, "I bet I know what it is - flowers!"

"That's right!" said the boy, "but how did you know?"

"Just a wild guess," she said.

The next pupil was the candy store owner's daughter. The teacher held her gift overhead, shook it, and said, "I bet I can guess what it is - a box of candy!"

"That's right! But how did you know?" asked the girl.

"Just a lucky guess," said the teacher.

The next gift was from the liquor store owner's son. The teacher held the bag over her head and noticed that it was leaking.

She touched a drop of the leakage with her finger and tasted it. "Is it wine?" she asked.

"No," the boy replied.

The teacher repeated the process, touching another drop of the leakage to her tongue. "Is it champagne?" she asked.

"No," the boy replied.

The teacher then said, "I give up, what is it?"

The boy replied, "A puppy!"

Recent Blog Entries

* Yes, It's Christmas Time Again!
* PayPal & eBay Invade China
* A Delightful Weapon Against Spammers
* Are We Slowly Poisoning Ourselves To Death?
* Creative eBay Auctions Are Alive And Well

http://auction-genius-course.com/blog