Bohemian Journey

I saw AuctionAds on Shoemoney’s blog for awhile and kept wondering if I could implement this new revenue stream on my web sites.

Surprise, surprise! About a week or so later, I received an email from Text Link Ads, another monetize source for websites, announcing AuctionAds venture and invited me to join. Without hesitating for even a split second, I jumped immediately at the opportunity.

A joint venture between TLA’s parent company, MediaWhiz and ShoeMoney Media, AuctionAds allows webmasters to monetize their websites from eBay auctions. When visitors click on the ad, they are redirected to the auctions on eBay. Publishers make money each time a user clicks on AuctionAds and then signs up for a new account on eBay, place winning bids or just perform an action.

Example - See an example of AuctionAds in action on PragueBuzz.com. This particular page promotes Bohemian crystals, rare works of art from the Czech Republic. At the bottom of the page, I include AuctionAds code showing Bohemian Crystal auctions from eBay. The ads have been displaying the right products most of the time. However, once in a while, you will see totally irrelevant ads, e.g. computer or electronic gadgets. This is one big issue with Contextual Ads in general though, not only AuctionAds. It is difficult to get the right ads all the time.

You probably know Google Adsense, don’t you? They are contextual link ads which match (or try to match) the website’s content. Similarly,AuctionAds are contextual image ads showing eBay auctions based on keywords associated with the code. The difference between Google Adsense and AuctionAds is that the former is pay-per-click advertising where you get paid from users’ clicking on the ads while the latter is an affiliate program which pays only when users make a purchase or perform some action after clicking.

Implement AuctionAds
1. Image ads - You choose a keyword, for example “Bohemian Crystal”, which best describes either the content of a particular page or the entire site or simply anything you want. Then you generate the code for the ads. Ads are available in many formats: leaderboard, skyscraper, banner, half banner, various sized rectangles and more.
2. Link ads - You target a page on eBay, supply the page’s URL and then generate the code.

I really appreciate the fact that pages from AuctionAds load very fast, which I can not say the say the same for many other affiliate-networks. Getting highly-targeted ads for my sites can be done very easily and quickly.

If you are small webmasters with niche site, you should check out AuctionAds. They most likely accept your sites as they do not reject based on the sites’ traffic. Click here to join.

Tags: Bohemian Biz, shoemoney, text link ads, auctionads, make money online

I decided not to do any more auctions on eBay, open an eBay store or anything eBay related for my online experiments for the following reasons:

1. Lack of valuable items - So far, I’ve been auctioning my junk items, mostly books. Their values don’t justify my effort and my time.
2. Time consuming - I’ve spent a lot of time doing administrative stuffs like list the items (writing descriptions, taking pictures and so on), replying to the auction’s winner, emailing and calling my mother to ship the items, and many other overheads.

Not worth it.

I thought about creating an eBay store to sell local crafts, Bohemian crystals, Czech glasses, ceramics and willow baskets from the Czech Republic. I later decided against this idea:

1. High-risked - The crystals, glasses and ceramics break easily. They need extra superb handling care. I will have little control when these items leave my hands.

2. Import/export taxes - These items are shipped from another country, thus I have to deal with an extra hassle and international taxes, which is something I don’t want to deal with right now.
3. eBay store - A friend of mine runs an eBay Store, selling Cisco routers. It’s his full-time business. He has an office, stays there more than 8 hours a day, and takes all kinds of calls from vendors and buyers. This is not something I want to spend my time on. In the beginning, I thought of eBay as a hobby project.

By dropping eBay from my making-money-online experiments, I will have more time to focus on other activities I enjoy much more: updating my blog frequently, promoting my existing travel sites, writing quality reviews and articles, researching and sniffing for new online trends, and possibly developing making-money-offline experiments.

If you have the time and lots of good items from your garage, eBay might be a good side business for you.

Tags: Bohemian Biz, making money online, ebay

“101 eBay Seller Secrets Revealed” by Tim Campbell.

I’ve bought on eBay over two years and at the end of last year; I decided to sell to add one more activity to my Online $$$ Experiments. After all, how hard can it be? You select an item for auction, fill out the item description, set a price, set a date and wait anxiously for the anticipated email “Your item has been sold.” It’s simple but unless you aim only at a few extra bucks, you need to do some study about eBay.

Uh, what’s there to study about eBay? Convinced that there was nothing to learn, I quickly compiled a list of items I wanted to auction, downloaded Turbo Lister and uploaded 30 books on eBay. I sold a few of them and lost a little bit of money due to my stupid beginner mistakes which could have been avoided if I had done some study.

101 eBay Seller Secrets provides excellent tips for seller, especially to those who’s starting out. If you seriously want to sell on eBay, you can’t miss reading these tips.

I’m not going to spell out these tips as it’s not fair to the author.

1. Honesty is the best policy.
2. Build your reputation on eBay through feedbacks.
3. Remember the golden rule when you leave feedbacks to people.
4. Will buy from someone who knows nothing about what he sells or sell to someone who is not trustworthy?
5. Think Paypal. Offer other payment methods to customers. Why should you offer check payment and signup for a merchant account?
6. Save your time with tips on handling emails and automating tasks.
7. Keep a good record of your items, transactions and customer information.
8. Everybody loves a bargain;use this hint to adjust your starting price. When to use “Reserved” and “Bid Now” options?
9. When do you think most people get online? Start and stop your auctions during this period.
10. How you describe your items contributes to your chance of selling them.
11. Text is not as effective as this one.
12. Check for typos.
13. How should you charge for shipping and whether you should insure your items?
14. What’s in your software bag?
15. Keep in touch with your customers and increase more chance to sell in the future.
16. Promote your auctions and stores.
17. Save, save and save on listing fees.

Check out the book for more details.

Ad: AGLOCO - Get Paid to Surf the Net!

Techorati Tags: Bohemian Biz, Ebay, Online $$$ Experiments, Secrets, Tips, Online Auction

You probably know about shil bidding if you’ve bought and sold on Ebay. Shill bidding means either you or your friends and associates bid on your own auctions to drive up the prices.

Our inquiries found evidence that a number of businesses — ranging from overseas property agencies to car dealerships — have placed bids on their own items using fake identities.

I confess that I briefly entertained this idea when thinking about selling souvenirs worth over a hundreds of dollars but eventually smacked myself out of that evil scheme. I firmly believe that the moment I start on this treachery path, I will start finding excuses for my action and get deeper and deeper on this online fraud.

Why do many Ebay sellers practice shil bidding if they know they will get away scotch-free?

1. It’s just bad cheating people.
2. They can be caught and banned permanently from Ebay, thus losing a vital business medium.

Because

1. Ebay is fiercely competitive nowadays. When you first start out selling without any positive feedback, it’s difficult to sell.
2. It’s even more difficult to sell valuable items without an impressive positive record.
3. The fees are higher to place a “Reserved” or “Buy it now” on the items or to set a high starting price.
4. Now by protecting the value of your items by doing #3, you’ll discourage bidders from bidding on your auctions. Every savvy Ebay bidder loves the 0.01, 0.1, 0.99 cents starting bids. No win for you eh?
5. And check it out

One former eBay employee said last week that “eBay never really bothered that much about customer service”.

But having ranted all of the above, I still consider using Ebay; I have bought and sold many items over two years and never had one negative experience. My sellers delivered items in described condition for bargain price. All my buyers have been very understanding for some of my mistakes. After all,

The eBay phenomenon is driven by the simple idea of a marketplace based on trust. Sellers and buyers strike a bargain at an internet auction and their trading records are self-regulated by both leaving “feedback” on the success of the transaction.

So in my opinion, Ebay is worth a try if you want to make money online. Just be smart, learn more about online auctions and some day you’ll make some big bucks. Prepare to make some stupid mistakes though.

Think all shill bidding all you want, but don’t do it.

Ad: AGLOCO - Get Paid to Surf the Net!

Technorati Tags: Bohemian Biz, Online $$$ Experiments, Ebay

[Link via reddit]