Archive for January, 2009
The eBay message boards are filled with posts by sellers about how eBay’s new Best Match has taken seller’s items and made them nearly invisible to buyers. The result, of course, is a decrease in sales.
Trying to adapt to Best Match is a challenge for sellers and although time and energy should be put into maximizing Best Match results another essential course of action for eBay sellers is to rely less on eBay driving buyers to your listings and figuring out ways to drive buyers to your listings yourself.
I have compiled a list of ways to drive buyers to your listings to supplement Best Match. If any readers have any additional methods, please add them to the list.
Google Base Store Connector
Use Google Base Store Connector to get your listings indexed in Google Search results. Here is a link to the free program that will send your eBay listing info to Google: http://base.google.com/base/storeconnector/index.html
Alt Img Tags
This is a little bit of HTML code that you add to the photos that you have within your eBay listing. Search engines can only read text. If you add this little bit of descriptive HTML code to your images, your images have a descriptive text attached to them and this can possibly aid in increasing your listing’s search engine ranking and Google Image Search ranking.
Continue Reading January 26th, 2009
The Internet Merchants Association is pleased to announce their third annual conference being held in Las Vegas, March 17-18, 2009. This leading e-Commerce conference is presented in conjunction with the ASD/AMD Variety Merchandise Show, the ASD/AMD Gift Expo and the ASD/AMD Jewelry Show being held March 15-18th. Register Here
“With the economy being a challenge to many in business, this year IMA is proud to offer free classes in conjunction with the ASD/AMD show on Monday, March 16th,” announced Steve Grossberg, IMA President. “We are excited to offer the free classes such as ‘Marketing My Website on a Budget’, ‘Successful Email Marketing’, ‘Make Shipping Easy Online’ and ‘Understanding Search Engine Marketing.” Registration with ASD/AMD is required for these free classes.
Continue Reading January 20th, 2009
Social networking in an online setting is dramatically different than in-person networking.
Traditional networking involves swapping business cards at monthly meetings and having occasional lunches with a few new acquaintances.
In an online setting, social networking is about forming a vast community of people with common interests, and meeting on a platform where you can interact frequently with the use of online resources and tools. Through the platform and tools available from the social networking sites, users can submit content such as blogs, videos, and photo albums that help bring large numbers of like-minded people together quickly.
The more open nature of social networking sites is in contrast to the anonymous forums and bulletin boards that were very popular earlier in the decade. Those sites are rapidly losing users to more social outlets like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.
Since MySpace first came on the scene, social networking has exploded. All businesses, particularly online businesses, should be watching and reaching out to their customers through social networking sites.
So, the question is: Why should a business be represented on social networking sites?
It’s about reputation management.
Continue Reading January 13th, 2009
Feedback is an issue that causes much angst to sellers both on eBay and Amazon. Many times the negative feedback left is irrelevant to the transaction especially when the buyer has not even contacted the seller. So I ask you – Is feedback even necessary in 2009? How many buyers even review a seller’s feedback? On Amazon the seller’s feedback is pretty much hidden, especially if the seller has the coveted “buy-box”. It is also extremely lopsided since so few buyers actually leave feedback on Amazon. On eBay many buyers do not understand the feedback percentages and don’t take the time to review the comments. This is obvious when you see a seller with 89% feedback, yet all their 99 cent junk auctions have bids.
So what other mechanisms could replace feedback and help reduce scam sellers? Both eBay and Amazon already have the mechanisms in place, they just don’t publish the information derived from these mechanisms to the buying community.
Continue Reading January 8th, 2009