SEARCH ENGINE & AUCTION BLUES

Written by Marc Holt


Continued from page 1

AUCTIONS

eBay is another online service that is now causing serious problems for their customers. And, like Yahoo, they have a stranglehold onrepparttar market so they can do whatever they like: For now.

In February this year, eBay posted a multi-million dollar profit, and not 2 weeks later they hiked their fees by 60% crying they were losing money! Do they really think internet users are that stupid? Perhaps they arerepparttar 125200 ones who need their heads examined.

If they are losing money, it’s not hard to see why. They are going out and buying up all sorts of small websites, claiming these will add ‘value’ to their service. Take their recent acquisition of Half.com for $US350 million. How can any little website that sells books online be worth that much? How many books will eBay will have to sell just to get their money back? We already know thatrepparttar 125201 biggest online bookseller, Amazon.com, is losing money hand over fist. Where does that leave eBay’s bookselling efforts?

eBay conducts between 2 to 3 million auctions a week, and they charge for everything. If you pay to list a single item, say a 9 karat gold ring with a ruby, and you can supply exactlyrepparttar 125202 same ring but in 18 karat gold, eBay say that is 2 items. You have to pay to list each one.

The biggest problem customers report is their ‘back office’ program. It is, to put it inrepparttar 125203 words of one irate client “Neanderthal”. He said it takes up to 1 month to learn how to use it well. But even worse, it often breaks down for up to 40% ofrepparttar 125204 time.

A few companies have tried to set up sites that work better than eBay. They accept your listing and then link it to eBay through their software. The problem is, eBay puts a spike in this by changing their program and evenrepparttar 125205 HTML code so thatrepparttar 125206 3rd party sites suddenly don’t work. They then have to waste time trying to figure out what eBay have done and update their sites.

The fact is, eBay clients report it is now impossible to make money from their auctions. Of 100 auctions submitted, only 3 will sell, despite extravagant claims by eBay. When you considerrepparttar 125207 amount of time needed to set up your auction pages to achieve this paltry result, it becomes unprofitable to even bother. When one of their clients was asked why he continues to use eBay he replied, “What choice do I have? They arerepparttar 125208 only game in town.”

Admittedly, there are other auction sites around, but eBay isrepparttar 125209 only one that everyone uses. He said he has posted items onrepparttar 125210 others and never even received one bid after 4 weeks. So, eBay can continue doing what it likes right now. But for how long?



Marc Holt Managing Director, Holt WorldWide Co Ltd, Thailand Phone: (662) 940-7414, 579-6605 Fax: (662) 940-7413 Mobile phone: (661) 828-0871 Website Design & Promotion, Virtual Server Hosting, and the following businesses: Web Design: http://www.holtww.com/


Why Visitors From Search Engines Don't Buy..And What You Can Do About It

Written by Lisa Lake


Continued from page 1

It's like going torepparttar giant Mall Of The Americas and finding everyone ofrepparttar 125199 hundreds of stores sellsrepparttar 125200 same thing, only some have more items, or more selection, or cheaper prices.

This involves a principle well known torepparttar 125201 people who produce commercials for politicians. If your politician isrepparttar 125202 only one on TV tonight, a lot of voters are going to believe what he says. But if there is another politician on TV sayingrepparttar 125203 exact opposite of what your politician is saying, nobody is going to believe either one of them. The opposing views cancel each other out.

On search engines,repparttar 125204 opposing sites cancel each other out (one ofrepparttar 125205 reasons a lot of people get frustrated using them and, according to a recent New York Times report, fewer and fewer people are turning to search engines.)

The solution. Recognizerepparttar 125206 limitations of search engines. You'll attract a lot more BUYING customers fromrepparttar 125207 articles you write and send out, fromrepparttar 125208 print or TV ad you run,repparttar 125209 ezine ad you place, or fromrepparttar 125210 good word-of-mouth former customers send aroundrepparttar 125211 Internet.

In these situations, you are reaching people who may not know of other sites like yours. They find your site, figure you are just what they have been looking for, and buy. They struggle withrepparttar 125212 cognitive dissonance (remember that term from Psychology class?) of having too many choices.

You also don't want to give up completely on search engines. Figure that when a person finds your site, they aren't nearly ready to buy. For that, you have to give them more time. You must be there again and again to remind them about your expertise inrepparttar 125213 field andrepparttar 125214 great deals you offer.

Do this with your own email list. Do everything possible to getrepparttar 125215 search engine visitor to put her email address in your subscribe form so she can receive your clever tips or product updates on a regular basis.

If you've been advertising your business in a variety of ways for many years, you have already discovered I'm not reinventingrepparttar 125216 wheel here. Once we get past allrepparttar 125217 new visitors a fresh advertising method can bring, we start to focus onrepparttar 125218 QUALITIY of those visitors.

Recognizerepparttar 125219 true quality of search engine traffic, then plan to groom, convert, and train those visitors to be buying customers.



Lisa Lake has created a list of top promotional methods on her http://MyAdBlaster.com Lisa also writes ad copy that sells for DrNunley's http://InternetWriters.com Reach her at mailto:lisa@myadblaster.com or 801-328-9006.


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