5 eBay Selling Tips for Newbies

1.  Buy a scale.  It may sound simple, but purchasing a scale can save you a bundle in shipping.  If you’re just eyeballing the weight of the package, you can often times guess too low, and be in for quite a shock when you go to the post office and see the package is going to cost twice what you thought to ship.  

2.  Know the dimensions of your packaging before listing the item.  Some packages cost more to ship because of their dimensions.  Knowing the weight alone isn’t enough.  

3.  Offer the buyer a variety of shipping methods.  Some prefer speedy delivery with Express mailing, while some prefer to save money with parcel post even though the wait is longer. It’s always a good idea when using parcel post or other slower ground shipping to alert the buyer by email that it can take anywhere from 8 to 10 days. 

4.  Save yourself money whenever possible by using boxes that have been used.  Most stores are more than happy to let you rummage through their old boxes and take some home with you.  But, do remember to choose boxes that are presentable, secure and strong enough for your items.  And, if you have breakables, don’t skimp on the bubble wrap.

5.  Give yourself a small handling fee that will cover your expenses.  Some sellers add on an additional $1 or $2 to the shipping fees for their handling fees (depending on the cost of the item and how much packaging you have to use).  I really advocate doing this because your expenses will add up if you do a lot of selling on eBay.  Be sure to be upfront with your buyers that you have a small handling fee so they can’t complain about it later.  

Being fair to both yourself and your buyer will keep you both happy, and keep more of your profit in your pocket.

4 Tips To Build A Content Site With More Repeat Visitors

 On the internet, content is known as "the king". People visits a site not for the flashy graphics nor the wonderful website designs, but because of the information they learn from the website.

Having high quality content not just attract visitors, it also attracts search engines to visit your sites more and increase your search engine placements.  However, in order to get more traffic that can turn into money,  you'll need repeat visitors who are eager to read your new update on your content site.

Therefore, your website should have rich, premium, informative content to capture repeat visitors and more search engine traffic.

Here are some simple tips that would help you build a content site that can attract more repeat visitors:

   - Make sure your website's layout is simple and easy looking to the visitors' eyes.  Don't add too many flashy features in your webpage to disturb your visitors's focus when they are reading on your content.

   - Always remember the most important part in your content is the headline and the first few paragraphs. Whether your reader will read on or not heavily depends on the attractiveness on these parts. Always try to capture their interests and give them what they want to know.

   - Update your website with fresh new content frequently. When your visitors revisit your site and find you have not add new content, they will visit elsewhere immediately. And if this situation goes on, they will not visit your site again. Besides, search engines love websites that update content frequently, and give them higher search rank.

   - You should consider to use blogs.  Blogs are very easy to set up and update.  Once you have entered your entries, all you have to do is to click a button to publish them. And blogs are getting indexed fast and easily in most search engines!

Content is king, and you can take benefit from it easily!

4 Instant Tips for Running a Successful Internet Business

 Running an internet business is not a difficult task; but running a successful internet business can be a bit more difficult.  There are thousands of people that have their own online business, but many of them are not having any luck at all.  If you want to be successful while running your internet business, there are a couple of tips you can follow.

1. Before you can run a successful internet business, you are going to need the necessary knowledge.  In other words, if you are looking to start an internet business, choose an industry that you are familiar with.  By doing this you will ensure yourself of knowing where to start, and how to handle problems as they arise.  Of course, it is possible to run a successful internet business even if you do not have past experience.  You will just want to make sure that you do your homework before starting.  This way you will have some background information on the industry instead of simply going into the venture blind.

2. Make sure that you are organized from the very start.  The most successful internet businesses are ones that have a quality business and marketing plan in place from the start.  This will allow you to follow your plan as the days go by so that you do not get lost.  It is hard to be successful in anything if you do not know where you are trying to go.  A business plan will give you an idea on how you want your company to progress, where as a marketing plan will direct you on how to grow your company.  These are two things that are synonymous with every successful internet business.

3. Never be ashamed to ask for help if you are having a rough time.  A lot of business owners do not like to ask other people for help because they do not want to hurt their pride.  This is something that you should come to grips with before you even get started.  It is impossible to know everything about your industry, so there are times when you will have to ask questions.  Instead of thinking of this as a bad thing, why not look at it as a way of making new business contacts?  If you are having a technical problem that you cannot figure out, you should get in touch with an IT company right away.  There is nothing wrong with doing this.  In fact, if you do not ask questions to other people you will only be holding your company back. 

4. Do not reinvent the wheel, by following an established Internet Marketing Plan you can take a shortcut to your online success. Be aware though to not follow unsuccessful plans, there are free ones which are just excellent like "The Internet Marketing Master Plan".

By following the tips above you will be well on your way to running a successful internet business.  Remember, anybody can run a business, but to be successful you will have to be determined.

3 Free Website Marketing Ideas - Easy And Quick

 Online marketing is not cheap. You can spend thousands of dollars on Pay Per Click (Google Adwords) and thousands of site-targetted dollars (AdBrite), and you can spend thousands just buying text links from individual sites. Trust me, I've spent thousands on advertising.

However, my favorite form of marketing is the free kind. Anything free I like, especially if it helps my websites make more money without increasing my advertising costs.

Here are three easy and quick ways to market your website at no additional cost.

1. Free Business Cards

Free business cards are a staple in my advertising arsenal. You can leave them everywhere and give them to anyone. The best part is, they are free! Use them where you want, when you want, and as often as possible. That is the motto I live by whenever I get a shipment of free business cards in the mail.

2. Link Exchanges

Link exchanges are a great way of spreading Page Rank, but also of sharing visitors. Most people who like a site will bookmark it. After they have read everything they want, they will read the site that you link to. You get the visitors, and share the visitor through a link exchange.

3. Business card networking

After you have received your free business cards, use them to network with other people. Everytime you meet someone, hand them one of your free business cards. After that, ask for one of their business cards in exchange. If they don't have one, make sure you mention what you do, and the website address that is also listed on your free business card. Free business cards make a great networking tool if you will put them to use. Never forget, they are free, and should not be used sparingly. Use them in any situation you can think of. People will take them home and visit your site when they pull your business card out of their pocket.

With those three free website marketing ideas, your website will not only be more successful, but you won't have to spend any of your hard earned money on marketing!

Creating Pareto Chart Using Microsoft Excel : Part II

Now to create the chart. If you arrived at this post and have no idea why you're suddenly creating a chart, you may check the previous post on accumulating data first.

To continue, we're selecting the data for the chart. 

Choose B3:B7 and D3:D7 (Highlight B3:B7, press Ctrl, hightlight D3:D7). Then, choose Insert->Chart->Combo. Choose Series 2 as Secondary Axis. 

Now you have the Pareto chart. Customize by adding labels, values and changing the horizontal range.

Now that your chart is complete, you may begin analyzing the highest defects, problems or causes to plan the countermeasure.

Creating Pareto Chart Using Microsoft Excel : Part I

First of all, what is pareto chart?

Pareto chart is a chart that have both bars and a line graph. Pareto chart analyzes the frequency of problems, causes or defects. It is useful to prioritize the defects or problems in order to create a countermeasure.

Image source : Metacomet/Wikipedia

How to create Pareto chart using Microsoft Excel?

The first part is to collect the data that you need. Organize it in descending order based on the total of causes, problems or defects that occurs.

Then, sum all the causes to find the total value. Next, find the cumulative values of each causes.

C3 value is B1, C4 value is by adding C3 to B4. You may use the calculation provided by Microsoft Excel. For example, in cell C4, use =SUM(C3+B4). For C5, =SUM(C4+B5). Continue until you add all value.

Now, we're going to calculate the cumulative percentage.

To calculate, use Cumm value/Total*100. For example, in D3, it should be =C3/B8*100. Continue for all values. The last value should be 100%. Now, you're ready to create the chart.

<<Proceed to the second part on creating the chart.>>

Creating Underline Menu In Blogger

The Menu

I used coding provided by Dynamic Drive. To be more precise, you can get it here.

Search for your blog header (it would be something like "id=header" or such, it differ based on your blog coding) and paste the code under it.

Adjust the code to suit your blog better. And then you get your own menu.

Changing From Blogger Icon to Yours

Want to change from this



to this?



You can try this easy steps.

Icon can be created with any free service offer by dozens of site (or just make one your own)

If you make your own icon, upload it into image hosting site like imageshack or photobucket and then copy the code for the image.

For those using icon created by site, you can just get the code to be paste.

From the Dashboard, click Layout -> Edit HTML.

Paste the code here :



It's before /head

Save Template and you're done.

Good luck in trying~~~

Sticky Post in Blogger

Write your post as usual. But before hitting the Publish Post button, click Post Options.



Change the Post date and time to the future date and time.

This sticky post will allow you to 'stick' the post until the date and time that you enter pass.

Adding Search Box on Top

To add search box on top of your blogspot's blog,



From the dashboard, click Layout->Edit HTML->check the Expand Widget Templates->search for data:defaultadstart



add the search box code before the data:defaultadstart ->click Save Template

You're done.

Free Contact Form

Response-o-matic

To build the form needs only a couple of steps. However, I noticed that client need to click on a link to return main page. That's not really recommend. They also bring user to the site that took time to load.

There's limitation for free users. Only 20 mails per month. Since I used one to test, looks like I am left with 19 mails more.

Still, it's very easy to use and user friendly. Highly recommended to small business owner and has minimal knowledge of html.


Mycontactform

It took a lot of step to build a form, it may get annoying. However, user will be direct back to our site after they fill it, which is a good thing to me.

There's limitation as well, only 20 mails per month. To remove it, you need to upgrade and leave the freebie land for $29.99 a year. There's other benifits for upgrading as well.





Emailmeform

This site is highly recommended apart from the two above. Apart from sending user directly back to our site after filling up the form, it also has anti-spam option. This is necessary to avoid unsolicited emails.

We didn't need to use a form with words like 'service provided by...' at the bottom of the form.

However, even though email goes straight to the mailbox, you may confuse when you saw the subject as they written as 'subject: reference number'. But I think we can live with that.