Sell Crafts Online
The Best Place to Sell Crafts Online?
Are you crafty? Do you know that more and more people are actually making a good living out of selling their crafts online? A new online marketplace, Etsy.com, has provided artisans with a 24/7 online craft fair for their work!
The mission of this website is to help people who make things by hand also make a living. They hope to connect, or reconnect, buyers and sellers! Most of the crafts people are in the USA, but they are distributed throughout the 150 countries.
What do people make by hand to sell on Etsy?
Well, they have dozens of categories from Accessories to Woodworking, and just about everything in between. Some of the featured items the day I wrote this include photography, jewelry, and furniture. If you have a passion for making things, you can probably find a place to sell it on Etsy!
Can You Make Money on Etsy?
Well, some sellers have exploded their business. Others make a handful of sales. The website, itself, can help you promote your goods, but you probably also need to promote it through other websites, word of mouth, press releases, etc. to really get your own Etsy Store to take off. You can find some Etsy Success Stories for inspiration.
We’d love to hear some Etsy sucess stories here! Just register for free to comment!
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Dropshipping Business Opportunity For Home Business
Dropshipping as a Home Business Model
What is dropshipping?
You can find suppliers who will allow you to order products after you have sold them! You will pay more for these products, ordered one at a time, than you would if you purchased a bulk lot of them. But you should be able to find distributors who will still sell at wholesale prices so you can make a profit when you sell them retail. In return for making less profit, you do not have to store a large inventory, and you do not have to risk a large sum of money to buy products before you sell them.
Where to Sell Products?
Of course, EBay is a popular market for drop shippers. The large online auction website brings in traffic and provides a lot of tools for sellers to research markets. The downside is, of course, is that the market place is very competitive. Since you already know you will be paying a bit more than bulk buyers, you need to find products that are unique and in demand.
You can also build an ecommerce website that displays products you have dropshipping sources for. In fact, I would suggest combining EBay sales with a personal website. You can use the online auction website to bring in new customers, but mention your website for future orders when you communicate with buyers. This way you can avoid fees in the future, and maybe you can even offer a discount if customers make future purchases on your website. You can link to your website on the About Me Section of your Ebay advertisement, but are not allowed to link to it in the advertisement.
Where to Find Wholesale Dropship Suppliers?
Most of the lists you find are not very good. And many services that claim to offer products probably won’t offer prices that are low enough to allow you to profit in a competitive market. However, one service that provides a lot of valuable training and carefully researched list of dropship suppliers is WorldWideBrands. In fact, they are the only EBay certified dropshipping list. Membership is expensive, but if you are new to the business, I believe it is a good investment.
Learn more – What Is WorldWide Brands?
This website has some great tips for people who are considering their own EBay Dropshipping Business.
Categories: Internet Business Tags: dropshipping, ebay, ecommerce
Free Website Traffic Tips – Get More Visitors to your Website!
How To Attract Visitors (Traffic) to your Website For Free!
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So now you have built, or paid to build, this great website. I will surely help your business. Your new website is a marvel to behold, and you only have one problem with it. Nobody is visiting it. You see, the problem is that while your website may be the best one ever, there are lots of other online marketers competing for traffic. Out of the millions of websites, and maybe thousands about your website topic, how can you get people to visit you.
Where Do Internet Visitors Come From?
Search Engines – For most of us, the bulk of our visitors come from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. These people enter search terms and see a list of topical websites returned to them. But for many swearch terms there are thousands of pages that come back, and it is very important to be on the first page of results. How many times do you bother to go to the send page of results, and do you ever go past that?
Search engine results can either be free or paid (sponsored results). The things that a webmaster does to get natural (free) traffic are called SEO (search engine optimization), which paid traffic usually comes from PPC (pay per click) programs. So research on those topics should be at the top of your to-do list if you want the search engines to send you visitors!
Other Websites – Do not discount the value of visitors who come from other websites either. There are some free ways to get your link listed so it can, hopefully, attract some traffic. Let me list some of the easiest way to spread some link love around the net!
- Forums and Blog Comments. Find internet forums and blogs on topics that are related to your niche. Make helpful posts and comments and figure out how to drop a link back to your own website there. This can be time consuming, but once you find some good places to participate, it should pay off. Always follow the rules, avoid looking like a spammer, and try to build your credibility.
- Social Websites – Both social neworking websites, like Facebook, ad social bookmarking websites (i.e. DIGG) can be great places for you to find visitors.
- Article Directories – I am a big fan of article directories. If accepted, your article will be posted on the directory, plus it will probably also be picked up by other websites who are looking for content. You will be alllowed to have a resource box which can be a plug and a link for your own websites. A free article directory example is PublishMyself.net. A paid service which I like is Submit Your Article. This service will distribute your article to dozens of other websites, and will even allow you to create unique articles from one “seed” article in a very simple way. Provide interesting information in your articles, and don’t just write a sales pitch. If you can do that, interested readers will follow your link through to your own website and some will be warmed up to buy!
- Offline Marketing – You can also attract visitors with offline marketing. Include a link on your business card or stationary. If you have a budget, try the radio or local tv spots. I have seen people with signs on their cars. Your ability to advertise offline will only be limited by your creativity.
- Email Signatures – Almost every email system allows you to add a signature to the bottom of your email posts. Add a link and short plug for your website. Why not bring in people who are already communicating with you?
Paid Link Building Services – If your business already generates income, you may do well to pay for some link building. A service I have used is Compbizz Link Building. These people are very good at what they do, have affordable package rates, and have been reliable 100% of the time for me!
This list of ideas is not meant to be all inclusive or detailed. But it should you give you the basics to learn more about generating free internet traffic the way the pros do. Now that you have a starting point, it is up to you to test and research these ideas.
We’d sure like to hear more of your ideas about internet marketing too! Feel free to register and comment here.
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Categories: Internet Business Tags: affiliate marketing, internet marketer, internet traffic, link building, seo, website visitors
How to Start Internet Marketing – The Real Google Profits Plan
Would You Like to Make Some Money on the Internet?
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Lots of people would love to try to make some extra money online, but have no idea how to get started. In my opinion, one of the easiest ways to profit from a website is to simply use a couple of Google Products that actually are associated with the big G (Major Search Engine), and not any so-called Google Biz Kit, Google Profits, etc. This is one of he easiest and cheapest ways to get started by making money blogging online.
You can get started today, and you can get started for free.
Adsense and Blogger
Adsense- The Google pay per click (PPC) program. You need an adsense account. From this account you can set up your payment information, and you will get paid every month as long as your balance is at least $100. You can also select scripts, which are little pieces of codes that you cut an paste on a website (blogger makes this even eaiser). You can pick a variety of advertising formats and sizes to fit your website.
The Adsense script will detect what your website is about, and will display context sensitive ads on your pages. This is what you want because visitors who are interested in the topic of your page will be most likely to be interested in related ads.
Blogger- This is Google’s free blogging platform. You can register for free, and start a blog in a few minutes by clicking through the easy set up options. Because this platform is also run by Google, Adsense is integrated with it. They make it as easy as possible to start displaying Adsense ads on blogs!
How to Get Started
- Decide what you want your blog to be about. I would always advise a newbie to start with a topic that is already interesting to them. Everybody has some intereests and expertise. Think about your work, hobbies, interests, and experiences. If you would like to discuss current events, cooking, ancient crossbows, or your favorite local restaurants, you can find plenty of people with similar interests on the world wide web! And if you choose an interest of yours, it will be easier to produce articles for your blog.
- Register your blog with Blogger.com. You just need to go through the steps, and it is really easy. The system also has plenty of help pages and support. Don’t worry if you make a mistake. The great thing about computers is that nothing is set in stone, and almost anything can be fixed later. Besides, if you do not like what you created, you can always create another one. Blogger allows you to run multiple blogs with one account.
- Add a few pages of content to your blog. Introduce yourself and cover some basics with your starter articles. Again, do not agonize over this. You can always go back and edit your articles, delete them, and add new ones.
- After your blog has a few pages, register for an Adsense account. This is also free for you to join. They will want you to list your blog as your first website, and approval may take a few days. Adsense is here: https://www.google.com/adsense/
- Once you have an adsense account, you will return to blogger with your publisher ID and set it up so you can start displaying ads. There should be an option in the layout or template to place your ads.
How Much Money Can You Make with Blogger
You probably will not make a lot of money at first. Adsense pays you per visitor click, and the amount varies by ads. Many ads only pay a few cents, but I have had a few ads that paid several dollars (this is rare) for one click! The key now is to promote your blog so you have visitors who are interested in the content of your blog, and who will be likely to visit your ads.
There are many beginning bloggers who need a few months to get to that first $100 payment, and some who make a few hundred dollars the first month. It takes visitors to make money, so the beter your strategy for this works, the more money you are likely to make. It takes most of us several weeks to start attracting traffic to a new blog or website.
Some topics just pay better than others too, but I would wait until you are more advanced to worry about that.
And finally, many popular websites, which have been going for awhile make thousands of dollars a month. Most webmasters and bloggers, though, work up to a good income when they have built a network of several blogs and websites, worked hard to make them useful and popular, and they took the time to educate themselves about the internet marketing business. That can take months or years.
Attracting internet traffic (Website Visiors) is beyond the scope of this article, but you can find plenty of advice on that here, and on other webmasters websites and forums. You could start by sticking your blog name in your email signature, putting it on your social neworking sites (facebook, myspace, twitter, etc.), telling your friends. As you get going, you will want to expand your efforts though, and that will take more learnin’.
NEVER CLICK YOUR OWN ADS! You will not get in trouble if this happens once in a blue moon, but you will get in trouble if you do it a lot. Google knows the computer (IP address) location that you registered with, and they will cancel your account if they find a lot of advertising clicking going on from that location.
Can you Really Make Money with Adsense?
Some internet marketers will criticize this article because they do not believe that Google Adsense is the most profitable system. I have a couple of replies to that.
- Adsense may not be the best way to make the most money for an experienced internet marketer, but I have always found that it is the easiest way for a newbie to get started making some money.
- Some very popular websites – like ezinearticles.com – bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars with Adsense. Of course the websites have grown to have lots of content and lots of visitors. That did not happen in a day, but it happens now!
We would certainly love your comments. So go ahead an register and tell us what you think!
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Categories: Internet Business Tags: adsense, blogger, blogging, make money internet, online business, ppc
Explain Affiliate Marketing – The Cycle from Web Browser to Income!
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I think Julia B also posted a great note on the basics of affiliate marketing. I want to give her credit, and her post is: What is Affiliate Marketing. We webmasters work hard to deliver internet visitors to our website, join some affiliate programs, put up links, and after a lot of hard work, hope to make some money!
I found this picture on Wikipedia, and it said it was under the creative commons license for reuse, so I am taking the liberty of illustrating my post here.
1. Brand or Seller has a product/service/message to deliver. They start an affiliate program. These programs could be in-house, or they could be managed by a network of affiliate programs.
2. An affiliate is usually a website owner. This could be an individual or a company. They join the affilaite program and promote the seller in hopes of making income in the ways that JuliaB described (i.e. pay per click, pay per sale, etc.)
3. Of course, customers are the key asset. Visitors to a website may be interested in the product or service or message being displayed, click through to the actual sales page, and then perform whatever action will make the actual affilate money.
These actions are tracked because each affiliate will get a unique tracking code they use to link to the seller. They will usually have some sort of statistics page they can log into so they can keep track of how well they do.
I think that those of us who do this business every day think this is obvious, but most casual web surfers do not really understand this process at all.
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Categories: Internet Business Tags: affiliate marketing, Internet Business, money online
