Harnessing eBay’s traffic – whether you are a seller or not

There is no getting around it…
eBay is one of the most visited sites in the world. And, these aren’t just visitors… these are people looking to BUY something. It makes sense to me that every business owner consider eBay for qualified leads… even if they are not an eBay seller!

Ebay has a little known secret… classified ads. These are not auction listings… and actually have a different set of rules that apply to them. The cool thing is that these classified ads show up in search results RIGHT ALONG SIDE auction listings! AND… you can include an email address and phone number in your ad.

Think about how much you are willing to spend on advertising… What would you pay for a banner on a top website advertising your site or services? Now, consider the amount of traffic that website gets for the price.

Right now, eBay only charges $9.95 a MONTH for a classified ad… if you place the ad strategically (use solid keywords, etc.), for under $10 you will have access to massive amounts of traffic – AND – this isn’t just any traffic… these are qualified leads! People looking to BUY!

Learn more about classified ads here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/f-ad.html

Finding Balance As A WAHM

Work at home moms face challenges that are very unique. The decision to work outside the home or stay with your children is difficult, with each option having advantages and disadvantages. If you stay home you may lose income and you will lose interaction with fellow employees, and if you work outside the home you live with separation from your children and pay caregiver expenses. Many women are choosing to work at home and finding the right opportunity is the first step in finding success as a work at home mom.

You could use the knowledge and skills you have and become a consultant, develop a career in design or writing, telecommute to a job, or start a home-based business. The opportunities are endless.

It can be difficult for a work at home mom to balance home, family, and career. Even if you are not a parent it is hard to find time for a personal life when you operate a home-based business. It is very easy to become consumed by your work when you work from home and it can be a challenge to find time for yourself and your family.

To successfully balance a home and career you must create a work schedule. Decide what hours will be set aside for work and try hard to stick to that time-frame. It very beneficial to create a boundary between work and home. Setting a work schedule will give you a routine to follow.

To give yourself the opportunity to socialize and meet new people, try geting involved with community or other volunteer activities. If you do not get out of the house regularly you may begin to resent your work and your family obligations.

During your workday, take short breaks to get up and move around. A simple stretching routine or a short walk will do wonders for your outlook. It will be necessary for you to deliberately schedule time for personal activities such as reading, picnics, or exercise.

By adding these activities and free time to your schedule you will ensure that you get some much needed “mommy” time and that your family spends quality time together. You will find that if your leisure and family time suffer too much, your relationships will suffer as well. Make time for the fun things and times shared with children and family.

If you implement these ideas into your life as a work at home mom, you will be better able to achieve balance between work and your home life.

Mentors Can Change Your Life

The following is part of an article my oldest son wrote a few years ago. 

When I was 14 years old, I flew to
Boise, Idaho to spend a month with Chris Verhaegh. That was a month that changed my life.  

While I was there, Chris took me to about a hundred different places and each one had a lesson of its own. 

He taught me lessons at a motocross race, coin shops, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, auto body shops, a grocery store, and in his airplane hangar. We visited hangars in his neighbors’ backyards where I met mechanics that built their own ultra-light airplanes. 

Each one had at least one lesson to learn. 

Here’s just one example.  

One day he took me to a landscaping company where they were selling huge oak stumps for $500 each. 

 Landscapers were buying the stumps for big expensive houses that needed “something.” 

I told him, “Back home in
Alabama, we burn stumps like that. I’ve seen big piles full of stumps just like that burn all day.” 

He said, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” 

Now even though I was just a kid, I knew everyone had heard that saying. Then he said, “You should stop burning the stumps and start selling them. Why burn something others are willing to pay good money for?”The important thing I learned was not that you could make money with stumps; it was that successful people learn to see opportunity in other people’s common problems. 

I’ve never met anyone who thinks like Chris Verhaegh.  

Neither has Mom or Dad. 

 He retired when he was 28 and has spent the rest of his life learning and raising four kids with his wife Karen.  

He’s also mentored other young men who have been more successful than me. Chris has also taught investors in many cities and countries how to profit in the stock market.

Drew has seen that a good mentor can change your life. I have too. 

So many books, so little time… 

Rhea!

who hopes you find a mentor

Turn Your Job into a Business

Whether you’re simply tired of your 9 to 5 job, are a new mother who can’t bear the thought of leaving your children in the care of someone else or if you’re just received notice that you’ll be losing your job – take heart. There are many opportunities to turn your job into your own business.

Here are some tips for turning a service you provide for your current employer into your own service-based business.

Take the Time to Research Your Options

Don’t just automatically quit your day job and assume the money will come pouring in. You’ll need to do research to determine if the service you currently offer is one that would make a good business venture. Some examples of jobs that have successfully been converted to businesses include bookkeeping, tax preparation, administrative assistant, web designers, graphic designers, sales jobs, and many others. Take a look and see what other independent service-providers are out there working in a similar field to yours.

Realize the Work Involved

By starting your own service-based business, keep in mind that not only will you be doing the actual work, but you’ll also be responsible for running a business. This will require more time on your part that are necessary to running a business. For instance, business owners don’t get paid each month for keeping track of, reporting and analyzing accounting for their business, but you still need to find time to do it. You will also likely incur additional costs in setting up your home office, creating a website (click here for a free 10-day trial) and finding new clients.

Beware of the Trading Hours for Dollars Trap

It’s easy to get into a routine of spending countless hours working on your business. It’s not uncommon for service based business owners to find at the end of the month, they’ve made very little money in comparison to the time they spent to earn that money.

One way business owners can combat this problem is to charge what their time is worth in the first place. Just because a business is new does not mean the owner should charge rock bottom prices in order to get work. Be honest with yourself and if you deserve more money, don’t be afraid to give yourself a raise!

You can and should also hire subcontractors to get some of the client work and tasks complete. No, I don’t mean anything complicated like hiring employees, but instead find independent contractors that can help complete various tasks in your business.

This might mean finding someone who can assist in areas such as customer service, bookkeeping, or even being a backup for the actual services you provide your clients. Independent contractors work for themselves and take care of their own costs and taxes, therefore leaving you to pay only for the work they actually do for your business. No need to worry about taxes, unproductive time, lunch breaks, equipment costs, etc.

If you enjoy what you do for your current employer but have found yourself in a position that leaves the need or just plain want to work for yourself instead, turning a current job into your own business is not impossible and definitely worth a second look. Just be sure to research and plan ahead to ensure the best possible outcome.

For Further Research: Search for service-based business ideas at Business Idea Library.

To complain… or just get creative

eBay has made some huge announcements these last few weeks… many have come as a surprise to sellers. Whether you agree, disagree, or don’t care ;-) … These changes will likely impact the way you run your eBay business. Although I’m not too thrilled about the changes, I think I’ve learned that it doesn’t really profit me to complain about them… or even put much effort into trying to change eBay. Besides, there are plenty of sellers already doing that.

On the other side of the coin, I have learned that eBay has a goal – and that is to grow in profitability. Even though their profits come from sellers (buyers don’t pay fees to bid, etc.)… they view the buyers/bidders as their customers and are doing what they believe they need to do to keep these customers happy. If this is truly the case… then, eBay’s customer and my customer are one in the same. By working to retain and bring in new customers, eBay is working for me. Yeah, they are making things more difficult for me (raising prices, changing feedback policy, changing payment options, etc.); however, if I can find a way to stay within eBay’s policy and work with these changes, I’ll be that much more successful.

I guess it is a mindset… we can choose to complain about things that we really can’t change – or, we can let our competition do that, and focus our own energy/efforts on how to grow our own business for bigger profits.

I think this applies to all business models actually… unless we are truly running our own business… or as long as we are ‘working’ for someone else, changes will be made that are out of our control. We can choose to fight it every step of the way… or roll with it and get creative about how we increase profits.

Traveling to a Convention This Summer?

Hi everyone!

Summer is fast approaching which means many companies are hosting Annual Conventions. These are great opportunities for learning and remembering why it is you’ve chosen to do what you do.

All the travel expenses can take a real bite out of business profits, though, so I’ve found a tool that helps me make the most of every dollar! I’d like to share it with you so you can be a savvy convention traveler, too!

www.biddingfortravel.com will give you the inside scoop on how to make priceline work for you – especially when it comes to hotels and rental cars. You can see exactly what people bid to win a hotel room and you see exactly which hotels are the “usual suspects” for priceline.

On top of that, if you take the time to read and learn the inside strategies, you will be able to master getting a great hotel **exactly** where you want to stay! For example, I just returned from Sedona, Arizona. Hotels there this time of year start at $125 for the most basic 2-star experience. Using Bidding for Travel’s information, I stayed at a Hilton Resort, got a king suite (lists for about $425 a night) for $120/night AND I knew that that was where I was going to stay before I ever started bidding.

Oh and I got a rental car for $17 a day.

Like I said, you have to do some reading and take the time to teach yourself the strategies, but it is well worth the $$$$ you will save when you travel to convention!

Good Luck!

Love & Success!
Sarah

Email Message With Headers What Does That Mean?

When you get to tech support on email related issues, you may be asked to forward them a copy of the email in question complete with headers. What does this mean? In all email message there is a part you don’t see. This section is at the very top heading the email (therefore called headers).

Most email readers including online ones won’t display this to you because to the regular email recipient this information is not meaningful. But to the email reader and for tech support, there is a gold mine of information there.

By looking at the headers, they will be able to tell where the email originated from, what was used by the sender to send the email and a bit more info along those lines. Very useful for investigating spam. In fact, if you ever are accused of spam, you should ask people to forward you a copy of the email complete with headers to determine the problem. But I digress.

When you are asked to forward this email, regular forwarding won’t work. The typical forward feature doesn’t include all this information so you probably have to go through some extra steps. But they are quick and easy. This video shows you exactly how.

Top 3 Software In Your Business

Have you ever stopped to think how lost you’d be in our business if you didn’t have a particular software or system? For online business owners, the top three software they find their business can’t live without is usually three of the following;

• The email autoresponder system
• The shopping cart
• The website or blog publisher
• The email reader
• The browser (but of course)

Well those are fine and should be the cornerstone of any business who has an Internet arm. But what about other not so obvious systems? Here are my three.

Firefox plugins – So I cheat. They are not full fledge software but they help make my favorite browser totally my own and also speed up my work considerably. I have quite a few plugins installed. Here are a handful of key plugins that go on every Firefox installation I have are:
Firebug: I am so lost without this especially when working on websites and themes.
BBCode Extra: So helpful when posting to blog comments and forums.
Colorzilla: Oh so very useful when you don’t have the color code or want to mimic a site’s color.

RoboForm – every time I use my Mac (like now) I am so very lost without my RoboForm. There is an equivalent for the Mac but I am not on here that much. Not as much as on my PC and RoboForm spoilt me totally.

Mozy – if I don’t have my data, my business will be at a standstill. The loss would be phenomenal. They help make my backups up to date and easy.

What are your top three software or systems?

The Web Works for Local Business

My itchy nose and watery eyes tell me that spring is in the air. Along with that comes hot weather, which prompted a search for someone to fix something that was wrong with our air conditioner. I was too busy dealing with house repairs to deal with that. Did I mention that an idiot drunk driver crashed into our house in February? Thank God no one was hurt but it threw my life into chaos.

Anyway, my husband found somebody and last week he showed up and replaced the evaporator coil and now we have a nice cool house, just in time too because the temperature is in the 80s already. So as I paid the guy, I noticed a URL on the invoice and asked him if he’s using the Internet. His answer surprised me…an enthusiastic YES.

He went on to tell me that most of his leads are coming from the Internet and he’s thinking of discontinuing his Yellow Pages ad.

This is BIG! When a small “Mom and Pop” type business discontinues their Yellow Page ad, or even thinks about it, that tells me that they are finally starting to “get” it. The light bulb is finally on and in this case, Alex is thinking about how he can take that three grand he’s paying for that teeny tiny unchangeable ad in a book that nobody even looks at anymore and generate leads online.

Proof positive that the web works for small local business and even better, they are starting to realize it.

WAHM’s Need Down Time Too

Let’s see. You did the laundry, checked your email, worked online, filed papers, made a few phone calls, dropped the boys off at Karate and the girls at dance class, stopped at the grocery store for a few last minute dinner items…What’s missing? As you were taking care of everyone else all day long, did you remember to take care of yourself? I know it can be hard to carve out space for you, since being a mom is a full time job, but taking care of yourself helps you have the strength and energy to keep taking care of everyone else, from your children to the snake your son left in the pocket of his dirty jeans.

If trying to squeeze out a few more hours a day just for you seems impossible, why not try one of these ideas:

1. Don’t be afraid to start small. It’s better for you to take five minutes to read the funny pages or your favorite inspirational poem than it is to not take any time at all for you.

2. Get up twenty or thirty minutes earlier than usual and spend some time doing something you enjoy, such as reading the paper while you sip your coffee or meditating. By the time the children wake up, you will be ready to start your busy day.

3. Talk to the other moms at your children’s classes and find out if any of them live nearby. See if several of them are interested in forming a carpool, so you don’t have to make every trip to drop off and pick up the kids.

4. Find another mom who has children that get along well with your kids. Alternate babysitting services with her, so that you each have a few hours of free time every week to go to the gym or get your hair done. Don’t be tempted to do chores instead. You need this time for you and you won’t feel very rested and refreshed if you pick up the dry cleaning, do the grocery shopping, and run the car through the car wash instead of relaxing.

5. Delegate evening chores like setting the table, washing the dishes, and packing the next day’s lunch. If everyone does ten or fifteen minutes of work, you will have enough free time to soak in the tub or read a chapter of the newest best seller.

Finally, make sure your family realizes the importance of letting you find some time for yourself. Speak with your children about respecting your quiet time, whenever and however you manage to fit it into your day.

So, do you get enough time for yourself? What would you like to see change?

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