Posts filed under 'business'
What are you doing to
keep your potential customers from shopping around?
Last week I read an article that was very fascinating… I wish I
could remember where I read it – it was one of those things that I
read in passing and didn’t quite think about how it could impact
the way I do business until later.
It was talking about how customers are getting more comfortable
with buying online… nothing new here. In fact, this is great news
for eBay sellers because more comfortable buyers can translate into
more sales, right? Wrong.
The article went on to explain the trends they are seeing with
these more comfortable shoppers… like shopping around. This study
pointed out that the more comfortable people are buying online –
the more they shop around for the best deal. The competition just
got more fierce.
Where online retailers (and resellers) use to have to just convince
customers/shoppers to buy… now, we have to convince these shoppers
to buy from us. We have to give them a reason why our items are
better than the competition. They have discovered that they have
choices – we have to help them understand why they want to choose
our products… or our services… or our information.
As you can see, this can have a profound impact on how eBay sellers
do business. If we have a good in-demand product but the customer
is shopping around… that is even more of a reason to be sure our
listings are all they can be!
The Auction Overhaul is designed to do just this… It is everything
you need to give your listings a good kick in the pants. You don’t
just get a list of things to check off — with Auction Overhaul you
will get your hands on tools to do your very own ‘Do-It-Yourself’
auction critique.
Look at Skip McGrath said about the Auction Overhaul package…
“I just finished looking over your material and I am really
impressed with the quality and the information.†~ Skip McGrath
(www.skipmcgrath.com)
Here is what is included:
** Auction Overhaul Workbook
** Report: 10 Mistakes to Avoid
** Report: 1079 Words That Sell Like Crazy
** Report: Descriptive Phrases
** Training Video: How to use photo editing software
** Product Descriptions pack
Separately, this package would cost over $130… but, as a package, I
have discounted it to $67 (saving you over 50 bucks) –
But, this email is to remind you that to kick off the launch of
this new package, you can get it for $47 IF you buy it before
midnight Sunday, August 19! That is just about 24 hours away…
You can learn more about the Auction Overhaul here:
www.auctionoverhaul.com – But, don’t buy it from that page or you
won’t get the discount.
Get the Auction Overhaul for just $47 by clicking here:
www.auctionoverhaul.com/special
That link will expire at midnight tomorrow – so if you have been
sitting on the fence with this one… now is the time to decide. And,
remember, I stand behind what I offer – you have nothing to lose
with my 30 day money back guarantee.
August 19th, 2007
 Popular site enhances existing services with board of experts
Basingstoke, Hamsphire, July 23, 2007 –The popular website Internet Based Moms took another step towards market dominance with the installation of eight business and marketing experts to its information site. The experts, all notable names in their respective fields, will be speaking directly to questions submitted by visitors in an on-going blog format. Owner Mila Sidman is joined by Alice Seba, Elaine Gordon Evan, Jenni Hunt, Kelly McCausey, Lynette Chandler, Rhea Perry and Sharon Odom Fling to provide advice and encouragement in a variety of internet business disciplines including affiliate marketing, e-bay sales, podcasting and marketing technology.
“I’m thrilled to be associated with bringing together the best and brightest online women entrepreneurs on the planet for this project.†says Sidman, the marketing and content creation specialist. “With the Experts Blog, our visitors will be able to access a superior level of personalized content, that is both original and exclusive, available nowhere else on the Internet.â€
Internet Based Moms was the first to focus exclusively on online business for women, and continues to evolve with innovations like the Experts Blog. Over 3000 new visitors seeking information on legitimate work at home opportunities arrive at the site daily.
“The Experts blog is a continuation of our mission to provide the most up-to-date and relevant information to women wanting to start and operate a business online,†explains Sidman, “The experts blog will help us ensure that we’re providing the right tools for our visitors to succeed in their endeavors.â€
# # #
Mila has asked me to participate as the eBay expert on this expert blog – come on by and say hi!
experts.internetbasedmoms.com/jenniÂ
August 9th, 2007
Kendra from Here Comes The Stork just sent me an email about her latest offer to join her membership site – it is a great deal! Here Comes The Stork is actually the first site I joined when I started selling on eBay… and she is the one who introduced me to Jim Cockrum’s The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay (a must read). Anyhow, I don’t think she has ever made an offer like this for her membership before – check it out before it is too late!
Here are the details:
The Premier Lifetime Membership for Here Comes The Stork will be available for only $99. Each person
who registers as a Premier Member will receive an entry into a raffle to
win GREAT prizes!
1st Prize – COACH SIGNATURE MULTI STRIPE TOP HANDLE POUCH ($138.00 Value)
2nd Prize – IPod Shuffle ($79.00 Value)
3rd Prize – One Year Subscription to www.TheSellerSourceBook.com ($70 Value)
4th Prize – $15 Starbucks gift card
5th Prize – $10 Target gift Card
** Drawing will take place on Tuesday, July 3rd. I will email the winners
for their shipping information and have prizes shipped directly from the
stores to the winners.
Sign up here:
http://tinyurl.com/2dyemm
Enjoy!
Jenni
July 1st, 2007
Okay… I’ll just tell you… ME! 🙂 How cool is that?
The writer did a wonderful job of putting the article together… it talks about being an internet mom. You can read it here:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/05/24/internet.moms/
Enjoy!
Jenni
May 27th, 2007
Summer is coming – and this can mean slower sales for some eBay sellers. Most items, in fact, have their high and low seasons… and some low selling seasons can last up to 6 months out of the year! This is bad news if you count on your eBay income year round.
Toys are one of the few items that sell well the entire year on eBay. The trick is knowing what toys will sell for profit. I always turn to eBay to find out…
One of the best ways to know what toys are selling on eBay is RESEARCH! But, let’s get real… you are busy taking pictures, getting those auctions listed and shipping items…
Who has time to research?
And to make it even more difficult, to *really* be able to know what is selling well, this research must be done on an ongoing basis. Spending a week researching hot toys is great – but, the results of that research can’t always be applied next month. Ebay is constantly changing… and although toys are always great items to sell for profit, it isn’t always the same toys that bring in the dough.
MyToyGuide is offering a summer package that will provide you with a list of 25 top selling toys from 5 toy categories… a weekly list of at least 25 items that are currently doing well on eBay. These aren’t predictions either – This list will be actual auctions of toys that are currently doing well for that week.
Here is what one of the MyToyGuide subscribers has to say,
â€Hi Jenni, I wanted to tell you thanks so much for this list!! I sent my hubby to Safeway to find the Eintsein Puppets [for $1.50 ea] that you alerted us to. He only found two there, but also found a book on the Indian Motorcycle,paid $2.50 and we sold on ebay for $47.50. Then we journeyed to the other Safeway across town and picked up 5 complete sets of the Einstein puppets. We didn’t do as well with those, but they all sold for around $30.00 a set!
I have paid for my list subscription over and over, Keep up the great work!
Debbie W.â€
A steal at $29.97, you can have this information available to you immediately. Not only that – but, you get your hands on the weekly list for 4 full months!
But wait… there’s more 😉
Here is what is included in the MyToyGuide Summer Package for 2007:
–        4 months of access to the MyToyGuide members site ($40 value) including…
–Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Weekly hot list of at least 25 toys that are currently selling well on eBay
–Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Access to my personal inventory resource list, articles, specials and more
–        4 months access to the Online Toy Reference Guide ($30 value) –An online directory providing information for hundreds of toys.
–Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 25 FREE item or seller searches with eSellerStreet (valued at $.35 each)
This summer package is valued at over $70 – but, for a short time, you can save over 50% and get your hands on it for only $29.97. On May 21st at midnight, this offer will no longer be available. You will still be able to sign up for the toy guide – but, the bonuses and discount will no longer be available.
Click here to get immediate access and start receiving your weekly toy hot lists
Or learn more here:
www.mytoyguide.com/summer
May 11th, 2007
If you are selling children’s items – I have a little treat for you that might help you build your list and gain repeat customers. Susanne from ParentingZoo has prepared an ebook that you can give to your customers as a thank you gift. It is a book of coloring pages for their kids.
There are a few ways you can use this coloring book…
1. You can send an email to your customers so they can download it
2. If you are collecting email addresses in an autoresponder outside of eBay, you could offer it as incentive for signing up for your newsletter/mailing list
3. You could print it out and include it in your package
I’m sure there are a bunch of other creative ways you could use these coloring pages as a tool to bring in customers as well…
You can grab your copy of the ParentingZoo coloring pages here:
www.jennihunt.com/All-My-Toys-Coloring-Book-Jenni.pdf
And to learn more about ParentingZoo – check out:
www.jennihunt.com/recommends/pzoo.htm
Enjoy!
Jenni
April 19th, 2007
A month or so ago, Jim Cockrum invited me to be an expert on his new site, www.My-Silent-Team.com… I’m honored to be a part of it. If you haven’t checked it out – it is a must see for eBay sellers.
Anyhow, I was poking around the members forum on the site and one of the things I’m really enjoying is that Jim’s wife, Andrea, has joined the team to help moderate the forum. What a treat! She started a thread titled, “What has your day ‘looked’ like today?”… and it really got me thinking.
I am lucky enough to enjoy what I do in my business… I have a passion for helping other eBay sellers take their business to a new level (especially eBay moms) – but, to be honest, sometimes I let this passion get in the way of other priorities in my life. Do you struggle with this? My kids and family mean the world to me… but sometimes I am so sucked into answering emails or writing an article that my focus gets a bit messed up.
I thanked Andrea for her thread topic because it made me stop and think about what my day was looking like… was I managing my time the way I really wanted to? Sometimes we just need someone to help us stop and think about our day…
So… What has your day ‘looked’ like?
Jenni
BTW – In case you aren’t familiar with Jim Cockrum… he is the author one of the most sold ebooks about selling on eBay. You have heard me talk about it… The Silent Sales Machine On Ebay. This book inspired me to grow my business beyond eBay – Jim is the absolute real deal! I’m a member on his site and I honestly think you should consider it too. www.My-Silent-Team.com
March 23rd, 2007
Overcoming a Poverty Mentality in Business
By: Confidence to Act
When I first started my Internet business I had a goal to earn money from home like everyone else. I had a few skills that I felt were marketable and I launched my website with high hopes and the smallest budget any man or woman has ever started with: Zero.
I had nothing! I didn’t have money to pay my electric bill so I sure didn’t have money for investing into my business. I figured I was building with 100% sweat equity.
I’m a hard worker and a pretty smart cookie so with time and effort I did build my business. I gained a few clients, a few referrals and after six months of pure grunt effort I was making about $100 a month.
Don’t laugh at my $100 a month, I was glad to get it! I had fallen into the work at home Mom online community and I spent a lot of time on message boards and discussion lists and I knew that there were hundreds of Moms trying to make an income from home who would throw a party if they made $100 in a month. So I counted myself among the blessed.
I found a really good web host who provided me with inexpensive hosting that allowed me to host multiple domains – this was really key to my initial business growth because when I got an idea for another income opportunity I was able to go for it with only the cost of the domain name – and more sweat equity.
After six more months of hard labor I was making about $200 per month. Again, don’t you laugh! That was my goal to start with. I had figured that if I could pull in $200 more per month, I could at least pay the bills. But I was working about 25 hours a week and that comes out to about $2 per hour. Yikes!
I heard about others who were making much more than I and I started to hang out around them to try to learn what they were doing. This was exciting, inspiring and frustrating.
Exciting because I wanted to earn more money desperately!
Inspiring because it seemed that normal people just like me were making good money online.
Frustrating because they were all attributing their success to the purchase and consumption of Internet marketing information products.
Imagine yourself a fly on the wall on a message board and you’re reading testimony after testimony about how someone had learned so much from so and so and they were now making $500, $1000 or even more a month from affiliate marketing.
Great! Sign me up!
Then you click on the link and find out the ebook they’re talking about is fifty bucks.
Well the heck with that, that’s one fourth of my business income. I need that money to pay my electric bill. I can’t afford that. Goodness, why is it so expensive? Can’t I learn this stuff somewhere for free?
All of those thoughts went through my head and I set out to dig out this information for myself. I scoured message boards, I read every article, I listened to every free teleseminar. I spent hour after hour after hour hunting down information.
Then it slowly dawned on me…. I was investing an awful lot of my time into this quest for information.
I realized there are two ways you can invest in your business.
You can invest time or your can invest money.
And it doesn’t take a whole lot of smarts to know that time takes longer.
I had just finished a big job and I had some cash in my PayPal account. I bit my lip and sweated through the purchase of my first information product. I bought the Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner.
I devoured it in a couple of hours and sat back to digest. I was amazed at how much information it had packed into it and overwhelmed by the possibilities for applying it in my business.
I won’t bore you with the details but since then I’ve spent close to a thousand dollars on information products, membership sites and business learning of one kind or another. As I look back at my receipts for 2004 I am a little shocked at how much I did spend!
Spending that money wasn’t easy either. $100 a pop for this or that when I would have much rather spent it on something else at the time is a sacrifice for this single Mom. But it has been worth it. I learned something valuable and made priceless connections with each expenditure.
I’m now earning more than $1000 per month from my home business. That is 500% growth! I am still applying what I’m learning, I am still investing back a certain amount and still growing my income. I’ve made such big strides in my personal finances that I am set to become debt free (not counting my house) by mid 2005.
I not only learned the value of investing money in business learning, I loosened up the purse strings on software, outsourcing and equipment investments that help make my work easier.
I have some friends that I’ve known since I first started my business. They are still doing the same things they have always done and they are still earning the same amounts of money and they are still expressing their earnest desire to earn more. Sadly, when I encourage them to invest in learning products they say the same thing I used to say. (I need that money to pay my electric bill. I can’t afford that. Goodness, why is it so expensive? Can’t I learn this stuff somewhere for free?)
I can honestly say now that I had a poverty mentality for a long time. I was so used to not having enough, I was always consuming every penny I made. It was just too scary to think of investing in my future. What if it didn’t pay off?
That attitude will only keep you in poverty.
You must break out of that line of thinking!
Earmark an amount to begin investing into your business learning. If it’s $25 a month, well then that’s what you’re going to start with. If it can be more, great. Then set apart a percentage of your business income for re-investing each month. Be brave and make it a good amount.
Set aside some time each week to really focus in on studying and absorbing new information – both what you pay for and what you can find for free.
You can invest time or you can invest money. You can invest both wisely or you can invest both foolishly. Sadly the web is running wild with crazy get rich quick schemes and dishonest business people making crazy promises. My advice to you is to find someone smart, successful and honest to mentor you. Run every penny you spend past your mentor – they will help you make sure that you get the best bang for your buck.
If you will do this, you will learn more than you ever imagined and you will grow your business!
This article provided by:
Kelly McCausey is the host of Work at Home Moms Talk Radio and she mentors Moms in creating successful internet based businesses. She knows that confidence keeps many from stepping out to put their ideas into action. Let some of her confidence rub off on you with the audio course, The Confidence to Act.
February 21st, 2007
