Jewelry Collectibles Design | Website Design, eBay Store SEO, Niche Marketing

One of the very important key elements of doing business, both online and offline (brickand mortar) is through networking. It’s a great way to meet people, create new alliances and ultimately win more business.

I work from home and work hard. No sofa lounge lizard watching TV for me! During the day I work on client projects, some are easy, some are fun, some not quite either. They all require an intense degree of attention to detail, diligence and a high degree of precision. or maybe I just think they require all that being as I am somewhat of a perfectionist!

Whatever. I do what I do because I love what I do and I give my clients 110%. it keeps them happy and happy clients are repeat clients who refer others.

By the time evening comes I’m tired. However, my day rarely ends there.

At least 5 out of 7 nights a week are spent networking. An occasional business lunch or dinner with the local chapter of my state business women owners organization for some real handshaking and face to face networking and the rest taling advantage of the many very good networking resources found online.

I spend my time tweaking any given profile, uploading screenshots of my work and completed projects, participating in forums, hooking up with other members, and of course finding new networking opportunities.

I also spend some evenings writing some creative content articles to enhance my reputation as a freelance writer of quality content and of course, making money.

The business of networking and marketing oneself and one’s business can be every bit as tiring as running the business, yet, it can be a rewarding and lucrative way to gain contacts and business as well as expand your overall reach in the search engines.

Joining a local or state business organization or your local Chamber of Commerce is another way to gain very valuable networking leads and exposure.

Volunteering on a committee is yet another way to network and meet potential customers plus it gives people the opportunity to get to know you.

This is important as it helps develop the trust factor. People who know yuo and trust you are much more likely to come to you first for a product or service.

Sure, all of this takes time and so doesn’t leave much room for fun and leisure. Look at it this way ~ you are building solid ground work for future business and business relationships. Out of those relationships comes business and referrals.

No business = no money = no fun and leisure. Personally I don’t mind working hard day and night in order to reap some solid rewards!

eBay has become famous in recent years for blatantly showing the world that their business model is in flux by instituting changes of all sorts, fee hikes, fee reductions, policy changes and management changes that have affected thousands of lives around the country and perhaps even around the world both positively and negatively.

Would this flux have been so obvious, so painful and the subject of so much commentary if eBay was not the world’s largest marketplace? I think not. Most if not all companies go through these growing pains without the level of publicity, scrutiny and speculation that eBay has.

In any event, the fact that the sleeping giant woke up and began stretching has not only made the ground shake but has created the occasional tidal wave as well. Out of the ashes things rebuild. Not always as we like, but if we are to survive, we ride the waves.

It has been said many times that people close their eBay stores and stop selling there because of the fees, the lack of visibility, and slow sales.

I’m not an eBay cheerleader however I see beneath the surface that eBay is still and always will be a most valuable selling tool.

Fees ~

Your fees are the price you pay for doing business in eBay’s playground. eBay isn’t going anywhere. They are and will be the world’s largest marketplace.

No website, no matter how well designed, search engine optimized, or marketed will be able to generate the traffic flow that eBay has proven it can. Your fees are the price of doing business there. Try getting Adsense or any other paid advertising for what you pay in eBay fees and being able to generate sales from that.  Try establishing the same traffic volume. Albeit traffic everywhere is slow at this time because of the economy which we can only blame on corporate greed ~  those who approved mortgages to people who were not really qualified for them in the first place, just so they could turn a fast buck.

How much you spend on eBay fees is dependant on how well you work the system.

Lack of Visibility ~

Again, visibility on eBay is what it is. They want you to run auctions, and items at fixed price, because it works well for their business model. They have place eBay stores at the bottom of the food chain.

Are they going to do away with eBay stores? Not likely. As much as eBay doesn’t want to publicly admit it, stores are an integral part of their business plan because in order for your store to take off, you need to run auctions and listings at fixed price. No eBay stores, that would be less auctions and less fixed price listings that would run. So, stores aren’t going anywhere.

As with pretty much any business venue, it’s up to you to “make it happen” and you need to do that in a way that is good for your business model. And, this includes your eBay store.

Here’s a few things you can do to promote your eBay store that are proven and that work ~

1) Find a designer who not  only designs an original, niche targeted and attractive storefront or full blown eBay store complete with all the bells and whistles, but who also includes expert search engine optimization. This is critical to your success.

2) Start a blog that promotes your eBay store, your listings, is search engine optimized and is properly widgeted to maximize your marketing efforts.

3) Learn the in’s and out’s of using widgets, social bookmarking, and social networking to promote your blog, eBay store and your website to it’s maximum potential. These tools are free but you need to know how to use them effectively to gain maximum exposure.

4) Add your own e-commerce website to the mix. Be sure to settle on a website designer who will include expert design, customization that carries your branding across the board, who also offers niche market search engine optimization, and an RSS feed for your products.

The website is the ultimate sister site to your eBay store. You can sell the same items in both, or different items in each, dependent on your business model and what you want to achieve. If you choose to sell different items in each you can cross promote both stores in various ways.

If you choose to sell some of the same items in each you can give your website customers who might prefer eBay shopping (simply because that is what they are used to) the option of also getting that item in your eBay store.

Why on earth would you want to do this?

Embed the referral code in your item’s link to it’s listing in your eBay store and take advantage of the 75% referral credit on your final value fees. Does that save you money as well as add up for your benefit!!

Slow Sales ~

This is something that is not controlled ~ eBay cannot force anyone to buy your items anymore than Google, MSN, or Yahoo can force anyone to buy items from your website.

However, you may want to recheck the following for any improvement that may be needed ~

1) Presentation ~ is your description clear, detailed, keyword rich, understandable, reading well? Are your pictures clear, closeup, good quality and the best they can be?

2) Is your asking price reasonable? Too high or too low is a big consumer turn-off. Do some research on your competitors who sell “like” items and price your products realistically.

3) Is your search engine visibililty where you want it to be for your chosen keywords? Don’t mistake search engine visibility for page rank, they are two totally different animals. If your keywords are not pulling up high enough for you to do any good, you may need a website, blog or eBay store SEO tuneup.

Well I hope this sheds some light on why it’s a good idea to keep your eBay store open. Your eBay store is a valuable sales and marketing venue ~ make the most of it instead of closing it down in frustration. Learn to turn adverse conditions to positive conditions.

Sometime ago while doing research on a competitor of mine, I came across Merchant Circle and of course being curious, I decided to investigate.

As with many online directories they want you to purchase their paid advertising services. You are hit with these almost as soon as you sign up. Until you know the ropes, just focus on creating your profile and making that as complete and salesworthy as possible.

I’m not knocking the paid services. I’m the type of person that wants to see if the traffic I get from them warrants and justifies the expense first. And building your network up there to a quality network takes some time, as does anything else. So, paid can wait and I’ll focus on my listing and building my network.

What is Merchant Circle anyway?

Merchant Circle is actually a very neat combination of social networking, a 411 directory and the Yellow Pages all in one.

They give you a full and generous (compared to many online listing services that are free) space to list and describe your business in detail.

Your customers / clients can post reviews of your products and services, rate your business and post comments.

You can also, with care, transfer your website testimonials to your reviews area yourself. Not for the dishonest purpose of inflating your reviews and star rating, but if you cannot or choose not to try to contact all your past clients to try to get them to do this for you, this is still a mechanism and a good one at that to carefully transfer some of your more stellar testimonials over.

Merchant Circle also provides you with a customer contact system and a mechanism by which to offer coupons for discounts and sales at your discretion.

The coupons are a great way to offer an introductory deal to those who found you on Merchant Circle ~ similar to Yellow Pages coupons.

Merchant Circle has potential for being a valuable venue to promote your business with it’s strongest potential being at a local level, however, the more you participate in the forums I can see where a national level would be a definite potential as well. I myself have not yet fully tapped into this resource however as I do I will post that information here in subsequent articles.

Another nice thing is Merchant Circel provides you with a badge that links to your listing, as well as a few other widget like tools,  plus an appointment setter tool. There is also an area for you to blog which is an extremely valuable tool that I think is under-used by most people.

I’ve learned and benifitted from posting constant updates on Twitter and so will give the blog aspect of Merchant Circle a definite go.

The members forum is a great place to go for valuable insight, opinions and experiences.

All in all, Merchant Circle gets my vote as a  valuable business promotion venue for my business!