What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

There were some unique items I really wanted from Ebay. I tend to avoid Ebay like the plague when it comes to buying things. Bidding wars do not excite me, they give me a stomach ache. But in this case I was willing to overcome my indigestion and my distaste for the ill-mannered auctioneer. I didn't know that the REAL buyers are those who snipe bids and fools like me are nothing but clowns. I literally had something bought out from under my nose during the final SECOND of the auction. Talk about the rug being grabbed out from under you. Well, no longer am I going to clown around if there is ever again a unique item that I feel the need to go through the horror of Ebay to buy. Now I'm using Bidnapper.
Bidnapper is not software, it's an online service. You don't have to be at your computer for it to work for you. You can wait until the auction is down to the wire after you've seen how things are going and then swoop in and take it away from the naive buyers. Click the link to try Bidnapper. They have a 15 day free trial so you can't lose!

ebay sniping

Banner Maker Pro

I liked Banner Maker Pro well enough that I bought it during the second day of the 15 day trial, and this when I'm really strapped for money. It helps you create beautiful banners like the one that I made for my Adam and Eve satellite store.
Banner Maker Pro helps you make professional looking banners easily. Fair warning--Banner Maker Pro's HTML generator is crap. You will NOT get a working banner code, so don't bother. I just learned how to make banners with code myself, so now I'll teach those of you who don't know what I wish I'd learned a lot sooner.
Here is my Adam and Eve banner:



The upshot of this is that banners are easy to make if you know how, but finding out how can be a pain in the ass. Banner Maker Pro makes the graphics part easier.
I would love to give you the HTML for my banner and help teach you how to make your own working banners, but Blogger just craps up my examples and tries to create banners from nothing. If you would like me to show you how to make your own working banner, please leave me a post in the comments section and let me know that you emailed me for the code. I'm really pathetic about checking the email that I've associated with Blogger. Which, for the record is cheesemeister@cheesemeistercosmos.org
But I do check Blogger for comments daily!

Banner Maker Pro for Flash easily creates

great looking flash banner ads quickly. Save

25% by clicking here. Free trial.

Discount Click Online Marketing Services

One of the things that many beginning e-commerce entrepreneurs fail to consider is the need for advertising. Although this is a daunting proposition, in some ways those advertising on the Internet have it easier than those who are advertising in print. For the price of a classified ad running for a couple of weeks in a well-recognized newspaper, one can have certain essential services performed. Now comes the problem of choosing the entity to perform those services. Where do you find one that is both reputable and knowledgeable, who can deliver on their promises? I have been searching and testing, and have found a new source that I'm going to try.

Discount Click Online Marketing Service offers internet marketing solutions. I read over their terms of service and it looks like they will work with adult businesses, which is good for me since the main site I am currently promoting is my online adult superstore. Still, I sent an email to confirm that they would actually work with me to promote this website. At this point I thought that it would be well for the company to create an FAQ page to answer questions such as this for customers in plain English rather than the eye-blurring legalese of a terms and conditions page.

I filled out an easy, free registration form because I think I may try Discount Click in the not too distant future. I then proceeded to price their services.

First, Discount Click offers search engine optimization services ranging in price from $50 to $2000 non-recurring fees or the self-service SEO tracking and tool kit for a $50 per month recurring fee. A warning for the neophyte online entrepreneur: make sure you can edit your own page before ordering search engine optimization services. I learned the hard way when I contracted a different advertising company to do search engine optimization (which I had confused with advertising) for me and ended up eating $179 because I do not have page editing capabilities. The web hosting company's web designers are the only ones who can do that for my storefront. Search Engine Optimization is NOT the same as advertising although it can help with advertising. If you can edit your own pages, Discount Click can help with this in a variety of ways. Still, in the future I may be able to use Discount Click's Self Service SEO tracking and tools because they manage tracking and keyword optimization of multiple sites for one price. This service costs $100 per month and has a one-time $50 setup fee and looks like something I'll consider using in the future.

The second service that Discount Click offers is email list management opt-in delivery services for a $50 per month fee. If you have a large list of email clients you may want to consider this service. I currently do not have an opt-in email list but if I did, having someone else manage the mailings sounds like a service I could use.

Discount Click then offers advertising services. This seems to fall mostly in the realm of banner advertising. Their graphic arts department can design a banner for your site for $50. And for $100 per month you can receive their ongoing banner advertising services which includes 200,000 ads served including tracking and reporting. Although I have heard negative things about banner advertising, 200,000 ads sounds pretty good. Personally, I will click an eye-catching banner and find out what it's all about and I tend to think of banners as the billboards of the Internet. So this too is a service that I will consider once I find out a little more.

The services sound enticing and the site is professionally designed and well written. However, a little more clarity for the neophyte entrepreneur would be desireable and I hope that Discount Click will consider adding an FAQ page designed for SEO and online advertising newbies.

Mall King

Majon International generates free online malls for interested parties, complete not only with stores but with multiple built-in affiliate links for you to take advantage of and promote. Click here to see my mall.

What makes these malls nice is that you don't ever have to pay a fee for them. In that sense, they may be a better bet for a beginner than an online store that needs to be hosted and/or stocked. Another nice thing about these malls is you have your own e-commerce site at your fingertips within minutes of signing up! That's a great feeling, and a greatly RELIEVING feeling if you've jumped into a webstore proposition with both feet. But these neat little malls don't make money all by themselves. You do have to promote them.

I see a mall like this as a no-lose proposition, but if you want to win, you have to push. This probably means that at some point or another you have to pay. Good no-pay ways of marketing your mall are banner exchanges and of course posting a banner on your own blog or website. Reasonably low-cost marketing includes Google Adwords. WARNING: SET YOUR BUDGET LOW TO START!!!! Perhaps $5 per day and 25 cents per click. Go to my Building the Empire blog for a nice set of SEO tools. The Spider Simulator is probably the best keyword mining tool you'll find, especially for the price. FREE!!!

I really like that word. I know it's a favorite among most e-commerce neophytes, which is why whenever I find a decent FREE service I'll be the first to share!

Happy E-marketing!

Cie

My World Plus Revisited

Sigh...looks like one of those affairs that the Straight Dope thought was gonna sizzle but it fizzled.

The My World Plus card costs $19.95 a month. So far I've saved about 2 dollars on a Sonic burger and printed out a bunch of coupons. Hint: you have to print the coupons using Internet Explorer. Don't do it using Firefox or it will give an illegal operation error. At least it did for me.

Like anything else of this nature, Folks, you have to be willing to promote the living hell out of it. What I'm learning about the affiliate business is that you can make money in it and there are legit programs out there BUT DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE WHEN YOU'RE TOLD YOU CAN START MAKING MEGA BUCKS OVERNIGHT!!!!! The My World Plus card is a real program. But the only way you'll get a bunch of people in your downline as an affiliate is by realizing that you will have to advertize like crazy. Also be aware that a lot of other people are thinking what you're thinking.

If you're really savvy and really aggressive, give it a try. Otherwise, it's better to find other affiliate programs that you don't have to pay to get into and put links to them on your website.

If you have a website that you want to promote and you don't have a big advertising budget you'll want to try Free Viral Marketing. It really is free. For once, you can't lose!

Click Here for your Free Traffic!

My World Plus

I may have found true love--no, not a new romance, a no-nonsense program that can provide residual income for promoting a product that people can really use!

Folks, when I got the email about this program, I was skeptical as ever. When I clicked on the link to check out the movie presentation, I started out skeptical but actually became enthusiastic--something that rarely happens! I

To explain briefly, it's a savings card program, but it isn't one of those annoying deals where you have to buy gift certificates. I've had advertisements sent to me for those programs and my thought was "how lame can you get? How the heck often do I buy gift cards?" You could buy a gift card and use it yourself, but seriously, who needs the hassle of that extra step? I'm a lazy sucker when it comes to extra steps. I'm too busy doing things to try and improve my life and the lives of my family members to play games!

With the My World Plus program you get savings on the real, actual products! Two for one deals when you eat out, savings on movie tickets, savings from six hundred online retailers, for the same cost as one of those silly gift card programs. Plus, if you're interested in making residual income, you can get in on the ground floor. I've provided a link to both the movie and the website. No pressure, just check it out! The movie will explain things better than I can with my ranting about how much potential I think this system has. If you knew how rare it was for me to say something like this, you'd be racing your mouse down to the link without bothering to read the rest of this post!

The jury's still out but so far, I'm jazzed! I NEVER say I'm jazzed. Now you know you have to check this prospect out!
My World Plus
My World Plus Movie Presentation TACT

Blogsvertise

I haven't made a fortune with Blogsvertise either, but they are a FREE, honest service for business bloggers. You are paid for blogging about products and services, or for referring new affiliates. NOT A SCAM, give them a try!

Cash Duck

Cash Duck probably won't make you enough money to quit your day (or night) job, but it's the real deal. Find the banner in my sidebar and make a buck or two!

The Ultimate Wealth Package

The first work at home program that I started with at the end of last month is the ultimate wealth package. I haven't been working with it very long so I can't say much about it yet. You can go see it at my Work From Home website.

One thing that I would advise is at least initially staying with the basic package. I got too excited about the big wonderful possibilities that were promised, so I went with the Gold Package, shelled out for my own domain, only to discover that I can't do basic things like add additional pages for the other work at home programs rated lower than 3 from my affiliate program's control panel. I emailed tech support only to get a person from India with patchy English emailing me back saying "well, Sir, you cannot do that from your control panel, you will have to contact your webhost." I'm sure the gentleman meant well, but it frustrates me to communicate with people who don't have reasonable command of my language under these kinds of circumstances. However, I mailed the webhost and got back an email from someone who DID have good command of the language, who basically told me:

"You will have to contact the program with which you are affiliated."

SCREAM!!!!!!

I haven't gotten around to dealing with this mess yet.

Unless you have a fair amount of money to invest in it, I would also advise avoiding their Yahoo adwords offer. I spent $80 in advertising to get back $10 in commission during the 10 days I have been doing this. I don't have that kind of money put aside, so I'll just have to figure out another way. A flat rate advertising program is better under these circumstances, but as always, be sure they're legit.

I'm not ready to declare the Ultimate Wealth Program a scam because I haven't been involved in it long enough, but I advise taking the free site.

I found about the program through Danny's Scam Review. "Danny" is simply trying to get people involved in the Ultimate Wealth Program.

I hate people that aren't honest about what they're doing. I wouldn't have felt "scammed" by Danny if he had said up front that he was an affiliate for the Ultimate Wealth Program and given their schpiel, letting me decide for myself.

I assure you that I will never do that. I would have nothing but bad karma to gain from being less than honest. I will always tell you my true experiences with any affiliate or work at home program, including whether or not I have enough experience with it to make an informed decision.

So far the Ultimate Wealth Program has provided me less than ultimate wealth. But I will keep you informed.

Swamped!

I am currently swamped with affiliate possibilities that I have signed up for to pass on to you! All of them look great on the surface. My job is to find out which ones actually are so you can bypass the struggle that I've engaged in for years of trying to make money through e-commerce. In the meantime, check out my original e-commerce blog.

I decided to seperate into three areas: affiliate and work from home programs, business critiquing for pay and my own product marketing because the original blog was becoming too cluttered. Hopefully I will soon have a real domain to go with each of these ventures as well!

This sort of thing never worked out before but I have learned a bit and hope to learn more.

What Is Affiliate Avenue?

I'll tell you all about the myriad of affiliate programs I'm working with. What really works, what really took my money and ran. No bull! And as I learn, I'll "learn" y'all how to advertise your own affiliate and other e-commerce sites. There are real opportunities out there. But letting others know what you're offering can be a real monster!