By William Brister

eBay has become a huge online business with people raking in hundreds of dollars selling discounted merchandise ranging from garage sale items to new products and collectibles. Research shows that more than 700,000 people across the world make a living, either part time or full-time selling on eBay. It is interesting to note that as more people generate income from eBay, the greater the number of shoppers attracted to the site.

Most people wanting to start an eBay business come as buyers, get hooked on the bandwagon, learn the art of selling and as they clear the belongings they have set out to sell, they realize that they have started making money as well. Thus, several enterprising individuals who began as part time home based businesses have turned these into thriving companies employing numerous employees.

But just as with all small businesses, one must be aware of certain things while starting an eBay business. There is a huge market with many buyers and lots of competition. The issues dealing with finance, warehousing, payment channels and fulfilling orders also remain equally challenging.

To start an eBay business, is like investing time and effort in any other. So ensure that you have a prudent business plan just like for a traditional business. Also, make sure that it is in congruence with your lifestyle and your needs with attainable goals.

Think about the products that you are going to offer and strategize on how to buy and sell on eBay. What would you prefer to be – retail store offering a variety or a discount merchant with specialized products? Is there anything that distinguishes you from your competitors? Select access to buying products will allow you an edge over your competition.

The trick of ‘buying and selling on eBay’ would be to buy at a low cost and sell at a premium and thus generate profits. But it’s not always that simple. You have to think carefully of your strategy for buying products at a price that’s low enough to allow you a profit margin when you mark it up to a price that is still attractive to your market. Also account for the turnover and how your profit margin combined with it will support your operations and still deliver a profit to you.

Once you have your business plan all figured out and products decided, you need to register yourself at eBay. Visit eBay and click on the “Sell” tab at the top of the homepage. Follow the step-by-step instructions to register as an eBay community member. You will have to provide your basic contact information, as well as banking information, such as credit card and checking account numbers. Once that is done, give your business a structure by filing for incorporation or forming a limited liability company.

Since it is a business, whether part-time or full time, keep separate accounting books so as to avoid creating confusion during tax season. Also get insurance for yourself and your eBay business.

Once all the preliminaries are sorted out, there are issues that need to be heeded of a more serious nature. These include paying for your merchandise, stocking goods, receiving payments from customers, as well as financing your business. Although there are many options for all of these, seek out the best suited for you. Stocking can start with garages or basements to save costs in the initial period. You can even use rental storage units and once money starts coming in think of more permanent options like warehouses. You can link up with your customers through payment companies like PayPal, which is an online payment service that enables buyers to pay for their purchases by drawing funds from their credit cards or checking accounts.

After all the logistics are taken care of, you can start your eBay business. Ensure that your web pages are well designed and attractive with good photographs of the products so that customers keep visiting. This is important, as this is the only way for a person to know what he is buying. Decide on which model you want to use to sell your good, auction model or fixed price model. Packing and shipping need special attention to ensure repeated business. Finally, pay attention to your eBay feedback rating especially designed to help eBay buyers and sellers police each other. As you collect positive ratings, buyers will view your business in a credible light, an extremely critical aspect of eBay.

With all this you are set to becoming a successful entrepreneur on eBay!

Source

By Claudiu Baciu

This is the question many people ask when they’re hitting the multitude of opinions pro and against from the forums and blogs all around the internet talking about ptc sites.
Let’s answer this question: It is definitely worth the time and money if you know what to do to make these websites bring you profit.

Some people are labeling these websites as „no good or scams” but all this is happening because they entered in the game without knowing the rules or better said the most common sense guidelines for it.

Here you have the minimum checklist you could use to see if a ptc sites is worth it or not:
1. Go to whois.net and check the domain name of the ptc (www.exampleptc.com) who is owned by and what hosting service does it use. New websites even those not older than 6 months have a higher chance of failing to resist so it’s best to stay away of those.
2. Take a simple look at the websites’ design – a poor design or a free script often shows a website owner that does not intend to honor his members’ payments.
3. Take a look at the advertising fees the website is charging and then compare it to the fees it gives to it members. If he requests for example $0.002 for a single hit of an advertiser and yet it pays the members at least $0.005 on a click then the site will not last long because it doesn’t make profit.
4. Do a google search for the ptc website followed by the word ‘scam’ and check if there are any complaints about it or what are other people saying about it.

If you have done these 4 steps before joining a ptc website then you have 99% chances to gain a good profit.
The next thing to do once you’ve analyzed and joined several ptc sites is to “start small”. This means do not invest large sums of money on referrals, upgrades or contests within these sites from the beginning.
Even if your analyze has proven those ptc sites are worthy it is best to test them yourself for a while, meaning wait for your first 2 payouts see how long does the ptc take to transfer the money and then you can start with investing more.

Every time try to test all the ptc sites you care to join and only after that if you are 100% positive about it start investing money. This way you will minimize the risk of being scammed.

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By Lisa Robbins

People String has multiple services, email, cash back shopping mall, games, mailbox-cashbox and on September 23, 2009 they launched their Social Networking site. Considering the popularity of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter it's a bold attempt to compete with the big boys, and try to tempt their loyal customers to join People String. But People String is offering something the others are not, revenue sharing. People String will be sharing 70% of their advertising revenue with their members. This can be quite profitable for someone who actively recruits others on behalf of People String, in fact people will be able to profit from 6 levels, they call this "building your string" and they will recieve .50 cents for each new recruit and a percentage of their revenue sharing for life. People could potentially make hundreds even thousands a month from the multiple income streams offered. In these tough economic times this could be very appealing to the masses.

To profit from this Social Networking site, members will have to remain active which means they will have to log in at least once every 30 days. There are also "people points" to consider. Members earn people points while using the site, this could add up to 20-40 points a day. People points are what determines the amount of revenue sharing someone will receive at the end of the month. It wouldn't be fair if someone with 20 points recieved the same share as someone with 2,000 points.
People points as well as the number of people you have recruited into your string are displayed on your People String homepage. Also, every transaction that makes you money can be reviewed as well. There is also a place to add your favorite sites, quick links to the other social networking sites, email sites and instant messaging sites. They have created a homepage that is well organized and easy to use.


Will the prospect of making money for free be enough to lure people away from sites like Facebook and Twitter. People String is new and still growing and evolving and they are promising features that will attract a tremendous amount of people. Time will tell whether or not it will be enough to topple the giants of Social Networking.

Source :http://www.articlealley.com/article_1191021_12.html

A great way to drive traffic to your site is by giving testimonials for other people's products and services in your market. Most web sites will display your name and your site address below your testimonial. People see those testimonials and will often click on your link to see your site.

I have a testimonial on one of Corey Rudl's web sites, and it generates about 50 to 75 visitors a week and does not cost me a penny. That is not a huge amount of traffic, but that is just from a single testimonial.
Most hosting services provide you with statistics on how many visitors are coming to your site, and you can study those to see where visitors are coming from. If I place a testimonial and it brings me visitors,
that will show up in my stats.

Randy Charach taught me an excellent technique for writing testimonials. Go to Amazon.com and look for best-selling books in the category that you wish to write a testimonial for. For each book, scan the
user reviews. Above each review, look for the user rating (i.e., "18 out of 21 people found the following review helpful").

Pay particular attention to the reviews where 90 percent or more of the people agreed with the reviewer. Read the review carefully and pick up on the language the writer used. You'll want to model your
own testimonials after these successful reviews. Don't copy the review, but use similar words and tone for your own testimonials. Web site owners are more likely to use a testimonial that cites specific results rather than general praise. "... helped me increase my sales by 175 percent in one month!" is better than "Loved
the course!"

Here's a tip for buying and selling e-books with resale rights. It takes just a few minutes to set this up, and it's free. Normally, when you buy an e-book with resale rights, you get the e-book and a ready-made sales letter in the form of a web page. You then add your order link and contact info to this page and use it on your web site or online auctions.

Most people just pass along the original generic web page when they resell the product. What I do is add my own testimonial (with my web address) to this page in an appropriate spot and include that page in my resale package. When customers resell the e-book, they put the modified page on their sites and auctions. This puts my name and web site address in front of their visitors. I get more traffic and it reinforces my credibility.