First of all, if you’re starting with one of those “pre-made” websites that your marketing company has given you as a means of promoting your opportunity, you can pretty much forget about getting that website ranked in the search engines for any relevant search terms. Google typically won’t do it just for the fact that too many of those sites exist with “duplicate content”.

So, you can either choose to promote your “cookie-cutter” website through means other than the natural search engine rankings or you can select another web presence to promote your opportunity or use it to drive traffic to your main opportunity website (i.e. the one that your company gives you).

There are several websites that rank well with the search engines that can be used to promote your opportunity. A few examples include hubpages.com, squidoo.com, xanga.com, youtube.com, and blogger.com. This list is in no way exclusive, but does incorporate several sites that allow you as an individual to create a free account and post whatever content you want to post including information about your “awesome business opportunity”. (more…)

Setting up an auction

When setting up an auction on eBay, there are several things that you need to be aware of. EBay has several options that you can choose from when listing an item. Some of them are more valuable than other. Every auction you list comes with a listing fee that eBay charges. Those listing fees depend on several things. We will get into that a little later. The options you select when listing an item will have an impact on those listing fees. We are going to discuss several valuable strategies that you can use to make your auction successful. The listing process itself is really quite simple to do.

• To start the listing go to www.ebay.com and select on the “sell” link at the top of the screen. From there you will be asked what product you are selling and you can simply type that into the box on the screen. Make sure you select the proper category. (more…)

Below are the notes from the Graduate Coaching Session held August 18, 2008:

Industry Update

Stanford study on online credibility.

Key Findings

The online consumers in the Stanford PTL study and our expert panel of evaluators diverged greatly in their credibility assessment criteria. Overall, our experts were far less concerned about visual appeal as a marker of credibility than the Stanford PTL consumers, and they were more concerned about the quality of a site’s information. Among other conclusions, this study found that health experts assigned more credibility to health sites that provided information from reputable sources and cited the names and credentials of authors for each article published. Finance experts assigned more credibility to finance sites that provided investors with a great deal of unbiased educational information and research, rather than nudging consumers toward their own products or services. (more…)

Product Research

One key to selling any product online or offline, one eBay or anywhere else is doing the proper research on your product ideas. When you sell on eBay there are fees associate with selling, so the better prepared you are to sell a product the better you will be. There are two good ways to research products for eBay.

www.terapeak.com This site has a free tool that you will find in the navigation bar at the top of the page. When you click on it, the program will allow you to type your product idea in the search box and it will give you some results on the item.

Completed listings. Use the completed listing sections on eBay to research product ideas. This can be done by searching for your product. Once results come up on the screen you will see a option on the lower left hand corner of the screen. The option there will be titled completed listings. From there you can search the completed listings section to get an idea on well your product idea might be selling. (more…)

Below are the notes for the Graduate Coaching Session held on August 11, 2008 by Michael Stone:

Introduction to Topic: How to become a dealer with suppliers that are more difficult to sign on with.

Constructing a Business Plan or Business Expansion Plan.

Benefits

• Gives You Vision and Direction.
• Lets Others Know Your Vision and Direction.
• Shows Others That You Know eCommerce. (more…)

Graduate call with Michael Stone.
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Getting Started
EBay registration- Before you can start selling or buying on eBay you must first become a registered eBay user.
When registering on eBay you must register as a buyer and as a seller. Both of these registrations are free just take a bit of time to complete. You will need to go to www.ebay.com and click on the register link at the top of the page and follow instructions from there.

Pay Pal registration
To register on pay pal go to www.paypal.com. Click on the sign up link at the top of the page. From there you will asked what kind of account you want to have on Pay Pal. Make sure to select “Business account” From there they will ask you for a bank account. You will need to provide an account that they can have on file. Pay Pal will then need to “Verify” you account and to do this they will put two small deposits in your account. What you are required to do is go back to Pay Pal and tell them what those deposits are. Once they have the deposit amounts you will become verified. (more…)

Below are the notes from the August 4, 2008 Graduate Coaching call by Michael Stone:

Working with Asian Customers and Suppliers

Why?

- Asian economies are rapidly growing and there are numerous opportunities.

Here are the twenty largest economies in the world for 2007 according to the International Monetary Fund:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

1. United States 13,843,825
2. Japan 4,383,762
3. Germany 3,322,147
4. China (PRC) 3,250,827
5. United Kingdom 2,772,570
6. France 2,560,255
7. Italy 2,104,666
8. Spain 1,438,959
9. Canada 1,432,140
10. Brazil 1,313,590
11. Russia 1,289,582
12. India 1,098,945
13. South Korea 957,053
14. Australia 908,826
15. Mexico 893,365
16. Netherlands 768,704
17. Turkey 663,419
18. Sweden 455,319
19. Belgium 453,636
20. Indonesia 432,944 (more…)

What is a blog?

Blog is derived from the words “Web Log,” which has be shortened to just “Blog.”  Blogs can be used for a multitude of different reasons.  Here are some of the most common ways in which blogs are used.

• Personal & Diary Blogs (family updates, photos, info)
• News (News discussions, current events, etc.)
• Opinions (politics, gossip, etc.)
• Business (product reviews, FAQs, website promotion, etc)

RSS Feeds

Syndication is simply the sharing of content.  Either you’re sending your content out where others can use it, or you’re receiving content from other’s via RSS.  If you’re using syndicated content  on your site, then every time the blog that you’re gathering information from is updated, the content of your own site will be updated automatically via the RSS feed. (more…)