• Welcome from Brian McGregor
• 1. Thought for the Day
• 2. Using eBay Classified Ad Format
• 3. Is eBay on the Way Out?
• 4. News & Views:
  Spruce up your eBay store (again!)
  A Surprisingly Easy Way to Convert Word Documents to PDF
  Are You Stuck in a Product Rut?
  Does it Make AdSense?
• Back to Newsletter Archive

Have you heard of eBay's Classified Ad format of listing? It's available on ebay.com and ebay.co.uk, although in a limited number of categories on the latter. I've been quietly testing the format recently on both ebay.com and ebay.co.uk.

First, the main difference between a Classified Ad and other eBay auction listing formats is that you cannot directly sell via a Classified Ad. It is designed to enable sellers to generate leads, in other words encouraging people interested in the Classified Ad item to contact the seller. Once that contact has been made, the seller can then progress their sale - offline from eBay, legally - via any means they wish.

Here is one of my experiments:

http://www.workwinners.com/experiment/

The beauty of using eBay's Classified Ads is that the majority of visitors to the page have gone there via searching. So in my case, they have already qualified themselves as being interested in hovercrafts.

The Ad is costing me £12.99 ($25) for 28 days exposure. As you can see I've had over 2,000 visitors to date. In terms of lead generation, I believe this represents excellent value for money.

The other advantage of Classified Ads is that you can use them to generate leads for affiliate products - which as you probably know eBay make it difficult to sell via other auction formats.

You can get more information about eBay's Classified Ad format here:

ebay.com
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/f-ad.html

ebay.co.uk
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/f-ad.html

By the way, if you're considering buying a hovercraft, do go to my Classified Ad and complete the online form to get my Hovercraft Buyer's Guide f-ree!

Our financial commentating friends at Motley Fool have been running a duel - between eBay and its potential competitors.

I don't think eBay need to panic. Take a look…

Amazon and Overstock aren't even within spitting distance of eBay's lead in auctions.

Google and Craigslist are threats, but they've yet to keep eBay from acquiring active users.

Yahoo have completely pulled out of online auctions.

eBay's PayPal is killing Google's Checkout.

Tens of thousands of people make their living from eBay, including the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance, which is global and does more than $400 million in annual revenue via the site.

In summary, eBay is still king of the online auction business. It has a growing legion of millionaires invested in its continued success. Would you bet against that? I wouldn't.

The point of this is to say that, if you're selling on eBay today, you're in exactly the right place at exactly the right time!

So use eBay, and start changing your life.

Spruce up your eBay store (again!)

Here is an excellent forum with some gems of ideas on how to get the most from your eBay store/shop.

http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=51649

You might remember I gave you a free ebook on how to Spruce up your eBay store. If you missed it, you can download it from here:

http://www.workwinners.com/nl140707.htm

A Surprisingly Easy Way to Convert a Word Document to PDF

If you sell ebooks on eBay, you will know that the preferred format of buyers is pdf. Not forgetting that pdf is the best format for us as sellers too, given that both PCs and Macs can read such documents maximizing our potential market.

Whilst there are several tools and software available to convert Word documents to pdf, in my opinion this is the easiest to use, bar none!

It's a web based service, it's f-ree, and you'll find it here:

http://www.expresspdf.com

Are You Stuck in a Product Rut?

If you're selling the same things over and over again, but seeing little growth or expansion, maybe your product offerings are slightly stale. It could be worth joining in an hour long workshop eBay are running called the Power of 10 Product Sourcing.

It's taking place on Tuesday 17th July, from 11.00am to 12.00pm Pacific Time. That's 7.00pm to 8.00pm in the UK.

You can read more about the event here:

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200707.shtml#2007-07-13130945


Does it Make AdSense?

I bought Michael Chesney's video course last year about how to make more money with AdSense. It was superb, and helped me to increase my income from that source quite substantially.

Michael has just announced a major revamp and update of this excellent course. If you've wondered about how to start using AdSense, or if you're looking to do better with AdSense, I recommend you find out more here:

http://www.workwinners.com/adsense_videos/