Tag Archives: ebay

Friday Podcast: Offline Promotion Strategies With AffiliateFamous’ Josh Smith

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josh smithInternet marketer Josh Smith who blogs at AffiliateFamous.com, has a unique background, having operated an online retail operation while he was still in school, before dabbling in affiliate marketing in 2006.

In 2007, he divested his retail businesses, taking the plunge into affiliate marketing.

Along with his experience in operating a business, he’s also skilled at copywriting and has done a number of offline promotion campaigns to generate leads for his affiliate marketing efforts.

I invited Josh on the Friday Podcast to talk about his strategies in building up his retail business which sold products on eBay, Liquidation.com, Overstock, Amazon, and even flea markets.

Having to deal with physical inventory has taught him the importance of managing his cashflow and he shares a number of these techinques during the podcast.

He also talks about the business management aspects of starting and growing your online business, together with the related topics of his copywriting influences and various offline promotion campaigns he’s worked on (which he affectionately calls “Chaos Marketing”).

Check out the Friday Podcast:

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Are You In For A Profitable Affiliate Christmas?

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Christmas is the biggest shopping season of the year and not getting even a small campaign up means you are facing a huge opportunity cost.

Talking to a couple of experienced affiliates, I got the sense that even they were somewhat jaded after years of doing Christmas and holiday promos.

christmas angel

Luckily eBay has released market research on toy ideas for the holiday season. (see the study here)

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Friday Podcast: eBay Power Seller Strategies With CJ Caccam

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CJ CaccamI met CJ Caccam over the Facebook social networks a couple of months ago where we’re active on a number of the FB applications.

CJ’s known as “the eBay” guy and after some research, I discovered he’s the top merchant/seller in his category, bathroom vanities.

Gathering nearly 5,000 feedback, CJ’s company Silkroad Exclusive has sold a couple of million dollars worth of products according to my estimate.

In our discussion, we talked about:

  • How CJ got started as one of the earlier merchants on eBay
  • His pricing and business model
  • How to market effectively on eBay and close the sale
  • Using the bidding format and “Buy It Now” auction formats effectively
  • Strategies on getting started as an eBay seller

Check out the podcast below:

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eBay Joins The Blackhole SEO Game? Fail!

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Following up on my “Blackhole SEO and Your Internet Business” post last week about high authority sites sucking up SEO linkjuice and pointing out using nofollow links, or worse yet, internal site pages or resource pages, I was conducting some research for a project when I came across an eBay partner (affiliate) network blog post.

ebay blog

Obviously, an auction site (or “digital marketplace” if you prefer that term, publishing blog posts about content publishers generating affiliate income is going to draw some interest.

eBay, from my experience, has taken a fairly non-supporting position towards affiliate marketers on it’s network, so seeing them point to Continue reading →

Friday Podcast: Application Development Tips From Mark Wielgus – 45n5.com

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mark wielgusMark Wielgus, or just “Mark” from 45n5.com (right) is one of those marketers whom you sit up and take notice of.

I found his site when he first launched his eBay-Amazon-Youtube mashup script, which lets you build an affiliate site easily. Mark has already done the API (application programming interface) work for you, so you can skip around the techie aspects and get round to the business of generating affiliate commissions.

He followed that up with his 19pages.com application, which lets you build a niche site easily, and the best thing about it doesn’t require a MySQL connection, so you can transport it from one webhosting account to another easily. If you’re into site development/site flipping, it can be a handy tool to add value to a site (and increase it’s monetization and asking price too).

He’s since gone on to launch his Top100 “make money online” blog rankings (he developed the code) and it’s generated a fair amount of buzz in the internet marketing blogosphere.

So naturally I had to have him on the Friday Podcast to pick his brains about developing software applications to boost your internet marketing efforts and to directly monetize.

We talked about the building blocks of application development, as well as monetizing your application once it’s good to go.

You can hear our thorough discussion (weighing in at more than an hour long) and hear about his latest project ShowYourAdHere.com in the latest edition of the Friday Podcast accessible below:

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Incidentially, Mark is also Blog Captain for the upcoming Affiliate Summit and you can hear about the blog room facilities too.

Affiliate Marketers, Your Domains And Lawyer Letters

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For content-based domain affiliates, taking note of your domain portfolio and potential copyright conflicts are an ongoing concern, especially if you’re planning to be in the game for the longterm.

I own a domain which contains the term “ebay” in it. Although I feel anyone looking at the domain probably wouldn’t mistake it for an eBay property that a name like eBayMarketing or eBaySupplies might convey.

Nonetheless, I received an email from enforcement@ebay.com from “Edith, eBay Legal Department” which however nicely written, amounts to a cease and desist notification, and I am supposed to “Please confirm in writing that you will agree to resolve this matter as requested. If we do not receive confirmation from you that you will comply with our request, we will have no choice but to pursue all available remedies against you.”

“Edith” further mentions that “We have filed several successful federal court actions in the United States against companies and individuals employing the famous eBay trademark in their domain names, as well as more than six proceedings before the United Nation’s World Intellectual Property Organization’s arbitration panel. eBay prevailed in each case and the domain names at issue were all ordered to be transferred to eBay.”

And “the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) has recently denied registration of the mark “ebaysecurities” by a third party. Like your domain name, “ebaysecurities” incorporated the entire eBay trademark, adding only a generic term to eBay’s famous mark. The USPTO recognized that eBay is a famous trademark and denied registration of ebaysecurities. eBay is concerned that any use of the domain name in question, will cause confusion as to whether you or your company’s activities are authorized, endorsed or sponsored by eBay when, in fact, they are not. ”

The domain is one in my portfolio and I haven’t developed it yet, so letting it expire isn’t a major issue.

I would think that eBay would be more forward in replying to the email seeking clarificatons I’d sent about 2 weeks ago, to date I haven’t received a reply.

Having dealt with lawyers previously, I would guess that Continue reading →