5 Simple Steps to Posting Your First eBay Auction.

It's surprisingly simple to get started posting your very first auction on eBay. Here's what you need to do.

Step 1: Open an eBay seller's account.

If you've bought things on eBay, then you already have an account - just log in with it and click 'Sell' in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click 'Create a seller's account'. If you've never used eBay before, then you'll need to open an account first using the 'register' link underneath the toolbar, and then click 'Sell' and 'Create a seller's account'. The eBay site will then guide you through the process. For security, this may involve giving card details and bank information.

Step 2: Decide what to sell.

For your first little experiment with eBay, it doesn't really matter what you sell. Take a look around the room you're in - I'm sure there's something in there that you're not all that attached to and could put in the post. Small books and CDs are ideal first items.

Step 3: Submit your item.

Click 'Sell', and you're on your way to listing your item.

The first thing you need to do is choose a category - it's best to just type in what the item is and let eBay choose for you. Next, write a title and description. Include key words you think people will search for in the title box, and all the information you have about the item in the description box.

Now set a starting price. $0.01 is the best starting price, as it draws people in to bid who otherwise wouldn't, and items will almost never finish at such a low price. The next thing to set is the duration of the auction: 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. This is up to you: longer sales will usually get more bids, but will also seem to drag on forever. If you've taken a picture, add it now - items with pictures always sell for more. Finally, tick the payment methods you will accept (just PayPal is best for now), and where you will post to (limit yourself to your own country to begin with). Submit and you're done!

Step 4: Wait for it to sell.

This is just a matter of sitting back and letting eBay do its thing - buyers will find your item and leave bids on it. Some bidders might email you with questions about the item, and you should do your best to answer these questions as quickly as you can.

Remember that if your item doesn't sell then you can list it again for free.

Step 5: Collect payment and post it.

eBay will sent your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item. Make sure you have the money before you send anything.

Once you've got the payment, all you need to do is pack the item for posting (make sure to use some bubble wrap), take the buyer's address from the confirmation email eBay sent you, and write it on the parcel. Put some stamps on, post it, and you're done!

I hope you enjoyed selling your first item. Now that you're starting to get into it, the next email will give you a checklist of things you need to do to be a successful seller.

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Comment Posting: A Power Blog Promoting Technique

You keep on hearing bloggers marvel about the wonderful benefits of leaving comments on other blogs but you’ve yet to try the tactic yourself. If you still aren’t sure about the wisdom of following their steps, here are a few reasons that could convince you to take that final step.

Show Your Expertise

Everyone prefers to listen to an expert than an amateur. With an expert’s advice, you spend your time wisely and get to learn something in return. Unfortunately, there isn’t always an opportunity to show your expertise.

As such, you have to create the opportunity for yourself once in a while and you can do that by leaving comments on other people’s blogs. Try spending a few minutes visiting other people’s blogs. Go around the blogging community, and once you’ve found some questions you’re very much in the position to answer, go ahead and share your wisdom.

Giving advice whenever it’s solicited is so much better than bragging, don’t you think?

Show Your Charm, Eloquence, and Wit

People can be terribly greedy. To please them, you not only have to be intelligent but you have to be articulate and witty, too. If you had a choice between visiting the blog of an extremely smart but humorless Internet marketer and one who’s moderately smart but witty, which blog would you choose? Many would choose the latter, don’t you think?

Now that you know what’s demanded of you, the next thing to do is determine how to prove that you indeed have all those great qualities. Again, you do that by leaving comments on other people’s blogs.

It’s very important not to overdo your bit when you’re out to display your wit. While providing excessive information can be seen as simply being detailed, being too funny could make other people you’re trying too hard to be so.

There’s a right time, place, and reason to be funny. Make sure you know when such moments occur!

Reciprocate

If other people left comments on your blogs, you owe it them to return the favor. Technically, you’re not obliged to do so but good business dictates reciprocity. And it’s really not that bad. Leaving comments on each other’s blog regularly will soon lead to link exchanges, another factor that can generate more traffic for your respective blogs.

If you continue to nurture your partnership after that, it can lead to even greater collaborations that would benefit both of you.

How to Make Your Comments Effective for Internet Marketing

All three reasons below are able to achieve the same goal: catch your target market’s attention and make them visit your blog. To increase your chances of success, you must make sure that your comments follow the tips below.

Write courteously.

Remember the usual rules of courtesy when you’re posting a comment on someone else’s blog.

Don’t be argumentative

Not everyone welcomes a debate so if you truly believe that there’s a need for you to propose an opposing view, make sure you do so politely and be very clear in saying that you only wish to expression your opinion and nothing else.

Don’t forget to link

Lastly, remember to provide a link to your blog whenever you leave a comment. This may be standard procedure but a lot of first-time bloggers still end up forgetting to do so. If you don’t want to risk losing any opportunity, never forget to post your link!

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Forum Posting Techniques to Help You Promote Your Blog

Having a blog can be a great start to an online writing career. A blog will allow you to express yourself, providing you with an outlet for your stress, which can be especially useful if you are working or in school. A blog can also allow you to share your experiences with friends and family, and you can simply post your pictures and diary entries without having to tell the same stories over and over again. Aside from all these, you can also use your blog to sell things, organize your web pages, and even earn some money.

Thanks to the power of technology and prospecting, there are now many ways through which you can make money through your blog. For instance, you can get commissions through paid advertising on your site. There are two ways that you can do this: you can either solicit offline and get brick and mortar companies to pay you to post their ads on your site, or you can join an affiliate marketing network and get paid for each click that visitors make on your ads. You can also blog for a living, and get paid for each entry that you write.

Either technique, however, demands that you have a lot of people visiting your site every single day. This can be a daunting task: you will need to be able to market your site so that it stands out amongst the millions of other blogs online. You will also need to sustain this onslaught of people reading your site by constantly adding to your content, keeping your content useful and fresh, and of course, never lagging in your marketing efforts. One way that you can promote your blog is to post in forums with subjects that are related to your blog posts.

If you are interested in promoting your blog and getting more people to read your work, then you may be interested in posting in forums and knowing how to go about it. Here are a few tips that you may need when posting in forums.

- Always pick a forum that has something to do with your blog. You may think that this is common sense, but you need to know why it’s the best practice for any blogger. Many bloggers make the mistake of spamming blogs in an effort to spread themselves throughout the forum and have their news spread faster. This can be a costly mistake: you do not only alienate your potential market, you will make yourself appear desperate. This air of desperation makes you appear like a hard-selling puppet of capitalism, and in the world of the Internet, where free and open source rules, you can work against your own potential.

- Avoid text lingo and spell like a pro. You may think that your audience is young and on the go, and would not care about your spelling. However, if you cannot even spell well, how can anyone trust you to blog well? How can anyone trust you as a credible source of high quality information? Spell well, check your grammar, and look at your punctuation. You need to look like you are someone who is meticulous and knows what people want, so don’t risk damaging your reputation by taking the shortest cut.

- Help people. Put your blog address in your signature, but start out by helping people with their problems. If you allow people to feel that they are important, they will be interested in you.

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Backlinks Creating Posting Effective Backlinks

What are Backlinks & What's the Big Deal?In your search for trying to improve your page ranking in the search engines to increase targeted traffic to your web site, vlog, blog, or article, you have had to learn about search engine optimization (SEO) and while learning how to make your web site, article, or blog search engine friendly, you may have come across the terms: inbound links (IBL) or backlinks (however you want to spell it and whatever you want to call them, inbound links, back-links, all mean the same thing). Back links are hyperlinks to the URL address of your web site, blog, or article that can direct (link) people to your page from other web sites, blogs, or articles.Backlinks are not just good for increasing targeted traffic to your page from the wandering Internet surfer who just happens to come across and click on your link. Back links are good for helping the search engines determine how relevant your page is to the search topic. When the top search engine’s web crawler ranks your web site, article, vlog,or blog, one of the factors the web crawlers are looking for is backlinks, as they provide a link juice (data) that allows the web crawlers to analyze and rank your page. However, the web crawlers are not just looking for any backlinks, they are looking for quality, relative back links. So having back links on any and every website you can possibly place a link on is not how you want to go about placing your backlinks, if you want to improve your page ranking in the search engines, relative and quality with a bit of keyword optimization (what I like call ROQ (rock) solid) are the kind of back-links you need.Where Do You Post Backlinks In Order For Search Engines to Consider Your Backlink as Relative and Quality?There are several factors that top search engines consider when determining how relative and quality your backlink is, and all of them should help demonstrate a natural link juice flow. What is a natural link juice flow? In Google's eye as well as the other major search engines eyes, natural is really based on human nature, as the human audience is who they are trying to please with their search results. Thus a natural link juice flow would be link juice IBLs give the search engines web crawler that show human characteristics, such as a diversity of the factors the web crawlers use to determine relevance and quality. A lot of those factors will not only be expected search engine accommodations on your pages, but will be expected to be on the page that you are posting your backlink on.One of the factors that search engine web bot crawlers look at is whether the web site, blog, or article you are posting a backlink on is a well known and quality web site, otherwise known as a “high authority.” A high authority web site will generally have a high page rank and a top level URL domain address such as .com, .edu, or .gov. However, just because a web site has a high authority and page rank, the particular page you are posting your backlink on may not have a high search engine rank placement (SERP).Want Back-links?Being as .gov and .edu web sites are government and educational websites, even if you are a newbie to search engine optimization, I’m sure you can guess why a .gov and .edu would be the coveted sites to post backlinks on. A back link on a .gov or .edu page that is keyword relevant to the page your backlink points to can give you a massive increase in traffic, as well as give you a huge jump up in ranking on the search engine results simply because government and educational web sites get more traffic due to that “high authority” factor, and the public belief that .gov and .edu sites will have the best information.How to Get IBLsSince you can’t just go to any website and edit the HTML source code to add your backlink to that website, the only way you can add a back link is through comments, forums, etc., so here are some methods you can use to interact with other web sites, articles, or blogs to post your backlink on.Question answering sites


Blog Commenting


Forum Posting and Participation


Social Bookmarking


Social Networking Sites


Video Marketing


Article Marketing & Document Sharing


Guest blog posting


Press Releases


Contacting the blogger, vlogger, or site owner with an offer they can't refuseLink Diversity Keeps Your Backlinks Natural and Search Engine FriendlyWhen the web crawler is calculating where your page should rank in the search engine results, a high authority site is 10 xs (10 times) more favorable to have a backlink on then a low authority site. However, having backlinks on high authority sites only can make your backlinks appear to be manipulated or to have an unnatural pattern to the web crawlers who are programmed to search for “natural patterns” in where and how often (the link velocity) you place backlinks. Natural patterns in link diversity and link velocity will show the web crawlers a balanced diversity and steady velocity, and can prevent the web crawlers from punishing you and diminishing your ranking for unnatural backlinking patterns.Among the High Authority & Low Authority Blogs and Web Sites Hides the No follow AttributeHaving a backlink on a high authority site does not necessarily mean you are going to get a better search engine rank, especially if that blog or web site has a “no follow” attribute that commands the search engine’s web crawlers not to follow certain outbound links, making that particular backlink weightless to your page ranking. The no follow code was designed to cut down on the effectiveness of scammers and spammer’s backlinks to prevent certain types of search engine spam and manipulation. You can find the “no follow” code in the HTML source code of the website by right clicking your mouse and selecting view source then searching for a code that is similar to the example below.Tip: If you use the firefox web browser you can easily find out if the site is no follow by highlighting (selecting) the text of a comment and the name of the person who left the comment, then right click your mouse and select view selection source. If you see a code similar to the example code above then that particular blog or website is a “no follow” web site.Automated SEO Tools are Considered "Black Hat" SEO TacticsThere are also some SEO tools available such as Scrapebox and the Blog commenting ninja that will search through the Internet to find .edu and .gov, tell you which sites are no follow, and can even post intellectual comments for you. Granted a lot of SEO tools that search the internet for you are considered black hat seo tools, so before you commit to buy one make sure that it follows Google’s best practices, as you wouldn’t want to get a Google slap.Remember, link diversity is important, so you will want to post backlinks to no follow sites just as much as you post to the sites that allow the search engines to follow your backlink. Even though the search engines won’t give you credit towards your rank on the search engines for backlinks on a no follow site, the backlink can still link people to your articles or web site to increase traffic, which is the goal after all.Getting Started BacklinkingIf you are new to the backlinking process then you are going to want to start out with leaving comments without backlinks, as you will first need to establish yourself as someone who is a worthy contributor to the online community, otherwise your comments will be deleted for sure and you will appear to be a spammer. Once you have established yourself as a worthy contributor (leaving at least 20 to 50 comments) you can then start leaving your backlinks with your comments.While you are working on building your reputation in the online community you will notice that there will be some commenting forms that allow you to add your web site address (the URL address to your homepage). I have noticed that generally if you fill these out and have not established a good reputation in the online community your comment will get deleted.Making Your BacklinkIf you are new to all this search engine optimization talk, you may be wondering how to create backlinks in the first place. Making the actual backlink is actually pretty simple; once you find the site you are going to post your backlink on, just take the URL address (example: http://www.example.com ) of the page you want your backlink to point to and post it with your comment. There are some web sites, blogs, vlogs, or articles that will allow you to use HTML or BBC in your comment, which allows you to hide that ugly URL address in keywords you used in your comment. Those keywords that are hiding your URL address are generally called the "anchor text" and can help bring up your SERP for that particular keyword or keyword phrase. Although some of the sites that allow HTML require that you know HTML code in order to use that feature, so I have included a snip of HTML code that you can use just for that purpose, just fill in your URL address where it says “your URL address” and your keywords you want to use to link to your page where it says “keywords” and you will be good to go.IBLs and Their Keyword Anchors Need to be Diverse


As I've said before, the major search engines web crawlers base your IBL quality and relevance on several factors which all happen to demonstrate a natural link juice flow. Since human nature is the top search engines idea of natural and we all know that human nature is diverse it not only makes since to use different relative keywords as anchors to provide that diverse human nature characteristic to the web bot crawlers, but also to your audience, who is diverse. Our diversity causes us all to do things a bit differently from one another, this is especially the case when it comes to the words we use. As they say: "To each, their own." Thus using different relative keywords as anchors instead of the same keyword anchor again and again will not only attract a diverse audience who is searching for the same information, but as you will be providing the major search engines with that diverse human characteristic they are looking for in your IBLs to appear natural, it will also provide a bit of link juice to boost your page's rank placement in different search terms containing the keyword which will help you get more traffic from several search terms instead of one.Indexing Your Backlinks to Make Them CompleteOnce your back link is posted, you will want to tell the search engines that you have new backlinks by telling the search engine to “ping” for links to your website so that the search engine can index them as fast as possible. Some web sites and blogs such as HubPages or WordPress will automatically ping the search engines every time new content or comments are added. If your website does not automatically ping the search engine, then you will need to go to Google Webmaster Tools and set your crawl rate settings under “Site Configuration > Settings.”Now that you know of the ideal places to post backlinks, how important your backlink diversity is to your search engine rank and how to make backlinks, it’s time for you to get links posted to improve search engine ranking on your blog, vlog, article, or curated content. If you find that your backlinks are not sticking around because of moderation, on my profile you may find my upcoming article on making your backlinks sticky may help you out.Copyright © 02/23/2012 by Page1 SEO tactics

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