When you hear “eBay” and “money” in the same sentence your probably think of becoming an eBay seller. You place product listings in the eBay marketplace, buyers bid, you pay your eBay seller fees and what you have left is your profit margin.

There is, however, another way to build a business which still revolves around eBay but which doesn’t involve you selling a single thing in the eBay marketplace.

This “other way” opportunity is based on the eBay affiliate program and a great tool which makes entry into this opportunity not only possible but also super easy. This tool is called “Build A Niche Store“.

Now if you don’t know – an affiliate program enables you as an individual internet entrepreneur to promote the products of a company in exchange for a commission on all sales that you refer.

You are basically operating as an internet middleman and connecting internet browsers to particular products and companies through you own network of websites and marketing methods.

The idea of an affiliate program for eBay was not really a new concept for me - I know that a lot of big sites, such as Amazon or eBay, have an affiliate program where they pay you for the traffic you drive to them. eBay though just didn’t strike me as a good possibility to look into since eBay items, by their very nature, are very dynamic. The longest auctions on eBay last for 7 to 10 days - to build a site based on affiliate links to eBay listings would mean that I would constantly have to keep refreshing that site to keep it up-to-date with the latest listings. This is exactly there “Build A Niche Store” helps - but more on that later.

If we return to the eBay affiliate program, eBay actually invites you to promote all of the product listings in the eBay marketplace and in exchange for your efforts will pay you up to 75% of the revenue they make from each
sale you refer plus up to $35 for each new active eBay member you refer.

You can read about the eBay.com affiliate program here

What this means is that you can earn up to three quarters of eBay’s revenue simply for connecting people to the products listed in the eBay marketplace. Not only do you get to partner with the best branded marketplace in the world, you also get access to and control over ALL of the products listed in this marketplace. The eBay product inventory becomes YOUR product inventory and yet you do NOT have to stock items, deal with customers, organize shipping or process refunds.

You are no longer limited to selling only those products which you can buy and sell for a profit margin. You can choose ANY niche market and promote those eBay products relevant to your chosen niche outside of the eBay marketplace, funnelling targeted traffic through to eBay and into your own affiliate commissions.

Golf clubs, sewing kits, laptops, dog collars, diamond rings, Florida real estate…you name it.

If you know eBay you know how BIG it is – there are NO limits.

At this point you might be thinking - well this sounds interesting but in reality is there any money in it? Well, here’s the shocker – eBay’s top affiliates make over 1 million dollars a month. That’s right – 8 figures a year without stocking, selling or shipping a single thing!

Now eBay does provide some basic free tools to help you succeed as an eBay affiliate and build an affiliate business BUT it has been the development of a tool outside of eBay that has really opened this up as a legitimate business opportunity.

The tool, as I mentioned earlier, is called “Build A Niche Store” and what it enables you to do is build eBay affiliate websites targeted to any eBay niche you want. These act as the medium through which you funnel targeted visitors to eBay.

Here are a couple of examples:

Race Car eBay Affiliate Website
Golf eBay Affiliate Website
Steam Showers and Saunas

As you can see, these are professional looking websites that contain all of those eBay products related to their target niche inside a searchable store format, each of which automatically contains your eBay affiliate id.

These stores then automatically update as new products are listed for sale and old listing expire from the eBay marketplace and the software has built in development features which enable you to create new store pages, add content to these pages, create content pages, modify your template etc etc.

Basically, in the space of about 10 minutes (once you are familiar with how the software works) you can create a fully functional eBay affiliate website targeted to the niche market of your choice.

Your store content is all search engine friendly which will provide the foundation for attracting targeted traffic from the search engines and you can then use the development features to attract more targeted visitors which will in turn mean more eBay affiliate commissions.

It really is a brilliant concept and I’ve been hearing great things about the guys behind the project and the member forum which you get lifetime access to when you purchase the product.

Build A Niche Store comes with a step by step user manual which will walk even the most technically inexperienced through setting up their eBay affiliate website, 9 professional template layouts which can be customized (from inside your admin panel) to match your target niche, lifetime member forum access, comprehensive product support and possibly most importantly – an UNLIMITED domain license which means you can build as many of these niche websites as
you want for the small one time fee.

Think about how many niches eBay caters to!

How big could your eBay affiliate business be?!

This product gets my full recommendation – check it out today…

Filed under: Computers, Make money online | No Comments »

I’ve been involved with RSS news readers since early 2001 or so, back in the days when RSS was still in its early stages and when blogs were virtually unheard of.

My first RSS news reader was AmphetaDesk - it’s probably the grandfather of RSS readers. It was quite a neat idea back then to have one application where you could read news and stories from many websites instead of running around the web to see the latest articles on each separate site. I think it was an application that was ahead of its time - not too many people knew about it, but it made such a big difference for those who discovered it and learned how to use it.

Not too long after that I discovered a number of web sites that allowed me to read aggregated news directly on the web - I’ve mentioned these in a different post. They were a great resource but they had one major drawback - I didn’t have much control over which sites they pulled feeds from. It was nice to have a quick place to look at news stories and posts but I soon realized that I wanted more control over the content.

Once I started this blog I realized even more that I needed a better way to follow all the blogs I wanted to read for inspiration and ideas. I had a few Windows-based RSS readers that I tried over time but, for one reason or another, I really wasn’t impressed with any of them. In some of the earlier versions of these apps there was one thing that always bothered me - while I was able to control the various RSS feeds, I felt that the user interface lacked a bit in giving me good control over how I read the posts, which ones I wanted to revisit, and which ones I could let go. I never really knew for sure what posts I read and what I still had to look at.

I finally decided to try Google Reader since I read so much about it on the web - and I also liked the idea of having a good web-based RSS reader that I could access from all the computers I use. Well, as soon as I started using it I noticed something odd - as I was browsing around the various feeds, articles were just mysteriously disappearing. It didn’t take me long to figure out that Google Reader was trying to get cute on me and by default was marking articles as read as soon as I looked at them. That was exactly the problem I had with some of the Windows-based RSS readers that I tried earlier - nice feature for those who need it but it wasn’t what I was looking for.

As soon as I realized what was going on I started looking for a way to turn off that feature. I found it eventually under preferences, in the section called ‘Scroll tracking’. Now I can mark articles and posts as read on my terms - moving around subscriptions doesn’t mark posts as read just because I look at them. That’s the way I like it

Such a simple concept yet it’s probably what enabled me to get attached to Google Reader. There are so many other things to discover in there - I read a lot about the various keyboard shortcuts - but for now I’m quite happy to just be able to follow my favorite blogs with a user interface that works the way I want it.

Filed under: Computers, Productivity | 1 Comment »

I know we’re still in the middle of winter but it’s never too early to think about spring cleaning and how exactly you’ll get rid of some of the stuff you accumulated over time.

Well, before you think that your attic is full with things that nobody could possibly ever need, remember the old saying: someone’s trash is somebody else’s treasure. You just need to find that somebody who could treasure the things you want to give up and allow you to make some money in the process.

eBay, of course, is just the place for this. If you have an eBay account (and even if you don’t have one yet) and think that you couldn’t possibly have anything that someone would want, think again. I recently came across this free e-book from Scott Foster where he gives examples of 91 common everyday items that you can sell for some nice profits on eBay.

Here are some quick examples to give you an idea:

• Cast Iron Skillets
• Two Color Golf Balls
• Dealer Manuals For Vehicles
• Time Life Book Series
• … and many more

You could have hundreds of dollars just laying around in your garage or attic - get the free e-book from the link below and see if you have any hidden treasures that you might sell on eBay:

Overlooked Treasure — Great Profits from Everyday Items!

Filed under: Finance, Make money online, Money saving tips | No Comments »