What they don’t realize is that lots of people make money by earning commissions on the eBay sales of other people’s junk. (I use the term “junk” loosely here, because there are also tons of very good, high quality, brand new products being sold on eBay all the time too).

eBay’s Affiliate Program

To put it simply, eBay has an affiliate program, which enables us to make money off of anyone’s auctions. eBay now handles its own affilate program, called the eBay Partner Network. (It used to let cj.com handle its program). eBay has done a good job with this new program, giving affiliates lots of information, tutorials, tools, and widgets to promote the site effectively. Even without additional tools, you can jump into promoting eBay auctions within your niche pretty easily.

More Robust Tools

If you want to go beyond what eBay offers, there are, of course, tools to help with that as well. For a while, the most popular tool was BANS (Build A Niche Site) software to quickly and easily build lots of niche sites promoting eBay auctions. It’s still popular, really, but some of the excitement about it died down once it got so popular that duplicate content started rearing its ugly head. (One site about golf clubs started to look just like another site about golf clubs, which was just like another, which was just like…you get the point).

Content First

The better way to make affiliate sales, in my opinion, has always been to concentrate first on content, and second on sales, rather than the other way around. If you provide great content and have a trustworthy rapport with your users first, then making sales is much easier to do. In addition, all that great content and user trust eventually contributes to better rankings in the search engines; driving more traffic to your site, which eventually leads to more sales.

So, although the quick and easy path of BANS is still right for some (maybe even you), I like the more content-integrated approach, where you integrate affiliate links naturally into your valuable content. This might be in the way of specific product reviews, or it might be just niche-relevant, but either way, the content is the main focus, and the eBay links are secondary. One of the best tools on the market for this kind of approach is the phpBay WordPress plugin. This WP plugin makes it easy to pull relevant auction links into your blog posts. This keeps the focus where it belongs – on your content.

Whatever tool used – eBay’s own tools, BANS, phpBay, or any other tool you might run across – the end result is the same … you don’t have to sell your own junk on eBay to make money on eBay … you can more easily make money by referring users to ane of the hundreds of thousands of ongoing eBay auctions, and then getting paid commissions for sending high quality traffic that result in signups and sales.

Here’s a quick example of an eBay creative (be sure to hover your mouse over it – it’s really cool):

As you can see just from this one example, there’s some pretty interesting things that can be done with the eBay affiliate program, and there’s tons more available, so it’s definitely worth considering.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: BANS, eBay, phpBay
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an expert on a subject: He is an authority on baseball.

Every person is an authority on any number of things. I truly believe that. You may say, “No, I’m not an expert on anything”, but I bet within 15 minutes of having a conversation with you, I could get you to think of at least 5 things that you could be considered an “expert” or “authority” on. Maybe it’s something really small and minor – maybe you are an expert at dealing with bugs in your garden, for example. You may think you couldn’t possibly be considered an expert because you didn’t get a degree in horticulture (or whatever a degree in garden bugs might be called), but your “experience” in dealing with them makes you an expert. Let’s take a look at one of the definitions of expert now.

possessing special skill or knowledge; trained by practice; skillful or skilled (often fol. by in or at): an expert driver; to be expert at driving a car.

Notice this part – “trained by practice”. The fact that you’ve been doing something repeatedly for a long time can make you an expert without any formal training. Perhaps you are an expert at baking chocolate chip cookies. Maybe you are an expert at multi-tasking. Some of you are probably experts at coaching little league sports. The point is that we all have skills that we’ve acquired over time, and we can attach the labels of “expert” and “authority” to those topics. I am absolutely positive that I could learn all sorts of things from each and every one of you.

So what, you ask? Oh, there is a point to my rambling, trust me. My point is that you can take those skills and teach others. Or you can take those skills and create products based on your expertise of the subject. Those products may be digital (such as informational ebooks, training videos, or software), or they may be physical, such as hand-made organizational gadgets. (I just bought one such hand-made gadget on eBay today from some lady who makes them, so I have first hand experience with that one).

The key, however, is in first recognizing your talents and your expertise, and then in making use of them. In addition, you need to be able to convey to others that you are indeed an authority or expert. You don’t have to present formal credentials. You do need to present information. Write articles that show people how to do something in your niche. Answer questions on social sites related to your niche. Help those who want to learn what you know. Each of these things can help build your reputation as an authority in your field. (Yes, even an expert chocolate chip cookie maker can be useful to others in the world – seriously!)

This won’t be the last time we discuss this topic. It is a critical aspect of your success. We’ll be dealing with it more in the days to come, I promise. For now, I invite you to notice the things you do on a daily basis, and really take note of those things that you do really well. Small or large, pay attention to the things that you are an expert at doing. That’s all for now.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Are An Authority, authority, baseball, eBay, expert, expert chocolate chip cookie maker, little league sports
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.