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Selling at eBay Reseller Marketplace

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 4, 2007

[photopress:rm_logo.gif,full,alignleft]I have been an eBay Powerseller since 2002. Like many other eBay Powersellers, I have so many stories about eBay and eBay customers. Many of you are tired of hearing these stories, but let me tell it again, eBay used to be so much profitable and fun. Just like any other company which grows too fast, eBay has lost some of the main points in its business model. They started caring less about the problems of the sellers (actually their customers). They have become more and more interested in increasing their quarterly profits.

This path has helped many eBay sellers to start their own websites, and sell through their own sites. By making international sellers job easier to sell at eBay USA, it has become almost impossible to compete for small home based US sellers. But we are talking about selling retail on eBay. I have also written about ebay affiliate marketing before.

I will talk about a different business model for eBay selling. Since eBay has become so big, and there are so many success stories out there, now so many people try to sell on eBay. But they have no clue how to find the real sources to buy. eBay has created a new platform called eBay Reseller Marketplace. You can sell wholesale direct to eBay Powersellers.

What are the advantages of eBay Reseller Marketplace?

  • All the prospective customers are current powersellers (pre-qualified).
  • You can make money without spending any money from your pocket (I’ll get into this little later).
  • Your fees will be much less compared to regular eBay fees.
  • You don’t have to deal with many retail customers, and make small profit. You can have large profits per month with dealing a few wholesale customers.
  • If you keep your promise, and if your customers like your products, you will be having returning customers. Because they will want to buy more to resell retail.

How to make money at eBay Reseller Marketplace without spending any cash?

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Successful Email Marketing Case Study

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 1, 2007

[photopress:email_marketing.gif,full,alignleft]I have recently had a successful email marketing campaign for one of my ecommerce sites. I will share the story of this email marketing campaign as a case study.

The site we have launched the email marketing campaign is an ecommerce site which is 14 months old. We have never done email newsletter or any type of email marketing for this site due to very busy schedule. We had around 14,000 email adresses collected from our customers. So, I thought it was time to start our regular newsletters, and increase our returning customer rates by offering specials through email marketing.

After an extensive research, we had 3 choices of hosted email newsletter programs on the table, and we have decided to go with Aweber. (Read my Aweber Review). Aweber had all the features we needed, plus some extra features such as a great autoresponder system integrated. After we’ve signed up with Aweber, the only down side seemed as the verified opt-in requirement. Yes, our only choice was to have a verified opt-in email list. We couldn’t just email our list of previous customers. We had to send them an email asking if they wanted to be added to our newsletter.

* What is verified opt-in?

Frequently called confirmed opt-in or double opt-in, it is generally defined as sending an email to a new subscriber request to verify that they are the person who made the request before adding them to a mailing list. This is usually accomplished by means of an email message sent to the subscriber to which they must reply, or containing a URL which they must visit, in order to complete the subscription. This prevents others from accidentally or maliciously adding an email address to a mailing list that does not belong to them.

After sending 14,000 emails to our previous customers, only 750 of them opted in the newsletter. I was first shocked and very disappointed with the low return rate. After speaking with a few friends in email marketing field, they have encouraged me with the success rate. Even though we had only 750 people on the list, they were all previous customers, and also were very interested in receiving emails from us. Because we have asked their permission for it.

It has been little less than 24 hours since we’ve sent the newsletter, and I believe we have already great success. Here are the facts:

  • Only 6 emails were undeliverable
  • 79% open rate (79% of the people who have received the newsletter have opened it)
  • Almost 80% of the people who have read the email have clicked a link within the email.
  • Already had 20 orders with over $2000 revenue.

We had a very simple design with a short text. We had the company logo, 1 coupon code, 1 short paragraph thank you letter for being a customer, and 3 new product images/links. Short and simple, to the point.
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Affiliate Marketing too Good to Be True?

by Ahmet Kirtok on October 27, 2007

I am a pretty new affiliate marketer. If you read my previous post about affiliate marketing, you will see the path I have taken until now.

I have tried only a few affiliate offers within last couple of months. By creating one niche site and two adwords campaigns, I have started making around $200/day net profit. I have signed up with AzoogleAds.com, one of the most respected affiliate marketing company, and searched for the offers they had. After picking the offer I wanted to promote, it took me total of 2 hours to create the site, and setup the adwords campaigns. Then, the offer was pulled from search traffic. Suddenly my income is net $0/day. But it didn’t discouarge me at all.

If I can create a very small site for a specific affiliate offer, spend total of 2 hours on it, and make around $200/day net profit, I must take this more seriously. This is what I am doing right now. Instead of creating a site for one offer, I have decided to pick an industry, and later create multiple affiliate offers, and landing pages on the site.

Long term or short term strategy for affiliate marketing?

You can create a very small site for a specific affiliate offer, and try to make the most buck out of it. This is the short term strategy, and works great for many affiliate marketers. But if you create a solid site, invest into the site, and start launching multiple affiliate offers in that niche, you will have a stable business model. This is the path I’m planning to take. I know the cash won’t be pouring in for the short term. But if I have a cool site with organic traffic, and regular members, then I will have a long term business in hand. I won’t have to worry about Google Slaps, or any related affiliate marketers’ nightmares.

Time is the problem for affiliate marketers

Yes, time is very valuable. I already run my businesses, and overwhelmed with the daily tasks. I can have my designer design a great new site, I can arrange the time to program the backend. But how will the people start coming? Will PPC enough, isn’t my goal to brign organic traffic? Now, this is the tricky part. I will use the big power of web 2.0 (user generated content). This is one of the important rules of money making; let others work for you. If I can find the right idea and right industry to create a web2.0 site, start the buzz, and let the community create the content, then I can focus on monetizing the site. This is what I will do with my next affiliate project.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?

by Ahmet Kirtok on September 3, 2007

[photopress:affiliate_marketing_success.jpg,full,alignleft]I first met an affiliate marketer at the summer of 1991. I didn’t know he was an affiliate marketer. We were on vacation on the Mediterranean Coast of Turkey in a small town. This town had beautiful architecture along with great sun, and the beaches. On the narrow street where all restaurants and bars stayed, there was this guy who stood all day. He was asking the tourists if they needed free recommendations and more information about the restaurants, bars and their menus.

It is always hard to pick the right restaurant or bar when you are on vacation, because you don’t know the area, there are great local places which tourists are not aware of. Anyway, this guy has offered to take you to the real deal places where locals hang out. He’s spoken almost perfect English, making jokes on the way, explaining every detail about the restaurants he’ll take you. He’s made a deal with several restaurants and bars in the town.
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Turning a WordPress Blog into a CMS

by Ahmet Kirtok on August 24, 2007

[photopress:wordpress_cms.png,full,alignleft]For one of my ecommerce sites I needed a very simple CMS. I always use WordPress for my blogs, and love it, but I wanted to have a more CMS than a blog. After spending a few minutes, I have turned the wordpress blog into a CMS. I’m pretty sure this has been done millions of time before, but I wanted to share it, because I know it will help somebody who’s looking for a similar solution.

Step by Step Guide to Turn a WordPress Blog Into a CMS
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Understanding NET ROI for Google Adwords

by Ahmet Kirtok on August 23, 2007

[photopress:ROI.jpg,full,alignleft]Google Adwords has become a MUST not for only online marketers, also for many small business owners. Competition increases every day within advertisers. Especially with the direction Google is taking to become the monopoly in advertising industry, you need to become an advanced user of Adwords to be able to make money. I have been reading many articles, and blog posts about Google Adwords ROI. Most of these resources offer tips and tactics to increase your ROI for Google Adwords campaigns.
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YouTube Social Marketing Experiment

by Ahmet Kirtok on August 22, 2007

[photopress:youtube_logo.gif,full,alignleft]Have you ever tried bringing traffic from YouTube? I have tried uploading a few videos before, but never had the chance to test the actual traffic coming from YouTube.

Social marketing is becoming huge. There are many popular websites like YouTube, StumpleUpon, MySpace, etc. If you have direct links from a site, you can easily track the traffic you’re receiving, and even every single detail from the traffic.

But with the addition of online video websites, most users will upload a video and implement their website URL onto the video, such as “Brought to you by blahblah.com” caption text on the video. This is great, if the person who is watching the video likes it, he/she may be checking your website also for more. But since the URL on the video is not clickable, they will type the URL and visit your site. Statistics softwares will show these visitors as “Direct Traffic” and you will never know where they came from.
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Most Creative Viral Marketing

by Ahmet Kirtok on August 18, 2007

I have recently written about creative link baiting. Being creative is great, but do you think there are limits?

I remember the day, when a hot blond girl auctioned advertising rights on her boobs on ebay. It was creative, close to the limit. But a guy named Joe is pushing the limits in creativity.

[photopress:geek.jpg,full,centered]When I checked Shoemoney to see the free friday t-shirt day, instead of a t-shirt, I’ve seen a guy with Shoemoney, Digitalpoint, and Grownupgeek websites’ names and logos tattooed on his arm.
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Business Networking with Meetup Meetings

by Ahmet Kirtok on August 16, 2007

[photopress:meetup.gif,full,alignleft]It’s been a long time since I first wrote about Meetup Meetings. I’ve attended NYC Affiliate Marketing Meetup Meeting last night. I’ve been a member of meetup.com and have attended a number of meetings in business and IT topics. Yesterday, only 4 people showed up, including me and the organizer. This is the first time I have had a meetup meeting with a small group like this. Depending on your goal, meetup meeting can be very productive for you. You can generate lots of business, or at least do some networking, and exchange business cards.
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Google Monopoly in Advertising Industry

by Ahmet Kirtok on August 14, 2007

[photopress:google_logos.jpg,full,alignleft]What is google?

- A search engine
- A full service advertising agency
- A verb in English language

This list will go on and on. But what is actually Google doing? What is their goal in the long run? What were the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin‘s plans when they first started google?

This is a pretty long article about my thoughts about Google’s dangerous monopoly game foreplay.

After the launch of Google Adwords (Google Sponsored Search Results), it has started to become popular. It was a great way for google to make money. Many users didn’t even notice they were paid search results, so they have clicked them. Google showed paid search results only at the right sidebar of the screen. My first thought was; They will eventually put these paid search results at the top section just above the organic search results, and they did.

Google Adwords has become a multi billion dollar revenue source for Google, and they wanted to make their shareholders happy quarter after quarter. Don’t get me wrong, I love google, I have always been a big fan since their launch, but just like any other corporation the interests started shifting at the Google Headquarters.
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