LinkedIn is kind of a funny social media platform – don’t you think? It’s a little awkward to use, and much, much harder to build relationships on than, say Facebook. It does have lots of great features, but it’s not as intuitive or as easy to integrate as some of the other social networks.

However, LinkedIn holds a high place of honor, and if that’s where your target market is, you’d better be there, too. To make it worth your while, you need to make sure you have an engaging, informative, effective LinkedIn profile. Here are steps to make that happen:

1. Before you even look at your profile, take time to properly clarify WHO you’re writing to, and decide specifically WHAT you want people to take from it. Writing general “blah blah blah” is not going to help you stand out. You want to know exactly who you’re talking to, and what you have to offer them.

2. Research your keywords and keyword phrases, and use them in each section of your profile whenever you can. You don’t want your page to sound like one of those keyword-rich article marketing articles, but you do need keywords in each section so people can find you quickly.

3. With that in mind, create a clear headline and summary: who you are, who you help, and how you help them. Keep it clear and concise and use your best keywords.

4. Use a professional photo that represents what you do. Make sure you’re face is big enough that people can see it clearly, and keep the background distractions to a minimum.

5. When it comes to listing your websites, instead of choosing “Blog” or “Company Website,” choose “Other” and give your websites a title that uses your keywords.

6. If you have an active, useful Twitter account, connect it to LinkedIn here. The more ways you can connect with someone, the better.

7. Create a powerful summary. This is achieved by writing in the first person, to the specific person you’re talking to, in a conversational tone that creates an opportunity for conversation. You need to identify your prospect’s pain and show them how you can solve it. You also need to explain how you are unique and different, and perfectly suited for your prospect’s needs. Make sure you create a clear call-to-action, and put your contact information in the summary with a gentle teaser-type headline: “To increase your sales by 30% in 10 days, contact me at: 123-456-7890″ for example.

8. Create your LinkedIn URL. LinkedIn automatically assigns you a random URL. This is ugly and hard to remember. It also looks bad on a business card. Just click “edit” by the assigned link, and use your name or part of your name as the tag. Don’t use your business name because that might change. When you are finished, your profile link should look like this:

(but with your name, instead of mine, obviously…)

9. Complete the ‘specialties’ section preferably as an easy to skim list.

10. Add widgets like your blog feed, Twitter feed, reading list (especially if you’re an author – use this to showcase your own books!)

11. Complete your education and experience, again using your best keywords, and being detailed about the kind of work you’ve done.

12. Spell check and proofread. Let me say that again: spell check and proofread! Get a few people to look it over for errors and mistakes.

13. Make your profile public (it won’t help you much if you keep it private!)

14. Get Recommended by people you actually know, who can talk about specific ways you’ve helped them. Don’t blast a request to all your contacts – whether they know you or not – to recommend you. Yes, I’ve actually had this happen where people ask me for a recommendation when I don’t know them at all.

15. When you’ve got it together and like it, you can then make it even more powerful by searching for those people who are considered the top people in your company or industry, and checking out how they’ve done their profiles. See if you can glean some great ideas from them that you hadn’t thought of.

And there you have it – a dynamic, engaging, attractive LinkedIn profile!

Darlene Hull is the founder of HotSpot Promotion, a small business marketing firm that uses creative marketing ideas to get small businesses from Who? to YOU! quickly, affordably, & cheerfully.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Web marketers produce web sites, lots of websites, but what is the very best way of making them? Years ago we sat there and coded the internet sites by hand, making use of notepad or a simple HTML editor. Life changed when WYSIWYG editors arrived and we could generate our websites quicker with these advanced tools. Recently, the landscape of website creation changed once again with an advanced piece of software program referred to as WordPress. Originally a basic blogging platform, WordPress has developed to grow to be the software program of selection for many a marketer to run their web site on. Why have so a lot of marketers moved so several of their websites to WordPress? What on earth can be so unique about WordPress for it to have become so popular? There are a lot of factors why WordPress has turn out to be so well-known. let’s outline some of them now. WordPress Benefit 1The initial benefit is the ease of use and installation. WordPress can be installed in just a couple of clicks of a mouse, with no technical skill involved. In truth, WordPress enables folks with totally no technical abilities to develop fantastic seeking websites with ease! If you can point and click then you can install, configure and use WordPress. WordPress Benefit 2You can make WordPress look fantastic very simply by way of the use of themes. A theme basically changes the layout of your website.

With just a couple of clicks you can entirely alter how every page on your website looks. No matter whether you want your site to look like a magazine, a squeeze page, a sales letter or whatever, you can effortlessly do this with WordPress. With thousands of free themes offered and many more paid themes, you can quickly make your website appear special. WordPress Benefit 3Another enormous benefit of WordPress is that it is incredibly straightforward to extend the functionality. With a click you can add Adsense adverts. With yet another click you can add Google Analytics tracking and far more. There are hundreds of plugins offered which extend the functionality of WordPress and makes it do almost something! Very best of all, you do not want any technical skill to do this, all you need to do is click on a couple of buttons and there you arenew functions added. Lovely! WordPress Benefit 4Ranking well in the search engines is crucial for everyone who wants to make money on the web. WordPress is a program that has been specifically created with the search engines in mind and is significantly loved by them. With search engine friendly URL’s, plugins to make it even more search engine friendly, built in RSS feeds and the ability to add XML sitemaps via plugins, you have a very search engine friendly web site ready extremely speedily. No much more spending hours messing about with your website, it is ready for the search engines as soon as it comes out of the box. If you are taking into consideration setting up a web site then perhaps the very best piece of software you can use is WordPress. You can produce any kind of internet site from a membership site to a sales page and beyond. These are just four of the main rewards of WordPress and as you start off to use it you will realise there are many, several a lot more.

About the Author

Georgette Adanas has been writing content articles on customizing wordpress tutorial since 1999.

One of the very first steps toward turning into financially self-sufficient and creating a second income online is getting individuals that adhere to your site, comment in your internet site, and be considered a part of your email lists and newsletters. In short, you need an marketplace! The audience is key, and today I’m going to display you one of probably the most efficient ways to engage your audience, the email publication. Newsletters give that individual connection, that additional touch that lets your customers understand that you are always supplying new content material and providing new benefits to your website. With out getting this content material, nobody will visit your site! Follow together with me and collectively we’ll develop the cornerstone of web communication together with your users, the email publication.

These days we will find out how you can create an e-newsletter using WordPress. I comprehend for numerous of us it may be a problem to figure out the right services, setup the account, setup your e-mail address and the like. With WordPress and MailChimp, a vibrant new e mail marketing business, a number of the difficulties are eliminated and setup is a snap!

To display you about Mailchimp and get you began, I’ve put together a 12 moment video clip that will take you all of the way from sign up to submitting your initial email marketing campaign. Follow this informative guide and you’ll be arranged in minutes.

Outstanding! Now we’ll begin the WordPress integration component. With this particular tutorial I am assuming you have a typical WordPress website set up on your personal domain title. Let us get to work.

we’ll have to do is install the official MailChimp extension. Navigate over to your plugins panel and select Add New. Within the box, just kind “mailchimp” and click Research. The 1st outcome ought to be the one you would like. Ensure it states MailChimp List Subscribe Type. Click on Install.

As soon as installed, you will see a new menu choice towards the left under your Settings panel, known as MailChimp. Click on that to see the following settings:

You may notice I am already logged in, so you should adhere to the directions to log into your own MailChimp account and get the essential info. Whenever you do this, your MailChimp lists will appear. You see in the above screenshot my newsletter seems, Income Ninja’s Passive Income Cheatsheet. This really is my new newsletter and so this is what I’d like website visitors to register for when handing over their e-mail to me. Be sure you have absent into MailChimp and set up a list prior to performing this step. Also, you will discover there’s few color and formatting choices on this display, but these arrive later. Correct now we’re just thinking about establishing the default instance.

Next, you need to decide how to capture the information your users are supplying you with. For our specifications, I believe it is much less difficult and much better for your utilizes to only enter their email address:

In the event you require, it is also feasible to decide to require their first and final title also. But, keep in mind, you would not want it to be too awkward for users to enter their particulars or they’ll choose not to.

Lastly, click on Update Subscribe Form Configurations and you are done! Nicely, not completely, but we’re almost there. Subsequent, you’ll need to click on around the Widgets menu beneath the Look panel, and add the MailChimp Form Widget for your site. I like to suggest placing this widget inside a very prominent location in your website to make sure your internet guests notice it. I place mine at the top in the sidebar section. Just be sure you similarly incorporate the form on post pages, too. This may improve presence, and help remind customers to enroll as soon as they find your blog and wish to study much more with the materials.

Nicely, we’re carried out here – I am hoping you learned something – I know I did whilst compiling this publish. Keep in mind, this really is a journey I’m taking for the first time, so I don’t know all the solutions. I’m determined to understand nevertheless, so in the future I will be submitting a lot of stuff I am up to as well as useful guides similar to this to assist your in your method to financial flexibility.

About the Author

Want to find out more handy tips on make an email, then go over this detailed articlefree newsletter.

First of all, let’s define WordPress. It is a blog platform. At first glance, it’s attractive because Google ranks blogs higher than web sites. But that’s only under certain conditions.

There are two flavors of WordPress: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. I’ll take each one in turn.

WordPress.com

Originally, I was thinking that a few of my customers with really small sites could save hosting fees if they switched to WordPress.com. I’m always looking for ways to save my customers money, especially now. But then I looked into it with the help of my very smart assistant and found out about all the limitations, and it just didn’t make sense.

WordPress.com is a web application that you can use to start your blog or online presence. It requires no hosting platform, no downloading of files, and no programming. That’s the plus side. Unfortunately, the con side is huge: you cannot use your own URL or domain name (www.yourdomain.com). You are limited by what you can put on your site, including selling links. And you are very limited in formatting your blog.

WordPress.com is good for these things: if you are running a hobby and not a business, if you want a personal or family blog such as for Christmas letters or to document the kids’ progress.

WordPress.com has too many limitations for a serious entrepreneur.

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is a very robust programming application that you can download, load onto your hosting platform, and set up and use as a web site. Thousands of people are doing it.

You still need to pay a hosting fee. You don’t need to know HTML, but the application is so robust that there is a learning curve. If you are not technical at all, then you will need to hire someone who is technical to set it up for you. Someone – you or a contractor – will need to go through the learning curve.

It took me about 1-2 hours to download and load the WordPress.org files to my web site. If you use GoDaddy as your host, the file load is automated. After you load the files, you’re ready to get your WordPress site set up. The time it takes to set up varies on how many pages you have, what plug-ins and themes you want, and a myriad of other factors.

WordPress.org is extremely flexible and there are many plug-ins that you can use to increase its robustness. One of the big benefits is that your web visitors can be much more interactive on a WordPress site than they can on your web site. That’s a great reason to convert.

The next good reason to convert is the search engine ranking. If you’re setting up a new site, your rank will be higher than if you set up a web site. If you have an old site that is ranked highly, then you can move your URL to a WordPress site and maintain the ranking. What you don’t want to do is start over with a new URL if your old URL has some years on it, because Google values age very highly.

If you have a huge site that you have not updated in a long time, then I don’t recommend moving to WordPress. You need to be actively adding content in order to benefit from WordPress. If your web content is very active, then it may make sense to move to WordPress.

You can also add WordPress on to your existing site, which is what I did. It causes mysite to rank even higher than before (and I have a highly ranked site because it’s so old). Here is my WordPress.org site so that you can get an idea of the layout: http://www.sandismith.com/blog/

I hope this explanation helps you make a better decision when it comes to implementing WordPress in your business.

About the Author

Sandi Smith coaches women business owners to boost their revenues, live fearlessly, and take giant leaps in their business using the science of breakthrough success. Sign up at http://www.sandismith.com to get her FREE newsletter full of business-building tips.

The new server is a Dell PowerEdge running Dual Xeon Quad Core CPUs, 4 x 1TB Hard Drives with hardware RAID 10 and 24GB DDR3 memory. You may notice that the performance increase is very noticeable, especially with database driven websites such as WordPress.

Webmail

Some of you may notice that the url to webmail now changes when you log in. This is because we now enforce SSL encrypted logins which keeps things extra secure.

As always if you have any issues of problems please don’t hesitate to give us a call on 0845 2416279 (during office hours) or 07817 060112 out of hours.

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t easy for any website, and e-commerce sites have some unique SEO challenges to overcome.

These tips will help you tackle your e-commerce site’s SEO so you can rank higher in search engine results and get more visitors, customers and sales for your online store.

1. Create Unique Content on Each of Your Product and Product Category Pages

Interesting, unique content tells Google a page is valuable, and helps it rank higher. Well-written content can also persuade more of your visitors to actually pull out their credit cards.

Don’t just copy the manufacturer’s description of the product. Write your own description so that Google sees it as valuable, unique content. Google’s Farmer/Panda Update of early 2011 favors sites with more original content.

2. Discover What Shoppers are Actually Searching For

Keyword research is an invaluable way to discover the words you should be using to describe what you sell. You can find out how many people search for a particular keyword per month, and even check more specifically for your own region, with Google’s free keyword tool.

For more info on choosing the right keywords, read Keyword Research Is Key to Online Success.

3. Create Pages for Categories People are Searching For

Some people may be searching for specific product names like “Nikon D90,” but odds are, more people are searching for broad keyword phrases like “Nikon digital camera” and “digital SLR cameras.”

Creating category pages for these broad keyword phrases – as well as product-specific pages within each category – boosts your SEO and helps you capture a bigger group of people searching for what you sell. Added bonus: Category pages based on broad keywords can help browsers and researchers find what they want more quickly, and turn them into buyers.

4. Interlink Your Pages Using Good Anchor Text

Link to other products or categories within the text on your site. Be sure to use anchor text with relevant keywords. This will help search engines find and index other pages on your site, so they can be found by searchers. The links and anchor text will also boost the linked pages’ SEO and help them rank higher for words you use in your anchor text.

Added bonus: People reading your text can easily click on links you provide and find other products that might interest them. You’ll be keeping people on your site, and helping them find what they want.

5. Allow People to Share Your Products on Social Media Sites

Social media mentions help your SEO. Plus, social sharing gets your product seen by more people. Install social sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter and Google+ on every product and product category page. Make sure they’re easy to find. One online retailer places them right below the price of each product, because people always look for the price.

6. Get Valuable Backlinks

Backlinks (links from another site to yours) have always been one of the most important factors search engines consider when deciding how high to rank a web page in search results. Getting backlinks isn’t easy, however.

Adding interesting content to your website beyond product and category pages is the first step, because few website owners want to link to a boring page, or a page where you’re just selling something. A blog is a great avenue for adding link-worthy content to your website.

For much more info on getting backlinks, check out our articles about link building.

7. Avoid Duplicate Content Issues

E-commerce sites tend to give visitors the option to sort a list of products by various parameters like price, popularity or product ratings. While sorting is useful for people, it can be a nightmare for your SEO, because it usually means you are essentially creating multiple pages with the same content, just in a different order. Search engines can see these pages as duplicate content, and therefore less valuable. This in turn can dilute the SEO of these pages.

This isn’t a simple thing to fix, but the easiest thing you can do is tell Google about the sorting through Webmaster Tools. For more info on solving this problem, read item No. 3 in this article.

8. Use Descriptive URLs

The URLs on your site are another opportunity for you to boost your e-commerce site’s SEO. If your page about blue widgets has a URL like http://www.example.com/blue-widgets, the URL is telling Google that the page is about “blue widgets” and should show up in search results for that keyword phrase. However, if the URL is http://www.example.com/page?id=59274974, Google doesn’t get that extra piece of information telling it what the page is about. People also look at URLs, and it’s much better if the URL informs them, too.

For more information about SEO-ing your URLs, read Improve your URLs for Better SEO.

9. Let Visitors Leave Reviews

Reviews are another piece of unique content, and search engines love unique content.

Plus, reviews can help visitors decide to pull out their credit cards and buy the product.

10. Include a Sitemap to Help Google Find All Your Pages

If Google finds a page and thinks it has valuable content, it will index the page. That means it can show up in search results. For instructions, read Creating an XML Sitemap or HTML Sitemap.

11. Update Your Website Content Regularly

The Google Freshness Update of November 2011 favors websites with the freshest content on a given topic.

Tweak your website’s content and add new content from time to time so your website doesn’t look stale. Adding a blog to your website, and writing a blog post every so often about your industry, can make this task easier. For example, if you sell pet supplies, you can add a post in mid-summer about de-fleaing your pets and your house.

Allowing visitors to post reviews is another way to get fresh content for your site, and it doesn’t take much work on your part.

This article, originally published on AboutUs.org, was contributed by Kristina Weis of AboutUs.org.

Kristina is a community manager for AboutUs.org who talks with a lot of website owners who are trying to promote their business online. Have a question? Contact me. @KristinaWeis

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com.

You’re setting up to run an Internet based business and obviously need to find a way to take money online. There are a large number of service providers who will allow Internet based businesses to do that. How do you choose between them?

First, there are your local and national banks that provide Merchant Services to businesses. This is generally a costly solution with set-up fees, recurring charges, and lots of hoops to jump through. For many Internet start-ups, these initial costs can be a bit prohibitive, as they have no idea at that stage what turnover they can realistically expect.

If for whatever reason you are unable to obtain the service you need at a reasonable rate from your bank, it isn’t the end of the world. On the contrary, PayPal, Google Checkout, Nochex, Worldpay are probably the best known alternatives, but there are a host of others. Your favourite search engine will have plenty of answers for you.

Once you start checking out their offers and terms and conditions, here is what you have to look out for:

1. Set-up costs for opening the service:Some service providers don’t charge, others can charge up to £200 ($300) or even more.
2. Monthly fees:These can range from no fees to £20 ($30) a month.
3. Commission per transaction:They are usually somewhere between 2% and 4.5% plus a fixed transaction fee (in the UK generally 20p)
4. Remittance charges:They can vary a lot from less that $1 to $23 per transfer. These charges can be a killer, especially if the service offers frequent or even daily transfers; make sure you do your sums very carefully.
5. Remittance period:This is the delay from the time the money is paid into your merchant account to the time it is transferred to your bank account. Make sure that you are comfortable with the remittance period offered. There is generally some margin for negotiation.
6. Percentage of funds retained: Most service providers will insist that you retain sufficient funds in your merchant account to allow for refunds. These are approximately 5% of the total funds taken, which can be held for up to 6 months.

There is no universal rule or best solution that fits all. You need to take a good look at your business, expected turnover, payment conditions and refund rules, and then choose what is best for your business. The best package for you may not always be the one that at first sight appears as the cheapest solution available on the market. Investigate all the pointers to avoid paying over the odds.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Max_Alter

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Setting your eBay business up as described in this article will give you a professional presence on eBay that will instill confidence in your potential customers making them more inclined to do business with you than your less professional competition …

1. Open an eBay Business Account

If you already have a personal eBay account which you use to buy and sell personal stuff, I recommend opening a separate BUSINESS account. Remember potential customers can view your other auctions and can also see what you have bought by clicking on the links in your feedback. If you are buying and selling personal stuff using the same account as you use to run your business, you will look less professional and less credible which may affect potential buyers’ confidence in buying from you.

You will appear more professional and credible to your customers if your business account only has business related transactions. There are other advantages to having a business account:

When selling on eBay, “Business Seller” will be displayed in the Seller Information Box of your listing, identifying you as a professional.

As a business seller, you can register with your business name on eBay which enhances your credibility (“AntiqueBookStore” is a much more professional ID than “JohnSmith267″)

Your business name will be displayed in all communications with the buyer, such as invoices, which again enhances your professional image and credibility.

As a business seller you can register for VAT and provide eBay with your VAT identification number and receive invoices net of VAT on your eBay fees.

To set up a separate business eBay account in addition to your personal eBay account you will need to choose a separate ID and have a separate email address.

If you don’t already have a separate email address that you can use for your eBay business, don’t let this hold you up. Get your business started using your personal eBay account but change your ID to your business name.

But I recommend that you sort out a separate business account as soon as possible so you can have separate personal and business eBay accounts. In the meantime you can upgrade your personal eBay account to a business account.

2. How To Choose An eBay User ID

As far as your eBay customers are concerned, your eBay User ID is your business name. You should choose your eBay business User ID carefully to ensure that it appears professional which will give customers more confidence to transact business with you. Your User ID needs to be memorable so customers can easily find you if they want to come back to you to do repeat business with you.

Ideally your eBay business User ID should be linked to your product line. So if you sell ebooks, your User ID could be ebooksgalore or ebookseller. You can also use your User ID to advertise your offline business if you have one. Obviously eBay doesn’t want to encourage anyone to do business with you not through eBay, as they won’t earn their fees. So you can’t blatantly advertise your non-eBay business by using a URL (such as ebooksgalore.com) as your User ID. But you could use ebooksgalore as your User ID and it would be very easy for someone on eBay to find your non-eBay website if they wanted to (by guessing that it is ebooksgalore.com).

3. Get A Business Email Address

You should also have a separate business email address because johnsmith @ WidgetsRUs, or info @ WidgetsRUs or support @ WidgetsRUs are much more professional and will instil more confidence in prospective customers than johnsmith @ hotmail.

Also, you can put your email address in your eBay listing which can drive traffic from your listing to your non eBay website if you have one. If you add “For further information, send me an email at info @ WidgetsRUs” to your listing, visitors to your listing will realise that you have a website at WidgetsRUs .com and might visit your site.

If you already have a commercial website, you probably already have a business email. If you don’t, you first need to get a domain name and then use that as your email address. Again, if this seems daunting, don’t let it hold you up. Get started using your existing email but I recommend you get a business email address as soon as possible.

4. Get A Business ‘Phone Number

Ideally you should have a separate business telephone number rather than using the same number that you use socially. This ensures that your business calls are always answered professionally in the name of your business. This is particularly important if your existing number gets answered by other people that you live with. You can have a separate line to your home but this will incur installation and line rental charges. You can use a separate mobile just for business calls but having a mobile number as your only business number will not instil confidence in your customers who will not see you as a proper business.

Alternatively you can use a call answering service. This will enable you to advertise your business with a proper telephone number that is answered professionally in your business name 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This will enhance your business image.

The way it works is the call answering service provider allocates a ‘phone number that is unique to your business. When someone dials your number, the operator’s computer knows the caller is trying to contact your business and the computer screen tells the operator what company name they need to answer the call with and how they should answer the call, depending on your instructions. The operator will then explain to the caller that you are unavailable to take the call, take a message and email it to you so that you can respond as and when you like.

If you set up your business properly, you shouldn’t get too many ‘phone calls so this service can be set up on a pay as you go basis so that you only pay for each call received. If you do receive a large number of calls, you can switch to a monthly tariff that is likely to be cheaper.

Again, I recommend that you have a separate business ‘phone number but if you don’t want to set this up just yet, do not let this delay the start of your eBay business.

5. Open A Business PayPal Account

Most people want to pay by credit card online. If you don’t accept credit card payments, your business will not seem professional and you WILL lose sales. In the past, to accept credit card payments, you had to have a merchant account. These could be costly and difficult to get. PayPal enables you to accept credit card payments without having a merchant account.

PayPal is a service that allows buyers to send payments SECURELY online to sellers WITHOUT having to disclose their bank account or credit card details. The small percentage that you have to pay PayPal per transaction is a business expense that is well worth paying. PayPal is owned by eBay and it is now compulsory for you to have a PayPal account to sell on eBay.

When paying by PayPal, buyers can pay from their PayPal account balance, direct from their bank account or via credit cards – whichever suits them. So a PayPal account enables you to accept credit card payments WITHOUT having to open a merchant account which can be difficult and expensive. PayPal also enables you to get paid INSTANTLY without having to wait for a cheque to arrive and clear.

When buyers pay you by PayPal, their payment goes into your PayPal account. You can leave it there to use when you buy things on the internet via PayPal or transfer the money in your PayPal account into your bank account.

Again, ideally you should have a business PayPal account that is SEPARATE from your personal PayPal account so that business transactions are done in your business name, not your personal name. PayPal allows you to have separate business and personal accounts as long as each account is linked to a different email address, bank account and credit card.

Having a PayPal account also entitles you to PayPal’s Seller Protection policy.

Setting your eBay business up as described above will give you a professional presence on eBay that will instil confidence in your potential customers making them more inclined to do business with you than your less professional competition.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Martyn_Boaden

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Surely it’s considered a major fashion faux pas – turning up somewhere in the same outfit as someone else. If the current crop of high street shops are anything to go by, however, you’d be forgiven for thinking that clothing conformity is something we’re all striving towards.

Let’s face it, for those of us looking for something a little bit ‘different’, high street shopping can be a pretty dreary and dispiriting experience. Just imagine that you’re blindfolded and parachuted into a UK city’s shopping street – your blindfold is removed – do you know where you are? The answer is that there will probably be very few clues, as you will find exactly the same shops wherever you go. The ‘usual suspects’ will be side by side, churning out similar-styled garments and cashing in on the latest ‘celebrity style’ craze with cheap copies of couture pieces.

To those who crave individualism and want to dress with a bit of flair and originality, this copycat culture is depressing. Kate Moss only has to appear looking stunning dressed in her own inimitable style – inimitable being the moot point here – and suddenly we’re being bombarded by ‘where to get the latest look’ articles and fooled into spending our hard earned cash on faked fashion which isn’t going to make us look a million dollars, and won’t make us look like Kate in a million years. When it comes to mock fashion the real mockery is the one we make of ourselves.

Don’t despair! The internet is a fantastic resource for anyone seeking their own unique style. There are plenty of places to shop online offering distinctive, desirable apparel and accessories which will set you apart from the ‘clothing clones’ without breaking the bank. The benefits of buying online are many; no more trooping round town elbowing others out of the way, no queues, and no last minute buying because the shop’s about to shut, only to get home and discover your panic purchase looks terrible on or has traces of cosmetics on the collar. Instead you can shop from the comfort of your home, browsing and buying at your leisure.

Small businesses and solo fashion designers use the web to showcase their products, and because their overheads are lower (no huge retail premises to maintain or large staff to pay) you have a real opportunity to purchase gorgeous garments and attractive accessories which won’t cost the earth. There are also sites selling quality second-hand and vintage fashion pieces, allowing you to track down your own style statement for a fraction of the price of buying new. If something is described as ‘hand made’ don’t let memories of Auntie Dot’s amazing asymmetrical unravelling knitwear cloud your judgment – handmade usually means lovingly crafted with great attention to quality and detail, and can definitely denote a one-off, original clothing item which will be the envy of others and a fashion favourite for years to come.

If you’re more concerned about the look you want than the designer label you’re wearing, there are a few points to consider when buying over the internet. Search for sites with decent product photographs and detailed descriptions, not tiny little ‘thumbnail’ images. After all, you wouldn’t buy a product from a catalogue unless you had a good idea what it looked like. Use careful keywords to narrow and speed your internet searches. For example, if you’d prefer a product in a quality fibre, include ‘wool’ or a more specific term such as ‘mohair’ as one of your search words to find precisely what you want faster. Vague, all-encompassing search terms will only drag the high street to your desktop, and you’ll end up ploughing through ‘virtual’ polyester! Make sure sites offer secure checkouts that encrypt your credit-card details; safe and trusted payment methods include PayPal, WorldPay and NoChex, although there are plenty of others.

Finally, enjoy the experience! The internet gives you a great choice, and buying online from a smaller supplier often means you’ll receive a much higher quality product and level of service than you’d find in a vast anonymous ‘bricks and mortar’ store. Independent online retailers are keen to involve their customers in a real relationship, and you’ll find yourself returning regularly to your favourite fashion sites. Shopping to suit yourself can be very rewarding, and not just financially.

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Strategy #3 – What Not to Sell On eBayDeciding what to sell on eBay will be among the most important decisions you will make with your eBay business. It will ultimately determine your success of failure. Many mistakes can be corrected along the learning curve of getting your eBay business up and running and then successful, but there is no solution for the problem of selling something that nobody wants to buy.

If You Build It .. Will They Come?I recently worked with a client who had thousands of men’s ties that he wanted to sell. He did some preliminary research and saw that comparable ties were selling very well on eBay and because he had obtained his inventory for pennies on the dollar he thought that he would set up an eBay business to sell off his ties. I was hired to help his staff get set-up on eBay with a seller’s accounts, a Paypal business account, accounts with Fedex, UPS and the US Postal System and an in-house system to manage their inventory. They even went out and hired a professional photographer to take pictures of their items.

I trained the staff in how to run a successful eBay business, how to best present their items, how to schedule auction start and end times for maximum exposure, how to maintain good customer contact and service, and how to package and ship their items. In a month they went live with their first auctions.They sold 3 ties the first month.The owner and his staff were devastated. They felt they had put in a large investment of time and money in setting up their eBay identity, hiring a consultant (me) and being trained and proficient with the eBay selling process; so they couldn’t figure out why they were not making any sales.

The Hard Truth They looked to me for the answer. I reminded them that all throughout the process of setting up their eBay business I had warned them that middle to low quality men’s ties were not the type of item that was going to just fly off of the shelves. The truth is that their ties were not selling because no one wanted to buy them. Well, that’s not exactly accurate as it turned out 3 people actually wanted their ties that first month.If they were committed to selling this item then they would have to be in it for the long haul, and not expect to generate the quick profits enjoyed by eBay sellers with more “sexy” or trendy, high-demand items.

They would need to commit to an eBay keywords campaign; build their feedback by purchasing 100 or so items on eBay and develop a marketing strategy that included off-eBay promotions.There are more variables at play in having auctions end successfully than are sometimes apparent to new eBay sellers, but they are the same types of variables that regular brick and mortar sellers have to content with.

The rules listed below may seem obvious to you but they are worth noting.What Not to Sell: Rule 1: Do not sell an item that already has more than 10 auctions running with no bids. If you do a search on eBay and see that there have been many auctions recently for the item and that most have ended with few or no bidsat all stayaway from selling that item. Also, if the item has received bids but the bids are lower than the price you would want to receive for the item, this is a good reason to stay away from the item.

What Not to Sell: Rule 2: Do not sell items that you know nothing about or that have a steep learning curve. For instance, cars. There are many people, individuals as well as auto dealers making a lot of money selling cars on eBay. But it is not a good choice for an item to sell if you don’t know anything about cars.I once was contracted by a client to sell a very large meteorite that had been in his possession for some time. I knew nothing about meteorites, the different types, their value or anything. I told the client that I wasn’t prepared to help him sell this item without first doing a lot of research.

He insisted that anyone who saw the auction and wanted to buy it would understand the value of it and that I should just list it and let the eBay marketplace determine the value. I did just that but not before doing some research so that I could write the auction listing. Unfortunately, the information that I listed in the auction about the type of meteorite we were selling was incorrect.I got a ton of email from potential bidders telling me how very wrong my description of the meteorite was. I ended up removing the listing from eBay early because of the response of the people who frequent eBay who know about meteorites.

What Not to Sell: Rule 3: Do not buy items at wholesale to resell on eBay. It is not possible to make money on eBay by buying items at wholesale prices and then looking to resell them on eBay. The eBay marketplace doesn’t support that type of business model.There are simply too many people selling items that you can source that way. If you can get the item wholesale, probably so can a hundred or more other people, all of whom are probably trying to sell them on eBay as well. The competition on a traditional wholesale to retail model is just too steep. Also, unless your item is the next iPod you won’t get anything close to the retail price for it on eBay. (There are some exceptions to this which I’ll get into later.)

What Not to Sell: Rule 4: Do not sell items that consistently close at less than $30. It is hard to make a profit, let alone a living, on eBay, relying on items that sell on eBay for very little money. There are people that will buy an item for $4.00 sell it on auction for $8.00 and believe that they made 100% profit. This borders on insanity. That $4.00 item had to be listed on eBay, more than likely with photos. The auction needed to be monitored with any bidder’s questions answered. Once completed the item had to be packaged and shipped. And out of the $4.00 “profit” there are those pesky eBay & Paypal fees to consider. So, the item you paid $4.00 for costs $0.60 to list with a gallery picture, $0.95 for eBay Listing & Final Value and $.053 for Standard Paypal fees.

Total cost for listing and selling the item on bay is $1.55 add to that the $4.00 the amount that item cost you and you are left with a whopping $2.45. If you subtract a minimal cost for your labor this item on which you thought you made $4.00 has actually cost you money to sell!If you spread this type of philosophy across your entire eBay business effort you will go out of business in a very short time.

What Not to Sell: Rule 5: Do not sell anything on eBay’s list of restricted items. This really is a no-brainer as long as you know that there is a list of items that are prohibited from being sold on eBay. Although people consistently try and skirt this rule, some of the items on the list include weapons including guns and knives, animal skins, American Indian artifacts, & human body parts.

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