November 15, 2011
I’ve noticed that people ask this question a lot. The answer is two fold, but it’s very simple. Before you go rearranging your websites in a panic, take a look at some of the Adwords advertisements you’ve been getting recently.
In order for Google to have ads to show, they have to recruit advertisers. To do this, they have to offer them savings. Adsense publishers have no control over which advertisers Google recruits or how much (or how little) Google will charge them. So even if your site is extremely well stocked with ads in every single space allowed, your traffic is great, and your search rankings are high and you have great user feedback, you have no control over whether Google will charge less than a cent per click or $5 per click.
So, when Google is making special savings offers to Adwords clients, you will probably be paid less per click.
The other reason is ad relevancy. Even if your keywords and tags are tight, and your site has lots of well written content, some advertisers purposefully buy space on sites with nothing to do with them or even ideals counter to theirs. I often get Christian fundamentalist ads on my spirituality, Pagan, and Vodun sites, some of which are quite offensive. I’m strongly considering not posting Adsense on them because they weren’t really getting many clicks anyway.
Basically, for the non mega-site webmaster, Adsense is a great way to make your hosting costs back, but I wouldn’t count on it for more than that. To me, it’s worth it simply because it makes the sites pay for themselves, but the hit-and-miss nature of it just doesn’t make it something I would rely on for consistent site revenue.
As always, the best way to make money on the internet is to be offering something that people are willing to pay for. If you own an extreme site on the level of Squiddoo or Hubpages, another articles database or forum host or something, then Adsense would pay you a living, but otherwise, stick to good old fashioned having a product and selling it. Then you won’t worry so much about Adsense ups and downs, get frustrated, and chuck it.
Aside of the crazy religious sponsors, for most sites, Adsense is a great way to bring relevant products to your readers. I have a site about cornrows, but I don’t sell hair supplies. Some sponsors do though, so it has helped my readers to not only find the information they need at my sites, but the products as well. So when you’re deciding whether or not to keep using it, bear that in mind.
If you’re not making anything from Adsense, or what you’re making isn’t really pulling its weight at the tops of pages, you might still want to keep blocks at the bottom or sidebar. Readers like the convenience, and this does good things for your traffic.
Posted in Contextual Ads Revenue, Google | 1 Comment » | Tags: ad revenue declining, adsense, adsense earnings, adsense earnings drop, adsense earnings dropping, adsense earnings falling, adwords, google
April 1, 2011
Many former eBay sellers have chosen this day to pull a massive prank on eBay. They’re moving or have moved all their listings elsewhere. You can read the details on the Facebook Page for April Fool’s Day Off From Corporate Greed.
Those with too few listings to export them automatically have either just let their listings expire and aren’t posting any more, or have put themselves on “vacation mode”. Buyers who don’t want to see their prices go up or have to search around the internet to maybe get the best deals are opting out of buying on eBay today.
In my case, I let my listings expire, and made my last purchases I’ll make on eBay ever, some days ago. If you’re watching items you want to get before the fee changes, then just at least wait until after today.
It’s intended to persuade eBay not to start charging final value fees that include the shipping costs. I personally don’t think it will work because it is clear that their intention is to get rid of small businesses and individual sellers. Losing us is actually good news for them because then they can finally come out as a wholesaler only marketplace.
However, what eBay should be aware of is a little something we like to call “web karma”. Most of their free linkage and following comes from individuals and small businesses. Without us promoting them, they’ll have substantially fewer buyers. If someone is looking for a collectible, and can only afford to buy one, they’re not going to buy a lot of 50+ just to get the one at the lowest price. They’re going to do what they did before eBay and hit the forums and do an internet search.
Yes, the internet existed long before eBay, and will exist long after. This is what they should bear in mind, and why they shouldn’t have alienated so many people. Worse, some of the taint in eBay’s reputation is going to bleed onto the sellers. Sellers who stay with eBay will be viewed as crooks, so even if someone is visiting eBay to price out their options for a product, they won’t trust that they are really looking at the best price. In addition to this, they may not even trust that they are really going to get their item.
I saw a little of that already in my own selling experience for Sheloya Mystical. I’m located in Israel, and I always send by registered mail. So items may take three weeks to a month to arrive. Even though I post tracking numbers as soon as I return from the post office every Thursday, I still get worried emails from people wondering why they haven’t gotten their package yet. People are apparently already afraid that things they order from eBay might not even get there. This has even happened to me, and because their claim period is so short, you can’t do anything about it feedback-wise.
Buyers already don’t trust eBay or sellers who sell on eBay anymore. I’d say that the eBay ship has sailed. If people don’t trust you, they’re not giving you their money.
So today’s the day both to make a stand and to take your business to a more trusted and trustworthy site, or build your own. Feel free to ask for help if you need it.
Posted in eBay, Opportunity Knocks, Selling Online | No Comments » | Tags: april 1, ebay, ebay boycott, ebay buyer boycott, ebay seller boycott, ebay strike
March 24, 2011
I got a bit frustrated when looking around for other places to sell my jewelry and mystical items. Most places were fairly international, but even though Google is in Israel, Google Checkout doesn’t have Israel yet, so I was shut out. So I built my own auction site: Money’s Mama Auctions.
I don’t expect to replace eBay or eCrater or even remotely compete with eBid or some others. I just want those of us who are expats and aware businesspeople in parts of the world that PayPal and Escrow cover but Google Checkout doesn’t, to have a little space on the net where we’re not completely on our own. eCrater is inclusive, by the way. They just don’t do auctions, only Buy it Now.
The comment about being able to accept cash, checks, or money orders made sense too. Money’s money. I don’t think people should be forced to pay transaction fees on top of what we already give the bank, to buy something we’re going to pick up in person, or from someone we trust.
So, give it a whirl. It’s free. 
Posted in Money's Mama News, Opportunity Knocks, Selling Online | No Comments » | Tags: abroad, auction site, auctions, buy from the source, buy handmade, expat, expatriate, international, new auction site, online auctions, original items, sell handmade, sell your stuff
March 22, 2011
If you’re going to roll your own online store, and want to be able to compete with the larger sites, you MUST create a Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base) data feed. If you’ve read the instructions and found them confusing, it’s only because they are trying to give you as much information as they can, so that your code will be tight. It really isn’t that hard at all. You can make a Google Base worthy data feed from a normal text (.txt) file without any HTML or XML. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that they prefer it that way.
I recommend making your own because all the feed generator software I’ve tried is too buggy. Somehow, the file gets broken and what you put in isn’t what comes out. A common error is “too few tabs” or “too many tabs”. To save yourself lots of frustration and wasted money, it’s best to make your own. It’ll be a bit of a headache the first time if you have lots of products already, but after that just add new products and upload it again.
What you want to make it “tab delimited”. The first line in the file will be your header line, that tells what things you need Google’s spider to know about your products. These are the “tags“. Between each tag, you press the tab key, and at the end of the header, you press the enter key.
On the next line, you type the information that would apply to each tag. Between each of those, you press the tab key. At the end of each item, you press enter.
Yes, it’s that simple.
When people are looking for products, they usually use the search engines first. This will be especially important now that eBay has essentially closed itself to smaller merchants and individual sellers. They’re not as dependable as they were for the best prices or for special or hard to find items. So go do it now.
Posted in Competing With Larger Sites, Google, Selling Online | 1 Comment » | Tags: creating a data feed, creating a google data feed, data feed, data feed from text file, data feed generator, easy way to create a data feed, google base, google merchant center, making a data feed
March 19, 2011
I got an answer from the USPS, and they say it’s an eBay matter:
I understand you are frustrated with the fees you are going to be charged when using eBay’s services.
I apologize for the inconvenience, however, we do not have anything to do with, nor have any control over what eBay chooses to do with their services.
This is an issue that you will need to bring up with them. This is not a United States Postal Service issue.
So it’s legal. How ever shady, it’s legal.
The company isn’t going to die from a federal lawsuit over this, but it is dead now to individuals and small businesses.
I was thinking over the last few days, what could possibly be the method in their madness. Why would they want to cut off what seemed to be their backbone? Then it dawned on me: Alibaba.com.
Those who have gotten to the point in their artistic and craft careers that they need to order supplies wholesale from time to time, know Alibaba well. It’s a hub for wholesalers, and you can make deals for smaller lots if you like. They’ve even started a site that specializes in smaller lots, AllExpress.com.
Most people I’ve read who are writing on the subject of eBay changes think that eBay is competing with Amazon.com or Etsy or other places that cater to individuals and small businesses. In that yes, they are being beaten, and seem to be making moves that seem crazy…but they’re crazy like a fox. They don’t give a whit about small and individual sellers anymore. They are gunning to be a wholesaler hub.
It has been a neat trick for them to make it look as if they wanted to be useful to artists, crafters, people selling collectibles and vintage items and whatnot. This is where they started after all, and besides, why not squeeze a few more extra pennies out of us while they can, right? They even want us to feel sorry for them for their falling behind in a category that they are purposefully removing themselves from.
:: cue the violins ::
We are trying so very hard to compete with Amazon….
:: end violins ::
The wholesale market is where the money is. We artists, crafters, and other smaller vendors are only a small fraction of their sales. So small, in fact, that we’re disposable to them. Now, we’re a nuisance, because every time they make it ever more clear to us that we’re unwelcome, we cry and complain about how they’re treating us…and yet way too many of us stay.
It’s like corporate game. They feel contempt for us because we’re like a stalker ex girlfriend who just won’t take the hint.
Take the hint. Get your items up in Etsy, eCrater, iBid or anywhere but eBay. Do it now, and stop doing the business equivalent of clinging to someone who doesn’t need you and doesn’t want you.
Posted in eBay, Selling Online, What Makes A Website Suck | No Comments » | Tags: ebay, ebay fees include shipping, ebay hates artists, ebay hates crafters, ebay hates designers, ebay hates small business, ebay hates vintage, ebay new fees, ebay only wants wholesalers
March 18, 2011
The United States Postal Service is apparently unclear about what it is that eBay is planning to do. They think that eBay is charging a fee on the shipping through their discounted sponsor shipping services. They don’t understand that eBay is charging a fee based on the total amount of sales, not a fee for using their sponsor services.
Here’s their response to my email:
Dear Nicole Lasher,
I understand that you would like to know if eBay is allowed to charge an additional fee for products that are shipped using our services.
Nicole, customers have a number of choices to pay for postage online.
- Click-N-Ship
- eBay
- Endicia
- Pitney Bowes Inc
- Stamps.com
Click-N-Ship is our online PC Postage service, and there are no additional fees to use this service. Unfortunately, we have no control over the fees that the other providers listed above may charge. They are paying the Post Office the regular cost of shipping, they are just charging you an additional fee for the convenience of using their services.
Some sellers prefer this one-stop shipping for eBay users. You can print shipping labels, pay postage and check the delivery status of their items right from eBay. And buyers can calculate shipping prices online, and pay for shipping with their PayPal account.
If you do not want to be charged the additional fees, you can definitely sign up for a free Click-N-Ship account, and print your postage labels from there. You print postage labels from our website using our free service Click-N-Ship. Click-N-Ship is a great online service for customers who ship a relatively low volume of mail and who ship primarily packages. This service provides you with shipping discounts, and you also receive free Delivery Confirmation with items that have postage printed from Click-N-Ship.
To sign up for this service, simply log on at:
https://sss-web.usps.com/cns/landing.do
You will need to enter a user name and password, and you will be asked whether you want to set up the account for personal or business use.
If you have an existing account with PO Boxes Online or the Postal Store you can use the same username and password for Click-N-Ship. You will provide your name and company contact information (if applicable). You will also be asked the credit card information, for the account you would like you postage purchases charged to.
Click-N-Ship can ony be used for:
- Express Mail service
- Priority Mail service
- Global Express Guaranteed service
- Express Mail International service
- Priority Mail International service
There are other PC Postage providers (such as eBay) that will allow you to print labels online for different classes of mail. If this is what you need, you can find a list of other authorized PC Postage providers and more information on PC Postage at the following link:
http://www.usps.com/onlinepostage/welcome.htm
I hope this information helps and I appreciate you taking the time to email us about this issue.
If you need to contact us again, please use the following link to do so:
http://www.usps.com/customerservice/redirects/email.htm?from=CustomerService&page=Center_EmailUs
If we can be of assistance to you in the future, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Thank you for choosing the United States Postal Service.
Best Regards,
Becky B.
So I wrote back and clarified. I have the feeling they are going to be really upset once they realize what eBay is actually planning to do: a pre emptive form of fee stacking.
Fee stacking is a seller or broker adding hidden fees after the end of an auction. To do it after an auction is over is totally illegal on the face. Ebay is doing it at the start of an auction or sale, but it doesn’t make the fee appropriate, and if they don’t tell the buyer exactly how much of it is a fee and not the actual cost of the item, it’s shady, and possibly illegal.
Hopefully the postal service and the IFCC will move to stop this madness before it starts.
Posted in eBay, Selling Online, What Makes A Website Suck | No Comments » | Tags: ebay, ebay new shipping fee, fee stacking, final value fee includes shipping costs, illegal, pre emptive fee stacking, shipping costs
March 16, 2011
I’ve written to the U.S. postal service about eBay charging fees for shipping, but doing nothing to earn them. The case number is HQ104683613. I encourage others to write them too, and if there are any lawyers or postal workers who could clear things up, please comment.
Posted in eBay, Selling Online, What Makes A Website Suck | 3 Comments » | Tags: ebay shipping, ebay shipping fee, ebay shipping fraud, ebay shipping surcharge, illegal ebay practices, is the new ebay shipping charge legal, new ebay shipping fee fraud
March 16, 2011
Since eBay is probably going to die, I might as well let the cat out of the bag. eBay’s product search is rigged. So that you can replicate my results and see it for yourself, I’ll tell you how I figured it out. If you’ve been wondering why on such a big site with so much traffic, your listings aren’t getting many views, here’s why.
I like Arab perfume oils very much. My favorite brand is Al Rehab. Many sellers have them, and a long time ago, I used to find many great deals with just using the search and “price+shipping, lowest first”. Lately though, when I type “al rehab” in the search I’d see one listing of a scent that I didn’t like, for a reasonable price, and tons for unreasonable prices. I thought, like anyone would, that this was all that was available.
So, I’d wait and try again in a few days…then again in a few more days. So on a hunch, I clicked the first listing so that maybe I could contact the seller to get the exact scents I liked.
Lo and behold, in their STORE (not just regular listings, mind you), I found many of my favorite scents for the reasonable price. My question was, “Why didn’t these show up in the listings?” Al Rehab was in their titles. They should have come up.
….
Obviously, when you select price+shipping, lowest first, you’re not getting that. You’re getting what eBay wants you to see, not what you asked for. How many times have you done a search for a specific product that you used to find all the time for a reasonable price, but not anymore?
So eBay isn’t just scamming the U.S. government by charging shipping without shipping anything, or just the sellers by adding all sorts of crazy fees. They’re scamming you, the buyers who think you’re finding the best deals, but you’re not.
Posted in eBay, What Makes A Website Suck | No Comments » | Tags: ebay, ebay product search, ebay product search is inaccurate, ebay product search is rigged, ebay scamming store subscribers, ebay store account, ebay stores, is an ebay store worth it, price shipping lowest first
March 16, 2011
In an announcement about changes to their fee structure coming in April, eBay has posted that they’re going to now count shipping costs towards the final value fee. This means that if you win something for $0.99 that costs $2.00 to ship, instead of taking a fee off the 99 cents, they’re going to take a percentage of the whole $2.99.
International sellers and those who ship internationally are already in an uproar. This is considered to be an outrageous move on eBay’s part, and may well be illegal. If a shipping cost is not an actual shipping cost according to the United States Postal Service, and eBay is taking a fee from it, then basically what they’re doing is defrauding either the buyer or the government. Unless they fully disclose to the buyer and seller exactly how much per transaction is a shipping cost and eBay’s new shipping fee, this will add unnecessary confusion for both. Buyers may think that higher shipping costs are fraud by the sellers rather than fraud by eBay.
Worse, since eBay is not a worldwide shipping service, for them to charge a shipping surcharge when they are not doing the actual shipping (the seller is), it is fraud on the face. Sellers will be charged by eBay for a job that their local postal service or a delivery service does.
This could be the final nail in the coffin for the individual or small business seller. Apparently eBay is telling us that we are very much unwanted.
So if you’ve been looking at something on eBay and have been dragging your feet, if it wasn’t made in a factory in China, buy it before April 19th. If eBay actually goes through with charging postal fees for not being the post office, they will lose individuals and small businesses altogether, and perhaps some larger ones who will decide it is no longer worth it to ship internationally. Then there will be whatever repercussions will come from the U.S. Federal government for false shipping charges.
Other gloom-and-doomers have predicted the downfall or total uselessness of eBay before, but in the past, sellers learned how to calculate and absorb the fees. This time though, they’ve gone too far, and sellers are either no longer going to ship internationally or leaving eBay for more sane selling services.
Remember when I said in a previous post that for an artist, eBay was good promotion? I don’t know if that is going to be the case after the 19th of April. We’ll see if they stay as Google friendly when Google gets wind that they’re defrauding customers with fake additions to shipping charges.
Posted in eBay, What Makes A Website Suck | 4 Comments » | Tags: april 19, ebay, ebay shipping fee, fake shipping charges, fake shipping fee, fee calculation, final value fee, fraud, new ebay shipping fee, shipping included in final value fee, shipping surcharge
February 27, 2011
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is waking up. Most likely due to comments in one of their new features called Sidewiki, they’ve noticed that people are getting rather annoyed with spammy, plaigarized, and non useful or inaccurate sites getting top ranking. So they’re changing how they rank sites, and are listening more to their human reviewers.
Read the WSJ article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166390281747136.html?mod=WSJ_hp_us_mostpop_read
Those of you out there who have sites that are higher on content and lower on hype may have noticed an increase of traffic already. If you haven’t then it is likely coming, if you’re anywhere in Google at all. If you’re not then it means you need to network more.
In my observation, for the past year or so, many “small time” webmasters like myself have gotten a bit discouraged. No matter what we did, getting traffic was an uphill battle, and it really took the wind out of many of our sails to see crappy sites getting ranked higher. So some of us have been slipping in what used to be normal promotion methods because to keep our relevance, we had to avoid being viewed as just another spam site.
Hopefully now this means that people who provide real, accurate, and original content or at least an original presentation or perspective, will get more air time. I hope this is true. I applaud any effort Google makes to be a really useful search engine.
Posted in Google, Search Engines | No Comments » | Tags: google, google improvements, google updates, improvements, quality content, ranking, search engine ranking, search engines, useful content, writers
Recent Comments