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The problem with most people who don’t make money online is they don’t give the business a fair chance, and I can prove this with just a few recent forum comments that prove how short sighted some of us really are:

-  “I did my first listing on eBay the other day.  My product didn’t sell, I ended up losing money; you told me people were making money on eBay and you’re nothing but a bl**dy liar!”  A forum member asked: “Did any of your other eBay listings work?”  The answer: “I only did one listing, I lost money, do you expect me to list all bl**dy day just to put money in eBay’s pockets?”

-  “I uploaded a web site more than two years ago and I haven’t made a single penny since.”  A forum member asked: “What do you do to get visitors to your site?”  The answer: “Nothing!  I did my bit, I uploaded the site, now I’m waiting for the search engines to send people to buy something from me, that’s how it works!”

Here is the most common and the most irritating of all fools’ statements:

-  “This book did not work for me!”  To which I usually say, “That is correct.  The book did not work for you.  The book won’t work for you.  A book won’t ever work for anyone.  It is the individual who buys the book who does the work based on principles and advice included in the book.  Tell me, what did you do after buying the book to make the kind of money you expected from the product?  The usual answer is:  “NOTHING!”

Of course professionals like ourselves know not every eBay listing works; they know there’s more to making money online than simply uploading a web site and leaving it to run itself; they know it’s always the person who buys the book that does the work, not the book itself! 

My sympathies do, however, always go to people who genuinely do try hard to make an opportunity work, but for some reason they discover the business doesn’t quite suit their personal requirements or it genuinely won’t make the kind of money they need to survive. 

Making a good living from AdSense, for example, can take weeks or months of creating content and uploading web sites and very few people can afford to wait that long for money to pay their bills and everyday living expenses.  The same goes for article marketing and blog posting, placing AdWords and using eBay Classified Ads. to promote affiliate products, where all intelligent sellers know only time, a tiny investment, a few calculated risks and repetition will prove if a business works, or doesn’t work, and most of those ideas work very well for anyone who gives them a determined try.

On eBay most sellers learn that the more products you list, the more money you’ll eventually make, and few of us expect more than fifty per cent of our products to sell first time round so some money will be lost along the way.   

Take collectibles as an example.

Making a living selling collectibles on eBay is perhaps the easiest way of all to earn a really good living on eBay, even if sometimes all you have after a long day at a flea market is sore feet and a big dent in your car door where someone bumped into you to grab the last available parking place. 

But at flea markets and boot sales you can just as easily find real treasures lurking alongside household castoffs, such as rare autographs placed for safekeeping inside some torn and dirty film star album, or a rare plate or cup placed precariously under a pile of grotty ornaments. 

Nonetheless it’s just too risky to depend solely on boot sale and flea market pick ups for a regular big income on eBay.  It’s always best to grow several eBay selling options alongside additional income streams that don’t involve eBay.

Being successful is a matter of trying various opportunities, deciding which suit the individual best and discarding those that don’t quite suit our personal circumstances.  We all must keep on testing and incorporating new opportunities into our overall business portfolio, that’s the only way to optimise our income while also safeguarding against a major source of income drying up without warning.  Remember how digital downloads vanished from eBay almost overnight, leaving thousands of people wondering how to pay their bills once their sole income source had vanished?  Thankfully only full time sellers were quite so seriously affected; those who also make money from AdSense and article marketing, affiliate marketing and such, saw just a tiny drop in their overall income.

Once you start you’ll find so many different repeat income streams to choose from including some that make money right away and others that take time to work but eventually fetch staggering profits. 

Such as:

*  Keep a close eye on the events diary in local weekend newspapers where you’ll find information about craft and trade fairs where you can approach local manufacturers about selling their products exclusively on eBay.  This works like a magnet, most manufacturers prefer to make items, most hate marketing them or don’t have time, and it’s a rare artist or craftworker who won’t fall at your knees for a chance to increase their usually tiny income from local sources.  Most manufacturers, including craftworkers, sell purely at local events and to customers within a short radius of base.  Offer to promote their products worldwide, on eBay, and see how many clients you sign up in one day at local craft and trade fairs.  Be sure to have a contract drawn up stating you are the only person allowed to sell your clients’ products on eBay, with the exception of sales by private buyers, and get clients to sign up to specific delivery times so you don’t miss out on Second Chance Offers for your most popular products.

*  Build an entire site and selling experience around one popular high commission affiliate product, from ClickBank for example, or Amazon, and spend an hour or so each week blogging about the product, writing articles, testing a few cheap Google Adwords, promoting through Squidoo and Twitter and other inexpensive online sources.  The secret is to spend several days choosing different products from ClickBank, and writing articles promoting those with your affiliate link embedded in your article resource box (some article directories prohibit affiliate links so use domain forwarding instead).  Then check out which product earns the highest commissions and make this product the focus of your future article endeavours.  Do this once a week and set time aside each week to write a new article about each of your chosen affiliate products.  This can prove amazingly profitable and only recently I discovered someone who spends his entire working day writing product review articles for ClickBank products which he uploads to dozens of different article directories and uses a separate ClickBank nickname for each article directory to show which directories generate the highest visitor and buyer conversion rates. 

*  Here’s the best money making idea I’ve tapped into for many years.  eBay Classifieds are back on the menu at ebay.com and they represent the perfect way to grow a massive mailing list to promote your own or affiliate products potentially for many years to come.  They say “The Money’s In the List!!” -  yes you know that already - but oftentimes you need money to grow a list before it starts generating profits. 

That’s because conventional ways of growing a list, using high profile advertising, for instance, or Google AdSense, can mean spending a pound or much more for every name added to your list.  In reality, most big list owners take weeks or even months to recoup the cost of adding names to their list and that’s an unlikely option for you, or for me!  So would you be interested to know it’s perfectly possible to add three or four hundred new names to your list each month from a single Classified Ad costing less than a fiver a month?  And that explains why many American PowerSellers have hundreds of Classified Ads. running concurrently to grow a profitable sideline business selling affiliate products from hundreds of different companies. 

The secret to using eBay Classified Ads. is to offer a free report to invite sign ups to your mailing list and to make sure your free report is different to those competitors are offering.  The rules are still a bit grey surrounding Classified Ads., especially concerning sign up boxes and email addresses, but only recently eBay reported it has no objection to outside links being used in Classified Ads. as long as they don’t lead to pages with products for sale!!!  So you mustn’t promote ClickBank products directly inside your Classified Ads, even though you’ll currently find hundreds of eBayers doing just that.

I’m trying Classified Ads. myself right now, with great success, and in the next few weeks I’m going to write up my findings as to how many names each ad. garners for my list and exactly how and when those names begin gathering profits.  I’ll let you in on the details some time in early January.

 
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