Auctions are great for selling your products, but you can generate traffic from them as well. Here are some tips for redirecting customers to your website from auctions:

• Include business cards, flyers, and promotional items with any package you send to a customer that tells them about your website.
• EBay gives you an “about me” page that you are allowed to include links on. Be sure to talk about your website and direct customers there for more products or special deals.
• EBay is not the only auction site. There are literally tons of others. Check the resource section for more auction sites you can use to generate traffic. Some of them even allow you to post links to your sites in your listings!
• Your User ID should be your website without the .com on the end. Mention that you have a website in all of your listings and the smarter people that find you will go look at your website.

Ebay’s fees are insane, but they do still have a great deal of traffic that I’m sure you’d be happy to redirect to your website. Here is a list of alternative auctions and some tips for each one.

http://www.bidville.com – Low fees, a lot of customers and traffic. Definitely worth your time

http://www.mightybids.com – Up and coming auction website http://www.ebid.net – Serves the entire world with a lot of traffic. You cannot sell EBooks at this site.

http://auction.overstock.com – Total garbage – don’t bother http://www.ecrater.com – You can literally sell anything here and it’s free! Listings are plain with zero html changes allowed. http://www.blujay.com – Same as above, but allows html code. http://www.onlineauction.com – $8.00 per month for unlimited listings and sales. This site allows you to post a link to your website in every listing.

Ebay Success

Ebay has gone through major changes over the last few years. They have added some very cool tools to allow you to promote your products to their audience.

Ebay blogs give you the power to interact with your audience and update them on your new products and services. Be sure to treat this like a regular blog and use the blogging domination system. Hint: You can link to wherever you want from your Ebay blog!

Reviews and guides are extremely powerful, too. Guides are the key to showing your expertise to your potential customers. By putting up a solid guide, you can get tons of targeted visitors to your listings or store. Ebay Wiki is another great place to build a presence. Be aware that any member can edit what you post, so make sure that the information you add or create is very solid.

Once you get someone to your listing, the key is to sell them! Use simple sales copy that shows the benefits of your products. Features are important, but simply list them and focus on what your customer needs to see and hear to buy.

Copy successful listings by looking at how they structured their offer. No matter what your product is, if you can find someone that already sold something similar, there is a reason that it sold. If they did something obviously wrong, fix it to get better results than them!

Secret Tips: Visit www.auctiva.com to enhance any Ebay auction listing for free!

The coolest thing I’ve seen on Ebay was where a seller had an expensive product and they posted details for a teleseminar in the listing. They don’t have to pay Ebay’s fees and get new customers.

Purchase a domain name that is similar to your store. Forward the domain to your auction website. This will make advertising easier, as people have no problem visiting websites with real domain names.

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