• Go to www.amazon.com and log into your account.
• Go to “Seller Account Page”, click “Manage Your Inventory Listing” then choose “Listings”.
• Explore the Amazon database for the kind of item you want to sell.
• Choose that kind of product and click “Sell Yours Here”.
• Provide the condition of that particular item you want to sell – is it new, used, does it have dents, etc.
• Put the price of that product of yours. You have to remember to take into consideration the other fees like the Amazon commission and shipping rates when computing for the price.
• Register to collect the payment of buying customers through Marketplace Payment by Amazon.
• Indicate the quantity of that item that you want to sell. You also have to give a code to that product so you can track it once you sell it.
• If you have several pieces of the same product and all are in the same condition, you only have to create one listing. If those several pieces have varying conditions (some are new, others are used, and some have scratches), you have to create separate listings for the products with the same condition.
• Double check if all the information you have provided are correct before finalizing to avoid confusion and unsatisfied customers. You can edit that information afterwards. However, you cannot change the state of condition of any product. In the event of alteration of that, you have to close that particular product listing and create a new one with the right condition.

Now that your products are listed on Amazon, you are ready to sell to a bigger market! You will then know why many businessmen use Amazon as a selling avenue. You will have a wider reach, more credibility, and a bigger market – all these without having to spend as much as you would if you would try to accomplish those on your own.

Pinterest: a website where one can pin or post interesting images

Board: A posting page or area for pinners to post and re-pin images to allow other Pinterest users to

view their images. It is fully editable – one can add and remove images whenever needed.

Pin or Pinning: the act of posting, uploading, or adding a picture to the user’s Pinterest board.

Re-pin or Re-pinning: the action in which another Pinterest user is interested on a particular image on your board and would pin the same image on their own board.

Pinners: the collective term for Pinterest users.; just like Followers is for Twitter.

Now that you know and understand these Pinterest terms, you can easily navigate and utilize Pinterest for your business’ benefit. If you still do not have a Pinterest account, you cannot just sign up for one. You have to be invited by an existing Pinterest member. Your Facebook friends or followers who are interested in your business can send you one so they can interact with you on Pinterest. So, you can beef up your photos posted on Facebook and on Twitter so your followers will see that they should invite you to Pinterest.

Once you are on Pinterest, immediately share photos of your products or photos relevant to your services so you can get your photos re-pinned and liked. You should also remember to link your website to your images so your audience can be immediately directed to relevant web pages of yours – instant increase in traffic!

• Go to www.amazon.com.
• On the home page, click the “Your Account” and then click “Your Seller Account” button, found under “Your Other Accounts”.
• You will be directed to a seller account page and there, click “Seller Account Information” under settings.
• You will then see the following sections and required to provide important data:
• Seller Information: Provide your personal name, legal business name of your business, and your local business address.
• Charge Method: Provide your credit card information here. This is necessary to confirm your identity and to create your payment account. You will have to update this section whenever relevant to keep the account active.
• Deposit: Provide your bank checking account number so the payments for your sales will be remitted to the said account. You will also get to choose if you will sign up for an individual account or a professional one. Your option will depend on the quantity of the merchandise you will sell per month.
• Go back to your seller account page.
• Choose “Notification Preferences” so you can set up and receive email notifications regarding your Amazon seller account. You will receive emails from Amazon notifying you of your listings and orders.
• Go back to your seller account page.
• Click “Store Settings”. You will then suppler information about your business that you would want your customers to know when they click on the link of your business name on Amazon. Here are some of the data you should put there:
• Logo
• General information
• Business policies
• Shipping information
• Vacation settings (You activate this option if you are actually on a vacation, sick, or whenever you will not be able to ship any order within the set delivery period of two business days.)
• Other important information all your customers should know

It’s that easy to start your selling on Amazon! You will be amazed on how many orders you will be able to get once your complete everything. On our next post, you will learn how to list your products on Amazon.

Now, why should you sell your products on Amazon?

• Partner with a giant. In 2010, Amazon was ranked as the number 1 online retailer in the world. It sales increased by 40% to $34 billion. Amazon billed 10% of all online retail sales in North America. Of course, a small local business like yours will not be able to topple down a big company like Amazon. If you can’t beat them, join them! That is why you should take advantage of their clout and benefit from their success.
• More credibility. While you can sell your products on your own local business website, there are a good number of people that are cautious buying from you. Why? Many people are hesitant in buying online as there are many scams involving online buying and credit card information used for fraud.

Good thing Amazon is well-known as an online store and is trusted by
millions of consumers. By selling your products on Amazon, you can
create a relationship with satisfied customers without any doubt
before buying - since they trust Amazon.

• More reach. You have your work cut out for you - Amazon has one of the largest affiliate programs on any merchant site online. By listing your products on Amazon, you can connect with the millions of partners that refer customers to Amazon. This kind of affiliation requires lots of efforts and money and as an Amazon seller, you get to enjoy all the rewarding benefits in a more convenient and less expensive way. The partners you will gain from this is far more than what you will be able to make if you would do this on your own for your business.
• A bigger marketplace. The worldwide reach of Amazon helps you sell beyond your locale. You can sell to customers from anywhere in the world! You just have to plan a good shipping process. Not only that you can earn from all your target market in any state, but also from customers from as far sa France, Japan, Germany, and China! Imagine being able to sell nationwide and worldwide without having to have enormous overhead costs.

Want to know more how you can maximize being an Amazon seller to your
advantage? Contact us today to learn more!

First, you have to know why no one is viewing your video. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

• Is the content relevant?
• Is the content helpful or beneficial to my target market?
• Is the content presented in an organized and understandable manner?
• Is it interesting or boring?
• Are all the elements right? (Sound quality, video quality, etc.)

You should try to assess these things as honest as you can so you can pinpoint what might be the weakness of your video. You can also try to join a forum wherein people with the same interests are members of. You can post your video there and ask for their feedback. Do not get hurt if you get negatives ones, instead, take these constructively so you can improve your video.

Once you have improved your video, all you have to zero in how to share it to your target viewers. Make sure that your video has a good search engine optimization (SEO) so that it will rank well with Google and YouTube. What to take note of in optimizing your video:

• File name should include relevant keywords, even before uploading.
• Complete tags and description.
• Don’t spam on tags.
• Make sure that all the keywords and phrases you use are relevant to your business. Websites like YouTube can detect spam videos and words.

After you have optimized your video well, share and ping the URL of your video on all available avenues – your website, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, your friends’ websites, etc. Doing this will help your video be noticed by Google and will yield higher search rankings. You can also share it in forums or community websites that already have a great following. Make sure that your video is relevant to that website, otherwise, they will ignore it. You should also enable embedding options that allow viewers to share your video on their own websites or blogs. The more presence your video has online, the better your search ranking will be on Google and YouTube.

You also have to take note that YouTube looks at the ratings and views whenever it ranks a video. Encourage your visitors to comment or rate your videos. You can also leave notes for them to like your video and watch other videos of your business.

Creating great awareness for a single video may be tedious but it will definitely pay off in the end. Just ensure, from start to finish, that you produce a quality video that clearly conveys what you want to say. It is better to be simple and understandable compared to some flashy video that no one understands.

How to find online forums you can join in:

• Go to Google, Yahoo or Bing and type in your niche or business keyword and the word forum. For example, you run a beauty salon. You can type in “salon forums” or “beauty forums” and then there will be links that will lead you to relevant online forums.
• Check out Google Groups and you can choose the relevant category for your business. You can be as specific as there are options to narrow down the search results.
• You can also use Facebook. Log in using your business account and type in your local business keywords in the search area. Choose from the results the pages that are relevant to your business.

Now that you have found forums you can participate in, create an account so you can join. For Facebook, you only have to “Like” the Facebook Fanpage you want to join and you can participate in discussions.

It would be best that you have a signature link that will always be seen after each post you make. You should include eye-catching lines plus links to your website, Facebook account, blog, or Twitter account. If you are a make up artist, your signature may start with “How to make yourself more beautiful in no time” and then followed by your links.

Make sure that you check the rules of each forum you join. Ask the moderators if you can insert links on your posts just to make sure that you won’t get banned from that forum. There are some forums wherein you have to be an active member for quite some time before being allowed to post links.

Once you get the ball rolling, you will be amazed with the useful information you can gather from just being active on these forums. You can ask specific questions so you can enhance existing products or services or how to execute new ones better. Imagine getting first-hand information from your target market for free!

YouTube

Millions and millions of videos are uploaded on YouTube each day. You can gather important information on relevant issues, topics, or niches by watching the current most popular videos that is related to your business.  You can also learn effective ways on how to create your own video marketing.

Google Adwords

Are you having headaches on choosing what keywords, both short tail and long tail, you should integrate into your website copy? Google Adwords is the answer. It can give you 100 and even upto 800 suggestions once you sign up for a free account. Be as precise as you want – whether you want phrase, broad or exact match keywords. You can choose the exact match ones since the results will be more accurate. You can even browse results from various niches.

Google Suggest

Google will instantly supply you with search suggestions as you type in your keywords. All you have to do is set up your Google search page with Google Suggest. As you type in your search, letter by letter, the number of pages that vie for that particular search keyword will be displayed. With that information, you will be able to see what keywords or phrases have the highest and lowest competition. As you will see the data, you will be able to tweak the search terms for your website to your advantage.

Google Analytics

This amazing tool will give you detailed results of your website traffic with graphs. With Google Analytics, you will be able to see how many visitors your website has and which of them are directed from your various online efforts – Facebook Ads, Facebook Fanpage, PPC, blogging, etc. You will also learn which visit are converted to sales, etc.

Google Blog Search

Know what bloggers in your industry are talking about and what the major news are – in real time with Google Blog Search. By browsing through that information, you will know what your market currently wants and needs. You will also know relevant stories, developments, and more that you could use for your business. Let’s say that there are current blog posts about a certain product’s negative effect on one’s health. If that kind of product is in your merchandise, you shouldn’t promote that product at the height of the bad press.

Defective or misleading destination URL

If your URL leads to an error page, is not widely available, asks for people’s information before leading to the home page, has pop-ups, or has any kind of downloads – prepare for you ad to be disapproved. Also, the destination URL of your ad is a Facebook page, it should not be a personal account.

Unsuitable images

Images that convey any sexual, political or any offensive content is definitely not allowed, whatever your product or service may be.

Inappropriate or malicious content

If your ad even insinuates violence, negative issues, tobacco and other related materials, spam, and money scams, it will be rejected.

Poorly written copy

Facebook does not tolerate poor sentence structure, spelling mistakes, incorrect grammar, and wrong punctuation marks.

Unnecessary capitalization and symbols

Your ad will not be approved if you capitalize words that do not need to be. Pointless use of symbols will also be grounds for disapproval.

Manipulation of spacing

You can’t edit your Facebook layout in terms of fonts and spacing. You should stick with single space.

Wrongful claims and statements

Your ad will be turned down by Facebook is you have claims that are not substantiated. You can’t create ads that you say that people of all ages can use but they only are effective for people over 50.

Wrong target market

If you are advertising a dating service, subscription that require money, weight-loss program, and any product or service that is only for adult audiences and you target Facebook users that are 18 and below, it will be disapproved. Ads that promote any alcoholic beverage should also comply with the legalities of the country that your target audience resides.

Too specific in addressing the target market

Of course, you can indicate you’re the demographic of your target market in your ad but you can’t be too blatant about it. You can’t put “Are you a 40-year old woman?” in your copy.

These are only some of the things that you should take note to avoid when creating your Facebook Ad. Make sure that your message is truthful and you are really willing to provide good products or services and not mislead people.

Google Trends

This tool shows the most searched terms in the US. As search terms differ each day, depending on what is hot and what is not, the results are updated throughout each day in real time. If you have the resources to do so, you can act upon all the trends as you see them and utilize high traffic keywords on your online efforts. For example, if you own a shoe store and a new model of a famous basketball player is out, you can edit your online marketing campaigns and SEOs to earn from the hottest trend.

Google Groups

Here you can personally see what’s inside online forums – what really is in people’s minds. What are their problems, their difficulties, their comments, their suggestions – almost anything under the sun! With the information you can gather from Google Groups, you will be armed in creating a new business or enhancing your existing one.

Google Shopping

You will see what products, from almost any industry or market, are most bought from online. Based on the information that you will get from Google Shopping, you can customize your inventory to maximize your sales and minimize loss.

Google Trends for websites

Would you want to know what your competition is doing online? Well, you can “spy” on them using this tool. You will discover very important data with this – the locations of their online visitors, what other sites they visit, and which specific search keywords they are using. This will definitely help you mold your online efforts to be at par and even surpass your competitors.

Google Insights

With this, you will be able to know the history of a certain keyword for certain periods and areas. You can be as specific as to how much that keyword is searched for in days, months, and even years in what town, state or country. Now, you will know which keyword is to be used best when and where to reach your target market.

So interesting and useful, right? Wait for the next blog post and learn 5 more free Google tools you can use to improve your business and its online efforts.

Why do people love Pinterest?

It’s simple. Pinterest is user-friendly – its layout is not cluttered and the navigation is so easy! Both business owners like you and the target audience won’t have a hard time monitoring their accounts and the ones that they follow.

It’s very popular. Pinterest is one of the top 20 social media sites in 2011. It has captured the attention of millions of people and they like how it works.

Ease in engagement. The people behind Pinterest made it so easy for its members to manage the content of their boards. Plus, the viewers also enjoy the simplicity and no-nonsense browsing and interaction. Gaining popularity is not difficult in this networking site.

Easy as 1-2-3. The process of pinning, re-pinning, liking images is idiot-proof that even those who are not techy-savvy will be able to understand the concept of Pinterest in no time.

Spreading like wildfire. The simplicity of sharing images enables an image to be shared to a million people even in one day! You will not believe how many people will re-pin or like an image of yours once it catches their attention.

These are only a few of the reasons why both business owners and personal account holders love Pinterest. If you still don’t have a Pinterest account now, then it’s time you create one. You will be amazed on how amazing it is as a marketing tool for your business.