Ebay DID NOT lower their fees.
This is how they FRAMED their massive Fee increase. Some sellers are going to be seeing a 141% fee increase. The majority of sellers received a 15% increase.
They sent out a wonderful little email today, and must've thought the people that sell on Ebay were to stupid to click on the links. Not this lady.
Their stock went up because Ebay found a way to make millions - by screwing over the people that sell on their site.
Expect a massive exodus from Ebay. The boards are buzzing and the sellers are IRATE!
This was the most IDIOTIC business move possible. Yes, they will make alot more money at the beginning, but once sellers realize what had happened, Ebay will LOSE in the end.
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Ebay announces cheaper fees for sellers shock! BUT THERE IS A CATCH
Option 1: "eBay Everyday" Standard Rates SEE BOTTOM OF POST FOR THE CATCH
- List up to 100 items a month Auction-style free—no Insertion Fees—when you start your Auction-style listing under $1.
- Get new, lower Insertion Fees for all other start prices.
- Either way, pay one easy Final Value Fee of 9% of the winning bid—and never more than $50—pay only if your item sells.
- List in Fixed Price for 50¢ with Final Value Fees mostly the same as today
Option 2: eBay Stores Subscription Packages
- List in Fixed Price with full search exposure for as low as 3¢ Insertion Fees with Final Value Fees for the most part the same as today
- Get FREE pictures
- Get deeply discounted fees on Auction-style listings
eBay says option one is ideal for those who sell occasionally, while option two is better for most sellers with 50 or more listings a month.
eBay's price change does represent a price increase for sellers who don't have a store
- List up to 100 items a month Auction-style free—no Insertion Fees—when you start your Auction-style listing under $1.
- Get new, lower Insertion Fees for all other start prices.
- Either way, pay one easy Final Value Fee of 9% of the winning bid—and never more than $50—pay only if your item sells.
- List in Fixed Price for 50¢ with Final Value Fees mostly the same as today
Option 2: eBay Stores Subscription Packages
- List in Fixed Price with full search exposure for as low as 3¢ Insertion Fees with Final Value Fees for the most part the same as today
- Get FREE pictures
- Get deeply discounted fees on Auction-style listings
eBay says option one is ideal for those who sell occasionally, while option two is better for most sellers with 50 or more listings a month.
eBay's price change does represent a price increase for sellers who don't have a store
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
GOOGLE Fast Flip set for Huge Expansion
Google announced through its blog on Wednesday that it is expanding Google Fast Flip, a news reading service that aims to make the experience of reading newspapers and magazines online similar to reading hard copy versions. Fast Flip launched three months ago with a small handful of publications including the New York Times and Washington Post. The recent announcement adds 55 top-flight publishers to the project including newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and the Miami Herald, magazines including U.S. News & World Report and leading online sites The Huffington Post, Mashable and POLITICO.
Fast Flip is designed to let Web surfers "flip" through multiple pages of content at once, theoretically making it easier to browse through a publisher's site and find interesting material. While Fast Flip is still only available in Google Labs, the service has evidentially been successful enough that publishers are interested in experimenting with it.
Newspapers are continuing to search for ways to generate revenue from online content, and Google is touting Fast Flip as a potential answer. Google has said that the "majority" of revenue generated by Fast Flip will go back to publishers but has not given specifics.
"Readers of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and the rest of our newspaper brands operate in a multimedia universe, and our goal is to ensure our content is available on the platforms they choose," Marc Chase, president of Tribune Co.'s interactive division, told the Los Angeles Times. "We're always looking for new technologies to help us reach an even wider audience."
Fast Flip is designed to let Web surfers "flip" through multiple pages of content at once, theoretically making it easier to browse through a publisher's site and find interesting material. While Fast Flip is still only available in Google Labs, the service has evidentially been successful enough that publishers are interested in experimenting with it.
Newspapers are continuing to search for ways to generate revenue from online content, and Google is touting Fast Flip as a potential answer. Google has said that the "majority" of revenue generated by Fast Flip will go back to publishers but has not given specifics.
"Readers of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and the rest of our newspaper brands operate in a multimedia universe, and our goal is to ensure our content is available on the platforms they choose," Marc Chase, president of Tribune Co.'s interactive division, told the Los Angeles Times. "We're always looking for new technologies to help us reach an even wider audience."
THE HSITORY OF THE INTERNET 2009 STATS
Internet 2009 in numbers
What happened with the Internet in 2009? How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many Internet users were there? This post will answer all of those questions and many more. Prepare for information overload, but in a good way.
We have used a wide variety of sources from around the Web. A full list of source references is available at the bottom of the post for those interested. We here at Pingdom also did some additional calculations to get even more numbers to show you.
Email
* 90 trillion - The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
* 247 billion - Average number of email messages per day.
* 1.4 billion - The number of email users worldwide.
* 100 million - New email users since the year before.
* 81% - The percentage of emails that were spam.
* 92% - Peak spam levels late in the year.
* 24% - Increase in spam since last year.
* 200 billion - The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).
Websites
* 234 million - The number of websites as of December 2009.
* 47 million - Added websites in 2009.
Web servers
* 13.9% - The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
* -22.1% - The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
* 35.0% - The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
* 384.4% - The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
* -72.4% - The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.
Domain names
* 81.8 million - .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
* 12.3 million - .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
* 7.8 million - .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
* 76.3 million - The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
* 187 million - The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
* 8% - The increase in domain names since the year before.
Internet users
* 1.73 billion - Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
* 18% - Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
* 738,257,230 - Internet users in Asia.
* 418,029,796 - Internet users in Europe.
* 252,908,000 - Internet users in North America.
* 179,031,479 - Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
* 67,371,700 - Internet users in Africa.
* 57,425,046 - Internet users in the Middle East.
* 20,970,490 - Internet users in Oceania / Australia.
Social media
* 126 million - The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
* 84% - Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
* 27.3 million - Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
* 57% - Percentage of Twitter's user base located in the United States.
* 4.25 million - People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter's most followed user).
* 350 million - People on Facebook.
* 50% - Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
* 500,000 - The number of active Facebook applications
What happened with the Internet in 2009? How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many Internet users were there? This post will answer all of those questions and many more. Prepare for information overload, but in a good way.
We have used a wide variety of sources from around the Web. A full list of source references is available at the bottom of the post for those interested. We here at Pingdom also did some additional calculations to get even more numbers to show you.
* 90 trillion - The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
* 247 billion - Average number of email messages per day.
* 1.4 billion - The number of email users worldwide.
* 100 million - New email users since the year before.
* 81% - The percentage of emails that were spam.
* 92% - Peak spam levels late in the year.
* 24% - Increase in spam since last year.
* 200 billion - The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).
Websites
* 234 million - The number of websites as of December 2009.
* 47 million - Added websites in 2009.
Web servers
* 13.9% - The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
* -22.1% - The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
* 35.0% - The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
* 384.4% - The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
* -72.4% - The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.
Domain names
* 81.8 million - .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
* 12.3 million - .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
* 7.8 million - .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
* 76.3 million - The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
* 187 million - The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
* 8% - The increase in domain names since the year before.
Internet users
* 1.73 billion - Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
* 18% - Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
* 738,257,230 - Internet users in Asia.
* 418,029,796 - Internet users in Europe.
* 252,908,000 - Internet users in North America.
* 179,031,479 - Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
* 67,371,700 - Internet users in Africa.
* 57,425,046 - Internet users in the Middle East.
* 20,970,490 - Internet users in Oceania / Australia.
Social media
* 126 million - The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
* 84% - Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
* 27.3 million - Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
* 57% - Percentage of Twitter's user base located in the United States.
* 4.25 million - People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter's most followed user).
* 350 million - People on Facebook.
* 50% - Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
* 500,000 - The number of active Facebook applications
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Bing May Become iPhone's Default Search Engine
Apple’s relationship with Google is souring, which is the perfect opening for Microsoft when it comes to the iPhone.
It’s no secret that Apple and Microsoft have one of the stranger relationships in tech. While Microsoft has produced software such as Office for the Macintosh platform, and Apple has opened its doors to Windows with its switch to Intel, they still are highly competitive with each other. But Cupertino’s relationship with Google is souring far faster, which is the perfect opening for Microsoft when it comes to the iPhone.
Apple is apparently in discussions with Microsoft to give the Bing search engine the top spot for search on iPhone, which currently belongs to Google. These talks have been underway for several weeks, BusinessWeek reports, but nothing as of yet has been finalized.
It’s no secret that Apple and Microsoft have one of the stranger relationships in tech. While Microsoft has produced software such as Office for the Macintosh platform, and Apple has opened its doors to Windows with its switch to Intel, they still are highly competitive with each other. But Cupertino’s relationship with Google is souring far faster, which is the perfect opening for Microsoft when it comes to the iPhone.
Apple is apparently in discussions with Microsoft to give the Bing search engine the top spot for search on iPhone, which currently belongs to Google. These talks have been underway for several weeks, BusinessWeek reports, but nothing as of yet has been finalized.
Google Stock value falls
Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular Internet search engine, fell on the Nasdaq Stock Market after the company's founders filed to sell about 5 million shares each...
Search engine use explodes in December
People were doing a whole lot more online searching last month, and they were still largely using the Google engine to do it. A comScore, Inc. study released late last week showed...
Friday, 22 January 2010
Meta description and google ranking
Although Meta descriptions are no longer part of the ranking algorithm they can affect your site's positions in the personalized search results. Your Meta description is a crucial factor that determines the CTR (click-through-rate) of your site in search results. The more compelling your description is, the more searchers will click it. When they click through to your site from search results this is recorded in their Web History. Next time they search for a product or service related to your site, it may appear high up in their personalized search results.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Writing Google Ad Text and How to Resolve Them
There are a lot of folks out there doing Google Adwords that seem like they have lots of money to spend! Why do I say this? Well they write their ads so casually that there is a good chance they are getting a high percentage of clicks from people who are not really their customers. On top of this there is a good chance that they have these generic, casual ads in an ad group with too many keywords. Plus lots of them don’t take the time to direct their potential customers to the best landing page on their site.
If they could calculate over the period of a year how much they were spending on random, curiosity clicks due to these types of ads and bad ad group formation, they would definitely get a shock. What’s more is if they spring cleaned their Google Adwords account this time next year they could be heading off on an extra holiday.
So in order to write the best Google ad text the first thing to do is identify if you are committing any of the Google Ad Text 7 Deadly Sins, as listed below. Then we will discuss how not to commit these sins.
1. Are your ads broad as you feel they will capture more people? This is the first deadly sin as in reality people feel that they the need to click on these ads sometimes in case they are missing out on something good. A fair percentage of them will leave your site quickly as they will be disappointed.
Don’t commit this sin by firstly realizing that people are getting more savvy every day and what they want to see is an ad that tells them as much as possible in the small space allowed. The ad text should always include the keyword at least once and where possible include a price or a starting price.
2. Are your ads unsupported by a proper group of keywords? This is somewhat like a football player who can’t score without the support of other team members.
Avoid this sin by having smaller ad groups with a family of related keywords inside which makes it possible for the keywords to be included in the ad text. This takes more time to set up but really pays off in the end.
3. Do your ads blend in nicely with the crowd? Many ads commit this deadly sin as often the combination of the perception of it being such a small announcement and the lack of experience of working this small space gives rise to lots of sinners!
Stop sinning and start having fun with language. It is always possible to make the ad text tempting to customers and inject something different from your competitors so that it no longer blends in with the crowd but instead stands out from the crowd, in a good way.
4. Have your ad texts been written with the customer or your business in mind? If they have been written with your business in mind and not the customer you are committing the fourth deadly sin. Sadly this is a common practice as many business owners know their own business so well and forget that their potential customers don’t.
By not committing this sin you will raise your chances of sales and customer acquisitions highly. Get into the mind of your customer and if this is too difficult ask your friends or employees to help. It is what is on your customers’ minds’ that counts.
5. Have your ads gone past their sell by date? The fifth deadly sin can be seen at different times of the year when seasonal ads are well out of date. This gives a message of inefficiency to your potential customers, and it is hard for them to get excited about an ad in December 2009 which talks about the New 2009 Range.
Cleanse this sin by putting seasonal ads into their own campaign which can then be paused when the season is finished and resumed and changed for the next season. Keeping them separate like this makes them much easier to manage.
6. Do your ads have no Unique Selling Point? If your ads do not include this ask yourself would you buy from your ads? Internet customers who are checking Google Adwords ad texts most likely have no loyalty to your competitors otherwise they would not be looking at the ads. What is your unique selling point?
To avoid committing this sin is more difficult than some of the aforementioned sins. The ad text space is tight and you have to be quite skillful to get this in as well as the keywords and price when relevant. If you sell unique goods mention it, if you are cheapest mention it, find a way to include at least the flavour of your unique selling point.
7. Do your ads direct people to your homepage or some other broad page leaving potential customers to have to navigate your website? This is the serious seventh deadly sin. Less and less people are willing to spend the time having a look for the page you should have deep linked your ad to in the first place.
Don’t commit this sin, do yourself and your potential customers a big favour and deep link every single ad to the most specific page. You will save money as people will be less likely to bounce off your website.
If they could calculate over the period of a year how much they were spending on random, curiosity clicks due to these types of ads and bad ad group formation, they would definitely get a shock. What’s more is if they spring cleaned their Google Adwords account this time next year they could be heading off on an extra holiday.
So in order to write the best Google ad text the first thing to do is identify if you are committing any of the Google Ad Text 7 Deadly Sins, as listed below. Then we will discuss how not to commit these sins.
1. Are your ads broad as you feel they will capture more people? This is the first deadly sin as in reality people feel that they the need to click on these ads sometimes in case they are missing out on something good. A fair percentage of them will leave your site quickly as they will be disappointed.
Don’t commit this sin by firstly realizing that people are getting more savvy every day and what they want to see is an ad that tells them as much as possible in the small space allowed. The ad text should always include the keyword at least once and where possible include a price or a starting price.
2. Are your ads unsupported by a proper group of keywords? This is somewhat like a football player who can’t score without the support of other team members.
Avoid this sin by having smaller ad groups with a family of related keywords inside which makes it possible for the keywords to be included in the ad text. This takes more time to set up but really pays off in the end.
3. Do your ads blend in nicely with the crowd? Many ads commit this deadly sin as often the combination of the perception of it being such a small announcement and the lack of experience of working this small space gives rise to lots of sinners!
Stop sinning and start having fun with language. It is always possible to make the ad text tempting to customers and inject something different from your competitors so that it no longer blends in with the crowd but instead stands out from the crowd, in a good way.
4. Have your ad texts been written with the customer or your business in mind? If they have been written with your business in mind and not the customer you are committing the fourth deadly sin. Sadly this is a common practice as many business owners know their own business so well and forget that their potential customers don’t.
By not committing this sin you will raise your chances of sales and customer acquisitions highly. Get into the mind of your customer and if this is too difficult ask your friends or employees to help. It is what is on your customers’ minds’ that counts.
5. Have your ads gone past their sell by date? The fifth deadly sin can be seen at different times of the year when seasonal ads are well out of date. This gives a message of inefficiency to your potential customers, and it is hard for them to get excited about an ad in December 2009 which talks about the New 2009 Range.
Cleanse this sin by putting seasonal ads into their own campaign which can then be paused when the season is finished and resumed and changed for the next season. Keeping them separate like this makes them much easier to manage.
6. Do your ads have no Unique Selling Point? If your ads do not include this ask yourself would you buy from your ads? Internet customers who are checking Google Adwords ad texts most likely have no loyalty to your competitors otherwise they would not be looking at the ads. What is your unique selling point?
To avoid committing this sin is more difficult than some of the aforementioned sins. The ad text space is tight and you have to be quite skillful to get this in as well as the keywords and price when relevant. If you sell unique goods mention it, if you are cheapest mention it, find a way to include at least the flavour of your unique selling point.
7. Do your ads direct people to your homepage or some other broad page leaving potential customers to have to navigate your website? This is the serious seventh deadly sin. Less and less people are willing to spend the time having a look for the page you should have deep linked your ad to in the first place.
Don’t commit this sin, do yourself and your potential customers a big favour and deep link every single ad to the most specific page. You will save money as people will be less likely to bounce off your website.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Importance of links in search engine indexing ( listing position )
Please keep in mind that Google may ignore your submission request for a significant period of time. Even if it happens to crawl your site, it may not actually index it if there are no links pointing to it. However, if Google finds your site by following the links from other pages that have already been indexed and are regularly re-spidered, chances are you will be included without any submission. These chances are much higher if Google finds your site by reading a directory listing, such as DMOZ (www.dmoz.org).
So submit your site and it may help, but links are the best way to get indexed.
So submit your site and it may help, but links are the best way to get indexed.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Power of Long Tail Keywords in SEO
What are long tail keywords?
Long tail keywords are long and specific keyword phrases that generate little traffic and few conversions each.
Long tail keywords usually consist of several words and they have a low monthly search volume.
What did the study find out?
Google AdWords advertisers with monthly expenses ranking from $15K to $750K per month were analyzed in the study. All of these advertisers had well managed Google AdWords accounts.
Here are the key findings:
1. The importance of long tail keywords varies. For one company, the long tail keywords generated only 8% of the sales. Another company received 83% of its sales through long tail keywords.
2. It depends on the product. People search differently for different types of products. For one product group people might use more long tail keywords while they use fewer for another product group.
3. The importance of long tail keywords does not depend on the paid search budget.
4. Long tail keywords are most important for SKU-based commodity retailers.
5. For some Google AdWords advertisers, long tail keywords are critically important. One company in the test generated more than 71% of its revenue from long tail keywords.
Long tail keywords are important to all AdWords advertisers. Even the company that received only 8% of its sales through the long tail keywords made a significant amount of money with them.
Long tail keywords are long and specific keyword phrases that generate little traffic and few conversions each.
Long tail keywords usually consist of several words and they have a low monthly search volume.
What did the study find out?
Google AdWords advertisers with monthly expenses ranking from $15K to $750K per month were analyzed in the study. All of these advertisers had well managed Google AdWords accounts.
Here are the key findings:
1. The importance of long tail keywords varies. For one company, the long tail keywords generated only 8% of the sales. Another company received 83% of its sales through long tail keywords.
2. It depends on the product. People search differently for different types of products. For one product group people might use more long tail keywords while they use fewer for another product group.
3. The importance of long tail keywords does not depend on the paid search budget.
4. Long tail keywords are most important for SKU-based commodity retailers.
5. For some Google AdWords advertisers, long tail keywords are critically important. One company in the test generated more than 71% of its revenue from long tail keywords.
Long tail keywords are important to all AdWords advertisers. Even the company that received only 8% of its sales through the long tail keywords made a significant amount of money with them.
Monday, 11 January 2010
NEW SEO SERVICES FOR 2010
Dominate Niche Marketing: Know exactly what the "money keywords" are. The keywords that BUYERS are searching for! Use these keywords to increase your sales. Nothing else will show you these.
Dominate Google Adwords: Instantly... Yes, and I said instantly, AND with very little money by seeing who is already running a profitable Adwords campaign AND then "borrow" their entire Adwords marketing strategy shown by the software for your own profitable campaign!
If you don't understand Google Adwords, it doesn't matter. The software is Fool Proof. It had to be if I was going to use it!
Dominate The Search Engines: Increase the amount of traffic to your site that you're getting now, WITHOUT paying a dime.
Dominate Google Adwords: Instantly... Yes, and I said instantly, AND with very little money by seeing who is already running a profitable Adwords campaign AND then "borrow" their entire Adwords marketing strategy shown by the software for your own profitable campaign!
If you don't understand Google Adwords, it doesn't matter. The software is Fool Proof. It had to be if I was going to use it!
Dominate The Search Engines: Increase the amount of traffic to your site that you're getting now, WITHOUT paying a dime.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
SEO UK IN DEMAND
Do you know that an SEO Company can easily do your Internet Marketing that would take you months of research and implementation to pull off successfully? That's right; quite a lot of online businesses today are investing in the expertise of these SEO gurus to help them stand out from today's competition -- pulling their rankings up to help increase their online coverage and accessibility to boost traffic to their page.
All The Manpower Your Need
If you think an SEO Company is compromised of a single expert in Internet Marketing, then you're wrong. One reason why hiring them is pricey is because they employ different experts to take charge of specific SEO concepts for your website.
For example, one group will be in charge of research while others are for implementation. This includes keyword research to improve your placement in search engines, article marketing and link building strategies to propagate your existence in the virtual world, and more. This is one reason why an SEO Company can bring up your ranking in the shortest possible time to cater to your online goals.
Finding An Expert
Now finding an SEO Company to help you with is easy; all you need is to look for them online. It's not like the usual business that you can find in the local yellow pages, though some of them are listed there. Most of them, however, have their own sites on the Internet to showcase their services to the public. You can use search engines to look them up.
Finding one is easy but deciding who will get your bid is something else. Keep in mind that hiring an SEO expert entails an expense on your end. Some may come cheap while other charge outrageous fees for their service. Just understand the fact that you need to find one that can deliver their promises despite how much you pay them.
Such is the case; the only way for you to find out if an SEO Company is the right one for you is to give them a call and ask for a proposal or quote. Get their contact number, talk to their agent, and request for a proposal to be sent or faxed to you that highlights the strategies they will be implementing to help you meet your online goals, timeframe of the service, and of course, the total cost of the project. You can get multiple quotes for comparison.
SEO UK
All The Manpower Your Need
If you think an SEO Company is compromised of a single expert in Internet Marketing, then you're wrong. One reason why hiring them is pricey is because they employ different experts to take charge of specific SEO concepts for your website.
For example, one group will be in charge of research while others are for implementation. This includes keyword research to improve your placement in search engines, article marketing and link building strategies to propagate your existence in the virtual world, and more. This is one reason why an SEO Company can bring up your ranking in the shortest possible time to cater to your online goals.
Finding An Expert
Now finding an SEO Company to help you with is easy; all you need is to look for them online. It's not like the usual business that you can find in the local yellow pages, though some of them are listed there. Most of them, however, have their own sites on the Internet to showcase their services to the public. You can use search engines to look them up.
Finding one is easy but deciding who will get your bid is something else. Keep in mind that hiring an SEO expert entails an expense on your end. Some may come cheap while other charge outrageous fees for their service. Just understand the fact that you need to find one that can deliver their promises despite how much you pay them.
Such is the case; the only way for you to find out if an SEO Company is the right one for you is to give them a call and ask for a proposal or quote. Get their contact number, talk to their agent, and request for a proposal to be sent or faxed to you that highlights the strategies they will be implementing to help you meet your online goals, timeframe of the service, and of course, the total cost of the project. You can get multiple quotes for comparison.
SEO UK
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