Marketing In A Turbulent Economy

I’m not gonna sugar coat it… it’s looking pretty darn ugly out there!

I’ll spare you a rehash of all the gory details — I’m sure you’re WELL aware of them already — but suffice to say that the stock market and economy took a pretty sound thrashing this week.

And MANY people are worried.

I’m seeing it in the emails I’ve been getting from nervous customers… and in the urgent phone calls I’m been receiving… and in the comments on my blog…

There are a whole lot of people out there who are concerned about what the present economic climate will mean to their Internet businesses.

Well, I’m no economist, so I’m not about to make a prediction about the markets or the stability of the economy…

… but I am an Internet marketer, and what I can say — with confidence — is that a downturn in the current economy does NOT have to be a major roadblock for YOUR Internet business!

One key to surviving (even thriving) during this period of uncertainty is to know your customers!

It’s more critical than EVER for you to understand EXACTLY who they are… where they’re coming from… their interests, goals, and desires. This will allow you to create laser-focussed marketing copy that speaks DIRECTLY to them and solves their specific problems, as well as offer products that you know for sure will make a difference in their lives.

You’ll be rewarded with continued customer loyalty, and ongoing sales!

So if you don’t already know all you can about your customers and visitors, NOW is definitely the time to find out…

 

… and the easiest and fastest way to do that is with a survey.

Here are the SIX STEPS you need to follow to create an effective and informative survey that will help you connect with your customers — and continue to profit — during the current financial turmoil:

 

Step #1: Plan Your Survey

As with everything else you do with your business, you’ll have the greatest success with your survey if you do some advance planning.

Without a solid idea of what exactly it is you hope to learn from your results, you can easily end up creating a survey consisting of fairly random questions that ultimately don’t lead you anywhere.

So make sure you take the time to sit down and do some brainstorming and list making.

Decide what your goals with the survey are. Are you trying to learn more about specific products you offer? Looking for ways you could give everyone a more positive customer care experience? Trying to gather demographic information so you can segment your list better and send out tailored offers?

Be clear about what you’re hoping to accomplish with the survey, and you’ll be in great shape when it comes time to writing the actual survey questions.

 

Step #2: Choose Your Weapon

One thing I like about surveys is that they’re super simple for pretty much ANY business owner to administer, no matter how small your budget, or limited your technical knowledge.

That’s because there are lots of web-based services out there that will host your survey for you… for FREE!

You just design the survey using their simple point-and-click interface, enter the text for your questions, and then email a link to the survey to your customers and subscribers.

When your customers show up, the automated survey is online and ready to take!

And best of all, many of these free services offer a reasonable number of reporting features, too, making it easy to interpret your results.

Of course, most of these services offer paid upgrades as well, which allow you to create more complex surveys and get more sophisticated reports, but for a typical small survey, the freebies work just fine.

Here are a couple that I’ve used and like:

• SurveyMonkey
• Survey Pro

 

Step #3: Design And Write Your Survey

Designing your survey takes a bit of skill, but with a small amount of planning (there’s that word again!), you’ll have no problem putting an effective one together. Just be sure that you’re putting the questions in a logical order, and not exhausting your customers by asking for too much detail.

Here are a few tips to help you design a better survey:

• Start with the good stuff – To ease your customers into the survey, start off with some simple questions they can answer without a lot of thought.

  This can be something as simple as basic demographic information (age, location, etc.), which also happens to be useful information.

  But don’t load up the front end with all of the easy questions. Save a few for the end of the survey. That way, it won’t get increasingly difficult throughout, which can cause some people to bail before they complete it.

• Avoid asking too many questions — 15 minutes is about the maximum length you can reasonably expect somebody to spend answering a survey, so be sure to limit your questions.

  At the same time, be sure to let your respondents know up front how much time will be required to complete it… and be honest! People will begin to drop out if it starts to take longer than you say.

• Give your survey an introduction and ending — It’s a good idea to include an introduction to the survey, to clearly explain what people are required to do.

  At the same time, it’s a nice touch to end the survey with a "thank you" page, just to let people know you appreciate the time they spent taking the survey.

• Respect people’s privacy – You may want to collect personal information like age, income, and occupation. If you do so, make sure to reassure your customers beforehand that you have a strict privacy policy, and remind them that their answers are all confidential.

When it comes time to write the actual questions, make sure you write in a relaxed, conversational voice, and avoid things like abbreviations, acronyms, and double negatives. You want to be sure that EVERY person who takes your survey clearly understands all of the questions.

Here are a few tips to help you write compelling and effective survey questions:

• Avoid asking leading questions – Be sure that your questions don’t sway your customers towards answering them in a particular way, or giving an answer that’s not actually true.

  For example, don’t say: "How quickly did we resolve your problem? " This assumes that the problem was indeed resolved.

  The question you should ask is, "Was your problem resolved?"

• Avoid questions that rate more than one thing — Avoid asking questions that require people to rate more than one thing at a time.

  For instance, don’t say: "How fast and accurate did you find our customer service representative?"

  While the service may have been fast, it may not have been accurate (or vice versa) so this question is impossible to answer accurately.

• Focus on asking "close-ended" questions — In a survey, a close-ended question is one that can be answered with a simple yes/no or other specific piece of information, or a selection from multiple choices.

  This makes the survey faster and easier for your customers, and the results more simple for you to manage.

  So instead of a question like "What did you think of your customer service experience?" try something like "Did you enjoy your customer service experience?"

• Be consistent with your questions — If you ask your customers to rate certain things on a numbered scale, make sure to use the same scale each time.

  So if they need to rate something on a scale of 1 to 5 in one question, avoid using a scale of 1 to 10 elsewhere.

• Watch out for long questions — If your questions are too long, your customers will soon get tired of answering them, and abandon the survey. Look for questions that can be broken into two or more parts.
• Don’t test your customers’ memories – Try not to ask your customers to recall a lot of information that happened far in the past. They’ll soon get bogged down trying to recall specific details, and if they’re in a hurry to complete the survey, will often abandon it.

 

Step #4: Test Your Survey

You all know by now that I’m a HUGE advocate of testing EVERYTHING before you email it, make it live on your site, or expose it to your customers in any way.

So take the time to carefully review the survey, to make sure it has a logical flow, and that it all makes sense.

If you can, it’s a good idea to ask a few people (customers, if possible, or co-workers, friends, or family) to take the survey ahead of time, and actually WATCH them while they do it.

Do they hesitate while answering a question? Backtrack? Skip over a question? It could be a sign that your questions aren’t clear enough, and you’ll need to work on making them more simple.

Once you’re done, ask about the experience. Was there anything you didn’t understand? Were you confused at any point?

You want to make sure the survey is easy to understand and follow BEFORE you make it available. Once it’s actually live — and your customers have started answering it — you DON’T want to have to start tinkering with the questions. That will skew your results.

 

Step #5: Administer The Survey

Okay, the moment of truth is upon you: It’s time to invite your customers to take the survey.

The easiest way to do this is to email them, and ask them for a few minutes of their time. And make sure you tell them what’s in it for them if they take the survey.

If your goal is to improve a certain product, for instance, tell them that by taking the survey, they’ll actually be helping you to help them, because you’ll use their comments to fine-tune the assistance you can offer them.

And don’t be shy about offering your customers a "bribe" for taking the survey. You’re asking them to do a big favor for you, so it’s not unreasonable to reward them for their time.

Consider sending everyone who responds a gift (like a free ebook that they’ll find valuable), a coupon for discounted products, or enter them in a draw to win some a prize.

Finally, make sure you build some urgency into the email. If you don’t ask people to take the time right away to answer the survey, they’ll often put it aside to answer when they have more time… but then never return to complete it.

 

Step #6: Interpret Your Results

As you review the results of your survey, remember that, more than anything, you’re looking for trends. Did the majority of respondents answer specific questions the same way? Are they often expressing the same frustrations, etc?

At the same time, look for any surprising answers. Your survey is likely going to tell you things about your audience that you had no idea were true.

By finding out EXACTLY who your audience is, what they like (and dislike), and what their goals and experiences are, you’ll be able to tailor your salescopy, your email marketing efforts, your website, and even your products, to perfectly suit them.

The results should be improved customer loyalty, and ongoing success with your business, even during these turbulent economic times!

Socialize Your Way To Online Success

And they’re off!

The Republican and Democratic national conventions have just wrapped up, both parties have selected their candidates, and the 2008 U.S. election campaign switched into high gear.

Wait… don’t leave! I promise I’m NOT going to talk politics!

Well, not directly, anyway…

See, as an Internet marketer, what REALLY interests me about this year’s election is the role the Internet is playing in helping to shape its outcome.

Well, not the Internet, exactly. That’s been changing elections for a few years now, as dramatically as the introduction of television did back in the early 60s.

No, what I’m really talking about is how much social networking on the Internet is changing politics.

Seems that social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Flickr — which were started as ways for people to keep in touch with their friends and family, share their latest holiday photos, and post their favorite cute animal videos — have become pretty powerful tools for candidates.

Leaders of all political stripes have started using them aggressively to get their ideas across, unite their supporters, and create communities of like-minded individuals who effectively campaign for them.

And then there’s the whole fundraising thing…

Thanks to social networking sites, the candidates have been raising RECORD amounts of money for their campaigns!

I’d say there’s a lesson to be learned here for all of us online marketers, wouldn’t you?

I mean, on Facebook alone, Barack Obama and John McCain have a combined 2 MILLION supporters (or "friends," in Facebook-speak) and growing DAILY!

Sheesh! Imagine the amount of traffic you’d get to your website if YOU had even a tiny fraction of this number of people talking about YOU and YOUR business… every DAY! And that should be your real goal as an Internet marketer: to get people talking.

Despite what many would have you believe, the value of using Facebook and MySpace is NOT so you can make tons of money in sales directly off of these sites. Instead, it’s about developing a presence online, raising awareness of your product, and building a community of people whose interests reflect your business.

That can translate to a LOT of excitement, more visitors to your site, and increased sales. And the great thing about social networking is that it’s really easy to get started, and usually FREE! You can have an account and profile for your first site set up in the next few minutes!

So if you haven’t jumped on the social networking bandwagon yet, here are the FIVE simple steps you need to follow to get started:

Step #1: Create a user profile for your business

The first step in getting started with social networking is to create user profiles for your business on the major networking sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr.

The most important thing to remember? Do NOT fill your business profile with all kinds of salescopy and other "hype." That’s the FASTEST way to turn people OFF on social networking sites.

Your profile should strictly be an introduction to your business, and a BRIEF overview of what it does, and who it’s for. And make sure your profile is detailed and descriptive, and has a lot of your keywords and phrases in the title and descriptions, so that when people search on those terms, your profile is sure to come up.

Step #2: Research groups related to your industry

Once your profile is set up, it’s time to start looking for people to connect with, so you can begin to build a broad network of online supporters.

Your goal is to locate other individuals and businesses who have interests related to your business. The best way to do this is to simply start typing keywords related to your business into the site’s search box, and see who turns up.

Step #3: Start "mingling," and getting to know people

Once you’ve identified individuals and businesses you’d like to start building relationships with, it’s time to get involved.

First, start requesting that people add you as their contacts or "friends" (or whatever the particular site calls these relationships), and then check out the conversations and discussions your new friends are having. Get to know their likes and dislikes, and the kinds of issues that concern them, so you’ll be ready to add value to the conversation.

One word of warning when you’re adding contacts: It pays to be a bit choosy about who you invite to be your friends. Your list of friends reflects your interests, and sometimes even your character, so restrict your invites to those who really do have something in common with you.

Step #4: Join in!

When you’re ready to join the conversation, make sure you focus on providing USEFUL information, and contributing your expertise to further the discussion.

Remember, your goal with social networking isn’t to make a ton of sales directly from these sites, but to get your name on to the Web, and build relationships with your potential market (and other business owners). So keep the sales pitch to a minimum!

And finally, be sure to keep it professional. You don’t want to start buying virtual drinks for your new friends, or "poking" them on Facebook!

Step #5: Is it worth it? Here’s how to find out…

It’s easy to get swept up in the fun and excitement of social networking, and find yourself spending HOURS communicating with your new friends (and barely doing any other work)!

So be sure to ask yourself this: Do the number of hours I spend on social networking sites yield enough results to make sense financially?

That may sound like a tough one to figure out, but fortunately, you can do it automatically with this free calculator.

You just put in a few simple figures (like the number of hours you or your staff spend on social networking sites, the number of friends you have, etc.,) and it will tell you if you’ll potentially earn more through your social networking strategy than you’ll spend on it.

Social networking is definitely a hot Internet marketing strategy, and NOT just for presidential candidates…

As long as you respect the rules of the social networking sites, and avoid blatant self-promotion and sales pitches, you should easily start making new customers left, right, and center!

Plan For The Worst… Hope For The Best!

In the end, it could have been MUCH worse…

On Monday morning, hurricane Gustav blasted across Louisiana and surrounding states, leaving behind a trail of destruction estimated to be in the billions of dollars

But despite the extensive damage, the one thing people feared MOST never happened…

New Orleans was spared.

Gustav made landfall 100 miles to the south, and the city avoided a repeat of the devastation that Katrina brought three years ago.

But it’s not like the city wasn’t ready for the worst!

In the days leading up to Gustav’s arrival, over a million people were evacuated, and massive emergency shelters were set up in surrounding areas.

Drawing on everything they learned from Katrina, New Orleans planned for the worst… hoped for the best… and were rewarded with the best possible outcome.

Now, without minimizing in any way the human and financial costs of Gustav, it’s a lesson we can ALL take away for our own businesses.

Plan for the worst. Hope for the best.

You’re probably already planning for success, right? We all spend a LOT of time projecting our future sales and revenue, figuring out how to improve our business processes, and generally making sure we continue to profit.

And obviously, that’s good! Hoping for the best is what makes us successful as entrepreneurs.

But how much time do you spend preparing for unexpected surprises?

Do you have a plan in place for things that could go wrong? When the market you’ve been successfully selling to suddenly dries up? Or there’s another major change in the search engines and your traffic DIES?

Here are FIVE things you can do to make sure YOUR business is prepared for the worst… and sails through nearly any crisis:

1. Pursue Multiple Markets Using Small Niche Websites

Say you own a website, and with it, you’ve pretty much cornered the market for your single product. Sales are excellent, and the money is rolling in day and night, without you barely needing to lift a finger.

You’re in the perfect position, right?

Well, assuming that nothing EVER changes, then yes, you’ll be fine…

… but what if there’s a sudden shift in the market, and the product you’re selling, which was HOT just a few months ago, is suddenly something you can barely GIVE away? (Think it can’t happen? Just ask anyone who sells large SUVs for a living!)

So how do you prepare for the worst?

I always tell people that the BEST way to protect yourself against fickle markets is to have MULTIPLE small niche sites up and running.

Get one started, and once it’s converting, use everything you learned from that process to start another. And another.

Before you know it, you’ll have multiple sources of income, so if one of your products goes out of fashion, or falls out of favor, you won’t take a BIG hit to your revenue.

But remember: slow and steady wins the race. Don’t try to put together five different websites for five different niches all at the same time.

Work on one, get it converting, put it on "auto pilot," and then move on to site number two.

2. Target Multiple Markets Within Your Niche, Using Custom Landing Pages

Just as it’s a good idea to have multiple niche websites in place, it’s ALSO a good idea to make sure each individual website is targeting many different keyphrases using custom landing pages.

Don’t just create a single landing page for your best keyphrase, then call it a day!

You may get good traffic initially, but some day, that particular keyword or phrase is no longer going to be popular, or competitors will move in and start targeting that same keyword… and your sales will be LOST.

But if you do your research, and understand ALL of the main keyphrases your visitors are using to find you, you can create custom landing pages for each of the main phrases.

That way, if one of the keyphrases stops being productive, you’re still getting plenty of traffic to the other pages.

So to prepare for the worst, stay on top of your keywords — they often change over time — and make sure you’re always targeting as many as possible.

3. Make Sure Your Traffic Is Coming To Your Site From Many Different Sources

Are you getting most of your traffic (and sales) thanks to one or two #1 rankings on the search engines?

There’s NOTHING like free traffic from the search engines, right?

But have you considered what would happen if Google (or one of the other big search engines) suddenly decided to make significant changes to their algorithms (the formulas they use to rank websites), and, without warning, you found yourself on page 37 in the search results?

It would literally be the END of your traffic!

And if you think that will never happen, it already has! Not that long ago, Google made some significant changes to the way they rank sites, and there were a LOT of websites that literally fell off the radar!

So if you’re depending solely on the search engines to drive an endless stream of traffic to your doorstep, right NOW is the time to diversify.

Of course, you can always turn to pay-per-click advertising if there’s a sudden change in your free traffic, but that can be costly, and to be honest, you won’t get as many visitors with a paid listing as you would from a top ranking in the natural search rankings.

So make sure you’re always thinking about other ways to drive FREE traffic (both online AND offline).

Submit your site to as many relevant web directories as you can… participate in online forums (and make sure there’s a link back to your site in your signature line)… give away LOTS of free content (again, with links back to your site)… issue press releases… and so on.

What’s really cool about all of these strategies is that, not only will they help you get traffic from other sources, they’ll actually help you in the natural search rankings, too, so now you have TWO good reasons to do it!

4. Actively Recruit Multiple Affiliates

Got a super-keen affiliate who is responsible for a BIG chunk of your sales?

That’s great, but what happens if that affiliate decides to retire, or try her hand promoting someone else’s product.

You could see your sales dry up literally overnight, and it can often take a LONG time to find another affiliate with the necessary skills (and customers) to replace the lost income.

Don’t wait until you NEED another good affiliate to find one!

Instead, start recruiting a stable of affiliates, so you’ll always have a few solid earners, no matter WHAT happens.

And while it can be tempting to open your affiliate program to anyone who’s interested, you may find that you’ll have more success hand-picking specific candidates.

That’s because a wide-open affiliate program can often draw a LOT of people who don’t really have experience selling online.

So to make sure you always have TOP affiliates working for you, start with a web search of sites that cater to your target market.

Focus on the sites that appear right at the top (or near the top) of the results. These are the savvy marketers, and chances are, they’ll have what it takes to sell for YOU, too.

From there, it’s just a matter of contacting them personally to discuss the possibility of promoting your product.

5. Find Multiple Suppliers For Your Product

What would you do if you discovered one day that the drop shipper or wholesaler who supplied you with your top-selling product could no longer get it? Or they’d gone out of business altogether?

If you haven’t been planning for the worst, chances are you’ll sit there in disbelief, as your revenue drops to zero within DAYS!

But if you had been preparing for the worst, you’d be fine…

… because you’d have backup suppliers for these same (or similar) products. so that the transition from your old to new supplier would be seamless.

Your customers will never know the difference, and your revenue will continue to flow uninterrupted.

Hoping for the best AND preparing for the worst is actually something POSITIVE you can do for yourself and your business. It’s the BEST way to prevent surprises, stay calm when potential disasters hit, and react to income-threatening situations quickly!

To your success,

Derek Gehl

 

3 Easy Ways To Start Selling Online

I’ve been feeling bad all day, because yesterday I may have broke a woman’s heart (don’t worry, Coralynn, it’s completely innocent!

You see, I was chatting to a woman while waiting for my car at the service center, when our conversation turned to business…

… and when she found out what I did for a living, she hit me with THE question (the one SO MANY people ask):

"I’d LOVE to make money on the Internet, but I really don’t want to waste any time on it…

What’s a FAST, EASY way to get online and making money - without doing any work?"

It’s my answer that broke her heart:

"There ISN’T one, and if you don’t want to do ANY work, then an online business isn’t for you!"

 I admit it… I was pretty blunt about it, but I just tired of people assuming that you can start an Internet business while sitting around watching television!

 

When I got back to the office, I began to regret being abrupt…

… and then I started thinking about the ways you actually CAN make money online quickly, without doing too much work (though you still have to be motivated, apply yourself, and spend a reasonable amount of time on it). (I need to say this again - you need to make sure whatever you sell has a market. That’s why a staple of my BeBiz business builder is the research tool.)

 

So here are THREE ideas for a FAST and EASY online business!

1. Have someone ELSE store and ship the products FOR you

One option for getting online and making profits FAST, is to sell products using a drop shipper.

Here’s how it works…

You choose a drop shipper who carries the kinds of products you want to sell on your site. Then, when you make a sale, you charge your customer, and send their shipping information to the drop shipper.

The drop shipper sends the product to your customer, then bills YOU for the order, at LESS than what you charged your customer. Your profit is the difference between what you charge the customer, and what the drop shipper charges you.

Drop shipping is one of the quickest and easiest ways I know to start selling online, because, with no stock to buy or store, there’s very little advanced setup required.

And there are other GOOD reasons to consider drop shipping:

• Affordability — There’s no product to develop, so no costs involved there, and because there’s no stock to buy, there are also NO storage costs.
• Flexibility — You can sell products you otherwise wouldn’t be able to stock yourself.
• Better customer service — Your buyers are still your customers, and you remain their point of contact.
  

Really, the only time-consuming part of setting up a drop shipping business is actually finding a good drop shipper where you can get the kind of products you’re looking for, at a price you can profit from.

Here are some resources I recommend to get you started:

• Worldwide Brands: www.marketingtips.com/worldwidebrands
  
• Doba: www.marketingtips.com/doba

There are also many companies online that provide extensive listings of drop shippers, like Aid and Trade (www.aidandtrade.com), and The Thomas Register (www.thomasregister.com)

 

2. Earn commissions recommending other people’s products

Recommending other people’s products is another great way to get started online quickly and easily.

As an affiliate, you promote another company’s product or service on your website (or to your opt-in list using email marketing), and for every paying customer you refer to the company’s site to purchase, you get paid a percentage of the profits in commission!

And the BEST part is that once you’ve done the research to find a solid market, it only takes SECONDS to set up an affiliate relationship, and start earning commissions!

Other reasons to consider starting an affiliate site?

• It runs itself — Once you’ve completed the setup, you can automate the entire process, so you can earn commissions day and night, year round!
• You can earn MULTIPLE commissions — Because there’s no customer service or payment processing required, you can get away with spending very little time working on the site, so you can easily set up MANY affiliate sites to MULTIPY your earnings.
• As with drop shipping, you have to do your research and find a good program (or programs) relevant to your business.

There are a number of web-based resources for locating affiliate programs. The best include:

• www.associateprograms.com
• www.refer-it.com
• www.affiliatematch.com
• www.cj.com (Commission Junction)

Of course the more traffic you send, the more money you make, so you do need to put some work into creating a site that gets lots of visitors.

 

3. Join the world’s LARGEST online marketplace

If you REALLY want it FAST and EASY, there’s no better way I know of to start making money online (potentially thousands of dollars each month), than to start your own eBay business!

$2,000 worth of merchandise changes hands on eBay every SECOND, so you’ve got a built-in market just waiting to buy what you’re selling! This is actually my FAVORITE way to start making money online as quickly as possible, because, unlike drop shipping and affiliate programs…

… you don’t even need a website to start making BIG profits!

There are other reasons to consider eBay if you’re looking to start making money right away:

• No start-up money required — You can easily create an account with eBay, get your first listing up, and start making serious profits, for just a few dollars
• No business experience necessary – You don’t need to know ANYTHING about running a business to get started on eBay, so it’s perfect for people who are just beginning to work for themselves
• You don’t need to be computer savvy — If you know how to check your email, you have all the computer skills you NEED to start making profits on eBay!

 

ANYONE can start making money quickly and easily on eBay…

… but to make really BIG money, it helps if you understand the more advanced strategies (the ones that very few other "eBayers" actually even know about).

I’ve been working with my in-house team of elite eBay mentors to develop a three-step system that anyone can follow to start making money on eBay…

… and I’ve put them into an online video training series that you can watch FOR FREE!

In the videos, I’ll show you how to AVOID the number one profit-killing mistake that nearly every new eBayer makes… my secret three-step formula for determining if ANY product will be a HOT seller… and review how to use eBay’s new rules to outsell even your TOUGHEST competitors!

You can get instant access to the FREE videos right here.

To your success,

Derek Gehl

Change… It Isn’t Always Popular

Is An "If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It" Attitude Costing You Opportunities?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been talking a LOT about the positive impact change can have on your business, and encouraging you all to look at areas where a quick (or not-so-quick) "tweak" can help your bottom line.

Well, apparently some of you remain unconvinced that change is always good, because I’ve been getting feedback from people who are quaking in their boots at the thought of touching a THING.

So today, I’d like to make my point (and reassure you ALL) with a pretty darn good example…

I’m talking about eBay: a company who already had a clear track record of success, but recently made some BIG changes anyway!

With over 84 MILLION active users spending almost $2,000 a second (that’s $60 BILLION a year, folks!), eBay is one of the true success stories in the short history of the Internet.

Clearly, eBay wasn’t broken. So why fix it??

Well, they’re smart enough to know that resting on their laurels isn’t the way to keep growing, or reacting to the needs of their customers.

So over the past few months, they’ve been making some pretty radical changes.

The biggest change?

They’ve revamped the way their customer feedback system works… and if you know anything about eBay, you know that having an impeccable customer rating is like GOLD, so it was a pretty risky change for eBay, right?

But that’s just the beginning!

They’ve also changed the way some listings get ranked during a search, played around with minimum bid amounts, changed the way you qualify for coveted "Power Seller" status, and a bunch of other things.

And to be perfectly honest, there was a bit of an outcry at first from regular eBay sellers, who accused eBay of no longer caring about the "little guy" who made them successful in the first place.

But here’s the thing about all of this change…

We have a team of in-house experts who provide personal, one-on-one eBay mentoring for people who want to start full-time eBay businesses, and what our mentors have been noticing lately is that these major changes that seem to have upset so many people are turning out to be HUGE WINS for everyone!

We’ve seen that, by fine-tuning their system, eBay is slowly discouraging the mountains of "hobby" sellers who list one lousy, two-buck item once in a blue moon just for kicks…

… and making it MUCH easier for serious professionals who want to use eBay to build a solid, full-time business.

It’s a SMART move on eBay’s part, because they know it’s these pro’s who make them the most money!

(Oh, and just as a side note, this is ALSO an excellent lesson about the value of focusing your efforts on your best customers!

So if you’ve been thinking about making changes to your business, but you’ve been afraid of any negative fallout, remember that change (even change that ruffles a few feathers at first), can usually bring opportunity for you AND your customers!

To your success,

Derek Gehl

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about these changes at eBay, I’ve just finished putting together a FREE video that walks you through the biggest ones, and explains how to use them to your advantage.

It’s part of a brand-new series of three free training videos I’ve created to help everyone cash in on the $60 BILLION that exchanges hands on eBay every year!

You can access all three videos here: http://www.auctiontips.com/

Next Page »