Ebay Ebook Success: Using Reviews and Guides to Promote your eBay Store

In my last article I discussed how to effectively promote your eBay store using your About Me page. In that article I outlined that it was one of the most underutilised promotion opportunities on eBay. Ebay Reviews and Guides are a new introduction by eBay, but are just as underutilised by eBay sellers as the About Me page. In this article I will discuss how you can utilise this excellent feature to promote your eBay store:

1) What is an eBay Review or Guide?:- A review is simply your own personal review of any product on the eBay market, for example a CD, DVD, book etc. You give the product a rating out of five and then write a brief personal review about what you liked, didn't like etc. A guide can be on absolutely anything you are qualified to give advice on. I convert these newsletter articles into "Ebook Success" guides on eBay which complement my eBay store. However, guides don't necessarily have to relate to your eBay store. If for example, you enjoy fishing then you could write guides related to fishing.

2) Why should I write an eBay Review or Guide?:- I would personally recommend writing guides over reviews. The reason for this is that when you write a review the only credit you receive is a small link to your eBay feedback profile. When you write a guide you receive a link back to your eBay feedback profile, eBay store, eBay About Me page, and some of your active listings. Anyway, whether you choose to write a review or guide, the reason for doing so is promotion. People reading your review or guide will be made aware of your eBay presence, may click on a link to one of your pages, and this may even lead to a sale.

3) What should I write my eBay Review or Guide on?:- As I mentioned earlier I write "Ebook Success" guides which are basically converted copies of these newsletter articles. However, the possibilities are endless. Just think of your hobbies, your job, or anything else which you know enough about to write a series of guides on. Everyone can write about at least ONE THING. Once you have found your topic, break it down into small, relevant guides. If you're really, really struggling to find a topic for a guide, then write a review on a product that you own. Although the promotion will not be as great as the promotion you would receive from a guide, it still provides you with free promotion.

That's all there is to it. Keep writing regular guides and if they are good people will rate them positively. The more positive ratings you get, the higher your reviewer rank gets. Also, the more guides you write, the more pages you have on eBay promoting your listings, your store, and your feedback. Since reviews and guides are relatively new and haven't fully taken off yet, it's best to get in now, while the majority of eBayers are not writing reviews and guides. That way when it takes off on a larger scale, you will already have a solid foundation upon which to build. To write your own eBay review or guide go to http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/. If you want to see view my reviews and guides for some inspiration then go to http://search.reviews.ebay.co.uk/members/ebookcavern. This is a promotional opportunity that you should not pass up. For five minutes writing, you can have a free, long term, promotional tool at your disposal.

»»  lanjuuut...

The Right Way to Mass-Submit your Article

Submitting articles to article directories is often a tedious process that involves author registration, proper formatting, and familiarity with the editorial guidelines set by each publisher. There are now hundreds of article directories that cater to both the general and niche markets. Because of the desire of authors to get their articles published on as many places as possible and the sheer number of article directories on the web, some authors have turned to automated submission software and third-party submission services to hasten the submission process.

The use of third-party submission agents presents an ethical problem. While some article directories don't care how articles are submitted to them, as long as the articles meet their editorial guidelines, many rely on authors as a major source of traffic to their sites. They want you, the author, to browse their sites, read their submission guidelines, and become a regular visitor to their sites in return for distributing your article.

Any article directory that cares about the quality of articles they publish will spend some time to review each submitted article before publishing it. As an article publisher myself, I can attest to the work involved in reviewing, reformatting, and correcting minor errors of every article submitted to me. Since I get hundreds of submissions every day, I am forced to reject any articles that appear as if they've been submitted by a third party or through an automated submission process.

It's not exactly rocket science to distinguish between an article submitted by hand and one submitted through an automated process. The software-submitted article may be improperly formatted, suggesting that the submitter never bothered to read the submission guidelines before submitting their article. It may be missing a required field, or it may be submitted to the wrong category. Different article sites stipulate different guidelines and requirements for what they accept. It's not possible for an automated submitter to take into account all of these differences to allow you to submit to several hundred directories with a few clicks of the mouse button.

Many article publishers do not even allow manual submissions by third-party submission services. A common telltale sign that an article has been submitted through a third-party service is when a single author account is used to submit multiple articles with different resource boxes. Submissions from multiple author accounts from a single IP address are another indication of third-party submission.

Any software program that promises to "do 99% of the work for you" does nothing more than spamming your article all over the web. Some of these spam machines even post a link along with your article back to the submission software. This is a sure-fire way to get your article rejected and even get you banned from some directories.

Ideally, authors should submit their articles by hand. Meanwhile, there is an understandable need for a way to quickly submit to a great number of sites. An acceptable compromise between laborious manual submission and a completely automated process is a semi-manual tool that allows you to browse article sites as well as quickly submit articles to them. Article Submitter is an inexpensive semi-manual submitter that stores your article, personal information, and resource box as you visit each article site. When you're ready to submit your article, the software auto-fills the submission forms for you, eliminating the need for tedious copying and pasting. The whole process is very much like manual submission, only a lot faster.

»»  lanjuuut...