Auctions - Buying and selling ideas

If you are looking for online income then one way is to sell on auction sites , or even on your own site. I wrote previously about using dropshippers to obtain products that you can sell on sites like e-Bay but that's not the only way.

In most countries including the US there will be police and Government Auctions taking place on a regular basis. These auctions are often not well advertised and are often not widely known to the general public. Vehicles are obviously high value items and the margins on selling a vehicle can be excellent - provided that you can obtain them cheaply enough in the first place.

This is where you can cash in from Government Auctions. www.gov-auctions.org for example concentrate on information about auctions of vehicles, trucks and SUV's. the vehicles at such auctions frequently go for massively under what would be a normal retail price. This can be a real opportunity to do some lucrative business. It's obvioulsy mportant though if you are goiing down this route to make sure you take someone who knows something about cars.

The good thing about these auctions is that once you have the inside information about them then you have access to a potentially steady stream of cut proice vehicles which you can then sell and make significant profits.

AdSense in India Fropper.com developments

India’s first social networking website Fropper.com will now be rewarding it's bloggers with AdSense revenue via a program called ezMoney. The ezMoney program will ensure that relevant AdSense ads are posted alongside the bloggers posts and the AdSense revenues generated from these adverts on the bloggers pages will then be shared with the Bloggers.

Joining the ezMoney program will simply involve creating a new a Google AdSense using a ‘Register’ with Google AdSense facility and then linking to the ezBlog. Existing AdSense users will be able to link an existing Google AdSense account to the ezMoney program.

Blogging has become popular among the 40 million internet users in India and increasing numbers are enjoying the chance to speak to others through the medium of a blog. Blogggers on Fropper.com will appreciate the ease of the new program and the chance to earn some income from blogging activity.

Fropper members have access to many pre-existing category templates for their blogging which makes the creation of blog posts on a range of different subjects very easy.

There has been increasing interest in Adsense in India and this development will do much to make income from AdSense further available to Indian internet users.

Search Engine Strategies Conference 2008

The Search Engines Strategies Conference will be held this year from March 17th to March 20th in New York City. This promises to be a major event , in particular given the recent stirring of the waters following the bid by Microsoft for Yahoo! and the rejection of that bid.

Featured speakers at the event this year include Nick Carr, Gordon McLeod, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Tomkins and John Batelle.

This event covers all the significant information and developments in search engine marketing and is a must-attend for the serious search engine marketer and those involved in e-commerce. Registrations are now being taken.

Control your outgoings and look for bargains

Running an online business is about making money. But making money is not just about the money you have coming in its also about controlling and reducing the money that you have going out - reducing your overheads and getting the best bang for your buck.

When it comes to reducing overheads and getting the best bang for your buck you should be constantly on the look out for ways to get any consumables or other products that you need for your business as cheaply as possible. When you are searching to buy stuff online always watch out for the bargains because if you can save yourself some money then in the long run you are making more.

I am particularly fond of finding stores which are running promotions. Many online stores do this but they can sometimes be hard to track down. Finding a store that pulls all this together for you can save a lot of time and energy.

One of the things you might want to think about to give your business a more professional look for example is having properly printed and designed personal/business checks. Checks in the Mail do this and are one of the companies that are listed in Couponchief.com in their Office Supplies coupons and deals section. That site has a lot of stores advertised all of whom are offering coupon discounts on their products through the site with potentially substantial savings. It is probably also worth keeping an eye on the Computers and Software discounts part of that site because there are also some good savings on software there; for example on Dell computer products and HP products. Coupon offers are often time limited though, so don't expect the offer that you see one day to necessarily still be available the next day!

Making savings is not just about savings on purchases of course. You really need to think about all your overheads. When it comes to hosting for example there are a lot of things you can do initially if you find a decent Free Hosting service - and there are some decent ones about. You will outgrow such a service ( hopefully !) in time - but there is no point in spending more than you have to at the start.

Anyway just remember that running a successful business is not only about getting as much money coming in as possible but that it's also about being careful and looking for discounts when you are spending money.

Pepperjam Affiliate network

The Pepperjam network is a relatively new affilliate marketing network that I have recently joined. They don't as yet have an extensive portfolio of advertisers for affiliate publishers to select from but the list is growing regularly.

One of the good things about PepperJam is that once you have appplied and been accepted as an affiliate by any of the participating advertisers you can then create a pepperjam ad block which will include whatever sub-selection of those accounts that you wich to promote.

You could for example join a number of the specialist clothing affilaite programs and then create an ad block which only shows those clothing ads. You will see an example of a pepperjam ad block in the right hand column of this blog. This one isnt highly optimsed yet but it shows you the type of ad black that you can create. I addition most of the advertisers in the network also supply a range of banners, buttons and text links and many allow deep linking.

Many of the advertisers in the network are selling very niche products but this can of course be a distinct advantage when affiliate marketing.



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AdSense allows use with other contextual Ads

This is a reminder for AdSense users who may not have noticed the change that Google has updated its competetive Ads policies. The policy was previously very explicit that ads from other contextual ads programs could not be displayed on pages which were displaying Google AdSense contextual advertising.

Its not clear what prompted this change but the policy has been amended and now allows contextual Ads from other programs to be displayed on the same pages as Google AdSense ads providing that the other ads are displayed in a way which ensures that they are visually distinct and diferent in look and feel from the AdSense ads.

This relaxation of the AdSense policies is a welcome change for AdSense publishers and means that they have more flexibility about the way they monetize their sites.

Adsense results disappoint and publishers worry

In an earlier post I raised the question as to whether the recent turbulence in the stock markets might be a taste of trouble ahead for Adsense publishers. I also noted in my last post that some AdSense users had been reporting drops in AdSense income in recent months. These issues now seem to be coming together with clearer signs of a slowdown in growth at Google following disappointing profit reports for its most recent quarter ending December 2007.

Google's profits were up 17% to $1.21bn (£608m) for the final quarter of 2007 but analysts had been hoping for stronger profit growth and Googles shares fell sharply in after hours trading.

Google's shares have suffered a fall of more than 18% this year due to concerns that the slowing US economy will cause advertisers to cut back spending. The latest results show that Google is not immune to a US economic slowdown.

Google has so often reported very strong profit growth that investors have become used to this and so they are disappointed with the recent results. Google in this sense is a victim of it's own past success. Google's sales for the quarter for example were $3.39bn, a 52% rise - but this failed to impress.

Given the tightening of the economy in the US and worldwide seemeingly endless rising performance can only be squeezed further as advertisers make hard decisions about advertising budgets in a climate where consumer spending is likely to tighten.

Publishers are likely to feel the effects of all this and further reports of publishers finding that their AdSense income has reduced are likely.