I know I’ll never get rich at this rate but I’m still super excited! I made $2.55 from ebay’s partner network. This particular site is a wordpress blog about a subject I know very little about - it’s geared towards men and power tools. On this blog I mostly post YouTube videos and little news blurbs related to the topic and then I follow it up with some ebay listings that already have bids and are getting ready to end soon.
I ended up selling five inexpensive items, four were related to my niche and one of the purchases was a boys toy. None of the things that sold were listed on my site but I’m guessing someone must have clicked on one of my items and then searched around ebay for what they really wanted. If you can get a person to click over to ebay and buy anything then ebay will spilt their proceeds with you. The person that bought the five items is a seasoned ebayer with 672 - 100% positive feedback.
My ebay partner network earnings since August 23rd are now $48.55. Woo Hoo!
Here’s an example of what the listings look like. 
DEBT CURE$" THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT"*TRUDEAU.
 | US $21.50 (8 Bids) End Date: Tuesday Jan-06-2009 10:06:35 PST Bid now | Add to watch list |
DEBT CURES MONEY STREAMS NOW! 5 DVD CD TRAINING COURSE
 | US $10.48 (2 Bids) End Date: Tuesday Jan-06-2009 15:47:00 PST Bid now | Add to watch list |
Debt Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About by Ke...
 | US $15.50 (7 Bids) End Date: Tuesday Jan-06-2009 20:52:20 PST Bid now | Add to watch list |
Exerice & Diet
I took my little mama dog and daughter dog for a 1.5 mile walk this morning. It felt wonderful. I’m really looking forward to getting back in shape. My diet is going well. As of last Wednesday I’m down 6 pounds. I haven’t stepped on the scale for about a week it’s that time of month so I figure why bother, it’ll just get me down. I’ll get back on either Saturday or Sunday and I should be down some more and all the water weight will be gone.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Chicky Finance 09.04.08 at 10:19 am
I am joinning you girl!
Kristin 09.11.08 at 10:56 am
congrats… I have been reading your blog and others for some time and reading up on BANS - and I just purchased it. I am working through setting it up, but I have some questions for you if you don’t mind
Are you doing advertising (like google PPC) for the site or are you adding informational articles as well? How are you driving traffic to the site? Can you tell I am a newbie
BTW, I love reading up on your blog updates… my debt is around $55k right now myself not including my mortgage. I am looking for alternative income streams. I do ebay and have sold some stuff on Amazon, but need to do more…. thanks for helping me and inspiring me and letting me know that I too can conquer my debt and I am not alone out there either!
messy 09.11.08 at 12:42 pm
Kristin - Thanks! Do you have a blog? If so I’d love to check it out. Blogging about my debt has helped to keep me accountable, I highly recommend it.
I’m not doing any advertising, to tell the truth it scares me. I really don’t have a budget to drive people to my site.
Here’s what I’ve so far:
1. Find your niche. Here’s what I recommend - Pick something to sell on ebay that goes for $50- $80 dollars. I’ve learned that you really don’t want to mess with really cheap stuff unless you really know what you are selling and can write some quality articles. Or unless you know that the item you’ll be selling will require more like items. Like Mary Kay makeup, the buyer will be needing more than lip liner and something like this niche could easily have sales in the $100’s.
2. I’m no expert by any means, I’m far far from it and still learning myself but I recommend checking out “free keyword tracker”. Type in your keywords - what you’ll be promoting and see how many times a day it is typed in. You’ll want to make note of the top searches and enter these in your meta tags.
3. I have both BANS sites and wordpress blogs with bayrss as a plugin, it makes the ebay inserts above possible. I’m not sure which I like best. Right now I’m thinking it would be best to set up a wordpress blog in your root (main) directory with the following plugins: BayRSS, photo dropper, karailievs sitemap (search engines love sitemaps), all in one seo pack, shortstat or wassup (lets you know how many unique hits you get a day, and social marker (having your blog article submitted to dig, etc will drive traffic to your site). I would then set up BANS in a folder on your site called “store” or “shop”. Then I would have links to my store on my Wordpress blog and links to my blog on my BANS site. Having wordpress would help with your SEO (especially if you use the all in one SEO plugin) and in getting people to your site. Once your site is set up you’d really only have to spend one day a month making 4 posts and just schedule them to post weekly. Google will love you!
4. After you get your site set up and remember this can take awhile. Then you should submit it to FREE directories. Also sign up for Google alerts for the product you are trying to sell. I set up my daily alerts so that Google alerts me when a blog mentions my products. I go check out the blog and leave a comment with the link to my site. This builds backlinks, the more backlinks your site has the more Google loves you and the more they think your site is important but trust me Google will already love you if you have wordpress. Don’t exchange or buy backlinks I think it backfires, or at least that’s what I’ve read.
I use firefox as my web browser and have SEO Quake installed. If I see a blog that’s related to my product I’ll go leave a sincere comment with my link so hopefully other readers get curious and check out my link.
That’s is really all I’ve done to drive traffic to my site.
You should also sign up with commission junction and clickbank. Another tip, you should avoid putting Google Adsense up on your site, even the blog side (if you choose to go this route) for a few months. Its been my experience that Google penalizes a site for having it up when the site is new.
I’m sure you know this but when you pick out your site name make sure you don’t do a copy right infringement. You don’t want to get a cease and desist order.
If you have any more questions just let me know, I’d be glad to help you out. You can also find a bunch of support on the BANS forum.
Check out this site, it has Wordpress on the main or root and BANS in a store. It looks great if you ask me.
Kristin 09.22.08 at 5:17 pm
Messy,
I have read over what you said and I have started working on my own blog to help hold me accountable. One of the things I like about your page is the chart you use to track your credit card debt. How do you do that? Is that a wordpress widget/plugin or do you code it manually?
Just curious… as soon as I get my personal blog done I will email you!
Thanks again for the advice!
Kristin
messy 09.23.08 at 10:29 am
Kristin - Good for you! Me having this blog has helped me with our finances in more ways than I can count. Since starting this blog I haven’t been late for a single credit card payment, where prior to blogging I could have cared less about payment dates and late fees. This sort of thinking is what got me into the credit card mess!
About tracking my credit card debt, I’m not sure if you are referring to the slide bar or the pictures that break down my credit card debt. The pictures come from MINT.COM. It’s a free service and what’s great about mint is not only can you track your credit card spending, finance charges, payments, etc, they will also send you text alerts to your cell phone (if you set up your account this way) for upcoming payments do. I love mint.
If you are referring to the slide bar I’ll have to email it too you, I don’t know how to post it here, it’s not showing up properly.
I can’t wait to check our your blog! Leave a comment here and I’ll be sure to go check it out. My blog is now a “Do Follow” blog so leaving comments here will help build up your backlinks!