class="bi x0 y0 w0 h1"
How to Make Money Online
with eBay, Yahoo!, and Google
A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Three Online
Services to Make One Successful Business
This page intentionally left blank
How to Make Money Online
with eBay, Yahoo!, and Google
A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Three Online
Services to Make One Successful Business
Peter Kent
Jill K. Finlayson
McGraw-Hill
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Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permit-
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one of the world’s largest VC firms. Kent currently consults with businesses about their Internet
marketing strategies, helping them to avoid the pitfalls and to leap the hurdles they’ll encounter
online. For more information, visit />Jill K. Finlayson is one of the founders of M Networks, a media company that provides training
seminars, books, and distance learning on online retailing, in addition to hosting the Small eBusiness
World Conference and Expo designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Finlayson
worked at eBay from 1998 to 2003 as Senior Category Manager in charge of the Toys, Dolls,
Hobbies, and Crafts businesses, a segment that generates more than $1.5 billion in transactions
annually. Finlayson is co-author of Fundraising on eBay (McGraw-Hill), and she writes much of the
curriculum and training materials for eKnowledge Institute’s Academy and Business School courses
in eBay. Finlayson also worked for The Learning Company, an educational software company. She
lives in Fremont, California, and is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.
Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. Click here for terms of use.
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For Nick and Chris
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ix
Contents at a Glance
PART I Building an eBay Business
1 How Your Business Fits Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Creating Your eBay Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3 Preparing to Sell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4 Planning Your Shipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5 Listing Your Items Effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6 Monitoring, Modifying, and Managing Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
7 Payment, Shipping, and Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
8 Automating and Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
9 Opening an eBay Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
10 Marketing, Keywords, and Promotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
11 Power Selling, Consignment Selling, and Analyzing Your Business . . . . 127
PART II Building Your Yahoo! Store

To Ship or Not to Ship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
CHAPTER 2 Creating Your eBay Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Why Sell Through eBay? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Registering as an eBay Member . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Setting Up a PayPal Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Using My eBay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Creating an About Me Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Using ID Verify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Getting Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
CHAPTER 3 Preparing to Sell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Learning How to Buy on eBay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Understanding the Selling Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Using Buy It Now—BIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Different Quantity Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
eBay Fees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Selling Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Timing Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Setting Your Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
CHAPTER 4 Planning Your Shipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
The Internet Shipping Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Picking Packing Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Packaging “Best Practices” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Contents
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xii How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo!, and Google
Who Will You Ship With? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Estimating Shipping Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Calculating a Packaging and Handling Fee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Considering “Shipping Strategies” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Leaving Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Handling Nonpaying Bidders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Using the Unpaid Item Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Relisting the Item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Doing a Second Chance Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
CHAPTER 8 Automating and Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
The Different eBay Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Using Turbo Lister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Contents xiii
Using Selling Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Using Seller’s Assistant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Using Third-party Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
More Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
CHAPTER 9 Opening an eBay Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Why Set Up an eBay Store? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Pushing People to Your Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Selecting a Store Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
eBay Store Fees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Monthly Fees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Listing Upgrade Fees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Final Value Fees—Sales Originating Through eBay . . . . . . . . . . 111
Final Value Fees—Sales Originating Through Your
Own Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Setting Up Your Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Customizing Your Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Listing Your Items for Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
CHAPTER 10 Marketing, Keywords, and Promotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Using eBay Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Using Store Promotion Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Setting Up Cross Promotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Adding an Item to the Product Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Working with Options—Monograms, Inscriptions,
Incremental Pricing, and More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Modifying Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Publishing Your Product Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Viewing the Data in Your Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Exporting Product Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Importing Product Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Dealing with Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Creating Section Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Entering Inventory Quantities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Creating and Importing the Data File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Publishing Your Import Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Importing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
CHAPTER 14 Working in Store Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Moving Around in Store Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Understanding Your Store Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Using the Contents Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Learning the Edit Toolbar Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Planning Your Strategy—to HTML or Not to HTML? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
CHAPTER 15 Creating the Home and Section Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Setting Up the Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Using HTML in the Message and Other Text Fields . . . . . . . . . . 193
Moving and Removing Elements on the Home Page . . . . . . . . . 194
Making a Product or Section a “Special” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Creating and Editing Section Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Working with Images and HTML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Placing Other Products on a Section Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Moving Products Between Sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
CHAPTER 16 Modifying Page Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Setting Up a Credit-card Merchant Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Credit-card Transactions Explained . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Already Got a Merchant Account? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Merchant Account Fees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Setting Up Credit-card Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Configuring Credit-card Verification (Risk) Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Understanding Address Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Understanding Card Verification Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Selecting Risk Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Selecting Payment Methods: Credit Cards, PayPal, and More . . . . . . . . 238
Setting Up Your Order Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Setting Up Notification and Feedback Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
CHAPTER 19 Configuring Shipping, Taxes, and Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Specifying Where You Ship—Foreign Orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
xvi How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo!, and Google
Setting Up Shipping Methods and Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Using UPS OnLine
TM
Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Creating Shipping Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Defining Shipping Rates and Creating Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Configuring Shipping Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Defining Shipping Confirmation Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Managing Sales Tax Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Setting Up Sales Tax in Merchant Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Using the Shipping & Tax Test Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Configuring Inventory Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Configuring Database Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Entering Inventory Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Opening for Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Calculating Breakeven Click Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
What’s the ROI? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Calculating Click Value and ROI Later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
So, Can You Make Money? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Understanding Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Broad vs. Narrow Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Doing a Keyword Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Checking Bid Prices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
CHAPTER 23 Setting Up a Google PPC Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Selecting a Location for Your Ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Selecting the World or Specific Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Selecting a Region or City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Selecting a Very Precise Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Creating Your Ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Entering Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Bidding on Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Specifying Your Daily Budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Entering Your Account Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Modifying Keyword Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Changing Bid Prices for Specific Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Changing Target URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Keyword Matching Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Understanding Expanded Matches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Creating New Ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Turning Off “Content” Placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Writing Effective Ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Google’s Editorial Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Going “Live” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
CHAPTER 24 Managing Your PPC Campaigns and Measuring Results . . . . . . . . . 319

Understanding the Role of Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Getting Links to Your Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Registering with the Search Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
CHAPTER 27 Using Affiliate Programs and Other Marketing Techniques . . . . . . 355
Using Affiliate Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Using Coupon and Discount Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
Promoting Through Newsletters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Creating Your Own Newsletter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Content Syndication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Marketing Through Discussion Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
Creating Your Own Discussion Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
CHAPTER 28 Selling Through Amazon and Other Merchant Programs . . . . . . . . 365
Selling on Amazon.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Different Ways to Sell Through Amazon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
Becoming an Amazon.com Marketplace Pro Merchant . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Using PriceGrabber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Using Half.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Using Overstock.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Using uBid.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Using SmartBargains.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Using Other Merchant Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Contents xix
CHAPTER 29 Cross-site Merchandising and Promotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Understanding Channel Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Using Your Brick-and-mortar to Promote Your Online Site . . . . . . . . . . 376
Giving People a Reason to Visit Your Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Using Your Online Site to Promote Your Brick-and-mortar . . . . . . . . . . 379
Using eBay to Push Visitors to Your Web Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Using Your Site to Help eBay Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

of thousands of businesses use Yahoo!’s e-commerce tools to manage their online sales?
■ Google A business needs traffic, whether it’s “foot traffic” to a brick-and-mortar
store or web traffic to an e-commerce store. Google—and the other “Pay Per Click”
advertising systems—can help you generate that traffic.
We’ve split this book into three main parts. In Part I, you’ll learn how to begin working
through eBay, selling your wares through auctions, Buy It Now sales, and the eBay store.
In Part II, you’ll find out how to set up a Web store using Yahoo!’s low-cost Merchant
Solutions software.
And in Part III, you’ll find out how to generate traffic through Google’s AdWords Pay Per
Click system…as well as how to get traffic from Yahoo!’s Search Marketing Pay Per Click
system through free search-engine traffic, from the price-comparison sites, and via a variety of
other online marketing techniques.
So let’s not waste time…your future beckons. Turn to Chapter 1 and find out how to get
started.
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