Boutique Bargains & Beyond {Blog}
The Latest News On What's Selling on eBay & Amazon | Recent eBay & Amazon News and Updates
Another great affiliate asked for an interview. Check out the questions and answers she posted on her blog. Louise Uithoven created the website Selling Items Online to help people find items to buy and resell online.
Find out a little about what I sell on eBay and how I began selling on eBay.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. People can subscribe to a Feed same as they would subscribe to an email newsletter. Whenever a RSS Feed is updated, the subscriber is then sent an email telling them to check it out.
eBay provides you an RSS Feed automatically when you have an eBay store, so it should already be activated. Whenever you update the listings in your store, your RSS Feed is automatically updated at the same time. However, this only works if you have Store Inventory.
How to check if your RSS Feed is active.
- Go to the Manage My Store page on eBay. Under Store Marketing you should see Listing Feeds.
- Select both ‘Activate your Store Inventory listing via RSS’ and ‘Make a file of your Store Inventory listings available’. Then click Apply.
That’s it, two easy steps. You have updated and made your RSS Feeds active! Now let’s submit your Feed to a few places.
Submitting your Feed to Feedburner.com
One place you can submit your Feed is Feedburner.com, which actually has been acquired by Google! This site is free to join, but you will have to register to be able to submit your feed.
Once you have registered/logged in – there are a few simple steps to getting your Feed burned.
Start by finding your RSS Feed link on eBay. One easy way to find it is to go to your eBay Store Icon and click on it. Then scroll to the bottom of the page. You should see your RSS icon in an orange box.
Click on the RSS icon, and this will show your URL RSS Feed link in the browser. You can also get an idea of what your Feed looks like to others who subcribe to your Feed. Your URL will look similar to mine with ‘rss’ in the beginning: http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?FeedName=StoreItems&siteId=0&language=en-US&output=RSS20&storeId=22585822
Copy YOUR URL for Feedburner.
Then head back to Feedburner.com and submit your feed using these few more steps:
- Select ‘Submit your Feed’ on the upper right of the screen and follow the 3 steps.
1 – Paste your URL into the box.
2 – Select ‘Preview’. You should see a page similar to what you viewed in eBay when you clicked on your RSS Feed icon.
3 – Submit into the Feed burner Directory!
Once you have submitted your feed, you will not be able to submit it again. As long as you keep listing items in your eBay store, your feed will stay updated. You can see how many people subscribe to and view your feeds under the ‘MyFeedpage’ menu, then by selecting ‘My Feeds’.
This is just one of my preferred ways of getting eBay listings out across the internet. This is an easy ‘set it and forget it’ method. Once it is out there and it has been set, you don’t have to do anything – it will just continually keep updated.
There are many, many, many RSS sites that you can submit your RSS Feed on, but keep in mind you need to keep it targeted to your product or it may not be accepted. Feedburner.com has by far been the easiest and most organized. And the best part is, you can show up on Google in their ranking pages…I was ecstatic when my RSS Feed showed up on Google!!
From iGoogle WordMonkey Dictionary:
Purge: noun
3. the act of clearing yourself (or another) from some stigma or charge
4. an act of removing by cleansing; ridding of sediment or other undesired elements
I have recently began dreading opening my email inbox. This may surprise many of my blog followers. I truly enjoy what I do, and it requires a lot of communication, research, and follow-up. However, lately my inbox has gotten over-run with newsletters and offers that I signed up to receive from other online marketers and retail locations.
I can usually easily get through 300 emails a day. It may take me an hour to get through ONE email account, and I have three email accounts that I regularly use each day. One is for personal emails and the other two for business related email. While I think it is important to keep my personal and business emails separate – I no longer need to have two business accounts. Recently, I have found that I am spending more time deleting emails than actually reading the emails being sent to me! One day while I was feverishly deleting those extra emails – I realized I could just as easily be unsubscribing to all these emails, instead of wasting the time deleting them day after day!
So I am purging! I am trying to work smarter about what email I need to receive in order to help my business keep growing. I organized Google (Gmail) for business where I can set up folders for each email to be automatically sent to and filed. Each day I will be able to scan the ‘money maker’ folders and work on the ‘learning’ folders at my leisure. Taking this action is going to save me some time that I can then put into my business.
So if you are feeling discouraged by your inbox each day, go through and purge a few emails yourself. It’ll make you feel better about your email and save you some time in the future.
Hey there! I hope you are enjoying having the kids back in school! I sent my 7 year old to 2nd grade today. Any anxiety she had went away when she saw her girlfriends at the bus stop again for the first time since June. Everyone around here scatters when school lets out. Summer camps, shore homes, family vacations and get togethers. It’s like a reunion the first day of school. Hopefully there won’t be too much girly drama as the school year progresses.
With my daughter in 2nd grade and my 17 month old in for a nice long nap, I sat and enjoyed some quiet time. It was so nice. 
I was able to READ my email in one swoop with no interruptions, print some shipping labels and get my eBay packages ready to ship without little helping hands. It was a nice day and I’m hoping for more quiet time to sit down and take some learning courses this season.
I really thought about how I want to up my Blogging game. I say it time and time again how important it is to have an eBay blog along with your eBay store. I love wordpress. It’s SO easy even the most inexperienced person can tackle it and feel good about it as early as their first day.
But you may be hesitant on where to start? I know, I know – I’ve been there, and some days I go back to basics to fine tune things – just like I plan on doing this fall. My colleague Kelly McCausey has a new course out that you may find helpful. After fully completing the lesson plans – you’ll have raised your level of exposure in the blogosphere, added more than fifty pages of content to your blog, built some great relationships and incorporated new profit points into your content.
Here are some lessons you can look forward to -
It is really a great starting point, and the best part about it is you can always go back and look through each lesson if you get stuck.
Have a whirl at it and let me know what you think!
>>>Blog Internship<<<
I hear a lot of you say how you would like to have a blog to promote your eBay items. But still, there are only a select few that take action. Believe me, I’m NOT a technical kind of gal. It takes a while for things to sink in wne you’re explaining computer lingo to me.
I DO however, have a blog to promote my eBay items despite my technical challenge! It CAN be done, period. WordPress has been by far the easiest for me to learn and expand my eBay sales.
My good friend Kelly McCausey has a real nice -Blog Week- package! It ends on Friday (3/19/10). I strongly suggest you get a move on! It won’t be around again for a while. Check out Blog Week!
And GUESS WHAT?? You’re getting lifetime access to their WordPress Orientation sessions. That means you can pop into any of the live sessions to ask questions about your WordPress blog. You’ll never be left high and dry and always have the help you need. THAT, my friends, is an awesome perk!!
There is SO much included with this Blog Week Package. Now is your chance to get started with the eBay Blog you’ve always wanted!
I speak with my readers on a daily basis. It’s important to communicate and keep up with the ever changing trends. One thing I have been doing for over a couple years now is blogging. It’s SO important and VERY easy. I know some of you still have reservations and feel that you’re technically challenged. It’s OK! Being totally honest, my brain is not wired to be technical about anything. I’m wired enough to know how to understand how things work, but applying the concept is a totally different story! But you know what? Blogging is so easy that even I have figured it out! My eBay blog showcases my items a few times a week. You can check it out here at www.bbalerts.com.
How did I learn? My friend Kelly McCausey has been my guide and business coach for all things Boutique Bargains and a while back she helped me set up bbalerts.com. I’ve been running with it ever since!
You can blog about anything, not just eBay – but keep your blog specific to your niche. Kelly is offering a WordPress Orientation tomorrow – September 19th or September 30th for only $19.00!
In just 3 short hours you’ll learn the following:
Get a complete tour of the WordPress Dashboard
Learn the difference between posts and pages.
Learn How To Use the Visual Editor to create great looking blog posts.
Learn about categories and tags and how to use them!
Learn about Plugins
Learn about Widgets
Learn about Themes
Learn about Exporting/Importing and Backups.
Get Answers to All Of Your Questions!
Sign up for the WordPress Orientation before it fills up! You won’t be disappointed!
Ever wonder how other’s finish those lingering projects in their business?
There are some great topics over at Sparkplugging, in this weeks Spark An Idea Thursday! It’s nice to take an outside look at how businesses get things accomplished. You can take some of these ideas back to your table and apply them to set goals in your eBay business!
Have Fun!!
The Man Page – Sparking an Idea Thursday : How To Finish What You Start!
SOHO Tools & Technology – Spark An Idea: Finish That Project
eBay & eCommerce – Do You Have A Bunch Of Unfinished Projects Lying Around?
The Marketing Eggspert – Finishing What You Started
WAHM 2.0 – Get It Done! How To Keep Momentum in Your Work-At-Home Project
Seems like not long ago we began the pitter patter of a baby blog post out in the cyber world and now – it’s a whole year later! SWEET!!
We’ve come a long, long way and have made great strides in our style, and our design. Our blog has truly grown over the past year. We’ve also recognized what our target market needs and what they like.
That is why over these past few months we’ve really done some sole searching ourselves and have listened to what YOU need.
With the current economic conditions, we know everyone is facing the decision to cut back here & there. So we have made our own decision to cut Boutique Bargains monthly subscription rate IN HALF!
We want our membership to be as affordable as possible in order to support your efforts in these uncertain times. We’re moms too, and we are certainly feeling the pinch these days, realizing we’re all in this together.
Besides the new low monthly rate, we have even greater discounts on our quarterly, 6 month, and NEW Lifetime memberships….
So our recent blogging project brought up some interesting questions that I wanted to share. It’s nice to see so many of you that are interested in bringing your selling to the next level. However, I have to be honest, I expected a lot more of you to actually jump in to having your own blog! I know it’s a change, and you’re all so used to listing away on eBay. But quite honestly, it’s about growing your business and stepping outside of the eBay boundaries.
On to the blogging questions that inquiring minds are asking:
A: You should spend about 20 minutes a day working on your blog. Whether it’s writing one post or five, you want to get in the habit of paying attention to your blog every day so you consistently have fresh content for your readers.
A: YES, I can’t say it enough. There’s an addiction about blogging that I can’t quite describe… I promise! Once you get it all set up, you’ll find your groove.
A: That’s OK, you’re not the only one. You can easily leave it up to the person setting up your blog for you. Web support is a god send for us non techie people.
A: It doesn’t have to be and it’s a very wise investment that you will have with you for a very long time. Our pals at Freshnets can hook you up and the momwebs hosting service is very affordable. We use WordPress Blogs and they ROCK!
A: You can if you absolutely want to have a different name, but it’s not necessary. I think it’s personal preference. Either way, your domain name should be short and easy to remember.
A: Absolutely!! This isn’t something that we would leave you hanging with and we’re experienced enough with it that we can get the kinks out if you have writers block. And don’t forget tech support is always there for technical issues.
A: LOL!! So funny, I thought I wouldn’t know how to put a blog post together to save my life, but it’s a lot easier than you give yourself credit for. Your focus is eBay! You’re going to be blogging about your items, your experiences, sharing your tips and connecting with other eBayer’s out there.
In the near future, I’ll be sharing with you the results of my eBay blog and how they’ve improved traffic to my listings on eBay. It’s quite impressive and I’m thrilled! I’m waiting for a full months worth of data, so the results will be in pretty soon…
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