The only downside when ordering online is the time in which you will receive your products and the fact that you cannot touch and feel the item you are purchasing. Most companies try to compete with watch other many different ways, but one of the most important ways that could separate 1 company from another is the speed in which the deliver carries out.

I myself am a very impatient person and sometimes prefer ordering from a brick & mortar store just because I don’t want to wait to receive something I want to buy. Not all people are like me though, most people would prefer to wait a few days or a week to receive their item at a cheaper price.

But the question remains, What is the maximum time a customer should wait for their package?

Lets look at it from the customer’s point of view. You order something online, most companies will offer you multiple shipping options from Ground 3-5 day Shipping, to a more faster method which will cost much more than the standard.

The average customer will naturally choose the cheaper one, after-all, they are buying online rather than in a brick & mortar store to save cost anyway. Most people know that standard shipping will usually be no more than a week to receive their package, but what happens if the company does not have that item in stock or something went wrong with the shipment company they used, resulting in a delay in the customers package?

It is always best to contact the customer if a delay on their package is expected as this will at least let them know that their package will be delivered a bit later than usual but most people will understand given their circumstances. Suppose the company has no idea of the delay from the shipping company due to so many other orders needed to be taken care of and that customer is never notified of the delay, you can expect a very upset customer who might call the company to complain or sometimes even screaming at the customer rep who answers the phone.

I believe the most a customer should wait on a package should not exceed 5 business days since this is the time that most people consider to be a standard delivery time. Anything after 5 days, the customer should at least get a call or an email letting them know of the delay with an apology as well.

A customer receives an item, doesn’t like it or finds an issue with the item, decides to file a claim through Paypal, rather than just contact the seller to get help on the item their purchased. Paypal will let the seller know they have an open dispute awaiting your response to the claim, at the same time, while the claim is opened, Paypal will hold the funds to that transaction until the case is closed in your favor.

You decide you no longer want to use Paypal as your payment method and start looking for alternatives to Paypal. The only problem is, with eBay owning Paypal, they pretty much force you to use only Paypal.

Recently, eBay has announced that sellers can now use their own Merchant Account to collect payments from buyers with a credit card , rather han being locked into using Paypal. This is a very good opportunity to not use Paypal and find a more better company who will provide better customer service who handles chargebacks and disputes much more better than Paypal.

Right now, the Alternatives to Paypal are:

Moneybookers - Similar to paypal, customer needs to sign up prior to sending their payments in.

Paymate – another merchant account that allows buyers to pay using their credit card directly with the upside of not having to sign up for an account.

eOnline Data - an eBay approved merchant account that collects direct credit card payments.

Other Merchant Processors - First Data , Paymentech (Chase Bank) , Nova Merchant & Global Payments

These are some of the other ways to collect money from buyers on eBay than being stuck with using Paypal and their horrible customer service.

If you know of any other merchant accounts accepted by eBay, please feel free to post it in your comments.

Note: I would like to thank you for sticking by while I had to take care of alot of issues in my personal life but now I’m back on a daily basis posting new topics on my experience with selling online.

Now, I would like to discuss a subject that cost me $1000′s of dollars and had only benefited me in the short term rather than making a cheaper investment for the long term. I used Google AdWords in the past and though I generated traffic, and sales, but I have also lost money in the process.

I am going to keep this post short and give you the short version of my experience with choosing Google AdWords over SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on my website. With Google AdWords, you are paying for each lead or visitor that lands on your website whether they make a sale , sign up or join any kind program you are offering.

I spent over $80K in 1 year and suspended the very next year due to the Google Money Tree Scam that was going around resulting in 100′s of innocent accounts being banned / suspended without any kind of explanation. You’d think with that kind of money being spent on Google  they would at least send me a warning if I were violating any of their policies, but this goes to show how much Google really cares for their advertisers.

After I lost my Google AdWords account, I had no other choice but to start investing in my own website and hired an SEO company to optimize my website and drive traffic to my website in the long run. I combined this with Google Base to at least compensate for the lack of Google AdWords. Google Base is a shopping search engine which is completely free and lets you upload products from your website which sometimes may appear on google’s homepage.

As for putting SEO work onto my website, I started with $500 a month which is nothing compared to what I spent on Google per month, which would fall into the $6K range monthly on clicks .  Several months later, I decided to add a bit more gas to the fire, so I added an additional $500 per month, totaling $1000 in SEO work on my website.

Though my sales were nowhere near what I generated through AdWords, I noticed my cost started to go down, sales were decent and I would not have to maintain my AdWords account for hours a day. Instead, now I was free to focus on investing into my own website which would benefit me in the long run. I used the extra money to buy custom banners for products I sold on my website and started to learn email marketing.

After 7-8 months my website started to generate around the same amount of traffic I was getting with Google AdWords and I wasn’t paying for each visitor and the conversion rate was higher. I notice when my website shows up in the organic search results (left Side), I tend to get much more sales than what I would get using Google AdWords.

The lesson learned here is “Invest in your own Business, not others”.

Please share your experiences with using Google AdWords and SEO and the differences you have seen with your business.

Now that you have an idea of how to get back on eBay in stealth mode, we will now discuss how to get passed the Paypal security radar as well.

First thing you will need to do is sign up a new paypal account using your new bank account, new business name and new telephone. The name you will be using will be the same as your eBay information (business name that sounds like a persons name – ex. Washington Flowers)

You will be need to confirm your credit card as well, so don’t be afraid, we are only going to be using the new information like bank account, dba name, etc.. from Part 1.

Now, you will have the ability to use paypal as your payment method for your eBay orders. At some point, when you get to a certain amount of funds going in and out of your paypal account, paypal will need to do a check on your business name and info just to make sure your business info matches up and you are who you say you are.

They will also limit your ability to withdraw more than $500  monthly until you supply them with your social security number.

Now, this is the part where we will have to be very careful, you are not going to give them your real social security, otherwise all of this work will go down the drain , and they will find out who you are.

You must go to the IRS website, and you will need to register your dba to obtain a valid EIN number or tax id number for your new business. Once you get this, you will need to include your business dba into the database of Dun & Bradstreet, which is what Paypal uses to determine if your business information is valid and exist.

The cost to include your business dba information into the database, will probably cost around $300, but it is worth it once you start making the sales again on eBay.

Once paypal ask you for your social security, you are going to provide them your EIN or Tax ID you obtained from the IRS website and this will be your social security for your business. If you do everything the correct way, you will now have a new Paypal account with a new eBay account and you are on your way back to selling.

Please note, once you begin selling , its highly recommended you start off very slow, since eBay will be watching your new account as it grows, so don’t sell high priced items, you will want to start selling small low priced items. You may also want to buy things from other eBay users to make it seem like you are on ebay as a newcomer and not a previous suspended user.

Please share your experiences with getting back on eBay, let me any feedback you have.

Microsoft has also announced new tools are available to be able to view facebook previews on its Bing network, and full page weather reports.

Google has also retaliated by now offering enhanced movie listings on their search page as well as new safer Safesearch.

What will Bing do next, and who will actually come out the winner of these 2 top search engines ?

The good thing about all of this is when 2 companies compete with each other, you will most likely see the best of both sides which at the end will only benefit us all.

When I received this eBay suspended email, I freaked out because I already had workers, products, and more investments on my eBay seller account and saw it all vanish in the blink of an eye.

I recently discovered ways to get back on eBay after I was suspended, and let me tell you, it was back to business as usual. Just because eBay suspends / bans your account, doesn’t mean its over, I’ll be damn if everything I worked hard for years, suddenly collapses just like that.

Here are the things you must know and follow in order to get back on eBay again without being re-suspended again for being associated with a suspended older sellers account:

eBay is not stupid, they are actually have some of the most advance techniques in finding suspended users trying to sell again. What most people do not know about eBay is that every email they send you whether its an update on their services, upgrades, or any type of email from eBay will have small cookies or bugs, that will be placed onto your computer the moment you open the email. These bugs will track your entire computer and later compared in their database for recent suspended users and match then catch you if you are not careful.

#1 – It is highly recommended you do a complete format on your computer (this will erase everything that is on your computer so backup everything first)

#2 – You need a new phone number, best bet is to purchase a prepaid card with minutes in order to have a way for ebay to verify you once you register.

#3 – You will need a new identity in order to open up a new sellers account. You ill either need to ask a friend or family member to use their name and address to use for the new eBay account. If this is impossible for you, don’t worry, there is a way around this.

You will need to go into your local area register a new DBA (Doing Business As) with your local country clerk office. The new business name you will be registering can be anything, but I highly recommend you using something that sounds like a first and last name and a business name at the same time (ex. Washington Flowers).

This will be useful so when you sign up a new eBay Sellers account, you can use the first name and last name that you registered the new business (ex. First name –> Washington | Last Name—> Flowers). This is why your new DBA name you will be registering will have to sound like a business name and a persons name, this way the clerk will not think you are registering someone else name on your business, since the person opening the DBA will have to be the owner.

#4 – You will need a new address , as long as it has nothing to do with your old address on your suspended account. To do this, you will need to go to a UPS store and rent a mailbox which would usually cost somewhere from $30 – $60 per month but this will be your new location for the sellers account.

Once the mailbox has been registered in your name (name can be anything, it doesn’t matter right now) then they will give you a key for the mailbox and that mailbox will be assigned a number. You now have an official address for your new eBay seller account, which is the address of the ups store + the number they assigned for your mailbox (ex. 5563 albany street #43).

#5- By now you should have a DBA registered business name, (sounding like a first and last name) , and a new address for your eBay sellers account. Now you need a Business Bank Account under the new DBA name and the UPS Mailbox connected to this bank account.

I recommend TD if its in your area, as they are the only bank that will give you a new debit card the same day you open the account. The business bank account will be registered under your name and also the new DBA name you previously obtained ( the one sounding like a persons name). The bank card will now have your UPS Mailbox address with your real name and your DBA business name on the card as well, either name will be fine when using the card for purchases.

#6 – Now you should have a DBA name, UPS Mailbox address, and a new Business Checking account with your new address and DBA name on the debit car and a computer that has been formatted completely.

Now the last part, you need is a new IP address. Remember, your internet used the last time you logged onto ebay with your suspended sellers account has been saved in eBay’s database. You will nee to obtain a new IP adress to avoid getting caught. If you have DSL, this is very easy, as most DSL boxes are dynamic, meaning the IP adress is always changing.

First you need to go here to this webste – http://www.whatismyip.com and write down the IP address you see, which is your current IP address. Then unplug your DSL and wait 30 seconds and plug in again, you should have a new ip address for your modem. Visit that website again http://www.whatismyip.com/ and check if that IP address sis different, if so then you are successful.

For dialup users, every time you connect to the internet, your ip will always be different so no worrying about anything if you use dialup.

For cable modem users, your best bet is to either get a new modem, or purchase a new router which w ill assign you a new mac number and a new IP address for your internet.

#7 – Now register an eBay account very carefully with a new email address, (Gmail is preferred, as long as its not your old email or even comes close to it). You will need to provide your first and last name which will be the DBA you registered with. Your UPS Mail box will be the address you are going to register your sellers account with and your telephone will be the new telephone number you previously received.

Once your new account is all setup and ready to go, please don’t go crazy and start listing expensive items right away, as you will be watched at least the first month you start selling so start slow and small, eBay will be watching you carefully.

Stay tuned for Part 2 , in which we will discuss how to get around the PayPal / Social Security problem.

Don’t forget to Register for daily articles on how to make money through my own experiences.

The ad I posted had a simple photo of what I am selling and a brief description underneath, followed by a “Click here for more information” Link at the end of the description. I waited an hour to let craigslist approve my ad which they did within minutes of posting.

I also have a tool for my website where I can view my website traffic live in real time within seconds of landing on my website. I was very impressed with the results, and I could see the referral URL coming from Craigslist.newyork and craigslist.newjersey (the 2 states I posted my ads). The traffic would not stop as I would continue to check every 30 -60 minutes and I would always see 4-5 people at on my landing page from craigslist, and as people would leave my website, within 1-2 minutes I would get a couple of more people.

So I decided to take it to the next level and wondered if this could work with just 2 states, how good would it work posting in many more states within the US. The problem is, craigslist has an Anti-Spam system so you could get banned if you posted too many times with the same IP adress.

I decided to do a little research and found a nice program called CLBOT Pro, a Craigslist Auto Poster that would automatically post to everywhere I told it to with the click of a button. So I decided to purchase this software for $99, and purchased the Addons they had which were the IP Adress Rotator and the Plugin for auto captcha since posting requires you to enter a capctha before submitting your post. I basically spent almost $300  and created a few email and craigslist accounts I could use with the software.

The first day I used the software, I let it post all over the US in certain cities and states, since I did not want to over post and risk being banned by craigslist police .

The next day I checked my Google analytics and found craigslist all over under traffic sources, from all over the country. The total traffic I had received from craigslist was 588 unique visitors for the first day.

I was blown away from the results I achieved for so little time and best of all for free. If Google hadn’t suspended me, I would have never researched other ways of getting traffic, thus resulting in me finding the craigslist free posting idea.

We used adwords to bring in traffic to one of our retail websites since last year and never had an issue up until now. Google has been suspending and banning users accounts due to ” Promoting Google Tree ” and not giving them the right to explain or even question before revoking their account.

Unfortunately , we were one of the unlucky users who’ve gotten their account suspended when I emailed them to please give me an explanation, I was simply Auto-replied with ” For security purposes, we cannot reveal the reason for your suspended account” and that’s it! I’ve spent almost a 1/4 of a million this year and they could not at least give me an explanation or allow me to defend myself.

Basically they told me I had violated Google’s policies, or promoted Google money tree scam, which we had never heard of up until this happened to us. Well, rather than sit and cry about it, I decided to open a new account with Microsoft’s Bing network and Yahoo Search Marketing to promote my electronics products.

The traffic is not as much as Google, but at least I did not just sit and let me business fall since 80% of my traffic was through Google ads I have been using. Well, I’m happy to say I had moved on without Google, at least we still have some pretty strong SEO on our website, so we are not out of Google completely.

Sales have dropped a small percentage since my Google Adwords account was banned, but this is a lesson to all who have been a victim of the Google tree scam suspension, there are other alternatives to go, it does not have to end there.

Google Adwords can be very costly, but if done correctly, it can become very profitable for your business.

Last December I had spent over $30,000 alone in that 1 month due to the Christmas rush in 2008.

I used the power of  high CTR to lower my click cost and gain a higher conversion rate, resulting in a higher profit rate during December 2008.

I would like to show you an example of what can happened if you use adwords the correct way. Those of you who have started using adwords and have quit only because you were paying more on ads than what you were making in profit , are going to see how its done the correct way.

Below is a snapshot of my google adwords December 2008 reports so that you can see how much I paid during that month:

Although I had spent $33K during December 2008, I had made close to $150,000 in profit. It was not all that easy, as a good adwords campaign must be monitored daily, sometimes more than once a day in order to maintain a nice flow of clicks while cutting cost on clicks.

Below are 10 ways you can cut cost , get higher CTR and increase your conversion rates. Please note, although these methods worked for me, selling electronics, it may be different for other product categories:

Start off with $0.05 cents per keyword, then in 2 more days increase it to $0.10 cents if you are not seeing any clicks and impressions on your keywords

Use at least 3 different Ads for each campaign, and have them rotate to see which ad gives you the most clicks and a high CTR, then after 2 days start deleting the less profitable ones and create another Ad with a different Keyword position in the header, or the 2nd or 3rd header.

Use {KeyWord} in your Ad header. This is effective because when something types in a keyword that you have in your keyword list, the {KeyWord:} in your header will display in bold the users typed keyword which will increase your CTR.

Disable and Enable adword partner sites. I left mine enabled for 1 week, then another week disabled. I found 2 interesting things during the 2 weeks I have experimented with the two. I found that using only Google Search, without search partners will definitely increase my CTR, resulting in less ppc cost on my keywords and raised me to one of the 3 top positions on page  1.When I had the google partner option selected, I noticed my CTR went down , but I had more clicks and more conversions, due to the fact my ads were not only showing on Google.com, but on AOL, Ask.com, and other search comparison websites.

Use Google’s keyword tool to see which keyword had the most searches by the user during the previous month, and go for those. There were some keywords I would have never thought of alone, and most of them are the ones that converted very well.

Use Brackets []  and Phrase quotes ” “ for your keywords and determine which ones give you a higher ctr and conversion. I made 2 separate campaigns with both using the same keywords, only 1 had [] and the other had quotes ” “. The Brackets [] were getting higher ctr because its much more targeted when users search for a specific keyword. The [] means that which ever keyword you use it on, your ad will only show up if the user types exactly that specific keyword. Example, my keyword is [ipod nano] , someone who types in  ipod nano 8gb , my ad will not even show up unless the user types in ipod nano by itself. The “” quotes on keywords will be the same as [], only this time, your ads will show up if the user types in any phrase you are using whether its in the right order. Example, my keyword is “ipod nano” , my ad will show up regardless if the user types in ipod nano, or nano ipod.

Use Negative keywords in your campaign, always. Negative keywords is basically a filter of keywords you do not want your ad to appear when its typed in. Example, if my campaign is targeting people who are search for a phone to buy, its best to include a negative keyword such as, -free , -ringtones , -plan , -case etc…. This allows your ad to show up  for your keywords and not appear when a user includes any of those negative keywords in their search query. This definitely increase CTR and eliminated a waste of clicks.

Monitor your conversion rate everyday. You must always monitor your conversion rate no matter what, as this is the most important part of using google adwords. If you notice your conversions show $20 per sale , and your initial profit on that item is usually around $10, then you have not only lost that the profit on that item, but you have also lost yourself $10 on top of that. If your conversion rate is low, or conversion amount per sale is higher than your profit, then you are obviously doing something wrong. You need to go back into that campaign and adjust the click cost, change the Ads title and description, to get the best one that works and always try your best to lower the ppc cost on your keywords.  Remember, the more campaigns you have with different products, the less the cost per sale will come out to. I had 10 campaigns running, for 10 products, and 5 of them I had 1 conversion each. This made each conversion around $15 per sale, not bad, giving that my initial profit was supposed to be $30 , so I already had to deduct $15 from the $30 profit on all 5 of the items I sold. Now, later that day the other 5 campaigns started showing conversions as well, so now that $15 per sale from before, automatically turned into $5 per sale due to the other campaigns that helped my average conversion go up. you see , the cost per sale is usually calculated by the total cost of your clicks for the whole entire campaigns that are active.

Keep this in handy so that you wont go broke by google adwords, as I know people who have lost their business because of the high clicks they were paying google. If you use google adwords the correct way, you will make alot of money doing this.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my regular Email Updates!

eBay is the auction giant of the Internet, while amazon is the retail giant, especially when it comes to find books online. Lets compare the strength and weaknesses of the two and see who has the better over the other.

eBay Strengths

• High Traffic (lots of it)
• More Auctions
• accepts paypal ( not really accepts, more like forces)
• over 10,000,000 items to bid on
• can find almost anything in existence on eBay
• the cheapest items you can find
• powerseller upgrades
• user friendly feedback page
• anyone can make money
• easy to start up

eBay Weaknesses

• Terrible Customer Support (almost non existent)
• Too many Scammers
• Easy to get shut down
• Cant leave neg feedback for buyers
• Only accepts paypal
• Expensive fees
• No freedom
• Too much competition

Amazon Strengths

• High Traffic
• Decent Customer Support
• Easy to list items
• No listing fees
• Accepts credit cards
• Funds to your bank or by check
• Huge selection of books
• Less scammers
• Real descriptions

Amazon Weaknesses

• High fees when item sells
• Shuts down accounts when feedback score less than 90%
• Buyers don’t have feedback
• Not as much items as eBay
• Amazon also sells and always has the lowest price

Well, there you have it. If you have any more strengths or weaknesses you feel the two have, please feel free to comment on them. Let the fight begin!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my regular Email Updates!