eBay gets a bad press these days, if its not being publicly pilloried for allowing the sales of fake goods or dangerous items it’s being criticised by its own users for the fees it charges or the restrictions it imposes on digital downloads.

A few months back I decided to explore some of the many other online auction platforms that compete with eBay to see if I could save some money on my listing and final value fees. I won’t bore you with the details of my research other than to share the conclusion with you……when it comes to buying and selling collectibles eBay beats them all hands down!

And the reason for this?

In a word……TRAFFIC!

Yes, eBay is head and shoulders above the rest because it attracts way more traffic than any of its competitors.

Don’t get me wrong, extreme caution is required if you are in the market for a designer handbag or memory stick (I should have ‘smelt a rat’ when I bought a memory stick for my sons PSP that was $60 in the shops for the bargain price of $15…..it only lasted for a week) eBay is full of counterfeit goods so BUYER BEWARE!

But when it comes to selling my vintage prints I wouldn’t waste my time listing them anywhere else.

Which brings me neatly to Prints Make Profits my step by step guide to rescuing vintage prints from old books and selling them for incredible profits on eBay. It is now one year old and to celebrate I have added new material and updated it, I have had the sales page professionally rewritten and redesigned and I have slashed the price temporarily to $9.97! (for a 47 page eBook, stuffed with bang up to date ideas and examples this is a SERIOUS bargain.)

I have a couple of tips for those of you who are creating your own eBooks.

You will have seen those great looking signatures at the bottom of sales pages and blog posts (check mine out here). They are proven to increase buyer trust and consequently improve sales (tests confirm that blue signatures are the most effective).  If you’d like to create your own signature, visit mylivesignature.com and the best thing is it doesn’t cost a cent!

My second tip is about finding professional help with your project.

When it comes to the ‘techy’ side of internet marketing I am a complete disaster. Having invested in professional sales copy,  new graphics and created my smart new signature I needed somebody with coding skills to pull it all together and build my new sales page. 

Having built my list of Twitter followers to 2,000+ (if you’d like to find out how and copy my methods pop your details into the boxes at the end of this post for a free copy of my Twitter eBook) so I thought I would Tweet my requirements and I was delighted to receive a direct message from a guy with the right skills in Argentina who did a great job for $30.00! 

I’m still looking for a memorable title for my Twitter eBook, by the way, that doesn’t include the words ‘Twitter’ or ‘Tweet’ which are both registered trademarks…….any suggestions?

I’d like to finish this post with a link to Dan Thompson’s latest blog post. Dan runs d9 hosting with Paula Brett and as well as being extremely knowledgeable he is also very approachable and helpful.

A few weeks ago my son suffered a hard drive failure on his laptop, this resulted in the total loss of all of his files, photos in fact everything stored on his computer. This experience started me thinking about taking steps to protect myself from a similar disaster, the problem was I had no idea how to do this.

Well, coincidentally, Dan suffered a similar fate and decided to post a step by step guide to protecting yourself in the event of a hard drive failure and you can read it here.

I took Dan’s advice, invested in an external hard drive (those of you in the UK should check out Argos for great prices) and can now sleep soundly knowing I have a back up of my entire system, this really is essential for us online entrepreneurs!

I hope you have found a useful tip or two in this post and look forward to your questions and comments.

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