Fun4TheMoney

Search engines don't like them, either.

Very creative. Unfortunately, also very slow to load for us country bumkins with no DSL and dialup slowere than Christmas. I tried to check the size of your images and got your copyright notice, instead. VERY SMART! I know it's a difficult choice to compromise on the quality of your images, but the Photoshop, "Save for Web" option can reduce the file size without too much loss of quality. If you don't want to do that, maybe you could put something simpler and quicker on your home page, so everyone can get a taste of your work, then link to the slower stuff from there--after you've got us hooked. Suz

Is anybody out there an editor at DMOZ? I have a question and couldn't find any FAQ over there. If I sign up to be an editor, will my submissions to other categories get preferential treatment or can I submit directly to other categories? I found a category that has 0 entries--Knitting Articles. I'd love to sign up for that, but my main mission is to market Fun4TheMoney.com. If the knitting thing won't get my real site listed then I'll have to pick a category where Fun4TheMoney will fit in. Suz

You mean Tax ID#? If you don't have one, use your social security #. Suz

My article on Fun4TheMoney.com I think I've developed a whole new easy, fun knitting stitch/style, but my article felll flat when I sent it to my friends. Please read and let me know what I did wrong. Is it confusing? Are my feeble attempts at humor really stoooopid? This is really, seriously, new, fun knitting. I want to link this article to my daughter's eBay listings for knitting needles, but I dont want to embarrass her or myself. I also want to get the word out to knitters everywhere that there's finally a no-brainer stitch that looks great for making just about everything without counting or following a pattern. Please pass this on to your knitting friends and let me know what to change in this article. TIA, Suz

DMOZ Search Engine list You're welcome. I also went over to DMOZ.com and got a list of their search engines. I found several in that list that weren't in the "I Need Hits" list, so now I have a few more marks on the wall. Maybe some day I'll see a real visitor from all this work. Suz

I need to qualify my last message. I've had excellent experiences buying and selling, but I'm only interested in "tame" merchandise--baby boomer stuff. Our son buys and sells trendier generation X merchandise and he has had a few problems. The younger crowd tends to be more impatient and not as easy to deal with. The same seems to be true of the people who sell to them on a regular basis. If your tastes in merchandise--either buying or selling--lean too far over the ragged edge of mainstream, you might need to be a little more careful on eBay.

Ah, but they're fighting over those books--that's a good thing. We had $150 worth go off on Tuesday. If you check back on Sunday, you'll probably see bidders fighting over the rest of our stuff. Almost everybody waits until the last minute to bid, now. As far as scams go, I've never been involved in any. Neither has anybody I know personally. When I was a Power Seller, I had access to the VIP message boards. I heard of some over there, but they were just nasty plots to harass sellers. The only real scam I ever heard of was just a rumor, and it was over a year ago, so even if it was legit, it may be gone, now. That scam had something to do with laptop computers. The way I heard it, someone was taking people's money, but never delivering the goods. If you check my feedback, you'll see over 1100 of them. Since some people don't bother with feedback, that probably means I've had around 2,000 transactions. I've only had one bad experience in that whole time, and that was just a grouchy old man who moved and didn't change his address with PayPal. I got stuck paying for double-shipping on a big, heavy item. One bad apple in 2,000 isn't a bad average. Suz

I also use IE 6 for several reasons. I like being able to keep several windows open, even when I log off from aol. Also, I do some of my web development on an old laptop that won't hold Dreamweaver. With IE I can do a View Source, which opens my web page in Notepad, so I can add or change my code, then ftp from the little old machine, when my DH is playing games on desktop <sigh>. I can also get ideas for meta tags, etc., by sneaking a peek at other people's code. Suz

I can't help with the Google question and how to build your own, but the above link takes you to a site that should answer all your questions about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Suz

I can't get to your site. I get a "cannot display" error. Are these sites down a lot? Suz

I've never worked very hard at these, and it shows. I got one check from Amazon a few years back and that's it. Please share your experiences--good and bad--and your favorite programs, if it isnt a well-guarded secret. If it is, I promise never to tell a living soul. Suz

Whatever you do, make sure their's a "Home" link on EVERY page and that your logo is always a link to your home page. I know you're thinking "DUH" but I can't tell you how many times I've done a search for something that took me to somebody's sub-sub-sub page, with no link back home. If I didn't know how to lop off the end of their URLs, they would never have gotten my traffic to their main pages. Suz

A business card only has room for a few lines. If one of those lines is a URL, that gives the company an opportunity to tell their whole story--in style--better than a flyer. Suz

ePennyPress Bravenet offers all kinds of free tools, including forums. their stuff isn't very sophisticated, but it is all customizable and easy to install. They'll bombard you with ads, but that's the "price" we pay for "free"stuff. what I like about their tools is that they have so many interactive freebies. You could set up a website for someone who could never maintain a real site, but they could learn how to use the tools and have a great time playing webmaster. I have an affiliate deal going with Bravenet, so please click through on my link, then click on the banner to sign up so I'll get credit for it . It's free. Suz

Oops! I forgot to say what we sell. We made our big bucks on sporting goods--mostly exercise equipment, but also bicycles, skis, snowboards, etc. I don't recommend it unless you're as desperate as we were. Our profit margin was huge, but our workload was huger <grin>. Sometimes my poor husband would spend 3 hours cleaning and packaging those big, heavy things. We had almost no competition, however, because nobody else wanted to work that hard. It almost did us in, but eBay saved our family farm. OTOH, there was the time we bought a baseball card for 10 and sold it for over $1,000. for anybody just starting out on eBay, I'd recommend selling little stuff that you know all about and really like. It's a good way to support a habit--like videos or computer games. Sell of your old ones to get $$ to buy new ones. We buy our merchandise at garage sales. Once you get into it, you'll know which neighborhoods have the best sales, and how to buy. Hint: pile up everything you want and ask how much for the whole lot. You'll get a much better deal than by asking for individual prices. Suz I just recently joined though I am pretty sure that I used to have an Id on there. 41738[/snapback]

I Need Hits I went to I Need Hits last night and registered my new site. It took about an hour to submit to 20 search engines. About half of them said it would take several weeks, which is what I expected. What I didn't expect was 75 hits on my new site this morning. I haven't published this site yet, because it's still under construction, but I did want to get the ball rolling on site submission. I never expected results so fast. These hits were probably all automated crawlers and such, but it was still a real hoot to see my hit counter going crazy. Suz

Fun4 The Money I LOVE Dreamweaver. Frontpage STINKS! Search engines don't like frames, which is a Front Page mainstay. If you don't want to spend any money at all, and you don't mind the work, you can use Internet Explorer to design web pages (View/Source). That's also a great way to learn HTML and meta tags. Find a site you admire and view their source code to see what they're doing right. Suz

We've been selling on eBay for 4 years. We were Silver Power Sellers for 2 years, before my husband retired, with eBay being our sole support. I even wrote an ebook about selling on eBay. Both our son and daughter sell on eBay. eBay has saved our financial butts so many times I can't count them. Whatever business you're in, you can probably find a way to use eBay to generate more traffic and sales for your website. Check out WAHM.COM (Work At Home Moms). That heads-up lady auctions off ads on her website and they all get bids--some go for over $100. What a win-win deal. She gets free publicity, increased traffic and makes money, besides. Now she's got me promoting her site, too. LOL!

Make sure you have meta tags in your header and real content on your site. Give out free samples and put "freebies" in your keywords. Use eBay. Their traffic is incredible. Where else can you get circulation in the millions for a quarter a week? List something dirt cheap, then be sure your URL is in your email sig, so whoever asks questions or wins your auction knows you have a web site. Sorry I can't help with the rest. I'm just getting into marketing and advertising and never pay for anything if I can help it. Color me CHEAP!