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Continuing the lessons I’m learning from the Stompernet Orlando presentation DVDs, this time I have some tips for all you eBay sellers or would be eBay sellers (and you will want to be one after reading this!).

I have to admit I was quite blown away by the eBay presentation by Andrew Lock. I’m not sure if everything he presented is accurate, but it sounds like it could be, and here’s the most startling fact - eBay currently does more daily searches than Google does. Let me say that again. EBay currently does more daily searches than Google does.

What that means is people go to eBay and type in more searches for auctions than the number of searches conducted at Google. I can’t verify that with any accuracy and I don’t know where Andrew is pulling his figures from, but even if it’s not spot-on true, the fact that eBay gets a stupid amount of traffic is what we need to take notice of.

Here’s another good reason to consider the opportunity on eBay. All those searches are product related. Not only does eBay potentially do more searches a day than Google, every eBay search is a product related search by someone looking to buy something - Google certainly can’t lay claim to the same thing. As popular as eBay is already, given this information, I believe it’s the most under realized opportunity on the web for Internet entrepreneurs.

It’s amazing as Internet marketers we spend so much time finding ways to convince Google to send us traffic, while a huge monster source of leads is sitting inside eBay, if we just take the time to learn how to tap it.

Capturing Emails Using eBay

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I’m sure this one is going to be all over the blogosphere soon enough - it’s already hitting the social networks and the Internet marketing forums.

John Reese, Internet marketing mega-guru, has released the first part of his master plan for Income.com, which is a blog traffic exchange widget called BlogRush. You can read over the release process as John talked about it on his blog over the past few days.

BlogRush is essentially a way to syndicate content across blogs. It reminds me a lot of a service that one of Mike Filsaime’s websites offers where you can put a widget on your website to display text box ads and for each impression you delivered from your site, your ad would be displayed on other sites who used the widget. Looking back further and this concept was taken from the old banner exchange networks, where you receive exchange credits for showing banners on your website, which were “cashed in” by showing your banner across other sites in the network.

About a year ago when I first heard about Mike’s system I thought to myself the concept would work well for blogs too and lo and behold, BlogRush has made it a reality.

BlogRush is a simple idea. Place the BlogRush widget on your blog and earn a credit each time it is displayed when your page loads. You are rewarded by using your credits to display your blog content on other blogs that use the widget. This happens automatically and it’s set and forget - stick the widget on and you start earning credits immediately.

BlogRush works by taking your RSS feed content and syndicating articles across the network at blogs that are topic-related to yours. Using a combination of context matching and the category you choose for your blog, BlogRush attempts to place your articles on blogs that it thinks are similar to yours. This should increase the click-through rate and I’m sure as more blogs join and the technology improves it will be possible to quite tightly match content, probably not quite to the level of Google AdSense, but certainly better than just random impressions.

Referral System

BlogRush has a ten-tier referral system, which means you earn credits for bringing people into the program up to ten times below you (yes, it’s like a super pyramid scheme or MLM program). When someone you bring into BlogRush begins earning credits you are rewarded with credits. When you referral brings in someone else and they earn credits, you get some more again, and so on and on until ten levels below you.

Obviously because of this structure it pays to join and promote early before everyone is on board, hence I’m writing this post on the weekend :).

Will You Get Traffic From BlogRush?

The short answer is yes, of course you will get some. However don’t expect miracles. Even if the uptake on BlogRush is significant, which it will be, in my experience the click-through rates on these sorts of traffic exchanges are terrible. Even with BlogRush’s context and category matching, the placement of widgets like these in sub-prime real estate (usually in sidebars below the fold, just like on my blog), means that they don’t get a lot of attention in the first place and there are five links competing for what attention there is, so the chances of a visitor clicking through to your blog is low.

That being said, as with all small communication channels for bringing traffic, which BlogRush is one, the effect of compounding does make a difference and all traffic helps, so it’s worth giving it a shot.

If you would like to get in on the BlogRush and grab referrals before everyone is on board, now is the time to join and stick the widget up on your site. Here is the link -

www.blogrush.com

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My good friend Jason Katzenback of Portalfeeder fame contacted me about a new website he’s launching along with some other partners aimed at providing an outlet for Internet marketers to sell their products.

The site is called DealDotCom and here is what it offers to the public:

DealDotCom.com is the place on the web to find all the Internet Marketing products you really want for rock bottom prices. We sell products and services that help save you time and money when it comes to running your online business.

However the site isn’t live yet to buy products (September 18th is the grand opening) and at the moment since this is so new, you have a great chance of getting in early as an affiliate and to list your own products for sale.

If you have any Internet marketing products and you would like to add another potential stream of sales and source of affiliate referrals, now is a good time to join DealDotCom and list your wares. When the doors open, given the caliber of people promoting this, there will be some serious traffic heading to the site, so it poses a good opportunity for exposure for your product(s), especially if you act quickly like I am now.

Here’s my personal invite if you want more info -

http://www.dealdotcom.com/invite/2126/

I’m currently working with Jason to craft the right kind of offer for my blogging products and who knows, if I make a sale or two down the line it’s worth my time.

The only question I have - what’s with these dotcom.com domain names - seems a tad confusing if you ask me :).

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I’m not sure this will teach you a whole lot about Internet business but hey, you get to see what I had for lunch. Give a guy a camera and this is what happens…

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The students who joined Blog Mastermind right at the beginning have just entered the traffic building and marketing phase of their training with me (lesson 11 onwards).

I’m very excited to finally enter this part of the program because it’s the area most people fail and the single biggest reason why most bloggers don’t make money. While I’m not expecting to perform miracles, since no matter how much training I provide it’s still up to the individual blogger to execute on the ideas, I hope I can help bring a good chunk of the students into profits as a result of what they learn in this section of the course.

The 4 Ways of Building Traffic

In lesson 11 I introduced students to the 4 different ways you can build traffic to a blog. I won’t repeat the whole lesson here, but I want to introduce you to these methods so you gain an understanding of what your options are for building traffic to your blog and point out one really important mistake most bloggers make that forever stunts the growth of their blog.

The four methods for building traffic to a blog are -

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