What is eBay? An introduction to the World's Online Marketplace

You're familiar with the name. You've seen it in stories on the evening news. You've heard co-workers talking about it around the water cooler. Your niece says she even did her back-to-school shopping there. So what is this eBay phenomenon, anyway?

Simply put, eBay is:

• A place to buy. Get nearly anything you need or want at prices better than you can find in traditional brick-and-mortar or even online stores. Though there are lots of rotten deals on eBay, too, the careful consumer can always come out ahead.
  
  
• A place to sell. Whether you're a bix-box retailer or just an average Joe (or Jane) cleaning out your garage, nearly anything you list on eBay will sell if you're flexible enough about the price. eBay's global reach can even move unusual items that aren't in demand in your own neighborhood, turning paperweights into cash.
  
  
• A place to shop. Because of the immense variety of things that can be found for sale on eBay, many members have discovered that eBay is one of the best places in the world to window or comparison shop. Item listings often include photos, detailed descriptions, and owner experiences. Because you can see lots of the same item side-by-side in various conditions and know what each one sold or is selling for, eBay gives you insight into the real market value or "street value" of most types of goods around the world.
  
  
• A place to collect. eBay is the world's largest marketplace for rare, discontinued, collectible, or hard-to-find items, no matter what the type or price. Whether you're looking for turn-of-the-century box cameras, hand-made Victorian doilies, Soviet army service medals, or 1980s vintage arcade games, eBay will give you a better selection than just about anyone else anywhere.
  
  
• A website. There is no physical eBay store. Founded in San Jose but now operated from several cities, eBay's service exists entirely online, and all aspects of business other than the delivery of bought and sold items themselves are typically handled through the eBay website.
  
  
• Free for buyers and inexpensive for sellers. It costs nothing to become an eBay member, to shop for goods, or to purchase goods from eBay sellers. Sellers pay a minimal amount to list items for sale, and another small percentage of the value when an item is sold. There are no monthly fees or other hidden costs.
  
  
• Green. eBay is has proven to be a boon to the environment. Millions of tons of goods that would otherwise go into landfills or more resource-intensive recycling programs instead find new homes every year thanks to eBay. Some of these goods include consumer electronics items like computer parts and mobile phones that release toxic substances once they're discarded and exposed to the environment.
  
  
• Socially responsible. Because eBay eliminates middlemen and lowers barriers to buying and selling, potters in rural Mexico and bead weavers in central Asia can sell hand-made goods directly and inexpensively to a massive global audience. This brings new economic opportunities to developing areas and increases cultural understanding between populations. eBay has become one of the world's most interesting and exciting trans-national ambassadors.
  
  
• Like the real world in many ways. Just as you'll encounter both honest and dishonest people in the real world, you'll find both honest people and crooks on eBay. Thankfully, eBay's site includes a selection of tools like the feedback system that are designed to help you to remain safe as an eBay member.

In short, since eBay's founding in 1995 it has become the world's largest place to buy and sell, a community of hundreds of millions of regular people, small businesses, and even big businesses from all of the seven continents. Millions of items of every kind imaginable, in every condition imaginable, change hands every day on eBay for prices ranging from one cent to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars (or pounds, or other forms of currency).

According to eBay's mission statement, "eBay's mission is to provide a global trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything."

By nearly any measure, eBay has succeded at its mission beyond its wildest dreams, and it has done so almost entirely in the online universe. But don't take my word for it. Visit eBay and explore one of the largest success stories of the Internet. Then join eBay to start shopping for great deals on your favorite items or to start turning your old junk into fresh cash.

Getting Rid of Spam

Spam has become ubiquitous - one of the facts of life, like taxes. Until strong anti-spam laws are passed and actually enforced, spam proliferation will continue because it's proven to reach a mass audience. If it didn't work, spammers wouldn't waste their time.

Most people, however, see spam as the scourge of e-mail and look for ways to stop it from infecting their e-mail boxes.

There are several ways to block spam from your e-mail inbox. They say prevention is the best medicine, so avoid giving out your e-mail address to unfamiliar or unknown recipients. This has become very difficult to do, however. Spammers can use software programs that troll the Internet looking for e-mail addresses, much like throwing a net in the ocean and seeing what gets caught in it. Nowadays it's almost impossible to shop online without providing a valid e-mail address. Offline stores are even asking for e-mail addresses in exchange for discounts or free merchandise. Realize that what they are doing is potentially opening the door for a flood of unsolicited e-mails. These organizations will most likely turn around and sell their list to someone else looking for valid e-mails. In these cases, it might be wise to have more than one e-mail address, one for friends, family and colleagues and another for unfamiliar sources. There are many free e-mail services in cyberspace to choose from.

However, also know that even trustworthy sources may be unwittingly shelling out your e-mail address. Ever receive an e-mail greeting card? The sender has given your e-mail to an organization that may very well be compiling e-mail lists to sell to spammers.

A second way to stop spam is to use your e-mail application's filtering features. Most e-mail applications allow you to block specific messages. When an offending e-mail comes in, set the filter to block further incoming mails from that sender.

A more aggressive approach to ridding unwanted e-mail is to report the e-mailer to the spammer's ISP. This is not always an easy task. First you must determine the spam's origins. Many of the bigger and more commercial ISPs forbid spammers from using their services and, once discovered, will actively ban the offending parties from using their services. But there are plenty of smaller ones that do not. To find the spam's origins, instruct your e-mail program to display all of the e-mail's header information. View the "Received" lines, and working from top to bottom you can often pinpoint the origin of spam. Spammers don't typically just send e-mails from their ISP to yours; that'd be too easy and apparent. Instead, they channel the e-mails through one or more ISPs in order to obfuscate the origin, but each computer that handles the e-mail will attach a "Received" line to the header. There are numerous Internet resources available for help in tracking down the source of spam.

Don't be fooled by phrases such as "to be removed from this list, click here." Spammers use these types of catch phrases to entice users to respond to the e-mails. The spammers may or may not remove your e-mail from their list. Either way you have told the spammer that your e-mail address is valid and reaches a real person. They know this because you responded and asked them to remove you from the list. This can actually be more valuable to the spammers because they can now sell your address to another spammer with the assurance that the e-mail address is legitimate. So you may have been removed from one list, but there's a good chance that you will end up on another.

Yet another way to deal with spam is to just not be bothered by it. Accept it as a fact of life. Delete the e-mails from your inbox without reading them and move on from there.

Define: SPAM

Did anyone really know what SPAM is? Here's some info for you.

Electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. However, if a long-lost brother finds your e-mail address and sends you a message, this could hardly be called spam, even though it's unsolicited. Real spam is generally e-mail advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup.

In addition to wasting people's time with unwanted e-mail, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Consequently, there are many organizations, as well as individuals, who have taken it upon themselves to fight spam with a variety of techniques. But because the Internet is public, there is really little that can be done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, some online services have instituted policies to prevent spammers from spamming their subscribers.

There is some debate about the source of the term, but the generally accepted version is that it comes from the Monty Python song, "Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam…" Like the song, spam is an endless repetition of worthless text. Another school of thought maintains that it comes from the computer group lab at the University of Southern California who gave it the name because it has many of the same characteristics as the lunch meat Spam:

• Nobody wants it or ever asks for it.
• No one ever eats it; it is the first item to be pushed to the side when eating the entree.
• Sometimes it is actually tasty, like 1% of junk mail that is really useful to some people.

What is SEO ? Care to explain ?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

There are a reported 20 billion web pages on the internet, Google tell us that they are aware of nearly 11 billion of those pages. Search engine optimisation is merely a way of ensuring your website ranks well for the most relevant keywords related to your sites industry.

Creative Confusion offers an SEO service that takes into consideration your other marketing activities (online and offline) and also what your other online competitors are up to. This way we offer a service that actually works for you in the long run.

Common SEO Approach
The following steps are taken to ensure websites rank well in the local and major international search engines;

• Site analysis
• Competitor analysis
• Keyword research and analysis
• SEO recommendations & implemenation
• Link building
• Social media optimisation
• Detailed Performance Reports
• Ongoing Monitoring and Optimisation






Adsense Tip for Today

Basic adsense tips

• Placement of the ads are key, there is no point in placing the ads at the very bottom of the page. Not all people are going to scroll to the bottom of your pages (no matter how good a writer you are), maybe having the ad in the center of the page will help
  
• Type of ad can make a difference as well from the 468 x 60 banner or the 120 x 600 the difference in size can drive a higher click through rate.
• ast tip is to play around with the clolur of the ads. A blue border, grey background and orange text can help to draw attention to the ad and increase the click throughs.

Thanks to Google;

• The wise people at the Google plex have come up with a novel idea, they will place ads on your pages that are relevant to your content, these ads are taken from their large database of contextual advertisers - Adwords.
• When some one visits your site and clicks on an ad Google get paid an agreed amount by the advertiser - Google then shares some of that money with you.
• Google allow you to change the look and feel of the advert that is shown on your site and also the placement, by doing this you can place it in highly visible spots on your page and also use colours that may attract more attention.