After one month, here are the results of the eBay Classified experiments:

Classified Ad 1 – Lead Generation

Over the 30 Day period that my ad was up and running, I had 60 opt-ins from my ad.  That’s an average of 2 per day over the course of the ad, however most of them came in the first week and the last week that the ad appeared.

Classified Ad 2 – Affiliate Marketing

For an outlay of $19.90 (2 ads) I made $195.57 in affiliate commisions for the 30 days (which is a profit of $175.67!)

 Needless to say, I’ve just added a whole lot more ads on eBay !!

Classified Ad 3 – eBook Selling

I had no-one purchase the eBook at $3.97.  Not a single sale!  Obviously selling eBooks this way is not very successful.

Summary:

eBay Classified Ads are fantastic for earning affiliate commissions and building your list (and they suck for selling eBooks!), so if you have been thinking about trying it out, I say go for it!

Yes its true, over the past few weeks I’ve been building websites with Build A Niche Store (BANS) and I have to say I’m very impressed.

As you know I’m a major cheapskate when it comes to buying yet another ‘make money online’ ebook/software/scam and rarely fork out my cash unless I feel something is truly worthy – and I have to say that I fully endorse BANS.  It’s a great EASY way to make affiliate money from eBay.

So how does it work?

After buying the Build A Niche Store software ($97) you then upload it to your server and create a niche store that will direct customers to eBay through your ‘store’.  If they buy something you get a commission.

How do you get paid?

You need to sign up to be an eBay affiliate through their new eBay Partner Network affiliate program.  eBay pays you your commissions through PayPal.

How many stores can I create using BANS?

As many as you like!  Once you buy the software you can create as many different stores as you want to.

How much could I make?

Well this depends on your niche, how much work you want to put in etc, but I’ve seen people who make thousands per week.  But let’s be realistic for a sec, most of us average folk usually make around $200 per month per store.  Therefore if you created 100 stores – you have the potential to earn around $20,000 per month! 

Not bad I think you’ll agree!

How long does it take to start earning money?

Like any new website, you have to give it time to get indexed in the search engines and have the traffic start visiting your store.  I think most stores start to reach their full potential at around the six month mark.  However most people start to see a trickle of commissions coming their way as soon as 1 or 2 weeks after their first store is created.

Is it easy to use?

Yes, extremely easy!  The software comes with full instructions on installation and creating your store.  The only hard part is trying to narrow down what you want your store to sell!

I fully recommend Build A Niche Store as a way of earning eBay commissions.  Check it out for yourself!

Many of you have been very interested in how my experiments have been going – so here is the latest results of my Classified Ad experiments.

Classified Ad 1 – Lead Generation

In the last 7 days I’ve had another 18 opt-in’s from my eBay Classified Ad for lead generation.  That’s a total of 52 so far from the one ad and I still have one more week to go.

This shows the power of Classified’s as a lead generation tool.  If you can get around 50 or more per month just from one ad, then you could definately build your business in no time at all.

Classified Ad 2 – Affiliate Marketing

I haven’t had any more sales from my original affiliate ad (still just the one sale from last week) but since that profit was 3 times the price of the ad anyway I still consider it a success.

I also decided to add another affiliate product in an entirely different niche to see how that performs.  It’s only been up 2 days so far but already I’ve had quite a few click-throughs and even one persons asking how they buy the product (customers are still slightly confused that there is no ‘buy now’ button for classified ads).  That means I’m going to have to make the ‘click here for more info’ button a little more obvious for those that haven’t quite got the concept of classified ads yet.

Classified Ad 3 – eBook Selling

Still no sales for any ebooks.  Even though I still have two more weeks – I’m coming to the realisation that classified ads are not the best method for selling ebooks. 

But considering the main reason that many people sold ebooks previously anyway was for lead generation and affiliate sales, now because you can now do those things directly means that ebooks might, quite possibly, be obsolete!

Slowly this week I have been adding some classified ads on eBay to test out how they perform.  At the moment I only have two ad’s running.  One is for pure lead generation (to grow my mailing list), and the other is promoting a Clickbank product for affiliate sales.

So far both ad’s have been promising but especially the Classified Ad for Lead Generation.  In the three days that my ad has been active, I have had 62 views and 6 sign-ups.  That’s a 10% conversion.  I think that’s pretty amazing since my goal was to get only 10 sign-ups over the 30 day period.

The affiliate product has had 32 views, 6 clicks but no sales as of yet (has only been active for 2 days).  That’s a 18% click through rate.  That is a much better CTR than any adsense ad I have ever ran!  In fact I’m starting to get really confident that I might make a few sales before the month is up.  My goal is to only make one sale – so fingers crossed.

Over the next week or so I will also start adding some ebooks to see how they do.  Hopefully they will be just as successful.

I’ve just finished my new FREE report on how to list an ebook on eBay using the new Classified Ad format.  It will show you (using TurboLister) step by step on how to set up a listing.

Of course you can still use it for listing other things like having opt-in boxes and affiliate selling.  In fact the more I think about it, the more excited I’m getting about using Classified Ad’s on eBay.

If you would like a copy, just head over to traceys-ebooks and enter your details.

Enjoy!