Independance Day? Yeah, right

So I was thinking about July 4th. Independance Day! The day got me thinking about my own independance. My own what? Independance? What is that? As a mother I don’t believe it exists any more in my vocabulary. The word makes all sorts of wonderful and freeing things come to mind. Things like heading to the beach with only a change of clothes and a toothbrush, spending all day in bed (preferably nude), or going out for pizza at 11 pm.

OK time to get out of fantasy land and join back up with my real life. The life in which I spent the afternoon of my glorious Independance Day at a festival in town watching my 6 year old playing on those blow up balloons and slides. The day where after standing in the hot watching kids run around and act crazed we ended up at a local fireworks show where my daughter totally lost her mind and kept screaming that she wanted to go home. Of course even if we had wanted to leave how could we get out with two thousand cars of other screaming children virtually surrounding us. Not happening!

Then to finally get home and get the screaming demon child safely tucked into bed. My independance finally showed up. At midnight I fianlly got to settle in with a cold one only to fall asleep in the recliner before I finished it. WoW, I love my freedom!

How to promote your eBay store.

Millions of visitors all clicking on different eBay stores and auctions but how do you get them to click on your instead of the one beside you? I have tons and tons of different ideas on promoting and advertising your eBay store. Some of these can be found in others places on eBay and some are just floating around in my head.

One of the most important and sometimes overlooked way to acquire visitors is to let search engines do the work for you. Make sure that the RSS feeds are turned on so your items will upload to search engines. This is very important to getting customers as lots of people don't go to eBay they go straight to Google or Yahoo and search for what they want. You want your items to show up when they do this.

Join eBay groups and discussion boards for the type of item you sell. This can help your networking and also teach you more about the items you are selling. No matter how much you know there is always someone out there who you can learn from.

Have business cards printed that have your information on them. Make sure to include the web address to your eBay store or website. These can be obtained affordable from vistaprint.com. Included these in every package you ship out and give to any potential customer you come across in your everyday life.

Run ads in your local paper that include your web address. These are very afforadable in the classified section and can be free in some local advertising papers. Look around you area for all opportunities to get your name known.

Consider joining Yahoo Groups for the items you sell. There are groups for everything under the sun. Also there are lots for buyers alone. Post regularly and tell people when you list new items. You never know who will be reading and you may have just what they are looking for.

MySpace and Facebook are also a great way to get your name out there. Start you a page and post when you have new items for sale. Make sure you have a link directly to your site or store.

Tweet your items and your store on Twitter. Be careful not to spam.

Include stickers, pens, and other promotional items with your packages.

Make sure that your store feeds are uploading to Google Base.

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Post ads on Craigslist and include your store link. Careful not to spam.

Offer discounts for repeat buyers.

I hope some of these ideas have gotten you thinking outside the box for ways to get your name out. I will be adding more as I think if them.