One of the most basic questions customers ask about e-commerce sites is: “Who are these guys I’m buying from?” Although it may seem obvious, many emarketplace owners often forget to answer this important question. However, you can quickly inform your customers by creating an “About Us” page through your ClickRiches Control Panel.

First, let’s talk about why an “About Us” page is important. Customers are going to be using their credit cards, giving you their information and purchasing your products. They want to be sure:

a) That you are a real, legitimate business.

b) That you are not going to misuse the personal information they give you by selling their information or spamming them.

c) That you are going to stand by your products in case there are problems.

d) That you care about your customers.

Now, let’s outline the basic content that goes into a good “About Us” page.

1. Company overview

This paragraph describes what your business does and what type of products you sell.

Example:

XYZ Marketplace sells the highest quality stereo equipment at great prices. We search for the best stereo manufacturers and suppliers to be sure you get the best deal possible when purchasing through our e-commerce site.

2. Talk about your team and your expertise

Do you have special knowledge that helps you get great products you know your customers will love? Have you been in business a long time?

Example:

Each member of the XYZ Marketplace team has over 5 years experience in the high-end stereo business. Also, our expertise in ecommerce ensures your transactions are speedy and accurate, and deliveries are on time. Finally, we really love the products we carry – each one of us is an audiophile (but please don’t ask the boss to play his old Partridge Family albums!)

3. Talk about how you treat your customers

This paragraph describes how you benefit your customers, want to be sure they are delighted with their experience and that you respect their privacy and time.

Example:

We understand that XYZ Marketplace’s customers want the best stereo equipment at the best price they can find. We guarantee that if anything is wrong with your purchase, we will make it easy to return it for a refund. Our customer service team is here to help you. Also, since our customers are so important to us, we will never sell your information to other companies, and we will not send you unwanted email.

4. Contact information and team

Finally, to really give your customers a positive feeling, list your physical location and contact phone number (if this is practical) and your top team members. Alternatively, you can create a separate “Contact Us” page and “Team” page. We will discuss these in a separate blog post.

Our next post will be on how to create an “About Us” page with your ClickRiches Control Panel.

Resources

Useit.com’s article on “About Us” pages:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/about-us-pages.html

If you want to grow your existing sales while expanding your business reach and thereby increasing your revenue streams, then this post will be useful for you.

These five easy steps will help you take your online sales business to the next level. We believe that all these steps are necessary in order to compete and grow your online business amidst today’s competitive landscape for marketplace sellers.

1. Register your own domain name. You’ll use this as the address for your own new marketplace.

2. Sign up with Commission Junction as a Publisher Affiliate, Google AdSense as a Publisher, shopping.com as a Partner Publisher, Amazon as an Associate.

3. Create your own Wordpress blog and publish regularly! See our post on how to write product reviews for useful tips and a suggested outline for guidance. Try to post at least once a week. Keep your content unique, relevant, interesting, and targeted to the items you sell or to those from your selected affiliate partners.

4. Sign up at ClickRiches to immediately create your own marketplace that incorporates your eBay listings, affiliate partners, blog and other content. Also link from your blog to your new marketplace. For example, see our eMarketplace Blog.

5. Enjoy watching your business take off! But there is plenty of SEO work to do in order to grow your traffic and sales.

Maybe you’ve already done some of these steps. ClickRiches platform makes all the pieces of your online web, marketing, and sales strategy to fit into place. To explain these steps in more detail, we wrote an e-book to help show the way. You can download it if you subscribe to one of our 3 plans (Free, Silver, Gold).

As you graduate from an eBay seller to a publisher who owns their own marketplace, you’ll see how the new direction and activity affords new opportunities for your business.

If you are an eBay seller, we’d appreciate your feedback. Write to us and let us know what you think and how we can improve the ClickRiches service.

In this post we will suggest a structure, methodology, and some new ideas to create captivating reviews that will express your points logically and at the same time be SEO-friendly.  We hope this information supports your unique and creative efforts to build content for SEO purposes for your ClickRiches Marketplace and eBay marketing success.

Maintaining a blog that links to your ClickRiches Marketplace is an important part of ebay marketing to bring more visitors to your eBay listings. Quality content is an important aspect, maybe even a requirement, for obtaining and maintaining your eBay Partner Network membership. So, creating a blog should be the first step in your eBay marketing plan. We have an made an example blog at blog.emarketplace.com.

People take all types of approaches to article publishing, whether writing down whatever comes to mind in the moment or planning logically with an outline and list of ideas to articulate. To be consistently successful, we suggest following a structure that incorporates best-practices and know-how for article marketing success.

On to the first part of the article structure, the headline. Use a hook to grab the readers attention and to keep them reading. Killer eBay marketing involves quality content and a proven merchandising platform just as much as having great products and customer service.

How to Write The Headline

First, do some research. Find out what people are searching for to find your product or information. Use the AdWords Keyword Tool to research keywords and phrases. The browser page title and article headline are usually one and the same – and this is the title that shows in the main Google, MSN, Yahoo, or other search engine result.

Also, check the eBay Keywords index and check eBay Pulse to see the most popular trends and searches at eBay.

Next, see what the competition is doing.  Here are some examples of article titles and headlines from top ranking pages for Nintendo DSI reviews :

• Nintendo DSi: Reviews, Trailers, and Interviews
• Nintendo DSi (black) Console reviews – CNET Reviews
• Nintendo DSi – At A Glance – Reviews by PC Magazine
• Hands-on with the Nintendo DSi | The Digital Home – CNET News
• Review: Nintendo DSi
• The toy that roared: Ars reviews the DSi – Ars Technica

Besides the SEO aspects of the keywords, one also needs to think if the words are catchy or meaningful enough to inspire clicks.

Here are some SEO considerations for the article or blog post title:

• the more words in the title, the more each word is devalued
• putting the keywords at the start of the title can give better results
• repeating words yields no extra value

Maybe your product review does not involve a “how to” type of headline and so here are some good suggestions for other headlines.

The Product Review Article Structure

Keep the product review as focused as possible while trying to reach a specific audience. To accomplish this, consider spreading the review out into multiple pages.  This will make the pages to index with search engines better as each page is more targeted and relevant. If you do use multiple pages for your post or article, then be sure to create a sub-menu for your article for easy navigation.

Two of the Nintendo DSI articles above are linked to demonstrate product reviews that correspond to the structure below. The structure should vary depending on the actual product and what you are trying to convey to the reader.

Of course there should be a title, introduction, body, conclusion. This is a general structure we propose to use for the body of your blog post or article to drive more traffic to your ClickRiches Marketplace and eBay listings:

1. Briefly explain what the product is and what it does. This could be considered as your introduction.
   • What is the previous version and how is this different?
   • Why would one upgrade or step up to this product?
2. Explain the design and physical characteristics.
   • How does it feel?
   • What size is it? How does it matter practically?
   • How much does it weigh?
3. Describe the features.
   • What are the most useful features?
   • What does the product claim to do?
   • What are the most significant improvements?
   • What are the features you love, and the features you don’t (pros and cons)?
4. Describe the performance and value aspects of the product.
   • What does the product actually do (vs. claims)?
   • What do you notice about the product that makes it interesting and most competitive?
   • What makes this product the best value?
   • How does the product impact one’s life?
5. Summarize your article in a brief conclusion.
   • What should the reader remember from your article?
6. Make a call to action. This is your chance to link to your ClickRiches Marketplace product landing page, or targeted search results page!
   • How much does the product cost?
   • Where can one find it and buy it?

After writing your article, review it with these points in mind:

• Be inspired by and illustrate your article with images from Flickr with Creative Commons license for commercial use (show artist credit). Better yet, email the artist and let them know you are using their photo, and they might even blog about or otherwise link to your post. Ditto with YouTube or Google videos.
• Try to keep your entire article 400-1000 words.
• Show some personality and add your honest opinion.
• Use bulleted lists for easier reading and be sure you are making strong points that are focused on the topic of the article.
• Convey clear competitive advantages with respect to the product or information itself.
• Refer to your keyword research and focus on 3-4 keywords or phrases that you plan to rank on.
• Emphasize important/key phrases or words with bold font type, but don’t overdo this.
• Show links to similar and related products, allowing the reader to explore your other items.
• Always check your spelling and grammar.

Finally — publish, repeat and watch your traffic and sales grow.

Besides keeping to a successful structure and using SEO-friendly best practices, always keep in mind that quality content will contribute the most to your online marketing success – the result is that users will find value in your article and consequently love your site, bookmark it, and return to it.

While the ClickRiches Marketplace platform has not officially launched, we are in the process of increasing the application performance and updating the Marketplace Control Panel (MCP) user interface (UI).

We expect to release the next revision of the platform by June 15. At this time, you can expect faster page loading and MCP content editing. Also, the page layout editor will be more accessible and easy-to-use.

In addition, we are enhancing the Widget library so that you can access any Google Gadgets, YourMinis Widgets, or SpringWidgets and place them almost anywhere inside your ClickRiches marketplace.

If you are a beta user, please send us feedback via the support form or simply email us at service @ clickriches.com.

We’re very much looking forward to releasing the platform this summer to empower marketplace sellers everywhere!

Consumers are naturally more responsive when their online shopping is more convenient and enjoyable. Applying some strategic merchandising techniques within your marketplace will make consumers become more comfortable and this will mean more engaged visitors and more profits.

Building an online catalog that is relevant and interesting for each shopper can be a daunting task. Here are 7 common sense, best practices for online merchandising:

1. Category navigation that emphasizes top sellers in each category.
2. Extensive product information, including informational & how-to videos, product reviews, multiple product images and packaging information.
3. Offer complete solutions that include cross-sell items; for instance, combine pants, shirts, & accessories to showcase a complete outfit. Show product collections. Seeing how well a few items complement each other may influence some customers to be more inclined to purchase multiple items. Accessorization.
4. Convey positive lifestyle content, including images that incorporate several of your products at top level pages.
5. Show accurate inventory information!
6. Fast on-site search – studies have shown that shopping sessions that involve use of search have nearly three times the conversion rate as usual sessions.
7. Use discount-related incentives such as free shipping or a “buy more, save more” type of discount. Also, offer limited-time, post-sale loyalty coupons that offer $ or % off the next order. eBay sellers can learn more about how to use coupons at eBay here.

ClickRiches offers the ability to make custom content pages in your marketplace, and to add static and dynamic merchandising widgets to help employ the above listed best practices. If you haven’t already, sign-up for free and starting building your own marketplace to earn more money and drive more traffic to your eBay listings.

While many online businesses are demoralized and facing serious business challenges these days, it seems that eBay sellers have been facing these challenges with their “hands tied.” But not for long.

FRUSTRATED WITH HIGH FEES AND LACK OF INNOVATION?

Small business can now have easy access to many powerful marketing tools and methodologies by building a ClickRiches marketplace.  Looking for an answer to decreased visitors and profits? It’s time to build your own marketplace and work to develop it systematically with relevant content, affiliate offers, and merchandising of your eBay listings.

LOOKING FOR AN ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGY FOR YOUR EBAY STORE?

The ClickRiches e-book outlines a plan for building and promoting your own marketplace. While the “turn key” free marketplace can help you sell and earn more, the more you learn and apply the instructions from this e-book, the better results you will see.

In addition, ClickRiches offers an online help guide to understand best practices for building and promotion of your marketplace, including SEO and Paid Search resources.

MORE INTEGRATED FEATURES COMING!

The new eBay Selling Manager is coming soon, and ClickRiches can be a part of your Selling Manager dashboard. We are working to bring our marketplace innovations right into eBay by Q4 2009.

Start here to find some places to publish and build links to your ClickRiches marketplace. We include important SEO information for these Article Marketing sites, including Google PageRank,  domain age, and Alexa ranking:

ClickRiches is a free, easy-to-use platform for building your own marketplace.

The reason we offer so much guidance with help resources is so that eBay Sellers can learn and work to use this tool and grow their visitors and profits. You could think of our platform as a complete eBay marketing system.

And think of your new marketplace as a new venture. It is true that some ClickRiches marketplace ventures will deliver more visitors and more profits than others. What distinguishes the more successful ventures? We look forward to comments here, and offer some ideas now…

The consensus among the team here is that content is the key and SEO is the door to unlocking and accessing really outstanding sales and marketing performance for your ClickRiches marketplace.

ClickRiches is a merchandising platform, but it is very important to understand that it is also a publishing platform. Those sellers who are bringing unique, relevant content into their marketplace on a regular basis will definitely be rewarded.

A free platform for eBay sellers to reward themselves as eBay affiliates makes the concept of ClickRiches a no-brainer for most. You can recoup your listing fees, and earn extra money from your visitors. If you are going to drive traffic and sales, why not to your own marketplace where you can control the monetization of both?

But marketplaces can perform with so much more than just your product sales.  Relevant, targeted content can drive affiliate sales as well.

As pointed out in the ClickRiches e-book, any marketplace site will usually convert less than 5% of traffic to sales. What about the other 95% of the visitors? Those visitors are valuable, and Ad and affiliate revenue can be realized day and  night when you have your own marketplace.

ClickRiches will work to bring more visibility to your eBay listings, and your sales will increase as a result. And to really make ClickRiches work for you — understand that the more quality, relevant content that you publish in your marketplace, the more traffic you’ll have.

We mention Squidoo in our resource section as a publishing platform to share about what you’re interested in, and earn money. With Squidoo you can also do merchandising, for instance by linking to your ClickRiches marketplace. Squidoo has had good success with generating search engine traffic because it is oriented around specific, targeted content. Again, content is key towards accelerating the natural traffic growth of your ClickRiches marketplace.

Again, ClickRiches is a merchandising platform, that you can also use to do publishing.  Using content widgets and your own content pages, you can bring relevant content into your marketplace to place strategically with your product listings as commentary, reviews, images, and videos.

ClickRiches is a powerful online business and marketing tool — are you ready to put it to work?

This is the ClickRiches story.

ClickRiches was an eBay seller who wanted to sell more stuff. Not too long ago ClickRiches noticed that listing and related costs are increasing, competition is increasing, and meanwhile his eBay sales activity is decreasing.  This situation created some natural questions:

How do I market my eBay listings? What are marketing strategies to drive more traffic to my eBay listings?

How can I reduce my fees?!

How can I make more profits online?

So, ClickRiches went looking for answers to these and other business challenges faced by many eBay sellers.

After experimenting with mixed and various online marketing approaches, ClickRiches took a step back from it all to study the industry and think about his business prospects as an eBay seller. Oh no, more questions.

Why are e-commerce sites like Amazon.com and Buy.com selling other people’s stuff?

Why do I see Google AdSense and various other advertisers at these major e-commerce sites?

Would I be better off listing at other marketplaces in addition to eBay?

Oh no, the realizations set in.

How can I compete while these marketplaces are ringing the cash register on my sales and my traffic? With competitors left and right, my listings are being drowned out!

It seems like I can’t win!

When the business prospects became this clear for ClickRiches, he began to think outside of the box. That’s when the revelation happened — I need to build my own marketplace! I can drive traffic to my own marketplace and make more profits from increased sales, those Google AdSense ads, and from affiliate offers. I will keep my eBay listings and leverage them for my own marketplace, and recoup the costs of those listings from the eBay Partner Network affiliate program.

I can get about half my listing fees back, and even get paid when new users register at eBay to buy my stuff! With my own marketplace, I am in control of the layout, content, affiliate offers, merchandising – and the profits!

Your visitors. Your profits. Your marketplace. What a concept.

So,  this is only the beginning of the ClickRiches story.

What happened next is that ClickRiches built an amazing platform that enables eBay sellers to easily build, manage and market their own online marketplace. ClickRiches shows the way in an e-book and offers all the educational resources necessary to make your marketplace a big success.

By the way, it’s free and you can get started by entering your eBay Seller ID.

ClickRiches is a team now, and they are reaching to make each ClickRiches marketplace deliver the most outstanding results. While not officially launched, we are inviting those that find us to sign up.

Are you an eBay Seller? Please let us know what your story is and how ClickRiches technology can help.

An affiliate program allows you to earn money by selling goods from another merchant. You can “ring your cash register” while selling their products, sometimes profiting even more than when you sell your own products! Remember, if a visitor doesn’t want what you sell, what can you lose by offering an affiliate product that they might buy – thereby earning you revenue? Earn more at your marketplace rather than having the visitor purchase through another site!

The most respected affiliate marketing service provider is Commission Junction. They manage the affiliate programs for most reputable online merchants – DELL®, Apple®, Lenovo®, Staples®, Adobe®, AT&T®, Priceline®, and hundreds more.

With your ClickRiches marketplace, you are not only a “Seller” but also a “Publisher” and you can get paid for every sale and lead that you generate through your affiliate account. All you have to do is enter your affiliate program IDs into your ClickRiches account.

This topic is created to invite people to share which affiliate programs are working best for them.