MAKING MONEY WITH EBAY'S CLASSIFIED ADS Part 1

I've been using eBay Classified Ads since they were introduced and continue to do so. They only cost about $10 for 30 days, which is pretty cheap considering the traffic that eBay generates.

There is no bidding on or feedback given with clasiffied ads but there are certain rules which are a bit hazy.

Basically, they can be used as a contact medium. You can include your email address and/or phone number for people to contact you about what you are advertising. You are not suppossed to add a Paypal button or an autoresponder web form or links to external websites.

Here is their general policy regarding links:
One link to a page that further describes the item being sold in that listing
One link to your email address that opens an email client for potential buyers to ask questions about the item in that listing

You will see some classifed ads that go against the policies, whether or not you decide to do the same is up to you.

Here's what eBay says about doing so:
Breaches of this policy may result in a range of actions, including: Listing cancellation; Limits on account privileges; Account suspension; Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings; Loss of PowerSeller status.

I'll come back to the policies in a while. Now I'll get down to how you can use Classified ads to make money. it doesn't matter which country you live in, you can use eBay's classified ads but (at the current time) you have to do it through ebay.com, the US eBay. Go to ebay.com and log in as you would any other eBay site.

Only certain catagories accept Classified ads. The Everything Else catagory and the sub catagories within it does. Here we are dealing with information products so that's fine. You list your item in the usual way then when you reach Choose how you'd like to sell your item you'll see three tabs: Online Auction - Fixed Price & Classified Ad. Click on Classified Ad to continue. If you don't see a Classified Ad tab then the catagory you have chosen doesn't support them, you'll have to try another catagory.

I use eBay Classified Ads to promote Clickbank Affiliate products. Clickbank is free to join and carries thousands of products you can promote and earn commission from. without having to stock anything.

I choose a product to promote and create my affilate link for that product then list it. To list it I create a heading for the listing, it might be the product title or it might be a search term that people will use to look for it. For the ebay image I usually use one from either the affiliate sales page or one that is supplied with the affiliate tools provided with the products.

When it comes to the item description, I copy and paste some or all of the affiliate sales page and paste it into the item description field on eBay (leave out the payment link, people can use it on the actual affiliate sales page). Then at the bottom I add a link. This is where we come back to eBay's links policies.

Ebay states: 'One link to a page that further describes the item being sold in that listing'. From this do we assume the affiliate products sales page falls within this remit? I do and add my affiliate link to the sales page for people to click to get further details about the product. As an alternative, you could create a blog, which is free with Blogger and describe the item further on this blog with a link to the sales page.

That is about as much as space allows here, I've given you the basic rules, it's up to you how you interpret them. You can get more in-depth info about using eBay's Classified Ads from various ebooks about the subject, a good one is
"Auction Classified Cash" by Tracey Edwards

Remember eBay can change the rules at any time so keep an eye on them or visit this blog regularly (there's a Bookmark link on the right), I'll be posting any eBay policy changes.

Check out part 2 of this article when added.