What a catchy title, eh?

I am a firm believer in utilizing the eBay 75% FVF referral credit every time I can possibly do so. And this is no exception.

Part of my New Year’s resolution to be good to myself and to my online business was to make a business plan. Which I did, on New Year’s Day morning. Sat down with pad and pen, and made my business plan. Informal though it may be, it’s something I’m following to the letter.

I figured out where the revenue will be coming from, where the money should and should not go, figured my budget, my advertising venues, basic tasks that need to get done in order for me to move from Point A to Point B and beyond in an orderly fashion, what needs to be done weekly and what needs to be done daily.

I detailed sources for affiliate commissions, hard income, possible new income streams, how I am going to cost effectively promote my business and what I need to do most importantly to be PRO-active instead of RE-active.

One of my fellow eBay store forum boardies reminded me in her own not so delicate way (yet point well taken) that this sort of thing needs to be actually a part of one’s business plan so that one does not fall behind in one’s promotion, marketing and such. The idea being that when one does marketing and promotion for others, as I do for my clients, I often forget to take care of myself, and hence my own hard worked venues fall off the map.

So, it’s now all part of The Plan.

Part of that Plan was to develop Squidoo lenses for my niche websites and venues, and more importantly, KEEP UP WITH THEM, as in UPDATE THEM on a regular basis. It’s a great thing to be in the Top 100 Lenses and then quite disheartening to fall back to #43,999 or whatever, all because you did not allocate time in your weekly work schedule for updating your Squidoo lens freshness.

Why is that SO important??? You lose an awful lot of incoming traffic that way………… almost a devastating amount.

Well, this all having been established, what’s the buzz about promoting your eBay store and saving money???

That’s right. Now, I’m not one of those industrious folks who goes off into the sunset and creates 50 or 100 Squidoo lenses. NO WAY. Not enough hours in the day for that. I make one lens per website. I consider my eBay store to be a website of mine. One lens. However, one very good lens per website is what’s important.

First let me say I am an old hand at Squidoo. Two years ago, 1 year ago, I had 6 or 7 lenses which all pertained to my retail website. Highly ranked by my fellow Squids with lots of stars, nice page rank, etc. I got disgusted by a few things going on and had “stuff” going on in my personal life as well so ditched the Squidoo lenses as I had no time to keep them up properly. Also ditched the website in favor of my eBay store but that’s another story.

At any rate the point I’m trying to make here is that creating a good Squidoo lens that is search engine optimized and full of quality content is a no-brainer for me. Now, thanks to my business plan I will be able to easily keep it up and keep it fresh.

So, I used my head this time around much better as well. Created the lens. And here are several points you may decide to use if you end up wanting to promote your own eBay store effectively and save money.

In no particular order:

1- Use really good pictures of your products

2- Create a text module for each category in your eBay store

3- Make a nice, keyword rich yet well written and easy to read intro for each section.

4- Feature 2-3-4 items from each category in each section, including pictures, and code all links and pictures with your eBay FVF referral code so that should someone click on an item if they purchase that or any other store item while visiting you reap the 75% final value fee credit, and save a bundle on the FVF fees.

5- Center your pictures nicely so they look better on the page. It’s all about presentation!

6- Learn how to hand code the text in the text modules so that your links are bolded, your pictures are clickable back to your eBay store, etc. It’s all basic HTML and you really need to learn how to do this so you can make the most of your lens.

7- Add the RSS feed of your eBay store to your lens using the RSS module.

8- Add a guestbook and set it up so that you can moderate all comments before they appear ~ saves the spam issue and keeps your guestbook clean.

9- Go through your tags carefully and be sure to make your lens as SEO friendly as possible.

10- Update weekly ~ replace old content with new, tweak, go through your search engine optimization, join relevant groups, begin a group. When / if you are ready, start a new lens to promote maybe a best seller section of your eBay store. After a while it just becomes instinctive what you need to do.

11- Twitter your updates, add them to Facebook, and to your MySpace page.

12- Monitor your eBay store traffic and watch the traffic increase from Squidoo. You’ll no doubt pick up some new customers and get some sweet sales as well.

Always encode everything with your 75% FVF referral code. It adds up nicely in the end ~ and it’s a nice reward from eBay for being pro-active enough to use it.

This is just one way you can promote your eBay store. We’ll show you other ways down the road!

Oh, and feel free to visit my brand new Squidoo lens to see what I am talking about. While you are there, rate me with some stars, sign my guestbook and if you are a Squidoo member, you may want to favorite me and lensroll me as well!