Reviews

Auction Tools Directory

Matt Kirtok — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:21:00 GMT

Are you an auction seller? Or do you have a resource website for auction sellers? If your answer is yes, you will have to visit Auction Tools Directory .

On Auction Tools site, you can find eBooks for auction industry, Auction Blogs, Image Hosting Services for auction sellers, auction management systems and many more sub categories specifically for auction industry.

There are already almost 300 resource websites listed for auction industry. You can suggest your site or your favorite auction resource sites and listings are free of charge.

I had a chance to speak to the owner of the site Brad, to ask him some questions before writing this post. He sounded very enthuastic about Auction Tools Directory and told about future plans.

He is in a process of moving the database from Access to MSSQL, and he is working on improving the site.

You can rate and write reviews for your favorite auction related sites. You can also join the Mailing List for updates and news about auction industry.

Timesheet Software from Moving Target

Matt Kirtok — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 04:32:00 GMT

People working in IT business always deal with freelance and consultancy jobs. It is often hard for an IT specialist deal with the money issues. Some projects may take way more than the projected time.

What's the best way to track our time spent, material cost, travel expenses and other unprojected expenses for a project?

Moving Target Software has an affordable solution for consultants, freelancers and company owners. With Moving Target's Timesheet Software you don't have to worry about overhead and losses on projects due to inaccurate cost calculations. Although this software was offered less than two years ago, there are over 350 companies using Moving Target's Time Tracking Software in 35 different countries.

Moving Target offers two versions of their Timesheet Software:

Timesheets MTS - Time and Billing Software ($59.00 license fee)
Timesheets Lite - Time Tracking Software ($25.00 license fee, free 30 days trial)

Image below is a comparison chart for Timesheets MTS and Lite versions:

If you need a Time Billing Software take a look at Timesheet Software, and if you want to try it before purchasing, you can use the Timesheets Lite 30 days for free.

You can also visit Moving Target Software Company Website for more information about the company.

Free Shopping Cart Mal's Ecommerce

Matt Kirtok — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 17:44:00 GMT

Free Shopping Cart Mal's Ecommerce Review

I have been reviewing some shopping carts to help internet business owners. Mal's Ecommerce is a free shopping cart which you can implement to your ecommerce site easily. I'd highly recommend Mal's Ecommerce free shopping cart service for small ecommerce sites, usually with less than 100 products.

Mal's Ecommerce also offers a paid service for $6/month lets you integrate your site with your choice of payment processor. Remember free version does not process credit cards for you, it basically stores the credit card and order details of the customers for you. But you can easily integrate the free version with PayPal, Nochex or Paymate and start processing credit cards. So if you have a PayPal account, and if you integrate Mal's Free Shopping Cart to your site with PayPal you can accept credit cards through your PayPal account from non PayPal members. This is a great way not to lose your prospective customers by only accepting payment from paypal members.

They also offer a free and paid versions of mOrders software which help you to track your orders offline.

Here's some features of mOrders:

Download new orders with a single click
Multiple accounts/usernames are stored in a single database
Group by, sort and search yours orders to make them easy to find
Powerful report generator built in. Customize your reports, print invoices.
Export your orders to other applications; Excel, MS Access, etc.

There's a discussion about Mal's Shopping Cart at FreeAuctionScripts which you can visit here: Mals-e Cart - Comments and Suggestions

Visit the What is E-Business Article for more information about E-Business and E-Commerce.

Shopping Directory

Matt Kirtok — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 20:25:00 GMT

OneStop Shopping Directory Review

Search Engine Optimization has become one of the most important methods to bring traffic to the web sites. Online shopping sites rely on different web promotion methods to find customers. While creating your own brand, you should specifically focus on search engine optimization.

Search engines have dynamic algorithms which change sometimes daily. But nowadays, most important part of SEO is creating back links to your site from related websites. If you have a website which offers free resources, scripts, tools, or information, it is pretty easy to find one way back links. But if you have an ecommerce site which sells products, it is sometimes hard to find free back links. This is where online shopping directories become important.

I have been continuosly searching for quality online shopping directories to recommend my readers on several of my sites. And a pretty new but very powerful Online Shopping Directory has recently got many webmasters' attention.

OneStop Online Shopping Directory was launched during December 2004 and within such a short time has close to 2000 listings with over 5000 pages indexed by Google. This is a free submission directory which doesn't require any backlinks, and will give your site one static back link from the category page, and three static back links from your site's own page. OneStop Directory automatically creates one detailed page for every site submitted, this way you can get more back links for your site, and it's a great way to promote your shopping site for free.

OneStop Shopping Directory also lists New Shopping Sites daily and has a Top Rated Online Shopping Sites section, and a Popular Online Shopping Sites section. Visitors rate the listed sites, and all the rankings take place with an algorithm which involves the visitors' rankings and sites' hits. This way, an unbaised list of ranking can be provided to the visitors.

OneStop Shopping Directory also has a Directories section which lists internet directories where you can submit your site to with categorized such as:

After submittin your site to OneStop Shopping Directory you can submit your site to these directories listed within categories to gain more back links.

Remember, more back links from directories, and related websites means better Google PR (page rank) value, and better rankings in SERP's (search engine result pages).

Blujay 100% Free Online Marketplace

Matt Kirtok — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 04:20:00 GMT

I've been looking for new alternative sites for eBay to recommend auction sellers and use myself also. While I was comparing sites which do not charge any listing fees or final value fees for the items listed, I have seen Blujay being a step further than some other new sites. Blujay had several advantages compared to other online market places. Blujay's system is similar to what we call classifieds systems. Some advantages I've experienced during using Blujay are:

Very easy to register, and activate your account. You don't need a credit card on file, or provide your actual address to be able to list your items.
One page listing is one of the easiest I've ever seen on auction and classifieds sites.
Blujay creates froogle feeds for your items and automatically submits them to Froogle. I've checked Bluejay's Froogle results and there are already almost 1400 items confirmed and listed by Froogle.
You have flexible listing day options such as 7, 14, 30, 60 and 180 days. 180 days option is a very rare to find at other classifieds sites, and if you have regular items in stock, it's a great way to list them all with 180 days duration.
You can upload up to 4 photos for each item for free which is a big save from image hosting costs for sellers.
As soon as you register with Blujay you get a free web store and your own URL to give to your customers such as blujay.com/yourusername . Free webstore option is always a plus to organize your items within one storefront page and let your customers find other products offered by you.

After reviewing Blujay, first I was suspicious about the whole system. Because all of these features would cost a big time to the site owner, and they claim to offer everything for free and they insist that Blujay will stay free. So I have contacted Adam, the owner of Blujay, and discussed about my concerns and questions. And I've seen that he is a hard working guy with a great project, and willing to help online sellers. Here's some information Adam has sent me about Bluejay:

blujay.com, the free online fixed price marketplace which allows the small business and individual seller to reach their buyers over the internet, finally releases the service for the public to use. After years of development and months of testing, blujay.com announces that the service is ready for the small business to start selling on the internet for free which would otherwise cost hard earned money on other sites.

"Small businesses already have very slim margins for what they're selling. We believe that selling online should be free, just like searching online, or emailing your family. Releasing this service is our effort to further that belief," says Henderson Hsieh, marketing spokesperson at blujay.com.

blujay.com offers features that cost big money on other sites.
In order to help the small business & individual seller to reach buyers online, the service allows them to open a webstore with a simple url "blujay.com/username" for free. Additionally, the service provides space on the storefront where the seller can include a physical store address, phone number or even a brief description of what they sell.

Some other features the service provides include item management tools, item listings with up to 4 photos, and item listings lasting 180 days. By comparison, on other sites each of these features is considered an "upgrade" on top of listing fees or monthly storefront fees being charged. For instance, thumbnail images in search results costs $0.25 & each additional photo costs $0.15 for each item on ebay. These types of fees quickly add up to significant amounts. On blujay.com, everything is free.

Sometimes auctions don't work.
Not everything for sale on other sites sells because the item doesn't find the right buyer in the 7 days of an auction or 30 days of a classified. By allowing a seller to list their item for 180 days, the blujay.com service allows more exposure and therefore increases the chance that a seller will find the right buyer.

About blujay
blujay.com is the free photo marketplace that offers the small business & individual seller the tools, services, & features needed to reach their buyers over the internet. A seller can list items with 4 photos each and refer people to their store via a simple link "blujay.com/your_username" all for Free.

If you are already selling online, or want to try, I'd highly recommend to check out Blujay.com . Here's the Blujay Storefront I've setup to test the system prior to writing this article. I will be spending some time listing at Blujay and supporting this new venue.

Free Website Advertising with Coop Advertising Network

Matt Kirtok — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 15:45:00 GMT

I've decided to register for Coop Advertising Network couple of months ago. It's a free service offered by Digitalpoint . Since joining the Coop Advertising Network , I've seen dramatic increases with my search engine results. I'd highly recommend using Coop Advertising Network to any website owners. Below is an FAQ from Digitalpoint website.

Coop Advertising Network FAQ

What is this?

The ad network is a network of site owners that offer ad space to the network. In return, the ads they define are displayed across the entire network. You can learn more about the goals and history over here.
How much does this cost?
100% free.
Why did you make this?
Because there is a ton of unused advertising space out there on the Internet, and I have not seen anyone else doing anything like this. It's easy to put 50,000 of your own ads on your own site, but there is much more value if you put your ad 50 times on 1,000 sites.
What types of sites do you currently support?
vBulletin 2.x and vBulletin 3.x forums, phpBB 2.x forums, Movable Type blogs, Blogger based blogs and any site that supports PHP (there are how-to instructions for each).
Blogger Note: Blogger blogs have some special requirements at this point. They must be published via FTP/SFTP (rather than xxxx.blogspot.com) and must be running on an Apache web server that allows mod_rewrite with PHP installed.
I can't seem to get the ads to work on my site, can you help me?
Please visit the forum for assistance.
What types of ads can be served?
Currently the system can serve 468x60 graphic banners, 468x60 text based banners or a simple text based ad. For the text banners, you can control the background color of the banner.
Are there any unacceptable ads?
Gambling, adult, political and pharmaceutical related ads will not be accepted for the ad network. All ads are reviewed before they become live on the network. There are also detailed ad guidelines.
What Character Set Is Used For Ads?
Ads are served as Unicode (UTF-8), so ads in any languages are supported. If your site's charset is not UTF-8, you may want to consider changing it so unicode ads show properly.

9. How exactly does it work?

Ads are served in realtime on the backend from a dedicated ad server.
First an active coop ad user is selected randomly based on weight (the more value/ad space you bring to the network, the more impressions/weight you will get across the network).
Once the user has been selected, it pulls a random ad that they created to display.
The ad server serves that advertisement for that ad request.
You can see a sample of a raw text link integration by clicking here (text links in the footer).
How do you prevent sites from joining the network and then removing the ads from their site?

Site are automatically revalidated daily, and accounts will be deactivated automatically if the ad network ads are missing from their site.

If I offer more ad space to the network do I get my ads displayed more on the network?

Yes, users are assigned a weight factor that determines the chances one of their ads will be served. The weighting system is a formula based on a variety of things, including popularity of the site, how many pages you offer to the ad network for space, how many other ads you run on your pages, etc.

Is there any incentive to refer people to the ad network?

Yes, there is a referral system where you receive a 10% weight bonus when you refer someone (the weight being based on the new user). In simple terms, the more people you refer, the more your ads are displayed across the network.

Can I buy my way into the network if I don't have any ad space to offer?

Sorry, no (this is not a money making venture on our end).

Why is there no cost if you run a dedicated server to serve ads? Doesn't it take server resources and bandwidth?

Yes it does, but at this point it's not much. If the ad network grows very large, there may be real costs incurred on our end to run it. If that ever becomes the case, we may sell a very small portion of the ad space to companies outside the ad network. There are no plans to do it at this point, and only enough ad space would be sold to break even on the bandwidth costs. But again, at this point there are no plans to do so, but it is left as an option to make it viable if it grows large.

Become a Coop Advertising Network member for free.

Second Life Future of Online Gaming

Matt Kirtok — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 16:16:00 GMT

There's an online community game called Second Life, you can visit the website here: http://www.secondlife.com . I've registered and become a member, and it's addictive. This is not a regular game, check it out when you have time. There are some websites where you can buy and sell second life currency (which you earn/lose by playing the game). So this has become a new industry for some companies. You can start your own REAL company in this game, it's just hilarious. Also can you recommend me a video card 64mb or 128mb? reasonable price, and quality. I need to get a new video card.

Have fun and let me know if you like the game.

Free Auction Scripts, Internet Business Owners Community Portal

Matt Kirtok — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 21:36:00 GMT

Free Auction Scripts, Internet Business Owners Community Portal

FreeAuctionScripts.com is my current project. While we were hanging out on different discussion boards with different eBay sellers, we came up with an idea of starting our own portal where internet business owners can discuss their problems, ask their questions and share their experiences. Let me tell you little bit more about Free Auction Scripts and what we have on the site:

Free Auction Scripts eBay Cross Promotion Tool

With eBay Cross Promotion Tool, eBay sellers enter up to twenty auction and/or eBay store item numbers and create thumbnails of those items and copy paste the generated html code to their auctions, then prospective eBay customers will be able to visit same seller's different eBay items. eBay Cross Promotion Tool was written with PHP by me and has a variety of display options, and a help menu. Users also can ask their questions about our cross promotion tool at our internet business owners community forum.

Free Auction Scripts eBay Stores Directory

Ecommerce Auction Sites Directory

Community Forum Site Map

eBay store owners and internet business owners can submit their online stores to the free eBay Stores Directory. There are already hundreds of eBay stores and E-Commerce sites submitted to the eBay Stores Directory. By submitting your online store to our free eBay Stores Directory, you will increase your site's back links and also will have a chance to find prospective customers.

eBay Success Stories

"Luvn Dogz " Ebay Store Success Story by Marge Holdorf

"My Silver Toe" Ebay Store Success Story by Wanda Silva

"eLegall Books" Ebay Store Success Story by Jodi Legall

"AB Restaurant Supply" Ebay Store Success Story by Allen Brigham

Please send us your “eBay Store Success Story”, and we will publish it on our “eBay Store Success Stories” Page”.

Free Auction Scripts

We have WYSIWYG HTML Editor, eBay Stores Search Tool, Avoid Spam Email Tool and several upcoming projects such as “Thumbnail Creator“, “Advanced Auction Template Creator“.

I will keep posting about the updates about Free Auction Scripts. If you have an internet business, you have to meet others at our Internet Business Owners Community Forum and share your experiences with others or ask your questions and learn from others' experiences. Everybody thinks this is the friendliest internet community, so please check it out.