While doing some searching on eBay this week, I came across a combination of things I rarely see. First, I found some AMAZING natural opals, and second, the seller is using a great technique to help sell them.
Opals-Downunder is an eBay seller from Australia that sells the most beautiful, unique Australian opals I have ever seen. I have been fascinated by their Yowah Boulder and Koroit opals ever since I first stumbled upon them, and their black opals are absolutely breathtaking! After drooling over their eBay store pages for an hour or so, it struck me that their real opals are similar to the faux opal beads that I used to make during my previous life as a full time polymer clay artist, which is probably one reason their pieces have struck me at such a deep level.
Opals-Downunder faces a challenge that any jewelry artist that sells on eBay knows well - How do you make your pieces look good in a still image? When dealing with "shiny things and sparklies," it's pretty close to impossible to take a photograph that does justice to the piece. Opals-downunder has come up with a great way to give someone a better idea of the true beauty of their opals by playing a short video of the opal in motion in their auctions:
Click the video image above to go to ebay and see the opal in motion.
How cool is that? While I am sure there is no way to show all of the fantastic sparkles in this opal, having the video makes a HUGE difference in the way the product comes across. I'm saving my pennies right now to get a few of these beauties. Oh, and did I mention that these gems start at only .99, and their shipping costs from Australia to the US start at only 7.00? What an amazing deal!
Are you looking for a way to get more visitors to your bead or jewelry website, but you can't afford the big bucks for advertising? Me neither, but I have been able to find a way get to my sites on Google, MSN, and Yahoo without breaking my bank account.
As you may know, most of the major search engine have what they call "Sponsored Ads," which means those sites have paid for the listings at the top of the search engine results. It's also known as pay per click (PPC) advertising, which means you only pay for the ads if someone clicks on them.
Each of the "Big Three" search engines have their own programs, and they are pretty similar, with some slight differences in how you manage your advertising on their sites. Google's is called Adwords, MSN (which includes MSN Search and Microsoft Live Search) is named the MSN AdCenter, and Yahoo calls it's program Yahoo Search Marketing.
With each of these programs, you go to their sign up page, open an account (which usually costs about $5.00), and set up your advertising campaign. First, you write a short ad for your campaign, which is what visitors to the search engine will see in the sponsored results area. Then, you select the keywords you want to "bid" on, which means that you choose words and phrases you think people will use when searching for things that you offer for sale. Bids can range from .05 per click to several dollars per click, so it's a good idea to do some research on popular keywords before making your bid selections. All of the programs offer tools to help you find good keywords, and they also give you spending estimates, so you will know how much on average each keyword will cost you per month.
Alright, here's the good part you have been waiting for. All of these search engines offer promotions and codes frequently that will give you free credit to try out their programs. Right now, MSN is offering a free $75.00 credit when you pay $5.00 to sign up, and Yahoo is offering a $25.00 when you pay $5.00 to sign up with them. To get in on these deals, you just need to go to this Squidoo page, and find the Yahoo or MSN banner. If you click on the banners, you will be taken directly to the sign up page. Once you are at the sign up page, don't forget to copy down the promo code listed on the page (they are near the "Sign Up" buttons), because if you don't enter it when you sign up, you won't get the credit!
This deal is available to anyone, not just bead and jewelry webmasters, so feel free to pass the word and the links along to anyone you think might be able to use the free advertising.
Click here for the links to the Free Credits For Yahoo and MSN Search
