Auctiva.com - eBay Seller's Best Friend!

With the start of my part time eBay business, The Monetizer did plenty of research, and continues to do so. Preparation and focus is definitely the best way to get any business idea off the ground. During my research, I found that smart sellers rely upon a free and effective website which I had never known of. The site called Auctiva.com, offers many great features for anyone looking to do part-time to more serious selling on eBay. The Monetizer fully supports this website as it can increase your eBay sales potential overall!

Let's take a look at what Auctiva offers you as an eBay seller...


(A look at just a few of the free eBay templates Auctiva offers!)

Auctiva makes the listing process so much easier for Sellers. If you've discovered that auctions ending on a certain day and time do best, you can set your listing up, save it, and just log in to "Post" the listing at your convenience. Auctiva automatically uploads your listing to eBay (provided you have signed up with Auctiva and provided your eBay info). Auctiva also allows you to prepare eBay listings for future post to eBay, similar to Blogger's function of posting future blog entries. So if you were going away for a weekend you could set up auctions in advance and have them post on Sunday. Auctiva also provides a large selection of free graphic templates to jazz up your auctions. There's hundreds of templates, with everything from Holiday themes to electronics to Adult themes and clothing themes. Additionally, Auctiva allows you to store shipping and payment information (such as your accepted payment type, shipping zip code and policies). Perhaps the best feature is the ability to upload and host 24 images per auction for free. It makes for a great savings, rather than paying eBay fees to host images.


(A stylish widget can be displayed on all of your eBay auctions!)

In addition, Auctiva offers a clever "Scrolling auction" widget you may have seen on some eBay auctions (see picture above). The widget shows all of the items a seller currently has up for auction, which can greatly increase sales. For example, if for Halloween you're selling 3 different kids' costumes, having them all display on each other's auction pages is a nice feature. A buyer may decide they don't want the Dark Knight Joker costume but prefer to buy a Jack Sparrow costume from Pirates. They'll see the other option on the auction pages, and click to the costume they like more, helping your sales.

I highly recommend anyone who does serious or part-time selling on eBay to sign up for a free Auctiva account. I don't receive commissions or referral fees, but believe in this website as a great way to boost your eBay sales. Auctiva offers payed options as well, which I have yet to investigate, but suspect they work just as well. Head over to Auctiva, give it a try and see for yourself how easily it can automate your eBay workload!

The Boomertowne Shutdown

As a member of Gather.com, The Monetizer sees all sorts of information passed on regarding various pay sites, Paypal, eBay and more. The recent buzz has been about Boomertowne.com. (See post: Boomertowne = Ghost Town?)

Well it now appears Boomertowne is shutdown. Becky Ford of CompareRewards.com contacted Boomertowne founder Herschel "Buzz" Peddicord, asking about the website's status and future plans. The following was his response to Becky:

RE: Saddened by the news about BT -- a response if you could, please?
Sunday, September 21, 2008 4:37 PM
From: "buzz peddicord"
To: comparerewards@yahoo.com

Unfortunately illness, economic downturn, and mass cheating drove the company bankrupt. Several millions were lost by investors and even though we tried to sell and raise capitol, the lousy economy made that impossible. The investors including me lost millions of dollars trying to build a real community. When the economy went south companies quit advertising and income dropped to 10 percent of what it had reached. That combined with mass point cheating made it impossible to go on. No site that offers rewards will succeed as long as people devote so much time trying to beat the system. It tells you something about our society.

(Violin music plays)

So it appears Boomertowne may have gone under like many other businesses
struggling to survive in these rough economic times. However, I can definitely
make a case that most website-based businesses should have a leg up on
brick-and-mortart types. Boomertowne worked as an incentive-based social
media site geared towards the Boomer baby generation. It relied on the users to
generate ad revenue through thousands of page impressions and ad clicks. I
haven't looked into it fully, but they may have had a subscription-based dating
service as well. BT claims they lost advertiser sponsorship due to the economy,
but if this were true how do entrepreneurs like John Chow, Shoemoney and Darren Rowse continue to prosper? All 3 have indicated dips in income at times, but they continue to provide what people want, and continue to implement new moneymaking strategies.

As for people cheating Boomer's system, that's still a problem many social media and incentive-based sites must combat. Myspace and Facebook are the two biggest social media sites on the web and must constantly battle this. The difference may be that neither site really offers its members gift card rewards. It might have made sense for Boomertowne to safeguard its self against these problems before a single reward was even offered, but hindsight is everything. Perhaps there also lies an opportunity for some clever entrepreneurs. Create a reliable database tracking system or website software to prevent such cheating on websites. Offer it for free to the first few upstart social media sites you find, and then begin sales (and make sure The Monetizer receives royalties ;)

When all is said and done, Boomertowne clearly put all its eggs in one basket, and that basket broke.

Goodbye Boomertowne, it's been nice knowing ya!

Kingside Media's CashCrate Makes Changes

Kingside Media is the company behind CashCrate.com, a popular and easy-to-use survey and "get-paid-to" site. The Monetizer has praised the site before for its ease of use. You can fill out up to 2 simple surveys per day, sign up for free or other offers, shop with money back deals at various sites, and refer friends to earn money. It's a great site to earn extra cash, and can work to your advantage as passive income based on referrals.

Recently, CashCrate has announced a few noteworthy changes, which may be good or bad for some. First off, there is a new minimum threshhold of $20 before you can receive payment. Previously you had to earn just $10, so this is double. CashCrate states that the average check they send is $20, and says the change will encourage referrals to complete more offers. It's most likely also to help CashCrate cut down on all the checks they had to send out. Some may view this as a more difficult goal, but if you build up referrals, you can achieve that $20 in no time.

The second change which is a good one is that CashCrate offers an option to receive Paypal payments now. In the past you had to wait for your check to be mailed (Monetizer is waiting for one from 9/15). Now you can supply your Paypal address and receive a much faster payment than before, but it must be a minimum of $20.

From the CashCrate blog:

To receive your payment via PayPal, you must have a Verified account. Then just login, go to “My Account”, select “PayPal” under “Payment Options” and enter your PayPal email address. Your monthly earnings will then be sent to your PayPal account instead of by check. Earnings from September and onward will be available through PayPal; payments from August and before can only be paid by check.

I encourage readers to sign up for CashCrate here. If nothing else, sign up and place your referral link on your blog or website, invite friends via email, and build a simple referral campaign. Then you can begin to earn a passive income off other people who fill out surveys and earn money with the site!

Boomertowne.com = Ghost Town?

A while back the Monetizer gave a review of the fun-filled website known as Boomertowne.com. It was a website aimed at the Boomer generations where games could be played, chats could be had, recipes and jokes could be shared and prizes could be scored. The site rewarded members as they racked up point totals, by sending out gift cards and other prizes like iPods, video game systems and more. It now appears that Boomertowne has become a virtual Ghost town...

In recent times, members of the site began to complain about the fact that gift cards were not arriving within 2 months as Boomertowne had promised. The Monetizer received 2 gift cards during the time of membership; a $75 Visa gift card and a $25 Target gift card. Both worked fine online and elsewhere for their total amounts. However, the fact remains that Boomertowne was not addressing the concerns of members asking "Where the heck are our gift cards??!" Complaint after complain had been logged, with some members going as far as writing to the Better Business Bureau. No responses, and now a visit to the site produces the mysterious "error, site not found message". Boomertowne has seemingly vanished.

**UPDATE: The following info about Boomertowne was obtained from comparerewards.com:

Update, 9/20: The BoomerTowne.com website is now down. The Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions shows Concierge Web LLC is still a valid corporation, so they haven't filed for bankruptcy (or if they have, WI hasn't updated their records to reflect it). The timing of this, just two days after their PR firm disavowed any knowledge of the company's owner's whereabouts, certainly sounds final. Feel free to submit your claims to the Better Business Bureau here - Concierge Web LLC is incorporated in Wisconsin but is listed with the BBB as www.Boomertowne.com, with this address: 100 North Corporate Dr Suite 170, Brookfield, WI 53045

I won't be too quick to judge as CashCrate.com was down for several days as well. But BT may be just another example of how not to conduct your online business. Customer service is key whether you own a sales site, social media, or even a blog. Boomertowne needs to start issuing statements, to prove themselves a worthy company. After all, the people who make the biggest "impressions" for your site are the ones you need to keep satisfied most.

On that note, the Monetizer previously mentioned Ximmy not paying up as well. About 2-3 weeks ago, The Monetizer sent a personally typed letter to Ximmy headquarters in California, but have yet to receive a response. The next step will most likely be informing Better Business Bureau in CA. It's unfortunate, but now we see two shining examples of poor online customer service. If your company runs a website with a large number of members or subscribers, you simply can't ignore those people. Shame on both sites for not delivering as promised.