Simple Ways to Sell Items Online
EBay
EBay is one of the most widely used ways to sell items online. Membership is free to sign up. You set up an auction for your item. Use the site’s template to create the auction page. Upload a picture, write a product description, and set the length of the auction and initial bid. Customers bid on the item until the auction ends and submit payment through the site. EBay takes a percentage of the sale as a fee. The amount is based on the final sale price. You can set a reserve, which means if the bids don't reach a certain point, the item doesn't sell.
Online Craft Fairs
Online craft fair sites work well for people who want to sell hand-made items online. You set up a free virtual store and tag your items with various keywords to help consumers find the items. Some sites even allow consumers to request the types of items they want. Some online craft sites are Etsy, DaWanda and Lovli.
Social Networking
Sometimes, people have a built-in audience for their goods through friends and family. One of the most common ways to keep in touch with friends and family is through social networking. You can post information and pictures of your items on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. With some people having in excess of several hundred friends, the audience can be quite wide. Buy.com even offers a garage sale application for use on Facebook.
How to Make a Facebook Store Stand Out
Start Fresh
1.Research and compare e-commerce software providers and Facebook store applications. Pick one that you find easy to use and set up and fits your business needs.
2.Create an eye-catching logo that is representative of your business. Design it yourself, hire a graphic artist, or ask customers for help.
3.Make sure that your store is well organized. All photos should be in titled albums with thoughtful descriptions and information should be updated and complete.
4.Delete any tabs that aren’t currently being used and focus on quality content. Clear your wall, deleting any unwanted or unprofessional posts. Experiment with different features, trying only a few at a time. Starting simple is key.
Emphasize Your Products
1.Update your store often with new merchandise information and include many photos of your products. Communicate with your customers, letting them know when sold-out items will be restocked.
2.Use a professional to photograph your products. Barter with local photographers to receive services free of charge in exchange for promotion of their Facebook pages on your page. Create a signature look for your product photographs that ties them to the theme of your store and its logo.
3.Make sure to add a “Like” button on each item for sale in your external e-commerce site so that clients can promote your products.
Promote Your Store
1.Ask your customers and fans to help you promote. Encourage them to share your link by holding contests with incentives. Word of mouth about your store will travel faster with Facebook, and nothing attracts more attention than a large number of Facebook fans.
2.Get clients and fans involved with polls, Facebook only sales, discounts and offer prizes to fans who refer the most number of friends.
3.Ask customers to leave positive feedback directly on your Facebook page and to email you with any complaints.
4.Make your page as interactive as possible. Think of it as an e-store, a blog, a customer review and ranking page, a client forum and a promotional newsletter.
5.Cross-promote your brand by adding pages from complementary brands and services to your page, and by posting on their pages.
Behind the Scenes
1.Log in to your store often; respond to fan questions and comments, and verify links are in working order.
2.Use your name and photo to give customers a feel for who you are.
3.Track your statistics. Carefully read your Facebook feedback, observing what kind of posts have shown the most interaction and increased fans or sales.
4.Tweak your page preferences and settings for optimal use. If your customers are getting constant news feeds when you post, limit the number and keep them meaningful.
5.Visit other Facebook stores often to review successful promotions of other vendors.
Improve Your Home’s Wi-Fi Signal in Five Minutes
Wi-Fi is just radio waves, and many things can cause interference. But a strong Wi-Fi signal can give you faster performance and better coverage distance, so it’s important to properly position and configure your router for optimal signal strength. I’ll show you how; it just takes a few minutes.
Point the Antenna Up
Routers generally have physical antennas that are adjustable. The antenna often comes pointed horizontally to fit the router inside its box. For maximum signal strength, position your router’s antenna vertically, pointing straight up. If you have two antennas, you won’t get better performance by pointing them in different directions.
Position Your Router Properly
Consider where you put your router. If you have a large home or office, place the router close to the center to maximize coverage. If you position the router at one end of the building, you may have poor (or no) signal at the other end.But keep in mind that if you already have your router positioned at one end of your home and the signal strength is just fine on the other side, you don’t need to move it.
For maximum coverage, the router should also be high up. Placing it on the floor is the worst location possible – place it on a high shelf, if possible.
Don’t place the router on or near large metal objects, such as metal shelves or filing cabinets. These can block the signal. Metal or stone walls can also block Wi-Fi, while wood and plaster walls won’t cause any problems.
You might be able to root out other sources of interference. For example: microwave ovens, 2.4 GHz cordless phones, and 2.4 GHz baby monitors all have the potential to interfere with a Wi-Fi signal. I’ve personally experienced a Wi-Fi signal to my laptop dying every time a microwave oven was turned on. The microwave oven was in direct line-of-sight between my laptop and the router. The solution? Move any one of them so that the microwave isn’t in between. If you get interference from a cordless phone, you might want to purchase newer 5.8 GHz cordless phones; these workon a frequency band other than Wi-Fi and don’t cause any interfere.
If you’re in an area with many different Wi-Fi networks — such as an apartment complex or even just a house close to other homes — your neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks are probably interfering with yours.
To minimize this, move your router further away from the other Wi-Fi access points, if you can. For example, if you’re in an apartment and have a router in the corner of your room, your neighbor’s router might be right on the other side of the wall.
But the best thing you can do is switch to a different Wi-Fi channel. You access this option on your router’s settings page — check your router’s instruction manual for instructions on how to do that. (If you don’t have the instruction manual, you can almost certainly find the instructions online.) Locate the Wi-Fi channel option in the router’s web interface and change it to a different channel with less interference.
It might take a little experimentation to find the best one, but you can get help choosing a Wi-Fi channel using the Wi-Fi Analyzer app for Android phones and tablets, which will monitor the Wi-Fi networks near you and recommend the least-cluttered Wi-Fi channel for your network. Unfortunately, similar apps aren’t available for iPhone or iPad due to the limitations Apple places on app developers.
That’s it — all you really have to do is position your router well and choose the ideal Wi-Fi channel to optimize your network. Of course, buying a new router that supports modern, improved Wi-Fi standards may also offer you a signal strength and speed boost.
How to Unlock the Touchpad on Laptops
1.Locate the function key on your keyboard (F1 through F12) that has an icon of a touchpad. This is often a rectangle with two smaller rectangles below it, representing the touchpad and its two buttons.
2.Press and hold the "Fn" key, usually found in the lower left area of your keyboard.
3.Press the touchpad function key and then release both keys. If this does not enable your touchpad, try holding the "Fn" key down and pressing the touchpad function key twice in a row.
Shortcut Key Method
1.Press the Windows icon key on your keyboard and hold it down until the Start menu pops up. If your keyboard doesn't have a Windows icon, press "Ctrl-Esc" at the same time.
2.Use your arrow keys to locate the Control Panel and press "Enter."
3.Navigate to "Mouse" with your arrow keys and press "Enter" to open the mouse control dialog box. Then, press "Alt-F" together to access the tabs at the top of this box.
4.Navigate using the arrow keys to "Device Settings" or "Touchpad" or the similar option on your system and press "Enter."
5.Press the "Tab" key until the "Enable" option or a check box next to it highlights and then press "Enter." Press "Tab" again until you are highlighting "OK," and press "Enter." Your touchpad will be re-enabled.
How to Unlock a Keyboard on an HP Laptop
1.Power your laptop off completely.
2.Take the battery out of the laptop. Typically the battery is located underneath the laptop towards the top.
3.Leave the battery out for 30 seconds. This will allow the laptop to refresh itself.
4.Put the battery back into the laptop.
5.Power your computer on. Once your computer has rebooted, check to see if the keyboard is working.
6.Open the "Start" menu on your laptop, if the keyboard is still locked up.
7.Click on the Control Panel.
8.Go into the "Accessibility" options.
9.Open the tab labeled "Keyboard".
10.Make sure none of the boxes have a check in them. If the laptop has Microsoft Vista as the operating system, go to the "Ease of Access" option and go to "Change how your keyboard works." Make sure none of the boxes in that section are checked.
11.Click the "Save" button.
12.Exit the Control Panel and begin typing to see if the keyboard is now working.
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