Internet Business Opportunity

eBay Online Tips

2007-04-18T15:54:00.000+08:00

eBay.com Online Auction Tips
eBay.com, the worlds largest online auction site, continues to dominate the online shopping world. With over 27 million active users buying and selling everything from web hosting to small towns. What's next? Planets for sale on eBay? There's no place in the galaxy like eBay! Review these basic tips for eBay.com buyers and sellers before bidding or selling.

eBay.com Buyers' Tips
on eBay.com, it is normally to the buyer's advantage to pay with a credit card, whether via PayPal or direct or with an escrow service. Most credit card companies offer their cardholders some type of protection against fraud. Never pay using a check or money order, if possible. Online fraud is increasing according to consumer advisor Clark Howard. Leave eBay.com feedback only after receiving the product and addressing any issues you may have with the seller via e-mail. Use the numerous "My eBay" resources to keep track of your bids and offers and get e-mail notifications on your bids. The eBay.com community forums are the probably the best source for help available on eBay.com. Due to the huge volume of help requests, don’t get your hopes up for a human to respond back to a you and certainly not by phone.

Watch the eBay.com feedback very closely. This is most important in judging seller credibility. If over 5% of the feedback remarks are negative or neutral, consider purchasing from another seller. Don't buy from eBay.com sellers with under 10 feedback ratings if possible. Be especially careful of anyone with negatives on large ticket items. Be mindful of eBay.com sellers who consistently have a high percentage of 0 eBay.com feedback bidders. Some eBay.com sellers may be artificially running up the market for their item, hoping you will be the high bidder. Pay promptly. You will receive higher praise from eBay.com sellers.

Always leave eBay.com feedback. Some eBay.com buyers with over 100 comments stop leaving eBay.com feedback, thinking that with such high numbers, they have achieved sellers nirvana. This could create a problem over time. Don’t get emotional with eBay.com bidding. Set the price you are willing to pay ahead of time and stick with it. Be like Mr. Spock and don't give in to emotion over logic. Respond to all questions from inquiring eBay.com bidders promptly.

eBay.com Sellers' Tips

Always list a photo in your eBay.com auction, even if it’s a stock picture from the Internet. List concise specs and details of your eBay.com item in the description. Is the item you're posting on eBay new or just opened and never used or in fair condition? These seemingly small details can often make the difference in a higher bid for your product. Mention comments in your follow up e-mail after your eBay.com auction is closed. Example: I sent your item today via Priority mail. I hope you enjoy it. I appreciate any positive ebay feedback you may want to leave and I plan to do the same for you as well. Send the merchandise only after you have received payment for your eBay.com auction item, even if it’s from a family member. Leave comments only after the eBay.com buyer confirms receipt of the product, either via e-mail or the eBay.com comments form.

eBay Tips

2007-04-18T15:31:00.000+08:00

These Ebay tips will make your pockets jingle, jangle, jingle -- enjoy !
#1: Keywords you put in your item description are the key to your Ebay success. Put in any word or phrase that legitimately pertains to your item, a word or phrase a potential bidder might type as his search word or phrase. For example, I list a lot of celebrity items--mostly magazines, sports cards, photos--& often, I begin my description by saying, for instance, "The pride of Hoboken, New Jersey, Frank Sinatra became a big . . ." -- see how I squeezed in his name & state, both words that might be searched for by local collectors. Your choice of keywords is limited only by your imagination.
It pays to take an extra 10 minutes to do a thorough description of your item. Don't settle for doing a paragraph. Many times, when I see an item with a paragraph description, I just laugh & bid on it, knowing that I can do a better job of listing it than the seller did.

#2: Do this today. This is the best thing an Ebayer can do! Ready to get free Ebay advertising & get more traffic to your auctions? Here's how:
Go to ebay.com and click on "Site Map" near the top of the page. Then, under the "Services" heading, click "About Me." Go through the 1, 2, 3 steps to create your own "About Me" page (it's fast & easy). Once your "About Me" page is up and running, you need to start being at least an occasional message poster on the various Ebay message boards. These are found by going to ebay.com, clicking on "Community" at the top of the page, and scrolling down to "Discussion, Help, & Chat," links to the message boards.
You can either add a comment to an on-going discussion or start a new discussion of your own. And any time someone reads any of your comments, an icon link to your "About Me" page will be available to them. Ebay users are curious creatures, and they will be curious about you . . . and your auctions, so they will click on your "About Me" link and be presented with all your auctions.
These message boards perform like neon-lit billboards for your auctions; but be careful, because they are quite addictive!

#3: Sellers--specialize! Devote most of your activity to 1 or 2 areas, such as sports cards or whatever. When you specialize, you slowly gain knowledge of your field, & if you do it long enough, you acquire expert knowledge, & you will have, as a bidder or as a garage sale browswer, a good idea of what an item is worth & whether or not you might auction it for a profit.
Specialization has other benefits. You get more repeat customers, & people spread the word about how "So-and-so" (you!) might have this or that item, & that So-and-so is trustworthy. (I've even had a couple regulars tell me that one of the first things they do each day is check my auctions because I list what they bid on.)
Customer service, always crucial, is even more crucial to a specialist, because you want the good word spread about you, not the bad. Tend to these customer service details by wrapping items securely, double-checking every address you write, shipping promptly, & refusing to gouge anyone on postage.

#4: Sellers, be seasonal. If there's a holiday coming up, mention it in your item description; and if you are able to couple that holiday with some hot item, even one having nothing to do with the item you're listing, include that, too; for instance, at Christmastime, I close my listings with: "Have a Harry Potter Christmas." This will bring Christmas browsers & Harry Potter browsers to your item.
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#5: When typing the item description for your listing, try to type numerals instead of spelling out numbers; for instance, type "16" instead of "sixteen." This is because a lot of potential bidders do searches for single items from a set, like card 16 from a set of 250 trading cards. People looking up items having nothing to do with what you're selling might have their eye caught by your listing, just because they have numerals in common. And the idea is to get as many eyeballs on your listing as you can.
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#6: (This could also be called Ebay 101, but many don't realize it.) Don't list an item and set the minimum bid as $10. Because of the way Ebay's fee schedule is set up, if you list it as $9.99 instead, you will save money. Nor should you list anything with a minimum bid of $25, $50, or $200; always shave a penny off these figures, and you will save each time!
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#7: If you aren't already signed up with an online payment service (such as Paypal), join one now. Here's why. Every time you purchase an Ebay item through one of these services, you save the price of postage to send payment. And as a lister, in each of your listings, you can point out how using a service will save potential customers the price of a stamp to mail their payment; that might be just the incentive to turn a potential bidder into a satisfied customer. Those stamps will add up to dollars in a hurry.
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#8: In your contact email you send out to your winning bidders, always close by saying that a blank email from them will let you know that they got your email all right. Then add, in parentheses, that if they put the letter "K" in the subject line of their blank email to you, you will occasionally (maybe once a month) send them an email telling them when you have up for bid items similar to the one on which they bid. You will be surprised at how much extra traffic this can bring your way.
Save the "sent" contact message and use it later for other winning bidders, changing only the things that change with each auction: the auction item number, the winning bidder's email address, the total of his bid plus postage, etc. It will save you time.
If your email system has such a feature, familiarize yourself with the "signature": a brief statement that automatically adds itself to the end of your outgoing emails. Make your email signature a link to your auctions! If your email system doesn't have the signature feature, find one that does. You might wish to try hotmail.com or yahoo.com.
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#9: ( Two basic tips counted as one): (14a.) Use a spell checker of some sort to check all the words used in your item description. Whenever an Ebay user clicks the box beneath the search box, the box saying "Search in title & description," that turns every word in your description into a keyword (words used by people doing searches for items), instead of only the keywords in your title. A misspelled keyword is a squandered opportunity. (14b.) Learn a little HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) to jazz up your listings. It's not that difficult, and it's fun.
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#10: Do searches for items similar to the ones you put up for auction. You can learn plenty from your competition. What do the listings of these other sellers have that yours don't? Can you improve on something they do?
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#11: Buy in lots (more than one item per auction, say, 25 baseball cards at once) and sell individually (one card/item at a time). You just get more money that way; trust me.
Search suggestions:baseball lotfootball lots(Notice the use of singular and plural.)
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#12: When you sell items in lots, be sure to mention in your listing how much the buyer will save on postage buying in lots instead of individual items; do the math & show the actual savings.
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#13: Put something friendly at the end of your auction listings. It can be anything from "Thanks for looking" to "Please email me about any questions you might have about this item." This builds confidence and a sense of goodwill--repeat customers.
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#14: At any hour of the day, go to Ebay and do a search for old. The variety of items this search brings up is unlimited, and you can add variety to your inventory by snagging something no one else has even spotted yet. It's always fun to find things to resell that you had never even considered before. Further . . . search for old (my favorite search word). Study the search results returned. Often you can find items that haven't been listed very wisely. Let me give you an outrageous example. Suppose you did a search for old, and in the results was an item listed as Old Book. You notice there are no bids, and there are only two minutes left in the auction. You click on the link and discover it is a signed 1st edition of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath"! You get it for practically nothing. Now wouldn't you be able to list it on Ebay yourself and sell it for a nice profit by choosing your keywords carefully? You could use Signed John Steinbeck book or any combination of more descriptive and specific keywords. My sister uses this trick to buy EVERYTHING she sells on Ebay. She says it's a lot of fun for her because she gets to be creative in seeking out these items and once again while relisting them.
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#15: When composing your item title, whenever you can, include the words old, vintage, and sexy. These are traffic builders and some of the more popular search words other than proper nouns. Think up some others!
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#16: Hang it on the wall! If you will be selling what you consider to be a quality item, consider using the gallery feature eBay offers. It's only $0.25, and you would be surprised at how many bidders use--and use exclusively!--the "Gallery Items Only" search feature. This way these "Gallery Items Only" eBay searchers will be a part of your pool of potential bidders, and your item won't be passed over by them because it's not featured in the gallery. So, hang it on the wall! (But not for items you are listing for a quarter.)
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#17: I skip bidding on a lot of auctions because of excessive postage. Don't gouge and alienate your customers by charging excessive postage. Charge only what it costs to mail plus enough to cover the true cost of your package, & no more. The lower your postage, the more bidders you will have, thus more money in your pocket.
Give bidders an option to buy insurance; that can save everyone headaches if something goes amiss; and when that inevitable something does go wrong, you, as seller, will be able to ask: "Was the item you bid on insured?" That will put you in a position of bargaining strength when something is lost in the mail. (Personally, I gave up offering insurance because too many bidders were wanting to insure $2 items, & the insurance form you have to fill out on a claim is so long; just being honest here.)
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#18: Your eBay search has led you to what you think might be the bargain of the century. You were looking for something you might buy on the cheap and sell for a nifty profit--but will you be able to?
For me, a good rule of thumb is that an item is worth (in pure cash only, sentimental value isn't considered in this example) as much as it goes for on eBay. In taking my own advice, I always check what an item I'm considering bidding on might actually return. Here's how:
Say the item I'm considering is a 1963 Topps Roger Maris baseball card. I do a search for:
1963 Topps Roger Maris
Then eBay returns my results, a list of links for that item. Now comes the trick. Down the left column of the page it says "Completed Items." Click that, and it will take you to a list of links for completed auctions of that Roger Maris card, giving you a firm idea of what you might expect to be able to sell the card for if you were to bid on one and try to resell it.
You could accomplish the same thing by bookmarking a current auction and waiting for it to end--up to 10 days!--but why do that when the info is right at your fingertips, and you need to know how much to bid right now?
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#19: Always have an image of your item for potential bidders to view. Many people pass on bidding for an item they don't get to see first. This also helps limit the number of items you have returned to you because you failed to describe them accurately enough to please those tough customers out there, saving you return postage in the process. Also, an item with an accompanying image just naturally gets more "hits" because many people search only gallery listings. A scanner can pay for itself very quickly. If you just can't afford one and are auctioning a relatively valuable item, let a copy company make a scan for you. If you don't show images, you are losing bidders/money. If you have a scanner, more people are bidding on your items.
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#20: Cutting down on the number of items returned to you is easy. You need only be thoroughly descriptive in your item descriptions (showing an image of the item always helps too). Leave nothing out. If there is a tiny crease in the item, say so. To omit mentioning these things frustrates customers and gives you an air of not being trustworthy, and those customers will avoid your future listings like they were Typhoid Mary. Reading a longer description is much better than a bidder having to repackage the item you sent and send it back to you.
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#21: If you are searching on eBay to bid on a particular item, wouldn't it make good sense to find it misspelled in its listing? After all, since it's misspelled, that means less people will find it--thus less bidders, less competition for the item. That saves you money! Here's how to do it:
Say you were looking for a 1964 Topps Roberto Clemente baseball card. Here's what you can type to find all the misspelled listings of items for 1964 Topps Roberto Clemente:
1964 Topps Roberto Cle* -Clemente
A person might run into trouble spelling "Clemente" once he reached the first "e," so you put a "wild card" (that little star symbol above "8" on your keyboard) right there. The reason for the "-Clemente" is that you are looking for misspellings, and this "-Clemente" gets rid of all the correctly spelled listings.
You might get no results at all. You might wind up with a bunch of results for Roberto Alomar. To get rid of those unwanted results, after "-Clemente" you would need only skip a space and type:
-Alomar
You get the idea.
Here's what you would type to find misspelled Hank Aaron items (all items, not just a specific year and brand):
Hank Aa* -Aaron
Again you will get some unwanted results, but if you weed through them, you might just find an Aaron item no one else has discovered yet and pick it up for a song!
Play around with that "wild card" (*); it will match any character or group of characters from where you place it in a word all the way to the end of that word.
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#22: If you find yourself unable to sleep during the wee hours, say, 3:00 in the morning, do yourself a favor and cruise eBay for a while in search of bargains listed (foolishly!) to close at this time. When everyone else is asleep, that is the time to snag a bargain. Go to ebay.com. Search for the item you want, maybe 1972 Topps. A list of items will be returned to you. Click one of those links, maybe the one that says 1972 Topps 50 different cards. Right beneath the item title and number is a link to that broader category to which the item belongs. Click on it. You get another list of links. Find near the top of the page where it says "Going, Going, Gone." Click that and be taken to a list of items that are ending relatively soon. Why not place a bid? After all, everyone else is sleeping. Final bid prices are automatically lower because of a lack of bidder competition, and that can mean tremendous savings for you.
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#23: Do a search for auction items that are to be listed for three days only. Your searches might be:
3-day3 dayThree dayThree-day
You might want to add an "s" to them. Then you can refer to my tip #18 and see what you might expect to resell the item for. Then, if you feel you can reauction it for a nice profit, list it for 10 days and see what it goes for. If you got it for a bargain after 3 days, you might auction it for a killing if you let your auction run for 10 days.
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#24: Unless you can't help doing otherwise, list your items in Prime Time (9-11pm Eastern, 6-8pm Pacific). To list at any other time is costing you bids. The closing moments of your auction is when your item listing "bubbles up" to the top of more eBay searches, even searches not directly related to the item you have up for bid, so try not to have your auctions end (they end exactly 3, 5, 7, or 10 days after you list, right down to the second) while the majority of your potential customers are sleeping or are at work. Don't rely on that one poor sap shopping at 2:00 AM to find your item, because if he does, it will just be a bargain for him.
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#25: In your item listings, use simple words that everyone knows.
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#26: Feedback is important. But don't let someone's having a negative or two keep you from bidding on one of their items. All sellers run into that customer who is impossible to please no matter how far they bend over for him. And someone may have given them a vengeance feedback, one that had nothing at all to do with the actual transaction.
So unless someone has a disproportionate amount of negative feedback, you might consider giving him or her the chance to please you as a customer. It's up to you. They just may have the bargain of the century for you. And they will be eager to rehabilitate their "tarnished" image of having negative feedback. However, do be wary, and show good sense in all your transactions.
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#27: When you leave feedback, as a bidder or as a seller, always mention--specifically--what item was exchanged (not the item number, something like "...the great Lady Diana magazine"). That way, people viewing feedback will see what item you just acquired that they might like to own. And if you have sold an item, maybe they will think you have one more that they can purchase. It gives feedback viewers a chance to see what kind of merchandise you bid on or sell. This trick can make all your customers' and sellers' feedback act as a more active link to your items than some static feedback that says nothing but "Great deal. A+++." And while the link to the item expires after some 30 days, your mention of the item will remain till Doomsday. This is a "red-letter" bonus because most Ebayers aren't doing it . . . yet! (Just check anyone's feedback & see.)
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#28: Pocket $10 or 10 cents at a time as an Ebay affiliate.It can really add up over a year's time!

eBay Prohibited Items

2007-04-18T15:23:00.000+08:00

Prohibited items
eBay in its earliest days was essentially unregulated, but as eBay grew, it found it necessary to restrict or forbid auctions for various items. Note that some of the restrictions relate to eBay.com (the US site), while other restrictions apply to specific European sites (such as Nazi paraphernalia). Regional laws and regulations may apply to the seller or the buyer. Among the hundred or so banned or restricted categories:
Tobacco (tobacco-related items and collectibles are allowed)
Alcohol (alcohol-related collectibles, including sealed containers, as well as wine sales by licensed sellers are allowed)
Drugs and drug paraphernalia
Nazi paraphernalia
Bootleg recordings
Firearms and ammunition
Used underwear and dirty used clothing
Teacher's editions of textbooks including homeschool teacher's editions.
Human parts and remains
Live animals (with certain exceptions
Certain copyrighted works or trademarked items.
Lottery tickets, sweepstakes tickets, or any other gambling items.
Military hardware such as working weapons or explosives.
Virtual items from massively multiplayer online games.
Many other items are either wholly prohibited or restricted in some manner.

Unusual sale items
In June 2005, the wife of Tim Shaw, a British radio DJ on Kerrang! 105.2, sold Tim's Lotus Esprit sports car with a Buy It Now price of 50 pence after she heard him flirting with model Jodie Marsh on air. The car was sold within 5 minutes, and it was requested that the buyer pick it up the same day.
In May 2005, a Volkswagen Golf that had previously been registered to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who had been elected Pope Benedict XVI) was sold on eBay's German site for €188,938.88. The winning bid was made by the GoldenPalace.com online casino, known for their outrageous eBay purchases.
In September 2004, the owner of MagicGoat.com sold the contents of his trash can to a middle school language arts teacher, who intended to have her students write essays about the trash before it was cleared away by a well-meaning janitor.
Water that was said to have been left in a cup Elvis Presley once drank from was sold for $455. The few tablespoons came from a plastic cup Presley sipped at a concert in North Carolina in 1977.
A Coventry University student got £1.20 for a single cornflake.
A man from Brisbane, Australia attempted to sell New Zealand at a starting price of $.01AUD. The price had risen to $3,000 before eBay closed the auction.
One of the tunnel boring machines involved in the construction of the Channel Tunnel was auctioned on eBay in 2004.
A man from Arizona sold an air guitar on eBay for $5.50.
A group of four men from Australia auctioned themselves to spend the weekend with the promise of "beers, snags, good conversation and a hell of a lot of laughs" for AU$1,300
Disney sold a retired Monorail Red (Mark IV Monorail) for $20,000
The German Language Association sold the German language to call attention for the growing influence of Pidgin-English in modern German
In late November 2005, the original Hollywood sign was sold on eBay for $450,400.
In February 2007, after Britney Spears shaved all of her hair off in a Los Angeles salon, it was listed on EBay for $1million USD before it was taken down after some considerable controversy.

Charity auctions
Using MissionFish as an arbiter, eBay allows sellers to donate a portion of their auction proceeds to a charity of the seller's choice. Some high profile charity auctions have been advertised on the eBay home page, and have raised large amounts of money in a short time. For example, a furniture manufacturer raised over $35,000 for Ronald McDonald House by auctioning off beds that had been signed by celebrities

eBay Intellectual

2007-04-18T15:18:00.000+08:00

Intellectual property in auctions
Holders of intellectual property rights, have claimed that eBay profits from the infringement of intellectual property rights. eBay has responded by creating the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program, which provides to rightsholders expedited auction takedowns and private information on eBay users, but has likewise been criticized. In June 2004 the jeweler Tiffany & Co. sued eBay claiming that eBay profits from the sale of counterfeit Tiffany products. As of July 2006, a trial date has not been set. In September 2005, eBay's privacy practices relating to its VeRO program came under scrutiny when WNDU-TV reported that the Embroidery Software Protection Coalition was accusing United States buyers, identified by eBay, of copyright infringement, and demanding monetary settlements. eBay's privacy policy warns that eBay may disclose personal information on the request of any VeRO rightsholder investigating illegal activity; in comparison, competing service Yahoo! Auctions may disclose personal information in response to a subpoena or court order. Although, according to a University of Notre Dame law professor, there is no legal basis, in the United States, for copyright infringement claims against buyers, eBay's VeRO program may have allowed the ESPC to obtain private information without judicial oversight.

Some manufacturers have abused eBay's VeRo program, through which copyright and trademark owners can quickly protect their rights, by seeking to prevent all sales of their products on eBay. In November 2006, a U.K. High Court ruled that a VeRO rightsholder's takedown request to eBay constituted a legal threat under design patent law. Since groundless legal threats under design patent law are unlawful, the ruling holds that groundless VeRO takedown requests based on design patents are also unlawful. Further, the text of the ruling appears critical of the VeRO program in general: "It is entirely wrong for owners of intellectual property rights to attempt to assert them without litigation, or without the threat of litigation, in reply."

Customer support
A source of frustration for some eBay users is that despite the company's size, it offers no customer support by phone, instead referring all ordinary members to its online help features. Apart from a library of self-help resources, these features consist mainly of e-mail contact forms and "Live Help," which lets users chat with customer service representatives via instant messaging. In fact, most visitors to the eBay site will not find any company phone number listed at all. eBay does, in fact, have a phone support department, but that service is limited to members of the rank "Gold PowerSeller" and above, the company's term for members who sell at least $10,000 worth of goods per month on the site. The phone number for that service is kept closely guarded, though ordinary users persistent enough to discover it will usually be offered help as a one-time courtesy.

Other eBay controversies
Other notable controversies involving eBay include:
In May 2000, eBay seller Kenneth Walton auctioned an oil painting on eBay for $135,805, due to speculation that it might be the work of California modernist Richard Diebenkorn. Walton pretended to know nothing about art and claimed to be surprised by the price the painting fetched, and the auction attracted international media attention. In several investigative reports by The New York Times, it was revealed that Walton was in fact an experienced eBay art dealer with several unhappy customers, and that he had colluded with two other eBay sellers to bid up each other's auctions. The Times described this as a "shill bidding ring". Walton and his cohorts were banned from eBay and eventually convicted of fraud by the federal government in the first ever prosecution for shill bidding on eBay.

On 28 May 2003, a U.S. District Court jury found eBay guilty of willful patent infringement and ordered the company to pay US$35 million in damages. The plaintiff was MercExchange, which had accused eBay in 2000 of infringing on three patents (one of which are used in eBay's "Buy It Now" feature for fixed-price sales, 30 percent of eBay's business and growing). The decision was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). The CAFC affirmed the judgment of willful infringement, and reversed the lower court and granted a permanent injunction. eBay appealed the permanent injunction to the U.S. Supreme Court, which on May 15, 2006 found an injunction is not required nor automatic in this or any patent case where guilt has been established. The case was sent back to the Virginia district court for consideration of the injunction and a trial on another MercExchange patent the inventor claims covers the remaining 70 percent of eBay's business model. (see EBay v. MercExchange). This case has been particularly controversial since the patents involved are considered to be business method patents. (See also Software patent debate)

On 28 July 2003, eBay and its subsidiary PayPal agreed to pay a $10 million fine to settle allegations that they aided illegal offshore and online gambling. According to the settlement, PayPal between mid-2000 and November 2002 transmitted money in violation of various U.S. federal and state online gambling laws. eBay's announcement of its acquisition of PayPal in early July said that PayPal would begin the process of exiting this market, and was already doing so when the ruling occurred. These offenses occurred prior to eBay's purchase of PayPal.

On 17 December 2004, Avnish Bajaj, CEO of eBay's Indian subsidiary Baazee.com, was arrested after a video clip showing oral sex between two Indian students was sold online. The company denied knowing the content of what they were selling (because it is a venue, not a retailer) and removed the offensive material as soon as they became aware of it. The Indian government attempted to make the case that Bajaj had violated India's IT Act, which forbids "publishing, transmitting or causing to publish" obscene material, even though the actual material was never published on Baazee's servers. eBay supported Baazee's defense.

On 14 June 2005, eBay removed auction listings for originally free tickets to the Live 8 charity auction amid hundreds of complaints about such auctions. Normally, selling of charity tickets is legal under United Kingdom law. In 2005, the Australian National Rugby League tried unsuccessfully to persuade eBay to prevent scalpers from selling Grand Final tickets online. On 18 December 2006 eBay won a court case against Creative Festival Entertainment in Australia, allowing sellers to on-sell (or scalp) tickets for the Big Day Out concert. The case was won due to the big day out organizers not being able to fully enforce an anti-scalping policy printed on the back of the tickets. The presiding judge described the decision as "unfortunate".

Some have criticized the emphasis eBay places on its subsidiary PayPal as a method of accepting payments. eBay discourages sellers from using independent money-wiring companies such as Western Union and MoneyGram (Moneybookers is now allowed instead), stating that it prohibits or discourages certain forms of payment in order to reduce fraud. On the U.S. eBay, while sellers may accept such payments, they are prohibited from advertising them as a payment option. A similar policy applies to mailing cash as a payment option. Certain non-U.S. branches of eBay allow sellers to advertise wire transfers or mailed cash as payment options, provided such methods are not the only payment options the seller accepts.

In late 2006 a change in eBay's policy which showed less information about sellers once auctions reached a certain value has been criticised for making shill bidding much harder to detect. This change is to the potential disadvantage of buyers and of significant advantage to unethical sellers who, sometime with the aid of accomplices, may artificially inflate the price of an auction. An investigation by The Sunday Times in January 2007 uncovered substantial evidence of shill bidding. eBay's decision to hide much information about bidders once an auction reaches a particular price have opened it to accusations of encouraging shill bidders by making them significantly harder to identify. The case has been put that it is in eBay's interests to protect high turnover sellers who profit from shill bidding since they generate substantial income for eBay. There are claims that this change in policy, favouring unethical sellers over buyers, has significantly weakened eBay's reputation both amongst buyers and ethical sellers.

eBay Controversy and Critisms

2007-04-18T15:13:00.000+08:00

Controversy and criticisms
eBay has its share of controversy, ranging from its privacy policy (eBay typically turns over user information to law enforcement without a subpoena)[citation needed] to well-publicized seller fraud. eBay claims that their data shows that less than .01% of all transactions result in a confirmed case of fraud. However, eBay states that their stated fraud statistic both undercounts and overcounts fraud.

Fraud
A major fraud-prevention mechanism for eBay users is its feedback system. After every transaction both the buyer and seller have the option of rating each other. They can give a "positive", "negative", or "neutral" rating and leave a comment no longer than 80 characters. So if a buyer has problems, he or she can rate the seller "negative" and leave a comment such as "never received product". Learning the system and examining a seller's feedback history is a buyer's best protection.
Weaknesses of the feedback system include:
Small and large transactions carry the same weight in the feedback summary. It is therefore easy for a dishonest user to initially build up a deceptive positive rating by buying or selling a number of very low value items, such as e-books, recipes, etc., then subsequently switching to fraud.
A user may be reluctant to leave honest feedback out of fear of negative retaliatory feedback (including "negative" in retaliation for "neutral").
Feedback and responses to feedback are allotted only 80 characters each. This can prevent users from being able to fully list valid complaints.
Accounts with good feedback can be hijacked by phishing giving a con artist the appearance of an excellent trading history. This problem is particularly prevalent in certain areas, such as digital cameras.
Although Ebay protects sellers from getting a negative feedback from a deadbeat buyer (once the non-paying bidder case is decided in the seller's favor), they do not offer the same protection for a buyer who gets a deadbeat seller.
When a user feels that a seller or buyer has been dishonest, a dispute can be filed with eBay. An eBay account (whether seller, buyer or both) may be suspended if there are too many complaints against the account holder.
Many complaints have been made about eBay's system of dealing with fraud, leading to its being featured on the British consumer rights television program Watchdog. It is also regularly featured in The Daily Mirror's Consumer Awareness page. The complaints are generally that eBay sometimes fails to respond when a claim is made, and since eBay makes its money on commissions from listings and sales may not be in eBay's interest to take action against large sellers.

Frauds that can be committed by sellers include:
Receiving payment and not shipping merchandise
Shipping items other than those described
Giving a deliberately misleading description
Shipping faulty merchandise
Counterfeit or bootleg merchandise
Selling stolen goods
Inflating total bid amounts by bidding on their own auction with "shill" account(s), either the seller under an alternate account or another person in collusion with the seller. Shill bidding is prohibited by eBay and, in at least one high-profile case involving Kenneth Walton (and his accomplices Ken Fetterman and Scott Beach) has been prosecuted by the federal government as criminal fraud.
Frauds committed by buyers include:
PayPal fraud: Filing false shipping damage claim with the shipping company and with PayPal.
Credit card fraud, in the form of both stolen credit cards and fraudulent chargebacks.
Receiving merchandise and claiming otherwise
Returning items other than received
The buyer sends a forged payment-service E-mail which states that the buyer has made a payment to the seller's account. An unsuspecting seller may ship the item before realizing the E-mail was forged.

Other controversial practices of users
Sellers of inexpensive items may benefit from inflating the shipping cost while lowering the starting price for their auctions, because some buyers overlook the shipping cost when calculating the amount they are willing to spend. Since eBay charges their fees based on final sales price without including shipping, this allows sellers to reduce the amount they pay eBay in fees (and also allows buyers to reduce or avoid import fees and sales taxes). This is called "fee avoidance", and is prohibited by eBay policy, as are excessive shipping and handling charges. A danger to the buyer in such cases is that in the event of defective merchandise, the seller may claim to have met his refund obligations by returning only the minimal purchase price and not the shipping costs. Sellers sometimes charge fees for use of PayPal as well. Although this is officially banned by eBay and PayPal and is against some local laws as well as violating merchant agreements with Visa, Mastercard and Discover, eBay does not police for this and will only look at it if the auction is reported. Therefore inexperienced users often wind up paying these illegal and unenforceable fees.

Auction sniping is the process of watching a timed online auction, and placing a winning bid at the last possible moment (often literally seconds before the end of the auction), giving the other bidders no time to outbid the sniper. Some bidders do this manually, and others use online services and software designed for the purpose. While disliked by many eBay users, sniping is not against eBay rules.
Burying shipping charges or undesirable terms in a large amount of text.

eBay Profit and Transactions

2007-04-18T15:09:00.000+08:00

Profit and transactions
eBay generates revenue from a number of fees. The eBay fee system is quite complex; there are fees to list a product and fees when the product sells, plus several optional fees, all based on various factors and scales. The U.S.-based ebay.com takes $0.20 to $80 per listing and 5.25% or less of the final price (as of 2007). The UK based ebay.co.uk (ebay.co.uk offices) takes from GBP £0.15 to a maximum rate of GBP £3 per 100 for an ordinary listing and from 0.75% to 5.25% of the final price. In addition, eBay now owns the PayPal payment system which has fees of its own. Under current U.S. law, a state cannot require sellers located outside the state to collect a sales tax, making deals more attractive to buyers.
The company's current business strategy includes increasing revenue by increasing international trade within the eBay system. eBay has already expanded to almost two dozen countries including China and India. The only places where expansion failed were Taiwan and Japan, where Yahoo! had a head start.

Acquisitions and investments
In July 1998, eBay acquired Cincinnati, Ohio based online auction site Up4Sale.com.
In May 1999, eBay acquired the online payment service Billpoint, which it shut down after acquiring PayPal.
In 1999 eBay acquired the auction house Butterfield & Butterfield, which it sold in 2002 to Bonhams.
In 1999 eBay acquired the auction house Alando for $43 million, which changed then to eBay Germany.
In June 2000 eBay acquired Half.com for $318 million, which was later integrated with the eBay Marketplace.
In December 2000 eBay acquired the Precision Buying Service portion of Deja.com.
In August, 2001, eBay acquired Mercado Libre, Lokau and iBazar, Latin American auction sites.
In July, 2002 eBay acquired PayPal, for $1.5 billion in stock.
On January 31, 2003, eBay acquired CARad.com, an auction management service for car dealers.
On July 11, 2003 eBay Inc. acquired EachNet, a leading ecommerce company in China, paying approximately $150 million in cash.
On June 22, 2004, eBay acquired all outstanding shares of Baazee.com, an Indian auction site for approximately US $50 million in cash, plus acquisition costs. Baazee.com subsequently became eBay India.
On August 13, 2004, eBay took a 25% stake in Craigslist by buying out an existing shareholder who was once a Craigslist employee.
In September 2004, eBay moved forward on its acquisition of Korean rival Internet Auction Co. (IAC), buying nearly 3 million shares of the Korean online trading company for 125,000 Korean won (about US$109) per share.
In November 2004, eBay acquired Marktplaats.nl for €225 million. This was a Dutch competitor which had an 80% market share in the Netherlands, by concentrating more on small ads than actual auctions. Marktplaats is the Dutch word for Marketplace.
On December 16, 2004, eBay acquired Rent.com for $415 million in cash (original deal was for $385 million of the amount in eBay stock plus $30 million in cash).
In May 2005, eBay acquired Gumtree, a network of UK local city classifieds sites.
On May 18, 2005, eBay acquired the Spanish classifieds site Loquo.
In June 2005, eBay acquired Shopping.com, an online comparison site for $635 million.
At the end of June 2005, eBay acquired the German language classifieds site Opus Forum.
In September 2005, eBay bought Skype, a VoIP company, for $2.6 billion in stock and cash.
In April 2006, eBay invested $2 million in the Meetup social networking site.
In April 2006, eBay acquired Tradera.com, Sweden's leading online auction-style marketplace for $48 Million.
In August 2006, eBay announced international cooperation with Google. Financial details have not been disclosed by either party.
In February 2007, eBay acquired online ticket marketplace Stubhub for $307 million.

eBay Items and Services

2007-04-18T14:42:00.000+08:00

Items and services
Millions of collectibles, appliances, computers, furniture, equipment, vehicles, and other miscellaneous items are listed, bought, and sold daily. In 2004, eBay launched its Business & Industrial category, breaking into the industrial surplus business. Some items are rare and valuable, while many others are dusty gizmos that would have been discarded if not for the thousands of eager bidders worldwide. Anything can be sold as long as it is not illegal or does not violate the eBay Prohibited and Restricted Items policy. Services and intangibles can be sold too. Large international companies, such as IBM, sell their newest products and offer services on eBay using competitive auctions and fixed-priced storefronts. Regional searches of the database make shipping slightly faster and cheaper. Separate eBay sites such as eBay US and eBay UK allow the users to trade using the local currency as an additional option to PayPal. Software developers can create applications that integrate with eBay through the eBay API by joining the eBay Developers Program. As of June 2005, there were over 15,000 members in the eBay Developers Program, comprising a broad range of companies creating software applications to support eBay buyers and sellers as well as eBay Affiliates.
Controversy has arisen over certain items put up for bid. For instance, in late 1999 a man offered one of his kidneys for auction on eBay, attempting to profit from the potentially lucrative (and, in the United States, illegal) market for transplantable human organs. On other occasions, people and even entire towns have been listed, often as a joke or to garner free publicity. In general, the company removes auctions that violate its terms of service agreement within a short time after hearing of the auction from an outsider; the company's policy is to not pre-approve transactions. eBay is also an easy place for unscrupulous sellers to market counterfeit merchandise, which can be difficult for novice buyers to distinguish without careful study of the auction description.
eBay's Latin American partner is MercadoLibre.

eBay Stores
HQ Community Building lobby, with PEZ dispenser display wall.
Since their introduction in 2002, eBay Stores have opened up ecommerce for eBay sellers and a way to have access to over 200 million shoppers worldwide.
eBay stores can be set up in a few minutes with subscription fees ranging from $15.95 for the basic store to $49.95 for a features store to $499.95 for an anchor store. The stores can be customized by the owner in various ways and sellers can showcase their items in the eBay store and sell at a fixed “buy it now” price.
eBay stores also offers several tools for promotion such as a newsletter, search engine keyword management, listing fees and a referral credit for external links coming in to the eBay store.
It is also possible for users to customize the look and feel of the eBay Stores to use their own HTML and images to better brand their eBay Store. This feature has greatly aided many "Mom and Pop" brick-and-mortar locations nationwide.

eBay Express
In April of 2006, eBay opened its new eBay Express site, which is designed to work like a standard Internet shopping site to consumers with United States addresses.(eBay Express) Selected eBay items are mirrored on eBay Express where buyers shop using a shopping cart to purchase from multiple sellers. The UK version was launched to eBay members in mid October 2006 (eBay Express UK), and differs from the US version by only offering brand new items from pre-vetted business sellers. The German version was also opened in 2006 (eBay Express Germany).

eBay Blogs and the eBay Community Wiki
In June of 2006, eBay added an eBay Community Wiki and eBay Blogs to its Community Content which also includes the Discussion Boards, Groups, Answer Center, Chat Rooms and Reviews & Guides.

Turbo Lister
Turbo Lister 2 is a software tool designed by eBay to streamline the process of creating large numbers of listings. It is provided as a free download for eBay users.

eBay

2007-04-18T14:30:00.000+08:00

eBay Inc, is an American Internet company that manages ebay.com, an online auction and shopping website where people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide. In addition to its original U.S. website, eBay has established localized websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Poland, Austria, France, China, Japan and New Zealand. eBay Inc also owns PayPal, Skype, and other businesses.

Origins and early history
The online auction web site was founded in San Jose, California on September 3, 1995 by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb,[1] part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus. The very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder and asked if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers." The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar's fiancée trade PEZ Candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen's 2002 book and confirmed by eBay.

Chris Agarpao was hired as eBay's first employee and Jeff Skoll was hired as the first president of the company in 1996. In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997. Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name EchoBay.com but found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com.

ADBRITE, MAKING MONEY

2007-04-13T16:52:00.000+08:00

ADBRITE, MAKING MONEY, I’ve mentioned AdBrite and Text-Link-Ads as options to make money from your website or to buy advertising to bring in traffic and raise your PageRank. A third option targeted specifically at the blogosphere is BlogAds.
BlogAds operates much like the other two services except they target only blogs and not general websites. This is a nice niche and as you can imagine makes for a powerful advertising method. Blogs in general have more sway with their audience because of the personal, human-to-human relationship bloggers enjoy with their readership. Generally if a blogger recommends a product or service, his or her audience will take the recommendation as word-of-mouth rather than perceive it as advertising, especially if the blogger has a reputation for honesty, integrity and experience in his or her chosen field. Placing an ad on a blog won’t quite have the same effect but it may enjoy more credibility than placing the same ad on a commercial website.

From the bloggers point of view BlogAds offers another method to monetise their audience. BlogAds won’t take just any blogs on board, there is a screening process and they will take a 30% cut of each advertising sale. BlogAds state that the average blogger makes $50 per month and the lucky few make as much as $5000 per month. The system offers a simple submission form hosted by BlogAds so you don’t have to do much once you are approved to join the network. You copy the “Your Ad Here” code onto your blog and any interested advertiser can click through and purchase an add. Delivery and payment are automatic and you can manually approve all advertiser applications. BlogAds also allows you to write your own sales copy that is displayed to potential advertisers which is a nice touch, allowing you to personalise the selling process and carefully pitch what your blog is about. If you are interested in trying this method on your blog you can view the submission details.

While not appearing nearly as professionally branded as AdBrite or Text-Link-Ads, BlogAds does have it’s appeal. It looks like a simple blog itself and feels more like a human being is running the show rather than a corporate entity, a no doubt important selling point to attract bloggers that value community over commercialism. BlogAds stresses the community nature of it’s network to potential advertisers and warns them that a standard advertisement like you would run on a site like MSNBC.com may not perform as well on blogs. Blog advertising rewards creative and savvy advertisers that can connect and empathise with the community they are trying to reach.

No doubt as more and more blogs are added to the BlogAds network it will become very appealing to advertisers to leverage this advertising method. I expect many bloggers will look to systems like this to form the bulk of their revenue strategy and hopefully over time it will reward popular blogs with enough funding that they can rely on it for a living. For the time being it offers small-time bloggers perhaps enough money to supplement hosting costs, but you certainly should not be thinking about quitting that day job just yet!

ADBRITE TIPS

2007-04-13T16:41:00.000+08:00

ADBRITE TIPS, I’ve recently become impressed with the potential for making money from a website by selling text link ads. During May I generated over $250 USD from selling text links on my blogs just from the brokerage service provided by Text-Link-Ads.com. It’s not a huge amount of money but it’s cash I didn’t have before. If you are aiming to become a full time blogger then any extra sources of income helps, so you may want to try selling text links yourself.

John Webster from AdBrite Guide contacted me about his new website aimed at helping publishers and advertisers maximize their return from another text link broker, AdBrite.com. AdBrite offers a similar service to Text-Link-Ads.com, brokering deals between website publishers and advertisers. As a blog publisher this means you can leave the selling of your advertising inventory to companies like AdBrite while you just work on making the best blog you can. All you have to do is add your site to their system, place some code on your site, then watch the money roll in (theoritically at least!). Of course factors such as how much traffic you have, what industry your site is in, your site’s PageRank (What is PageRank?) and where you place the add code will determine how much you make, but as I said, anything is better than nothing, so it’s worth a try.

John kindly offered a list of tips for me to publish to help you get the most out of AdBrite as a publisher and an advertiser. I’m posting the tips for AdBrite publishers (those wanting to make money from text links) here. The AdBrite advertiser tips (those wanting to generate traffic from buying links) are posted on my other blog, Small Business Branding.

Tips To Maximize Your AdBrite Income
ADBRITE TIPS, Never start your pricing too high. It is better to error on the low side and get advertisers hooked, because then they will be willing to pay higher prices for your inventory when the pricing increases. Make sure your placement is worth buying, the popular sellers in the marketplace tend to be sites with the most premium inventory. Spend some time tagging your site and giving proper demographic information. In your site description provide ideas of advertisers that you think might convert well. You know your audience best. AdBrite is more successful if you sell a FEW premium placements as opposed to just MANY backfill placements.

Hard code all placements because of the concreteness of â€œyour ad hereâ€. Putting AdBrite in rotation doesnâ€™t perform as well. Allow a ramping period. AdBrite is a tool to help sell your own inventory, and think of it as a virtual salesperson for you. Any salesperson needs some time to gain traction. Just like an auction, the beginning price is never the final price. Entice advertisers with specials. You have full control to set pricing so make occasional specials to entice advertisers. Enable AdBriteâ€™s auto pricing which will raise automatically as inventory sells, and lower itself as vacant inventory sits unsold. You can find more AdBrite publishers tips and AdBrite advertisers tips at AdBriteGuide.com

ADBRITE

2007-04-13T16:30:00.000+08:00

AdBrite
AdBrite, Inc. is an online advertising firm based in San Francisco, California. It was founded by Philip J. Kaplan and Gidon Wise. Kaplan is also the founder of the website Fucked Company.
AdBrite serves ads on more than 40,000 websites and is the 10th largest ad network on the Internet, according to Media Metrix. AdBrite was founded in 2004 and is backed by Sequoia Capital, having raised $12 million in two rounds of funding.

About Us
AdBrite powers the world's most trusted and transparent marketplace for digital advertising. AdBrite served ads on 988,698,347 pageviews, from 43,789 sites. These numbers reflect yesterday's activity. They may fluctuate up or down each day, as some sites become inactive (zero pageviews) and others become active. This fluctuation is normal, as long as the general trend is upward :)

History
AdBrite was started by Philip Kaplan and Gidon Wise in 2002. They were looking for an easy way to sell advertising on their websites and blogs, and decided to place a small "Your Ad Here" link on each site to connect advertisers to an order form. AdBrite's simplicity spread through word-of-mouth, and within the first two years, more than 1,000 sites were using AdBrite to sell ads. The duo officially incorporated the company in 2004 and teamed up with Sequoia Capital, who’d previously funded companies including Google, Yahoo, and Apple. Since then, thousands more advertisers and publishers (see real-time stats, above) have entrusted AdBrite to manage their online advertising needs.

What can AdBrite do for me?
Advertisers
-Reach millions of users across a whole lotta sites
-Target your ads by keyword, site, or geography
-Run text ads, or get guaranteed traffic and branding with our innovative Active Interstitial ads
-Enjoy full transparency—see the stats before you buy
-Optimize your campaign with our easy-to-use online tools and conversion tracking pixel

Publishers
-Monetize your site with complete control over your pricing
-Approve or reject ads
-Sell directly to your users with our "Your Ad Here" link, our dedicated page created just for your site, and our in-house sales team
-Customize your ads for seamless integration into your site's design
-AdBrite works great by itself, or alongside ads from other networks (Google, Yahoo, etc.) or your own sales team
-Through a small snippet of HTML placed on your site, we handle ad serving, billing, customer service, and sales

Want to get started?
Advertisers, start by creating your ad—choose from

keyword targeted text ads or active interstitials, or browse the marketplace to find your target site or sites.

ADSENSE HIGHER EARNIGS

2007-04-13T16:02:00.000+08:00

Have you ever looked at your ad reports and noticed that your channel data and your aggregate data don't match, even for the same date range? You're not alone -- we often receive emails from publishers who are concerned about this issue, and we're happy to clarify what's going on. Depending on how you've set up your channels, you'll see a larger number of page impressions, clicks and earnings in your channel reports than your aggregate reports for any or all of the following reasons:
Your ads are being tracked on multiple URL channels.Let's say you've set up 2 URL channels - one to track example.com and to track www.example.com/page. The URL channel example.com will track clicks and impressions from all subdomains, subdirectories, and subpages of example.com. As a result, one click on www.example.com/page will be tracked on both of your URL channels, which means you'll see two clicks recorded in your channel reports. However, your aggregate reports will show you the correct number of clicks, one, with no data duplication. You can learn more about how URL channels will track specific pages in our Help Center.
Your ads are being tracked on both a URL and a custom channel.Now let's suppose you have a URL channel for example.com and a custom channel called Example Homepage, which you're using on the homepage of example.com. When you receive a click on the ad unit tagged with your Example Homepage custom channel, it will also be tracked on your example.com URL channel. Just like above, this means that you'll see two clicks logged in your channel reports, but only one in your aggregate reports.
Your ads are being tracked on multiple custom channels.So you've taken advantage of our new feature, and you're tracking each of your red leaderboards with 2 custom channels -- one called Red_ad_units and one called Leaderboards. One click on a red leaderboard will be tracked in both of your custom channels, so you'll see twice as much data when you compare your channel reports to your aggregate reports.Of course, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't set up multiple URL and custom channels to track specific pages and ad units. But if you'd like to view the overall performance of your account, visit your Advanced Reports page, select the Aggregate Data radio button, and click Display Report -- you'll then see your reports without any duplicate data.Now get tracking (correctly)!

ADSENSE COST REVENUE

2007-04-13T15:58:00.000+08:00

It's an oft-seen question from publishers: Are we earning revenue for ad impressions or for ad clicks? The answer is that it depends on whether cost-per-impression (CPM) ads or cost-per-click (CPC) ads are appearing on your pages. By default, CPC ads will show on your site and you'll generate earnings for valid clicks on those ads. However, your ad units will display CPM ads when advertisers bid specifically on your site using site targeting, and for those ads you'll generate earnings with each valid impression. Please keep in mind that CPM earnings are not the same as the values you see in your eCPM column; your eCPM is only a reporting feature that can help you compare ad performance.To determine which type of ad you displayed on specific days, you can follow these instructions to generate a report. In your Advanced Reports, the ad type 'Site' refers to CPM ads, and 'Contextual' refers to CPC ads.Want to show more CPM ads on your site? It's not possible to request CPM ads, but you can help advertisers get interested in your site by customizing your Onsite Advertiser Sign-up landing page. Advertisers can then create campaigns targeted specifically at your site, directly from your site. And don't forget to focus on quality, placement, and size -- take a look at some important tips from the AdWords team on what advertisers look for in site targeting their CPM ads.Remember: keep publishing that high-quality content and the advertisers will come to you.

ADSENSE PIN NUMBER STEPS

2007-04-13T15:56:00.000+08:00

As you may know, one of the steps to receiving your first payment is to verify a Personal Identification Number (PIN). We'll send this PIN via standard postal mail once your earnings have reached $50, and then you'll need to enter it into the PIN Information Page of your account.Many concerned publishers ask whether they'll need to complete the PIN process more than once -- such as before receiving every check, or every time they generate $50 in earnings. Fortunately, the answer is no. You'll only need to enter in a PIN once per account, and we'll send it to you the first time you reach $50 in earnings.If you've reached $50 in earnings and haven't yet entered in your PIN, you'll see a box at the top of your Payment History page labeled 'Required Action'. Click on the 'Please enter your PIN' link to review detailed information about the date your most recent PIN was generated, and when you can request a replacement should you need one. Once you've verified your PIN, you should no longer see this language on your Payment History page.If you have more questions about our PIN process, you may wish to review our PIN guide or visit our Help Center.

ADSENSE FORMULA TIPS

2007-04-13T15:47:00.000+08:00

Google Adsense tips, as explained in Why are ads displayed on this site?, most of the pages on this site display text ads from Google's AdWords program. To display these ads, a site must join Google's AdSense program. Joining is free, but not all sites are eligible to join. Once you're accepted, however, it's very simple to place the ads on your pages and to start generating revenue for your site. AdSense will serve ads that are generally very relevant to the content of a particular page. Here are some tips based on my experiences so far with the AdSense program. Google

Adsense Tip #1: Don't put ads on empty pages.

When I reworked my site, I built a skeleton set of pages that had no content, just titles and some meta tags. I displayed ads on those pages, however. Although all you see are public service ads at first, the very act of displaying ads on a page causes the AdSense web crawler to quickly fetch that page for analysis. A page with good content will thus begin showing relevant paying ads fairly quickly. If you don't have any content, then, Google will have to guess as what your page is about. It may guess wrong, and so the ads that it displays may not be relevant. You'll have to wait until Google re-crawls the site for the ads to correct themselves. Here is what Google had to say when I asked them about how often the AdSense crawler updates a site.

Thank you for taking the time to update your site. New ads will start appearing on your site the next time our crawler re-indexes your site. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to control how often our crawlers index the content on your site. Crawling is done automatically by our bots. When new pages are added to your website or introduced to the AdSense program, our crawlers will usually get to them within 30 minutes. If you make changes to a page, however, it may take up to 2 or 3 weeks before the changes are reflected in our index. Until we are able to crawl your web pages, you may notice public service ads, for which you will not receive any earnings. It's better to flesh out the page before you start displaying ads on it.

Google Adsense Tip #2: Don't be afraid to ask questions. If you're wondering about something, don't be afraid to ask Google. So far, they've always responded to my questions within a working day. There are email addresses to use, depending on the type of question, homeopportunitybusiness@yahoo.com

Google Adsense Tip #3: Avoid non-English characters on English pages. This one is a bug, to be honest. My surname is French, and I prefer to write it out correctly with the accent grave on the first "e". Every page on my site would then include at least two accented letters, because my name shows up twice in the footer. On some pages my name shows up two or three more times. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue. But on some pages the presence of the accented characters is enough to cause AdSense to display non-relevant ads in French. This happens whether the browser indicates a preference for French or not. When I reported this to Google, this is the answer they gave me:

"Hello Eric,Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.We are currently working as quickly as we can to address this problem. As soon as we have more information for you, we will email you again.We appreciate your patience.Sincerely,The Google Team"

Until this is resolved, I've decided to strip out all accents except on the pages that are actually in French.

Tip #4: Check your keyword density. Although Google doesn't release exact details as to how they determine the ads to serve on a given page, they do tell us that it's the text content of the page that matters, not the meta tags. Before serving ads on a page, then, you might want to check its keyword density. A good, free tool for doing this is found here: http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.htmlThis lets you fine-tune the page before exposing it to the AdSense crawler.More AdSense TipsYou can find more AdSense tips in my Make Easy Money with Google blog. Here's the complete list so far:

AdSense Tip #5: Manage your own AdSense account

AdSense Tip #6: Carefully craft blog or forum pages

AdSense Tip #7: When NOT to use CSS

AdSense Tip #8: Access your console from alternate domains

AdSense Tip #9: Use section targeting to exclude stop/poison keywords from your content

AdSense Tip #10: Join the AdWords programAdSense Tip #11: Plumb AdWords for keywords

ADSENSE MULTIPLE AD UNITS

2007-04-13T15:43:00.000+08:00

Multiple Ad Units, another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Google’s TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click throughs you’ll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP:Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.

Adsense in RSS, with the growth of blogs and RSS feeds you’re starting to see adsense included in the feeds now. IMHO this doesn’t work, and here’s why:

1. You only get to place one ad unit.
2. You have no control over finding the ’sweet spot’ for the ad unit.
3. The ads are usually poorly targeted (this is getting better).
4. People develop ‘banner blindness’.

I know people like being able to read full postings in their feed reader, and there are at least a dozen other reasons for full posts from pleasing your users to mobile offline computing, all of which are completely valid. However if your website depends on generating adsense revenue to survive, then bring them to the site and show them the ads there.

ADSENSE MANAGING URL'S

2007-04-13T15:39:00.000+08:00

Managing URL’s and channels

Adsense channels is one area where it’s really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. If you wanted to you do something channels like this:domain1.com - 728 bannerdomain1.com - 336 blockdomain1.com - text linkdomain2.com - 728 bannerdomain2.com - image bannerdomain2.com - 336 blockdomain3.com - 300 blockWhile this is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why, it makes your reporting a little wonky. Your total number will always be correct but when you look at your reports with a channel break down things will get displayed multiple times and not add up to correct total. Makes things pretty confusing, so decide if you really need/want that level of reporting detail. TIP: At the very least you want to know what URL is generating the income so be sure to enter distinct URL channels.

Site Design and Integration Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you’re going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it’s easier, if it’s an existing site it’s more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I’d say if you just slap the adsense code in, you’ll end up with a frankensite monster (props to Tedster of WMW for the buzzword). While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I’ve done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you’re doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn’t work out.Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

-336×280 large rectangle

-300×250 inline rectangle

-160×600 wide skyscraper

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, I don’t really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location it’s own channel for a little while until you understand the users behavior. Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black.TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.

The one area where I’ve found blended ads don’t perform as well is forums, especially ones with a high volume of repeat members. Regular visitors develop banner blindness pretty quickly. One ‘trick’ to keep the ads from being ignored is to randomize the color and even the placement. As with any of the decisions about location, placement and color it’s a trade off. How much do you emphasize the ads without annoying your visitors. Remember it’s better to have a 1% CTR with 500 regular visitors as opposed to a 5% CTR with 50 visitors. TIP: For forums try placing the adsense ads directly above or below the the first forum thread.

Using ImagesOne of the latest ’secrets’ to make the rounds is using images placed directly above or below an adsense leaderboard. This has been used for a while but came out in a digital point forum thread where a member talked about quadrupling their CTR. Basically you set up the adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Whether or not this is deceptive is fuzzy and very subjective. Obviously four blinking arrows would be ‘enticing people to click’ and be against the adsense TOS. However placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isn’t, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Google’s perspective. If you have a question as to your implementation being ‘over the line’ write to adsense and ask them to take a look. As far as using the images, I’ve done it and can tell you it definitely works. You get the best results when the images ‘complete the story the ads are telling’. For example if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and braeburn apples. TIP: Don’t limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit, it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.Added:I got a little criticizm for this and rightly so, as I wasn’t specific as I could have been. Do not use very identifiable brand name or products for your images. Use generic non-specific stock images whenever possible and appropriate

ADSENSE TIPS

2007-04-13T15:36:00.000+08:00

General or NicheYou can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field. If this is your first try at building an adsense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact it’s currently zero).

Once you’ve gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don’t try to run with the big dogs if you can’t keep up. If you have to ask if you’re a big dog, then chances are, you’re not. I have used a high dollar keywords report from cashkeywords.com and was pleased with my results (see cash keywords free offer recap).

New Sites, Files and MaintenanceWhen you’re building a new site don’t put adsense on it until it’s finished. In fact I’d go even farther and say don’t put adsense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. If you put up a website with “lorem ipsum” dummy or placeholder text, your adsense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for google’s media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted. TIP: If you start getting lots of traffic from a variety of IP’s you will speed this process up dramatically. I like to build my sites using include files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. I also like to put my adsense code in include files. If I want/need to change my adsense code, it’s only one file I have to work with. TIP: I also use programming to turn the adsense on or off. I can change one global variable to true or false and my adsense ads will appear or disappear.

GOOGLE PRODUCT

2007-04-13T15:05:00.000+08:00

List of Google products
This page is a summary of services and tools provided by Google For other uses, see Google (disambiguation). This list of Google products includes all major standalone services and tools created or acquired by Google. They are either a gold release, in beta development, or part of the Google Labs initiative. This list also includes previous products, that have either been merged or discarded. Features of products, such as Web Search features, are not listed. Many of these products are made by individuals or small groups of Google Engineers. Each Google Engineer devotes a certain amount of time to develop a new application or technology.

Desktop applications

Standalone applications
Desktop [1] (Windows 2000 SP3+/XP/Vista)
Desktop search application, that indexes e-mails, documents, music, photos, chats, Web history and other files. It allows the installation of Google Gadgets.
Earth [2] (Linux, Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP)
Virtual globe that uses satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS over a 3D globe.
Hello [3] (Windows 98/ME/2000/XP)
Allows users to send images across the Internet and publish them to blogs.
Gmail Notifier [4] (Windows 2000/XP)
Alerts the user of new messages in their Gmail account.
Notifier [5] (Mac OS X)
Alerts the user of new messages in Gmail and upcoming events in Google Calendar.
Pack [6] (Windows XP/Vista)
Collection of computer applications, including Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picasa, Google Talk and Mozilla Firefox.
Picasa [7] (Linux and Windows 2000/XP)
Photo organization and editing application, providing photo library options and simple effects.
Picasa Web Albums [8] (Mac OS X)
An application to help uploading images to the "Picasa Web Albums" service It consists of both an iPhoto plug-in and a stand-alone application.
SketchUp [9] (Mac OS X and Windows 2000/Windows XP)
Simple 3D sketching program with unique dragging interface and direct integration with Google Earth.
Talk [10] (Windows 2000/Windows XP/Server 2003)
Application for VoIP and instant messaging. It consists of both a service and a client used to connect to the service, which uses the Jabber protocol.
Video Player [11] (Mac OS X/Windows 2000/XP)
Video player to watch videos from Google Video, including unique resume and download features.
Web Accelerator [12] (Windows 2000 SP3+/XP)
Uses various caching technologies to increase download speed of web pages.

Desktop extensions
Blogger Web Comments [13] (Firefox extension)
Displays related comments from other Blogger users.
Browser Sync [14] (Firefox extension)
Saves browser settings for backup and use on other installations of Mozilla Firefox.
Dashboard Widgets for Mac [15] (Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets)
Collection of mini-applications including Gmail, Blogger and Search History.
Pinyin IME [16]
Input Method Editor that is used to convert Chinese Pinyin characters, which can be entered on Western-style keyboards, to Chinese characters.
Send to Phone [17] (Firefox extension)
Allows users to send text messages to their mobile phone (US only) about web content.
Toolbar [18] (Firefox and Internet Explorer extension)
Web browser toolbar with features such as a Google Search box, phishing protection, pop-up blocker as well as the ability for website owners to create buttons.

Web applications
These products are accessed via a Web browser.

Advertising
AdSense [19]
Advertisement program for Website owners. Adverts generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis, and are adverts shown are from AdWords users, depending on which adverts are relevant.

AdWords [20]
Google's flagship advertising product, and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads.
AdWords Website Optimizer [21]
Tool for testing different website content, in order to gain to the most successful advertising campaigns. It is fully integrated with AdWords, and is currently only available to selected beta testers.

Analytics [22]
Traffic statistics generator for defined websites, with strong AdWords integration. Webmasters can optimize their ad campaigns, based on the statistics that are given. Analytics is based on the Urchin program.
Audio Ads [23]
Radio advertising program for US businesses, available by contacting Google sales offices.
Click-to-Call [24]
Calling system so users can call advertisers for free at Google's expense from search results pages.
Grants [25]
Scheme for non-profit organizations to benefit from free Cost-Per-Click advertising on the AdWords network.
TV Ads [26]
CPM-driven television advertising scheme available on a trial basis, currently aimed towards professional advertisers, agencies and partners.

Aggregation
Personalized Homepage [27]
Customizable homepage, which can contain Web feeds and Google Gadgets. Tabs and themes can be created. It was launched in May 2005.
Reader [28]
Web-based news aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds. It allows the user to search, import and subscribe to feeds. The service also embeds audio enclosures in the page. Major revisions to Google Reader were made in October 2006.

Communication & Publishing
Apps [29]
Custom domain and service integration service for businesses, enterprise and education, featuring Gmail and other Google products.
Blogger [30]
Weblog publishing tool. Users can create a custom, hosted blogs with features such as photo publishing, comments, group blogs, blogger profiles and mobile-based posting with little technical knowledge.
Calendar [31]
Free online calendar. It includes a unique "quick add" function which allows users to insert events using natural language input. Other features include Gmail integration and calendar sharing. It is similar to those offered by Yahoo! and MSN.
Docs & Spreadsheets [32]
Collaborative spreadsheets and writer application, combining Google Spreadsheets and Writely into a single interface. It was released on October 11, 2006.
Dodgeball [33]
Social networking site built specifically for use on mobile phones. Users text their location to the service, which then notifies them of crushes, friends, friends' friends and interesting venues nearby.
Gmail [34] (Also known as Google Mail)
Free Webmail and POP e-mail service provided by Google, known for its abundant storage and advanced interface. It was first released in an invitation-only form on April 1, 2004. Mobile access and Google Talk integration is also featured.
Joga Bonito [35]
Soccer community site, similar to services such as MySpace, in that each member has a profile, and can join groups based on shared interests. The service allows a user to meet other fans, create games and clubs, access athletes from Nike, and watch and upload video clips and photos.
JotSpot [36]
Application wiki company that offers enterprise social software and was founded by Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, co-founders of Excite. The product is targeted mainly to small and medium-sized businesses. It was acquired by Google on October 31, 2006.
Measure Map [37]
Statistics for blog writers. It was launched on February 2, 2006.
Notebook [38]
Web clipping application for saving online research. The tool permits users to clip text, images, and links from pages while browsing, save them online, access them from any computer, and share them with others.
Orkut [39]
Social networking service, where users can list their personal and professional information, create relationships amongst friends and join communities of mutual interest. In November 2006, Google opened Orkut registration to everyone, instead of being invitation only.
Page Creator [40]
Webpage-publishing program, which can be used to create pages and to host them on Google's servers.
Picasa Web Albums [41]
Online photo sharing, with integration with the main Picasa program.
YouTube [42]
Popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. In October 2006, Google, Inc., announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion USD in Google's stock. The deal closed on 13 November 2006.

Development
Code [43]
Google's site for developers interested in Google-related development. The site contains Open Source code and lists of their API services.
Code Search [44]
Search engine for programming code found on the Internet.
Co-op [45]
Platform for users to expand and apply Google Search to specific sites and topics, using Custom Search Engine, Subscribed Links and Topics.
Related Links [46]
Script that places units for related Web content, including pages, searches and videos, on the owner's Website, through embedded code.
Webmaster Tools [47]
Collection of services, designed to assist Website owners with search ranking, indexing and general site maintenance. Previously known as Google Sitemaps.

Mapping
Maps [48]
Mapping service that indexes streets and satellite imagery, and provides driving directions and local search for the USA, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. It is also available as a mobile service in some countries.
Mars [49]
Imagery of Mars using the Google Maps interface. Elevation, visible imagery and infrared imagery can be shown. It was released on March 13, 2006, the anniversary of the birth of astronomer Percival Lowell.
Moon [50]
NASA imagery of the moon through the Google Maps interface. It was launched on July 20, 2005, in honor of the first manned Moon landing on July 20, 1969.
Ride Finder [51]
Taxi, limousine and shuttle search service, using real time position of vehicles in 14 US cities. Ride Finder uses the Google Maps interface and cooperates with any car service that wishes to participate.
Transit [52]
Public transport trip planning through the Google Maps interface. Google Transit was released on December 7, 2005, and is currently available in nine cities.

Search
Accessible Search [53]
Search engine for the blind and visually impaired. It prioritises usable and accessible web sites in the search results, so the user incurs minimal distractions when browsing.
Alerts [54]
E-mail notification service, which sends alerts based on chosen search terms, whenever the are new results. Alerts include web results, Groups results and news.
Base [55]
Google submission database, that enables content owners to submit content, have it hosted and make it searchable. Information within the database is organized using attributes.
Blog search [56]
Weblog search engine, with a continuously-updated search index. Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger. Results can be viewed and filtered by date.
Book Search [57]
Search engine for the full text of printed books. Google scans and stores in its digital database. The content that is displayed depends on the arrangement with the publishers, ranging from short extracts to entire books. Previous called Google Print.
Catalogs [58]
Search engine for over 6,600 print catalogs, which are acquired through Optical character recognition.
Checkout [59]
Online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. Webmasters can choose to implement Google Checkout as a form of payment.
Directory [60]
Collection of links arranged into hierarchical subcategories. The links and their categorization are from the Open Directory Project, but are sorted using PageRank.
Finance [61]
Searchable US business news, opinion, and financial data. Features include company-specific pages, blog search, interactive charts, executives information, discussion groups and a portfolio.
Froogle [62]
Price engine that searches online stores, including auctions, for products. It is also offered in Wireless Markup Language (WML) form as Froogle Mobile.
Groups [63]
Web and e-mail discussion service and Usenet archive. Users can join a group, make a group, publish posts, track their favorite topics, write a set of group web pages updatable by members and share group files. [64]. In January, 2007, version 3 of Google Groups was released. New features include the ability to create customised pages and share files.
Image Labeler [65]
Game that induces participants to submit valid descriptions (labels) of images in the web, in order to later improve Image Search.
Image Search [66]
Image search engine, with results based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image and text adjacent to the image. When searching, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed.
Mobile [67]
Collection of applications for mobile phoness and PDAs, including Gmail Mobile and Mobile Web Search.
Music Trends [68]
Music ranking of the songs played with iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player and Yahoo Music. Trends are generated by Google Talk's "share your music status" feature.
Language Tools [69]
Collection of linguistic applications, including one that allows users to translate text or web pages from one language to another, and another that allows searching in web pages located in a specific country or written in a specific language.
News [70]
Automated news compilation service and search engine for news. There are versions of the aggregator for more than 20 languages. While the selection of news stories is fully automated, the sites included are selected by human editors.
News Archive Search [71]
Feature within Google News, that allows users to browse articles from over 200 years ago.
Patent Search [72]
Search engine to search through millions of patents, each result with its own page, including drawings, claims and citations.
Rebang [73]
Google China's search trend site, similar to Google Zeitgeist. Currently part of Google Labs.
Scholar [74]
Search engine for the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and scholarly fields. Today, the index includes virtually all peer-reviewed journals available online, except those published by Elsevier, the world's largest scientific publisher.
Search History [75]
Search tracking for Google Account holders, which records Web pages, images, videos, music ad more. Previously called Personalized Search, it also includes Bookmarks, search trends and item recommendations.
SearchMash [76]
Search engine that means to "test innovative user interfaces." Among its features are the ability to display image results on the same page as web results, feedback about features, and continuous scrolling results. Aside from its privacy policy and terms of service, there is no Google branding on the site.
Sets [77]
List of items generated when the user enters a few examples. For example, entering "Green, Purple, Red" produces the list "Green, Purple, Red, Blue, Black, White, Yellow, Orange, Brown.
SMS [78]
Mobile phone short message service offered by Google in several countries, including the USA, Japan, Canada, Germany, Spain and formerly the UK. It allows search queries to be sent as a text message. The results are sent as a reply, with no premium charge for the service.
Suggest [79]
Auto-completion in search results while typing to give popular searches.
Trends [80]
Graph plotting application for Web Search statistics, showing the popularity of particular search terms over time. Multiple terms can be shown at once. Results can also be displayed by city, region or language. Related news stories are also shown.
Video [81]
Video search engine and online store for clips internally submitted by companies and the general public. Google's main video partnerships include agreements with CBS, NHL and the NBA.
Web Search [82]
Web search engine, which is Google's core product. It was the company's first creation, coming out of beta on September 21, 1999, and remains their most popular and famous service. It receives 1 billion requests a day and is the most used search engine on the Internet.
University Search [83]
Listings for search engines for University websites.
U.S. Government Search [84]
Search engine and Personalized Homepage that exclusively draws from sites with a .gov TLD.
Voice Local Search [85]
Non-premium phone service for searching and contacting local businesses
Zeitgeist [86]
Collection of lists of the most frequent search queries. There are weekly, monthly and yearly lists, as well as topic and country specific lists.

Hardware products
Google Search Appliance [87]
Hardware device that can be hooked to corporate intranets for indexing/searching of company files.
Google Mini [88]
Reduced capacity and less expensive version of the Google Search Appliance

Previous products
Applications that have been discontinued by Google, either because of integration with other Google products, or through lack of support.
Answers [89]
Question and answer service, allowing users to pay researchers to answer questions. Google announced the closing of service on November 28, 2006. All past discussions have been publicly archived.
Local
Local listings service, before it was integrated with mapping. The merged service was then called Google Local, which was further renamed to Google Maps due to popular demand.
Public Service Search [90]
Non-commercial organization service, which included free SiteSearch, traffic reports and unlimited search queries. Discontinued in February 2007 and re-directed to Google Co-op.
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheet management application, before it was integrated with Writely to form Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It was announced on 6 June 2006.
Voice Search [91]
Automated voice system for searching the Web using the telephone
Writely
Web-based word processor created by software company Upstartle, who were acquired by Google on March 9, 2006. On October 10, 2006, Writely was merged into Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Google X
Re-designed Google search homepage, using a Mac OS style interface. It appeared in Google Labs, but was removed the day after.

ADSENSE CRITICISM

2007-04-13T15:00:00.000+08:00

Abuse
Some webmasters create sites tailored to lure searchers from Google and other engines onto their AdSense site to make money from clicks. These "zombie" sites often contain nothing but a large amount of interconnected, automated content (e.g.: A directory with content from the Open Directory Project, or scraper sites relying on RSS feeds for content). Possibly the most popular form of such "AdSense farms" are splogs ("spam blogs"), which are centered around known high-paying keywords. Many of these sites use content from other web sites, such as Wikipedia, to attract visitors. These and related approaches are considered to be search engine spam and can be reported to Google. There have also been reports of Trojans engineered to produce fake Google ads that are formatted to look like legitimate ones. The Trojan Horse apparently downloads itself onto an unsuspecting computer through a web page and then replaces the original ads with its own set of malicious ads.

Criticism
Due to concerns about click fraud, Google AdSense has been criticized by some Search engine optimization firms as a large source of what Google calls "invalid clicks" in which one company clicks on a rival's search engine ads to drive up its costs. Some publishers have been blocked by Google, complaining that little justification or transparence was provided. To help prevent click fraud, publishers can choose from a number of click tracking programs. These programs will display detailed information about the visitors who click on the AdSense advertisements. Publishers can use that data to determine if they've been a victim of click fraud or not. There are a number of such commercial scripts available for purchase. An open source alternative is AdLogger.

Because AdSense adverts use non-xhtml compliant methods to display the advert blocks they will break xhtml strict pages. This is due to the use of the document.write method, which is deprecated in favour of DOM manipulation in xhtml, and the use of the iframe element, which is deprecated because it ties markup to presentation. This can be worked around by keeping the AdSense code in a separate html4 file served as text/html and including this in the application/xml+xhtml file using the object element.

Google has also come under fire for allowing AdWords advertisers to abuse trademarks. In 2004, Google started allowing advertisers to bid on any search terms, including the trademarks of their competitors. The payment terms for AdSense customers have also been criticized. Google withholds payment until an account reaches US$100, but many small content providers require a long time - years in many cases - to build up this much AdSense revenue. These pending payments are recorded on Google's balance sheet as "accrued revenue share". At the close of its 2006 fiscal year, the sum of all these small debts amounted to a little over US$370million - cash that Google is able to invest but which effectively belongs to its customer

ADSENSE TOOLS

2007-04-13T14:58:00.000+08:00

AdSense for feeds
In May 2005, Google unveiled AdSense for feeds, a version of AdSense that runs on RSS and Atom feeds that have more than 100 active subscribers. According to the Official Google Blog, "advertisers have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertising — and in the long run, more quality feeds to choose from". AdSense for feeds works by inserting images into a feed. When the image is displayed by the reader/browser, Google writes the ad content into the image that it returns. The ad content is chosen based on the content of the feed surrounding the image. When the user clicks the image, he or she is redirected to the advertiser's site in the same way as regular AdSense ads.

AdSense for search
A companion to the regular AdSense program, AdSense for search lets website owners place Google search boxes on their pages. When a user searches the web or the site with the search box, Google shares any ad revenue it makes from those searches with the site owner. However, only if the ads on the page are clicked, the publisher is paid. Adsense does not pay publishers for mere searches.

How AdSense works
Each time a visitor visits a page with an AdSense tag, a piece of JavaScript writes an iframe tag, whose src attribute includes the URL of the page. Google's servers use a cache of the page for the URL or the keywords in the URL itself to determine a set of high-value keywords. (Some of the details are described in the AdSense patent.) If keywords have been cached already, ads are served for those keywords based on the AdWords bidding system.

ADSENSE

2007-04-13T14:47:00.000+08:00

AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis. Google is also currently beta-testing a cost-per-action based service.
Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website.

It currently uses JavaScript code to incorporate the advertisements into a participating site. If it is included on a site which has not yet been crawled by the Mediabot, it will temporarily display advertisements for charitable causes known as public service announcements (PSAs). (Note that the Mediabot is a separate crawler from the Googlebot that maintains Google's search index.)
Many sites use AdSense to monetize their content and some webmasters work hard to maximize their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:

1. They use a wide range of traffic generating techniques including but not limited to online advertising.

2. They build valuable content on their sites which attracts AdSense ads which pay out the most when they get clicked.

3. They use copy on their websites that encourage clicks on ads. Note that Google prohibits people from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. Phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements".

The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction, in that it commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid.

The underlying technology behind AdSense was derived originally from WordNet and Simpli, a company started by the founder of Wordnet — George A. Miller — and a number of Professors and graduate students from Brown University, including James A. Anderson, Jeff Stibel and Steve Reiss. A variation of this technology utilizing Wordnet was developed by Oingo, a small search engine company based in Santa Monica founded in 1998. Oingo focused on semantic searches rather than brute force string searches. Oingo changed its name to Applied Semantics, which was then bought by Google for $102 million in April 2003, to replace a similar system being developed in house.

FOREX FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS

2007-04-13T14:43:00.000+08:00

Financial instruments, there are several types of financial instruments commonly used.Spot: A spot transaction is a two-day delivery transaction, as opposed to the futures contracts, which are usually three months. This trade represents a “direct exchange” between two currencies, has the shortest time frame, involves cash rather than a contract; and interest is not included in the agreed-upon transaction. The data for this study come from the spot market. Spot has the largest share by volume in FX transactions among all instruments.
Forward transaction: One way to deal with the Forex risk is to engage in a forward transaction. In this transaction, money does not actually change hands until some agreed upon future date. A buyer and seller agree on an exchange rate for any date in the future, and the transaction occurs on that date, regardless of what the market rates are then. The duration of the trade can be a few days, months or years.
Futures: Foreign currency futures are forward transactions with standard contract sizes and maturity dates — for example, 500,000 British pounds for next November at an agreed rate. Futures are standardized and are usually traded on an exchange created for this purpose. The average contract length is roughly 3 months. Futures contracts are usually inclusive of any interest amounts.
Swap: The most common type of forward transaction is the currency swap. In a swap, two parties exchange currencies for a certain length of time and agree to reverse the transaction at a later date. These are not contracts and are not traded through an exchange.
Options: A foreign exchange option (commonly shortened to just FX option) is a derivative where the owner has the right but not the obligation to exchange money denominated in one currency into another currency at a pre-agreed exchange rate on a specified date. The FX options market is the deepest, largest and most liquid market for options of any kind in the world.

The difference between spot and futures in forex, before a description of retail trading, it is important to understand the difference between the spot and futures markets. Futures are generally based on contracts, with typical durations of 3 months. Spot, on the other hand, is a two-day cash delivery. While the futures markets were created to hedge out risks and speculate on future market conditions, spot was created to allow actual cash deliveries. Spot developed a two-day delivery date to give those transporting the actual cash a window of time to receive it. While in theory there still is a two-day delivery date imposed after a forex transaction, this is effectively no longer used. Every day, at 5 pm EST (the predetermined end of the trading day) spot positions are closed and then reopened. This is done to guarantee an unlimited timeline for delivery. For example, if a spot transaction occurs on a Monday, the delivery date is Wednesday. At 5 pm on Monday, the position is closed and then immediately re-opened; now this is a new position with the close date of Thursday. This daily process allows an investor to hold open a position indefinitely. Another important difference between futures and spot is how interest is credited. Each currency in a forex transaction has an inherent interest rate attached to it. In the case of the US dollar, this is the Federal Funds Rate. This interest is added every day whether the market is trading or not. Interest cannot take a vacation; money and its loaning value are still important even if the financial world has stopped dealing. In futures, the interest is built into the price of the contract. In spot, however, interest is not taken into account in the offering price because the spot market is a cash market, not a contract market. There must be some mechanism for crediting interest, and various institutions have developed ways to do it. The most common method is to credit that day’s worth of interest at the same time they “flip” the position, or carry it over to the next day. This is important for later discussions and analysis because the transactions examined in this study had interest credited at the end of the business day at exactly 5 pm EST. If a position was held from 5:01 pm on Tuesday and closed at 4:59 pm on Wednesday, no interest would be credited for that day. If, on the other hand, a position was opened Tuesday at 4:59 pm and closed Tuesday 5:01 pm, a full day’s interest would be credited. This has interesting ramifications; traders who work intra-day, or “day traders,” often do not use interest for either gain or loss.Speculation, controversy about currency speculators and their effect on currency devaluations and national economies recurs regularly. Nevertheless, many economists (e.g. Milton Friedman) argue that speculators perform the important function of providing a market for hedgers and transferring risk from those people who don't wish to bear it, to those who do. Other economists (e.g. Joseph Stiglitz) however, may consider this argument to be based more on politics and a free market philosophy than on economics. Large hedge funds and other well capitalized "position traders" are the main professional speculators.

Currency speculation is considered a highly suspect activity in many countries. While investment in traditional financial instruments like bonds or stocks often is considered to contribute positively to economic growth by providing capital, currency speculation does not, according to this view; it is simply gambling, that often interferes with economic policy. For example, in 1992, currency speculation forced the Central Bank of Sweden to raise interest rates for a few days to 150% per annum, and later to devalue the krona. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is one well known proponent of this view. He blamed the devaluation of the Malaysian ringgit in 1997 on George Soros and other speculators. Gregory Millman reports on an opposing view, comparing speculators to "vigilantes" who simply help "enforce" international agreements and anticipate the effects of basic economic "laws" in order to profit. In this view, countries may develop unsustainable financial bubbles or otherwise mishandle their national economies, and forex speculators only made the inevitable collapse happen sooner. A relatively quick collapse might even be preferable to continued economic mishandling. Mahathir Mohamad and other critics of speculation are viewed as trying to deflect the blame from themselves for having caused the unsustainable economic conditions.

FOREX ECONOMIC FACTORS

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Economic factors, these include economic policy, disseminated by government agencies and central banks, economic conditions, generally revealed through economic reports, and other economic indicators. Economic policy comprises government fiscal policy (budget/spending practices) and monetary policy (the means by which a government's central bank influences the supply and "cost" of money, which is reflected by the level of interest rates).

Economic conditions include:
1.Government budget deficits or surpluses: The market usually reacts negatively to widening government budget deficits, and positively to narrowing budget deficits. The impact is reflected in the value of a country's currency.
2.Balance of trade levels and trends: The trade flow between countries illustrates the demand for goods and services, which in turn indicates demand for a country's currency to conduct trade. Surpluses and deficits in trade of goods and services reflect the competitiveness of a nation's economy. For example, trade deficits may have a negative impact on a nation's currency.
3.Inflation levels and trends: Typically, a currency will lose value if there is a high level of inflation in the country or if inflation levels are perceived to be rising. This is because inflation erodes purchasing power, thus demand, for that particular currency.
4.Economic growth and health: Reports such as gross domestic product (GDP), employment levels, retail sales, capacity utilization and others, detail the levels of a country's economic growth and health. Generally, the more healthy and robust a country's economy, the better its currency will perform, and the more demand for it there will be.

Political conditions, internal, regional, and international political conditions and events can have a profound effect on currency markets. For instance, political upheaval and instability can have a negative impact on a nation's economy. The rise of a political faction that is perceived to be fiscally responsible can have the opposite effect. Also, events in one country in a region may spur positive or negative interest in a neighboring country and, in the process, affect its currency.Market psychology, perhaps the most difficult to define (there are no balance sheets or income statements), market psychology influences the foreign exchange market in a variety of ways:-Flights to quality: Unsettling international events can lead to a "flight to quality" -with investors seeking a "safe haven". There will be a greater demand, thus a higher price, for currencies perceived as stronger over their relatively weaker counterparts.
-Long-term trends: Very often, currency markets move in long, pronounced trends. Although currencies do not have an annual growing season like physical commodities, business cycles do make themselves felt. Cycle analysis looks at longer-trem price trends that may rise from economic or political trends.
-"Buy the rumor, sell the fact:" This market truism can apply to many currency situations. It is the tendency for the price of a currency to reflect the impact of a particular action before it occurs and, when the anticipated event comes to pass, react in exactly the opposite direction. This may also be referred to as a market being "oversold" or "overbought".
-Economic numbers: While economic numbers can certainly reflect economic policy, some reports and numbers take on a talisman-like effect - the number itself becomes important to market psychology and may have an immediate impact on short-term market moves. "What to watch" can change over time. In recent years, for example, money supply, employment, trade balance figures and inflation numbers have all taken turns in the spotlight.Algorithmic trading in forex, with steady growth of the FX markets and the increasing adoption of E-FX among the market participants, algorithmic trading is emerging as the next level of trading technology for market participants to contend with. Although there is much confusion about the technique, most market participants seem to agree that it will be used increasingly frequently. According to financial consultancy Celent estimates, by 2008 up to 25% of all trades by volume will be executed using algorithm, up from about 18% in 2005.

FOREX BROKER

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Retail forex brokers or market makers handle a minute fraction of the total volume of the foreign exchange market. According to CNN, one retail broker estimates retail volume at $25-50 billion daily, which is about 2% of the whole market.Trading characteristics, there is no single unified foreign exchange market. Due to the over-the-counter (OTC) nature of currency markets, there are rather a number of interconnected marketplaces, where different currency instruments are traded. This implies that there is no such thing as a single dollar rate - but rather a number of different rates (prices), depending on what bank or market maker is trading. In practice the rates are often very close, otherwise they could be exploited by arbitrageurs.

Top 6 Most Traded Currencies RankCurrencyISO 4217 Code Symbol
1.United States dollarUSD $
2.Eurozone euroEUR €3.Japanese yen JPY¥4.British pound sterling GBP £
5-6.Swiss franc CHF5-6.Australian dollarAUD $

The main trading centers are in London, New York, Tokyo, and Singapore, but banks throughout the world participate. As the Asian trading session ends, the European session begins, then the US session, and then the Asian begin in their turns. Traders can react to news when it breaks, rather than waiting for the market to open. There is little or no 'inside information' in the foreign exchange markets. Exchange rate fluctuations are usually caused by actual monetary flows as well as by expectations of changes in monetary flows caused by changes in GDP growth, inflation, interest rates, budget and trade deficits or surpluses, large cross-border M&A deals and other macroeconomic conditions. Major news is released publicly, often on scheduled dates, so many people have access to the same news at the same time. However, the large banks have an important advantage; they can see their customers' order flow.

Currencies are traded against one another. Each pair of currencies thus constitutes an individual product and is traditionally noted XXX/YYY, where YYY is the ISO 4217 international three-letter code of the currency into which the price of one unit of XXX is expressed. For instance, EUR/USD is the price of the euro expressed in US dollars, as in 1 euro = 1.3045 dollar. Out of convention, the first currency in the pair, the base currency, was the stronger currency at the creation of the pair. The second currency, counter currency, was the weaker currency at the creation of the pair. The factors affecting XXX will affect both XXX/YYY and XXX/ZZZ. This causes positive currency correlation between XXX/YYY and XXX/ZZZ.

On the spot market, according to the BIS study, the most heavily traded products were:EUR/USD - 28 %USD/JPY - 18 %GBP/USD (also called sterling or cable) - 14 %and the US currency was involved in 89% of transactions, followed by the euro (37%), the yen (20%) and sterling (17%). (Note that volume percentages should add up to 200% - 100% for all the sellers, and 100% for all the buyers). Although trading in the euro has grown considerably since the currency's creation in January 1999, the foreign exchange market is thus far still largely dollar-centered. For instance, trading the euro versus a non-European currency ZZZ will usually involve two trades:

EUR/USD and

USD/ZZZ.

The only exception to this is EUR/JPY, which is an established traded currency pair in the interbank spot market.exchange rates are affected by many factors, in the end, currency prices are a result of supply and demand forces. The world's currency markets can be viewed as a huge melting pot: in a large and ever-changing mix of current events, supply and demand factors are constantly shifting, and the price of one currency in relation to another shifts accordingly. No other market encompasses (and distills) as much of what is going on in the world at any given time as foreign exchange. Supply and demand for any given currency, and thus its value, are not influenced by any single element, but rather by several. These elements generally fall into three categories: economic factors, political conditions and market psychology.

FOREX BANKS

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Banks, the interbank market caters for both the majority of commercial turnover and large amounts of speculative trading every day. A large bank may trade billions of dollars daily. Some of this trading is undertaken on behalf of customers, but much is conducted by proprietary desks, trading for the bank's own account. Until recently, foreign exchange brokers did large amounts of business, facilitating interbank trading and matching anonymous counterparts for small fees. Today, however, much of this business has moved on to more efficient electronic systems, such as EBS, Reuters Dealing 3000 Matching (D2), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Bloomberg and TradeBook(R). The broker squawk box lets traders listen in on ongoing interbank trading and is heard in most trading rooms, but turnover is noticeably smaller than just a few years ago.Commercial companies, an important part of this market comes from the financial activities of companies seeking foreign exchange to pay for goods or services.

Commercial companies often trade fairly small amounts compared to those of banks or speculators, and their trades often have little short term impact on market rates. Nevertheless, trade flows are an important factor in the long-term direction of a currency's exchange rate. Some multinational companies can have an unpredictable impact when very large positions are covered due to exposures that are not widely known by other market participants.Central banks, national central banks play an important role in the foreign exchange markets. They try to control the money supply, inflation, and/or interest rates and often have official or unofficial target rates for their currencies. They can use their often substantial foreign exchange reserves to stabilize the market. Milton Friedman argued that the best stabilization strategy would be for central banks to buy when the exchange rate is too low, and to sell when the rate is too high — that is, to trade for a profit based on their more precise information. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of central bank "stabilizing speculation" is doubtful because central banks do not go bankrupt if they make large losses, like other traders would, and there is no convincing evidence that they do make a profit trading.

The mere expectation or rumor of central bank intervention might be enough to stabilize a currency, but aggressive intervention might be used several times each year in countries with a dirty float currency regime. Central banks do not always achieve their objectives, however. The combined resources of the market can easily overwhelm any central bank. Several scenarios of this nature were seen in the 1992-93 ERM collapse, and in more recent times in Southeast Asia.
Investment management firms, investment management firms (who typically manage large accounts on behalf of customers such as pension funds and endowments) use the foreign exchange market to facilitate transactions in foreign securities.

For example, an investment manager with an international equity portfolio will need to buy and sell foreign currencies in the spot market in order to pay for purchases of foreign equities. Since the forex transactions are secondary to the actual investment decision, they are not seen as speculative or aimed at profit-maximization. Some investment management firms also have more speculative specialist currency overlay operations, which manage clients' currency exposures with the aim of generating profits as well as limiting risk. Whilst the number of this type of specialist firms is quite small, many have a large value of assets under management (AUM), and hence can generate large trades.Hedge funds, such as George Soros's Quantum fund have gained a reputation for aggressive currency speculation since 1990. They control billions of dollars of equity and may borrow billions more, and thus may overwhelm intervention by central banks to support almost any currency, if the economic fundamentals are in the hedge funds' favor.

FOREX(FOREIGN EXCHANGE MARKET)

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FOREX, The foreign exchange (currency or forex or FX) market exists wherever one currency is traded for another. It is by far the largest market in the world, in terms of cash value traded, and includes trading between large banks, central banks, currency speculators, multinational corporations, governments, and other financial markets and institutions. The trade happening in the forex markets across the globe currently exceeds US$1.9 trillion/day (on average). Retail traders (individuals) are currently a very small part of this market and may only participate indirectly through brokers or banks and may be targets of forex scams.

Foreign exchange market(FOREX), market size and liquidity is unique because of:

-its trading volume,-the extreme liquidity of the market,

-the large number of, and variety of, traders in the market,

-its geographical dispersion,

-its long trading hours

- 24 hours a day (except on weekends).

-the variety of factors that affect exchange rates.

According to the BIS study Triennial Central Bank Survey 2004, average daily turnover in traditional foreign exchange markets was estimated at $1,880 billion. Daily averages in April for different years, in billions of US dollars, are presented on the chart below:

Global foreign exchange market turnover:

$621 billion spot

$1.26 trillion in derivatives,

ie$208 billion in outright forwards

$944 billion in forex swaps

$107 billion in FX options.

Exchange-traded forex futures contracts were introduced in 1972 at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and are actively traded relative to most other futures contracts. Forex futures volume has grown rapidly in recent years, but only accounts for about 7% of the total foreign exchange market volume, according to The Wall Street Journal Europe (5/5/06, p. 20).Average daily global turnover in traditional foreign exchange market transactions totalled $2.7 trillion in April 2006 according to IFSL estimates based on semi-annual London, New York, Tokyo and Singapore Foreign Exchange Committee data. Overall turnover, including non-traditional foreign exchange derivatives and products traded on exchanges, averaged around $2.9 trillion a day. This was more than ten times the size of the combined daily turnover on all the world’s equity markets. Foreign exchange trading increased by 38% between April 2005 and April 2006 and has more than doubled since 2001. This is largely due to the growing importance of foreign exchange as an asset class and an increase in fund management assets, particularly of hedge funds and pension funds. The diverse selection of execution venues such as internet trading platforms has also made it easier for retail traders to trade in the foreign exchange market.

Because foreign exchange is an OTC market where brokers/dealers negotiate directly with one another, there is no central exchange or clearing house. The biggest geographic trading centre is the UK, primarily London, which according to IFSL estimates has increased its share of global turnover in traditional transactions from 31.3% in April 2004 to 32.4% in April 2006. Other large centres include the US (with a 18.2% global share), Japan (7.6%) and Singapore (5.7%) (Chart 2). Most of the remainder was accounted for by trading in Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, France and Hong Kong. The ten most active traders account for almost 73% of trading volume, according to The Wall Street Journal Europe, (2/9/06 p. 20). These large international banks continually provide the market with both bid (buy) and ask (sell) prices. The bid/ask spread is the difference between the price at which a bank or market maker will sell ("ask", or "offer") and the price at which a market-maker will buy ("bid") from a wholesale customer. This spread is minimal for actively traded pairs of currencies, usually only 0-3 pips. For example, the bid/ask quote of EUR/USD might be 1.2200/1.2203. Minimum trading size for most deals is usually $100,000.

These spreads might not apply to retail customers at banks, which will routinely mark up the difference to say 1.2100 / 1.2300 for transfers, or say 1.2000 / 1.2400 for banknotes or travelers' checks. Spot prices at market makers vary, but on EUR/USD are usually no more than 5 pips wide (i.e. 0.0005). Competition has greatly increased with pip spreads shrinking on the major pairs to as little as 1 to 1.5 pips.Unlike a stock market, where all participants have access to the same prices, the forex market is divided into levels of access. At the top is the inter-bank market, which is made up of the largest investment banking firms. Within the inter-bank market, spreads, which are the difference between the bid and ask prices, are razor sharp and usually unavailable, and not known to players outside the inner circle. As you descend the levels of access, the difference between the bid and ask prices widens. This is due to volume. If a trader can guarantee large numbers of transactions for large amounts, they can demand a smaller difference between the bid and ask price, which is referred to as a better spread. The levels of access that make up the forex market are determined by the size of the “line” (the amount of money with which they are trading). The top-tier inter-bank market accounts for 53% of all transactions. After that there are usually smaller investment banks, followed by large multi-national corporations (which need to hedge risk and pay employees in different countries), large hedge funds, and even some of the retail forex market makers. According to Galati and Melvin, “Pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, and other institutional investors have played an increasingly important role in financial markets in general, and in FX markets in particular, since the early 2000s.” (2004) In addition, he notes, “Hedge funds have grown markedly over the 2001-2004 period in terms of both number and overall size” Central banks also participate in the forex market to align currencies to their economic needs.