Visit our partners and sponsors:

SWeCS NEWSLETTER - 10 January 2005

Happy New Year! We look forward to bringing you lots of information and special offers this year.

As we send this issue, we've just received details of a great new opportunity that will allow ALL businesses, no matter how small, to receive credit card payments online in Australian dollars, with no upfront fees whatsoever. All you pay is around 3-5% of the sale per transaction. This is a fantastic new service being provided by a long established global business, and is set to revolutionise online selling for small and micro businesses in Australia. We'll give you more details in our next edition.

In this issue...

- South West Classifieds
- This Fortnight's Question
- New Adwords Terms Of Service
- Get $25 To Advertise To The Americans
- Resources For Small Business

SOUTH WEST CLASSIFIEDS

As you may know, South West eCommerce Strategies produces an email magazine about the south west of Western Australia, called South West Life. You can find it at www.southwestlife.com.au. Whenever we ask for feedback on what South West Life needs, someone always asks us for a classifieds section. We wanted to do that some time back, but there's a lot of administration in making that work, so it's taken a while to figure out a reasonable way of providing what people asked for.

As usual, the answer is simpler than we thought but took a lot of thinking and negotiating to make it come about.

From now, you can log into a classifieds section on South West Life and you'll be using eBay, the most extraordinary development in online selling that we've ever seen. What makes it special and why you should use it if you live in the south west of WA, is that it's restricted to local sellers, so if you bid for something you'll know that you can follow up with the seller pretty much locally. That's been something that's caused us to hesitate on some eBay purchases in the past.

How will it work? We reckon it's going to be a pearler, but that's really up to you. There's still some "tinkering" to do, but what's certain is that it needs you to get on board to both sell your stuff and to buy what's posted there. Our marketing budget is about zero, so it really comes down to our subscribers giving it a try and telling their friends that it's available.

At the time of this mailout there are currently over 60 items already listed. Click here to visit the South West Life Marketplace.

THIS FORTNIGHT'S QUESTION

This fortnight's question comes from Cherie:

"Are we able to use content from your website in our newsletters, or to give to our staff?"

Generally speaking we don't mind if you use content from our website for your newsletters etc, so long as our name and website address are clearly noted with the article.

However, we do also like to ensure that we are only associated with reputable businesses and products, so please do check with us first before using our content.

Got a question? Send it to us at admin@southwestecommerce.com and we'll do our best to answer it, as well as publish one every fortnight for everyone to see.

NEW ADWORDS TERMS OF SERVICE

For those of you who advertise affliate programs through Google Adwords, they have just changed their Terms Of Service which will affect the way you can advertise affiliate links.

Basically the new terms are that Google will now only show ONE Adwords advertisement per domain.

So for example, before when you did a search and you would see half a dozen ads down the right hand side for eBay (usually one ad being from eBay itself, and the other 5 were from affiliates), Google will now only display one ad for eBay. This change is taking place over the next few days.

Which ad gets displayed? The one with the highest click through rate. At this stage it's still unclear how you can get your ad displayed if someone elses is already there (ie. how do you earn a high click through rate if your ad isn't going to be shown?), but this should become clear over the coming days and weeks.

How will this affect your affiliate ads in Google? Opinions are divided, so we'll have to wait and see about that one too. One thing for certain is that the number of ads down the right hand side will be reduced, and cleaned up a lot. The changes may mean that some of your ads will no longer be shown. But equally it may mean that if you're ad is shown the click through rates will be even higher. And, with less ads being shown will this mean downward pressure on maximum bids?

We'll keep you posted.

GET $25 TO ADVERTISE TO THE AMERICANS

As a registered affiliate for Overture.com, we are authorised to offer free search engine accounts with them that include US$25 worth of clicks.

No catches, no gimmicks. If you click on the link below and sign up for a free account with Overture.com, US$25 will be credited to your account. You can then start using that money immediately by placing your website at the top of the major search engines around the world including MSN, Yahoo, Altavista, and more.

Click here to get your free account with US$25 credit.

RESOURCES FOR SMALL BUSINESS

Ecommerce Library

Browse through the SWeCS Ecommerce Library, full of FREE information about getting more out of the Internet. Sections include Web Site Development, Web Site Promotion & Internet Marketing, Online Commerce, Computer & Technical Issues, and Miscellaneous.

Newsletter Archives

The SWeCS Newsletter archives provides a wealth of FREE information on small business and the Internet. Browse through the main topics or search for your particular query.

SWeCS Affiliate Program

Start up another income stream, by earning commissions for each referral who signs up for one of our services.

Affiliate Directory

Browse through a list of reviewed Affiliate programs. Let us do the work of testing it out for you!

Do you know of a resource that should be added here? Email us and let us know. There is only one condition - it must be free.

OTHER EMAIL NEWSLETTERS

Here's some other email newsletters you might like:

www.southwestlife.com.au

www.dunsboroughbayvillageresort.com/news/newsindex.htm

www.west-oz.com/newsletter/newsletter.asp