Your regularly scheduled Japanese related posts will resume after this short break…

I want to make the most out of the advertising I allow on my sites. While I don’t like to clutter the pages with advert after advert, I also don’t want to lose money on hosting fees. And with an ever busy schedule (mostly my inability to delegate and outsource!), my time spent working on the sites should be worth something. So I have been thinking recently how to balance this by being smart with ads.

I know this will sound morally snobbish, but I refuse to advertise something I don’t think is good. Most of the ads I have displayed through the years are products and services I personally have tried or were recommended by trustworthy friends or acquaintances.

Of course it is easy to simply find ads that pay the most and push those without considering the value of the product to the consumer. Yesterday, I read about one guy who apparently regularly makes 10k+ a month with Google Ads pointing directly to thousands of affiliate links. Of course he is doing absolutely nothing wrong (unless the advertiser says not to do it), but it wouldn’t be possible for him to screen all those thousands of products and services for value to the consumer.

This morning, while thinking on this, I found an Ebay auction I was interested in. I logged into Auction Sniper and had the thought to mention it here again. I am still using it and think it is simply awesome. Yes, I get three free snipes if you sign up, but so do you!

I don’t buy much on Ebay, but when I do I definitely use the sniper site.

The only downside is you have to trust them with your Ebay information. Obviously they will need your username and password to make bids on your behalf, but it is a little scary to give someone that information. I have had no problems and they seem to have an excellent reputation, but if I made my living off of Ebay, I would open a secondary account and give them that information.

Here is a tip. You can easily add the Ebay Item # in the box to add a snipe, but an even smarter way is to browse Ebay and add any auction you are interested in to your watch list. Then in Auction Sniper, click on ‘My Snipes’ and then ‘Import Wizard’ (see below). This will automatically import all items from your watch list!

What I like to do is add a number of auctions to my ’shopping cart’ even if I am only slightly interested. Then in auction sniper, I can set my highest bid accordingly and forget about it. This takes the emotion out of the game.

If you buy from Ebay, give them a try! I don’t think you will be disappointed.