From: "Mike Manoske" <info@timesharevalues.com>


Bogdan,

My wife and I have had our site Timesharevalues up since November 1999.   We
sell timeshares through Internet auctions - a unique and profitable sideline
business we developed.

Both us are technical: my wife is a Systems administrator who worked for a
very successful Ecommerce firm.

I am the Managing Director of an Ecommerce Solutions and Consulting Firm.

Our site has been an experiment on how to market successfully, without
spending all the profits on banners!

Our biggest win came in April.  We belong to several timeshare users groups,
and we were asked to be interviewed - by USA Today.  We told them about our
business.  They sent out a photographer.  Two weeks later, we got a call
telling us the story was on the Front Page of the Money Section.  Our
picture ended up across 3 columns on Page 2.  We were the site quoted in the
article - and the only auction site listed in a table.  We beat out several
multimillion dollar sites!

This kind of publicity was free, and resulted in a 5000% increase in site
activity and sales.  We sold out our entire inventory, saw our mailing list
triple in 2 weeks - and all for free.

Since then we have ended up in eBay magazine and several other large
circulation web zines.

The moral of the story - User groups are amazing places to build business.
Also, be bold about asking for publicity.  I took the USA Today article and
emailed it too several other magazines and sites, ending up with the full
page story in eBay magazine.  My only expense was time.

Footnote: my wife has resigned from her firm to run our site full time.  We
made more part time than her full time salary!  She has since doubled our
sales.

Shy web owners are lonely web owners!

Mike Manoske

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http://www.timesharevalues.com
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