3 Proven Techniques for Improving Your Website’s Usability

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The number one factor that makes or breaks your website is whether or not people can use it. This is typically referred to as your website’s usability. It seems simple: if people can’t do what you want them to do (buy things, subscribe to things, request a call, etc.), they won’t do it. Yet, because websites are so easy to change, several companies just create websites, web applications, e-newsletters, etc., and hope that the changes will help their business.

What further confuses this is typically a lack of clear insight into your website’s performance. For example, how well does your website convert visitors into buyers? What are the key decisions that visitors must make on your website? Do you give them the information and tools necessary to make those decisions?

This article will help you focus on 3 proven techniques for improving your website’s performance: website analytics, usability testing, and personas. Exactly how you choose to implement these techniques is obviously up to you. However, one thing is guaranteed: all three techniques help you get closer to the people who visit your website: their needs, their desires, and their behaviors. This information is critical if you plan to optimize your website’s usability to achieve your goals.

1. Measure Progress with Website Analytics

Many companies mistakenly install a standard “website statistics” program and only get a group of standard reports. Typically, these reports do very little to help you judge the true effectiveness of your website.

Want to get a jumpstart on creating your own website analytics? Just follow these 3 simple steps:

1. Begin with the end in mind – start with your objectives. Define your website marketing strategy objectives (i.e. “Increase the number of qualified prospects coming from web search engines”), and what you want your website visitors to do to reach those objectives (i.e. “See our listing in the top 10 in Google and click on it)

2. Get in touch with your visitors’ behavior on your website. Track how many unique visitors you get, and how long they stay on your site (including how many pages they view). You want all of these numbers to be going up, since that means you’re getting more visitors who are staying on the site longer. You are maximizing the odds that they will do what you want them to do.

3. Develop your conversion rate. Track how many visitors do the key action you want them to do and compare this number to your total visitors. This helps you determine your conversion rate. For example, if 15 out of 100 visitors requested more information from you (and that is one of your objectives), then your conversion rate for information requests is 15%.

Once you have these key website analytics in place, you can start to evolve your tracking and look for trends to optimize for. Here are two examples:

• Let’s say you notice higher conversion rates on weekends. Then you might want to spend more on online advertising on weekends and reduce your spending during the week.

• Let’s say you need more visitors and embark on a search engine optimization project to improve your rankings. Then you can track the increase or decrease in visitor flow from your project’s activities.

Regardless of what you want to achieve, getting to website usability first starts with solid website analytics. Why? Because website analytics force you to identify those areas that matter most, and identify how well or poorly you are doing in them. Once you know this, you are armed with key data that can help you focus your efforts and determine where things like usability testing can help the most.

2. Leverage Usability Testing

Usability testing is where you take people who would use your website, and actually watch them using it. Typically, you ask the person to do things on the site, and you watch either over their shoulder, behind a one-way mirror, or via a second computer where you can see what’s being recorded on the test computer.

It’s amazing how many things you can make better on your website just by watching people use it. Yet, as you get into it, you may find that hiring a usability professional for a testing project can be unnecessarily expensive. Usability professionals are helpful, since they typically have substantial expertise in planning and conducting tests, as well as interpreting test results. However, usability testing does not have to be fancy or formal: people are going to give you their opinion whether you’re sitting in a research company or at Starbucks. So be careful when hiring a professional that seems to make the testing process complicated or costly. When someone does this, it’s usually only for their own financial gain.

To successfully conduct a usability test, just follow these 5 steps:

1. Define your objectives. Begin with the end in mind. What do you want to accomplish with this usability test? Do you have specific areas of your website that you want to improve? If so, this is a great way to get ideas on how to make those areas better. Are you planning on rolling out a new area of your website? A usability test is a great way to do a “trial run” before the big launch.

2. Recruit the participants. This will take the most time, and can be the most frustrating part of the test process. You have to find people to participate (which can be tough, particularly if you need to match specific demographic profiles), and then you need to schedule them. Then, some will cancel, some won’t show, and some will be great test participants. The best way to get a feel for the person is to talk to them directly more than once over the phone. TIP: Be sure to call the person the day of the test to remind them about it.

3. Script the test. You’ll want to have an intro script, the test script, and a post-test survey. The intro script serves as a checklist of things you want to be sure to cover with the person before you start the test. TIP: During the part, try to focus on making the person feel comfortable giving their opinion, and reiterate that any feedback is good feedback. The next part, the test script, is a checklist of the actual things you want the person to do. This is followed by the post-test survey, which allows you to ask the person questions, and later compare those answers to what they said during the test.

4. Conduct the test. This is the fun part! You sit down with the person, and walk them through the test scenario. Some tests benefit from close “hand holding,” while others benefit from letting the person do whatever they think is right. It completely depends on the objectives, and they information you want to collect. In either case, the best thing to do is to record both the person and what they do on the computer. TIP: Be sure to compensate the person for their time.

5. Report the results. The best way to report the results is two-fold: First, do a quick, one-page or less recap of each session immediately after the test. That way, the information is still fresh in your mind. TIP: Include a picture of the user in your recap, since it will help make that person’s feedback “come alive.” Next, take the information collected during testing, and create 1 to 4 “personas” – user profiles that explain the type of person, what they need from the website, what issues they encounter frequently on the site, and what can be changed to help them. This will help you explain the results to others, and you can reuse these personas later when you are adding or updating areas of your website.

How many people should I test?

For most usability tests, you can learn the maximum amount by only testing ten people. Too many more and you’ll start to see too many recurring patterns. If you go less than ten, you might miss things or not see enough of a pattern.

3. Develop Personas

Let’s face it - no one reads a 20-page usability report from cover to cover. It just doesn’t happen. Usually, key decision makers ask for “recap” presentations, and then “latch on” to one or two key points from the study, quoting that point over and over again.

This presents a great opportunity: why not give those key decision makers something memorable? Enter personas.

Personas are a way to get everyone involved thinking about the actual people who visit your website.

What Personas are:

Fake people based on real data

A practical tool to maintain focus on your target customers

A way to make your data come alive and be more memorable

What Personas are not:

Every possible customer profile

“Made up”; they are created from real data, like usability test results

A replacement for existing ways we design and build our web site

Reporting user tests as personas is a great way to:

1. Get key decision makers on board with the persona concept

2. Communicate web site issues in the context of the people actually using your site

Creating personas from usability testing data is time-consuming, but very valuable. Just look across the data for key trends: what common roles, goals, and actions do you see? Can you group the feedback along those things? You’ll quickly start to evolve a handful of personas which can be refined over time. Add a name and a few pictures of that “person” and you’ll be on your way to creating a more user-focused website experience.

Again, exactly how you choose to implement these techniques is obviously up to you. Even small steps can make a big impact. You don’t have to have super-sophisticated website analytics, test your website with 100 users, or develop extremely detailed personas. Every step you take in these three areas, no matter how big or how small, will help you get more from your website, and your website marketing strategy.

Internet Marketing 101: Putting an Online Twist on an Offline Model

If you're just starting out in internet marketing, you probably feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available. The learning curve is less like a hill and more like a cliff! If you've been at this business for a while, you may be frustrated that you're still not making any money, or not enough money. You may be wondering why no one is reading your ads, or why all those visitors to your site are not buying anything and not returning. Where do you start? How do you convert the casual visitor to a return customer?

Relax and breathe. None of us was born an internet marketer. We all have to start someplace. A great place to start is by looking at something you already DO know, offline business. We all shop somewhere. Pick a store you're familiar with, maybe the grocery store where you shop at least once a week. Pick a small store to focus on, not a huge supermarket. Now pretend that's just an empty lot or building, and you're an aspiring grocer. What do you need to do?

There's 3 big steps you need to take.

1) First you have to have a crystal clear picture in your mind of exactly what you want to do. What do you want to sell, and what do you want your store to look like? Spend some time dreaming, so you can see everyone who is in your store and what they are buying. Your store needs four walls, a floor, doors and windows, and a roof. You need to decide on size, the first step is to figure out what you want to sell. You think about what people in your town need and buy regularly, the availability of these products in other well established stores, and decide on your niche and your location. Maybe it's bread, canned goods, cereals, candy, ice cream, soda, milk, and cigarettes on a busy corner near a residential area with no other store in walking distance. Maybe it's a natural food store in a yuppie neighborhood. Maybe it's gas and snack foods near a highway.

2) Secondly, you have to understand what you need to have in place to make that dream come true, and how you're going to do it. What does your store need by way of infrastructure? You need shelves, freezers and refrigerated cases, a counter and a cash register. Probably you need a small office and bathroom as well. You need electricity, lighting, heat, air conditioning, desk, chair, phone, fax, maybe some music, paint, flooring, security cameras and so on.

Once you decide on the layout of the store, you will know what size of a building you need to build, buy or rent. How are you going to finance this, and how will you afford to stock your store, from savings or from a loan?

3) Assuming that you now have a fully-stocked and operational store, how will you get people to shop there? You could advertise in newspapers, radio and tv; put up signs; offer door prizes and/or sales; offer free advice and information (recipes, menus, shopping lists, health and nutrition information, diet information); sponsor events (a booksigning by a famous cookbook author, co-sponsor a food related festival); build familiarity and trust by joining social, charity or business clubs, or volunteering at local events.

Fine and good, you say, but I still don't know how to make money online. Let's take the example we just developed and convert it to online business.


Gazing Into Your Crystal Ball

1) First the concept. What do YOU want to do? What do the people that frequent the internet want? First and foremost, right behind email, people online are looking for information. There are places online you can go to research hot topics, such as Overture's Keyword Selector Tool. Here you can see how many times a word or phrase was searched in the last month. You can do a Google search for these terms to see how many websites are already available sharing that information. As you keep narrowing down your focus, balance between your passion, what other people want, and what's already available. A very small niche with very little competition with targeted promotions can become a very lucrative business.


Your Shopping List

2) Now the infrastructure, the Short List:

a) internet real estate = a website. This can be an affiliate site or your own. You can get a free website with no outside advertising here: http://www.finitesite.com

b) products: No matter what your interests, there's an affiliate program with products that fit; you may want to sell related ebooks, Amazon.com books, etc. Clickbank is a good place to find electronic information products.

c) tools: you will need a tracking system (known as a link tracker); an autoresponder; a link rotator.

d) knowledge: you will need a splash page program and/or some basic html and advertising knowledge. A free html tutorial: http://www.pagetutor.com

e) an expense budget, no matter how small at first.


You Need More Than Two Cans and a String

3) Promotion: people enter your world (the internet) via a browser. Since "the internet" is intangible, many people confuse the vehicle (AOL or Yahoo!, for example) with the destination itself, the internet. So let's be gentle with our potential visitors and make their journey from landing pad to your neighborhood as effortless, pleasant and convenient as possible.

If they are interested in buying widgets online, they will soon realize that there are a million widget salesmen out there. So they start narrowing down their search, and they comparison shop. First and foremost, they are information gatherers. Where do they go first? Probably to a search engine. Then they start exploring. They visit a site; if it fits their needs, they may bookmark it before they move on. When they move on, they may return to their Google or Yahoo! search results, or they may follow a link off of the page they visited.

So getting yourself listed in the search engines is important. This does not require your own domain name, although it's the best route to go, but a website where you can control your page content is essential. A search engine will not list a replicated affiliate website, such as http://any-old-program.com/aff_id=102109 but it will gladly list http://your-domain.com/any-old-program. Search engines want new, original information, so write something original on your website about every program you join. Link your articles, etc. to your web page, then link that page to your affiliate program.

Your own domain name, carefully chosen, will help to brand either your name or your website name, such as wallywalton.com wallyswidgets.com widgetworld.com etc. If you get a free website with finitesite.com, your url will be finitesite.com/wallywalton or something like that. It might be finitesite.com/member/wallywalton -- I forget, it's been a while since I had a site with them :) With some work, you can get a site with a url like this into the search engines. It's a great way to start if you can't afford domain name, hosting etc.

Sooner or later, your site visitor will be ready for a purchase. Maybe they will drive off to the nearest hardware store armed with all their new information and buy a widget there. If they found your site in the search engine, visited and bookmarked it, maybe they'll return and buy from you. Maybe they'll buy from the site they went to after your site. But 9 times out of 10, once they've left your site, they're gone forever.


And Now the Quiz, Purely Common Sense

How do you get them to come back? Here's a pop quiz for you, choose the best answer (it's a no-brainer):

a) offering so much valuable information, they bookmark your site and return on their own;

b) building so much trust and familiarity that, when they think of widgets, or of asking for an opinion, or for buying anything widget-like, they think of you (that's called branding your name);

c) promoting your website so much that, when they think of widgets, they automatically think of your website (that's also branding, the name of your site in this case)

d) have a mailing list they can subscribe to (this might be the online equivalent of a guest book in a store) and receive updates on information on your website;

e) have contests on your site;

f) endorse other people's sites and products, with an appropriate byline including your own url;

g) give away things;

h) hang out in places online that your potential visitors frequent (forums, bulletin boards, chat rooms, conferences, seminars) and make friends, give away free information and helpful links and tools, include your url in your signature where allowed;

i) blogging and using RSS feeds to keep people thinking of you and your widgets;

j) being a part of the search engine revolution and exploring the world of tagging, or social bookmarks (creating your own search engine with other like-minded anarchists :)

k) all of the above.

Each of these concept, infrastructure, and promotion ideas could be an article in its own right; but this is your basic outline for building your online business. The ultimate power of the internet is to level the playing field for both major corporations, little ol' you, and everyone in between. A business that fully utilizes the internet can throw away the purchased leads list, because cold calling and cold emailing is a thing of the past. Using the internet to its fullest business potential means putting your message where your potential customers can find it, and letting them come emailing, looking and calling for you.

Be sure to take advantage of the unique power of the internet, and keep the "internet" in your internet marketing

The 15 Online Businesses that you can start today for big profits.

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Here you can find 15 businesses that you can start fast. These businesses are profitable and they are in high demand. You could expect to receive good profits from most of them. The drawback is that there is too much competition for the majority of these businesses. Anyway, I will briefly describe them here and show you how you can also claim a piece of the profits from the online business world.

1. Sell information.

People are starving for information nowadays. Information could be anything that communicates a message. Art is a kind of information, images, files, software, games, books and e-books are information too.

You can create your own products or have other people do it for you. Either way, you will have to invest some time and money. If you want to have the products created for you, then you can outsource the projects to others even to people in other countries. This is a good technique that a lot of companies are using today.

Selling information is very profitable because the costs of reproducing the products you sell are next to nothing. Once you create the first product you can create as many copies as you need virtually at no cost. The time required to distribute the products to your clients is next to zero too. Finally the shipping costs often disappear on the Online business world. This is definitely a profitable business.

2. Become an affiliate.

If you don’t want to create anything you can sell what others create. Your only duty will be to advertise. Advertising is not easy, specially in such a competitive arena that is affiliate marketing. On the other hand, if you have the patience and discipline to learn how the super affiliates make it, then it can be really worthy the time spent on this venture.

Some top affiliates make tens of thousands per month from this business alone. There are just so many companies out there that want you to promote their products. This is one of the reasons why some new affiliates get lost. How can you know which companies are trustworthy and which ones are not?

Simple. Stay with the companies that pay you high commissions like 50% to 75% per sale and which conversion ratios are fairly high. For example, if a company pays you 65% commission to sell their product and for every 100 people that see the product 2 - 3 purchase it, then you may consider promoting the product.

Also expect to receive at least $20 per sale. I wouldn’t advertise a product if I can not get at least $20 for every sale. Do the math. Let’s say that you get paid $25 per sale. Your advertising costs are $5 per 100 people. If on average 2 out of 100 purchase the product, then you will get a huge return on investment.

Of course these are hypothetical figures. The real world is a little bit different. To find these products may not be that easy. But that’s the basic idea of how starting an affiliate business works.

3. Sell advertising space.

This is another good idea. The main thing you will need is a website with a lot of real good quality traffic. You can get truck loads of cheap traffic from autosurf programs and other sources. You can trick some advertisers but most of them won’t stay with you after their test spend.

That’s why it is better to do it right from the beginning. This business can be profitable but you definitely need reasonable quantities of quality traffic everyday. You can do this by giving away good quality content both on your website as well as other places.

For example you can write articles and publish them on article banks or e-zines. You can write a short e-book and offer it for free to your visitors on the home page. You can write programs reviews. You can set up a forum on your website and let you visitors interact with each other.

Anything that could provide a service or that can enhance the experience of your visitors can be a good source of traffic. The good thing about it is that most of those visitors will come back to your site from time to time and these techniques are free. If your website offers good content to your clients, you won’t need to pay to get visitors. They will come to you for free.

4. Trade.

Trading is very risky, that’s why it can be very profitable too. It is like they say: “no risk, no reward.” You should never trade or invest the money that you cannot afford to lose, but if you have some spare capital, this can be another source of income.

Most online brokers today will allow you to open an account with them with very little initial investment. You can open an account with as little as $300 to $1,000. Also there are many markets that you can trade in. You can trade currencies at Forex. You can trade stock shares at the different exchanges through the online brokers. You can trade commodities at the Futures market. You can trade options and many other derivatives.

The are many choices for those who want to trade for a living. Just a cautious note here. Trading is not as easy as many people want you to believe it is. It takes time to master any market including the financial markets. It is better to trade on paper for a while before you compromise your real capital. Some people become rich trading, but 90% of the traders fail.

5. High Yield Investment Programs.

There are many opportunities on the Internet to invest in programs which promise high rates of return in a short period of time. Most of them claim to be private investor clubs and they say that they get most of their profits from financial trading and investing.

Some of these companies seem legitimate but many are pure scams. Discretion is recommended to anyone who chooses to invest on these programs. Some offers are so unbelievable that they are simply that: unbelievable. Remember that “if something sounds too good to be true it probably is.”

When you visit the forums you can read how many people lose money on these programs while others claim that they paid for their vacations or something else with the money they got from one of these programs.

Many high yield investment programs are short lived. They disappear quickly ripping off many investors. Others tend to be more stable. Typically I have seen that those companies which offer more reasonable returns like 1% - 2% profits daily tend to be more reliable and last longer.

Anyway, the reward on this investment can be big, so the risk is also big. Discretion is recommended. Avoid anything that sounds like a game, pyramid or gambling.

6. Online Auctions.

Online auctions can be a good source of revenues. You can sell virtually anything on these auctions. Who doesn’t know about e-Bay? Almost everyone on the civilized world knows about it. E-Bay is not the only one though. Stormpay is a good player too and there are many others.

The idea is to get good quality products at the lowest possible prices. You can achieve this by getting to know the best wholesalers for the products you are trying to sell.

If you can buy bellow wholesale price and then sell the items individually you may realize a nice monthly profit by doing that. Some people’s main source of income are online auctions and they make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Another way to make money with online auctions is to be a dropshipper, which I explain bellow.

7. Be a dropshipper.

When you are a dropshipper you don’t need to buy the products that you are selling. This eliminates some of your risks. You just make the presentation for the products whether on online auctions websites or your own websites and wait for somebody to purchase the products.

Once they send you the payment you transfer the order to the distributor who package and send the product to the buyer. Then you get paid a portion of the sale price. Some individuals prefer this because they don’t have to deal with the merchandise nor the clients and still they get handsome profits from this business.

8. Multi-Level Marketing.

When you join a multi-level marketing company you can sell other people products like with affiliate marketing and recruit others to do the same. You then get paid for every sale that your sales team generate.

You can do all of this over the Internet without having to meet people personally. The beauty of this business is the residual income that it can generate for you. If you train your sales people well and they do the same with their sales team your profits multiply over time.

This may sound like a pyramid but it is not. Genuine multi-level companies won’t charge you to join their program. They are interested in your advertising efforts not in your money. Pyramids charge you to join, usually a large amount and the only way for you to make more money is to pull more people into the scheme.

With multi-level marketing you can make money even if you do not invest anything on the company. You make money by selling their products as well as training other people to sell the products. The people that you train do not have to pay anything to join the company either. They are just sales people not investors.

9. Start a consultancy business.

If you have knowledge and expertise about a particular topic, you can start a consultancy business online and help others. You can offer your knowledge and advice for a fee.

You can do this directly from your own website or your website can be used as an advertising tool. Then you refer your visitors to other media you can use to run your consultancy business like your telephone or any meetings that you organize and they can attend.

10. Exchange e-currencies.

There are different e-currencies on the Internet today. Sometimes somebody needs to exchange one kind of e-currency for another. For example, they may have e-gold and they may need e-bullion.

So, when they want to exchange money they go to online money exchangers and exchange the money. The transactions occur mostly through the exchangers websites, sometimes manually and sometimes automatic.

This is a lucrative business. If you become an exchanger you get paid a small fee for the transaction. It could be for example 3% of the exchange amount. So, if someone has $1,000 in e-gold and they want e-bullion, then you charge three percent of the e-gold you are receiving ($30) plus the amount that e-gold charges you to receive the funds. That’s your profit $30. Then you send them the e-bullion.

How it is usually done is that once they send you the e-gold you subtract the fee from the e-bullion that you send them. So, they receive less in e-bullion than what they send you in e-gold.

This may not look as much money to you. But if you have several hundreds of transactions per day, you can make serious money this way. The drawback is that you need funds to do the exchanges. You may also need to find out what are the rules and regulations about this business in your local jurisdiction. But I certainly believe that this can be another good source of revenues on the Internet.

11. Autosurf for profits.

Autosurf programs has spread all over the Internet lately. The idea is as follows. You pay a company some money to receive website visitors. The company send you visitors and give you the opportunity to surf other members websites as well. If you surf other members websites you can get paid a percentage of the amount you paid on a predetermined time frame, let’s say weekly.

For example, you pay the company $100. The company promises to pay you back 15% weekly if you surf 15 websites per day. Then you click on a link every day and the websites rotate on your browser for a set amount of time (e.g.: 15 seconds). Then you close your browser and go do something else. At the end of that week you will have $115 on your account. The more you invest the more you make.

Many autosurf programs are scams. They do not provide a legitimate service to their users. Others are very effective. I specially like the ones that require the users to manually surf the websites. This way I make sure that a real visitor is visiting my pages and not a machine.

12. Start an affiliates network company.

If you start an affiliate network company you will be the intermediary between the merchants and the affiliates. You can also offer the merchants a payment processing system and allow them to use that tool to collect payments from their clients.

Your main focus on this business is not to create products nor to advertise products. You mostly act like a bank. The merchant join your company to sell products using your services and to get affiliates. The affiliates join to be able to sell the products on the program and receive commissions. The merchants offer the commissions they are willing to pay and take care of their customers.

You collect the payments from the merchants’ clients and send payments to the merchants and affiliates on a predetermined time frame. You charge a fee for your services.

That’s basically it. That’s the basic idea of how this business works. Of course, it is not that easy in real life. You will face competition, but the good thing about it is that you don’t have to create the products and you don’t have to advertise them either. You act like the bank and intermediary between affiliates and merchants.

14. Become an e-books wholesaler.

You can also purchase e-books in wholesale quantities and sell them all over the Internet. A package of e-books may cost you a few dollars and you can sell them over and over again.

Some people write e-books and offer master resale rights on those books. This means that not only you can resell the books but also let your clients sell them to their clients and on and on. The reason some authors do this is because they want to get maximum exposure for other products that they are selling or for the affiliate links that they included within those e-books.

Then you can get a package of those e-books and software with master resell rights and sell it to other people. This way you do not have to create your own products. You make a small investment once and profit many times.

15. Sell hosting and memberships.

This business can provide residual income for you. When you sell hosting you are basically selling a space on a server to webmasters. This provides a good source of revenues because many webmasters stay subscribed with the same hosting company for many months or years.

They pay a monthly fee and as long as they stay subscribed you keep receiving profits. The same happens with membership sites like dating websites. You don’t need many subscribers to be profitable. This business is different to others for the reasons that I will explain bellow.

If you write an e-book and try to sell it to others, you will sell that e-book once to one customer. That customer may never purchase anything else from you again. If you sell a membership to somebody that person will give you money on a recurring basis. You will sell the same product to the same person several times.

This provide a source of residual income in which your money grows exponentially over time. Let’s say that you have 1,000 subscribers and they pay you on average $5 each per month for your subscription. If you don’t sell further subscriptions you will still receive on average $5,000 per month.

On the other hand, if you market single sale products you need to keep selling the same amount of products every month to new clients if you want to keep receiving the same amount of monthly profits. That’s why residual income is so important. A web hosting or paid subscriptions business offer a great opportunity to receive monthly residual income.

Buyers and Sellerts FAQS on Timesharing

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Buyers FAQS:

Q: Why should I buy a RESALE timeshare from you instead of buying it directly from the resort?

A: You can get the SAME timeshare on the resale market but at anywhere from 50% to 80% off the price you would pay if you bought it directly from the resort. And, because you will have paid so little for it by buying resale you will have an easier time getting most of your money back. Or, if you decide to keep it, you may will it to your kids or give it away. Click here for the TimeSharing Today Article “Let's give it to the kids!”.

* Depending on resort and market conditions.

Q: Why should I buy a RESALE timeshare from a professional, licensed timeshare RESALE Broker? I have friends who want me to buy theirs.

A: GOOD QUESTION... BUT BE VERY CAREFUL !

When you buy from a private party you have no way of knowing if the previous owners have put it up for collateral, have a lien against it, or owe back dues or taxes. You could be liable for heavy duty fees that you know nothing about! When you buy from a private party you have no way of knowing if the previous owners put it up for collateral on a loan or it could have a lien against it. Even though they are the best people in the world, they might not know either. Or, did they use a quit-claim deed and give it to someone else? Have they paid all the annual maintenance fees and taxes? If not, you may be liable for heavy-duty past-due bills if you buy it from them.

And, you cannot use the timeshare until you have paid off those outstanding bills. We are a professional, licensed timeshare resale company and we have the same fiduciary responsibility to buyers and sellers as real estate agents who sell homes. We are successful because we offer sellers, as well as buyers, easy, fast and SAFE property transfers. Click here to see our TimeSharing Today magazine article on “Do you dare do it Yourself?”.

Q: How do I know that I am buying a RESALE Timeshare that is free and clear of all liens?

A: This is why it is important to buy your timeshare from an established company like Timeshare RESALE Alliance, and why we use a professional escrow company that gives you a Title Policy guaranteeing that the deeded property you receive is free and clear. The same checks are made on Right to Use or Club Membership types of property as well.

Buying a timeshare involves almost as much paperwork as buying a home. You want to make certain that all the paperwork is filled out and properly recorded, that you are buying a property that is free and clear, and that the transfer of title is accurately registered with the resort. Making sure you get what you pay for is how we earn our commission (which is paid for in most cases by the seller)---we’ve matched thousands of buyers with sellers and know how to get the job done for you.

Q: Will I get the same benefits the resort offers to those who buy directly from them?

A: Resorts often give you two free airline tickets, an inexpensive weekend at the resort or a comparable gift, when you come for a presentation by them. You do not get those when you buy on the resale market. On the other hand you don’t get the generally high powered sales pitch either. But, you get the same timeshare at a savings of $5,000 to $20,000! With these savings, you can afford to buy your own airline tickets and resort weekend and still pocket huge savings. Hence our slogan, “Never an Up-Front Fee. No Pressure. Just Great Values”.

You know about all that “free” stuff? It isn’t really free. The buyer not only pays for his own but everyone else’s that didn’t buy as well (about seven out of ten).

Resorts give away a lot of “fluff” to make it seem as though you are getting many free benefits. They sometimes also give you a “free” membership in their Travel Club or “bonus points” that give you access to discount airline tickets and “weekend getaways”. In reality, you get these same benefits from the Exchange Companies such as Resort Condominiums International or Interval International. Why spend thousands of dollars extra to buy directly from the resort so you get this “fluff” (we call it “airware”) from them, when you can get the same thing from your exchange company?

Q: How will the resort treat me if I buy a “Pre-Owned” Timeshare rather than a “New” one purchased directly from them?

A: During your escrow, the Escrow Company notifies the resort of the Transfer of Ownership. When you check in to your resort, the staff does not even know that you bought the timeshare on the RESALE market. Nor do they care. The resort’s only concern is to have enough owners to pay the annual maintenance fee and taxes so they can maintain the beauty, high quality and desirability of the resort.

Q: How do I know which RESALE Timeshare Resort is the best one for me?

A: First, determine where and how you want to use your travel time. Where do you enjoy spending vacations? Do you love the beach, the mountains, the big cities or the desert? You have many choices. For example…

If getting back to nature in the Southern California mountains is for you, you can become a lifetime “pardner” in a “Members Only” 750 acre Private Ranch located 26 miles inside the Sequoia National Forest with free RV hook-ups, cabins, horseback riding, fishing, shooting ranges and more. And, you can go there as many times a year as you wish at no additional charge. After you use it for your lifetime, you can resell it or will the membership to your kids. This is most suitable for those living from Fresno to Paso Robles to Ventura to Los Angeles, California.

Is taking the family and grandparents for an annual family reunion during winter vacation in the warm desert high on your list? You can have a Palm Springs retreat that Tracy and Hepburn would have envied. And, if you’re in the neighborhood, you can even have day use!

How about a weeklong romantic rendezvous for you and your Special One in Paris one year, and on a Caribbean beach the next? Then you want to buy a top-trading, high-demand California coastal resort at a dramatically reduced price from what you would pay if you bought directly from the resort---and then trade it for anywhere in the world you want to go.

Q: After I speak with your Consultant and determine which Resort is the best for me, what’s the next step?

A: This is the easy part---we do all the work for you and lead you through the process step by step.

After you decide on the resort and price, our personal Timeshare Resale Travel Consultant will FAX or mail a Purchase Agreement to you for your signature. The agreement contains the entire dollar amount of your purchase, including all fees and escrow charges---there are no surprises down the line. Simultaneously, she or he will take your credit card number and charge your Deposit of $500 (sometimes more on more expensive RESALES – You will know in advance what it will be) and alert the Seller. As soon as she receives your signed Purchase Agreement, she presents the offer and if accepted instructs our Escrow Coordination Department to open your escrow at a major national Title Escrow Company. They credit your escrow account for $500. The balance is due back to the independent Escrow Company along with your signed Escrow Instructions. When your escrow closes, the Escrow Company then sends the monies due to the Sellers to them and the Grant Deed to you and you are now the proud new Owner of a wonderful future full of fabulous vacations.

Sellers FAQS:

Q: Do you charge an upfront (“Listing”, “Appraisal” or “Marketing”) Fee to list my timeshare?

A: NO! NEVER, EVER PAY AN UPFRONT FEE! We have Sellers who, after paying even $800 - $1,500 in upfront fees that never resulted in a sale of their timeshares, come to us and we sell their timeshares for them and NEVER charge them an upfront fee.

Q: Why should I list my timeshare with you?

A: 1. Because we spend thousands of dollars monthly to market YOUR listing.

2. Because our sales agents are more than salespeople. They are experts in the specialized field of timeshare resale. They know YOUR listing is in our inventory and present it to buyers who are interested in California resorts. Even if a buyer wants a resort in another state, we show them why YOUR resort may be better for them. Our licensed agents know all the strategies for getting the most from timeshare travel and act as Timeshare Travel Consultants to help your buyer understand all the reasons why they should buy YOUR timeshare.

3. Because we’ve been doing this successfully for years and have matched thousands of sellers with buyers.

4. Because we use a professional escrow company that handles all the money and delivers a Title Policy on all deeded transactions so the it can never come back to bite you.

Q: How much can I get for my timeshare?

A: How quickly do you want to sell it?

We do not set the prices; Sellers set the prices. There are many reasons for selling a timeshare: death of a spouse, divorce, illness, and financial setbacks. Some Sellers just want to give it away and place a very low price on it - they are your competition. We research the prices in the resale market to help you determine a fair price.

The timeshare resale market is very much like the automobile market. You will pay a dealer a large sum for a new car. The second you drive it off the lot, it’s worth much less on the resale market.

Prices are also influenced by the quality of your resort location, size, season of use, and its trading power in addition to comparable sales of similar units. Resale timeshares normally sell for 50%-70% off the price paid when purchased new. You paid a fair price to the developer who bought expensive land and paid the construction costs to develop a beautiful resort. Also their marketing costs to sell it are extremely high (on the order of 50% of your price). But like a car, there are a lot of Sellers who drive the prices down by selling at low prices. It is to our advantage to get the most we can for your timeshare and we make every effort to get top dollar for you. But if we ignore the realities of the marketplace we simply won’t be able to sell it for you. What good does that do you?

Q: How much is your commission?

A: Here is some background on how timeshare resale commissions work:

In the residential real estate market, commissions are usually 6%. They are so low, because the price of a house is so substantial. Six percent of a $400,000 house (the median price in California now) is $24,000 in commission. A timeshare sale involves almost as much work as selling a house, sometimes more! Yet, in timeshare resales, the commission dollars are so low that most real estate agents won’t even consider selling a timeshare. Note that the 3% Selling Broker’s commission is still $12,000.00 (more than the selling price of most resale timeshares).

Because of this disparity in commission dollar amounts, the normal commission throughout the timeshare resale industry is 30% so that the resale company can get enough to advertise it, sell it and oversee the transaction for both the Buyer and the Seller and still stay in business. Occasionally a company will state a 20% commission but with a $1,500 minimum. That is still a 30% commission on a $5,000 resale.

In exchange for this, what we do for you is maintain numerous sales locations, advertise in newspapers, magazines, resorts, yellow pages and on our website. In addition, we have highly trained, experienced sales agents answering our 800 toll-free telephone lines to sell your timeshare to interested buyers who call us. When your unit sells, we prepare all the paperwork and open an escrow for the transaction. We then follow through on the details of the Escrow activity to make certain it closes in a timely fashion.

Q: How long does the listing last?

A: Because we spend so much money to advertise our listings, we take the usual industry-wide listing period of one year. Some timeshares sell very quickly. Others can take 6 months to a year to sell depending how many are on the market.

Q: Can I sell my timeshare if it is not paid for (there is a loan balance)?

A: We cannot sell a timeshare if more money is owed on it than what you would receive for it after closing costs and commissions are paid without you coming up with the cash difference (usually a bad idea). How much did you pay for it? How much do you owe?

One thing you can do, if your timeshare is not paid for, is pay down the loan so that what you owe on it is what you would receive for it when it sells. If you cannot do that, you can pay off the balance on a no/low interest credit card. Or, if you qualify, we can help you get a home equity line of credit to pay it off - you can save a lot on the interest and deduct from your taxes whatever interest you pay on it. Or, you can send cash for the amount needed to pay off your loan at close of escrow.

Q: Who handles my money?

A: When we sell your timeshare, everything is handled for you by a professional escrow company, just like the ones used for buying and selling homes. We use well-known national title companies that have a fiduciary duty not only to you, but to your Buyer, as well. They efficiently prepare the legal documents for you and your Buyer to sign. They receive the money from the Buyer. They distribute any dues owed to the resort. They pay us our commission and they subtract any other closing costs. They then send you the balance - that is what they are legally required to do at the same time they send us our commission. We never handle your money.

Q: Yes, I want to list my timeshare for sale. What’s the next step?

A: IT’S EASY!! Call us and we walk you through it, step by step. One of our professional, licensed timeshare RESALE consultants will ask you some questions regarding the resort you own and help you determine a price. Then we will send you a Listing Agreement that shows, usually to the penny, what you can expect to receive. You sign it and send it back to us with a copy of your deed and loan payoff documents (if it is paid for). We do the rest. As soon as we receive your signed listing agreement, all of our sales agents are made aware of your property so they can begin offering it to buyers who call us daily.