eBay Listings That Draw New and Repeat Customers

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Attracting customers online isn't so different from attracting customers to a retail store. Here’s a real-world example. Last week, I went to a mall to find a pair of jeans. Jeans used to be a simple purchase, but today they come in so many shapes, styles and sizes, it’s hard to keep track of them all. There was no one to help me through the maze of options in the store I first walked into, so I left empty-handed and went to another. There, I was immediately approached by a very helpful salesperson who explained all the varieties of jeans to me, and I bought a fancy pair of jeans at that store--at retail price! (Now that I know my size and style, I can buy them for half-price on eBay.) But which store do you think I would return to when styles change?

Expanding my jeans shopping experience to eBay, the lesson is, any item sold on eBay deserves more than a title, a picture and a one-line description. How many times have you found an item through a keyword search just to click on it and find no further information? Plenty. It happens to thousands of prospective buyers every day. As a seller, if you’re going to invest the money to list an item, give it a fighting chance for a successful sale.

An item’s description tells the customer what to expect about their possible purchase. Mention size, manufacturer, material, condition--basically, anything and everything to give the buyer more information about the item. Lucky media sellers get the advantage of eBay’s license of the Muze database, which supplies further details on books, movies, games and music. But believe it or not, some sellers don’t even take the time to click their mouse to include it in their listings--all you'll see in their descriptions is "New and sealed." Wow. What you should do is tell the customer what they’ll get and what to expect. Then take some time to sell yourself--tell them why they should buy from you.

If you're trying to sell multiple items on eBay, there may be many people who don’t know the difference between the types of jeans (curvy, boot cut, cigarette, etc.), light bulbs (fluorescent, true color, watts, etc.), cell phone accessories or other products you sell. The variations are endless. The solution is one: Write solid descriptions.

When writing descriptions, it's also important to think beyond your listing pages. If you have an eBay store, consider using one of the blank pages that come with your store for a product FAQ page. Or at the very least, put the information on your "About Me" page. That way, you can provide information about all the products you sell, so customers will know which of your listings to look at.

A stellar example of doing things right is eBay seller Beachcombers! In her eBay Store, Beachcombers!Bazaar, store owner Jody Rogers has several informative FAQ pages about her Henna temporary tattoos and other products. By explaining her products, Jody can ratchet up sales far beyond those sellers who don't take the time to build their businesses. Her store is colorful, friendly and offers lots of good reasons to shop there. She uses friendly customer service tactics like “no questions asked” returns (with no return shipping costs for the customer) and custom gift boxes so shoppers can select a group of gifts in one order and make a great impression. If you’re into her bangle bracelets--or know someone who is--she offers a “bangle bracelet of the month” club. Now that’s merchandising for success!

Once you’ve got the customer, it’s time to go full-gear into customer service. Send out these e-mails:

1. Thank you for your order
2. Your order has shipped (make sure to include a tracking or delivery confirmation number)
3. A post-sale thank you and an invitation to return to shop

Shipping quickly will get you lots of return customers and excellent feedback. And feedback always pays off in more customers. Here are a few feedback examples from my profile:

• Thanks so much! Fast shipping and received in excellent condition!
• Great service, nice to do business with, we need more like 'em. A++++++
• Super fast delivery. Certainly will do business with again. Thank you!

I’d easily shop with someone who has that kind of feedback. Wouldn't you?

I’m always shocked when I order an item on eBay and it takes two weeks to arrive. That’s just not acceptable. If there'll be a delay in sending out your item, be sure to e-mail the customer. Also, pack your items carefully. Ask yourself how you’d feel if your item arrived in the condition you sent it out in. Use new padded envelopes and boxes (though you can recycle bubble wrap).

Keep in mind, also, that as an eBay store owner, you can send out newsletters to buyers who've requested them. Write news about new products you carry, trends in fashion (if that’s your thing), ideas for gift-giving holidays and anything else you think your customers will find interesting. You can also use your newsletters to offer your customers a seasonal deal. How about a two-week sale? And free shipping is always appreciated, as is a 15 percent discount for a limited time.

Go the extra mile to give customers a reason to buy your items. Don’t fall into the “I just don’t have time for that stuff” pitfall. Investing the time to keep your customers informed will be well worth the effort; not taking the time will eventually drive you out of business.

Marsha Collier, a successful eBay PowerSeller, is Entrepreneur.com's "eBay" columnist as well as the author of the bestselling eBay references,eBay for Dummies andStarting an eBay Business for Dummies.

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Internet Marketing - 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Site

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Internet marketing involves more than getting traffic to your site. Sometimes the smallest things can have the biggest impact. The following five actions you can take to improve your Internet marketing and Web site are simple and often over looked when creating or marketing a site.

1) Create a unique 404 error page.

What is a 404 error page? It's the page you see when someone clicks on a broken link or a page that has been renamed. When that happens the site visitor will see a standard page that simply tells you the page is no longer available. It has no thrills, no other links, no branding and above all, very little helpful information.

The page usually starts off with these words:

The page cannot be found.
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Your unique 404 error page should look like a regular page of your site. It should include your site's header, footer and navigation bar so that the site visitor can easily click on another area of your site. The content of this unique 404 error page should contain text explaining that the page selected is no longer available along with contact information so the site visitor has the option of emailing or calling your company.

An example of our 404 error page can be found at: http://www.eplusm.com/404.html.

2) We value your privacy.

This simple four word sentence can have a tremendous effect on your email or form conversion ratios. Be sure to have the sentence, or at least the word "privacy" linked to your privacy statement.

Use this sentence next to any email form on your site or on your contact page. Clearly and simply stating your privacy policy assures the site visitor that you will not sell, give or trade their email or personal information to a third party.

While a privacy page is standard practice for most professional site builders, lawyers usually have their hand in writing a company's privacy policy. That results in having the privacy policy looking like a long legal document.

Using the simple sentence with a link to the privacy policy gives the site visitor assurance that you care about their privacy without having a long explanation.

3) We vs You.

Re-read your home page copy and make sure it is customer focused text. Customer focused text is text that focuses on the customer and not YOU. When you re-read your home page content see how often you use the term "we, us, or our" rather than "You". If your text reads something like: "We offer bla, bla, bla," or "Our services includes, bla, bla, bla," then it is focusing on you rather than the customer.

4) Email Signatures.

Create standard email signatures for ALL your employees. Anyone that uses the Internet in your company should have a company standard email signature.

What's an email signature? Did you ever notice that at the end of some emails you will see not only the email creator's name, but their phone number, fax, number, company name, logo, Web site address, etc. It's amazing how easy this is to do and how many companies simply over look it. Or they let everyone do their own thing.

Having the company's contact and Web site information makes it easy for the recipient to contact you or visit your site. Making it standard email signature improves your overall branding strategy.

5) Call to Action.

A call to action is a statement that asks the site visitor to do something. Two of the biggest mistakes made on a Website is not using call to actions or using the wrong call to actions.

You have probably been on sites that do not give you a clue as to what to do next. They have text and links but nothing that tells you to learn more, buy, compare, read, or call now. Look over your site and see what call to actions are on your site. Try to view it as a first time visitor and create a scenario or action you want your site visitor to take.

The most common and most boring call to action is "Click Here". Sometimes it's unavoidable or it's the only phrase that makes sense, but consider using other statements. Instead of "Click here" use words like learn, save, read, compare, etc.

Call to actions are usually linked to another page on your site. This is a great opportunity to use a keyword in a link on your site, which helps with search engine optimization. Use the keyword in the link for your call to action.

These five suggestion are basically simple things to do that can help improve your site overall. They are often over looked but can prove to have a tremendous effect on your site.

For one of our client's Web sites we suggested item number 2, adding "We value your privacy" just above their email form. The sentence was linked to their privacy policy. The link was hardly used, but having that simple statement was all that was needed. The added statement increased their form's conversion ratio by over 250%.

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About the Author: Patricia Hughes is founder of ePlus Marketing and has over 11 years experience in Internet marketing and over 20 years experience in marketing. To receive the ePlus Marketing monthly newsletters and BLOG - both packed with additional Internet marketing tips and suggestions - visit our site as http://www.eplusm.com.

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Everyone wants to 'make easy money,' as far as I can see. It's a universal pastime and goal. The question I have, is how does one make money? Can you make money by starting a business? Some can, but most new restaurants fail within the first year, unless they are a franchise.

Franchises seem to do well, because the issuer of the franchise won't sell one unless they have done traffic counts, approve the location, median income of the area, competition, etc. Starting your own, has no franchise fees, and no percentage of the gross to pay to the franchisor, but then, you have no proven name or instructions on how to operate, menu prices and content, equipment and ingredients furnished by the franchisor which makes it work efficiently. I have had two restaurants, non-franchised, and they worked very well, but oh the work!

In one, the Swedish chef decked my son, who was dutifully washing dishes on a busy night…because he was eating some ice cream. He went quickly! No more restaurants for me. I have clients who have restaurants, Dairy Queens, and the like, and they make out well. Make money in a food dispensing business? Yeah, but make plans to do a lot of work and put in long hours.

I am mentioning things I have done, which made me a lot of money, just to show how it can be done. Way back in 1963, I decided to build an ice cream parlour in Filthydelphia, (it wasn't filthy then), because I love ice cream, and had an idea for hand dipping, which hadn't caught on then. I made it work beautifully! I ended up with ten parlours, owned the buildings in which they were located, and paid cash for the buildings after the third one. I soon discovered that employees are the main problem in any business, and in the first one, I was being stolen blind.

My second one, and then all ten, made a lot of money, because I franchised them. The operators bought their ice cream through me, and I bought it for thirty cents a quart and sold it to them for sixty cents a quart, and charged them no rent, no utilities, no repairs, or even light bulb replacements. They had a fully equipped store, and no franchise fees. They had to charge my prices, which gave them a 40% markup before any employees they hired.

I was making good money, and my operators did well too. In the year 1970, my ten stores sold over 100,000 gallons of ice cream. They had to be careful. If they over-scooped, it cost them their profit, and if they under-scooped, they would destroy their goodwill. They had to worry about their help stealing, not me. I had my supplier take orders, collect money, and send me a rebate check every week. I'd just drive around in my Mercedes and "check stores" to see that they were using my ice cream, were clean, well stocked, etc.

I sold them when I went to Colorado to save an old hotel which was going to be torn down. (God lives in Colorado, I really believe!) The fellow I sold to, destroyed them within six months, due to inattention, and sheer stupidity. A business is only as good as its operator, concept, location, prices, profit making ability, and a host of other things. Not everyone is cut out to be a businessman. I've done a lot of things, and had a lot of fun, but the point of this is to make money, and how to do it.

Most people think that by saving their dollars and drawing interest on them, they are 'making money' at the rate of 10% per year, if they're lucky. Various investments and investment advisors consider themselves successful and lucky if they get 10% a year. I think this is an absolute sham. "What, are you crazy? What's wrong with a 10% return a year?" I am sure this is the logical and common response, but once again, I disagree. Why? Because first of all, two things aren't taken into consideration.

(1) Currency devaluation: How much value is the buck losing every year? Josef Gebbels, the Nazi honcho said, in 1930, "Any lie, frequently repeated, will gradually gain acceptance." I am no fan of the Nazis, but his statement is totally true. Hitler and his goons repeated their lies so fervently, frequently, and with such gusto, that almost the entire German nation accepted their nonsense, and went along with their brutal actions. Hitler was a grand public speaker, which helped out his cause a lot. German currency had gone to absolute zero, years before Hitler came into power. The Reichsmark's going to zero, as a matter of fact, is what caused Hitler to come into power. The chaos created when a currency goes to zero sudde4nly, as opposed to the buck's less rapid slide, is horrendous.

After WW 1, the victorious Allies forced Germany to pay for the damage they caused, a first in history. Naturally, the Germans were broke, so to make a complex story simple, they printed their way out of debt. The more they printed, the less their currency was worth. The more they printed, the more they needed, just to stay afloat. The presses couldn't keep up, so they took the old bills and printed over them with much higher 'valuations,' which of course were total lies. Printing press money cannot create value, nor increase the value or purchasing power of a currency. Government lies to the contrary don't make it true.

The more that is printed, the less they are worth, and prices go up to meet the decreased value. This is known as inflation. Germany is an extreme case, but the truth of the matter cannot be denied. If a currency is endlessly increased in numbers by means of the printing press, its value will go down and prices go up in proportion. Lies, repeated often, will eventually gain acceptance. It is in government's interest to lie about inflation, otherwise known as printing one's way out of debt, or printing press money.

In its interest, because millions of Social Security recipients' checks are directly related to the government stated cost of living increase rate. If the truth were told, we'd be getting a lot more dollars every month. Also, since the U.S. is more in debt than any nation in history, they depend on OPM, or "Other people's money." OPM is money 'loaned' to the U.S. government in exchange for paper instruments in the form of bonds and treasury notes.

Our taxes, it is said, don't even pay the interest, so we must constantly borrow. If the truth about inflation were published, foreign nations might not want to loan their money. It therefore is logical that governments will always be truthful, only so long as it makes them appear righteous and solvent.

Ask yourself the question, "Have prices gone up only a percent or two per year, as the official government statistics say they have?" The answer has to be, "NO, A LOT HIGHER.". How much higher? We can only guess, but I'd put it at eight percent. It has been made more difficult because the M3 figure is no longer published…to government's advantage, of course. (Hitler stopped allowing government financial information to be printed in the newspapers in 1934).

The question then is, if one is getting a 10% return on invested dollars each year, you must figure how much less the dollar is worth each year. If 8% devaluation is correct, the return is 2%, not 10%. If your advisor or manager of your funds takes a percent for his trouble, does this make the 'return' 1%?

(2) When you invested your dollars for a 10% return, did you have to give your Social Security number? Then you have to figure your taxes, not on one or two percent actual return, but the full ten percent, you supposedly received.

Since gold went up 28%, and silver went up 69% last year, you figure it out. Start a restaurant, chain of ice cream parlours, buy a hotel, or get a franchise for something, and you might make some taxable money, spend lots of hours, worry a lot, fight the bureaucrats, and get a few headaches. Maybe you could perfect alchemy, making gold out of lead. Sir Isaac Newton worked real hard at this, but never succeeded. Or you maybe could buy some real gold or silver, and make 69% or 28% this year? The chances are pretty good, I think. Protect yourself.

Don Stott has been a precious metals dealer since 1977, has written five books, hundreds of columns, and his web site is www.coloradogold.com

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Corn Socks

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Clothing made from corn could be saving hundreds of North Carolina textile jobs from heading overseas.

Four North Carolina factories now produce socks and scarves from a corn-based fabric.

The product is especially popular in Japan.

The machines humming at Catawba Valley Community College may be spinning the next hot seller in socks. This is where textile plants send newly developed fabric for testing as US companies try to figure out how to fend off foreign competition.

"It's hard to predict what the consumer is going to buy or what's going to be the hot thing next."

Dan Saint Louis runs the hosiery technology center in Hickory, a lab that recently perfected the latest invention in clothing fabric made from corn.

"It's a new yarn that we're introducing, but we're very pleased in the interest that people are showing it."

Four North Carolina companies now produce clothing made from ingeo, the patented cloth that looks and feels like cotton, but is actually a man made fiber derived from plant sugars, the fabric is biodegradable, and has become a big seller in Japan.

"They are very very environmentally conscious. They don't have places for anything extra in their landfill."

Scientists have also developed clothing made from bamboo and crab shells, a niche in manufacturing that companies say will save jobs and is creating room for expansion in a very competitive industry.

"It would be hard to compete with us. That's the name of the game for us."

You'll pay between $8 and $9 for a pair of socks made from corn.

Several department stores including Nordstrom and REI now sell this and deals are in the works with other major department stores.

WCNC-TV, Charlotte, North Carolina

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How A Good Copywriter Can Beat Corporation

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Great article in the January 29th issue of The New Yorker titled “What’s The Trouble?”.

It’s primarily a deep deconstruction of how doctors think and make a fast diagnosis under pressure. Which turns out to be dangerously flawed in many cases… especially if they like you.

But the article also makes an excellent cross-reference to how the same kind of thinking can affect business owners. This isn’t about evil or obtuse agendas… it’s about how a very natural way of looking at vast, changeable, and not always clear data can mess with your head.

The result can be frightening for a patient. And disasterous for a business owner.

I love the New Yorker, by the way. It hosts the best writing in journalism right now, and yet it’s on the stands every week. (I have a subscription.) There’s no telling how long this excellence will last — it’s dependent on enlightened publishers, hard-ass editors (who barely exist anymore in journalism), and ambitious, competitive writers who are at the peak of their game.

Learning to write well has nothing to do with grammar. It’s about communicating. And it’s nearly a lost art in America. Molly Ivins died yesterday, one of the last of the truly-courageous Old School columnists and book writers in politics. (Thank God P.J. O’Rourke is still pounding ‘em out.) We won’t see her like again soon… especially since the Corporate Beast discovered how easy it is to use books to coat public discourse with bullshit propoganda and rabble-rousing name-calling nonsense. (Both Al Franken and Ann Coulter fall into this category. These scumballs and their publishers are strangling American political dialogue.)

All this, however, isn’t necessarily bad news for people who care about good writing. And I assume this includes you, since you’re reading this blog.

The need for clear, truthful writing will be filled. If you care to join those of us who work to master the craft (and while it ain’t brain surgery, it does require waking up and facing reality), the rewards are beyond counting.

For business owners, the lack of good writing in your market is an opening you should leap into with guns blazing. Whether it’s honing your sales message, or building up your content and nurturing your list… this is the most important writing you will ever do.

And doing it really, really well allows you to stand out no matter how much better funded, or better situated your competition is. A single good copywriter can go up against Attila The Hun, Inc, and win.

Just remember that when I suggest articles to read.

Sharpening your ability to communicate is like putting money in the bank.

Stay frosty.

John Carlton, http://www.marketingrebelrant.com/

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The Problem With Unplanned Growth

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This is a true story, although the names and places have been changed. Everything ended up OK, but there was a lot of unnecessary stress--all of which could have been easily prevented by just a minimum of business planning. This kind of problem happens all the time, and it's so easily preventable, it’s a shame it happens at all. The lesson: Don’t be a victim of unplanned growth.

The story takes place in a midsize university town on the West Coast, during the mid '90s, as the internet boom took off and most everybody in business and education was getting connected. The main players are Leslie and Terry, co-owners of a consulting business offering computer and network services mostly to local businesses.

At the beginning of this story, Leslie and Terry had a small but comfortable office a few blocks off Main Street, near the university, and a comfortable business, averaging about $20,000 in sales per month with a few steady clients and not a lot of seasonal variations in sales. They had one employee who did the bookkeeping and general administration tasks, maintained office hours and made appointments.

Then came the big, wonderful new job--a contract with a large and fast-growing company to install new internet facilities in offices on its corporate campus, 10 miles up the freeway. This was a $200,000 contract that had to be delivered quickly and opened up an important new relationship with a potential business-changing client. There was great celebration. Leslie and Terry and their spouses started with a fancy dinner in the best restaurant in the area.

Both partners readily got going on fulfilling the contract, delivering the network, connecting the systems, making good on their promises. To make sure the new relationship would be a permanent increase in business, they took on five contractor consultants to deal with the needs of installation, training and the general increase in business demands.

Within two months, it seemed clear to both partners that they’d made the leap. Systems were being installed, clients were happy, and they were on the road to doubling their business volume in a very short period of time. The contractors were doing good work, and four of the five were happy to consider becoming permanent employees. Leslie and Terry decided they could celebrate more, so they both went to the local car dealer and leased new Mercedes sedans.

Then things started going bad. Like a television loosing its connection, things got fuzzy, then blank. Though sales and profits were way up, jobs were done and invoicing was underway, Leslie and Terry had no money. The contractors--good people who Leslie and Terry wanted to keep--needed to be paid, but there was no money. They rushed to their local bank, waving their increased sales and profits, but banks need time. The business suffered the classic problems of unplanned growth. Just as the accounting reports looked brightest, the coffers were empty. People were barely done celebrating, and suddenly they were looking at the disaster of unpaid bills and, much worse, unpaid people.

What happened? Unplanned cash flow problems happened. The new, larger client had a slow process when it came to paying bills, so the jump in sales didn’t mean an immediate jump in cash in the bank. Leslie and Terry were more concerned about delivering good service than delivering necessary paperwork, so their own invoicing process was slow. They were owed about $85,000, but they couldn’t go straight to their new client to get the money--she said she’d already authorized payment and sent them to the company’s finance department for answers. The people in the finance department were slow to respond and not particularly concerned about vendors getting paid quickly; their job was to pay slowly, but not so slowly as to get a bad credit rating.

Leslie and Terry had a bad case of “receivables starvation"--money that was owed to them was already showing in sales and profits, but not in the bank. It would have been predictable, and preventable, with a good plan.

In this case, fortunately, the two partners had enough house equity to get a quick loan and pay their contractors. The business was saved and grew, but not without a great deal of stress and strain, and even second mortgages.

The worst moment is worth remembering: One of the partners' spouses was particularly eloquent about the irony of taking on a new mortgage while driving that “[profanity omitted] Mercedes.”

The moral of the story: Always have a good cash flow plan. Never get caught not knowing the impact of a sudden rush of new business. Get to the bank early, as soon as you know about new business, and start processing a credit line on receivables. And never lease a Mercedes until you’re sure you won’t have to take out a new mortgage a few weeks later.

Tim Berry is the "Business Plans" coach at Entrepreneur.com and is president of Palo Alto Software Inc., which produces the industry's leading business planning software, Business Plan Pro, as well as other popular planning applications for businesses.

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Using Affiliate Programs And Smart Marketing To Make A Residual Income

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Affiliate programs are a great way to make a residual income. They allow
you to take part in an established system that has already been tested and
built up. All that is left to do is take control and build a down line.
Combine an affiliate program with smart marketing and it equals a great way
to make residual income.

Affiliate programs are often misunderstood. Originally the idea of building
a down line and making a residual income off recruiting people was called a
pyramid scheme. These pyramid schemes didn’t work because they relied
solely on recruiting and not at all on selling. The main idea behind them,
though, was a good one, so the affiliate program was created. An affiliate
program is more than building a down line of people, it also is based on
selling real and useful products. Affiliate programs work because a person
earns money through their down line and through product sales.

Affiliate programs are also very easy to get started in and most are
completely free with no costs to get started. Most programs offer a website
and plenty of help and advice on how to get the business going. A person
gets help from the people in their up line, too. The biggest challenge,
though, is marketing. No matter how much help a person gets, they still
have to master marketing on their own. Nobody can really teach someone how
to be a successful marketer, they just have to learn it on their own.

Marketing involves learning how to use the tools provided by the program to
get customers and sign others up for the opportunity. The affiliate program
will provide a person will written ads and their own website, among other
things. The website is the central hub of all the marketing efforts. The
main goal should be to get people to visit the website. Once there they
will be able to buy products and sign up to be an affiliate. The hard part
is not getting people to buy or sign up, but to get them to the website in
the first place.

A person has to take the ads and other marketing tools and place them where
people will see them. One of the biggest marketing platforms are search
engines. Most affiliate websites are a simple website, but with a little
work a person can optimize it to make it rank high on the search engines. A
good way to get started is to add a blog to the website and write entries
everyday. These entries should be keyword rich and informative. Search
engines like articles or blog entries and will assign the site a higher
ranking if they have them. Another way to go is to place links and ads on
other websites. A person should choose websites that compliment the
affiliate program, but that are not in competition with it. By using these
marketing methods a person should be able to get a good start in marketing.

Affiliate programs and good marketing efforts can really help to get a good
start in residual income. Building an affiliate program will take some
time, but they are made to produce a great residual income.

Article Source: http://www.articlecube.com

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Age proves no limit for maritime inventor

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If it's in your blood, you're never too old to be an inventor.

Just ask Norton Shores' Larry Gray. He's 77 and in the middle of a relatively successful launch of a new sailing product.

Gray, with his wife, Judy, have created, produced and marketed the TideMinder through their company Go With the Flow Solution LLC of Muskegon.

The TideMinder protects boat dock lines from chaffing due to tide or wave action. A series of balls attached to the loop of the dock line keeps the line from rubbing on a piling, Gray said.

It all began as an idea while hanging out at Hernado Beach's Gulf Star Marina north of Tampa Bay, Fla. Gray has been a sailor of S-2 yachts for years.

The initial idea came in April 2005 and the Grays worked all summer on the prototypes. The first was the use of roller blade wheels but a 3-inch diameter solid plastic ball worked better. The ball is bored to allow the dock line to slip down the center.

"They balls are indestructible," Gray said. "And they float."

For a 12-inch-diameter piling, a set of nine TideMinder balls retail at $49.50. A competitor's product is a small car that runs along a track bolted to the piling and retails for $225, Gray said.

The TideMinder is portable, staying with the boat from marina to marina, said Gray, a member of the Muskegon Inventors Network.

"I like to think it is the perfect invention ... something every boater needs," Gray said. "(As a manufacturer) it's not that perfect though ... it doesn't wear out."

The product was ready for marketing in October 2005. The TideMinder is produced by CamCar Plastics of Muskegon and distributed through Dr. Shrink, a distribution outlet of Mike Stenberg of Manistee, Gray said.

Some 2,000 packages of the TideMinder have been produced but Gray said he cannot say how many of those have been sold. The product was written up in Practical Sailor last June and Gray is working to get the product into the West Marine inventory -- the boating superstore with an outlet in Muskegon.

This is not the first product that Gray has produced. The retired music teacher and choir director also had made a vacuum cleaner accessory for shag carpets that eventually was sold to Clarke Floor Machine.

Larry Gray's TideMinder protects boat dock lines from chaffing.

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