In many areas of business, the most successful people and companies are those who have taken a proven idea, or business model, from an unrelated business and applied it, with a twist, no their own business.

Here are six blogs that have nothing to do with eBay, but do contain ideas and tips that, when applied with a little outside-the-box thinking, can help build your eBay business, improve it’s profitability, and make it stand out from the crowd on eBay.

1. Zen Habits - Written by Leo Babauta, Zen Habits can probably best be described as a personal growth blog. While none of Leo’s posts are directly related to eBay, many posts in the productivity, finance, and organization categories provide ideas and techniques you can apply, either directly or indirectly, to your eBay business.

A good example is a recent post titled 7 Essential Tips To 2008 Your Best Year Ever. Although none of the seven tips say anything about eBay, each one of them can be applied in a manner that will help improve your eBay business. After that take a look at Big Rocks First: Double Your Productivity This Week.

2. Steve Pavlina . Com - Another personal development blog, Steve Pavlina . Com, written by Steve Pavlina, doesn’t contain any eBay specific information either. However, similar to Zen Habits, scattered throughout it’s pages are a wealth of posts that will help you improve your eBay business by changing the way you think and feel about it.

A couple of good posts to start with are 30 Days To Success and How Intentions Manifest.

3. Copyblogger - The main focus of Copyblogger is copy-writing which you may think has nothing to do with eBay. You would be wrong. Writing effective descriptions involves good copy writing techniques. There are plenty of posts here that will help you write more persuasive auction descriptions.

The ten-step copy writing tutorial in Copywriting 101 is a good place to start and will keep you busy for some time.

4. Skelliewag - Skelliewag is just one of hundreds of blogs about blogging that can be found on the Internet. What sets it apart from nearly all the others is that Skellie delves much deeper into one specific aspect of blogging - setting yourself apart from your competition - than the others do. Granted, selling on eBay and blogging may be worlds apart, but some of Skellie’s posts are filled with ideas you can adapt to an eBay business if you are able to think outside the box.

A ‘Simple Web’ Philosophy For Getting What You Want along with it’s four follow-up posts and How To Pick Your Niche Wisely are two good places to start.

5. Anywired - When was the last time you purchased something totally new based entirely on the reputation of a different product from the same manufacturer? Started just yesterday by Skellie (see above), Anywired is that kind of blog. It is written for “anyone who works on-line or wants to start, including freelancers, bloggers, entrepreneurs and telecommuters. Learn how to work the hours you want from anywhere in the world.“, and I guarantee if you follow along, you are going to get a healthy dose of ideas and information that you can apply to any eBay business to make it more successful and stand out from the crowd.

There’s not much content yet (it’s only two days old), so why not simply read everything.

6. Digital Photography School - Digital Photography School is one of the better photography blogs on the Net and is filled with information you can use to improve the quality of your auction photographs.

You can find plenty of information to get you started in the series of posts titled Digital Photography Tips For Beginners.

Photo by Carl Mueller.

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