Sunday night… it was a long day. I got up at 5am to go the the Swap Meet to try and sell some of the things filling my garage. Our house is on the market and I’m trying to get lean…as far as clutter that is. In general, I’m the anti-packrat. I throw stuff away almost too quickly and then wish I’d kept it. But, I still manage to collect enough stuff overtime to fill my Trooper from front to back floor to ceiling.
Anyway, after a 6-hour stint at the lovely Oceanside Swap Meet, I was $500 the wealthier and 24 boxes of stuff lighter! WhooHooo
I grabbed some Chipotle for lunch and headed over the the Boy Scout Space Derby event. This is a fun tradition held anually by my youngest son’s Scout Pack. They’re balsa wood rockets that fly down a fishing line race track propelled by ….rubber band powered propellers.
My son, being the knucklehead he is, decided he intentionally didn’t want to make it aerodynamic. He wanted it completely square, like block of wood it is when you get it out of the box. He also insisted we not paint it, or finish off nicely. He wanted to win the “Procrastinator” award (which is a real category), even though he planned well ahead to not finish the darn thing.
Amazingly he finished 4th overall out of some 60 rockets – beating many of the wafe like aero shaped rockets that obviously hours were spent on. It almost irritated people and only made our family chuckle. We spent literally 5 minutes on the entire project and he flew through 5 rounds with only 1 loss on the track before his final round for third place – which he lost. Anyway, it was fun.
I then hurried home for an online conference I was hosting for AuctionSelling101.com – our eBay education website. We coveed eBay stores today, where I instructed the attending students on how search is different for eBay stores than it is for fixed price and auction format listings.
Then we spent another hour where I literally opened up a store, and built it before them online in the conference room where I can share my desktop while talking to them in my headphones. Very cool stuff.
We had some dinner, and went over to Starbucks for an hour or so to play some Monopoly with the family. Then hit the grocery store and then home for the night.
Turns out we had a stellar day on eBay with the bicycle clothing! We sold 5 of our new cycling jackets and vests, several pairs of arm and leg warmers, toe covers and shoe covers and several pairs of shorts. Gross sales of over $350 for the day in just my bicycle clothing. Very good news!
We have an order already in that should be arriving in another week, and I have an order put together to submit next week. I sent out an email to my 400 plus past customers of cyling products directing them to my eBay store letting them know we had full inventory and lots of new items in stock. I guess it worked! )
Selling on eBay is so easy. On our new site AuctionSelling101.com people are always asking, “what should I sell?”, or “what’s a good product to try and sell?”. I’ve given a list of basics to ask yourself to evaluate product ideas, but people always ask the same question.
They make it so much harder than they need to. I know I’ve been selling on eBay for years…7 or 8 now. But it’s just not that hard.
Example: The other day I was looking for things to sell. I am doing a lot of triathlons lately, and I already sell bicycle shorts, jerseys and other cycling related items. So I did a search for triathlon to see what I’d find.
I found several things under that heading that I could sell. One was a very simple small item. Cord locks. You know the kind you push the little button and stick a string through it. Check out the pictures below. Someone was already selling them, but for $4.00 I think, plus shipping. I know that’s highway robbery, so there’s a potential item.
So that’s what they are and from the image you probably get the idea.
Runners and triathletes use them to avoid tying their shoes when they’re in a hurry, or simply for the convenience of not having to tie them. I actually used these for one of my young boys for a year or so before he was able to tie his shoes…they worked great.
Anyway, I figured heck, it’s a small piece of plastic. How much could it possibly cost? So I did a Google search. The search returned hundreds of items. I also went to an International Trade site I’ve used before called Alibaba.com. It’s a free site and you can import things from overseas.
But the bottom line was I found them in lots of 100 from a place 100 miles from my house for about .30 cents per pair. I ordered them online, and had them in two days. I took a few photos – made a listing and put them up on eBay.
I made a fixed price listing for a pair of them for $2.99 and FREE SHIPPING. They were up for about 1 hour before they sold. Ok, .30 cents my cost, two stamps and an envelope to mail them – that’s another $75 cents and I’m into them for just barely over a dolloar and I sold them for three. I net $2.00. Not a killing – I get it. But a few hours later I sold two pairs to another person. So I made $6.00 that first day. I figure if I only make $10 a week, that’s $40/month. Again – not making a killing here, but it’s just one little simple item.
You get a dozen of these type of little things that you source yourself and then you’re making $500/month. Now that may not make a difference in your life, but for some it could be life changing… a car payment or the rent!
Oh yeh, if I import them myself from China I have to buy 5000 or 10000 at a pop, but they end up costing me around 5 cents a pair instead of 30 cents a pair. Of course it takes longer and I have to assume that I’ll actually sell that many, but I could put them up on eBay in lots of 100 for $100 making them only $1.00 each and I’d make an even greater profit margin. I’m sure you get the idea.
If you own your own website you’ve probably heard of the ‘Google Dance’. If you haven’t, let me explain.
Google updates it’s search engine index periodically. This normally turns the whole ranking of sites on the world’s most popular search engine on end, wreaking havoc with site owners as their rankings are disrupted. This is the ‘Dance’.
Ina Steiner of http://www.auctionbytes.com/ reported that eBay will soon be delivering it’s search results by ‘Best Match’ results by seller quality (PowerSeller status and selling track record) instead of strictly by relevance. eBay did not explain what selling track record meant, but it seems likely to be based on Detailed Seller Ratings that were rolled out recently in Feedback 2.0.
Currently, customers see default search results by “Time Ending Soonest,” so everyone has an equal chance of showing up at the top of results as listings end. But I believe eBay may change the default sort to Best Match in an effort to serve up more relevant, quality listings. (Currently shoppers on eBay may select Best Match from a drop-down menu on results pages.)
This is apparently being tested in a few categories on eBay France.
I think this means, your item will show up, but rather than showing up at the top of results when your listing is about to end, it may be buried on a lower page throughout the entire duration of your listing.
Steiner says “If eBay implements Best Match as the default sort, I think some sellers will be devastated. Shoppers, too, may be annoyed, particularly in some categories, and it will be interesting to see if they change their preferences to “Time: Ending Soonest,” though eBay is not likely to share this information with us.
My advice is to be sure and do your best to optimize your listings for whatever changes eBay plans to roll out in the next few months, and get ready for a rocky ride.”
I haven’t written much about MySpace in my Blog, but it’s become a big part of my Internet Marketing life recently.
I have dozens of profiles, bots, Myspace resource sites and much more. I will need to bring everyone up to speed on this whole MySpace deal. I have also been actively marketing for several companies on MySpace and driving tremendous amounts of traffic to thier sites and products. Again, big update is needed.
In the meantime, I wanted to tell you about one of the products I’ve been marketing. It’s FREE to use, of course, but is really valuable for MySpace or eBay or dozens of other places.
What is it? It’s called a Vtag. It’s your voice on the internet. How? You call an 800 number and record what basically amounts to a voicemail. So your phone is the microphone. Then you go the the Vtag website and grab the code they provide you and paste it where you want your voice to be heard. When someone clicks the button…poof your voice plays.
Think of the possibilities…you could do audio blog posts from the field, record a song at a concert, make an audio profile for MySpace, use it to describe something on your eBay auction…it’s so cool..and FREE.
Ok, example time…so you can figure out what the heck I’m talking about!
Allright, if you didn’t click it, go back and do so. This is one of a several different skins available. They come in a few colors, sizes with the scrolling text and without it. There are even a few fun ones.
How do you get a Vtag? Go to www.Vtag.com and register (FREE), and get started making your own and get your voice on the web.
Are you a member of any affiliate programs? Chances are you probably are somewhere somehow. It’s an opportunity to make some money by referring a potential customer to an advertiser.
Well here’s an affiliate program of sorts, made specifically for MySpace. It’s called FavoriteThingz . You go to the website and browse through Bands, Teams, Companies, TV Shows, Websites, Players, Games, Movies and you can even upload your own images and url’s. Talk about a great way to advertise your sites!
Check it out below!
” allowScriptAccess=”never”>
There are NO GIMMICKS, NO SPAM, ABSOLUTELY FREE!
It’s cool all by itself, just to display your favorite things to your Profile viewers, but You have the opportunity to make some money while you do it!
Let’s say you add a video game to your favorite things like the one below:
When others are viewing their favorites they can click on them. They can actually be redirected to an advertiser that sells that game and others. If a purchase is made you get a referral commission.
Awesome isn’t it! It is the first of its kind on MySpace. It’s perfect for Blogs too. They make codes for Friendster, MySpace, Hi5 and a bunch of other Social Communities. Click HERE to get started on yours and start making some money for hanging out on MySpace and Posting all those comments and bulletins!
This is a really cool little tool I found today. Actually I heard about it at eBay Live, but finally got around to checking it out today. It’s called FilmLoop. It’s completely free and it does a few different cool things.
You create these neat little scrolling images and then you can post them in email, blogs, on eBay, MySpace…wherever you want. You can have it go and get all the images from eBay by username or others usernames or upload your own images and make screensavers. Awesome tool.
Check out the Horizontal scroller below:
You can also create the type below. I’ve put this into one of my eBay listings to show you how powerful it can be! Talk about cross promoting your items!
Here’s a link to this looplet in one of my eBay listings. Click Here
There are tons of other ways to use these, be creative. And don’t forget….they’re FREEEEEE! And FREE is a very good price!
That’s what I hear from most people I tell about my guide and others. It’s not a guide “about” eBay. It’s actually a guide about buying a magazine on eBay, written by me, but hosted on eBay.
eBay has created a way for members to share their knowledge on just about any subject with other members. You can find out more about itHERE . You can review a book, DVD movie or MP3 player, or write a guide about something.
Well, I wrote a guide about how to buy a magazine on eBay. I know, it seems simple enough, but you wouldn’t believe the miriad of questions I get about it. So, I wrote my guide Buying a Magazine Subscription on Ebay .
It’s really a broad overview of what to look for as a buyer. But it answers many of the questions I used to get asked daily. I still get the questions, but hopefully it helps some. At the bottom of the guide eBay asks you to tell them if the guide was helpful or not. So far 103 out of 109 people have found my guide helpful. That’s good news for me.
Out of the 22,242 or so guides on eBay (you can see them all HERE) I rank number 729 as a ration of helpfulness votes. They actually give you a little icon next to your user ID and feedback score…mine says “Top 1000 reviewer”. Here are the available rankings.
Anyway, I invite you to read my guide, whether you’ve purchased a magazine or not. Hopefully you’ll learn something about the process and can vote that – yes, my guide was helpful. Once again, you can visit the guide here: Buying a Magazine Subscription on Ebay .
A side benefit of this is traffic generation for your eBay store and listings as it does share my user ID and store location with the visitors to my guide. The guides are also submitted and indexed by Search Engines, further increasing the opportunity for more traffic.
If you have some knowledge about any topic, share it with others. Make the eBay community a better place for everyone by sharing what you know. Also right now, there is a big promotion where eBay is giving away $100,000 in eBay Gift Certificates divided between 500 people over 10 weeks, for those who write a guide, review or eBay Blog. Check it out!
Banners…what are they used for? Normally you think advertising. Now when you need a banner you have two choices…make your own or hire someone. I’ve done both. Now I like to think of myself as a fairly artistic and creative guy, but my skills are still limited and my time is even more limited than my skills! Below is a banner I created for eBay keywords advertising.
It’s not bad, but even as simple as it is, it probably took me an hour to make.
Well through my searching and doing business online, somewhere in a forum I found a guy that does fantastic work, and dirt cheap. His name is Justin and he owns 5dollarbanners.com . You can check out some of the hundreds of banners he’s done at his site, and I’m going to paste a few below. I really like the animated ones he’s done for me. $5.00! And he usually has them done in a day or two. He does all different sizes, whatever you want.
Justin also does eBook covers, CD’s and website headers.
Anyway, that’s my shameless plug for a guy that does super work at great prices. Check it out the next time you need some work done.
Hey, I’m like you probably…in the fact that I’m kind of leery of anything that’s offered free. Of course nothing is free right? I’ve visited 1000’s of websites and joined 100’s of mailing lists all for what? Information. Information that has educated me, and given me the opportunity to make my living without ever having to go to work for someone else, ever again. )
Anyway, in this pursuit, I came across something that is free. It’s a program called Niche Profits, that will show you exactly how to make money with your own ideas. And like I said…it’s FREE. Check it out below!
I’m not making any money on it, it’s just something I think can help just about anyone who is interested in making money online, either on eBay or on a website of their own. How? It’s called “Niche Marketing”. What is it? It’s finding a market that is already existing, that needs to be filled. Think general. Let’s say you like cats. So you want your “niche” to be about cats somehow. That’s your niche. Then you need to find out what people want to buy. This product will help you find this out. Then it will help you find out how to get it to your targeted customer for as little as possible with the greatest perceived value.
It’s just below….check it out!
Get your hands on Joe Cooper’s Niche Profits Course. This is a $97 valueand worth the price of this package alone.
This incredible course shows step by step method of how to make a killing selling info products online.
Including the simple technique that you can use every time you create a new product that brings in thousands of dollars in a very short period of time!
List building is a method of direct advertising. You get to place an advertisment or offer in front of someones face. This is the most responsive type of advertising around. The power of direct marketing is amazing. I did over $20,000 in sales in under a week with one eMail to my optin list.
If you are interested in growing your own optin list you should visit: http://www.ListExplode.com/index.php?referid=bubba76819 You will be able to virally grow your list to over 100K members in 30 days. Once you have a large list you can advertise your own products or affiliate products.
I recommend starting by selling affiliate programs. Once you get the hang of it and know what people are buying you can start creating your own products and selling them. Good luck building your list, and get ready for it to Explode at: http://www.ListExplode.com/index.php?referid=bubba76819
Turns out we had a stellar day on eBay with the bicycle clothing! We sold 5 of our new cycling jackets and vests, several pairs of arm and leg warmers, toe covers and shoe covers and several pairs of shorts. Gross sales of over $350 for the day in just my bicycle clothing. Very good news!
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