bubbajay.com

What is ‘head clearing’? It’s when I do a download…a mind dump to get stuff off my mind.

Work – too much. I remember now why I didn’t like having a ‘job’ and a boss. It’s not either the job or the boss – I have two jobs now, and two bosses, and really like both. But it’s the loss of freedom. I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I like to be free to make my own path, my own decisions and work – at least mine – just doesn’t lend itself to that.

But, times are tough out there, and I need to feed my family, pay bills and take care of business – so I suck it up, shut up and go to work.

Kids – love ‘em. I have four kids. They’re all so unique and different and I love each of them for their own merits. My oldest son Cole is turning 18 today. Wow, feeling old right about now. My youngest, Jacob is 8. And I have two in the middle, Dylan 12 and Teddi my daughter is almost 16.

The older two live with their mom locally, and the younger two with me. The younger two keep me busy and unfortunately between their Baseball, Boy Scouts, School, and my two jobs, I don’t see my older two very often. Add to this that they’re teen agers..heck adults and they just don’t really want to hang out with Dad too much. It’s kind of a bummer – but life I guess.

Location – we’ve been trying to move to Big Bear, California for a few years now, but with the housing market stinking it up out here in California, it’s just not happening. We talked with a mortgage guy the other day about refinancing and that’s not going to happen either. So, the newest plan, save some money, pay off some debt and move to Big Bear and rent our home and hope and pray for the best renters in the world. Cross you fingers.

Racing – I haven’t done any Adventure Races in months. If you’ve known me for long, I did 4 two years ago I think, and 7 last year as I recall. Love them…but need to be fit and honestly it’s been tough…well if we’re being honest – I’ve been lazy. With my schedule, when I did have time to train I usually opted not too. But, I’m back at it. I have a snowshoe race coming up in 2 months. I got third last year so I’m going to start shooting for that. I’ve been running 5-6 miles 3 days a week – either road or trail runs, and riding my road or mtn. bike the days in between. I usually don’t do any workouts on the two days that I work my day job and then night job in the same day – my ‘double’ as we call it, pretty much zaps me. They’re 16 hour work days and they’re always back to back so I just can’t do it. But other than that I’ve been pretty disciplined lately. I wanted to get some kayaking in again and some high altitude hiking to get my legs and lungs strong for the snowshoe race as it’s up in Big Bear at over 6,000 feet to START and climbs around 1000 to 1500 feet from there.

Halloween came and went, before you know it Thanksgiving will be past and Christmas is just around the corner. Dang, it only reminds me we were hoping to be in Big Bear by now. Bummer. We booked a week up there at Christmas…keep the dream alive!

Ok, so you’re all caught up. I’m busy, but doing well. Hanging in there – you do the same!

Interesting…I just got a Blog comment from “anonymous” on my post below titled “Getting Red Going Green”. I was chastised for not keeping up on my Blog. I’m not sure how to feel…first they’re right – I haven’t kept up on my writing lately. But, second – where is their Blog? Who are they? What right do they have to judge my frequency of writing? Third, I put the Blog out there so should I be judged? Perhaps.

Anyway, here come the excuses…

Times are tough. I’ve been working from home for 5 or 6 years now I think, providing for my family from my various e-commerce endeavours. I started looking for work outside of the online realm, much to my demise. Even worse I found a job. And to top it off, I found another.

So, a month later, I went from working at home full-time to working two jobs for a total of around 70 hours a week for someone else.

I have a background in restaurant management, and fell into position as the Front of the House Manager at a local Irish Pub. The Pub is owned by Matt Hensley – ex-professional skateboarder, and band member of the fairly famous Flogging Molly. It’s a fun, lively atmosphere with live music every night and a young clientele and staff. I enjoy it despite the fact that I don’t drink and am not Irish. I work there approximately 30 hours a week, 4 nights a week.

I was happy to find a job in the evening allowing me to pursue my own businesses in the daytime, still be home when my boys get out of school and so on. But when I got the Pub job, I was just filling is serving, and the hours were less regular and not management, so I kept looking.

Amazingly after a few weeks I found another job doing basically what I’ve been doing myself – at home, though for someone else. The company has more business than I did, and they know more than I do about several areas of web-design and I was excited to learn some new stuff, get paid and still be working with eBay and websites. It was a part-time gig too and I could basically make my own schedule.

Then it all came together…or fell apart – depending on how you look at it. My skills were appreciated at the web design job and they gave me an enormous raise and asked me to work full-time. I accepted and things have been great there.

A few weeks later, the Pub asked me to start managing 3-4 nights a week – a raise was given and now I suddenly have two jobs for 70-hours a week or more. Don’t forget I never quit running my own businesses at home, but they’ve definitely taken a back seat.

So, why haven’t I been Blogging? Maybe I could start a band – Blogging Molly!

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.

Let’s recap….

It’s EASY. Just get busy…

 

 

Wow, I’m almost embarrassed as I see I haven’t posted to my blog in 2 months. Of course it was the two busiest months of the year. Not just for me, but for most of you too I’d imagine. We went from Halloween, straight into Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas and then shortly thereafter New Years.

During that time I launched a highly successful website with my partner “Mr. Black”. We’re Black & Blue Marketing Corp., and the site is www.SpaceHogs.net . It’s an entire membership site dedicated to teaching others how to market to the Social Networking crowd – a.k.a. MySpace.

My eBay Education Specialist Certification has been put the test as I’ve been teaching literally 2-3 private lessons a week lately. I have a new Trading Assistant client, a new car dealer to list cars for, another new site of my own I’m working on, developing more tools for magazine sellers … what else. Ah yes – I’ve started importing products from China too. People always ask me how I keep track and I have no good answer. I just do. And sometimes… I just don’t )

If you’ve read my blog before you’ll probably recall a previous post about what I called EADD, or Entrepreneurial Attention Deficit Disorder. Well I was reading an old Forbes magazine today….June of ‘06. That alone should tell you how many directions I’m headed…I’m reading 6 month old magazines ’cause I can’t keep up!

Anyway, in the Forbes there was an article by Rich Karlgaard. He writes a regular article called Digital Rules for Forbes. He also has his own blog at http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules or you can check out his homepage at www.karlgaard.com . ANYWAY, he wrote a great article called “Blessed Are the Hypomanic”.

I won’t go into the whole thing, but I wanted to quote a bit of it…that explains so very eloquently what I feel about myself and this whole EADD thing I’ve tried to explain to others, but feel I muddle through.

Rich writes:

Last week our Preacher spoke about Spiritual Gifts. She identified a dozen or so, Leadership, evangelism, empathy and faith were at the top of the list – just what you’d expect in a church sermon. She surprisingly also mentioned entrepreneurial personality. “Some people are gifted at starting things,” she said. “Sadly, we anal-retentive types are too quick to come along and criticize entrepreneurs for not finishing their projects. That’s wrong. The entrepreneurial gift isn’t to manage and administer. It’s to start things.”

Very true. Some entrepreneurs I know are good at managing and administering, but not many. Most are a mix of visionary and hustler, with a dash of attention deficit disorder thrown in. They see opportunities the rest of us overlook. They are driven by a breathless energy to assemble resources in pursuit of those opportunities. Then soon after their baby is toddling, they get bored.”

Rich goes on to explain more about where some people feel that entrepreneurial spirit comes from, but I won’t quote the whole thing. I just really felt like he was talking about me in many ways…and it felt good to not feel like I was the only one who gets things going and moves on to the next…

Anyway, that’s my thought for the day…actually my quote of someone else’s thoughts, but I still recognized the brilliance in his writing, right? :O)

I’ll try to get some more regular posts going here shortly. Have a great week, and try and stick to those dang resolutions you made a week ago!

It’s simply been too long since I’ve posted here on my Blog. I’ve been so incredibly busy, you can’t imagine. In the past month I’ve launched or purchased/rebuilt 5 new websites. I’ve been very busy shooting cars and listing them on eBay for dealerships, I’ve been doing quite a bit of marketing on MySpace for a few different companies…and that’s just work.

I’ve got 2 boys playing baseball and I coach both, and my daughter is playing Softball to boot! That’s life, right? I know everyone is busy. Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed.

Anyway, I found a fantastic article that I though I’d share with you all. It’s helped me tremendously…well not exactly. I think it has the potential to help me if I will only follow the advice given in it.

I’m pasting the article below. I got the article from The Warrior Forum, one of my favorite forums for Internet Marketing information. The original post was writtne by Internet Marketing Guru John Reese. It’s long, but very wise.

————————————————

“DOUBLE Your Profits Now!”
By John Reese of MarketingSecrets.com

I just thought I would share a little “wisdom” with you
that I learned the “hard” way over the past 12 years
of running online businesses. Hopefully, some of you
will be able to benefit right away from what took me
YEARS to figure out and finally DO. It was the major
difference in finally finding big success online.

1. Have many Internet projects you are working on?
Have many ideas you are developing that you want to
make money with?

YOU’RE IN DEEP DOO-DOO AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IT.

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn was that
working on several projects at the same time was
literally the KISS OF DEATH for my online ventures. I
was under the impression that if I could create TEN
little online ventures that could each make a measily
$2,000/month, then when the day came that they were
all online I’d be making $20K/month.

Take it from me, that will NEVER happen.

I once had over 20 projects being developed at
the same time. I even had a TEAM of employees
at that time to do it. It still FAILED.

FOCUS. THAT’S THE SECRET TO MAX PROFITS.

Just as you cannot make a million dollars without
making just ONE DOLLAR first (there’s no other way
around that order) you really can’t succeed online
unless you work and FOCUS on just ONE PROJECT and work
on it until it’s profitable. Then and only then should
you work on Project #2.

It’s too easy for entrepreneurs like us to surf around
the Internet and see opportunity everywhere. It’s too
easy to come up with yet another new “plan” to create
yet another little venture — often sidetracking us
from our original project.

So stop working on multiple projects at the sametime
– at least not until you have ONE project making you
enough money that you can sitback and relax and “play
around” with a 2nd and 3rd and 4th project. Until you
create just ONE project that is able to support your
lifestyle you have no reason to be working on other
projects. YES, many people will disagree with me, but
it’s a FACT.

The way to succeed online is to FOCUS. It’s better to
do one thing “great” than to do many things “fair”. If
your primary project is just not growing to the size
you want it to to support your lifestyle, then you
should probably focus on another project instead. Pick
another market. Do some research. Don’t be afraid to
try something else.

DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR PROJECTS.

If you give them an honest effort and they prove not
to be as profitable as you want, don’t be afraid to
DUMP THEM. Online ventures are very inexpensive to
start. Don’t be afraid to bail out on a failing
project and start another to focus on.

You’ll make a lot more money by making one project as
best as you possibly can. Instead of spending your
time trying to get another project going, work on
GROWING your original project — go out and get more
affiliates or test more advertising campaigns. THEN
work on creating a backend product that compliments
your initial product/service.

MILK YOUR MARKET.

Work on making your original project as big as possible.
When you can’t do anymore, THEN considering starting a
second project.

2. Make Lists And Prioritize Based On One Thing — PROFITS.

You should do “brain dumps” often. Pour everything in
your head onto paper. Get everything off your mind. We
all get a gazillion ideas everytime we surf around.
Don’t clog your mind with these ideas, write them
down.

THEN RELAX AND STOP DWELLING ON THEM.

You don’t need to let these ideas encompass your thoughts –
they are safe on paper or in a computer file you’ve created to
note them.

Make a list of “tasks” you need to work on for your
business. Write down every conceivable thing you’d
like to accomplish. Then prioritize this list from top
to bottom based on what will you make you the most
money or have the biggest impact on your bottom line.

It’s funny how we often will spend a lot of time on
tasks that don’t necessarily bring in new profits for
us. So work on those things that will most directly
affect your bottom line FIRST — then work on the rest
of the list.

Also work with a better PRODUCTIVITY “BALANCE”. Plan
to work 3-4 hours a day working only on some tasks on
your list. As Internet entrepreneurs it’s too easy to
surf this site and other sites and PROCRASTINATE. The
Information Age makes it too easy to procrastinate –
because we can NEVER know everything there is to find
online, so we can surf INDEFINITELY.

Kill your web browser for a few hours a day if you
don’t need it to accomplish the work you need to do.
Surf only when you’ve accomplished your day’s tasks.
Same with email. Close your email client if you don’t
need it.

(AND HERE COMES A “BIGGIE”)

3. STOP TRYING TO COME UP WITH THE NEXT “BIG THING”.
LET OTHER PEOPLE *SHOW YOU* WHAT’S MAKING MONEY.

For many years of my life as an entrepreneur I was
trying to come up with the next “Big Idea”. I was
always trying to innovate. I was always trying to
invent something. I finally realized that it’s much
easier to make money THE LAZY WAY.

Let other people do all the hard work for you. Let
other people figure out what people want to buy. Then
you can DIFFERENTIATE yourself and offer something
similar to the same market. No, don’t copy off of
people. But create a product that compliments a
popular product/service. Not only have you created
something to offer to that same “hot” market, you have
also created something that makes for the perfect JV
for that original person that “showed you” the market.

Online, you can find out ANYTHING about any business.
Do some research and check out other successful people
online. Notice what kind of ad copy they use.
Subscribe to their ezines or autoresponder series. See
what they send you — realize WHY. Buy your
competitors’ products. See what they sell you on the
backend. Figure out HOW they are making money.

THEN EMULATE SUCCESS.

Stop trying to do things the HARD WAY. Keep an eye on
people that have already figured it out.

OBSERVE ADVERTISING

Check out the keywords for your market. Notice the
companies that are bidding for your keywords. Keep an
eye on these listings for at least a couple of weeks.
The companies that remain at the top are most likely
MAKING MONEY with that advertising or they wouldn’t
keep paying for it (unless it’s some Fortune 500
company just wasting money). Go to their site and see
WHAT they are selling. How much they are selling their
product for. What autoresponder series they might be
using. What their offer is. Buy their product. Figure
out their backend.

Do a little RESEARCH and you can find out the exact
“blueprint” for success in any market.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST…

4. Be proactive.

If you want more subscribers, go get them. If you want
to bring more traffic to your site, go find some
partners that can send it to you. If you want more
email subscribers, create more ways for people
to opt-in and take more advantage of the traffic you
already have.

Don’t sit back and “hope” your business grows, MAKE IT
GROW. No matter what your goals are, you CAN make them
happen if you TAKE ACTION to make it happen.

This is your year to do it. Make it happen.

—————————————–
John Reese is an Internet Marketing pioneer that has
been actively marketing online since 1990. John has
sold millions of dollars worth of products and services
online and his network of Web Sites have received over
1.4 BILLION Web Site visitors since their inception. You
can learn more about John, his home study courses,
and subscribe to his free ezine by visiting:

http://www.marketingsecrets.com

(c)2003 MarketingSecrets.com. All rights reserved.

Hope you enjoyed it and you learned something. I know I did!

“What the heck is he talking about?” I can hear you all now. I’m sure I have it. I have so many things going on, it’s hard to stay focused. I’m working on several new sites, still running my eBay busniesses – which entails answering over a hundred emails a day, and investigating new online business opportunities all the time. I am constantly telling myself to focus on one thing at a time…at least for a short amount of time, to get something done. Every day it’s a battle, but it’s a war worth waging. Ok, enough whining. I’m sure we all go through it. At least I hope it’s just me! Anyway, I wanted to go back in time a bit, back to the Trading Assistant gig. If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll recall the post “My Best Trading Assitant Deal Ever” . Well I’d been very busy with that when another deal fell in my lap.

I had posted my Trading Assistant profile on eBay, and a local car dealership found it. The parts manager called me and explained he had a large quantity of car parts to sell. We met for lunch to discuss it, and it turned out great.

It turns out, that a fairly common practice at these car dealerships, is they buy parts, and after a few years they become “dated”. So, they write them off the books and literally toss them in the dumpster.

Well this internet saavy parts manager would take his marked down parts and sell them on eBay. But it had become too much work while he was also trying to manage a multi-million dollar parts business. So, we came to an arrangement.

The deal – I would come to the dealership, photograph and log all the items. I’d go home and create the listings, and launch them in a store/and under a username I had created just for them. They paid all fees and they did all the shipping. I got a flat 20% of the closing value for my work. Again if you look around this is quite a departure from what most Trading Assistants do or what they charge, but it worked great. I didn’t have to pack or ship the items, or store them. They felt comfortable because if it didn’t sell I didn’t make anything.

Was there an opportunity for me to do work and not get paid? Absolutely! But it built an incentive for me, and a relationship. A year later it turned into a multi-dealership car listing business with this same dealer group…but more on that later. So was it worth it? You bet!

I did learn a valuable lesson I’d like to share with you. As many of you know…just about anything can sell on eBay. And this dealership taught me just how true this was. One day I was in the parts managers’ office, and on his desk was a standard sales brochure for a new Ford Mustang.

I was flipping through it while waiting for the manager to do something. When he saw me looking at it, he mentioned how the brochures were hard to come by, and he’d just received a box of 1000 or something like that. He laughed and said “we should sell them on eBay”.

Well if you knew me, you’d know what I did. I jumped on his computer. You know what found? Car brochures for sale. Old ones, new ones. Every make and model. We weren’t the first ones to think of it, but we put a twist on it. I told him, there were quite a few online already and they were selling for a few bucks. Not really worth the work to mail it out, after fees and my split.

Then the light came on. I went to the manufacturer website. They had the auto brochures for download in a .pdf format. Check one out HERE. What could be easier? We sold tons of auto-brochures on eBay, that were electronically delivered via email. No packing/shipping, nothing. An email – that’s it! Then we started selling the accessories brochure in .pdf format and along with that we included a price list of what those accessories would cost them, and the special “internet” price we were offering them. This resulted in the sale of the brochure and then the accessories. I still got a cut of the accessories and I never had to even take a single picture or ship anything. A few clicks of the mouse. That’s the power of eBay! Then I went crazy. I found brochures for every make and model of car out there, domestic and foreign. Everything from Hyundai to Maseratti, Toyota to Ferrari. Many are even available in several languages including Spanish, Chinese adn Korean and more. There were very few people doing at the time so we listed them as store items and it cost us only pennies to do so.

I love that story, because it truly exposes what’s possible on eBay. Something for darn near nothing! That’s my kinda’ job. )

::Side note… I’m not sure if I was infringing on some copyright or anything like that. The dealers do give them away, but that’s how it went down.