It's always inspring to begin a new year, isn't it? We take our hopes and dreams and re-commit to them ("This year I WILL lose 30 pounds and quit smoking!") Sometimes we follow through - and more often we don't. Accept our best wishes for you and yours that this year will truly be a productive year and that you DO make those new year resolutions come true.

---

Next Saturday, January 13th, we're beginning the first Auction Genius Course class of 2007. It wasn't planned, but on that same weekend, 14 students, myself and my partner are attending a gift show here in Atlanta. There are 51 floors of wholesale goodies - anyone could find something to sell with such a huge array to choose from. Stay tuned for pictures from this class "field trip".

The Critical Need For Cash Flow

Whenever you want to have your own business, the first problem you must solve is Cash Flow. Worrying about your bills and struggling just to stay afloat is truly a gruesome experience. I know. Once I lived in such dire straits that every single unexpected bill was a cause for panic. Heck, the regular bills were terrible, too!

Or if you have enough money to pay your bills, but it's coming from a J-O-B you detest, that's pretty awful, too.

eBay is superb at generating cash flow. I don't know anything any quicker and easier than eBay as a way to come up with quick money - except for a life of crime which has its own hazards. :-)

But once you have your cash flow problem solved, it's time to take a look at creating "wealth". Everyone has their own definition of this term, but mine is this: wealth to me means having enough money that I never have to work again, if I don't want to. The good news about wealth is that eBay is great for this, too. So we have revised our classes to include our new Auction Genius Course Wealth Plan.

Auction Genius Course Wealth Plan, Part 1

I really keep up with what's going on in the Internet marketing world and there are constant promotions for ideas on how to create wealth. A few of them are realistic and possible - most of them are pure junk. But even the ones that are realistic are often so ... complicated.

Or if they're not complicated, they're quite expensive. For instance, using Google AdWords as your main promotion tool can cost you lots & lots & lots of money - especially if you don't know what you're doing. And most people don't. Marketer Alan Bechtold has been in mail order and Net marketing for decades. He recently told me that he lost $4,000 in approximately one week with an AdWords campaign. And Alan did his homework before he launched his campaign, so it wasn't carelessness that cost him so much money.

For the last couple of years, I've been improving and working on a system that is focused around Virtual Real Estate (VRE). This concept was first introduced by John Reese and compares a website to an investment property in the physical world. The theory of investment real estate, of course, is that you acquire a house and rent it out. Over a period of time, your tenants pay the mortgage for you until you own the property free and clear. Then all rent is pure profit. That's the theory and many folks buy into the system. I was one of them in the past. But there are problems with owning physical real estate:

1) It's expensive to acquire property, in spite of the promises of the "no money down" deal
2) Maintaining rental property can be risky, too - if your house sits vacant for a few months your bank or mortgage company could care less. YOU are on the hook for the payments.
3) There are tremendous legal risks - you are, after all, dealing with the most expensive purchase the average family will ever own and novice real estate investors can get themselves into all kinds of hot water without meaning to (ask me how I know)

Virtual real estate, however, is infinitely cheaper to acquire and maintain and the legal risks are almost non-existent. And it has another huge appeal - it can be profitable immediately, rather than waiting 15-30 years for a mortgage to be paid off.

Having said that, though, there are obvious hurdles because the vast bulk of money-making websites return few, if any, profits to their hopeful owners.

Before you can build or create anything, you must know what you want. So considering the above ideas, I devised a check list for what I wanted from my VREs:

1) They must be profitable, obviously
2) They must be stable and endure - I don't want junk sites that are thrown out of the search engines a month after I've built them
3) They must be "auto pilot", once they're making money

*********************************************************************************
Exercise: if you're interested in VREs or profitable sites, make a list of exactly what you want from your sites, just like mine above. Are there more criteria than the three above? Or are some of those not important to you?
*********************************************************************************

After a lot of reflection, I divided all my sites into three "tiers":

+ Tier A
+ Tier B
+ Tier C

The Tier C site is the basis of the Auction Genius Course Wealth Plan. It has a very modest goal: only $10 per day. That might not seem like much, but consider this:

If you build one site per week ...

Where is this $10 per day going to come from? In my case, primarily it comes from AdSense. If you don't know what AdSense is, it's a brilliant revenue source created by Google several years ago. If you go to any Google search page, on the left hand side you will see their results for whatever words you've typed into the Google search box. On the right are paid ads. This is the famous Pay Per Click (PPC), otherwise known as Adwords. The thing is that you and I can easily add those same PPC ads to our sites - and get paid whenever anyone clicks on them. And I love AdSense because it's the easiest sale in the world! A customer doesn't have to buy anything - (s)he simply clicks. What could be easier?

A second revenue source is an occasional information product. Sometimes I include these - and sometimes I don't. But the cool thing is that just one sale per day can easily cover my $10 per day.

Here is a sample of a Tier C site:

http://AsthmaAnswersOnline.com

Building the site is easy and follows a step-by-step plan. But there is a second part to the equation and that is marketing. The most splendid, 'fantabulous' site in the world is useless as a profit center IF you don't have a steady stream of genuine interested buyers looking at your pages. "Build it and they will come" may have been great advice for Kevin Costner, but it's really lame as a business strategy.

So exactly where does my traffic to Tier C sites come from? From "organic" search (meaning it costs nothing) and ... eBay! Frankly, eBay beats Pay Per Clicks hands down as a source of customers because it's:

1) Much cheaper
2) You have much more control
3) It can be put on "autopilot"
4) The competition is mostly non-existent because almost nobody sees eBay as a superb lead-generator. Instead their thinking is in the "flea market" groove. That's a great advantage for those of us with a different perspective.

We will discuss this Wealth Plan more in later newsletters. If you would like to download a free guide on this subject, you can go here:

http://wealthplan.auction-genius-course.com/WealthReport.pdf

---

Worldwide Brands Introduces "One Source"

I am a huge fan of Worldwide Brands and its owners Chris Malta and Rob Cowie are good friends of mine. They've now outdone themselves with a new product sourcing system they've labelled "One Source".

Up until now, they had multiple products, including:

1) The Dropship Source Directory: this was their premier product and an excellent source for finding legitimate dropshippers
2) The Light Bulk Wholesale Directory: suppliers who will sell small amounts of products
3) The "Wizard": a market research tool.

In addition, Worldwide Brands has suppliers who sell large wholesale amounts and have recently added importers. It was confusing at times to go into all these separate areas, but now they have
one panel for all of these programs! It's very cool and I made a very short video on how it works:

http://www.auction-genius-course.com/freeonlinevideos/onesource/

What if you already own some Worldwide Brands products? You can still access all the areas you've paid for (it's a life-time membership) but you just can't see those sections you didn't pay for. You can naturally upgrade at any time and access all of it.

---

eBay Raises Fees!

eBay has announced new fee increases. In the past, they've done this right before - or even during - the holiday season. eBayers have loudly - and justly - complained about this practice. Many brick and mortar stores, as well as Net stores & sites, "make or break" their entire year based on sales during the holiday season. Google has also, in the past, changed the rules of the game at this critical time, so we commend eBay for not disrupting the season for many eBay sellers.

The changes aren't drastic, we're glad to say.

---

Insertion Fees

Cost of auctioned item: $1.00 - $9.99

Former fee: $.35
New fee: $.40

---

Final Value Fee

Final price: $25.01 to $1,000.00

Former Fee: 3%
New Fee: 3.25%

---

eBay Stores: no changes

---

eBay Motors Fees

1) The Insertion Fees and Final Values Fees changes above will also apply to eBay Motors Parts & Accessories categories.

2) Transaction Services Fee for Motorcycles & Powersports

Former Fee: $30.00
New Fee: $40.00

3) Transaction Services Fee for Cars & Trucks and all Other Vehicles & Trailers categories

Former Fee: $40.00
New Fee: $50.00

4) Motors Reserve Fee

Former Fee: $5.00
New Fee: 0.1% of the reserve price, with a minimum of $5.00 and a maximum of $10.00. (Reserve Fees are refunded when bidding meets the reserve price.)

These new prices went into effect on January 30.

---

From Our Humor Department: REALLY Dumb Comments

Sometimes you've just gotta wonder about our fellow human being. What were they thinking??? Customer: "I've been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can't get through to enquiries. Can you help?" Operator: "Where did you get that number from, sir?" Customer: "It was on the door to the Travel Centre." Operator: "Sir, they are our opening hours."

---

Customer: "I've been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can't get through to enquiries. Can you help?"
Operator: "Where did you get that number from, sir?"
Customer: "It was on the door to the Travel Centre."
Operator: "Sir, they are our opening hours."

---

Caller: "I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised that I need it. If I turn my system clock back two weeks, will I have my file back again?"

---

Samsung Electronics Caller: "Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?"
Operator: "I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking about."
Caller: "On page 1, section 5, of the user guide, it clearly states that I need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the
number for Jack?"
Operator: "I think you mean the telephone socket on the wall."

---

RAC Motoring Services Caller: "Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am travelling in Australia?"
Operator: "Doesn't the product give you a clue?"

---

Caller (inquiring about legal requirements while travelling in France): "If I register my car in France, do I have to change the steering wheel to the other side of the car?"

---

Directory Inquiries:

Caller: "I'd like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff, please."
Operator: "I'm sorry, but there's no listing. Is the spelling correct?"
Caller: "Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar, but the 'B' fell off."

---

Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator: "Woven? Are you sure?"
Caller: "Yes. That's what it says on the label: Woven in Scotland."

---

On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box told a worried operator: "I haven't got a pen, so I'm steaming up the window to write the number on."