"EBAY SELLING" EZINE
April 9, 2003
In This Issue:
* New AUCTION GENIUS COURSE
* Free Classes In Return For Brain Pickin'
* And Speaking Of Autopilot Money ...
* Selling Affiliate Products On eBay???
* Is Your Email Being Deleted?
* Online Auctions Offer Stability Amid Turmoil
* Throw Away Your Copy Of“Computers For Dummies”
New AUCTION GENIUS COURSE
A new Auction Genius course begins next Wednesday, April 16. We are adding new classes and the package just gets better and better. Here is a comment from a recent “graduate”, and he understands THE most important ingredient of auction success. See if you figure it out???
- - -
This is just a note to let you know how much I appreciated your class. I have spent a lot of money in excess $2500.00 to learn the insider secrets to Ebay and Internet Sales and to be honest I didn't get much for my money except the fact that I found your course. I only wish I had known about your course before I spent that money!
I was getting pretty discouraged until I took your Auction Genius Course. You cut right to the chase of all the facts of Ebay and Internet Sales. Your product sources were excellent and the step-by- step process of your course has allowed me to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I now have a renewed since of direction to follow my way to multiple streams of income and financial freedom.I know that this is not going to be a get rich quick scheme with no work, on the contrary, I understand it will take some time to build my successful Internet income. I now know, armed with the information and business model examples that it can be done with a little hard work and dedication.Once again, Thanks for your help and I look forward to hopefully being one of your student examples in future courses.
If you would pass this on to future students. It is age old advice that is always true - “Winners never Quit and Quitters never Win!”
Bill Hardin
Sunshine Marketing
racinbill@comcast.net
Did you spot the “secret”? It's this:
“I know that this is not going to be a get rich quick scheme with no work, on the contrary, I understand it will take some time to build my successful Internet income. I now know ... that it can be done with a little hard work and dedication.”
Most people don't get this. They have been deceived by all the garbage on the net about eBay being the Land Of Instant Riches. It reminds me of the 49ers in the California gold rush. Tens of thousands of would-be rich people set out for the gold fields, convinced that all they had to do was dip a pan into a mountain stream and fish out handfulls of large gold nuggets. Was it that way for anybody? Perhaps. Was it that way for the vast majority? Absolutely not.
I recently sadly noticed a couple of emails on different business discussion boards. Both of them were requests for sources of “lots” of cheap products that they could sell on eBay. One of the writers said he was unwilling to get any business credentials and asked for wholesalers that would do business with him without any tax information. The other said he didn't want to “spend any money” finding sources.
Guess how many responses they got? The only answers were from people who didn't know anymore about eBay than the the two writers did.
Think about it: if someone really has good sources and is making money on eBay, why would they reveal their suppliers to a total stranger? Would you?
The (unpopular, I know) truth is that an eBay business is just that ... a BUSINESS. Would we open a bookstore or a dry cleaners or a restaurant by putting a request on a discussion board?
If you would like to join our next class, it's Wednesday at noon Eastern, 9 AM Pacific time.
http://auction-genius-course.com
Free Classes In Return For Brain Pickin'
What do you want to know about the auction business? If you'll tell us, you might get some free classes.
Here's the deal: we're collecting some auction experts and recording online auction classes with them. We really want your input, and if you're the first person to suggest a topic – and we make a class about it – we'll give you the class for free. These are both audio and visual classes, so they're bound to be popular. So, send an email to:
and tell us what you are thinking about.
The first two experts on board are:
JIM COCKRUM, author of the best selling auction book, Silent Sales. Jim has amazingly TRIPLED his ezine subscription list in only a few months:
http://silentsales.auctionknowhow.com
BARBARA LING is the author of Ebay Search Profits. Barbara has some magical way of getting her eBay sales pages into google and other search engines. She is teaching me and my Auction Genius course students how to do this next week. My students think they're excited – but they're pikers compared to me! I can hardly wait to learn how in the world she does it. Talk about soaring profits!
There are others who will be joining us.
And Speaking Of Autopilot Money...
Once again, I marvel at the genius of Barbara Link. In my Auction Genius Course I'm always raving about creating multiple streams of income – sometimes small streams that can grow into giant rivers. The best kind are those who that can go autopilot of months – even years – at a time. Let me show you what brilliant Barbara has done.
STEP ONE: she created a simple ebook directory:
http://www.barbaraling.com/e-books/
If you take a look you will see that it was simple, and she didn't spend much time on it. BUT, here is the genius part – if you click on one of the links, you will see it goes directly to the clickbank.com listings. So, anyone buying something through Barbara's site automatically earns affiliate commissions for her.
The problem: Clickbank has thousands of digital products for affiliates to sell. It would take gazillions of hours to create links with Barbara's affiliate code. Except that she has written some code that does it for her! Automatically.
STEP TWO: promote her site with the search engines.
Go to google.com, the #1 search engines, and type in the keywords “ebook directory”. You will see her site on the second page of the google listings. And, she is competing with 299,000 other sites for the coveted first two page listings. How in the world does she do that?
I dunno. But, she's going to teach me and a large group of Auction Genius students.
And, good news: we are going to tape the class so that it will be available to all of you. Stay tuned for an announcement on this awesome subject.
In the meantime, if you want to learn how to promote your auction pages – or anything else – you might be interested in her new package Ebay Search Profits. It's a “package” because it isn't just an ebook, but a whole collection of cool stuff.
STEP THREE: wait for the checks from clickbank to arrive in the mail box. There, LITERALLY, isn't anything else she needs to do.
Wonderfully simple, huh?
- - -
And here's a wonderful tip from Barbara:
“When you load your digital pictures to eBay or any other site, you have to take into account their size. The bigger they are (and I'm talking file size, not inch-size), the longer it will take for your auction to load. And the longer that takes, the greater a risk you'll have that the potential bidder will yawn with boredom and click on the same product from a different vendor.
Two great sites that will cure this ill are:
http://www.myimager.com (I use this for jpgs)
http://www.gifworks.com (I use this for gifs)
These sites will upload your pictures, display the originals to you, and then show you optimized images from which you can choose. I managed to smooshilate a 57K jpg to under 15K from them! And best of all, it's *free*.
Think now how you can apply this to your auction business. You can speed up the rate at which your complete auction loads...thus immediately gratifying your bidders and giving them what they want to see. You don't lose the momentum! And that can only be a good thing. Take advantage of that.
Selling Affiliate Products On eBay???
Everybody who is interested in auctions wants to sell by drop shipping. And why not? There's no shipping and no inventory costs because your buyer pays for the products before you order them.
But, frankly, I haven't been able to make drop shipping work very well. Oh, I've made small amounts of money, but nothing substantial. Why? Because drop shippers know how we drool to get in on this – and they price their merchandise accordingly. Meaning, higher prices than regular wholesalers – usually/often too high to work on eBay.
In my Genius course, though, I teach a way to sell affiliate products through auctions. As far as I know, no one else does this, and I only teach it to my course students. I haven't done regular auction selling for years because I make more money with less effort selling this way.
This has provoked a lot of questions about how to sell affiliate products, in general. There are tons of info products out there, some of them costing hundreds of dollars. But, the best one I know of is exactly the right price ... FREE. So, if you have any interest in this subject at all, grab this now:
http://www.auctionknowhow.com/ebooks/Aff-Masters.zip
Is Your Email Being Deleted?
Every day, I open my email and find all kinds of offers that are obscene or offer to enlarge body parts that I don't even have! :-(
Getting rid of all that garbage would be a wonderful relief. But, did you know that your emails may not even be reaching the people you're mailing, just because of all the net efforts to fight spam? Yes, yours! Innocent and well meaning as your mail may be. So, how do you know if your mail is getting through? One way is to use the high quality and FREE spam check below:
- - -
Spam is a bigger and bigger problem nowadays. Recently Ralph Wilson, Paul Myers, and other Net marketing gurus have written about the problems that spam is causing honest, hard working Net marketers. Actually, while spam is the fundamental root of our problems, the anti-spam measures that large ISPs and important free e-mail hosts (like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail) undertake are what hurts legitimate Net marketers.
Much like tuna nets catch dolphins by mistake, their spam filters catch us. So the SiteSell SpamCheck Tool is a quick way for honest marketers to make sure that their e-mails are less likely to be considered spam by ISPs, by Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail (which tosses you into their Junk folders) and even by individual filters set up by an ever- growing number of recipients around the world.
-----
Here's how it works...
STEP 1: Copy-and-paste your subject, but start your subject with the word "TEST" (without the quotes, in UPPER CASE) so that we know this is a test e-mail. (If the subject does NOT start with TEST, we'll assume it's REAL spam and delete it). Here's a sample subject...
TESTFlower-Lovers Ezine #007: Peonies for the Yukon
STEP 2: Copy-and-paste the rest of your e-zine and simply send it, exactly the way you would send it to your recipient, to...
auctionknowhow-spamcheck@sitesell.net
You'll get a report back (in seconds, perhaps a few minutes if volume is heavy) telling you how good or bad your e-mail is, from a spam-detector's point of view. You will receive a full, free report of all corrections that you should make to your zine, in order to stay out of the junk folders. It does NOT, of course, actually comment on WHAT you write -- first, it's not that smart. And second, the actual content is YOUR business!
- - -
Use this great service. I do.
Online Auctions Offer Stability Amid Turmoil
War. Terrorism. A sick economy. SARS.
Pretty depressing stuff. Makes us uneasy and anxious. Many people have asked how online auctions are holding up in this tough time. Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal's online information for entrepreneurs. The verdict? Pretty good place to be.
- - -
Lost a job recently? There's a life preserver floating out there that wasn't around in the last recession a decade ago: eBay, the online electronic marketplace.
eBay rescued Steven Levi, who was laid off from his sales job just before the tech bubble burst in early 2000. He hasn't taken a corporate job since.
On a recent day he was presiding over 230 camera auctions on eBay. At his home office, phones are ringing, e-mail is flashing, and faxes are humming, part of his typical 100-hour workweek. His proceeds provide a nice life for his family of four in Manhattan, including two summer months at a beach house in Virginia. "I'll put my kids through college on eBay," he says. The recent economic shocks -- from the tech bubble burst and the Sept. 11 terrorist attack to corporate scandals and the market's decline -- have boosted the national unemployment rate to a stubborn 6%. Some jobless workers, and others who don't show up in the statistics, are getting by -- or even getting ahead -- by selling on eBay and other online marketplace services.
"There's always been a surge of entrepreneurship in economic downturns," says Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wachovia Corp., Charlotte, N.C. "What's new here is eBay can make it easier for new entrepreneurs." He finds it a positive sign that many Web newcomers have the courage to take the step from dabbler to full-fledged eBay trader. "Necessity is the mother of innovation," he says. A Booming Business
The recession certainly hasn't hurt eBay. The company already moves more than $5 billion a year in merchandise over its sprawling Web site. Its
once motley collectibles and dolls are now just part of a larger universe that includes sales of cars, real-estate and professional services. The San Jose, Calif., firm said recently that its fourth-quarter revenue soared 89% to $419.9 million from the year-earlier quarter. It has already raised its profit and revenue projections for 2003.
For some of the jobless, dabbling in online auctions covers short-term expenses and provides an emotional boost. Aron Danburg of Houston worked for a couple of dot-coms, and the second one, which he believed was more stable, collapsed in two months. The technical writer snagged some contract work, but it ended a few months later. Expecting to move for his next job, he began clearing out his house, selling old college textbooks and compact discs on Amazon's new service, similar to eBay. (Sellers set a firm price on Amazon; it's not an "auction" as at eBay; eBay also has a "fixed-price" sales format that allows buyers to purchase without haggling or waiting.)
Though he landed a job after four months at the Halliburton Co., an oil-field and construction-services firm, the uncertainty was wearing, especially as he watched fellow job searchers struggle for months on end. "I had no idea how long it would take," he says. "It was quite frightening." He found just unloading a single book could add a spark to a gray day of online job-search rejection. "I'd get an e-mail saying something positive," he says. "I'd think, hey, I just made $15 bucks." His sales were enough to cover the rent for a month, allowing him to stretch his savings. He's still at Halliburton, and still sells the occasional book or CD online.
For the underemployed, including entrepreneurs hitting slow patches in the weak economy, eBay can fill an income gap. Boston-based Constance Mazelsky saw her communications and marketing work with Internet and software companies losing steam. "During the last few years it's not been a real vibrant market segment." Moreover, after she had a baby last year, she began working from home.
Now she's selling her expensive handbags, which she now rarely uses, on eBay. "When I worked outside the home I tried to be totally accessorized and fashionable," she says. Her collection of upscale designer purses that matched particular suits have fetched excellent prices, including a recent sale of a Dooney & Bourke purse for $150. "People respond to a good photograph and accurate description," she says. "Name brand things sell very, very well."
'Powersellers'
To be a serious seller requires a certain degree of commitment, but the eBay Web site walks beginners through the process. eBay charges small
fees to post items, and a small percentage of the sale, depending on the price. And eBay deploys a middleman payment system that allows buyers to securely use credit cards, forwarding the payment to sellers. Digital photos of the items help attract interest, as does punchy descriptive writing. Serious sellers need systems for packing and shipping their goods. eBay user sites help with suggestions.
eBay particularly courts "powersellers," such as Mr. Levi in Manhattan -- those with big sales and high customer-approval ratings -- with special perks including travel deals and health insurance. Powersellers must meet minimum monthly sales ($1,000 for the lowest level; $150,000 for the highest) and must have an approval rating above 98%.
When Mr. Levi, who sells used cameras from his Manhattan apartment, was laid off from his position at Carolee Designs, a fashion jewelry firm in Greenwich, Conn., the layoff came as a shock. He'd been a globe-trotting salesman, spending much of his time on the road in Hong Kong, London, Sydney and other cities. "I'd never lost a job," he recalls.
After a brief spell consulting in his old field, he more or less fell into eBay selling refurbished cameras. "I was unemployed and messing around," he says. The seeds of his new venture were sown after he made his first eBay purchase: four copies of Microsoft Office 2000. He used one for himself, and resold the other three on eBay. Those three covered the price of his copy.
Always a techie, he loved digital cameras and began buying and selling them on eBay. As the business improved, he realized he had to get better organized. These days, he often buys cameras returned to electronics chains. He puts a lot of work into his auction pages, and tailors different auction formats to different camera gear. For instance, some items do better with a fixed price. Suppliers handle shipping for a fee, so he doesn't have to handle and store the actual merchandise. He tries to combine high volume with high service and is avid about maintaining his eBay customer rating - a sort of grade card from each buyer published on the site for all to see. Over 99% of his are positive. He makes it a point to never mislead about the quality of a particular camera, distinguishing "class A" from "class C," which may, for instance, have cosmetic blemishes. "There's no fine print," he says. "I'm very Ralph Nader about it."
He's thought about selling other types of merchandise, but doesn't think the return will be as great. "I'm looking for growth in volume, margin and product offerings," he says. He declines to disclose sales, but says that they rose 75% in 2002 over 2001. He works 365 days a year, he says, but adds, "Working is different when you're doing it for yourself."
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/articles/
technology_and_ecommerce.html?s=
smallbiz/articles/20030221/online_auction&p=wsj
Throw Away Your Copy Of“Computers For Dummies”
These are hard to believe! This will make you feel like a PC wizard! Take heart, anyone among you who believes you are technologically challenged,
you "ain't seen nuthin'" yet.
1. Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is.
2. AST technical support had a caller complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag
the mouse was packaged in.
3. Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper- by holding it in front of the monitor screen -and hitting the "Send" key.
4. Yet another, Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually.
5. A Dell technician received a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was "Bad and an invalid." The tech explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid" responses shouldn't be taken personally.
6. A confused caller to IBM was having trouble printing documents. He told the technician that the computer had said it "couldn't find printer." The user had also tried turning the computer screen to face the printer-but that his computer still couldn't "see" the printer.
7. An exasperated caller to Dell Computer Tech Support couldn't get her new Dell Computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. Her response, "I pushed and pushed
on this foot pedal and nothing happens." The "foot pedal "turned out to be the computer's mouse.
8. Another customer called Compaq tech support to say her brand new computer wouldn't work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked, "What power switch?"
9. Another IBM customer had trouble installing software and rang for support. "I put in the first disk, and that was OK. It said to put in the second disk, and had some problems with the disk. When it said to put in the third disk, I couldn't even fit it in..." The user hadn't realized that "Insert Disk 2" implied to- remove Disk 1 first.
10. A story from a Novell NetWire SysOp:
CALLER: "Hello, is this Tech Support?"
TECH: "Yes, it is. How may I help you?"
CALLER: "The cup holder on my PC is broken -and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?"
TECH:"I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?"
CALLER:"Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer.."
TECH: "Please excuse me. If I seem a bit stumped, it's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?"
CALLER: "It came with my computer. I don't know anything about a promotional. It just has '4X' on it." At this point, the Tech Rep had to mute the caller because he couldn't stand it. He was laughing too hard. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder and
snapped it off the drive.
11. A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem with her printer. The tech asked her if she was "running it under windows."
The woman responded, "No, my desk is next to the door. But that is a good point. The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window and his printer is working fine."
12. And last but not least:
TECH SUPPORT: "O.K. Bob, let's press the control and escape keys at the same time. That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen. Now type the letter "P" to bring up the Program Manager."
CUSTOMER: "I don't have a 'P'".
TECH SUPPORT: "On your keyboard, Bob."
CUSTOMER: "What do you mean?"
TECH SUPPORT: "'P' on your keyboard, Bob."
CUSTOMER: "I ain't gonna do that!"