eBay Live 2008

Whoa - I'm outta' control - 2 eBay posts in a row?


Summer may seem a long way off since we just celebrated New Year's, but it'll be here before you know it. And what comes with Summer? Ebay Live of course!


If you haven't attended an eBay Live conference, I suggest you do.


What is eBay Live? Ebay Live is a once a year convention, held by eBay. The eBay community gets together to network, celebrate, learn and teach. They're beneficial to those new to eBay as well as an experienced PowerSeller. There are hundreds of vendors offering tools to make your work easier as well as sourcing for merchandise. But one of the most popular attractions at the Live conferences are the classes. There are dozens and dozens of free classes on just about every topic from How To List to Advanced Tax Strategies for PowerSellers.


Of course there's the ever-popular closing ceremonies dinner where all of eBay's employees line up to applaud 'us' and there's a great buffet dinner and live entertainment. The two years I've attended I saw the B-52's and Davey Jones (The Monkey's...yes The Monkey's).
There is always a presentation given by CEO Megg Whitman and eBay President Bill Cobb. These are usually a 'sign of things to come' type presentations and are always entertaining if not enlightening.


This year it's being held in Chicago from June 19th - 21st at McCormick Place West. McCormick Place West is a new facility opening this year.


How can you register? Usually registration opens around April of the year. I'll let you know for sure when it's live and give you a link too!

Sunday night

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! :o)

eBay Success

And the hits just keep on coming...

That's right - more good news on the eBay selling front. I've been importing my own Bicycle clothing line from overseas and am having great success with the full line. I've recently received and practically sold out of arm warmers, leg warmers, knee warmers, bib shorts, shoe covers, toe warmers and more.

Within a week of getting my order and getting them online, I'm nearly out of all of them and have already placed another $1000 order. This is great news as the magazine business has been slowing steadily over the past 6 months with increased selling restrictions and increased competition.

I'm working on long sleeve jerseys, and have jackets, and vests coming in my next order in additon to more of my staple shorts for men and women. Pretty exiciting for us - having this success with our clothing line.

We're also working on a deal to open a US Distributorship for some swim related products from the UK. This would help fill out our whole triathlon line.

I am almost done making my own race number belt and will buy in bulk the materials needed for that project. In addition to the cord locks I wrote about previously I've also already ordered bulk elastic lace and small zip lock baggies to package 'speed laces' for runners and triathletes. It's all coming together nicely!

It's so easy

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...

eBay Dance?

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."

You can read the entire article here http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y207/m08/abu0196/s01

Preparing ahead of time sounds like the ticket. I've already begun myself. Pray for the best and Prepare for the worst.

AuctionSelling101.com

Yup - it's live! We launched a few weeks ago and have had a great response to our initial offer. We already have several hundred members and the discussion forums are active. This past weekend we also had our first live conference with around 30 members in attendance.



Very cool stuff. We're getting ready to add another 8-10 videos in the next week or so. We have more convferences lined up in our virtual classroom, and will be breaking them up into ability levels. Check it out if you get a chance HERE .

eBay Jay?

A good friend of mine left me a voicemail the other day and she asked me "What's the point of being eBay Jay if you never post to your Blog?". Good point.

She was right. I haven't posted here for literally 6 months! That's ridiculous isn't it. It's not like I haven't been busy, but who isn't? We're all busy.

So as that little girl in Poltergeist says... "I'm baaaack" or something like that. :o)

Ok down to business. Have I been busy? Absolutely!

I updated my links on the right. I removed a bunch and added a new one. The new one is http://www.auctionselling101.com/ . What is it? It's a entire membership site devoted to teaching other people how to successfully sell on eBay. It's going to launch soon, but we had an initial membership available for SpaceHogs members and members of the Warrior Forum as a WSO. We let in 100 early birds to get some feedback on the site, get some affiliates to help us promote the official launch and get some activity going in the discussion forums.

The site is really awesome and our greatest project yet. I say "our" as in me and Chris. That's Black & Blue Marketing, our Corporation and the team that launched the super popular http://www.spacehogs.net/ . Anyway, we're very excited about it.

What else is new? Still doing the magazines though sales have slowed over the past 6 months. There is soooo much competition it's crazy! I did finalize some tools specifically for magazine sellers. I offer them on a subscription basis on this new site of mine http://www.magazinesellersresources.com/ . If you sell magazines, these tools I had custom coded will turn days of work into literally 1/2 hour - literally!

On my other eBay username we have been going through some changes. First as some of our Adidas stock was slowly dwindling we decided to source some new stuff. First we got some Nike shoes, which sold very well, but we had a few issues with customs from importing them and then had some claims of them not being genuine Nike products. Now we did get a smoking hot price on them, but they look like Nike's, they feel like Nike's, I even wore mine for 6 months with no problems, but we didn't want to take any chances or possibly mislead anyone so we just pulled the plug on that whole project.

Next we decided we needed another line of products. Something that wasn't a name brand. Something no one could say wasn't genuine. I've been selling bicyle clothing for years off and on, mostly from my own stock and then stuff I'd find at the thrift store or swap meets. So I started looking overseas in Taiwan, China and places like that. I found a great supplier that would make me my own line of bicycle shorts and other cycling apparrel for a super price. I've ordered and received several orders of a few hundred pieces each with great results. Our cost is low so I can price them right on eBay and they're selling very well. Here's a picture of the men's shorts:

The JN is for Jay and Nicole...awwww sweet isn't it? :o) Anyway, hopefully it's the start of something great and profitable as we grow the line into triathlon gear, jerseys, arm and leg warmers, tights, gloves...all the cycling specific clothing.

I think that about wraps up the update. Still need to get back to SpaceHogs.net and get it updated, and keep plugging along on the other fronts. Hope to see you online!

Shooting Star... 10K

So they call it the flying star. You get one when you get 10,000 unique feedbacks on eBay. And I got mine. :o)

I know it's a small picture, but if you look closely it says 10,006. I actually have over 14,700 positive feedbacks, so that means over 4700 returning customers. Not bad.

What does it all mean? Not much really. Just a milestone I'd been shooting for, for quite some time. According to eBay it puts me in the top 1% of all members...for feedback that is.

25,000 anyone?

Entrepreneurial Spirit: Alive and Well

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 :o)

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!

Updates...Updates...Read all about it

Wow, time is flying! It's Halloween already and before you know it, New Years Day will be here!

So updates are in order...

Let's see, LowPricedMags, my primary eBay user ID...we just hit 13,000 total positive
feedbacks...almost 9000 unique positives. I've got my eye on that big 10k...the flying star.

Our other eBay store All_that_and_More! where we sell just about everything, but mostly sell Adidas Golf Clothing, has been doing very well, very consitant.

We have a few other user ID's we're working on some different projects with, and will keep you updated as things progress on that front.

Let's see...other sites...

Well, my site www.HookupyourMySpace.com is literally busting at the seams with traffic. Checkout out this screen shot from my awstats page in cpanel...

Can you believe the growth? Would you like to have nearly 30,000 unique visitors to your site this month? Of course you would. It's MySpace marketing folks.

I'm using MySpace to drive this traffic and the traffic I spoke about in my last post, for Vtag...is continuing to grow week after week.

With that success on the MySpace resource site, I decided to expand on that success and I started and/or bought 5 more resource sites. I now have www.RapRnBlayout.com, www.SpaceTagger.com, www.ClearSpaceLayouts.com and a few others I'm still tweaking.

All the other sites are hanging in there...holding their own.

What else...the eBay car business is steady...still shooting cars for dealerships and posting around 100 listings/month for them.

Oh yeh, just remembered something else I've been working on ( of course... ). I had a custom checkout built for my magazine business. The problem is that when people order magazines on eBay, they typically want to send them to multiple addresses as they're a very popular gift item.

Well the challenge is that neither eBay or PayPal, or ANY other checkout system on the market allows the user to enter more than one shipping address. Then my customers send emails and leave notes in PayPal and at the end of the week, you end up with literally a thousand emails and notes to reveiw...not a good scenario. So, I solved the problem and had a solution built.

Here's a link to the main page https://www.search4mags.com/checkout/ though you can't get in much further without a transaction pending.

I had to outsource it to a company from India and it took several weeks, but the result is awesome! Now my customers can enter as many addresses as they want, and they can select new or renewal for each title as well. Then they can pay through PayPal or by Money Order. It gives them a receipt and gives my customers all the information I'm trying to convey to them in automated emails.

It is more efficient, and more accurate. Better for me and my customers.

The checkout had to be certified by eBay, which it was and I'm now in the Solutions Directory and in the Developer's Program.

But the big plan is to spend a bit of time using it, work out any potential bugs and then I'll offer it to other magazine sellers for a monthly fee. It'll save everyone time, trouble and make a bit of money for mui!

Official Review of The Auction Resource Network...FREE

Hey there! My buddy Chris from 3RiversAuctions just released his newest eBook. I have it for my Blog readers...absolutely FREE.

It comes with full resell and giveaway rights and there is even a link to watch a free video inside the eBook!!!

If you want to go straight to the video you can check it out here:

http://www.3riversauctions.com/videos/auctionresourcenetwork

The ebook also comes with an auction template making selling it on eBay a breeze - there's even a mystery bonus included...

Download the ebook here:

http://www.blackandwhitesprocket.com/ebooks/arn-review.zip

The eBook basically reviews a pretty cool tool. I use the site myself and visit it a few times a week. With the free download you also get another FREE ebook (again with full resale rights) called Top 10 tips for eBay Sellers.

Go check it out, you've got nothing to lose!

Secret technique for getting your eBay listing ranked at the top of Google!

Here's a little known secret about how to get your eBay listing in Google's top 3 ranks for the keywords in your eBay listing title.

How? Make it a featured item.

Usually items in the last 2 or 3 days will show up in the top 3 ranks on a Google search for the keywords in your title.

Example: I found this item on the featured listings list: Life-size Bob Daddy-O Wade Longhorn Herd Sculptures

Now Google "life-size bob daddy-o wade longhorn"

Top postion on Google!

Here's another: 150 Acre SW Oregon Mining CLaim Property

Google it: "150 acre sw oregon mining claim"

Number 1 again.

Now it doesn't always work...for instance an item where there is a lot of competition for the exact description like:

sony cyber-shot dsc-w7 7.2 megapixel

It shows up as number 10 on Google. Still remarkable exposure don't you think?

So, it may not always be worth the price of "featuring" your item, but in some cases, HOW CAN YOU BEAT A #1 RANKING ON GOOGLE for your eBay item?

Hope that gets the wheels turning!

eBay Education Specialist - eBay University

eBay U...it's just what is sounds like. A place to learn about eBay.

I've been teaching people how to use eBay for probably the past 6 years or so. For the past several years I got a lot of teaching referrals from my Trading Assistant listing on eBay.

We'd teach individuals, families or businesses how to buy & sell on eBay for $20 an hour. It was always informal and based largely on the individuals experience level and the topics they desired to know about.

For the past few years I've been seeing those "Learn How To eBay" class advertisements in the Learning Annex magazine and even local Community College handouts. I always marveled at the fact that whenever I looked at the Bio of the instructors, they always seemed to be business people, but with very little eBay experience. With only a bit of investigating, I found many have fewer than 100 feedback points, yet they're teaching others as an "expert" in their field.

Well at the recent eBay Live event in Las Vegas, they had a seminar on the eBay Education Specialist program. For a nominal fee, eBay would instruct me on the art of teaching about eBay. They include videos, a Powerpoint presentation, handouts and student books.

After I got home from Vegas, I jumped in with both feet. I knew a lot about eBay, but I always like to learn new things, and I did learn quite a bit during the online class I took to become a certified eBay Education Specialist.

Now my name is listed on the instructor database, so I can be found by potential students looking for a "Basics of eBay" curriculum. I set up a simple website so my students can learn a bit about me and register for my classes. I'm ready to roll.

My classes will likely be held in small conference rooms at local hotels or schools. I'd love to work my way into the local Colleges. It has the possibility of providing a decent part-time income as well. I'm able to charge whatever I want, but I think a fee of $50 for the 4-hour class with a $10 materials fee (certificate and student manual) is a reasonable amount. With say 20 students on a Saturday afternoon, that's $1000...not bad for 4 hours work.

Once I've had some student feedback (much like eBay's regular feedback system), I will qualify to be certified for a "Beyond the Basics" class. Again, with more feedback I can teach a Business Specialist class as well.

I think it's a great opportunity to share what I know about eBay, which I already enjoy obviously. I searched my area in San Diego & Los Angeles. There are maybe 50 people in all of San Diego and Los Angeles certified to be instructors and guess how many have a class scheduled in the next 3 months? No one within 50 miles, and about 5 people in the entire Los Angeles area. Sounds like potential to me!

Anyway, I'm fired up about it. Check it out, it might be for you too.

eBay Guides

What the heck? An eBay guide...what's that?

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 it HERE . 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!

Don't forget to visit my guide and let eBay know if it was helpful...of course it is! :o) Buying a Magazine Subscription on Ebay

Buying on eBay - How to find the best deals

How do you find the best deals on eBay? Well one of the best ways is to be the only bidder, or have very little competition.

"And how do I do that Jay?" Well, as you may know I have a website called http://www.sweetdealfinder.com . It has lots of cool links and tools for doing business online and finding great deals. But one of the lesser known tools is the "eBay Misspelling Tool". You can find it in the top left hand corner of my site.

The super simple explanation: People misspell words in their titles. If they spell Apple Ipod Appel Ipod, it might not ever get seen by 99% of eBay shoppers. But you can find it easily.

Anyway, I could explain how to use the tool, but my friend Chris from www.3riversauctions.com has put together a sweet video that explains it so much better than I ever could.

He even tells you how to have eBay email you when someone has made a mistake on the spelling of one of the words in their title so you can swoop in and buy it cheap!

Check out the video, totally FREE here:
http://www.3riversauctions.com/videos/not-just-another-ezine.htm

How to deliver eBooks? E-Junkie of course!

One of my goals over the past year is to slowly get away from selling a physical product. Physical products have to be purchased, photographed, inventoried, then when sold, packaged and shipped, sometimes insured and occasionally they get returned...sheesh! So long term goal...sell electronic products or ones that are drop shipped.

So let's get right to it. I sell eBooks on one of my sites, and on one of my eBay user id's. The site is www.best-ebook-store.com . Nice url huh? :o) I also use it for delivery my eBooks from my site www.bestskytv.com and on my eBay auctions for eBooks.

So an eBook is still a product that needs to be delivered to your customer once they've paid. At first I would just email the eBook once I'd received notification that a customer had made a purchase...but after a bit I realized that long term, this wasn't going to do. What if I went on vacation, or my email went down?

I actually have an eBook I sell about how to get your products delivered to your customers electronically through your email for free...but there are some challenges involved in this. First you must of course have your computer on and your email program open. Again I'm thinking...vacation. Come to think of it, I think about vacation alot...hmmmm. OK, I'm back.

Anyway I started looking and asking around and came across a great product that has worked out exceptionally well for me. I don't ever recommend stuff I haven't tried or items that don't work, so take my word for it, this works.

The product is called E-Junkie and you can find it at HERE . What is E-Junkie? They explain it so much better on their site than I ever could, but I'll give you the basic overview. You upload the product to their site, they generate a link for you. You can put the link on a webpage and when the purchase is made and the product is paid for, they customer is immediately given the product to download. It works with eBay too and PayPal! And it's VERY affordable. Starting at $5 a month, it's well worth the investment. They don't charge a commission, there's no per transaction charges...really they're the bomb!

I use it for eBooks, but you can use it for selling Mp3's, eBooks, software, photos and digital are, games, templates, scripts, icons, phone cards and more!

They supply stats on your sales, downloads and it's all customizable too. Again, they can tell you much more and much better than I can, check it out for sure if you are even considering selling and delivering electronic media. Click the logo below to find out more!

Blog Blog Blog

So I've had my blog for a few months now, so I thought I'd touch on they why and how of it.

Why get a blog? Some people enjoy writing. Some people get good therapy for themselves out of writing about lifes goings on. Others do so strictly for business reasons and others to educate the masses. Google has one, HP, Sony...just about everyone it seems is blogging. Businesses use Blogs to communicate with its customers.

But me...why did I start a Blog?

Well a bit of all of the above. I do enjoy writing, even in my matter of factly style. I wanted to educate anyone willing to read it, on a miriad of subjects that I've endured in my pursuit of making a living online. And I too, want to communicate with my regular readers.

Has it worked? Who knows really? You're reading it right? Why? You may have gotten here via my email signature. It appears this is the way most of my readers find their way here. The first month around 70 visitors total, then 80 the next, thn it dropped off a bit...down to 60. Then this month boom, back up to over 100. Ok, I'm not the New York times, but I have had a few people email me about what an "interesting" blog I have. I'm not sure that means they like it or not, but I'll take interesting. :o)

I'm trying to touch on eBay, websites, email marketing, and any other online endeavours I've run across. But if you have a topic you want to see my comments on, let me know. Chances are better than not, that I've tried it or at least given it some thought.

Feel free to post your comments on any posts you like or dislike too.

eBay Live...come and gone

eWow, it seems like I was just writing about eBay Live 2005 not so long ago...and BAM!, Live '06 has come and gone. The recent event held in Las Vegas actually sold out at just over 15,000 attendees. It was the first time that has happened in the brief 5 year history of the event. They actually didn't allow "at the door" registration because of maximum capacity.

The show was great! We always have a great time. I heard so many people griping about having to pay $50 for the three day event, or simply refusing to go on the grounds of "I'm not paying eBay another cent" type mentality. Honestly, the entertainment alone is worth the admission price, not to mention the show itself.

It's always great to meet people you've chatted with on the phone, including eBay employees, account reps, PayPal staff and others that we indirectly work with every day. On more than one occasion I've leveraged my past relationships with people I met at eBay Live to help me work through an issue I was having.

I realize not everyone makes their living on eBay like I do. But I always want to learn more, and would always take any opportunity to do so.

I did learn a lot. Some I'll share in future posts and others I'll touch on briefly here today.

So what's new? eBay Blogs! Yes, if you didn't hear, eBay has a blog now. It's free and is another way to drive traffic to your listings. They're new, and their future is not yet determined, but at this point, why not, right? Check 'em out here http://blogs.ebay.com/ .

Shipping terms are going to be enforced better. That's the promise from Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay. We saw her at the "Keynote" speach. You can see her below. What does that mean? It means when you see a listing with a Buy It Now of .99 cents for say a $50 item, then you see Shipping & Handling $49.01. This is what eBay calles excessive shipping and is really designed to save the seller money on eBay fees. You see, if you're unfamiliar with the eBay fee structure, the way it works is, the higher you start an item at, and the higher it closes at, the more eBay charges you in fees. But, that doesn't include shipping. So, they're paying next to no eBay fees, and still making the sale. Smart, but it's cheating and in the past it's gone on un-patrolled.

This is the view from our seats. I guess Meg and others are fans of the Monkees - the old "hey, hey with the Monkees" band. And yes, the lead singer Davey Jones of the Monkees and his new band were there to put on a short concert at the end of the speaking. It was really fun. Snack foods, soft pretzels, soft drinks, hot dogs, pop corn and ice cream bars were all free for everyone at the event that around 10,000 attended.

By the way, you can listen to the Keynote speach by visiting here: http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk.cfm/radio/ebay-keynote-2006.html

One of my favorite things at eBay live is the "Seller Scalability" area of the show. This is where you meet one on one with an eBay account rep and they go through your listings, and store and give you immediate feedback on things you can do to improve your sales, appearance and effectiveness. It REALLY helped me out last year. I especially liked this year when I was told "wow, this looks great. I wish there were something I could help you with" . Now while I appreciated the compliment, I really wanted someone to pick my work apart and show me what to improve, but this was beyond the scope of the show meeting.

The show was very large and took us about a full day to walk through at a fairly brisk pace. Then the second day we re-visited particular booths of interest and the last day, really just fooled around. :o) There are also educational seminars and guest speakers going on all day everyday for all abilities on all manner of subjects. Jerry, from Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream was there. The PostMaster General from the Post Office was there. There were classes for newbies and for PowerSellers alike. Again, we got SO much out of those classes last year, but were much more selective this time around.

Speaking of the PostMaster General...he informed everyone that you can now print International labels and fill out customs forms all online and at home, like you already could the regular and priority postage before. This will be a huge time-saver for anyone doing International shipping on a regular basis.

Of course there is always the collecting to do at the show. Last year they had the trading cards I mentioned in my past Live post, but this year it was a mini deck of playing cards...Vegas Baby! And the ever-present lapel pins to trade and save too.

The closing ceremonies or GALA Event as it is called, is always a great bash. There are literally a thousand eBay employees lined up on both sides of a red carpet and they all cheer, clap and give you high-5's as you enter the event. There is food galore everywhere, all part of the $50 you paid for the whole show. There are give-aways, entertainers, and always a headliner band. Last year B-52's, this year Huey Lewis . It was fun. Also it wouldn't have been a Vegas event if they didn't have about 20 Elvis impersonators running around and show girls for numerous picture opportunities.

All in all...definitely a great time. I didn't get quite as much out of it as last year, but I'll definitely go next year. And by the way, the show is heading back to the East Coast...Boston! Should be a fun time and will feel like it's just around the corner.

Hey...who's that dude below? YES! It's eBay Jay himself. :o) Yeh, that's me.

Hope to see some of you in Boston next year!

MinuteProfits.com Review

I think I've mentioned it before, but I'm kind an info-product junkie. I always get sucked in by the "make thousands per week, buy now" hype. I do always look for the ones with the money back guarantee, and I've often exercised that option when the products turn out to be less than advertised.

Anyway, I thought I'd start reviewing some of the products as I buy them, use them and find out what they're all about. I'll share with my readers what I find out, good or bad.

Tonights venture... Minute Profits.

Following is the basic speal they sent me in an email.

----------------------------------

From: The Desk of Sebastian Foss

Subject: Profits in 15 Minutes ?! MinuteProfits!

Hi! My name is Sebastian Foss and I thank you for taking the time to read this!

How would you like to make $50 - $250 every hour - starting minutes from NOW ?

http://bubba76819.incomesite.hop.clickbank.net

Many people ask me everyday - "Sebastian, there are so many 'make money on the net' guides out there - which one shall I buy -
which one really brings in money - I finally want to start making money on the net". Don't believe any hyped promises - you won't be making thousands of dollars every day and you won't be a millionaire by next year but my System is a surefire method for everyone who wants to start earning online ".

http://bubba76819.incomesite.hop.clickbank.net

If you are ready to finally start making money online this is the right System for you.
I have developed the "MinuteProfits" - System that allows you to stark making money on the Internet 15 minutes from now - without any investment or advertising!

All you have to do is click your mouse and go shopping! I will give you access to thousands of shops that pay an average $50 - $75 per hour. That's right... up to $75 an hour for being an " undercover eye " for the company. So if your ready to get started then we are going to take you through the process of getting paid to shop!

My shopping company database is so large that you can make thousands every single week by only shopping a few times.

And believe me - I'm going to give you access to a lot of shops that will give you $50 - $75 every hour!

I put in about 2 hours a week and I make between $500 - $750 a week! My personal best was $800 in one day and Im going to show you how you can make an incredible income with very little effort, too!

http://bubba76819.incomesite.hop.clickbank.net




Make an extra $500, $1000 or even $5000 per week with 15 Minutes of your time!

-------------------------------

Ok, so that's the basic ad.

My initial impression is that it's some kind of "mystery shopping" online type thing. Sounds interesting enough. I've done quite a bit of service review jobs, being a secret shopper. I understand the need for it as a business and I get the importance of doing it right as the "shopper".

Overall the ad is pretty cryptic, not really telling you too much about it, but I'm a sucker for this stuff so I'm "all in". I pay the "introductory price" of $49.97 and away I go.

I'll edit this article and publish my results shortly. Hopefully I'll be raking in the $50 - $250 per hour they're quoting us. :o)

UPDATE: Ok, it's about 10 minutes later. That was quick huh? It's a 75 page e-book on mystery shopping. The ad is very misleading in my opinion, and like I said before, I've done quite a bit of mystery shopping so it was of no interest to me. You can get all this information for absolutely free on the internet or even buy an eBook for a few dollars off of eBay with the same information in it.

That's why you look for the 100% moneyback guarantee. I know if it's through Clickbank, like this was, that I can get my money back.

So, my review is...don't waste your money. If you have a "mystery shopping" question, I'll be happy to answer what I can.

Adsense Arbitrage...My EADD exposed

It's been a few weeks since my last post...I've been super busy! I've been working on some websites, where I'm using Adsense to make some money. And just to reinforce the fact that I seem to have Entrepreneurial ADD I'm onto something new...again.

The idea is called Adsense Arbitrage. On one side you make a website that provides some valuable information on your site. And of course you have Google Adsense ads on the site to hopefully generate some income.

Generally the websites are small, from 1 page to several pages. And they deal with niche's. A niche is a very specific area of interest. Example: Hobbies is a big area of interest. Model airplanes is a bit more specific. Remote Control airplanes is even more specific. And gas powered 1/4 scale remote control airplanes is a pinpoint niche.

If you build a site around a very specific niche, chances are you won't have too much competition for the keywords you're trying to target, and will be able to get search engine ranking and traffic.

Traffic of course is the key.

On the site, you can also have affiliate products, or perhaps a product of your own...maybe an eBook. Here's a site I created recently. BestSkyTV.com

You'll notice this is a 1 page site. It has a few different income generating areas. First of all there are the Google ads at the top and near the bottom. Then there are the descriptions for my two eBooks which I'm selling. These descriptions provide the text needed to pull the desired Google ads that are related to SkyTV. And then at the bottom, I have a search feed where I get paid a very small amount per click for the searches performed.

Ok, so that's the revenue generation side of Arbitrage. Like I said before though, Traffic is the key to success.

Now I just made this site a few weeks ago, so how do I get traffic to this fairly unique little niche? Google ads of course!

I use Google adwords to create a campaign as an advertiser. What am I advertising? My eBooks. So I create a campaign with a few hundred keywords having anything remotely related to satellite tv and SkyTV and I bid very low...2-3 cents per click.

Then it's a numbers game. If I get 1000 impressions a day, and 100 clicks, that's a 10% CTR or click through rate. Not bad. Then how many people will click one of the ads on the site? How many will buy one of my eBooks? How many will click the search links from the RSS feed a the bottom? And also important to consider... How many people will visit and do nothing?

Let's presume I set a daily budget of $20 for my campaign. It's not a ton, but if I'm only paying .02 cents per click on average, that's a 1000 clicks from my Adwords campaign to the site. If I have that CTR of 10%, or 100 people visit my site, then it becomes a numbers game. The revenue depends on many factors. What are the advertisers on the site willing to bid to display their ads? The quality of information Google feels my site is offering, and several other factors. But at the end of the day, if the clicks (Adsense revenue) generate more than it cost to drive the traffic (Adwords campaign), then the difference is my revenue.

If I net $5 at the end of the day, it's a success. It's not a killing, but $5 a day is $150 a month and there really is next to no work once it's set up. What if you made 10 profitable sites? $1500 a month. 50 sites? You get the idea.

This idea works well with blogs too. Here are the sites I've been working on.

Magic Site
Sky TV Site
Pet Information Site
Botox Site
Ticket Site

There have been many others, some I won't share, some I may share later. I don't want to give away all my secrets. :o)

On another post I'll get more into the nitty gritty of how to research what profitible niche is, and how to find it. But that's a topic for another day...