eBay & Entrepreneurial ADD and more about Trading Assistant work

"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. :o)

::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.

My best eBay Trading Assistant deal ever!

It was a warm summer morning, when rounding the corner at the local drive-in turned swap meet, I saw it. My gold mine... :-) Actually it was just a large delivery type truck with a roll-up back door. There was a crown gathered so I hurried on over to see what all the hub-bub was about.

It turned out to be a whole truckload of Adidas and Taylormade golf clothing, shoes, hats and accessories. They were selling the stuff really cheap, and I was excited. I bought 40 Taylormade hats for a dollar each, knowing they'd sell for $8-10 on eBay. I bought an armful of shirts for $5 each and soon had spent my pocketful of cash (a few hundred dollars). I couldn't imagine they'd sell all of it, so I found a woman who seemed to be in control (partially). I found out she managed a local thrift store, got her card and headed home.

First thing Monday morning I was waiting at the door. After they opened, I gave Margaret a few minutes to get settled and then approached her. My plan was to offer her maybe a few thousand dollars for whatever she had left. I knew I could sell it for much more. She recognized me and we began to chat. Turns out the thrift store was part of my Church and I didn't even know it. They fund a local soup kitchen and emergency services for our local community. She told me how she had 3 or 4 other buyers coming in that wanted to buy all of the golf stuff she had. They had offered her $5000 and another $7000 at the swap meet. I was surprised because although I knew there was value in it, I didn't see that much potential.

She must have read my face, because she then pointed out the two full truck container loads in the parking lot. The truck she brought to the swap meet was just a sampling! Now I saw the potential! It had to be actually probably $100,000 worth of stuff I estimated. Turns out all of the goods were donated by Adidas/Taylormade to the Church to clean out a warehouse. All of the merchandise was prior year, or production samples, or salesman samples. Both men's and women's, hats, shoes, shirts, pants, shorts, skorts, jackets, sweaters...

There were two issues for my new friend. One, she had no place to keep all this product. She told me she had to return the truck containers in two days. Second, although she knew they had value, she was in a very low income area of town and it would take forever to move the product piece by piece and in her neighborhood she would get very little money for the items that way. Second, although she knew she had to do something with the product, she knew the value and although the $7000 would have been a huge boost to the sales (over 2 months sales worth), she saw the bigger potential.

And then it clicked for me. I knew I didn't have the money to compete with the other buyers, but I did have something they didn't (as far as I knew). I had eBay. I told Margaret that I sold stuff on eBay for a living, and that the golf shoes she sold me the day before for $5 I would sell on eBay for $50. That the hat she sold me for $1 I would move for $10. She couldn't believe it. So I made my move. I told her, I would take all the product. I would help her store it, sort it, and I would sell it all. I would split the profit with her 50/50 on whatever was made. I told her it wouldn't be quick, but it would be a steady supply of money for the store for the next year or two.

She barely hesitated. She said "done deal" and shook my hand. Little did I know what I was in for. I just found two years income without putting out any money from my own pocket. She and her staff spent the next month sorting the product right there in the store. Boxes floor to ceiling absolutely everywhere. She was getting heat from every direction to get it out of the store. So we got a storage unit nearby. It was packed floor to ceiling front to back.

I started out one box at a time. Each box had maybe 40 shirts in them. I checked out the competition on eBay and picked a medium start price to feel out the market. Turns out they shirts sold pretty consistently for about $15 each. So we got $7.50 and the Church got $7.50. They were selling the shirts in the store for $2.00 so my new partner was elated. Once I got more and more product up we were making about $1000 a week, so $500 each. I was pleased and they were ecstatic. A great deal for everyone. It has been over two years now and we're still selling this product. We still have 200 or more auctions up per week. We have an eBay store and an outside website. This one project has taught me more than any other. The supply has definitely gotten thinner, but we're still making $500 a week or so, and giving them $250 of it. This was our first PowerSeller business and continues to keep us in Silver PowerSeller status. You can check it out HERE. To learn more about becoming a Trading Assistant read this post to my blog HERE .

My eBay education continues...as a Trading Assistant

I continued the "thrift store circuit" for another year or so. During that time I got involved in eBay's Trading Assistant program. A "Trading Assistant" is someone who will sell your items for you, generally for a commission. As I was going to garage sales, I'd tell people "hey, if you don't sell this, let me know and I'll sell it for you on eBay".

Pretty soon people were calling me on a regular basis. I even went so far as to run an ad in a community newspaper advertising I was a Trading Assistant. I can share my ad with you if you're interested. I got a great response to that as well, at least several calls a week.

Another trick I had was to contact people before they had their garage sales. How? Well in my city, the Pennysaver comes out on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. It would list maybe 50 garage sales coming up the next Saturday or Sunday. They always have the address because they want you to come. I did a zip code lookup online, based on the address and city and that was all I needed. I wrote this great letter explaining how I could sell thier valuable items for them if they didn't sell or if they wanted me to take a look at them before the garage sale, they could call me. I used all the PowerSeller logo's and Trading Assistant Logo's so it looked very professional. It cost me .37 cents at the time, so I spent maybe $20 a week to mail 50 letters and I usually got anywhere between 5 and 10 calls back. That's a pretty good ratio I think, 10-20%! Sometimes I'd get calls from their neighbors or friends who they had given my number to, and I was getting calls months after I quit this marketing technique.

I hung flyers up everywhere, at churches, schools, laundry mats and just about anywhere you'd find a public bulletin board. Honestly, I don't think I ever got a single call from one of my flyers.

Point is, all this marketing stuff I found on or through eBay. Start HERE . I also spent a lot of time on the eBay discussion boards. If you're trying to grow your business or just get a question answered, these online forums are extremely helpful. Another great resource were the Groups . I joined several groups for Sellers, PowerSellers, Trading Assistants, Store Ownwers, and I browsed many more. Just reading what others had to say, soaking it all in, good and bad. Learning...

Now being a Trading Assistant involves a lot of differnt dimensions and you can run that business in several differnt manners. I personally chose to charge a flat percentage and I paid all the fees - both eBay and PayPal from my commission. I also chose not to charge anything else. No up front fees for making the ad, or picking items up. So bottomline, if it didn't sell, I lost money. But I was pretty good at what I did, and rarely would I take something that didn't sell. And in the long run, I think I got so much TA business because people liked the concept of my business. If they didn't make money, I didn't make money. It definately made me more attractive than some of my local competition.

If you look around you'll see mosts TA's charge between $5 and $10 just to make the customers ad, whether or not it sells. Then a large majority of TA's pass all the fees associated with selling an item on to the customer. Then they charge their commission of 30-50%. I had a sliding scale that I changed depending on circumstance, but in general, items under $100 I charged 30%, $100-$500 - 25%, $500 - $1000 - 20%, and it ticked down from there.

I made special contracts with different customers and I learned some valuable lessons. My first large customer was a local golf driving range, that wanted me to move their excess demo clubs and past years inventory that was quickly becoming dated. Because of the high selling price of these items and large volume they gave me, I agreed to a flat 15%. Later I figured out that between eBay and PayPal I was paying out 10% and only making a little for all my hard work. But, I learned a lot from it, and still made some money. Other customers I negotiated flat 20 or 25% contracts depending on what they had to sell and how much they had to sell. Over time I figured out it wasn't really worth listing anything that wasn't going to sell for at least $50-$75. I became more selective about what I took on, and as I got smarter, I made more money.

I mentioned a contract for Trading Assistants, and I can share mine with anyone who wants one. It's a Word doc so you can modify it to fit your needs. All in all, being a Trading Assistant taught me how to run a business on eBay, not just sell stuff. And in pursuit of this, I landed my best deal ever...until next time.