Jim Wilson's eBay Secrets : Part 2
The easiest sale...
Exactly. And in addition to that the CD's also have what I like to call hidden jewels on them. They have affiliate links on them of course. And I make about one sale per week minimum from those affiliate links. I made one again today. I made one yesterday. Just from those CD's.
People are searching through, they find that link, the products are good, I screen them, and in most cases I use them myself, and I put an affiliate link on there and the next thing you know someone else is also using it. Secondary sales. I think I mentioned that in my newsletter.
What type of person would you say buys your CD?
There are those who buy it in order to start a business. There are those who buy it because it's got information on it on how to find people, and how to find information -- like spy software, and there are those who buy it because it's got games and fun stuff on it. It covers the whole gambit, it's just an absolute ton of information.
The thing that I'm selling my advertising on is "Making Money On eBay -- How profitable it can be, and here's how you do it". You can literally take my same CD and sell it as "Do you want to learn how to be an online spy?". And if you look there are other people selling "The Online Spy" -- it is the exact same software and it's the exact same CD in all likelihood.
So let's talk about the day-to-day running of your business, and for example let's take this CD of yours. How many copies of that do you sell -- do you list one a day, do Dutch auctions...?
Well what I do is I do a Dutch auction and I count up the number that I have remaining in stock and I place the Dutch auction for that number remaining. I do list it as if I'm completely, totally selling out, which there is a possibility because honestly if I see that too many people are selling it then I'm not longer going to sell that particular CD and move onto one of my others.
But I work at the Fire Department one day on, two days off, I time out my auctions where they always close when I'm off duty. Because I've found that if an auction closes people want instant gratification.
And that's another mistake that a lot of rookies make when they get on eBay ... they forget that people are paying hard earned money for something that is sight-unseen from someone who is sight unseen. It's a lot of trust involved.
And if you send an email to that person who you just sent your money to by PayPal and they don't respond right away you start getting nervous -- "Oh my gosh, did I just get taken?". So by being off duty and online, I can make certain that when they send that email I get it, and within a couple of minutes most of the time I can reply, makes them feel really comfortable, and once again you end up with a satisfied customer.
So for your Dutch auction, you start them all at 99 cents?
On the Dutch auctions they all sell at the exact same price, and if you look it's sort of strange how this CD is doing ... it sells for 1 penny and I charge $4.99 for the shipping, handling, and CD processing.
What I tell all the people I teach as far as eBay is concerned, as far as markup, you want to use the standard 42% markup minimum, you know make sure you cover all the advertising costs, that you cover your shipping, to make sure that it's worth your time and effort. For the CD processing, there's a company that I contract with, they make all of my CD's and they cost between -- depending on how much you buy they cost between $1 and $4 per CD. I'm able to buy so many now, that they cost on the low end of that.
So they make copies with all the software? Do they label it too?
They sure do. They have the label and the whole nine yards so that when the CD comes to me it's actually ready to ship. It's very, very professional. It's computer stamped, and they actually offered to do my logo on there and I said "that's too much". I really didn't want that.
They do an awesome job and they have extremely good quality control. I know when I shipped out my CD's everything that's supposed to be on there is on there, and accessible and the stuff that's not supposed to be on there isn't. They don't mark the CD with their marking's either which is another important factor. Because it's my product, not their's.
Exactly. So since you're selling them quite cheaply at $5, are you looking to make money through sheer quantity, or do you have a longer term plan?
Basically, in this particular case, it's only one of many items that I'm selling. I have 14 web sites online now. Of those 14, two of those are actually selling for me, and several of them are actually getting lots of traffic. My biggest money-maker of late besides eBay, has actually been hosting. I provide hosting services.
Which web address is that?
ULSO.com. That's my home site as a matter of fact. I pretty much base everything else from ULSO. And it's strange how things have worked out ... because it all happened in very little time ... I went from being an online internet novice to carrying lots of domains, several of which are doing quite well.
Gnuday gets around 20,000 hits per month. That's 20,000 quality hits, that's not trash hits, it is making sales. Both the eBooks that are on there sell and the CD's.
I would never ever tell anyone that it's easy to make money online, that would be an outright lie, it takes work, it takes effort, it takes knowledge, but once you figure out how to write an ad, and once you figure out how to get people to come to your sites, if you've got a quality product, and you back it up, people will buy it.
So let's take one of your sites Gnuday.com. When did you start the site ... how did you promote it, and how do you continue to promote it?
I actually started the site less than 6 months ago, believe it or not. Basically, the idea came to me as far as this site was concerned originally I was going to sell some of the things that I was selling on eBay, on that site. I ended up leaning much more towards informational products on it.
Once I started promoting the site, the first thing I'd do is set up metatags. And I make sure that I've got a really good description on there so the search engine spiders are going to be able to find it. I'm by far, nowhere near a search engine expert, but I can say that if you search for certain terms, my sites are on there. My sites are on Google and Yahoo. I do get hits from those search engines.
You're ranked quite high in them are you?
I honestly don't know how high, but I've had people who have emailed me and told me that they found me both through the search engines and I know if you search for certain names, I pop up.
Anyway, I start doing ezine advertising. Newsletters. Basically, I track the newsletter ads very, very closely so now I've got a nice list compiled of which newsletters are really good to run ads in and it's all logarithmic. Once you start getting hits to a site it seems like they never stop coming.
The hard part is getting it started in the first place. I haven't placed an ad for Auction Hints in six months or more, because I focused a lot of attention on Gnuday and Auction Hints still gets 8,000 hits per month. I have people signing up for my newsletter 3, 4, 5 per day every single day, and that's without one ad.
Now the next thing that I do also, and you're aware of this, I post answers in the forums. And in each case when I post an answer I make certain that I put a signature file at the end. It's a subtle advertisement. Hopefully the post that I put in there doesn't make it sound like I'm an idiot, it builds enough credibility that someone says "Hey, I'd like to see what this guy's site is all about".
Well, I have noticed that you're one of the more regular posters and your posts are really interesting. Because you share some of your business -- what's happened in your business, what's worked for you. So I think it interests a lot of people.
That could be because in addition to being a paramedic, I also am an instructor at a local community college and I think sometimes that that pops out in me as far as the activities that I take on, online.
Something that I hadn't mentioned up to this point, which just occurred to me, the person who wants to get started in eBay, they have absolutely no earthly idea how to get started, or what to do, I urge that they look around their own home, they have got to have something laying around they no longer use, they no longer want, they can turn that item or those items into cash.
And it's just a simple matter of looking on eBay to see if it's already selling, looking at the ad that is already selling it, getting an idea of how to write the ad, and sort of mimicking what others are doing.
Certainly not copying that but that is one thing that several of my family members have done. I talked them through what amounts to an online garage sale. And they sold all kinds of stuff. You name it: old golf clubs, collectables, coins, jewelry, the list goes on and on and on.
You mentioned earlier that you do a lot of hunting around for bargains and wholesalers. Is that an ongoing process?
It's a constant ongoing process. If you're not constantly looking for new stuff to sell, then you're going to end up being stagnant and you're going to get left behind.
That is probably the hardest thing to do. Even those people who have found their niche in online sales, are going to end up trying to constantly find new suppliers. Because the fact is you can always find a better price.
When I first started selling the software: I sold children's software specifically, for a long time and I found that I could get 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% savings simply by shopping and comparing. And not going constantly to the same supplier.
And so literally, what you find you end up doing is building what amounts to a list of suppliers and when you need an item or you see a market you contact those suppliers, find out the best that they can do, and then you go with the lowest price. It's a simple common sense approach.
And those suppliers, do they drop-ship, or do they send it to you?
Oh no, I stock it myself and most of the time what I do is any stock that's sitting on the shelf is gathering dust so the goal is to buy as limited amount as you possibly can. And still get a reasonable price. And then move it out fast.
Actually someone else I spoke with -- Jim Straw told me how he structures his drop-ship program, that people buy from him at 40% of the cost so you're basically getting a 60% discount. So let's say the product sells for $10, and you're buying it for $4, and you were selling it on eBay, what price would you choose to start at?
Actually I would have to research the particular item to see what price it would sell at. The reason that I don't do a lot of drop-shipping, actually I can honestly say I don't do any right now, is because of the fact that on eBay people are looking for bargains. And there's so little markup on most items that the little bit of profit that the drop-shipper is going to make, often wipes out the profit that you would have made.
And that's one of the frustrating things about eBay is that you do sort of have to plan on having an inventory at some point. But there are drop-shipping companies out there that you can make a little bit of money on.
I've sold "As Seen On TV" items for a short period of time. And those "As Seen On TV" items ended up doing fairly well. I could actually sell 10 - 20 items per week fairly easily. But the problem was all of the hard work that went into the advertising and the cost, I wasn't really making a whole lot because I had to pay the drop-shipper.
So you tend to look more for Wholesalers?
Exactly. I look more for wholesalers, honestly of late, the greatest bargains that I have found have been at garage sales and at flea markets. My wife and I went to a garage sale a couple of weeks ago just before Christmas. I found an old leather case filled with a travel bar. It had three glass bottles, a liquor shaker, a stirrer, and just all the makings for a travel bar.
It was circa 1970 and the jet-setters used to use them. The woman had a price tag on it of $25, I offered her $5 and she took it. I put it on eBay, and it sold for $46 and the guy paid $12 for the shipping.
That's an instant turnaround of anyway you look at it, by the time I pay for the ad and everything, my gas and my time, of around $40. That's one item. He's extremely satisfied. He's going to use it for parties -- he's a big Buffalo Bills fan and he's taking it to football games.
I love going to the flea market. And to the garage sales. As I said, if it looks old, and it looks like there's any value, chances are it is. You don't have to be an antique expert, if you look at it and you say to yourself "Wow, if I dust that off, take a couple of good photos of it, describe it well in an ad", chances are there's somebody out there in the world, which is literally who you're dealing with, with eBay, you're not dealing with just your local garage sale market, you're dealing with the world. Someone out there probably wants it.
As you say you ship stuff all over the world ... fragile stuff too?
As it happens the travel bar was fragile, with 3 glass bottles in it. That's a piece of cake, because you just wrap it up in newspaper ... I put it in a nice string box, and shipped it out to them priority mail, as per his request, and that's what he paid for.
And no harm. There was absolutely no damage. He even let me know it arrived safely. I shipped a camera just last week. An old collectable camera that actually my wife found in a box of her grandmother's belongings after her grandmother passed away.
This box became my wife's and I asked "What are you going to do with that?". She said "Nothing". And it sold for $50. And it was an old beat up camera. It even had the original receipt and the original box.
People love that kind of collectable item. So that's exactly how I presented the ad as a matter of fact ... I said that "This was made in a simpler time when camera's weren't digital".
Let's say for example you were writing your ad for that, where did you come up with the text? Did you use the documents that came with the camera?
I read some of the documents that came with the camera and took the model, and basically what I do is I've got a template of an ad that I use. What I do is I actually base my work on that template. I've found it's a nice clean template that other people actually -- you can easily apply this template to literally any ad, and as a matter of fact what I'm doing right this moment, I'm going to go and bring up that ad ... so that I can tell you exactly what I wrote on it ...
So the whole process of putting together an ad ... how long would you say it takes?
It used to take me somewhere around 2 to 3 hours minimum. Basically I'm very fortunate now because honestly I can bang out an ad probably in about 18 - 20 minutes. Because I have this template that I base the ad on.
And I'm actually looking at it, I'm looking at the leather bar one that I brought up ... okay it says "Travel bar, leather bar kit" and right below that I had a photo and then I put in a little catchy saying that I made up "This is one bar that never closes".
And then I put a description: "Circa mid to late 1960's, these were actually quite fashionable for the jet-setters to throw a party on the run. The kit is highly collectable and is in near mint condition inside and out."
Then there's a couple more photos that are close-ups of the inside, then I put a description of what was actually in the kit: "leather case, 3 glass bottles, a faux silver tray", faux is a wonderful word too "faux" - a faux silver tray ... AKA plastic. "Comes with complete instructions for some great drinks".
And then I put the terms of the purchase to let them know exactly what they're bidding on and exactly what they're going to pay for the shipping and I have my email address there. And that is the exact same template that I use on each and every ad that I write.
It's got a little place for what I would call the headline, right below that I'll put a nice photo of the item. Below that I'll have some kind of a phrase that sort of describes it or perhaps embellishes upon the photo, trying to add to it ... like if it's picture of jewelry, I'll say something to the effect of "You can actually see in this photo how much this wonderful piece shines" or something like that.
And then I would go into extreme description including all the way down to what's included so that the person knows exactly what they're bidding on, and then I always put the terms of purchase on the ad ... that's an extremely important aspect, and I notice that a lot of people don't do that and then they wonder why customers end up being a little bit upset when they didn't realize that they needed to pay x number of dollars for shipping or that the person had a no return policy, or something like that. The terms of purchase spell it out. Small print so to speak.
So just from the example you read out, it sounds more like catalog copy, rather than a sales letter. Would you say that that was what you were going for?
Essentially yes. It's like you're putting it on an online catalog. It's factual and I go for a lot of pictures. It slows down how fast the ad loads -- yes. But a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. When they can actually see what they're bidding on, they're more likely to bid on it.
I use just about the same format in every single ad, but what I do is I will actually modify the ad to fit the product. If I'm selling something that is somewhat vague then I'll go into an extreme amount of detail and if I'm selling something where I'm up against a lot of competition, I'll go into even more detail, I would try to convince people "Why should they buy from me versus the 250 other people that are also selling the exact same product?"
The gentleman that lost his job and is asking for my assistance, he became very fortunate. It just so happened that as a fire fighter I knew what he was talking about -- he had a whole bunch of shields that he had found in the basement of this house that he had just bought.
And the shield is the front portion of the helmet that indicates the unit number and the station number and from his description these things were quite old. He was able to put those on eBay, and they sold for $200 - $500 a piece. They were 100 years old.
I told him "Put them on there with pictures and I'm not going to teach you at this point how to write an ad, but bottom line show the pictures, and let the item sell itself".
And that's exactly what it did, and he said in his ad ... he was very honest "I found this in my basement, I think it came from Lancaster Pennsylvania, it's probably about 100 years old, I don't honestly know, here's the photo, the rest is up to you, please bid".
And they did. He made a bundle in his first week. So if he could find more of them like that, he wouldn't need my help any more. That's the main thing that I go for: honestly and integrity.
You mentioned earlier that you used to link to your own sites from your listings, but eBay won't allow that any more...
They completely negated being able to do that. I understand eBay's position because eBay works very hard to get people to come to their sites and what they are essentially allowing was eBay's hard-earned customers to essentially click-through and leave.
So they said "No more -- we won't allow that any more". A wise way of getting around that, that I did for a while was I made my eBay ID actually the name of my web site. Check out my old ID it was GolfCFL.com. And that was the golf web site that I sold golf clubs from. It got a few hits.
The main thing was it's all a matter of what you're selling, and in that case I was selling golf clubs that were in high demand. And so it definitely transformed into lots of hits and lots of requests for clubs.
In one week, in August I did $3,500. That's why September 11th, oh boy. That really messed up the economy in the States. And this is something that's also interesting Louis, is the fact that September 11th has actually caused a boom in eBay sales in some facets. I would have thought that it would have wiped out eBay sales but in actuality it increased it because people were looking to save more money and people are looking to make more money so there's more people actually coming to eBay.
Yeah, I remember reading that often when people are laid off it's home businesses or home business opportunities that really boom ... and that it's often when lots of network marketing companies get more sign ups.
But unfortunately, it's only certain things. Obviously luxury items, like jewelry, I would imagine that those sales suffer tremendously while information products that teach people how to make money on line ended up with a boom.
And there again it's just a matter of knowing your market and figuring out exactly what the trends might be and trying to move with the market, as opposed to against it.
Would you say, that because of the eBay rule change, having your site and any affiliate sites you wish to list, on your About Me page is a good thing?
That's definitely something that everyone should do when they join eBay, because in the first place it takes the mystery out of who you are, let's you tell a little bit more about yourself, and perhaps you can put a photo of yourself there, but in addition to that you can link to your eBay store or your own web site and that can definitely lead to more credibility and more sales.
You have an eBay store do you?
I don't have an eBay store, simply because I didn't want to try to justify that particular expense while I'm spending so much on eBay ads. And I rotate -- it would be difficult for me to have a store since I really don't center on one specific theme any longer, I sell literally anything that I go out and find at a flea market or a garage sale.
It would be hard to put those in store, but if I did once again get into the golf again, yes I was building an eBay store for the golf products I was selling. So bottom line is if you have a niche product that you sell specifically then I would definitely recommend that you build an eBay store and write an About Me page.
If I remember one of your posts from the Tony Blake board, you mention that you take pretty much any method of payment ... is that right?
Just about. I don't take American Express but every other form of payment - yes. And I don't hold an order specifically because when I look at the people who are buying online, they're looking for online instant gratification in most cases, so if they send me an electronic check, or if they use a credit card, to me they've paid, and I've only gotten for lack of a better term, in the four years I've been doing this, I've only got burned twice, so maybe I've been real lucky, but it's not hard to imagine that the easier you make it for someone to pay you, the more likely it is that they're going to buy from you because they realize "I can pay this guy using literally any form and I'm going to get that item that I wanted".
So do you actually have the ability to take credit cards by themselves as well?
Yes I do.
So you have a merchant account do you?
I have a merchant account set up through bank locally and in addition to that if a customer buys from me if they would like I can set them a special link that they can go into my shopping cart and literally pay me directly through the shopping cart, and as a matter of fact if you go to Gnuday.com if you click on any one of those links it will take you into my shopping cart. And you can pay using Visa, MasterCard, you can pay with an eCheck, you can pay via PayPal, it's just a really simple way of setting up a shopping cart.
I know that PayPal keeps growing -- would you say it's the most popular method of people paying for things on eBay?
It is by far -- my sales actually went up when I started accepting PayPal. I understand that there are those who are disgruntled with PayPal for whatever reason. I have yet to have any dealings with them as a seller, that was less than ideal.
As a buyer I would never recommend that you use them to buy anything that's not a solid object because they simply don't provide buyer protection, and I didn't know that until it was too late, I bought a series of ads as a matter of fact and the guy was not legit and PayPal didn't back me up, they backed that seller up, but I learned my lesson and I won't make that mistake again.
But I do put PayPal logos on each and every one of my auctions ads. As a matter of fact, out of the 78 that I sold the other day, nearly 60 have already paid, and out of those that paid 4 of them used BillPoint, and all of the others used PayPal so that tells you the mass percentage of people that are using PayPal.
And I remember you saying that to avoid any problems, what you do is download your PayPal balance to your bank account every day.
Daily. As a matter of fact today I did it twice. Because this morning when I got up there was another $44 in there from people who had paid overnight so I processed those orders, and this evening when I got home, there's another $40 from people who once again had paid during the day while I wasn't on the computer. And in both cases I went ahead and sent them to my account. There's a small fee for the transfer -- it's like 50 cents. To me it's worth the peace of mind knowing there's no funds in there to be frozen.
Of course. It's nice to come back to more money each time...
It is. There was a time when I just started out that was a rare occurrence, now I'm happy to say that -- and this is another huge piece of advice that I would give to anyone Louis is this is like the race between the Tortoise and the Hare.
Online marketing is not something to be rushed. If someone tells you "Oh by next week this time you'll be making $10,000 a week" stay away from them, they're probably lying to you.
The fact is though the longer that you stick it out and the more you learn the more likely you are to succeed. And now, I make in a week, what it used to take me a month to make online.
In relation to that ... something I'm curious about -- you said that you sell what's in stock, could you say how many auctions you have running at any one time?
Right now I've only got two, but right around Christmas I had 40. It depends on what I've got in stock and it also depends on what my wife has me doing on my days off! As a matter of fact I would have run more ads this week 'cos I do have some things in inventory here that I bought at garage sales that are just itching to be sold but I couldn't write the ads for them, because I had to clean out the garage.
But the good news is, in cleaning the garage, I found some more stuff out there that my wife would have thrown away and one mans junk is another mans treasure. I put it right into my inventory and I'll write ads for it too. I imagine if you want to check my advertising over the next week to ten days, you'll see that I have more ads on. I imagine that I'll probably run 20 to 30.
Generally speaking I usually run around 20 per week and now because I think it's a combination of what I'm selling and how I'm selling it most of the time just about every item I put on is selling. I'm really, really lucky.
Another of your posts that I saw on Tony Blake's board -- something really caught my eye, you mentioned "this morning I've processed 150 orders". It seems an awful lot of orders. I'm intrigued. How did you do that?
A lot of pre-setup work. What I recommend to those who are going to sell on eBay, you do the work up front. And then it's just a matter of copying and pasting. I had my post-sales emails completely set up. All I had to do is copy them and then basically eBay sends you an email that tells you exactly who all of your bidders were and you get their email address, and you click on their email address, and paste the email into that particular blank email and hit send.
It took me about 15 minutes to process all those invoices. It's simple copy and paste. It's kind of "Oh boy, am I going to make any mistakes here" because you do it so quickly, but after you've done it so many times you get used to it. It's just a matter of making sure you're set up beforehand.
I would equate it to being like an instructor -- when I first started teaching at the college here locally, it took me hours upon hours to set up for my classes because I had to prep for each and every class, but now that I've been doing it for 16 years I'm ready-prepped. So I go in there, and I open the book, and I lecture. I know what I'm going to say.
It's the same thing -- you do your prep work before the auction closes. Actually before you even post the auction. And then it's just a matter -- I've already got my post-sales letters set up and I just change the item, change the amount, and click on the person who bought it. It's all pretty much done in place.
You choose not to use a service like Auction Watch?
No, because they charge too much. The bottom line is I'm still a small business, and they're a wonderful service but you really have to be clearing a fairly decent amount consistently in order to justify that expense. I would much rather put that money, instead of putting it towards AuctionWatch I'd rather put it towards more advertising.
Do you use any auction specific software packages?
I used to use Robbin Tungett's Virtual Auction Ad Pro, and it is absolutely phenomenal. She is like the eBay Queen. This woman is just phenomenal.
I now use Front Page to write all of my ads, I found it's more versatile, but for anyone who's just starting out, I would highly recommend that they visit AuctionRiches.com ... that's Robbin's site, and take a look at her software because it does everything for you in assisting you in writing a decent ad.
And how do you post your auctions? Just manually through Explorer?
I'd rather use Netscape. For some reason Explorer -- another little tidbit of information for people now just getting started, Internet Explorer for some reason after you post your first ad tends to lock up. I don't know why. It's done it ever since I've been selling. I've found that Netscape doesn't so while I'll use Internet Explorer for 99% of my browsing, when I'm posting ads I'm using Netscape and it slides right through.
I can post, once I've got the ads I've already written, and I already have my headline written out also, so it's just a matter of copying and pasting it, I can post 30 ads in less than 30 minutes. And if you talk to the people who are literally selling thousands and thousands of items, they're probably doing the exact same thing.
So all these customers you've had over the years, how do you follow-up on them, what do you do with them after the sale?
That's an excellent question. I make certain as I said to send them that final email once again thanking them and reminding them that I'm still there, and I keep their email address in a data file and when I come up with another product that they might be interested in, I email them to remind them who I am and ask them if they might be interested in hearing about it.
The last thing I want to do is send them an unsolicited business email. I invite them to return my email if they are interested, if they do -- great, I send them the offer. If they don't, then I don't. I definitely don't throw away any email addresses of any past customer because they are another potential customer.
I've ended up with several sales from people I've already sold to by doing that. I have an eBay mailing list -- I actually have more than one depending if they bought software from me, or they bought the CD, and I use Worldmerge to send the mass mailing out, and the mass mailing, the first one that I do is basically an invitation saying "I've come up with another product, you were a former customer of mine, as I told you in a previous email I'll let you know if I came up with anything, the last thing I want to do is interfere with you or whatever you're doing these days, but I wanted to let you know about this offer. If you would like to know more about it please feel free to email me and I will personally email you".
In that case I do send a personal email to those who reply. That way it doesn't seem as if I'm something of a business machine just asking for more money. And I also like adding that personal touch because as I said earlier in our interview Louis, removing the mystery of who the person is behind the auction ad actually makes it a lot easier to sell because people will buy from someone who they trust a lot faster.
Okay, do you have your photo on your listings?
I don't put my photo in my listings, but I make sure I put contact information. I make it very easy for them to contact me. My email address is right there in every single ad that I run, many of the ads that I run actually have my name, as well as my post office box business address, and my phone number and I urge them, I invite them to email me if they have any questions. I even use that word "urge ... if you have any questions please email me" and it works.
Do you use any other contact methods like ICQ ... instant messaging?
I used to use ICQ and then I found that it made me vulnerable using a cable modem, so I took it off my computer because I got hacked, no more, it's not worth it, at one point I was using software that allowed me to actually interface while I was online I could leave a little thing on my web site that indicated that I was indeed online and if they clicked on it they could ask me a question live and in person. That worked out quite nicely, but I found that I couldn't get things done 'cos every time that I was online as soon as I logged on, I started getting questions.
That's it, unlike emails you can't choose when to respond.
Exactly. I tried to use ... and this is something else that I'm now focusing on is my time management, because I've found that I'm so excited about getting email from someone because I love chatting with people, I love answering the email, that I would actually stop writing an ad, I would stop scanning in photos, I would have all of this stuff all set up and right in the middle of writing an ad my email thing would ping, and next thing you know I'm answering the email.
I've got time management down now, and basically I set aside a certain time that I check my email and a certain time that I process orders and it seems to be working out. Actually I have to schedule myself almost as if you would as if you're working for someone. You work certain hours, and you do certain things during those hours, and that's another little tidbit of advice I would give anyone getting started is: make sure to put themselves on a schedule.
Time management is just as important, if not more important than money management because your time is valuable. You would have thought that I'd have learnt that one a long time ago!
It's too easy to be disorganized. I can vouch for that. I think we're kind of coming to the end of this interview ... so what would you suggest to someone who's either starting selling on eBay, or someone who's already selling on eBay but wants to sell more, or take it even full time?
eBay is definitely one thing you can get into online full time and yes it's going to take some time and effort and some learning but there is definitely money to be made. I could do it in all likelihood fulltime already honestly if I devoted more time but the fact is I've got so many years in the fire department I can't give up that retirement. That would be a very silly thing to do.
The big hint that I would give people that want to get started is learn as much as you can and just absorb the information that's out there ... Auction Hints, my eBook is a fairly decent eBook that tells all about eBay.
There's several other publications out there that will tell you exactly what you need to know as far as how to safely sell and buy in the online auction forum. In addition to that I would say start counting on something that you truly, truly love because if you have a passion for it, then you'll find it easier to sell it.
And I loved software absolutely, I still do, but unfortunately I got knocked out of that market but if you find a niche, for example a friend of mine that sells on eBay, she is very much into antiques and she does extremely well selling antique vases and she loves them. How could she help but sell them? Another friend of mine sells fishing equipment. Guess what his passion is?
It was just natural as a golfer -- I love the game of golf, and so for me to sell golfing equipment was awesome. I got to actually see the brand new golf stuff as it came out of the factory. "Wow -- look at this!". Find a niche. If you have urges to keep something yourself, then how hard can it be to sell it.
There's going to be other people out there that are going to want it. And don't overprice yourself, don't try to make a killing on one item, you're far better off selling ten of the same item, and making the profit over the long term because now you've got ten contacts.
Just be honest, and be available, and do unto others. The old ethic of "do unto others, as you have them do unto you" it definitely plays into online sales.
I'm happy to say that the people that I've dealt with, I don't know if I've just been very lucky or what but the people I've dealt with have been very, very honest, and had a lot of integrity, if they did write me a bad check it was an accident and they made up for it, and it's been just an extremely wonderful experience, and I don't regret any portion of it.
Especially now that I'm actually, it's taken some time, but now that I'm now making a nice secondary income. I could actually give up my teaching at the college, but I love that too much too. But I'm actually making as much on eBay, as I was at the college.
And as you say, you've got the system so automated, how much do you actually spend on it ... an hour a day?
It depends if it's a day I'm scheduled to post ads. If it's a day that I'm posting ads then I go over the ad with a fine tooth comb to make sure I didn't add something in there that was dumb. You know you're tired, you're writing 30 ads, and you could absolutely put the wrong description or something. And people will hold you to it. And they expect the item to be exactly what's advertised.
And once I've done that, by the time I've posted, probably maybe 2 hours, 3 hours, and that's maybe twice a week. And then every other day it's about an hour on eBay, and then I spend several hours reading online forums and posting, which is a great form of advertising, but in addition to that it's an awesome way to meet people, like yourself, and end up learning even more about online marketing.
And it's also another passion ... it's almost like a hobby, because you really enjoy reading a lot of the posts because some of those people are just so intelligent and in addition to that you like seeing the fighting too ... it's almost like a soap opera. You gotta laugh at some of the posts.
I'm constantly looking at new and better ways of improving things. I just registered EzineAdResults.com and as a matter of fact the gentleman that's working on it with me is in the UK and he and I are working diligently to put together a nice info-package on how to advertise successfully in newsletters.
That's basically another thing that I'm working on that's sort of behind the scenes, so you constantly keep learning and moving forward. And as a matter of fact my plan is once the product is 100% completed I will be marketing it on eBay. Just one more thing that we market.
There are people on eBay that sell certain types of items exclusively, and they continue doing it, and they do quite well. I envy them in some ways, but in other ways honestly I enjoy selling a diverse measure of items because there's little side businesses that end up popping up.
Once you get very decent at selling on eBay, as a matter of fact I've got a gentleman today that contacted me about selling one of his golf clubs for him. It's a used golf club. It will probably sell for around $100 on eBay, and he'll give me 20% of the sales price. I've already got golf club ads written, all I've got to do is take a photo of his and then I'll put it on and he'll pay the ad cost by the way, and I'll sell his golf club. That's another potential business. I hadn't really thought about it, until he mentioned it to me.
Okay, thanks very much Jim. In conclusion, anything you would like to say ... any final points?
I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about this. I still consider myself a little guy, who's a fire fighter paramedic first, and online seller second. But eBay has definitely made a difference in my life, I make money on eBay. Others can certainly make money on eBay also.
It affords people opportunities that most online endeavors simply don't because they're too difficult. eBay is simple. It's a very, very good place to start. And it's inexpensive. It's fun, and they have made it as safe as they possibly can as long as you add your own common sense to the measures that eBay has taken then it's a perfectly safe place to also to buy and to sell.
