Auction Power Guide

Sales of U.S. existing homes fell in December due to a shrinking supply. Purchases fell by one percent to a 4.94 million annual rate according to the the National Association of Realtors. The reading was the second-highest since November 2009. Economists expected a gain to a 5.1 million rate.

This is Sayoko Murase for Passfail.com, taking you behind the ticker.

For Passfail.com, Behind The Ticker (TM)
Pass Fail News

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I’ve sold quite a bit on eBay and I’ll give you advice from my experience.

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This is a vid capture of the auction for the original #1 1966 Batmobile build by George Barris for the 1966 Batman tv series. This was the #1 car the car built from the 1955 Lincoln Futura prototype car. It had been owned by George since it was built for the show.. this is the first time it was ever put up for sale publicly. The car sold for the hammer price of 4.2 million but with the buyers premium of 10% it came up to a total of 4.62 million.

Thanks to www.Moviepropcollectors.com for linking this video first 🙂

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I have just started my own little business selling fashion and costume jewellery :
www.sophiesjewellerybox.co.uk

I would just like some advice on others experience with starting a new business, and any tips for getting more traffic that have worked for you.

So far I have paid for advertising on google adwords and facebook. Entered my URL on various trawlers and online web directories, got all of the social media sites such as twitter, stumbled upon, facebook and pinterest.
I also leaflet drop, attend fairs and shop events, have set up an online blog, promote on asos marketplace and have written to various newspapers and magazines with my press release.

I understand it takes alot of man hours, hard work and determination, but would just value some tips and tricks from people who have been through or are going through the same as me. I spend around 5 hours a day purely on online promotion and advertising.

I really want to make this work, it’s my passion and hobby, i am 22 years old, and I really would love to hear your stories.

All constructive criticism and feedback is welcomed, and thank you in advance
Sophie x

I noticed that most of your products centered around rhinestone jewellry, so you should concentrate your keywords based around those.

Adwords can be tricky to get right from the get go, these days there are so many different features in there that it can be confusing. I would suggest that you stick to product listing ads (and google shopping). AFAIK Google shopping is still free in the UK and you should utilise them. I work with American clients normally so I really don’t have a clue what the UK rules are. Even though I’m from the UK.

I’m not sure what your profit margins are using Adwords on low cost products – I suppose it really depends on your market, what the typical customer buys (5+ items or just one). I would expect that you will need to get at least 15 customers to your website to make one sale. If you’re paying 15p a click that would mean that your margin would need to be at least £2.25 to break even.

There are various techniques you can use on site to increase the amount of money people spend on your site by cross selling and Adwords techniques to hammer your click costs down.

The free delivery over £30 is a nice touch and will help to increase your average basket value up so customers buy more than one item and you have a better margin.

If you need some tips and specific Adwords related advice contact me through http://www.karimium.com

I used to run an eCommerce site before, I found that a lot of sole proprietors run an ebay store as well – even though it’s not the core part of their business, they use ebay as a lead generation funnel. They’ll sell pieces on ebay – because it’s a big market place and then use it to build a list of prospects and when mailing goods out enclose a phamphlet of their website or even a catalogue.

Enclosed a 20% off ebay purchase discount for the online store and funnel sales onto there.

The ebay method acts like a advertising medium that essentially pays for itself.

Also utilize email marketing to retain a list of customers and email them about latest store updates and send fashion tips etc.

Something like soap,pins,candles or hair accessories i dont know

My advice would be Pinterest and Etsy. For one, if you scan the "Popular" page on Pinterest once a week, you will find awesome items that can be pretty simple to make (I have tried some). Their "DIY & Crafts" page is also helpful. Also, look on Etsy. Find cool handmade shops and get inspiration from them. I shop at Michaels’ and JoAnn’s all the time, and the constantly have online coupons and sales going on. You can buy your supplies there. Also, YouTube different techniques and crafts if you aren’t sure how to make things, there is plenty of help out there. Hope I helped!

At the beginning of the year I started up a small home business purchasing and re-selling consumer electronics products. Business license and registered with the state (Georgia) as DBA. I am a sole proprietor and the only one involved in the business.

January and February have been kind of rocky. I was learning the best and cheapest ways to ship, the quickest ways to test my products (stuff like memory cards coming from wholesale suppliers that could unknowingly be selling fake/misrepresented cards to companies, etc.) I sell on Ebay only, and I only accept Paypal as a payment method. So every sale, sale date, product description, Ebay fees, Paypal fee, date sold, etc. are all there. When I was a little more naive, I unknowingly flipped some products before I knew of a solid way to test them, so I got some returns and had to refund. Long story short, January and the beginning of February turned into an accounting nightmare in regards to logging everything. I utilize the "Outright" program on Ebay, which pulls all of my Paypal data. So it basically organizes everything, tells me the final profit, the total fees/business expenses for each month and year, the product description, date sold, sale price, Paypal fees, Ebay fees…all of that. The only thing it doesn’t log is the original purchase price and purchase date. I’m pretty much screwed for January and February in regards to proper documentation in regards to bookkeeping, but I do have the final profit amount for both months, all of the expenses and fees, payments received, etc. and I will just have to eat the taxes on the purchase amount vs. re-sold price. So taxing the whole instead of only the profit.

Is there a better way to keep track of this? I did make a spreadsheet in January. It has the item description, purchase date, purchase price, purchase tax paid, purchase shipping fee (I buy all of my inventory online and get it shipped to me from wholesale companies using my tax id), resale date, resale price, shipping fee, Georgia sales tax charged (if they were in my state – I only had one sale to Georgia during January and February and I have logged and paid taxes to the state on that), Ebay Listing/Insertion Fee, Ebay Final Value Fee, Ebay Final Value Fee on Shipping, Paypal Fee and then Finally Profit/Loss at the end.

Yeah, that’s a lot of fields to log for each transaction. Outright seems to do a really good job with keeping up with everything and letting me just print out all fees and sales with proper dates and descriptions. The only thing it doesn’t keep up with is the purchase price. I try to print out the invoice each time I buy something to re-sell and staple that to the printed paypal transaction paper for each transaction, when I have sold it. Is there a good way to keep this from being too tedious? We’re talking probably…$4,000 a month in sales in February. January was rather slow.

At tax time, Outright supposedly makes it easy to just see the total profit, total fees/deductions and such. But it doesn’t have an option to compare my purchase price per item to the re-sale price. So I could print that stuff out…but I’d end up paying taxes on everything for the whole year as a $0 purchase price value.

Any advice from sellers? Apart from "Get a CPA to do it all for you"…I wouldn’t make anything if I did that.

I keep all my items, prices, descriptions, final payouts, etc listed in an excel workbook. It does my calculations for me once I put the formulas in and I have a nice setup now after using it for a while. I don’t have to pay any fees to use it and I’m just very organized and attentive to it. If your business is so large that you can not handle the books on your own, I suggest hiring an employee. It shouldn’t take much training to keep good records. Just discipline.

A wholesale drop shipper allows you to sell items without keeping a physical inventory. The company provides and stores products, then, when someone buys an item from an EBay business owner for example, that owner simply processes the order and sends it and payment onto the drop shippers who then package and ship the product to the customer. All you have to do is sell the products listed on the pages of a wholesale drop shipper’s web site for more than the drop shipper is charging and you’ll be on the way to an easy profit.

Drop shippers and wholesalers are an invaluable resource for all EBay store owners. They provide a means of simplifying the entire ordering process and enable entrepreneurs to make greater profits. The customer never knows that a third party exists because drop shippers will package the product using the EBay business owner’s labeling. By purchasing the products at wholesale prices, the EBay store owner profits the difference between that price and the winning bid amount while the drop shippers take care of everything else.

The beauty of drop shipping is that it is virtually risk free. Any business which fails to use a wholesale drop shipping company must bear the expense of buying the inventory and waiting until a sale is made before recuperating an investment. By using drop shippers, nothing is paid out until the customer’s payment is received. It is an ideal arrangement for people with little start up capital.

Basically, time is the only thing that an EBay business owner must invest when using drop shipping. And the majority of that time is spent on research, trying to find the best wholesale drop shippers to supply the quality products they wish to sell.

However, be warned, it is not all smooth sailing. It can take hours to find a reliable source. Believe me, searching for wholesale drop shipper companies using Google turns up middleman and broker network offers almost exclusively.
‘Brokers’ often have a very elaborate system of steps you need to take. Effectively, all that these companies are offering you is a commission sales situation. They require a W-9 to participate, something no real drop ship supplier would demand. In general you should NEVER, EVER pay a fee just to talk with someone about what they offer. No reputable business would require this.

A middleman drop ship company positions itself between the manufacturer/distributor wholesale drop shipper and the retailer. They generally aggregate many different suppliers and present them under ‘one roof’. Many charge a monthly fee and also have per order drop ship fees. In general, middlemen are best avoided as it is difficult to find profitable product lines given their mark up, participation fees, and per order drop ship fees. However, some companies do offer money making potential and if you have lots of time to spare this may be worth pursuing, for example the free trial at Doba.

The true wholesale drop shipping companies referred to throughout this article are manufacturers and distributors who are willing to work directly with internet retailers. You can use these sources to stock your EBay store or other online marketplace and stand to make a good profit. They require little or no money of EBay business owners, and they even take care of the entire logistics involved in getting an item to your customer. So if you are serious about making money on EBay look into the world of drop shipping today. Visit salehoo for a great list of wholesale drop shippers.

Paul Buntrage
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-business-articles/wholesale-drop-shipping-how-to-make-money-from-home-using-ebay-71488.html

Yes, digital images or photos of your items being posted for sale are not only essential but mandatory, in my opinion.

Have you ever bought anything without seeing the item even though you may have some idea what the item looks like?

You would like to see the condition of the item even though the digital images or photos may not give you a 100% feel of the product that you intend to buy.

It is also important that you are sincere with your photos or digital images and not use photo editing software to beautify your product; e.g. enhance the color or remove scratches on your product. Otherwise, your Buyer would not be happy at all if the color was not what was shown in the photos and there are scratches on the item received, too.

You cannot afford to have negative feedback as you will lose your creditability as you would lose future sales.

In fact, you ought to take photos of your item from different angles; e.g. front view, back vies, side view, inside too if possible. The more you show the item to the Buyer the more comfortable he or she would feel.

This would also lead to zero complaints on the item sold or almost no conflicts in the transaction.

Here ere a few tips on how to take good photos or digital images of your items products:

1. Use natural light instead of flash – try to use light coming in from the windows and minimize any shadows. But do not go out and take your photos directly under the sun.

2. Choose a non-conflicting background – find a white or dark color cloth or cardboard as the base or background so that your item or product stands out; e.g. you would not want to place your item on top of a flowery or multi-color table cloth.

3. Take many photos – since you are using a digital camera, take as many photos as you can and then select the best few for the auction.  Remember to take the photos from different angles to show off how good is your item or product.

4. Remember to re-size your photos or digital images as they do not need to be  too large for the Web else it will affect the downloading time.

Finally, you need not buy an expensive digital camera. An entry level digital camera with 3 mega-pixels is good enough. I am currently using my teenage son’s digital camera which he uses for his school project, a Canon camera.

After a few tries, you will soon be an expert on taking good photos and uploading them for your eBay auction.

Ruby

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There are many people every day jumping into the online world. With more and more people using the internet the floodgates of internet users are opening wider everyday. But how, as a home business owner, can you expect to compete with the “big dogs” of the internet and dip your cup into the profits as well?

There are a ton of tips and tricks that people will tell you are the “best” way to advertise your home business??. But do them incorrectly or choose the wrong methods and all you’ll really end up doing is increasing your frustration, not your traffic or your sales.

I remember back when I started my first business (not online) it seemed like almost everyday someone was willing to offer me a great deal to advertise my business. For more details visit towww. spam-learners-pro.com.Of course with all these different resources out there some of them had to be more effective than others. The only problem was ???. HOW Do I Tell Which Ones? I had limited resources and certainly couldn’t afford to give them all a try, unless I just wanted to cross my fingers and hope they worked so I wouldn’t go out of business!

Thankfully, today’s online world provides home business owners with a variety of different marketing techniques, and each can be as profitable as the next. As a business owner you simply have to decide what you are willing to invest in your business, and which will have the best return on your investment

Let’s run through a few of the most popular types.

Paid Banner (CPM + CPC) and Paid Text-

Banner ads you can pay for as CPC(cost per click) or CPM(cost per every thousand times banner is displayed) usually placed in a high traffic area on a site that causes visitors of that site to see it and visit your site.

Paid Text advertising is similar only the ad is in the form of a text link usually off to the sides (or at the top in search engines like Yahoo! And Google) For more details visit to www.podcasting-teleprompter.com.If you are going to use this kind of advertising make sure you pick the sites you place your ads on carefully (popular sites will be expensive but you should get more clicks and smaller sites will be cheaper, but often with little or no results)

E-mail lists –

Programs or services that will get your link out to many different internet users. These can be good if you have a very widely used type of product. The negative to these lists is that with new e-mail features often these types of messages get marked as spam and are disregarded by the intended recipient.

Free Traffic Generators –

Traffic generators like Traffic Swarm can be a great way of just getting people to go to your site. There are some that you can pay for that will guarantee you a certain number of visitors for a set price. Problem is that most of the people that are now visiting your site aren’t really interested in your product or service. You might get one or two sales from extremely impulsive buyers but the rest only visit to earn credits or something of the sort from the home site. If you’re going to rely on this type of advertising make sure your visitor/buyer ratio is already high for your site.

Link Exchange –

This is by far the best way of driving quality traffic to your site?? If you do it right! Before you even THINK about trying to exchange links with other sites there’s a few things you should know?

1. Download the Google toolbar – This way you will be able to tell the page rank of any pages you want to exchange links with (higher the PR the higher in the search ranking which means more traffic)

2. Exchange links with only pages of PR 4 or higher. It will help your page more by having a few PR4+ pages linking to you than 10000 pages with no page rank.

3. Build your content FIRST! Don’t expect E-Bay to display your link just because you asked them nicely! Webmasters want to know they are linking to a quality site with a good amount of substance. Focus on building your site before you ask people to link to it.

4. Try to exchange links with other sites that have the same key words as yours. Ie: There’s no reason to exchange links with a flower web site if you sell telephone service

The only thing this type of advertising will cost you is a little effort. The greatest part of it is that the people that visit your site are people that are actually interested in your product or service, not just people stopping by to earn credits?? And you don’t pay a cent. There are many books and sites on the web that can give you more details on how to effectively exchange links to your benefit.

Hopefully these tips have helped you narrow down the best type of advertising for your site. The one thing that hasn’t changed in the transition from regular to internet marketing is that you never really know what will work best for you until you try. Don’t be afraid to get your feet wet and see what you like!

VIBHA GOVIL

I’m basically new at Ebay and I’m not sure how to do this and that. With your help, can you tell me how to sell an item on Ebay and other information I might need.

Thank you.

It is really pretty easy to follow their instructions. Best if you have a paypall account but you don’t really have to, but eBay will need some means of getting money from you, ie credit card, debit, etc. They have a 30% discount on listing fees this month. You will need to take pictures, list your item in at least 2 categories, with as many key words as you can to describe your item. Be honest about the flaws. Its best if you find a product for sale like yours from a seller with high points, and copy off their sight. Do your home work and read all the tips offered.