This is definately a step in the right direction. Getting other people to sell for me. Funny story: Two cell phone stores I sell to, fired 2 employees. A few days later, I get a phone call from both of them asking to sell my products on the street. Perfect! I have another who is reselling into Jamaica, and another reselling into Haiti. My products are in Suriname too. And of course, I get calls regularly from people who were given my business card or found me on Craigslist.
I have a few thousand that I put into buying regular inventory that sells out weekly (need more money) of the hottest inventory items. I have found that while I am making more sales, giving discounts to salesmen is cutting heavily into profits. The next pricing update is due to be released by me in the next week or two. At that time, my prices will need to go up, in order to compensate for unforeseen losses.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Outsourcing
So.... outsourcing huh?.... Hmmm....
The local Advocate newspaper's front cover a few weeks ago said (Big bold letters) "Sorry, this issue has been outsourced to India". Funny.
So, yeah, let's see. The first company I went with was the only one who took it upon themselves to go to my website and put together a sample for me. I was impressed by the initiative, and hired them. How did it go? Well, 2 weeks later, the deadline had passed, and they had JUST figured out what the hell I was talking about. Was it my inability to speak clearly? Nah. Like I usually explain about China, they understand the words, not the concepts. So, I pulled allthe other possible work from them, and let them finish the task that took me so long to communicate to them. It's now 3 weeks past due, and they did about 110 out of 500 entries.
Second company I hired, I had them do some design work. The title was "2 Posters and a Bag". The agreed price was $2.50/hr. They did 10 hours and really nice, eye catching designs. I paid them the $25.00 and asked for the master files. They said to send them another $25.00 and they would send me the masters. Needless to say, I do not respond well to extortion. I will have another company just redesign it for a fraction of that cost. Besides, it's the principal.
At this point I was frustrated, as I put in about 20 hours of MY time explaining all these projects. The worst was that India was 9.5 hours off from me, so their 9am was my 11:30pm so this created many late nights for me. Point was defeated on making my life easier.
I reposted all my jobs again, this time I broke them apart into different tasks and categories. Then I found my guy. He is Canadian, speaks English as a first language, moved to China, and opened his own Virtual Assistant company. The results were drastically different.
China is 12 hours different from me, so he logs into chat at 8-9pm, perfect for me. He understands my comments (and my jokes). He can follow even the most complex things I throw at him (still testing, but he has been fine so far). While not perfect for all my tasks, he meets most of my needs. His price is $3.00/hr.
There are some tasks I will find others for, like PHP Web coding, but then I will get specialists.
Overall, I found it hit or miss. Even with Feedback, I found I had troubles. The people I liked most were over $9/hr and at that point, I can hire locally. But, my bigger goal is not one-off tasks. I plan on training, then they can do the repetative work daily (like posting on Craigslist) and I can just oversee.
The local Advocate newspaper's front cover a few weeks ago said (Big bold letters) "Sorry, this issue has been outsourced to India". Funny.
So, yeah, let's see. The first company I went with was the only one who took it upon themselves to go to my website and put together a sample for me. I was impressed by the initiative, and hired them. How did it go? Well, 2 weeks later, the deadline had passed, and they had JUST figured out what the hell I was talking about. Was it my inability to speak clearly? Nah. Like I usually explain about China, they understand the words, not the concepts. So, I pulled allthe other possible work from them, and let them finish the task that took me so long to communicate to them. It's now 3 weeks past due, and they did about 110 out of 500 entries.
Second company I hired, I had them do some design work. The title was "2 Posters and a Bag". The agreed price was $2.50/hr. They did 10 hours and really nice, eye catching designs. I paid them the $25.00 and asked for the master files. They said to send them another $25.00 and they would send me the masters. Needless to say, I do not respond well to extortion. I will have another company just redesign it for a fraction of that cost. Besides, it's the principal.
At this point I was frustrated, as I put in about 20 hours of MY time explaining all these projects. The worst was that India was 9.5 hours off from me, so their 9am was my 11:30pm so this created many late nights for me. Point was defeated on making my life easier.
I reposted all my jobs again, this time I broke them apart into different tasks and categories. Then I found my guy. He is Canadian, speaks English as a first language, moved to China, and opened his own Virtual Assistant company. The results were drastically different.
China is 12 hours different from me, so he logs into chat at 8-9pm, perfect for me. He understands my comments (and my jokes). He can follow even the most complex things I throw at him (still testing, but he has been fine so far). While not perfect for all my tasks, he meets most of my needs. His price is $3.00/hr.
There are some tasks I will find others for, like PHP Web coding, but then I will get specialists.
Overall, I found it hit or miss. Even with Feedback, I found I had troubles. The people I liked most were over $9/hr and at that point, I can hire locally. But, my bigger goal is not one-off tasks. I plan on training, then they can do the repetative work daily (like posting on Craigslist) and I can just oversee.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Lawyers
I have 2 lawyers on my ass. One is because I refused to pay back tenants their deposit after they broke the lease within 6 months. The other is because I refused to pay the oil company after making payments, I owed them significantly more than what started with because of bullshit late fees and cancellation fees. They can both blow me.
What I learned is this: After my last small claims case, my tenant was ordered to pay me $35 per week for the next 12 years. So, I am not exactly scared. If I loose any case, I will pay the fuckers in pennies. Simply because they pissed me off. However, I may not, you never know.
What I learned is this: After my last small claims case, my tenant was ordered to pay me $35 per week for the next 12 years. So, I am not exactly scared. If I loose any case, I will pay the fuckers in pennies. Simply because they pissed me off. However, I may not, you never know.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The New Business
Wow, so much has changed for the better since I read "The 4-Day Workweek" and "Think and Grow Rich". Really great stuff.
"The 4-Day Workweek" got me to outsource the backend of my company to India saving me an incredible amount of time. Since then, I have been working on all kinds of other projects, like dealing with a UPS mess, and the old tenants who want to sue me (good luck with that). It has also given me much more free time with my wife, who not surprisingly, is taking full advantage of the situation.
The other goal of this book is to focus on 20% of the work that generates 80% of the revenue. So, I made a business decision to actually stop selling to the various local stores because the profit margin is smaller, and I then need to stand around waiting for the owner to turn his attention to me. There is also the constant driving to and from, repairs, blah blah,blah.... When I laid it all out on a table, it was an obvious waste of my time for what little revenue it generated. Instead, I made an offer to me best store customer. More on that another day. I am going to focus on Craigslist and rebuild the website. Both of these topics are falling under the India heading.
It has also freed up my time to focus on the advice of "Think and Grow Rich". The book itself was published in 1937 after the great depression. Don't let that stop you though, quite an amazing work of literature. The aim of this book is saying to visualize your specific goal, and focus by taking advantage of any situation that meets your criteria.
In my case, I said I wanted to have $20,000 in the bank, one year from now. I would achieve it by selling phones. I then remind myself of it several times a day. While it sounds like bullshit, I have already seen an improvement in my business personality. I am calling back more possible customers who leave messages. I am following up with old contacts that have fallen by the side of the road. It has also gotten me to call up older "salesmen" I was working with, and trying to get them back involved.
Basically, since my time isn't being dominated by back-end nonsense anymore, I am looking into more sales avenues, that involve the least amount of work for me. For example, I had met a guy who is a "street hussler" about 2 weeks ago. Since then, he sold 2 phones, and has 2 more pending. I met him tonight and gave him one of the phones. Same night, I met another guy, same situation. He called me tonight about 2 possible sales. These types of situations are great, because they make money, I make money, and I don't even need to do anything but hand off inventory to people I already know. This is a much better situation than the one that involves meeting strange people in random parking lots. Let them do that, I'll be watching TV or something.
"The 4-Day Workweek" got me to outsource the backend of my company to India saving me an incredible amount of time. Since then, I have been working on all kinds of other projects, like dealing with a UPS mess, and the old tenants who want to sue me (good luck with that). It has also given me much more free time with my wife, who not surprisingly, is taking full advantage of the situation.
The other goal of this book is to focus on 20% of the work that generates 80% of the revenue. So, I made a business decision to actually stop selling to the various local stores because the profit margin is smaller, and I then need to stand around waiting for the owner to turn his attention to me. There is also the constant driving to and from, repairs, blah blah,blah.... When I laid it all out on a table, it was an obvious waste of my time for what little revenue it generated. Instead, I made an offer to me best store customer. More on that another day. I am going to focus on Craigslist and rebuild the website. Both of these topics are falling under the India heading.
It has also freed up my time to focus on the advice of "Think and Grow Rich". The book itself was published in 1937 after the great depression. Don't let that stop you though, quite an amazing work of literature. The aim of this book is saying to visualize your specific goal, and focus by taking advantage of any situation that meets your criteria.
In my case, I said I wanted to have $20,000 in the bank, one year from now. I would achieve it by selling phones. I then remind myself of it several times a day. While it sounds like bullshit, I have already seen an improvement in my business personality. I am calling back more possible customers who leave messages. I am following up with old contacts that have fallen by the side of the road. It has also gotten me to call up older "salesmen" I was working with, and trying to get them back involved.
Basically, since my time isn't being dominated by back-end nonsense anymore, I am looking into more sales avenues, that involve the least amount of work for me. For example, I had met a guy who is a "street hussler" about 2 weeks ago. Since then, he sold 2 phones, and has 2 more pending. I met him tonight and gave him one of the phones. Same night, I met another guy, same situation. He called me tonight about 2 possible sales. These types of situations are great, because they make money, I make money, and I don't even need to do anything but hand off inventory to people I already know. This is a much better situation than the one that involves meeting strange people in random parking lots. Let them do that, I'll be watching TV or something.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
I have seen the light
Are you ready?
Ready the book: The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris
The is one of the best I have come across in a very long time. I was told about it 2 years ago, but I thought it was just another self-help book. Boy, was I wrong. It was more in the lines of Life Changing. Seriously.
Based on his advise, I have now outsourced my entire company to India. Seriously. My old assistant emailed me about some nonsense, and I replied: "I have outsourced your old job to India for $2.50 per hour. Have a nice day."
Can you image? It was SO easy. Just go to http://elance.com and sign up. I did that before bed. the next morning, I had 10 offers, the average price was a whopping $2.50 per hour. Crazy.
After some interviewing, I chose a company that went above and beyond the competition. I gave them 10 tasks, with 10 different skill sets, and they assembled a team just for me. this ranges from design, to bookkeeping.
Oh yeah, I should email that worthless bookkeeper and let her know I have outsourced her job too.
I spend about 7-8 hours assembling everything I could possibly think of for them. I emailed it, and now I just sit back, and wait for the work to be completed. I will have an updated website, updated inventory, sales added to PeachTree. And all at $2.50/hr. It does not get any better than that.
Sure, it will cost several hundred to get up and running the way I want it, but then it will be all down hill. The best part? I wont have to do a damn thing.
The basic point of the book, 4-hour workweek is to take yourself completely out of the equation. Once I get them to understand where I get my inventory list from, and they know that they need to check on this bi-weekly, then i will have eliminated a huge amount of time I waste week after week. And at only.... $2.50 an hour.
I can have my life back. Yeah!
Ready the book: The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris
The is one of the best I have come across in a very long time. I was told about it 2 years ago, but I thought it was just another self-help book. Boy, was I wrong. It was more in the lines of Life Changing. Seriously.
Based on his advise, I have now outsourced my entire company to India. Seriously. My old assistant emailed me about some nonsense, and I replied: "I have outsourced your old job to India for $2.50 per hour. Have a nice day."
Can you image? It was SO easy. Just go to http://elance.com and sign up. I did that before bed. the next morning, I had 10 offers, the average price was a whopping $2.50 per hour. Crazy.
After some interviewing, I chose a company that went above and beyond the competition. I gave them 10 tasks, with 10 different skill sets, and they assembled a team just for me. this ranges from design, to bookkeeping.
Oh yeah, I should email that worthless bookkeeper and let her know I have outsourced her job too.
I spend about 7-8 hours assembling everything I could possibly think of for them. I emailed it, and now I just sit back, and wait for the work to be completed. I will have an updated website, updated inventory, sales added to PeachTree. And all at $2.50/hr. It does not get any better than that.
Sure, it will cost several hundred to get up and running the way I want it, but then it will be all down hill. The best part? I wont have to do a damn thing.
The basic point of the book, 4-hour workweek is to take yourself completely out of the equation. Once I get them to understand where I get my inventory list from, and they know that they need to check on this bi-weekly, then i will have eliminated a huge amount of time I waste week after week. And at only.... $2.50 an hour.
I can have my life back. Yeah!
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Two posts in 2 days?
Two posts in 2 days. The hell is wrong with me? Like I said, I need break time. I have been down here in my office for the past 5 hours now and I am feeling a little burnt.
Today, I went to the bookstore and bought a book about getting government grants. Not quite sure where that topic will lead me, but it had other stuff in it that helped point out things to me. Like, what to say to investors, how to say it. It explained how to put together a proposal for an investor and stuff like that. Most of it I am sure I know, but I would still like to have it spoon feed to me.
One problem I have in life is that I do not have a mentor. 100% of the business decisions I make are based on my own experiences. Since I have a long history of advertising, and watching others succeed and fail, I feel confident in my choices, but it would still be nice to have a guide.
This is a lead-in to a plug for a TV show that you should definitely watch. I mean, If you are reading a blog about building your own business from scratch, which you are, then yeah, you should watch it. It's called "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" and it really is amazing stuff I would never have expected on "free" TV. If anyone knows where I can find all the past episodes, I would love to hear about it. Torrents didn't come back with anything. You can checkout a few episodes here: http://www.fancast.com/tv/The-Big-Idea-with-Donny-Deutsch/97338/full-episodes
There is an Audio book of his that came out that is 50% off at Barnes and Noble so it's only like $9.00. Less if you have a Membership. I will buy it tomorrow.
When I work these long hours, there are 2 things that get me through them. Alcohol and music.
Yeah, by definition, I am an alcoholic. But, I do it to clear my mind. It helps me focus on the task at hand. It's kind of like Ritalin or something. For me anyway. I have this mixture I created for myself. It's mostly powdered ice tea, but I throw in the rest of the ingredients of a Long Island Iced Tea. So, it's got Vodka, Gin, Rum, Tequila, etc.... The mixture is designed to get me drunk, but not cost a fortune, since it is mostly flavored water. The thing is, for me, it puts my physically into a happy place, but my mind has never been affected by alcohol. So I think as clearly as ever, if not a bit more creative. So, in case your wondering, it's a long Saturday night, so yeah, I'm pretty plastered right now. Since I drink alone daily, I am categorized as a drunk. However, Since my thoughts are fairly coherent, anyone with a problem can kiss my ass. My liver, however, is another story.
So, the music. Ok, I have unintentionally collected 27 songs that are my favorites that play when I want some music while I work. The unintentional part is that they are mostly inspirational music. As I type this, it sounds silly, but much of the music gives me confidence in what I am doing, when I am the only one spending hours, days, weeks and months on this stuff.
They seem to start off pretty dark with songs like:
"Nine Inch Nails - Hurt" "I hurt myself today, To see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, The only thing that's real"
Then "Smashing Pumpkins - Galapagos" "Too late to turn back now, I'm running out of time and I am changing, changing"
This then drifts into songs like:
"Bob Segar - Like a Rock" "My hands were steady, My eyes were clear and bright,
My walk had purpose, My steps were quick and light, And I held firmly to what I felt was right, like a rock"
and "Battlestar Galactica Theme" Which is a Hindu prayer for guidance. "May Thou guide our intellect in the right direction."
and "David Gilmour - Coming Back to Life" "I knew the moment had arrived, For killing the past and coming back to life"
And then the songs end with:
Guns N' Roses - Breakdown" "Funny how everything was roses, When we held on to the guns"
and then the climax with "Pink Floyd - Fearless" "You say the hill's too steep to climb, You say you'd like to see me try, You pick the place and I'll choose the time, And I'll climb The hill in my own way"
Gawd, that all sounded so cheesy. But, I guess the point is there, that I do what it takes to motivate myself night after night, and get through this garbage. And yes, it's hard. Last year at this time, I was the only person who saw my vision. And now? Now my whole family believes I can do it. I mean, shit, I've been selling phones for the past year, and making money. I have been building a very strong business. I have many regular customers. And I can fill out those grants (and other loans) to say: "I have been in business for more than a year. Here is a list of my contacts for customers, suppliers, and other investors."
At this point, I have drifted past the point of "Kinda drunk", and right into the "we need to go to bed now" drunk. But, are these just ramblings? Naw, I've been wanting to mention these things for quite some time. I hope they give you some direction in your "quiet time", and help you through those hours of wondering if it is all worth it. Is it? Oh, I don't know. I guess it boils down to how you handle it. To me, my son comes first (even though it gets a little forced on me), and then my business, then my wife.
How does she feel about being in last place? Well, she gets every Friday night. No matter what, I do not work on Friday nights, I spend them exclusively with her. Overall, she understands the nature of what I do. When a customer calls, she knows that if I don't drop what I am doing, they will likely not call back later, and I will loose the sale. But, that is a whole other topic. If they take the time to call me at 5pm, why won't they call back at 6pm? Who the hell knows. Stupid customers.
Today, I went to the bookstore and bought a book about getting government grants. Not quite sure where that topic will lead me, but it had other stuff in it that helped point out things to me. Like, what to say to investors, how to say it. It explained how to put together a proposal for an investor and stuff like that. Most of it I am sure I know, but I would still like to have it spoon feed to me.
One problem I have in life is that I do not have a mentor. 100% of the business decisions I make are based on my own experiences. Since I have a long history of advertising, and watching others succeed and fail, I feel confident in my choices, but it would still be nice to have a guide.
This is a lead-in to a plug for a TV show that you should definitely watch. I mean, If you are reading a blog about building your own business from scratch, which you are, then yeah, you should watch it. It's called "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" and it really is amazing stuff I would never have expected on "free" TV. If anyone knows where I can find all the past episodes, I would love to hear about it. Torrents didn't come back with anything. You can checkout a few episodes here: http://www.fancast.com/tv/The-Big-Idea-with-Donny-Deutsch/97338/full-episodes
There is an Audio book of his that came out that is 50% off at Barnes and Noble so it's only like $9.00. Less if you have a Membership. I will buy it tomorrow.
When I work these long hours, there are 2 things that get me through them. Alcohol and music.
Yeah, by definition, I am an alcoholic. But, I do it to clear my mind. It helps me focus on the task at hand. It's kind of like Ritalin or something. For me anyway. I have this mixture I created for myself. It's mostly powdered ice tea, but I throw in the rest of the ingredients of a Long Island Iced Tea. So, it's got Vodka, Gin, Rum, Tequila, etc.... The mixture is designed to get me drunk, but not cost a fortune, since it is mostly flavored water. The thing is, for me, it puts my physically into a happy place, but my mind has never been affected by alcohol. So I think as clearly as ever, if not a bit more creative. So, in case your wondering, it's a long Saturday night, so yeah, I'm pretty plastered right now. Since I drink alone daily, I am categorized as a drunk. However, Since my thoughts are fairly coherent, anyone with a problem can kiss my ass. My liver, however, is another story.
So, the music. Ok, I have unintentionally collected 27 songs that are my favorites that play when I want some music while I work. The unintentional part is that they are mostly inspirational music. As I type this, it sounds silly, but much of the music gives me confidence in what I am doing, when I am the only one spending hours, days, weeks and months on this stuff.
They seem to start off pretty dark with songs like:
"Nine Inch Nails - Hurt" "I hurt myself today, To see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, The only thing that's real"
Then "Smashing Pumpkins - Galapagos" "Too late to turn back now, I'm running out of time and I am changing, changing"
This then drifts into songs like:
"Bob Segar - Like a Rock" "My hands were steady, My eyes were clear and bright,
My walk had purpose, My steps were quick and light, And I held firmly to what I felt was right, like a rock"
and "Battlestar Galactica Theme" Which is a Hindu prayer for guidance. "May Thou guide our intellect in the right direction."
and "David Gilmour - Coming Back to Life" "I knew the moment had arrived, For killing the past and coming back to life"
And then the songs end with:
Guns N' Roses - Breakdown" "Funny how everything was roses, When we held on to the guns"
and then the climax with "Pink Floyd - Fearless" "You say the hill's too steep to climb, You say you'd like to see me try, You pick the place and I'll choose the time, And I'll climb The hill in my own way"
Gawd, that all sounded so cheesy. But, I guess the point is there, that I do what it takes to motivate myself night after night, and get through this garbage. And yes, it's hard. Last year at this time, I was the only person who saw my vision. And now? Now my whole family believes I can do it. I mean, shit, I've been selling phones for the past year, and making money. I have been building a very strong business. I have many regular customers. And I can fill out those grants (and other loans) to say: "I have been in business for more than a year. Here is a list of my contacts for customers, suppliers, and other investors."
At this point, I have drifted past the point of "Kinda drunk", and right into the "we need to go to bed now" drunk. But, are these just ramblings? Naw, I've been wanting to mention these things for quite some time. I hope they give you some direction in your "quiet time", and help you through those hours of wondering if it is all worth it. Is it? Oh, I don't know. I guess it boils down to how you handle it. To me, my son comes first (even though it gets a little forced on me), and then my business, then my wife.
How does she feel about being in last place? Well, she gets every Friday night. No matter what, I do not work on Friday nights, I spend them exclusively with her. Overall, she understands the nature of what I do. When a customer calls, she knows that if I don't drop what I am doing, they will likely not call back later, and I will loose the sale. But, that is a whole other topic. If they take the time to call me at 5pm, why won't they call back at 6pm? Who the hell knows. Stupid customers.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Update
I have lots going on, and no time to blog. But, I took the 20 minutes to give you an update. Little distraction for me, from all the busy work.
Someone asked what happened with my Amazon.com account. Well, they shut down both my accounts and held the money for 3 months. When I got my money back, i said good riddance. I have since considered going back (briefly) because the money was so good. But, since I now deal with cell phones, that is some serious inventory and money i would be dealing with. Even if I had the money, and was willing to take the completely pointless risk, there are always the ass-sucking degenerates who would give me a 1 star because the phone sucked. Like that's is my fault? Crap like that would get me kicked off again in like 5 minutes.
Anyway, February and March were killer for business. I was like, "wow, this is what a real business is supposed to be like in a good economy." But, like all good things, the tax checks ran out, and so did my sales. I think i sold like 6 phones for April, which totally blows.
But, good things came out of that rush of sales. One was that I hired an assistant, who lasted all of 3 weeks. At first I was upset, but them this past month I would have had to fire him anyway without any money coming in to pay for him.
I also hired a bookkeeper who totally sucked. I'm not sure what her problem was, really, but after she put 25 hours into building the company in peachtree, she realized she did it wrong, and wanted more money. I told her she should have picked up the phone and asked, I wasnt paying her more, so she quit and deleted the database. I didn't pay her, so whatever. what I did do, was hire another bookkeeper to teach me a bit about peachtree, and I figured I could just build it myself. It's not that hard to learn, took about 2.5 hours, and I paid him $50 for his time.
In case your wondering why peachtree instead of Quickbooks, the main reason is that Quickbooks does not track serial numbers. I wanted to track sales from original purhcase, through repairs. In total, it means keeping track of a single items for over 1 month if needed.
Next week I am going to be displaying my company at a local bank. I signed upo for it a few months ago and now it's finally here. Basically, it is a bank that is located in the major grocery store. So, for 2 weeks, everyone walking by will see my phone business. If anyone really cares, I will also have business cards for my computer repair business, and menu's for my wifes catering business.
To draw more attention, I thought I would take a small financial hit, and give away a Blackberry phone for peoples email addresses. I wanted to start emailing specials to people, and keep in their mind for when they need a new phone. Since I paid about $80 for the phone, I think a trade of hundreds of email addresses for local people will all need a phone sooner or later, is worth it. I wasnt sure at first, but I think it is. It's all about the advertising. Next to the supermarket, I used to have a computer repair location, and I had machines to fix all the time (rent sucked though). So, I know business can be good if I can just get my name out there. If this works, I will reach out to all the different branches in the area (they have dozens of banks around here) and have them diaplay my business. Why not right? It's all free advertising. Well, except that $80 phone... but that is just a 'try it, and see what it does' kind of idea.
Someone asked what happened with my Amazon.com account. Well, they shut down both my accounts and held the money for 3 months. When I got my money back, i said good riddance. I have since considered going back (briefly) because the money was so good. But, since I now deal with cell phones, that is some serious inventory and money i would be dealing with. Even if I had the money, and was willing to take the completely pointless risk, there are always the ass-sucking degenerates who would give me a 1 star because the phone sucked. Like that's is my fault? Crap like that would get me kicked off again in like 5 minutes.
Anyway, February and March were killer for business. I was like, "wow, this is what a real business is supposed to be like in a good economy." But, like all good things, the tax checks ran out, and so did my sales. I think i sold like 6 phones for April, which totally blows.
But, good things came out of that rush of sales. One was that I hired an assistant, who lasted all of 3 weeks. At first I was upset, but them this past month I would have had to fire him anyway without any money coming in to pay for him.
I also hired a bookkeeper who totally sucked. I'm not sure what her problem was, really, but after she put 25 hours into building the company in peachtree, she realized she did it wrong, and wanted more money. I told her she should have picked up the phone and asked, I wasnt paying her more, so she quit and deleted the database. I didn't pay her, so whatever. what I did do, was hire another bookkeeper to teach me a bit about peachtree, and I figured I could just build it myself. It's not that hard to learn, took about 2.5 hours, and I paid him $50 for his time.
In case your wondering why peachtree instead of Quickbooks, the main reason is that Quickbooks does not track serial numbers. I wanted to track sales from original purhcase, through repairs. In total, it means keeping track of a single items for over 1 month if needed.
Next week I am going to be displaying my company at a local bank. I signed upo for it a few months ago and now it's finally here. Basically, it is a bank that is located in the major grocery store. So, for 2 weeks, everyone walking by will see my phone business. If anyone really cares, I will also have business cards for my computer repair business, and menu's for my wifes catering business.
To draw more attention, I thought I would take a small financial hit, and give away a Blackberry phone for peoples email addresses. I wanted to start emailing specials to people, and keep in their mind for when they need a new phone. Since I paid about $80 for the phone, I think a trade of hundreds of email addresses for local people will all need a phone sooner or later, is worth it. I wasnt sure at first, but I think it is. It's all about the advertising. Next to the supermarket, I used to have a computer repair location, and I had machines to fix all the time (rent sucked though). So, I know business can be good if I can just get my name out there. If this works, I will reach out to all the different branches in the area (they have dozens of banks around here) and have them diaplay my business. Why not right? It's all free advertising. Well, except that $80 phone... but that is just a 'try it, and see what it does' kind of idea.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Oh wait, I still HAVE a blog?
Oh, Crap,I'm sorry. I didn't think anyone really gave a shit about what was going on in my life or my business. Ok, Ok, I'll give a recap on how things turned out.
October:
I won my court case against the tenants from the previous year for $5000. The court ruled it as a no-contest and just gave me what I wanted.
The current Tenants broke the lease and moved out on the 31st. At the time, I told them no hard feelings, and I would forward on their security in 30 days.
November:
Since the house was still messed up from the first tenants, and now more (medium) damage from the last tenants, I had decided to keep the place vacant for the month, and remodel the place once again. I fixed all the things that were driving me nuts.
My phone business was suffering because I spent all my time at the house fixing it back up. By the end of the month, my sales had plummeted because I could not spend any time at it.
The first tenant and I settled for $2000 cash to drop the whole thing and move on. We parted peacefully, and apologized for really messing up each others year with this nonsense.
I opened up a Home Depot Credit Card to try and bury some of this remodeling cost.
By the end of the month, the cost was about $1500-$2000 in materials to fix it back up to it's original glory, and then some.
I found a tenant who signed a lease and wrote a deposit check to move in on December 1st. As it turned out, the check bounced. Needless to say, I did not let them in.
Because of tight money, I did not pay the insurance payment.
I used the $2000 from the lawsuit to pay for some repairs, and the rest went to pay for the month's mortgage.
December:
The house stayed vacant and I could not find anyone to rent the place no matter what I tried. The insurance company dropped me since I did not pay them. Later in the month I signed with another insurance company.
I stabilized my phone business, and was ready for my board game sales to skyrocket with the holiday season. That never happened. Lots of traffic, but sales were terrible.
I had another couple who signed a lease for January 1st. A little digging revealed that they were evicted earlier in the year and did not pay the landlord. Once again, I canceled the lease.
I opened a Credit Card with a $1000 limit, and used the money to buy inventory, and float credit card purchases for customers, since deposits took 3-4 business days.
I did not have enough money to pay the mortgage. This started my credit spiral into oblivion.
January:
On January 18th, I found a tenant, and signed a lease.
On January 20th, some nosey person from Craigslist went to my property, looked in the window, and saw that my basement was flooded. They called the fire department, who broke in, shut everything off, cleaned it out and left a note. A few days later, I went to get the last of my stuff out of house, and discovered that I had a flooded basement earlier in the week.
I decided to make an insurance claim, and quite surprisingly, they accepted it, and paid for everything. The downside was that quite a lot of work that was just completed, now needed to be redone. Drywall, Tile, doors, sink, tub... all of it was ripped out because of the moisture. My real motivation for doing this was because earlier in the year I had another flood from the same location (different pipe) that had left much mildew growing since I ignored it the first time.
Still did not pay mortgage, but had started a workout with them. Credit continued to tank.
February:
To make this quick, I submitted a quote for $7500 and had the work done for $3000. So, when it all ended, I walked away with over $5,000.00 cash. I used this money to pay off most of the companies begging me for money all year long. I also invested a bit into my phone business on office supplies, new computer equipment, etc. Still had some left over as a financial cushion.
Tenants are settled and happy. They pay rent early.
My Phone business went through the roof. I guess income taxes started coming in, because I went from 10-20 phones in January to over 100 in February. I became completely overwhelmed and my under-structure of the business/office/tracking completely fell apart. I was lost under a sea of money in/out/returns/repairs. I realized that if I wanted to succeed, I needed to rebuild my inventory tracking and billing procedures from the ground up. This is what it was like to run a real business.
The bank gave me a really shitty workout that only fixed their best interest, and did nothing to fix my real problems. I sat on the paperwork for the next month trying to figure things out.
March:
I hired a bookkeeper who is building my company inside of PeachTree. The bottom line reason for PeachTree as opposed to Quickbooks was because of inventory tracking. I wanted to track the serial numbers on the phones to ensure that any returns were really my phones. As I have started selling more and more brand name phones, it would otherwise be easy to have me fix someone elses broken stuff. The bookkeeper will likely cost several hundred dollars just to get this up and running, but it will be a benefit in the long run. As I said, the way I was doing business before was collapsing under it's own weight.
I hired an assistant. My wife wants to know where I am getting money to pay for him. I explained that as long as I continue to give him money generating work, he will make his own salery. As an example, I have been having him build CraigsList ads for the items I have in stock. Once they are built, they can just be relisted every few days and a regular customer generator. It has worked out as I expected, if not better.
Basically, if I sell a phone from CraigsList, that is a local customer. They are then showing it around to friends. My referrals in the past 30 days has started snowballing and I am getting more cold calling with no extra effort.
The assistant actually offered to take less pay, if I teach him how I am running my online business. He has tried to get his own stuff off the ground, but was not successful. So, I get cheap help.
I also found another go-getter who is out trying to make sales. He knows my price, so he can mark it up whatever he wants, and make the sale. Once again, someone else does the work, and I collect the money. I like this idea.
The insurance company dropped me (No big surprise). The new company cost $50 more per month, but since I walked away with $5000, I think I made out quite well.
I signed the workout and sent it in. Basically they are taking out a 2nd loan for $40/mo to payback the missed payments. This means I need to deal with the house taxes separately. Oh, did I mention I did not pay taxes all year long and now they put a lien on it? Yeah, I need to have the bank open an escrow account to pay that off. So, that means the monthly cost is going to skyrocket. with these 2 extra payments.
The tenants want to buy the house, so I am going work out something from that angle. I will be quite happy to just be done with that money pit, and buy something else at a better deal. It cost me way too much per month to keep that property. I think it has paid me back quite nicely over the years, despite the headaches.
October:
I won my court case against the tenants from the previous year for $5000. The court ruled it as a no-contest and just gave me what I wanted.
The current Tenants broke the lease and moved out on the 31st. At the time, I told them no hard feelings, and I would forward on their security in 30 days.
November:
Since the house was still messed up from the first tenants, and now more (medium) damage from the last tenants, I had decided to keep the place vacant for the month, and remodel the place once again. I fixed all the things that were driving me nuts.
My phone business was suffering because I spent all my time at the house fixing it back up. By the end of the month, my sales had plummeted because I could not spend any time at it.
The first tenant and I settled for $2000 cash to drop the whole thing and move on. We parted peacefully, and apologized for really messing up each others year with this nonsense.
I opened up a Home Depot Credit Card to try and bury some of this remodeling cost.
By the end of the month, the cost was about $1500-$2000 in materials to fix it back up to it's original glory, and then some.
I found a tenant who signed a lease and wrote a deposit check to move in on December 1st. As it turned out, the check bounced. Needless to say, I did not let them in.
Because of tight money, I did not pay the insurance payment.
I used the $2000 from the lawsuit to pay for some repairs, and the rest went to pay for the month's mortgage.
December:
The house stayed vacant and I could not find anyone to rent the place no matter what I tried. The insurance company dropped me since I did not pay them. Later in the month I signed with another insurance company.
I stabilized my phone business, and was ready for my board game sales to skyrocket with the holiday season. That never happened. Lots of traffic, but sales were terrible.
I had another couple who signed a lease for January 1st. A little digging revealed that they were evicted earlier in the year and did not pay the landlord. Once again, I canceled the lease.
I opened a Credit Card with a $1000 limit, and used the money to buy inventory, and float credit card purchases for customers, since deposits took 3-4 business days.
I did not have enough money to pay the mortgage. This started my credit spiral into oblivion.
January:
On January 18th, I found a tenant, and signed a lease.
On January 20th, some nosey person from Craigslist went to my property, looked in the window, and saw that my basement was flooded. They called the fire department, who broke in, shut everything off, cleaned it out and left a note. A few days later, I went to get the last of my stuff out of house, and discovered that I had a flooded basement earlier in the week.
I decided to make an insurance claim, and quite surprisingly, they accepted it, and paid for everything. The downside was that quite a lot of work that was just completed, now needed to be redone. Drywall, Tile, doors, sink, tub... all of it was ripped out because of the moisture. My real motivation for doing this was because earlier in the year I had another flood from the same location (different pipe) that had left much mildew growing since I ignored it the first time.
Still did not pay mortgage, but had started a workout with them. Credit continued to tank.
February:
To make this quick, I submitted a quote for $7500 and had the work done for $3000. So, when it all ended, I walked away with over $5,000.00 cash. I used this money to pay off most of the companies begging me for money all year long. I also invested a bit into my phone business on office supplies, new computer equipment, etc. Still had some left over as a financial cushion.
Tenants are settled and happy. They pay rent early.
My Phone business went through the roof. I guess income taxes started coming in, because I went from 10-20 phones in January to over 100 in February. I became completely overwhelmed and my under-structure of the business/office/tracking completely fell apart. I was lost under a sea of money in/out/returns/repairs. I realized that if I wanted to succeed, I needed to rebuild my inventory tracking and billing procedures from the ground up. This is what it was like to run a real business.
The bank gave me a really shitty workout that only fixed their best interest, and did nothing to fix my real problems. I sat on the paperwork for the next month trying to figure things out.
March:
I hired a bookkeeper who is building my company inside of PeachTree. The bottom line reason for PeachTree as opposed to Quickbooks was because of inventory tracking. I wanted to track the serial numbers on the phones to ensure that any returns were really my phones. As I have started selling more and more brand name phones, it would otherwise be easy to have me fix someone elses broken stuff. The bookkeeper will likely cost several hundred dollars just to get this up and running, but it will be a benefit in the long run. As I said, the way I was doing business before was collapsing under it's own weight.
I hired an assistant. My wife wants to know where I am getting money to pay for him. I explained that as long as I continue to give him money generating work, he will make his own salery. As an example, I have been having him build CraigsList ads for the items I have in stock. Once they are built, they can just be relisted every few days and a regular customer generator. It has worked out as I expected, if not better.
Basically, if I sell a phone from CraigsList, that is a local customer. They are then showing it around to friends. My referrals in the past 30 days has started snowballing and I am getting more cold calling with no extra effort.
The assistant actually offered to take less pay, if I teach him how I am running my online business. He has tried to get his own stuff off the ground, but was not successful. So, I get cheap help.
I also found another go-getter who is out trying to make sales. He knows my price, so he can mark it up whatever he wants, and make the sale. Once again, someone else does the work, and I collect the money. I like this idea.
The insurance company dropped me (No big surprise). The new company cost $50 more per month, but since I walked away with $5000, I think I made out quite well.
I signed the workout and sent it in. Basically they are taking out a 2nd loan for $40/mo to payback the missed payments. This means I need to deal with the house taxes separately. Oh, did I mention I did not pay taxes all year long and now they put a lien on it? Yeah, I need to have the bank open an escrow account to pay that off. So, that means the monthly cost is going to skyrocket. with these 2 extra payments.
The tenants want to buy the house, so I am going work out something from that angle. I will be quite happy to just be done with that money pit, and buy something else at a better deal. It cost me way too much per month to keep that property. I think it has paid me back quite nicely over the years, despite the headaches.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Last Tenants
My last tenants were only in there for six months before they wanted to leave. Most likely cause is that the rest cost too much for them. So, instead of simply asking to break it, they went right for the Fire Marshall and Building Inspector. What bullshit.
Now that they are out, I am doing many of the much needed repairs before putting new tenants in there. Sure, it is costing me more than $100 per day in lost income, but the property desperately needs some TLC. Additionally, after the last 2 tenants sucked, I want to try any find someone worth while this time.
Now that they are out, I am doing many of the much needed repairs before putting new tenants in there. Sure, it is costing me more than $100 per day in lost income, but the property desperately needs some TLC. Additionally, after the last 2 tenants sucked, I want to try any find someone worth while this time.
My Day in Court
7 months ago, tenants of mine moved out, leaving behind approximately $12,000 worth of damage. I easily kept the $3,500 security. Soon, I realized it was not enough.
6 months ago I filed a small claims for $5,000 in damages to my property.
Last week I had my day at the court house.
This week I received a judgment for the full $5,000 in damages.
The down side is that the court order is for $35 per week for the next 12 years. I sounds silly, but it is $170 per month. Likely, she won't even bother to pay it, so then I can go after the full amount.
If you read back to my older posts, you will see that we also won a court case against an employer for wrongful dismissal. I also got eBay to leave me alone when they tried to file a collection on me.
6 months ago I filed a small claims for $5,000 in damages to my property.
Last week I had my day at the court house.
This week I received a judgment for the full $5,000 in damages.
The down side is that the court order is for $35 per week for the next 12 years. I sounds silly, but it is $170 per month. Likely, she won't even bother to pay it, so then I can go after the full amount.
If you read back to my older posts, you will see that we also won a court case against an employer for wrongful dismissal. I also got eBay to leave me alone when they tried to file a collection on me.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Yahoo's Pay Per Click
I got this in my email today:
From November 3, 2008, until December 31, 2008, Yahoo! will be making a seasonal rate adjustment by increasing the cost per click (CPC) by 25% in all categories.
Hey Yahoo, take your shitty Pay-Per-Click scam and shove it up your seasonal ass.
If there are any readers thinking about doing pay-per-click, consider this: Last Christmas, I made approximately $25 profit for every $300 I spent. Your time is better spent setting up the free Google-Base. Not as much traffic, but again, it's free. So is http://shopmania.com... for what it's worth. Also, drive ebay traffic to your website. When they ask you a question in email, be sure to respond off-system with all your website information... and tell them it's cheaper too.
From November 3, 2008, until December 31, 2008, Yahoo! will be making a seasonal rate adjustment by increasing the cost per click (CPC) by 25% in all categories.
Hey Yahoo, take your shitty Pay-Per-Click scam and shove it up your seasonal ass.
If there are any readers thinking about doing pay-per-click, consider this: Last Christmas, I made approximately $25 profit for every $300 I spent. Your time is better spent setting up the free Google-Base. Not as much traffic, but again, it's free. So is http://shopmania.com... for what it's worth. Also, drive ebay traffic to your website. When they ask you a question in email, be sure to respond off-system with all your website information... and tell them it's cheaper too.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Cell Phone Sales
My business has really taken of. I keep getting many one-off sales, and then I get the 5+ phone orders. I always look at the bills and wonder how in the world I can pay them, but then I get a phone call out o the blue ordering 8 phones. It's pretty cool. I made a generic craigslist ad for a phone and I have been getting many emails about it. Today, someone called me on it, I met him and sold him a phone in a gas station parking lot. he then informs me he likes the phone so much, he wants to get them for his salesmen! Not sure how it will turn out, but so far all my big orders have followed though.
I have hired a data entry person, and a designer for various projects that have come my way. Last year, i never would have guessed I have more work, than I have time. I am really happy about what I have accomplished in this past year. All my businesses are doing well for themselves. Each one is enough to keep me busy. All Together, I need to hire help. Crazy.
I have hired a data entry person, and a designer for various projects that have come my way. Last year, i never would have guessed I have more work, than I have time. I am really happy about what I have accomplished in this past year. All my businesses are doing well for themselves. Each one is enough to keep me busy. All Together, I need to hire help. Crazy.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Final Customs Information
I don't remember everything I said about that customs mess over the past few months. But I will recap, now that I have 20/20 vision about the whole thing.
1. Customs were, by and large, very helpful and friendly people.
2. DHL was, by and large, fucking idiots who made the whole experience 20x harder than it needed to be.
3. Shipping by EMS is fairly safe. Shipping by FedEx and UPS can be risky. Shipping by DHL is suicide.
4. If you call customs, and are put on hold, you get an ad for DHL. That says something.
5. If your declaration is 20 Communication Devices, you may be OK. If it says 1 Bluetooth, your screwed.
6. My package sat at customs because DHL would not provide the proper paperwork.
7. DHL kept asking me for documents and licenses that did not exist. Mainly because they did not know what the hell they were talking about.
8. I authorized DHL to remove ONE Bluetooth device from the box. They removed 13+... and left several behind.
9. Even though there were technically several violations in the box, customs did not care. 100% of this mess was because of DHL.
10. Because the declaration said "Bluetooth", DHL wanted me to provide an "Authorization License" because BlueTooth is copyrighted and Trademarked... both the name, and the logo. The problem was, they would not say that. They just kept saying "License to Import" without telling what License they actually wanted.
11. After I lost all those phones, I finally found the link (a little buried) on the Bluetooth website that I could sign my company up as an Authorized Bluetooth Reseller. I have since signed my company up, and I also requested signed documentation via mail. This is all anybody wanted. It was quick and easy.
13. It is OK to call up various customs offices and ask for help and information. They were so willing to help. Unfortunately, no one could actually do anything to really help. However, I did receive more help from customs than DHL.
14. Never put more in one shipment than I am willing to loose. So, if my safe number is $500, then anything more than that, I will put into another box and ship seprately. This obviously cost more, but I feel that 5 boxes at an extra $68 is worth more to me, than 1 box, save $68, but risk getting $3000 stopped for 2 months.
Ok, I have droned on about this topic more than enough for the past 2 months. It is time to move on.
1. Customs were, by and large, very helpful and friendly people.
2. DHL was, by and large, fucking idiots who made the whole experience 20x harder than it needed to be.
3. Shipping by EMS is fairly safe. Shipping by FedEx and UPS can be risky. Shipping by DHL is suicide.
4. If you call customs, and are put on hold, you get an ad for DHL. That says something.
5. If your declaration is 20 Communication Devices, you may be OK. If it says 1 Bluetooth, your screwed.
6. My package sat at customs because DHL would not provide the proper paperwork.
7. DHL kept asking me for documents and licenses that did not exist. Mainly because they did not know what the hell they were talking about.
8. I authorized DHL to remove ONE Bluetooth device from the box. They removed 13+... and left several behind.
9. Even though there were technically several violations in the box, customs did not care. 100% of this mess was because of DHL.
10. Because the declaration said "Bluetooth", DHL wanted me to provide an "Authorization License" because BlueTooth is copyrighted and Trademarked... both the name, and the logo. The problem was, they would not say that. They just kept saying "License to Import" without telling what License they actually wanted.
11. After I lost all those phones, I finally found the link (a little buried) on the Bluetooth website that I could sign my company up as an Authorized Bluetooth Reseller. I have since signed my company up, and I also requested signed documentation via mail. This is all anybody wanted. It was quick and easy.
13. It is OK to call up various customs offices and ask for help and information. They were so willing to help. Unfortunately, no one could actually do anything to really help. However, I did receive more help from customs than DHL.
14. Never put more in one shipment than I am willing to loose. So, if my safe number is $500, then anything more than that, I will put into another box and ship seprately. This obviously cost more, but I feel that 5 boxes at an extra $68 is worth more to me, than 1 box, save $68, but risk getting $3000 stopped for 2 months.
Ok, I have droned on about this topic more than enough for the past 2 months. It is time to move on.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Customs Release
After about 1.5 months, Customs finally inspected and released my shipment. Of course, they had to rape and pillage it first. 20 Phones were shipped, 8 arrived. Interestingly enough, they gave me all the iphone copies, but confiscated all the TV Phones. That made no sense to me. So, I emailed several people asking them to see if they could find a formal document that explained why they took what they did. Not that it matters, I just want to know what the violations were.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Small Claims Court
I mentioned ages ago that I was taking my old tenant to court because of the extensive damages they did to my house. Since then the running joke has been that I should take them to the Peoples Court.
Well, today I received a letter in the mail from the Peoples Court asking if I wanted to be on the show. Kinda funny, really. At first I was kinda upset because my first reaction was that I did not a TV spectacle about it, I just wanted the money I was owed. Once of the things they promised was that if I won, I would be paid, guaranteed. This was enticing because one of the issues that I was worried about was whether or not this person would even pay me after I won. These people are from the hood, so it's not like they have $5,000 kicking around.
I had a brief talk about it with my family, and we decided to do it, for that reason alone. I will keep you updated.
Well, today I received a letter in the mail from the Peoples Court asking if I wanted to be on the show. Kinda funny, really. At first I was kinda upset because my first reaction was that I did not a TV spectacle about it, I just wanted the money I was owed. Once of the things they promised was that if I won, I would be paid, guaranteed. This was enticing because one of the issues that I was worried about was whether or not this person would even pay me after I won. These people are from the hood, so it's not like they have $5,000 kicking around.
I had a brief talk about it with my family, and we decided to do it, for that reason alone. I will keep you updated.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
The Crazies Out There
It does amaze me that with all the crazy people out there who randomly shoot people, no one bothers to take a plane flight out to one of Amazon's warehouses, or eBay/Paypal, and blow them to pieces.
It also amazes me that with all the suicides that happen each day, not one of those people actually tries to rob a bank or something first. If your going to die, why not try and get away with it? I mean, what the hell, right?
It also amazes me that with all the suicides that happen each day, not one of those people actually tries to rob a bank or something first. If your going to die, why not try and get away with it? I mean, what the hell, right?
Importing From China
Random experiences Importing from China:
1. The customer service should be easily accessible, and speak English fairly well. The companies I deal with have live chat available, usually through MSN Live Messenger. If they do not, I don't deal with them.
2. Even if you have larger shipments available, you should break them up into smaller shipments, into total amounts you are comfortable with losing. For example, if you place a $4,000 order, and customs gets involved, are you OK with that? If not, make smaller shipments of only $1,000 or $2,000 each. It cost a few dollars more to ship, but if customs decides to inspect, or confiscate the package, you are not out the full order.
3. Never.... EVER.... under ANY circumstances... ship with DHL.
4. Never.... EVER.... under ANY circumstances... ship with DHL.
5. Oh wait... I said that already.... the point is this: If you happen to call customs, and get put on hold, did you know that you will hear an advertisement for DHL? This should tell you something. Every vendor I have asked, has told me the same thing... DHL gets more packages opened than EMS and UPS combined.
6. If customs ever decides to put one of your packages on hold, consider it lost. Accept the fact that you need to repurchase the merchandise, and move on. Maybe you can get the shipment released someday in the future, but do not wait on it. The process of Customs will take weeks and weeks to show any forward progress.
6a. Let us say that you are an aggressive person and want to take control of the situation. Don't waste your time. Personally, I spent an entire business day circumventing the system until I had the name and number of the Officer who personally stopped my package. The end result was that once it was randomly stopped (for no particular reason), it was sent to the lab for inspection. This is three weeks minimum, and nothing can be done, not even by the Officer (unless you are related or something, I figure). I accepted the $2,500 loss, and moved on.
7. If you are paying with Western Union, you can ask if the person you are paying has any fraud reported against them. However, I should mention to take this with a grain of salt. Two of my vendors have 0 this year, and that is great. One of them has 16 complaints against them. At first, I thought I was screwed. As it turns out, they have bent over backwards for me, and given me whatever I needed. Since you are only saying the person's name, located in China, this could be anybody. It's like sending money to John Doe in the USA... you would expect more than one person to have the same name.
8. Before doing business with a company, do an extensive google search about the company. Once, I found a company that swore to my (email) face that they sold genuine brand name products at great prices. After a search, they turned out to be liars and thieves.
9. You can use Alibaba.com and DIY.com to find products, and vendors. For me, i use it to see how long they have been in business, and stuff like that. The company I found in #8 was found here, so again, buyer beware.
10. There is no number 10... or number 4 for that matter.
1. The customer service should be easily accessible, and speak English fairly well. The companies I deal with have live chat available, usually through MSN Live Messenger. If they do not, I don't deal with them.
2. Even if you have larger shipments available, you should break them up into smaller shipments, into total amounts you are comfortable with losing. For example, if you place a $4,000 order, and customs gets involved, are you OK with that? If not, make smaller shipments of only $1,000 or $2,000 each. It cost a few dollars more to ship, but if customs decides to inspect, or confiscate the package, you are not out the full order.
3. Never.... EVER.... under ANY circumstances... ship with DHL.
4. Never.... EVER.... under ANY circumstances... ship with DHL.
5. Oh wait... I said that already.... the point is this: If you happen to call customs, and get put on hold, did you know that you will hear an advertisement for DHL? This should tell you something. Every vendor I have asked, has told me the same thing... DHL gets more packages opened than EMS and UPS combined.
6. If customs ever decides to put one of your packages on hold, consider it lost. Accept the fact that you need to repurchase the merchandise, and move on. Maybe you can get the shipment released someday in the future, but do not wait on it. The process of Customs will take weeks and weeks to show any forward progress.
6a. Let us say that you are an aggressive person and want to take control of the situation. Don't waste your time. Personally, I spent an entire business day circumventing the system until I had the name and number of the Officer who personally stopped my package. The end result was that once it was randomly stopped (for no particular reason), it was sent to the lab for inspection. This is three weeks minimum, and nothing can be done, not even by the Officer (unless you are related or something, I figure). I accepted the $2,500 loss, and moved on.
7. If you are paying with Western Union, you can ask if the person you are paying has any fraud reported against them. However, I should mention to take this with a grain of salt. Two of my vendors have 0 this year, and that is great. One of them has 16 complaints against them. At first, I thought I was screwed. As it turns out, they have bent over backwards for me, and given me whatever I needed. Since you are only saying the person's name, located in China, this could be anybody. It's like sending money to John Doe in the USA... you would expect more than one person to have the same name.
8. Before doing business with a company, do an extensive google search about the company. Once, I found a company that swore to my (email) face that they sold genuine brand name products at great prices. After a search, they turned out to be liars and thieves.
9. You can use Alibaba.com and DIY.com to find products, and vendors. For me, i use it to see how long they have been in business, and stuff like that. The company I found in #8 was found here, so again, buyer beware.
10. There is no number 10... or number 4 for that matter.
Monday, August 4, 2008
2 eBay Accounts
Someone asked this about a month ago. I suck at responding, so I will mention it now. I had an eBay account that was shut down. I started it back up a week later. I did nothing new or fancy, not really. I opened a bank account in my wifes name, and listed the address as my 2nd house (rental property). I attached Paypal to the bank account, and ebay to the paypal account. A few weeks later, paypal wanted some proof I was really selling products. I took some pictures of the merchandise, and sent them some invoices. All was real, but I doubt it would have mattered. They reinstated my account, and I have been selling on there for 6 months now, and still with 65+ 100% positive feedback. The real trick was getting enough feedback to open a store. Once I did that, i stopped listing on auction, and only manage a store. It still draws traffic. Not as much, but it keep a low profile.
Now, I would add that you should change your ip address. For those on cable, you should change your router MAC address, which will force your modem to get a new ip address. Lastly, remove all Flash Cookies as well.
If you old Paypal account is still in good standing, you can use them both freely. I log into both back to back, and send myself money as I test my web store.
PayPal only knows the Account Number and Routing number. They may ask for the name of account owner, but they have no clue who it is, or what address the account is tied to behind the scenes.
Basically, they are not as scary and all powerful as people make them out to be.
Now, I would add that you should change your ip address. For those on cable, you should change your router MAC address, which will force your modem to get a new ip address. Lastly, remove all Flash Cookies as well.
If you old Paypal account is still in good standing, you can use them both freely. I log into both back to back, and send myself money as I test my web store.
PayPal only knows the Account Number and Routing number. They may ask for the name of account owner, but they have no clue who it is, or what address the account is tied to behind the scenes.
Basically, they are not as scary and all powerful as people make them out to be.
My Legal Cases
eBay shut down my account then came after several hundred in fees. They sent numerous emails. I ignored them all. At some point, they stopped the emails, but sent a collection agency after me. I followed the advice of this website: http://www.creditinfocenter.com/rebuild/debt_validation.shtml and after that, ebay went back to the emails. I haven't heard from that collection agency again, and it's been a few months. According to that site, they can not bother me about it again. So, I guess I won.
Additionally, my wife was fired from her job on day 8. We took the case to the workers compensation and brought it before a judge. The company, while having every right to fire her, cowered under my complete disregard for their less than stunning lawyer. They settled for $1500.00 in back wages, just to make us go away.
Lastly, I had tenants who left my house with approximately $11,000 worth of damage. I am still waiting on the court to coordinate anything. At the very least, I have become a thorn in the tenant's side.
The moral of the story? Don't be a pussy and let people and companies walk all over you. File a motion, and watch them back off.
Additionally, my wife was fired from her job on day 8. We took the case to the workers compensation and brought it before a judge. The company, while having every right to fire her, cowered under my complete disregard for their less than stunning lawyer. They settled for $1500.00 in back wages, just to make us go away.
Lastly, I had tenants who left my house with approximately $11,000 worth of damage. I am still waiting on the court to coordinate anything. At the very least, I have become a thorn in the tenant's side.
The moral of the story? Don't be a pussy and let people and companies walk all over you. File a motion, and watch them back off.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
China Imports
I tried a new company (for me) in China. I bought 2 phones, and they arrived on tme without a problem. A week or so later, I bought 5 phones. They also arrived without a problem. So, a week later, I place an order for 9 phones. While paying with Western Union, the woman advises me not to send the $1400.00 to them. I asked why, and she would not say. Only that she strongly suggested I do not send the money.
So I go looking on the internet for information about the company. I did not find any complaints, warnings or anything else. I emailed the company, and asked them to comment. I also said that I wanted to change the order to only 3 phones.
I called back Western Union, and pushed the issue. She finally told me that there have been 16 complaints of fraud this year.
I thought about things that could have caused 16 complaints. Of course, nothing is said about how many hundreds or thousands of orders that may have been completed without issue. Since the money was going to be held up by the bank for 3 business days, and I was still going to be charged by Western union, I decided to keep the order going and hope for the best.
From my point of view, the first 2 orders were correct. I even made a blatant error that I discovered 5 days later. They, however, knew what I had wanted, and simply did it. The service is also quick to respond to my emails. So, I really had to conclude that as a seller, things go bad with orders, and you can't make everyone happy.
They just responded to my email about everything. Know what it said? It said that my order was being packaged up, and will be shipping out tonight. She also gave me an invoice for my new order....... what new order?!? Sure as shit, she thought I was ordering 3 more phones. She had no clue what the hell I was talking about.
My point is this, communication between USA and China is difficult at best. When you stick to easy questions using keywords for their business, they can tell you what you want to know. Once you start talking about this or that, they have no clue.
Most likely, those 16 people had a communication breakdown. Instead of resolving it, they just went and complained. However, I am just guessing by what I have seen today.
Not all are good vendors in China though, and you need to check them out before hand. I had one that swore it was Genuine Apple products they were selling. A quick Google search revealed an army of pissed of customers that now had cheap Chinese crap. There really isn't anything wrong with it, if you know that is what you are buying. It's the deceiving that is the problem.
You can stop by www.pebkac404.com for my recent entry about this communication problem. Anyway, thanks for reading.
So I go looking on the internet for information about the company. I did not find any complaints, warnings or anything else. I emailed the company, and asked them to comment. I also said that I wanted to change the order to only 3 phones.
I called back Western Union, and pushed the issue. She finally told me that there have been 16 complaints of fraud this year.
I thought about things that could have caused 16 complaints. Of course, nothing is said about how many hundreds or thousands of orders that may have been completed without issue. Since the money was going to be held up by the bank for 3 business days, and I was still going to be charged by Western union, I decided to keep the order going and hope for the best.
From my point of view, the first 2 orders were correct. I even made a blatant error that I discovered 5 days later. They, however, knew what I had wanted, and simply did it. The service is also quick to respond to my emails. So, I really had to conclude that as a seller, things go bad with orders, and you can't make everyone happy.
They just responded to my email about everything. Know what it said? It said that my order was being packaged up, and will be shipping out tonight. She also gave me an invoice for my new order....... what new order?!? Sure as shit, she thought I was ordering 3 more phones. She had no clue what the hell I was talking about.
My point is this, communication between USA and China is difficult at best. When you stick to easy questions using keywords for their business, they can tell you what you want to know. Once you start talking about this or that, they have no clue.
Most likely, those 16 people had a communication breakdown. Instead of resolving it, they just went and complained. However, I am just guessing by what I have seen today.
Not all are good vendors in China though, and you need to check them out before hand. I had one that swore it was Genuine Apple products they were selling. A quick Google search revealed an army of pissed of customers that now had cheap Chinese crap. There really isn't anything wrong with it, if you know that is what you are buying. It's the deceiving that is the problem.
You can stop by www.pebkac404.com for my recent entry about this communication problem. Anyway, thanks for reading.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
My Websites
I have created a little spiderweb of websites that all cross link to each other. This wasn't really intentional, but it seems to work pretty well. I get people that wander around and see what I am up to.
I have a website that sells board games. It gets little traffic that my other sites drive to it. However, I also have a cell phone site that Google simply loves. I'm not quite sure what that's all about, but if you search for one of the products that I sell on there, there is a good chance google throws it up at the top of the list. This drives all kinds of traffic to my store.
Mostly, i made the site for my own needs, but since I get traffic, I modified it to accept orders from anyone. It has made a few sales. One of them landed me a whopping $3500.00 cell phone order. I made a very handsome payday from that order since he did not nickel and dime me like other customers I have. I just hope the sale follows through without incident. He said he sent a check, that I will have in 2 days. If it does not bounce, I hope to have found another good customer. It better not bouce, cause I really need that money.
I also listed a bunch of the phones on my eBay store. Maybe I can make another sale or two on there. Nothing crazy, no brand names, no auction listings. Just if someone finds it and wants it. I prefer to keep my head down and stay out of trouble over there.
After a few months of trying OLA.com I finally canceled the account. No one was even looking at my stuff. I'll save the $8.00 a month. Besides, I started reading about what sucky owners ran the place, and I lost interest.
eCrater has not done shit for me. But, it cost nothing to leave it there. Kinda funny though, how my products get double listed on Google Base. Once for my website and once for my ecrater site. Different prices. I'm competing with myself, I think.
iOffer amazingly sent me TWO sales. Be still my aching heart.
I have a website that sells board games. It gets little traffic that my other sites drive to it. However, I also have a cell phone site that Google simply loves. I'm not quite sure what that's all about, but if you search for one of the products that I sell on there, there is a good chance google throws it up at the top of the list. This drives all kinds of traffic to my store.
Mostly, i made the site for my own needs, but since I get traffic, I modified it to accept orders from anyone. It has made a few sales. One of them landed me a whopping $3500.00 cell phone order. I made a very handsome payday from that order since he did not nickel and dime me like other customers I have. I just hope the sale follows through without incident. He said he sent a check, that I will have in 2 days. If it does not bounce, I hope to have found another good customer. It better not bouce, cause I really need that money.
I also listed a bunch of the phones on my eBay store. Maybe I can make another sale or two on there. Nothing crazy, no brand names, no auction listings. Just if someone finds it and wants it. I prefer to keep my head down and stay out of trouble over there.
After a few months of trying OLA.com I finally canceled the account. No one was even looking at my stuff. I'll save the $8.00 a month. Besides, I started reading about what sucky owners ran the place, and I lost interest.
eCrater has not done shit for me. But, it cost nothing to leave it there. Kinda funny though, how my products get double listed on Google Base. Once for my website and once for my ecrater site. Different prices. I'm competing with myself, I think.
iOffer amazingly sent me TWO sales. Be still my aching heart.
What I Am Doing Now
Funny thing, how one week everything looks like doom and gloom, the next week it's all sunshine. Last week, I was thousands in the hole, unemployment running out, no job prospects, CountryWide ARM had expired, and I was is dire straights. On Friday, my website brought in a $3500.00 order. CountryWide called and said they would modify my loan into a fixed rate. I had several more sales over the weekend. Sunday night at 10pm I was juggling 3 different customers. On Monday morning I was offered a full time that I actually (god help me) turned down. Monday afternoon I went to pick up money from a sale. Got a letter (just a notice, nothing important) from the Courthouse about the tenant I am suing. Made a few sales since then, and tomorrow I am going off to my Part Time Photography job I was lucky to get last month.
Whew. Crazy.
Whew. Crazy.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Online Sales
eBay has ruined any real business that used to be there. I'm afraid of listing items, and actually drawing attention to myself. Not to mention the fees. I can list 10 items, sell only 1, and break even. So how is that worth it? With the new rating system, some day I am "Lowered" and the next I am "Raised". There does not seem to be any sense of order with that thing.
I still haven't been paid by Amazon for over 2 months. They better pay up in the next few weeks. I have bills long since behind.
For my own local customers, I setup http://Portable-Fun.com as an easy checkout system. It also helps me on the phone taking orders, I can quickly enter the order in, and it gives the price with discounts and stuff. The funny thing is, it gets sent to Google Base, and that has been sending traffic to it. So I get people looking at my stuff, and I wasn't even trying. No actual online sales yet, but if anyone does come through, and place an order, I will be ready.
All in all, it's a part time thing that now makes me money without any real effort. This is more of what I planned on doing 6 months ago.
Now I am going to start looking into other products like pets or kids or something else that should bring in more revenue.
I still haven't been paid by Amazon for over 2 months. They better pay up in the next few weeks. I have bills long since behind.
For my own local customers, I setup http://Portable-Fun.com as an easy checkout system. It also helps me on the phone taking orders, I can quickly enter the order in, and it gives the price with discounts and stuff. The funny thing is, it gets sent to Google Base, and that has been sending traffic to it. So I get people looking at my stuff, and I wasn't even trying. No actual online sales yet, but if anyone does come through, and place an order, I will be ready.
All in all, it's a part time thing that now makes me money without any real effort. This is more of what I planned on doing 6 months ago.
Now I am going to start looking into other products like pets or kids or something else that should bring in more revenue.
Local Sales
So, I have now been to all the local Cell Phone shops to pitch my products. One owner is never around, but I did meet with 5 other store owners. Three are selling my products, and two were interested, but not so much. Guess I will have to be more persistent with the three stragglers.
Most of the stores these days are brand name only (Sprint, ATT, TMobile) so that makes it so much harder to do this. There are some more around, but they are in scattered, opposite directions. May not be worth the trouble.
Most of the stores these days are brand name only (Sprint, ATT, TMobile) so that makes it so much harder to do this. There are some more around, but they are in scattered, opposite directions. May not be worth the trouble.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Wrong Pricing
I had put together a price book, and entered all items into a website store. I accidentally listed a $600.00 item $500.00. I will honor the price, but it cost a hundred bucks.
Bands
I had an order for a phone. One company said it was DualBand, another said TriBand. I had the DualBand company recheck, and ordered from the TriBand. A day later, the DualBand confirmed it was TriBand, and the TriBand said they made a mistake, it was DualBand. Then, the first company said it was DualBand, again.
WTF?!? This is a waste of my time and energy.
WTF?!? This is a waste of my time and energy.
Names on Checks
I have a customer that writes checks out to "Company Name - My Name" and I've cashed this before. Today it was a problem. She insisted on a Business Account to use the check. I completely blew up right at the window, threw the pen at her and ripped up the check. I didnt mean to, but it cost me time, money and gas to get that stupid check the first time, now I have to go get another one. The business is about 30 minutes away on a good day, each way. What a waste. It had my damn name on it, who cares?
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Half Year Update
In November I started selling Apple iPods on eBay. In December my wife quit her day job to stay home with our son. I started importing generic MP3 players from China. In January, I was laid off and simply turned my part time business into full time.
The next few months were spent going in circles while I tried to find direction. I knew my end goal, but I did not know quite how to get there. eBay had a new CEO and turned evil, putting many big and small sellers like me out of business. Amazon was no better, and they have been holding over $2000 of my earnings hostage for 47 days, with 43 more to go. After chasing my tail, I came up with the idea that I could import Cell Phones, and sell them to local small stores in the Bridgeport and New Haven areas.
My wife had started a new job, cut herself, and was fired. A simple accident had turned into a corporate railroading. So, I filed a claim for Workman's Compensation and Unemployment. I don't know if we will get anywhere, but I do feel better knowing that the woman who started this is now in the hot seat by her own bosses for this mess. My wife did get a pleasant temporary job that will be ending at the end of July.
As you know I have my own businesses, where I sell Board Games, MP3 Players, and Cell Phones. If you wanted to see what I have been working on for the past few months, you can visit www.The-Game-Store.com and www.Portable-Fun.com The games I sell on eBay, but the Phones I sell locally to small stores, acting as a distributor. So far it has been going well. On Saturday I met with four owners, that own seven stores between them. They were as interested as my other customers are, so I hope this will be worth all the trouble. While this is a new thing for me, once I had the idea, and started putting the pieces together, I really felt this was a very good idea.
The next few months were spent going in circles while I tried to find direction. I knew my end goal, but I did not know quite how to get there. eBay had a new CEO and turned evil, putting many big and small sellers like me out of business. Amazon was no better, and they have been holding over $2000 of my earnings hostage for 47 days, with 43 more to go. After chasing my tail, I came up with the idea that I could import Cell Phones, and sell them to local small stores in the Bridgeport and New Haven areas.
My wife had started a new job, cut herself, and was fired. A simple accident had turned into a corporate railroading. So, I filed a claim for Workman's Compensation and Unemployment. I don't know if we will get anywhere, but I do feel better knowing that the woman who started this is now in the hot seat by her own bosses for this mess. My wife did get a pleasant temporary job that will be ending at the end of July.
As you know I have my own businesses, where I sell Board Games, MP3 Players, and Cell Phones. If you wanted to see what I have been working on for the past few months, you can visit www.The-Game-Store.com and www.Portable-Fun.com The games I sell on eBay, but the Phones I sell locally to small stores, acting as a distributor. So far it has been going well. On Saturday I met with four owners, that own seven stores between them. They were as interested as my other customers are, so I hope this will be worth all the trouble. While this is a new thing for me, once I had the idea, and started putting the pieces together, I really felt this was a very good idea.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Repxchange.com
This place is great. They have collected an eBay Blacklist from thousands of sellers. Once you join (free) you can download a customized list of troublesome eBuyers. With the current state of dysfunction eBay is in these days, extortion has run rampant. This is an excellent first defense to stop buyers what have caused undue burden on us, the sellers.
A link to this most awesome (did I mention Free?!?!) website is http://repxchange.com So please stop by, give your support, and help may eBay safe again.
A link to this most awesome (did I mention Free?!?!) website is http://repxchange.com So please stop by, give your support, and help may eBay safe again.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Bulk Listings
The good news is, I came up with a way to have my master Excel database merge with an HTML Template so i can bulk upload to eBay without any extra fees. The bad news is, I included code that is now off limits on ebay, so I have to fix them all either by hand one at a time, or pay about $8.00 in fees to re-list them all at once on my store. eBay blows.
OLA.com doesn't support bulk uploads. That was a waste of my $8.00 for the month. I really do need to cancel that account before I am charged again.
eCrater.com does bulk uploads... by hand! It takes them several days to process my upload. Then, it fails and I have to do it again. The sample file and the help docs directly conflict information, and neither way worked. I emailed them a few days ago, but haven't heard back. I'm not too thrilled by these people either.
iOffer.com has a bulk upload system that works great. The bad news is, I haven't made a sale in.. well, ever.
The-Game-Store.com gets a few visitors now an again from Google Base. I make like one sale a month. Boy, was that worth the effort.
Portable-Fun.com is pointing to eBay, but will soon being going to it's own store that I will host here. Yes, here. I have one machine that is a file server, email server, ebay image host, store server, bootleg software downloader, etc... if that machine ever dies, I am so screwed.
OLA.com doesn't support bulk uploads. That was a waste of my $8.00 for the month. I really do need to cancel that account before I am charged again.
eCrater.com does bulk uploads... by hand! It takes them several days to process my upload. Then, it fails and I have to do it again. The sample file and the help docs directly conflict information, and neither way worked. I emailed them a few days ago, but haven't heard back. I'm not too thrilled by these people either.
iOffer.com has a bulk upload system that works great. The bad news is, I haven't made a sale in.. well, ever.
The-Game-Store.com gets a few visitors now an again from Google Base. I make like one sale a month. Boy, was that worth the effort.
Portable-Fun.com is pointing to eBay, but will soon being going to it's own store that I will host here. Yes, here. I have one machine that is a file server, email server, ebay image host, store server, bootleg software downloader, etc... if that machine ever dies, I am so screwed.
Just an Update
A big shout out to Kyle!
I came here to specifically give you a shout out and surprise you. But since you decided to request the shout out in the previous post, that kind of ruins the surprise.
I used to have so much to say on here, but I have just been so damned busy trying to make a friggin' sale. It's horrible out there. eBay and Amazon really ruined a good thing.
So, I have most of that brochure finished. It has evolved though and turned into a major undertaking. Originally, it was two pieces of paper stapled together. Really simple. But long story short, it turned into a 3 ring binder that has about a dozen double sided pages in it.
The goal is to supply 2 or 3 of them to the local cell phone stores. One with prices, the rest without. Then, they can leave it on the counter for customers to look at while they wait. This will get ALL the products I carry into everybody's hands. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense.
Just so we are clear, I didn't know a damned thing about cell phones when I started. I was trying to sell MP3 players to a cell phone store back then. It just just sort of made more sense to change my focus to what my customers would want. This goes back to one of my earliest posts on here. It doesn't matter what you sell, as long as it does sell at a profit.
One of the things I learned was that I was not charging enough. I was really trying to walk away with a dirt cheap price and look better than whoever they regularly buy from. But it took me a few orders of not making what I wanted before I realized I had to double what I originally thought. Between shipping, payments (Western Union), returns and haggling, I was just hurting myself. Not to even mention the time and gas driving around (Damn, I just mentioned it anyway).
In the end, I just came to realize that they were just as happy to have another place to buy from, even if I wasn't their number one.
OK, so that's where I am these days. Working on that book and making my one or two sales a day from my eBay store. Which is sad since I used to sell like 8 MP3 players a day until that "Best Match" garbage started. Now, I don't even bother listing auctions anymore, no one sees them anyway.
I came here to specifically give you a shout out and surprise you. But since you decided to request the shout out in the previous post, that kind of ruins the surprise.
I used to have so much to say on here, but I have just been so damned busy trying to make a friggin' sale. It's horrible out there. eBay and Amazon really ruined a good thing.
So, I have most of that brochure finished. It has evolved though and turned into a major undertaking. Originally, it was two pieces of paper stapled together. Really simple. But long story short, it turned into a 3 ring binder that has about a dozen double sided pages in it.
The goal is to supply 2 or 3 of them to the local cell phone stores. One with prices, the rest without. Then, they can leave it on the counter for customers to look at while they wait. This will get ALL the products I carry into everybody's hands. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense.
Just so we are clear, I didn't know a damned thing about cell phones when I started. I was trying to sell MP3 players to a cell phone store back then. It just just sort of made more sense to change my focus to what my customers would want. This goes back to one of my earliest posts on here. It doesn't matter what you sell, as long as it does sell at a profit.
One of the things I learned was that I was not charging enough. I was really trying to walk away with a dirt cheap price and look better than whoever they regularly buy from. But it took me a few orders of not making what I wanted before I realized I had to double what I originally thought. Between shipping, payments (Western Union), returns and haggling, I was just hurting myself. Not to even mention the time and gas driving around (Damn, I just mentioned it anyway).
In the end, I just came to realize that they were just as happy to have another place to buy from, even if I wasn't their number one.
OK, so that's where I am these days. Working on that book and making my one or two sales a day from my eBay store. Which is sad since I used to sell like 8 MP3 players a day until that "Best Match" garbage started. Now, I don't even bother listing auctions anymore, no one sees them anyway.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Brochure
I have been working quite a bit on putting together a catalog for my Local Cell Phone Store customers (that I dont have yet). I put together an 8 page brochure, then decided if i made a flip book without prices inside a vinyl 3 ring binder, It could be left on the counter for customers to look at while they wait to be helped. My one local store liked this idea a lot. So i am going to finish the catalog, set up the website, then go out and try to sell my products to local cell phone shops. From the response I have had, this could work. At least this way i wont get negative feedback!
eBay's New Ratings System
Yesterday I received 2 5-star Positive Feedbacks, and my ratings actually went DOWN. This just proves they are screwing with the numbers. Because of their screwed up system of "Best Match", me, and many other sellers, have watched out sales plummet. Good job eBay, Good Job.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Changing Your IP Address
Once they shut down your account, you need to do the obvious, like empty out all your cookies, maybe even changing browsers. With IE 7, you can restore to factory defaults, and clear all private data in one shot. The big way they get you is your IP Address. So, you will need to forcibly change your IP Address through your Modem and/or Router.
Direct To Modem
1) Go to the start menu, click on run and type CMD
2) Type in IPCONFIG
3) That is the current IP address (assuming you dont have a routed hooked up)
4) Now you are going to type IPCONFIG/RELEASE
5) You will be disconnected from the internet --- Go to Start menu, My Network Places, Click on Network Connections in the left menu, Right click on your internet connection (It may be Local Area Connection, something to that affect)...anyways, right click and select properties
6) Now select Internet Protocal (TCP/IP) and select properties
7) Choose Use the following IP address and type in the following:
IP ADDRESS: 192.168.11.100
Then just click on the Subnet Mask and it will fill it in
8) Next Click OK to close that window and then OK on the other window
9) It will take a couple seconds and then once you are able to, click back on properties for the Internet Protocal (TCP/IP) and select Obtain An IP Address Automatically
10) Click OK and OK to close those windows and now go back to the CMD prompt and type in ipconfig/all
11) As you will see, the IP has changed!!!
12) Now this is the COOL part, you can copy that information (you will need IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, and the DNS Servers) and mark it down for one of your eBay accounts.....When you want to go back to that IP, you just go back to the properties section of the Internet Protocal (TCP/IP) and type in all of that information that you wrote down...BOOM....you are at that IP again (dont believe me, then go to Find My IP Address - Lookup)
13)You can easliy switch between IPs this way and you dont even have to unplug the modem.
Through a Router
What you need to do is change the MAC ID for the ROUTER ONLY. The reason why people still get the same IP is because of this. The original MAC ID is located on the bottom of the router so there is no need to copy or write it down if you ever want to revert back to it later.
The first step is to connect your Ethernet cable from your computer to the router so they can communicate and adjust settings. You do not need to do anything with the cable modem at this time. It will be towards the end.
Open up IE (internet explorer) or Firefox and type in your router address, mine is 192.168.0.1 if you don't know it then look in your router manual or cd that came with your router. Or goto the Run command and type in "cmd" and the ipconfig/all and you will see you router address.
Enter your login name/password if you have it set, mine is "admin" which is default. Now the menus is different for each router company. Just find the option that says MAC ADDRESS and click on it or click on manual settings and you should see your MAC ADDRESS. It looks like 6 boxes with 12 numbers and letters in sets. For example 01-5d-b2-42-f1-65
Now you want to change the MAC ADDRESS by doing the following.
Leave the first box the same. You only have to change the other boxes with numbers from 0-9 and letters from a-f but keeping the letters and numbers in the same position and only changing the value for example 01-4b-c5-31-a3-45
After you have replace them click on save settings or apply settings.
You will lose internet connection at this time. Now the final step is to unplug your router and your cable modem for about a minute or so and plug it back in. give it couple minutes to initialize and check your ip at ipchicken.com
You now have a new IP address. Repeat the process to get a new IP address through your router.
Direct To Modem
1) Go to the start menu, click on run and type CMD
2) Type in IPCONFIG
3) That is the current IP address (assuming you dont have a routed hooked up)
4) Now you are going to type IPCONFIG/RELEASE
5) You will be disconnected from the internet --- Go to Start menu, My Network Places, Click on Network Connections in the left menu, Right click on your internet connection (It may be Local Area Connection, something to that affect)...anyways, right click and select properties
6) Now select Internet Protocal (TCP/IP) and select properties
7) Choose Use the following IP address and type in the following:
IP ADDRESS: 192.168.11.100
Then just click on the Subnet Mask and it will fill it in
8) Next Click OK to close that window and then OK on the other window
9) It will take a couple seconds and then once you are able to, click back on properties for the Internet Protocal (TCP/IP) and select Obtain An IP Address Automatically
10) Click OK and OK to close those windows and now go back to the CMD prompt and type in ipconfig/all
11) As you will see, the IP has changed!!!
12) Now this is the COOL part, you can copy that information (you will need IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, and the DNS Servers) and mark it down for one of your eBay accounts.....When you want to go back to that IP, you just go back to the properties section of the Internet Protocal (TCP/IP) and type in all of that information that you wrote down...BOOM....you are at that IP again (dont believe me, then go to Find My IP Address - Lookup)
13)You can easliy switch between IPs this way and you dont even have to unplug the modem.
Through a Router
What you need to do is change the MAC ID for the ROUTER ONLY. The reason why people still get the same IP is because of this. The original MAC ID is located on the bottom of the router so there is no need to copy or write it down if you ever want to revert back to it later.
The first step is to connect your Ethernet cable from your computer to the router so they can communicate and adjust settings. You do not need to do anything with the cable modem at this time. It will be towards the end.
Open up IE (internet explorer) or Firefox and type in your router address, mine is 192.168.0.1 if you don't know it then look in your router manual or cd that came with your router. Or goto the Run command and type in "cmd" and the ipconfig/all and you will see you router address.
Enter your login name/password if you have it set, mine is "admin" which is default. Now the menus is different for each router company. Just find the option that says MAC ADDRESS and click on it or click on manual settings and you should see your MAC ADDRESS. It looks like 6 boxes with 12 numbers and letters in sets. For example 01-5d-b2-42-f1-65
Now you want to change the MAC ADDRESS by doing the following.
Leave the first box the same. You only have to change the other boxes with numbers from 0-9 and letters from a-f but keeping the letters and numbers in the same position and only changing the value for example 01-4b-c5-31-a3-45
After you have replace them click on save settings or apply settings.
You will lose internet connection at this time. Now the final step is to unplug your router and your cable modem for about a minute or so and plug it back in. give it couple minutes to initialize and check your ip at ipchicken.com
You now have a new IP address. Repeat the process to get a new IP address through your router.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
How I Became Fucked
I really should change the name of this site "How I Became Fucked". Amazon shut down my first account last week, so I started using a Random Proxy to Mask my IP Address. Well, yesterday a program I was using stopped working, and while I was on Amazon, they got my real address, and shut down my money making account. They are now holding over $2500 for *90* days. This is outright theft in my opinion, and why I never wanted to sell on there in the first place. I have since figured out how to do it manually myself, but what the hell?
This whole online selling has been a miserable experience. Now, I simply can not pay my bills because they are holding money that is rightfully mine, and now I can't even unload the inventory I have here. Sure, I have an eBay account, but with that mess over there, it's only a matter of time before that gets shut down as well.
This whole online selling has been a miserable experience. Now, I simply can not pay my bills because they are holding money that is rightfully mine, and now I can't even unload the inventory I have here. Sure, I have an eBay account, but with that mess over there, it's only a matter of time before that gets shut down as well.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
eBay Alternatives
Here is a list of FeeBay alternatives for all your buying and selling needs.
http://www.UseBid.com
http://www.eCrater.com
http://www.HiBidder.com
http://www.OldandSold.com
http://www.PlunderHere.com
http://www.Bidville.com
http://www.iOffer.com
http://www.fididel.com
http://www.blujay.com
http://www.tazbar.com
http://www.overstock.com
http://www.Amazon.com
http://www.mildbid.com
http://www.mommyacutions.com
http://www.specialistauctions.com
http://www.payifsell.com/
http://www.wagglepop.com/
http://www.onlineauction.com/
http://www.etsy.com/
http://www.flugpo.com/
http://www.kananabid.com/
http://www.zlio.com/
http://www.auctionquests.com/
http://www.neoloch.com
http://www.zipidee.com
http://www.tias.com
http://www.ziing.com
http://www.yourhighbid.com
http://www.yardsalepirate.com
http://www.wensy.com
http://www.usiff.com
http://www.ubid.com
http://www.ubidright.com
http://www.specialistauctions.com
http://www.qxl.com
http://www.quty.com
http://www.payifsell.com
http://www.overnightauctions.com
http://www.oldandsold.com
http://www.northwestblvd.com
http://www.loudfrog.com
http://www.bestbay4u.com
http://www.jaxbids.com
http://www.biddersnsellers.com
http://www.kagoo.com
http://www.miniaturesonly.com
http://www.sellmylens.com
http://www.usold.net
http://www.UseBid.com
http://www.eCrater.com
http://www.HiBidder.com
http://www.OldandSold.com
http://www.PlunderHere.com
http://www.Bidville.com
http://www.iOffer.com
http://www.fididel.com
http://www.blujay.com
http://www.tazbar.com
http://www.overstock.com
http://www.Amazon.com
http://www.mildbid.com
http://www.mommyacutions.com
http://www.specialistauctions.com
http://www.payifsell.com/
http://www.wagglepop.com/
http://www.onlineauction.com/
http://www.etsy.com/
http://www.flugpo.com/
http://www.kananabid.com/
http://www.zlio.com/
http://www.auctionquests.com/
http://www.neoloch.com
http://www.zipidee.com
http://www.tias.com
http://www.ziing.com
http://www.yourhighbid.com
http://www.yardsalepirate.com
http://www.wensy.com
http://www.usiff.com
http://www.ubid.com
http://www.ubidright.com
http://www.specialistauctions.com
http://www.qxl.com
http://www.quty.com
http://www.payifsell.com
http://www.overnightauctions.com
http://www.oldandsold.com
http://www.northwestblvd.com
http://www.loudfrog.com
http://www.bestbay4u.com
http://www.jaxbids.com
http://www.biddersnsellers.com
http://www.kagoo.com
http://www.miniaturesonly.com
http://www.sellmylens.com
http://www.usold.net
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Search Engine Code to Text Ratio
This was interesting:
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/code-to-text-ratio/
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/code-to-text-ratio/
To anyone who Cares
I had sent the following email, of sorts, to Amazon after I was kicked off for being the worst seller EVER! Of course, all I got back was a canned response about how I will never be allowed back on, even if I try to sneak in. It's just wrong. Seriously.
To Amazon:
I was really hoping that Amazon would care more for the sellers than eBay. I guess not. I say this because all you did was look at some blanket numbers, and not a situation. I am an excellent seller. You could easily see that my Positive Feedback isn't just 5 stars each, it is people actually thanking me for the good solid customer service I provide. If this email is not read, and my case is not reviewed by someone who is willing to look at my sales as a whole, then your entire system is flawed, and you are doing your sellers, and customers, an injustice.
I just logged in and saw two more people left bad feedback without contacting me first! While I can clearly see why you needed to do something, this just shows several flaws with the system.
1) Being permanently banned without ever having a chance to rectify the situation with my customer. As I am selling the same exact item as other vendors, it was just luck of the draw I got sellers who did not like the product.
2) I was selling almost two thousand different items. All I had to do was stop selling the items in question. Ban the item, not the seller.
3) My competition has over 1000 feedback. He can afford bad feedback all day long. I have no idea why I could only get 10% of my customers to rate me. I tried with every sale.
4) To add insult to injury, today was my payday, and you are holding all my money. This, of course, means I can't pay any of my bills. But hey, you know, whatever.
Yeah, I know. I'm just wasting my time. Your policies are law, and no one is going to help me. I don't know why I ever thought I could do this as a full time job. This was worse than a day job. One day i wake up, and three people I've never spoken to before just say whatever they want, and I'm out of business.
----
Hello from Amazon.com.
Thank you for writing. We have considered your request for
reinstatement. Upon careful consideration, we have decided your
account will remain blocked.
While we appreciate your interest, please understand that the
closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts
that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your
understanding with our decision.
Best regards,
Seller Performance Team
To Amazon:
I was really hoping that Amazon would care more for the sellers than eBay. I guess not. I say this because all you did was look at some blanket numbers, and not a situation. I am an excellent seller. You could easily see that my Positive Feedback isn't just 5 stars each, it is people actually thanking me for the good solid customer service I provide. If this email is not read, and my case is not reviewed by someone who is willing to look at my sales as a whole, then your entire system is flawed, and you are doing your sellers, and customers, an injustice.
I just logged in and saw two more people left bad feedback without contacting me first! While I can clearly see why you needed to do something, this just shows several flaws with the system.
1) Being permanently banned without ever having a chance to rectify the situation with my customer. As I am selling the same exact item as other vendors, it was just luck of the draw I got sellers who did not like the product.
2) I was selling almost two thousand different items. All I had to do was stop selling the items in question. Ban the item, not the seller.
3) My competition has over 1000 feedback. He can afford bad feedback all day long. I have no idea why I could only get 10% of my customers to rate me. I tried with every sale.
4) To add insult to injury, today was my payday, and you are holding all my money. This, of course, means I can't pay any of my bills. But hey, you know, whatever.
Yeah, I know. I'm just wasting my time. Your policies are law, and no one is going to help me. I don't know why I ever thought I could do this as a full time job. This was worse than a day job. One day i wake up, and three people I've never spoken to before just say whatever they want, and I'm out of business.
----
Hello from Amazon.com.
Thank you for writing. We have considered your request for
reinstatement. Upon careful consideration, we have decided your
account will remain blocked.
While we appreciate your interest, please understand that the
closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts
that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your
understanding with our decision.
Best regards,
Seller Performance Team
Kicked off Amazon
After 3 months of selling on Amazon, yesterday one person did an A-Z claim, one gave a neutral feedback, and another gave negative. By 7pm I was kick off their system and told I could never sell on there again. Before I went to bed, I sold another 5 MP3 players. Even though it seemed silly at the time, I have been running two Amazon accounts for about a month with different names, banks, and addresses. So, it doesn't seem so silly now, does it?
I needed to flush all cookies and stuff from both my computers. I downloaded an IP Address anonymizer so that Amazon would now see me as from a different address. I also used a completely different web browser. I needed to do all this because they can track my IP address and shut down this second account as "Guilt by Association". I have been going on Amazon as the second account a few times now, and so far so good.
But now i am living my life paranoid again, just waiting for Amazon or eBay to kick me off again for no good reason. They kill your business, ask questions later, then expect you to be nice and honorable to the customers that just screwed you over. I genuinely feel this is a stupid way to make a living. I don't have one stupid boss, now every single customer becomes a problem. They don't bother to leave positive feedback, but they go out of their way to leave negative before contacting me first.
I needed to flush all cookies and stuff from both my computers. I downloaded an IP Address anonymizer so that Amazon would now see me as from a different address. I also used a completely different web browser. I needed to do all this because they can track my IP address and shut down this second account as "Guilt by Association". I have been going on Amazon as the second account a few times now, and so far so good.
But now i am living my life paranoid again, just waiting for Amazon or eBay to kick me off again for no good reason. They kill your business, ask questions later, then expect you to be nice and honorable to the customers that just screwed you over. I genuinely feel this is a stupid way to make a living. I don't have one stupid boss, now every single customer becomes a problem. They don't bother to leave positive feedback, but they go out of their way to leave negative before contacting me first.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
No more Selling on Ebay
Previously, I knew the changes sucked, and I knew that sellers were leaving eBay because of it. I, too, have decided that selling on eBay is more trouble than it is worth. It is clear their intention is to remove all the small sellers, and keep only the biggest sellers. I am letting my listings expire, then calling it quits.
If you read back, or have followed this blog, you would know that as of February 5th, I have had nothing but problems and run ins with eBay and Paypal. I am an AWESOME seller. I totally, and completely RESENT how they are treating me as a seller. Amazon may not be perfect, but after several months, they have kept their nose out of my business.
www.HotAndVintage.blogspot.com wrote a condensed version of the new eBay policies that have started May 1st, 2008. Below is a copy of it:
1. Feedback Changes
A. Buyers will only be able to receive positive feedback effective May 2008.
B. Feedback older than 12 months will no longer be applied towards your
feedback percentage.
C. Neutral Feedback will now be considered as negative to determine buyer
dissatisfaction rate and seller account restrictions
2. DSR'S (Detailed Seller Ratings)
A. eBay allows buyers to think that a 4.0 (on a scale of 1-5) denotes good
business practices by the seller regarding item as described, communication,
shipping time and shipping and handling charges, while sellers are subjected to
various penalties for that same score.
B. DSR's are rated on a curve. Results of this curve may make even a rating of a 4.8
the median in a given rating category.
C. DSR'S will now be intertwined with "Best Match" search positioning.
D. eBay is unjustly red-flagging "good" sellers as well as "bad" sellers by stating
sellers with a 4.5 rating (On a scale of 1-5) now have a "low" rating, thereby
implying they are in the category of "bad sellers".
E. "Bad" Sellers will be kept because of their monetary value.
3. Minimum 21 Day PayPal Hold For Risky Sellers And Risky Categories
A. Sellers whose total feedback score is not more than 100 will have payments held
for up to 21 days.
B. Risky category sellers will be subjected to a 21 day hold, even well established
sellers.
C. Sellers with 5% or greater negatives in a 30 day period will be subject to the 21
day hold regardless of the circumstances.
4. Unreasonable Fee Increases
A. Promoted to the Ebay community as decreases, only the insertion fees were
decreased. Insertion fees decreased by $.05 with the gallery picture given free
($.35 savings) yet FVF (final value fees) raised by as much as 66%
B. Reserve fees increased from $1.00 to $2.00 and will no longer be refunded if
the item sells.
C. Store FVF's (final value fees) increased to 12% above and beyond monthly and
listing fees.
5. Miscellaneous
A. The universal anonymous bidder policy promotes additional
unsafe buyer practices and has led to buyers losing trust in the system.
B. The majority of Power Sellers will not qualify for newly stated discounts
C. The note "This item is not covered by buyer protection on eBay," which is
placed in two areas of the listings of sellers who do not offer PayPal, causes
harm to the good sellers' reputations and intimidates buyers.
D. eBay sellers are red-flagged on their listing page if their rating is 4.2 and below.(per the beta test)
E. When sellers are red-flagged, eBay also lists other sellers' items on said sellers' listings. (per the Beta Test for eBay Express items)
If you read back, or have followed this blog, you would know that as of February 5th, I have had nothing but problems and run ins with eBay and Paypal. I am an AWESOME seller. I totally, and completely RESENT how they are treating me as a seller. Amazon may not be perfect, but after several months, they have kept their nose out of my business.
www.HotAndVintage.blogspot.com wrote a condensed version of the new eBay policies that have started May 1st, 2008. Below is a copy of it:
1. Feedback Changes
A. Buyers will only be able to receive positive feedback effective May 2008.
B. Feedback older than 12 months will no longer be applied towards your
feedback percentage.
C. Neutral Feedback will now be considered as negative to determine buyer
dissatisfaction rate and seller account restrictions
2. DSR'S (Detailed Seller Ratings)
A. eBay allows buyers to think that a 4.0 (on a scale of 1-5) denotes good
business practices by the seller regarding item as described, communication,
shipping time and shipping and handling charges, while sellers are subjected to
various penalties for that same score.
B. DSR's are rated on a curve. Results of this curve may make even a rating of a 4.8
the median in a given rating category.
C. DSR'S will now be intertwined with "Best Match" search positioning.
D. eBay is unjustly red-flagging "good" sellers as well as "bad" sellers by stating
sellers with a 4.5 rating (On a scale of 1-5) now have a "low" rating, thereby
implying they are in the category of "bad sellers".
E. "Bad" Sellers will be kept because of their monetary value.
3. Minimum 21 Day PayPal Hold For Risky Sellers And Risky Categories
A. Sellers whose total feedback score is not more than 100 will have payments held
for up to 21 days.
B. Risky category sellers will be subjected to a 21 day hold, even well established
sellers.
C. Sellers with 5% or greater negatives in a 30 day period will be subject to the 21
day hold regardless of the circumstances.
4. Unreasonable Fee Increases
A. Promoted to the Ebay community as decreases, only the insertion fees were
decreased. Insertion fees decreased by $.05 with the gallery picture given free
($.35 savings) yet FVF (final value fees) raised by as much as 66%
B. Reserve fees increased from $1.00 to $2.00 and will no longer be refunded if
the item sells.
C. Store FVF's (final value fees) increased to 12% above and beyond monthly and
listing fees.
5. Miscellaneous
A. The universal anonymous bidder policy promotes additional
unsafe buyer practices and has led to buyers losing trust in the system.
B. The majority of Power Sellers will not qualify for newly stated discounts
C. The note "This item is not covered by buyer protection on eBay," which is
placed in two areas of the listings of sellers who do not offer PayPal, causes
harm to the good sellers' reputations and intimidates buyers.
D. eBay sellers are red-flagged on their listing page if their rating is 4.2 and below.(per the beta test)
E. When sellers are red-flagged, eBay also lists other sellers' items on said sellers' listings. (per the Beta Test for eBay Express items)
Friday, April 25, 2008
EMS Shipping
EMS shipping is the local Post Office's Express International. The minimum cost is $25.00 whether you use an envelope or bag. When you go over 1 pound, the price on the bag goes up. If you can still get it into the fixed price envelope, do it.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
International Payments
When selecting banks, and checking accounts, ask about how much it cost to transfer internationally. One bank may charge $40, and another may charge $25. Getting this out of the way now, may save an added hassle later.
Generally, you have three payment methods: T/T, Western Union, and Paypal.
Paypal - If they take paypal, they are likely places you should not be dealing with. Is this a blanket statement? Yes. But once you get into it you will start to see the difference between a manufacturer, a distributor, and a middle man. Middle men take paypal, manufacturers do not.
Western Union By Phone- I sent about 10 transfers in three months. Each and every one of them became longer on the phone, more hassles, and more garbage. They would not allow me to set up a business account, without a monthly transfer cap. Currently, it is something like $3000 per month on the website, and $5000 per month on the phone. Once you start doing serious business, these caps are a joke. Not to mention they do customer security to the point of agony. On my last dealings with them, They would not accept the transfer, but they wouldn't tell me why either. I strongly recommend not using them if it can be avoided, even if it means a slightly higher transfer cost. My average time on the phone was 45 minutes, plus call back verification.
Western Union At Location - If you walk up with cash it's pretty easy. Bring two forms of ID to avoid hassles. Takes about 10 minutes, and the money is available anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour later. Don't forget to email the recipient the tracking number, or else they won't get paid. The downside is that you have to wait until the next business day for China to process your order. Over the phone you could have gotten the price, and sent the money and been done inside an hour. Oh well.
T/T - This is a standard bank wire transfer. Get the manufacturer's bank info, go into your local bank, and give them the information. You can be in and out in about 15 minutes. Transfers should be available in about 4 days. This is where Western Union get's you.
Generally, you have three payment methods: T/T, Western Union, and Paypal.
Paypal - If they take paypal, they are likely places you should not be dealing with. Is this a blanket statement? Yes. But once you get into it you will start to see the difference between a manufacturer, a distributor, and a middle man. Middle men take paypal, manufacturers do not.
Western Union By Phone- I sent about 10 transfers in three months. Each and every one of them became longer on the phone, more hassles, and more garbage. They would not allow me to set up a business account, without a monthly transfer cap. Currently, it is something like $3000 per month on the website, and $5000 per month on the phone. Once you start doing serious business, these caps are a joke. Not to mention they do customer security to the point of agony. On my last dealings with them, They would not accept the transfer, but they wouldn't tell me why either. I strongly recommend not using them if it can be avoided, even if it means a slightly higher transfer cost. My average time on the phone was 45 minutes, plus call back verification.
Western Union At Location - If you walk up with cash it's pretty easy. Bring two forms of ID to avoid hassles. Takes about 10 minutes, and the money is available anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour later. Don't forget to email the recipient the tracking number, or else they won't get paid. The downside is that you have to wait until the next business day for China to process your order. Over the phone you could have gotten the price, and sent the money and been done inside an hour. Oh well.
T/T - This is a standard bank wire transfer. Get the manufacturer's bank info, go into your local bank, and give them the information. You can be in and out in about 15 minutes. Transfers should be available in about 4 days. This is where Western Union get's you.
Multiple Accounts
I have found that having multiple accounts on Amazon to be a huge help to my business. Despite the extra $40.00/mo for a second account and extra steps in processing orders from the different accounts, it is paid back in several ways. One is that by staggering the pay day, I can get paid weekly instead of bi-weekly (major Amazon drawback). It also means that I can compete with myself. That sounds silly, but it gives the customers the illusion of choice, and I get the benefit of double the chance they would select me, instead of my competition. You would think that it would not matter, however my sales doubled, so go figure on that for a while. Another huge benefit is if one account gets negative feedback or other hardship, the other account can still stand strong while I try to fix whatever happened.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Starting Up
Getting started requires more than one product, or even one company to do business with. For a fully successful end of the day sales, you need to carry many items, from many different distributors. You need to take their disorganized mess of products and updates, and convert them over to a master list in excel so that it can be uploaded to your store in one batch. Additionally, for maximum sales, you need to sell anywhere you can find. This means selling on eBay and Amazon. Ideally, you should have multiple accounts on each (in case one gets negative feedback, suspended, etc).
This means that you need a master list in a format your own website understands, one that Amazon understands, and eBay understands. It requires quite a bit of data entry to get all the various systems to have the same items. Then it requires daily updates with discontinued and out of stock items. All this is on top of orders, returns, and daily headaches. Properly selling on the internet is definitely not for the faint of heart. It takes many long hours.
This means that you need a master list in a format your own website understands, one that Amazon understands, and eBay understands. It requires quite a bit of data entry to get all the various systems to have the same items. Then it requires daily updates with discontinued and out of stock items. All this is on top of orders, returns, and daily headaches. Properly selling on the internet is definitely not for the faint of heart. It takes many long hours.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Shipping to Canada
If you use PayPal to ship to Canada,your options are fairly limited, and all expensive. If you go into a Post Office and do it there, it could be less than half of your online price. Personally, I started by paying $15 each package. Then I figured out how to do it for $9. Now I can do it for under $4. Always ask, and investigate your options. No one way, seems to be the right way.
Friday, April 11, 2008
My Life
I gotta tell you , I really like my new life. Sure, I have spent the day in front of my computer building my business, but it was from my own office, in my sweat pants, drinking beer, and popping Percasetts (a whole other story). A few weeks ago I interviewed a BookKeeper while I was in my slippers. I felt so decadent. Yesterday, I sold two Paddles and Balls (you know, connected by a rubber band) where it cost me a grand total of $9 to buy and ship it, and I pocketed a profit of $22.65. I just sold some "10 in 1 Game Set" for a profit of about $25.00.
The key here, I am not actually doing anything. An email comes in from Amazon, I forward it on to the warehouse, I keep the markup in between. They do the shipping. Additionally, I only have about 1000 items listed. I have thousands more where that came from, just waiting to be listed. I am trying to figure out why people work so hard.
If anything, this will be an amazing second income once it's all set up. My wife won't ever have to work again. I need to watch inventory levels every few days, but this is nothing terribly difficult.
The key here, I am not actually doing anything. An email comes in from Amazon, I forward it on to the warehouse, I keep the markup in between. They do the shipping. Additionally, I only have about 1000 items listed. I have thousands more where that came from, just waiting to be listed. I am trying to figure out why people work so hard.
If anything, this will be an amazing second income once it's all set up. My wife won't ever have to work again. I need to watch inventory levels every few days, but this is nothing terribly difficult.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Google Checkout
For the first time, I found a warning, before I had the problem. I found this text which came from a Google Checkout representative. It is about how and where the Google Logo should be in order to be in compliance. Once again, I think they are another company throwing their weight around. I am posting it here because, if you are going to do Google Checkout, it is good information:
During our recent review of your website http://www.DOMAIN.com, we found that your website doesn't appear to display Google Checkout buttons or logos in accordance with the following policies:
- To inform prospective buyers that you accept Google Checkout, you may only display a Google Checkout acceptance logo on your website as specified here:
https://checkout.google.com/seller/acceptance_logos.html.
You may not alter the size, shape, color, or any other aspect of the acceptance logos provided by Google. Any use of the Google Checkout product name, logo, buttons, or associated imagery not explicitly authorized is strictly prohibited.
- Ensure 1:1 and adjacent button placement You must place a Google checkout button or Buy Now button immediately beside, above, or below every existing checkout button or link on your website. (Because users tend to read horizontally, we recommend placing the Google button beside your existing buttons and links.)
You must separate the Google checkout process from your existing checkout process.
If a buyer initiates your existing checkout process, they must not see a Google Checkout button.
If you're using Buy Now buttons, you must display a Buy Now button in a visible and appropriate location for each item you'd like to sell using Google Checkout.
- Place Google Checkout buttons before your login pages Buyers should only have to provide their purchasing information once. If you require users to register or sign in to your site, you must ensure Google Checkout and Buy Now buttons are available before the login process so buyers are able to check out with Google Checkout without having to log in. (You may still track visits and personalize pages using cookies.)
- Direct buyers quickly to Google
If you're using Google Checkout buttons, you must ensure that buyers who click the Google Checkout button on your site see the Google Checkout confirmation page within one second, and without seeing any intermediate pages. This will help you avoid shopping cart abandonment. We recommend you consider pre-computing shopping carts, leveraging server to server posting, and other tips in our Developer's Guide.
- Do not disable the browser's 'Back' button Buyers who click their browser's 'Back' button should be brought from the Google confirmation page directly back to your site without seeing any intermediate pages. (Learn about server-to-server posting and other best practices in our Developer's Guide.)
- Identify unsupported purchases
If you're using Google Checkout buttons, you must display the Google-hosted 'not available' button for orders not adhering to our content policies (https://checkout.google.com/seller/content_policies.html).
- Google Checkout must be available as a checkout option at least 95% of the time Google Checkout may be unsupported no more than 5% of the time, in which case you are required to display the 'not available' button. At least 95% of the time, Google Checkout must be offered as a checkout option, with the standard Google Checkout button prominently displayed.
- Direct your 'checkout' links and buttons to the checkout process Buttons or links containing the word 'checkout' should initiate a checkout process, not a 'view cart' page. The latter may confuse buyers and disrupt the purchase flow.
Because it appears your website doesn't meet one or more policy requirements, your AdWords ads aren't eligible to display Google Checkout badges at this time. (Your account is still active, however, and you may continue to process transactions.)
If you'd like to display badges again, please make the appropriate changes to your website, then respond to this message so we can confirm the changes.
For more information about Google Checkout button and Buy Now button requirements, please visit https://checkout.google.com/seller/policies.html.
For information about Google Checkout badges, please visit http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bi...py?answer=37897.
During our recent review of your website http://www.DOMAIN.com, we found that your website doesn't appear to display Google Checkout buttons or logos in accordance with the following policies:
- To inform prospective buyers that you accept Google Checkout, you may only display a Google Checkout acceptance logo on your website as specified here:
https://checkout.google.com/seller/acceptance_logos.html.
You may not alter the size, shape, color, or any other aspect of the acceptance logos provided by Google. Any use of the Google Checkout product name, logo, buttons, or associated imagery not explicitly authorized is strictly prohibited.
- Ensure 1:1 and adjacent button placement You must place a Google checkout button or Buy Now button immediately beside, above, or below every existing checkout button or link on your website. (Because users tend to read horizontally, we recommend placing the Google button beside your existing buttons and links.)
You must separate the Google checkout process from your existing checkout process.
If a buyer initiates your existing checkout process, they must not see a Google Checkout button.
If you're using Buy Now buttons, you must display a Buy Now button in a visible and appropriate location for each item you'd like to sell using Google Checkout.
- Place Google Checkout buttons before your login pages Buyers should only have to provide their purchasing information once. If you require users to register or sign in to your site, you must ensure Google Checkout and Buy Now buttons are available before the login process so buyers are able to check out with Google Checkout without having to log in. (You may still track visits and personalize pages using cookies.)
- Direct buyers quickly to Google
If you're using Google Checkout buttons, you must ensure that buyers who click the Google Checkout button on your site see the Google Checkout confirmation page within one second, and without seeing any intermediate pages. This will help you avoid shopping cart abandonment. We recommend you consider pre-computing shopping carts, leveraging server to server posting, and other tips in our Developer's Guide.
- Do not disable the browser's 'Back' button Buyers who click their browser's 'Back' button should be brought from the Google confirmation page directly back to your site without seeing any intermediate pages. (Learn about server-to-server posting and other best practices in our Developer's Guide.)
- Identify unsupported purchases
If you're using Google Checkout buttons, you must display the Google-hosted 'not available' button for orders not adhering to our content policies (https://checkout.google.com/seller/content_policies.html).
- Google Checkout must be available as a checkout option at least 95% of the time Google Checkout may be unsupported no more than 5% of the time, in which case you are required to display the 'not available' button. At least 95% of the time, Google Checkout must be offered as a checkout option, with the standard Google Checkout button prominently displayed.
- Direct your 'checkout' links and buttons to the checkout process Buttons or links containing the word 'checkout' should initiate a checkout process, not a 'view cart' page. The latter may confuse buyers and disrupt the purchase flow.
Because it appears your website doesn't meet one or more policy requirements, your AdWords ads aren't eligible to display Google Checkout badges at this time. (Your account is still active, however, and you may continue to process transactions.)
If you'd like to display badges again, please make the appropriate changes to your website, then respond to this message so we can confirm the changes.
For more information about Google Checkout button and Buy Now button requirements, please visit https://checkout.google.com/seller/policies.html.
For information about Google Checkout badges, please visit http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bi...py?answer=37897.
SSL Secure Seal
The more I get into this website integration with other sites like Google Checkout, LinkPoint and Paypal, i find that an SSL Seal is very important to be compliant across the board. I got mine for $15.00 at GoDaddy.com and I have not found any browser issues yet (If you read about it, people will say a cheap one may give problems, but I haven't had any).
Yahoo Product Search
In Search Ads, Google won't allow the word Casino, but Yahoo Search would. I've mentioned this kind of nonsense before.
Now, I've got Yahoo Products bitching about Privacy and Return Policies not being posed on my site, meanwhile Google didn't give a shit.
Setting up a SIMPLE home made website has turned into the most complex project I have ever encountered. And I've done tons of overly complicated stuff... like buying, fixing, and selling a house within 3 months. Building a Web Server and other tencho garbage. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. It's crazy hard... and time consuming. I don't feel like I've spent much time with my family because of all this. It's just too much sometimes.
Now, I've got Yahoo Products bitching about Privacy and Return Policies not being posed on my site, meanwhile Google didn't give a shit.
Setting up a SIMPLE home made website has turned into the most complex project I have ever encountered. And I've done tons of overly complicated stuff... like buying, fixing, and selling a house within 3 months. Building a Web Server and other tencho garbage. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. It's crazy hard... and time consuming. I don't feel like I've spent much time with my family because of all this. It's just too much sometimes.
Google Checkout
I am adding Google Checkout now to my website. I already added PayPal and regular Credit Cards. Hopefully, this will attract people with various paying habits.
Yahoo Product Search
This is another Pay Per Click system, cost $50 to start (worth of clicks). Since these cost $.25 each click and up, that $50 can go damn fast. Unlike other systems though, it isn't a random ad being placed, it is for a specific product (uploaded via a datafeed just like google base and bidhopper). The hope is that they already did the looking, they see the price, and only go to you once they have decided... in theory. I'll try it out, and get back to you.
ShopMania
The people suck, avoid them. They want your usual full information, including a credit card (because they are pay per click). Then, they balls it up with wanting a link back to them on every single page of yours (For Google Search Boosting). Then they top it off with NO SSL support. This means your credit card and other info is not protected. Additionally, if you DO link back to them, and you have SSL yourself, it will error for your customers, making it look bad for you.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
After several months of testing on Yahoo I have come to a single conclusion: Pay-Per-Click Advertising Does NOT Work for anyone but the search engine. I have tried all kinds of ways to make it work, paying alot per click, paying very little, serious ads, humorous ads, different keywords... anything I could think of.
The simple truth seems to be, that it drives traffic, not sales. People are just wandering around aimlessly. Don't blame my website, It has thousands of products, it's easy to navigate, and has a simple checkout system.
I have begun trying various other systems like Google Base (Froogle), ShopMania, and Bidhopper. Sadly, others like Shopping.com and Bizrate.com have been eaten up by the eBay juggernaut. And we all know how I feel about them.
The simple truth seems to be, that it drives traffic, not sales. People are just wandering around aimlessly. Don't blame my website, It has thousands of products, it's easy to navigate, and has a simple checkout system.
I have begun trying various other systems like Google Base (Froogle), ShopMania, and Bidhopper. Sadly, others like Shopping.com and Bizrate.com have been eaten up by the eBay juggernaut. And we all know how I feel about them.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Free Faxes
You can Fax a Word or PDF Document for Free at www.faxzero.com with no signup, hassles or issues.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
I Like Cheating
I have posted a bunch of GPS, camera and printers on Amazon, but I can't seem to compete with these guys. There is like $5 profit margin and not even worth it. If it wasn;t free to have them listed, I would have just pulled them down by now.
However, I have a secret little trick up my sleeve. With all this Wholesaling I was getting into I came across a toy company. What makes this company so special to me is that they are about 15 minutes away from my house! While they are a regular Drop Ship company, I can just swing by and pick up whatever I need off the shelf.
This means that all the sellers on Amazon (not even many of them, either) have to include that $5 drop ship price on top of the profit and shipping. Me? I logged on and low-balled everybody. I didn't even compare prices, just knocked a buck or two off the lowest seller. It was glorious. No one can even touch my prices, and most haven't even tried.
While I need to build some momentum, I expect that worst case, this will be awesome starting on Black Friday.
However, I have a secret little trick up my sleeve. With all this Wholesaling I was getting into I came across a toy company. What makes this company so special to me is that they are about 15 minutes away from my house! While they are a regular Drop Ship company, I can just swing by and pick up whatever I need off the shelf.
This means that all the sellers on Amazon (not even many of them, either) have to include that $5 drop ship price on top of the profit and shipping. Me? I logged on and low-balled everybody. I didn't even compare prices, just knocked a buck or two off the lowest seller. It was glorious. No one can even touch my prices, and most haven't even tried.
While I need to build some momentum, I expect that worst case, this will be awesome starting on Black Friday.
Amazon Sales
Wow.. after 3 WEEKS of no Amazon sales, I finally got two sales today. I have added several GPS, Priner, and Camera items, but also my MP3 players and about 150 toys. I hope to get some feedback so I can loose this "Just Launched" garbage from my name.
Credit Card Gateways
There are many, many and more many Credit Card Gateways out there that let retailers accept credit cards. They are all terribly expensive. Signup fees, closing fees, monthly fees, per sale fees... it's brutal. A popular one is 2checkout.com because they have a $50 setup, then 5.5% per sale there-after. This means that once you fork over the $50, your good to go for years to come. However, that 5,5% is a real killer.
Personally, I signed with LinkPoint.com because they had no extraneous fees. While It has a $25/mo fee, the 2.3% per sale is quite nice compared to what else I saw out there. Customer Service was smart and knew their stuff, but were foreign, and didn't want to be bothered with me, it seemed. Two calls, both pointed me to the help docs.
The break between these two seems to be, that if you plan to sell 1-5 things a month, go with 2checkout.com. But if you expect to do 2+ sales a week, go with LinkPoint.com and if you missed everything else I have been complaining about for the past month, don't EVER use PayPal.
Personally, I signed with LinkPoint.com because they had no extraneous fees. While It has a $25/mo fee, the 2.3% per sale is quite nice compared to what else I saw out there. Customer Service was smart and knew their stuff, but were foreign, and didn't want to be bothered with me, it seemed. Two calls, both pointed me to the help docs.
The break between these two seems to be, that if you plan to sell 1-5 things a month, go with 2checkout.com. But if you expect to do 2+ sales a week, go with LinkPoint.com and if you missed everything else I have been complaining about for the past month, don't EVER use PayPal.
More People That Suck
I wanted to mention that I had started buying from a vendor named PSOEXPIMP that I had found on eBay. I was doing business with him for all of three weeks during the Chinese new year because he was in Pennsylvania. He was wicked expensive, but again, he was local so it was quick and convenient. So I gave him $6000 in business and he was all over my orders. I ask him for ONE invoice because of this PayPal mess, and he is nowhere to be found for days. People fucking suck. That with a few other issues and now he gets no more business from me..... meanwhile I ordered another $2000 worth of MP3 players from China...
Avoid Fraud
In an attempt to get away from all the petty complaining I have been doing lately (with good reason!) I wanted to post about www.customers2avoid.com who have a blacklist of suspected fraud perpetrators. It is only for merchants, and needs to be manually verified. Not that big of a deal though.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Lazy Americans
When we started this country, settlers were crazy, and ambitious. They didn't like the tax, so they got up off their collective asses and threw tea in the harbor and rebelled against England.
During the Vietnam war, people young and old got up off their lazy asses and protested against the war. They didn't fix the problem, but they at least tried.
Ebay, Paypal, Bank fees, Credit Card fees, high interest rates, mortgages, house taxes, income taxes, cigarette taxes, Sprint, Microsoft, gasoline ... the list goes FUCKING ON! Why doesn't ANYBODY do ANYTHING anymore to stop this insanity?!?!?!? Are we all just sheep programed to do what we are told? Is there something in the water we ACTUALLY FUCKING PAY FOR?
Me? Naw, I'm not going to fight the system anymore. I'm too old and too tired. I'm just a voice in the crowd. We need some of those young kids to make a change.
Ebay wants $450 from me in services NOT rendered.
Paypal Stole $450 from me because I was "High Risk"
Fucking Assholes.
During the Vietnam war, people young and old got up off their lazy asses and protested against the war. They didn't fix the problem, but they at least tried.
Ebay, Paypal, Bank fees, Credit Card fees, high interest rates, mortgages, house taxes, income taxes, cigarette taxes, Sprint, Microsoft, gasoline ... the list goes FUCKING ON! Why doesn't ANYBODY do ANYTHING anymore to stop this insanity?!?!?!? Are we all just sheep programed to do what we are told? Is there something in the water we ACTUALLY FUCKING PAY FOR?
Me? Naw, I'm not going to fight the system anymore. I'm too old and too tired. I'm just a voice in the crowd. We need some of those young kids to make a change.
Ebay wants $450 from me in services NOT rendered.
Paypal Stole $450 from me because I was "High Risk"
Fucking Assholes.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
ebay and PayPal SUCK
I won't bore you with the details, but both these ass-suck companies shut me down THREE times this month. I thought I left my job to become my own boss, but these asshole companies are evil, and have made it damn near impossible for me to run my own business the way I want.
What i found is this: They are a membership, and they can do whatever the hell they want to it's members, and no one can stop them.
The first time I was shut down for using the word "Ipod" in my listings. Despite the fact that MANY shady people mislead the listings, mine was quite clear. Regardless, i get the point, and I wont do it again. Will they let me back in? yeah, in 12 MONTHS. So, basically, I gained all this momentum, and they shut me down.
I then used another account I had to startup again, but they easily made the connection and shut down that account too.
Then, i start a new one with another persons name, at a diferent address, and a diferent PayPal account and start at 0 feedback. That sucked, but I did it. Within 2 weeks, I built up my feedback a bit, and made $2000.... so ExtortionPal locked my accounts because they felt that i was "High Risk" and now they want invoices to prove I actually own the merchandise. Luckily, I didn't trust these fuckers anymore, and pulled my money out everyday and sent it to my bank account, which I setup only to Launder the money through, which i then pulled out of the ATM every day. if I didnt do these steps, PayPal would have held onto that $2000 just because they can.
I have moved into Amazon, but I read about how bad they are to deal with too, and they hold your money for 2 weeks, plus 1 week to deliver a check. I dont like it, but I need to diversify so that if one gets closed down, I have other avenues of capital.
If you are looking to see what i am up to, you can go to http://www.portable-fun.com and also http://www.the-game-store.com
What i found is this: They are a membership, and they can do whatever the hell they want to it's members, and no one can stop them.
The first time I was shut down for using the word "Ipod" in my listings. Despite the fact that MANY shady people mislead the listings, mine was quite clear. Regardless, i get the point, and I wont do it again. Will they let me back in? yeah, in 12 MONTHS. So, basically, I gained all this momentum, and they shut me down.
I then used another account I had to startup again, but they easily made the connection and shut down that account too.
Then, i start a new one with another persons name, at a diferent address, and a diferent PayPal account and start at 0 feedback. That sucked, but I did it. Within 2 weeks, I built up my feedback a bit, and made $2000.... so ExtortionPal locked my accounts because they felt that i was "High Risk" and now they want invoices to prove I actually own the merchandise. Luckily, I didn't trust these fuckers anymore, and pulled my money out everyday and sent it to my bank account, which I setup only to Launder the money through, which i then pulled out of the ATM every day. if I didnt do these steps, PayPal would have held onto that $2000 just because they can.
I have moved into Amazon, but I read about how bad they are to deal with too, and they hold your money for 2 weeks, plus 1 week to deliver a check. I dont like it, but I need to diversify so that if one gets closed down, I have other avenues of capital.
If you are looking to see what i am up to, you can go to http://www.portable-fun.com and also http://www.the-game-store.com
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
How Things are Going
It's been what, 3 weeks since I was shit-canned? Bah, whatever. I was hoping to retire from the printing industry within 6 months anyway. Since I got in 2 months before another 6 months of unemployment, I should be OK... I hope. It's a little scary doing this whole "no day job" thing, but I am being kept very busy with my eBay business. I am a few days away from becoming a Silver PowerSeller ($5,000 in sales for 3 months), and that as part time. My real goal is to get Gold Status ($10,000) so that I can get my own customer service representative at ebay and stop dealing with all these lunk heads in India.
Heh, funny story. I was in the middle of listing 300 auctions (thats a fucking lot!) and ebay red flagged my account. Someone down there dug into my account history and realized that I had owed eBay $19.00 for *4* years now. So they stopped my listings and said my account was suspended. Of course, I had no clue, they just "did" it. It told them 3 days to respond, took me 5 minutes to fix it, then another 2 days for them to respond back. I went off on them about how I give them over $1000/mo in fees, and they are pissing about $19.00. Oh yeah, so my point was, with a Rep, I could just call him up and have him fix it. I get crap like that all the time with eBay.
While I am very good at running my own business, it is clear that I suck huge nuts at Accounting. I have no clue how much money I am making, or who I owe. I thought I did, but I was mistaken. I am pretty sure I make enough money to supplimanet my income, I just can't prove it. Too much money is coming in, in small chunks, and going out in big chunks.
I have started using a distributor in the USA who I have been getting my inventory from while China has been closed. While i pay him extra, he does what I need, hasn't screwed up any of my orders yet (ok, he did, but it was minor). But mostly, I like the fact that I don't have to spend $2000 in china, wait 2 weeks to get it, then another week to sell it, before I have to do it again. With him, I give him the $2000, but I have merchandise in hand 3 days later. He is also in a position to drop ship for me,if needed, as he has done before.
I've set up a descent account to sell GPS units as well. I can have the drop shipped, and I love that since I don't need to financially fund that project. I will also sell paper. Sounds odd, but it's another idea I had years and years ago. I had found a wholesaler who gives awesome prices about 2 years back. I called him up tonight and pitched my idea to him. He was another person who thinks I'm crazy. Guess he doesn't realize that photographers need special types of paper in special sizes that would otherwise sell for 3 times as much on Epson and Canon's Store. I can double the price, and he can drop ship it. Nice.
I know this is entitled "How I Became Rich". I really should have started smaller. Named it something like "How I Told My Master To Go Fuck Himself After I started My Own Business and Managed To Support My Family On a Fraction of the Cost". Ok... maybe not.
It's true though. My gas usage has dropped from about $180/mo to about $40/mo. All I really do is go to the post office once a day, and stop at the local shops if I need anything on my way back. Likely, my electric is going sky high now though.
Heh, funny story. I was in the middle of listing 300 auctions (thats a fucking lot!) and ebay red flagged my account. Someone down there dug into my account history and realized that I had owed eBay $19.00 for *4* years now. So they stopped my listings and said my account was suspended. Of course, I had no clue, they just "did" it. It told them 3 days to respond, took me 5 minutes to fix it, then another 2 days for them to respond back. I went off on them about how I give them over $1000/mo in fees, and they are pissing about $19.00. Oh yeah, so my point was, with a Rep, I could just call him up and have him fix it. I get crap like that all the time with eBay.
While I am very good at running my own business, it is clear that I suck huge nuts at Accounting. I have no clue how much money I am making, or who I owe. I thought I did, but I was mistaken. I am pretty sure I make enough money to supplimanet my income, I just can't prove it. Too much money is coming in, in small chunks, and going out in big chunks.
I have started using a distributor in the USA who I have been getting my inventory from while China has been closed. While i pay him extra, he does what I need, hasn't screwed up any of my orders yet (ok, he did, but it was minor). But mostly, I like the fact that I don't have to spend $2000 in china, wait 2 weeks to get it, then another week to sell it, before I have to do it again. With him, I give him the $2000, but I have merchandise in hand 3 days later. He is also in a position to drop ship for me,if needed, as he has done before.
I've set up a descent account to sell GPS units as well. I can have the drop shipped, and I love that since I don't need to financially fund that project. I will also sell paper. Sounds odd, but it's another idea I had years and years ago. I had found a wholesaler who gives awesome prices about 2 years back. I called him up tonight and pitched my idea to him. He was another person who thinks I'm crazy. Guess he doesn't realize that photographers need special types of paper in special sizes that would otherwise sell for 3 times as much on Epson and Canon's Store. I can double the price, and he can drop ship it. Nice.
I know this is entitled "How I Became Rich". I really should have started smaller. Named it something like "How I Told My Master To Go Fuck Himself After I started My Own Business and Managed To Support My Family On a Fraction of the Cost". Ok... maybe not.
It's true though. My gas usage has dropped from about $180/mo to about $40/mo. All I really do is go to the post office once a day, and stop at the local shops if I need anything on my way back. Likely, my electric is going sky high now though.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Day Jobs Suck
Yesterday, I dragged myself into another crappy day of doing nothing at work. I was there for about 1/2 an hour when I was asked into the boss's office and handed a severance package. I'd like to say how upset I was about the whole thing, but oddly, I haven't felt too badly about it. I hated that fucking job, and the people who worked there. I would like to try an say something nice, but it's tough. I liked the two big bosses, and 2 or 3 employees, but mostly my life was like grinding teeth all day long.
Sorry, but I have to say this: On the off chance that someone from my old company is going through my stuff, Fuck you Mat. Take your pompus arrogant attitude and shove it up your ass. You are NOT god's gift to everything. You only LOOKED like you knew everything, because you never told anyone SHIT once you found out about it. I did NOT need to come into work and get verbally abused because I wasn't a fucking mind reader. I am a strong, independent, well educated person. You did you best to put me down, and get me under your control. I know it must have pissed you off to no end, when I would never let you belittle me, or let your snide comments get to me. I used to have another boss just like you. I let him destroy my ego and make me think I was worthless. I vowed never again to be controlled like that. If you weren't there, I could have done your job. I never needed you. At some point, I just gave up caring. Maybe that pissed you off most of all. I don't know. And I genuinely don't care. If you had the balls to be there when I was fired, I would have told you this stuff to your face.
Sorry about that. I needed to vent. And it just goes back to my point about how I would rather work for myself. I don't like the idea of someone else being in control of my life. Which is why next time, I will take a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. At the time, I just wanted the lowest rate, but now I have to justify myself and my income to someone else behind a desk. I am quite happy to not want any credit cards. Credit is over rated.
Anyway, over the past few months I had listened to those self-help start your own business type of audio seminars (free for download, where all bootleg stuff is found). And one of the best lessons I had learned was "If you have one source of income, and one stops, you have no income. If you have ten sources of income, and you loose one, you still have nine ways of getting paid." So, to that end, I spent quite a bit of my time building on those ten sources of income, waiting on the day I would get booted out the door, which was only a matter of time.
I have a house that I rent out to tenants, I make about $550/mo profit. I also have my iPod business which is doing quite well. I think I am averaging about $900/mo. However, that is limited by funds available to purchase merchandise. I need to find more funding. So, If anyone wants to invest, shoot me an email. I also have this Game Store and e-store thing I've been trying to work on, but I just haven't had the proper amount of time. Guess I have the time now, huh? There is also the unemployment check as well.
So, I have several sources of income that bring money in daily. I feel much better about that. I had also put extra money into savings every week, just waiting for the day I would need it. It's only a matter of time, it always is.
My wife asked me if I was going to sell iPods full time now. I said I still needed a day job.... for now. I haven't built up the passive revenue yet. I've been trying, but it's only been 3 months that I have been serious about all this.
However, I asked the obvious question (to us anyway) "Now that neither of us have a job, should we rent this house out to tenants as well, and finally move far away from here?" Last night we talked about where we wanted to live, and how feasible it was to do it. Other than the fear of it, there isn't any reason we can't. After all, all my sources of income will come with me, no matter where I live. And that's a beauty I have been working hard to achieve.
Sorry, but I have to say this: On the off chance that someone from my old company is going through my stuff, Fuck you Mat. Take your pompus arrogant attitude and shove it up your ass. You are NOT god's gift to everything. You only LOOKED like you knew everything, because you never told anyone SHIT once you found out about it. I did NOT need to come into work and get verbally abused because I wasn't a fucking mind reader. I am a strong, independent, well educated person. You did you best to put me down, and get me under your control. I know it must have pissed you off to no end, when I would never let you belittle me, or let your snide comments get to me. I used to have another boss just like you. I let him destroy my ego and make me think I was worthless. I vowed never again to be controlled like that. If you weren't there, I could have done your job. I never needed you. At some point, I just gave up caring. Maybe that pissed you off most of all. I don't know. And I genuinely don't care. If you had the balls to be there when I was fired, I would have told you this stuff to your face.
Sorry about that. I needed to vent. And it just goes back to my point about how I would rather work for myself. I don't like the idea of someone else being in control of my life. Which is why next time, I will take a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. At the time, I just wanted the lowest rate, but now I have to justify myself and my income to someone else behind a desk. I am quite happy to not want any credit cards. Credit is over rated.
Anyway, over the past few months I had listened to those self-help start your own business type of audio seminars (free for download, where all bootleg stuff is found). And one of the best lessons I had learned was "If you have one source of income, and one stops, you have no income. If you have ten sources of income, and you loose one, you still have nine ways of getting paid." So, to that end, I spent quite a bit of my time building on those ten sources of income, waiting on the day I would get booted out the door, which was only a matter of time.
I have a house that I rent out to tenants, I make about $550/mo profit. I also have my iPod business which is doing quite well. I think I am averaging about $900/mo. However, that is limited by funds available to purchase merchandise. I need to find more funding. So, If anyone wants to invest, shoot me an email. I also have this Game Store and e-store thing I've been trying to work on, but I just haven't had the proper amount of time. Guess I have the time now, huh? There is also the unemployment check as well.
So, I have several sources of income that bring money in daily. I feel much better about that. I had also put extra money into savings every week, just waiting for the day I would need it. It's only a matter of time, it always is.
My wife asked me if I was going to sell iPods full time now. I said I still needed a day job.... for now. I haven't built up the passive revenue yet. I've been trying, but it's only been 3 months that I have been serious about all this.
However, I asked the obvious question (to us anyway) "Now that neither of us have a job, should we rent this house out to tenants as well, and finally move far away from here?" Last night we talked about where we wanted to live, and how feasible it was to do it. Other than the fear of it, there isn't any reason we can't. After all, all my sources of income will come with me, no matter where I live. And that's a beauty I have been working hard to achieve.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Amazon
Referencing: http://www.ripoffreport.com and http://www.my3cents.com
I am afraid of Amazon now. I didn't like waiting for my money to be released to me. Now, I don't like the idea of them closing the account for no reason AND holding my funds for 1-3 months. What bullshit. I will continue looking. Gotta be somewhere good to sell on.
I am afraid of Amazon now. I didn't like waiting for my money to be released to me. Now, I don't like the idea of them closing the account for no reason AND holding my funds for 1-3 months. What bullshit. I will continue looking. Gotta be somewhere good to sell on.
Random Thoughts
I removed those garbage AdWords. As I figured, no one bothered to click but me, and I didn't get paid for any of them. Not that I had many visitors. It said I had several displays a day, but who knows if it counted GoogleBots or not. I didn't think it would work. Whatever.
Yahoo Ads brought in visitors at .15 cents a click, but I only got two orders this week, both had items out of stock. No fun at all, running an e-Store. I still think Getting on Amazon would help draw customers at an affordable price.
I found a website called www.ioffer.com that is an anti-ebay.You list items or have a whole store, no fees. I liked that. When you sold, they take about 5%, which is less than ebay. You can accept offers for your items, or accept only full price. It will suck in your ebay feedback and listed items making join the service quite easy. Last thing i liked was that you can setup with Google Base (Froogle) from their system. So, you suck in ebay, then expot to Froogle. Nice.
My 4th batch of IPods arrived tomorrow, so I will be busy with that for the next few days. I even hired someone on to help me prep them. As they need to be formatted, tested, cleaned and photographed, it becomes time consuming. My wife thinks I'm silly for paying someone to help. However, time is money, and the sooner I can get these listed on EBay, the sooner they will be sold, and the sooner I can buy more. With the help, i can get all 30 listed on EBay this weekend, and have them sold in no time.
Getting batch 5 delivered from china sure takes a while. I have no patience for all this waiting, when I dont have inventory to sell.
Hey, i don't have inventory to sell! Well, I have 8 Generic 1gb IPods left. They likely won't sell until I drive traffic in with the new batch of 30 30giggers.
I listed the 4gb Nanos on ebay as a Presale. Surprisingly, I sold one. I don't have them in stock, and I am charging more than anyone else. Yet, I can still sell them. Pretty amazing.
I had listed a chess set on ebay two weeks ago. in 10 days, only 27 people looked at it, and no one bought it. That was a waste, but I tried. Next idea please.
I started work on the lingerie store. Once again, inventory mess that needs to be reindexed in excel and properly linked to images. Been busy at work past two days, so no time to spend on this. With the ipods coming in, guess this will hit the back burner again.
Yahoo Ads brought in visitors at .15 cents a click, but I only got two orders this week, both had items out of stock. No fun at all, running an e-Store. I still think Getting on Amazon would help draw customers at an affordable price.
I found a website called www.ioffer.com that is an anti-ebay.You list items or have a whole store, no fees. I liked that. When you sold, they take about 5%, which is less than ebay. You can accept offers for your items, or accept only full price. It will suck in your ebay feedback and listed items making join the service quite easy. Last thing i liked was that you can setup with Google Base (Froogle) from their system. So, you suck in ebay, then expot to Froogle. Nice.
My 4th batch of IPods arrived tomorrow, so I will be busy with that for the next few days. I even hired someone on to help me prep them. As they need to be formatted, tested, cleaned and photographed, it becomes time consuming. My wife thinks I'm silly for paying someone to help. However, time is money, and the sooner I can get these listed on EBay, the sooner they will be sold, and the sooner I can buy more. With the help, i can get all 30 listed on EBay this weekend, and have them sold in no time.
Getting batch 5 delivered from china sure takes a while. I have no patience for all this waiting, when I dont have inventory to sell.
Hey, i don't have inventory to sell! Well, I have 8 Generic 1gb IPods left. They likely won't sell until I drive traffic in with the new batch of 30 30giggers.
I listed the 4gb Nanos on ebay as a Presale. Surprisingly, I sold one. I don't have them in stock, and I am charging more than anyone else. Yet, I can still sell them. Pretty amazing.
I had listed a chess set on ebay two weeks ago. in 10 days, only 27 people looked at it, and no one bought it. That was a waste, but I tried. Next idea please.
I started work on the lingerie store. Once again, inventory mess that needs to be reindexed in excel and properly linked to images. Been busy at work past two days, so no time to spend on this. With the ipods coming in, guess this will hit the back burner again.
Friday, January 4, 2008
International Sales
I have found that selling in Canada has noticeably increased my orders. This is because the item gets listed on EBay.com and Ebay.ca as well. I sold 3 iPods to Canada within 10 hours. Nice.
The downside, is that shipping there is darn near impossible for someone who has never done it before. USPS wants a special envelope, and cost more than UPS. With USPS, I can use my normal packaging, but I needed an extra Global Commercial Invoice I had to download from the website. I needed to fill it out with all sorts of information that I didn't actually have until i called UPS back and had someone walk me through how to fill it out. Now that I figured it out, I will make an easily edited one on my computer so I can just changed the information of the buyer.
The downside, is that shipping there is darn near impossible for someone who has never done it before. USPS wants a special envelope, and cost more than UPS. With USPS, I can use my normal packaging, but I needed an extra Global Commercial Invoice I had to download from the website. I needed to fill it out with all sorts of information that I didn't actually have until i called UPS back and had someone walk me through how to fill it out. Now that I figured it out, I will make an easily edited one on my computer so I can just changed the information of the buyer.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Beyond Liquidation
My first idea was to buy and sell on ebay. Then I asked "If they can sell on EBay for so little money, where did THEY get it from?" and the answer was www.liquidation.com. Then I asked another question: "If they can sell it for cheap on liquidation, where do THEY get it from?". The answer is Returns, Salvage, and China.
Salvage looks dangerous to me, I can't justify the financial risk. Returns have worked out well so far with iPods, but other products scare me because I can see myself stuck with 10 broken PSP's and no way to fix them. China, on the other hand, intrigued the hell out of me.
I've been able to sell these generic iPods fairly well. With a $40 mark-up, I can't complain. So, my biggest question seemed to be "How the hell do I buy directly from china?" followed by "How do I buy directly from china, and not get fucked?"
The answer is www.globalsource.com. This website, is the Holy Grail. Direct from China, thousands of generic brand products, from hundreds of different companies.
You are lucky you found this website. One day, soon, I will collect all my thoughts, and sell this information. In a nice little package, complete with bonuses I've never even mentioned on here. The more I figure out, the more I want to charge. I don't know how much yet, but it will certainly be more than a $9.99 e-book on ebay. If someone is serious, all this information I share could easily change someones life. After all, my wife hasn't worked in over a month, and I haven't even noticed, financially.
Salvage looks dangerous to me, I can't justify the financial risk. Returns have worked out well so far with iPods, but other products scare me because I can see myself stuck with 10 broken PSP's and no way to fix them. China, on the other hand, intrigued the hell out of me.
I've been able to sell these generic iPods fairly well. With a $40 mark-up, I can't complain. So, my biggest question seemed to be "How the hell do I buy directly from china?" followed by "How do I buy directly from china, and not get fucked?"
The answer is www.globalsource.com. This website, is the Holy Grail. Direct from China, thousands of generic brand products, from hundreds of different companies.
You are lucky you found this website. One day, soon, I will collect all my thoughts, and sell this information. In a nice little package, complete with bonuses I've never even mentioned on here. The more I figure out, the more I want to charge. I don't know how much yet, but it will certainly be more than a $9.99 e-book on ebay. If someone is serious, all this information I share could easily change someones life. After all, my wife hasn't worked in over a month, and I haven't even noticed, financially.
A Reply
"It’s easy to come out breathing fire in the fledgling new year, dedicating yourself anew to conquering the world, building empires, and making all that you see your own, but the reality is often far from that."
Today was the first business day of the new year. Today I bought $3,500.00 worth of merchandise to sell on ebay. My inventory will be gone by the end of the month. By then, I will have already purchased another shipment for sales in February. By March, I will be planning Christmas.
Is this some wishful sense of grandeur? No. This is my fifth such order within two months. I have only just begun to hit my stride. It's actually quite easy once you learn to play the game.
The point is this: Set your goals, learn what you need to learn, then get off your ass and do it.
Today was the first business day of the new year. Today I bought $3,500.00 worth of merchandise to sell on ebay. My inventory will be gone by the end of the month. By then, I will have already purchased another shipment for sales in February. By March, I will be planning Christmas.
Is this some wishful sense of grandeur? No. This is my fifth such order within two months. I have only just begun to hit my stride. It's actually quite easy once you learn to play the game.
The point is this: Set your goals, learn what you need to learn, then get off your ass and do it.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Google Ads
Ok, So, I guess this Google stuff is setup. Once the system goes through the blog, and picks up keywords, it will start generating ads. Now, it's part of the legalese that I can't ask you to click on anything. So, i won't do that. But, I'm sure we would all like to see what kind of money this thing will pay, and there is only one way to find that out.
In theory, what we need to do, is come up with some nice keywords that will generate ads that will bring in some ads that pay out the big bucks. As I have mentioned previously (I think) it cost me .75 cents for a top slot in "Board Games" but a top slot for "Buy Chess" was more like $3.00- $4.00, so was "Gifts for Him". How about stuff like XBox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii.
yeah, Yeah, OK, that's enough of that crap. I just checked in on my .11 cent bids, and they are doing abysmally. I upped the bid to .12 cents and we will see how that does. I already know that .15 cents was too high, believe it or not. So, I'll find the happy medium in there somewhere.
Oh yeah, porn, boobs, pussy, vagina, and naked women. (Well, if we are going to be getting ads around here, we can at least make them interesting, right?)
In theory, what we need to do, is come up with some nice keywords that will generate ads that will bring in some ads that pay out the big bucks. As I have mentioned previously (I think) it cost me .75 cents for a top slot in "Board Games" but a top slot for "Buy Chess" was more like $3.00- $4.00, so was "Gifts for Him". How about stuff like XBox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii.
yeah, Yeah, OK, that's enough of that crap. I just checked in on my .11 cent bids, and they are doing abysmally. I upped the bid to .12 cents and we will see how that does. I already know that .15 cents was too high, believe it or not. So, I'll find the happy medium in there somewhere.
Oh yeah, porn, boobs, pussy, vagina, and naked women. (Well, if we are going to be getting ads around here, we can at least make them interesting, right?)
Game Store
This game store is proving to be a thorn in my side.
I setup Yahoo Ads to be limited to $10 per day, and .11 cents per click.
The problem seems to go back to these damn vendors I need to deal with. My first day of the new ad, I get an order for $155. Sounds good right? I was pretty excited. Then after about 15 minutes of digging around, I find out that two of his products are discontinued. Another product came from a second vendor which would be additional shipping and additional drop ship fee. The fourth product was actually without issue. Since he ordered over $100, I could not charge him shipping, because I am competing with other companies that offer the free shipping also.
Long story short, I waste 1/2 hour gathering information, make about $17 on the sale (then minus the yahoo costs), and in the end, he just canceled the order anyway, and I don't blame him.
I keep telling myself Christmas was a shitty time to try and start this, and also that starting any business will have it's difficulties.
The other issue is that I am breaking a drop ship rule. The rule is to only sell products from one distributor. this way there is only shipping and fees from one company. Since I have some 5 companies listed so far, my profit is tough if they order from too many places. That's my call though, because I am trying to have more available than my competition. For example, I seem to be the only one who sells a product from a particular vendor, and that gives me a leg up on everyone else.
I think I also started with the hardest one, the games. the next one I will do is Women's Lingerie, in hopes for sales during Valentines. Tis would be easier because it's less products (By far) and only one distributor. Nice stuff too, cross between Victorias and Fredricks. Nice, but slutty.
I setup Yahoo Ads to be limited to $10 per day, and .11 cents per click.
The problem seems to go back to these damn vendors I need to deal with. My first day of the new ad, I get an order for $155. Sounds good right? I was pretty excited. Then after about 15 minutes of digging around, I find out that two of his products are discontinued. Another product came from a second vendor which would be additional shipping and additional drop ship fee. The fourth product was actually without issue. Since he ordered over $100, I could not charge him shipping, because I am competing with other companies that offer the free shipping also.
Long story short, I waste 1/2 hour gathering information, make about $17 on the sale (then minus the yahoo costs), and in the end, he just canceled the order anyway, and I don't blame him.
I keep telling myself Christmas was a shitty time to try and start this, and also that starting any business will have it's difficulties.
The other issue is that I am breaking a drop ship rule. The rule is to only sell products from one distributor. this way there is only shipping and fees from one company. Since I have some 5 companies listed so far, my profit is tough if they order from too many places. That's my call though, because I am trying to have more available than my competition. For example, I seem to be the only one who sells a product from a particular vendor, and that gives me a leg up on everyone else.
I think I also started with the hardest one, the games. the next one I will do is Women's Lingerie, in hopes for sales during Valentines. Tis would be easier because it's less products (By far) and only one distributor. Nice stuff too, cross between Victorias and Fredricks. Nice, but slutty.
Blog Advertising
When I finished my last post, I noticed an ad that says "Earn money from your blog
Let your blogging pay off with relevant ads from Google AdSense." and I had a thought. What if I stab myself in both eyes with a steak knife, and sell my soul for a few dollars.
Up front, I would say that I hate, Hate, HATE internet advertising, especially clogging up blogs. Garbage on the page where all I want to do is read something useful.
I would additionally ask who the hell clicks on those damn things anyways? It will make a mess of my page, and not bring in any money anyway.
Then I think of another blog I go to. He recently mentioned that his blog makes him about $5,000 per month in advertising revenue. He is making plans to quit his job, and blog full time.
What? No way! I'll tell you, those Yahoo ads that are placed on random internet pages certainly work to drive traffic to my store, so somebody is clicking on them.
After all, I figured no one bothers to read this blog at all, but I know of two readers that are out there, cheering me on. Besides, if every other post of mine mentions the words Chess, Backgammon, Gifts for Him and Gifts for Her, then I **edited out because of AdSense Rules** to click on all the "Buy Chess" ads, I could make some money. Serious money. Or not... I won't really know. It said that they won't tell me how much money THEY made on the click, so how do I know if I got a fair share? It said "Although we don't disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks."
So, I decided what the hell, I'd give it a shot. After all, it says "There's no cost, no obligation, and getting started is quick and easy." Of course, that's followed by legalese of what I can, and can not do. What I can post about, and what I can't. I would love to tell you about it all, but it said I would be in violation, if I mentioned any of it to you. HA! Google Adsense system is really obnoxious. They are going to "Review" this blog to make sure it's real, and what kind of content it has on it. I better not mention the words Casino, Gambling, or Tobacco. The Google World Police will then veto my ability to become part of their collective.
So, it says I will get paid 30 days after I reach $100 in clicks. Yeah, OK, I'll hold my breath.
Oh, another odd thing. When I went to sign up, it said that I did NOT have an account. Which i find odd, since I DID have an account. For that Game Store stuff. I guess when I complained about the system last time, they booted me out. Ha, that's funny.
Since I can't have Yahoo Ads with these Google Ads, maybe I should make a clone of this website on some Yahoo system and sign up for their system too. hmm... I guess no one ever said I couldn't have two identical websites run on two different systems.
Let your blogging pay off with relevant ads from Google AdSense." and I had a thought. What if I stab myself in both eyes with a steak knife, and sell my soul for a few dollars.
Up front, I would say that I hate, Hate, HATE internet advertising, especially clogging up blogs. Garbage on the page where all I want to do is read something useful.
I would additionally ask who the hell clicks on those damn things anyways? It will make a mess of my page, and not bring in any money anyway.
Then I think of another blog I go to. He recently mentioned that his blog makes him about $5,000 per month in advertising revenue. He is making plans to quit his job, and blog full time.
What? No way! I'll tell you, those Yahoo ads that are placed on random internet pages certainly work to drive traffic to my store, so somebody is clicking on them.
After all, I figured no one bothers to read this blog at all, but I know of two readers that are out there, cheering me on. Besides, if every other post of mine mentions the words Chess, Backgammon, Gifts for Him and Gifts for Her, then I **edited out because of AdSense Rules** to click on all the "Buy Chess" ads, I could make some money. Serious money. Or not... I won't really know. It said that they won't tell me how much money THEY made on the click, so how do I know if I got a fair share? It said "Although we don't disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks."
So, I decided what the hell, I'd give it a shot. After all, it says "There's no cost, no obligation, and getting started is quick and easy." Of course, that's followed by legalese of what I can, and can not do. What I can post about, and what I can't. I would love to tell you about it all, but it said I would be in violation, if I mentioned any of it to you. HA! Google Adsense system is really obnoxious. They are going to "Review" this blog to make sure it's real, and what kind of content it has on it. I better not mention the words Casino, Gambling, or Tobacco. The Google World Police will then veto my ability to become part of their collective.
So, it says I will get paid 30 days after I reach $100 in clicks. Yeah, OK, I'll hold my breath.
Oh, another odd thing. When I went to sign up, it said that I did NOT have an account. Which i find odd, since I DID have an account. For that Game Store stuff. I guess when I complained about the system last time, they booted me out. Ha, that's funny.
Since I can't have Yahoo Ads with these Google Ads, maybe I should make a clone of this website on some Yahoo system and sign up for their system too. hmm... I guess no one ever said I couldn't have two identical websites run on two different systems.
iPods Everywhere
What can I say? This has to be the best idea I ever followed through with. I can sell those damn things all day, every day. It wasn't just christmas, either. My sales haven't even slowed down, really. Doing this won't work for every product, nor will it work for everyone, but it seems perfect for me.
Sure, it has it's hassles because of suck-ass customers, but overall it seems to be easy money. If I had larger pockets, I could possibly do it full time, seriously. However, it takes a large sum of money to keep it going, at least to start. My first batch of 40 4gb ipods cost $2140, second batch of 40 4gb ipods cost $2140, third batch of 30 1gb generics cost $775, and my newest batch of 30 30gb ipods cost $2520.
Technically, as long as I keep one batch at a time, it's the same $2000 capital being reused over and over. Then the added sales pay for all the paypal/ebay/postal fees. This is more of a long-term plan, rather than a get-in get-out thing. After 1 month, I have made a cash profit of only $300. However, my real profit is still inventory sitting on my floor. I'll make my money as long as I keep plugging away at it.
The big money stopper was those generic ipods. Sure, they sell, so it's not like it was a bad idea, it's just that it takes a while. Apple ipods can sell 5 in 1 hour. the generics only do about 1 per day. I could lower the cost, but that seems to be counter intuitive. So it takes an extra week or two to sell off, whatever. It's tough to stand firm when I look at that measly $300 for all this work, but I keep telling myself I am building a long-term business. In another month or two, my 'company' should be self-funding and will continue to bring in an actual paycheck every week. This is not only the IPods, but includes my Game Store, and whatever other e-store I setup in the coming months.
I have been toying with the idea to go asking around for Private Funding for my project. If I can borrow $2000 from someone, pay them like 10% or $7 per iPod sold or something, then that could be it's own funding source that doesn't have to come out my own pocket. This would allow me to buy twice as much inventory. Not only that, but that would be inventory that someone else would NOT be able to buy. Slowly, I would able to corner the market. Yeah, i know, big ideas.
Sure, it has it's hassles because of suck-ass customers, but overall it seems to be easy money. If I had larger pockets, I could possibly do it full time, seriously. However, it takes a large sum of money to keep it going, at least to start. My first batch of 40 4gb ipods cost $2140, second batch of 40 4gb ipods cost $2140, third batch of 30 1gb generics cost $775, and my newest batch of 30 30gb ipods cost $2520.
Technically, as long as I keep one batch at a time, it's the same $2000 capital being reused over and over. Then the added sales pay for all the paypal/ebay/postal fees. This is more of a long-term plan, rather than a get-in get-out thing. After 1 month, I have made a cash profit of only $300. However, my real profit is still inventory sitting on my floor. I'll make my money as long as I keep plugging away at it.
The big money stopper was those generic ipods. Sure, they sell, so it's not like it was a bad idea, it's just that it takes a while. Apple ipods can sell 5 in 1 hour. the generics only do about 1 per day. I could lower the cost, but that seems to be counter intuitive. So it takes an extra week or two to sell off, whatever. It's tough to stand firm when I look at that measly $300 for all this work, but I keep telling myself I am building a long-term business. In another month or two, my 'company' should be self-funding and will continue to bring in an actual paycheck every week. This is not only the IPods, but includes my Game Store, and whatever other e-store I setup in the coming months.
I have been toying with the idea to go asking around for Private Funding for my project. If I can borrow $2000 from someone, pay them like 10% or $7 per iPod sold or something, then that could be it's own funding source that doesn't have to come out my own pocket. This would allow me to buy twice as much inventory. Not only that, but that would be inventory that someone else would NOT be able to buy. Slowly, I would able to corner the market. Yeah, i know, big ideas.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Auction Tricks
Here is a little trick I learned about Liquidation Auctions. I should not be telling you this. You are my competition. However, I figure, very few people will read this, and of those, few will try buying iPods, and of those that do, I will unlikely be bidding on the same exact auction away.
Lets say you have a product you want to buy from www.liquidation.com, my case is obviously iPods. I started by seeing what was available to buy. This week (being christmas, it was slow) there some 512k shuffles and 1gb and 2gb nanos. All of which were overpriced at auction, so I let them all pass. I focused on 3 batches of 30gb iPods, all of which were ending today. Morning, noon, and afternoon.
Now, how many people do you think are out there bidding on $2,000+ worth of broken iPods? Not too many. In fact, there was only three of us, and three auctions. The morning one bid up to $2,700 because all three of us bid on it. The noon one bid up to $2,700 because two of us bid on it. With the last auction of the day, I was the only person left standing willing to spend that kind of money. I won the auction for $2,400 because there wasn't any competition left. Do you know who drove the price up that high in the first place? Yes, the same three people... we were the only ones interested for the day. I have done the same thing on each of my other auction purchases, creating hundreds more in my profit margin.
The moral of the story, is that you should not get emotionally attached. Set your top price, and stick to it. If someone else is willing to pay more, let him. There are always more auctions to buy from. Pace yourself, and at some point you will win the auction. The same goes for Ebay. There is a reason I can sell a 4gb nano for $115, and another one won't even make my reserve price. It's called timing. They drove up the price on themselves.
The other moral, and true trick, is to focus on the auctions that are at the end of the day. Let everyone else fight it out, when they leave for the day, you can get the real deal. the same goes for EBay auctions. There is a reason I will only sell in the morning, and that i called competition. by 8pm at night, people are watching TV, doing homework, or even bought their product for the day. Morning sales bring in more than 20% over comparable evening sales, in my experience.
In a nutshell, Sell in the morning, Buy at night.
Lets say you have a product you want to buy from www.liquidation.com, my case is obviously iPods. I started by seeing what was available to buy. This week (being christmas, it was slow) there some 512k shuffles and 1gb and 2gb nanos. All of which were overpriced at auction, so I let them all pass. I focused on 3 batches of 30gb iPods, all of which were ending today. Morning, noon, and afternoon.
Now, how many people do you think are out there bidding on $2,000+ worth of broken iPods? Not too many. In fact, there was only three of us, and three auctions. The morning one bid up to $2,700 because all three of us bid on it. The noon one bid up to $2,700 because two of us bid on it. With the last auction of the day, I was the only person left standing willing to spend that kind of money. I won the auction for $2,400 because there wasn't any competition left. Do you know who drove the price up that high in the first place? Yes, the same three people... we were the only ones interested for the day. I have done the same thing on each of my other auction purchases, creating hundreds more in my profit margin.
The moral of the story, is that you should not get emotionally attached. Set your top price, and stick to it. If someone else is willing to pay more, let him. There are always more auctions to buy from. Pace yourself, and at some point you will win the auction. The same goes for Ebay. There is a reason I can sell a 4gb nano for $115, and another one won't even make my reserve price. It's called timing. They drove up the price on themselves.
The other moral, and true trick, is to focus on the auctions that are at the end of the day. Let everyone else fight it out, when they leave for the day, you can get the real deal. the same goes for EBay auctions. There is a reason I will only sell in the morning, and that i called competition. by 8pm at night, people are watching TV, doing homework, or even bought their product for the day. Morning sales bring in more than 20% over comparable evening sales, in my experience.
In a nutshell, Sell in the morning, Buy at night.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
eCommerce
So, if you want to check it out, my store is at www.the-game-store.com and I think it came out quite well. Opening day was a rush to try and snag a few last christmas sales. While I did manage to get a few orders, I saw where there was some serious flaws. I was not going to find them until I went live. They are now a thing of the past, but I thought I would mention them.
I signed up with Google's AdWords. To this day, weeks later, it still isn't working. Stay away from this system, it really sucked. Nothing would get done unless I emailed customer service asking them what the fuck was going on. I've gone into detail about this before, so I won't rehash it.
I then signed with Yahoo's Adword system, and I was more than pleased with the system, and the results. Minutes after setting things up it was driving traffic to my store by the truckload. This, is obviously good. I can only assume that my problem was christmas time. Since I was peddling board games, I was competing with some serious bidders for top slots. I would guess my average per-click price was about .75 cents each. 30 visitors was costing over $30, and that did not take long to get that many hits. Other really good keywords was going to cost WAY too much for my blood. For example, both "Buy Backgammon" and "Buy Chess" were going for $7 - $11 EACH visitor. It was insane. The reason, was that they were shooting into a barrel trying to get someone to buy a $1000 Alabaster Chess Board and $750 Chessmen. But realistically, all I found was under $50 sales.
In the end of the weekend, I made 3 sales, $20 profit, and spent $250 in advertising. Now, obviously there is a better way of going about it. I think if I could get results from .10 cent hits, that would be affordable. Also, Amazon.com looked like a real deal at only $40/mo so i will look further into this at a later date.
Anyway, other issues I had with the store was that shipping was right on my site, but when it went over to paypal, it only charged about 50% of the shipping. Turned out to be some hidden "feature" I needed to disable. I also noticed that I was wholly undercharging for one companies products. Both these issues ended up costing me $4 to make my first sale.
I also had many Out of Stock issues pop up. One customer is going to wait for it to come back in stock next month, so I can make another $20 off that.
In general, I am putting the whole store thing on a shelf for now while I add more products to the database I am creating for the website. If you missed that part, none of these companies have valid databases of products they carry, so I am creating it all by hand from their website, one page/product at a time. It's a huge time waster. I would never do this if it wasn't for the fact that I do nothing at all at my day job. Seriously, for the past 14 months, I go in late, and run my side business from my desk. Everyone knows, and no one really cares. I do actual work for about 1 hour a day, if that much. I have no clue why they employ me. I have no idea why they pay me top dollar to do it, either. I used to worry about it, thinking if they caught on, they would fire me, but they never did care. Of course, now I'm just gloating.
I signed up with Google's AdWords. To this day, weeks later, it still isn't working. Stay away from this system, it really sucked. Nothing would get done unless I emailed customer service asking them what the fuck was going on. I've gone into detail about this before, so I won't rehash it.
I then signed with Yahoo's Adword system, and I was more than pleased with the system, and the results. Minutes after setting things up it was driving traffic to my store by the truckload. This, is obviously good. I can only assume that my problem was christmas time. Since I was peddling board games, I was competing with some serious bidders for top slots. I would guess my average per-click price was about .75 cents each. 30 visitors was costing over $30, and that did not take long to get that many hits. Other really good keywords was going to cost WAY too much for my blood. For example, both "Buy Backgammon" and "Buy Chess" were going for $7 - $11 EACH visitor. It was insane. The reason, was that they were shooting into a barrel trying to get someone to buy a $1000 Alabaster Chess Board and $750 Chessmen. But realistically, all I found was under $50 sales.
In the end of the weekend, I made 3 sales, $20 profit, and spent $250 in advertising. Now, obviously there is a better way of going about it. I think if I could get results from .10 cent hits, that would be affordable. Also, Amazon.com looked like a real deal at only $40/mo so i will look further into this at a later date.
Anyway, other issues I had with the store was that shipping was right on my site, but when it went over to paypal, it only charged about 50% of the shipping. Turned out to be some hidden "feature" I needed to disable. I also noticed that I was wholly undercharging for one companies products. Both these issues ended up costing me $4 to make my first sale.
I also had many Out of Stock issues pop up. One customer is going to wait for it to come back in stock next month, so I can make another $20 off that.
In general, I am putting the whole store thing on a shelf for now while I add more products to the database I am creating for the website. If you missed that part, none of these companies have valid databases of products they carry, so I am creating it all by hand from their website, one page/product at a time. It's a huge time waster. I would never do this if it wasn't for the fact that I do nothing at all at my day job. Seriously, for the past 14 months, I go in late, and run my side business from my desk. Everyone knows, and no one really cares. I do actual work for about 1 hour a day, if that much. I have no clue why they employ me. I have no idea why they pay me top dollar to do it, either. I used to worry about it, thinking if they caught on, they would fire me, but they never did care. Of course, now I'm just gloating.
Ticket Sales
Toni asked a question. I don't know who Toni is, but thanks for reading. He asked if I wait in line or go to ticketmaster. The answer, is neither. I had been using www.livenation.com. When I purchased those TSO Tickets (Awesome seats BTW, I could see right up the girls skirts! er.... sorry) they started sending me weekly updates of what they have coming up for pre-sales and regular sale dates. I'll skim through and see if there is anything of interest.
Here's the thing though, TSO tickets were only $60 each, and at the time, I didn't have any other real uses for the money other than leaving it in a 5% savings account. So, the fact that I had $1000 tied up in tickets for 2 months was easy money. These Van Halen tickets were $210 each, $421 for the pair. If I add on (my new rule of thumb) profit margin of 25%, then tack on StubHub fee of 15% on top of THAT, now your talking $615/pair and who the hell wants to pay that?!?
Right now, to stay competitive, I've dropped below 20% otherwise I'll never move the damn things. While it IS easy money, now it's tying up over $800 that now I would rather spend on the iPods because that is faster money with a much greater profit margin.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not going back on what I said about tickets being a bad idea. After all, in 6 weeks I made $550 on TSO tickets, about a 50% profit. What I AM saying, is that I can make that in under two hours on ebay. It's more work dealing with "customers", but it pays much better, and much faster.
Here's the thing though, TSO tickets were only $60 each, and at the time, I didn't have any other real uses for the money other than leaving it in a 5% savings account. So, the fact that I had $1000 tied up in tickets for 2 months was easy money. These Van Halen tickets were $210 each, $421 for the pair. If I add on (my new rule of thumb) profit margin of 25%, then tack on StubHub fee of 15% on top of THAT, now your talking $615/pair and who the hell wants to pay that?!?
Right now, to stay competitive, I've dropped below 20% otherwise I'll never move the damn things. While it IS easy money, now it's tying up over $800 that now I would rather spend on the iPods because that is faster money with a much greater profit margin.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not going back on what I said about tickets being a bad idea. After all, in 6 weeks I made $550 on TSO tickets, about a 50% profit. What I AM saying, is that I can make that in under two hours on ebay. It's more work dealing with "customers", but it pays much better, and much faster.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Google AdWords
AdWords have MANY policies that they enforce with dictatorship accuracy. While I agree with some of them, like no ads about Prostitution, Hacking, Phishing, Freaking, etc... I honestly fail to see why using a keyword of Casino or Cigarettes would be banned. Go ahead, try a google search and you won't find anything listed at all.
Who made Google the World Police for Ethics? My Board Game Website sells Casino products like Poker Chips and Dice, but I can't say that, otherwise my ad gets disapproved.
I also can't have page forwarding either, which is silly. Which means www.abc.com gets sent to www.xyz.com because, again, who cares. While I can aplaud Google for keeping the system clean and keeping out bogus bullshit, but it takes DAYS before these ads get approved or disapproved, which leaves me without revenue until they get around to fixing the problem. In this case, I loose out of Christmas Traffic while they bother to tear my ad apart.
Who made Google the World Police for Ethics? My Board Game Website sells Casino products like Poker Chips and Dice, but I can't say that, otherwise my ad gets disapproved.
I also can't have page forwarding either, which is silly. Which means www.abc.com gets sent to www.xyz.com because, again, who cares. While I can aplaud Google for keeping the system clean and keeping out bogus bullshit, but it takes DAYS before these ads get approved or disapproved, which leaves me without revenue until they get around to fixing the problem. In this case, I loose out of Christmas Traffic while they bother to tear my ad apart.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
DropShip Warehouses
What the hell are these people thinking anyway? I have dozens of warehouses I am jugging here, and not ONE of them has a usable database speadsheet that I can use to import into my website. The images are either ginormously large or low resolution garbage. I am spending hours and hours of my life building usable data for my e-store. And these forst 3 were the easy ones! The next one I have to scan in a price list, OCR the text, scan in the paper catalog, extract the images, OCR the text there too and put it all back together as something my website will import. I have complained to them all, and the just shrug at me.
I swear, If I was building a long lasting website that will generate lots of money for me, I would never bother with all this junk. My wife is SO pissed off at the amount of time I've wasted in my office. Whenever she complains, i have to point out that since she isn't working anymore, she has to stay out of my way and let me do whatever I have to do to bring in a steady flow of money. I'll be damned if I'll be out working part time at Burger King, I tell you that.
It's a shame the real estate market is doing so badly. I was good at flipping houses, damn good. But now, the house across the street from my rental has gone on the market at less than what I have invested in it already. So, it looks like I have little chance at selling it anytime soon.
I swear, If I was building a long lasting website that will generate lots of money for me, I would never bother with all this junk. My wife is SO pissed off at the amount of time I've wasted in my office. Whenever she complains, i have to point out that since she isn't working anymore, she has to stay out of my way and let me do whatever I have to do to bring in a steady flow of money. I'll be damned if I'll be out working part time at Burger King, I tell you that.
It's a shame the real estate market is doing so badly. I was good at flipping houses, damn good. But now, the house across the street from my rental has gone on the market at less than what I have invested in it already. So, it looks like I have little chance at selling it anytime soon.
Small Blog World
I was reading a Blog that I go to regularly and the guy starts talking about this blog I am writing here. I was quite surprised because what are the odds of finding anything on the internet anymore. i mean, I doubt I would be able to find him again even if I tried.
He had mentioned that Selling broken IPods on Ebay wasn't his "Thing". Well, shit, it wasn't my "thing" either until I calculated $1000 in two weeks.
If I failed to mention before, the reason I picked IPods is because, like cell phones, everyone needs one. The other reason is that they are generally easy to fix, taking less than 10 minutes each. Out of Batch #1, I threw away 3 that were just beyond saving, Selling 5 "as-is" broken for parts, and 32 were sold between $71-$129 each. I estimate my walk away number is about $900 for two weeks in my spare time.
The 30 New Ipod Knock Offs are expected to bring in about $1300-$1500 in ONE week. And that's without actually doing anything to them but shipping them out.
The comment was made about "Dealing with the Public" and yeah, I've had my share of morons this past week. One person never replied again after winning, another said his 9 year old bid by mistake, and yet another complained that a new one could be had for $20 more. So, sure, there is a general hassle factor, but I feel the profits are enough for me to suck up and deal with it.
It was also mentioned about buying things other than IPods on liquidation websites. And that I can almost agree with. Almost. For example, I could buy Xboxes and PSP's and resell those for profit. the catch is, if they really are broken, what the hell do I do then? Same for toasters and blenders. At least with the IPods I have a chance to fix.
He had mentioned that Selling broken IPods on Ebay wasn't his "Thing". Well, shit, it wasn't my "thing" either until I calculated $1000 in two weeks.
If I failed to mention before, the reason I picked IPods is because, like cell phones, everyone needs one. The other reason is that they are generally easy to fix, taking less than 10 minutes each. Out of Batch #1, I threw away 3 that were just beyond saving, Selling 5 "as-is" broken for parts, and 32 were sold between $71-$129 each. I estimate my walk away number is about $900 for two weeks in my spare time.
The 30 New Ipod Knock Offs are expected to bring in about $1300-$1500 in ONE week. And that's without actually doing anything to them but shipping them out.
The comment was made about "Dealing with the Public" and yeah, I've had my share of morons this past week. One person never replied again after winning, another said his 9 year old bid by mistake, and yet another complained that a new one could be had for $20 more. So, sure, there is a general hassle factor, but I feel the profits are enough for me to suck up and deal with it.
It was also mentioned about buying things other than IPods on liquidation websites. And that I can almost agree with. Almost. For example, I could buy Xboxes and PSP's and resell those for profit. the catch is, if they really are broken, what the hell do I do then? Same for toasters and blenders. At least with the IPods I have a chance to fix.
More Tickets
Since the TSO concert tickets did pretty well for me, I decided to up the ante a bit and I picked up 4 Van Halen tickets. They cost $210 each and I currently have them listed on StubHub for $370 each. This price puts me just below the bulk of the pack. There are always low ballers that resell the tickets at just above cost, which I think is just a waste of time. Since I spent an hour of my time to buy and list the tickets, then put up $850 that will sit for weeks into months before I sell them all, I simply need to make more than $25 per ticket. I was hoping for a much faster sell out since this area is small, but sadly good seats are still available. Oh well, I suppose they will be sold out soon enough.
I still get emails about those TSO tickets (the show is tomorrow) and I have been sold out for weeks. I just checked StubHub and all the tickets on there were sold out now too. So either they got tickets by now,or they simply are not going.
I still get emails about those TSO tickets (the show is tomorrow) and I have been sold out for weeks. I just checked StubHub and all the tickets on there were sold out now too. So either they got tickets by now,or they simply are not going.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
IPod Christmas Sales
Wow... I tore through my IPod inventory in 5 days. I literally could not list them faster than I was selling them. What a wonderful problem to have! I seem to currently have 6 good ones to sell off tomorrow, all for profit, between $90-$120 each. This tail end is where I can finally make my money. I also have 2 more I need to fix using a Macintosh (some problems seem to fix better on a Mac) and I have 9 busted ones that need actual attention from me. While I could EBay them off as broken for $30 each, I would rather take a few minutes and swap out the parts and fix them. Like, I can use one to swap the LCD, another a Battery, etc... it's pretty easy, if your so inclined, like I am.
I Won't have time though, because I took all the money I plan on making, and I ordered 40 more Ipods as well as 30 Brand New Generic IPod Rip-Offs. These other ones sell for less, but they cost me so little, the mark-up is awesome. In this case, I got them for about $23.00 each with an expected sale of $60-$80 each. Yeah, seriously, do the math. Since I make a few more bucks off shipping to cover costs, it's like $50.00 each times 30 means a profit of about $1500. Thats more money than I'll make from monkeying around with the scratched up IPods. That revelation came to me AFTER I spent another $2000 on the next batch. Oh well, whatever, They will sell, no problem.
My wife thinks this is because it's christmas, that's why I can sell them so fast for so much. Maybe she is right. That's why I picked up 2 more batches I can get out the door before christmas rush is over. Personally, I think when they don't get what they actually wanted, they will just go out afterwards and buy more IPods, giving me anoither month of great sales. But, if I can keep this going, that would be amazing.
Just as a followup, while I am here, I am also working on the Board Game Website. Really tough work since these dumb assed distro places don't have any usable databases. This means I have to go through every item myself. This lag means I will likely miss any real christmas sales since a bulk of my time is spent keeping up on the IPods.
I Won't have time though, because I took all the money I plan on making, and I ordered 40 more Ipods as well as 30 Brand New Generic IPod Rip-Offs. These other ones sell for less, but they cost me so little, the mark-up is awesome. In this case, I got them for about $23.00 each with an expected sale of $60-$80 each. Yeah, seriously, do the math. Since I make a few more bucks off shipping to cover costs, it's like $50.00 each times 30 means a profit of about $1500. Thats more money than I'll make from monkeying around with the scratched up IPods. That revelation came to me AFTER I spent another $2000 on the next batch. Oh well, whatever, They will sell, no problem.
My wife thinks this is because it's christmas, that's why I can sell them so fast for so much. Maybe she is right. That's why I picked up 2 more batches I can get out the door before christmas rush is over. Personally, I think when they don't get what they actually wanted, they will just go out afterwards and buy more IPods, giving me anoither month of great sales. But, if I can keep this going, that would be amazing.
Just as a followup, while I am here, I am also working on the Board Game Website. Really tough work since these dumb assed distro places don't have any usable databases. This means I have to go through every item myself. This lag means I will likely miss any real christmas sales since a bulk of my time is spent keeping up on the IPods.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
1st Day Selling IPods
Yesterday I had listed 3 of my 4gb Ipod Nanos. At the time of purchase, I went into it hoping for a profit of $10 each, which would have brought my expected profit between $350 and $400. Happy was my surprise when I was expecting 22 good and 18 bad Ipods and it turned out to be 29 good and 11 bad ones. All that would be extra profit for me since I can obviously sell a working one for more than a broken one.
I bought them expecting to sell them for a minimum of $80 for the good ones. The first three IPods I sold today went for $91, $96 and $116. One of them had no accessories and was beaten to death. It amazes me what people will pay for an IPod. Crazy.
I don't know if you can do the math, but I made as much profit today selling 3 IPods as I did working for 8 hours. Grand total spent on buying,refurbrishing, and selling these three was under 1 hour.
Tomorrow, I have 5 of those bad boys selling on EBay. Can't wait to see how well they do. No wonder I was always being out bid when i tried to buy them. Lot's of money to be made. Of course, that's only if they aren't broken, which I really had no idea about before I bought them. looks like this will pay off very well for me. Sweet.
I bought them expecting to sell them for a minimum of $80 for the good ones. The first three IPods I sold today went for $91, $96 and $116. One of them had no accessories and was beaten to death. It amazes me what people will pay for an IPod. Crazy.
I don't know if you can do the math, but I made as much profit today selling 3 IPods as I did working for 8 hours. Grand total spent on buying,refurbrishing, and selling these three was under 1 hour.
Tomorrow, I have 5 of those bad boys selling on EBay. Can't wait to see how well they do. No wonder I was always being out bid when i tried to buy them. Lot's of money to be made. Of course, that's only if they aren't broken, which I really had no idea about before I bought them. looks like this will pay off very well for me. Sweet.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Wholesalers
The different companies I am dealing with seem a little hit or miss. One sent me five catalogs in the mail with a welcome letter, another charged $15 and sent me a package of materials, and others didn't even lift a finger. Some gave me nice Excel database spreadsheets with all products listed complete, and others had half assed ones I had to manually update, and others don't have anything at all.
So, lets be honest here, why would I deal with a company that would make me manually enter 500 products by hand (6 hours), and the next company has a simple modify and upload to my server (15 minutes). Gee, which company do you think I'll be dealing with?
So far, I have a Game site mostly setup. I have Adult toys and lingerie coming soon. I also expect to do one for Tools as well. Once I finish setting up this first Site, the others should be little more than copying the website server files into a new folder and uploading different images and data.
I finally used OSCommerce Website. Configuring it was a pain in the PHP ass. Every bell and whistle had to be hand coded into it. However, now that it is mostly done, I really like the way it turned out. It's useful, looks good, and does everything I want it to.
So, lets be honest here, why would I deal with a company that would make me manually enter 500 products by hand (6 hours), and the next company has a simple modify and upload to my server (15 minutes). Gee, which company do you think I'll be dealing with?
So far, I have a Game site mostly setup. I have Adult toys and lingerie coming soon. I also expect to do one for Tools as well. Once I finish setting up this first Site, the others should be little more than copying the website server files into a new folder and uploading different images and data.
I finally used OSCommerce Website. Configuring it was a pain in the PHP ass. Every bell and whistle had to be hand coded into it. However, now that it is mostly done, I really like the way it turned out. It's useful, looks good, and does everything I want it to.
Ipods Arrived
So, I bought 40 Ipod Nano 4GB 1st Gen. It cost $2140.00 and it was expect to have 22 Good and 18 Bad. If this was true, I calculated a profit of about $350. I've had a chance to go through about 1/2 the box and so far I have found 4 bad and 20 good. This is amazing because unless the other 16 are broken in half, I am going to make a nice profit on this. I estimate if I have 8 bad ones and 32 good ones, I'll profit about $850 which is 40% return on my money. Nice. Really Nice. I expect to start listing them on Ebay later today or tomorrow.
As I had expected, the reason most of them were returned (to Best Buy) was because the consumers were idiots. Many had a Folder with Exclamation when you turned it on. All they needed was to be reformatted and updated. I could see why they were returned, but come on people. Do a little research, huh? oh well, my profit. Three had bad LCD's, so those would be lost causes, but I have another that won't boot up. So if I can't get that one going, I'll just open them up and swap parts. Otherwise I'll ebay the broken ones as parts and get about $30 each.
As I had expected, the reason most of them were returned (to Best Buy) was because the consumers were idiots. Many had a Folder with Exclamation when you turned it on. All they needed was to be reformatted and updated. I could see why they were returned, but come on people. Do a little research, huh? oh well, my profit. Three had bad LCD's, so those would be lost causes, but I have another that won't boot up. So if I can't get that one going, I'll just open them up and swap parts. Otherwise I'll ebay the broken ones as parts and get about $30 each.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Wholeselling
The other day I signed up for a Business License. It cost me $50 and was delivered a day later, I was quite surprised, seeing as how I was dealing with the state. I then spent about 5 hours today going to different wholesellers and filling out their applications and sending faxes of the permit and whatever else they wanted from me. The whole process in dealing with them is terribly slow. Even if they responded right away, I still have to wait for packages to arrive in the mail. I'm not quite sure why this stuff needed to be mailed instead of emailed, but hey, whatever.
I've also spent several days screwing around with various shopping cart software. So far, they all seem to suck setting them up. I'm not quite sure exactly what I am looking for in the software, but different ones had different drawbacks in design that left me unhappy. Once I find one I like, I should be able to setup a store with minimal work if they can include a database to import. If not, entering all that stuff in by hand is gonna suck.
I've also spent several days screwing around with various shopping cart software. So far, they all seem to suck setting them up. I'm not quite sure exactly what I am looking for in the software, but different ones had different drawbacks in design that left me unhappy. Once I find one I like, I should be able to setup a store with minimal work if they can include a database to import. If not, entering all that stuff in by hand is gonna suck.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Ticket Scalping
A few months back I had took at shop at Ticket Scalping. I bought about $1000 worth of tickets, at various venue's for the TranSiberean Orchestra. It took me two months, but I have sold the tickets and made about $500 profit. I sold two sets from Ebay, none from CraigsList, and mostly from StubHub. I would check in weekly and adjust the price to reflect the going rates. As long as I don't plan on needing the money anytime soon, i would definitely do this again.
I would advise no more than 6 tickets per show. For example, I bought for three shows. One show sold all 6 tickets within 2 weeks. The next show sold within a month, and this last show took 2 months and has had quite a bit of competition. Since you never seem to know before hand, diversifying was a good idea to keep the money flowing back in. I would also, likely, not bother selling on ebay again because of the expiring listings and added cost of shipping. CraigsList is free, but people wanted tickets at cost or less. StubHub clients were willing to pay a premium for the tickets, so even with StubHub's high fees, it was still worth it to use them.
I would advise no more than 6 tickets per show. For example, I bought for three shows. One show sold all 6 tickets within 2 weeks. The next show sold within a month, and this last show took 2 months and has had quite a bit of competition. Since you never seem to know before hand, diversifying was a good idea to keep the money flowing back in. I would also, likely, not bother selling on ebay again because of the expiring listings and added cost of shipping. CraigsList is free, but people wanted tickets at cost or less. StubHub clients were willing to pay a premium for the tickets, so even with StubHub's high fees, it was still worth it to use them.
Banks and Companies Suck
I can't begin to tell you how much I hate banks and large companies. In this case, FNBODirect.com that I painfully signed up with a few months back. It was a hassle to start the account, maintain the account, and now access my money when I needed it. They wouldn't Wire Funds to another bank (wasting days before telling me). They would transfer money back to my original checking account, but it takes like a full business week. to do this. It's slow as dirt! So, I need to make a payment for this Ipod order, so I paid from my private funds, but I have bills that are due tomorrow, and this transfer was still slugging along. So, I had to log onto FNBO website and figure out how to activate this ATM card they gave me (thankfully I called up to request it!), then went to the bank and withdrew the max they would allow me to so I could put it back into my checking and pay who needed to be paid. this made me late for work, having to deal with this added time waster.
So, I loose any interest this month that I would have otherwise made because the $2000 transfer is no longer collecting interest, the ATM $1000 is no longer collecting interest, the Fees from the ATM transfer (both banks), then the time it is going to take to transfer this $1000 back to the savings account when the $2000 arrives. Lastly, I lost 1/2 hour pay from work because it took me so long to deal with this mess. At least i won't get any added late fees from bills that i couldn't pay, or from the liquidators who threated a $300 fee for being more than 2 days with payment.
At least, in the future, I will know how to properly deal with this slow bank, what not to expect from them, and how much cash I need to easily access to run my business.
So, I loose any interest this month that I would have otherwise made because the $2000 transfer is no longer collecting interest, the ATM $1000 is no longer collecting interest, the Fees from the ATM transfer (both banks), then the time it is going to take to transfer this $1000 back to the savings account when the $2000 arrives. Lastly, I lost 1/2 hour pay from work because it took me so long to deal with this mess. At least i won't get any added late fees from bills that i couldn't pay, or from the liquidators who threated a $300 fee for being more than 2 days with payment.
At least, in the future, I will know how to properly deal with this slow bank, what not to expect from them, and how much cash I need to easily access to run my business.
Monday, November 12, 2007
CubeCart
I found a free eCommerce Shopping Cart called CubeCart. I will be using that to setup my various stores with. I had previously downloaded one called ZenCart, but the configuration on it was assed-backwards. They gave the software away for free, but charged you for manual. WTF?!? Screw that.
I plan on opening three stores. One with Porn, another with Games, and another with self-help guides... like this site... except i will charge for it. I know plenty about stuff that I can sell information about. Three on my mind are buying real estate, advanced real estate investing, and now wholesaling. I know, I just started it, but I certainly don't need to charge $269 like I just paid. Pass along he same information for like $20 bucks or something. then charge extra for the actual list maybe. It's all about the up-sell right?
I plan on opening three stores. One with Porn, another with Games, and another with self-help guides... like this site... except i will charge for it. I know plenty about stuff that I can sell information about. Three on my mind are buying real estate, advanced real estate investing, and now wholesaling. I know, I just started it, but I certainly don't need to charge $269 like I just paid. Pass along he same information for like $20 bucks or something. then charge extra for the actual list maybe. It's all about the up-sell right?
Friday, November 9, 2007
Liquidation Bid
I have been been trying to get into a nice score with liquidation.com. It has proven to be difficult since I can't for the life of me figure out how these people plan to sell this stuff at a profit since they bid so high for the merchandise. The big thing for me, is that the listing don't really mention the true condition of the stuff. Does it come with boxes and manuals, or is just thrown in a box and left for dead? Seems to be a bit both, but I am bidding while I assume the stuff is broken, and they are assuming it's in full working order. Well, hey, they are the ones who may lose a ton on broken stuff.
I wanted to make sure that my bids were fast and accurate so I made an Excel spreadsheet that would allow me to quickly enter in key elements of the sale, and then have it spit back all kinds of useful information, like what my top bid should be. So far, my bids have been well under what it sold for.
Today I got lucky (maybe) and I won an auction for 40 4GB Ipod Nanos at $2,000.00. Yes, the price seems steep, but the payoff should generate several hundred for me in the next two weeks. On Ebay they sell like hotcakes at $80.00+ each and I picked them up for about $50.00 each. So, even with the ebay fees and what not, I should walk away with a little smile on my face. I'll let you know.
I wanted to make sure that my bids were fast and accurate so I made an Excel spreadsheet that would allow me to quickly enter in key elements of the sale, and then have it spit back all kinds of useful information, like what my top bid should be. So far, my bids have been well under what it sold for.
Today I got lucky (maybe) and I won an auction for 40 4GB Ipod Nanos at $2,000.00. Yes, the price seems steep, but the payoff should generate several hundred for me in the next two weeks. On Ebay they sell like hotcakes at $80.00+ each and I picked them up for about $50.00 each. So, even with the ebay fees and what not, I should walk away with a little smile on my face. I'll let you know.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Liquidation
I have solved the "How do they sell for so little on Ebay" question. As I had suspected, vendors go to sites such as liquidation.com and bid on boxes and pallets of stuff. Basically, you buy large quantities of stuff for several hundred dollars each, and then hope for the best.
In many cases, you don't know what your actually going to get. Sometimes they have pictures, sometimes they don't. Sometimes its returned merchandise, sometimes it's office salvage.
As for me, i decided to try the high road and bid on boxes of IPods. I figure, even broken, it can be sold for $60 each. I bid on a box of 30 and a box of 50, no idea how good or bad condition they are. I am hoping I can FrankenPod them and maybe resell a few working ones to turn some profit, then either keep the rest for parts or auction them off as well.
There is a guy (or Two) on EBay right now that sells them. They seems to be doing pretty well for themselves. Selling them for $30+ each. At that point, it doesn't matter how much they go for each. Just pay about $25 or less each at wholesale and I should be OK. I would be looking about about $1000 profit or more, believe it or not.
In many cases, you don't know what your actually going to get. Sometimes they have pictures, sometimes they don't. Sometimes its returned merchandise, sometimes it's office salvage.
As for me, i decided to try the high road and bid on boxes of IPods. I figure, even broken, it can be sold for $60 each. I bid on a box of 30 and a box of 50, no idea how good or bad condition they are. I am hoping I can FrankenPod them and maybe resell a few working ones to turn some profit, then either keep the rest for parts or auction them off as well.
There is a guy (or Two) on EBay right now that sells them. They seems to be doing pretty well for themselves. Selling them for $30+ each. At that point, it doesn't matter how much they go for each. Just pay about $25 or less each at wholesale and I should be OK. I would be looking about about $1000 profit or more, believe it or not.
Online Reselling
By basic is plan is to build a website using cascading style sheets. This means I can build one page, then use that template to replicate all the products I want to sell. I will then link them all through a free carting system I know of, then flow sales through PayPal. This is pretty much the same system I used years ago. The reason for building it manually, instead of an off-the-shelf system is cost. Using a pre-built cart would cost around $50.00 per month, plus setup fees. This way it will cost me $0 per month with $0 setup fees. That means more money in my pocket. Even if I wanted to expand, the pay version of this system is only $8/mo for 500 items.
Wholeselling
So, i made my way through all the diferent wholesellers on my list of several hundred. In the end, it came off to be a long list of items from an LTD catalog. Most of which I had no interest in at all, even though someone must be interested, obviously. What I narrowed it down to was to resell Board Games. The reason was the same as the adult stuff, bottom line was that were were only a few distributors I would need to deal with and be able to carry a decent selection of products. With Christmas here, I may be able to make a few bucks in the short term. From a brief email conversation I had with a distributor, I am apparently not he only person with this idea. He commented on the influx of new resellers.
AdWords Revisited
Apparently, all Ads placed on Google's AdWords system must be manually approved before being released into the wild. But, Now that it;s been OK'ed by some immortal being, it's cruising. In a few short hours, I've had over 1,200 ads placed, and had 6 hits (at .10 cents each, that's .60 cents). Here is the interesting part, with all the random keywords I chose (use your own imagination) by far, at over 80%, the number one keyword was (dramatic pause) Animal Sex.
Yeah, I know, right? It also sent me all 6 hits. Despite the topic (and the customers!) this shows a market for a product, which is what I was really hoping for. Once they get there, it's usual crap toys. If I was to target that market and advertise exclusively to them, selling products exclusively FOR them, I may well get a much better hit/miss ratio.
In my searching the other day, I remember seeing some blow up sheep or some such nonsense. Maybe I can find enough products and group them all together, then shoot at the target again.
Yeah, I know, right? It also sent me all 6 hits. Despite the topic (and the customers!) this shows a market for a product, which is what I was really hoping for. Once they get there, it's usual crap toys. If I was to target that market and advertise exclusively to them, selling products exclusively FOR them, I may well get a much better hit/miss ratio.
In my searching the other day, I remember seeing some blow up sheep or some such nonsense. Maybe I can find enough products and group them all together, then shoot at the target again.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Broken Ipods
There is quite a market for broken Ipods, believe it or not. You can buy them in bulk broken, take them apart, and put together a working one or two to sell. You can even resell the broken parts for profit. Seriously. I bought a broken Ipod and resold it a week later and profited $4.00. That was a profit of 5%, and it was infinitely less risk and hassle than the monitor was.
That case was buy one sell one. However, if I was to buy a lot 4 or more at about $40/ea then the profit margin would be closer to 40-50%. My only real issue would be constant packaging and inventory in/out. Of course, time to try and fix one can be an added expense as well, if I wanted to bother.
That case was buy one sell one. However, if I was to buy a lot 4 or more at about $40/ea then the profit margin would be closer to 40-50%. My only real issue would be constant packaging and inventory in/out. Of course, time to try and fix one can be an added expense as well, if I wanted to bother.
Advertising
While the mark-up on Adult Toys is crazy, and I am sure it makes plenty of money, the problem seems to be in advertising. Let's say there are 3 Toy distributors. Each vendor buys from them, but there are 1,300 vendors total. All 1,300 are either listed in some porn network, or they use Google AdWords. After 3 days, my ad has not come up once. Why? Too much competition.
The other problem is that there is no where else to list my products. Because of the adult nature, I am not allowed to list on Ebay, Froogle, Amazon, Overstock, or anywhere like that.
Seems that if I were to pursue this, I would need to take the Old-School Video Store approach. They openly rent regular movies, but in the back they rent the porn. So, i would need to setup a legitimate store to be seen on the big boys, but also sell the toys in the "back room". This would allow someone to buy a blender with a vibrator. While this may seem kinda silly, I wouldn't be surprised if it worked.
The other problem is that there is no where else to list my products. Because of the adult nature, I am not allowed to list on Ebay, Froogle, Amazon, Overstock, or anywhere like that.
Seems that if I were to pursue this, I would need to take the Old-School Video Store approach. They openly rent regular movies, but in the back they rent the porn. So, i would need to setup a legitimate store to be seen on the big boys, but also sell the toys in the "back room". This would allow someone to buy a blender with a vibrator. While this may seem kinda silly, I wouldn't be surprised if it worked.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Porno Shop
When I was 18, people would ask me what I wanted to do with my life, and I said "Open a Porno Shop". 10 years later, people asked me what I was going to do, and I said "Open a Porno Shop". Two years ago, someone asked me how I planed on retiring, and I replied "With a Porno Shop".
Well, I was just comparing the DirectShip I mentioned in the last post with online stores vs. the wholesalers and I simply can NOT belive the markup on those sex toys. We are talking 40-50%... of pure profit. And If you ever seen the prices, that's not spare change, at all. I just compared this product (does it matter which?) and one store sold it for $75, another sold it for $59. My cost would be $40 to have it shipped from the warehouse, to your house. All that difference in the middle would go right into my pocket.
I am so all over this.
Well, I was just comparing the DirectShip I mentioned in the last post with online stores vs. the wholesalers and I simply can NOT belive the markup on those sex toys. We are talking 40-50%... of pure profit. And If you ever seen the prices, that's not spare change, at all. I just compared this product (does it matter which?) and one store sold it for $75, another sold it for $59. My cost would be $40 to have it shipped from the warehouse, to your house. All that difference in the middle would go right into my pocket.
I am so all over this.
Ticket Sales
About 2 months ago I was given a ticket pre-sale invitation to buy concert tickets a month before the general public, and months before the show. I wanted to buy tickets for my family (6) but this was very expensive. So I bought 20 instead, heh. I had sold 4 on Ebay and 4 on StubHub. I had 6 for myself and still have 6 left to sell. At this point, I've paid up all the extra tickets, and like I said, I have 6 left. So, even if I sell them at cost, it will still pay for all of them, which was the whole point. Unfortunately, the show I have tickets for is proving to be difficult to sell because some other jack-off keeps under selling me taking my business. I am currently just above cost, and can't really go lower. Overall though, it should be worth it.
DropShipping
I think the Ebay idea was correct, but the execution sucked. The fact that some other guy flooded the marketplace with my product really pissed me of too. But this got me thinking, where did HE come up with all of them. The answer is likely in Wholesaling and Dropshipping. This would allow me to advertise hundreds of products, but not actually pay for any of them until after I was already paid, and the order placed. I list on Ebay, and when the order is placed, I give the shipping address to the warehouse and they ship directly to my customer. I profit the difference. I've spent the day researching this topic and I came up with a valid list of wholesale warehouses willing to do business like this. Since I already had an online storefront years ago, I already have a working knowledge of how to setup a store that accepts credit cards for free. All I need to do is populate it with products, then drive traffic there via ebay, amazon, overstock, froogle, and others like that. I am a really big fan of runing a business that doesn't involve me doing much of anything, even receiving the funds into my bank is automatic. If I use Andale, I can honestly set it, and forget it.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Ebay Sales
A big idea of mine, was pretty simple. Buy stuff on ebay at a discount, and then resell it properly for a profit. It wasn't supposed to be a huge amount of money, but I had hoped it would make up another hundred or two for the month.
Here's how it would work: Many electronic products are hot sellers, but improperly named. Or, it just so happened to fall under the radar for no particular reason. So, I chose a product that regularly sells for a specified amount, minus the expected profit, shipping, ebay relisting and paypal fees, then I am left with a ceiling price I can pay to buy it with. In theory, as long as I get a good deal, I should have no problem making money at it.
So, my first sale I shot for a Friday Listing and had it run through Monday 12pm PST. I was quite shocked when I did not get one bid. I immediately relisted it at a lower price, and shot for a Thursday sale.
As it turned out, I had twice as many views Monday to Thursday as I did Friday to Monday. I attribute this to more people either getting paid on Thursday, or looking forward to blowing the Friday paycheck before it even arrives. Anyway, I had 4 bids and ended up making about $10.00 or something silly like that. After looking at expired bids, it seems Wednesday was a super shitty day to sell (but great day to buy!)
While technically, not the windfall I was hoping for, if you change perspective it wasn't that bad as a dollar for dollar investment. Think about it this way, with a $401.00 investment on the 15th, two weeks later I had a 2.5% return on my money. To further put it into perspective, if I left that money in a High Yield Savings account (where it came from) it would have taken me 6 months to make that same $10.00.
If I left that $401.00 in the savings account, a year later it would be worth $20.00 interest. It's easy to see where I could make that on one sale. But, even if I follow the same schedule for the rest of the year, that same $401.00 would bring in another $260.
Now, sure, by itself it's not worth it, but if I put together 3-4 deals like that a week, that's another $200 per month income. Yeah, I know, it's nothing great. I'll admit it, I had hoped for better. Now it seems another company is flooding the marketplace with what I was going to resell next week. Figures.
Here's how it would work: Many electronic products are hot sellers, but improperly named. Or, it just so happened to fall under the radar for no particular reason. So, I chose a product that regularly sells for a specified amount, minus the expected profit, shipping, ebay relisting and paypal fees, then I am left with a ceiling price I can pay to buy it with. In theory, as long as I get a good deal, I should have no problem making money at it.
So, my first sale I shot for a Friday Listing and had it run through Monday 12pm PST. I was quite shocked when I did not get one bid. I immediately relisted it at a lower price, and shot for a Thursday sale.
As it turned out, I had twice as many views Monday to Thursday as I did Friday to Monday. I attribute this to more people either getting paid on Thursday, or looking forward to blowing the Friday paycheck before it even arrives. Anyway, I had 4 bids and ended up making about $10.00 or something silly like that. After looking at expired bids, it seems Wednesday was a super shitty day to sell (but great day to buy!)
While technically, not the windfall I was hoping for, if you change perspective it wasn't that bad as a dollar for dollar investment. Think about it this way, with a $401.00 investment on the 15th, two weeks later I had a 2.5% return on my money. To further put it into perspective, if I left that money in a High Yield Savings account (where it came from) it would have taken me 6 months to make that same $10.00.
If I left that $401.00 in the savings account, a year later it would be worth $20.00 interest. It's easy to see where I could make that on one sale. But, even if I follow the same schedule for the rest of the year, that same $401.00 would bring in another $260.
Now, sure, by itself it's not worth it, but if I put together 3-4 deals like that a week, that's another $200 per month income. Yeah, I know, it's nothing great. I'll admit it, I had hoped for better. Now it seems another company is flooding the marketplace with what I was going to resell next week. Figures.
Domain Registration
I would have been able to register a .com address for this site, but .ifo was on sale for $3.00 instead of $9.00. Sure, I know it's not much saved, but I really thought it was the principal of the matter. I would not be getting richer if I overspend when I didn't have to.
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