THE EBAY SELLER'S NEWS, JULY 2005, VOLUME 5, ISSUE #8

by: Skip McGrath

Musings

I put out a special notice of the newsletter the other day when I returned from eBay Live with a link to an article I wrote, Behind The Scenes at eBay Live. It's posted on the Free Articles page if you haven't seen it yet.

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Just before leaving for eBay Live, I heard the news that my good friend and mentor,Corey Rudl, had been killed in a tragic accident racing his Porsche. Corey was 34. Derek Gehl, Corey's close friend and the number two exec at the Internet Marketing Center has taken over with the support of Corey's wife Tracey.

I have met Derek on two occasions and can attest that he is very capable of carrying on the business. Derek has put up a special tribute offer for Corey's master course that will donate a substantial amount to a charity that helps young people become entrepreneurs --The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. You can read about this special offer here. This is a chance to get some really great FREE bonuses with Corey's course, while helping out a charity at the same time. I am affiliate of this program and will be donating a large portion of my affiliate income this month to our Support The Troops Phone Card Program.

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Speaking of the phone-card program; Karen and I started it just as the war with Iraq broke out --over two years ago now. Our readers and visitors to our web site have so far contributed almost $12,000. I know the war and the ongoing occupation is controversial, but there is almost universal support for our fine men and women who are serving and I would personally like to thank each and every one of you who have donated over the past two years. Karen and I have dozens of touching letters, emails and even signed photos of complete units and squadrons who have sent us thank-you notes. I am a little behind in posting some of the recent ones, but you can read some of them HERE.

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I have just obtained a distribution deal to sell the highly-regarded EZ Cube Table Top Studios. Rather than put it on this web site, I have started a new web size called EZ Auction Tools where I have listed the first few models of the EZ Cube studio I am selling.

If you struggle with your auction photos you should consider using one of these. I have used the 30" EZ Cube model for the past two years. With this system anyone can take a shadow-free perfect digital auction photo every time. Best of all I am selling them at prices between 10% to 30% lower than the EZ Cube retail web site. The best deal is the Table Top Portrait Kit. Don't let the word "portrait" throw you --it's not for human portraits, but it is a complete kit with lights and professional portrait-type backdrops to give your product photos that professional look.

I really recommend the complete kit because it comes with the special daylight-balanced, low-watt, high-output trumpet bulbs. But if you want to save money, you can buy the basic light tent and some inexpensive clamp lights from ACE Hardware. Your results will still be very good. (See my article below on improving your digital auction photos). If you go the clamp light route, you still may want to buy the special daylight-balanced bulbs. They put out a large amount of light, stay cool and you don't have to fiddle with the white balance on your camera.

At the moment I am only selling the basic kits, but later I will be adding special kits for photographing jewelry, coins & stamps and glassware. Eventually I plan to add more products and photo accessories.

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Before we get into this month's issue I want to thank all of the new subscribers who joined us at eBay Live and the many regular readers who came up to say hello --it was great to meet you in person. Karen and I were thrilled to meet each and every one of you.

IN THIS ISSUE

1. TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR AUCTION PHOTOGRAPHS
2. BUILD YOUR OWN E-COMMERCE WEB SITE IN TWENTY MINUTES
3. COMPETITIVE PRODUCT ANALYSIS ON EBAY
4. JOIN ME FOR FREE MONTHLY EBAY SELLING TELE-SEMINARS
5. AM I MAKING ANY MONEY ON EBAY?
6. NEW CONSIGNMENT SOFTWARE AND AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS From eBay LIVe! 2005
7. TESTIMONIAL CONTEST
8. NEW WHOLESALE SOURCES FOR JULY 2005

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1. TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR AUCTION PHOTOGRAPHS

Everyone knows that good photographs will help sell your items on eBay. Even though I have expensive cameras and equipment, I still occasionally struggle to get that just-right photograph that will show off the product I am selling to the best advantage.

Most digital photo problems are actually pretty easy to solve. There are a few things you can do to dramatically improve the quality of your photos. I am going to take the troubleshooting approach as a way of describing them:

• Photos Not Sharp - This is almost always due to camera vibration or movement. Digital cameras tend to favor slow shutter speeds. The best thing you can do to insure sharp pictures is get a Tripod. You can also use flash, but this tends to cause more problems such as hot spots, shadows and even overexposure in certain lighting conditions.
  
• Clutter & Distractions - I see this on eBay all the time. Someone puts an article on their dining room table and takes a shot that shows the dirty dishes on the kitchen countertop in the background. When you are composing a shot --take a moment to look past the object you are shooting and look at the background. Best of all, take the time to set up a neutral background such as a piece of white or colored craft paper taped to the wall and curving down to the floor. The curve in the paper will help to prevent shadows. A great solution is one of the EZ Cube portable photo tents mentioned above. You can get them from my web site www.EZAuctionTools.com.
  
  If you are shooting larger objects try hanging a solid color sheet or blanket in the background and just light the object from two sides. For clothing, display the items on a hanger or even invest in a sewing dummy or torso manikin. But once again, be sure to place them against a plain or non-distracting background.
  
• My Photos have an odd color to them - All but the cheapest digital cameras have an adjustment called White Balance. All light has color. Indoor light bulbs cast one color, while fluorescent or halogen each have their own color. If you set up a shot indoors using standard indoor (incandescent) bulbs and leave your white balance set on Daylight (the default for most cameras), your photos will have a yellow cast to them. The answer is to look in your camera's instruction manual for how to change the white balance. Some cameras have a button on them that you push just before you shoot and it automatically adjusts to the current light, while others have a setting for each type of light.
  
• Shadows, Hotspots and Reflections - Unlike film cameras, digital cameras prefer a steady light as opposed to flash. If you are shooting outdoors, shoot either in the open shade or on a cloudy day. This will mute the shadows and reflections. Indoors, you will need to use at least two and even three lights on each side of the object to help cancel out the shadows. Here again a curved piece of fabric, poster board or Kraft paper (you can now buy this in several colors at art supply stores) will help diffuse the light and minimize the shadows.
  
• My Photos all look gray - Most digital cameras have an exposure adjustment. It will usually be a knob or setting with + and - signs and numbers next to them. If your photos have a gray cast to them and they don't "pop" you camera is underexposing. This happens a lot if you shoot against a white background. The white is "fooling" the camera's automatic exposure adjustment. The answer is to simply set your exposure adjustment at +1. This will take care of the problem 90% of the time. If it doesn't work, then you may need to go to +1.5 or +2.

If you got to AuctionBytes, David Steiner has an excellent interactive tutorial on taking good photos. Also take a look at our EZ Cube photo tents and lights at my new web site EZAuctionTools.com.

2. BUILD YOUR OWN E-COMMERCE WEB SITE IN TWENTY MINUTES

In the article above I referred to my new web site, EZ AuctionTools. I built this site using a service from CityMax (another exhibitor at eBay Live). There are several companies offering template-based web sites, and I have used several of them over the years. CityMax, however, is by far both the easiest to set up and the most complete in terms of their offering. They are integrated with PayPal and the eBay API so you can actually launch an auction direct to eBay from the inventory in your shopping cart.

The system is very low cost, very easy to create pages and comes with a full suite of e-commerce tools including a shopping cart, two payment gateways (PayPal and Merchant Credit Card), email addresses, auto-responders, message board, and lots of additional specialized pages. Best of all they include all of the web site submission tools and services such as submitting your site to Google as well as getting your products indexed to Froogle and other popular shopping comparison sites.

It literally took me about twenty minutes to select a design and a color scheme, create a home page, About Me page and a Contact Us page and publish the site to the web. It took me about another hour to set up my product catalog, upload my photos and set up the shopping cart. Since then I have spent a couple of additional hours creating other pages. I did not use any HTML or technical skills beyond typing descriptions and uploading photos. I also used all of their free web marketing tools and received over 500 hits to the site the first week and by the third week I am averaging over 400 hits per day. That doesn't sound like that much traffic, but it is really good for a brand new site. It can take as long as 45 days for all of the major search engines to fully index a new site.

I have no pretensions about being a professional web designer and I am sure a real designer could offer a lot of critiques and improvements to what I have done --but I think you will have to agree the design is not bad. The site is friendly, functional and has already delivered traffic and sales.

A final feature is the easy to add Google ADwords that you can see at the bottom of every page. I am paying $16.95 a month for the site, but in three weeks I have already earned $37 from the Google ADwords.

You can try Citymax free for 10 days but that is without the shopping cart. You must sign up for at least one month to activate the shopping cart. They charge $19.95 a month or $16.95 month if you sign up for one year. When you start you will have a URL that is yourname.citymax, but you can use your own URL if you have one, or create your own unique URL for $8.95 per year.

The final benefit is that I really had a lot of fun doing this. Give it a try.

3. COMPETITIVE PRODUCT ANALYSIS ON EBAY

Competition factors into every thing you do on eBay. Almost every top seller on eBay I have met, spends at least two hours a week looking at his competitor's auctions and analyzing their performance relative to his or her own.

Finding Your Competitors

In the early days of eBay all you had to do was find a product at a good price and launch an auction. There was very little competition compared to today. For example in 2001 the digital camera category had less than 1000 cameras listed on any given day and sellers enjoyed conversion rations of over 50%. Today there are over 10,000 digital cameras listed every day on eBay and conversion ratios have fallen to below 30%. That means that on average you have to list your camera three times in order to complete a successful auction. This means you will pay eBay two listing fees for each successful auction. (eBay lets you re-list an unsuccessful item one time for free).

Does this mean you shouldn't sell digital cameras? Well it might, but not necessarily. If you analyze the auctions for digital cameras you will find that although only 30% of auctions close successfully, some sellers are closing over 60% of their auctions. This is where it pays to analyze your competition. Why is one seller closing a high percentage of auctions, when another is not? What are they doing differently? What listing and pricing strategies are they using? All of this is very helpful information. Before I launch a new product on eBay, I always take the time to first, find all of my competitors and then identify the most successful of those and examine their auctions and listing strategy.

The first step is to find you competitors. You could do a search for completed auctions and simply look at all of the completed auctions and list the sellers, but an easier way is to use Terapeak's Research Service. If you want to look beyond eBay to the whole World Wide Web, then you can use the WorldWide Brands Market Research Wizard. You can search by product, in this case digital camera, or even specific product, Sony Cybershot digital camera, and see who is selling them. This feature will allow you to list the most successful sellers by product. Now you can examine the auctions of each competitor.

Are Your Competitors Making Any Money

Ok, so what am I looking for when I look at a competitor’s auction? First of all, is your competitor making any money? Your competitor may be able to buy the same items you are selling cheaper if he or she is buying in larger quantities than you, but if not, then you are both paying roughly the same price for your merchandise. Let’s assume for this discussion that you can all buy at the same wholesale price.

Using Terapeak, look for the competitors first with the highest conversion ratio. Look at their average selling price, subtract the estimated cost, eBay and PayPal fees and determine his or her profit margin. Is he making any money? If he is selling dozens of cameras a week and making only a 15% or less margin after fees then his business is marginal because overhead and inventory carrying costs can easily eat up this small a margin. If he or she is making a 25% margin, but only selling a couple of cameras a week, then he is making money on his auctions, but not much overall.

Now look at the auctions to determine what they are doing differently from other sellers with lower conversion ratios. Are they offering free shipping? Are they starting their auctions at a low price to attract early bidders? Are they using a reserve? How much detailed information do they provide about the product? Are they offering any type of money back guarantee? What day to they start and end auctions? Do they use any eBay special features? What is their feedback total and positive percentage?

List these and any other items you notice. Now move on to the competitor with the highest ASP. Ask the same questions about this seller and write down your answers.

Now compare your auctions to theirs. What are they doing that you are not? Can you find a pattern? Is the seller who is offering free shipping really making any more money than one who is not after he pays for the shipping? If a seller is getting a lot of bids by starting his auctions at a low price, does he ever get stung by having to sell a camera lower than his cost?

It doesn't matter what the product is. You can be selling high-end electronics or used clothing. All of this information is there for the taking –you just have to learn how to find it to use it and analyze it.

Can I Make Money With This Product?

This is where the rubber meets the road and what all of this research is about when you get to the bottom line, at the end of the day. (Ok, I just wanted to see how many stupid clichés I could pack into one sentence. Eat your heart out Andy Rooney.)

All kidding aside, “Can I make money with a given product?” is a decision eBay sellers face almost every day or week. Unless you have found that one dream product and control the source of supply, you will always have varying levels of competition. Remember all of the other top sellers are looking at the same reports and using the same research tools that you are.

The biggest mistake many eBay sellers make is purchasing a product first, then trying to sell it on eBay. In this world of internet access to virtually any product from anywhere in the world, there is absolutely no reason to jump at a product offering, no matter how good it seems, without first performing the research tasks we have discussed here.

Your research goal as it relates to sourcing product should be twofold. First, is there a market for this product on eBay? And second, can I buy it at a low enough cost and sell it at a high enough price to make money?

Finally, it pays to test a product before buying a large supply. If you can't get samples from the manufacturer or distributor, then buy one or two at retail and launch them on eBay to see if they really will sell for more than your proposed wholesale cost. Yes, you may lose a few dollars doing this, but it could save you hundreds or even thousands.

4. JOIN ME FOR A FREE MONTHLY TELESEMINAR

Starting next Saturday, I will be presenting a monthly teleseminar on a wide variety of topics related to selling on eBay. The first call will be this Saturday, July 9th. at 8:30 AM Pacific Time --11:30 Eastern Time.

The topic is "Taking Your Trading Assistant Business Up Market." This is based on a talk I gave at the TA Booth at eBay Live. It is about learning how and where to find consignors who will provide you with higher-value goods to sell on eBay. If you currently sell on consignment whether you are a TA or not, or if you are thinking of getting into consignment selling on eBay, you will want to listen in. Click Here to register for the seminar and to get the phone number and passcode.

I usually publish this newsletter the first week of each month. So each month I will announce the topic here in the newsletter and the Teleseminar will be on the following Saturday. Teleseminars are somewhat expensive to put on. I had a choice of charging for them or getting a sponsor. My current readers know that I am involved in helping promote Seller's Voice, a system for placing audio in your auctions. Seller's Voice has agreed to sponsor the teleseminars from now until the end of the year. So you will hear a short plug for Seller's Voice in each seminar. Taking a few moments to consider the Seller's Voice proposition will not only benefit your auctions if you try it, but will help keep the teleseminar's free.

Speaking of Seller's Voice, I just ran another blind test on eBay. I put Seller's Voice audio in one of my auctions for my eBay Consignment Manual. I ran two identical Dutch auctions --one with audio and one without. The auction without audio sold 2 books and the one with audio sold 5. That is a 150% increase.

Here is a list of topics that I will cover in future teleseminar's between now and the end of the year:

• Finding the perfect product to sell on eBay
• Driving buyers from your auctions to your eBay Store and web site
• Mastering the art of the up sell
• How to research products and run test auctions
• How to get into and shop for wholesale bargains at Merchandise Marts and Trade Shows

I will be announcing future dates and times here in the newsletter and in a box on the home page.

5. AM I MAKING ANY MONEY ON EBAY?

That may sound like a simple question, but you would be surprised to know how many sellers don't have a clue. In the business world the term for measuring the results for your business is called Business Metrics. Metrics are nothing more than key measurements you apply to your business to determine if you are profitable and succeeding in your goals. Let's first look at some key eBay metrics and then we will talk about how you can use them. Don't be afraid of the math --a fifth-grader could do this.

ASP - Average Selling Price. This is the average selling price of all your auctions that sold. Do not count those that ended without a successful bidder.

STR - Sell Through Rate. This is the percentage of auctions that ended successfully. If you launched 50 auctions last month and 39 of them closed with a winning bidder or a Buy-it-now sale, then you divide 39 by 50 which will give you your STR of 78%. In general an STR of 60% or better is considered excellent.

GMS - This is your gross merchandise sales. Nothing more than adding up all your sales for the month. Do not include non-paying bidders --only the sales for which you received payment.

FTS Rate - This is your Fees To Sales Rate. FTS is the percentage of your GMS that you spent on eBay Fees. Some sellers also add their PayPal fees to this, but I don't recommend that as you will see later. To calculate FTS simply divide your eBay fees for the month, by your GMS. For example if you collected $9,200 GMS for the month and you incurred $875 in eBay fees, your FTS Rate is (875 / 9,200)= .095 which is 9.5%.

NPB Rate - This is your Non-paying Bidder rate. It is nothing more than the ratio of how many auctions ended successfully versus how many were not paid for. If you had 115 auctions end successfully and 6 of them were not paid for, you just divide 6 / 115 = .052 which is 5.2%

GM - This stands for Gross Margin. GM is your income for the month, less your direct costs. Your direct costs are the cost of the goods you sold plus your eBay fees. If shipping is a break-even you can ignore it for this calculation. However, shipping & insurance is a cost center for me that I always try to make a little money on. so I include what customers pay me for shipping in my Income and the cost of shipping materials and postage in my direct costs.

There are several more metrics that large professional sellers use. Probably the best discussion of eBay metrics and how to use them to grow your business is the book eBay Strategies by Scot Wingo, the founder of Channel Advisor. (Available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble online).

OK - So how do I use all these fancy numbers now that I know them? If you set up an excel spread sheet with the metrics across the top and the month's of the year down the side it will be very easy to spot trends in your metrics. This way you can even graph them if you want to see a visual.

Let's start with ASP. I like to track my ASP because I am lazy and don't like to launch a lot of auctions. The higher my ASP the fewer the number of auctions I have to launch to hit my monthly sales goal. Also if my product mix is stable and my ASPs are falling, that is a warning sign. I may have a new competitor, their could be a large supply of the products I sell hitting eBay, or seasonality is affecting my auctions. When I see this happening I can take several actions. I can have a sale to quickly dump the merchandise, or I might move the goods to a web store where I can get higher prices. The point is that I know something is happening by watching my ASPs.

STR is one of the most important metrics in terms of increasing your profitability. If your STR is 50%, then you are paying two eBay listing fees for each auction that sells. After the cost of goods sold (what you pay for the products you sell), eBay fees are your next largest expense. Anything you can do to increase your STR will usually put money in your pocket.

GMS - I like to track my GMS every month to see if I am on track to reach my goals and I need the GMS figures to do my other ratio calculations.

FTS Rate - This is a biggee. eBay fees can really eat up your profits . My goal is always keep this under 8%, unless I am selling a lot of high-value merchandise, in which case I may accept up to 10%. If your rate is higher than that, start looking hard at the special options you are purchasing and what you can do to increase your STR.

NPB Rate - This is often a factor of the type of merchandise you sell. Because I sell information products in addition to merchandise, I tend to get more NPBs than most. NPBs sometimes leave you negative feedback when you go through the NPB process on eBay to either get paid or to get your fees refunded. If my NPB rate is low and my feedback were still a low number, then I will usually let it go and eat the fees. If, however, my NPB rate is significantly affecting my profits, then I will chase them down.

GM - Your Gross Margin is where it all comes together. This is the one calculation that tells you how much money you made at the end of the month. I personally know several eBay sellers who were not tracking this and actually thought they were making money when they were not. One fellow I worked with had a FTS rate of 19%. When we went though all his sales and costs for the month he had made a Gross Margin of $14 on GMS of $2,114.00

There is one other metric and that is Net Profit. Your net profit is your GM less other costs such as PayPal fees, monthly ISP fees, computer payments and so on. Most of these fees are either fixed such as your monthly ISP fee and others such as PayPal you can't really do much about, so it is far more important to track your gross margin to see if you are making money.

It is very easy to get these numbers. Just sign up for Sales Reports on your My eBay Page. Some of the ratios such as ASP and GMS are calculated and you just have to copy them onto a spread sheet.

6. NEW CONSIGNMENT SOFTWARE AND AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS AT eBay LIVE

Automation is very important to any eBay seller, but more so to the trading assistant or consignment seller. As a consignment seller you have all the time consuming issues that any eBay seller has to deal with, plus you have to keep good records on your consignors, fees, commissions and payments.

Auction Wagon was showing their Store Manager Pro based on the G2 platform. This is a very robust solution designed primarily for drop-off stores with excellent consignment tracking built in. The new feature this year was the addition of CraigsList to the ability to sell on eBay.

Auction Wagon offers another service for the consignment seller that bears mentioning. If you are starting your business working out of your home and you would like to get started selling immediately, they offer a program called the Auction Wagon Management System. It works like this: You take an item in on consignment, take the photos and write a short description. You then email this to Auction Wagon. They put the auction up and sell the item for you. They charge fees on a sliding scale, but most fees average 33%. They collect payment from the buyer and tell you to ship the item. Once the buyer receives the item, they pay you 20% of the final value, keep 13% for themselves and then they send the balance to the consignor.

Of course you are making less money with this system, but you are also doing very little of the work. As I have mentioned many times, one of the highest value tasks you can do is finding consignors with merchandise to sell. If you were making 33% margin on your auctions, you would easily spend part of that on overhead, eBay fees and perhaps even an employee. If you really want to run a large consignment business then you are better off doing everything yourself --but this could be a great way for the small seller to manage the business or just to get started until all of your other systems are up and running.

Mpire was one of the big hits of the show. This is a new auction management company started by eBay power sellers. The system has all the functionality of the large auction management companies, plus they have designed a consignment module in from the beginning. Mpire is now in Beta testing with several users and will launch to the general public in August. If you visit the site now you can sign up for a Free 30-day Trial.

The other trading assistant product I liked was Marketblast from 4-D Software. This is an off-line software program that performs virtually all the functions of eBay automation software but also contains a full-featured consignment model that includes consignor inventory tracking, commission and fee splits and all the functions a consignment seller or trading assistant could ask for. Best of all is the price. Marketblast goes for a one-time fee of $99.00. That's it and you own it.

7. TESTIMONIAL CONTEST

Last month I announced a testimonial contest where you could submit testimonials. Well --I did get some very nice testimonials, but I also received complaints from several people that the contest was too short. By the time they read about it the holiday was here and the contest was over. So I am extending the deadline to July 15th. Here are the details:

If you send me a testimonial that I use (I can use up to about 20 total) you will get two benefits. You can select a FREE copy of any of my books --AND each testimonial that I use will qualify for a drawing for a Table Top Photo Studio --value $294.00. I have about 35,000 readers out there and I don't want my email program swamped --so I have set up a special yahoo address to receive the testimonial submissions.

Please send your testimonials to: ebaysellersnews@yahoo.com

What makes a good testimonial? First of all it should be truthful and credible. Please don't make up testimonials. Next the testimonial should show a clear benefit you received by reading this newsletter or from purchasing one of my books. "The Complete eBay Marketing System is an awesome book" is a nice testimonial but it doesn't show a benefit. Something such as " Skip's Book, The Complete eBay Marketing System laid out a system that I used to triple my eBay business within two months," shows a clear benefit that someone can identify with.

8. NEW WHOLESALE SOURCES FOR JULY 2005

I have recently updated my top-twenty wholesale sources. Any of you who have purchased before ($2.99) shold revisit the site to see the updates. If you would like to buy the Top Twenty Wholesale Sources Just click on the link to visit my eBay Store where you can buy it for $2.99 with a money-back guarantee.

World Wide Brands also created a lot of excitement at eBay Live! San Jose. Their drop ship solution actually puts you in contact with manufacturers instead of using a drop ship middleman. They have the added advantage of being the only drop ship source that is an official eBay Solutions Provider. I have personally used their service to find manufacturers who drop ship for me. To date I have over $8,000 in sales from just one manufacturer I found on their site.

As I said in my article on eBay Live, I am not sure if it’s public knowledge yet, but Go Wholesale, the internet wholesale search engine, merged with their largest competitor Wholesale 411. I have featured the Go Wholesale search engine on my web site for some time. It was always good –this will make it great !!!

Pre-qualified Asian Suppliers: Alibaba.com's wholesale search service connects you with sellers mostly in Asia, but other places as well. . If you read my eBay Live wrap up, you know the story of this very interesting company whose parent company is duking it out with eBay in China. When you get to the Alibaba home page, click on the link to Gold Suppliers. Unfortunately there are some suppliers listed on Alibaba that can be less than reliable. Gold Suppliers, however, are pre-qualified and have to pass a rigourous screening to be listed. Once on the Gold Suppliers page, there is a search box where you can search only the Gold Suppliers.

Digital scales are big sellers on eBay. Last month I mentioned Awesomewholesale. Another large scale supplier is Vector Distribution.

eBay announced a strategic partnership with Global Sources, a large Asia supplier search engine, at eBay Live. The terms of the dea,l and how Global Sources will help source products in smaller quantities, are not yet clear. They are supposed to release more information later this month.

Hayes Specialties distributes a large line of glow products including the hot flashing drink glasses.

Pet supplies and novelties are huge sellers on eBay. Future Is Hot is a company that sells a wide variety of pet novelty items and accessories and King Wholesale sells a large line of higher-priced professional pet products. Another good supplier of low cost pet items is DollarDays,

I suspect the wristband craze is almost over, but if you want to get in our it, you can buy assorted wrist bands from Escapade International for as low as 6-cents each in quantity.

The cell phone market on eBay is pretty saturated, but there is always money to be made working around the edges of a popular product. Smooth Talk International sells a large variety of cell phone accessories, cases, batteries and iPod gear such as distinctive cases, speakers and other gadgets.

There are hundreds of Barbque grills sold on eBay --but none like these. Coastal Professional Grills makes a line of serious grills in the higher price range.

Wholesale Airsoft is a direct importer of the popular line of airsoft sporting guns. They sell airsoft pistols for as low as $1.00. You will have to register on the site to get access to their pricing.

The latest teen fad is digital belt buckles from Puka Creations--these are belt buckles with digital LEDs that allow the wearer to spell out a message.

That's in for now. See you next month

Skip McGrath