eBay Isn’t The Only Place to Sell Online

The Online Seller's News, April 2010, Volume 10, No. 6

Tips, Tools, News and Resources for eBay, Amazon and independent Online Sellers
by: Skip McGrath

In This Issue:

Musings from eBay and beyond

1. eBay Isn’t The Only Place to Sell Online
2. How To Make Money With an Email List
3. eBay Niche of The Month – Niche Music CDs
4. New Wholesale Sources for April 2010

"The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain." ~ Kahlil Gibran

Musings from eBay and beyond

If you want to find wholesalers, then you want to look where they advertise. Web Wholesaler Magazine is a free B2B publication where wholesale companies advertise to find sellers like you.  Click here to get your free subscription.

Most of you know my good friend Jim Cockrum perhaps as members of his online training site, The Silent Team –his membership website where I sometimes make an appearance. Jim has launched a new product this week that I talk about in article number 2.  But I wanted to tell you about another great eBook that he released recently called 20 Ways to Make Money on the Internet. This is a really good book and a great companion to my book on niche marketing, Ten Little Known, Highly Profitable Niche Markets on eBay.  See below for another great offer from Jim that will teach you how to build a profitable email list. I just finished going through the entire course and it is better than other email course I have see that cost hundreds of dollars.

Last month I gave you the link to my new article 44 Free Wholesale Sources for eBay and Amazon Sellers.  I have now expanded the article into a FREE eBook. Click here to download your free copy.  Please feel free to share this with anyone you wish.

Last month I told you about my visit to the ASD/AMD Wholesale Trade Show in Las Vegas. Another of my favorite wholesale trade shows is also coming to Las Vegas in May. It’s the National Hardware Show May 4-6, 2010. This show features over 2300 wholesale suppliers in categories of hardware, tools, outdoor living, DIY and lawn and garden. If you are interested in selling in any of those categories, then this is a great show to visit. Here is a link to register. Unfortunately I won’t be attending this one as we have a family event planned for the same dates.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman just added another $20 Million of her own money to her campaign to succeed The Terminator as governor of California. This brings her total investment to $59 Million of her own money.  That may sound like a lot, but she left eBay with over $1 Billion and Forbes Magazine still has her on the list of the top 500 richest people.

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1. eBay Isn’t The Only Place to Sell Online

I get a ton of email from folks who are frustrated with eBay asking where else to sell.  There are other places to sell and I will tell you about a few, but you have to realize that all of the alternative auction sites taken together, don’t even add up to 10% of eBay’s daily volume. If you really want to run a full-time online business selling products, then eBay and Amazon pretty much dominate the space.

However, there are some sites where you can sell and lots of sellers are having success with them

One of the most popular venues are penny auction sites. I have looked at several of them and the only one that has any traction seems to be BidCactus. Penny auctions are one of the booming verticals in the online auction space, and BidCactus seems to lead the pack.  They give good telephone and email support and their traffic and registrations are growing steadily.

They have a great offer running now where you can get $10 off of your first winning auction bid. Here is the info you need. $10 Off Your First Winning Auction at BidCactus with Code: K2T8BC

One great use of BidCactus is that I have seen items selling there so cheap, that you could buy them and turn around and sell them on eBay.

eCrater.com is a fixed price site that has attracted a lot of eBay sellers. I have some listings there and they do sell once in a while, but not enough to count on it for steady income.

Upillar.com is an up and coming classified site that is growing really fast due to a national radio advertising campaign.  I have listed a few things there will pretty good success. And its free to list so there is no risk.

A lot of eBay sellers really like OnlineAuction.com. They are also one of the oldest alternative eBay sites.

Ubid is also pretty popular. Most of their auctions start at just a buck.

And lastly there is ePier. They have also been around a long time. They lack many of eBay’s features and their fees are a bit high –but still less than eBay.

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2. How To Make Money With an Email List

Of all the online business opportunities, probably the easiest way to generate a steady and predictable income is with an email list. No I am not talking about SPAM, or purchasing email addresses.  To make money with an email list, you need to build and develop your own list of confirmed subscribers.

You can do this with a website, or blog and even with social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Of course you need a product to sell –but that is the easy part. Once you have a list, you can sell physical products, affiliate products, memberships, or your own information product.

But how do you build a good list?

In the musings section I told you about Jim Cockrum’s latest book. Jim is one of the most trusted Internet marketers and an absolute master of list building and email marketing.

Jim also has two wildly successful membership sites that have been in operation for YEARS and have a combined total of nearly ten thousand members. Anyone can create a membership site but it takes commitment and real value to sustain a membership site and keep it growing month after month. Jim is changing people’s lives and the evidence is clear.

…and the core of it all is his email list.

Jim has sold over 80,000 copies of his best selling eBook. That makes it one of (if not the all time) best selling eBook about success on the Internet.

He has over 120,000 subscribers that enjoy his weekly email newsletter. Did you catch that??? 120,000 subscribers (That’s 2.5 times the size of my list).

Jim didn’t purchase or illegally gather these names; all of them are 100% confirmed opt-in email addresses. That means that ALL of the subscribers on Jim's list asked to join the email list and then confirmed it a second time (by email) before being added to his newsletter campaign.

That's a HUGE accomplishment and it clearly qualifies Jim as one of the premier email list growth experts of our time.

Jim is offering his course to my readers at a $80 discount for the next week only. And you can test drive a couple of the training videos for free. Click here to learn more about Jim Cockrum’s List Building Course. Oh yes, like everything Jim sells, his course comes with a money-back guarantee.

You may be thinking: “What would I do with a list? What could I write about or sell?”  That’s OK, because Jim will answer that question for you. Everything is there from a master of the genre and one of the most trusted Internet marketers on the web today.

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3. eBay Niche of The Month – Niche Music CDs

The problem with selling music CDs on eBay is competition. There are so many sellers driving down prices that you can’t make any serious money unless you are a huge seller.  This leads to the other issue, which is the small amount of money made on each sale that you have to sell hundreds of CDs a week just to clear a few hundred dollars.

So why sell CDs? Over 90% of all the CDs sold on eBay feature music from popular artists and popular categories. That’s not where you want to go.  The answer is to look for very niche CDs.  There are millions of people who like unusual music and these people are constantly searching for products.

Here is an example:

Greg Laswell was never that famous and produced far fewer records than Justin Timberlake, so his fans have a harder time finding music and will pay much more for it.

Here are some other niche genres and artists that sold for good money:

As you can see these artists and styles are pretty niche.  And notice how much people will pay for them.  Now you probably think these are hard to find –but they’re not.  One of the best places to find these unusual CDs are at Library sales. Most libraries have a sale once or twice a year where they sell books, CDs and DVDs that were donated to them but they didn’t add them to their collection.

The other place you find these is at thrift shops and garage sales.  And lastly you can even find them from dealers.  Have you ever seen these people who set up at street fairs and flea markets.  These are dealers who buy used CDs in bulk and sell them cheap. Well a lot of time these people are sitting on valuable CDs that they will sell for a few bucks that are worth a lot more. Last year at our annual street fair I bought a copy of Phil Ochs in Concert for $5 that I sold on eBay for over $50.

If you want to know what to buy, just search Completed Auctions on eBay. When you search by category, eBay allows you to narrow down the categories to sub-genres and then search by price highest. You can then see what artists and CDs are selling for the most money. If you don’t know your music and artists this can take a bit of trial and error, but not that much. Almost anyone should be able to pick this up pretty quickly.

Lastly, when buying used CDs pay attention to condition. Sending out a CD with scratches is a quick way to earn poor feedback.

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4. New Wholesale Sources for April 2010

Deer Track Traders is a great supplier of Native American Jewelry, baskets and other merchandise –the real thing –not the stuff from China.

Foutz Trading Company is another wholesale supplier of Indian –primarily Navajo goods. They are actually located on an Indian Reservation.

Desert Images is a website that connects you with Australian Artists and craftspeople where you can buy directly at wholesale prices. Australian art is highly collected here in the US.

Akzan Wholesale imports and distributes wholesale fashion watches including name brands such as DKNY, Fossil, Swatch, Tommy Hilfiger and Casio.

Joissu is a leading importer and distributor of a wide range of wholesale toys, wholesale novelties, gifts and general merchandise.

7-Wholesale sells brand name jeans and fashion tee-shirts and other branded clothing for men and women.

The Brabo Group sells a great line of children’s clothing with fun themes including their Magic Socks.

Little boys still like to play with toy guns. The Parris Manufacturing Company sells a complete line of toy guns including the old standby western cap guns that are so hard to find these days.

Real Bugs sells jewelry and collector bugs encased in clear plastic. Sounds weird –but this stuff really sells.

That's it for now - See you in about two weeks with a new book and some great new news and info.

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

P.S. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it.

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