New Book ~ How To Make Money Working From Home

The Online Seller's News, September 20, 2010, Volume 10, No. 16

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

In This Issue:

Musings from eBay and beyond

1. New Book ~ How To Make Money Working From Home
2. Should You Cruise The Amazon for The Holidays?
3. Will Used Goods Sell During The Holiday Season?
4. Vendor Review – buySAFE
5. Help me Support Hug a Hero to Get Daddy Dolls to Kids
6. New Wholesale Sources for eBay, Amazon & Online Sellers

"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt." ~ William Shakespeare

Musings from eBay and beyond

I ran this item in the last issue and forgot two things:

1. I forgot to give you the link to the special offer. It is www.stamps.com/skipmcgrath
2. The other item was “who is this for?” Basically Stamps.com will save time and money if you ship at least 20 to 25 items a month or more through USPS. Less than that and you should just stick with the PayPal/USPS interface.

Stamps.com has extended the special offer they made to my readers again. If you use this link you can save $100. New customers will get:

• $45.00 in Free Postage
• A $50.00 Postage Scale
• $5.00 in free supplies

I like Stamps.com mostly because it saves me time, but it also saves me money. Get postage discounts on Priority Mail & Express Mail. You can import orders from eBay and Amazon. You can save up to 10% on package insurance and you can hide the postage amount on your shipping labels. Besides normal domestic First Class and Priority service, Stamps.com allows you to ship worldwide with USPS First Class International.

Last week, eBay CEO, John Donohoe went to China where he addressed a large conference put on by Alibaba. Alibaba and eBay have had a contentious relationship since eBay kicked them out of eBay Live in San Jose and Alibaba responded with a brilliant guerilla-marketing program that made eBay look really stupid.

So it looks like maybe they have buried the hatchet. And since Alibaba recently bought Vendio, there may actually be some type of partnership in the works that would allow eBay to get back into China.

I tend to get a lot of email from readers who are interested in setting up a website. I used to recommend a service I was associated with called Powersellerbuilder.com. That is a still a good service, but lately I have found two others that I like.

If you want to set up websites for niche affiliate marketing, AdSense earnings or things like that, then check out XsitePro. This is a really cool and fairly inexpensive service and they have a large almost cult-like following of users who love them.

The XsitePro sites can also work well for ecommerce (selling products), but for that I really like Ken Envoy’s SiteSell Program better. Although slightly more expensive, it is still reasonably priced and you get a lot of training and support and lots of SEO help so your website gets found in search engines.

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1. New Book ~ How To Make Money Working From Home

How to Make Money Working From Home is the title of my latest book. This is a very interesting book at this time. Since the financial markets melted down and we went into recession, I get readers who are unemployed who find my site and tend to ask: “I just lost my job. Is it still possible to make money selling on eBay?” And a lot of my regular readers are also asking about other ways to make money online. So I decided there is so much interest in this topic that I would write a book that shows what I think are the six easiest, lowest risk and lowest cost ways to start an online business. The book covers six basic businesses:

1. eBay niche market business
2. Selling Used Books online
3. Creating Content-Rich Google AdSense Niche Websites (or blogs)
4. Creating websites for the eBay and Amazon Affiliate Programs
5. Creating Niche Product websites
6. Creating and Selling Information Products

The basic idea behind this book is to help folks get started in one (or more) of these businesses. Obviously we can only cover so much in one book. There is enough information to get started making money, but at some point you may have to buy additional tools or resources to go beyond the basics. But that is OK, because each business comes with recommendations of resources that we know are scam-free and worth the money.

Now here is a special, limited time offer for readers of this newsletter. I am selling How To Make Money Working From Home at the same price as my other eBooks - $27.00. However, if you use the coupon code 8989NLSAV upon checkout, This will reduce the price to $19.99. However, this coupon will expire on Tuesday, September 28 at Midnight Eastern time.. After that, the price will revert to $27. (Be sure to click the "apply" button after entering the coupon code otherwise the coupon won't be applied to the order)

When the discount ends, I will be making the book available through my affiliate program. So if you are one of my affiliates, you will be able to market the book this time next week. Just log into your affiliate control panel and you will find banners and text links for the book.

NOTE: this book was adapted from another book I wrote under the Geezer Guide series, so if you already bought The Official Geezer Guide to Making Money Online, then you will find a lot of duplicate content, so you may not want to get this one, although there is also a lot of new content in this book.

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2. Should You Cruise The Amazon for The Holidays?

Amazon recently sent an email to thousands of their associates (affiliates) inviting them to sell on Amazon for the holidays. If you are an eBay seller, you might want to consider that as Amazon continues to surpass eBay as a sales platform and it is really easy to sell on Amazon.

Everyone is holding his or her breath to see how the holiday season works out this year. Although unemployment is still high and shows no signs of getting better, about 85% of Americans still have a job and those folks have been saving instead of spending. In fact the savings rate in the United States is at a 30-year high. Usually when Americans have money it tends to burn a hole in their pockets –but that isn’t happening. Retail sales last month came in at an anemic 0.4% growth –and only 3.5% higher than the same month last year. But August of last year was in the depths of the recession –so that isn’t saying much.

As a seller this is not the time to have all your eggs in one basket. Let’s face it: eBay’s strategy to reposition the platform as a fixed price marketplace hasn’t worked too well. Personally when I am looking for a new product at a fixed price I almost always go to Amazon first. And so do most other people. Amazon continues to grow while eBay is still stagnant.

Does that mean you should leave eBay altogether? No! There are still billions of dollars worth of goods sold on eBay every year and you want a piece of that –but why sell only on eBay, when Amazon is just as easy. This way you get the best of both.

There are two ways to sell on Amazon. You can open a basic seller account and sell goods that are already being sold by others. If you have a product that is being sold by others, you just click a box next to the listing that says ‘Sell yours here.” (See image below)

One of the products I sell on eBay is the Ergo Chef knife set by celebrity chef Guy Fieri that is shown above as the fifth item. So if I want to sell one on Amazon all I have to do is click the button that says “sell yours here,” and a form will open up with the product info and photo filled in.

Here is what that page looks like:

All I have to do is select the condition (new) and write a note about the condition. Then I set a price and I am done. It only took me about 2 minutes to launch the listing. Best of all it was completely free. There is no listing fee and I pay nothing unless the knives sell.

Here is a link where you can see my items on Amazon and see how I list those knives.

The other way to sell on Amazon is to open a pro account. This costs a little money but it allows you to create your own listings and sell products that others don’t have.

And, with both type of accounts you can join Amazon’s FBA program where you ship your goods to Amazon’s warehouse and Amazon takes care of the shipping to your customer –effectively becoming your personal dropshipper.

I obviously don’t have room in this newsletter to show you all the ins and outs of selling on Amazon.You might want to take a look at a blog post I did that featured an article by Steve that compares eBay and Amazon.

If you prefer a printed book, here are two that you can buy right on Amazon. The one by Brad and Deborah Schepp is the more recent of the two, but both are good, as Amazon doesn’t change their policies as often as eBay.

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3. Will Used Goods Sell During The Holiday Season?

During the holiday season everyone thinks about new merchandise. That makes sense as very few people buy used goods as gifts for others. Exceptions to this are art, antiques, vintage or collectible items that are often purchased and given as gifts. But it is unlikely that someone would buy a used mp3 player to give his or her son for Christmas.

However, there is another dynamic at work during the holiday season: When people are spending money on gifts they have less to spend on themselves. I have personally experienced this in prior holiday seasons, and I spoke to a couple of sellers who sell used goods (a woman who sells used children’s clothing and a fellow who sells used small appliances). Both of them said their sales always boom during the holiday buying season.

The other reason this works is the fact that there are simply more people shopping online from October through the end of January than any time of year. Last year during what was probably the poorest holiday season on record, the sales of all of my products went up –not only those products that were good for gifts.

Despite eBay’s push to become more like Amazon and sell more new products, in this economy sales of used clothing, appliances, books and other goods are holding up surprisingly well on eBay. Most of the sellers I speak with who sell used goods say they are doing well. One lady who sells used toddler’s clothing is having her biggest year ever and she has been selling for over 6 years. Another lady who is one of my readers sells used blue jeans she gets mostly from thrift shops and she is also doing very well.

As I wrote about in The Virtual Peddler, the biggest benefit to selling used goods is the higher profit margins. When I sell one of my kitchen knife sets or firepits, I am lucky to clear 15% after fees. But when I sell a used book for $12 that I bought for a dollar, my profit margin after fees is closer to 90%. Of course the downside to selling used products is that you have to go out and find them. This means going to garage sales, thrift shops, estate sales and small country auctions and storage locker auctions. All of this takes time and is difficult for part-time sellers who have a full-time job to do. But if you are one of the unfortunate who are out of work, this can be a quick way to make some serious money and the best season for doing that is fast approaching.

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4. Vendor Review – buySAFE

I have been using buySAFE since the first year they started when I met the founders at eBay Live. Karen and I were exhibiting that year and the buySAFE booth was just down the aisle from us. Today buySAFE has millions of eBay and other online sellers who use their service.

So what exactly does buySAFE do? Basically they are a bonding service. When you are approved you get the buySAFE seal to put on your auction listings or website. This seal tells your buyers that you are bonded up to $25,000 against fraud. Here is what ny seal looks like:

buySAFE has done the research over the years and has the data to prove that you will close more auctions at higher prices and website sellers will show higher conversions and more repeat buyers.

So who should use buySAFE? Obviously if you sell low priced goods your customer base is probably not worried about fraud. But if you sell expensive goods (over $100) then you may want to consider buySAFE. buySAFE also offers a bonding program for eBay Trading Assistants (consignment sellers).

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5. Help me Support Hug a Hero to Get Daddy Dolls to Kids

As many of you know, my son is in the US Navy. He has deployed 11 times since the war began nine years ago. Our four year old granddaughter, Rowan, had a very hard time with deployments until our daughter-in-law got her a Hug-A-Hero doll. It’s a plush doll with a full length photo of her Dad dyed into the fabric (so it won’t wear or peel off). I’ve seen how much it has helped Rowan overcome the challenges of being away from her Daddy during the five deployments she’s endured in the last four years.

The organization I want to tell you about is Operation Hug-A-Hero®. This 501(c)3 non-profit raises funds to provide Hug-A-Hero dolls at NO COST to the children of America’s heroes— military, law enforcement, and others separated from their kids to defend our nation.

As we approach the holidays, this is a great time to reach out and help these kids. Hug-A-Hero dolls not only help the child deal with separation, but also help the parent who is away see that their kids still remember them, and want to interact with them. I recall a picture of Rowan, aged 2 ½, sitting at the Christmas dinner table with her Hug-A-Hero doll propped up in a chair next to her as she fed her “Daddy” some of her dinner. It did my son the world of good to see that his little girl wanted to include him in the family celebration even though he was half a world away.

It only takes $25 to put a Hug-A-Hero doll in the arms of a child in need. That’s not a lot to help bring a little homeland security to these children. Plus, it is 100% tax deductible as a charitable donation. Here’s another thing—every part of a Hug-A-Hero doll is made in the USA. Not many companies can say that.

If you are looking for a feel-good organization to support this holiday season, this is it. They are part of eBay’s Giving Works program, so if you want to donate that way, you can (search for Operation Hug-A-Hero). Any donation makes a difference—it all adds up. To date, they’ve provided over 600 dolls to kids separated from their parent.

I urge you to think about the many kids who started school without their parent home this month, those children of first responders who lost a parent in 9/11, those who will celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with a loved one deployed in harm’s way, and those kids whose parent paid the ultimate sacrifice for their nation. These are the kids Operation Hug-A-Hero supports. Let’s see how much of an impact we can make, and how many dolls we can get to the kids of our American heroes.

Here is a PayPal Button you can use to donate.

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6. New Wholesale Sources for eBay, Amazon & Online Sellers

Clipa is the ingenious purse hanger that keeps your purse off the ground. Simply clip it to your handbag strap and leave it there. Whenever you need to hang your bag, open either end of the Clipa. It instantly hooks onto table edges, chairs, doors, rails, and carts and holds your handbag securely. Holds up to 45lbs. The website is retail, but use the contact form to get wholesale information.

Sunrise Wholesale offers free wholesale dropshipping on their line of over 5,000 wholesale products. Their gift products work well for eBay, website and Amazon sellers. I honestly don’t know much about them, or if they are reliable or not, but an eBay seller I respect says she does very well with them.

EXOTIC Elegance brings you a bit of everyday luxury in a collection of timeless, genuine handbags and other fashion accessories handcrafted from crocodile or other exotic skins. These are expensive luxury products, so the minimum opening order is somewhat high.

Nice Products makes soy candles with exquisite glass jars and uniquely beautiful French inspired fragrances.

Mama K's Play Clay is a kid-safe gluten-free clay with aromatherapy oils to soothe the mind. Ingredients are basic and natural: they include certified gluten free flour, extra virgin olive oil, vegetable colorants and organic essential oils. The clays are available in seven scents, including soothing lavender, relaxing chamomile and tension-easing bergamot.

Sunflower Hill makes personal care products for adults, children and babies. Check out their novelty kids soap including the latest Zoo Zoap, clear soap with zoo animals embedded and Ahoy Mates! which are clear soaps with colorful pirates embedded.

Entertainment Earth is a wholesale distributor of licensed toys, collectibles and action figures.

The RE Greenspan Company is a manufacturer and direct Importer of animated Christmas, Halloween, Easter and Valentine novelties with action, sound and lights. Battery operated toys, animals, radio controlled vehicles, trains, dolls, small electronics.

Amglow Inc. is another distributor of Halloween and Christmas seasonal products.

The Henry Brandt & Co. sells top quality Christian Closeouts! Christian greeting cards, Christian gifts, magnets, novelties, collectibles, books, Christian jewelry, & more. Wholesale Only! $100.00 minimum order.

Native Remedies & PetAlive offer natural herbal/homeopathic remedies for a wide range of pet conditions and disorders for both people and pets. They also offer a no-fee dropshipping program –but here again, I do not have any experience with them so tread carefully.

People buy stuff for their pets during the holidays too. Xtreame Pet Products sells a very nice line of pet leashes and other products.

Another wholesale distributor of pet products is Dog Supplies. You will have to open an account to see wholesale pricing, but its very easy to do online.

GS Mobile sells a line of unlocked GSM cell phones and accessories.

Here is one for my UK Readers. Top 1 Wholesale is a leading wholesaler and drop shipper of consumer electronics products for eBay sellers in the UK. I don’t know that much about them, but one of my UK readers works with them and does very well.

Well that’s it until October

Skip McGrath
The Online Seller's News

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

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