Here is a video of the youngest eBay seller I have ever met and how she wants to solve all the world’s problems.  ENJOY !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsQX1ynUB6U

The link leads to an article in the Washington Examiner.  And yes its true.  Philly really is charging blogger $300 for a business license –even if they are only hobby bloggers.

The lady mentioned in the article should have read my book, How To Make Money Blogging From Home.  Even though the city is charging her $300 a year to blog, she noted in the article that she had only made $50 from her blog.

Both blogging on a topic and setting up niche WordPress blogs is a great way to make anything from a few extra bucks to actually making a living working from home.

And blogging is fun.  I just hope that the city fathers in Philly come to their senses and if not that other cities don’t try to fill their coffers by copying them.

Of course it could be something more nefarious. It is well known that governments hate bloggers as they are often the source of stories that embarrass governments and government workers when they uncover bad behavior, corruption or wasteful and silly spending.  There is an old saying: “If you want less of something then you should tax it.”  I wonder if maybe that is what’s really going on here?

Packing your goods

If you are going to run a profitable and professional eBay business, you will need to package and ship your goods professionally. No one likes to receive his or her “eBay treasure” in an old shoebox stuffed with your last week’s newspaper. This does not mean that you have to always use “new” supplies. Recycled boxes and packaging materials are fine as long as they are in good condition.

There are three costs involved in shipping:

• Shipping supplies
• Shipper charges
• Your time

Let’s look at each one.

Shipping supplies

Shipping supplies consist of boxes, newsprint or tissue, Styrofoam peanuts, bubble-pak and tape.

Why pay top dollar for shipping supplies when you can get them for free? Here is a source of free shipping supplies, boxes and packing materials. Visit your local gift shop or kitchen store. These merchants receive shipments on a daily basis of usually fragile items that require large amounts of bubble pak, Styrofoam peanuts and sturdy boxes.

Gift shops are deluged with shipping and packaging materials. Local laws often require them to recycle the materials rather than just throwing them away. This can be expensive. Believe me — they are happy to give it away.

Local shops can be a treasure trove of free shipping and packing materials. Other stores that receive large amounts of shipping and packaging materials include drug stores, electronics stores (such as Radio Shack) and small neighborhood hardware stores.

If you ship USPS Priority Mail, he U.S. Postal Service website offers free shipping supplies delivered (also free) direct to your home or office. Many eBay sellers use Priority Mail for shipping items less than five pounds.  Less than five pounds, Priority Mail usually works out less than UPS and it gets there faster.

The USPS will send you free boxes, envelopes, tape and labels direct to your home by priority mail. You can print out labels and select Delivery Confirmation at the web site. (This is a saving of 60 cents over doing it at the post office). Here is a link where you can order free shipping supplies with the eBay logo on the box.  http://ebaysupplies.usps.com/

It goes without saying that you should package your merchandise carefully to avoid damage. Why do I say this if it’s so obvious? Just last month my wife received a package from a Top Rated Seller containing a collectible (and expensive) flow blue plate she had purchased from his eBay Store. The plate was loose in the box. The seller had wrapped it with bubble pak, but hadn’t taped the bubble pak together. During shipping it had worked loose in the box. Fortunately, it wasn’t broken. Even people who know better often take short cuts that can result in an unhappy buyer and in some cases, negative feedback.

Shipping Charges:

As an occasional seller there isn’t much you can do about lowering shipping charges. If, however, you are a high volume eBay seller, you can negotiate rates with UPS, FedEx and FedEx Ground.  Call the companies and ask what their quantity points are to get a discount. If you work for a company that uses UPS or FedEx, they have programs whereby employees can piggyback on their company’s discounts. You open up an account with your own credit card, but your shipping rate is tied to your employer’s rate. Ask you employer to ask his/her shipping company sales rep if they offer such a program. It is good for you and the employer because it can raise his/her quantity to help get lower rates.

eBay also has a program for PowerSellers and Top-rated sellers where you can save up to 23% off UPS Ground Daily Rates. The more you ship, the bigger the discount. Learn more about UPS rate discounts.

Your Time:

Time is valuable. Time you spend making labels and wrapping packages could be better spent launching auctions, searching for new products, answering emails and so on.

The best way to save time is to have a permanent area for shipping. Invest in tape guns, paper rolls and so on. If you have to clear off the dining room table every time you want to wrap a package, this is a waste of time.

When our kids were younger, we used to hire them to do our shipping.  Now they are grown up, we hire our neighbor’s teenagers to help with the business. It is a much better use of my time to pay a teenager a few bucks an hour to wrap packages. Besides anything you pay them is a business expenses for tax purposes.

Calculating postage and making labels is another time consuming task. Take a look at Stamps.com. They have a great $100-off offer they made to my readers.  Using a service like Stamps.com is a great way to save time and money on shipping.  Here are some of the benefits:

• Get postage discounts on Priority Mail & Express Mail.
• Import orders from eBay, Amazon.com and more.
• Save up to 10% on package insurance.
• Hide the postage amount on your shipping labels.
• Ship worldwide with USPS First Class International.

The other popular service that competes with Stamps.com is Endicia, but right now this special offer trumps them.

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The Complete eBay Marketing System covers issues like shipping and much more.  This is a complete printed training manual to setting up and running a profitable eBay business.

Here are some of the places where you can find reliable eBay wholesale sourcing information and where I find mine.

• Wholesale Search Engines
• Wholesale Trade Shows and Merchandise Marts
• Worldwide Brands
• Wholesale Buying System

Lets look at each of these

Wholesale Search Engines

If you look at the top of this blog and hover over the navigation tab that says Web Wholesale Search, you will see three wholesale search engines.  Although these search engines are optimized for wholesale companies, you do have to remember that they are search engines and therefore clever SEO experts can fool them.  When you do a search you will often get results that include the big dropship companies and even discount retailers who sell under the guise of being a wholesale site.

Nevertheless, by far most of the results will be legitimate wholesale suppliers, so this can be a good place to screen for companies that you may wish to contact.

One thing to remember:  When you click on a link to one of the wholesale suppliers, you will often land on a retail site.  When this happens, look around the navigation links and find a link that says partner login or wholesale or dealer information.  Clicking on those links will usually get you to the wholesale information.

Wholesale Trade Shows and Merchandise Marts

These are one of my favorite places to find wholesale sources for the simple reason that most online sellers (eBay and Amazon sellers), rarely visit these.  This means that I can often find goods to sell that are not yet being sold on eBay.

There are both wholesale trade shows and wholesale merchandise marts in all major cities.  If you live in a smaller city like Austin, TX you may not get many trade shows. So what you want to do is look for shows in nearby cities such as Dallas and Houston, or watch for shows in Las Vegas, which is the trade show capital of the US.

The same thing goes with merchandise marts.  There are about 30 cities in the US with permanent merchandise marts. These are locations where wholesale suppliers have actual showrooms that you can browse in. You can’t buy anything to carry out –instead you place orders and the goods are shipped to you.

Entrance to both wholesale trade shows and merchandise is controlled and limited to the trade only. So you will need a business tax or sales tax certificate, and often they will want you to show other proof such as a business checking account, business cards and so on.

WorldWide Brands

WorldWide Brands is one of the oldest and largest suppliers –and in my opinion the best supplier of wholesale information.  The service is not cheap –but it is a one-time, lifetime fee. For that you get access to thousands of sources and tons of training videos.  WorldWide Brands was the first place I used to find wholesale information when I started selling on eBay and I still have my membership and use it all the time.

Many companies in this business simply research and post lists of wholesale sources, but WorldWide Brands actually contacts the wholesale sources and talks to them to make sure they will deal with small eBay and Amazon sellers.  And they are constantly updating the database –usually adding anywhere from 20 to 30 new sources each month.

Wholesale Buying System

This is a product that I wrote and produce.  It is a printed wholesale training manual that comes with membership in my members-only site where I list about 1000 wholesale sources that I have personally researched.  But most importantly, the Wholesale Buying System teaches you everything you need to know about the wholesale sourcing industry and shows you how to research and find wholesale sources for thousands of products –including those hard to find ones.

One word of caution:  If you have purchased –or plan to purchase, The Complete eBay Marketing System, then you already have the wholesale buying system as that is part of the complete eBay system training manual –so don’t buy both.

Liquidation Goods

I didn’t mention this at the beginning of the article, but wholesale liquidators –companies that liquidate surplus inventory for large retailers, are another great source of name brand wholesale goods.  If you know what you are doing you can find some fabulous deals where you can buy brand new merchandise –including popular brand name goods at literally pennies on the dollar.

Notice that I said: If you know what you are doing. The problem with this market is that it is fraught with risk and danger and the novice buyer can really get screwed.  This is where a guy named Chad Maslak comes in.  I have known Chad for about 3 years and he is the absolute master of the liquidation and surplus market.

Chad sells a training course that teaches you everything you need to know before buying from liquidation and surplus dealers. And the course comes with his favorite sources –sources that you can rely on not to get screwed.  Some time ago I asked Chad if he would give my readers a special deal and he agreed. He only offered it for a limited time, but he has opened it up again.  So click here to get a special offer for Skip McGrath readers.  BTW – Chad’s system comes with a no-questions-asked money back guarantee so you can’t really lose.

Your first task is to select a good digital camera with all the features you will need. There are hundreds of digital cameras on the market and new models are coming out virtually every week. The trend today is towards higher and higher image quality. This is expressed in the number of pixels –or mega pixels a camera can resolve. The higher this number, the more expensive the camera.

Fortunately you do not need extreme high-resolution for your auction photography. In fact, high-resolution photos are undesirable because they take a long time to download when someone opens an auction.

eBay recommends that photo file sizes be limited to 80 kilobytes. Actually you can go up to 120 kilobytes with no problem. Sixty-four kilobytes (64kb) is the size of what is called the email setting on most digital cameras. So this is one of the first features you need to look for when buying a camera –make sure it has a low resolution or email setting.

This feature is on most digital cameras so it is not a hard option to locate. The email setting is OK for most digital photos if you are not going to crop them. When you do, you lose detail. If you are selling a product where detail is important, then you will want to shoot at a higher resolution, at least 1 or 2 Megapixels, and crop or resize the photo in your software to get down to below 80KB. Shooting at this higher resolution will preserve the detail when you crop or resize.

Here are some of the features you need in a camera for eBay auction photography and why they are important: If you are about to buy a camera, just print this out and use it as a checklist and you can’t go wrong.

• Tripod: Almost all cameras have a standard tripod screw mount in the bottom. It is very important to use a tripod when taking auction photos to avoid blurred images that occur when you handhold a camera.
• Macro Setting: Macro is the photographic term for the ability to focus very close to an object. Typically the macro feature will allow you to focus as close at 3 or 4 inches from the subject. This is important to photograph small objects or to get up close to details you may want to show such as the original manufacturer’s price tag or a maker’s mark on pottery or silver.
• White Balance Adjustment: White Balance is used to adjust a camera to account for different color temperatures of light. Almost all cameras have an automatic white balance, but you want to make sure you get one where you can manually select the white balance between daylight, fluorescent and incandescent.
• Manual Focus: The auto focus on digital cameras is often fooled. The ability to manually focus on an object or part of an object is very important.
• Exposure adjustment: The light meter in a camera can be fooled by bright backgrounds. Since we often shoot against a white background especially when using a lighting tent, you need a camera that can adjust for this exposure.
• Optical zoom: Digital cameras come with both optical zoom and digital zoom. Digital zoom is very restrictive and difficult to work with. Make sure your camera has a basic optical zoom feature. You can tell if it does by pushing the zoom button and seeing if the lens actually moves in and out. If not, they the camera is using digital zoom.
• Aperture priority setting: The ability to select a small lens opening (aperture) allows you to achieve what is called depth of field. This means that objects close to you and far away are both in focus.

Wondering what camera to buy?  Visit my Recommended Digital Camera Store for ideas.

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The eBay & Online Sellers News is the largest and oldest FREE Newsletter for eBay and Amazon Sellers and small online website sellers.

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Take perfect photos every time with an EZ Cube Digital Photo Light Tent

See all the EZ Cube Models at www.ezauctiontools.com

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Let’s put the cart before the horse:  For the past seven years I have used PayPal to process sales on my website.  I have known for a long time that I was getting what online marketers call Shopping Cart Abandonment.  How did I know this?  Well when I look at my Hitslink analysis program it might show that 17 people hit my Order Page while only 4 or 5 hit my Thank You Page (Where you end up after you pay).

Over time I was seeing abandonment rates of over 50% consistently and often as high as 60% to 70% some of the time.  I always assumed there was something wrong with my order page and I was constantly redesigning and tweaking it.

For the past two years my webmaster has been trying to talk me into trying a shopping cart program called 1Shopingcart.  I finally gave in last April –and wow am I glad I did.

We still use PayPal to process the payments, but now instead of my customers going to PayPal when they pay, they stay on my site on pages that I control. And the results?  My abandonment rate has dropped below 35% and my sales increased overnight by 20% to 30%.

There was another huge benefit as well. Those of you who were in my old affiliate program might remember that we switched lately.  The old program was run by MyAp and was costing me around $500 a month.  Now I have an affilaite program built in to 1Shoppingcart that only costs me about $60 a month –a savings of $440.

1Shoppingcart also has a built-in email program that captures the name of every customer and can also capture names from an opt-in form.  I currently use Aweber for my newsletter email program and am very happy with them.  If all you want is an email list program they are simply the best and the lowest cost.  But if I were just starting out I would probably use the program built into 1Shoppingcart. It comes free with the shopping cart.

1Shoppingcart also works for information sellers. If you sell digital products, they have a secure delivery solution for those too. If you have bought an eBook on my website then you have used 1Shoppingcart

Web Builder

My favorite web builder is fast becoming xSitePro.  This company has been around for a long time and they are very well respected in the industry. They offer a complete “build-it-yourself” website solution that assumes you know absolutely nothing about building websites.

Their designs work for any kind of website, from simple niche affiliate websites, to complex product sales websites. Their training and support are legendary in the industry.

So whether you want to build your first website or you want a fast economical system for constructing multiple websites, check out xSitePro.  If you would like to see xSitePro in action, here is a link to a really cool free webinar.

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Ten, Little Known, Highly Profitable Niche Markets Hiding on eBay.  Anyone can make money with even one of these markets, but you get all ten to try.

You just enter the item number and hit Get Report.  Your report will look like this:

I pulled two reports on the same item but each item has a different title.  Notice in the top box I got 127 click throughs for a total of 0.29%.  But the second one resulted in 147 views at 0.39%.  This tells me that I should be using the second title.  One of the ways eBay rewards you with search position is the number of items that sell per impression.  You can see that neither of these has had a sale. (They are fairly new fixed price listings but I have many others that do have sales.)  So what I am doing is splitting the opportunity to get a sale between two listings.  If I run just the one listing I should get more views per impressions and of course I will save fees on the second listing.  And when I do get a sale that listing will rise higher in eBay’s search results.

So use eBay’s listing visibility tool to help optimize your listings.

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Written by an eBay Top Rated Seller who sells on eBay every day, The Complete eBay Marketing System is a complete printed training manual that teaches you everything you need to learn how to start and run a profitable eBay business.

Starting August 3, 2010, list your items for free—no Insertion Fees, regardless of the start price of your item. Just list them Auction-style with no reserve price.

• Get free Insertion Fees for up to 100 Auction-style listings—regardless of start price
• List even big ticket items—start the bidding where you want
• Pay only if your item sells

There are few catches:

eBay Store subscribers are not eligible for this promotion

If you have already sold more than ten items on eBay, your detailed seller ratings (DSRs) must be 4.5 or higher on all four criteria (Communication, Shipping Cost, Shipping Time, and Item as Described) to be eligible for this Promotional Rate. DSR rating criteria for this promotion will be based on the previous 12 months. If buyers have left you DSRs on 10 or more transactions, you’ll have access to a Seller Dashboard within My eBay where you can see your current rating

However, new sellers who don’t yet have DSR ratings are also eligible.

This promotion does not apply to the following: Sellers who have an eBay Store, Fixed Price listings, eBay Motors Passenger Vehicles, Motorcycles, Boats, Power Sports, Other Vehicles, Motors Local Market, Professional Services, Real Estate, Classified Ad listings.

Also the promotional rate does not apply to listings with a start date prior to August 3, 2010—including those listings revised during the Promotion Period. Additionally, the promotional rate will not apply to listings scheduled to start after the Promotion Period. Listings that have a reserve price are not eligible for this promotion.

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The Complete eBay Marketing System by Skip McGrath is a complete eBay selling and business system delivered in a 6 pound printed manual.

Internet Sales Tax

On July 1, a bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives that would impose complex sales tax collecting requirements on internet retailers and entrepreneurs, including our eBay sellers. If passed, HR 5660, the so-called, “Main Street Fairness Act,” would require small online retailers to comply with varying and regularly changing sales tax rules and rates for thousands of tax jurisdictions, and to collect and remit sales taxes from each customer. This new sales tax scheme would be extremely burdensome and costly to small online retailers like you who have set up shop on the internet. A similar bill is expected to be introduced in the Senate as well. eBay is working very hard to stop this bill from becoming law, but we need your help.

Please join our effort to stop the passage of this anti-small business bill. In three minutes or less, you can sign this petition urging your lawmakers to protect small, online retailers by opposing new tax burdens.

Write Your Congressperson

Petitions are great, but nothing beats contacting your own congressperson.

If you know the name of your congressperson, just Google their name and you will get a link to their home page that has a form where you can email them and they also have fax numbers where you can fax them.

If you don’t know their name, go to the following link and type in your zip code

http://www.house.gov/zip/ZIP2Rep.html

Once you type in your zip code (don’t worry about the +4 you can leave it blank) you will go to a page with your congressperson’s name as a hyperlink. Just click on that link and you will be taken directly to your congressperson’s home page. Now just click on the contact link to send an email.

Be polite. The emails are read by staff and they just trash any weird or angry-sounding emails. The other ones get forwarded to the congressperson.  Don’t bother your Senator with this as it hasn’t gone to the Senate yet.

News for Diabetic Test Strip Sellers

In my newsletter a few days ago I had a Musing’s item about problems with selling Diabetic Test Strips.  And I warned that eBay was suspending sellers.  Finally I have the real scoop:

It turns out that there have been some folks selling stolen strips and selling strips with Medicare or pharmacy prescription labels on them.  The other trigger is sellin strips with short expiration dates. So follow these steps to stay out of trouble:

1. If you suddenly sell a large quantity of strips you could trigger eBay’s fraud detection.  So if you have been selling small quantities and suddenly find yourself with a large supply just dribble them out slowly.
2. If someone calls you with a large supply of strips to sell –be careful. They may be stolen.
3. When buying strips be sure an check the expiration date.  Make sure there is enough time to sell all the strips before the date expires.
4. Do not buy strips with Medicare labels. It is a crime to resell these.
5. If a box has a pharmacy label you can remove it with goo gone or lighter fluid before selling it.
6. Don’t buy or sell the Johnson & Johnson Brand as they will file a Vero complaint against you.

Follow these tips and you will be fine.  If you have any other tips or questions please leave a comment so we can share this will all readers.

Skip McGrath

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eBay Business System – Learn How to Sell on eBay: The Complete eBay Marketing System by Skip McGrath

By now most of my readers are tired of hearing about this, but since its going away on Monday, this is your last chance and the last time you will hear from me about this.

I know that many of you were shocked by the high price of the system, but I strongly recommend that you watch the entire sales video. Even if you can’t or don’t want to buy –there is some great educational material that you get along with the sales pitch. I have been doing SEO for years and I even learned a lot that will help me drive more traffic to my website and blogs.

So if you want to learn Ryan’s secrets for getting free traffic from Google, you need to go NOW and signup before it’s too late:
http://budurl.com/McGPTLaunch

Training for “Perpetual Traffic” starts on Monday, and since this is a LIVE
coaching program Ryan wants everyone to get started at approximately
the same time.

That’s why I KNOW this training will close on Monday, so if you’re still
sitting on the fence, now is the time to see what Ryan has to say:

http://budurl.com/McGPTLaunch

See you again soon,
Skip McGrath