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January 29, 2007
My First 'Live" Meeting With Marlon Sanders
This past weekend I spoke at Jim Edwards' information marketing seminar. There were a lot of very cool people there:
* Stephen Pierce
* Rich Schefrin
* Yanik Silver
* Jim, naturally
And many more. But the person who stood out the most is Marlon Sanders! He is an obviously brilliant guy. But there are lots of smart people in this game. What makes Marlon so outstanding is his personality. He is zany, exuberant, funny and a real character. He is also totally unpretentious and doesn't much care what others think about him. I was fortunate enough to have lunch with him on Saturday and he entertained the entire table (he isn't exactly shy). :-)
If you ever have the chance to hear him speak, jump on it. He's so much fun.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 12:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 26, 2007
eBay "Buyer Protection" Expanded
eBay recently announced an expansion to their "Buyer Protection" program - but only if you sell via PayPal. According to eBay, they've expanded their original protection:
"When you pay with PayPal on eBay, eligible transactions will receive coverage up to $200 at no additional cost. However, the majority of transactions will be covered up to $2000."
* The $200 coverage applied only to tangible goods, the seller doesn't matter and there is no cost - IF you use PayPal.
* The $2,000 coverage only applies to "qualified" sellers which PayPal defines as those sellers with a Verified Business or Verified Premier Account.
And what if the fraud involves a credit card or other payment? You're pretty much on your own. I can see eBay's point of view, though. They have zero control over credit card lenders and their policies - but they do have power over PayPal and are choosing to enforce it. Of course, if along the way they're encouraging use of their product (PayPal), well good for them. That's what marketing is all about and I would do the same in their shoes.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 2:45 PM | TrackBack
January 22, 2007
"Safeguarding Member IDs" On eBay, Part 2
When we wrote an earlier entry about the new "Safeguarding Member IDs" program on eBay, we didn't realize that eBay has added information on the new anonymous bidders.
Verrrrrrrrrrrrry interesting.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 12:55 PM | TrackBack
January 20, 2007
Blog "Comments" Temporarily Turned Off
For the past week, we have turned off the "comments" function on this blog. The reason for this announcement is that several people have sent private emails asking why they couldn't respond to stories. We did this because some scumbag with spamming software has been bombing our blog - one day there were over 800 comments. Hopefully, after a couple of weeks of being unable to connect to our server, this creep will go away and we can turn it back on.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 12:44 PM | TrackBack
January 18, 2007
"Safeguarding Member IDs" On eBay
Safeguarding Member IDs" (SMI) is a new program by eBay that makes bidders more anonymous. According to an eBay spokesman, the purpose is to cause "a reduction in unwanted commercial and malicious spam (including Fake Second Chance Offers) to bidders on higher-priced auction-style listings."
To accomplish this, bidders IDs will show up as "bidder1", "bidder2", etc. The seller will be able to see the IDs, but no one else can. Currently, this applies only to items that sell for $200+, but we can certainly expect it to occur site-wide, if it's successful.
eBay acknowledges that this might increase shilf bidding. Shill bidding occurs when:
1) Sellers artificially raise the bids by bidding on their own items with other accounts or by getting friends to do so
2) Buyers can bid a high price on an item they covet, which discourages other bidders. Then at the last moment, they withdraw that bid and the price takes a nosedive, at which point they scoop up the item
eBay claims to have a sophisticated shill bidding detection system, but this reprehensible practice still remains. So, we will see what happens with their new SMI system.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 2:43 PM | TrackBack
January 15, 2007
eBay Buys Stubhub.com
eBay does a big business with ticket sales. In fact, their two biggest competitors seem to be Stuphub.com and TicketExchange.com, operated by Ticket Master. So it's no surprise that eBay has eagerly snapped up Stubhub, a ticket site that does a brisk business in the follow categories:
* MLB
* NCAA:
* NBA
* NHL
* Concerts
* Theater
eBay paid $310 million for StubHub, a San Francisco-based online marketplace launched in 2000. StubHub saw 2.1 million unique visitors and generated 22.3 million page views in August, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. EBay's ticket section saw 309,000 unique visitors and 875,000 pageviews so the deal definitely makes sense for eBay. And Ticketmaster is none too happy, we might add.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 2:16 PM | TrackBack
January 12, 2007
Auction Genius Course Student Dr. Zhivago In Disguise?
Carl, an Auction Genius Course student who lives in Boston, sent me this gorgeous picture. Not only am I jealous because he's having some REAL winter, but the scenery is spectacular. It has a surreal quality that reminds me of the Dr. Zhivago movie with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 2:08 PM | TrackBack
January 10, 2007
PayPal Security Key Seems Like A Winner!
PayPal has introduced their new PayPal Security Key in an effort to update security and reduce unlawful access to your PayPal account. The deal is that we can buy a security key for $5 (PayPal is taking orders but there is no delivery as yet):
The key will generate a unique security code every 30 seconds. The account holder then uses this code to log in to her/his PayPal account, rather than the current standard code. It's a one-time fee to purchase the key and it's small enough to attach to a keyring. I can see a couple of potential issues. Like, humans being what they are, what happens when we lose our key? (Not me, of course. Just speaking hypothetically. :-) Or what if our key doesn't work - technology IS subject to glitches?
Still, it seems like a great security update and, if it works properly, will make PayPal accounts mostly invulnerable. Kudos to eBay/PayPal!
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 1:41 PM | TrackBack
January 7, 2007
One Source Review: New Worldwide Brands One Source A Winner
I am a huge fan of Worldwide Brands and its owners Chris Malta and Rob Cowie are good friends of mine. They've now outdone themselves with a new product sourcing system they've labelled
Up until now, they had multiple products, including:
1) The Dropship Source Directory: this was their premier product and an excellent source for finding legitimate dropshippers
2) The Light Bulk Wholesale Directory: suppliers who will sell small amounts of products
3) The "Wizard": a market research tool.
In addition, Worldwide Brands has suppliers who sell large wholesale amounts and have recently added importers. It was confusing at times to go into all these separate areas, but now they have
one panel for all of these programs! It's very cool and I made a very short video on how it works:
What if you already own some Worldwide Brands products? You can still access all the areas you've paid for (it's a life-time membership) but you just can't see those sections you didn't pay for. You can naturally upgrade at any time and access all of it.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 3:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 4, 2007
New Auction Genius Course Begins January 13
Next Saturday, January 13th, we're beginning the first Auction Genius Course class of 2007. It wasn't planned, but on that same weekend, 14 students, myself and my partner are attending a gift show here in Atlanta. There are 51 floors of wholesale goodies - anyone could find something to sell with such a huge array to choose from. Stay tuned for pictures from this class "field trip".
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The Critical Need For Cash Flow
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Whenever you want to have your own business, the first problem you must solve is
Or if you have enough money to pay your bills, but it's coming from a J-O-B you detest, that's pretty awful, too.
eBay is superb at generating cash flow. I don't know anything any quicker and easier than eBay as a way to come up with quick money - except for a life of crime which has its own hazards. :-)
But once you have your cash flow problem solved, it's time to take a look at creating "wealth". Everyone has their own definition of this term, but mine is this: wealth to me means having enough money that I never have to work again, if I don't want to. The good news about wealth is that eBay is great for this, too. So we have revised our classes to include our new Auction Genius Course Wealth Plan.
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Auction Genius Course Wealth Plan, Part 1
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I really keep up with what's going on in the Internet marketing world and there are constant promotions for ideas on how to create wealth. A few of them are realistic and possible - most of them are pure junk. But even the ones that are realistic are often so ... complicated.
Or if they're not complicated, they're quite expensive. For instance, using Google AdWords as your main promotion tool can cost you lots & lots & lots of money - especially if you don't know what you're doing. And most people don't. Marketer Alan Bechtold has been in mail order and Net marketing for decades. He recently told me that he lost $4,000 in approximately one week with an AdWords campaign. And Alan did his homework before he launched his campaign, so it wasn't carelessness that cost him so much money.
For the last couple of years, I've been improving and working on a system that is focused around Virtual Real Estate (VRE). This concept was first introduced by John Reese and compares a website to an investment property in the physical world. The theory of investment real estate, of course, is that you acquire a house and rent it out. Over a period of time, your tenants pay the mortgage for you until you own the property free and clear. Then all rent is pure profit. That's the theory and many folks buy into the system. I was one of them in the past. But there are two problems with physical real estate:
1) It's expensive to acquire property, in spite of the promises of the "no money down" deal
2) Maintaining rental property can be risky, too - if your house sits vacant for a few months your bank or mortgage company could care less. YOU are on the hook for the payments.
3) There are tremendous legal risks - you are, after all, dealing with the most expensive purchase the average family will ever own and novice real estate investors can get themselves into all kinds of hot water without meaning to
Virtual real estate, however, is infinitely cheaper to acquire and maintain and the legal risks are almost non-existent. And it has another huge appeal - it can be profitable immediately, rather than waiting 15-30 years for a mortgage to be paid off.
Having said that, though, there are obvious hurdles because the vast bulk of money-making websites return few, if any, profits to their hopeful owners.
Before you can build or create anything, you must know what you want. So considering the above ideas, I devised a check list for what I wanted from my VREs:
1) They must be profitable, obviously
2) They must be stable and endure - I don't want junk sites that are thrown out of the search engines a month after I've built them
3) They must be "auto pilot", once they're up and running well
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Exercise: if you're interested in VREs or profitable sites, make a list of exactly what you want from your sites, just like mine above. Are there more criteria than the three above? Or are some of those not important to you?
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After a lot of reflection, I divided all my sites into three "tiers":
+ Tier A
+ Tier B
+ Tier C
The Tier C site is the basis of the Auction Genius Course Wealth Plan. It has a very modest goal: only $10 per day. That might not seem like much, but consider this:
If you build one site per week
* In one year you will have 50 sites (with two weeks vacation) = $182,500
* In two years you will have 100 sites = $365,000
Where is this $10 per day going to come from? In my case, primarily it comes from AdSense. In case you don't know what AdSense is, it's a brilliant revenue source created by Google several years ago. If you go to any Google search page, on the left hand side you will see their results for whatever words you've typed into the Google search box. On the right are paid ads. This is the famous Pay Per Click (PPC), otherwise known as Adwords. The thing is that you and I can easily and simple add those same PPC ads to our sites - and get paid whenever anyone clicks on them. And I love AdSense because it's the easiest sale in the world! A customer doesn't have to buy anything - (s)he simply clicks. What could be easier.
A second revenue source is occasional information products. Sometimes I include these - and sometimes I don't. But the cool thing is that just one sale per day can easily create my $10 per day.
Here is a sample of a Tier C site:
Building the site is easy and follows a step-by-step plan. But there is a second part to the equation and that is
So exactly where does my traffic to Tier C sites come from? From "organic" search (meaning it costs nothing) and ... eBay! Frankly, eBay beats Pay Per Clicks hands down as a source of customers because it's:
1) Much cheaper
2) You have much more control
3) It can be put on "autopilot"
4) The competition is mostly non-existent because almost nobody sees eBay as a superb lead-generator. Instead their thinking is in the "flea market" groove. That's a great advantage for those of us with a different perspective.
We will discuss this Wealth Plan more in later newsletters. If you would like to download a free guide on this subject, you can go here:
Posted by SydneyJohnston at 6:30 PM | TrackBack
January 1, 2007
An Online Auction Listing Just Got A Little More Expensive
An online auction listing just got a little more expensive because eBay has announced new fee increases. In the past, they've done this right before - or even during - the holiday season. eBayers have loudly - and justly - complained about this practice. Many brick and mortar stores, as well as Net stores & sites, "make or break" their entire year based on sales during the holiday season. Google has also, in the past, changed the rules of the game at this critical time, so we commend eBay for not disrupting the season for many eBay sellers.
The changes aren't drastic, we're glad to say.
- - -
Insertion Fees
Cost of auctioned item: $1.00 - $9.99
Former fee: $.35
New fee: $.40
- - -
Final Value Fee
Final price: $25.01 to $1,000.00
Former Fee: 3%
New Fee: 3.25%.
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eBay Stores: no changes
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eBay Motors Fees
1) The Insertion Fees and Final Values Fees changes above will also apply to eBay Motors Parts & Accessories categories.
2) Transaction Services Fee for Motorcycles & Powersports
Former Fee: $30.00
New Fee: $40.00
3) Transaction Services Fee for Cars & Trucks and all Other Vehicles & Trailers categories
Former Fee: $40.00
New Fee: $50.00
4) Motors Reserve Fee
Former Fee: $5.00
New Fee: 0.1% of the reserve price, with a minimum of $5.00 and a maximum of $10.00. (Reserve Fees are refunded when bidding meets the reserve price.)
These new prices went into effect on January 30.
