Making money is really a hard thing to do these days, as many people want to get some extra dollars out of their unused stuffs, eBay comes along to help. Having to sell them is quite a task but no means that hard. I have stated the basic things you need to start out an eBay business.
These are for the beginners who would like to make money on eBay. The proper ingredients to having your very own cyber shop are really not that demanding. All you need is a computer, an internet connection, a digital camera, and of course, products to sell.
You can sell used items you find at garage sales, from your closet, etc. You can sell new items you find at discount prices from liquidators, dollar stores and clearance sales. If you can find a supplier who will make you a deal, you're even luckier.
Skills for the trade
Marketing Skills You can develop these skills as you learn how to sell various items on eBay. Read some marketing books and articles to help yourself sell things, but really, its selling them efficiently by having your own strategy which you already got from other successful entrepreneurs online. Take time to read and plan things out. You will thank yourself later for a job well dome.
Organizational Skills You need to keep good records of your sales and not just for tax purposes. You need to be able to keep track of which buyers have paid, which have received their items, etc. Setting up a spreadsheet with all the pertinent information should help keep this under control. You can also get affiliated with third party payment systems online. There are choices to choose from, however, they charge for about 1 percent of the item price but nothing is better than your clients having to be at ease purchasing your items.
Basic HTML Skills To make your auctions eye-catching and appealing, you will want to know some basic HTML skills. There are a lot of simple and basic tutorials online. Start out by searching for html tutorials, you can choose which one you like for your convenience.
Starting up on eBay
Start by choosing a certain type of product to specialize in (ex. toys, clothes, etc.). That way, you can become an expert in those products and how to sell them effectively. You may want to expand your product line at a later date.
Getting started is easy. Create an eBay user ID and you're on your way. Be sure to read through the eBay selling rules and check out all the tips eBay offers along the way.
Put up only a few items to start and don't saturate your auctions with too many of the exact same item. The objective is to sell your item at the highest price. If you are selling 5 identical items, it may be harder for you to get a high price. Experiment with various selling methods and find out what works your particular items.
Online Marketing Ideas Promote your business with your own personal web page. This can be a web page just to promote your eBay business, or it can be an online store that links to your auctions. It gives you a more established presence on the Internet and gives your clients a better sense of who you are. Build a mailing list. Send out an informative newsletter on a regular basis to your subscribers. Just be sure to promote your auctions in the newsletter too.
Other Online Auctions Don't limit yourself to eBay. EBay is only one of the many online auction houses available, but it is, by far the largest. However, eBay's fees can get expensive. It may be cost effective to also sell your items on other auction sites and you may face less selling competition especially if you are selling items at a fixed price. Other auction sites might be a good opportunity for you to buy items to sell for higher prices elsewhere.
So what you need is some motivation and patience to see your hard- earned money in the palms of your hand.
Just remember, you may also have fewer buyers for your products and may have a lower selling price. You will need to evaluate which is the most efficient way to sell your items.
About the Author
If you are looking for more information on selling or buying on eBay, visit Ralph and Liz's make money on ebay site.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Don't Trust Digital Camcorder Reviews
A couple years ago (ok, more than a few), I became really interested in buying a digital camcorder. Like most people new to the trade, I wanted to purchase the latest digital camcorder that featured the best technology. I always enjoyed looking at the flashy camcorder magazines to check out pictures, and read articles and reviews on the latest camcorders.
However, once I became serious about wanting to buy one, it suddenly occurred to me, as I was reading the magazine reviews, that almost every single one had a positive slant. Virtually every review I read, discussed only the benefits and cool features of the camcorders.
All of these good reviews made me realize that what I was reading was biased information designed as a marketing tool. The content within these articles and reviews was nothing more than eye candy for techies. Essentially, aside from stats (which I could barely make heads or tails of) the magazine reviews actually provided very little information about the quality and practicality of the camcorder.
So, to test my theory on my favorite "flashy magazine", I plugged in the names of the few digital camcorders that interested me into a search engine. Low and behold I found genuine reviews from consumers who had actually purchased the cameras and expressed their real opinions about the product. What did I discover with my research? I learned that my first digital camcorder choice actually only received a "good" video quality rating from most users. This was a much different result compared to the "excellent" rating it was given by the magazine. Naturally, my attitude toward this digital camcorder changed, and I began investigating other models.
What I learned as I began conducting my digital camcorder review research was that while the stats of the camera matter, they aren't the most important part of a review. Until you actually purchase the digital camcorder and compare it to another camcorder, or an older model, you won't know if the digital camcorder is true to its hype. In other words, most of the fancy stats mean squat to the average consumer who knows very little about digital camcorder technology.
Think about it, if you know very little about digital camcorders and a review only provides you with technical details and a product description, how will you know if the camcorder will suit your intended use?
For instance, observe the following example that has been based on an actual digital camcorder review:
The digital camcorder captures fantastic videos and stills. It is compact, lightweight and capable. The Camcorder features a 4x digital zoom, an internal 16MB flash memory with external SD/MMC card slot (supports up to 1 GB) and a 3.2-megapixel CCD image sensor. The digital camcorder has an image resolution of 1280x960, 1600x1200 and 2048x1536, and records MPEG-4 movies. The digital camcorder also has a 1.8" TFT monitor, NTSC/PAL TV out format, and USB 1.1 PC connection.
Did that mean anything to you? Do you know whether or not you need all of those features, or if you have the right equipment to accommodate the camcorder? If you're like me, and technical stats make your eyes cross, here's what you need to do to ensure that the digital camcorder you buy is ideal for your needs.
First and foremost, avoid getting sucked in by all technical flare such as the lab/bench tests, color/lines of resolution etc. Look for quality reviews that will tell you what purpose the camera is ideal for, and the type of person it will likely suit.
Thus, if you are looking for honest camcorder reviews, direct your browser to sites that sell these products such as Amazon.com and find out what people who actually purchased these products had to say about them in the user comments section. Here you will not only receive a consumer "five-star rating", but also find out what they liked and didn't like about the camera.
About the Author
Mark Sturge is the owner of KMS Productions and webmaster at kmsvideo.com. A site where visitors can find camcorder reviews such as the panasonic pv-gs400 3 ccd camcorder as well as useful hints and tips to better their filming techniques.
However, once I became serious about wanting to buy one, it suddenly occurred to me, as I was reading the magazine reviews, that almost every single one had a positive slant. Virtually every review I read, discussed only the benefits and cool features of the camcorders.
All of these good reviews made me realize that what I was reading was biased information designed as a marketing tool. The content within these articles and reviews was nothing more than eye candy for techies. Essentially, aside from stats (which I could barely make heads or tails of) the magazine reviews actually provided very little information about the quality and practicality of the camcorder.
So, to test my theory on my favorite "flashy magazine", I plugged in the names of the few digital camcorders that interested me into a search engine. Low and behold I found genuine reviews from consumers who had actually purchased the cameras and expressed their real opinions about the product. What did I discover with my research? I learned that my first digital camcorder choice actually only received a "good" video quality rating from most users. This was a much different result compared to the "excellent" rating it was given by the magazine. Naturally, my attitude toward this digital camcorder changed, and I began investigating other models.
What I learned as I began conducting my digital camcorder review research was that while the stats of the camera matter, they aren't the most important part of a review. Until you actually purchase the digital camcorder and compare it to another camcorder, or an older model, you won't know if the digital camcorder is true to its hype. In other words, most of the fancy stats mean squat to the average consumer who knows very little about digital camcorder technology.
Think about it, if you know very little about digital camcorders and a review only provides you with technical details and a product description, how will you know if the camcorder will suit your intended use?
For instance, observe the following example that has been based on an actual digital camcorder review:
The digital camcorder captures fantastic videos and stills. It is compact, lightweight and capable. The Camcorder features a 4x digital zoom, an internal 16MB flash memory with external SD/MMC card slot (supports up to 1 GB) and a 3.2-megapixel CCD image sensor. The digital camcorder has an image resolution of 1280x960, 1600x1200 and 2048x1536, and records MPEG-4 movies. The digital camcorder also has a 1.8" TFT monitor, NTSC/PAL TV out format, and USB 1.1 PC connection.
Did that mean anything to you? Do you know whether or not you need all of those features, or if you have the right equipment to accommodate the camcorder? If you're like me, and technical stats make your eyes cross, here's what you need to do to ensure that the digital camcorder you buy is ideal for your needs.
First and foremost, avoid getting sucked in by all technical flare such as the lab/bench tests, color/lines of resolution etc. Look for quality reviews that will tell you what purpose the camera is ideal for, and the type of person it will likely suit.
Thus, if you are looking for honest camcorder reviews, direct your browser to sites that sell these products such as Amazon.com and find out what people who actually purchased these products had to say about them in the user comments section. Here you will not only receive a consumer "five-star rating", but also find out what they liked and didn't like about the camera.
About the Author
Mark Sturge is the owner of KMS Productions and webmaster at kmsvideo.com. A site where visitors can find camcorder reviews such as the panasonic pv-gs400 3 ccd camcorder as well as useful hints and tips to better their filming techniques.
Make Money Easy with Your Own DVD!
Making and marketing your own DVD. Does that sound like a viable business? Well, let us see... You shoot some video tape and have it transferred to a blank DVD. Just a few bucks spent for a one time expense. From there you can have the DVD duplicated with four-color printing on it and have it in four-color printed packaging which makes it look very professional for just a couple dollars each, but that's just if you want to be fancy about it by using photographs. Otherwise, two-color printing will work just fine.
Now your DVDs are ready to sell. From just over a dollar's worth cost for production when you use two-color printing, you can mark up your product as you see fit. Charge $97.00 or $149.00 a copy, over and over again. Or produce a set of DVD's and charge $495.00! Does not take much math skills to figure why people are becoming rich doing this!
The way to make a valuable DVD is to have it show and tell how to do something people want to do, or how to have something people want to have. You can come up with some ideas if you reach into your experience of things you have learned or discovered how to do.
This is the information age and if you put out the information, people are going to buy it up because they are hungry to know everything. Truth is that if you are currently selling printed how-to material, you can command a much higher price to provide that information in DVD format. Sell them your knowledge on a DVD.
Of course you will need some equipment to make your DVD. You can be up and running without a big budget. A tripod holding a digital camcorder than can connect directly to your computer so that you can use video editing software and a good microphone so you can be heard clearly is what it comes down to.
Having a remote control on your camcorder could even make video editing unnecessary, since what really counts in DVDs is the information contained in the DVD and not how pretty the presentation is. What really makes winners is down and dirty content.
A good place to get content from which to produce a DVD that you can call your own is InfoGround. In fact there is so much there covering the most popular niche markets that you can give yourself the reputation of being an expert! InfoGoRound has hundreds of top quality, private label articles for the taking!
Converting some of the many information products found at InfoGoRound to DVD is the fast track to being a 'how-to' author able to effortlessly bring in the easy money. You will have so much content to work with that you should even use some of the video you make to put up on a website. Showing free video samples on your website is sure to drive traffic and skyrocket DVD sales.
Are you ready to do this and join the ranks of the Millionaire Internet Marketers? There are a couple of those marketers who amazingly enough have separate website videos in the same spacious white room with huge decorative windows. Assuming they don't live in the same mansion, you might think they are filming in the same studio. If you think that then you would be wrong.
You can make your video look like it was done at a beautiful gorgeous place no matter what the surroundings you currently have. To set up your own amazing studio, get some florescent lights as they provide lighting without much extra heat or shadows, and set up a screen for your background. Put a light on each side of the camera pointing toward the screen. You will want to experiment in order to get the lights placed just right.
Now you have a clutter free background by using a screen, which could just be a sheet or curtain placed up. The secret to having any type of background you want however, is to invest in a chroma key green or blue screen. Also get and learn how to use video editing software that has chroma key effect. What chroma key effect does is replace the colored background with any type of background you want... even an image of the inside of a mansion! It is definitely the way to make a great impression.
Information DVDs are perfect products to develop. You can build your whole business around them. They are inexpensive to make, yet have a high-perceived value. They are heavily in demand, and staggeringly easy to sell for big fat wallet-filling profits. Film yourself on DVDs sharing what you know or make a presentation from the treasure-trove of information found at InfoGoRound. The money you can generate from doing this is outrageous!
About the Author
Mr James has owned The Cartridge Specialists (Melbourne) since 2004 selling ink, toner, fax rolls etc & regularly writes articles about his industry
Now your DVDs are ready to sell. From just over a dollar's worth cost for production when you use two-color printing, you can mark up your product as you see fit. Charge $97.00 or $149.00 a copy, over and over again. Or produce a set of DVD's and charge $495.00! Does not take much math skills to figure why people are becoming rich doing this!
The way to make a valuable DVD is to have it show and tell how to do something people want to do, or how to have something people want to have. You can come up with some ideas if you reach into your experience of things you have learned or discovered how to do.
This is the information age and if you put out the information, people are going to buy it up because they are hungry to know everything. Truth is that if you are currently selling printed how-to material, you can command a much higher price to provide that information in DVD format. Sell them your knowledge on a DVD.
Of course you will need some equipment to make your DVD. You can be up and running without a big budget. A tripod holding a digital camcorder than can connect directly to your computer so that you can use video editing software and a good microphone so you can be heard clearly is what it comes down to.
Having a remote control on your camcorder could even make video editing unnecessary, since what really counts in DVDs is the information contained in the DVD and not how pretty the presentation is. What really makes winners is down and dirty content.
A good place to get content from which to produce a DVD that you can call your own is InfoGround. In fact there is so much there covering the most popular niche markets that you can give yourself the reputation of being an expert! InfoGoRound has hundreds of top quality, private label articles for the taking!
Converting some of the many information products found at InfoGoRound to DVD is the fast track to being a 'how-to' author able to effortlessly bring in the easy money. You will have so much content to work with that you should even use some of the video you make to put up on a website. Showing free video samples on your website is sure to drive traffic and skyrocket DVD sales.
Are you ready to do this and join the ranks of the Millionaire Internet Marketers? There are a couple of those marketers who amazingly enough have separate website videos in the same spacious white room with huge decorative windows. Assuming they don't live in the same mansion, you might think they are filming in the same studio. If you think that then you would be wrong.
You can make your video look like it was done at a beautiful gorgeous place no matter what the surroundings you currently have. To set up your own amazing studio, get some florescent lights as they provide lighting without much extra heat or shadows, and set up a screen for your background. Put a light on each side of the camera pointing toward the screen. You will want to experiment in order to get the lights placed just right.
Now you have a clutter free background by using a screen, which could just be a sheet or curtain placed up. The secret to having any type of background you want however, is to invest in a chroma key green or blue screen. Also get and learn how to use video editing software that has chroma key effect. What chroma key effect does is replace the colored background with any type of background you want... even an image of the inside of a mansion! It is definitely the way to make a great impression.
Information DVDs are perfect products to develop. You can build your whole business around them. They are inexpensive to make, yet have a high-perceived value. They are heavily in demand, and staggeringly easy to sell for big fat wallet-filling profits. Film yourself on DVDs sharing what you know or make a presentation from the treasure-trove of information found at InfoGoRound. The money you can generate from doing this is outrageous!
About the Author
Mr James has owned The Cartridge Specialists (Melbourne) since 2004 selling ink, toner, fax rolls etc & regularly writes articles about his industry
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