Working Online

While you can sell most things on eBay, quite a few things are banned. If you try to sell any of these things then eBay will remove your auction and all bids will be void.

Here is eBay’s full list of prohibited or questionable items:

Academic Software
Airline and Transit Related Items
Alcohol (also see Wine)
Animals and Wildlife Products
Anti-circumvention Policy
Artifacts
Authenticity Disclaimers
Autographed Items
Batteries
Beta Software
Bootleg Recordings
Brand Name Misuse
Catalog Sales
Catalytic Converters and Test Pipes
Celebrity Material
Charity or Fundraising Listings
Comparison Policy
Compilation and Informational Media
Contracts and Tickets
Counterfeit Currency and Stamps
Counterfeit Items
Credit Cards
Downloadable Media
Drugs & Drug Paraphernalia
Electronics Equipment
Embargoed Goods and Prohibited Countries
Encouraging Infringement Policy
Event Tickets
Faces, Names and Signatures
Firearms, Ammunition, Replicas, and Militaria
Fireworks
Food
Freon and Other Refrigerants
Gift Cards
Government IDs and Licenses
Hazardous, Restricted, and Perishable Items
Human Parts and Remains
Importation of Goods into the United States
International Trading - Buyers
International Trading - Sellers
Lockpicking Devices
Lottery Tickets
Mailing Lists and Personal Information
Manufacturers’ Coupons
Mature Audiences
Medical Devices
Misleading Titles
Mod Chips, Game Enhancers, and Boot Discs
Movie Prints
Multi-level Marketing, Pyramid and Matrix Programs
OEM Software
Offensive Material
Pesticides
Plants and Seeds
Police-Related Items
Political Memorabilia
Postage Meters
Pre-Sale Listings
Prescription Drugs and Devices
Promotional Items
Real Estate
Recalled Items
Recordable Media
Replica and Counterfeit Items
Satellite and Cable TV Descramblers
Slot Machines
Stocks and Other Securities
Stolen Property
Surveillance Equipment
Tobacco
Travel
Unauthorized Copies
Used Clothing
Warranties
Weapons & Knives
Wine (also see Alcohol)

Most of this is very obvious - of course you can’t sell illegal things like drugs, pyramid schemes or stolen goods. Almost everything that is on the list is there because there is law against selling it. Some of the reasons, though, are a little strange.

The ‘autographed items’ entry, for example, doesn’t mean that you can’t sell anything that’s been autographed - it just means that you can only sell it if it comes with a certificate of authenticity. The ‘artifacts’ entry prohibits you from selling Native American graves; ‘celebrity material’ means you can’t sell unauthorised pictures of celebrities; ‘embargoed goods’ means that you can’t sell anything that comes from Cuba… on and on it goes, and most of it you never need to know.

If your chosen kind of item seems to be on the list, though, and you’re concerned that you might not be able to sell it, then check the full list at http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/items-ov.html to see whether the item is banned entirely or there are just a few restrictions.

eBay says it will remove any items that it believes violate copyright law, but in reality they don’t have that many people to monitor the site. You will generally only find that your auction gets removed if someone decides to report you - and even then, they might not get around to it.

Really, buying and selling on eBay can sometimes feel more complicated than it really is, thanks to all the rules surrounding it - not to mention the jargon. Our next post is a ‘jargon buster’, to help you learn the language of eBay.

————————————————————

To find out more about the Author visit:

www.GaryOrtlieb.com

Copyright © Gary Ortlieb

————————————————————

Over the years, eBay has introduced all sorts of different auction types, in an effort to give people more options when they buy and sell their things on eBay.

For every seller who doesn’t like the idea that their item might sell for a far lower price than they intend, there’s another who wants to shift hundreds of the same item quickly. eBay tries to cater to all tastes. This post gives you an overview of the different kinds of auctions and their advantages for you.

Normal Auctions.

These are the bread-and-butter of eBay, the auctions everyone knows: buyers bid, others outbid them, they bid again, and the winner gets the item. Simple.

Reserve Auctions.

Reserve auctions are for sellers who don’t want their items to sell for less than a certain price - a concept you’ll know about if you’re familiar with real auctions. They work just like normal auctions on eBay, except that the buyer will be told if their bid does not meet the reserve price you set, and they’ll need to bid again if they want the item. If no-one is willing to meet your price, then the auction is cancelled, and you keep the item.

Fixed Price (’Buy it Now’) Auctions.

Buy it Now auctions can work in one of two ways. You can add a Buy it Now button to a normal auction, meaning that buyers can choose either to bid normally or to simply pay the asking price and avoid the whole bidding process. Some sellers, though, now cut out the auction process altogether and simply list all their items at fixed price. This lets you avoid all the complications of the auction format and simply list your items for how much you want them to sell for.

Recently, eBay added a twist to fixed price auctions: the ‘best offer’. This means that buyers can contact you to negotiate a price, which could be a good way to get sell some extra stock at a small discount. The only downside to reserve and fixed price auctions is that you pay a small extra fee to use these formats. In general, it is more worth using reserve auctions for higher-priced items and fixed price auctions for lower-priced ones - but remember that you can combine the two formats.

Multiple Item (’Dutch’) Auctions.

These are auctions where you can sell more than one of a certain item. Dutch auctions can be done by bidding. Buyers bid a price and say how many items they want, and then everyone pays the lowest price that was bid by one of the winning bidders. If you have trouble getting your head around that, then don’t worry - everyone else does too! These auctions are very rare.

What is more common is when a seller has a lot of one item, and lists it using a combination of two auction types: a multiple-item fixed price auction. This just means that you can just say how many of the item you they have, and offer them at a fixed price per unit. Buyers can enter how many they want and then just click Buy it Now to get them.

Now that you know about the different types of auctions, you should make sure that the items you plan to sell don’t violate eBay’s listing policies. The next post will let you know what’s allowed and what is a big no-no.  

————————————————————

To find out more about the Author visit:

www.GaryOrtlieb.com

Copyright © Gary Ortlieb

 So you’ve decided that you want to get started as a seller on eBay. There are a few things that you really need to know before you go and throw yourself in at the deep end.

What to Sell.

First off, you need to know what it is you’re going to sell: what’s your speciality? You’ll do far better on eBay if you become a great source for certain kind of products, as people who are interested in those products will come back to you again and again. You won’t get any loyalty or real reputation if you just sell rubbish at random.

When you think about what to sell, there are a few things to consider. The most important of these is to always sell what you know. If you try to sell something that you just don’t know anything about then you’ll never write a good description and sell it for a good price.

You might think you’re not especially interested in anything, but if you think about what kind of things you usually buy and which websites you go to most often, I’m sure you’ll discover some kind of interest. If all else fails mention it to your friends and family: they’ll almost certainly say “Oh, well why don’t you sell…”, and you’ll slap your forehead.

Out of the things you know enough about, you should then consider which things you could actually get for a good enough price to resell, and how suitable they would be for posting. If you can think of something of that you’re knowledgeable about and it’s small and light enough for postage to be relatively cheap, then that’s great!

Don’t worry if you think the thing you’re selling is too obscure - it isn’t. There’s a market for almost everything on eBay, even things that wouldn’t sell once in a year if you stocked them in a shop. You’ll probably do even better if you fill a niche than if you sell something common.

Tax and Legal Matters.

If you earn enough money, you should be aware that you’re going to have to start paying tax - this won’t be done for you. If you decide to sell on eBay on a full-time basis, you should probably register as a business.

Prepare Yourself.

There are going to be ups and downs when you sell on eBay. Don’t pack it in if something goes a little wrong in your first few sales: the sellers who are successful on eBay are the ones who enjoy it, and stick at it whatever happens.

Anyone can sell on eBay, if they believe in themselves - and if you do decide it’s not for you, then the start-up costs are so low that you won’t really have lost anything.

If you’re ready to start selling, then the next thing you need to know is the different auction types, so you can decide which ones you will use to sell your items. My next post will give you a guide.

————————————————————

To find out more about the Author visit:

www.GaryOrtlieb.com

Copyright © Gary Ortlieb

If you’ve ever read an article about eBay, you will have seen the kinds of incomes people make - it isn’t unusual to hear of people making thousands of dollars per month on eBay.

Next time you’re on eBay, take a look at how many PowerSellers there are: you’ll find quite a few. Now consider that every single one of one of them must be making at least $1,000 per month, as that’s eBay’s requirement for becoming a PowerSeller. Silver PowerSellers make at least $3,000 each month, while Gold PowerSellers make more than $10,000, and the Platinum level is $25,000. The top ranking is Titanium PowerSeller, and to qualify you must make at least $150,000 in sales every month!

The fact that these people exist gives you come idea of the income possibilities here. Most of them never set out to even set up a business on eBay - they simply started selling a few things, and then kept going. There are plenty of people whose full-time job is selling things on eBay, and some of them have been doing it for years now. Can you imagine that? Once they’ve bought the stock, everything else is pretty much pure profit for these people - they don’t need to pay for any business premises, staff, or anything else. There are multi-million pound businesses making less in actual profit than eBay PowerSellers do.

Even if you don’t want to quit your job and really go for it, you can still use eBay to make a significant second income. You can pack up orders during the week and take them down to the post office for delivery each Saturday. There are few other things you could be doing with your spare time that have anywhere near that kind of earning potential.

What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like: some PowerSellers are very old, or very young. Some live out in the middle of nowhere where selling on eBay is one of the few alternatives to farming or being very poor. eBay tears down the barriers to earning that the real world constantly puts up. There’s no job interview and no commuting involved - if you can post things, you can do it.

Put it this way: if you know where to get something reasonably cheaply that you could sell, then you can sell it on eBay - and since you can always get discounts for bulk at wholesale, that’s not exactly difficult. Buy a job lot of something in-demand cheaply, sell it on eBay, and you’re making money already, with no set-up costs.

If you want to dip your toe in the water before you commit to actually buying anything, then you can just sell things that you’ve got lying around in the house. Search through that cupboard of stuff you never use, and you’ll probably find you’ve got a few hundred dollars’ worth of stuff lying around in there! This is the power of eBay: there is always someone who wants what you’re selling, whatever it might be, and since they’ve come looking for you, you don’t even need to do anything to get them to buy it.

So you want to get started on eBay? Well, that’s great! There are only a few little things you need to learn to get started. Our next post will give you the lowdown.

————————————————————

To find out more about the Author visit:

www.GaryOrtlieb.com

Copyright © Gary Ortlieb

Yes, you read that correctly: twelve years. eBay was created in September 1995, by a man called Pierre Omidyar, who was living in San Jose. He wanted his site - then called ‘AuctionWeb’ - to be an online marketplace, and wrote the first code for it in one weekend. It was one of the first websites of its kind in the world. The name ‘eBay’ comes from the domain Omidyar used for his site. His company’s name was Echo Bay, and the ‘eBay AuctionWeb’ was originally just one part of Echo Bay’s website at ebay.com. The first thing ever sold on the site was Omidyar’s broken laser pointer, which he got $14 for.

The site quickly became massively popular, as sellers came to list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work remarkably well, and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself. The site had been designed from the start to collect a small fee on each sale, and it was this money that Omidyar used to pay for AuctionWeb’s expansion. The fees quickly added up to more than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his job and work on the site full-time. It was at this point, in 1996, that he added the feedback facilities, to let buyers and sellers rate each other and make buying and selling safer.

In 1997, Omidyar changed AuctionWeb’s - and his company’s - name to ‘eBay’, which is what people had been calling the site for a long time. He began to spend a lot of money on advertising, and had the eBay logo designed. It was in this year that the one-millionth item was sold (it was a toy version of Big Bird from Sesame Street).

Then, in 1998 - the peak of the dotcom boom - eBay became big business, and the investment in Internet businesses at the time allowed it to bring in senior managers and business strategists, who took in public on the stock market. It started to encourage people to sell more than just collectibles, and quickly became a massive site where you could sell anything, large or small. Unlike other sites, though, eBay survived the end of the boom, and is still going strong today.

1999 saw eBay go worldwide, launching sites in the UK, Australia and Germany. eBay bought half.com, an Amazon-like online retailer, in the year 2000 - the same year it introduced Buy it Now - and bought PayPal, an online payment service, in 2002.

Pierre Omidyar has now earned an estimated $3 billion from eBay, and still serves as Chairman of the Board. Oddly enough, he keeps a personal weblog at http://pierre.typepad.com. There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay - that’s a lot of laser pointers.

Now that you know the history of eBay, perhaps you’d like to know how it could work for you?

————————————————————

To find out more about the Author visit:

www.GaryOrtlieb.com

Copyright © Gary Ortlieb

Almost everything sold whether it be on the Internet or from a stand alone business is a niche market. The big niche markets such as Real Estate, Insurance or Automobiles obviously require a lot of money and are very competitive and over saturated.

These are all needs that are being filled by these big companies. The Internet gives us, the little guy the chance to seek out smaller niche markets that the big money companies have no interest in. This is the idea behind niche marketing on the Internet. To find these markets and fill their needs.

How do we find these markets? You first of all will need commitment and passion. Anybody that tells you, just sign up and you can be making money in 15 minutes. I won’t go as far as to say they are lying. But I will say that 99.99% of the time it is not going to happen.

The best way to find a niche market, is to sit down with a pen and paper. Write down all of your interests, hobbies or anything you have a passion for. This can be anything such as fishing, crafts, pets etc. You should try and make a list of at least 5 interests.

Once you have your list of interests then you should try to add subcategories to your list under each interest.

For instance lets say your interest is fishing. This is a very broad subject, so you want to narrow this down to try and find a more targeted niche. Remember the smaller the niche is the better chance you have at getting the targeted traffic.

So you break fishing down some more. Say you like crappie fishing, now you are getting into a more specific area. You could maybe even break this down further. What if you could break it down to a specific state, like crappie fishing in Alabama?

I think that should give you an idea of how to find a possible good niche. The reason I say possible is because you now have to see if there is a market for this niche.

This is the reason so many people fail on the Internet. They either jump on a product or promotion and become an affiliate or set up a website. Then they try to create a market for it. Believe me this does not work.

If you are going to make any money, you have to do the research and find the hungry markets and either create a product of your own. Or find a product that someone has created and become an affiliate. Then you try to fill the needs of that market.

There are several good tools you can use to see if there is a market for your niche. In my opinion one of the best tools is wordtracker. You can type in your keyword, say crappie fishing in Alabama. Wordtracker will then tell you how many times that phrase is searched for in a 24 hour period and much more. You will just have to read the tutorial on wordtrackers web site.

I don’t know what kind of results you would get for this particular niche. Lets just say with different combinations of the phrase you could get 50 searches a day. This would be a small market but possible money could be made here.

What if these 50 searches that wordtracker tells you, actually turns into 1500 to 2000 per day. Would that be worth going after?

You obviously would like to have all 2000 of the searches land on your site. But say you got 6% of them, 120 hits that are targeted. They are not from a traffic exchange or got there by clicking for credits from a safelist. This traffic is actually searching for your product.

Say you have a $30.00 product to sell. Your first goal would be to try to convert 1% of these people into actual buyers. You do this by creating a sales page that actually focuses on your visitors as individuals. Your sales page must let the visitor know that you are aware of the problems and question they have. Your headline or sub headline should address you usp and then let them know how your product will answer or solve their problems. This all falls under copywriting and is a skill in its own.

I am getting a little bit ahead of myself here. I just get a little exited when talking about niche marketing. So lets get back to the 50 searches a day.

With that amount of searches you know there is a market. Now you need to see how much competition there is and how they’re promoting their product.

You now want to go to google, type in your keyword phrase and see what comes up. The less the better because you already know there is a market out there.

Click on some of the results and get to know your competition. See what they are doing and figure out how you can do it better.

Once you have finished this process, then you are ready to start you niche project. Your domain name, website design, sales copy and ebook. If you don’t know how to do this or if you can only do some of it. You can always outsource.

Just think of the possibilities of having 5 to 10 of these niche sites running and taking in a $100 or so a day. I think you could live with that.

If you would really like to learn how to do niche marketing with a step by step system. I highly recommend: “Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet” . This has been the #1 best-selling Internet Marketing course online for more than 8 years running. I not only recommend it, I own one.

Privacy | Disclaimer

I do not want to turn this blog into just a promotional type thing but this is just a way to pick up a free report and a little money for yourself.

Russel Brunson is launching a report on 10/09. All you need to do is go here: http://www.IM-Myth.com/garyortlieb and sign up for your free report. Then once you sign up, you can make $1.00 for anybody you refer and $.50 for anybody they refer.

You can do all of this without touching you wallet. So I would click on the link above and head on over and sign up. You have absolutely nothing to lose. The worst that can happen is you receive a free report.

This is only going on for a week so act fast.

To your success,
Gary Ortlieb

 I am 2 weeks into “Job Crusher” the mentoring membership program. If you have visited that site lately, you have noticed that the doors are closed.

From what I am hearing they may never open again. I would think that if people for whatever reason would drop out, they may fill those slots from people on the waiting list. But I have no idea what is going to happen in that regard.

This program does deliver, they have had 3 to 4 training webinars in the 2 weeks that I have been their. These are actually for training, they are not listening to someone tell you how much they are making and how great their next best thing is. Then at the end try to sell you something. This is real answers to any question that you want to ask.

These training sessions are recorded, so if you would miss one you can listen to the recording later. Eric actually had one whole session, where he just opened it up to the members to just ask him questions. He sat there for almost 3 hours answering questions and looking at members web sites to give them advice on what they could do to improve on what they had.

I think “job crusher” has over 2,000 members and I thought there wasn’t any way that they could deliver the type of training they had promised. Now, I am not going to say that this is as good as 1 on 1 mentoring.  I will however, say that even with a group this large, in my personal opinion this program is as close as you will come.

There are mastermind groups forming and the forum seems to be coming together really well. They are adding new and very helpful features daily.

Anybody that actually follows my blog, knows that I tell it like it is. So this is not a sales pitch for “job crusher.” The doors are closed anyway.

In my opinion if you wanted to learn niche marketing without paying the upper 4 figure cost of a mentoring program. You missed a great opportunity if you didn’t make it into ”job crusher.”

What “job crusher” may lack in the 1 on 1 mentoring is more than made up for with being part of a 2000 or more group of like minded people.  This particular group and the administration of this program seem to work very well together.

I know that I have only been involved for 2 weeks and many things could happen either way. But as of right now, if I were the type to do a rating system. This program would receive one of my highest ratings.

————————————————————

To find out more about the Author visit:

www.GaryOrtlieb.com

Copyright © Gary Ortlieb

————————————————

This post is for anyone who actually reads this blog and does not come here to just spam it.

I spent at least a year on the Internet fumbleing around, spending money on every new best thing and basically wasteing my time and a lot of money. I finally realized that the only chance that I would have to make any money was to get proper training. So I opted to be mentored, this type of training delivered just what was promised. But this type of training is very costly, upper 4 figures.

Even once you receive this type of expert training, you will still realize that with the constant changes going on with the Internet. That your training and learning has to be ongoing also.

So if you would like to receive training for a lot less than upper 4 figures for 6 months of 2 - 1 hour phone sessions per month. I strongly suggest you read this:

I’m sure you’ve heard of the power of Master Minding.… Well, Job Crusher now offers you instant access to communities of like-minded people just like you.You see, inside Mike Filsaime and Eric Louviere’s new Internet Marketing membership site, you get to join various master mind groups to form lasting relationships that put you on the fast track to success.In fact, inside Job Crusher you can even create your own Master Mind group and watch as various members from around the whole start to join you and add value for everyone in the group.

I just wanted to make a quick post about the Affiliate website business model that I explained in the previous posts.

I just consider this kind of funny, with me just explaining this business model. But I received an email this week from a well known, highly respected marketer. Offering me one of these free affiliate sites.

It was just like I explained and had to be hosted by the host picked out by the people giving away the website. As I mentioned this is a good business model to make money if you can market the give away site.

 ——————————————————–

To find out more about the author visit:

www.GaryOrtlieb.com

Copyright © Gary Ortlieb

———————————————————