martin-thompson.com

The Opportunities on eBay

Martin Thompson — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:07:46 +0000

Hi and welcome to the first of a series of fun articles on how to cash in on eBay. You can modify these and put your own name to them, compile them into an ebook, give them away as a mini-course to subscribers or anything else you can think of

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,
Gold PowerSellers make more than $10,000,
Platinum Powersellers make more than $25,000, and
Titanium PowerSellers make at least a whopping $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.

My next post will go through some more things to think about before starting to sell on eBay

Internet Marketing News and Reviews

Martin Thompson — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:46:56 +0000

Hi all, a bit of a delay since my last post. It’s recently been announced where I work that several colleagues and myself will be made redundant sometime in the first couple of months of 2009 (cue sympathetic ‘AAAHHH’). I’m trying to see this as positive as my redundancy plus some savings, should allow me to pay off my mortgage after less than 9 years. This would seriously take the pressure off how much I would need to earn in the early stages of my online career.

So I now find myself in the position where I have the best part of a year to ramp up my online activities so that I don’t have to go through the awful process of JOB applications and interviews all over again

I’m currently working on my first online product under the guidance of John Thornhill and his Personal Coaching team. This has had to be rethought in the light of the eBay ban on digital product listings. Thanks for that eBay Trust and Safety ! Anyway, it’s slowly taking shape…again…so I’ll keep you posted on how it goes, without giving too much away of course

Anyway, slightly overdue I know but here a few links to cool free info and products that I’ve come across over the last week or so

http://www.internetmarketingsweetie.com/50-ideas.pdf

Alice Seba - 50 simple to implement tips that you can use to create credibility and build a relationship of trust with your prospects and subscribers

http://traffictycoons.com/blog/?p=17

Michael Jones TrafficTycoons.com - free 32 minute video on how to get traffic by writing and distributing articles. There is a product launch behind this but the video itself is a useful free resource

http://www.mysupercoach.com/blog/henry-gold/lesson-12-failure-of-the-7-product-scary/

Henry Gold at mysupercoach.com - interesting post on how to price your info products for maximum profits. Focus on quality not quantity, and price higher

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=jeffjohnsonvideos&p=r

Jeff Johnson videos on youtube.com - how to create your own info product, affiliate marketing, Myspace, Wordpress and more. This lot should keep you going for a while !

http://marketingproductreview.com/reviews/Marketing_Product_Review_Vol-1_Issue-17.pdf

Mike Filsaimes ‘Marketing Product Review’ Volume 1 Issue 17. Featured products in this issue are :

- Traffic Tycoons
- Instant Traffic Expert
- Traffic Kahuna
- Video Opt-In Profits
- 4 Minute Money
- Bidding-Buzz
- CB Stampede
- Opt-In Accelerator

Enjoy and don’t forget to leave a comment. Any offers of work from early 2009 gratefully accepted. Wife and 2 kids to support !

Back from the slopes to eBay digital chaos !

Martin Thompson — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:42:50 +0000

Just got back from a weeks skiing in Morzine, France and have spent the last couple of days digesting the news from eBay regarding the ban on listing digitally downloadable products which started yesterday. By the way, that’s not a photo of me above…if I looked like that it would be because I’d completely lost control and was heading for a crash landing…I suspect the guy above meant to strike that pose !

Anyway here’s the link to the eBay announcement. Typically I was planning to list some ebooks on eBay in the next couple of weeks. Seems like I’m always one step behind things !

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200803.shtml#2008-03-24125416

As you can imagine the internet and eBay related forums have been abuzz with tales of doom and gloom from eBay sellers who see this as the end of their world. I do find it surprising that eBay only gave one weeks notice of such a huge change which will have caused many sellers to have to completely reorganise their businesses

The options remaining can be classified into two areas :

1) turn your digital product into physical product, either by putting all your ebooks etc onto disk yourself or utilising an order fulfilment company

2) list your digital product on the eBay Classified Ad format, which is still acceptable

As you can further imagine, the guys at the forefront of digital product selling have immediately taken action on this and have released positive comments and free reports on their blogs and websites. Check out recent postings from Socrates Socratous (creator of My Digital Dispatch), Dan Thompson (elpasso blog) and John Thornhill (planetms blog)

The eBay changes should mean that many sellers will be put off listing info products due to the amount of work now involved in transferring everything onto disk. This in turn means less competition for sellers who are prepared to get creative with attractive CD’s including bonus features, upsells, lead capture forms etc

OK that’s it for now, I’m off to find out the cheapest price I can get a pack of 100 CD’s for !

Internet Marketing News and Reviews

Martin Thompson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:44:58 +0000

Here are some cool links from the past couple of weeks :

Derrick Van Dyke Affiliate Cash Secrets : New Squeeze Page Generator. Excellent step-by-step video

Derrick’s video shows how easy it is to set up attractive squeeze pages with new software to be released anytime now

Watch the video here

Mike Filsaime : Marketing Product Review Vol 1 Issue 14

Products Reviewed (click on the ‘Review product name‘ button after each of the sales pages to see reviews) :

- Affiliate Defined - 13 year old kid
- Mafioso Marketing
- Sky High Auctions
- Niche Inspector
- Niche Annihilation Method

It doesn’t surprise me the Sky High Auctions is getting great feedback. I mentioned the excellent free videos in my earlier post. Read again here

Read the full magazine here Internet Marketing Product Review

Derrick Van Dyke Affiliate Cash Secrets : How to Find Profitable Products That You Actually WANT to Sell

Watch the video here

Jeff Dedrick : Viral ebook Explosion. Tips for viral marketing and some mistakes to avoid. Free video . Viral ebook Explosion lauching 17 March

Watch the free video here

eBay changes - making Best Match the search default

Martin Thompson — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 08:40:32 +0000

eBay has just made some changes to the way your search results are displayed, based on what they call ‘Relevance’. This works partly based on ‘past sucessful buyer behavior for similar items’ . I understand this to mean that if a similar item to the one being searched for was previously successfully purchased on eBay, results for those sellers will display higher in your Best Match results

Best Match also gives higher ranking to sellers providing better buying experience and penalises sellers that don’t, based on their feedback scores. This is to reward professional sellers and give buyers a better eBay experience. In addition, sellers who have low Detailed Seller Ratings for shipping and handling charges (ie they charge too much) will also appear lower in search results

Generally these changes will benefit buyers generally, and the more professional sellers. I especially think the inclusion of penalties for sellers charging excessive shipping costs is a good thing, as being charged 3 or 4 times the actual shipping cost is a pet hate of mine.

Personally I’m not too concerned about Relevance in search results, as I like to hunt for bargains from new and inexperienced sellers. Also, if I’m looking for something specific on eBay I generally want it asap. You can still display search results using the traditional ‘Ending Soonest’ option if required, which is what I will be doing

You can read the full Press Release here

Finding My Way

Martin Thompson — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:05:10 +0000

Let the head scratching begin….over the past few days I’ve been starting to think about the topic for my first online product that I will be working on over the coming weeks. After a brainstorming session I came up with the broad topics of eBay and affiliate marketing, or something in between the two.

I guess it’s fair to say that in the case of eBay, this is one area in which I am pretty knowledgeable. As for affiliate marketing, I am less in-the-know but regard myself as an enthusiastic beginner who is very interested in learning more about this subject.

This leads me to my next question : for my first product should I play safe and stick with what I know best (ie eBay), or use the exercise of creating my product as a way of researching and hence increasing my knowledge (ie of affiliate marketing) at the same time ?

My head tells me play safe the first time, and hopefully I’ll enjoy the process of creating my first product so much I’ll soon be raring to go on the next one

So eBay it is….Now then, how to come up with some fresh new content that people will want to know all about ? In an area where it seems like every few days there’s a new mega launch of some ‘Complete eBay Profits’ study course ?

Hmmm…shouldn’t be a problem !

So that’s where I’m at right now. In fact I have a few more ideas regarding the specifics of my product, but I don’t want to give way too much yet. You’ll just have to subscribe to my blog for future updates on my progress

Take care and have a great weekend

Martin

Best of the links

Martin Thompson — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:35:20 +0000

Here’s a roundup of interesting topics and links from last week. Time permitting, I will make this a weekly post

1) Niche Widget by Terry Perdew

This is a plug-in for your website or blog that generates attractive scrolling ads that are targeted based on the subject of your site. According to Terry, Niche Widget is already available in a wide range of topics, with more to follow soon

You make money either by referrals or purchases via your affilate id. Commissions vary from 50% to 100% depending on your membership level, and you also make money when your referrals make sales of their own

The site includes testimonials from some big names including Willie Crawford, may of which refer to the simplicity of installing and configuring Niche Widget

2) I spotted a great post at Dosh Dosh blog on How To Become An Authority In Your Niche. This is especially relevant for my new blog as I’m still deciding which niche to target. Click here to read the full post

http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to-become-an-authority-in-your-niche/

3) A couple of useful free videos on Automatic eBay Auction Income by Jeff Mulligan at Quickie Profits. The videos discuss becoming an eBay/Commission Junction affiliate and using your affiliate id to create simple sales pages on our favourite niches.

The pages are dynamically generated using code from eBay’s Editor Kit, and you receive commissions either from active eBay sign-ups or from sales made via your affiliate id

Click here to watch Video 1

Click here to watch Video 2

4) Free Tax Benefits Guide by Joel Comm. You need to opt-in to receive this guide, which gives a good basic understanding of the types of expenditure that can be offset against profits to reduce your tax liability when you become a successful Internet Marketer, or indeed any home-based small business owner. The guide is obviously written from a US perspective but many of the general principles apply more widely. As always, you should consult a tax professional before making decisions regarding treatment of specific items of income or expenditure.

Note that there is also a MLM element to receiving this report, whereby you can promote it and drive sign-ups into your downline on selected Joel Comm products

The Story so Far…

Martin Thompson — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:32:16 +0000

Hi, my name is Martin and it’s been 3 weeks already since I started work on John Thornhills Personal Coaching program (sounds like a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous).

Unsurprisingly I’m already slightly behind schedule ! This isn’t a problem for me personally as I’m in no great rush to become the next internet millionaire. I’m quite happy to take my time and as I get more experience of all things related to internet marketing and blogging etc, the learning curve will shorten and things should happen faster…hopefully.

These first three weeks have been taken up with creating and configuring the blog that you see before you. It’s by no means the finished article but I’m sure you’ll agree thats its better to ‘get yourself out there’ asap and work on the fine tuning later. Substance over style I say, although I hope to make my blog more appealing to the eye as time goes by

You may think that three weeks is a long time just to create a basic blog and make a few posts…and I would agree with you. When I think of how many hours its taken to get this far I reckon I could have blasted through everything I’ve done in one long day without any interruptions

However I currently work full-time and have a wife and 2 boys to spend time with in the evenings, so a spare day with no interruptions simply doesn’t happen to me ! That’s why the 16 weeks John Thornhill has scheduled for the Personal Coaching program is perfect for my lifestyle

The next stage in the program involves thinking about ideas for my creating my first digital product to be marketed online. I’m sure this will involve plenty of head scratching so it’s entirely possible that by the time I make my next post about progress in the Personal Coaching program, I’ll be even further behind schedule

Feel free to leave a comment below about anything in my blog. I’ll keep you posted soon on further progress

Great free eBay selling videos

Martin Thompson — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:37:13 +0000

I just came across these great free videos about eBay selling. They are by Jimmy Huber at Sky High Auctions. If you’re fairly new to eBay selling there are some essential tips here that will help you increase your sales and profits.

On 6 March Jimmy is lauching his new product which will include much more cutting edge strategies that will be invaluable once you’ve got the basics of auction selling down and are ready to take your selling activities to the next level

If you look round the site, you’ll see Jimmy has received glowing testimonials for his new product from the likes of John Thornhill, eBay Powerseller with a feedback score of almost 14,000 at 99.9%. If you read my blog, you’ll know I am currently enrolled on Johns Personal Coaching program, so I can obviously vouch that he’s a good guy who definitely knows his stuff when it comes to all things eBay

For now just enjoy the free videos as they keep coming, and look out for the product launch in 3 weeks time

Welcome to my eBay category

Martin Thompson — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:43:41 +0000

Over the next couple of weeks I plan to start listing ebooks on ebay.com. I’ve got my copy of Turbolister downloaded and ready to go. Currently I’m putting together a collection of relevant, up-to-date ebooks on various topics related to e-commerce and internet marketing, which will be invaluable to lots of eBayers

As you can see, I’m very closely following the John Thornhill busines model. I’ll be using my eBay ebook sales to help in building my subscriber list (which currently doesn’t exist !) Well, if it can work for John, I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work for me…

I’ll keep you all updated on how it goes. Wish me luck…