Are You a Geezer and Would You Like To Make Some Extra Money Online?

The eBay Seller's News, December 2008, Volume 8, No. 18

Learn How To Sell More on eBay with The Newsletter for Professional
eBay Sellers by:  Skip McGrath

In This Issue:

Musings

1. Are You a Geezer and Would You Like To Make Some Extra Money Online?
2. What Am I Selling on eBay This Christmas Season?
3. More Big Merchants Coming to eBay - What does this mean for small sellers?
4. Recession - What Recession?
5. New eBay Wholesale Sources for December 2008

"Risk taking is inherently failure-prone.
Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking." 
~Tim McMahon

Musings

Today is launch day for The Official Geezer Guide website and book series.

When I surveyed my readers some time ago, one of the things I noticed is that a high percentage of my readers and folks who want to start an online business are over the age of 55 and many of them were already retired. So that is what gave me the idea for The Official Geezer Guide. See the 2^nd article below for more details

FREE eBooks for my readers: Worldwide Brands has just come out with a revised version of their great little Free eBook - How to Find Real Products You can Sell Online.  You don't have to sign up for anything, just Click Here to download your copy.

Do you have a friend or loved one serving in the military? If so I have a great Christmas gift you should look at.

My daughter-in-law Lissa is married to our son a Navy Chief who is off serving in the Desert this Christmas.  Lissa has just completed writing The Complete Idiots Guide to Life as A Military Spouse - Survive and thrive tips for every military spouse.  It teaches those who are married to our serving soldiers, sailors Marines and Air Force members how to navigate all of the complicated government benefits, deal with long deployments and tons of insider information about little-known programs and benefits for military families. You can find it at your local bookstore or here is a link where you can purchase it instantly on Amazon.com. The book has received excellent reviews and is selling very well. It is a perfect Christmas present for anyone married to a member of the military.

So, let's get started with this month's stories

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1. Are You a Geezer and Would You Like To Make Some Extra Money Online?

This week is the official launch of the Official Geezer Guide website.  I have been working on this project in secret for several months.  The Official Geezer Guide is an information website aimed at helping seniors, retired and about-to-retire folks learn about ways to make money online in a scam-free environment.

Besides reviewing and recommending various online business training programs, we will also publish a free monthly newsletter and publish our own line of training manuals.

Our first two books available now are:

The Official Geezer Guide to Starting an Online Business from Home by me (Skip McGrath)

The Official Geezer Guide to Selling on Amazon, by Steve Lindhorst.

We have two more titles in the works that should be available later this week:

The Official Geezer Guide to Selling on Craigslist by Richard Geasey

The Official Geezer Guide to Creating and Selling eBooks by Julie A. Fast

For the next few months we will be rolling out several more titles including a new book I am working on for Geezers who want to sell on eBay and books about making money with blogs, Google AdSense and content-rich niche websites.

We are also planning a series of webinars and monthly conference calls and eventually we hope to put together an annual Geezer Get-together.

I have already had several questions from people who have visited the site asking me if they have to be a geezer to buy from the site or why we are selling to the senior market.  The answer to the first question is easy -we don't discriminate. Anyone can buy our books.  As for the second question the Geezer Guide concept grew out of the realities of the market.  The baby-boom generation is starting to retire.  Today there are 14,000 people who retire every day.  By 2010 that number will jump to 20,000.  Those are staggering numbers and a natural market for anyone who wants to target it.

There is a giant myth out there that old folks don't know how to use computers. Well this may be true of my mother who is in her late 80s and retired many years ago, but most people who have recently retired and will retire soon are highly computer literate. Some of you may just use a computer to search the web, shop, share photos with the kids and send email. But, others are quite skilled -having come from jobs in the tech world where they used a computer daily. Whichever description fits you, as long as you have some basic computer skill then our business guides, methods and systems for making money online will work for you.

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2. What Am I Selling on eBay This Christmas Season?

"What should I sell on eBay to make money?" Is one of the most frequent questions I get and people often complain about the difficulty of sourcing products.  People also ask me what I am selling on eBay. Well, my auction management company, Vendio, recently set up their scrolling gallery that appears at the end of my auction listings, so I can show it on my website too.  So here is a look at what we are selling this Christmas.
 

Click Here. Double your traffic. Get Vendio Gallery - Now FREE!

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3. More Big Merchants Coming to eBay - What does this mean for small sellers?

Earlier this year eBay rolled out their Large Merchants Services (MS). LMS is a set of APIs designed to meet the integration needs of Large Merchant sellers (Think Buy.com, Macy's, Wal-Mart, etc.). Basically it is a feature on the eBay Developers platform to make it easy for large merchants to list items on eBay in bulk with a minimum of information.  The plan is to bring huge retailers inventory onto eBay.

LMS is part of eBay's survival and growth strategy. At first glance small sellers reacted negatively -it seemed to be just more proof that eBay doesn't care about small sellers anymore and is trying to become more like Amazon.  However, the real losers in this plan are not the small niche sellers, but the really large Platinum and Titanium eBay sellers.

The type of goods we are talking about here are mainstream retail products such as brand name clothing, shoes and accessories, consumer electronics, computers, music and DVDs. This market has been dominated and controlled by large eBay sellers for several years now. These are the sellers who are affected the most. The additional competition and sheer volume of listings will swamp existing sellers, compress their margins and over time push a lot of them off the platform.

As for small sellers there will most likely be little or no effect.  Most small sellers on eBay today deal in used products, liquidation goods, art, antiques or collectibles or new, but highly niche products, that are ignored by the large retail chains.  As long as eBay can still attract buyers for these products, the small sellers who sell in these categories should be little affected. For the little guy, eBay's main advantage is that it is still the place where people go who are searching for that unusual item and the place where people feel safe and are not afraid to buy from some small seller who may be working out of their home instead of from a big established chain store.  As long as eBay doesn't ruin that, the small sellers should continue to do well.

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4. Recession - What Recession?

Yes, we are in a recession. That is undeniable --but it seems to be highly segmented. Everyone was expecting retail sales after Thanksgiving to tank -but they didn't. And online sales from Thanksgiving through the following Monday (so called Cyber Monday) were actually up from the previous year. According to Forbes Magazine, Online sales of consumer electronics soared 24% the week after Thanksgiving.  Total online sales were up 11% over the previous year.

I have spoken with three separate eBay sellers and one mid-sized Amazon seller this week and all of them report increased sales. The same goes for my business.  Sales of my books and training materials are down slightly, but sales of our products on eBay and from our websites are up strongly.

I honestly can't explain it. With unemployment rates up and credit drying up retail sales should be falling dramatically.  The only positive seems to be the dramatic fall in gas prices.  But this is also counterintuitive for online sales. The common wisdom 6 months ago was that high gas prices would help online sales -but they didn't. Now with gas prices falling, fewer people are going to the malls and more people seem to be buying online.

Of course this could be nothing more than a last gasp -people remaining optimistic and buying for the Christmas season -we won' t really know until we get to January.

So although I am pleased that sales are still strong -personally I am still being a bit cautions.  Here are three rules I follow to manage my business in an uncertain environment:

• Cash is king. Keep your debts low and keep a high cash position. One of the things that every recession provides is opportunities. Since credit is tight anyway, having some extra cash on hand can help you score some awesome deals as companies go out of business and others reduce inventories.
• Manage your inventory. If you have products that you have paid for and they are not selling, then get rid of them. Everything will sell if the price is low enough. Lower the price to the point where they will sell. You may not make a profit and you may even lose some money, but now you have the cash to put into goods that will sell
• Concentrate on your best-selling items. This may sound overly simple but you would be surprised how many people just don't get this. If something is selling, then offer -and sell more of them. Stop wasting time, effort and listing fees on slow moving merchandise.

These rules also relate to my business, but the first one is a good rule to follow in your personal life. Cash is king in your personal finances as well.

I don't suggest you stop buying everything -if everyone did that then the economy really would crash. But maybe you can wait a while to upgrade to that new plasma TV or maybe you can get another few months out of your old car. As credit tightens interest rates will start rising. Consumers are already getting notices from their credit card companies that their rates have increased. So now with interest rates still low is a great time to reduce your debt load and put your savings into savings.

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 5. New eBay Wholesale Sources for December 2008

The Liquidation and surplus market is starting to heat up. Businesses are under great pressure to reduce inventories and there are going to be some great deals in the months ahead. However this market has it's quirks and dangers. As long as you know what you are doing it can be very profitable.  Here are two articles about sourcing the liquidation market that you should read before diving in:

http://www.skipmcgrath.com/articles/liquidation-surplus-closeout-ebay.shtml

http://www.skipmcgrath.com/articles/ebay-secondary-surplus-liquidation-market.shtml

One of the largest and most popular online liquidation companies is Liquidation.com.  Frankly I often get complaints from readers who used Liquidation, yet they are used by hundreds of small eBay and website sellers who are very loyal to the site and keep coming back. I have never been able to put my finger on the problem but I think it may have to do with the fact that Liquidation is much like eBay -there are good and bad sellers. I strongly recommend you read the two articles above before buying so you know what you are getting into. The other piece of advice is to start small. Don't dump thousands of dollars into merchandise. Start with a smaller order until you get some experience.

Some other well known closeout dealers are:

Via Trading

Salvage Closeouts

AllStar Closeouts

Countryside Closeouts

Ok - enough of closeouts. Let's look at some new products

Vecceli of Italy sells croc handbags, signature handbags, jewelry handbags, evening bags, watches, perfumes, photo bracelets, recordable photo frames and sunglasses - all from Italy.

Factory Direct Leather sells a wide range of fashion leather goods.

Sercal has almost anything you can think of to import from Mexico. One eBay seller I know is doing very well selling leather rifle cases to hunters. He buys them for about $30 each and sells them for close to $100.

Colours Wholesale gifts distributor of iPod accessories, kid's sleeping bags and wholesale products and new merchandise by Colours USA

Hartmann Variety is a closeout dealer for popular brands of tools including DeWalt and Bosch

Well, that's it for this month. See you in January. I hope all of my readers have a wonderful and Merry Christmas and Joyous Hanukkah and a happy, prosperous and successful New Year.

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

P.S. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it.