Could netSpray be The Next eBay?

The eBay Seller's News, June, 2009, Volume 9, No. 8

eBay Tips, Tools, News and Resources for the Professional eBay Seller
by: Skip McGrath

In This Issue:

Musings

1. Could netSpray be The Next eBay?
2. How eBay Sellers Can Profit from Failing Banks
3. Niche of The Month - Exam Textbooks and Textbook Sets
4. eBay Motors - the Forgotten Selling Opportunity
5. New eBay Wholesale Sources for June 2009

"Everyone who got where he is, had to begin where he was." 
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Musings

I did an interesting interview last week with eBay PowerSeller, Ron Saxton. We spoke about the state of eBay, what’s going on with the eBay consignment business and how Ron manages his Titanium PowerSeller level business.  I have put the interview up as a link on our Free Auction Resources Page. If you are not familiar with this section of the website you should take a look as we have links to lots of free and low-cost paid resources.

My latest published book, Titanium eBay was originally published in 2006, but a lot has changed on eBay since then. So Penguin has just released a new version, Titanium eBay 2009 - the second edition.  Here is a link to My eBay Book Store on Amazon if you would like to buy a copy.

As you can see I am now on Twitter. I am learning that Twitter is a great way to drive traffic to your eBay auctions. But first you need followers. I have only been on Twitter a few weeks and I am already up to almost 1400 followers. There are tools out there to help you do that but most of them are junk. They build random followers –whereas what you need are targeted followers. For example, if you are selling clothing on eBay then you need people interested in fashion or if you are selling fishing gear then you need fishermen. But I just found a great tool that will help you build thousands of targeted followers with just a few minutes per day of work. And even if you don’t have a product, you can use it to build followers to make money with affiliate offers. Here is the link: http://budurl.com/twitterbuild. It’s simple to do and comes with a money-back guarantee so you can’t go wrong.

Last month I ran a special offer for folks who wanted to learn about our personal training program. I am offering a free signed copy of Titanium eBay in return for filling out an information form and participating in a 30-minute interview where you can learn about the program and see if you qualify.  This offer was limited to 20 people, and we had 13 take advantage of the offer, so I have another 7 books left.  Click here to fill out your information form if you would like to learn more about our personal one-on-one eBay and website marketing training program.

For those of you who did participate, your signed copies of Titanium eBay will be going out this week. You should receive then within a few days.

For those of you looking to learn how to sell on Amazon, we have a new link for Steve Lindhorst’s best-selling book, Selling on The River. If you are looking for the book under the old link, amazonbasics.com, that link is no longer active.

I get a lot of questions from readers wanting to know if they can run an eBay business part-time while still working.  I actually wrote an article about this some time ago that is still very relevant today.  Managing A Full-time Job and an eBay Business.

Let’s get started with this month’s issue:

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1. Could netSpray be The Next eBay?

I used to make my entire online income from eBay -and I still make a lot of it there, but with slowing growth and rising fees, like all sellers I am always looking for other venues to sell on.  Amazon has been pretty good, but their fees are high, too.  I have tried several alternative auction and selling sites including Online Auctions, Overstock, Etsy, Bonanzle and a few others with some limited success.  But, so far, none of them have come close to eBay.

Last week I found a very interesting site called netSpray. This is a place where you can sell at a fixed price, but they have no listing fees and no final value fees. Instead they use a low monthly subscription fee.

When the founders of netSpray contacted me, I took a look at the program and frankly I didn’t get it at first.

It wasn’t until I actually set up a netSpray account (which took all of two or three minutes) and launched my first ad that I got excited. I went from mildly perplexed to Wow! This is powerful stuff!

With netSpray I discovered a system that would allow me use the power of many sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Craigslist, Twitter and even eBay Classified ads, to sell my products. And, if you don’t have a product, you can use netSpray to make money by selling other people’s products.

Here are some of the features:

• Free Listing and No Final Value Fees!
   
• Inventory Controlled Ad Listings
   
• Activate/ Deactivate Your Ads on the Fly
   
• Spray your Items Across the Internet
   
• View Ad Clicks and Ad Views of Your Item
   
• Sales Copy Hosting (upload your stores template)
   
• Digital Downloads for eBooks, music and videos
   
• The ability to sell new or used products
   
• Built in affiliate program that gets affiliates selling your product, or you can become an affiliate and sell other people’s products
   
• Support and education (netSpray University)

Besides using netSpray to sell products directly, it comes with a built-in affiliate program so you can get hundreds of other people selling your product as well. Or you can be on the other side and make money as an affiliate.

I don’t know of any other program on the net potentially as powerful as this.  Yes, they are still in the early stages -sort of like how eBay was in 1995. I don’t know if you were around the internet back then, but those early eBay sellers made a lot of money.  This could be one of those opportunities. Click here to learn more about netSpray and get your free report.  If you would like to learn more about netSpray, I have also posted an article on our Free Articles page.

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2. How eBay Sellers Can Profit from Failing Banks

Almost every Friday, the FDIC takes over and closes a bank. Just last week, they moved on the second largest bank failure in the country, BankUnited in Florida. So how can you make money from this?

When a bank fails the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) does one of two things:  They arrange a forced sale of the bank to another, more healthy bank, or they simply liquidate the bank.  In both cases, there are assets that need to be sold off. These assets fall into three main categories:

1.       Office equipment, computers, furniture, telephones and so on. All of the stuff you would find in a bank or the bank’s backroom offices.

2.      Assets owned by the bank that were repossessed from customers who did not pay. These can include cars, trucks, boats, commercial equipment and of course real estate.

So how does the FDIC sell those assets?  They contract with a company called Penny Worley Auctioneers.  Called simply Worley Auctioneers they conduct auctions both online and in locations all over the country. I have been following the auctions and can tell you that a lot of this stuff goes for a steal.  There are plenty of things selling that can be resold on eBay for huge profits.

Here is what the Worley website looks like:

One of the assets you see sold frequently on Worley is restaurant equipment because banks frequently foreclose on restaurants and the assets have to be sold off. I spoke to one big eBay PowerSeller who buys from Worley at least once a month. He asked me not to give his username, but he says he can buy in lots from Worley and mark the equipment up as much as 300% on eBay. He also occasionally buys office equipment. Last month he purchased a medium sized Xerox printer that came with a dozen toner cartridges and some other accessories for $900.  He sold the printer on eBay for $2000 and he sold off the ink and toner suppliers for about another $500.

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3. Niche of The Month - Exam Textbooks and Textbook Sets

This is a great niche and could be one of the most profitable. We are not talking about ordinary college textbooks here, although some of those, especially older ones about the sciences and math can be pretty pricy.  This niche is about textbooks that are created to help people pass professional exams such as the bar exam, a CPA exam, engineering certification exams and others.

Here is a screenshot of some recent sales on eBay:

As you can see these books sell for really good money.  Some of them are even more expensive. Take a look at this screenshot:

Notice that the first one is not a book, but actually a set of CDs or DVDs. These are also becoming more popular, so keep your eyes out for those too.

There are 4 places to find these books:

1.       Go to where the bar exams and CPA exams are held and advertise on the bulletin boards that you will buy study guides

2.      Garage sales often turn up these sets -just make sure they are fairly current

3.      I have also come across them in thrift shops

4.      Lastly advertise. Just take out small classified ads in local papers and on bulletin boards, that you buy these sets

I know, the searching can be a lot of work. But the last time I found a set of Bar exam guides, I bought them for $75 and sold them for just over $500 -so the time spent will really pay off.

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4. eBay Motors - the Forgotten Selling Opportunity

When sellers are looking for ways to make money online, they usually think of eBay.com, but they often forget eBay Motors.  When you think of eBay Motors you think of cars -but eBay Motors is about a lot more than just cars. There are two main categories on eBay Motors -vehicles and parts and accessories.

One of the challenges of selling cars on eBay Motors is that in most states you need a dealer’s license to sell more than 3 cars per year. But people forget that vehicles includes more than cars.  Some of the other vehicle categories on eBay Motors includes trailers, motorcycles, All Terrain Vehicles, Go Karts, Personal watercraft, boats and more.  There are no limits or special dealer requirements on these vehicles in most states. Now, you may not have a wholesale source for these vehicles but that is OK, because these are perfect products for eBay sellers to sell on consignment.

The other major part of eBay Motors is Parts and Accessories.  Look at some of the categories under parts and accessories:

If you look at the various categories you will see the richness and variety of merchandise available. Much of it is new -and therefore available from wholesale sources and much of it is vintage and collectible and can be found at flea markets, thrift shops, garage sales and by advertising locally.  If you are mechanically inclined, pay attention to this idea, there is a fellow in our town who buys vintage cars that are in really bad condition and therefore not candidates for restoration. He simply takes the cars apart and sells the parts on eBay to collectors, people who restore cars.  Last month he found an old Ford Fairlane for $300.  He has already sold over $1400 worth of parts and still has a way to go. He told me he expects to realize over $2000 once all the parts are sold. Last year he found an old Chevrolet Corvair that was mostly rusted out, but the interior was excellent. He bought the car for $100 and made over $2500 parting it out.

Another seller I met at eBay Live last year finds and sells old car repair manuals. He has a $3000 a month eBay business just selling those and other used car enthusiast books.

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 5. New eBay Wholesale Sources for June 2009

I featured this company before, Topper Liquidators. I received some nice emails from readers who thought they were a pretty good source for liquidation goods in small quantities, so here they are again.

C. B. Distributing is a wholesale electronics distributor specializing in personal communications and accessories. They distribute over 5,000 different products in citizen band (CB) & 10 meter radio, marine radio, police scanners, GPS, radar detection, cordless telephone and audio/visual categories and will sell to e-commerce resellers.

Impulse distributes various car stereos and kits. The prices on the website are discounted retail, but you can E-mail them for wholesale information.

MinoUSA is a wholesale distributor for automotive aftermarket parts, kits and accessories.

Paragon Leather specializes in motorcycle leather apparel & accessories as well as fashion leather apparel, Harley Davidson Boots & Riding Glasses, Jacket, Chaps, Vests & Accessories. Prices on the website are retail. Call them for wholesale pricing.

Smart Blond is a distributor of license plate frames and novelty plates, beer signs, religious novelties and much more.

Retro Pets are “works of ARF” by Santa Fe artist Krista Brooks. It’s Animal Art With an Attitude! 8 X 10 art prints. Free Lolli-PUP with your first purchase! Call today for wholesale pricing and to find out why this is the MOST unique dog art you’ve ever seen! Toll-Free 866-992-1930

Studio 500 are importers & distributors of high quality, affordable images such as Photographs, Postcards, Frames, Fine Art, Sculptures, Posters, 3D Paper Arts, Sports Photography & Name Paintings.

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

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

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