eBay store about to bust at the seams! Consignment offers opportunities...

by Robert Leavitt

Greetings fellow workaholics!  I am back in full swing on eBay and my store is about to burst at the seams!  I am very close to reaching my max list limit (which is around 600 items) for the month.  I have never actually reached it so I'm not sure what happens then. I know just as I get close to maxing it out, eBay raises my limit, so from experience I can deduce that will happen once again.

I opened a "consignment" shop of sorts.  It's just a few friends and family that have me listing stuff for them under my account.  There are advantages to doing this as I have established a history of sales within the eBay community and I have managed to maintain my 100% feedback rating. (Knock on wood!)

The feedback rating is huge, not only does it drive people to your listing, it also will allow you to charge a premium for your items.  You can compete on price on certain things, especially used items, however if you are listing new in box items for sale, you are going to find that competing with "top-rated-plus" sellers is a very difficult task.  They pay the monthly fees to have an eBay store and they also receive discounts on the final listings and are able to undercut you.  Even if you have the same supplier and shipping costs.

eBay is addictive, it really is, both as a buyer and a seller.  If you plan to sell on eBay, start as a buyer (buy things you need for your business, like tape, bubble wrap, tape guns, boxes, etc...) and learn how the process works first.  The best thing is that you get ratings for being a buyer.  If you have 10 buying transactions and 3 selling transactions you will have a rating of 13 total transactions.  The buyers can see this in the "detailed seller ratings" but many don't know that they are combined, and what they don't know can benefit YOU!

I did say earlier in this post that I have a store, which is a stretch of the truth.  I haven't not actually upgraded to a real "Store" yet because of the fees.  I will shortly if things maintain this pace, but for now I will keep it the same.  I have read that it is a mistake to upgrade to early, and I can see that for certain.  If you are only selling a few hundred dollars per month on eBay, a store is not necessary and is in fact a waste of your hard earned money!

The consignment process is easy in principle.  It is however a challenge to maintain your inventory (keep it separate, ideally with a catalog system of some sort allowing you to put item numbers on everything so you can remember who things belong to!).  But at the very minimum at least keep your groups of boxes separate from each other.  I have yet to find an "vendor Item number" in eBay but I'm sure that one exists. I plan to find an inventory solution, perhaps built into a management platform.  I will keep you posted on this and let you know should I decide to use one.  I'm looking for something that has inventory features and will allow me to "dump" the product to amazon, eBay and a shopping cart all at once.  Maybe that's too much to ask!

I will keep you updated on my eBay progress.  I really want to write an eBay eBook but I have yet to find the time.  It really is a big project that requires a lot of thought and preparation.  There are 1000's out there, but the demand is high.  Everyone wants to do this, but not everyone can.  It is intimidating and unlike other mistakes on a computer that can often be fixed, mistakes on eBay can often mean "losing money" which is a burden few people can bear.


You can learn more about Robert Leavitt on his Google Plus page.

Niche Marketing, The Market Samurai and Keyword Research

by Robert Leavitt

Establishing if Niche Marketing is right for you:

So you want to learn about keyword research and niche marketing?  The market samurai provides a powerful too to be able to research keywords easily.  Remember you can do this for free with Google's Keyword Planner, but it's cumbersome to use and in recent years they have made it much more difficult.  This is why programs like Market Samurai and Long Tail Pro are SO useful.  Some argue that keyword research is the most important step when planning a niche site.  Some also fail to tell you that keyword research is important to planning every single post!

Niche Marketing

The first step is to sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil.  It's time to brainstorm.  You want to make 2 columns, the first labeled "strengths" and the second labeled   "flaws".   You should try to come up with 10 things for each side of the list.  It is important to be brutally honest with yourself here.  If you try and "stretch" the truth, you are really only lying to yourself.

Next gather a handful of close friends.  One of them can be your wife or significant other and have them repeat the same exercise, except instead of writing about themselves they are going to do a "strengths" and "weakness" column also evaluating you!

Now you can do this last part one on one, or in a group.  Group takes less time and is usually more productive. Take turns comparing your results with the results of the people who know you well..  Are you lying to yourself?  This exercise will also help you determine how well you can accept constructive criticism.  Are people around you not understanding where your head is?  There are no right answers to this and it's not a test, it's just an exercise to help  you evaluate your current position in life, and whether a "work-at-home-Dad" environment is the right thing for you.  If you find your answers contradict the goals you are hoping for, it may be necessary to work outside of the house.  Not everyone is suited for this, otherwise, everyone would be doing it!

After you have written down your strengths and weaknesses go ahead and make a "passions" column.  You can then write down the things you are passionate about.  Have you ever thought "I really love golf clubs, and I know a lot about them.  I should make a website about golf clubs!"  This is the time to write down these ideas.  Though what I am about to share with you probably will go against everything you have ever learned from a "guru" or "self-help program or speaker".

When it comes to niche marketing, your ideas are not important unless you are planned to shell out a lot of money for aggressive marketing campaigns.  Let's face it, if you had the kind of money to establish a completely new product, you probably wouldn't be reading my "don't punch a clock" blog.  You would be busy running your empire.

The Market Samurai

This is really hard to digest, because it doesn't seem to make sense at first.  Let me try to clarify.  When you have an idea, even if its a unique idea that is 100% original and your are certain that you can get it out in the hands of the public that it will change the world and I tell you "it doesn't matter what your idea is because it's all about the 4 golden rules" you may throw your hands up and walk away from me in disgust.

Market Samurai

I am telling you right now, that I very rarely ever pursue an idea first.  I do it the other way around.  I find the keywords that already meet 3 of the 4 golden rules, then I add content that is relevant to those specific keywords. You will need a tool like Market Samurai to do this, They have a trial period and you will not only have access to the program but you will also gain access to the "dojo" which is the learning center.  The keyword research section of the program will always be free, but if you want access to the other tools the market samurai provides, then you will have to pay for it.

The dojo will teach you the 4 golden rules and the reasons why niche marketers fail.

The four golden rules of keyword research are:

• Relevance
• Traffic
• Competition
• Commerciality

If you have an idea but it doesn't fit these 4 rules, it will fail on the internet.  That "if you build it they will come" attitude is completely wrong on the internet.  In fact seldom do I have ideas that I want to test on the internet.  Instead I use the Market Samurai to identify terms that people are ALREADY searching for. I then make sure it is relevant to what I am trying to promote (or I just gear my content to BE relevant to a specific keyword), it has acceptable levels of competition, and lastly that the keyword is "commercially viable".  If your keyword is "don't buy anything on the internet" and you have 10,000 unique visitors a day. It's going to be hard to make any money with that keyword.  You have to really pay attention to that rule.  They will give you dozens of other examples and what to look for.

The Market Samurai, and the dojo, completely changed the way I approach niche marketing.  The best thing is not only does the tool work, but they offer the dojo and education center 100% free.  If you pay close attention to what these gentlemen are saying and do your research accordingly, success will follow.  I was skeptical at first, but I did my research carefully and gave it a shot.  I also didn't let myself get in the way.  I can be very defeatist and throw in the towel early.  This time I did not do that. I kept pushing and pushing, and trying out things until I found a system that does work!

You will need a Google adWords account to use Market Samurai.  Even if you don't have a website yet, you can make an adWords account.  It is vital to your keyword research and it's also the way you would launch a "paid advertising" campaign on google.

Please comment and let me know how this tool is working for you.  I will respond to questions and comments and help as best I can.  Stay tuned for the next section and what to do after you pick keywords.  Don't be in a hurry though, the keyword selection process is the most important step in this whole process.  Really take your time to understand the keywords, how they relate to the four golden rules and what your target market is.  Think hard and long before you make this decision.  It can make or break you.

You can learn more about Robert Leavitt on his Google Plus page.

My Plants, eBay and Returns!

by Robert Leavitt

As you probably already know I sell on eBay.  It's my main source of income and I have sold everything from nick-knacks to rare LP albums on vinyl.  I can say for certain that eBay is an ADVENTURE!  Lately I've been following my sisters lead and I got into the wonderful world of plants.  I mostly sell seed online, but I also do ship real live plants.

Shipping plants is difficult at best.  I have had some luck with it, but it's not an easy task.  I usually ship things bare root, but lately I have been nervous about my tender seedlings arriving alive, so I have been wrapping up the entire starter pot with plastic wrap. It costs more to ship this way, however my customers have seemed pleased to have it arrive in soil.  (You can try to explain that bare-root is OK, but it's a HARD sell to someone who is buying plants at a retail level).

If you are planning to sell plants online, I highly suggest that you do some research first.  It's hard to do and it requires a good deal of knowledge.  I never offer refunds, however I have refunded people anyway because of the USPS damaging the plant.

You really have to weigh your cost and look at it carefully.  Most people can come up with plants the "inexpensive" way which is to grow them, but you have to look at containers, potting mixes, water cost, heat if you have to heat the area (like a greenhouse) and packaging and shipping.  This doesn't even count your time.  You have to "run a tight ship" to make money doing this.

Let me know what you think!

You can learn more about Robert Leavitt on his Google Plus page.

The Grim Truth about Crowd Sourcing and Astroturf!

by Robert Leavitt

Well you may ask yourself how Crowd Sourcing and Astro Turf go together in a sentance!  First lets define each:

Crowd Sourcing is a type of employment where people hire employees (via the internet) to perfom small tasks that can't be accomplished by a computer in most cases.  They could be searching for a website, clicking certain links, or signing up for a service.

Astroturf is artifical grass that was originaly used in the "Astrodome" in Houston, TX as a place to play baseball that required no ground maintenance.  Another advantage was the ability to play in any weather condition.

Now, these two terms refer to people using Crowd Sourcing as a way to "Astroturf" certain websites by giving them "fake roots" and manipulating search engine results.

As some of you know I was a microworkers employee for a long period of time, and I have completed many many tasks.  I started to notice some patterns emerging.  For example there were several tasks that always asked you to go the site.  They will post a picture on a picture host server and it will have the name of the site painted into it, so it's not identifiable to a spider crawling the web.  Then once on that page, you will search inside that page for a list of advertisements.  Then you are asked to click the advertisement.

I have seen many variations of the above task, but they all share a couple of things in common.

• You are never asked to search for the site in google.
• You will enter the site from another site, usually facebook or something like that to make it appear like legitimate traffic.
• You usually conduct a search while in the page, though not always.
• You are asked to click an advertisement.

At first this seemed harmless to me, and some of the people were paying a decent amount to do this fast task ($0.15 - $0.25 a task for a matter of seconds).  In fact I used to look for these tasks exclusively as they are highly profitable for the worker.

Yesterday I applied for an adSense account to help monetize my fertilizer blog.  I figured that i could use the ad revenue to help pay for hosting costs, etc... After I filled in the details and I got to the end, I started to read the Terms of Service (TOS) for adSense.  I was absolutely shocked to find that paying someone to click your links is an outright violation of the TOS.

So why do they continue to allow it?  Why wouldn't Google try to sue microworers and other sites like it?  I don't have the answer to this question, and I know that microworkers is based in Europe somewhere.  It's really kind of sad how much manipulation there is out there in World Wide Web.

It's a dog eat dog world out there.  What are your thoughts?

You can learn more about Robert Leavitt on his Google Plus page.

BING and Yahoo #4 results!

Last night, bing and yahoo both indexed my site.  I got the number 4 slot for my keyword right off the bat.  I can't believe it.  Google has yet to index the site, but I have the analytics installed and it's starting to give me information about my website.  It's incredible.  I'm off to write another article now about fertilizer!

Blog update

OK I spent some more time on the blog this evening, and I came up with the beginning of a "products" page, where I will have all my products listed in one place.   I also got my code together for the buttons needed to make a shopping cart and easily checkout with that cart.

It's nice because it allows you to update the qty and things like that right there in real time, and the cart itself is actually handled by paypal, which is where my account is anyway.

The most important thing to understand about this whole process is that now, with the site, I am completely free of "eBay" and any sales I do here, will not be subject to that 10% fee (+2.5% for payPal).  This is a wonderful thing.  I can use my distributors, etc.. just like I always would.  Also because it's not processed by eBay, paypal will not hold any of the funds.  Which allows the money to be free to place orders with the distributors, etc.. I plan to REALLY get a bunch of products into this product page.  Using my main dropshipper he has an abundance of "overstocked" items, like harvesters, cultivators, lawn mowers, etc..

the problem is his inventory is constantly changing, and he doesn't have an inventory feed.  So this is going to be a lot of baby sitting, but seeing that it is my first venture into this, and I will have the time to devote. I might as well give this a shot.  I am going to next do some research on my "ocean solution" affiliation which I picked up a few days ago, so I can get that product up on the webpage too.

That product differs because it's not a "dropship" item.  They handle the fullfillment, but it's independent of my site.  That site will handle there own cc processing, so i better keep it seperate so it's not confusing.  I get a 30% comission on anything I refer to them, so it's a win-win situation for both of us.

This is what I keep trying to teach everyone that reads this.  Dropshippers and affiliate programs exist out there, however you have to do the research and contact people on your own.

Anyone charging you to "dropship" is a huge red flag.  Also buying premade lists can be beneficial for brainstorming and such, however if you already know what products you want to carry, then don't bother, get out the phone book and google and start looking for the places.  Call them, explain to them what you are doing, and see what they say.  If they say "yes we DropShip" or "Bond Ship" then your in there and you can start building your page.  If they don't then you have to move on and find someone else who does.

They are out there, remember I told you that this isn't easy!  Everyone is trying to do it!

Here is the site as it stands right now http://fertilizernumbers.net

The truth about dropship amazon programs.

by Robert Leavitt

I haven't posted on this blog for a little while, and for that I apologize.  I wanted to give everyone on update as to my whereabouts.  I am just breaking into "blogging" and internet affiliate marketing.  There are many advantages to affiliate marketing.  It allows you to collect a commission or percentage of each sale you drive to a website.

Several places have affiliate programs and I am going to give you a brief list of things to look out for as scams.  As you all know, the internet is a giant scam and it's always trying to prey on people that emotional.  I read an excellent article in a doctors office the other day.  I am not sure what publication it was in, but the title was something along the lines of "How I was a con-artist for 30 years and conned millions of people out of millions of dollars".  The most important thing I remember from this article was this:

• People that are being conned don't ask questions, they answer questions.  

If you are involved with someone that is trying to sell you something (usually the next best thing) they will ask you a bunch of questions and prey on your emotion.  If you are driven by a "get-rich-quick" attitude and always looking for huge rewards with no work or risk, let me be the one to break this horrible news to you.  It doesn't exist.  There is no such thing, in the online world, or outside as a "get rich quick" scheme.  I have read several programs and I am a sckeptic by nature, and there are so many people preying on "work at home" and the like keywords right now it's not even funny.

Have you seen the ads for amazingmoneymachine or dominate-whatever it's called.  They are both drop ship programs for Amazon.  These programs promise things like a 6 hour work week, cutting and pasting descriptions.

I have "drop-shipped" from amazon to ebay.  It is possible, however there are a lot of things they aren't telling you about this.  First of all, the only way you are going to get someone to "brown-box" ship something for you, is if you contact that vendor directly and set it up with THEM.  Chances are if they are selling on amazon, they are selling on eBay too, and your not going to compete with the price to begin with.

If the item is fulfilled by amazon, it is not going to happen.  Amazon has an affiliate program.  They don't have a "drop-ship" program and anyone that is telling you to "click this link" on their site to get "brown box shipping" from amazon is a scam artist.  It's not a "brown-box" link.  It's just a link to amazon through their affiliate ID so they get a commission on whatever you buy.  The item will still arrive in a box all covered in amazon tape and smiley faces.  And you will have egg all over your face!

At this point your customer will be upset.  They will find out that they could have gotten the item for much less, and even though this is America and we practice capitalism, people get upset when they find out they didn't get the best price, and they just payed you X number of dollars to "click a couple times".  It leaves a bad taste in there mouth.  It's not illegal according to either eBay or Amazon policy (unless you use Amazon Prime for 2 day shipping, then you are breaking rules), however it is highly frowned upon and it's a not-so-good way to make a very small profit margin.

• Your customer is gonna leave you bad feedback, lowering your ratings.
• It's HIGHLY competitive, and anoyone with topseller status will get a break on the eBay fees and be able to undercut you.
• The margins stink.  It's not worth sacrificing your rating over a few dollars.
• If you pick an item that has authorized resellers selling, they most likely will grab you on a copyright infringment for the pictures, causing eBay to take down the listing, and potentially getting you in a heap of trouble if you violate this policy several times.

• If they generate a return, your stuck out of pocket until amazon refunds you, because it's NEVER gonna happen in the time you have to refund your customer on eBay.  If they return ship it to your drop-shipper with the proper numbers in the first place.  Otherwise they send it to you, and now you are out shipping again, and you have to wait some more for the refund from amazon.

Oh... what do you mean they didn't tell you all that when you signed up for that program they just charged you a few hundred dollars for?  I mean did you really think that you were going to cut and paste your way to a cruise in the Bahammas?

Don't feel bad.. I fell for this too.  I actually didn't pay anyone, and I don't know those things I outlined above because I had a divine intervention.  I know them because I made those mistakes too.  I'm not trying to be hard on you, but sometimes a dose of reality is necessary to give you the push you need to make something positive happen.


DropShipping is real.

Look at that statement, notice is says DropShipping is "real"  it doesn't say, "Dropshipping is real easy"...because it's not.  It's HIGHLY competetive and attractive becasue of the very low cost of doing business.  When something is that competitive your chances of sucess (especially when you are a novice) are next to none.

I have nothing to sell you at the moment.  Just trying to get you back to earth.  I will discuss some of my current ventures when they are farther along.

Here is a peak at what my most recent project is:  http://fertilizernumbers.net

As always you can contact me directly at voicesmicro@gmail.com.  Don't contact me with some mentor program regarding how to get rich quick or I will find you and rip off your arm and beat you to death with it.


You can learn more about Robert Leavitt on his Google Plus page.