Holiday Shipping Deadlines

Well the verdict is in, if you want your product to arrive on time the shippers are all providing the 17th as the last day you can ship an item using standard delivery and expect it to arrive in time for Christmas. There is a chance that something ordered later than that will arrive but I would not bet on it. So keep that in mind when either shopping or selling online this Christmas season.

For your convenience I have listed the links to the top U.S. shippers' holiday mailing schedules:

USPS

UPS

DHL

FEDEX

Happy Holidays!!!

Cynthia Ford
www.toriastreasure.com

Free Download - eBay Workshop Collection 2007

I have a valuable freebie for you today.

It's from Worldwide Brands, the creators
of OneSource.

They have the world's largest database
of genuine wholesale suppliers and every
year, they hold workshops for eBay sellers
on how to find wholesale products for their eBay
business.

They recently compiled all of their 2007
eBay workshops into one eBook.

The workshop titles included in the ebook are...

* From Hobby to Home Business

* How to Compete in a Crowded Market

* What is the difference between Liquidation,
Closeouts, and Surplus

* Understanding the Basics to Importing
Physical Products to Sell

* Building Supplier Relationships is Very
Important Especially for the Holiday Season

You can download it for free here:

http://www.worldwidebrands.com/wwb/kh_freeebookWorkshops.asp?kbid=17080

It's a great book and I'm sure you'll get a lot of
value from it.

Also, if you sell on eBay or plan to in the future,
OneSource is a great place to find wholesalers
and drop shippers for your eBay auctions.

And there are 2 big reasons you should become a
member of OneSource today:

The first reason is right now, they are running
a $30 discount to a lifetime membership to OneSource.
The discount only lasts until the end of November.
It's the lowest price you'll be able to get a
lifetime membership to OneSource.

Click here to get the full details on OneSource and
get the discount:

http://www.worldwidebrands.com/?kbid=17080

The second reason why you should get OneSource is
wholesalers have begun offering steep discounts on
their products. They are trying to get inventory out
of their warehouses before the end of the year, so
they won't have to pay taxes on the inventory.

That rarely happens this time of year.

But, with the combination of the housing and mortgage
market, the low consumer confidence index and wholesalers
overestimating retail sales, wholesalers are looking
for a way to liquidate goods immediately.

It's a great opportunity to stock up on items to sell
right now and for the first quarter of 2008. But you
need to take advantage of this now.

This window of opportunity closes on December 31st,
2007.

Chris Malta, the founder of Worldwide Brands, explains
how you can take advantage of this rare opportunity
and buy low from wholesalers and sell high for nice
profits in a brief audio.

You can listen to his 8-minute audio here:

http://www.worldwidebrands.com/wwb/2007_wholesale_opportunity.asp?kbid=17080

Enjoy the free eBook and the audio and I'll talk to
you soon.

Cynthia Ford
www.toriastreasure.com

Customer Troubles

I had the worst customer relations issue this week. It is the biggest problem I have had since I began my business. I had a customer buy an expensive item which I purchased through a drop-shipper. The said item did not arrive is satisfactory condition, which happens sometime. To make matters worse a third-party becomes involved through the customer and tells the customer that the item I sold them was in fact a fake! Well the item was not a fake and I had to end up contacting the manufacturer and having them verify that my distributor was an authorized distributor. This customer was about to ring me through the whole eBay, PayPal dispute system. It was a huge headache.

Honesty is such an important quality in business. You will never get far if you have dishonest business practices. Even though this week was stressful, in the end it worked out because I was honest with the customer. I can accept that an item arrived damaged and needs replaced. I am so willing to bend over backwards for customers in that instance. On the other hand, to be accused of selling fraud products hurts me because I am an honest person and the thought to buy cheap crap to resell on eBay has never crossed my mind.

When I decided to start my eBay business I went the legal route and obtained my tax id so I could work with real wholesalers and drop-shippers not those ones who say they are for real but don't require any special info from you. Those people are schemers and to sell the products listed you would have to mark them up way over retail and would be lucky if you made an occasional sale.

I am ranting today but my advice this week is, be honest. No matter what you think you can get if you aren't, it never works out in the end. Dishonesty in business will be the end of your business. If you are delayed in shipping be upfront with your customer. If you make a mistake, admit it. It may not be easy to do all the time but it is the best way to go.

Till next time...

HELPFUL RESOURCES

Helpful Resources

If you can't find products to sell you should check out World Wide Brands. They offer a legitimate list of wholesalers & dropshipers for a one-time membership fee. To check out this great resource, click here.

If you are a Mom like me and are starting an Ebay business, the absolute best site I have found for tips, tools, forums, and overall support is Here Comes the Stork. It is geared towards selling children's clothes but there are members who sell lots of different items. See for yourself, click here.

Before you invest in all that inventory, do some free research using Mpire Researcher. They will tell you what percentage of the items sold, what was the average price, and let you know the best way to list your products. This is great. I always use Mpire before I start an auction.

This is all I have for now but it is a great start.

International Shipping Hassles

This week has been one of those weeks when nothing seems to be going right. I am sick with a major infection. I am behind in school from being sick and I have had three eBay sales go the way of the creek. Two are international orders that are two big to ship USPS and UPS wants over $300 dollars to ship them!!! There needs to be some compromise between the two services. I might be able to find another shipper myself but I am working with a drop shipper so my options are only what they offer.

The other order gone bad was an order that was made and when I went to make the order from the drop shipper they had conveniently discontinued the item. The big problem was that the customer sent me a money order before I found out that the item was no longer available. Soooo I had to wait and get the money order, cash it and send a refund through my bank. Like I said, it has been one of those weeks. Advice...

• Join Ebates if you still have not. I have earned over $140 in rebates from just going to their site before I shop at the online stores I was already planning on going to. I use it a lot for Gap, Ink Cartridges, and drugstore.com. The link to use is http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?id=32696671. If you sign up you get $5 just for joining.
• In the past 10 months I have learned quite a bit. The biggest realization I have come to is do not limit your possibilities. My business has not formed the way I would have imagined it. I am not selling the items I initially wanted to sell. You have to be open to opportunities that come knocking and realize when other ideas need to be put away. The item you want to sell won't always be a money maker or the wholesalers you find that sell the item may not be people you want to have a business relationship with. I always invest in small amounts of new items I am buying wholesale to make sure it is going to sell. I also give my drop shipment items about six months and if they are not selling I end the listings and move on to something new. In short, be flexible!

Until next time...(Hopefully next month!)

Sorry Long Time No Blog! Business Is Going

Summer has been a fun and relaxing time. We have adventured and enjoyed the sun. My business is doing well. I am still not making huge amounts of profit but I have started getting more regular sales and have added some different products to my inventory. I have stopped selling most of the crystal and nic nac type items. The swords and children's items seem to be selling the best. I have added a variety of Pedal Cars which are very cool. Perfect for Christmas.

My advice for this week is be careful, careful when shipping international. This month I have had a package seized by customs at the Canada border. I actually didn't ship this item myself because it was through a drop-shipper. The issue was with what it was declared as. I guess the customs official didn't like that it was labeled as a movie prop when it was a false edged fantasy sword. Just make sure you write the correct item description on the customs form or your package could be seized as well!

Click here for more information on shipping internationally from eBay.

Until Next Time!

Yay Finals are done!!!

Well I am officially out of school for the summer! Now I can focus on my business and hopefully get my sales up. I have really not been doing to well for the past month. It seems that sales have slowed all around but I think with some work I can get my business going strong.

My new find this week that can have a positive effect on traffic for your business is StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a web discovery service which integrates peer-to-peer and social networking principles with one-click blogging. The Toolbar system automates the collection, distribution and review of web content within an intuitive social framework, providing users with a browsing experience which resembles "channel-surfing" the web.

You should check it out for its entertainment value alone. I will be writing much more in July. Be sure to check back in the coming weeks!

Ebates

I have to write another blog about Ebates. My total earned by using this free service is up to $47 in two months. Anyone who shops online should be using this service. Especially if you buy clearance items to resell from stores like Gap or Old Navy.

Ebates is a shopping site that gives you up to 25% Cash Back every time you shop online. You can shop at over 800 stores including Barnes & Noble.com, Gap, Target, Buy.com and Expedia. Plus you get additional savings with exclusive coupons, free shipping offers, and limited-time sales!

Click Here to Sign Up

Happy shopping!

Cynthia

How to get repeat customers

It has been a crazy month. Selling has been going OK. I have been really busy with school and haven't been able to invest heavily in store promotion so sales haven't been spectacular but good enough for now. This summer I will be devoting myself to my business completely, except for the mom and spouse duties of course.

The issue I want to discuss this time is getting repeat customers. I have been using a program called My Store Rewards for a couple of months. It gives a rebate to buyers who buy from you using PayPal and then sends out bi-monthly emails to your prior customers who have opted in offering them a rebate for repeat purchases. You as the seller are in charge of the amount of the rebate offered in either percent or dollar value. I don't receive anything for referring them. I just think they have a neat program that is worth a look.

I hope you gain so value from this short but sweet blog. I am getting ready for Finals so I will now return to joy of college before my boys get home from school!

Until Next Time...

I made Power Seller Status

I made it to Power Seller Status! I am excited to announce that I have made enough consistent sales in the past 3 months to be invited as a Power Seller by eBay. I have only been in business for 3 months so I think that is pretty good. It was nice to receive the email from eBay because business has not been great lately. I have been busy with school and family and not listing as many auctions as I would like to have running.

I have learned that the best way to get traffic to your eBay store is through auctions. I have been trying to get traffic through external sources like GoogleBase and listing my site on search engines but the highest amount of traffic comes from auctions. I have been told it takes about three months for any of the search engine advertising to start working. I may have to rely less on auctions in the future. Only time will tell.

I use one pay-per-click advertiser and that seems to bring a good amount of traffic. I use Bidvertiser. There are many different pay-per-click advertisers out there but I am happy with Bidvertiser for now. Well I have to hit the books, midterms next week!

Until Next Time...

Promote your eBay auctions with BidVertiser. Get $20 in FREE clicks.

Slow Week

At least business wise it has been a slow week, personally I had to supervise Easter festivities for my 3 little ones and I started a new term of classes at Southern Oregon University.

I think going on vacation for a week did slow business a lot, mostly because my business is so new and relies on eBay auctions for most of my traffic. Hopefully, it will pick up in the next couple of weeks. Of course many people have also been on Spring Break and probably not shopping too much!

My advice this week does not have so much to do with my business but is a really neat website I found to help save you money. It works for my business because I use it when I buy clothes from Gap or Old Navy to resell.

The site I am talking about is Ebates.

Ebates, a shopping site that gives you up to 25% Cash Back every time you shop online. You can shop at over 800 stores including Barnes & Noble.com, Gap, Target, Buy.com and Expedia. Plus you get additional savings with exclusive coupons, free shipping offers, and limited-time sales!

It doesn't cost anything to sign up and they pay you a $5 bonus when you make your first purchase!

This isn't one of those sites that you have to fill out surveys or do anything lame. You just go to their site first before you shop at your favorite online retailers.

I am only sharing this information because I have been using it and loving it. I earned almost $20 when I bought replacement ink for my printers!!!

Until Next Time...

On Spring Vacation

The kids and I are on Spring Break Vacation but lucky for me, all the family has computers! Sales have been going well. I have sold almost $4000 in product in my first two months. My profits haven't been that high because of some initial costs I have had to pay but I am not in the red. I have weeded out two drop shippers who were not very good. I have acquired two new drop shippers and also bought some wholesale goods from two others. I don't have a very large home so I will keep my wholesale orders down but it is nice to handle what you are selling before you sell it.

I really wanted to talk to you about International Shipping today. I have been having some issues with the swords and weapon related items and international shipping. I have to ship most of them UPS because of their size and it is expensive. I just had an order that was $160 for shipping! Well the biggest problem is convincing buyers you are not trying to rob them. My point of this is, sometimes with large or heavy items, International Shipping is more of a hassle than it is worth.

Now for items weighing less that 13ozs, like clothes, you can ship Internationally for a dollar or two more that you can ship it in the U.S.. This makes selling clothing great on eBay. The best shipping costs for International Orders I have found are through the USPS. Don't forget to tell your customers they are responsible for any customs or tariff fees related to their order or you could end up losing money.

Well that is it for today!

What to Sell

When starting a new business in retail the first question you have to answer is, what do I sell? On Ebay this question is really a never ending question. You are constantly trying to figure out that product that will make you a profit. I started off with about 3 drop shippers that I listed items from. Only one of them, who carries swords & weaponry brought me sales.

I will tell you, selling swords was not really my first choice. I am a mother of three children and not really the violent type. I do like the whole fantasy genre and my husband has a couple swords around the house so it wasn't to awkward. It does seem wierd that my primary auctions are children's clothes and swords!

This seems to be a regular event on Ebay. There are many sellers out there who sell a variety of items and that is OK.

So my advice for this week is to not go crazy and buy $1000 inventory on something that you don't know will sell. Buy a small amount of product and test the waters. In addition, do your research. I will list some sites that I found helpful in my next blog.

Until then...

Googlebase

Image via Wikipedia

So far this week has been pretty uneventful. I have been busy with sales, mostly swords and some clothes that I had bought last year when I thought I wanted to sell clothing on Ebay. That is a tough market. There are a lot of WAHMs who do it but the loss potential is huge. I am starting all of clothing auctions at $0.99 to save on fees but am losing a lot of money on my initial investment. I just want all the clothes gone so for me it is a pay off.

My whole family has come down with the flu the past two weeks so it has been interesting caring for the sick and running a business.

This Blog Tip:

GoogleBase
Some of you have heard of Google Base I am sure but I didn't learn about it until a week and a half ago. For free, you can upload your whole inventory into GoogleBase and your products show up in Google searches and Froogle for FREE!!! This is a must for any business owner. If you are a EBay Store owner, go to listing feeds and get the listing feed that is Google Base specific. EBay makes the file available for you (how nice). If you are not an Ebayer go to the Google Base and read the instructions.

Hope this helps, it helped me for now my products show up on Google (at the top).

Till next time.

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What Have I done!

Image via Wikipedia

I have been selling on eBay since 2000 so why I am not new to the business scene, I am still pretty green. This year I decided to apply for my business tax # and take my hobby to the next step.

So I set up shop on eBay because I am familiar and so far it's going well. eBay business is tough with the fees and the small profitability of most items so I am branching out. I will set up a site on freewebs and maybe also on eCrater and see if I can't get some profit going.

I will try and update my blog with my struggles and any advice I obtain along the way. Maybe I can help some poor soul from making some of the mistakes I have.

If you are interested in fantasy items...

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