Your Questions About Email Marketing Tips

Jere answers:

First get an Income Tax PAN card,

Secondly, Open 3-in-1 Account with HDFC Bank / ICICI Bank (Savings Bank Account + Demat Account + Trading Account)
Or
Open Only Savings Bank Account with HDFC Bank / ICICI Bank and Demat and Trading Account with any reliable stock broker (Reliance Money / India Infoline / Indiabulls / Kotak Securities / Edelweiss Capital / Geogit Securities).

Start watching CNBC TV 18 everyday from 9 a.m. To 1 p.m. And from 9 p.m. To 10 p.m. Every night for a week.

Invest only in Top 5 to 10 Scrips of Indian Stock market:

Reliance Industries (RELIANCE), Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), NTPC, Bharti Airtel (BHARTIARTL), ICICI Bank (ICICIBANK), Larsen & Toubro (LT), Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL), Steel Authority of India (SAIL), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC).

You can email / message me anytime if you need more advice. My Email address is aramaiya@yahoo.com .

Jere answers:

Generally, you want to save on listing fees and let the (ebay) market to set the closing price. In most cases, this means starting the initial price at $9.99 or less. However, the only exception is for expensive items. With the current recession and sales at ebay (and most everywhere else) soft now, you don’t want to get burned. Use you discretion with expensive items.

Some tips that may be helpful to you……….

Be honest and accurate in your descriptions – One-sentence descriptions are for lazy sellers. One paragraph should be sufficient for most items. My general guideline is the more expensive (read higher priced) an item, the more you should ‘talk it up.’ It won’t be time wasted. Use lots of adjectives in your descriptions. Adjectives make prose and your items come alive. Without them, prose is dull and your items less appealing. Just add a little ‘sizzle’ and even have a little fun with it. In short, make your descriptions stand out above the crowd.

Be professional – use good English with no spelling errors

PICTURES:

ALWAYS include at least one picture, more pictures for higher priced items. Make sure your pictures are clear. There are far too many pictures on ebay that are dark. If prospective buyers can’t see your items clearly, your items, more than likely, will not fetch the closing prices they deserve. To remove darkness, use any photo editor to add some brightness and a wee bit of contrast.

Eliminate clutter. Prospective bidders don’t want to know what kind of cereal you eat or what kind of kitchen table or bedspread you have. Use a SOLID backdrop when taking your pictures as you want to focus all of the attention on your item. In short, the one and only thing you want in your picture is the item being sold. A SOLID white or light blue backdrop is best. However, there are certainly items that won’t show well on a light backdrop. In these cases, use a darker backdrop. And for gosh sake, don’t even think of using a plaid blanket as a backdrop for your pictures as I once saw on ebay. You should also crop the photos in your photo editor. Good pictures can add 5% to 10% to final closing prices.

GOOD DESCRIPTIONS + GOOD PICTURES = GOOD PRESENTATION. This is what you should strive for.

COMMUNICATION:

GOOD Communication is a must – Always notify buyers when you mail their items. It is not only a courtesy you would want and expect as a buyer but it is also both good customer service and good business practice. After all, you are the ‘President & CEO’ of your ‘company’ running your business but using ebay as your selling medium. In short, conduct your business so that it reflects well on you as a person. Treat everyone as a human being, not a living being and this includes people who have inquiries about your items, not just your buyers. Prospective buyers making these inquiries could ultimately be the winning bidders and possible repeat customers.

TIPS TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS:

Do not limit your auctions to one country. SELL WORLDWIDE. The reason is elementary. You now have access to the largest market ebay has to offer. Limiting your auctions to only one country also limits your potential profits. A basic business tenet is, ‘the greater the potential market, the greater the potential to maximize profits.’ But do note in your listing that PayPal is the only form of payment you will accept from overseas bidders/buyers. Through experience, you will learn that there are certain problem countries. Italy seems to be one of them. Mail sent to buyers in Italy very often ‘mysteriously disappears.’ If this is the case, just note in your listing you sell to all countries EXCEPT (name(s) here).

However, if you decide to limit sales to only one country, such as the USA, never say NO when you receive an email asking if you would ship to Taiwan, Germany, Australia or wherever. The reason is that you have a ‘FISH ON THE HOOK!’ This person will bid! When he or she does, this may force a previous bidder to enter another, higher bid or force later, first time bidders to come in with higher bids. So always say YES to these emails if you want to maximize your profits. But do say that PayPal is the only form of payment you will accept from these overseas bidders

Avoid selling ‘nickel and dime’ items. People who list and sell a steady stream of items that close for $5 or less are wasting their time. Less expensive, similar items ($5 or less) are best sold as a group to save time. If you have a large number of these cheaper, similar items, divide them up into sub lots of three, four or five.

More expensive (higher priced), similar items are best sold individually to maximize profits. There are ebay ‘vultures’ who just love to swoop down on similarly grouped items in one listing. When they win these auctions, they turn around and sell the items individually and, in most cases, get one and a half to 2 times and sometimes three times what they paid for them on an average item basis. I know this works. When I had more time (read unemployed), I was one of these ‘vultures.’ This is one of those situations where the parts are worth more than the whole.

Short of items to sell and where to find items to sell? Garage and yard sales, church bazaars, flea markets are obvious as are ‘junktique’ shops. If you want to let your fingers do the walking, you too can be crafty ‘vulture’ like a select group of other ebay sellers. Become a member of several smaller auction sites and search for bargains there. But as before, ‘stick with what you know.’ These smaller auction sites are great for buyers for the same reason they are bad for sellers:

Far fewer potential bidders = less competition = lower closing prices

Once you have your bargains, turn around and sell them at ebay. Ebay has the largest membership of any auction site. There isn’t another auction site that is remotely close and I do mean remotely close to having the number of members that ebay has. Here is the ebay formula:

Largest, by far, of any auction site = MAXIMUM competition = HIGHER closing prices,

If you want to do your listings OFFLINE, download the TURBO LISTER program free from ebay. Once you have finished with your listings, you can upload them anytime or schedule a date and time when you want your auctions to start.

Lastly, keep in mind that experience is the best teacher. Start off slowly listing only two or three items and see how that goes for you. Once you get your feet wet and gain confidence, start listing more items on a weekly basis. You will soon learn the ins and outs and the dos and don’ts in short order and ultimately settle on a system that works best for you. The more items you list, the more items you will sell, the more $$ you will make and the harder you will work. Nothing in life comes easy and that includes becoming a successful seller at ebay. Good luck & happy selling!

Jere answers:

Starting with your friends and family is good. Anyway starts with the following too,

– set up social network for your business eg twitter, facebook, myspace etc. Its free anyway
– do you own blog. This is free too.
– your friends and family can spread the good news to their friends and families provided that you did a good job in the cake.
– make your own flyers and carry them wherever you go and give to people you meet & also distribute in your areas.
– design your own business card.
– you can also sms (cost a bit of money) & email (free again) to people you know. Just remember , do not spam.
Once people had a good experience and very satisfied with your cake, the marketing just gets easier.
Good Luck

Jere answers:

You can earn the sort of money you’re talking about at Mechanical Turk which is like a web based market place where you agree to carry out various online assignments for a set fee. Mechanical Turk is run by Amazon – so it is genuine and not a scam.

Just type Mechanical Turk into Google / Yahoo etc and go from there.

Good fortune

Stuart Warner
Home Based Business Specialist

Jere answers:

Market, market, market. Web Design is a large and competitive field. If you dont have one yet, get a portfolio setted up. The more proven experience you have the better. Sole Propietership is the easiest but riskiest legal structure you can have. It’s only risky though if you make a mistake or defy your own contract. There are ebooks out there specifically for the business side of Web Design, so do your own research for that. The one tip I do have for you though, is to get a resellers account with a web hosting company and host the sites that you design. It won’t bring in alot of income, but it’s definitely another source of money. If you have any other questions feel free to email me at pcguy1989@yahoo.com