5 Bucks a Day

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while, I’ve been involved in multiple conversions.  I had to convert or at least look at several dozen sites that I have eBay affiliate links on, since eBay moved their tracking from CJ to their own new eBay Partner Network (ePN).

And I’ve been doing a lot of tweaking to Earn1KaDay.com to add a bunch of value.  I’ll discuss more about that in a future post.

And I’ve been getting the word out to people that I think would be interested in the Wealthy Affiliate membership site instead of mine, that they only have until May 5th to join or else they’ll pay a bunch more (how much more is still a mystery, for some reason).

Plus putting up stuff on my Dime Sale domain and general life issues, so I’ve been quiet.

But I’d like to get the word out.  I use AVG Anti Virus.  I used McAfee once upon a time but the last conversion I did to that crippled my old computer.  So then I switched to Symantec, and the support issues I had there were insane.  It stopped working 8 months into my one year contract, and I couldn’t get support to help me at all, even though my contract hadn’t expired.

So I got AVG (commercial version, even though they do have a free version, I was happy to pay for it).  A couple weeks ago it started nagging me to upgrade for free to the new release 8.0.  So yesterday I finally did.  Duh, don’t I ever learn?

I suspected I might have trouble on my Vista computer at home, but it was my office one running Windows 2000 that gave me the most trouble.  After installing, the poor guy started maxing out at 100% CPU utilization and everything was crawling, especially opening emails, but also accessing web sites.  It seemed like nothing was being cached, every web page was being reloaded fresh.

Finally I started fooling around with the options.  First I disabled the link scanner, as I had seen in forums that others had trouble with that and felt it didn’t do anything useful anyway.  That didn’t help.  Then I disabled the web shield and resident shield.  Bam, my computer was flying again.

So tonight I came home and with everything enabled, no problem at all, and I was happy as a lark until I tried to submit some eBay auctions.  I had actually had a problem last night, and got around it by submitting as revisions instead of “sell similar item”.  Tonight the same thing was happening, so I thought, ah ha, maybe it’s AVG.  I disabled the link manager, no help.  Then I disabled the web shield and resident shield and no longer do I have a problem with eBay.

Just thought someone out there would like to know.

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I was afraid this was going to happen, and it did.

I sell on eBay still pretty heavily, everything I have is merchandise that I just keep relisting, as one auction ends I start a new one.

The last several weeks eBay has had a promotion where they gave a free upgrade to have your item listed in the gallery (a little thumbnail picture). I never used that on the type of auction I run because it’s typically for cheap consumable merchandise, not something where a picture is particularly valuable to attract attention.

Like imagine you’re selling toilet paper (I’m not, but consumable so similar), would ypu pay an extra .35 to have an extra little picture of a roll of toilet paper visible, if you’re only going to make a dollar anyway if it sells? Me neither.

So I never needed or wanted or chose the gallery option. eBay just stuck it in as a freebie, thank you very much. My percentage of successful auctions didn’t seem to improve, but now the promotion is over.

As I started to do my robotic relisting this evening, I noticed after pressing the submit button that the fees charged were higher than they should have been. Sure enough, I checked my account and now they’re charging me for gallery at .35 per auction.

Neat marketing trick. They give you something you didn’t ask for, and the next time they charge you for what you never asked for.

Now I have to go in to every auction I’m relisting for the next week and make sure I uncheck the gallery option that I never turned on to begin with.

I know I should complain, and if I did I would probably get my $1.05 back because eBay customer service has always been pretty awesome once you get to a real person, but is it worth the time to jump through hoops for 30 minutes to get back $1.05. I have better things to do, like write a blog post.

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I read an eBook this week that I wish would have been available oh, about 9 years ago.  I’d be a millionaire by now many times over if I had it then.

Back when I was heavier into eBay (I still sell every day, but mostly the same things that I’ve been selling for years, which I keep relisting, that I get from trusty suppliers), I used to always look for the magic wholesale list that would enable me to find stuff that could be sold for a profit.

The trouble with the wholesale lists is that they’re available to anyone willing to spend the few dollars.  Then you start competing not by who has the best product line, because you all all have the same, but by who’s willing to sell closest to cost.

Whap go the profits.  That’s no fun.

Dennis Hester has written a great guide called “The Product Hunter” that should enable you to find merchandise nobody, or very few others are selling, right in your neighborhood.  He lists over 20 sources that he’s found over the years to get sellable merchandise for great prices.

If you’re into eBay heavily, you really shouldn’t be without this guide for finding wholesale merchandise for eBay sellers.

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Several weeks ago one of the members of Earn1KaDay.com took it upon himself to organize a challenge.  One of the business models I teach (videos and personal attention to any members needs) is what I call the Mini Money Sites, where we have software and techniques to construct mini sites designed to promote small niches, usually including lists of merchandise available on eBay.

These are nothing like the ugly sites you’ve seen elsewhere where they scrape content designed to get AdSense clicks, make .50 a day and make 5 or 10 of these sites a day, building up a huge Virtual Real Estate empire until the sites get delisted.

So it’s not like these sites can be pumped out in a few minutes spewing crap all over the Internet.

Anyway, the guy who organized the challenge told the participants to figure out how many sites they thought they could build in a week, and then double that number, and get to work.

In other words, push themselves, get out of their comfort zone, and prove something to themselves.

Most of the members did what they set their minds to do, proving once again that if you think you can, you can.

A new challenge is starting up on Friday, one member originally thought he could build 2 sites a day last time, so he doubled that and tried to build 28 for the week.  And he made it.  This time he’s going for 56.  Again, these won’t be crap sites, and if he makes that, I’d say he will soon have a very nice income stream, just in time for the holidays.

There’s still time to learn how to build these sites and take the challenge.  Your goal might be to build 4 in a week.  Nothing wrong with that.  Even 1.  Go for it.

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