Ronald Su dot Com

Tips On Selling Online

I used to be a very active seller on eBay as I bought things in bulb from China and list them online. That was about 2 years ago and I totally gave up on that business because eBay was totally treating me like crap.

My idea of writing this post came from reading this post called “It’s Now Completely Impossible To Sell A Laptop On eBay“. It is about how difficult it was for this guy named Timothy to sell his laptop on eBay. It got my attention as it brought back my angry memories.

Are You a Scammer?

There was nothing wrong with eBay itself but the scammers and eBay’s effort to stop scammers were driving me crazy. It’s nice for eBay to try hard at getting rid of scammers and sellers of fake stuff, but they went way too far.

I used sell silver jewelries. They were no name generic ones but some of their designs were similar to brands like Tiffany & Co and others. eBay suspended my account because they thought I was selling counterfeit items. I tried to contact them but there were simply no way one could reach live real help. If you try to email them they would just reply you with an auto-reply that’s totally unrelated. I opened a new account with my friend’s name and they suspended it again. I totally gave up on selling on eBay and listed my products locally instead. I listed them on Craigslist and they were all sold in less than a month.

Get Paid Instantly With No Fees

If you want to sell something, sell them on local listing sites like Craigslist. You get to meet the person and they pay you instantly. Not to mention you pay no fees what so ever. Here are some tips for a safe and no hassle selling experience:

1) Sell locally because you see the person and you get paid in person. The most popular is Craiglist.

2) If an interested buyer emailed you, ask to communicate via phone. This will ensure he’s actually going to buy it. You will save a lot of time by talking over the phone.

3) Pick a public place to meet. Don’t meet in your house or the buyer’s house. If you can, try to bring along a friend with you. This will greatly protect your safety.

4) When you count the money, try to do it so that not many people can see it. You don’t want a lot of people know you have a pocket full of cash.

5) Try to leave after the buyer after transaction. Tell the person you are going to have another cup of coffee and he should leave first. This will prevent the person from following you and rob you.

Have my posts delivered to you by email. Subscribe to my email feed now!

Tags: craigslist, ebay, selling

eBay Abandons Commission Junction

I didn’t read my emails during the weekend because I went to Victoria BC for vacation. Did some photo shooting and relaxed a little. Today is back to school and work day all over again. Opened up my mail box while in Account class and found out there were a lot of things happened during the weekend. Most of the emails in my box were news alerts and reports on the Bear Sterns amazing buyout by JPMorgan. Two dollars a share? I pray good luck to their shareholders. Another chunk of emails were about the crash of the Build A Niche Store server. The email said the server was hacked and brought down. It didn’t affect me, but I heard most BANS owners couldn’t access their admin panel for a long time. The most surprising subject is the news regarding eBay moving their affiliate efforts in-house.

The New eBay Partner Network

eBay will take back its affiliate network from Commission Junction (CJ) as of April 1, 2008, which is the beginning of next month. I guess eBay noticed the growing number of affiliates since the launch of BANS and wanted to cut the middleman. All BANS owners must be aware that eBay will reward all affiliates moving to their partner network by increasing April commission by 5%. So get ready for the move now!

Pros And Cons For The Switch

I don’t see any real issues for eBay taking back control over its affiliate network. My only concern with the switch is that eBay may not be ready to match the same level of support as CJ. CJ has a pretty good support system and generally replies for questions really fast. I was once an eBay seller and I knew how crappy eBay is in terms of support. They don’t really care about you unless you’re their power or platinum sellers. The good side for the switch should be more control and customization for affiliates. It should also improve in sales tracking as links are directed straight to the eBay site.

Have my posts delivered to you by email. Subscribe to my email feed now!

Tags: affiliate, bans, Build A Niche Store, cj, commission junction, ebay, in-house, partner network, pros and cons, sales

Blogging About Making Money With Niche Stores

As many of you can see, I am changing the focus of this blog from general business to niche stores. I started to pay attention to the whole niche store business model soon after I started this blog. After reading Shoemoney’s build a niche store tutorial last month (view here), I bought my first niche store domain and bought the BANS script. I began to realize how interesting and amazing the whole BANS concept is. Because I was once a seller on eBay, the build a niche store eBay affiliate business model reminds me of how easy it is to make a profit online.

I started my first BANS project with CellPhoneJet.com. It was fun and easy to set up with the BANS script. The store is currently making some very small profits but it lets me see the real potential of this whole thing. If I build a store with careful research and very specific and targeted niche ideas, it is going to be very profitable.

I also noticed a growing community of BANS owners seeking advices and knowledge from each other. Mark from TheNicheStoreBuilder.com is among the top for providing and sharing valuable information for the community. I hope to use this blog to share my experiences on building my niche store empire. The blog will also help me stay focused and on track on how to effectively make money online.

Have my posts delivered to you by email. Subscribe to my email feed now!

Tags: affiliate, bans, Build A Niche Store, ebay, make money online, Niche

Selling On eBay VS. Starting a Build A Niche Store

I was once an eBay power seller about a year ago selling silver jewelry and computer parts. It was quite profitable but it was for sure time consuming. From listing to controlling inventory and shipping, I could sit in front of my computer all day. I was also attending school full time, working on an eBay business was not the best way to make a profit. If you are a young entrepreneur and trying to make some fast cash online, start a niche store with Build A Niche Store BANS instead.

Build A Niche Store is actually a script that help you build an eBay affiliate website in 10 minutes.  Of course, if you want your website to make you money constantly, you will spend more than 10 minutes building it. I’ve started my niche store last month and the script is a very user friendly tool that you and me can use with little training. In short, all you have to do is design your store and state what kind of eBay listings to display. You then wait there for someone to buy something from eBay through your store. You will get commission from every sale that eBay gets. It is the tool I recommend for building an eBay affiliate store. There are other tools and scripts for setting up a store but most of them are less user-friendly and require more prior web development knowledge.

Why build a niche store? The answer is very simple. You make money from a sale without actually selling. You don’t have to worry about buying inventory, listing items, writing up descriptions, taking photographs, asking for payments, shipping products, and answering customer complains. The sellers do all those, we are just the middlemen, taking a piece of the pie. There are millions of sellers on eBay and billions of items on sale, think of the potential for being the middlemen. After you’ve finish building your niche store, all you have to do is wait for your piece of pie and move on to another niche store. The most difficult part though, is finding that niche idea. I will be providing more tips on niche ideas and building a niche store in later posts. Stay tuned!

Have my posts delivered to you by email. Subscribe to my email feed now!

Tags: affiliate, bans, Build A Niche Store, commision, ebay

Update On Build A Niche Store (BANS) Project

It was been a week since I’ve written about my Build A Niche Store (BANS) project. Boy! It was a though time getting the script installed. It wasn’t the script’s fault though. After days of solution hunting I’ve got through it and finally got something to show. You can view the project site at CellPhoneJet.com, feel free to add any comment or suggestion.

Main page of CellPhoneJet.com, my Build A Niche Store project featuring the coolest cell phone auctions.

After 2 days of customizing the layout and pages, it now looks like a full functional website. However, it still needs some search engine optimizing and original content creating. My schedule for this week is to finish building the website and by next week I can start driving traffic to it. The funny thing is that I have notice Googlebot had already visit the site and received 4 unique hits even though I had never setup a link to it. I’ve already started to brainstorm my next niche store in order to reach my 5 stores in 3 months goal.

Also, I’ve noticed there is an online course on blogging for profit called Blog Mastermind. Read about it in Chris Bloczynski’s blog. I wonder if there will be a university degree in the future called “Blogging” in the faculty of Business.

Have my posts delivered to you by email. Subscribe to my email feed now!

Tags: affiliate, bans, blog mastermind, blogging, Build A Niche Store, cell phone, cool phone, ebay, web design, web development