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UK
The newsletter for buyers and bidders on
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This latest issue is now also available online at
http://www.workwinners.com/newsletter/041011.htm
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In This Issue
1. Welcome from Brian McGregor
2. News and Views
3. What is the best Duration for an Auction?
4. Am I Psychic or what?
5. A Small Token of my Appreciation
6. One Last Thing
7. Someone's auctioning what? Unusual items currently
available
8. Finally
9. My Products Catalogue
=============================
Inspirational quote of the day
"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things
left by
those who hustle."
Abraham Lincoln
=============================
1. Welcome from Brian McGregor
Hi and welcome to the latest edition of my Newsletter.
As I'm writing this I'm thinking about that Abraham Lincoln
quotation.
It's not that hustling is my style. Friends will tell you,
I'm a
pretty relaxed kind of guy. In fact
I can prove I'm a "cool
dude". My grandson and I swap
thumbs-ups and tell each other so
every time we meet!
But isn't it strange that old Abe has put his finger on a
major
problem for budding internet
entrepreneurs?
You can waste oodles of time on the internet, and achieve
nothing. It's the biggest
opportunity to procrastinate I've ever
seen.
In your internet business - be it eBay or anything else - if
you
want things to happen, only you can
do it.
And on the internet, if you don't do it, you can bet your
bottom
euro somebody else will.
If you're looking to build income from the internet, don't
wait
for things to happen.
Make sure you do a little hustling every single day!
Speak to you soon.
Brian
-----
P.S. You receive the
bought from me or enquired about my
auction items on eBay or QXL.
If you do not want to receive this newsletter, the only one
dedicated to eBay
email to
=============================
2. News and Views
a) Readers feedback
I recently received the following email from a reader. It
contains an example of a slightly
different scam.
"Brian
Thanks again for your monthly newsletter. Always a good
read.
Thought I might bring to your attention a scam on ebay that I am
sure you are aware of.
I am seeing a lot with people selling cars but have seen it
on
other items.
Basically someone bids and wins your car at say £1500. They
then
email you to say that they are owed
money from a friend and would
it be OK for the friend to pay you
directly say £5000 and you
send the balance with the goods.
These seem to be forged money
orders, bankers drafts or the like.
When you pay it onto your
bank account everything looks fine.
You would then lift the
"balance" and sent it on.
Because the banking system in this
country is so crap, 10 to 15 days
later they discover it is a
fake and take the money back out
your account.
Therefore you have given Joe Fraudster £3500 and the goods
and
some days later the bank take their
£5000 back. Ouch.
I have not personally been hit with this but have emailed a
few
people who have been conned.
I don't like to put a clause on my auctions for cars stating
that
users with a low or zero rating
have to contact me first as I
think this could deter potential
genuine bidders.
Hope this is of interest to you.
Regards
Kenny"
I'm glad to see Kenny wasn't taken in by this. One of the
ways
the fraudster attempts to induce
sellers to co-operate in such
arrangements is by offering a
"reward" for helping. In this
instance it might be £250 for going
ahead with the suggestion. As
the only real money is that which
is coming out of the seller's
pocket, how generous of the
scammers to give the seller £250
discount!
On a lighter note, I had an email from Juliet.
And this contained a link to a song about eBay! No, really.
In
fact, it's quite good. Anyway, see
what you think. Does the
artist have the X Factor?
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1001.htm
b) Only in
If you're interested in such things we'll know in a few
weeks who
will be the next President of the
One lady eBayer's opposition to
President George W Bush has gone
to her head. Literally.
A 29 year old mother of four auctioned her shaved skull on
eBay
to be tattooed with an anti-Bush
message.
Her starting price was a penny, and she witnessed quite a bidding
war. Her auction ended with a
winning bid of $103.50.
She then had her skull tattooed with a large W, a cowboy hat
and
a red slash.
The cost of the tattoo was less than the winning bid. So she
gave
half to the tattoo artist and used
the rest to pay part of a
bill, buy a gift for her children
and get some beer.
She's unsure what she'll do after the November election.
"If Bush wins, I'll keep it there" she said,
"It's my little
civil disobedience thing. A
permanent picket sign. If Kerry wins,
I'll probably just let my hair grow."
$103.50? Hmmmm.
I'm just off to the hairdressers!
c) Traffic Jam
Traffic to
months. According to web traffic
analyst Hitwise, eBay now
attracts more than 3.5 per cent of
ALL web traffic in the
This is up from 1.5 per cent in January 2003.
Hitwise reports that while eBay is
the most visited online
shopping and auction destination,
it also is the most searched
for brand in the entire Shopping
category. The popularity of the
term "ebay"
dwarfs the level of search engine queries for all
other retailers fivefold or more.
Hitwise Search Term data show that
for the four weeks ending
queries across all major search
engines that delivered traffic to
Shopping and Classifieds sites.
Whereas "walmart" represented
0.28 percent of all searches; "best buy" 0.26
percent;
"amazon.com" 0.24 percent; "home depot"
0.24 percent; and
"target" 0.22 percent.
All of this is great news for eBay members. As a seller, the
website on which you're placing
your items for sale is the most
popular shopping site on the
internet. And as a buyer, with more
and more sellers joining up with
eBay, the opportunities to find
bargains increases daily.
=============================
3. What is the best Duration for an Auction?
On eBay you run your auction for a specific duration.
Currently,
the options are 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10
days.
But which duration is best for your auction?
In this article, I'll give you some pointers designed to
assist
in answering the question.
You might wonder why you would ever wish to have less than
the
maximum exposure i.e. 10 days?
Surely running your auction for
the longest time would give bidders
more opportunity, and
therefore a higher sale price would
result? ebay.com would appear
to think so, as they currently
charge a fee of $0.20 for the
privilege of operating a 10 day
auction.
However, if you have a very popular item or if you have many
identical items to sell, it may pay
you to have a shorter auction
duration. Also, it pays to consider
the end point of your auction
very carefully. In addition, if you
are running a Fixed Price
auction, there is a little trick
you can employ to give you extra
exposure.
So, let's review the elements to consider in setting your
auction
duration.
a) Start/end day of auction
In my experience, for most categories, the weekend is by far
the
busiest viewing period on eBay. I
would estimate that around 50%
of views of my auctions take place
on Saturday and Sunday. In
setting auction duration,
therefore, the weekend peak could be
important to your success.
If you can arrange to end an auction on Sunday night, you
get the
benefit of those who wait until the
end of the auction to bid,
plus the enhanced viewing traffic
numbers which appear during the
weekend.
This means if you're posting an auction on Tuesday night, a
5 day
auction could be good.
Having said that the weekend is the busiest for most
categories,
some could benefit from a midweek
closing date. Items in this
category would include those in
which goods are offered for
business users.
If your item is targeted at businesses, you want people to
bid
for your item while they are at
work. In these instances, make
sure your auction covers working
days, and concludes during work
time. It has also been found that
office equipment and supplies
sell well in the morning.
Be conscious of the time when you post your auction, as this
is
the exact time it will finish a
number of days ahead. There's
potentially a great deal of
difference between an auction closing
at
If you can pitch your auction to be the former, you could
benefit
significantly from those extra
weekend viewers. (Note the
section on Time Zones later.)
b) Known popularity of the item
If you know your item is very popular, and your past
experience
shows that you will always sell at
or more than the price you
want, even outside of normal peak
periods, then a 1 or 3 day
auction could be appropriate. The
benefit of a 1 or 3 day sale is
that you can sell more items, more
quickly.
c) Awareness of eBay sort facilities after searching
Whenever eBay's search is used by an eBayer, the default is
that
it returns auction titles in the
order of how long auctions have
left to run. Auctions which have minutes, or seconds to
run,
will appear first in the returned list.
Auctions which have 9+
days to run will be at the end. And
the list may run to many,
many pages.
Experience has shown that eBayers tend to look only at one
or two
pages in returned lists. This means
it is important you get your
auction onto these pages at some
point in its life - another
reason why a 1 or 3 day auction
might be better than a 7 or 10
day duration.
Be aware too that a high proportion of bidding activity
takes
place towards the end of an
auction. This is natural. Buyers are
on the lookout for bargains. If
they can nip in with a bid at the
end of the auction, they might get
the item at a good price and
there may not be time for others to
top their bid. (Buyers can
also use "sniping"
software, designed to place a bid at the
latest possible time on auctions
which are of interest to them.)
However, the searcher can easily re-order the returned
titles
list. A popular option is to
re-order the list into "newly
listed" sequence. The top of
the list will now show auctions
which have been newly added to
eBay. This is why there is
sometimes a blip of bidding
activity at the beginning of an
auction as well as at the end.
d) Time Zones
eBay's default is to commence your
auction from the time you
submit it. As you know this means
it will terminate at that exact
time, the number of days ahead that
you select as the duration.
However, if you're offering your item internationally you
should
give consideration to the time zone
you're aiming for in terms of
auction finish point.
For example, in the
Eastern Time Zone. So an auction
ending at
fine for west coast eBay members,
but over on the east coast this
is
bidders at a critical point in your
auction.
eBay does provide an option whereby
you can schedule your auction
to commence at a specific time (and
on another day). In fact you
can set your auction to start at
any time and day up to 21 days
ahead. This means you can commence
your auction according to the
timing you believe will attract the
most viewers. There is a
small fee for using this
capability.
This feature is also useful if you want to create your
listings
in advance, and then have them
released onto eBay in a phased
sequence.
e) Fixed Price auctions - Single Item
I mentioned a little trick earlier. Well, here it is. With a
Fixed Price auction for a single item you could consider
managing
your auction duration dynamically.
You need to be monitoring your
auctions closely i.e. throughout
the day, to undertake this
technique.
When bidders do a search on eBay, you know the auctions with
the
least amount of time left appear at
the top of the returned list.
So it is advantageous to keep the remaining time on your
auction
as short as possible. This is a way
in which you get four bites
of that cherry for a single listing
fee.
1. Start the Fixed Price single item auction off with 1 day
duration. Wait for someone to buy.
2. When the auction has just over 12 hours left, go in to
the
auction and revise the auction
duration to 3 days. Yes, you can
do this - as long as there is at
least 12 hours left. Wait for
someone to buy.
3. When the auction has just over 12 hours left, go in to
the
auction and revise the auction
duration to 5 days. Wait for
someone to buy.
4. When the auction has just over 12 hours left, go in to
the
auction and revise the auction
duration to 7 days. Wait for
someone to buy.
5. When the auction has just over 12 hours left, go in to
the
auction and revise the auction
duration to 10 days. (Don't forget
this will cost you a small fee on
ebay.com) Wait for someone to
buy.
6. The auction concludes naturally.
This might look complicated, but it isn't really once you
get the
hang of it. Of course, at any point
during the above process
someone could buy your item and
your auction closes
automatically. If you have another
of the same or similar item to
sell, you can re-list it.
Fixed Price auctions - Multiple Items
With a Fixed Price auction for multiple items, I would
recommend
you set the auction duration to the
maximum - 10 days, or 7 days
if you're not prepared to absorb
the extra fee on eBay.com.
When you have multiple items it is not advisable to use the
ploy
described above for Fixed Price
single item auctions. This is
because as soon as you receive a
bid (in this case it would be a
Fixed Price sale), you are unable to modify the auction
duration
even though you may have many of
the multiple items still to
sell.
If you sell all your items within your chosen 7 or 10 days,
then
the auction closes automatically
anyway.
f) Value Based Formula
If you are happier using a value based formula in setting
your
auction duration, here is my rule
of thumb for items that I have
not tried to sell before:
Min Bid amounts Set auction duration to
£5 - £25
5 days
£25 - £100
7 days
Over £100
10 days
If you're selling items which from experience you know will
definitely be bought at acceptable prices,
then you can reduce
the duration.
I hope this outline of selecting the best auction duration
proves
useful to you.
It is based upon an extract from my ebook best selling
ebook,
'The eBay Formula'.
'The eBay Formula' is available at a special price for
newsletter
readers here:
http://www.workwinners.com/rd01.htm
=============================
4. Am I Psychic or what?
You might recall in the last newsletter I announced a superb
new
service from a British company.
The one that gives you up to 5 times more speed from your
existing dial-up connection,
without having to change modem or
ISP.
Do you remember?
As I mentioned last time, as soon as I learned about this
service, I signed up. Even though I
am on broadband, it speeds
up my connection too!
Well, I'm pleased to announce this service has deservedly
been
nominated for the 2004 Future UK
Internet Award in the Web
Innovation of the Year category.
I'm delighted to be able to vote for them in this award. And
we'll know on 11 November how
they've done.
Like many
a breakthrough they've made. I wish
they did.
It really is incredible.
If you want to know why they're in the running for this
prestigious award, take a look
here:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1002.htm
=============================
5. A Small Token of my Appreciation
Have you heard of Timothy Mina?
He runs a website called the-online-auction-expert.com
I guess he can claim to be an online auction expert as he
sold
picture cards by auctions on the
internet BEFORE eBay even
existed! And he's been selling on
eBay since it was born.
He is the author of the best selling ebook "Online
Auction
Expert's Bible to Selling on eBay".
And today you can sample his work without charge.
Timothy has written a new ebook "How to Make a Living
on eBay:
Separating Truth from Hype".
It's a useful ebook for both new and experienced eBay
sellers.
There's a superb chapter in there called "Why 99% of
Sellers Fail
on eBay".
As I said, there's no charge. The ebook is in PDF format,
and you
can get it from the following link:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1003.htm
=============================
6. One Last Thing
What's your views on mobile phones?
The greatest invention ever? Or, the bane of your life?
I used to swear by my mobile, but recently I've tried doing
without it.
Guess what?
My world hasn't collapsed. I'm still in business. Nobody is
complaining they can't get hold of
me.
And I feel more in charge of my own time.
My daughter on the other hand....
I'm convinced her mobile is an extension of her hand! If
she's
not talking, she's texting. If she's not texting,
she's playing a
game on that tiny little screen.
I'm quite proud of my own experiment. But I know she is more
representative of mobile users than
I am.
The reason I know this is that I read the other day that
there
are now 50 million mobile phones
registered in the
This is some number when, according to the Office for
National
Statistics, the
The reason I'm banging on about the numbers of mobiles is
that it
has spawned a rather clever new
business.
Have you ever thought what happens to all those mobiles
which are
replaced by new models? You know
the ones we all have in a drawer
in the spare room, or in the
sideboard, or in the cupboard under
the stairs?
Well, this new business provides a cunning way to earn money
from
these obsolete mobile phones.
And it also provides an eBay opportunity for you.
To find out all about it, go to this page:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1004.htm
If you've any questions about the business, you can get me
on my
mobile. It's
077..... oops sorry ...that's censored!
=============================
7. Someone's auctioning what? Unusual items currently
available
Nothing surprises me when it comes to internet auctions.
Amuse
yourself with some of these
beauties ...
I'm indebted to Paul for bringing this one to my attention.
Who
says size doesn't matter?
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1005.htm
Hands up if you never made one of these at school!
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1006.htm
5526651183
I think the very last two words in this auction tell all.
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1007.htm
You'll never go hungry again!
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1008.htm
Ouch!!
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1009.htm
Disclaimer - I have no association with any of the sellers
of the
above items.
=============================
8. Finally
If you are changing email addresses soon please put a note
on
your calendar to send a blank email
to:
after you get your new email
address.
I don't want to lose touch with you!
If a friend sent you this newsletter, you need to send a
blank
email to:
That way you can get your own copy next time!
Increasingly, email filters are preventing genuine email
communications such as this
newsletter from reaching subscribers.
If you use any method of checking on your email, and you
wish to
continue receiving the newsletter
you may need to include my
email address in your safe list,
whitelist or address book.
Thank you for continuing to take my newsletter - I hope it
gives
you as much enjoyment to read, as
it does me to write.
Regards
Brian McGregor
Editor - "
====================================
9. My Products Catalogue
Check out my portfolio of products and services:
"The eBay Formula"
How to sell successfully on
time. Special
Price offer to newsletter readers.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd01.htm
"
Twenty six genuine
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"Sourcing DVDs, CDs and Videos at Trade Prices"
Where and how to buy DVDs, CDs and Videos at trade prices,
and
how to sell for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd03.htm
"Sourcing and Selling Electrical Products for Big
Profits"
Where and how to buy Widescreen TVs, DVD players and VCR
players
at trade prices, and how to sell
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"Sourcing Maternity Clothing and Baby Needs at Trade
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Where and how to buy at trade prices.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd05.htm
"Sourcing and Selling Jewellery for Big Profits"
Where and how to buy jewellery at trade prices, and how to
sell
for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd06.htm
"Sourcing Mobile Phone Accessories at Trade
Prices"
Where and how to buy mobile phone accessories at trade
prices,
and how to sell for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd07.htm
"The Streetwise Buyer's Guide to Radar Detectors"
Don't buy a Radar Detector system until you read this.
http://www.workwinners.com/rd08.htm
Oil Painting Marketing Business
Become my partner in this pleasant money-making venture.
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10 ebook Special
All ten of my ebooks
available to newsletter readers for a special price.
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr9205.htm
Your Own ebook and Software Sales
Business
Valuable ebooks and software which
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High speed internet connection from your
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Up to 256k speed instantly with this incredible software.
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Your own business recycling second hand
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Make money today with this brand new business opportunity.
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Discounts for your use
If you shop at Curry's, Dixons,
the Early Learning Centre, PC
World or Littlewoods Extra, you
will be interested in this. I
know it's nothing to do with eBay,
but a reader brought this to
my attention, and I thought we all
might as well all benefit.
Here is a way in which you can get from 7.5% to 20% discount
on
purchases of new items from the
Online Shops of these retailers.
Check it out here:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr902.htm
Finally, a book well worth reading.
In 'The eBay Book', long time
eBay user David Belbin,
explains how eBay.co.uk works and how to
get the most out of it, whether you
are a buyer or seller.
Step-by-step, he takes you through the key features of the
site,
advises on bidding and selling
tactics, explains how to minimise
the fees you pay and why feedback
is so important. He explores
the best ways to pay for goods, and
what to do if your
transactions go wrong. This hugely
readable book also contains a
wealth of case studies covering a
wide variety of eBay users.
It's available at Amazon here:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr809.htm
See all of my products and opportunities here:
=============================
"
weekly.
In each issue you'll get ideas on how to make the most of
buying
and selling on eBay sites from a
If you would like to unsubscribe please use the link at the
bottom of this email.
Finally, be assured that your email address will never be
shared
or sold - ever!
=============================
Copyright Information
Copyright © 2006 Brian McGregor. All rights reserved.
No part of this newsletter may be copied or published
without
prior permission, but do please
forward it to your friends and
colleagues as long as you keep it
in its entirety. Brian
McGregor, as publisher, disclaims any liability for the use
of
any information contained herein.
We further claim no
responsibility for the legality or
accuracy of any advertisements
or articles. It is the reader's
responsibility to practice due
diligence in any product or service
acquired based on information
contained in this newsletter.
If you do not want to receive this newsletter, the only one
dedicated to eBay
email to
=============================
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