• Welcome from Brian McGregor 
• Inspirational Quote of the Day
• News and Views
• Words From Mystic Meg
• How to Find Hot Selling Products on eBay
• The Magic Numbers
• A Gift from Me to You
• Someone's auctioning what? Unusual items currently available
• Finally
• My Products Catalogue
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Hello and welcome.

A particularly warm welcome to you if you're a new subscriber. It's good to have you as part of the family taking my eBay newsletter.

Regular readers will know I keep on about trying things. About never being afraid of testing yourself, and about stretching your mind.

This can be good. But beware, it also runs risks!

On the internet it is so easy to slip into continuously looking into new areas, and never actually devoting time to taking action and implementing things.

Let me give you an example.

I've recently been researching into Adsense. If you didn't know it, Adsense are those little adverts that appear on millions of web pages. If you look at the very top of this page, you will see Google Adsense adverts.

I'm looking into this area as Yahoo have announced their own Adsense equivalent, and I wanted to know which is the best to use.

I went to Google search, entered "google adsense" and was presented with over 7 million answers!

I could easily spend the next week or two, just following up on the mountain of information about Google Adsense.

But I didn't. I was very strict with myself as I have a system for not letting my time run away.

What I do is allocate about 20% of my time on new projects and areas. So Google Adsense research was only going to get one day in every five of my time.

I suggest you try and compartmentalise your own internet time. Allocate it according to your personal priorities. Make sure that you don't let all your time drift away on areas that aren't contributing to meeting your aspirations.

Like most people, I find it really exciting setting up new internet projects. And isn't it weird how they always seem to have so much more potential than anything else you're doing currently?

However, potential is great, but it doesn't pay the bills!

Look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Brian
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1. Life in the Old Dog....

Love letters allegedly sent by Prince Charles to a mystery girlfriend have been put up for sale on eBay. The letters are owned by Los Angeles based royal collector Alicia Carroll, and were on offer on eBay.com for £34,000.

One of the letters was said to be written in June 1980 - a year before he married Princess Diana. The others were sent in 1976 when Charles, who was then serving in the Navy, was regularly linked with a string of women.

In the 1980 letter Charles complains of his frustration with the Press and not being able to sneak ladies into his hotel room during royal tours. It's tough at the top!

He refers to the pressure on him to wed by writing: "I shall just have to get married as soon as possible and then all these people will relax a little."

In another letter, dated July 6 1976 which is when he was serving on HMS Bronington, he expresses his desire to meet up with a girlfriend when his ship visits Canada. "I wish I could come roaring across the Atlantic to make you feel less lonely," the letter says. "I do hope you will be there because it would be glorious to have a chance of being alone with you for a moment."

Steamy stuff!

I'm sorry, but I can't tell you any more. This newsletter has a family readership!


2. Has This Happened to YOU?

Thanks to Chris for bringing the following to my attention. His own email explains it all....

This is Brian again.

There is a very simple way to tell immediately that Chris's email isn't from PayPal.

At the top, it says "Dear PayPal member,". PayPal would NEVER send an email to you addressed like that. They will ALWAYS use your name. For example, a genuine PayPal email to me would say "Dear Brian McGregor".

The reason why the email Chris received didn't have "Dear Chris etc", is because all the scammer has is an email address. He's probably bought the list of email addresses from a list broker. He has no idea what name is associated with the email address.

Note that you can use this criteria to test any spoof email. If you receive an email from a bank, from eBay, from PayPal or anyone else, and it starts with Dear Member, or Dear Customer, or Dear Client etc, it is a fake. Delete it.

This test will enable you to identify 99% of spoof emails. There is a second test you can apply.

ALL spoof emails have a link within the email which they want you to click on. In Chris's "PayPal email" the link is under the words Dispute Transaction.

The general rule I apply is NEVER click on a link embedded within an email unless I am 100% certain - and I mean 100% certain - that the email is from who I think it is.

Thank you again to Chris for reminding us all to be vigilant.


3. A Bonus Freebie in This Edition

As you will know, I give you a free gift in every edition of the newsletter. You can see this edition's free gift is a little further down the newsletter.

What I want to do here is give you a special, second free gift.

If you're looking to make money on the internet by selling information products on eBay or from websites, this is for you.

Harvey Segal is the author a new ebook which contains some really helpful information for us all.

His latest (and best ever) ebook is called 'The Ultimate Supertip'.

The great news for all of us is that 'The Ultimate Supertip' is free. There is absolutely no cost involved. You don't even have to give Harvey your name or email.

'The Ultimate Supertip' is 23 pages of solid content. There is no fluff.

Here is a brief overview of the ebook:

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2 - The very best strategy to promote any information product. A real case study is presented as well.

Chapter 3 - An ingenious twist that takes this strategy into orbit.

Chapter 4 - The tools that will help you put the strategy into practice immediately.

Chapter 5 - An astonishing viral idea that will put money into your PayPal instantly via a 100% affiliate commission payout system!

I thoroughly recommend 'The Ultimate Supertip'.

Make sure you get your free copy now from here.


4. Did eBay Tell You About This?

I wondered if you knew that UK eBay has changed some of its fees from 29th September, 2005? I certainly didn't.

There are fee changes in multiple item (Dutch) auctions, the use of Buy it Now and in using images.

To eBay's credit, not everything has gone up! However, it would've been nice to have been given advanced warning of these changes.

The reason you (and I) didn't receive an email about this, is that they didn't send one!

Ah well! You can read all about the fee changes here.


5. Do YOU Want to Create Your Own ebooks to Sell on eBay?

I know from my email inbox that many readers of the newsletter are interested in selling information products like ebooks on eBay.

This is hardly surprising as information products have one of the highest net profit percentages of any items on eBay. Once an ebook product has been created, it can be sold many times over. And, it is simply delivered to buyers via email or download.

In other words, once you have your information product in a file on your PC, there is virtually no cost involved in selling and delivering it!

If you're interested in creating your own ebooks, I've found a very helpful resource which takes you through the process in easy-to-understand terms.

It's called 'A Simple Guide to Creating Your Own Ebooks', it's free, and you can download it from here.

Last week, eBay CEO Meg Whitman was interviewed by TIME magazine. Here is an excerpt. I hope you find it interesting - I did!

TIME: eBay recently paid at least $2.6 billion for the Internet phone company Skype, and the two words most frequently used to describe the purchase were "head scratching." Was the price excessive?

WHITMAN: We obviously think it was fair. We looked at value in Skype in a number of different ways: the amount we paid on a per-user basis, discounted cash flows, etc. We also looked at what we thought Skype could do on its own and with eBay.

TIME: eBay has about 157 million users worldwide and Skype will soon have 57 million, but the overlap is only about 1%. How will you combine the two communities?

WHITMAN: The other figure I'd lay on there is the 79 million people who have PayPal. Maybe we'll introduce every Skype user to a PayPal account, and vice versa, in a thoughtful way. We want to make sure we don't take away from the destiny of each business, but we'd like one plus one plus one to equal five.

TIME: Are there any other communities that you'd like to collect?

WHITMAN: We're always interested in communities forming on the net. Shopping.com, our shopping comparison site, has a different but equally dynamic community of buyers and sellers. There's also a very strong Craigslist community in every city.

TIME: eBay owns 25% of Craigslist.com. Are there options to acquire more?

WHITMAN: No. We own 25%. When this chunk of stock became available from one of their original partners, we were offered the chance to invest and I said, absolutely. There was no right of first refusal [on future opportunities]. We have a seat on the board, but we don't have any more say in the business than any normal board member would have.

TIME: The New York Times recently started charging about $50 a year for access to certain features on its website, including its op-ed pages. Some people thought that a better idea would have been to charge a few pennies a page and make money on micropayments. Since eBay owns PayPal, are you looking at getting into that business?

WHITMAN: Yes. Our relationship with iTunes demonstrates our ability to process a 99-cent payment without charging 7%. [PayPal does not charge consumers, but on micropayments under three dollars, the merchant, in this case iTunes, pays 5 percent of the total sale plus five cents per transaction.]Micropayments are part of the future of PayPal, and we're incredibly well-positioned to do that because we're used to handling individual, small buyer transactions of ten cents, 20 cents, 30 cents.

TIME: As video on the Web becomes more widespread, do you think eBay's marketplace will allow videos of items for sale instead of just photos?

WHITMAN: We've talked about that. As broadband catches up, I think there will come a day where people have videos of the objects, with perhaps a voice-over description. Actually, that may not be too far off.

TIME: What role will advanced cell phones play in eBay's future?

WHITMAN: I'm optimistic. Particularly in developing markets like China and India and Brazil, those populations may well leapfrog over the PC and laptop with their phones.

TIME: Is there room for more growth in the U.S.?

WHITMAN: Oh yeah. The U.S. is still growing in excess of 20% a year, which most companies would kill for.

TIME: What will it take to make growth even more dynamic?

WHITMAN: That's one of the reasons we're excited about Skype. It can create a new way for buyers and sellers to communicate. It actually will help us get into new categories. For example, if you're a web designer, it's hard for you to sell your product on eBay - what you want to do is connect and find out what the buyer wants.

TIME: Is there a market for a used downloaded movie, or other kinds of digital content?

WHITMAN: We've been cautious about that. There is a downloadable music content marketplace on eBay today, but we vet the sellers quite carefully. Over time the intellectual property rights questions will be overcome, and digital content will very much be a part of the eBay marketplace.

TIME: How do you see that happening?

WHITMAN: I'm not exactly sure how, but I've been impressed by the ability of technology to solve problems over time.

Brian here again. I don't know about you, but I find Meg to be very impressive. I'm not quite sure paying so much for Skype was good use of eBay's cash. However, $2.6 billion may not be too much for 54 million new members - Skype's customer base. A base which is growing by around 150,000 each day. That's more new members daily than eBay itself is getting! What can't be denied is that Meg has usually made the right decisions during her period in the hot seat.

For the benefit of all of us, long may it continue!

Most people who sell on eBay would like to be in the position of selling highly sought after items. But how do you know which products are the ones that are in high demand?

You might not have realised it, but eBay itself has several ways for you to determine exactly what these items are! In fact eBay gives you four ways to do this.

Whilst this data is only available on ebay.com, and not ebay.co.uk, depending on the categories in which you operate, the information may well be of interest no matter which eBay country site you use.

Items In Demand

In this part of Seller Central, you will find each of the main categories is listed. If you scroll down, you will see within each category area there is a heading of In Demand. If you click on this, you will see what are the most popular items currently within that particular category. To see the In Demand page, click here.

Hot Items by Category Report

eBay produces a monthly report called the "Hot Items by Category" report. This report lists the fastest growing categories on eBay for the previous month. The explanation for what eBay considers "hot" can be hard to understand on first reading. The important matter is that the categories listed are ones where buyer demand for the items under those categories are growing fastest. This report is a PDF file. You can view it on your browser, or download it and open it with Adobe Reader. Go here, and select "Hot Items by Category" from the menu on the left.

eBay Pulse

This is an area on eBay where you can find "a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks, and cool stuff on eBay". With eBay Pulse you can get this information by category, or across eBay.com as a whole. Click here to see eBay Pulse in action.

Merchandising Calendar

eBay promotes specific categories on its home page each month. Savvy eBayers know that this home page exposure results in more interest in such categories. Fortunately, thanks to eBay's Merchandising Calendar, you can know in advance which categories are going to be featured in each month. Thus you can be prepared with appropriate auction items, ready to take advantage of the increased traffic in these categories. Click here to view the current Merchandising Calendar.

I hope this insight into eBay's services helps in your selling.

Following eBay's recent tenth anniversary, the Daily Mail featured an excellent article talking about some of the numbers and the stories behind eBay's success.

0 or 'nothing' was put up for sale by an American eBay dealer. He received a single US dollar for it.

1 hour was the time taken for the first Live8 tickets to appear for auction on eBay after ticket lottery-winners had been informed of their success. In far more dubious taste, it also took that long for the first rubble from the World Trade Centre to appear on eBay after the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11.

2 Ascot Royal Enclosure tickets were auctioned on eBay by Prince Andrew in January 2005 to support UKRadioAid.

3 Nintendo Gameboy consoles, originally intended as Christmas gifts for his children, were placed on eBay in December 2004 by a father in Texas, after his offspring were naughty. The Gameboys sold for almost £3,000, roughly 25 times (at US prices) what Dad would have paid for them.

4 of the many relics of Elvis Presley to have been sold on eBay are a branch from a tree at his Graceland home, snapped off during his funeral (£467.50), three spoons of water from a cup from which 'the King' drank during a 1977 concert (£252), a ball from his personal pool table (£937) and a hanging plastic fern that no longer hangs at Graceland (£395).

£5 was the postage cost of the 'air guitar' successfully auctioned by a British eBay seller

6 was the UK size of the second-hand bright red stiletto shoes bought by Cherie Blair on eBay in June 2004, using the name 'cherie boo'. Cherie paid £10 for the shoes, which would have sold new for at least £100. She also purchased two other items of footwear, a 99p alarm-clock for her son Leo and two Disney videos at £1.99 each.

7 seconds is the average gap between sales of items of women's clothing on eBay in the UK. Meanwhile, a piece of men's clothing sells every 13 seconds, a mobile phone every 21 seconds, a handbag every 36 seconds, a piece of golf equipment every minute and a car every two minutes.

8 of the most bizarre celebrity souvenirs sold on eBay are a thong previously worn by the singer Christina Aguilera, sold along with a tub of her dirty bath-water for £810, rocker Bryan Adams' dirty socks (£551), newsreader Kate Garraway's half-eaten banana (£1,650), Britney Spears' used and spat out chewing-gum (£270), a half-finished bottle of suicidal grunge-rocker Kurt Cobain's beer (£175), the plaster cast from Wayne Rooney's broken foot (£2,000), Justin Timberlake's half-eaten French toast (£2,000, including fork and syrup) and Ronan Keating's leather trousers (£5,000). Mr Keating was no longer in the trousers at the time of the sale.

9 categories of items that cannot be sold include Nazi memorabilia, illegal drugs, fireworks, human remains, living human body parts, alcohol (except for rare collectors' items), tobacco, lottery tickets and illicit satellite TV decoders.

10% of all the time spent online by internet users throughout Britain is on eBay.

14 is the value in US dollars of the first item ever sold on eBay in September 1995 - a broken laser-pointer owned by founder Pierre Omidyar. While he is now a billionaire, the company's boss since 1998, Meg Whitman, has shareholdings worth more than £850m. Which buys a lot of broken laser-pointers (60,714,285, to be precise).

18 holes of golf with Tiger Woods were sold on eBay for £236,000.

34 (FF) was the size of breast implants whose £2,500 cost was financed by eBay seller Michelle Monroe. A mystery businessman paid for her op in exchange for the right to examine the finished products.

£54 was the amount paid on eBay by singer and Dukes Of Hazzard actress Jessica Simpson for a pair of red 1980s cowboy boots, which she wore in the video for her version of the old Nancy Sinatra hit These Boots Are Made For Walkin'.

57% of British eBay shoppers are male, perhaps the only known example of men being more actively involved in retail therapy than women.

58% of eBay users in this country are aged 35 and over, suggesting the internet is not just a young person's phenomenon, as is often believed.

£1,200 was paid earlier this year for a 'Chavmobile' - a 1991 Vauxhall, painted in a Burberry check and with various low-quality gold accessories - plus a boot that didn't close properly.

£5,600 was the frankly meagre price obtained by Karolyne Smith of Salt Lake City, US, who had offered her forehead as the site for a permanently tattooed advertisement. The winning bidder was the Golden Palace online casino, which had previously made headlines when paying £17,500 for a grilled cheese sandwich that purportedly had the image of the Virgin Mary burned onto its surface.

£9,000 was paid by one besotted GMTV fan for a date with the morning station's fragrant newscaster Penny Smith. It's not know whether he kept the receipt.

15,000 software companies sell applications specifically designed to work on eBay or assist purchasers and sellers.

£17,100 bought one of the more unusual properties to be sold on eBay, a decommissioned nuclear bunker near Pickering, North Yorkshire.

£20,000 cars, motorbikes and other vehicles are currently for sale on eBay Motors UK. Previous motors sold by online Arfur Daleys include Joanna Lumley's Ferrari for £35,000, David Beckham's Range Rover for £24,000, mammoth's skeleton, the incredible stories behind Britain's favourite auction website George Michael's Range Rover (number plate: J5STUD) for £11,600 and Lady Penelope's pink Rolls-Royce for £20,000. The latter, sadly, was only a puppet car, from the original Thunderbirds TV series.

50,000 years was the age of Max, the complete mammoth skeleton sold by a Dutch eBay seller in 2004. It fetched £61,000.

£103,000 is the biggest amount raised for charity by a single sale on eBay UK: it was paid for one of Margaret Thatcher's legendary handbags.

£128,268 was paid in May this year for a VW Golf once owned by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, otherwise known as Pope Benedict XVI.

724,000 people in the US make all or most of their living as eBay traders.

3 million items are offered for sale on eBay UK at any one time, divided into 13,000 different categories. Worldwide, there are some 55m items on sale at any one time, with 5m new items added every day.

£3.2m is the highest amount ever paid for an item on eBay. And considering it bought a Gulfstream private jetx, it was actually something of a bargain. £5m was reportedly paid for a Shakespeare manuscript (above) in 2003. But this story turned out to be one of many eBay hoaxes.

11 million people currently visit eBay UK every month.

157 million people worldwide are registered eBay users.

£4bn is the projected value of sales on eBay UK in 2005, according to a recent survey.

£29.5bn is the current share-value of eBay. Up from precisely zero this time a decade ago.

Is your brain hurting yet?

Mine is. So we'll wrap up the numbers game now!

This time I have a useful software product for you.

It's called Feedback Analyzer, and it enables you to quickly view any eBay member's feedback comments and ratings.

A very useful feature is that it separates all the positive, neutral, and negative feedback comments. Also, you can opt to see feedback received or feedback left.

You are able to save the feedback comments in several file formats - html, txt, and excel. You could copy the html version straight into your auction description to give your auction added credibility!

The software looks quality, and is very easy to use.

You can download Feedback Analyzer here.

Nothing surprises me when it comes to internet auctions. Amuse yourself with some of these beauties.

OK. What's this warning about then?

You like to think that entrepreneurship isn't dead. But WHY this auction???

Will you call the police. Or will I?

I can just see the look of horror on Dame Edna's face!

Now there's an idea with potential!

Disclaimer - I have no association with any of the sellers of the above items.