I was going through my business receipts from last year. I ran across one for $97 for Dave Lovelaces 6 Figure Marketing or some such hoo-ey. What crap that product was. He should be ashamed of himself.
Then right after the receipt I found my email to him asking for a refund. He said all sales are final.
What crap.
Live and learn.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Introducing Andrew Lock
I was squirreling around on Amazon and came across some interesting-looking eBay books, so I bought them to see if anything earth-shattering or mind-bending could be unearthed.
The books are:
Titanium Ebay: A Tactical Guide to Becoming a Millionaire PowerSeller
Ebay Exposed: How to Really Make Money Selling on Ebay
Three Weeks to eBay Profits: Go from Beginner to Successful Seller in Less than a Month
(Note to self: If I ever write a book, the title MUST contain a colon in order to sell)
Before I give you the results, a bit of a disclaimer: I don't have a product source yet. I didn't exercise what these books preach. But there is a reason to this, and I'll tell you what that is in a second.
Titanium Ebay - Ummm... Isn't this stuff pretty much anyone would know either through examining Ebay's website, or just plain logic/experience. Not a page-turner. I think it's at the 20,000 ft level whereas the reader is probably expecting more of a "how-to".
Ebay Exposed - Fan-freakin'-tastic. Really.
Three Weeks... - To be honest, I haven't read this one. It just doesn't interest me. I browsed through it, and it just seems like the boring old stuff that was in Titanium Ebay -- e.g. Sign up for an account, browse other auctions to see how other people do it, buy a few things... seems to be fluff, but again, I haven't read but the first chapter. It may get better.
Back to eBay Exposed.
Sure, the title sounds all gimmick-y, the book is thin, and the print is large, but this guy, Andrew Lock, gets down to business FAST. It's a quick read and a lot of it goes against conventional wisdom.
I can't put even a fraction of what's in the book here. That's probably plagiarism anyway. But I can tell you it's worth the $8 or whatever it costs.
Just as a warning, the book does try to up-sell you on Andrew's H3 system, but there are a number of jems in the book that you can implement without the H3 system. Buy the looks of it, the H3 System is more for information products anyway.
At the back of the book was a "FREE* Offer!" -- the * being the $20 for shipping the free offer. (There's no affiliate program - I'm not pushing anything, I thought you might want to take a look.) I bit. I ordered it. What I received was okay, nothing to get my panties bunched up about. Shipping was super-fast.
I received 5 CDs - 4 of them were audios of interviews Andrew had with various business gurus. The interviews pretty much went over what was in the book. I can't say for certain that I learned anything from it. The 5th CD was supposed to be "The Ultimate Ebay Resource Kit", but the CD was blank. I emailed the customer service, they said they'd send me another.
The Resource kit turned out to be a list of vendors that offer different services for an eBay business. I had only heard of a handful, so I'm anxious to look through the list more thoroughly. (stay tuned to later posts for the results of those reviews)
The last thing included for the $20 is supposed to be Andrew's print newsletter which is like $40 a month or something. It's supposed to be free for 3 months. I haven't gotten it yet, so I can't tell you if it's worth anything.
But the reason I haven't gotten off my duff and sold anything on eBay is that I'm waiting for my H3 training system to come.
I know, I know. I ate the bait, hook line and sinker. But to my defence, Ebay Exposed has some really compelling stuff.
It hasn't come yet, but I'll be sure to post my thoughts on Andrew's H3 training.
(oh yeah -- and Andrew's customer service department is PHENOMENAL. Courteous, helpful and all that jazz.)
(c) 2007
The books are:
Titanium Ebay: A Tactical Guide to Becoming a Millionaire PowerSeller
Ebay Exposed: How to Really Make Money Selling on Ebay
Three Weeks to eBay Profits: Go from Beginner to Successful Seller in Less than a Month
(Note to self: If I ever write a book, the title MUST contain a colon in order to sell)
Before I give you the results, a bit of a disclaimer: I don't have a product source yet. I didn't exercise what these books preach. But there is a reason to this, and I'll tell you what that is in a second.
Titanium Ebay - Ummm... Isn't this stuff pretty much anyone would know either through examining Ebay's website, or just plain logic/experience. Not a page-turner. I think it's at the 20,000 ft level whereas the reader is probably expecting more of a "how-to".
Ebay Exposed - Fan-freakin'-tastic. Really.
Three Weeks... - To be honest, I haven't read this one. It just doesn't interest me. I browsed through it, and it just seems like the boring old stuff that was in Titanium Ebay -- e.g. Sign up for an account, browse other auctions to see how other people do it, buy a few things... seems to be fluff, but again, I haven't read but the first chapter. It may get better.
Back to eBay Exposed.
Sure, the title sounds all gimmick-y, the book is thin, and the print is large, but this guy, Andrew Lock, gets down to business FAST. It's a quick read and a lot of it goes against conventional wisdom.
I can't put even a fraction of what's in the book here. That's probably plagiarism anyway. But I can tell you it's worth the $8 or whatever it costs.
Just as a warning, the book does try to up-sell you on Andrew's H3 system, but there are a number of jems in the book that you can implement without the H3 system. Buy the looks of it, the H3 System is more for information products anyway.
At the back of the book was a "FREE* Offer!" -- the * being the $20 for shipping the free offer. (There's no affiliate program - I'm not pushing anything, I thought you might want to take a look.) I bit. I ordered it. What I received was okay, nothing to get my panties bunched up about. Shipping was super-fast.
I received 5 CDs - 4 of them were audios of interviews Andrew had with various business gurus. The interviews pretty much went over what was in the book. I can't say for certain that I learned anything from it. The 5th CD was supposed to be "The Ultimate Ebay Resource Kit", but the CD was blank. I emailed the customer service, they said they'd send me another.
The Resource kit turned out to be a list of vendors that offer different services for an eBay business. I had only heard of a handful, so I'm anxious to look through the list more thoroughly. (stay tuned to later posts for the results of those reviews)
The last thing included for the $20 is supposed to be Andrew's print newsletter which is like $40 a month or something. It's supposed to be free for 3 months. I haven't gotten it yet, so I can't tell you if it's worth anything.
But the reason I haven't gotten off my duff and sold anything on eBay is that I'm waiting for my H3 training system to come.
I know, I know. I ate the bait, hook line and sinker. But to my defence, Ebay Exposed has some really compelling stuff.
It hasn't come yet, but I'll be sure to post my thoughts on Andrew's H3 training.
(oh yeah -- and Andrew's customer service department is PHENOMENAL. Courteous, helpful and all that jazz.)
(c) 2007
Grrrr...
Dave Lovelace of 6 Figure Marketing has crappy customer service.
It's okay to tell someone "no" when asked a customer service question, but you don't have to go through line-by-line of the complaint and try to make the customer feel like a moron by responding with long explanations of why the customer is so terribly, terribly wrong.
Heaven knows I won't buy anything that he's ever selling.
It's okay to tell someone "no" when asked a customer service question, but you don't have to go through line-by-line of the complaint and try to make the customer feel like a moron by responding with long explanations of why the customer is so terribly, terribly wrong.
Heaven knows I won't buy anything that he's ever selling.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
My LLC
Okay, I lied. I'm not going to cover ebooks. I recieved my Certificate of Organization from my Secretary of State today.
I'm so glad I didn't spend the $$$$ to have someone do these filings for me. The form was right on ths Sec. of State website. I filled it out by easily following the questions.
One thing that did stump me was the signature line where a "title" of the signatories was required. Through some searching I found that "member" is good enough, but other titles might be Executive Officer, Presiding Member, etc.
Anyway, my Cert. came today and I'm thrilled. Now I just need an EIN from the feds and a state tax number. I'm on my way. I need these numbers to establish relationships with legitimate suppliers.
Disclaimer: Note that I'm not a lawyer, and I am not giving legal advice.
(c) 2007
I'm so glad I didn't spend the $$$$ to have someone do these filings for me. The form was right on ths Sec. of State website. I filled it out by easily following the questions.
One thing that did stump me was the signature line where a "title" of the signatories was required. Through some searching I found that "member" is good enough, but other titles might be Executive Officer, Presiding Member, etc.
Anyway, my Cert. came today and I'm thrilled. Now I just need an EIN from the feds and a state tax number. I'm on my way. I need these numbers to establish relationships with legitimate suppliers.
Disclaimer: Note that I'm not a lawyer, and I am not giving legal advice.
(c) 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Finding a Product Source
I suppose I should tell you what I've done up 'til now.
Well, like most Internet users, I started with a Google search. I don't remember what the search was specifically, but there's a lot of crap out there. A LOT of crap.
What I found NOT to use is Doba.com. There are some nasty reviews of that website, and I couldn't find a single good thing said about it other than the testimonials on their website. Otherwise it sounds like Doba is always trying to up-sell their customers and they sell their products to you (the eBay seller) for more than what you can sell products for on eBay.
I spent a lot of time contemplating Worldwide Brands' "Once Source" and finally bit the bullet. I must say I was initially disappointed. The search results are not explicit. What I mean by that is if I look for "Winter Coats", I get no results. And when I change my search terms, the resulting sources don't necessarily have winter coats.
And don't expect every source to be a drop-shipper. In fact, it looks as if you're going to almost have to carry an inventory of some sort.
However, I will need to form my LLC and get a EIN to establish relationships with the dropshippers to see the prices. I understand the need for an EIN and I'm glad to see the businesses listed on Worldwide Brands demand you get one before contacting them. I'll get on that next. I think I can file for my own LLC and EIN for less than half the price of having one of those online places do it (such as IncorporateABuisness.com). It looks like they charge about $120 - $300 for LLC filings, plus the fees paid to the state where you form your company, which is about $90 - $150.
By visiting the Secretary of State website for my state, I see the registration fee is $125. There's also a requirement for annual reports which cost $50 to file.
I'll get into all of this later.
Let's get back to product sourcing.
Man, it's easy to get sidetracked here.
Before I purchased the Worldwide Brands membership, I noticed on their sales page that one of the types of sources is liquidators, so I did a Google search for that as well. I found Liquidation.com and wholesalerwholesaler.com right off the bat. Well, not to trust anyone right off the bat, I Googled these guys as well to see what others are saying about them.
As for Liquidation.com, the auctions can be fraudulent with very little recourse available to the seller. I'll go into more detail if someone requests me to, but for now, it's sufficient to say that I won't be participating in any of the auctions.
WholesalerWholesaler.com just looked like a pile of crap. Unprofessional, etc. After a very short search on Google, it was easy to find people complaining of getting knock-offs, etc. I guess I'll keep looking.
The last thing I'll mention that a lot of the liquidation websites seem to be selling pallets of the same stuff. They must be brokers. It will probably be beneficial to shop around and even call these places to see what the best price available is.
That's it for now. Next time I'll cover some eBooks I've read and the value (if any) they added to my Hunt.
Well, like most Internet users, I started with a Google search. I don't remember what the search was specifically, but there's a lot of crap out there. A LOT of crap.
What I found NOT to use is Doba.com. There are some nasty reviews of that website, and I couldn't find a single good thing said about it other than the testimonials on their website. Otherwise it sounds like Doba is always trying to up-sell their customers and they sell their products to you (the eBay seller) for more than what you can sell products for on eBay.
I spent a lot of time contemplating Worldwide Brands' "Once Source" and finally bit the bullet. I must say I was initially disappointed. The search results are not explicit. What I mean by that is if I look for "Winter Coats", I get no results. And when I change my search terms, the resulting sources don't necessarily have winter coats.
And don't expect every source to be a drop-shipper. In fact, it looks as if you're going to almost have to carry an inventory of some sort.
However, I will need to form my LLC and get a EIN to establish relationships with the dropshippers to see the prices. I understand the need for an EIN and I'm glad to see the businesses listed on Worldwide Brands demand you get one before contacting them. I'll get on that next. I think I can file for my own LLC and EIN for less than half the price of having one of those online places do it (such as IncorporateABuisness.com). It looks like they charge about $120 - $300 for LLC filings, plus the fees paid to the state where you form your company, which is about $90 - $150.
By visiting the Secretary of State website for my state, I see the registration fee is $125. There's also a requirement for annual reports which cost $50 to file.
I'll get into all of this later.
Let's get back to product sourcing.
Man, it's easy to get sidetracked here.
Before I purchased the Worldwide Brands membership, I noticed on their sales page that one of the types of sources is liquidators, so I did a Google search for that as well. I found Liquidation.com and wholesalerwholesaler.com right off the bat. Well, not to trust anyone right off the bat, I Googled these guys as well to see what others are saying about them.
As for Liquidation.com, the auctions can be fraudulent with very little recourse available to the seller. I'll go into more detail if someone requests me to, but for now, it's sufficient to say that I won't be participating in any of the auctions.
WholesalerWholesaler.com just looked like a pile of crap. Unprofessional, etc. After a very short search on Google, it was easy to find people complaining of getting knock-offs, etc. I guess I'll keep looking.
The last thing I'll mention that a lot of the liquidation websites seem to be selling pallets of the same stuff. They must be brokers. It will probably be beneficial to shop around and even call these places to see what the best price available is.
That's it for now. Next time I'll cover some eBooks I've read and the value (if any) they added to my Hunt.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Introducing... My Quest
I've decided I'm going to jump on the eBay bandwagon and see if I can't make an extra buck or two. I've noticed that nobody out there is giving specific answers to questions on product sourcing and other such stuff.
Here I will document exactly what services I've purchased, books I've read, product sourcing attempts I've made, and anything else I come accross in my attempt to make money on eBay. I hope I'm explicit enough that I'll be able to help others out there who are also trying to make money on eBay.
I guess time will tell.
- eBay Rookie
Here I will document exactly what services I've purchased, books I've read, product sourcing attempts I've made, and anything else I come accross in my attempt to make money on eBay. I hope I'm explicit enough that I'll be able to help others out there who are also trying to make money on eBay.
I guess time will tell.
- eBay Rookie
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