Best Syndication News

(Best Syndication News) On Tuesday night we attended the Pinon Hills Chamber of Commerce meeting and presented a seminar on “How to use the Internet to make money”. We are including some of the text of that two part seminar below.

There are two basic ways to generate income on the Internet: Either sell things or produce content. Obviously there are other ways, but we will concentrate on those two methods.

Selling products is a quicker way to generate income but it does require money to get started. Some vendors may try to jump start the process by using drop shippers, but the higher price makes it tougher to compete.

If you produce content it will take longer to generate income, but in the long run it will be easier and provide more satisfaction. It doesn’t take much money to get started in the content business.

Here is the first part of the seminar:

Selling Stuff Online

There are various channels you can use to move your merchandise, including eBay, Amazon, Yahoo Shopping, Google Products, Shopping.com and your own website. There are various online websites that can help you sell your merchandise in multiple channels.

eBay provides various auction management tools for their website. Their options include Turbo Lister, Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro. The cost of those tools varies from free to around $25 per month. Obviously the better ones are for bigger sellers.

They want you to use their tools because eBay makes money when you list items and when you sell them. If you list an item and it does not sell, you can list the item again and get your listing fee back if it sells the second time around.

If you want to sell in multiple channels like eBay plus Amazon, I recommend using third party applications like Vendio and Channel Advisor. You will input the data into their program (database) and the process is pretty much automated after that.

The data input include the price you paid for the item, the price you want to sell it for, the quantity you purchased, a description and an image (or multiple images). I recommend you take plenty of pictures of your product and describe your item well. This will save you hours in answering email questions.

Make sure you tell people about the warranty and your return policy. Is there a discount if they buy more than one item? Answer all of the question you can before they start asking them. This will increase your sales.

The first thing you will want to do is package the item and weigh it. Lighter items can usually be sent via the U.S. Postal Service. Heavier items can be sent with UPS or FedEx Ground. If you are doing a lot of business you can ask UPS and FedEx to give you a lower rate. It is OK to tell the representatives that you are shopping around to get the best rates.

Larger items will require more packing material. It is very difficult to ship heavy objects like generators and furniture. Don’t expect the carriers to pay you for damaged merchandise even if you pay for insurance.

Vendors

To be successful, you will have to find the right product at the right price. Although some sellers may claim that they have done very well with drop shippers, the competition is fierce and if everyone used them they will not make any money.

Drop shippers charge more for their products, and you could save money and be more competitive if you purchase the products up front and ship them yourself.

But where can you buy the merchandise? You can purchase items directly from manufactures or from wholesalers and importers. Shop around. It is critical that you get the lowest price available. It is pretty discouraging to find out that you have purchased a bunch of widgets and your competition is selling it for less than you paid for them.

If you see a product you want to sell, look at the packaging for the manufacturer. Contact the manufacture directly and see if you can buy direct. If not, ask if there are any distributors in your area you can buy from. Sometimes you can get a better deal from the wholesaler / distributor than you can from the manufacturer.

Tradeshows are a great opportunity to meet manufacturers and wholesalers. Contact the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and get a list of the trade shows. Attend them. One great show is the ASD / AMD surplus trade show.

There are toy and clothing districts in Los Angeles. You might want to subscribe to related trade journals. There are hundreds of these publications and many of these magazines are free.

Prices

Now that you have determined what products you want to sell, what price should you sell them for? You will want to provide better service at a competitive price. If your images and ad is better than the competition, then you may be able to get more money than your competition.

eBay is a great place to look to see what items are selling for. Type in the description and see what others are selling similar items for. If you are logged in, you will see a link to “completed items” on the left side of the page. After you do your search, click the link.

Sometimes items don’t sell. If that happens frequently, the price is too high. Look for the items that sold and compare them to yours. Make sure they are the exact same item.

You can do the same thing for Amazon. See what items are selling for on Amazon. We have seen others sell their widgets for a lower price and then run out. After that we started making the sales for the higher price.

One time we saw some wind meters for sale on eBay and compared them to the price we could pay the manufacturer. The seller was making a fortune selling several of them a day. We purchased some and began to sell them. It didn’t take long before the competitor lower his price prompting us to lower our price. Pretty soon neither of us was making any money.

By Dan Wilson