Mar 28 2008
What you want, for what you ve got
What you want, for what you ve got
It s the start of a new year at college. Panic sets in when the reading list pops through your letterbox. As a language student, this occasion would mark a new event in my diary ” going into town, rummaging through all the foreign language bookstores, in the hope of retrieving all the necessary material required to pass the course! Furthermore, if you get the reading list late, or delay the process, the chances of you finding even a sixth of the textbooks or novels is unlikely ” Dweeby Danielle will have beaten you to it! You literally have to pay the price, and order off a really expensive online bookstore with extortionate delivery rates, and because the text is obscure, they have to order it in themselves, which takes even longer! My other option used to be to search on Amazon, but often there are two problems with this: firstly, rare books probably won t be listed, and if you are lucky enough to find them (especially translations from the original text) they charge exorbitant amounts for them. All I want is the text, not the fancy edition with notes by a random academic I don t know! In general, it really can be gutting if what you re paying is beyond the recommended retail price! I m now at the end of my third year of studying for a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in French and Art History and slightly out of the loop as I ve been on a year abroad in Paris. The final year is a critical one, and getting hold of the text as early as possible is also paramount. My course comrade, who s quite well informed about the Internet, had been talking about a website called Care to Trade (http://www.caretotrade.com) over the vacation. Care to Trade allows you to buy, sell or trade items and barter services with users from all over the world. It s appealing for students like myself who don t have huge amounts of money, because all classified advertisements are free. In fact, they state on the site pay no listing fees, no transaction fees, and no commission . The basic idea is that if I m looking for a French textbook that someone else has, they can barter with me for no cost or loss, for an item or service that I possess and no longer want. You d be surprised how material you re looking for crops up when you search on this site. A detail that makes things easier is the sort by ISBN# facility (ascending or descending in number), and also the option to search by state (outside the U.S if this is the case). If a particular advert for a book grabs you, you can click on view details . In the new window, the title of the book, with a description (condition, edition details), author, shipping details (i.e. In person, buyer pays, or negotiable if trade ), selling details (for example willing to trade/sell for ” open to offers! ) and so on are shown. Not only can you barter on books, textbooks and magazines, but also health and beauty products, flyer miles, tools and hardware, and real estate and cars, which apparently are just a few of the most widely used categories. I m very impressed with this website, and my hope is that it expands and becomes a full fledged, widely used service, as it is a great resource that students like myself could make good use of.
Dawson is a guest writer and key contributor of articles to many local magazines and newspapers in the south London region. He is a <a href=http://www.lacartes.com>restaurants</a> fan, who also actively writes about pretty much everything else in <a href=http://www.caretotrade.com>classifieds</a> magazines.
A few Tips on Buying on Ebay from http://www.ScamPain.com
Ebay gives good documentation on how to bid etc. but obviously it wants you to pay the maximum amount for the item since it’s charges (to the seller) relate directly to the final selling price. What I want to do here is to give you a few tips on buying that Ebay doesn’t tell you and that I have learnt the from my seven years of dealing on Ebay. Safety First. Always check the sellers feedback. Do not just go by the numerical rating for that user. Look at the dates when the feedback was entered. This is especially true if you are buying an expensive item since one scam used is to sell/buy many trivial items over a short period to build up a good feedback rating prior to selling a bogus expensive item. When checking the sellers feedback check to see if he has sold any like items and read what others have said. Also be wary if the buyer repeatedly bought lots of separate items but of course this could be a good thing so use your common sense. Paying. Never pay until you have received an invoice. Never send cash. Only send postal orders if that your only possible payment method. Credit cards do offer some protection but I am always hesitant about telling a stranger my card details. Although I do not like it probably the safest method is PayPal. It does offer protection but be sure you read the smallprint. Paypal have lots of getout causes such as ‘is the seller paypal verified?’, ‘how long has he been on Ebay?’. what is his feedback rating?’. Basically this means Paypal will only protect you against legitimate sellers and not bogus ones! So ensure you check Paypals terms and conditions if you have doubts. . Postage. Check those items that appear ridiculously cheap. You see a lot of things from Hong Kong for 99p. Yet when you check the postage it’s 12.99. If you wish to buy antiques be careful with the sites from China; I have seen items with a bid price of 3.99 but with postage of 199! If you are buying from the UK always check with the seller regarding other methods of postage he may offer, even if they are not in his listing. For example the ‘Next Day’ delivery offered. Do you really want the item that urgently that it needs to be with you next day or could you wait till the day after and half your postage costs? Electrical goods. Obvious really but ensure that any goods are designed to run on our voltage! VAT. Be very wary when buying from abroad outside the E.U. You may find that you need to pay an extra 17.5% when your goods arrive. This is especially enforced when buying from the States. A friend of mine, who intended to buy and sell on Ebay as a business, recently bought 25 top of the range Ipods from the States estimating that he could make a fair profit. However on arrival he was hit with a 17.5% extra charge which as you can imagine seriously reduced his profit margin. Ebay Shop. Okay so you have seen an item for auction that you want to bid on. The first thing to do is check to see if the seller has an Ebay Shop. If he does than check it out you may often find that an identical item is in his shop with a ‘Buy it Now’ price less than the current auction price of the auctioned item. Other Listings. Always check the sellers other listings. It is surprising how often inexperienced sellers will list an identicle item with a complete time only a few minutes after the first and of course depending how many items there are the second item appears on subsequent pages. Inevitably the second item is always cheaper often by a mile! I used this technique last month to by a Dyson vacuum cleaner. The leading auction price finished at around 60 but I managed to buy an identical model from the sane seller for 17 that finished 4 minutes later! When to Bid. Always bid at the last possible moment. This is for 2 reasons. Articles for auction that have bids attract more bidders, this is the reason sellers start at a low price. Secondly you are less likely to be out bidded. There are ’snipe engines’ you can purchase that automatically bid for you up to a set limit in the final moments of the auction but as to whether are worth it or indeed work I shall leave up to you. I personally have never had the need for one. What Days to bid on. Traditionally Sunday evening is when most activity takes place on Ebay so if possible try to find items that do not finish then. I have found that weekday lunchtimes (Not Friday) are also very busy times as office workers go on the site during their lunch break so again avoid items finishing at this time. How Much to Bid. Novice buyers will say I will pay say a maximum of 5 for this item and enter this as their maximum bid. Do not do this but put a maximum bid of 5.03p. For the sake of the extra 3p you increase your chances of winning the auction ten fold. You could try 5.01p but I have found 5.03p is the optimum. Bad Spelling. Believe it or not sellers do make silly mistakes in the listings so check phonetic sounding words when you search for an item as obviously these items gain far less exposure. For instance I recently purchased some lead soldiers however they were listed as led soldiers which I managed to purchase for 8.99 the starting price as I was the only bidder. I resold them on Ebay a week later for 59.00. This idea of getting bargains is so prolific on Ebay that you can purchase software that actually generates a search string of incorrectly spelt words. Fortunately, or not, my spelling is bad enough that I have never had the need for such soft ware! Other On-line Auction Sites. Believe it or not there are other on-line auction sites that are not as popular as Ebay but because of this you can often pick up a bargain. The tips above equally apply to those sites. One good site I frequently use is Ebid it’s far cheaper to sell here and you can find some real bargains.
Hi, I am trying to set up sites to protect users who are starting internet businesses from internet bandits! Vist me at http;//www.scampain.com
How You Can Benefit From An Ad Tracking Software Posted By : Tom Williamsen
How and Ad Tracker works and why business owners better use an Ad Tracking Software.
Why Drop Shipping is a Hot Sunrise Industry
Drop shipping has now become one of the most lucrative sources of online business. Individuals pursue drop shipping, act as retailers for merchandise of one or more wholesale companies and try to sell the merchandise to retail customers. Just type any product you can think of into a search engine and look at how many pages of websites come up - most of them are indeed retailers making living online selling wares using drop shipping!
Why Drop Shipping is Lucrative
Drop shipping has suddenly caught everyone s fancy because it is simply the most efficient way to retail over the Web. This is how drop shipping normally works:
- A prospective buyer surfs the Web for a product and make a purchase.
- The website owner (retailer) passes that order to his drop shipper or wholesaler.
- The wholesaler processes the order, ships the product to the buyer with the name of the retailer on the package. Buyer thinks the website owner has sold and shipped the product to him.
Here the profit margins are phenomenal for the retailer. This is because the retailer himself purchased the product at wholesale rates and then sold it to the customer at the best possible price he could offer.
But there are some more advantages to this. Drop shipping requires zero overheads as there are no rentals, labors or salaries to pay for. There is no inventory to maintain as all products are stored, managed and shipped by the wholesaler, in fact, this is more lucrative than even a Wal-Mart model. You see, Wal-Mart also follows the same principles of buying wholesale and selling at retain prices, but It has to take in the inventory and lots of operating costs, which is why you make a better profit per sale than Wal-Mart does.
Drop Shipping s Secrets
Veteran e-retailers don t even bother wasting time and effort on promoting and operating their own e-commerce website, which are too time consuming and troublesome. It s almost like reinventing the wheel. They use eBay, where they post their products at retail rates, offering discounts and other freebies to attract buyers. eBay gets millions of clicks and retailers don t have to worry about maintenance, shopping carts etc. All of this is taken care of by eBay.
It s no wonder that people make entire careers from drop shipping and eBay. Maybe you should also give it a shot, who knows, you could be on your way to success and riches!
Lewis Low is the founding editor of OnlineBizPromo.com. For more Practical Online Business Ideas and Work-From-Home Opportunities, visit his Work-At-Home directory at http://www.onlinebizpromo.com
