Because it's an established community of buyers and sellers. Almost all the bugs have been worked out, saving those which scammers and spammers have recently flocked to.
Means you can easily and quickly get established with a profitable base, for the low entry cost and know-how every work-from-home Online Millionaire is starting out with. That's why more millionaires are being made through online or online-related venues than brick-and-mortar - low entry costs.
And, where you start with a profitable business, you can then leverage that positive cash flow into other venues. Also, this could replace your day job so that you can then spend more time (with less stress) perfecting other marketing approaches.
I "eat my own dogfood" - with relish.
This hit me when I posted a comment to someone's blog that social marketing is a oxymoron, since you can't build a market, only promote and find unqualified leads through social networks. It's the nature of the "beast". I stated there that anyone looking for sales should go where there is an active sales community, one full of buyers, like eBay.
That was a haunting comment. It was one area of making an online fortune which I hadn't investigated. A lot of that due to the other venues being exclusively concerned with making it on their own, another that auctions hadn't "been my thing," since they seemed filled with a lot of work in order to make any money - the cost-benefit ratio seemed a bit low for what I had to do in order to earn money in that area.
However, when I started looking for data in this area, I found that there was a great deal more data about this than just going to yard sales and putting stuff up for auction - hoping it would sell big. And by cursory investigation of eBay, I saw that a great deal of auctions were completing with nothing bought. You pay your 35 cents and takes your chances.
Auction basics: buy low and sell to the highest bidder - profitably.
Interestingly, I had actually started this research years ago when I stumbled upon a bootleg copy of "Deep Analysis". Like most bootleg copies, it was dated and didn't run all that well. Promising, but not ready for prime time. However, during the years, this had matured into an intensely viable research tool for finding hot areas where there were high numbers of bidders for certain items routinely. In short, you could find profitable "buzz niches" where sales were brisk and hugely profitable.
But where to get these products cheaply and in volume?
While Deep Analysis matured, another company, called WorldWide Brands, had grown from the itch that its founder, Chris Malta had to scratch. You see, Chris realized that his highest profits would be to buy in bulk and sell individually. Simple. Basic to all commerce. However, he had difficulty in finding wholesalers who wanted to work with individual eBay sellers. Either they didn't understand the market possible through affiliates selling their products directly through eBay, or didn't understand the scope of eBay - or were being represented by scam artists, who were simply out to make a buck.
What Chris did was to find the real manufacturers for these items (not the corporate brand names which are on the label) and then contacting those manufacturers for a list of wholesalers they recommended. By contacting those wholesalers, he was able to piece together a list of companies who would actually work with individual eBay sellers.
Chris's work continued, as it was personally profitable to him - but also because he had found a niche others appreciated: validated sources for bulk wholesale items. And so his company now maintains the largest database of its kind in the world - some 9,000 (yes, that's 9 thousand) companies willing to sell directly to individuals so they can re-sell them on eBay.
You might now be asking yourself, "but those pallets of goods arrived on my front step and I filled my garage with these - great. What if the market tanks? Not to mention the fact that I still have to package and ship these by hand."
Ok, we've covered that slightly above with Deep Analysis - research before your buy. But Chris also had that same problem and worked around it with a couple of solutions:
- He found companies which would drop-ship your item directly to the customer with your name on the package. You sell it on eBay, contact the company, they ship.
- He worked with the larger companies to create arrangements where you could buy partial pallet of goods (or just a single pallet instead of twenty). So you can start small and keep on top of the market as it changes, while your overhead (time and money) of shipping is kept low.
Ok, back to our story of the new eBay Online Millionaire:
Now, I'm going to tell you in the next few posts, of my own experience with this area. I've already published several books on becoming an online millionaire, but have also stated that all this data needed to be tested and verified. I know that the people I've studied had become millionaires through using this data - and either made their millions through the Internet, or added more millions to those they already had.
But most of these didn't really leave a viable blueprint behind them of how to make your own millions.
And that's where my own frustration (at this point, I'm still working on my first million - and still need that day job) lead to my taking a great leap of faith.
I signed up with a company to coach me on how to become a PowerSeller on eBay. Name: Bright Builders. You can check them and WorldWide Brands out on the Internet and find they are both represented far more highly than any detractor can throw mud their way.
The reason I'm blogging as I go is for several reasons:
- To tell you all this story as it unfolds - and a good story is worth retelling.
- To add to my research on An Online Millionaire Plan - and I've always blogged my research as I go.
- Teaching others is one of the most effective ways of learning and retaining new data.
Since I got access to their website, I started clicking away, downloading everything I could, and digesting all this stuff - comparing it to other data I'd already accumulated in my few years of research into online marketing.
Some data started dropping out immediately.
Napoleon Hill enters, stage left.
I started my whole online marketing research from the point of needing to sell my own published works. And the first of these was "Go Thunk Yourself!" self help techniques. That book boiled down the entire genre of self help into a study of a double-handful of highly successful authors. It turned out they were all running on the same underlying system of self help.
How this ties into eBay Online Millionaire planning? Hill starts out his "Think and Grow Rich" by requiring the reader develop a "BURNING DESIRE". In the coach-speak of Bright Builders, this becomes "Business Vision Statement". Same basic points. You figure out what you want to achieve, write it down in detail - in the past tense, as if you've already accomplished it - and then read this over 2 to 3 times daily so that you constantly hold this in front of you.
Get a copy of "Think and Grow Rich" and read this chapter. See if I don't speak sooth here. While you're at it, take a gander at the remaining ones and see if they don't also apply exactly to anyone starting an ecommerce business.
Reprogramming yourself for entrepreneurial success
And this brings up the next point. You have been trained through public school systems and all your family contacts to be an "employee" - all of your life up to this point. And the ads and programs on TV, radio, "news"papers and other sources all tend to confirm this view. Your highest achievement is to become a junior partner with a corner office. Right.
How about working any hours you choose, on whatever you like to do? And make money hand-over-fist at it?
Well, you're going to have to change that programming that we've all swallowed. This, again, brings up self-help books, tapes, videos, etc. to change your habitual thoughts in this area.
Now any habits, especially mental ones, can be changed in about 30 days - if you constantly re-inforce the new idea daily by repetition. Some people call this affirmation, others used to call it "auto-suggestion". Both have their roots in antiquity, but were most popular with Emile Coue' during the early 1900's. And fell out of favor because people didn't understand why they had to do what they did - and what underlying laws made this work.
While I've gone over this in some detail in my books, Napoleon Hill covers the essentials in his book above.
The simplicity is that you have to turn off sources of data which tell you constantly to remain an employee and surround yourself with new sources that tell you how competent you are as an entrepreneur. The new sources replace the old sources. In about 30 days, you'll start seeing the changes in you take hold. And you will also see some interesting synchronicities happen around you, as your life begins to change to reflect your new attitudes.
This happens because your thoughts and opinions create the world around you. As you change your chronic thought patterns, new opportunities present themselves and you start looking for them - and are prepared to take advantage of them as they show up. (Practically, a lot of these opportunities have always been around, but you never decided to pick up that magazine, or click that link.)
You are going to want to turn off the TV and start listening to MP3's or inspirational CD's on your daily commute instead of the radio or pop music. Keep a copy of an inspirational book or article to hand at the office, for times when you are put on hold or during your breaks. And if you get to listen to podcasts at work, then fill it with such recordings.
Listen to these recordings over and over. You learn with repetition, especially when you come back to it after a time away from it. Eventually, you'll find the datums in these recordings start to prompt you with solutions - even if you never learn the whole recording verbatim. Getting the concept and understanding of it is the way to really learn anything - not just the rote words.
End Notes
Ok, that's enough for today. There are a lot of technical details in this and I'll be going over these in future posts. They all relate to brick-and-mortar basics, most of which I've covered in the earlier posts on my blogs, but have also published in the first sections of An Online Millionaire Plan.
Here's to all of us creating the best luck possible! Cheers - and - Good Hunting!
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