Each day we all need to make decisions, things like do we get up in the morning, what we eat, what we wear, and if we go to work. For most this is a daily routine which we never think about. But there are days when we say out loud or just in our head, “I have just had enough of this daily lifestyle I want a change.”

To some they just say this and carry on with their lifestyle. To others they decide enough is enough, and each day they do something different to bring their life style to where they want.

Now it is to these people that I want to talk with, there are going to be days when you just do not feel like spending that extra few hours working or learning something new. Please do not give up !!!!

There is going to be times when people laugh at you and say stuff like “You do something like that” please do not listen to them, carry on and make that dream you had come through. And you know what, those people who laughed at you will soon have to say sorry for you will be living your dream lifestyle.

So make a decision today to take steps to make that dream come true and please “Never Give Up”

Another thought and resource bought to you by Andrew Milburn and My Auction Empires.

I guess that if you have ever felt bored at work, or worse have lost your job you are among many thousands of people who dream on a daily basis and want to set up and start selling online on places such as eBay and Amazon to name a few of the more famous sites. By doing this will give,you more time to spend at home with your family or loved ones or allowing you free time to spend in other areas of your life. Now this is all good, but you can wish all you like, plan all day long, but until you have a product idea or line of products to sell on these sites, then guess what you will not be making any money.

Today there the thousands and thousands of product ideas and niches that you can sell on eBay, Amazon or your own website. Now in this article there is not the space or time to go into a full lesson, but there are plenty of places to go to for help or give you ideas. In this article you will find some nuggets that will help you brain storm product and product niche ideas to give you a start.

eBay and Amazon, is the best place to get a toe in the water to see if online selling is for you, and if running your own business is the thing for you. Once you have sold the items in your home, and for family and friends you will need in place a source of new products to sell, so to help you get started below are some ideas that sell day in and day out on these sites.

Now before we get into some hot niches it is important to think when you are sourcing do not pick very hot products that you will never be able to price match on, as sadly you will only lose money on. For instance the latest gadget maybe on everyones want list, but will the profit margins allow you to make a living, think and plan.

Baby Items Are Hot

Babies around the world are born every second and new parents and those who have a second or third child will always want new items or the latest item for their little one. But something else with baby items things like nappies are repeat items and parents by them on a weekly basis ib bulk for a few years at a time. If you can get a good supply and offer good customer service then you will have customers for a few years spending good money with you.

Non Branded Products

Everyone likes the latest item but often cost does not allow people to do this, but instead of think and looking for branded items, go out and look for non-branded items and very often you can find the same quality at a huge reduction and your customers will love you for this.

Niche Products From Around The World

Now if you have friends or contacts around the world or love to travel, then selling niche items that can only be found in some far flung country could be your key to a new business. Yes you need to think of customs etc, but do not let this stop you thinking out side of the box.

Hope this helps you and start you in making money on eBay and Amazon.

I would guess if you are like most people, you are finding it a bit harder to get by the last few months, and with some holidays coming up, a lot of you will be thinking of either cutting back on how much they spend or even thinking of staying at home.

But did you know you have an almost instead solution sitting right in your home or business ( if you are self-employed ), it has been suggested that people have around $2,000 sitting in their homes in unwanted gifts, and items they no longer use. Ok you may say, but how do I turn these into hard cash that I can spend.

Below there are some simple steps that if you follow them you will have the cash in your accounts very shortly.

Step One : Find a large box or laundry basket, the bigger the better for this exercise.

Step Two : Now go around the home and place into the box everything that you have not used for six months, look in cupboards, drawers, sheds, garages, take your time over this.

Step Three : If you have children who understand what you are doing, get them doing the same around their own rooms, make it a family project, this does work well if it is for a family holiday.

Step Four : Once you have done this, I suggest you allow a few days, spread everything out on a table or floor.

Step Five : You need to think am I going to sell this at a Car Boot / Garage sale, eBay or Amazon. My suggestion would be eBay as this allows you to sell world-wide.

Step Six : You need to take a picture of each of your items and write a good heading and a description, to help you sell the items.

Step Seven : If your item has a story behind it, use it and tell it as it will help you sell the item and maybe get a higher price.

Step Eight : Now go to eBay and start to list – because you have done the hard work of writing descriptions and taking pictures this should not take to long.

Step Nine : Set sensible prices – either auction or Buy It Now.

Step Ten : Sell, sell, sell.

Step Eleven : Post the items off to the people who have bought them.

Step Twelve : Bank the money.

So there you have it in twelve simple steps, you can turn unwanted gifts and items around your home and business into much needed cash. This is a real fun project and all ages can take part. If you have teenagers maybe you could get one to take the pictures, another one to write the descriptions and someone else to do the listing. They will all have fun, and all will know at the end of the day, the money if for a holiday or some family fun thing.

I wish I could say that I came up with idea…………………….. but I cannot a young man called Morgan did, and as they say the rest is history. He used some public domain pictures and words, and showed the online video to a few friends at his church including his pastor, but asked them to tell no one.  A few weks passed and late one night he got a call from his free hosting company to ask him what he was up to as his little video had crashed their servers.

He went back to his little video and saw over 100,000 people had viewed it, his jaw dropped………………………………..  He paid the small monthly payment to the hosting company, made the webpage look smart and added a name capture page.

The rest is history sit back watch and enjoy a true viral video.

How To Add An Ezine
Articles Widget To Your Site

Following in on our How To series a few people have asked me how to add an ezine article widget to there website. Well I could do an article with screen shots of each process……………….. But then I tough Ezine Articles have done a short how to video so I went along to YouTube and “borrowed” it for you.

I think you will find this great little video very helpful and you can stop and start the video as you complete each step.

How To Use Twitter

Well it is Saturday and Saturday at My Auction Empires is How To Day, and the How To for today is Twitter.

Twitter is a what is known as a Micro Blog and allows you to use 140 characters to tell your followers what you are up to.  Twitter can be up dated from your computer or from your mobile phone.

So if you are not yet part of Twitter then pop along to http://www.twitter.com and you will see a screen like this.

Now if you are a member sign in as normal, but if you are new click on the green “get started – Join” button at the bottom. You will then be taken to a screen like this

Just follow along and fill out the boxes. Now before you pick a user name think what you are going to be using it for. You are allowed to have multiple accounts by the way, but also remember that you need to keep them up to date, so my advice is have a main one and then some sun ones when you want to test some things.

Once you have signed up you will see a page like this :

This is where you can follow people and see who is following you. In future blog posts I will cover how you can use it to drive traffic and make sales on your sites.
But some advice, give content at all times and make a few pitches as well and your followers will love.

A great book to help you understand the Power of Twitter is called Twitter Power by Joel Comm my advice is buy this book today and start to read and put into action what Joel tells you.

Using Correct Words When Listing

In this weeks blog post we are going to talk about how to use the correct words when we list an item. The words or phrases can be used when listing on Amazon and eBay and most other e-commerce platforms.

So what the the different words and phrases mean ?

1) Mint = Brand new untouched just as it came out of the factory. Sometimes you see it shortened to MT.  Some other words and phrases you will see on eBay are :

MIB  (No not Men In Black) but Mint in Box

MISB = Mint In Sealed Box

MOC = Mint On Card

MIP = Mint in Package

2)  Near Mint = This is like mint, but the item or package has some very slight marks on it. Again you will see some of the above things used as well with near mint such as NMIB – Near Mint In Box.

3) Very Fine – This is used when you cannot list it as Mint or Near Mint. often you will see it lists as NF – Near Fine.

4) Fine – Again the item has some pitfalls with it and does not allow you to list it with any of the above words and phrases.

5) Very Good – We are now coming onto items that have some large faults, or marks on the item and or box, but still it is a very good item in very good condition, but look out.  Listed as VG

6) Good – The item is now showing some big faults, and major marks or parts missing or not working. Listed as GD

7) Fair – The item now could have markings that make it look used and not pretty, and could result in you not being happy with the purchase, or the person buying from you not happy.
But as with all things depends on what market you are selling in Fair could be very good as the person buying is not expecting brand new.

Poor – again this could mean trouble as the item may be broken, damaged or not pretty at all. But as with fair, poor could be ok for some people if it works and is what you expect.

When ever you are listing, be honest with people, and tell them the truth. Do not say if it is mint, if it is near mint and so on. When I list I always tend to under sell my item and tend to go down to the next one.
When you do this the buyer is always happy as if you listed it as Near Mint, and when they got it it was Mint they will be well pleased.

Hope this has helped you to understand How To use the correct words when listing.

If you sell online there will be times when a picture just does not work for your item. The best way to show off the item you are selling is to take a scan of it.

Scans work really well for paper products and some other flat objects.
Also if you sell small items like jewellery then a scanned image will work very well for this and show your item off a lot better.

Now I am going to be honest here with you it is going to take you some time, but if you put the time and effort in now, you will get good results with your auctions and buy it nows.
But remember the same goes for anything if you are selling poor items then you will either not sell items or get alow price.

But think postive we are talking paper items here and people will pay over the odds at times. The main think is when you list your items be very honest and under sell all the time, if there is a rip or small mark tell the people, never ever clean up your image.

Step 1 – get all the items you want to scan ready in a pile.

Step 2 – Go to where you store your images on your computer and create a new folder and call it scanned images.

Step 3 – Take yoor first item and place it on your scanner.

Step 4 – Scan away, once you have scanned just check it looks ok and then click save as. Now call it a name that means something to you, so that you can find it staight away when you start to list.

Step 5 – You need to save it as a jpeg file.

Step 6 – Rinse and repeat, and work your way through the items.

Step 7 – Once you have finished, everything will be ready to start listing.

Step 8 – Do it today, do not put it off, for you could be throwing money away, but not selling those small and paper items.
You will have noticed that I have not mentioned how to scan, this is because each scanner is different, if you need help pop along to http://www.youtube.com and do a search for the scanner that you use, and you will find some videos to help you along.

As for software I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 I find this simple but very powerful.

How To Use Marketing Calenders

As your business grows, you will start to need to take a serious look at how you market you growing buisness and in some cases you growing businesses. If you are like me, I guess you just thought about about doing it and did it, and the word marketing calender did not cross your mind.

That will work but after a bit you may forget what you should be doing on a day or a week, or month, so use a Marketing Calender.

Now your marketing calender could be written in a dairy, a sheet of paper, a filofax etc. I have choosen to do mine on Google Calanders. If yuo do this you put it down as an all day event so that it appears at the of each day.

For my blog I have split the week up into six days – a blog post for each day, and this allows me a sunday as a catch up day – (Which I will need this week as I have had several meetings outside of my home office that took up 16 hours a day)

Does this mean I will stick to each days themes – YES this helps me and my customers.

Does it mean I cannot blog about other things – NO of course I can add other posts as and when the need arises.

Also on the Marketing Calender will be important dates that need a special blog posting. Also when I need to write that review, that ezine article.

Once you have worked on it and stick to it, you will wonder how you ever managed without one.

Hope this has helped you. Once I have mastered the art of screen capture video I will do a video and post it to show how you can set up a Marketing Calender in Google Calenders.

Another How To resource bought to you by Andrew Milburn and My Auction Empires

How To Make A Web Button

Today I want to talk about a popular topic “How To Make A Web Button“  Why is How To Make A Web Button so popular,  well with the increase of blogs, HubPages and Squidoo lenes the need to make quick simple Web Buttons is a must nowadays.

Now I could give you a step by step list with screen captures, and take you from stage one through to the last stage, but then I thought why not do a video, and then it struck me a good friend of mine and fellow online seller Cindy Shebley has created a great video thats shows you all the steps in a clear way

The above video will show you in a clear to understand way and at the end you will be making Web Button in a few minutes. Another why to use this “How To Make A Web Button” is to keep stopping it do the stage, then move on to the next stage. Cindy Shebley is a great teacher and presents in an easy to understand way. To learn more about how Cindy and her team can help you in your business pop a long to www.Websellerscircle.com

Hope you find this video on How To Make A Web Button useful for your business.