Earning money with eBay, where’s the margin?
So a friend of mine recently mentioned that he wanted to get into eBay as he heard it’s a really good way to earn money online (him along with rest of world). So at a basic level what most people on eBay are doing is buying stuff locally and then selling it nationwide with the hope of making a profit. This in itself isn’t a revolutionary concept but there are a few key things eBay does really well:
- They have the site/system already built. All you have to do is upload the details of your products and they handle the rest (all technical stuff). You don’t have to worry about building your own site and taking credit cards and all that involves.
- They provide the customers. Ok so you can advertise your eBay listing on your own site or in other places but most of the sales are going to come from people browsing eBay and finding what you have to offer. Don’t underestimate this bit because attracting customers is one of the hardest things to do online, there’s a lot of competition out there.
- Trust rating/system. If you have a new site it’s really hard to get people to trust you and even harder to get them to hand over credit card details, after all you could be anyone! EBay provides a great system for customers to view the history of a seller and what other customers thought of them. It’s a great system that allows small sellers to compete with the big retailers. I will trust a small seller with over 1000 positive reviews over a big retailer any day, they have much more to loose by providing bad service.
So on the face of it earning money with eBay should be easy right? Well not really actually, even with all these benefits the margin on selling stuff on eBay is terrible. For a start you have all these little costs that eat into your profit:
- Listing fees
- Final value fees
- Payment processing fees (PayPal/visa etc)
Don’t forget you still have to post whatever it is to the person, the whole thing seems like a massive headache to me so far. Here’s the biggest problem though, the margin you can make on most items is really low, around 5% – 10%. I know there’s lots of stories about people becoming millionaires via eBay but it seems to me the only way to do it would be sourcing a product that’s not readily available in a local market and adding a big margin. If you’re trying to compete with 100 other people selling the exact same thing you’re going to be haggling with other sellers to see who can do it £1 cheaper.
To me the eBay idea is great if you really don’t have a clue at all about the online world and you just want them to handle everything from the website to the marketing. But realise they are going to take a big chunk of whatever you earn for doing this. Also realise that they directly list all of your competitors right beside you every time someone searches for what you’re selling, eBay doesn’t care about your business on an individual basis, only the collective success of their site.
The problem for someone like me when I look at eBay is that I just see how much easier it would be to do all of that stuff myself:
- Out of the box ecommerce solution like oscommerce
- Take payment with PayPal (no need for merchant account I think?)
- Some proper marketing of your site with SEO and PPC
The last point is probably a little over simplified but it is possible to do with time and effort. Once your there though and your generating your own sales on your own products you will realise how much bigger your margins are going to be.
So that’s all I have on the eBay thing, I have a feeling my friend is probably going to just plough ahead anyway, he’s stubborn when it comes to money like other people I know 
Why do some websites fail while others are winning!
Please excuse the Charlie Sheen reference, I know were all “winning” in our own way but how do you win when it comes to creating a successful website? If two people are sites in the exact same market what determines which makes money and which doesn’t? It can’t be luck all the time.
1. Picking the right market. This is essential, if you’re in a super competitive industry then you better be there for the long haul because in the online world nothing happens that quick, especially if you’re trying to build a brand. Remember it’s better to be number no1 in a niche than No 83 in a multinational dog-fight. Maybe it’s an ego thing but I keep seeing people trying to compete with million pound companies with 1% of the resources and quality, it’s not smart thinking.
2. Dedication. It’s easy to give up on anything when results are distant but you have to accept that any legitimate business opportunity weather its earning money online or opening a shop on a high street it takes time. I suppose people think that because it’s the internet there should be a way to make money online instantly. The truth is reputation and trust are built online the same way as offline, it takes time.
3. Spending time/money on the wrong things. This usually happening when people start their first website and many hours are accrued just by tweaking that top banner image 10 pixels to the left. No site is perfect and the thing is if you have no traffic at the start it really doesn’t matter if the new shade of lilac goes with the grey menu or not. It’s important to have a professional looking design but don’t go nuts with it, in the scheme of things its way down the to-do list.
4. Finding a path to cash. It is essential you have at least some idea how the site is going to earn money before you start. Yes I know Google,Twitter,Facebook didn’t know either (twitter still doesn’t make money) it’s not the same thing. If you’re building the site to earn a living and not just as a hobby then it’s an investment and it needs to make a return at some point. There are lots of revenue streams from advertising to ecommerce that can generate big revenues but only if implemented correctly, monetisation isn’t one of those things that works out itself.
5. Marketing strategy. The reason most people leave this out is because internet marketing is much more of a technical exercise than in the offline world. You really need a plan out where your visitors are going to be coming from and how you’re going to work with that medium. If its facebook then you better understand viral media and social marking. If it’s Google then you better have a strong grip on SEO and PPC. And the thing is if you don’t understand them then you better have the money to pay someone who does otherwise your going no-where my friend.
So I didn’t include luck on the list even though as we know it’s always a factor in everything we do. However I believe very much in volume and quantity when it comes to success online, do enough for long enough and something’s gonna work (not very technical I know). There’s more to a successful web business than this and certainly true if you want to earn real money on a consistent basis but if I were starting out I would concentrate on those 5 points and as Mike Tyson said, “Refuse to lose”!
Making money in 2011 – freelancing for beginners
So I’m feeling at little bored and I suppose that’s never a perfect way to start a post though I have to admit some of my best ideas have come from just messing around on the internet and see what works, and more often than not what doesn’t. Anyway it’s the New Year in a day or so and I got me thinking how people (and me) are planning to make money in 2011. What new ideas are you going to have? What old ideas are you going to finally act on or do even better?
The biggest problem with making money on the internet is the number of options (and scams) there are. How do you pick something stick with it and make it work? So for this post I wanted to focus on ways you can actually work for a living online as opposed to a passive income from websites etc which I have been talking about recently. Now I know creating a passive income does sound very appealing but the thing is its usually only passive once you’ve done a huge amount of work that you get to a point where the revenue looks after itself. What if you just need to make some fast (ish) cash straight away?
So obviously the first thing you need to establish is what skill you have to offer the marketplace. There are a number of skills that are highly sought after on the net if you really can deliver (this is quite important). A few but not all are:
- Writing content
- Graphic design (photoshop etc)
- Programming (php,asp,coldfusion)
- SEO services (link building, on site optimisation)
Ok so you might have noticed all these services are quite “nerdy” and 100% IT related. Well the thing is if you want to work from home and get well paid for it IT really is the only game in town. Also the great thing about IT companies is they are much more open than traditional businesses to working with people overseas. If you can do the job well and on time they don’t really care.
So how to you land these big clients that will want to pay you millions for access to your brain? It’s a big question and it would probably be easier to tell you how NOT to do it but I don’t want to be negative. The key point is you want potential clients coming to you instead of you sending out 100s of unread email requests. Believe me when a client emails you out of the blue asking about your services it’s always a much easier sell. So for clients to notice you and your work you have to stand out above the crowd online (there can be quite a crowd). For example are you selling SEO services? Then rank a site for a popular term, within week’s you’ll be getting other SEO companies emailing about advertising etc, when they do – mention that you know SEO too. If you’re a designer then enter the best online design competitions or even design and amazing site for a charity to get noticed.
The biggest point I have to make about making money by offering services is that repeat business is essential, both for your income and stress levels. You see getting new clients is expensive and time consuming on its own but there’s also the time required just to work out what this person really wants. However if you are lucky enough to find someone who needs repeat work IE on a monthly basis then you can devote all of your time to building the relationship with them and delivering the perfect job.
There’s quite a few places to get started, both to list your services and find clients. Are few are:
There’s actually a lot more than that but there’s no point in going out posting on them all, concentrate on a few and build up a reputation.
I know some of you may be a bit fed up at this point if you don’t actually have any of these skills to offer. The only thing I can say is that webmaster/web-site related activities make up a huge amount of the online working world that you really have to acquire the skills if you want to earn any kind of real money with freelancing. You also have to bear in mind the many advantages you get with working online/freelancing like choosing your own working hours and working from anywhere in the world (this is especially true if you want to move somewhere with low living costs). It might not be as hard as you think though, I remember when I got my first PHP/MYsql book it was like a whole new world had opened up. I couldn’t believe the amount of things you could so with just a few hours reading.
So this post isn’t as “magical” as some you’ll find in the create money on the net world but then again isn’t it better to be realistic than just selling you some get rich quick scheme for 100 easy payments? The point I’m actually making is that with some work is it possible to create a real income from the net even if it’s only a supplementary thing to your main “job”. I know myself how much difference an extra £500 a month would make to most people, it could literally be life changing.
So what am I going to be doing in 2011? Well I really hope to grow all of my internet sites to their full potential which I know is going to take a good bit more work and probably a bit more understanding on my part about how this Internet marketing thing works (I don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet). Anyway I also hope to bring you more interesting and hopefully entertaining posts in the New Year too. Here’s to an exciting new year!
Do you have to cheat the system to earn money from the net?
So first off I have to make an apology because so far there have been over 1,500 comments on this blog but until today none of them have been approved because I just haven’t had time to check. While it’s true that over 1,495 of these comments were advertising the latest form of medication for “blood flow regulation” it still makes me look me look bad! I mean how are these people going to promote their latest pharmaceutical products if I don’t approve their latest msg (which is usually in Russian for some reason)? So anyway I have some program called Akismet now so hopefully it will allow me to have some genuine comments on here at last.
My Russian pill pusher friends do lead me on to an interesting point though and that’s if you have to cheat the system in order to earn real money online? I can say for more certain that in this case these people are completely wasting their time commenting on random unrelated blogs. For a start Google ignores these links automatically and there’s really no chance of someone clicking on the link within the blog comments section. So what’s the point of it, its lazy marketing at best and very annoying at worst. It actually reminds me of that old Microsoft slogan which I’ve always liked:
“Work smarter not just harder”
The thing is when people see these and other black hat techniques pasted all over the interweb all the time they assume they must be working all the time, however that isn’t necessarily the case. On the other hand though you have a very large group of people going in the opposite direction and trying to follow every solid “rule” they have been told about either how to market at website or start a business online. That old saying “think outside the box” has become an overused cliché but you do have to think about things differently to get noticed. You’ve got to remember that all the best markets (i.e. worth money) are going to have competition and there can only be one big dog at No1 (for Google anyway) so how are you going to persuade them to pick you?
As you may or may not know my main method for making money on the internet is to build websites that attract traffic from Google using SEO. Sometimes when I mention to people what I do (i.e. when at the bar) their eyes tend to go a glassy as if I just asked them 7 times 8. Usually I just say that I build websites as trying to explain the complexity of the Google algo in any intoxicated state in is just about impossible. But there is also a safely in that complexity I have to admit, partly because my ego likes the fact that not a lot of people can do this but also the less serious competition the more money for me! Not that there will ever be too much competition imho with so many different markets and keywords out there.
So what exactly am I trying to say here? Well first off all these black hat techniques don’t really work unless you’re doing them in ridiculous volume and even then the tolerances are so low. At the other end of the scale you have all these people who don’t do anything at all! I mean they might do the occasional post on a forum about their website but fundamentally they just want to sit there and wait for the magic to happen. So what’s the answer? Well for a start you have to be active in marketing your site but more importantly you can just wait for the SEO secrets to arrive at your door. At the same time I’m not saying there are “secrets” as such but there are definitely some more efficient ways to do the basics (which I’ve talked about before). Time is also a big factor here, you’re not going to learn everything you need to know overnight. It could take quite some time, however since the search engines are in no hurry to rank new sites anyway does it really matter.
So back to my original point. I think it’s possible to have all the fun of evil tactics but without the sleepless nights and with more success than your average spammer can dream of. Until next time.
What is the “Key” to earning money with the net? Do you have it?
So been a while since I last posted but I always want to wait until I have something at least semi interesting to say before I decide to clog up your life with even more information. I suppose that can be a pretty big problem when it comes making a living on the internet, information overload! Yes it can happen to us all, you keep stuffing your brain full of the latest “secret” or “trick” to help you conquer the web and you end up getting more and more confused. Analysis paralysis can be one of the most dangerous things that can happen in any field but it’s even worse on the net as there are millions of gurus all trying to sell you something different.
So how to you work out if you’re on the right path to making money online or another road to ruin? One of the easiest ways to tell is by asking yourself if this method even makes sense to you and/or other people? It’s not an easy question to ask, especially if you have already invested a lot of time and money into this system. Some people don’t know when to quit and others can’t get started.
One thing I do feel has been key to my success and made it possible for me to consistently earn good money online is perseverance. I once heard the phrase
“Brute force beats perfect understanding every time”
And it more or less describes my entire internet philosophy when it comes to building websites and making a living as its been as much the failures as the successes that have helped me to learn this whole industry. What it means is that you get to a point where you just have to dive in and see what happens when you test things. Google is one big puzzle and the only way to find out how it really works is to build something. So many people want the perfect formula before they start so they have no possibility of failure but starting with that attitude more or less guarantees one result (and it’s not a good one).
One thing you also bear in mind that despite what you may think internet businesses do not have overnight success any more than any other business. While yes you can get massive amounts of traffic and hype to your website overnight, this will never or very rarely convert into instant money. Remember traffic and visitors do not always = money, just look at YouTube and Twitter, millions of visitors every day and they still can’t make a profit. Remember quality beats quantity every time, don’t chase a market/visitors that you can never turn into hard ££££.
One mistake that I see people making all the time when trying to earn money is to start a website about something they love without researching the market properly to see if the money is actually there. Yes you may have a passion for purple slippers with glitter but how many other people do? How many of them are searching for this every day on Google? How many of these people can you convert into sales and £££?
Ok so far you may be thinking this post is all negativity about the pitfalls about a career on the internet and there are so many mistakes you can make when you start but the truth is that many of them can be overcome with hard work and perseverance. This also brings me to another very important point about online marketing and that is that you really have to have an interest in it at some level to really achieve success. I was actually explaining to a friend of mine who also wants to get into this business that you really have to have an interest in it if you’re going to have any kind of success. He said:
“Im interested in making money, does that count?”
The thing is I told him, you won’t always be making money so how will you stay motivated at these times (especially the start). You see I don’t think you have to be a genius to earn money but like most things I think hard work (and a little bit of luck) are what really makes the difference. So until next time….
