Wednesday 22nd October 2008 

Background

I have decided that the best way to provide value to you, my readers, is to write a weekly newsletter.

The  content I have provided since my blog started back in February has been both infrequent and unfocused and my intention now is to produce a  midweek newsletter in three parts to give you;

1. an insight into my business; what I have been spending my time (and money) on,  my successes,  my failures and my plans for the future.
2. useful resources, tips, tricks and strategies that will help you in your own online ventures.
3. product recommendations (based strictly on my own experiences of the products– I am determined that my newsletter will not be a weekly sales pitch for every ‘next big thing’ product that comes along).

OK, as this is my first newsletter I’ll take a deep breath and dive in!

My Business

I continue to earn a regular income on eBay. I operate in several distinct niches; vintage hunting prints— business has been slow during the summer but this is typical of eBay at this time of the year, I expect trade to pick up as more buyers enter the market in the run up to Christmas. I took the opportunity to build my stock of prints during this quiet period and have picked up some great bargains, see Prints Make Profits for a list of my secret sources.

I am using classified ads to build mailing lists in several niches. The strategy is simple; I research eBay to find hot niches, I list classified ads offering free eBooks in return for email addresses, I then send promotional emails for well targeted affiliate products. My results are encouraging and I am keen to add videos to my ads to improve my sign up rates, I am struggling, however, with uploading to YouTube so if anyone can help me with this please get in touch at stuart@stuart-turnbull.com If you would like to try this idea for yourself there is a great free guide here.

I am earning a regular income from my eBook Prints Make Profits, it isn’t a fortune but it is sufficient to convince me that creating your own information products is the way to really make it online. I am open to  suggestions for follow up eBook titles if anyone has any ideas.  

I have signed up to Jim Cockrum’s latest membership site Offlinebiz.com as I reckon I’ve learned enough about internet marketing during the last few years to make me an expert in the eyes of the average offline business owner. I am planning to approach local business people to offer advice on online techniques to improve their businesses and I will let you know how I get on.

Tips, tricks and strategies;

Why am I working on several different ideas at the same time? wouldn’t I be more successful if I focused all of my efforts on one area?

The simple answer is that I am trying to build lots of different income streams because;

1. lots of little streams come together to make a river.
2. if one stream is lost I still have several others to fall back on.

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If you are a regular eBay seller who sells the same or similar item over and over using the auction method you will notice that the price achieved drops over time.

A strategy I use to counter this is to list one item at a time and make second chance offers to any bidders whose high bids match the minimum price I will accept for the item. This keeps the price up in two ways, it maintains the impression of scarcity of the item and because second chance offers do not appear in completed item searches future buyers will base their bids on the higher prices.

Products I use

I’d just like to write a brief review of Jim Cockrum’s bestselling eBay eBook Silent Sales Machine.

If you aspire to making money using the internet then this book is for you.

To make money online you need to bring together two things; a product that people need, presented in a way that convinces them it will benefit them and a continous stream of people to read  your sales copy.

The key to this winning formula is the traffic and the mistake that so many online sellers make is to put up their website and try to drive the traffic to it.

Silent Sales Machine approaches this situation from a different angle.

eBay has tens of millions of daily visitors in ‘buying mode’ so why not take your product to the traffic?

The book is full of creative, ‘under the radar’ ideas for doing just that and I promise it will make you look at eBay in a completely different way.

If you are confused about what to sell on eBay then Silent Sales Machine  will give you dozens of mind-tingling ideas for hot selling products many of which can be obtained for free!

This is one of those rare products that if acted upon will make you money, it is as simple as that and I would not be without it.

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Thank you for reading my first newsletter, I value your feedback so click on ‘comments’ below and let me know what you think;

is this the kind of content you want to read?

do you have any suggestions for areas to cover in future newsletters?

is the frequency right? (weekly)

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