The Twitter Effect...except for on-line auction sites!

I recently heard about how the so-called "Twitter Effect" basically killed the movie "Bruno" with almost immediate negative reviews posted and circulated like wildfire within hours of its opening.

So I wondered...how big is Twitter with the big auction sites and on-line stores like eBay and Amazon.

Well, let's look.

Here is a quick list of some of the bigger (and lesser-known) names in the field.

Company (twitterid) #followers
Amazon (amazon) 5,278
Amazon Gold Box (amazondeals) 14,452
Amazon mp3 (amazonmp3) 816,910
eBay (ebay) 1,685
eBid - no presence
ecrater (ecrater) 180
bonanzle (bonanzle) 561
CQout (CQout) 2
blujay (blujaydotcom) 51
OnlineAuction - no presence
Atomic Mall (atomicmall) 17



I only included twitter IDs that were the "official" ones, skipping the rest (such as fan sites and personal pick sites), and I also skipped some of the more technical IDs of these sites (such as Amazon's Kindle news and updates ID).

OK, now I have to admit that the # of followers for these sites may not be a great indication of their popularity, but I think it is rather telling about the demographics of Twitter and the demographics of the sites mentioned above.

For example, can I assume from these numbers that...

1. Amazon didn't just jump the bandwagon, they have the lead float in the parade. They obviously have embraced this technology and they know that younger people + mp3's + music downloads = a potentially profitable source of sales.

2. eBay has not quite fully embraced Twitter. Griff is on twitter as well (ID: ebayjimgriffith) with a not-to-impressive 281 followers.

3. Scrappy upstarts ecrater and bonanzle are getting their presence known, but slowly.

4. The rest? I think I can assume most of their sellers, if asked about twitter, would say don't need it/it's not for me/it won't help my sales/it's just a waste of time/etc.

Agree? Disagree? Think I'm nuts for spending any time at all on this?

Let me know what you think.

So...where do you get your stuff? The Next Generation

OK, so we covered getting items to re-sell via normal channels you go to everyday (big box stores, discount stores, etc.).

But you need more perhaps. You are tired of driving around these places almost every day to see what new stuff they got in.

You need a more consistent source.

You need...a wholesaler.

Wholesalers open up a HUGE world of opportunity to you. Plenty of supply, great prices, and there about a gazillion wholesalers out there.

Good luck finding them. Or at least, good luck finding one that will deal with you.

I'm gonna tell you right off the bat that if you are looking for a wholesaler who will sell you a bunch of iPhones or Wii game stations, you got yourself one heck of an uphill battle. Who wouldn't want to sell these?!?! Just about everyone wants one. And you can get them, too. You really only need a couple of things:

• a significant business presence (think Toys 'R Us, rather than a bonanzle booth)
• a significant amount of money/credit (think purchases by the truckload, rather than 2 or 3 units).

If you take anything from this blog, let it be this: don't try to repeat the success of others, find your own thing...PLEASE!!!)

OK...back to our story...

Now don't get too upset. There are actually a lot of wholesalers who will work with you, even though you aren't a Best Buy and you don't have a million-dollar line of credit.

They just don't sell Wii's. But they do sell toys, games, clothing, home goods, food, cooking supplies, sports equipment, craft supplies, big/small appliances, blah blah blah.

And this is where you can make some serious money. I'm talking serious serious money.

Where are they?

Sorry...that would be telling.

But I will give you a hint...soon...very soon.

So...where do you get your stuff?

There are several questions that always pop up in forums where sellers discuss their topics:

• Do you declare your income on your taxes?
• How much is this item worth?
• Where do you get your stuff?

Well, asking this question is usually gonna result in a whole lot of flaming from other posters. Sources for goods to sell are hard to come by and usually closely guarded.

But...here are a few hints I can give you (without divulging any of my sources, of course).

FYI...this topic covers new goods, not antiques and collectibles. That's for another thread.

1. Look around you. I can tell you I have gone into local big-box retail stores, purchased items at their retail price and sold them for about 4 times what I paid.

Now don't go fill up a dozen shopping carts at your local wallyworld and expect to make a fortune. It takes research and just plain dumb luck to find these items. But they are out there. And it's not a one-time thing. I do this regularly with about 5 items I know I will sell for at least 150% profit.

2. Look around you part deux. You know those stores that have "the names you know, at discount prices"? Well, they are sometimes a fantastic source for good items to re-sell. Case in point: we came across about a dozen Dept. 56 halloween sets. Original price: $55. Their price: $15. What we sold them for: $65.

3. REAL discount stores. There are stores out that that specialize in close-outs, overstock items, returns, etc. About 95% of their stuff is, well, junk. I mean, it's fine stuff, nothing wrong with it. Just not worth trying to re-sell. But that remaining 5% can be pure gold. There is one store in particular that I can go to about every week and easily spend a few hundred bucks on stuff that I can easily turn around and gross about 2-3 times what I paid.

Basically, if you want good, new, sellable items, you need to stick with the locations that have these goods, do your research, do your research again, and keep on doing it until you find a source.

And if you find a source, don't stop looking for others. That one source you found may just be a flash-in-the-pan and never have decent stuff again. If it is or not, don't stop looking for more sources.

I got about 4 fantastic sources in my back pocket, and I have about 10 that I'm looking into right now.

Don't stop looking. Ever.

The joys of waking up and checking out your Amazon sales

I sell on Amazon and only via the FBA program. Expensive, yes. But also usually advantageous.

I mentioned a while ago about the motorized Banzai bumper boats. I sent them two and sold both in about 10 days (one just sold this morning...a great thing to see first thing when you get out of bed).

Paid $20. Cleared about $75.

Now, this is the icky part: I paid close to $30 in fees, including their selling fee and the fees with them packing and shipping the bumper boat for me.

So there are two ways of looking at it:

"Dang, I could have made more if I shipped it on my own."

...or

"Excellent, I just cleared $75 and I didn't have to do squat!"

So...time? Or Money? Which is more important to you?

The Danger of the "all your eggs in one basket" mentality

Many a seller had hitched their wagon to ebay, thinking that it would be the only venue they'd need to become big-time on-line sellers (or at least sell enough to help pay the bills).

Ah...reality.

When ebay decided to alienate the smaller sellers and focus on the big box stores and manufacturers to become a venue for overstock goods, many of those smaller sellers felt like they were being pushed out.

And they had no place else to go.

They had fallen prey one of the biggest pitfalls of the small seller: dedication to a single venue for your sales.

Whether you sell on Amazon, ebay, bonanzle, ebid, ecrater or even your own site, it's important to realize that any one of these could fail, stumble, or in some way seriously hurt your business on it. Even having your own site doesn't make you immune. There are others out there looking at your site thinking "Yeah, I can sell that, too" and POOF - there goes whatever exclusivity you may have.

Lesson 1: if you want to sell and even think of being able to make a living at it, you need to look at all venues out there. You may not need to necessarily sell on them, but at least be aware of them and perhaps have a presence there, just in case your current venue decides to "ebay" you!

Lesson 2: be sure to have a contingency plan. Do you sell your hand-made items on ebay? Excellent! Have you looked into bonanzle? Or etsy? No? Then why not? Etsy is a fantastic site for artisans and crafters to sell their wares. If ebay starts to fail you, where will you go? Or is the market already dried up for your handmade toaster covers made from recycled Bud Lite cans? Ok...so what you gonna sell now?

Now, you may ask, "What about you? Did you have other venues in line?" Well, I started to ween myself from ebay long before they started to become closeout city. When I saw the disaster eBay Express turned into, I knew they didn't have any idea how to re-invent themselves...at least without hurting its then-present seller base.

So, yeah, I had contingency plans. I went from selling antiques and collectible to selling new goods. It took me like 3 1/2 weeks to convert, including suppliers, venue, and profit required to make it at least match what I was doing on ebay.

I'm not bragging. That's just the benefit of planning.

And so far, the plan is working pretty nicely.

In other words, if you need to change venues, product lines, or any serious portion of your business plan, PLEASE have a folder in your desk (or in your head) labeled "what if's" to fall back on just in case that great venue is still a shooting star, but no longer wants your wagon hitched to it.

A short list of things to NOT do first when opening your website

OK, I know it's the fun part...

"What should I name my store?"
"What colors will it use?"
"I have so many ideas for my logo."
"I love the flashing graphics I saw on one site and I want them on mine."
"I can't wait to list my stuff and start selling!"

Here's a piece of friendly advice....whoa. Hold on.

Yes, a name is important. Colors are important, too, as are your logos.

But wait...there are a few more important things to check on first.

• Your host: Picking a host is seriously important. There are about a gazillion hosting sites out there. Maybe a tiny handful are worth serious consideration (and your time, trust and money).
  
• your products: Some hosts are more suited for store-type products, others can handle almost anything. What will you be selling?
  
• your payment methods: Not all hosting sites allow use of a merchant account to handle credit card payments, so you may need to use a gateway, take CC payments over the phone only, or just skip credit cards. Want to take checks? Some don't have that option at all!
• your # of products: Monthly fees are sometimes based on the # of products you want to sell.
• ability to redirect your site: If you want people to type www.mycoolthings.com to go to your site (rather than www.ecommercehost.com/mycoolthings), make sure your host allows this and that masking won't screw anything up.
• ability to customize: Most hosting sites offer pre-set templates you can choose from. You can usually customize them once you select one, but the level of customization may not be to your liking. Or the degree of complexity to customize it may be a bit intimidating.
• how much you want to pay: You can easily pay $100 a month for your web presence, and that doesn't include selling fees, merchant account fees, etc. You may have found the perfect host, but can you afford them?

OK...don't be all ticked off with me about bursting your bubble. That was not my intention.

I just want to give you a little heads-up on some of the issues you will inevitably have to face if you want to have your own web store.

Shopify...great product...but no thanks...

OK, so I really want to open up a "real" web store. you know...just my products, not a subset of a bigger set of items (e.g., an ebay store), where I can take credit cards, have control over the look and feel of the site, etc.

So I stumbled upon shopify (www.shopify.com), which seemed to fit ALL of my requirements. I don't have a merchant account (WAY too expensive for me right now) but I could accept CC payments via a PayPal gateway.

I spent about 3 days working on getting it to look right. It has a lot of functionality but I just couldn't get it to where I wanted it.

OK... I know...3 days is not much time to spend on setting up a web site. But I do have html experience, and web design is not all that foreign to me. I figured, though, that 3 days should be enough time for me to figure out even the basics, like getting my home page just right, determining my menu navigation, etc.

So I gave up.

For now.

But don't take this as a rip on shopify. I was quite impressed with what they had, and their pricing was fantastic (especially compared to zoovy and volusion).

Right now, I got about 5 irons in the fire. The "my own web site" thing is gonna take a lot of dedicated time for me to do the way I want; I DON'T want a cookie-cutter site that looks like everyone else's site who uses the host I ultimately choose.

Given all this, I do recommend it. It's just not for me...yet.

A note on Fulfillment By Amazon

As I mentioned in the prior post, I really like FBA. But if you are interested in it here is a little quirk about it (or pain, actually) you need to know.

I sell a lot of things, but I usually only get 5-10 of any one item. Some are big, some are small. Some are already on AZ, some not. Here's where it gets tricky.

• And some are on AZ more than once...which itself causes me problems. If there are two or more listings for the exact same item, I can still use FBA but I also need to put a label over the item's bar code so AZ can process it. Other items, I usually don't need to do this. If they need a label, they can't be shipped with items that don't need a label...hence, they need to go in a different box when I ship them to AZ.
  
• Some items are oversize (not USPS oversize, AZ's version of oversize). Oversize items need to go to a different warehouse...hence, they need to go in a different box when I ship them to AZ.

Starting to get the picture? When I pack things up to ship to Amazon, I may need to make up to 4 different "types" of shipments:

1. not oversized, and don't need a label
2. not oversized, but DO need a label
3. oversized, and don't need a label
4. oversized, but DO need a label.

How do you avoid this?

Well...you don't. Not unless you want to walk away from a good deal from some stuff that may need a bif of extra processing on your part to ship for FBA.

Yes, it can be a serious pain, but I get a lot of good stuff to sell, and it sells well and for a decent profit, so I guess I'll put up with the hassle.

Hmmm...........profit.............what a great topic for another discussion!!!!!