Unusual Coca-Cola (COKE) item with Christie's tags

Recently while out hunting for items I found this one pictured here! It is a 27x20 in. image under glass modern artwork of some kind. Its not a poster, or a lithograph but the image seems to be attached to the back of the glass. It is very nicely done. On the back there are Christie's (the auction house) tags! I paid $5.00 for this , and I am pretty sure it is not a super high dollar value item but I am trying my sources to see what I can learn about it. I posted the item on the collectibles and art boards on Ebay but did not have much luck from others. I tried Christie's website where you can search for past auctions but the search didnt seem to come up with any meaningful results. I tried calling but they are closed until Jan 3rd.

On this item I would be looking to find out the artist and more about the piece if possible. It could sell on its own without that information as just a cool piece, but it always helps! Ill post back when I learn more! If you have any info do write in!

Selling Graphic Novels from the 1980s/90s on Ebay

Another area that sometimes runs extremely HOT on Ebay is that of Graphic novels. Basically book sized Comics down with super fine graphic and captivating stories. I have always done well with them. I try to find ones that are from the 1980s or so and most sell fairly well on ebay. You can usually tell just by looking at the covers that you have something interesting. Here are a few examples..

Selling Vintage Newspapers On Ebay

One area that is both interesting and rewarding is that of Vintage Newspapers. They are fun to read and then re-sell on eBay. If you have a good source for pre 1940 newspapers, they make for excellent reading material and usually always get at least 1 bid.

I just finished a batch of 1933 Depression Era Newspapers from North Dakata and sold them on Ebay. Reading them gave me a better perspective on that era than I learned in school and in books. I highly recommend buyer a few papers to check them out!
I got started after reading a scrapbook I will be selling. A woman put news clipping from about the same era in and it was just amazing stuff!

Selling Monopoly Games - Local Style

Hey everyone! Sorry its been a while since I last posted :( Lots to report though.
Here is something new for you. As you know lots of people grew up with mononopoly games being a staple of family life! Well many local versions of the game were made for towns/cities even colleges. Whether officially licensed games or just used as fund raisers these games do well on Ebay! I sold a New Haven game recently and already have a big on one for Oxford ,CT . Keep in mind items with state or town or city collectibility generally do well on Ebay. Here are some pictures for you!

New Ebay Stores Awareness Campaign!

A homegrown effort by Ebay Store owners has lead to the creation of a campaign to promote awareness of Ebay stores ! High praise to Sandy (Ebay seller: sandrarn83) for thinking of this and also following it through to completion. Thanks Sandy!

Behind the Red Door you'll find millions of items never found in regular searches. We, the proud eBay Store owners, want you to have the best shopping experience available on eBay! Click on the logo above to visit my Store or click on this link to see the millions of items from all the other fine eBay Store owners.

Aliens , UFOS, Always interesting to buy and Sell on Ebay!

I just had to show your these pictures! As you know Holograms are very hard to take pictures of . Selling this Alien card set with a silver looking foil picture would just not do it justice!

So in this blog post I will tell you how to take a picture of an Alien Hologram to get this affect!

First you need to be outside without a flash! You need to have some sunlight, and something to lean the picture and or holographic card against. You need to angle the items slowly left to right to get the right affect then be sure to hold the camera to get the most of the holographic image in color as you can.

It makes your Aliens sell better and when they sell better they are known to not use their ray guns as much ;)

Check out this guy! This set I am selling (still some left), has real artist depictions of aliens seen in real events with dates and the story on the back. Done for charity, these were some extra packs I purchased to benefit the charity and of course sell to you!

Selling Art On Ebay - Notes from a non-artist type..

Recently I have been fascinated by Art. I am not sure if it is an escape from reality thing or just an appreciate that grows as we age. In any case, I have always had some luck selling unusual pieces of art which I find out and about on my Ebay searchese of flea markets , tag sales etc.

Recently I came across an oversized poster booklet (in quantity) and and Artist named Christo that did the banners/flags of an orange/salmon looking color in Central park recently. I loved the posters and picked these items up cheaply. The images are of art done on a grand scale. From islands and bridges being wrapped to umbrellas set across miles of hill or in raging rivers. Ebay has developed an interesting art market. It is not just the antique pieces or pieces by lesser known masters but markets its developing all by itself . For now ill leave you with some pictures of the posters in the large posterbook by Christo, but my next blog installment will be on the ACEO artist trading cards! Thanks for reading my blog! :) -Marty

Flashback to An Important Moment in Time

As we all know Ebay is just as much a community as a place to shop. I thought I would let you in on a very special moment for me a number of years ago when my daughter was younger. After running and playing at a friend's house all day my friend took this picture of us. It stuck in my mind because at that time I had a lot of worries on my mind, my mom was very ill, work was tough, but it was that friend who captured the moment and created a memory that would last a long time for me that made the day special for my daughter and I. Now my daughter, Jaime, is just as much an Ebay shopper and web community member as anyone. Just a little personal story to place a photo in the timeline of an Ebayer.

Our Mosaic Down Syndrome Puzzle Master

I just found an old photo poster that our house puzzle master Tina Harduby (my wifes mosaic down syndrome sister) did with a Nascar Driver years ago!

Tina, who is now in her mid 20s is a master of putting together Springbok puzzles to make sure all the pieces are there for our customers! I saw this cute picture of her and since she is a star in this household I wanted to share it with you! You can see an update of her in our family picture here taken a few years ago!

Thanks Tina for all the puzzles you assemble! WE LOVE YOU! You too Jaime! (my daugher shown with the Cheesy smile LOL)

Ebay Live Boston 2007 Received Community Hall of Fame Award

Exciting news! I could not tell you about it until the event was over! I received one of 5 Community Hall of Fame Awards given out by Ebay this year! The award is for being a good member of the Ebay community, helping others , and names are suggested by former winners and Ebay employees from what I understand. It was a great award to win! I received the honor of directing a $2500 donation to Solar Youth Inc from Ebay. Solar Youth is an organization that teaches inner city kids about the environment through all kinds of great activities. When I saw a video of the kids climbing a local hill and their faces I said you bet this is the one! I also received a wonderful plaque and a crystal award of stars that fit into a plaque, a part of which is to be placed in Ebays corporate HQ. I could not have won this without all my friends at Ebay and my fellow eBay seller friends that pulled this part of me out into the open. I realize I want to do as much as possible to help other people and I was very honored to receive this award which will mark an important time in my life when I realized I need to spend more time helping others. Here are a few pictures for you! -Marty

PS - If anyone from ebay reads this blog post.. Thank you ! So much please thank Meg and Bill for me! :)

Ebay LIVE Boston - Pre Conference Report 6/9/07

Well , it is almost time for Ebay Live 2007 in Boston, Mass! The conference runs June 14-16th but already there are some hints of some important things going on. One interesting thing is that Seth Godin the Squidoo visionary will be speaking. The guy is a guru for sure. I only wish I had more time to digest all he has writen. I will be attending his class at eBay Live and Squidoo will have a presence there.

There are some interesting classes in the schedule for Live. There is one on eBays new media market. It has been a struggle for eBay but it might be an area where local radio commercials become available for bidding fairly soon. I also heard (non-eBay related) that Cable now has the ability to pinpoint ads to your neighborhood. If this is every offered in an eBay like marketplace I can see huge potential for local business.

Speaking of Local business I am curious about the the class offered called "Ebay Local" and wondering if that is an expansion of their home page "Map It" feature or something new, different and Craigslist like? I am in that class!

I will be reporting here LIVE from LIVE so to speak. There are some other areas we are curious about including Rent.com (an Ebay company) since my wife is also a real estate agent.

If you have ideas/comments about live feel free to post! -Marty

(picture if of a Plush DICE radio we have in our store!)

Update on Wall Street Cigarettes - Library Research

I just had to post an update here to praise Librarians!!! My good friend Loretta is a librarian and she had me email some libraries for info regarding my 1920s cigarette label item as shown in the picture ! This information below was the result of my question and subsequence answers from the library regarding this item. I highly recommend contacting librarians who love to dig through these resources! With this information I can now list my item!

In short the item is from Wall Street Tobacco Co. formed in 1926, out of business (it appears in 1927) and the directors signature is on the side of the pack!


From the paper Polk's & Co. (Trow's) 1926 NYC Directory:

Wall Street Tobacco Co. Inc. (N.Y.)
L L Mosquera Pres, Wm P (might be an F) Raab, V-P, Jas Carruthers Sec,
D E Greene, Treas.
Dir: L L Mosquera, Wm F (might be a P), Jas Carruthers, D E Greene
79 Wall, R 304

There was no listing for a Wall Street Tobacco in the paper directories
of 1921-22, 1929, 1930, and 1936-37.

JP

New York State Library
Reference Services
CEC, ESP
Albany, NY 12230
(518)474-5355
www.nysl.nysed.gov/refserv.htm


Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:35:46 -0400
From: "NYSL REFSERV"
To:
Subject: Re: 44 Wall Street Company/Building information
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline



To: Martin Adamo

You have reached the New York State Library (NYSL) in Albany, New York.


Your e-bay posting was very interesting and gave you some good
searching suggestions, such as contacting a business librarian at the
New York Public Library in Manhattan. http://www.nypl.org/

The New York City Municipal Archives may also be of help. You can
leave an e-mail comment with the City Hall Library (see link under
Contact Records).
http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/about/archives.shtml

FYI...
In the NYSL's Marvyn Scudder Manual of Extinct or Obsolite Companies ,
Vol. III, for 1930, the following information is listed for a Wall
Street Tobacco Corp.: Delaware charter proclaimed repealed for non
payment of two years' taxes January 24, 1927. In Vol. IV of the same
title, which shows companies that have reorganized, merged, liquidated,
or dissolved and companies that have changed names or forfeited their
charters, this information is listed: Wall Street Tobacco Co. Inc. N.Y.
1929. No other information is mentioned. No addresses are given.
Neither company was mentioned in the 1938 volume. There was no
information that these two companies were connected in any way or if
they were totally independant of each other.

No Wall Street Tobacco Company or Corporation was listed in the
International Directory of Company Histories.

The NYSL has the NYC Business and City Directory and Telephone
Directories on microfilm for the following years: 1924/25, 1931,
1933/34 (among many others). We do not own the microfilm for 1926 -
1930. I will check to see if we have any paper directories for the time
frame you request.

JP



New York State Library
Reference Services
CEC, ESP
Albany, NY 12230
(518)474-5355
www.nysl.nysed.gov/refserv.htm


>>> 4/23/2007 11:48 AM >>>
Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
(clhct1@aol.com) on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 11:48:32
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Martin Adamo

City: Wallingford

State: CT

Request: I am researching an item from a company that had a listed
address of 44 Wall Street NY. The company was called Wall Street Tobacco
Co. Inc and it is a cigarette wrapper. It appears to have been pre 1940
but I cannot really tell the date). I am trying to find out if this
company existed at that address and what was located at 44 Wall Street
before the current building was put up. I found out the building
presently located there was built around 1926-7. I have a picture I of
the item which shows the Wall Street view on the wrapper at the time but
cannot send with this info form can reply and attach to email.

In short looking for any history of the existence of Wall Street
Tobacco Co. Inc located at 44 Wall Street.

Other hints from the label. It mentions they were made at Factory #23
2nd District NY. I did find a reference to a Cigarette item made at that
factory in the 1890s but not by Wall Street Tobacco Co. Inc. That
reference was a Baseball collectible item that looked like a milk cap
with a baseball players photo on it. It was a promo item made by another
company but did reference that same factory.

Sending you the picture might be helpful to you.

Thanks for any help or resources you can provide.

Martin Adamo

SourcesConsulted: I have searched all online resources I could find. I
searched Google, Yahoo, Google Book search, histories of 44 Wall Street,
Cigarette information. Online marketplaces such as ebay and others and
can come up with no information on the item or the company.

Submit: Submit

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Most Amazing Puzzles on Ebay at Galaxy Puzzles!!!

A very popular item to sell (and buy) on eBay is jigsaw puzzles. There are puzzles and then there are great puzzles with amazing scenese. My good friend Janice has a store on eBay called Galaxy Puzzles and sells the most amazing looking puzzles.

Her new jigsaw puzzles are by Educa, Sunsout, Ceaco, and Paper House Productions.

Here store link is here

http://stores.ebay.com/Galaxy-Puzzles&refid=store

Here is one example of a a puzzle I really love in her store!

Use Poshpoints to Promote your Ebay Store and Listings!!!!!

This is so cool! I cannot take full credit for it I have to mention my friend Janice directed me here! (I will grab her store URL and promote her here as a thank you ) I checked out this site called Poshpoints a while back but never signed up. As usual, I figured I didnt have enough time to poke around yet another site. However, Janice came back to my seller group mentioning that on this site you can now promote your eBay listings for FREE~~~~~!!!!!

You cannot beat that. The site is growing fast and here is the "skinny" as they say...

Its a site where you load up some stuff to "sell" but get points instead of money. You then trade these points for stuff by buying stuff. Your only out of pocket cost is shipping and there are no fees! Great for those items you need to clean out that might not be right for eBay, but you do not want to throw away. Also a great way to promote you eBay items at no cost while doing so.

So check out this site by clicking below and get started its free plus you get some free points while their offer lasts!! -Marty

Check out Togo.ebay.com - Sample Widget NEW from eBay!!!

Taking a look at Stumbleupon.com to help market your store

Recent news reports have eBay in talks to aquire Stumbleupon.com. I read the news release and checked out the site which was very interesting. I first noticed this site when reviewing my traffic reports (these are reports ebay store owners can view to show how traffic (customers) come into the store and from what sources). I determined that a seller friend has given a thumbs up to my store and that was leading a handful of people over .

As I checked out the site I realized it had real potential as a review site for pages we are trying to promote in this Ebay effort. I highly recommend checking out the site located at http://stumbleupon.com and signing up.

Basically this site gets an idea of what you like based on which sites you rate and then feeds you more of the same when you click the "stumble" button.

I believe what eBay might be getting at with a possible aquisition here is a socially rated web search for products but that is just speculation at this point.

I feel there is an advantage to signing up and at least rating your own content sites and then moving your way through some random sites to build up a knowledge of how this tool works.

Lately it seems eBay is moving in the right direction with their efforts and I like this site.
If you happen to check it out and sign up, please comment to this blog and list your site and we can exchange ratings if you like! -Marty

Researching the Unusual Find Wall Street Tobacco Co. 1930s?

I felt it might be helpful to talk about the research process when it comes to items that are unusual in nature. One thing we hope to find is that we pick up an item that is not common and not already listed on eBay by numerous sellers. Recently at an estate clearout I picked up an inexpensive piece which appears to be a framed Cigarette wrapper of some kind. As best I can tell it looks 1930s perhaps 1940s. In reading all the wording on the paper its hard to find much online. There is nothing listed in Google and other searc engines for the Wall Street Tobacco Co. located at 44 Wall Street (at the time). I looked up the building and found it was built in 1926-7 so that made the item have to be made after that time. I also searchd a phrase on the side of the pack label that states "Made at Factory No 23 2nd District NY" . I found one reference oddly enough to another Cigarette item which was a button promotion of a baseball player but from the 1890s. Seeing that nothing was immediately available except these few clues I took the step of posting the picture to my seller group for input and ideas. This is something that is very useful that you should consider doing as well. I will probably post this same info to a collectibles forum to get some idea. This appears to be a rare and special item which I will not sell at a low start bid without a reserve. Of course having as much info as possible is always helpful. You will see a quick picture of this item as it is (framed) with this post - Marty

Using Tag (Keyword) Clouds For Visual Sales and Information Directories

I have been working on an interesting way of displaying content by word density called Tag Clouds. They have been around a while but Im slow to catch on. Of course I do think of new ways to use them. LOL

Ok now just so you know what I am talking about you will need to look over to the left hand side of my blog <-----over there and scroll down.

There are two tag clouds there. The first one is for the blog, people can click on anything and find those posts. The second is for my eBay store. People can click on a word and find matching items.

Both these "clouds" as they are called are put together using a formula which makes fonts bigger for higher mentions of words and phrases etc. They both will update automatically as well as items come and go (supposedly).

It is running off the eBay RSS feed (which up until tonight was pumping out only the word "Wednesday" which is why I couldnt get it to work LOL)

Keep in mind I do need to refine this some I can adjust colors and size and also exclude words etc. But give the basic store visualization would you agree that it might give you a very quick idea of what is in the store if you were a new buyer or someone just looking at that list from a blog?

I felt that this was true, but I wanted your thoughts -Please post your comments!!

One seller on eBay posts about making lists and posting them everywhere. I know it sounds basic but I have heard about this very basic game plan working but thought the list was good but not good enough as it was hard to navigate. A clickable tag cloud however might be appealing in this sense that they suggested to broadcast.

Here are some advantages I see here.

1- It adds tons of clickables to blogs (couldnt get it to work on the Squid lens yet still working on that)

2- I can use Vflyer.com (check them out) to create a flier that is free and can go to all the free classifieds sites.

3- The list is always updated so wherever it is, there it will change.

4-It appears Zoom renders their own pre-page before the customer gets to the eBay page which nicely lists all the items that match the click.

I am working on ways to bring people in that dont involve them having to know what they are searching for.

I wanted to integrate it on a custom page in the store but dont think it will work there due to the scripting but there are plenty of places to use it.

So how did I come across this? Well first I noticed Squidoo had a tag cloud, but more importantly I saw a site where people listed what they would like to do with their lives and I learned almost everyone wanted See the Northern Lights and of course lose weight , quit smoking etc etc. It was interesting to see the density of the thoughts of 900,000 people all interested in many of the same things.

In any case please offer your thoughts.

How being a Trading Assistant Can help Your eBay Store Sales..

A Trading Assistant is the term eBay uses to describe people that sell for others on a commission basis. How could this make sense for you? Well first it is a source of income for which you do not have to come up with money for inventory. Next , the items you list to auction for you clients you are selling for will promote your own store items for free! The clients pay the costs of auctioning their items, but any items out on auction promote your store items! So you get some free promotion. Also some slower moving client items can be put in your eBay store where you can charge more than eBay charges you! (rent). Lots of good ways to make money in the trading assistant program. We will be writing more about this in coming posts.

I am a Trading Assistant - I can sell items for you!

Grow your eBay Store Squidoo Lens hits #1 In Business #2 overall!!!!

Big news to report tonight! Our Squidoo lens located here

http://www.squidoo.com/growyourebaystoresales

Has soared to the #1 position in the Business category! It is also an astounding #2 overall out of over 90,000 lenses! Squidoo is like a socially rated website content area. I could not have moved up without the help of many great eBay store sellers. Plus who doesnt want to make money on eBay these days?

In any case I am really excited about it and hope that if there are any Squidooers out there they can stop by and say hello on my lens and vote for me! I will keep providing the very best eBay information !

Marty

Train & Railroad Collectibles/ Items are always good to sell on eBay!

One theme that seems to never go out of style is peoples love of Trains! There are so many train and railway collectors out there! . People collect everything! From model trains to the real trains themselves! They collect bells from train stations, read books on trains, kids read books on trains, and almost everything with a train them is usually better than something without it! After selling out of nearly every train related item we had in our first year of selling we finally have a few more listed. Just to give you an idea of the variety of items . We have train belt buckles and books listed now so Ill post a few pictures -Marty

Huge Star Trek LOT /Outer Limits - What to do about titles for Cool Auctions

Well we have a cool auction running. Its for a huge lot of Star Trek Spaceships and a few other items.

Recently we had some Outer Limit cards with Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner episodes so we decided to toss in a few cards into the lot. Thus we were able to use the following keywords in the title

Star Trek

Huge Lot

Outer Limits

Klingon

Borg

Having multiple reasons a searcher can find your item always helps. This should be an interesting auction! Star Trek items were very popular in the early days of eBay, and the best items will always get some good prices. However , in years since those days Star Wars has been more popular at times and represents one of the biggest markets on eBay. Some support for Star Trek items can be found in Japan where great collectors just cannot get enough items!

-Marty

Using your Squidoo Lens to Earn Ebay Affiliate Dollars & Increase Your Sales

On Ebay, I post often to a discussion board where other store owner (Sellers) gather. I just posted this information which I felt was important enough to add to the blog here.. I invite all comments and or ideas on this.

A week or so ago (its hard to remember as during tax time I lose track of time) I mentioned that eBay had opened up the affiliate end to eBay sellers. What this means if you can make money driving business to your own listings AND if someone signs up for an account to buy one of your items. Have you noticed the big announcement? Of course not! It came out but not everyone got the "memo". In any case there are many affiliates out there making lots of money bringing people to eBay listings to bid, buy and sign up for accounts but now its your turn.Ok so basically people set up these websites (you have seen them) where your listings are all over the web and look like big collections of eBay listings, some even look like their own search engines or stores. This is how people make money doing this.They have some web space and do the coded endings to the listings using tools eBay gives you that do it automatically. Some people make 1 million bucks a month (no lie).In any case, this program was not open to sellers bringing traffic to their own listings before. You could bring traffic to others listings and make money but now things are way more interesting because you double benefit! (sales and $$ for bringing them in ).In any case it all sounds good, but like anything else who has endless time right? Well being the rocket scientist I am (actually stumbled into it LOL) , I figured Id check on something.As most of you know from tinkering with the Squidoo lenses they have a nice system for adding an RSS feed module easily (basically if you can cut and paste a URL and type your done!). Moreover its FREE (their webspace and their dime no hosting costs no cost whatsoever to you).PLUS they pay you if someone clicks on an ad etc from your Squid pages (nice but no real money yet).In any case the affiliate program eBay has will create an affiliate coded feed of your items to post in RSS modules on Squidoo and you can post away and post your friends items (especially if related they might help your sales too) and do it all for free. Any business coming in with these codes earns you money under the affiliate program . Here is a link to the payout page (you can click around to get more on the program)http://affiliates.ebay.com/odcs/custom.htm?template=Payout

With the Squidoo network we have , combined with the blogs and myspace pages etc , we have a web of content in place that will make these affiliate feeds more valuable.People can make money doing affiliate deals without content but we just created a huge web of content and can add lenses or modules to add RSS affiliate feeds.Lets take an example. I am not a home craft person but always like stuff that others do here.Many of these people have Squidoos and blogs now. They set up lenses with RSS affiliate coded feeds and earn money off any business coming to them AND off any new active user that signs up because of their feeds.Say Home craft person #1 is more motivated then person 2 and 3, she can put everyones stuff she likes up and earn money on all of it while her friend benefit from the sales in their store with no work.To the best of my knowledge there are few great content areas with affiliate set ups and for the most part while web space is cheap its not free. So this is my idea.Basically there are a few downsides. First I think like anything else new , eBay can always change it or take it out, and second, I worked with Commission Junction before and didnt like how they operated but it could have been just my experience. Commission Junction is running this for eBay.Also , while this isnt important to everyone when you have a business DSL or Cable package it often comes with this huge amount of space on their servers. I have some crazy amount at my office. Many of you have the same. I assume that can also be used to set up RSS feeds for no cost but Im not an expert in doing that.Anyone with any ideas? read through that section and let me know.Downsides are limited plus no costs. Upside could be some extra money.

Here are some thoughts from an affiliate blogger on the ebay change..http://www.geekbooks.com/ebay_changes_affiliate_terms_for_the_better_530.html

Selling and Old Favorite Educational/Science Kits

I am not sure if its because I would like to play with these or because people really want them but I buy a lot of educational/science kits to re-sell on ebay. As it turns out they sell really well. While many kids are plugged into their video games there are still people that enjoy these kits much like I did when I was a young teen 30 years ago. This weeks find? Prehistoric Animals locked in sand that you can escavate and paint yourself! I sold one within hours of posting them for sale! Always a great item! :)

Our Squidoo Lens hits #1 in Business #17 Overall! - Social Media Marketing

Within the short span of less than a week our Squidoo project jumped up to the #1 slot in the Business category and #17 overall out of 97,000 plus Squidoo lenses on the internet! For those of you that do not know what a Squidoo lens is, and for those that are hoping its just another way of looking at (or eating Calamari) LOL then let me give you a brief description of it. Its basically "Your take on a subject" . You post information , gather articles and or products and produce a lens or "your read" on a subject. Its a very cool site. You can see our lens here at

http://squidoo.com/growyourebaystoresales/

We did our lens on Growing your eBay Store! This is what our goal will be. We are there to grow our eBay store and will post ideas and strategies that we have to do just that. By creating a lens we also invite others to comment and add content and we grow a source of knowledge that helps everyone! We also have increased our sales as onlookers see our items in a soft sell environment of who were are and what we are about.

We plan on many more social media marketing strategies but the Squidoo lens is very well set up and the eBay store discussion board jumped right on the project propelling many eBay stores to the top ranks of the Squidoo especially in the Shopping and Crafts areas!

Definately check out Squidoo! Ill be back with more info! -Marty

Fairies, Mermaids, Fairykins and Mystical Creatures

One important thing we learned when selling is that the mystical and magical sells well online. People love fairies, they love mermaids they love dragons, unicorns, you name it! A while back we came across some nice items that were no longer manufactured in a closeout called Fairykins. Like many of our items we have small lots of these not an endless supply but they have been really popular. There were even Fairy Mermaid Kins but we sold out of them! Always keep the magical in mind when buying or seeking new products to sell. The fairkin pictured flaps her wings when you push her belly! I just love these things! -Marty

Using Squidoo To Tie Together your Ebay Content

Hey Everyone! Its still tax time for us CPAs but I did manage to get some work done ! I started our Squidoo lens here http://www.squidoo.com/growyourebaystoresales/ . It is just a start but it will tie together all our related eBay content. We have this blog, our store and myspace sites linked there. We have book recommendations, and hope to have our ebay listing feeds up and running to show our items for sale but I do not see it coming up as of yet. The goal here is to have a place to tie together all the content sites we are working on now. Squidoo is very highly ranked. One of my friends Sallie , worked hard on her lens and had a top 100 Squidoo lens for a while, she is my encouragement to do this project as well as my good friend Maggie the artisan who just stated I had to do it! LOL. So no challenge left undone! Its up and I hope you enjoy it. Please vote for me there if you like! I have lots of great content coming to all my sites so stay tuned! Sales are cranking for us and will be for you soon! Keep in mind always that we offer training, consulting and even tax help over the phone or even in person if you live close by where we are here in Connecticut!

Start your own Squidoo lens about your eBay Store or any topic you like by accepting this invitation http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/OnceUponaBid !!!!

-Marty

Dream Pets - From being Stuffed in Train sets in the 50s to now...

One thing about eBay, is that you learn something new pretty much every day. A while back , trusting my 16 year old daughters instinct we purchased some "Dream Pets" to sell . You can see one in this post . The interesting story behind these little animals is that in the 1950s the Japanese use to stuff to them in between toy electric train sets to protect them during shipment. The cute little stuffed things became a hit. Many years later they re-issued them in limited quantities. Due to an absolute freaky streak of luck once they were done sending small quantities to distributors the rest showed up somewhere where we found them. We had some of each of the many pets but just last night a buyer from the UK purchased 13 of the Pink Poodles you see on the left , cleaning us out! While these will never make the Beanie Baby hysteria level , they are extremely cute and retro looking , and that is a look which is definately in now! Unfortunately I have not gotten around to listing all the animals we have but we did get some of them up! - Marty

Ebay Express Heating Up? Time to Opt in?

Most people familiar with eBay know that eBay Express has not been quite the hit they thought it would be. It seemed to literally die in terms of traffic to the site and people pretty much gave up on it . Sellers, given an option to OPT OUT of eBay Express (have their items not appear there) were doing so (myself included) because of the strong evidence that sales were lower for store sellers when remaining opted in due to indexing and or other issues which were never really clearly determined. However.... Every dog has his day! Ebay Express seems to be pickign up lately. When I saw a sale from Express I did not think too much until we had 4 in one week. More than we had in months ! I then went to Alexa.com and noticed traffic perked up and was triple what it was just a few months earlier. The spike was somewhat short-lived but given that its make or break time for Express now I would consider opting in to Express. You can see our items here http://search.express.ebay.com/merchant/clact . Take a look to see how clean Express looks. The items we have been selling on Express seem to represent a different type of buyer. If you have any comments please post them! Thanks for reading this blog by the way soon we will have some cool new stuff here to show you! -Marty

Update on Traffic Program -Driving Business to Your Ebay Store

I am currently in the 3rd month of our traffic program trials. So far I have been happy, but want to update you a little on how things are going.

December and January were both great months for us. In February things started slow, but have been picking up some. I noticed my hits having been coming in slower from the traffic program. I am also not working as much with the store as I usually do. I have found that in order to good sales I need to target traffic of 1200 visitors a day for about 600 items in the store. I am going by the Omniture Traffic reports given to store owners free of charge in the store description. It seems to me when traffic spikes to those level things start happening.
What I mean is that small increases in traffic do not seem to show results I need to get to that level which I did in February, and in December and also in March 2006 when stores were in eBa's core search. So bringing in traffic more slowly is not helping proportionately it has to hit critical levels. I am working on that now. Below is a banner for the traffic program.



Lots of people are emailing me or messaging me for help with accounting for their eBay business. I want to mention that if you scroll down a bit you will see a banner that will take you to my friend Rogers software for eBay sellers . It is inexpensive and handles your eBay business, we use it! There is also a program for selling on ebay for consignment. IF you are lazy and dont want to see his banner his site is located at http://auctionsellersolutions.com

So far on the hit program we have had solid store sales every month. February ended with our lowest fee bill in two years and we sold over 100 store items!

I still need to do more testing (seems like a never ending job), and also sample out some international traffic from other sources!

Marty

Using GivingWorks at Ebay to Increase your Sales & Help Charities

Here are few links concerning using eBay's GivingWorks to do good, and increase your sales!

This first one is how to use the charity section to potentially get better pricing on your items by using the extra attention the charity section brings in . This has worked for me very well in the past. I highly recommend printing these out and reading through them a few times.http://www.tastefulgraphics.com/_CauseMarketingforSellerseBayLive2006_eBayLive2006_FINAL.pdf

The second one is if you were considering being a trading assistant to help nonprofits, also loaded with good info!

http://www.tastefulgraphics.com/eBayGivingWorks_TradingAssistants_final__eBayLive2006.pdf

The classes were dont by the Givingworks team at eBay were great! You can tell they loved what they did. When I mentioned the info was great they emailed it to me so I can share it with people (this was a while ago) .

The type of people that visit charity listings are the type of buyers you want. You have to trust me on that one! They are often people doing the charity listings themselves checking out others, and people more inclined to buy something if a portion goes to charity (makes them feel good).The Givingworks people fought hard to get a $5.00 minimum donation instead of the old $10.00 one so that makes things more affordable to do. Now, at the end of the year... they even send you a report of all the donations you made!When you read the report you will see that many times (but not always) finally prices are higher by MORE THAN THE AMOUNT YOU DONATED!!!!!. So you get a better price, the charity gets some money etc.Also, many charities monitor listings and send you thank you notes.

Overall, I think as part of the big plan running a charity listing or two per week if you have the right items will bring in more traffic and aid sales.I hope some of you find this info helpful. My thanks to the people at Givingworks that you never really hear from that behind the scenes set up eBay to raise millions of dollars for charities.Occasionally there will be a challenge to the eBay community and there remains and anonymous donor who sponsors a large charity. That donor sometimes comes forth and adds to your dollars you raise for the charity!I think its Warren Buffet, but it could be Gates... Maybe its you?? LOLMarty

Save on Ebay Purchases with Paypal Coupon!

Just a quickie update for now!

*** If you received a promotional email from Paypal dont ignore it, you could get some free money! You need to have received the email to use this coupon! *****

How these work is Paypal occasionally does stuff like that to encourage you to buy something and pay with Paypal! You must have a paypal account (or set one up then use the link I suppose if you dont have one), and then buy an item that meets the criteria which I think is $30 or more between Feb 8th and March 31st.

https://paypal.promotionexpert.com/greatshopping/signup/200702/misc_s.html?route=misc.s

They give you a $15 rebate! That is darn good hey?????

Now that you might have some FREE DOUGH I strongly suggest you check out my store, and perhaps me eBay ME page where I list some of my friends ebay stores!

You can get to some awesome eBay shopping here..


http://Onceuponabid.com



Marty

Using FilmLoop To Help sell items from your Ebay store!

A picture is worth a thousand words! I figured I should show you why you should check out filmloop.com . At filmloop you can create and eBay slideshow you can post all over the web! I have this slideshow running on our Myspace and now on the blog here! It only shows about 30 items or so but automatically updates over time! It is a great sales tool! Customers can click right from the picture to the item itself as listed on eBay! Let me know what you think! - Marty

Increasing Your sales for your eBay Store UPDATE

Hey! This is one of the first times I have been excited in a while. We are having an excellent sales month and in sharing a lot of details with other sellers I have learned even more things to pass along. So if you are strolling in for the first time or just checking please keep checking back over the next few days at least so I can feed you some useful info.

If you have been reading you will know by now I have been using a traffic program that I started trying out in December. This month so far I have had 106 store sales and 29 CORE sales on eBay off a base of less than 600 items. That is probably the best eBay store item sales number I have had and our fees are running very low this month (ebay fee bill). Now I am doing a bunch of things, so Ill go over them all here...

1- I am opting in / out of Ebay Express every 7 days
2- I am bringing in 25k in hits a month using a traffic program. Allocated cost to this month $61.00
3- I have been using search engine submission sites and manually submitting this blog, my ebay store, my ebay store domain and my myspace to all of them I can find.
4- I cut back core auctions to 10 or less items a week and have had a decent sell through on those as well

That is the basic plan I am following. During the course of my research, I had the idea to try out some foreign traffic programs for the next month . I have not done so yet and will not mention any providers until I can get some info as I have not decided on which one to use yet and they are different than the first one I am using for US traffic. I asked a few questions and found out we , as eBay store owners have stores on other eBay sites if we sell to those countries! I never knew this! Let me give you links to our UK store and our Australia store...


http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Once-Upon-A-Bid


http://stores.ebay.com.au/Once-Upon-A-Bid

This is something that I did not know, and which could be of value. I stumbled across this after asking some questions and figured we could list items on these other sites and point people to our stores in their country! As you know eBay policy makes it so you have to be clear on the location of your item as being in the US (if you are a US seller) and you should note any special concerns for those countries in terms of what you can ship there. Generally the UK and Australia are pretty easy , its other countries which are more difficult in this regard.

So I am actually going to look to not only promote my US url but the foreign ones as well and build up some knowledge of my store on these sites.

I started using the traffic program mentioned a few posts below on December 18th. I ran one program from Dec 12-Jan 12 and then another started Jan 18 and will run til Feb 18th. Some other people have started trying it out as well and I will report how things worked out for them . So far out of 3 other people I am familiar with 2 others (besides me) were fairly happy with it so far. One person directed the traffic to an off eBay website and had a poor result. As a result of her analysis of this I would not recommend the program for this purpose. My reasoning on this is that it is redirected traffic. This means people come to you after they looked for something else similar to what you sell. The eBay name gives these strangers to you a slight amount of thought that they are somewhere familiar or that they can rely on. So while 95% of your traffic will just click away I believe it helps turn a little more of whats left into buyers.
Another issue is that the seller who had a poor result sellers primarily a single product line. As such I would not recommend this for a single product. Remember the odds. 25,000 visitors maybe only 1000 will take a peek maybe only 30-50 will become buyers maybe less. If you sell a variety of items I feel you are more likely to do well with it. Also if you have a small store and not much in it yet, I would hold off on much traffic and search engine stuff until you stock up some. A larger store provides some if its own traffic as it gets indexed. You need this traffic to work with other sources to make things work. I am only offering these cautions as the best info I can offer , it could be be that your experience would be different.

I will be giving a full report when the month ends which is later tonight, so probably by some time tomorrow.

I will be reporting more on promoting the foreign URLs for our stores and I am going to start recommending some other resources that I have used like books I have read etc, in case people like those things. Right now I have a few in my store, the cheapest and most ebay related is the Grilled Cheese Madonna book whic talks about all the crazy eBay auctions and might give you some marketing ideas. I have a few other market specific books listed on the Tween market and Creating Ever- Cool how companies create brands that live on. Those are more general.

The comment section is open for others recomendations as well.

Another project I will be working on is creating a Squidoo lens for all our content and some new ideas . A good friend of mine (Sallie) who is featured way way down the blog (She sells some nice jewelry) has been working with Squidoo and doing and excellent job. Its time for me to get moving on it!

More sooon...

Marty

Use FREE Search Engine Submissions to Help Sell your EBAY items!

It does seem like lately, it has been all business and no fun pictures huh? LOL In any case another good marketing strategy today. This one costs ZERO! Many years ago before Google was huge and everyone thought about how they showed up in Google in the rankings, people worked hard on submitting their sites to as many search engines as possible. I have found this strategy still works today. There are more search engines than ever and even though the top ones still throw around the bulk of the traffic there are many small niche search engines that people stumble upon and can find your business in! Basically this will take you some time. So stop wasting time and have some tea, a cold drink or whatever you need and get to work! You need to go to Google, then to Yahoo and type in "free search engine submission" . You will be happy when you get a ton of results hey? Well , its not that easy. Many of these are just covers for charging you money so you have to dig through a little bit. Over the course of a few nights I found I could get coverage in 100 or more search engines then paid 5 bucks to pick up another 300 or so then I kept submitting anywhere that would take me. I noticed my small hits from odd domains increasing in my traffic reports.

While everyone looks for the "home run". Its often a matter of building a "web" of your business all around the web. For example. Right now you are reading my blog, I submitted that as well to search engines. I also submitted my myspace page. Submit anything you have that talks about you, especially if its rich in content. Remember the more you can talk the better!

To get you started here is a site which on the right side of the page you can start by submitting to 40 search engines free! http://www.submitexpress.com/ !! Keep in mind that you will receive some emails from this process. So if you do not want to clutter your box create a hotmail email or another email addy just to click on the confirmation notes etc. With 40 search engines its really not too bad but if you blast out there then it will get to be a bunch of mail!

Good luck and I promise some fun stuff is coming up! -

Just as a reminder. here are my sites

http://Onceuponabid.com <----Ebay store

http://Myspace.com/Onceuponabid <----Our Myspace with music and a slideshow that you can creat for your business as well!

http://www.worldofebay.blogspot.com <--- This blog that you are reading now. Save them all these are great places for great info

Also keep in mind the Accounting Software to get you ready for the Tax man by Roger in the banner below and also the hit program I am sampling out also shown a few posts below.

Coming up on the blog will be some information on something new I found ! International traffic! Time to grab some Europeans! Ill be back with more info! :)

Marty

Using Myspace as an eBay Tool

Just a short post here to direct you to take a look at our Myspace for our eBay business. We have developed a basic site and used a filmloop to show a slideshow of our items and hook up with other eBayers. I highly recommend giving this a try as you can connect with other ebayers there and get some hits and sales. We are just in the initial stages of this project but wanted to show you the possibilities. Also , on Myspace you have "friends" if you click on some of mine you will see some more advanced possibilities as many people have done a great job with their sites. Here is a link to our myspace .... http://myspace.com/onceuponabid
Let us know what you think! -Marty

Accounting, Record-keeping , Tax help for your eBay business!

Many eBayers have asked how the heck do we keep track of things we are selling on ebay? How do you know what you are making on your items and how to accumulate information for filing your taxes and figuring out if you are making money?

Well a good friend Roger has developed this program that you can get to from clicking the banner below. His solution which is always being updated takes you from soup to nuts through the process of accounting for your business. If you have been looking around for something that looks good, has the right feel and isnt overly expensive and does not charge a monthly fee this software might be right for you. He currently has two main programs one for accounting for your auctions business and one if you work selling items on consignment from others on eBay. We work with both programs and Roger will be stopping in her to the blog to talk more about them. You can take a peek at tons of screenshots to see how these work below! One great thing about these is if you do not have Microsoft Excel he has an open office version . OPen office is a free spreadsheet out there and Roger has a link to it on his site! So take a look at these programs , even if to just get a feel for what you might need to gather to get you info in order! They are also very inexpensive ! He is working on even more auctions solutions and will be posting here about them. Make sure to comment to let me know what you think! ... More soon!

Update on Driving Traffic to our eBay Store

As I mentioned in some prior posts we are using a traffic program to build some off ebay traffic flow to our ebay store. Our first program ran from December 12th until Jan 12th and delivered 25,000 targeted hits choosing the main category of "Gifts" to our store.

We felt sales benefited from the program, we saw the traffic saw some click through and visits, but its hard to tell in the holiday season and while running a lot of core auctions how everything interplayed. We decided to try another program in January and overall since Jan 1 we changed our style to run LESS Core auctions , a lot less since they cost a lot of money to gain exposure. For those who do not know what core means. This is running fixed price or auction style listings at fees ranging from 70 cents on up to a few dollars or so for a weeks exposure on eBay. Store listings cost 6-10 cents a month by comparison.

In any case by running less core auction in January ( and average of less than 10 per week) we had HUGE store sales with just the traffic program running to Jan 12th, then a pause before starting the new program which took a few days then more sales since. We lucked out this month as the traffic selection we made was on a 50% off special. You can check here as this sale is going on til the end of the month I believe..



Now some people have written and heard that these programs are "rip offs" . It seems to me that a good chunk of these targeted hits are click in click outs. These are people searching for gifts and getting redirected because someones domain expired. However, we are getting a small percentage of people poking around in our store and buying. Sometimes the orders are better. Most of the time something catches their eye in these cases. Our store carries something for everyone so if it was just say a hunting fishing store, there might be less success unless of course you had targeted hits for that area.

Another thing I wonder about is when you bring hits in, does that change how search engines look at you? It seems as though other things improve as well.

Overall I think in the price range of the current sale of 25k in hits for 49 bucks its worth a try. I will be reporting more on the second program as we go along here as well.

Coming up in future posts I have some great info for you!

1- Tons of places to submit your site free across the net

2- How to use Myspace to generate some eBay traffic

3- Some great software to keep track of eBay sales and even Consignement eBay sales when selling for others!

So stay tuned for more!

Marty