I never finished college.  It bored me, so I quit.  Frankly, it is a decision that I have never regretted.  I am kind of a free spirit, I like to do what I want to do, and that varies.  Sometimes I do a certain type of work, then I get bored with it and move on to something else.  It’s just my nature.

Because of my free nature spirit, I have gone through many jobs over the years, and even many niches within the same type of work.  I’ve been earning money online for more than 10 years now.  I have earned my living exclusively online for about 6 years now.  But, how did I get started in earning online?  Let’s have a look.

In 1997, a friend e-mailed me and told me about eBay.  I had never heard of it before, they were still relatively new, so I went and checked it out.  Wow, it intrigued me.  I started buying a few things on eBay.  I learned the ropes of how eBay worked by buying on the site.  I bought quite a few things there, because I found it convenient, and also I was intrigued at being able to actually buy things on the Internet, something that was almost unheard of in those days.

Being the entrepreneur that I am by nature, it didn’t take long and I had the itch to sell on eBay.  I had to learn how to do that, but I didn’t consider that a hurdle.

During this time, I didn’t have too much money, I sort of lived paycheck to paycheck, but I was happy.  It happened to be May of this particular year, and I had just gotten a very nice tax refund, around $5,000.  Feyma and I went to do some shopping at Costco, mostly for groceries.  While there I saw a big pile of REX organizers, from Rolodex.  I had been wanting one of these things, it was a credit card sized PDA, and I wanted one, but they were too expensive for me at that time.  Online, you could buy one for about $150 in those days.  At Costco, they had them for $49!  I couldn’t believe my eyes, but I didn’t buy one.  Too conservative with my money, I guess.

When we got home, Feyma told me that she was surprised that I didn’t buy a REX and try to sell it on eBay, after all it was 1/3 of the normal price!  Oh, wow, this was a business opportunity.  I went back to Costco to get a REX to sell on eBay.  Hmm, I thought… how many should I buy?  Two?  Three?  Well, I remembered that I had that $5,000 tax refund in the bank.  When I got to Costco, I bought 100 units.  That’s right, I blew my entire tax refund on REX units.  What if they didn’t sell?  Well, Costco is very liberal about giving refunds on unused products, so no biggie, I would just return them if they didn’t sell.

I got home, and got busy, started listing my new found product on eBay.  When I woke up the next morning, I already had bids for higher than I had paid for the units.  By the time my auction ended, I had sold the REX for over $100, so I more than doubled my money!  I started listing 3 or 4 REX’s on eBay at the same time, with auctions ending at different times, different starting prices, etc.  I sold out of the 100 units in a week or so, and went back and bought another hundred.  Sold all of them too.  I made between $25 to $80 per unit.  I made less on the units sold at later dates, because others started finding the deals, and were in competition with me, but still, $25 was a nice profit, and I was happy with it.

I made a nice chunk of change from selling those REX units.  It only whetted my appetite too, because from that day forward, I have made money online in one way or another ever since.  It was a great way to start!

Do you have a story on how you started earning money online?

What? You are not yet making money online?

What are you waiting for?

If you get much negative feedback at all, people will start shying away from your auctions, and will buy from somebody else instead of you.  Let’s face it, almost any item on eBay can be found from other sellers too, unless it is something that you made yourself.  Even then, perhaps a similar item can still be found, even if not exact.  If you are showing a track record of negative feedback, people will just stop buying from you.

How do you get positive feedback?  Let’s look at some tips:

• Always be honest with your buyer.  No matter what the question is, always tell the truth.  Even if the truth is not positive, don’t hide it!  As a matter of fact, if the item you are selling has some kind of flaw, be sure to list that in the auction, so people will be aware.  The simple fact that you are willing to point out the flaws will make people trust you more!
• Always answer every e-mail within a reasonable time.  If you are selling on eBay, it is expected that you will be available for questions and such.  If somebody e-mails you, don’t hide!  Answer the e-mail as quickly as you can.  If you wait and wait before answering, it will anger your buyers, and when they leave feedback, they will likely ding you for that!
• When you spell out on the auction what you will do, follow it!  If you say that you will ship the item within 2 days, do it!  If you say that you will e-mail the tracking number for the shipment, don’t forget!  Whatever you say on the auction, follow it!  Same for the items you list, make sure that the item you send is exactly what you said it will be!  Don’t ever send something “similar” because it will kill you down the road when it’s time for feedback!
• Always be friendly!  No matter if your customer gets angry, and makes you angry, when you e-mail them, be friendly!  Remember, you are running a business, and one rule of business is that the customer is always right – even when you know they are not!  So, be friendly, be accommodating as much as possible, and  never get angry!  An angry customer will often become disarmed when you respond to them in a kind way!

One of my sacred rules of leaving feedback is that I never leave feedback first!  In my auctions I put something like “I guarantee to leave you appropriate feedback when the transaction is complete.”  Now, for me, the transaction is not complete until the other person has left feedback!  Sometimes people ask me why I don’t leave feedback first.  I say that the transaction is not “complete” until I am certain that I have done everything I need to do to make the customer happy.  I can’t be sure that the customer is 100% happy until they have left feedback for me and said that they are happy.  If the customer doesn’t like that policy, I simply don’t leave feedback if they have not done so.  The main reason for this is that some customers will leave you negative feedback for little or no reason, and they also will not even e-mail you to try to work out any possible problem.  For example, let’s say that you have shipped an item to a person half way around the world.  When the item arrived at their doorstep it was broken.  I do not feel this is a case where negative feedback should be left by the customer, because if the item broke in transit, that was beyond the control of the seller. A more appropriate way of handling this would be for the buyer to contact the seller and see what can be done.  Perhaps there was postal insurance on the item,which will pay for the damage!

So, remember, always do everything you possibly can to obtain positive feedback from your customers!  The more positive feedback you can get for your account, the more people will be willing to do business with you!  Also, if you get a negative feedback rating from a customer, don’t lose sleep over it.  It’s rare to have a perfect record!  Just learn from the mistake, and try to improve your performance on your future transactions!

Well, there are a number of payment methods that you can consider.  Let’s have a look at some of them.

Paypal - If you are going to be successful on eBay, you absolutely must accept Paypal.  You have no choice!  About 90% of eBay buyers expect to pay with Paypal, and if you don’t accept Paypal, they won’t bid.  It’s that simple.  Paypal got started back in the late 90′s.  It was actually two different companies at the time, both doing the same thing, allowing users to take and send payments online.  If I recall, there was Paypal.com and there was another company called X.com.  X.com was the most successful at that time, as I recall,, and Paypal bought them out, thus becoming the only player in the game.  Paypal went on to be bought up by eBay, and they are now eBay’s official payment system.  If at all possible, accept Paypal for payments.  Paypal is now doing business in the Philippines, although the accounts in the Philippines have some limits.  If possible, set up a US account!  If you have family in the USA, or friends, perhaps they can help you set it up.

Accepting Payments on eBay

Money Orders – You can accept money orders for payment on the goods.  Be careful, some people will send you the green money orders from the US Postal Service – those are very popular to use in the States.  However, those particular money orders are for US Domestic Use only, they cannot be cashed here.  The Postal Service also sells a pink colored money order that can be cashed worldwide, and that is the one that you need to accept.  There are lots of other brands of money orders too, and they are fine, as long as they are for international use.  Keep in mind that with money orders, the bank here will make you wait a while before you get the funds, to make sure the money order clears.  As long as you have enough cash to support the business while you are waiting to be paid, this is not a problem.  If you receive a money order from the USA, you need to ship out the goods right away, because your customers will not accept additional waiting time due to a money order payment.

Checks – I do not recommend that you accept checks if you are in the Philippines.  I do accept checks here, but I have a US bank account, and I send the checks back to the USA for deposit.  If you don’t have a US account, the clearing time is too long, and the risk of getting a bad check must be considered.  My advice is to avoid check payments.

Xoom.com – Xoom.com is  a money transfer service that sends money all over the world, although I believe that the Philippines is their number one destination.   I have used Xoom.com and been happy with their service in the past.

2Checkout.com – 2Checkout is a service similar to Paypal.  eBay customers will be more comfortable using Paypal, but 2Checkout will give a full range of services to customers in the Philippines.  I have used 2checkout extensively for about 5 years now, and I am very happy with them.  In addition to using them for auction payments, they are also useful for e-commerce stores and such.  I use 2Checkout on all of my online stores.

Western Union – Western Union is widely known, and customers will probably be comfortable using it.  However, Western Union is expensive.  Your customer probably won’t want to pay the fees, so the Western Union fees will probably come out of your profits.  You need to plan for this!  However, using Western Union in the Philippines is very easy to do, and there are thousands of locations where you can pick up your cash!

Getting payments is probably the most important part of the whole business!  Without getting the money, you wouldn’t be interested in doing it anyway, right?  Try out some of these different methods, and see which you prefer!  Also, if possible, offer multiple payment methods on your auctions so that payment will be easy and convenient for your customer!

How about you, do you know of payment services that I have not listed here?  If so, please let me know by leaving a comment!

According to Seth, most people are irrational. He uses the following as evidence:

Set low opening prices. When choosing between identical items, buyers seem to favor whichever auction has the most bids. The best way to grab early bids: Start with a cheap price. By the time a $1 DVD auction reaches $10, it will probably attract more newcomers than a DVD that started at $10.

Seth goes on to talk about not using reserve prices too. These are pretty much exactly the same things that I’ve been saying. It’s nice to see somebody whom I consider to be a real expert in selling things (online or off) backing up my position!

Go read Seth’s article, and while you are there bookmark his page or subscribe to his RSS feed. He is always a good read!

So, other than the mechanics of listing the items, what else do you need to think about?

When should you list the item? Honestly, it doesn’t make much difference when the auction starts.  It makes a huge difference when the auction ends, though.  The time and day when the auction ends could mean making a huge profit, or losing money!  How?  Well, think about it.  Firstly, you need to realize that on eBay, the majority of the bids come in within the last few minutes of the auction.   People will find your item, and then bookmark it.  They will wait and see how the price is looking as it comes to an end to the auction.  If they see an item listed for $5, and they feel it is worth $20 to them, they will pay attention to the item.  But, as they keep watching the item, if it is suddenly $40, they won’t be interested anymore, most likely (with a few exceptions that we will talk about later in this post).  But, if they look at the auction again and there are 5 minutes left, and it is still $5, they will start drooling!  They want that item!  But wait, what if there are 3 or 4 people who are all watching it at the end of the auction?  A bidding war is about to erupt!  Those last few minutes can see an item jump from a few dollars to any amount – the sky is the limit.  Now, think about this…. what if you live in the Philippines, but you are targeting US customers.  You started the auction at 3pm Philippine time, so it will end on another day at 3pm.  That’s OK, right?  NO, it’s NOT ok.  It’s a big problem.  Your target customer is in bed at the time the auction ends (it’s 3am on the East Coast of the USA, and it’s midnight on the West Coast!).  Nobody, or very few people will be watching the auction at that time.  You also need to have the auction end on the right day.  You need to know when the holidays are in the USA to be effective.  What if the item ends on Labor Day?  Nobody is online on Labor Day!  There certainly won’t be a bidding war on your item if you end it on Labor Day.  And, if you are here in the Philippines and not familiar with US holidays, you would not realize that Labor Day is in September, it’s not in May like here in the Philippines!  This takes study, and knowledge of your target customer!  If the auction ends on a Sunday night in the USA, people are getting their kids ready for school on Monday, etc.  Experiment with different auction ending times to see what works for you.  My advice is that it’s best for your auction to end in the US evening hours, on a weekday.  Your target audience may vary.

How much should I start the auction at? Well, how gutsy are you?   On many items, my favorite strategy is to start the auction out for $0.01 and let it ride.  It can scare the pants off of you, but it can also earn you some serious money!  I have had items that cost me hundreds of dollars, and I listed them for a penny.  When you list something that cheap, it starts a stir.  People get all excited about the item.  If it’s worth money, and it’s something they want, they will bid, you can be sure of that.  You know what, a lot of times on an item starting that cheap, people will end up paying much more than the item is worth too.  Why?  Because once they bid when it is only pennies, they get invested in it.  They are going to get that item!  And, when others are bidding the price up, they only remember that they want the item, they aren’t going to let the other people bid them.  Get a few people thinking that way, and you are going to be making some nice money on that particular auction!  If you don’t have the guts to try setting the price at $0.01, set it at the lowest level that you are comfortable with.  Let the bidding decide what the item is worth, and see what happens.  That is my best advice on pricing.

What about the reserve price? Some of you are asking “what is a reserve price?” A reserve price is the minimum price that you will accept.  For example, you can start off an item at $0.01, but have a reserve price of $20.  In other words, the auction price may end at $19.40, but since it didn’t meet your reserve, you are under no obligation to sell the item for $19.41.  As far as eBay is concerned the auction was never completed successfully.  Nobody but you knows what the reserve price is, the auction will just note if the reserve has been met or not.  Personally, I don’ t use reserve prices.  I don’t like them.  A lot of eBay buyers are turned off by reserves, and if the auction has a reserve they don’t bid.  Odds are they can find the same item elsewhere on eBay with no reserve.  My advice – avoid using reserve prices.

OK, in my next post, we’ll look at more selling strategies for eBay.  Until then, keep up your research about eBay by buying a few items, and always be on the lookout for that hot item that you can get cheap and re-sell on eBay!

Keep in mind that I live in the Philippines, and I like selling things to people in America, so my shipping variables are a little unique. A lot of my readers also either live in the Philippines, or want to move here and consider eBay as one of their options for earning money while living here. So, if you live in the same country where you are planning to ship to, many parts of this particular post won’t really apply to you.

At the time that I was really active in selling on eBay, eBay Philippines did not exist, or was just getting started at the end of my selling days. Because of this (and for other reasons that I will cover in a later post) I was selling on the American eBay site, and primarily shipping goods to people in the USA. Of course, eBay is a worldwide site for buyers and sellers to meet, but the USA was my primary target for buyers of my goods. So, the first thing that I had to figure out was about shipping goods half way around the world to my customers. As a matter of fact, at first, I decided not to even sell on eBay because of the shipping problem. But, my wife convinced me to give it a try, and I’m glad that she did!

Yes, shipping from half way around the world is expensive! But, the thing to keep in mind is that the buyer pays shipping charges. You list the item for sale, include information about how much the shipping will cost, and let the buyer decide if he is willing to pay that amount. It’s that simple. If he won’t pay that amount for shipping, he won’t buy. If he buys the item that means that he agrees to pay the shipping charge, and you have nothing to worry about.

The only problem with this is that when the buyer sees the high shipping charge, often times he won’t buy from you. Some people will, though. The problem is that the high shipping charge will make your pool of potential customers smaller, which in turn will mean that fewer people will be bidding on your auction. Fewer people bidding will inevitably mean a lower final price for your item. Even so, you can still earn money! This is just a fact of life, and you must accept it. Since you will still earn a profit, even if it’s a bit smaller than people in the USA or wherever, there is still good reason to pursue the business, right? Keep another thing in mind – being in the Philippines gives you a chance to find items that may be unique on eBay. If you have an item that is not available from other sellers, and it’s an item that buyers want, you can get away with a higher shipping price, since there is nobody else that the buyer can get it from.

I do know a little trick when it comes to shipping price that you may want to consider. Remember that you don’t have to charge the same amount for shipping as what you are paying. Just as an example, let’s say that you’ve found an item that you can buy for $1.00 here in the Philippines (converted from Pesos). Let’s say that the item can bring $20 when you sell it on eBay. Let’s say that it will cost $5 to ship the item. If you were just going to go straightforward, you could offer the item for $17.99 or so, with $5 shipping charge. Well, instead, you could offer the item for a little more on the price, but less for shipping. Let’s say you offered it for $21.99 with shipping of $3, in that case you’d make even more, while offering a low shipping charge. You have to pay more for shipping than you are charging, but you are making a killing on the item itself!

Another strategy you could employ is selling things that you don’t have to physically ship. For example, let’s say that you are a real expert on something. You could write up reports, or an e-book about the subject that you are an expert on. When people buy that e-book, you just e-mail it to them, or they can download it from your website. Shipping doesn’t cost you a centavo, you don’t have to charge any shipping, etc. The whole hassle of shipping is gone from the equation. In addition to reports or e-books, I have known people who have sold things like recipes for Filipino foods and such on eBay and delivered them by e-mail. You won’t make a ton of money selling things like recipes, but you can make a little side income with such items, and you don’t have to worry about shipping anything at all.

For most common items, I generally used the post office for my shipping needs. PhilPost offers a service called EMS shipping, which is a trackable method of shipping. It is more expensive, but the tracking makes it worthwhile. Being able to give your customer a tracking number that he can check on the web gives you credibility, and also makes for less hassle for you. Instead of your customer e-mailing you all the time asking where his package is, all he has to do is to go to the Internet site, look up his package and he will have all the information that he needs.

For larger and more valuable items, consider using a courier company like FedEx, UPS, DHL or another such company. It is more expensive to use, but for an item of high value your customer will be willing to pay a premium shipping price if the item is better handled that what you’d get from the postal service.

So, these are all options that you can consider when selling on eBay and shipping worldwide. Shipping from the Philippines is more costly, and there are some hassles involved, but it doesn’t need to stop you from making a good living selling on eBay.

Each morning, all of the Supervisors in the area where I worked would have a morning meeting with the Plant Management to take care of any problems, plan production, etc.  Before the meeting, while waiting for everybody to get there, we would get into all kinds of discussions.  One day, I said something about eBay, a lot of people started asking me about it.  I told them that as a side business, I sold on eBay, and the discussion started turning to my eBay business every day.  When I would enter the meeting people would start asking me how I did on eBay the previous day.  I could tell that a lot of these people were just joking around, and really thought it was kind of silly to sell on eBay.   Some of these people were basically mocking me, although a few of them were sincere and interested in doing it themselves.  I just played along, and told the truth to them about how my business was doing.

The thing that I found really funny was that some of these people who were mocking about having an eBay business were the same people who would be complaining about having trouble paying their bills or they didn’t have the money to pay their rent or their mortgage!  I would just sit there quietly thinking to myself how I had doubled my take home pay with just a few hours of work per week.  Over time, a few of these folks at the meeting would ask me to tell them more, and some of them also became regular eBay sellers.  I helped them learn how to do it, and witnessed them become successful over time.  I found this rewarding.

Not living in the USA any longer, I don’t know what the attitude is these days toward people selling on eBay.  I would guess that it is more accepted now, compared to in the 90′s when the Internet was still fairly young.

What do you think about people selling on eBay?

Buy on eBay.

That’s right, the first thing you need to do if you want to learn how to sell on eBay is to buy on eBay.  It seems a little silly, but it’s true.  Start out by purchasing through eBay, so that you can learn how others are doing it.  Buy from a variety of buyers.  Buy from beginners who just started selling.  Buy from veterans who have been selling on eBay for years.  Buy from Power Sellers (people who sell a lot of volume on eBay), and buy from low volume sellers.  As you buy from these folks, watch how they handle the transactions.  Decide what you like about doing business with sellers, and what you don’t like.  Write down your impressions so you won’t forget.  After a while, when you are getting ready to start selling, you need to look at these notes and take action.

What kind of action do you need to take?  Well, firstly, look at the things that you enjoyed about transactions.  Try to copy those things, and operate your business in a way that people will enjoy dealing with you!  Next, look at your list of things that you didn’t like during transactions, and do your very best to avoid those things when you deal with customers.  You want to make a good impression with your buyers, and make them want to come back for more!

So, to reiterate, your first step is to start buying, and tracking the transactions so you can learn from every purchase.  You will be surprised at how many little tricks you will learn when you do this.  Don’t worry, you won’t need to spend a lot of money on this.  Buy inexpensive things.  Buy things that you would have bought anyway, or that you can get a good use of.  If you buy things that you don’t need, you can also re-sell them later.  Even if you don’t make a profit, at least you can recover your money by re-selling.  What you are looking for is an education from people who are already selling on eBay, like what you want to do.

If you are like me, you won’t be buying for long.  I bought maybe half a dozen items on eBay before I started selling.  With a little hard work and smarts, you will be able to do that too!

It was back in 1998 or so (maybe it was ’97) when I made my first dollars online.  How?  I did it on eBay!

While my days of selling on eBay have long since passed, I do believe that it is a great place to get started and learn the ins and outs of online selling.  Even for advanced sellers, eBay is a great choice.  A lot of people earn millions of dollars on eBay, believe me.  I started out when eBay was still young, and I made a few extra thousand dollars per month, but by the time I quit selling on eBay, I was earning well into the 6 figures per year.  When you are doing that kind of volume, it is not an easy job, though.  It takes work, it takes patience, and it takes an ethic to do the job right.  If you can’t commit to that, you won’t make it to the very top levels of eBay selling.  I finally quit because I was just doing it for too long, working too hard, etc.  On an average day, I would deal with 500 to 1000 e-mails having to do with my eBay business.  By that time, also, I had my own websites that were doing very well, and I elected to sell on my own, without eBay.

So, over the next week or so, I will be covering eBay, with some stories of things I did on eBay, etc.  I will also be happy to answer questions for anybody that wants to ask!  Just leave a comment with your question, and I’ll do my best to give you a straight answer!