Jassen: I would like for you to explain to our listeners how you make money selling literally, goodness, I don’t know, hundreds of different niche products online with nothing and I call it your EZA.biz model.
James: Yeah, because that’s where it [was] on the web. [Since this recording I have closed the EZA.biz business down to focus on other businesses.]
Jassen: Right. Explain how that works.
James: Yeah, I’ll give you the quick overview, I mean, I could talk for hours, on this topic so, let me just try to give you a really basic overview, I’m only going to use one company as an example. I’m going to use Ebay, but other companies have similar models.
Jassen: Okay.
James: Okay? Ebay has what it calls its affiliate program…
Jassen: Right.
James: …okay? And what it basically is, is that you sign up as an affiliate of Ebay and then you can show auction items using special software that Ebay provides, where people look at those options, if they click through to the auction, they bid on the auction, they win the auction, Ebay is going to pay you a fee for showing someone else that this auctions exists and having them win it.
Jassen: Right.
James: Now, let’s walk through what this means. Well, Ebay is collecting a fee from the person who is selling the item. Okay, so let’s say it’s you and you’ve got and item, you’ve got a widget up for sale on Ebay, you’ve got an auction, Ebay’s going to charge you those fees in order to sell the widget.
Jassen: Right.
James: Remember, we talked about this earlier. The low end is forty cents, but you can pay, I mean, twenty, thirty bucks in order to list something on Ebay with all their featured things and everything else.
Jassen: Yeah.
James: Okay, so if you go on there and you’ve got your widget for sale, now let’s say I’ve got my own little website, or I don’t even need my own website, I could show you how to do that on another call, but you don’t even need a website you can basically just do this through email, you can do this with, you know, free website hosting, but you have a place where you can show these other auctions up for sale, and I group them into niches.
Jassen: Right.
James: Okay. So, we have the software where people can then go on there, they can see that you, Jassen, has a widget for sale on Ebay. I don’t have the widget, I’m just showing you that it’s available; someone clicks on through to the widget from my website, they end up at your auction. They bid, I have no involvement in the bidding, I don’t have to hold their hand or make them click on it or anything like that. If they bid and win, though, Ebay actually registers that it came from me and they’re going to pay me a small percentage of the money they collected from you.
Jassen: How small?
James: I’d have to go look it up, but I mean, I think it’s like forty percent of the amount that Ebay collects and it’s on a scale.
Jassen: Okay.
James: Let me try to pull it up here.
Jassen: So, it could be forty percent of forty cents?
James: Or, it could be forty percent of, you know, twenty bucks.
Jassen: Right, I just want to, I just want people to know that it could be a really wide ranging, that it could be really small or really big.
James: Okay. Oh, they just changed their website, this is brand new. By the way, they pay you, forty percent is where they start and it ends up at sixty- five percent of the revenue generated, revenue share, of these items if you get up to the top tiers. So, somewhere between forty percent and sixty-five percent, but in addition to that if people are not registered on Ebay and they end up registering and winning, they’re going to pay you a bonus and the bonuses start at twelve dollars a person.
Jassen: Right.
James: Okay, so somebody who’s never been to Ebay before, sees the auction, clicks on it, besides they really do want this item, it’s at a good price, you know, it’s an auction, they go on there, they register, they bid twelve dollars for that person to go through your website and sign up. That’s pretty good and then it goes all the way up to twenty two dollars per person at the top tier.
Jassen: I like it.
James: Yeah. So, you could be selling an item that’s four dollars and make twelve dollars on it.
Jassen: Right.
James: Can you see that?
Jassen: Yes.
James: Okay. So, that’s what I do. I don’t have any inventory, I don’t have to worry about you delivering the widget, I don’t have to worry about, you know, stocking the widget, pricing the widget, paying the fees or anything like that. I just direct people from my website straight to auctions, you know, auctions that are already good deals and people bid, they win, I get paid.
Jassen: That’s right. Now, in the interest of time…
James: Yeah.
Jassen: …I want to move on here.
James: Okay.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Check out Online Business Setup Step By Step or our free downloads.
James: …and so that’ s what you need to do here, so let’s, you know, you kind of mentioned something here before about finding a wholesaler, isn’t that really what people need to do if they need inventory?
Jassen: Correct. Okay, here’s the way to do it if you’re doing it online. I’m a huge fan on drop shipping.
James: Okay.
Jassen: And there is a lot of drop ship companies online.
James: Wait, what is drop shipping so people…
Jassen: Well, okay, drop shipping is when a retailer, such as yourself, sells something either locally, online, it doesn’t matter, and then you get the order, you get paid, and you don’t have the inventory physically in stock, you have a wholesaler that ships it for you out of their own inventory.
James: Okay, so let me just walk you through this.
Jassen: Okay.
James: Okay, I’m a seller; I have somebody who wants to buy my Widget for ten bucks…
Jassen: Right.
James: …I collect the ten dollars, I don’t have the Widget…
Jassen: Right.
James: …but, I have someone that I know that’s going to sell me the Widget for five dollars, they’re a wholesaler, maybe they’re the manufacturer themselves, maybe they’re an intermediary, so I pay the guy who has the item five bucks, he ships it directly to the person who bought it from me, I keep the difference.
Jassen: Exactly.
James: Okay, so that’s what drop shipping is.
Jassen: Yes, I’m a huge fan of that.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: In terms of the products that you can do that with.
James: Now, you need to know where to find these guys, so if you go to the resource guide we’ve got links to lots of different wholesalers, wholesalers lists, drop ship guides, all of those different things so if you go on there you’ll be able to have the updated list because if I record it on a CD, they go out of business in six months.
Jassen: Exactly.
James: You’re just not going to want to have that issue, so.
Jassen: Exactly. Go to the LearnToBeRich.com industries specific resource guide for the niche that you’re interested in you will find links to drop shippers and wholesalers. Now, here’s the thing a lot of wholesalers are also drop shippers, but if they don’t drop ship, you can always ask.
James: Okay.
Jassen: There’s nothing wrong, if you find some company and you really like their products, you really like their prices, you really like their customer service, etc., but they don’t offer drop shipping, ask.
James: Yeah, you know, I think, like on the scale of either getting everything in stock yourself and then selling it from, you know, your garage or bookshelf or whatever it is and then you have drop shipping which I think as the next step, but I would even take it a step further and I’d try to set up situations where I don’t even need to touch the item or be involved in the drop shipment portion.
Jassen: Right and that’s where I want to go with this. I do want to mention, you know, you could also find local wholesalers in your community.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: A lot of Ebayers are garage sale fanatics.
James: Yep.
Jassen: You can make stuff yourself, your own handiwork if you’re a craft person or something like that.
James: Yeah, we make a lot of our stuff ourselves.
Jassen: We do.
James: Like CD’s.
Jassen: Yeah, people don’t realize that these CD’s, we burn them, we label them, we package them, we ship them, we do all that stuff ourselves.
James: And it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s me doing it, I mean, I could hire someone to do it, but realize that it’s being done, like in our little group.
Jassen: Right, doesn’t your son do quite a bit for you.
James: Yeah, my son does a lot.
Jassen: Okay, I mean, for the ones I ship out, at this point anyway, you know, it’s something, I do all myself. I hope in a couple of months, you know, be able to hire somebody to help me out, but for right now it’s something that I do for myself, and I run my entire business out of a spare bedroom.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: So, you know, don’t neglect, you know, depending on the niche that you’re looking at you can make stuff yourself, which means you can make it on demand…
James: Yeah, no inventory is someone pays you, you go down to the store, you buy the supplies, you make it, and you ship it out.
Jassen: Exactly.
James: Yeah.
Jassen: So, you can do that, you know, depending on what your niche is, I mean obviously if you’re selling personally handmade wooden furniture, then yeah, you have to have some lead time involved with that, just as an example.
James: Or, you could do to order.
Jassen: Yeah.
James: I mean there’s nothing wrong with doing to order.
Jassen: Yeah.
James: You know, you go to a restaurant, you order the food, they make it while you wait, and then you get it delivered to you.
Jassen: Exactly and there’s nothing wrong with, I call them one off’s…
James: Okay.
Jassen: …because it’s a one off production. It’s a custom or what not.
James: Okay. Yeah.
Jassen: Now, you do a lot of stuff with no inventory at all.
James: Yeah, no drop shipping and no inventory.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Check out Online Business Setup Step By Step or our free downloads.
James: Now, let’s talk about the additional ones.
Jassen: Okay, well, a couple of other things about step two actually.
James: Okay.
Jassen: I think a common question is ok, I’ve picked a niche and I think I know where I’m going to put it, where do I get the stuff.
James: Oh, so you’re looking for sources of inventory?
Jassen: Right, now we have an entire CD on sales models where we talk, you know, in depth about this and we also talk about how to sell without inventory.
James: Oh, I’m big on that, because I hate it.
Jassen: I know you are. I know you do. But, and I do want to actually have you talk about that here in a minute…
James: Okay.
Jassen: …but, first of all, you know, if people are selling things that do require inventory, there’s a lot of products that do, there’s ways that you can find products to sell and when, you know, a couple of years ago when I was doing a lot of physical product sales, you know, I was doing a lot of knives and swords and things like that about two, two and a half years ago, and actually I don’t thing I told you about that before.
James: No, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of it.
Jassen: Okay, but yeah I was… I wasn’t doing a lot of business, but I was doing ok, I was putting stuff online and at local flea markets over here in our area.
James: Now, let me just interject for one second.
Jassen: Yeah.
James: To just to kind of create a point here.
Jassen: Okay.
James: I have no idea about anything that you’re talking about swords, this is the first time I’ve heard of it…
Jassen: I know.
James: How much approximately, just give or take, was it a couple of hundred dollars, was it a couple thousand dollars were you making from selling swords part time?
Jassen: Depending on the month I was making between two hundred and four hundred a month.
James: Okay. Now, if you knew what you knew today about how you could have that same industry running, kind of set it up on auto pilot, and then put one, two, three, four, five, ten more in parallel now you can see where that can be a significant business model.
Jassen: Exactly.
James: And I’m sure at the time you were like ‘I just can’t make this work’ at just making two hundred dollars a month for swords.
Jassen: No.
James: And so one of the keys that I think people miss out on is they go into business thinking that they’ll make a full time living selling, X, Y, Z, Beanie Babies or something else.
Jassen: Right.
James: And I’m suggesting that, while you could do that, it’s a totally different model then if you say, okay, now I can make two hundred, five hundred dollars a month whatever it is on this one little industry, but now I’m going to open up five in parallel knowing that I can, you know, automate a lot of these steps and have management for ten of them, which is not going to be ten times as much work, but maybe two or three times as much work to manage ten.
Jassen: Right, and you know this is completely and aside, but, and I know this is the first time that I told you about this thing that I used to do, I’ve done a lot of things…
James: Okay.
Jassen: …but, this particular one I did eventually come across… What I did was I started selling sunglasses as well.
James: Okay.
Jassen: You know, so I was actually, I found a direct importer of fashion sunglasses from China and I was getting incredible deals on them and it just so happened that that importer was the same importer that I was getting swords and knives from.
James: Okay, great.
Jassen: And so, I was like I will sell sunglasses as well both online and in my flea market booths here in town…
James: Yea.
Jassen: …and it created, it was not huge by any means…
James: Yeah.
Jassen: …but, it was an extra thirty to fifty bucks a month.
James: Yeah, it doesn’t need to be huge is what I’m suggesting.
Jassen: Right, but I didn’t learn from that and add the next thing and the next thing, and the next thing.
James: That’s the point that a lot of people miss…
Jassen: Right.
James: …is that I can make things work making twenty dollars a year on a product…
Jassen: Right.
James: …because I’ll make ten thousand of those products.
Jassen: Right.
James: I mean, and that’s how I know how to do it.
Jassen: Right.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Check out Online Business Setup Step By Step or our free downloads.
Last night I recorded a webinar about how to market a handyman business. This 1 hour and forty minute webinar covers a wide variety of topics on how to market your handyman business. It is just a small part of some of the topics covered in The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course that we are recording live this Friday and The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Book which will edited and largely based on the transcript of the live course.
The following are just a few of the things covered in the webinar:
- Two Major Marketing Focuses For Marketing Your Handyman Business
- Using Niches To Market Your Handyman Business More Effectively
- 4 Ways To Build Your Handyman Business Offline With Business Networking
- 7 Ways To Build Your Handyman Business Online Without Spending A Fortune
- 3 Ways To Improve Marketing Effectiveness Generating Prospects For Your Handyman Business
- 3 Ways To Get Paid Doing Lead Generation For Your Handyman Business
- Marketing Your Handyman Business Using Special Reports
- Marketing Your Handyman Business With Audio Interviews
- 5 Ways To Outsource Marketing Your Handyman Business
- Joint Venture Opportunities For Growing Your Handyman Business
- 4 Ways To Cultivate New and Repeat Business From Your Client and Prospect List For Handyman Businesses
- Free Google Marketing Tools For Promoting Your Handyman Business
- Guerrilla Business Card Marketing Tactics For Handyman Businesses
- Marketing Your Handyman Business Using eBay
- Using Meetup To Market and Grow Your Handyman Business
- 3 Ways To Expand Your Niches And Increase Your Handyman Business
Here is the video of the webinar:
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video.Until my next post,
James
P.S. If you have not downloaded the Handyman Marketing Primer, you may want to do that.
