Strategies

In some of my eBay seminars and workshops, I’ve taught a simple version of “ebay arbitrage”.

Arbitrage is an economic term that is defined as:

The practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets.

Put simply, it means buying low in one market and selling higher in another market. (for example, you might buy an item on eBay and resell it on Amazon.com)

On eBay, there are various ways to do this. For example, you can search eBay titles for misspelled items. When you do this, you are benefiting from the fact that the misspelled item will not show up in eBay’s search results when someone types in the correct spelling for that item.

You can use misspelling search tools like www.FatFingers.com or www.GoofBay.com to find bargains that are misspelled on eBay.

Buy these items up and resell them with correct spellings and you’ve just made money!

Another arbitrage technique is to buy lots. A lot is simply a group of identical items. By buying a lot on eBay, you can get a better deal because the only people bidding on that lot are resellers and there are less of them on eBay than there are of consumer buyers for that item.

Buying lots is a good way to make money on eBay but there are even more advanced arbitrage strategies.

For example, if you know what to look for, you can seek out listings that have been mis-listed. (meaning the sellers have left out crucial information from the title or the description in their listings) When you find an item that has been mis-listed, you can go ahead and buy that item, and then relist it correctly, thus making the full amount possible on that item.

Before you dismiss this as some penny-ante technique, understand that you can do this with high-end items and be profiting to the tune of hundreds of dollars per item by reinvesting your profits into bigger and better items.

When you take this strategy and use it on various websites, such as craigslist, Amazon and eBay, now you can begin to use arbitrage at the next level.

I recently reviewed a multi-media training course about eBay arbitrage called The eBay Auction Arbitrage Secret and I’ve been impressed by the number of different ways there are to use eBay arbitrage to make money.

In this combination of eBook and videos the author. Pete Bruckshaw shows real-world scenarios where he has profited over and over again by using these strategies on eBay.

In fact, he consistently makes between $100 and $300 PER TRANSACTION using these strategies!

I won’t go on and on about it – I’d rather you read about it yourself and get your FREE copy of the introduction to his special report by clicking here.

Take a look – this product has my full recommendation and I think you’ll like what you see!

I’ll admit, I am a newbie to LinkedIn.

It doesn’t seem to be built in an intuitive way for most people.

In case you don’t know, LinkedIn is a social network for the professional set. (Think of it is Facebook, but without all the Farmville games, applications, niece’s drama, etc.)

It is a place where you can showcase your resume, find a job, make new connections, network, find strategic partners, answer questions in your field of expertise and generally create more business for yourself.

There are all kinds of creative ways to use LinkedIn to generate more business and it is one of the world’s best kept secrets (there isn’t a lot of information out there about maximizing your LinkedIn experience)

However, recently I bought the rights to a LinkedIn video that shows you exactly how to use it to it’s fullest and how to get more business from it.

I am implementing a lot of what I’ve learned in this video – it is amazing!

You can learn more about and order the new LinkedIn Tips & Tricks video here: http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00ZCL9HE&pp=1

Also, I just ran across a very helpful article called: Seven Top Tips For LinkedIn Success here:

http://randyschrum.com/2010/10/seven-tops-tips-for-linkedin-success/

Since my boys are off school for Thanksgiving week, I asked if they wanted to go to the Flea Market yesterday and one of my boys went with me.

Growing up selling at flea markets, I feel very comfortable walking amid the “junk” that is sold at flea markets.

(the junkier, the better!)

I love sorting through boxes of old stuff and finding things that I have either never seen before or things that I had forgotten existed!

And the real fun is in finding cool old items that I can make money with – taking home some prizes that I can research on eBay or Amazon and resell for high profits.

I may be a little odd, but that’s what I grew up doing and it’s like therapy to me!

There is something inherently exciting about being able to buy something today, pop it up on eBay and see your profit within 7 days – or sooner!

In the old days, when I used to buy things at the swap meet, I would have to wait til the next week to try to sell the items I bought. And, while buying things at a flea market to resell (by itself) is not going to make anyone rich, today with eBay, the profit comes a lot quicker!

Here are some of the items I bought yesterday – what I paid for them and what I expect to get for them based on my initial eBay research.

I bought these Tony Robbins “Get The Edge” and “Personal Power” sets of DVDs, CDs and Workbooks.

They are all still in their original shrinkwrap and in the original shipping box for only $8!

Based on my eBay research, I see that I can get about $150 for the two sets.

That’s what I call FUN! (and a 1,775% profit, too)

Another thing we bought was a stack of 36 Star Trek and Star Wars “Giant Poster Books”.

These were published in 1977 and are actually a giant poster that was folded into a booklet that had all kinds of fun facts and photos.

We picked up 36 of these sci-fi gems for $30.

They are selling on eBay for about $7 each.

So, these 36 (at $7 each) makes $252.

Again, we won’t get rich on this, but I just love turning $30 into $252!

That’s a 740% profit!

_______________________________________________________

I also like to use my cell phone bar code scanner to check pricing on things when I am at the flea market.

In this case, I bought 2 “font” CDs with 10,000 fonts and 2 CDs with a “VIP” Gameboy game (still shrinkwrapped) for $8.

I figured I would buy a few and go to the next aisle and bar-code scan them to see what they were worth. This would tell me whether I should go back and buy the rest.

When we tried scanning the two new packages with my cell phone barcode scanner, the scanner I was using showed no results, so I didn’t go back and buy any more.

When I got home, my research showed that the 10,000 Font CDs are selling for $19 and the VIP games are selling for $14.40. (on Amazon.com – and I promptly listed them there)

So on these 4 items, the total made will be $66.80 and the amount paid was only $8.

That’s a 735% profit on these little gems!

So, let’s add this up – it was a particularly fun and profitable day at the flea market…

Total spent on these items: $46

Total to be made on these items: $468.80

Total profit: 919%!

By the way, the most profitable item we bought was the Tony Robbins stuff and we would never have found it if we hadn’t gone back to some of the first aisles we walked through. We walked through these aisles for a second time and there it was!

You see, one of the earliest strategies I learned – back when I was a kid – was that a Flea Market is in a “blossoming” stage all morning long.

In other words, the things you see in an aisle at 7:30 am will be different than the things you see in that same aisle at 8:00 am and again at 8:30 and at 9:00 am.

This is because the sellers are putting their goodies out all morning. When we went back through those aisles a second time, I was impressed (all over again) with how many new things we saw and how different some of the stands were.

They were fuller, they had more items and some of them had canopies overhead.

It was on this second trip that I picked up the Tony Robbins box for $8. This made an already good day into an epic, fun and profitable day!

Like I said, I don’t expect that anyone could get rich buying at flea markets, this is more of a fun hobby I wanted to share.

The eBay strategies I teach in my eBay systems are far more sophisticated and far more profitable but for me, going to a flea market is just plain fun!

You can learn about my brand new eBay video training here.