One unexpected bonus, or side effect, of selling lots of information products via eBay was that I was also, unknowingly at the time, advertising myself to like-minded people. People who were already selling information products, or intending to sell information products, suddenly got in touch with me. Sometimes it was to do a deal on multiple purchases, others asked me if I could locate ebooks on a particular niche. I was starting to become the Mr Fixit of resale rights stuff on eBay….

              

Read this post very very carefully – there is valuable information in here that NO-ONE else is telling you. If you act on it, it could be worth a lot of money to you. Initially I was going to “pad this out” into a short 16 page report and charge maybe $20 for it but I’ve decided to give this away for free…so read it carefully!

              

July 10th 2008. The big day had arrived, I was finally leaving Britain. It’s a strange feeling when something you have been planning for a number of years, something which had seemed a bit of a pipe dream when we first considered it, actually becomes reality. We had left our house some 2 weeks earlier and stayed with my parents whilst we had a few loose ends to tie up. On of my biggest concerns was what would happen to my eBay business which was starting to pay real dividends now.

              

By the beginning of 2007 it was obvious to me that UK property market was about to come crashing down. I’m no economics expert, nor some kind of property guru – quite the opposite. However common sense told me that a UK average property price of £200,000 combined with an average wage of £22,000 spelled disaster. The historical ratio of average property price to average wages was 3.5. So the 2006 average salary of £22,000 should have equated to an average house price of £77,000! No-one in the media, in politics or the property business picked up on this. The good times were never going to stop….

              

It’s very easy to be overwhelmed when getting into the information business. There is just so much of it out there. Everyone seems to be saying “get your own product, that’s where the money is”. But how can you, as a newcomer to internet marketing create your own product? What can you offer that is new? My point is that absolutely everyone, including YOU, has information or knowledge or experience of something inside their heads that other people will pay a lot of money for.

              

When eBay still allowed the sales of digital products via digital download it was one of the hottest money making products around. Literally hundreds of sellers were doing this, and selling them for next to nothing. Can you remember seeing them? Just like me, you probably wondered how on earth these people could make money from products selling at such ridiculously low prices. So I decided to investigate this a little bit further……

              

By the end of June 2008 I had more digital items listed on eBay UK than anyone else – 390. Three months previous to that I hadn’t even listed one single item; I was still trying to work out the process of how to do that. Through a lot of trial and error I had reached the top of the tree with no previous experience of this business. To make things more difficult for a “novice” like me following eBay’s decision to ban the sales of items via digital download there was almost no information out there. As our American friends like to say, it was a “whole new ball game”.

              

I’ve received quite a few emails lately from people who are concerned about competition and how it’s a factor stopping many people from starting a business. This is understandable up to a point, after all you want to give yourself as much chance of success as you possibly can. However, I’ve come across people who are almost obsessed with the potential competition to the extent that months and even years pass without them getting started. It’s an interesting subject so let me expand on that…..

              

Outsourcing is an essential part of any marketer’s business. It is approaching impossible to manage every single task yourself and be successful. That is a lesson I am slowly learning – in the beginning I tried to do every little thing myself, but frankly there aren’t enough hours in the day. However this cautionary tale shows that outsourcing is not something to be taken lightly, and here’s why you must choose your outsourced workers wisely….and keep a check on their activities.

              

So, in the middle of April 2008 I took my plunge and created my very first information product on CD-ROM and listed it on eBay for the princely sum of £7.95. This was a product about how to go about getting more dates, which seemed to be a fairly hot topic. I actually created this product myself, using a combination of resale rights products already out there. The product finished up as a series of 3 “mini products” combining together into 1 overall product.

              

My first internet product was going to be about “How to make money selling ebooks on eBay via digital download”. Obviously after eBay’s banning of digital products in March 2008, that idea was out of the window. Whilst most ebook sellers left eBay never to return, one or two switched on marketers had different ideas – why not put the ebooks onto a CD-ROM, post that out to the customer, and hey presto, you’ve complied with eBay’s new policy. Overall I am very sceptical of the so-called internet marketing “gurus” but there are 2 guys out there that made sense to me – Ray Johnson and John Thornhill. Out of the very few people online that I trust, Ray and John would be at the top of the list.

              

At the end of March 2008 eBay made their announcement about banning products sold via digital download. There were an awful lot of sellers of these kind of products – not just eBooks, but also software, web site templates, graphics, the list went on and on.

              

There are a HUGE amount of different ways of making money online. This is great news of course because it means there is “something for everyone” so to speak, but on the other hand it can be very confusing for the beginner. If you sign up to a few mailing lists, your email inbox will be bombarded with the latest “make money on the internet” offers – all with very tempting sales pages. It is very easy to be taken in by the “hype” and send off your money. I personally doubt whether more than 1% of people who actually buy these kind of products make any money…..

              

It’s been a while since my last post. So many exciting, and not-so-exciting things have happened in the last 9 months but anyway, I have neglected this blog for far too long, but now I’m back again! Due to various things happening, which I’m going to detail below, I have either just not had the time, nor the material to write something on here. Over the next few days I’ll be going through everything in detail, which means that yes, I’m going to be posting here regularly again.

              

Unless you’ve only just joined the online world, you will certainly be aware of the various “success” stories on the internet. Men and women who came from nowhere, completely unheard of before, creating virtually an overnight success of themselves. Sure there’s the stories which make front page headlines, such as the 3 or 4 people who started a little online video web site called YouTube and then sold it to Google for what was it – nearly $2 billion? All that in the space of 18 months as well. Wow!

              

Something completely different today. The last few days I have written about my old business, and the factors that drove me out of it. In this short post I want to tell you a little bit more about myself, the things that interest me. It’s not really relevant to the rest of this site and what I am hoping to achieve with it, but for those who want a little light-hearted reading about who I am, read on!

              

The 6 years leading up to my discovery of the truth behind Kasp had been a pretty rough ride. All of the Board of Directors had become increasingly and openly hostile to its most successful sales people. Why was this? Well, there are a variety of reasons but I suspect the main one was simple jealousy. I and my fellow agents were able to achieve a level of sales that others could not.

              

So, just to briefly recap from the previous post, the timeline was as follows:

Sep 2005 – we were officially informed by our Managing Director that Abus had decided after 40 years to end our sole supply agreement, and would now also supply 2 of our competitors. This had “come out of the blue” and was “completely the fault of Abus”.

              

If you are selling a product, whether that is face to face as I was for 22 years, or from a web site, a newpaper advert, etc the most important thing that you as a seller have is your integrity. Yes the product needs to be a quality one, the price needs to be acceptable, but if your potential buyer doesn’t trust you, then you don’t have a business. You may get the odd sale here and there, but this is not a formula for a successful long term business.

              

The main reason for deciding to sell the business was of course financial. If you see your business earnings dropping by almost 75% over 5 or 6 years, then it’s fair to see there is a trend appearing there. I am a great believer in keeping things simple, the simplest description I have ever seen of how to successfully sell a product is….