Big Crumbs eBay Widget

Get Paid to Read emails

Who can spend 15 minutes a day or so doing this? It isn't hard, just takes a few minutes. I saw a program for PC that put it all on autopilot, so that all you have to do is click on the first email. I'll have to see if I can find that again. Talk about free money.

Meanwhile, eBay ad sales seem to be picking up some. For different reasons, it seems that I may have been underauctioning, trying to save on listing fees. Some place I heard that 75% of items listed should be for auction. That would be way over what I've been doing, which has been about 40 or 50 out of 3000. I'm trying to increase the number to maybe 40 a day, and see where that goes.

It does seem that a the increase so far (actually going from 40 to 100, which is about a 150% increase come to think about it) has brought about an increase in sales. There has definitely been an increase in bids. Number of bids, not the final sale price. I will pursue and report back.

Happy Friday.

Read Emails and Get Paid - No Cost to You

To follow up on the last post, signing up for these paid email sites is completely free. So the money referenced is really just there for the little bit of time it takes.

The emails do not get to your regular email inbox. The email site sends you one email saying that there are emails for you to read. You click on the reference button which takes you to the sign in page, and from there you go to your member inbox page. There is a tab showing how many emails are waiting to be read, with the first one displayed. Towards the bottom of the first one is a button saying "Click here." You click there, then are taken to the clients' web page, where you wait until the header changes to a box saying something like "Click here to read the next email."

You just keep clicking on "next" until you read all the emails in your in box. You do not have to do anything at the clients' web page except just wait for it to be credited, which takes about a minute. You can look around while you are there if you want—they probably hope someone will see something worth clicking on. You are on your own if you do that.

One other clarification. Hits4pay has two levels of referrals, Deals'n'Cash appears to be just one level beyond you. Still free money, although the calculations done earlier won't apply beyond the first level. Sorry.

This is really no-brainer, no-effort income. You just need to get a few people to signup from your link.

And who would have thought that typography was a dead topic? More tomorrow.

This is a different sort of thing where you are not selling anything, you just have to be willing to complete those free offers that you have probably seen all over the place. But in this instance, you are doing them for someone who is paying you to do them. And after a while, you can set yourself up to have others do them for you as well. You scatach my back, I'll scratch yours.


eBay
Meanwhile, eBay is taking a nose dive from where it was. I had gotten up to Power Seller with over 100 items a month, but will probably lose that soon. I did do a study of what had sold versus what had not and found that some categories just were not contributing, so I've spent some time weeding those out and the total listings are now down to about 2900. The fees were eating up all the profits, and for an ad that was not going to sell, there didn't seem any point to keep listing it. Interestingly, alcohol and tobacco were two non-selling categories which I had had some moral conflict about anyway, so I'm taking most of those down, unless there is some good reason to leave it up. Some of the WWII cigarette ads with troops in them, for instance.

I've been down with bronichitis for the last week or so ad haven't done much of anything. It wasn't too bad unless I tried to breathe and then things just went to pieces. Getting a bit better now. Good thing I'm not in China, from what I hear about the air pollution over there.

Have fun with the widget below. It is a real live listing of what is in my store. It's fun. Try it.

Have a good day.

Visit My eBay Store:

Get Paid to Read Ads from Your Computer

Here's another easy way to make some money from home. Read paid ads.

If you sign up using the links to the right (better yet, sign up with both), you will get an email when there are emails for you to read for pay, usually at $0.02 each. The key to making the income worthwhile is to have others sign up using your link, so that you also get paid for the ads they read and the ads their referrals read at $0.01 each. Sounds kind of pyramidy, but I think it is probably like most commission structures. Let's say I get 15 ads a day to read (that is an estimate based on what I've seen so far, but there is no guarantee. It could be less, or it could be more). That is 30 cents per day for my reading. If I have five people reading through my link, and they also do 15 a day at 0.01 each, that is another $0.75 a day at level 1. And let's further assume that each of those five got five more and that they also get 15 ads a day. That would be 5 x 5 =25 x .01 x 15 = $3.75 per day.

This is from the Hits4pay FAQ page:

"How many levels do I get paid for?
Hits4pay.com compensation plan is a two level plan.

1. Direct Earnings: Earn $0.02 for each validated email that you read
2. Second Level: Earn $0.01 for each validated email that your direct referrals read.
3. Third Level: Earn $0.01 from each validated email that your direct referral's referral reads.

Please be aware that this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. We simply share the ad-revenue generated with our members. The more people that you refer to Hits4Pay program, the more your earnings."

So, lets figure this out.

I read 15 ads a day at 0.02 = $0.30.
Five referrals read 15 a day at 0.01 =5 x 0.15 = $0.75.
Each referral gets five referrals, which would be 5 x 5 = 25 readers reading 15 ads a day at $0.01 = 25 x .15 = 3.75.
So, per day, that is $0.30 + $0.75 + 3.75 = $4.80.
Time 30 days = 30 x 4.80 = $144.00 per month.

Not a lot, but here comes the best part. Reading 15 ads might take 15 minutes, so that is a time investment of 7.50 hrs a month for me. $144.00 for 7.5 hours = 19.20 an hour. Better than minimum wage, eh?

Now here comes the snake oil. Suppose I got 10 referrals who also got 10 referrals. Only my 0.30 remains the same. But there are now 100 people doing what we had 25 doing just above. That would mean an 3 fold increase, which is going to be about $432.00. Excel tells me $504 a day.

Go Figure
Don't believe either one. Figure it out yourself. The point is, it can get worth doing.

Have a fun day.

Another Idea for eBay and Online Money Making

The eBay listings got reduced to about 2850 from a high of 3800 or so. That's nearly 33%, isn't it? And while sales and traffic are also down, they are not down that much. I think.

The bronchitis is finally better, after spending a small fortune on an antibiotic and a cough medicine. Other antibiotics would start working on ingestion. This one took 5 miserable days—my regular MD was on vacation, so I went to a walk-in, non-hospital place. If that is a foretaste of socialized medicine—it was not a government facility—we're in trouble.

In addition to the ads and postcards on eBay, I've also gotten into Project Payday (see banner to the right) and surveys. Below is a link you can use if you are interested in getting into surveys. I think there is no charge for this one (and yes, I might get some payback if you signup for something—thanks in advance).

http://www.surveyteam.com/?refID=836645

Good luck.

Got to get back to listing ads. Just more selectively. Of course, the hockey schedule doesn't help - nearly the end of the season, but then there are the playoffs. And the HBO John Adams series is a must. And I'm trying to read the book. Talk about different approaches—but both are very well done and worth while. What's a guy to do? :)

Have a fun Wednesday.

Multiple Streams

Everywhere you go on the internet looking for ways to make some money, you read about "multiple streams." I suppose it makes sense, but the problem is that one only has so many hours in a day and can only keep after so many streams. Well, it doesn't take too much to think that we can probably handle two or three streams before we are overwhelmed.

Proejct PayDay
So, with that in mind, I've added a link on the right for Project PayDay. I get points if you sign up through that link, so please DO IT.

This is a different sort of thing where you are not selling anything, you just have to be willing to complete those free offers that you have probably seen all over the place. But in this instance, you are doing them for someone who is paying you to do them. And after a while, you can set yourself up to have others do them for you as well. You scatach my back, I'll scratch yours.


eBay
Meanwhile, eBay is taking a nose dive from where it was. I had gotten up to Power Seller with over 100 items a month, but will probably lose that soon. I did do a study of what had sold versus what had not and found that some categories just were not contributing, so I've spent some time weeding those out and the total listings are now down to about 2900. The fees were eating up all the profits, and for an ad that was not going to sell, there didn't seem any point to keep listing it. Interestingly, alcohol and tobacco were two non-selling categories which I had had some moral conflict about anyway, so I'm taking most of those down, unless there is some good reason to leave it up. Some of the WWII cigarette ads with troops in them, for instance.

I've been down with bronichitis for the last week or so ad haven't done much of anything. It wasn't too bad unless I tried to breathe and then things just went to pieces. Getting a bit better now. Good thing I'm not in China, from what I hear about the air pollution over there.

Have fun with the widget below. It is a real live listing of what is in my store. It's fun. Try it.

Have a good day.

Hot Dogs And Bait Ads to Postcards Store Widget

The eBay store widget doesn't look right cut off, so I'm moving it to the posting area. I guess I can just recopy the code into each post. Wow. Must have had some good sleep last night.

To continue the observations, February is not recording any record breaking sales, inspite of the 20% off sale in the store on everything except postcards. I think I am going to take the postcards out of the store anyway, since they seem to sell better at auction. I'm thinking of setting up my own web page for the postcards. The eBay fees add up quickly.

Speaking of eBay fees, I do not plan to participate in the boycott being pushed for Feb. 18-25 or whatever it is. The new fees go into effect on Feb. 22. I haven't done a calculation yet, but it seems that the new fee schedule should mean a lower expense for me. We will see.

I've also arrived at the mind boggling concept that listings that don't sell well are just eating up the income from those that do sell. Therefore, I am going to unlist ads which are not in the top 9 or 10 categories and only use ads in those categories for additional new listings. So far, boats, postcards, cars, offroading and trucks have the highest ratios of sales to listings.

A 100% Guarantee

While watching a Devils hockey game a while back, someone, I think it was Chico Resch, quoted Wayne Gretsky as saying something like, "It is 100% guaranteed that shots not made will not score."

That applies to ads not listed as well. And I have said it myself, but I'm happy to give the credit elsewhere.

So far, I'm not getting too close to the 6000 figure. I think it is about 3480 listings. January sales were below December's, so it was the first month in which sales did not increase over the previous month. Not good, but only more reason to get more listings up.

I started my first sale, since February is the end of the first year. I'll be interested to see what effect that has.

Another thing I have found to do is to send things from the store out to auction again. Several have sold. Would they have sold anyway from the store? Who can tell? The important thing is they sold.

To report back on the newer ads, they seem to sell as well as the older ones. At the moment, there are two with bidding wars going on and a couple more days to go till the end. I'll let you know. But it seems like an interesting idea.

Meanwhile, postcards will just go out to auction, using Garage Sale and their picture service. I can show both front and back, and without using gallery for now (and I see most postcard listings do not use gallery), it cuts the listing cost almost in half. To be followed up. Of course, with the new eBay fee structure going into effect Feb. 22 (I think that's the date), gallery will be no charge.

Got to the new Prudential Center a week ago for a Devils game. What a neat facility. Close to the train station and really well attended by police, etc. Friendly, great food, reasonable costs. Loved it. Gotta go back soon.

Way to go, Giants!! What a game - my bride was screaming her head off. As was the daughter. What a racket. My football game for the year.

Have a great day. Wish us all luck tomorrow (Super Tuesday).

Slide Show from Others Photos

Wow. It is amazing what can be done online. I found a page that has someone's collection of photos of old farm tractors, which can be pasted in here as a slide show. It did work, but I took it out. It didn't work in Safari, only in Firefox (I'm a Mac guy, if I haven't said that before.) I'm not sure about the concept. Is it "fair" for me to use a bunch of pictures from someone unknown? Shouldn't he get something for it? Or is name recognition enough? Have to think about that.

Meanwhile, eBay listings go a lot slower than hoped for. December was the best month yet, per the December sales report. Not enough to live on, but showing the right kind of progress. Christmas sales maybe? I know some of them were for Christmas, but January has continued along at a pretty close pace, so I'm not sure. Some of the emails from customers are really rewarding. If only that could pay the electric bill.

I just went through some more recent magazines my wife was throwing out. Some of the ads use the new technologies in neat ways. I'm going to see how well those sell. Perhaps age isn't everything. Many of my customers have said that the ad they bought was because they had owned the subject of the ad. Maybe more people (around today, that is) owned a 1998 watch than a 1943? Report to follow.

Have a great day.

Accomplishments for 2007, Goals for 2008

There were three huge accomplishments in 2007: Started the eBay business, quit smoking and read the Bible in one year.

Of the three, I think reading the Bible in one year was the most satisfying. The damage has been done from 50 years of smoking, so there probably isn't much good to come from that except saving money, which isn't a totally bad result.

This blog is supposed to be about the eBay business, but some of these other things have an effect. The Bible puts everything of this world in perspective. Don't sweat the small stuff, just be sure it doesn't keep you from getting your reward later. Maybe I'll start a Bible study blog someday. Chuck Missler is a great example. Should I even hope to ever know what he knows? Probably not. But trying could be fun.

I spent a lot of December thinking about which way to go with the eBay business. As I said, selling a whole bunch of postcards didn't net me much. As I sat looking at the eBay Market Research results for ads a couple days ago, the light bulb seemed to come on. For both auctions and stores, sales of ads were about 10% of completed items. I don't find a reliable completed figure in my Selling Manager Pro stuff—it does not include store items which are listed as good til cancelled And at this point, it doesn't seem worth the data to go about relisting every ad after its 30 days. Some days there are more than 100. Wouldn't leave me any time to count my money.

However, the number of items listed and the sold figure looked to be about 10%. Turned out it wasn't, but the volume of listings had been a bit over 3000 for a couple months, and the number sold had remained constant. Tripling it is the goal, so maybe tripling the listings will do it. That is the immediate goal, should take a couple months to get the number of ads up there. Will shoot for 6000 first, then 9000. The 9000 would put the store in the top 10 or so on eBay for ads. Postcards will be a secondary interest for now. They are fun, but the economics so far are not. Reports will follow.

Happy New Year, all.