Hope you have a spook-tacular Halloween.
In this issue: Adding products to your FaceBook page with a simple cut and paste from Netcarnation; 5 Must Have Google Tools; What’s New at the Web Sellers’ Circle – and more!
Last week was the earnings report time for many companies, Amazon and eBay included. The news was pretty good in light of our current economic climate. For me, a couple of items really stood out. They both highlight my feelings that selling fixed price, commodity type items is really starting to take hold, even on eBay. By that I mean more shoppers are forgoing their visits to the local store to purchase items online instead.
The first was eBay’s growth in fixed priced listings. The official statement reads:
“The Marketplaces business unit benefited from strong growth in its fixed-price format, the continuing success of its highest rated sellers, and acceleration in sold items. Excluding the impact of the stronger U.S. dollar, revenue growth in the Marketplaces business was 4% year over year.”
The other was Amazon’s growth in general – but of special interest was the third party seller’s growth and FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) continued growth.
Amazon’s net sales increased 28% to $5.45 billion in the third quarter.
About 31% of Amazon’s sales now come from third-party merchants who sell goods on the site
Items shipped on behalf of sellers who utilized Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) more than tripled from the prior year.
As if this news wasn’t good enough I read a survey this week about the online holiday sales forecast. A survey done by Maketing Live found that More than 55% of US consumers plan to do their holiday shopping online in 2009.
I hope you have your holiday stock in hand – this Holiday could blow the lid off of previous years!
That said, let’s get down to business…….
Adding Your eBay Listings To Your FaceBookProfile Is Easy With Netcarnation
Here’s a simple cut and paste way to add a your product(s) to your FaceBook profile using Netcarnation.
And best of all it’s FREE! No fees, no hidden service charges. You can list up to ten items for free. If you decide you want more than ten, there’s a $10.00 a month service charge, which is very reasonable for this technology.
You may recall, in the last issue I talked about a similar service from Artfire. If you are confused about which service is best to use – ArtFire or Netcarnation – I did a post comparing them on my blog at http://www.websellerscircleblog.com
Five Must Have Google Tools for Online Sellers
We did a special presentation on the must have Google tools for online sellers.
They included:
- Google Gmail
- Ad Words/Ad Sense
- Google Alerts
- Webmaster Tools and Analytics
- Google Local
If you are counting that really adds up to seven, but we clumped a couple together. If you’d like an overview of what these tools are and how they fit into your business we invite you to listen in on the Free Podcast – to download it click here.
Congratulations To Christine Skaley, Etsy Seller on her new blog!
Congrats go to: Christine owner of Pillow Throw Decor on her newly updated blog. She takes special orders and has a beautiful selection of pillows on Etsy. Just in time for holiday giving! Stop by and say hello, or comment on her latest blog posts.
If you need a blog for your business, please feel free to contact me for a quote.
QuickBooks Help is here!
$64.99 plus $3.00 shipping
Exactly what you need to know about setting up your
books. Done in easy to understand English.
Moderator Sheryl Schuff CPA explains what you need to know about business bookkeeping.
This set includes video demonstrations with high quality audio so you can easily follow along. Starting with CD 1 you will learn accounting basics. How to track income and expenses. What double entry bookkeeping is and how it works.
Learn what accounting system works for yourbusiness. Included is a glossary of important accounting and bookkeeping terms.
Listen to this presentation on the go! We have included MP3 versions for quick, easy transfer to a portable player. Once you have mastered the basics, watch the demonstration as Sheryl guides an online seller through QuickBooks for the first time.
1. The interview, what is important
2. Customize your chart of accounts
3. Set up inventory, vendors & customers
4. Set up taxable and non-taxable customers & items
5. Pay vendors, write checks
6. Correct mistakes easily
7. Journal entries
8. Write receipts, prepare invoices & receive payments
9. Make deposits & transfer money from one account to another
10. Run reports
With easy to use menus and clickable links you will easily find and review the information you need.
ADDED BONUS! 30 Days FREE Access to the Rapid Up & Running Support Forum.
You have private access to an exclusive support forum where you will receive quick, easy to understand answers to your small business record keeping concerns.
Plus, as part of this package you will receive these free goodies:
A) Start-up checklist
B) QuickBooks tips & techniques discussed during the demo
C) QuickBooks shortcuts cheat sheet
This powerful CD set will be one of the most useful tools you can purchase for your business.
We’re calling it the QuickBooks Rapid Up & Running Premium CD Set and you can find out more information here.
As we get closer to the end of the year those piles of papers need to get entered into a place where you can easily access them. You’ll need to pull out important information – not just for Uncle Sam – but for yourself.
I’m sure you want to know if all this hard work is resulting in a profit!
When we put the finishing touches on the lessons, Sheryl suggested a fantastic bonus for everyone who purchases – thirty days of follow up support. That means you’ll have a place to ask questions and receive answers quickly from a Certified Public Accountant with over 30 years experience helping small businesses like yours! By itself, this bonus could save you hundreds of dollars.
Order your copy today by clicking QuickBooks Rapid Up & Running Premium CD
Cost: $64.99 plus $3.00 shipping
A New Course For Education Specialists and Internet Trainers
The Web Sellers’ Circle is proud to host the new “Presenter Series.” Online education is a growing field. It is a new way to reach students, clients and promote your business. New technology makes it easy and inexpensive to reach more people. Webinars and Podcasts are becoming a common way to communicate and build a community.
However, most educators don’t know where to start, what tools work the best, and many other details.
This new course will cover a host of topics to help get online presenters off to a good start.
We’re going to cover:
- How to choose topics and guests
- How to define your audience – your purpose and theirs for hosting/attending the class
- How to determine your budget
- How to find the technology works best for your presentations
- How to podcast, including distribution and syndication
- How to do a teleconference, what software works for your needs
- How to present a webinar, what service to use and how to record it
- How to record the broadcast
- How to turn your presentation into a product
To kick the series off we have an exciting Master Mind Round Table conference call with industry experts: Janelle Elms, Marlene Gavens, Phaedra Stockstill, Sheryl Schuff, Dany Byrne, and myself Cindy Shebley. This is a FREE call and we invite you to join us on the line.
When: November 3, 2009
Time: 5:00 PM Pacific /8:00 PM Eastern
How To Register: go to this page
This series is part of membership to the Web Sellers’ Circle; if you’d like to take part in the whole course we invite you to join today.
What’s Happening At The Web Sellers’ Circle
- We’re giving away another Blog setup – join the WSC and be our newest winner!
- Vendio’s Crystal Wells took us on a tour of their newest researcher tool, I’m impressed – watch it here
- We just finished the 13 part series on getting started on eBay, now we’re showing sellers how to open an eBay Store – in five minutes a day
- Phaedrea Stockstill and Judy aka BluePennyLady are presenting a fantastic two part series on the Google Base/Product feeds that you don’t want to miss!
- Dany just announced she’s teaching a Book Publishing Class on Friday Nov. 6th – if you’ve wanted to publish a book she’ll point you in the right direction.
All this is happening at the Web Sellers’ Circle, plus an active forum too.
Product Source Of The Month
There are a couple of sites I suggest you check out. First a great article on makeuseof suggests several good sources for liquidation and auction inventory. You can find the article here:
The next is a new Home & Garden portal called onecoast. If you have a business license you’ll find vendors here. And to make it even easier you can order directly through the OneCoast site. One Coast has vendor catalogs, sales representative information, podcasts and more to help you build your retail business. I found an interesting niche idea when I thumbed through the site the other day. I’m seriously considering starting a new eBay business; and once it is up and running, selling it off to the highest bidder – LOL
One Last Word
Good Until Nov. 3rd so go now!
That’s it for now,
Cindy Shebley
eBay Certified Business Consultant
Author of The eBay Marketing Bible
www.websellerscircle.com