Karol started his first successful business at the age of 18 with 2 high school friends. It was called Infinite Solutionz Web design. Since then he has gone on to working eBay, writing eBooks, conducting seminars, and writing a bi-monthly newsletter called Auction Profits (Subscribe to Auction Profits by clicking here).
Karol now earns a full-time living on the Internet, and is a member of his local Chamber of Commerce and Toastmasters organizations.
font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" >Karol, and his family, are proof that dreams do come true. All it takes is action.
Web site: http://www.freeauctionprofits.com/
Answer: By Karol Gajda
Day 1: Planning
First, I would write down my goals for the next 30 days. I estimate I would have to raise about $2,000. I also have to assess my strengths. What am I good at? eBay!
Ultimate Goal: Raise $2,500 in 30 days and plant the seeds for long term profits.
Immediate goal: Get together 100 items from around my house to list on eBay on Day 2.
7 day goal: Begin putting together a JV with someone who has a fairly large mailing list and would be interested in doing an eBay teleseminar with me. Since I’m unknown I will need their name to help bring credibility to the seminar. Cost for the seminar: $39 including Resell Rights. Limit it to 100 people and only accept Paypal.com as payment. Any other form of payment would take too long to reach my bank or would cost upfront to use. My JV partner(s) would get 50% of profit. Why choose $39 as the price point? Well, it’s enough to make a decent profit, and the attendees will get a great benefit out of the resell rights. Owning resell rights means, in a nutshell, being able to resell the product and keep all the profits for yourself.
14 day goal: Finish writing teleseminar.
Day 28: Conduct seminar. Use http://www.phonebrain.com/ as the conference call service for the seminar since it will only cost $20 for 100 people and they include recording capabilities on the line.
30 day goal: Begin putting together ideas for a Web site and eBook: "How I Saved My House (and My Life) In Under 30 Days!" Subtitle: "The Step-by-Step Guide For Getting Yourself Out Of Your Financial Rut In 30 Days...From Someone Who Lived Through It!"
Day 2: eBay Listings
Hmm...what can I sell on eBay that I have a large quantity of RIGHT NOW, and would make me a decent profit?
Well, I have 5 guitars. Those would probably sell for a few grand. But I can’t sell those...that would probably depress me to no end.
I could sell a bunch of the knick-knacks around the house. I’m sure I could make a few hundred dollars, if not at least $1,000. But no, that would take too long getting together the descriptions and and having to deal with figuring out shipping costs for each item.
I’ve got it! I can sell off part of my large CD collection.
I will find 100 CDs out of my 300+ collection that I don’t listen to or don’t want anymore. Based on past experience I will make an average of $6 profit per CD (after all fees from eBay, shipping, and Paypal) and I will list them with a starting bid of $0.99 with NO reserve. I will charge $2.75 shipping for 1 CD with each additional CD being $0.99. Today will be spent sorting my CDs and writing my eBay descriptions for each.
An example eBay description (without all the HTML fixins) would be:
| You are bidding on this like new (insert name) CD! (Picture of CD cover here) This CD has absolutely NO scratches and the booklet is also in suberb condition. (Pictures of actual CD and booklet here) I am selling my collection of 100 CDs on eBay because I am in a huge financial bind and MUST raise $2,000 in the next 3 weeks. If you can help at all I would greatly appreciate your support. Please browse my other CDs by clicking here: (link to my other eBay auctions) Shipping terms: Shipping by First Class Mail will be $2.75 for the first CD and $0.99 for each additional CD you purchase from my collection of 100 CDs listed on eBay right now. Payment terms: Payments MUST be made within 7 days of auction’s end. As mentioned, I am in a huge financial bind and I cannot afford to play games, so please do not bid if you cannot pay within 7 days. I would very much appreciate payments by Paypal, but also accept cash (at your own risk), check, and money order. |
Day 3: eBay Listing Day
I would take all my listing descriptions and input them into eBay’s free Turbo Lister available here: http://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister/
Turbo Lister will enable me to list my auctions all at the same time instead of having to go through the listing process by hand.
I will separate my 100 auctions into two separate 50 auction listings in Turbo Lister and I will list 50 with 5 day auctions and the other 50 with 7 day auctions. This is because about 25-50% of buyers will pay by Paypal within 1 day of the auction’s end. I will have some immediate cashflow and will have already shipped some CDs before the remaining 50 end. Also, by separating into lots of 50, it’ll make it easier on me when I have to send End of Auction e-mails to all the winning bidders.
All listings will start at 9:15 PM EST. This way people on both the East and West Coasts have a chance to bid right before the auctions end. I will purchase my shipping supplies today from one of the many eBay stores selling Bubble Mailers. Doing a search for "bubble mailers" at http://www.stores.ebay.com/ brings up over 1,000 results! I need 6" x 10" bubble mailers since they are perfect for shipping CDs. Cool, I find 100 for $12.98 + $8 shipping.
Day 4: eBay Upsell Search
I will go searching for some upsells to my eBay auctions. My first stop is the $1 dollar stores. There are about 5 in my immediate area. I find a bunch of nice CD cases which each hold 12 CDs. Based on my past experience with upsells, about 25% of my buyers will take me up on this so I buy 25 CD cases for $1 each.
I will upsell these in my e-mail to winning bidders for $3.50 each or 2 for $6 with no additional shipping charges. This will put about $50 more in my pocket for very minimal work.
Now I need to go back to the eBay Stores and search for larger bubble mailers so I can ship these CD cases with the CDs. I find 25 12.5" x 19" for $9.99 + $7 shipping. Perfect!
Total costs so far: $62.97. OK, I can handle that...for now. :)
Day 5: Teleseminar Outline
I will put together a basic outline of my eBay teleseminar so I have something concrete to talk about with potential JV partners.
The working title of my teleseminar will be "How To Start Your eBay Business Today and Start Making Money Tomorrow!"
The outline will consist of my own knowledge of eBay so I won’t have to go out and do any research.
Day 6: Begin JV Search
I will go to Google.com and start searching for anybody and everybody with a Web site about online auctions. I will put together the following information in a text file on my computer:
Potential JV’s name:
Web site:
Ezine’s Name (if any):
Contact info (including phone number):
To get the phone number I will do a simple WhoIS search at GoDaddy.com (my registrar of choice). A WhoIS search shows you who has registered a particular domain name. For example, if you do a WhoIS on my domain http://www.freeauctionprofits.com/ you’ll get my name, PO Box address, and phone number!
Day 7: Contact Potential JV partners
I will use a basic script to contact all my potential JV partners. The script is so I don’t stumble while I’m on the phone. :)
The script will go something like this:
Hello (first name),
I apologize for calling you. First, I just want you to know I’m not a telemarketer. hehe I was at your Web site (insert name here) and I was hoping I could run something by you for a minute. Is that OK? It’ll take under 60 seconds.
(If they say yes, then I continue. If they say no I ask if there is a better time to call.)
My name is Karol Gajda and I’m an eBay seller who’s in a huge financial bind. I have to raise $2,000 in the next 3 weeks to save my house and I was hoping you could help me.
I’m putting together an eBay teleseminar called "How To Start Your eBay Business Today and Start Making Money Tomorrow!" and since I know you’re a well respected eBay expert I’d like to propose a Joint Venture on the seminar. We would split the profits and I’ll handle all the details.
The price of the seminar will be $39 including resell rights so that will be almost $2,000 profit for you without really having to do a whole lot. All I ask is that you send an endorsement to your mailing list and put a message on your Web site about it. And you’ll also, of course, have resell rights to the seminar so you’ll have a long term income stream from it if you so choose.
Does that sound like something you’d be interested in?
If they’re interested we put together the finer details. If not, then I thank them for their time and call the next person on my list. The reason I call my potential JV partners is for a few reasons:
- It’s more personal than an e-mail.
- I’ll get a quicker response than an e-mail.
- I’ll be able to feed off the response I get from the phone call and structure my script on the fly to tailor it to the person’s personality.
If my list of names comes up short on JV partners, I go back to searching for more until I find one who’s interested and has a fairly large e-mail list.
Day 8: Seminar and eBay Auctions
Begin writing the seminar using the outline I wrote on Day 5.
My first 50 auctions will end tonight so I begin putting together my end of auction e-mail template to send winning bidders.
It goes something like this:
*Please read this ENTIRE e-mail*
Congratulations, you won the following auction:
Item Title:
Item #:
Winning Bid:
Your total is $ including shipping.
Wait! Before you continue please read this! As you probably already know from my eBay ads, I am in a huge financial bind and MUST raise $2,000 in the next 22 days.
I have just a few BRAND NEW CD cases that each hold 12 CDs and I would like to offer you 1 for $3.50 or 2 for $6 with no additional shipping charges.
These cases are made of beautifully rugged material and are black in color.
Please consider purchasing 2 of these for only $6. If you don’t need them yourself they make very nice gifts.
Please include a note mentioning how many CD cases you’d like with your payment.
Thanks!
Paypal, Money Orders, Cashier’s/Personal Checks, and Cash (at your own risk) are accepted forms of payment.
Please send Paypal payment to (my e-mail address).
If mailing your payment send to:
(my mailing address)
All checks/money orders must be made out to K & G
Marketing Group.
*Please include item number(s) and return address with payment.*
Payment must be received within 10 days.
I will leave you positive feedback once you leave me the same.
Thanks for bidding!
Karol Gajda
After the auctions end tonight I will promptly send this letter to each winning bidder.
Day 9: Shipping
Ship all items I got paid for since Day 8’s auctions ended.
Day 10: Seminar and eBay Auctions
Continue writing my seminar. My remaining 50 auctions will end today so I will send the same e-mail template from Day 8 to these auction winners.
Day 11-14: Finish Up Seminar
Put the final touches on the seminar and also make trips to the post office to ship any items I have been paid for.
Day 17: E-mails
Send e-mails to all auction winners who have not yet paid me. If I don’t receive Paypal payments within 24 hours I will relist the items.
The e-mail would be very simple:
Hi,
You won my auction for (insert CD title here) 7 days ago. I still haven’t received payment. Please let me know within 24 hours if payment is coming or I will relist this auction.
Thanks!
Karol Gajda
Day 18: Relistings
Assuming I don’t get paid for 5% of my auctions by now I will relist them all as 3 day auctions starting at ONE penny. I need this money NOW, so I don’t have time to deal with a 5 or 7 day auction. Starting the bidding at one penny will hopefully get lots of people bidding right away.
Day 18: Conduct Promotions
Practice my seminar and call my JV partner to have them send a message to their list about the seminar. They will send one message now and one message the day before the seminar.
I will also visit some message boards and help some people. Hopefully they will all allow a signature which I will then include info about the seminar and an autoresponder for more info. *It will be a free autoresponder from GetResponse.com.
A great way to find message boards is to do a search on Google or just ask around. My JV partner probably knows of a few good ones.
Day 19: Practice Seminar/Iron Out More Details
Today the mailing goes out! I’m crossing my fingers.
Day 20: Wooohooo!
It looks like the mailing was very successful!
Out of our 100 available spots we have sold out 50 of them already. That’s $1,950 gross so far. Not bad, but we’re expecting more to trickle in over the next few days.
Day 21-26: Practice Seminar/Handle Any Loose Ends
I will continue practicing my seminar as stated earlier.
I’ll also work on handling any loose ends from my eBay transactions.
Day 27: Send Another Mailing
Send another urgent mailing stating that there are only a few positions left for the seminar.
Day 28: Conduct Seminar
Yesterday’s mailing made it a packed house!
Hopefully everything goes off without a hitch and the seminar is a big success.
Now my own name has been exposed to 100 people in person, in addition to everybody on the Forums and my JV partner’s mailing list.
I will now begin putting together the details of my whirlwind month for an eBook and Web site that will bring me residual income past 30 days.
Day 29: Upsell Seminar Participants
Conduct a 1 day special for an audio CD and PDF transcript of the seminar. I will do the transcription myself and use a FREE PDF converter (http://www.pdf995.com/) to convert my Word file into PDF.
The special price for the CD and PDF transcript will be $19.95 + $5 shipping. Assuming 25 people take me up on the offer, and with the profit per CD being about $19, that will be an additional $475 in my pocket (split 50/50 with my partner)!
I’ll use http://www.audiostrategies.com to record the seminar onto a CD and ship it to me. Cost: $40.
Conclusion
Based on $6 profit per CD, plus $2 profit per CD case I will have made $650 profit from my eBay auctions.
After Paypal fees it would be $18.78/person profit for me from the teleseminar. Total profit from seminar: $1878
Profit from backend CD sales: $237.50.
The cost to conduct the seminar: $20 using http://www.phonebrain.com
Cost to have the Seminar recorded and audio files mailed to me: $40 from http://www.audiostrategies.com
Total Profit: $2,705.50 - Just over of my $2,500 goal, and $705.50 more than I needed to keep my house and pay my bills!
Beyond 30 Days
I will put the finishing touches on this whirlwind month and show people how they themselves can get out of such a bind. I’m still on a tight budget, so I’ll use GoDaddy.com to register a domain name for $8.95 and a cheap Web host such as DayanaHost.com.
Will this sell?
Who knows? And I’ll never know if I don’t try, now will I? :)
Great, but it is not serious job. Part-time job.
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