All UK Wholesale Directories Are A Scam… Aren’t They?

This is a debate which will go on and on until I am in a box six feet underground!

Since I started looking at making a serious living from eBay at the turn of the year I have been plagued by fears that buying into any wholesale directory or list would be plain crazy. It has actually held me back quite a bit. When I did eventually part with some money a few days ago I immediately felt buyers remorse and screamed SCAM at te top of my voice, demanding a refund because I still couldn’t find what I was looking for.

That’s when it hit me.

If you are like me then you will have some sort of idea of the niche you want to sell into on eBay.  Then you start looking for products that you know something about and that actually sell. Once done you just buy the product right?.. WRONG!

Everyone expects that this product will be easy to find, that the wholesalers on your list will have this product and that it will be cheap. This is the completely wrong attitude and it is fundamental in how we are portaying the Wholesale Directories here in the UK.

The reality is that you will probably not find the exact product you are looking for at a price that will make you a profit. What you will have to do is source a similar and possibly better product and sell it appropriately. Sell the quality and the benefits. If you check the prices one specific product sells for over the course of a week in the eBay’s completed listings you will see they vary. It depends on the quality of the listing, the picture and the description of the benefits.

The same product can consistently sell at a higher price in one eBayer’s listing simply because of the way it perceived by the buyer. Bear that in mind.

Anyway, now that I have bought into a UK wholsale directory and I have taken the time to delve a bit, I have actually found one or two little nuggets that will help me turn a profit. There are also a huge list of suppliers I wouldn’t have come across had I listened to the comments being thrown away in the various wholesale forums. Sure there are some dead links but you still see the company details and what they have to offer.

Forums are good but in moderation. People who look on forums usually have something to say. The best thing you can do is take action. It’s the only way to take your business forward. It will work out or it won’t but at least you had conviction…..and that counts for everything!

A Free Website With Free Hosting And A Free Subdomain Get Me To Page One ( Position Two) in Google in Just 2 days!

I tried a little experiment the other day with a Free Website building tool. The results were way beyond what I expected.

I have made a short video for those who doubt you can earn a decent living on-line with little or no cost on advertising and tools.

I have used one or two free website companies in the past but have found them restrictive and a bit “glitchy”. You usually have to sign up to a hosting agreement or buy a www.com domain name but with Yola there is reaaly no need.

Check out the video below to see what I’m talking about.

Build a free website, anyone can do it!

Build a free website, anyone can do it!

Who would like to know just how to get started working from home…Anyone or Everyone?

I think everyone who wants to make a living from home has been in or is now in a state of paralysis simply because they don’t know where to start.

This isn’t because there isn’t enough information on “How To Make Money On-Line” on the internet…..infact, we all know it’s the complete opposite!

Hopefully  I have something for you that will cut through the noise and help clarify things so you at least get moving.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been putting together what was originally going to be a short report. This report kind of grew and I then found myself having a nice book full of  very informative content.  I considered putting it on Clickbank for $47….but everyone is doing that so….

To cut a long story short I decided against this and have some good news for you…………I’m going to give it way for free!

I’m not going to show you a fancy sales page and there are no catches. All you will have to do is complete the form below for immediate access to the product and that is it.

Watch the video below for a sneak preview…

The whole “Make Money On-line” niche has become a bit of a joke these days, so much so that many people who could make money on-line are not even taking the time to look.

You will not get rich quick on-line if you buy into such schemes…they are scams!

Ask yourself this. How did you learn to drive your car? Answer, you took it little by little until you became an expert. Fundamentally though you made a conscious decision to learn to drive!

My point here is this. If you are serious about making money on-line you first have to make the decision to do it, how you’re going to do it and then do it. Just get started. Don’t put it off.

Set yourself a goal of £100 profit in your first month and then get better at it.

Check this short video out for an idea.

Formerly “The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay”.

Well I must confess that I must have had my head up my backside to miss this little gem of an ebook.  Number one on Clickbank for eons and still up there now with over 100,000 copies sold making it the most read eBay income strategy book ever sold!

Mind you, I’ve never been a fan of  “ebooks”!

Bestseller - 100,000 copies sold!

And another thing, I found it by accident when I was doing some ebay research into some new products. I was attracted to it not because of  the title or it’s lame graphics (proof that quality not design counts) but the book’s author…Jim Cockrum.

Some of you will probably not recognise his name but he is very well respected in internet marketing circles. I don’t respect many of the so- called gurus as you know but I came across Jim when I was pottering around the Warrior Forum last year when I paid for a “traffic generation course” he ran for a couple of weeks. He really does know his stuff and you can learn a lot from him.

Anyway, to the book.  Just what does it have that’s driving hungry punters to it in droves?

Well for starters you don’t get any filler or fluff.  It’s not what Jim is about.

If you take the book at your own pace and let some simple instructions sink in, you can master the techniques he uses to set up one sales machine at a time.

“A silent sales machine is a thing of beauty. There are unlimited ways to set one up using eBay as the fuel”.

“Silent sales machines are virtually free to start. They can even be run with little or no maintenance”.

“They can be TURNED ON in as little as 30 minutes in some cases”.

Jim sees eBay differently and that’s what makes his ideas more then cunning. Normally you list your items and they either sell…. or not. However, during the lifetime of that particular listing you may have had dozens or even hundreds of interested buyers looking at your listing. If it was a single item then youwould generate a one-time profit for the sale. Jim will show you how to legally tap into these viewers with the ultimate goal of making them buyers and repeat customers! You have one silent sales machine.

He goes into great detail and basically disects one of his silent sales machines so you can understant exactly how it was put together.

This isn’t about the nuts and bolts of eBay, it’s about funnelling the traffic of eBay to one of your “machines” by using your About Me page in a legal but nevertheless ingenious way. Just think for a minute….this is the true power of his method. Imagine you list your item but the item itself doesn’t sell…however the secondary offer the viewer saw on your About Me page was more appealing and you captured his details or even took an order. Mind boggling but simple…and you got free traffic!

I wish I could see things they way Jim and other gifted people do but I am more like you…I work hard but always get there!

I could go on and on but I’m tired and it’s bedtime. What you’re getting here is a lot of information and a myriad ideas (and some other stuff that Jim will throw in for you) which is very surprising. You also get a no quibble guarantee which is typical of Jim but with 100,000  copies sold and counting I think you’ll find youself in good company.

I can’t recommend this highly enough

Get It Here!

Omnitron 3 in 1 Carbon Monoxide, Gas And Smoke Alarm…

What Price Would YouPut On Your Family’s Safety?

According to The Carbon monoxide And Gas Safety Society carbon monoxide poisoning is responsible for about 300 injuries and 40 deaths per year in the UK.

The total number of deaths caused by accidental carbon monoxide poisoning in the period September 1st 1995 to August 31st 2009 was a staggering 558!

In addition, according to the same source,  in the same period there were 3772 near misses from carbon monoxide poisoning,  2003 of which required hospital treatment with 346 having already lost consciousness.

The one thing that came as a shock to me when studying the statistics was the fact that such a low percentage of CO (Carbon Monoxide) in the air…..just 2%….can kill in 2 minutes!

So what can we all do to protect ourselves from this silent killer?

Well, after doing a lot of reseach I found dozens of products out there aimed at this specific market but having had a scare recently with my boiler (which I posted recently) I wanted to come up with an effective and relatively inexpensive way of protecting my family against smoke , gas and CO (carbon monoxide).  I have 4 smoke alarms in my house which I do test regularly but they are heavy on batteries. I have my boiler serviced at decent intervals but what if I have a leak between times? I didn’t have a carbon monoxide detector at all!

To cover all the bases I could easily have spent in the region of £250 but in the end found a quality product that took care of detecting all three of these silent killers. It is also inexpensive and portable!

Omnitron 3 in 1 carbon monoxide, gas and smoke alarm

The Omnitron 3 in 1 carbon monoxide, gas and smoke alarm is an extraordinary product which isn’t bulky, is ultra portable and is easy to set up.  Just plug it in and you are protected. Instant peace of mind.

One thing I like about the Omnitron  alarm is that it is pleasing to look at. It is triangular in shape with a red light at each of its corners. The lights are marked accordingly so that when the alarm is triggered they flash you will see just what has been detected. You won’t miss the alarm when it sounds either at approx 85 decibels!

In the box you get a 3 pin UK AC adapter which plugs directly into the mains( a 9v back up battery is also supplied), full operating instructions and a wall fixing kit. The alarm is CE Approved, consumes very little power and comes with a 2 – year manufacturers warranty and a sensor life of five years.

At under £40 it won’t break the bank and you can even take it with you in your caravan or on your boat!

John.

A Review of Andrew Reynolds “Cash On Demand” Course.

Until 2005 Andrew Reynolds ran his very successfull company Manhattan Direct Ltd which specialised in selling information products, mailing lists and special “behind closed doors” seminars. The company was extremely profitable and produced well known successful students such as Tim Lowe.

At this time he shut his company down and sent out sales literature to a very large mailing list explaining  that he had developed a system which was making him “over £1,000,000 a year…working just 1-2 hours a day”. This system had only been released to four friends, each of whom had allegedly had tremendous success with it.

One tried the system once and made £621,510.95. The 2nd made just under £1million in 10 months, the 3rd made £1.13 million in 10 weeks and the 4th took over £300,000 working from a small office in his back garden.

In the end the course was offered to anyone subscribing as a free trial for the first month followed by a recurring monthly fee of £27 + £2.95 P&P. The length of the course was never mentioned. It was rumoured to be 12 lessons long but having spoken directly to some of his students at the Entrepreneurs Bootcamp, the course is at least three times as long!

Sceptics would ask why a successful businessman like Reynolds would lay out his entire business on a platter for less than £30 a month? Well, around module 4, subscribers (like myself at the time!) were offered a “quick route” to the end of the course. This offer was for “The Million Pound Private Student Home Study Course” – a full training course with a great deal of material plus licences to several specialist DVDs which you could go out and sell as your own. The cost at the time, a hefty £1,697 +VAT.

Penny dropped yet?

However, a bonus of being a subscriber on Andrew’s course is that all subscribers were offered tickets to an “Entrepreneur’s Boot Camp” in London. This was a 3-day training camp with around 10 well-known internet marketers from the States. People like Ted Nicolas, Stephen Pierce, Armand Morin and Derek Gehl were in attendence.

As you can imagine, any seminar which Andrew organises usually comes with a £3000+ price tag which usually puts a great deal of people off…

However, this time and others so it transpires the whole 3-day event cost just £150 per ticket.

These events have raised an astronomical amount of funds for the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity and subsequently the Make A Wish Foundation from the paltry entrance fees which is great but there were no secrets to be learned at the bootcamp I attended in Brighton. Each of the speakers would give you the hard sell on their product, hinting at what it might contain and then offer you a final discounted price for that day only. I was less than impressed. Others however did buy and Andrew I would imagine would take a percentage of the sales for having organised the whole thing.

Bottom line. Andrew made (and continues to make) money. The charity scored and Andrew was the good guy.

Me? I gave £150 to charity which I have no qualms with but the Boot Camp was a waste of time for those seeking information. The course itself up until part five offered nothing but fluff fro me personally and others over a year into the course were not impressed either.

I’m sure that those who want to kickstart their homebased businesses could learn from Andrew as he is a money making phenomenon but only by taking the direct route – by attending one of his famous expensive seminars. For the people who need it most I believe the course has missed the mark.

John.

How Amazon And eBay Are Your Friends!

Bono captured the reality of todays fast – paced world when he said…

“I can see the Future…It’s getting away from me…I can see it’s tail – lights glowing”

When I look back to the end of 2008 I can remember doing my usual last minute Christmas shop on the high street, being jossled and bumped to distraction whilst feeling the whole thing was farcical.

Jump forward to last December and there I was where I am now…typing away on  my laptop,  but then I was ordering my Christmas presents on – line.

More of us are doing it,  so much so that it is now the norm rather than the exception.

Over the last couple of years I’ve gotten used to doing almost everything on – line and a lot of the old barriers have been eroded…especially regards the fear of  internet fraud. As yet I have never had a problem…( famous last words)! but common sense will always be on your side.

Pricing on-line goods is really easy these days without the need for comparison websites (which rarely give you the best deals anyway…they’re set up by middlemen to take commissions from lazy shoppers)!

That’s where you and I come in. There is easy money to be had out there. I’ve used Amazon and eBay as examples but there are many other sites like Play.com or Offer Of The Day.co.uk where comparing prices can net you a nice little income.

Whereas eBay shoppers drive a hard bargain, Amazon shoppers tend to be more affluent and will tend to pay more for the same product rather than waiting for an aution to finish. We don’t live in a classless society!

For some the internet is still a little bit new and they just aren’t as well equipped to get the keanest prices for their new camcorder or digital camera. For them if the first price they see beats the high street, then that’s good enough to go ahead and purchase.

Resellers who are new to the eBay game will also struggle because typing in “combined smoke alarm wholesale” will bring up nothing but a list of middlemen…with prices higher than those found on eBay! Where does he go now?

Simple, buy on eBay for the lowest price and sell via Amazon or Play.com or at your local market (if you have the necessary licence of course).

Better still, why not become an affiliate for all of the above and set up your own review store of  items you actually use in the household or at play. You use them…how do they rate?…The possibilities are endless.

Perhaps you would like to become an ebay Power seller? Then Amanda O’Brien’s  “The £2500 Per Week eBay Powersellers Secrets”  book  I reviewed earlier this month may be the thing to spur you into action.

Click  here to read my review

The £2500 Per Week eBay Powersellers Secrets

Gambling: Steer Clear

Over the last couple of months I have been receiving lots of money- making ideas from the type of internet marketers I thought knew better, that is to say people for whom I had at least some modicum of respect!

Genuine money making ideas are great but when well respected website owners start pushing products and ideas that involve any sort of gambling or sports betting (lay betting) in one instance then I really begin to question the credibility of the individuals involved.

I just won’t pay for expertise when it involves gambling on the outcome of, say a horse race or a football game. My approach to anything in life is measured ansd is not thrown to the wind.

One such system doing the rounds just now is the Cash 1234 System which basically involves you signing up to a list of casinos (kindly supplied by the product owner in order that he gets paid in affiliate earnings) and gambling on the martingale system to build profits before moving on to other gash generating systems!

It is clever in that you pay a measely ten dollars or so for the privelige so people with “what the hell” attitude will sign up and lose some money along the way….DON’T BE ONE OF THEM!

There are genuine products to HELP you out there but don’t trip up along the way.

John

MyInternetBusiness : A Review

If there is one thing that has remained constant in my lifetime it is this :

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

I would even take this further by suggesting that the rich are openly flaunting their wealth in a bid to attract the poor to them…and take their money!

I’ll be honest here…I actually bought into MyInternetBusiness at the beginning of 2009. The web pages were slick and the promos even slicker. What seemed to be on offer seemed too good to miss. The reality wasn’t.

Bottom line is, the people who are at the forefront in MIB are doing very well for themselves. Of that there is no question. But, and this is a big but, those who are being suckered in by the hype are finding out that only certain people will manage in this business…those who have large amounts of disposable income to spend on marketing!

In essence you buy MyInternetBusiness at a level you feel comfortable with. You will also have to pay a monthly fee for hosting etc which isn’t cheap.

You are given a back office which will show you how to grow your own business with tutorials which can be found readily (with superior content and quality in my opinion) for free on-line. The catalogue of ebooks you can sell can also mostly be found on the internet so there isn’t much to be gained here either.

I managed to get my videos and websites and blog running very well and had high rankings in the search engines, all on a low budget or for free but the bottom line is THESE TECHNIQUES DO NOT WORK!

These techniques are good for other niches but in order to get targeted traffic for a high ticket item such as MyInternetBusiness, the people raking in the majority of leads and converting them are the ones who are able to pay out thousands-of-pounds-per-month on pay-per-click and display advertising.

By the way, they are the self proclaimed mentors who are not supposed to disclose their earnings but blatantly do and by doing so attract more sheep to their flock!

Even as part of a co-op you will not succeed as your turn won’t come around until you have exhausted your cash pot.

There is nothing new here. You make money by signing people up to MyInternetBusiness….and that my friend is very difficult and costly to do. Avoid.

Of course here at MarketArmed I am just a reviewer with an opinion but I am honest and genuinely want to help you on your way to financial independence.

I am in no way trying to undermine MyinternetBusiness, I am expressing my opinion having been involved with them.

You are responsible for your own choices.

Best regards

John