Previously shipping and handling options were adressed and explained when it came to merchandise delivery in yesterday’s post. But there was an important discussion left out in my personal belief from past experience that you should be aware of. This is none other than the importance of tracking your items when it comes to the popular paying method called Paypal on eBay transactions that are of very high value or limited.

When it comes to merchant accounts that accept Visa, Mastercard, AMEX and electronic checks Paypal is indeed one of the most challenging payment gateways for sellers when it comes to recovering funds if a buyer escalates a dispute or a chargeback is issued when it comes to eBay. If you’re an eBay seller and you have sent an item to a customer without some sort of confirmation of delivery, nonetheless tracking, you’re surely going to have challenging situation with paypal when it comes to eBay even if you’re covered in their seller protection policy of up to $1,000 as described by them if a customer who received their item as far delivery confirmation goes confirms. While buyers are covered for most of their purchases, you as the seller must assure yourself of shipping only to the confirmed address in the paypal account, have your address confirmed and verified in order to be protected according to Paypal.

But here is where the interesting part takes place. When it comes to Paypal you must assure yourself of sending merchandise that can be traced and verify with address AND name. Paypal only allows you to have two paypal accounts, a Business and Premier account, Personal and Business or Premier and Personal account. This rules of paypal buyer protection apply only in the Premier and Business account as explained previously to me when challenging situation needed my follow-up. It can be great if you’ve any of these two accounts, but what happens if you shipped an item with delivery confirmation only?

Delivery confirmation when it comes to a chargeback or buyer protection reversal means the benefit of the doubt will usually (IF NOT ALWAYS) to the buyer of the item when it comes to eBay.com! Meaning and I reiterate MEANING, that if the buyers received his item perfectly as described and as usual he can STILL ask for his or her money back and stay with the merchandise he original paid for in the first place. What does this mean in the long run? Long hours of international or long distance calls in your end if this issue (rarely happens, usually around 1% around 1,000 orders) happens. Delivery confirmation as explained in the previous post means item delivered to the address in the recipient label area, that’s it.

Will Paypal give priority to a seller offering items on eBay when it comes to paid funds and lost packages? My answer, be VERY careful how you handle high ticket items or items that you no longer have and were already delivered according to the delivery confirmation ticket number by USPS. If the buyer says I din’t receive the product/product never arrived/empty box without anything in it and escalates the dispute to Paypal the seller will MOST LIKELY have a payment reversal in his/her Paypal account or a negative balance. Be it if it was for $10 or for $600.00!

That’s why it pays to send high ticket items or products that you no longer have in stock with at least tracking information and not with delivery confirmation, especially if you ship internationally consistently. That is, Express Mail, Global Express Mail (for international shipments) as they already have tracking and insurance up to $100 and First Class or Priority Mail with registered mail. Their is proof of who signs the package/item you sent and their is less likely of fraud from a customer perspective. Meaning, less possibilities of a chargeback or reversal from paypal when it comes to eBay transactions. While items that arrive as described to the recipient are usually a successful transaction in your eBay feedback account, their are these advance and expert buyers that know this little dirty tricks when it comes to eBay transactions. When it comes to physical/tangible transactions on eBay, Paypal covers buyers who QUALIFY for protection. Outside of eBay it’s a different story.

Weight your options as far shipping and handling goes. Most of the times you shouldn’t have issues or difficulties when items arrive, which is close to 98.5% of the items as far USPS statistically reports. It’s always good to know facts about how you should handle items of high value or limited items in case you want to assure yourself close to 99% in certainty that everything would go smoothly for both the buyers and your Paypal account. Still Paypal is my number one prefered merchant as I hardly have issues with any of my two accounts.

Be safe and protect yourself when it comes to eBay, it pays to do so! Will be talking about the role “USPS” insurance plays in your eBay transactions from my experience alone once again in my next post. Insurance is surely another great option, so do be sure to read how it plays as a selling point of view.

Joaquin

Shipping USPS is definitely worth it and cost-effective when you want the customer to save more and leave any of the packages immediately on any mail center. The disadvantages with low shipping and handling with services like Media Mail, Parcel Post and First Class is that once the buyers buys he expects to receive the package in as little as 5-7 days.

If its media mail the post office has estimates that packages can arrive between 2-4 weeks have elapse! Here at Puerto Rico I’ve received packages from media mail that have delayed 5 weeks to arrive while I have others through the cheap economic option of media mail arrived in as little as 5 days.

Reality is you never know, especially if it’s overseas and it depends on package volume and in timing. But either way, estimates are from 2-30 business days with media mail.  The broader you explain the more likely your customers will end upgrading to a faster service you may be offering.

Situation being, we all want to save money but when most of us pay we expect to receive our packages fast, especially if your selling in any of the popular auction sites and your feedback rating is 100%. If you’re going to sell accessories, games, guides or even books of the item you can think of for a profit give the customer the option to upgrade to priority mail and express mail.

The great percentage of eBay buyers shop for comfortable convenience and affordability, but there are others that only buy online for comfort reasons and avoid retail stores. Others shop online as many worldwide countries don’t have particular items for sale in their country so they at auction sites and in online stores. It’s not uncommon to have merchandise shipped next day for accessory items that weight less than 14onz.

Another detail to consider at all times is shipping with delivery confirmation or tracking information at least. With priority mail, media mail packages are popular examples of what can be shipped with delivery confirmation. Remember that delivery confirmation is not evidence of receipt! Very important so the nightmare does not occur to you too!

Post mail officers are not obligated to knock on your door when you’re expecting a package with delivery confirmation. In layman terms (as it’s very important before paypal ask you for proof), delivery confirmation is just proof of an envelope or a package being delivered to the address shown on the label.

That’s it, nothing else! But 99% of the time you would not have negative situations with customers complaining, most of the time they will just ask you for some sort of tracking information and that’s it. I highly recommend software like Auctiva for many automatic features that allow you the ease and delivery of customer receipt and order confirmation.

In the other hand do know that tracking information the additional benefit that customers have to sign the package in order to receive the package. Registered mail is a form of tracking and the service of Express Mail already has the benefit of tracking already in the minimum fee.

So you can see on the internet with Express Mail service who actually sign the package and you’ll get evidence of signature receipt by first class mail back to you if you selected registered mail. While Registered Mail and Express Mail delivery are not usually used for items with a cost of $100 or less, do expect to use one of the two shipping options when you are concerned about merchandise delivery or your auction feedback being 98% or higher. I will provide an example of why it’s important to have at least delivery confirmation or tracking information for every package you ship in the next 24hrs.

It is often said that greed is good. It usually is, however, my finding and studies are quite different than traditional thoughts. Most often our thinking often goes; the more we buy, the happier we get and the more satisfied we become. However, through my handful of experiments I have also found that this isn’t as truthful as society beautifully portrays.

When we are in a full time job most of the time spending consistently and getting in debt equals more time to pay credit cards, loans, mortgages, and many others to reach one of the so-called American Dreams of financially independence. Think about it, a 16% interest rate out of a simple $1,000 debt from a credit card means around $200.00 or more in profit anually for a credit card company. Pay your credit cards minimum fee every month, and you may find getting debt free and financially independent from a job a dream.

From personal experiences in my early 20’s, it was surely difficult to get out of debt with minimum wages in P.R or in other internship in the US! Short term pleasures could very well mean long term expenses if you keep yourself in a low paying job. Most importantly if you are self-employed and things go smoothly, spending can surely grow in the thousands if you let it.

A tip-bid that has worked marvolously since then, take notes of your spending. If you love to buy and are a little compulsive about getting everything our advertising god’s invent as the latest solution for our daily ’supposed’ improvements, take notes and ask yourself if you really need the item or what you intend to purchase. Most often, writing the item and the price tag in a notepad will make you well aware that a $20 purchase here, $80 purchase there on things that you don’t need for your daily schedules might actually save you money to start a business and to get closer to financially independence. Sure, the planning in paying off debt by a tight deadline schedules must be done but you should get the picture.

Buy what is neccessary, dump items that are unnecessary and forget about “getting more” is better while having a 9-5pm job. Most likely it won’t be as you’ll grow in debt and would most need to stay more time (as in years) to break even or pay most of your debts that don’t allow much room for a breath.

Plan and execute a debt reduction regimen from monthly expenses, and jot down everything that you purchase. You’ll grow more concious and increase your response to getting closer to financially independence and getting out of debt.

Quick tip: Do you need to pay $190.00+ monthly for cable TV when DishNetwork starts at $35 and even lower in some states?

Bring a piece of paper out, start thinking about your expenses and wiping out monthly expenses intelligently without jeoperdizing your family needs. You’ll see how fast you can grow out of debt if you really put your mind into it and if you want. It truly is that simple once you’ve made the tough and painful first decision. Been there done that quite enough times.

Hopes this helps a lot of you@!

Joaquin

Are you one of the persons that believe that more is better? For many, many years (including myself) the thought that “more” defined in many ways happiness, receiving more satisfaction and in fact enjoying life in improved ways were to play a big role and key in our future.

Interesting enough, here is what having “more” usually means. Having “more” for many people equals, having more money. Having more to spend on ourselves and our loved ones, either for satisfaction or for plainly to spoil ourselves and reward ourselves to feel good and even better.

If we have a good car, we need to have, perhaps, a sexier car next time. Forget the Toyota Corolla, I want a Lexus next time. Tamara has a great line of cloth, she works the 9-5pm traditional life, nothing surprising. After all, it’shealthy to gain experience and meet new people. Her paycheck comes by-weekly. What does she does? She spends 20% of her income in cloth and top of the line outfits to suit the store fashion style and demands to keep the job. She pays her car and after three years of hard work and great overall work she gets promoted to assistant manager. She buys the wanted Lexus!

After a few years Tamara starts to notice she has her young, fine looking and top producing manager as a boss. Tamara ask her in a friendly conversation about the manager’s goals with the company and the manager says; “I’m staying here until this company doesn’t pulls a penny more, it’s good as you know girl!” Tamara smiles and subconciously shouts to herself “bad news!”  I either stay here or start looking for more work to improve and get myself “more” the next time.

Well, Tamara’s life is a regular case here at Puerto Rico and up in the states. Some work their jobs satisfied of their accomplishment, however, others see them as a way of having “more” and as necessary. Most often, when responsabilities of mortgage, bills, loans, cars and all the likes reunite in statements, it turns out that more is actually not better if keeping the routine.

Sure, we can save, save and save. But the more we want more, more and more as an employed person - the more a person has to work in hours. The less amount of vacation he should share and the more overtimes he would need to do in order to break even and have a little some for him or her as reward.

Which leads this for a next discussion. Is getting more better, for your financial independence?

Joaquin

Online marketing, Real Estate, job, passive income, etc, etc…they all surely own the same principle for success. Consistency. I definitely loved the way an olympic gold medal did it. The United States surely have a dream team. The only thing they needed where the results.

Hope you share a similar love for sports the way I do. I mean just “Wow!” Check this out and consider reading all his video while they are still alive on nbcolympics.com. This is the guy I’m talking about…

None other than Michael Phelps. With only 22 years of age. Big history already for him, olympic time.

He clearly said; “Too Look at Him and say I Want To Do This!” We all need a role model to have a better view of what we want, clearly an opinion. But it’s just the simplest way, and then you just move to your plan once you’re secured when applied to business. Michael Phelps started with an incredible amount of training, had a physical advantage and definitely had the consistency.

Boom 8 medals straight. The beauty in consistency and the training are my two greatest influential conclusions. Know I’m hooked with the olympics, enjoy the video and watch more live directly from NBC.

Catch you later…

Joaquin

For the last week it has been quite a pain, but quite interesting to see different set of behavior results. For the last week, I have woken up at around 5:00am to 6:00am. The difference in productivity from just a handful set of changes can be quite interesting in energy and consistency.

Here’s what I have been doing to work on my projects more effectively, it surely should help you fasten a seat belt in your office and put sped in overdrive consistency. While it may different for many, obvious reasons are health, routine and day schedule responsabilities I surely know this routine could surely work if you let it no matter if you are working your business part-time or full-time.

Simple Routine: (Mix it Up Bi-Weekly or Weekly as your likes)

5:00am : TASTY coffee or Tea. Small read of local newspaper.

5:45am: Get yourself into that CAR! Hit the gym for high intensity training; 45-50 minutes.

7:00am: Take a shower and immediate BIG breakfast. (Goodmorning honey! or some immediate connection with a good song on YouTube to keep morning momentum)

7:45am: Have your day goals and schedules printed on a notepad, dashboard or your PDA -which is ever is useful to you. Big bottle of water next to you.

8:00am: WORK! (Have FUN!)

This schedule has been very useful for me, so hopefully you might try it anytime soon to see your results on a period of a week. The first 3 days is just warm up and getting your body accustom to constant minor moods of sleeplessness. Once you do it a fourth day in a row, note the differences that it might produce on you. If you wake up at such time, wake up a bit earlier and consider a different routine with an exercise regimen. No gym, how about your balcony? How about a treadmill at home?

Whatever it can save you time and at least confuse your muscles should do great. It’s working nicely, try it!

Joaquin

As I study more and more competitors, few of my competitors in numerous market use the short term solution for acquiring immediate traffic to their website. The e-commerce industry also calls this phenomenom “Black Hat” marketing. Overall, using black hat marketing can also be assimilated to the use of steroids. Steroids to cheat and beat competitors in search engine rankings.

is it intelligent to use steroids on the internet? You decide. But the reality is that they both have there peculiar positive results. Using the correct legit way of achieving high ranking results on Google, Yahoo and MSN through the honest, ethical and moral way according to tradition is using white hat techniques.

This is the way my commercial sites are all used, including videogamesmystery.com as you may have notice. The interesting situation is when you receive competitors that use black hat techniques to cheat the search engines from your own hard work. It happens, most often the results are short term Google results once you have discovered all their techniques and how they are cheating the search engines to steal traffic from every other commercial site that is competing the right way.

But here is the good part, once you know something is wrong on how your competitor behavior on search queries has been over a period of a few moths, don’t care to report him - study the website. Don’t bother reporting it to Google or Yahoo without knowing how the site is performing under the lazy marketing.

Why? So you may be able to do in other niches. Of course, you’ll have to study quite a few hours and understand a few concepts for getting everything in grasp, however, with websites that you might be able to re-direct traffic to your main central website - you don’t care of losing the website. By then you had received 1,000’s of visitors and sold numerous items.

Here is a technique I used to discover few of this sites. Check regular link exchange directories. Link exchange directories is where most sites exchange links with other website in order to gather search engine popularity. Now, once you have seen how regular link exhanges are install this particular firefox add on:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

Once you have installed it. Substitute the user agent of your browser and set the user agent to Googlebot/2.1 . You’ll be able to see it through googlebot eyes. Surprise, no outgoing links. Only links pointing to it. Furthermore, the site has so many footprints that I am shocked to see Google not responding and banning the website. Sweet? For the owner indeed. Not for all the others that are doing the right things.

On the short term if you know how to eliminate footprints, that is any associated sites in the same server, change your I.P address or have a unique I.P for such site and can fly under the radar under keywords that are not popular..it’s up to you to practice it. However, it’s not the way to earn a living from the internet…there are other ease ways to cloak but are way to expensive. These is the easiest and most cheapest way to get traffic in the short term.

You get to judge if you want to use it for your wholesale niche site or not.

Joaquin

What of the best thing your body can surely have is sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep! When you have slept for the recommended dose of 8 hours, your days are usually better in many ways. At least in my end, waking up at 8:00am will do it. However, if you’re into improving a bit more by the day consider this tips as I surely did them today(Sunday!) and it once again worked marvelously.

Study your sleeping patterns. Over here in island Puerto Rico in my early 20’s I remember going to bet very late at night, very late. It usually means 1:00am to 2:00am. Now can you imagine a morning schedule of waking up at 11:00am? Lucky me? Not so. Here’s what I have found so far, the insights in the learning process have been quite insightful.

Regular business days in Puerto Rico usually start at 8:00am. That’s when morning traffic is still at mid-levels as people are already working. Between 8:00am and around 10:30am the momentum of the day is very slow. People are getting paid by the hour, getting paid to do their work; however, the peak of the day hasn’t started yet.

We could easily know that by studying when the PHONE starts ringing. You start receiving calls to your home about credit card offers, business associates start calling you to check on updates about current project and most importantly your mind is still cozy with it’s own internal environment so bit by bit it can wake up completely and activate itself into its full capacity.

What I have done that has helped me now for the last week is fighting with my brain in order to wake up at 5:00am. The last time I had to do that was on my way to the airport. It can be a bit difficult if you don’t have to wake up early in the morning, however, once you do so you not only enjoy your day more - your energy is usually at its peak. Now, here’s a simple yet basic calculation in words.

If at least in Puerto Rico, people are either on traffic or in combat for full active capacity from 8am to 10:30am. The time when most people are either still in a sleeping comma(i passed through those many times), and when quietness(peace) is present.

What do you think is the best time, to get yourself constant productivity peaks? By my logic, it would be between 8:00am to 10:30am! Hence, if your days productivity is only 2 hours on average I then think it would be suggestible that anyone that finds out they have 2 hours of major productive work per day, work in the most productive priorities between 8:00am to 10:30am. This of course can be adjusted for your priorities and given situation.

What can you do to have a peak through a working day? My findings. Give your mind at least 2 hours before starting ANY type of work in the early morning; which generally means, allowing yourself a space of two early hours of breakfast, reading newsworthy material and/or having a nice conversation with your wife. Purpose of it; the more you know yourself, the more perfection in control you gather for improving workload through the day.

Most importantly, how can you wake up at 5:00am or 6:00am of the morning to enjoy my day and become more productive? Go figure, imagine. It was my third question. Once I knew the “what” and “why”, the “how-to” was supposed to be a bit of a fight. Of course, at least on my end.

Here is what I did and it worked after studying my own patterns. (Telling you a weakness boo for the marketer!) Ok seriously, go to sleep ONLY when you feel like sleeping, in other words when you feel those sleeping hormones can make you sleep once you catch a book and drop t in less than a 3 minute blink. That’s surely the first step.

Then go to sleep consistently no matter how late at night you get into that queen size, king side usual bed of yours. How this will work if you will still be sleepy if you wake early morning and only sleep 2-3 hours the next day? Wake up at the same time the next no matter if you went to bed at 3:00am the last day. The word consistency here means that through days your body will assimilate a pattern through at least 4-5 days of practice and going to bed before 11:00pm will be possible, therefore, 5:00am or 6:00am will become more easier and actively progressive through your given day.

It has worked wonders for me when I have wanted to do it and it could surely could work for you to. Heck, now I know for sure why many guys that aren’t in the bodybuilding industry need to use steroids. The quickest solution is cheating, the most difficult solution is working out a nutritional regimen day and night to acquire yourself a physical shape(in mind and body) that is healthy. Most people aren’t willing to do that, but I am sure that the faster you get on with it, the better.

Joaquin

“Ha… this guy is delusional” Oh, perhaps this might just be a more appropriate reaction: ” What kind of medication is Joaquin!” Well, I am going to tell you something that is a fact and not a form of controversy or an opinion as realism adjourned to probably you to. If not, perhaps you’ll be at such position soon.

Can someone retire at age 26? Today, August 26, 2008 I consider myself completely retired of any task that has the traditional and petulant description of a JOB! You may also be retired and you may not know it. Reason why being, a job is something that you have to do when you don’t know what else to do in order to acquire something. Something that you consider a duty,therefore, is generalize in most cultures by there tradition as slavery. Hey…it was two decades in the personal making. Been there, passed that.

One task I highly dislike was the task of passing a mop every single week for a period of time, and hey don’t tell me that you hear that often from a male. Either way it was true, cleaning eliminated HOURS of my productive and energetic time on my businesses. So what I did? I eliminated it. Retired the task.

You have the opportunity to plan and do the exact same thing. Even if you owe hundreds of thousands of dollars, there are a gigantic amount of expenses you can reduce that are highly unnecessary and get closer to retirement in order to pursue greater purposes. Think about, retirement isn’t “doing nothing!”

Retirement is doing the things you love to do them, when you want to do them. Personally, I have already sold 2 businesses, therefore, I would have greater time to pursue tasks that I love doing. Selling wholesale merchandise and teaching wholesale being one of them.

In the past years I felt even more motivated to write this comments do to the fact that complete discovery has been attained in what is the major essence of work, what is work and what purpose someone can have as an online small business entrepreneur. Once you have an employee in a specific task for technicality (as example) and for any other task you dislike, the only thing you’ll have left is FUN!

Now fun as you know isn’t slavery. Fun means Joy. Check this guy series out…

Now, a guy at peace and with challenges I believe. Hope keeps growing. Now, if you can somehow hate what you do and can get out of it, what are you waiting for? If you wait to long, careful, it might be too late. If you’re in heavy debt, with confidence, it’s not the end of the world. Eliminate unnecessary things that you don’t need? Realistically, do you need a BMW, Mercedes or a luxury car?

Do you need to pay almost $200.00 when the opportunity of paying Dish $25 will get you what most people need to hear? If cutting down unnecessary expenses isn’t enough, read my book again. Consider getting more educated in the wholesale business from this blog and going to seminars. Do not buy more expenses, and most importantly - consider not acquiring what you should not get that will get you in more financial long term responsibilities and evidently, anyone you know that follows can retire. I sold businesses, eliminated jobs that I disliked and tasks that were hateful by preparing myself. Now why can’t you or a fellow friend of yours can’t?

Critics? Jealousy? Becoming hated? If you retire, tell them to get in line. Anyone can do it. Watch that guy surely speaks from the heart.

Joaquin

Reflecting from past experiences against one of the emails I received from a customer: “What’s the best moment to start doing business online?” I had continued flashbacks on such fascinating edifying point from his curiosity thought. His point truly hold me enough memories back when I started taking the Internet seriously.

Back in the days that the enthusiasm of internet marketing started heating up to my days of being in love with what e-commerce and anything surroundings business online could do back in late 2004. By experience; when is the moment to start a business?

The moment to start a business is by experience is, when you’re truly enthusiastic of moving on with what could be a better opportunity. When you have supplied enough confidence to say “Enough.” Most commonly, when you have carefully planned “what are you going to do” and “how are you going to survive or perhaps live from such new projects”

Problem being even from experience, perhaps, for you too. If your surroundings, and by surroundings I mean all the key and loving people that surround are in most parts, workaholics for enriching someone else pocket - how are you securely going to decide if it’s time to quit and resign your job?

Most commonly, from experience…never. Never if you are awaiting someone else approval. You’ve to decide that for yourself. Sure, by logic, you should expect to plan before quitting a job that is maintaining 2 young, little boys that have medical needs. To minimize the risk, you should expect to have some savings for AT LEAST, 6 months if wanting to offer wholesale merchandise as a career.

Most importantly, you should communicate and deliver your plan to your spouse before even expecting to resign and quit any kind of income that provides to those who need you must. Selling merchandise can surely make you a living, heck, I am even going to address you two groups of guys who started a company called “MyWeddingFavors” and that had made millions from just the site alone.

Sure, the site din’t make a million dollars the first year. But at first, it may be a possibility that you may start surviving. Later on you start living and buying toys here and there (who doesn’t want to!) and perhaps ultimately as an option…you get to truly enjoy yourself with ultra financial success. None of us need explanation for it. Financially, these guys have had greater success than me and many of us. Heck, they have too if they live in California. Here in Puerto Rico few thousands dollars and you live, pretty well.

Just go check their site and see for yourself. The site obviously is nice and beautiful for their market. They are now the leader in wedding details, that you’ll not get shocked of answering “reason why” in your mind. Here’s the great site. And hey, getting married soon…think of these sites for buying or even great ideas. It’s worth to see a million dollar sub-niche site…

http://www.myweddingfavors.com/

Now that’s beauty indeed, my wife wants to build one just like that one now. Of course, you may imagine my reply… “NOOOOOOOOOO HONEYYYY….AT LEAST…..NOT FOR NOW!” But of course I did liked the ideas that came with it and we were both happy. Hint, do the same to your spouse if you’re yet not married and see what happens.

Disregard the last message if you feel the need. Keep yourself hooked.

All the best,

Joaquin