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Selling on Trade Me: Business or Hobby? February 3, 2010

Posted by Michael Carney in : auctions , add a comment

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Spending too much time on Trade Me? Here are ten ways to tell if your flirtation with Trade Me is turning into a serious business — and, if you are indeed in that position, ten things you should know to make that business soar.
BUSINESS OR HOBBY – DOES IT MATTER?
If you’re running a business, your business expenses are deductible but you have to pay tax on your income. If it’s a hobby, you can’t deduct any expenses but then you don’t have to pay tax on your sales either.
Inland Revenue’s point of view, paraphrasing its published advice on the subject: the same rules apply, whether you’re selling on Trade Me or offline. If you sell stuff you don’t want or need any more, there are usually no tax consequences. However, if you sell things on a regular basis you might be regarded as being in business and consequently should declare the sales for income-tax purposes.
THE TEN TELL-TALE SIGNS THAT YOU’RE RUNNING A BUSINESS ON TRADE ME
As a general rule you’ll be considered to be in business (and should declare and pay tax on your Trade Me sales) if:
1. You acquired your products with the purpose of onselling them
OR
2.Your intention is to make a profit from your selling activities
OR
3. If your business involves dealing in such products
Note the ‘or’ — any one of these conditions is enough to lead to the conclusion that you’re running a business on Trade Me. A key factor that Inland Revenue will consider when evaluating your case is how often or how regularly you’re selling on Trade Me. A high feedback count in a short period of time may be good for business — but it’s also a good indicator that you’re actually running a business.
Business or hobby — it’s one of the ‘grey areas’ of tax law. Some of the other issues that Inland Revenue (and the courts) consider if they need to establish whether an operation is hobby or business are:
4. Scale of operations
If it’s relatively large-scale, it’s probably a business. If it’s small-time, it could be a hobby.
5. Volume transactions
Many sales make business work. Just a few sales suggest a hobbyist (or a really lousy businessperson).
6. Commitment of time, money and effort
If you don’t have a life any more, it’s a business. If you’re only occasionally engaged in Trade Me-selling, hobby status seems likely.
7. Frequency of sales
Regular = business; occasional = possible hobby.
8. Financial results
Large sums of money changing hands, whether profitably or not, indicate a probable business venture. Small dollar values suggest you aren’t very good at this, and if it’s not just a hobby then maybe it should be.
9. Type of activity
If you’re dependent on Trade Me for your livelihood, tick business. If it’s mostly for fun, tick obsessed.
10. Buttoned down
Do you have systems and processes set up for your Trade Me efforts? Quacks like a business to us. Or are your operations loose as a goose? Then you’re either feeding a hobby or setting yourself up for a major business quack-up.

Spending too much time on Trade Me? Here are ten ways to tell if your flirtation with Trade Me is turning into a serious business — and, if you are indeed in that position, ten other things you should know to help make that business soar.

BUSINESS OR HOBBY – DOES IT MATTER?

If you’re running a business, your business expenses are deductible but you have to pay tax on your income. If it’s a hobby, you can’t deduct any expenses but then you don’t have to pay tax on your sales either.

Inland Revenue’s point of view, paraphrasing its published advice on the subject: the same rules apply, whether you’re selling on Trade Me or offline. If you sell stuff you don’t want or need any more, there are usually no tax consequences. However, if you sell things on a regular basis you might be regarded as being in business and consequently should declare the sales for income-tax purposes.

THE TEN TELL-TALE SIGNS THAT YOU’RE RUNNING A BUSINESS ON TRADE ME

As a general rule you’ll be considered to be in business (and should declare and pay tax on your Trade Me sales) if:

1. You acquired your products with the purpose of onselling them

OR

2.Your intention is to make a profit from your selling activities

OR

3. If your business involves dealing in such products

Note the ‘OR’ — any one of these conditions is enough to lead to the conclusion that you’re running a business on Trade Me. A key factor that Inland Revenue will consider when evaluating your case is how often or how regularly you’re selling on Trade Me. A high feedback count in a short period of time may be good for business — but it’s also a good indicator that you’re actually running a business.

Business or hobby — it’s one of the ‘grey areas’ of tax law. Some of the other issues that Inland Revenue (and the courts) consider if they need to establish whether an operation is hobby or business are:

4. Scale of operations

If it’s relatively large-scale, it’s probably a business. If it’s small-time, it could be a hobby.

5. Volume transactions

Many sales make business work. Just a few sales suggest a hobbyist (or a really lousy businessperson).

6. Commitment of time, money and effort

If you don’t have a life any more, it’s a business. If you’re only occasionally engaged in Trade Me-selling, hobby status seems likely.

7. Frequency of sales

Regular = business; occasional = possible hobby.

8. Financial results

Large sums of money changing hands, whether profitably or not, indicate a probable business venture. Small dollar values suggest you aren’t very good at this, and if it’s not just a hobby then maybe it should be.

9. Type of activity

If you’re dependent on Trade Me for your livelihood, tick business. If it’s mostly for fun, tick obsessed.

10. Buttoned down

Do you have systems and processes set up for your Trade Me efforts? Quacks like a business to us. Or are your operations loose as a goose? Then you’re either feeding a hobby or setting yourself up for a major business quack-up.

CONGRATULATIONS, IT’S A BUSINESS!

So your operation fits one or more of the Ten criteria above? Well done! Time to get even more serious about doing business on the site. Here’s another top ten list for your collection, this time of  10 key points to improve the prospects for your Trade Me offerings:

1. There are four wholesale levels when it comes to manufactured products: manufacturer, importer, distributor and intermediary. The further up the chain you have to buy, the harder it is to make money when you sell. Try to get as close as possible to the original manufacturer of a product. How? If you see a product you think would be a profitable seller on Trade Me, check the markings on the product and/or the packaging for point of origin. Then pick up the phone, ask for sales and start talking likely volumes. At the very least they’ll point you in the direction of the nearest importer or distributor.

2. Don’t be an early adopter. Never buy new or soon-to-be-introduced products unless you’re absolutely certain they’ll sell on Trade Me (based on historical results for similar products).

3. Don’t buy fad products, unless you buy at bargain-basement prices direct from the manufacturer or importer and you’re buying right at the height of the fad (which, frankly, is unlikely).

4. All products have life cycles. First, they’re launched, full of hope and excitement. Ultra-hot new products, where demand exceeds supply, can sell on Trade Me for a premium — if you’re able to find a dependable product supply source and can get in when demand is at its peak. (Guess wrong about a product’s popularity, however, and you’re cooked. Anyone want to buy a Catwoman plastic toy — we’ve still got a few hundred left?)

5. Not all products survive the launch phase. But those that do tend to become established then turn into a steady seller at retail. During this phase you’re unlikely to match the buying power of the large retail chains, so it’s not a good time to sell this product on Trade Me (except for pre-owned versions bought for a song and resold at highly discounted prices).

6. In the next phase of the product life cycle, sales begin to dip as customers move on to the next big thing. Retailers will start clearing stock at discounted prices — but not at enough of a discount to make it worth your while buying up product. Once again, this is a poor time to buy for resale on Trade Me.

7. Finally, the products fall into the liquidation phase, flogged off for pennies in the dollar. This is when you’ll be able to make a decent profit — so long as the product still has inherent appeal for potential purchasers.

8. Don’t buy products in volumes that represent more than 10% of the total quantities available on Trade Me. You won’t corner the market; you’ll just take a bath.

9. Don’t buy a product if there are more than 10 competitors selling the exact same thing on Trade Me.

10. Never buy a liquidation or end-of-line item unless it carries a well-known brand name.

For a whole lot more about running a business on Trade Me, may we direct you to Chapter Seventeen of Trade Me Success Secrets, available through our Trade Me Store.

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Making Money Online December 1, 2009

Posted by Michael Carney in : auctions, make money online, trade me, trademe , 3comments

So you’ve decided to get serious about Trade Me and make some real money on the site. But what should you sell – and where can you find goodies at the right price to make a good profit anyway?

WHAT SHOULD YOU SELL ON TRADE ME?
For some, the answer to this question is easy: sell products that you know a lot about – and indeed, are passionate about. That could be anything, from coins of the nineteenth century to slightly used designer clothing. If you know your products well enough to be a little, um, obsessed about them, then you’ve probably already identified what’s a good deal and what’s a ripoff anyway – and often you’ll already know where to buy your specialist products for a really good price.

For others, the choice of what to sell is not so clear-cut. Many of us have passions that don’t easily lend themselves to profitable trading. Collecting the various ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ models, for example, can be great fun and all-consuming—but the stock easily available to Kiwi collectors may not have a high resale value, at least not on Trade Me.

And that’s the point of this particular article. We’re exploring what it takes to make some reasonable dollars online, not just earn some spare change by selling off those odds and ends cluttering up your garage – or by parting with precious items that you’ve spent half your life collecting.

HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO EARN ONLINE?
Before you even choose what products to sell, you need to decide how much money you want to make on Trade Me – and how much time you’re prepared to devote to doing so. When we interviewed some of the top Trade Me sellers for the TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS book, they told us they were spending 60-70 hours a week on Trade Me related tasks, and listing 200-300 items a week. That total suggests that they were photographing and listing an average of 3-4 items per hour (not to mention wrapping and despatching perhaps one item per hour, based on selling one in every three or four items listed*).

*Across Trade Me, typically the sell-through rate averages around 25%. In other words, one in four auctions usually close successfully. That response rate is much higher for specific categories, as you’ll see later.

Of course, those top sellers were trading fulltime on the site – your goals may be somewhat more modest. Even so, you need to identify some key metrics before you decide on your product selection.

For example, if you want to earn $500 per week (before tax) from Trade Me, but are only willing to spend 20 hours a week working on auction tasks, then the following maths might apply:

If you’re selling one product for every four listed, then each product sold must also include a listing cost allocation for the three not sold. Those costs (within general auctions) can range from 25 cents to $5 or more per listing, depending on your selection of promotional items, subtitles and other options. So your calculations need to take those into account (x4). And then there’s the success fee of 6.9% per sale item (up to $150). All in all, you could be looking at fees totalling as much as $20 for every four items listed (and one sold).

In other words, in order to clear $25 per successful sale, you may need to earn at least $45 more than your purchase price per item. Clearly you need to choose (and then buy) your products very smartly indeed. You also need to be very careful when deciding which promotional options to choose, to minimise your costs but maximise the appeal of your auctions (for which advice, may we point you to Chapter Eleven of Trade Me Success Secrets).

CHOOSING A PRODUCT 1: THE PRICE RANGE
Continuing with our example, then, if you’re wanting to earn $45 per item, you could perhaps be looking at selling products with a perceived value of (say) $150, which you need to source for around $100 each in order to achieve your desired profit margins. That clearly rules out a wide range of products; but still leaves plenty of scope for the imaginative mind (refer to Chapter Nine of TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS for strategies to customise each product and thus improve its perceived value to potential purchasers).

CHOOSING A PRODUCT 2: STUFF THAT ALREADY SELLS ON TRADE ME
Every week, around 1.4 million items are listed on Trade Me. Every week, around 350,000 of those items sell. Trade Me collects and kindly reports on which items are more likely to sell than others, and you’ll find that information (updated monthly) here: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Community/SellThroughRates.aspx .

We’ve been tracking these statistics since Trade Me first started publishing them in late 2005 (just in time for the first edition of TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS), which was a great relief – we weren’t looking forward to crunching the numbers ourselves, which would have required looking at some fifty thousand pages (every week).

What we found in 2005 – and it’s a result that remains true today – is that Baby Gear and Mobile Phones are consistently the most sought-after categories on Trade Me. A higher proportion of products in those categories sell on a regular basis than almost anywhere else on the site.

Of course, not everybody can sell Baby Gear and Mobile Phones, certainly not all the time (and the categories would plunge in terms of success rates if everybody tried). So we recommend you look at the monthly sales results by category (through the prism of your price constraints, of course)  and decide if any of those are for you.

CHOOSING A PRODUCT 3: FINDING NEW PRODUCTS AND TRENDS

Even though online auctions can consume your every waking hour, there is, in fact, life outside Trade Me, radical though that notion might be. If you want to identify hot products and categories before they begin to become popular on Trade Me, you need to start your searching elsewhere. Ten suggestions:

1. The Trade
Manufacturers are constantly bringing out new products, as they look for ways to increase their sales and meet the evolving needs of their customers. Don’t wait for these new products to hit the public arena before you hear about them. Talk to industry experts, read trade journals, go to trade fairs and exhibitions.

2. Read
Haunt your local library, bookstore or news-stand. Some of the hottest new global offerings are written up in international news magazines such as Time, Newsweek and Business Week, especially in regular Hot Products issues. For techno-business trends, sample Wired, Fast Company and (locally) Unlimited and Idealog. For more technical products, Popular Science and Popular Mechanics provide inspiration. In the world of fashion, you’ll find the many international editions of titles such as Vogue will spark ideas. Whatever your product category, there’ll undoubtedly be international magazines serving that interest.

3. Watch TV
In particular sample some of the magazine-type shows on CNN and BBC World. You’ll get advance warning of hot trends brewing offshore. If you’re interested in the latest entertainment-related products, check out shows such as E! News Live, Entertainment Tonight and The Late Show with David Letterman.

4. Web Trends
If you’re interested in broader trend analysis, a number of global websites specialise in new trends. Inevitably, many of the trends thus uncovered are still some time away from commercial reality in New Zealand. However, for a sneak peek at some of the opportunities you might be considering for next year, visit (and, where available, sign up for newsletters at):

5. Closer to home: Kiwi ‘what’s hot’ lists
‘What’s Hot and What’s Not’ lists make regular appearances in many local newspapers and magazines. While some of the selected hot items are fleeting at best, bizarre at worst, others will provide the seed of an idea for a profitable product to offer on Trade Me.

6. Any and all magazines
Even weekly magazines such as the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, Woman’s Day and New Idea are great sources of inspiration for what’s current. Squeezed in between those tantalising tales of celebrities in trouble you’ll find:

7. Mailers and advertising ephemera
Tear down that ‘No Junk Mail’ sign on your letterbox and enter the world of sell, sell, sell! Devour those advertising circulars. Pay particular attention to products that have pride of place on the cover or have a full page inside that’s all about them. Those are products that will sell strongly at retail and — if you can source them at the right price — are potential sales champions for you.

8. Network
Talk to shopkeepers and shop assistants. Ask them what’s hot in their store. Those that have been paying attention can point you towards some best-sellers — and probably some surprises. A word of warning: take any overly passionate endorsements with a grain of salt. These people are in the business of selling and may have you in their sights!

9. Searching online
Once you have an inkling of the type of product you might sell, search online via your search engine of choice. What exactly are you looking for?

10. Number crunching
Many leading New Zealand retailers are public companies, and required to publish regular reports on trading patterns. Read their quarterly, half-yearly and annual reports and review any historical sales data that’s available in those reports (sometimes it’s in the accompanying commentary, explaining anomalous results). Use this information where you can to identify product categories that have been historically popular at certain key periods, eg, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, etc.

CHOOSING A PRODUCT 4: WHAT ELSE?
Once you’ve identified possible products, you need to identify where to buy them, at a price that enables you make a decent margin. It’s never easy, but it is possible, as some of Trade Me’s top sellers reluctantly revealed when interviewed:

WHERE DO TOP SELLERS GET THEIR PRODUCTS?
We asked contributors to TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS where they get their products. They were understandably reticent — in many cases that’s the secret of their success — but we were very persuasive and managed to encourage a number of them to unlock their Book of Secrets, at least a little.

As you can see from these reports from our experienced sellers, you can find resaleable products just about anywhere. If you just want to make a bit of pocket money, you don’t have to worry too much about regular sources of supply. But if you really want to build a sustainable business on Trade Me then you’ll have to put some serious effort into tracking down reliable suppliers, building relationships with those suppliers and (frankly) investing not just time but money.

For those who don’t particularly want to specialise in a single category, some other thoughts:

SOURCES OF SECOND-HAND GOODS FROM THE GENERAL PUBLIC

LOCAL RETAIL OPPORTUNITIES
Trade Me is accessible to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. As such, it’s a great shopping venue for buyers in more geographically isolated parts of New Zealand. Residents of far-flung outposts can now get access to products normally sold only in the larger metropolitan areas, while still enjoying their more pleasant lifestyles. Astute city-clicker sellers have noted this fact, and have been known to frequent their local retailers, buying discounted and sale items and reselling them online. Inexpensive products can often be found (with a certain amount of rummaging around) at stores such as:

In fact, any retailer who has regular clearance sales should be on your list of potential product sources. If you know of retailers who have sales at a particular time of year (eg, Smith & Caughey’s twice-yearly events) you should add them to your calendar. New store openings are also a good source of bargain buying, but you need to be quick.

FACTORY AND OUTLET STORES
Although some ‘Factory Shops’ sell their wares at prices little different from traditional retail outlets, there are enough genuine factory shops out there to serve as a good source of products. The ideal factory shop will also be one of a kind and physically close to the factory it supports, so that few Kiwis have easy access to its lower prices.
SECOND-HAND DEALERS AND PAWNBROKERS
These classic institutions, which had the resale of second-hand goods pretty much to themselves in the days before eBay and Trade Me, can still be fertile sources of products to resell, although the dealers’ margins can mean it’s not always profitable to list them online. Second-hand dealers range in size and scope from single stores to national chains such as Cash Converters. Pawn shops occupy a lower profile in the retail sector generally, and are more likely to be found in areas bordering poorer households.

OPPORTUNISTIC EVENTS
There are, we are told, only two sure things in life: death and taxes. Estate sales, liquidations and bankruptcies are essentially the side-effects of both certainties, and while we naturally wouldn’t welcome such eventualities, they do tend to create opportunities. Typically, the recipients of deceased estates have little interest in many of the items hoarded by the dear departed, and will tend to dispose of them in bulk without worrying too much about the value of specific items. Similarly, receivers and liquidators are more interested in quitting chattels quickly than in realising optimal resale prices. Watch out for such opportunities: good profits can be made reselling the items individually.

ENDS OF LINE
We live in a disposable world of conspicuous consumption. Products with heaps of life still left in them are consigned to oblivion when new (sometimes only slightly) improved versions are introduced by manufacturers. But what happens to the old products? Where do superseded cellphones go to let their batteries run down? When the latest PlayStation rolls out the door, what happens to all those unused (but redundant) previous-generation consoles?

If you can find the right sources, perhaps some of those retired products could find new homes through your Trade Me listings. We can’t always afford the latest and greatest new product, and you could be performing a valuable public service by providing a new life to these obsolete senior citizens — and making a decent profit at the same time.

TRADE SHOWS AND CONVENTIONS
There’s nothing quite like the last day at a good trade show. Exhausted exhibitors, weary of the whole thing, just want to pack up and go home. But they’d rather not have to lug home all the products they still have on display, so they’re often willing to quit stock at a substantial discount. So if you intend to go to any tradeshow, make sure you leave it till the last day — and preferably the last afternoon. Then get ready to haggle.

RENTAL AND LEASING COMPANIES
Companies that lease out equipment, whether on a short-term or long-term basis, inevitably end up with used but often still serviceable products when the leases expire. They are bound to have existing arrangements in place to dispose of those goods, but will probably listen to a compelling alternative.

UNCLAIMED ITEMS
We’re a forgetful lot. We leave our belongings on trains and buses. We drop stuff into drycleaners or repair shops and never get around to picking them up. We send packages to the wrong addresses. We leave goods in storage. That’s why the companies reserve the right to sell unclaimed goods. To you.

CONFISCATED GOODS AUCTIONS
There’s something vaguely voyeuristic about bidding for goods that have been confiscated by police or customs. We tend to imagine all sorts of sordid tales about the former owners of these innocent household goods. Unfortunately, that morbid fascination also tends to make such auctions very popular, so bidding can be brisk for many items. Our best advice: get a catalogue in advance, if you can, and check out potential resale returns in advance. Failing that, turn up early, identify and inspect the items you could resell. If possible, work with a partner by cellphone to identify the prices such items are currently fetching on Trade Me. Subtract your costs and your margin and that’s your top bid price. Don’t bid beyond that point (sometimes easier said than done, if you happen to fall in love with a particularly choice offering).

CHARITY AUCTIONS
Auctions have always been a popular method of supporting good causes. They have become even more effective with the advent of Trade Me. Products are donated freely, all the dollars raised go towards the designated charities and everyone’s happy. Of course, not all products at the auctions achieve their maximum value. The high-profile offerings capture attention and bids, but some of the products slip through at bargain prices. That’s your cue.

TRADITIONAL AUCTIONS
While Trade Me auctions continue to draw more and more members, they’re not the only game in town. Traditional auctioneers still handle large quantities of goods, and they’re still a great place to pick up unexpected bargains. We recommend looking out for special-interest auctions (eg, those which involve the sale of complete stock and chattels of restaurants, industrial goods suppliers, contractors, etc). Typically, these auctions attract industry insiders looking for the specialist equipment available only at such auctions. The insiders generally have little interest in the everyday chattels common to all businesses — computers, fax machines, copiers, printers, desks, tables, chairs, etc — and such products can be purchased at much lower prices than if they were being sold at general office or computer-equipment auctions.

LOCAL WHOLESALERS
Where can you find genuine local wholesalers who might be willing to deal with you? You have to ask the right people. And that would be who? The local manufacturers who made the products or the local branches of multinational manufacturers for products made offshore. Specifically, you should call them up and ask for the sales department. Simply tell the person in that department that you own a retail business, and you want to sell some of their products. Ask them for a list of their wholesale distributors. They’ll have that information readily available, and should be willing to give it to you.

Next step: call the wholesalers they give you and ask about their terms — discount structure, minimum stock requirements, payment terms, etc. They’ll probably need you to set up an account, and you still have to deal with the issue of whether they will sell to a small home-based Internet business. Many of them won’t, so this research can take a great deal of time, but it is very important to your business that you do it right.

INTERNATIONAL WHOLESALERS
If you thought local wholesalers were tough to track down, just wait until you try to find genuine international wholesalers. The Internet is flooded with millions of people and organisations claiming to be wholesalers — a quick Google gave us 4,560,000 results — so you really will have to put in the hard yards. If you’ve identified a specific product you want to sell, the first steps can be the same as those we’ve suggested for dealing with local wholesalers: call the sales department at the manufacturer and find out their wholesale distributors. The next step, however, would be a lot harder: finding someone who’s willing to (a) deal with small orders; (b) ship stuff all the way over to New Zealand; and (c) overlook the fact that there’s probably someone in New Zealand who already has the distribution rights for this market.
LOCAL ONLINE AUCTION SITES
There are a small number of online auction and classified sites operating in New Zealand in competition to Trade Me. It’s fair to say these sites have been attracting relatively limited numbers of visitors and as a result the bidding on specific items is less frenzied. There may well be products listed on these sites that could be purchased cheaply and then resold on Trade Me.

INTERNATIONAL ONLINE AUCTION SITES
If you can cope with such issues as currency exchange, shipping costs and the higher risk of fraudulent activity, the world’s online auctions are a fertile source of products for you to resell locally. You should inevitably begin with eBay.com of course, and that may well occupy you enough. But eBay has many international offshoots. If you can handle languages other than English (or use the automatic translation options on Google’s browser bar plugin), you might well pick up some useful bargains on non-Anglo sites.

PRODUCT SOURCES ARE EVERYWHERE, BUT…
With a combination of knowledge, experience and imagination you can find potential product sources anywhere. But if it was easy, everyone would do it. It takes as much diligence and determination to turn an idea into a business on Trade Me as it does in any business venture.

PS That’s definitely all we have space and time for in this way-over-length article. If you want more, may we respectfully direct you to TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS, which covers the topic in even more detail. The second edition of this best-selling book is of course available for sale at our Trade Me store.

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Striking Gold In Online Auctions November 11, 2009

Posted by Michael Carney in : auctions, eBay , add a comment

It’s a favourite fantasy of those who buy stuff through garage sales, school fairs and on Trade Me: that we’ll one day stumble upon a hidden treasure that will make us rich (or at least famous).

“Madam, that is indeed a Picasso long thought lost. It is difficult to assign an exact value until the assessors have examined it closely  — but the most recent Picasso sale was of his 1969 “Buste D’Homme”, sold at Sotheby’s last week for $10.4 million. So perhaps we should move this painting out of your spare bedroom and give it a slightly more secure home.”

Oh yes, we can dream. And TV series such as Antiques Roadshow encourage our imagination in such directions. But does it ever happen, especially on online auction sites?

Yes, it does. Film collectors are buzzing about the recent discovery on eBay of a lost Charlie Chaplin film, purchased as part of a collection of nitrate film bought for US$5.

Morale Park from Henham, Essex, purchased the can of film simply because he liked the look of it. He was amazed to discover its fragile contents: a previously unknown seven-minute film Chaplin film called Zepped.

The film features footage of Zeppelin airships flying over England during the First World War, and out-takes from three pictures that Chaplin shot with the film company Essanay, with whom the entertainer had a contract in 1914, before falling out.

An animated scene shows Chaplin wishing he could leave America to join his British countrymen in the war, before being taken on a cloud and deposited on an English church spire.

It also shows him sending up the Zeppelin, and an animated sequence of Kaiser Wilhelm popping out of a German sausage. There is a certification from Egypt, dating the film to December 1916.

Mr Park got his neighbour John Dyer, former head of education at the British Board of Film Classification, to look at it, and they concluded the film had been put together as a piece of war propaganda.

It is not known whether Chaplin was involved in the project or whether various out-takes were spliced together without his knowledge or consent.

David Robinson, author of Chaplin: His Life and Art, believed the film could be worth anything from £3,000 to £40,000.

Mr Park and Mr Dyer are currently in California making a documentary about the find.

Could this sort of thing happen on Trade Me?

Absolutely. Probably already does, in fact. However not every lucky buyer will recognise the importance of their new purchase.  So all those potential goldmines will end up in someone else’s attic, to be stumbled upon by future treasure hunters.

Well, anyway, that’s our dream.

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Good Samaritan Award: Queenstown Motel Apartments October 26, 2009

Posted by Michael Carney in : auctions, charity auction, trade me, trademe , 2comments

One of the neatest things about Trade Me — and after five years of studying the site, it still blows us away — is the way the Trade Me community helps others. Apart from the Community Noticeboards, where you’ll constantly find veterans offering advice to newcomers, you’ll also find a steady stream of charity auctions flowing through the site.

One that just caught our eye — sadly, too late to help market the auction but certainly time enough to offer a well-deserved bouquet to the organiser — was this auction for a truly wonderful visit to our jewel of the South Pacific, Queenstown.

On offer: “Three days of pure pleasure, action and scenic packed days at Queenstown for 2 people”

All money raised to be donated to the New Zealand Red Cross Samoan Earthquake and Tsunami Appeal www.redcross.org.nz

Over $2,000 worth of accommodation and activities, valid for 12 months at a time suitable to the lucky winner subject to availability.

Thanks to the kindness of the following local Queenstown businesses for their donations the package includes:

Queenstown Motel Apartments owner Dianne Smith was behind the whole thing. You can read her story here.

Bravo, Dianne. Outstanding effort.

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Social Selling September 8, 2009

Posted by Michael Carney in : Twitter, auctions, facebook, new zealand, trade me, trademe , 4comments

Can you use Twitter to sell stuff on Trade Me? Is it fashionable or a complete social disaster to promote your auctions on Facebook?

The first answer, the purist answer, is ‘No’ – you shouldn’t use either service just to flog your auctions. And especially ‘No’ if you intend to turn your Twitter and Facebook presence into Spam Sausage Machines, churning out endless updates fixated on your Trade Me listings. Epic FAIL.

Of course, if ‘No’ was all there was to the answer, that would make for a pretty short blog post. So let’s quickly point out that there are circumstances under which it can be both acceptable and desirable to harness the power of Twitter or Facebook to promote your offerings [you probably knew we were going to say that].

A MATTER OF FOCUS

Regardless of whether we’re talking about Twitter, Facebook or any of the many other microblogging or social networking services, the key question is focus. What’s the purpose of your online presence? To keep in touch with your friends? Just to have an outlet for your rants and raves? Or to help with your business or professional ambitions, whether it’s to further your career or just help you earn a decent crust?

You may not have even considered the question before – most people haven’t. Now’s the time to do so.

If you decide that all you want to do online is hang with your friends or indulge in a good old-fashioned soapboxing from time to time, thanks, nothing to see here, move along please.

Otherwise, let’s talk about developing a new online focus – specifically, on those products that you sell on Trade Me. We’ll assume that they’re all part of a related product portfolio – in other words, you’re not selling car batteries today, dolls’ clothing tomorrow [if you do dabble in what we’ll charitably call a “diversified product range”, you either need to reconsider your overall selling strategy or else develop separate online identities* for each collection of products].

*EDIT: You can’t use multiple identities on Trade Me, of course, but you can and should have different  Twitter accounts and Facebook Business Pages for your various offerings. And thanks, Tim, for pointing out that this wasn’t clear in the original post.

Your focus can be reasonably broad (eg “Baby Clothing”) or very narrow (eg “Bronze Age Marvel Comics”). Either way, we’ll presume that there’s sufficient interest in the product category within New Zealand that you’ve been able to build a viable market niche selling such products on Trade Me.

Identified your focus? Great. The rest of the process can be simply described in four steps:

  1. Ensure that your online identity reflects your focus (eg your Twitter User Name and profile details are all about your passion for Model Railroads of the Twentieth Century; you have a Facebook business page that talks about your comprehensive Swatch collection);
  2. Start regularly posting useful information (eg to your Facebook wall or to your Twitter account) about your chosen topic: “Ten Worst Movies Available On BluRay”, “My Favourite Scrapbooking Technique”, “How Open Source Software Changes The World”;
  3. Actively build a database of followers by seeking out other service users whose posts and profiles indicate that they are interested in your category;
  4. Every once in a while (about every 15th tweet, for example), in the midst of all the other useful information you’re posting, mention a relevant Trade Me auction that might appeal to your followers.

The guiding principle: provide an ongoing source of valuable information about your specialist topic (setting yourself up as an expert in the chosen field), attract those interested in your field and then interject with very occasional commercial messages (but don’t over-pollute).

These things take time, of course – don’t expect to be an overnight sensation. But once you build an enthusiastic following in your niche, you can significantly multiply the effectiveness of your auction listings.

GETTING SPECIFIC: TWITTER

Twitter is the flavour of the year. The service’s popularity has exploded around the world, and New Zealand is no exception. Twitter’s share of daily visits in Aotearoa increased 305% from the start of 2009 until mid-April (the latest data we have available), at which point, according to researchers HitWise, it was our 49th most visited web site.

Twitter’s most endearing feature is its ability to multiply messages exponentially. To paraphrase a (very) old commercial: with Twitter, “you tell two people and they each tell two people, and they each tell two people,  and so on and so on …” and before you know it, your message has been retweeted around the world six hundred times, reaching every person on the planet (okay, perhaps not, but certainly you can reach far more than just those on your own list, provided your message is of enduring interest).

So where do you start on Twitter? Returning to our four-step process noted above, start (STEP ONE) by claiming your online identity on the site. Go to www.Twitter.com and attempt to claim your Trade Me user name as a Twitter ID (we’re assuming that your user name reflects your product focus). Note that you can have no more than 15 characters in a Twitter ID (and it’s first-come, first-served globally), so you may need to modify or abbreviate to fit.

STEP TWO: Posting. You have 140 glorious characters within each tweet – not very much to provide useful, meaty information about your chosen topic (which is why many Twitterers tend to include links to more detailed blog posts in their tweets). Remember, remember, your role is to position yourself as an expert in your chosen field of endeavour, so post useful information on a regular basis. Also be aware that some will be receiving your updates on their mobile phones (and may be paying for the privilege). If they don’t think they’re getting value for money, they’ll quickly stop following you.

STEP THREE: Building a following. In essence, you want to attract a core group of (ideally Kiwi) followers who are very interested in your topic, as many people as possible with a mild interest in your topic and a smattering of others who might occasionally become prospects for your products.

How do you go about doing that? We won’t reinvent the wheel – Promo Magazine covers the topic in depth with a useful excerpt from “Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time” by Joel Comm (John Wiley & Sons, 2009):

How to Be Intentional about Creating Your Own Network of Experts

High quality followers can do different things. Some will be the type of followers who hang on to your every tweet, follow all your links, and buy your products.

You certainly want to have lots of those … but identifying them isn’t easy. Few Twitterers write on their bios that they’re looking to buy lots of products about Corvettes or football—or anything else.

What you can find very easily on Twitter, though, is experts.

This is really Twitter’s strength. The site is stuffed with people who have great information about particular subjects and are willing to share it.

Find experts on a topic related to yours and encourage them to follow you, and you’ll be giving yourself a massive and very valuable network.

Enter your keywords [in a Twitter search engine] and pull up tweets that contain that phrase.

You’ll then be able to see who’s talking about your topic and, by looking at the bios and reading their tweets, see which of those Twitterers are the leading experts. It’s much more efficient to identify the key Twitterers on the topic and get them to follow you.

If other people see that the expert is following you, they’ll assume that you’re also an expert and want to follow you too.

One way to succeed on Twitter is to hang out with the influence-makers. Find the top people in your topic on Twitter, and become a part of their circle.

When you’re one of the prominent Twitterers on the site, you’ll find it’s much easier to persuade people to read your tweets. In fact, you won’t have to do anything but make sure that your tweets are interesting, informative, and entertaining.

Read more at http://promomagazine.com/interactivemarketing/news/building-twitter-followers-0331/index1.html

STEP FOUR: Once you’ve built a useful following, you can afford to mention your auctions on an occasional basis.

AND WHAT ABOUT FACEBOOK?

Facebook overtook Bebo in April this year to become New Zealand’s most popular social networking site (Source: ComScore). Amazingly, Facebook has also (according to HitWise) overtaken Trade Me in the last month to become New Zealand’s second most visited website behind Google.

Facebook requires a bit more care than Twitter, because the site doesn’t allow you to register as anything other than an individual. However you can set up (free) a business page and populate that page with info about your products.

What to do next? John Marshall to the rescue:

Step One: Who Is Your Target Market? That’s the million dollar question. Lets say you were selling video games. You only want to add friends who play and buy those video games. Think of your target market.

Step Two: Find your target market. You ask how do I do that. It’s very easy if your target market is video games, you go to groups and search for stuff related to video games.  Once you find these groups of people you now have your target market in front of you.

Step Three: Build your following. It’s time to start adding friends and having fun. Here are a few things to keep in mind when building your following:

  • Only add 50 Friends a day (If you go too fast FaceBook will tell you to slow down)
  • Don’t use a program to add friends (Facebook will kick you out)
  • Add a personal message when adding friends. (Draft a message, one that sounds professional, and keep it handy)
  • Approve all requests for friendship from others.
  • Join Groups in your target market (people will invite you from these groups)
  • Join the conversation (Get out in the conversation and be seen)
  • Write on your friends’ Walls.
  • Link your FaceBook to other websites: your blog, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube.

Social Networking specialist Deltina Hay also provides some highly valuable advice for taking advantage of sites such as Facebook:

To avoid the scattershot approach, choose one or two social networking sites that fit your business well and invest the time to maximize your presence in them. Let’s explore what that might look like if Facebook is one of your choices.

Prepare your best information before you start.

Avoid the “I will go back and fill that in later” trap. Have all your necessary information on hand, ready to copy and paste on the spot. Complete a worksheet containing:

1. Key Terms:
Make a list of your best key terms and weave them into the rest of your worksheet items. Key terms are one, two, or three word terms that someone might use if they were searching for your business in a search engine.

2. General Information:
Your Name
Business Name
Email Addresses
URLs
Instant Messaging screen names

3. Biographical and Descriptive Information:
Short bio (50 words)
Longer bio (100 words)
Short company description (50 words)
Longer company description (100 words)
Business mission statement

4. List of Products

I based these worksheet items on a typical Facebook profile and page. If you choose a different social networking site, examine some completed profiles and base your worksheet items on them.

Create an account and thoroughly complete your profile

If you haven’t already, get a Facebook account. Completely fill out your profile using your worksheet. Under the relationships tab, choose “networking.” You can skip the personal and education tabs for business profiles, but there is no harm in filling them out. If you have an existing account, upgrade your profile information using your key terms.

But don’t stop there!

Facebook, like most good social networking platforms, offers many marketing opportunities for businesses, some for free. You can find these by clicking the “Advertising” link in the footer of the Facebook site, or by following this link: http://www.facebook.com/business/.

Since I can’t cover all of the marketing tools in one article, let’s focus on my favorite: The Facebook Page. It’s my favorite not only because it is free, but because it makes use of the many diverse Facebook applications.

Facebook pages are specifically for marketing a business or a product. They offer a way for a business to represent itself to the Facebook community in an authentic way. Facebook users can search pages the same way they search for people within the network community.

Create your page by going to “Page Manager” in the left sidebar of your Facebook profile, or by following this link: http://www.facebook.com/business/ and choosing Facebook Pages. Choose the best category for your business.

Use key terms in the name of your Facebook page!

It seems that the actual page name is the only text on a Facebook page that is used in a search. With that in mind, use at least two of your best key terms in your page name.

Populate your page with all of your best worksheet information. You may have only a few seconds to catch a reader’s attention, so put your best key terms forward.

Once your page is in place, add applications to help represent your company in your own unique way. To find applications for your page, click on “Applications” in the upper left corner of your page, or search for them here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/.

Applications are not difficult to install and are usually very easy to set up. Use this general rule of thumb when choosing an application: If you can’t figure out how to set it up after the second try, find another one. There is often more than one application available to accomplish the same task.

Applications Top Picks:

Implementing these applications creates an interactive page that also gives visitors a personable look into your business.

MORE READING

We’re really just scratching the surface of social network marketing in this article. We suggest you do your own additional homework as you go along (recommended tutor: Old Missus Google).

Anyway, back to the original questions: Yes, you can use Twitter or Facebook to promote your auctions, but only as a side-effect of your development as the Expert in your Chosen Field. BTW, you’ll find a few other useful side-effects along the way, as you develop and publicise your expertise. We’ll leave it to you to discover them!

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Are you ready for … July 16, 2009

Posted by Michael Carney in : auctions, movies, trade me, trademe , add a comment

So here we are, Bastille Day behind us, the latest Harry Potter movie just opened and the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing coming up this weekend. All great opportunities to flog some stuff on Trade Me — did you?

Yes, there’s still time to list some lunar droppings on Trade Me  — personal letter from Neil Armstrong, perhaps, thanking you for the flight training lessons — but the reality is that you should be planning a little further ahead. You should look at the promotional calendar in TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS to note the regular seasonal highlights of the next couple of months. Events peculiar to 2009 include the following movies (which just might lead to some merchandising sales opportunities:

AUGUST

Coraline and the Secret Door
Animated tale from Henry Selick, writer/director of ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’, based on the book by Neil Gaiman. Eleven-year-old Coraline walks through a secret door and discovers a parallel reality. Voice credits: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French. Our view: distinctive animation and a quirky storyline may limit this movie’s mainstream appeal but it’s likely to attract a passionate following amongst young urbanites.


G. I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra
The world’s favourite ‘poseable action figure’ turns into high-octane action with this big budget makeover. Your toybox will never look the same. Our view: the producers took a look at what Michael Bay had done to Transformers (explosions! mayhem! more explosions!) and chose the same route for G I Joe. This is an ideal vehicle if you want to reach males who like to watch stuff blow up.

Case 39
A social worker (Renee Zellweger) fights to save a girl from her abusive parents, only to discover that the situation is more dangerous than she ever expected. A mix of crime, suspense and horror. Our view: creepy, will appeal to twenty-somethings who like to be scared out of their wits.

Inglourious Basterds
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as “The Basterds” are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. Blood-splattered Quentin Tarantino directs, Brad Pitt (sporting an atrocious Southern accent) stars — what else do you need to know? Our view: for those who enjoy blood, guts, gore. Best avoided if your brand has a weak heart or a tender disposition.

The Young Victoria
This year’s historical drama/romance with a royal theme: a dramatization of the turbulent first years of Queen Victoria’s rule, and her enduring romance with Prince Albert. Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend portray the two young lovers Victoria and Albert in what’s described as “a touching romance and a gripping human drama”. Our view: good association for products appealing to older women or those of a monarchist persuasion.

District 9
Peter Jackson produces this sci-fi morality tale of an extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly find a kindred spirit in a government agent that is exposed to their biotechnology. Our view: set in South Africa, this film draws interesting parallels with apartheid. Given its local provenance, could do well with older Kiwi audiences.

SEPTEMBER

The Taking of Pelham 123
Denzel Washington, John Travolta and James Gandolfini star in this remake of the popular 1974 original and do a good job by all accounts. Armed men hijack a New York City subway train, holding the passengers hostage in return for a ransom, and turning an ordinary day’s work for dispatcher Walter Garbe (Washington) into a face-off with the mastermind (Travolta) behind the crime. Our view: pretty good for a remake.

Up
Animated adventures of 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen, who sets out (by tying thousands of balloon to his home) to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Currently topping the US box office. Our view: solid family fare, appealing to all ages.

Aliens In The Attic
A group of kids must protect their vacation home from invading aliens. Think family movie, with the next holidays just around the corner. Our view: another family favourite in the making.

Funny People
When seasoned comedian George Simmons (Adam Sandler) learns of his terminal, inoperable health condition, his desire to form a genuine friendship cause him to take a relatively green performer under his wing as his opening act. Our view: the writer/director Judd Apatow (director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up) says he’s “trying to make a very serious movie that is twice as funny as [his] other movies”. The trailer suggests a reasonable attempt.

Imagine That
What if your daughter’s imagination… was the secret to your success? Eddie Murphy stars as a financial executive who can’t stop his career downspiral. Then he’s invited into his daughter’s imaginary world, where he magically finds solutions to his problems. Our view: terminally cute Eddie Murphy vehicle. Variety rated it “…an undemandingly pleasant, mildly amusing fantasy…” which has done average business at the American box office.

We figure the potential for the remaining September titles is pretty obvious:
Shorts
From Robert Rodriguez (director Of ‘Spy Kids’): A young boy’s discovery of a colorful, wish-granting rock causes chaos in the suburban town of Black Falls when jealous kids and scheming adults alike set out to get their hands on it. Our view: good appeal to the kids, with fun gadgets, silly jokes and town bullies who get their comeuppance. Useful association for family-focussed traders. Don’t forget the “Spy Kids” link.

G-Force
A specially trained squad of guinea pigs is dispatched to stop a diabolical billionaire from taking over the world. It’s animated, it’s from Disney, it’s the school holidays, there’ll be merchandise. Our view: this one should do good business, another family-friendly movie.

The Year One
Jack Black and a collection of caveman/historical parody jokes. Our view: not for the Rialto crowd.

Fame
An updated version of the legendary 1980 movie musical which centered on the students of the New York Academy of Performing Arts. Our view: attempts to catch the spirit of the original, the same passions and dreams that drive people to enter shows like American Idol. Should resonate well with Gen Y.

Happy planning!!

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Five essential ingredients to make your listing famous July 8, 2009

Posted by Michael Carney in : auctions, new zealand, trade me, trademe, what's hot , 9comments

You’ve probably heard of the “scary washing machine”, last month’s insanely popular Trade Me phenomenon. Sadly, your mint-condition washing machine (or any other worthy but ordinary item) won’t attract a fraction of the frightening one’s admirers (806,220 pageviews) – nor the $5160 final windfall. Not without some very special magic.

So what does it take to create a Trade Me sensation?
There are a great many answers to this question, but at a minimum you need the following five essential ingredients if you’re to have any chance of attracting exponential attention on Trade Me:

1. An auction listing with “the right stuff”
Your product might be ordinary but the listing can’t be. Not if you want people to talk about it. When we spread the word about a Trade Me listing (or any other topic), it’s because it enhances our standing with our friends, not just because we like the listing or topic.

Successful listings that attract lots of attention typically tap into some pretty basic human motivators:

Most of the auctions that became famous on Trade Me were at least entertaining; some held out the chance of acquiring an item that would significantly increase in value at some point in the future (engaging the greed gene); “proceeds to charity” validated our bidding actions; the fact that we were bidding on a very popular item suggested that we were indeed doing the right thing; and being the successful bidder on a high profile auction can do wonders for the ego (at least until buyers’ remorse kicks in).

If we look back at some of the items that have caught the popular imagination on Trade Me, we find that in most cases the headline and/or description started the process of making the auction memorable.

The legendary paper clip auction (34,801 pageviews, final selling price $173) is a very good example:

It was inevitable that such a good-humoured listing (penned by Aucklander Rhys White during a quiet day in the office) would attract frivolous questions. And that brings us to essential ingredient Number 2:

2. Interactivity (with a sense of humour)
One of the neat things about Trade Me is the “Ask the seller a question” facility. For 99 .9% of listings, the questions that are asked are mundane and practical (and relatively few). For those special listings that catch the imagination of the public, however, sellers can be inundated with quirky questions. Answer appropriately (tongue firmly in cheek) and you’ve got the makings of Trade Me magic.

When an iceberg floated close to New Zealand in November 2006, it was listed by an opportunistic seller (“In good condition. Some small stains – should come out. Girlfriend doesn’t like it and says it needs to go. Buyer must collect.”) and attracted (ahem) a flood of questions:

Q. How much does it weigh? I may need to rent a trailer…
A. I don’t want timewasters here mate. You don’t use a trailer to remove an iceberg. Come on, you are being silly.

Q. Hi. I’m looking for something along these lines for a christmas decoration. Do you have any in the shape of a reindeer?
A. By the end of the auction it may look like that. Get real drunk and check back in.

Q. I don’t wish to pour cold water on this, but I must point out that MAF regulations require that this ‘berg will need to be held in quarantine for 8 weeks. This may impact on delivery.
A. That’s only if it has a bird in it. But thanks for checking.

Q. Hi. do you have these in any other colours? Thanks.
A. No sorry. Besides, you don’t want the yellow icebergs.

For the record, bidding on the iceberg reached $99,999,999 before the auction was removed (as an obvious joke listing).

Of course, with more than 1.3 million items listed on Trade Me at any given time, it’s tough to stand out. Your item also needs to conform to essential attribute Number 3:

3. Original and Scarce
If you want your item to become famous, then the item needs to be “one of a kind” – even if (as was the case with the ‘scary washing machine’) that uniqueness is simply in how you describe it. You can expect copycats to emerge – we lost track of the number of ‘cute’ stationery listings that attempted to cash in on the fame of the Paper Clip – so you need to be first and freshest in your particular category.

On the other hand, if you do have a genuinely unique item, such as the cast (sold in February for $18,500) which adorned John Key’s broken arm – or the handbag wielded by Tana Umaga to discipline an unruly colleague ($22,800 in June 2006) – then your focus should be on capturing the flavour of said collectable and communicating appropriately to those who would be most interested in acquiring the item. Which brings us to essential ingredient Number 4: 

4. People who know people
As soon as the listing is posted, spread the word – to journalists, twitterers, bloggers, anyone with a suitable/relevant audience. Of course, they’ll only be interested if said item already stacks up as unique and scarce – but they’ll also be looking for timeliness. They won’t want to be talking/writing about something that’s already old news – they’ll want to be bringing exclusive news to their followers.

Of course, everyone can’t be first – the second person you tell may not have heard about your listing but you can’t pretend that they’re the first to know. So instead, like a true public relations practitioner, you need to look for an angle, a spin that can be unique to that correspondent.

An example? Bono’s bird kite which the U2 frontman had been flying during his 2006 NZ concert.

The first angle: Bono’s kite up for sale on Trade Me. Then: caught by Tauranga woman (local spin for the Bay of Plenty Times). Next: proceeds to Oxfam. Follow-up: pictures from the concert, showing Bono flying the kite. You get the idea.

And that leads us to the fifth of our ingredients:

5. Topical
If you can leverage current events, that’s another quick way to spread the word. The current furore around Michael Jackson’s untimely demise is a classic example, with quick-thinking sellers offering personalised plates (THRLER, JACK5N, WACKO or MOONWK), replica Thriller jackets, web addresses (RIPMJ.co.nz) and a wide range of other Michael-related memorabilia on the site. In such a high profile event, however, there’s a very real danger of over-exposure, so media interest may quickly burn out. In other words, choose your topicality with care.

Apart from the five ingredients noted above, there are several other qualities that will stand you in good stead when it comes to conjuring up some Trade Me magic. To all the above, add perseverance, imagination, initiative and plain old luck (‘right place, right time’).

Your 15 megabytes of fame awaits.

PS: Of course, there’s quite a skill to creating effective listings. For a more in-depth look at “The Art Of The Listing”, may we humbly point you towards TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS the book (now in its second edition). In Chapter 14, you’ll learn about the eight different types of effective headlines, the pictures that sell a thousand words and the vital ingredients of a successful product description. The following chapter guides you (in rather more depth than we can manage in this blog entry) through many of the promotional options available to help you drive the sale — and suggests alternative actions if your item still doesn’t sell.

You’ll find the ‘Trade Me Success Secrets’ book in your local library, from leading booksellers or on sale at our Trade Me store.

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Google joins the Property party July 6, 2009

Posted by Michael Carney in : Google, auctions, property, trade me, trade me property , 2comments

Things just got a whole lot more complicated in the property market in New Zealand with the news today that Google is now inviting real estate agents and data providers to add property details to Google Maps — for free, in the usual Google tradition.

What does this news mean for prospective buyers?
Looking for a home to rent or buy? Now you can go to the real estate section of Google Maps, nominate a city or suburb and then be presented with available home listings in that area. [A little word of warning -- because Google Maps is a global service, you do need to be quite specific in your location, otherwise you're as likely to be presented with maps for "Hamilton, New Jersey" or "Epsom, UK" as their local equivalents]

Your search parameters can be further refined by:

Listings details are relatively limited, but include a link back to the real agents’ site or to aggregator sites such as realestate.co.nz where you can find more details about each property. Presumably in due course we’ll also see links back to Trade Me Property listings as well.

This new Google Maps real estate service has just launched, so you’d expect to see only a few listings — but already at least some of the NZ maps look like they’ve got a bad case of the measles, with spots designating available properties scattered everywhere, prepopulated courtesy realestate.co.nz and leading agents such as Harcourts.

What’s unique about this service, from a buyer’s perspective?
As more and more properties get added to the maps, it’s likely to become (as far as we’re aware) the only property listings site where you can look at a specific area such as a suburb on a map and see what’s currently available in that area. That’s likely to make it a good starting point for property searches.

In time we’ll also start to see the service integrated into Google’s main search  results: search for “townhouse for sale Christchurch” and you’ll eventually see a map at the top of the search results, with featured properties flagged.

And from a seller’s perspective?
Did we mention “free”? And, of course, there’s the small matter of all that traffic passing through Google — better to be included than not, especially if you can point viewers to a link containing full details.

What about from Trade Me’s perspective?
It’s another competitor, at least for eyeballs. And who’s to say that somewhere down the line Google won’t charge a fee for this service, once it reaches critical mass? Or remove the ability to link back to another site? Still, Google’s already gotten into the game, so Trade Me might as well tap into the promotional power of all that Google traffic.

As the cliche goes, better to have Google inside the tent than outside …

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A Trip Down Memory Lane July 1, 2009

Posted by Michael Carney in : auctions, trade me, trademe , 1 comment so far

All this talk of a new-look Trade Me prompted us to cast our minds back to the early days of the site, when it looked just a little different to what it does now.

How different? Check out the site’s front page from April 1999, when Trade Me was just a month old:

Trade Me - partying like it's 1999

Trade Me - partying like it's 1999

At that point,  Kev the Kiwi wasn’t even a twinkle in his creator’s eye, so we’ll simply acknowledge that, as far as Trade Me’s logo was concerned, the best was yet to come.

We also draw your attention to the strangely compelling Banner Advertisement in the middle of that early page, inviting bids on the site’s banner advertisements (bids started at $1). We understand that the first of these banners (the first paid auction on Trade Me!) sold for the princely sum of $20. Actually, that was probably a reasonable pricetag given that Trade Me’s visitor numbers were still (ahem) somewhat limited back then — many if not most of the site’s users were friends or relatives of site founder Sam Morgan.

2000AD
Fast forward to the first year of the new millennium. Like most of us, Trade Me survived the Y2K bug, audience numbers were starting to grow — and the Trade Me home page scrubbed up a little bit.

Trade Me launches into the 21st Century

Trade Me launches into the 21st Century

Ah, the retro charm of those big BUY and SELL graphics!

Things were starting to happen with Trade Me in 2000. Traffic was still just a blip by today’s standards, but word was getting round that you might find a bargain on the site. Membership began to grow.

Financially, the little site wasn’t doing so good. Gobally the dot-com boom was turning to bust and all those wonderful internet business models (all potential and no income) started going to the wall. Trade Me’s original plan called for its money to come mostly from advertising — but, alas, risk-averse Kiwi marketers really didn’t understand this interweb thingy, and weren’t going to pour much hard cash into a small “garage sale” operation with limited penetration. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed how popular eBay was becoming offshore.

Anyway, times were tough in the fledgling Trade Me business. So Sam introduced fees for premium listings (bold headlines, featured auctions and the like), which helped somewhat. Finally, in September 2000, Trade Me introduced success fees (sell your item, pay a fee) and finally Trade Me had a real income stream. Time for Kevin the Kiwi to make his entrance.

2001 A Spacebar Odyssey

2001 A Spacebar Odyssey

Looks pretty familiar, doesn’t it? Most of the look and feel of the site was established way back then — what we’ve seen since has largely looked like a steady evolution based on the established theme (although in saying that we do the designers a great disservice for all the development work that’s been put in along the way — please forgive us for our artistic ignorance).

Anyway, here’s a year-by-year journey through the many faces of Trade Me, for you to form your own opinions:

2002

2002

2003

2003

2004

2004

2005

2005 (first edition of Trade Me Success Secrets published)

2006

2006 (Year of the Sale to Fairfax)

2007

2007 (Second Edition of Trade Me Success Secrets)

2008

2008 and today

And, of course, there’s the proposed new look site:

2009

2009 - the preview

Can’t wait to see how Trade Me looks in 2019, after another decade of makeovers …

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The wisdom of the crowd July 1, 2009

Posted by Michael Carney in : auctions, trade me , add a comment

Trade Me is embarking on a site makeover — this time a predominantly cosmetic refurbishment of our favourite auction site, with a fresh new skin.  Head over to http://preview.trademe.co.nz to check it out. A word of caution: the preview site is live and linked in to the Trade Me database, so if you place a bid on the preview site you’re actually making a legally binding bid.

In an unusual move, Trade Me has gone public with this preview of the site and invited member feedback via a dedicated section of the Message Boards. Some of the TM team may be regretting that crowdsourcing decision right now — the flames are burning bright on the Boards, with some 143 spleen-venting threads within the topic “New look Trade Me“. The Message Board contributors, not exactly shrinking violets at the best of times, are relishing the opportunity to give feedback — often of a cantankerous nature.

What’s interesting this time round is not the fact that Trade Me is listening — that happens far more often than its critics care to admit, because Trade Me constantly monitors the Message Boards and takes user comments on board — but that the invitation to comment has been extended so widely.

Inevitably, the result is constant carping, with the occasional bouquet.

Will the feedback improve the outcome? Yes it will — since going public, Trade Me has already reassessed some design elements, released a “new, new version” and reported back to the Message Boarders thus:

We’ve released an updated version of the preview site that addresses many small issues, and includes a few bigger changes. Auction descriptions now wrap to the full width of the page, rather than staying in a narrow column on the left. We’ve also heard a lot of feedback regarding the amount of whitespace on larger monitors. Some feel this makes the site appear floating, while some find the white distracting or straining on their eyes. We’ve updated the site design so that the content is framed with a neutral colour, in order to improve readability and to better anchor the page.

But the most important function of this feedback loop: reinforcing the fact that, despite its big-corporate parentage these days, Trade Me remains a community-centred operation. For all the griping that goes on, Trade Me members still consider themselves part of something unique. They can still speak up and someone in Trade Me will listen. No, the community doesn’t always get its way — but it is at least heard.

And that still counts for something pretty special.

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