Want to sell on Trade Me? There’s a bit of an art to creating headlines that grab peoples’ attention, photos that sizzle and descriptions that attract bids. Let’s explore each element in more detail.

A. THE HEADLINE

David Ogilvy (1911-1999) is a legend in the advertising world.  He has often been called “The Father of Advertising.” In 1962, Time Magazine called him “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry.”

Mr Ogilvy had this to say about the headline:

‘Headlines, more than anything else, decide the success or failure of an advertisement.’

What’s true for advertising headlines is also true for listing headlines on Trade Me. If the headline of your listing doesn’t stand out from its neighbours, visitors simply won’t bother to check out your item.

You have a maximum of just 50 characters — 100 if you choose to pay for a Sub-Headline (’sub-title’) as well — available to you when you create a Trade Me listing headline. That’s not a whole lot of real estate when the headline has to do up to three different jobs:

1. Attract the attention of potential buyers by using the right keywords.
2. Communicate the pricing strategy at a glance (eg, $1NR, S=R).
3. Differentiate your product listing from every other listing out there for similar products.

1. KEYWORDS

There are two ways that potential buyers find stuff on Trade Me: browsing the categories or searching for keywords. Searching is the most popular method — not surprisingly, given that in a typical week more than a million items are listed on the site. To reach searchers, appropriate headline keywords are absolutely vital. Your listing simply won’t exist for them otherwise.

What keywords should you be considering? Start with the product name, the name of the manufacturer, the model or item number, slang terms for the product, even singular and plural forms of the product name. Also look for affinity terms: if you’re selling a tent, for example, you might also consider such additional terms as ‘outdoors’ or ‘camping’, to catch the eye of those looking for other items that are in some way related to your product category. Include whatever appropriate words you believe might catch the searchers and lead them to your auction listings. (NB: See Trade Me Success Secrets Chapter 14 for some tools to help you choose appropriate keywords).

2. PRICING

In Chapter Eleven of the Trade Me Success Secrets book, we discuss the most effective pricing strategies for your auction items. We don’t have time to go over those here, except to note that, whichever pricing option you choose, it may still be overlooked by Trade Me surfers unless you specifically feature it in the headline.

Why is that? So many listings, so little time, perhaps. Or more likely it’s because Trade Me is teeming with so many new buyers, who haven’t yet become wise to all the mysteries of the site. It’s not intuitively obvious that a $1 price tag and a little yellow flag can signal a terrific bargain.

Whatever the reason, listing the starting price strategy in the headline (eg $1NR if it’s a $1 No Reserve or S=R if it’s a Start=Reserve strategy) will help get your listing noticed by more potential bidders.

3. BEING DIFFERENT AND GETTING NOTICED

Keywords + Pricing — that’s fine as far as it goes, and most Trade Me sellers stop there. We want to go to the next step — standing out from the crowd. Otherwise how can we expect potential bidders to decide between:

• kelvinator Fridge Freezer
• Kelvinator Fridge / Freezer
• Kelvinator Fridge/Freezer
• Kelvinator fridge and frost-free freezer
• Frost-free Kelvinator fridge freezer
• Kelvinator fridge
• Kelvinator Fridge by Fisher & Paykel
• kelvinator fridge freezer

(And those were a sampling of the successful auctions!)

It’s time to learn a bit more about the art of the headline. It will be something of a challenge — after including keywords and abbreviated pricing you won’t have many characters left out of your 50 or 100 character total. Still, worth a try.

Eight Is Enough

Thankfully, even though online auction headline-creating is a relatively new discipline, we can draw upon a century or more of wisdom from the advertising industry, where headlines have long been crucial to making sales.

From that accumulated knowledge base, we’ve identified eight different types of effective headlines that will deliver results on Trade Me, specifically those that:

1. Promise a major benefit
2. Make an offer
3. Offer a solution to a problem
4. Give a warning
5. Flag your target customer
6. Use a testimonial
7. Make a news announcement
8. Give a guarantee

In the TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS book, we do give examples for each headline type, drawn from actual Trade Me headlines. Here, we just have time to describe the basic listing types, because now we’re onto the next component of successful auction listings:

B. PHOTOGRAPHS THAT SIZZLE

it’s still a surprise when we encounter a listing that doesn’t carry any photos. The expression ‘Russian Roulette’ springs to mind. We might be willing to bid on that widget when it’s only a few dollars, but if it costs much more than that, sorry, it’s not that we don’t trust you — but we just don’t trust you. Not with our money, anyway. No photo, no profit.

Want to earn a few more shekels from your auctions? Then allow us to guide you through the process of photo-enabling your listings. Say ‘Cheese’!

First, Take Great-Looking Photos

According to top photographers, it’s much easier for beginners to get great pictures by using natural or outdoor lighting to illuminate the product. The most suitable natural light is generally between 3pm–6pm, depending on the time of year. Set aside at least 15 minutes so you can take several pictures at the same time.

Set up a table next to a window and cover the table surface with white paper. Place your auction item on the table so that the side you wish to photograph is illuminated by the light from the window. Use a simple plain backdrop and place it behind your auction item. Suitable backdrops could be a plain bedsheet, fabric or piece of cardboard. Use a solid colour for your backdrop — an uncluttered background focuses attention on the subject, resulting in a stronger picture. (The backdrop colour should be the opposite of your item colour.)

Smooth out any folds or crinkles in the backdrop. Put your camera on a tripod facing the item you want to photograph. Move the item and the camera around until you’ve managed to capture the best possible lighting through the window. Once you’re satisfied with the camera position, make yourself a reflector (use either a sheet of white cardboard or some other card covered with aluminium foil) and place the reflector opposite the window so that it’s bouncing light on to the shadow side of your item. This will ensure that your item is properly lit. Do not use the flash. Otherwise you’re likely to end up with nasty glare, reflections and strange shadows.

If your camera allows, set the white balance to ‘cloudy’ — which will capture your image in more natural tones under these lighting conditions.

Now get up close and personal! Buyers want to see detail, so make certain your item takes up the entire frame. And (if appropriate) take a close-up of relevant sections of the item as well, to give buyers a better idea of its actual condition.

Detail is king — taking photos of any product numbers, brands or labels on your items adds substance to your offering and has the potential to increase the value of your bids.

If you provide multiple photos of your auction item you’ll normally attract more bids. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether it’s effective enough to justify paying the extra fee for more views of your product (we recommend you run some tests and see if it’s worthwhile in your chosen category).

Secondly, edit or process your photos

Once your photos are saved to your computer, you can often improve them with photo-editing software, which might have come bundled with your digital camera or scanner. If you don’t have such software, Windows users could try Google’s image editor, Picasa (a free download from picasa.google.com), or search for “image editor” at sites such as www.tucows.com or www.download.com. For Mac users we suggest iPhoto.

During the editing process, you should:

• Crop your image to remove unnecessary backgrounds
• Balance the contrast and brightness
• Resize your image to approximately 500 pixels wide by 400 pixels high (sometimes available as part of the Export process)
• Save or Export your edited image as a gif or jpeg file

Trade Me requires photos to be under 500 kb in file size so you may need to reduce your photos accordingly.

Thirdly, upload your masterpieces to Trade Me

The uploading of photos takes place as part of the List An Item process. Once you’ve entered your listing title and your description and selected the various components of the auction listing, you’ll be taken to a page where you can Upload a Photo.

The photo that you upload first will be displayed alongside your headline (if you choose a Gallery listing, which we strongly recommend). It’s also the photo that will be displayed with your main listing. So for that first image, choose the photo that most clearly captures the essence of your product.

C. THE DESCRIPTION

There are a million ways you could write a Trade Me description and none of them is wrong — but some will be more effective than others at attracting bids and driving  sales. The essential ingredients of a successful description:

1. A compelling description of the product
2. The offer — a reason to buy this product, now
3. All the product details, features and benefits
4. The fine print — terms and conditions of the sale
5. The close — ask for the order

Wrap all these elements in a writing style that reflects your personality and you’ve got yourself a successful sale.

In a nutshell, that’s what you need to do to create effective, eye-catching listings on Trade Me.

We’re out of room and out of time now, but if you’d like to explore the topic in a whole lot more detail, may we point you to Chapter Fourteen of TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS the book, available through our Trade Me store here.

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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:

• 20 hours @ 4 items listed per hour = 80 items listed per week
• Sell-through rate of one sold for every 4 items listed = 20 items sold per week
• Profit required on each item to earn $500 per week = $25 each

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):

• http://www.trendwatching.com/
  This site and its thousands of trend-spotters scan the US, Canada, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, India, South Africa, Australia, Brazil and 50 other nations and regions for hot, emerging consumer trends and related new business ideas. A monthly email newsletter shares these global observations, insights and new business ideas.
• www.springwise.com
  A sister site to Trendwatching, Springwise scans the globe looking for new business-to-consumer ideas, concepts, innovations and ventures that have already proven themselves in local or regional markets, and are ready for expansion, partnership, franchising or copying.
• www.google.com/trends/hottrends
  Search patterns, trends, and surprises — what’s hot and what’s not, according to Google. Search statistics are automatically generated based on the millions of searches conducted on Google over a given period of time: weekly, monthly and annually.

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:

• Advertisements about products that you could also be selling
• Stories on common problems facing readers, which may inspire you to find or create profitable solutions
• ‘How to’ features, eg, beauty workshops — needs found, for you to fill
• Fashion accessories, for which you might have access to a low-cost source
• Letters to the editor, citing problems and opportunities
• Home and garden pictures, which can inspire you to create your own versions and sell online!

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?

• The latest news on the product (for example, you may find that it’s just been superseded, recalled or enhanced – which can mean there’s an opportunity to buy up last week’s models at heavily discounted prices, wsell them at a not so heavy discount and make good margins)
• Possible wholesale sources, if you plan to sell new items
• Insider tips from those who love (or hate) the product
• Sales figures from other markets
• Articles or reviews on key features, benefits and failings
• A whole range of possible insights about the product
• Customer reviews, which tell you lots of useful info about the product (which you can use to inform your listings)
• Tweets alerting you to hot news about product releases
• And a whole heap of stuff you’d never find out the old-fashioned way

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.

• One of our jewellery sellers attributes a large part of her success to an ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ of goodies which she discovered when she purchased a jeweller’s estate. The acquisition included items that had been in a storage cupboard for some 30-odd years. These were shop-new but very retro. These days she also sources products from offshore (from a variety of international suppliers based in England, Europe and the Americas).
• Another jewellery seller sources all of her products through the Internet. A lot of her ‘spare time’ is spent searching for products that no one else has, finding people with credibility and establishing good relationships with particular companies. She usually starts off purchasing a sample quantity of an item, to test the quality and the customer service of the company. If both measure up, she’ll start to build from there.
• Another top trader, who sells toys online, has a more direct source: a large extended family (12 kids!) so there are always unwanted toys, games, clothes, appliances, etc. The normal greeting is ‘Hi, is this any good to you?’ as they walk in the door waving whatever in the air!
• Yet another specialises in imported clothes and sexy lingerie. She reports that she does buy a little on Trade Me, but buys many of her products on eBay. Her particular niche: fashionable clothing and lingerie in larger sizes.
• A leading Australian Trade Me seller usually manufactures his own products (which include replica posters, pins and patches, replica and novelty currency — and Kiwi Million Dollar Notes), but sometimes gathers goodies from garage sales and markets.
• A Kiwi trader sometimes buys from ‘op shops’, and even occasionally buys sale items from shops. Her story is not atypical: many of the sellers we interviewed purchase products from local sources. A surprising number started out as hoarders, until they began drawing on their own collections to sell online. Friends’ stuff, markets and garage sales — as well as many of the other sources we identified earlier — were all fair game, and our top sellers were obviously able to make enough of a margin to make their Trade Me activities worthwhile.

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

• School Fairs: If you have kids, start with the schools that they attend. If you volunteer yourself for the PTA organising committee, you’ll sometimes be able to wangle first look at the goodies to be sold, before the fair is open to the public. Of course, you will have to contribute your fair share of PTA work in return for this privilege.
• Flea Markets and Car Boot Sales: These highly localised markets attract a broad range of sellers, from the ‘clearing out the garage’ types to small-scale importers of knick-knacks from exotic destinations, but choose your purchases with care; some of these sellers you may never see again.
• Book Fairs: For those who believe they can earn good money from books, the country’s book fairs can be an inexpensive source of stock, but you’ll have to hustle; the best offerings are usually rapidly scavenged as soon as they’re put on display.
• Thrift Shops and Op Shops: We found 24 Salvation Army Family Stores and 20 St Vincent de Paul Society shops listed in the Yellow Pages; just some of the welfare organisations that operate these shops as community resources and worthy fundraising endeavours.
• Antique Fairs: Visit www.huntly.net.nz/antique.html for a list of antique and collectable fairs throughout New Zealand. If you know your antiques, these fairs can be valuable, but you’d be well advised to visit some of the more out-of-the-way regions if you want to unearth truly hidden treasures.
• Garage Sales: These humble events are always a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly. To find the real bargains, you’ll have to become one of those obnoxious individuals who turn up on the doorstep an hour before the scheduled start time. You’ll also make new acquaintances — the other earlybirds catching the worms, trudging along the same garage-sale circuits in search of the pot of gold hidden beneath the rainbow duvet.
• Inorganic Street Collections: The last bastion of conspicuous consumption, as neighbours demonstrate their affluence by discarding perfectly functional, um, kitsch for others to drive by, sample and adopt. Or, worse, leave untouched for (gasp!) the council to haul away. Alas, this acquisition process will not provide a steady flow of saleable inventory, but can provide a few choice items for the opportunist. Note, however, that in recent years councils have tended to pass regulations to deter activity by hawkers – check out the rules in your catchment area.
• And we would be remiss if we failed to mention the more regular supply of items that can be acquired if one is inclined to frequent the local Refuse Centre (that’s a rubbish dump with delusions of grandeur). Product quality might be an issue, but quantity and variety (certainly at a desirable pricing level) are assured.

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:

• The Warehouse
• $2 Shops and other similarly named dollar stores
• Dick Smith stores (especially their repairs and returns tables)
• So-called ‘Category Killers’ — retailers that focus on a single product category, eg, Super Cheap Auto, Rebel Sport, Number One Shoe Warehouse
  

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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The  new REAA 2008 came into full effect today.

All real estate agents (including companies licensed as agents) must be licensed under this Act. It requires agents to ensure certain information is displayed on all advertisements, including the agent’s name and the fact that they are licensed under the Act.

When agents list property on Trade Me, the words “Licensed Agent (REAA 2008)” will be included beneath the agent’s company name.

Some other facts you should know about real estate advertising under the new Act:

When you appoint a real estate agent to help sell your property, the agent (or salesperson(s) who work for the agent) will generally give you a number of advertising and marketing options. These are usually presented in the form of a written marketing plan or plans, with an associated budget.

Do you have to pay for advertising?

You do not have to pay for advertising if you do not want to.

Agents generally undertake a certain amount of advertising and marketing as part of their service to you. Before you commit to paying extra advertising and marketing costs, ask the agent or salesperson what marketing and advertising they will provide without charge.

Your agent or salesperson may suggest that your property would benefit from advertising and marketing over and above any “free” exposure. They may suggest local or regional newspaper advertisements, or the placement of larger or full-page advertisements in specialist property publications.

You should not agree to pay for any additional advertising without first receiving a written proposal, and an itemised breakdown of the costs involved.

You also need to consider whether the cost of advertising will provide you with any additional benefit. Will this additional advertising bring you a higher price or a faster sale?

What sort of advertising could you expect to get free of charge?

The sorts of things usually included, without additional charge as part of their service (although these may vary) are:

• Putting details of your property on the agency’s website.
• Putting details of your property on other real estate websites (eg Trade Me Property).
• Advertising your property in specialist real estate publications.
• Displaying a photo or photos and property details in the agency’s office.
• Possibly providing a “for sale” sign outside your property.

When does advertising have to be paid for?

Unlike commission, which is only paid towards the end of a sales process, advertising expenses generally have to be paid upfront, and they have to be paid whether or not your property sells.

Do you still have to pay for advertising even your property does not sell?

Yes you do. If you have agreed to pay for advertising you still have to pay for this even if your property does not sell.

Related posts:

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2. Still King Of The Castle Nielsen Online has just released its numbers for February 2009...
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It’s already Christmas on Trade Me, with thousands of items listed for the festive season (21,532 as we write this). In this article we’ll attempt to  show you how to use Trade Me to make this Christmas wonderful, whether you’re on a budget or just shopping for that very special someone.

Oh yes — and we also have a hot offer [free!] for Trade Me sellers, so keep reading.

So — When Should You Start Shopping For Christmas?

If you have to ask, you’re probably a guy. Three-quarters of those who leave shopping until the last minute are men. Incredibly busy, right fellas? Yeah, us too.

It won’t come as any surprise to mall visitors that retailers have been in Christmas shopping mode for some time. The ubiquitous Cameron Brewer, chief executive of the Newmarket Business Association, warned in late September that “for better or worse consumers can expect to see Christmas decorations and displays popping up in some New Zealand shops over the next few weeks.” Sure enough, tinsel is definitely in the air all over.

Kiwis usually do their shopping somewhat ahead of the Christmas rush anyway. A 2007 study by AMP Capital Shopping Centres found that:

• 25% of Kiwis have begun their Christmas shopping by September 25, three months out from Christmas
• 16% start shopping in October
• 21% hit the malls in November
• 33% wait until the last fortnight before Christmas
• 7% of us (you know who you are, guys) leave Christmas shopping until the last minute
• Meanwhile an impossibly virtuous 3% head to the Boxing Day sales with vim and vigour, buying their gifts for the following year 364 days early.

How Much Should You Spend?

When it comes to holiday spending this year, 36 percent of American consumers expect to spend between $100 and $499, 28 percent plan to spend $500 to $999, and 30 percent anticipate a holiday spend of $1,000 or more.

Fifty-three percent of U.S. consumers are planning to spend less than they did last year. Of those who are planning to spend less this year, 48 percent reveal that one of the reasons that they are spending less is due to an increase in prices (necessities, petrol, etc.), 45 percent cite lack of confidence in the economy, and 38 percent indicate making less money as a reason for spending less.

We don’t have any recent NZ data for Christmas spend levels, but a five-year-old study by UMR Research on behalf of Visa International found that:

• More than 50% of Kiwis expected to spend less than $300 on Christmas gifts
• 16% intended to spend less than $100
• One in twenty said they were planning to “splash out” and spend more than $1000
• Credit card holders were more likely to expect to spend over $500 than non-cardholders (22 percent compared with 12 percent)
• Men generally planned to spend slightly more than women
• The most free-spending age group was 30-44 year-olds

Those numbers will probably be about the same or even lower this Christmas, given the economy — which makes Trade Me a pretty smart place to buy as much of your stuff as you can.

Half New

More than 50% of the items up for sale on Trade Me last Christmas were brand-new. We expect that percentage to keep growing this Christmas, so don’t worry that you can only buy something secondhand for your nearest and dearest. Of course, if you’re shopping for collectables or antiques, “new” probably isn’t such a good thing …

TIP: When you search on Trade Me, you can select your options so that only “New” items are displayed. Click on “New” in the yellow bar partway down the page that controls your List options.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING ON TRADE ME
PART A: IF YOU ALREADY KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT TO BUY

Sometimes we know exactly what sort of gift we want to buy. Gives us a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. So buying that gift is more a matter of knowing exactly where to find it and how much to pay.

1. Search
   Start your quest by searching for the item (let’s be incredibly creative and describe it as a ‘widget’) on Trade Me. Make a note of who’s selling widgets and at what price they’ve listed each widget.
2. Browse
   Browse in the widget category for misspellings, products without pictures and other items that won’t show up in searches (for more details, read our earlier article on how to find bargains on Trade Me).
3. Verify
   Check out the feedback of the widget sellers. Look for any recent negatives. Cross out any sellers with poor reputations, highlight those with better than sterling customer service. Add the good ones to your “favourite sellers” list to be emailed details of their new listings.
4. History Check
   Go to the Trade Me Search Box and click on “More Options”. Use the advanced search facility (with “Expired Items” selected) to see at what prices those widgets previously sold (or didn’t sell). That will give you an idea of the actual value of the widget in the Trade Me marketplace. (NB If your widget is rare or obscure, there may be no recent auction listings).
5. Real World
   Don’t forget the non-virtual world. Check out widget pricing in actual stores or in printed catalogues. And see what the Recommended Retail Pricing is, perhaps by phoning up widget stockists.
6. Comparison Shopping
   More than ever, comparison shopping is on the forefront of consumers’ minds, with 70 percent of consumers internationally doing more research and comparison shopping online, compared with 38 percent last year. And fifty percent of consumers are planning to shop at discount or outlet stores this year, while only 43 percent did so last year.

   Product comparison websites are commonplace overseas, rather less so here in NZ. However there are a few:

Technology Ubersite www.pricespy.co.nz

This is the site to visit for technology products. Has just launched a website makeover, still a bit buggy, but their database is the most comprehensive around.

General product comparison sites

• www.priceme.co.nz
• www.beforeyoubuy.co.nz

Both these sites offer a limited range of product comparisons, but could be worth a look.

7. The Daily Deal Sites

Air New Zealand’s Grabaseat was the first to hit the headlines in NZ. Now the category has taken off in a big way. The listings are random, but when widgets do come up you’ll get further insight into pricing to help with your homework. Here’s the latest collection of One Day Sale Websites (tip of the hat to Sheldon Nesdale of Marketing First blog for doing the heavy lifting):

• www.1-day.co.nz (NZ’s most popular one day sale site)
• www.6shooter.co.nz
• www.OffTheBack.co.nz
• www.DealADay.co.nz
• www.FirstIn.co.nz
• www.3Deals.co.nz
• www.MightyApe.co.nz
• www.WineDay.co.nz
• www.SnatchADeal.co.nz
• www.1-DayTee.co.nz [T-Shirts]
• www.TodaySale.co.nz
• www.TheTShirtStudio.co.nz [T-Shirts]
• www.Ziwi.co.nz [Books]
• www.1DayFishingSale.co.nz
• www.735pm.com

And, of course, the newly launched Yahoo!Xtra shopping site (with its own daily deal listings):

• shopping.yahooxtra.co.nz

Other new 1 Day Sale websites launching soon:

• www.DaySale.co.nz
• www.EzyDeal.co.nz

NB: For the past year global auction giant eBay has been offering daily deals at Deals.ebay.com. It’s an unlikely development for Trade Me — eBay ends up competing with its own customer base.

8. Get ready to buy

Having down all your homework, you’ll now know what sort of price to pay for your widget. Identify target auctions, hurry up and wait.

9. Hold your breath – and your bid

As you move into Bidding Mode, may we respectfully point you in the direction of Chapter Six of Trade Me Success Secrets. It reveals the most important secret of buying successfully on Trade Me, and deals with the topic in far more detail than we can address effectively here.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING ON TRADE ME
B. IF YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT TO BUY

1. Who

Who are you buying for? Christmas gifts can go horribly wrong if you don’t take into account the recipients’ Personality Types.

We’ve found this really cool personality profiler at www.gifts.com that brings demographics alive. You really must go to the site to check it out, but here’s a sneak peek

• Buying for a SENIOR WOMAN? Is she a Country Clubber, Domestic Diva, Thinker, Super Grandma or Active Retiree?

The Candidates:

Delicious character details at the site, but here’s a sample definition:

The Super Grandma

• Weekend Plans: Three generations around the table for Sunday dinner.
• Second Career: Spoiling the grandkids.
• Favorite Accessory: Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and milk.
• Guilty Pleasure: What’s there to feel guilty about — have another cookie!
• Bumper Sticker: If Mom and Dad say no, ask Grandma.
• Famous Examples: Marie from Everybody Loves Raymond.

SENIOR MEN:

• The Country Clubber
• The Thinker
• The Devoted Grandad
• The Active Retiree
• The Veteran

MEN:

• The Guy’s Guy
• The Geek
• The Devoted Dad
• The Achiever
• The Adventurer

WOMEN

• The Super Mom
• The Achiever
• The Hipster
• The Domestic Diva
• The Trendanista

TEEN GUYS

• The All-Star Athlete
• The Creative
• The X-Treme Dude
• The Student Leader
• The Tech Head
• The Class Clown

TEEN GIRLS

• The Activist
• The All-Star Athlete
• The Creative Spirit
• The X-Treme Dudette
• The Student Leader
• The Trendanista

BOYS

• The Smarty Pants
• The Jock
• Mr Imagination

GIRLS

• The Smart Cookie
• Miss Imagination
• The Girly Girl
• The Tomboy

Not sure what personality type your recipient might be? Take the test at http://www.gifts.com/finder

2. What

What types of gifts would your family/friends/significant others like to receive this holiday season? This is what American consumers told researchers last month:

• 72% of 18-24 year olds wanted Clothing or Accessories, as did 58% of 25-34s
• 40% of men (just 26% of women) wanted consumer electronics or compter-related accessories
• 55% of 25-34s wanted books, CDs, DVDs, videos or video games
• 26% of men wanted sporting goods or leisure items
• 26% of women wanted home decor or home-related furnishings
• 56% of 35-44s wanted gift cards or gift certificates, as did 53% of 45-54s and 49% of those 65 plus
• And 26% of women but just 7% of men wanted personal care or beauty items

This data from BIGresearch’s Consumer Intention & Actions study (October 2009)

3. Specifics

Want more specific advice? Google “most wanted gifts 2009″ and you’ll find a variety of lists of the Most Wanted, for men, women, kids, teens, you name it.

4. Use the Trade Me Christmas Gift Finder

If you’re still at a loss, check out the new and very helpful Trade Me Christmas Gift Finder.

There you’ll find

• Gifts for kids
• Gifts for Mum
• Gifts for Dad
• Gifts for your wife or girlfriend [best not to get the two confused, it can lead to unfortunate outcomes ]
• Gifts for your husband or boyfriend [also try not to mix up the two, not that they'd notice]
• Gifts for grandparents
• Gifts for babies
• Gifts for pets

[Not sure about that last one, especially in tough times!]

5. Go Back To Part A

Once you know exactly what you want, go through the processes described in Part A above.

And another thing

Oh yeah, one last thing. If after going through this process you still can’t find what you want on Trade Me, you could always check out the Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalog. Highlights of the 2009 edition:

• His & Hers Gift Package, $250,000: An ICON A5 sport aircraft with custom trailer and sport pilot license training for two. The ICON A5 is from a world-class team of engineers and designers who helped create the groundbreaking Virgin Global Flyer, and features an amphibious hull and landing gear to take off and land just as easily on water as on land.
• Algonquin Round Table Experience, $200,000: Exclusive dinner party at NYC’s legendary Algonquin Hotel with guests including Christopher Buckley, Roz Chast, Nora Ephron, Malcolm Gladwell, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Adam Gopnik, John Lithgow, Anna Deavere Smith and George Stephanopoulos. Proceeds to benefit First Book, the 2009 Christmas Book Charity.
• 2010 Jaguar XJL Supercharged Neiman Marcus Edition, $105,000: Limited to only 50 examples, the bespoke version of Jag’s new flagship features a supercharged 5-liter V8 that delivering 470 hp, a custom interior of butter-soft navy and ivory leather and Zebrano matte wood accents, and includes a five-piece set of matching Jaguar luggage in navy blue leather.
• Maker’s Mark Master Distiller Experience, $7,500: All-access, VIP experience with Maker’s Mark Master Distiller, Kevin Smith. Spend a day making whiskey, step by step and take home two bottles of the rarest Maker’s Mark – golden bottles etched with your likeness and dipped in gold wax with 24-kt gold flecks. Includes luxury accommodations in Louisville and a gourmet dinner hosted by Bill Samuels, the 7th generation of Maker’s Mark
• HALL Artisan Wine and Art Experience, $20,000: Learn organic, artisan winemaking firsthand, tour the estates in Napa and the art collection, and have the opportunity to create your own personal vintage in a private blending session with HALL’s Winemaker with a custom vintage bottled for you. Includes accommodations at Auberge and a private dinner party with Ambassador Kathryn Hall.

PS We almost forgot — that invitation for Trade Me sellers. If you have suitable Christmas gift items for sale, pimp our traffic. Comment on this blog post, use your seller name as your ID and tell us WHAT product categories you have for sale and TO WHOM they would best appeal. Be specific if you want to be helpful. Items as listed on Trade Me only, please — we do moderate.

PPS Note to buyers: if you’re looking for Christmas inspiration, make sure you read the Comments (and perhaps even come back more than once to do so). Entrepreneurial sellers will be strutting their stuff for your consideration.

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2. An Open Invitation To Trade Me Sellers As an ongoing extension to the just-published Second Edition, we intend...
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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:

• Three nights accommodation for 2 people at Queenstown Motel Apartments in their honeymoon suite with lake and mountain views, a spa bath and breakfast or brunch at their favourite cafe. www.qma.co.nz value $820.00.
• Milford Sound Coach and Cruise for 2 people with Real Journeys from Queenstown. www.realjourneys.co.nz value $460.00.
• Travel on the TSS Earnslaw Vintage Steamship to Walter Peak for 2 people with Real Journeys. www.realjourneys.co.nz value $136.00.
• Skippers Canyon Jetboat trip on the Shotover River for 2 people www.skipperscanyon.co.nz value $218.00
• Lord of the Rings tour for 2 people with Nomad Safaris www.nomadsafaris.co.nz value $298.00
• Voucher for Dinner at The HMS Brittania Restaurant, The Mall value $100.00
• * Voucher for Dinner at Prime Restaurant www.primerestaurant.co.nz value $100.00.

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

Bravo, Dianne. Outstanding effort.

No related posts.

You polish up your headlines, take some great photos and write sizzling words that (you figure) will have people bidding like crazy. You kick-start your auction with great hope and check back in a day or so later.

What? No bids? After all your good work, how could this happen?

If you find your items left at the altar, here’s a little advice.

First, look at the stats. There are three pieces of information you need to know about an item that’s just sitting there, apparently unloved:

1. Is your auction not getting any pageviews?
2. Is it getting views but no bids?
3. Or are people viewing it and then just adding it to their watchlist?

How do you know the answers to these questions? Go to My Trade Me and thence to your Items I’m Selling section. The three key auction numbers are there for you to see.

ON THE WATCHLIST?

If several people have added your auction to their watchlist, don’t change anything. They’re probably veteran Trade Me buyers and are saving up their energies (as well as their Auto-Bidders) for a sudden flurry at the end.

VIEWS BUT NO BIDS?

If you’re getting views and not bids, you know there is demand and interest in the item, but there’s something wrong with your price, your description or your photos. Tinker with the description, consider changing the photos — but don’t touch the pricing. Time enough for that if you have to relist your item.

NO VIEWS?

If you’re not even getting views, then either:

• There’s no demand or interest in the item;
• Your item is listed in the wrong category; or
• Your headline is letting you down.

WHATCHA GONNA DO?

First, head on over to the “more options” link in the Search box, and search for recent sales of similar items under Expired Auctions.

If you find a reasonable number of recent sales at acceptable prices, then you’ve established that there is demand for what you have to offer.

Dig a little deeper: click the most successful sold items and confirm if they were listed in the same category you’re frequenting. If not — and if you still have at least a day before the auction ends — change categories. If the successfully sold items were listed in the same category, probe even deeper.

How does your headline stack up? Is there anything you can learn from the headlines used by the successful sellers? Nothing that’s immediately obvious? At this point you have two choices:

1. Suck it in and wait for the end of the auction. To all intents and purposes, your listing stacks up. Take your chances on attracting attention as your listing moves into the endgame, passing through the Closing Soon pages on the way to temporary oblivion.
2. Tinker under the bonnet, trying some random changes to your headline and/or your choice of category.

We recommend choice #1. But that just might lead to…

COPING WITH FAILURE

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. The same is true of online auction listings. No top seller on Trade Me achieves a 100% success rate, first time every time. We don’t imagine you will either. For some reason, those potential buyers out there have a mind of their own.

Sometimes, there’ll be no bids. Sometimes the bids just won’t reach your reserve. It’s a numbers game — and a game of perseverance. Even the professionals fail between 20% and 55% of the time. As for the rest of us: across the whole site, only one in four auctions closes successfully.

However, all is not lost. If your item doesn’t sell first time you can:

• Make a limited-time offer to any bidders or watchers. However you should note that because it’s so much easier these days to add an item to a Watchlist, you’ll attract many watchers who have only a mild interest in your item. So don’t get too disheartened if nobody bids.
• Relist your item in a different category. Your research amongst Expired Items might have unearthed appropriate alternatives. If not, just think creatively.
• Relist the item with a different description. Sometimes you can achieve success just by changing how you describe an item (refer the Trade Me Success Secrets book for advice on writing effective descriptions).
• Relist your product with a changed price offer. Maybe you were too ambitious with your pricing. Try again.
• Store it for now and try again later. Maybe this is a bad time to sell widgets.
• Add your item to a group of related products (ie, bundled together). Sometimes people don’t appreciate what goes with what (especially with fashion or design items). Combine and attempt to sell the new collection as a unit.
• Add extra value (such as a gift with purchase). The Gift With Purchase strategy is a tried and true sales tactic for retailers. It just might work for you.
• Add premium promotional options. Maybe enough people didn’t notice your listing. Add pictures and pay to have one featured as a Gallery image. Pay for your auction to be listed at the front of the category.
• Turn the whole thing into a publicity opportunity. We can see the headline now: widget that didn’t sell first time round on Trade Me now reaches record sales figures (see our earlier story “Five essential ingredients to make your listing famous” to see what can be done).
• Make the whole thing a learning experience! Use it to explore Trade Me in greater detail than you ever have before (and, ahem, may we suggest that a great way to master Trade Me is to read our Trade Me Success Secrets book).

Let’s not be gloomy about failure, though. It gives us a chance to learn new ways of doing things on Trade Me! Eventually, as winter turns to spring (soon, surely!) and thence to summer, failure will blossom into success.

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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 15^th 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.

• If your Trade Me user name is too long or not available, consider using a descriptive name (related to your product focus) in your Twitter ID – that will help people find you and understand what you do.
• You also get to choose a thumbnail image to accompany your user ID. Choose or create an image that reflects your focus (but try to give it a personal twist – people like to follow other people, not corporations).
• Twitter also lets you include a single biographical weblink to let people click and learn more about you. If you’ve created a meaningful, product-focussed profile on your Trade Me member page, use that as your link (and if you haven’t already fleshed out that page properly, do it right now).

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:

• My Flickr (http://apps.facebook.com/myflickr/): Display photos from your Flickr account using this application. These photos can include logos, product photos, photos from events, etc.
• Upcoming (http://apps.facebook.com/upcoming/): Add all of your events to upcoming.org, and you can easily display them on your Facebook page with Upcoming’s Facebook application.
• YouTube Box (http://apps.facebook.com/videobox/): Allows visitors to play your YouTube videos right on your Facebook page.
• Simply RSS (http://apps.facebook.com/simplyrss/): This allows you to display up to eight RSS feeds on your Facebook page and display the feeds from your business’s main site and newsrooms.

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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Normally, around two-thirds of visitors to Trade Me are looking for a bargain (the remainder are looking for something unique, either a collectable or some other one-of-a-kind offering). However, in the midst of a recession, expect nine out of ten Trade Me visitors to be in bargain-hunting mode.

So the first part of your mission is to take the path less travelled (i.e. go to the sections on Trade Me least populated by other members), lest spontaneous bidding should break out around you.

Avoiding Bidding Wars

So where should you go on Trade Me, to minimise human contact (and thus reduce your chances of squabbling with another keen hunter over some enticing goodie)? Some statistics to the rescue.

Last month on Trade Me, the 20 least popular categories (those which achieved the lowest sell-through rates — the site average was 23%) were:

• Business, farming & industry: Businesses for sale (just 4% of listings sold)
• Art: Photographs 6% sold
• Art: Drawings 9%
• Art: Other 9%
• Crafts: Greeting cards & envelopes 9%
• Electronics & photography: Memory cards 9%
• Antiques & collectables: Phonecards 10%
• Clothing: Wedding 10%
• Electronics & photography: Camera accessories 10%
• Gaming: PC games 10%
• Home & living: Lifestyle 10%
• Sports: Waterskiing & wakeboarding 10%
• Antiques & collectables: Food & drink 11%
• Books: Rare & collectable 11%
• Computers: Blank discs & cases 11%
• Crafts: Painting & drawing 11%
• Crafts: Woodcraft 11%
• Health & beauty: Naturopathy 11%
• Music & instruments: Music DVDs 11%
• Toys & models: Magic tricks & sets 11%

NB We excluded Carbon Credits, which topped our list of Trade Me’s worst, attracting a big fat 0% sales in July. Our research indicates that in tough times consumers prefer to save their families first, before they get around to saving the planet.

If you’re in the market to buy any of these items, head over to the relevant category and browse away. Don’t mind the empty halls — that echoing sound you hear is the sound of the savings you’re likely to make when nobody else bids.

Plan B: Less Likely To Buy

On the other hand, none of those categories might look particularly compelling. Plan B involves taking a look at consumer buying intentions in recessionary times.

Relax, we’ve already done the heavy lifting. A US study conducted in July by BigResearch.com tells us that fewer people in the land of hope and glory are planning to spend in these categories in the next three months: 

• Apparel
• Shoes
• Sporting Goods
• Toys/Games
• CDs/DVDs
• Books
• Electronics
• Home Improvement
• Lawn & Garden Furniture
• Home Decor
• Linens/Bedding

Our own research suggests similar trends in New Zealand, as Kiwis cut back (though not perhaps to the same extent as their American or UK counterparts). So if you’re looking for a sharp deal in one of these categories, now would be a good time to let your keyboard do the walking. 

General Trade Me Buying Advice

Apart from these current trends, there are also a number of tricks and techniques to use when searching for hot deals on Trade Me. Here they are, excerpted from our Trade Me Success Secrets book: a dozen of the best types of auction listings to peruse when you don’t want to spend much:

1. POOR IMAGES OR NO IMAGES
Many people simply won’t bid on an auction if it doesn’t include an image, or if the image is so small or fuzzy that you can’t distinguish the product from the background. That’s why such listings can be great bargains. Yes, there are obviously risks. But if you’re bidding for an item like brand new single sheets, with a reasonably comprehensive description of what’s on offer, from a seller with more than a hundred positive feedbacks, the risk is minimal. On the other hand, if you’re tempted to bid on an unillustrated diamond ring from a brand new seller, we might encourage you to get seriously acquainted with Chapter Three of TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS, which shares some useful perspectives on fraud.

You won’t find image-less listings on Trade Me by searching, alas – you’ll have to browse through the categories that interest you, looking for something that isn’t there. Once you find a listing without images, you’ve still got to decide whether it’s worth taking a risk. If it’s a listing placed by a local seller, you may be able to arrange to pick up the item, giving you the chance to inspect it properly before you pay over any cash. If it’s an out-of-town seller, chances are reasonable (seven degrees of separation theory applies here) that you or a friend know someone nearby who can check the item out on your behalf before handing over the cash. Don’t be put off by a little thing like location.

2. NIGHT OWLS & DAWN CHORUSES
Trade Me operates around the clock, attracting buyers and sellers twenty-four hours a day. Some of those sellers, however, perhaps not quite completely aware of Trade Me’s automated listing processes, add new listings either very late at night or very early in the morning. There’s nothing wrong with doing that if you pay a premium to choose a suitable closing time (i.e. when there are people around to bid). If you don’t set such a closing time then the auction will close at the same time as you listed it, an appropriate number of days later. Such auctions are fair game for the dedicated buyer willing to stay up late or rise a little earlier than usual.

High-volume sellers are particularly likely to be offering products through auctions that finish at odd times. Not because they don’t understand the Trade Me system, but because (if you’re selling multiple copies of the same product) Trade Me’s automated relisting system automatically relists the product to close in increments of 24 hours since the last sale. In other words, if some insomniac buys your widget at 3.27am, your next widget will be relisted to close at 3.27am a (user-specified) certain number of days later.

Canny Trade Me buyers can and do exploit this systemic weakness by adding high-volume sellers to their ‘Favourite Sellers’ list and watching for timing anomalies.

3. ON HOLIDAY OR AT THE GAME
Our political masters don’t plan an Election Day during the school holidays or when there’s a big rugby game scheduled. No-one would show up to vote. For the same reason, you should never end an auction on a public holiday, in the middle of a big sporting event or when it’s going to clash with a major television show like the final of Dancing With The Stars or Outrageous Fortune.

Fortunately for us, sellers don’t always have an event calendar at their fingertips when they’re listing their auctions, so auction closing times seldom take account of what’s happening out there in the real world. Sure, most sellers avoid Christmas Day and the more obvious public holidays, but even so there are often times to snap up bargains because the rest of the population are cheering on the All Blacks or fighting with their tentpegs in some sodden holiday paradise.

4. MISSPELLED WORDS
Lousy spelling can be the kiss of death for Trade Me sellers – but a glowing beacon for buyers in search of a bargain. How do you find such auctions? Try looking at popular Trade Me search terms in your desired category and predicting what mangled variants might exist out there – do a search and prepare to be horrified. Alternatively, browse through the auction listings keeping your eyes peeled for almost familiar brands and keywords.

5. POOR DESCRIPTIONS
Even when they do the other things right, sellers who say little about the items on offer – or who describe them badly – are likely to scare away potential bidders. A collectable Anchor Tea Towel, listed in the Antiques & Collectables category under the headline “Tea towel”, could only attract a $2 bid. The not exactly riveting description that kept the price low: “Anchor butter,in very good condition with no tears or stains,highly decorative and nostalgic item.” Bargain hunters who can see past such descriptions stand to make a killing.

How do you find such gems? It’s not difficult – just browse through a category and look for items that seem good value but haven’t attracted many if any bids. Some sellers seem unable to find words to describe their products satisfactorily. If you’re one of those sellers, read Chapter Fourteen of TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS – Second Edition (Chapter Twelve of the First Edition) before you list another item.  

6. OBSCURE HEADLINES & HEADLINES WITHOUT KEYWORDS
Auction headlines should be treated like gold – every word should be a potential keyword someone will be searching for. And those odd characters that populate the top row of the keyboard are a definite no-no, if more than sixty percent of Trade Me users find listings by searching.

Have you ever searched for the keyword “l@@k”? We just did, and the Trade Me search engine just came back and told us “No results for ‘l@@k’ in New Zealand”. Yet sellers keep using such symbols in their headlines, trying to attract the attention of casual browsers. It’s a mug’s game.

The other common headline mistake: not using keywords. We searched for Tupperware and found 460 listings. The first 422 listings displayed had Tupperware in the headline – the last 38 only had a mention within the main body of the listing. The most popular of the 460 auctions had the headline “Tupperware Modular Mates x 4”, had attracted 573 pageviews and bidding stood at $41.50. The least popular was burdened with the headline “Jelly Molds x2 )”,  had no mention of Tupperware,  three pageviews and no bids. 

• Want to find bargains when you’re browsing? Look for the headlines with the funny symbols. These listings are less likely to show up for searchers, reducing your competition come bidding time.
• Looking for bargains when searching? Start by searching for your desired keyword – but then go through the listings in reverse (go to the last page of the listings and work your way back to the front). The items at the end of the listing results will attract a lot less viewers than those at the front, thanks to keywords not included (in the headlines).

7. LISTINGS IN THE WRONG CATEGORIES
Trade Me has a great many misplaced listings thanks to the joys of self-classification. Not all the listings are wrong – the Lord Of The Rings movies, for example, can be found listed under various DVD categories, including Action, Adventure, Scifi, New Zealand,Boxed Sets and Collectors. Arguably, they’re all valid categories – yet most of the LOTR DVDs have been listed under Action or Adventure and that’s where fans would be most likely to turn first. If you find The Two Towers under Scifi, it’s likely to have attracted fewer pageviews – and probably not as many bids. 

Misplaced items aren’t particularly easy to find deliberately. But if an item shows up during a search that appears undiscovered by others, check out the category in which it’s listed. If it’s wildly out of place, you could be in luck.

8. MARKET KNOWLEDGE
All those wonderful TV programmes where innocent consumers parade their home treasures in front of experts, to be told that they have a $500,000 Rembrandt hanging in their smallest room, are great entertainment – and a wonderful fantasy for Trade Me buyers. Reality seldom delivers on the dream but, if you specialise in a particular product category and know it well, you will have a definite advantage over casual sellers. As more and more new traders set up shop, your specialist knowledge could just come in handy.  

9. FADING FASHION
We live in an instant gratification society. When it’s hot we want it now. That’s why cinema chains can charge blockbuster pricing when a movie is first released – and why some patient (and thrifty) souls are willing to wait a few weeks until the price drops. The same dynamic applies to online auctions – when a hot new DVD or CD is just released, you’ll end up paying about the same to buy it on Trade Me as you would through a retail store. If you’re prepared to wait, however, the price will drop. How long should you wait? Check on the final sale price of similar items on a regular basis. When the price drops to a level that seems acceptable, get ready to bid.

In the same vein: buy off season. Buy your Christmas ornaments after Boxing Day and your swimming accessories at the end of summer.  

10. BROWSING RATHER THAN SEARCHING
If you only use the Search facility on Trade Me, you could be missing out on bargains listed by sellers who (either through some of the poor practices already outlined here or through other misadventures of their own) have done a lousy job of listing their offerings online. It’s worth taking a bit of time to browse through categories of interest – like a jumble sale or a lucky dip, you never know what surprises are in store.

11. OVER-PRICED LISTINGS
Every once in a while you’ll see a product that you want that’s overpriced – either the starting price is too high or, even if there’s been some spirited bidding, the reserve still hasn’t been reached. Don’t do anything rash – just add the product to your watchlist and wait until the auction closes. Unless the bidding gets out of hand, the auction is likely to finish unsuccessfully. Once that happens, you can use the Trade Me system to get in touch, asking them either to relist the item or make a fixed price offer – hopefully this time their expectations will be more realistic.

NB Some sellers simply refuse to make their products available via fixed offer — something about “gannets” and “scavenging”. Their loss.

12. ATTITUDE THAT OFFENDS
Some sellers, presumably as a result of previous problems, seem determined to drive away potential buyers by tough talking in their listings: “payment within three days or the item will be relisted and negative feedback will be posted.” It’s OK to have a bad hair day every once in a while but if you’re the public face for your organisation (as Trade Me listings are) then it’s not a good career move to operate on a customer-is-always-wrong model.

If you’re willing to take the risk of offending these somewhat prickly traders, go ahead and bid. Other more delicate souls may be put off, lessening the competitive pressure. Just make certain that your actions after the auction are squeaky clean.

To List Is Human, To Sell Divine

Just before we leave the topic of recessionary trading, some advice for sellers (who’re also trying to survive and thrive in the economic downturn):

The Seven Things Every Trade Me Seller Should Know About Consumers In 2009

1. Conspicuous Consumption is out of fashion (for now). We don’t want to be seen to be over-indulging while others are suffering. Bling is out, dowdy is in. Subtlety and decorum, please. We will allow ourselves small indulgences — but with discretion. So — even if you have ostentatious items to sell, a little bit of taste, please.

2. Climate Change has been postponed until we can afford it again. Yes, products still need green credentials but they’re just not the most important attribute right now. So mention any sustainable attributes your products might boast, but price your stuff competitively.

3. Security Really, Really Matters. So many finance companies and other institutions, supposedly safe, have fallen into the abyss. We won’t be nearly so trusting anymore. It also means we’ll look more closely at your feedback and your past history, so behave already.

4. Country of Origin is now a significant issue. The melamine-tainted milk powder scandal really brought it home to us — we’ve now started checking labels to see exactly where products are made. Good news for Kiwi Made, not so good for importers. Be open about the source of your products.

5. Staying In is the new Going Out. We’re eating out less, spending more on our little home nests. It’ll take a compelling offer to lure us out in 2009. Focus on selling items that improve quality of life in our homes.

6. We’re Slower To Spend.  In tough times, we procrastinate more about when, where and how we spend. We spend more time searching for information before we commit to purchase (and look further around for the best deals). And we negotiate harder when we do decide to buy. So make those listing details as comprehensive as possible and add lots of pictures.

In the US BigResearch study mentioned earlier, consumers told researchers that their new order of priorities – what they look for first when they shop — is:

• 71% Price
• 54% Selection
• 39% Quality
• 34% Location
• 13% Service

You know what you have to do.

7. We have new Spending Priorities. A September 2008 European Study on Discretionary Spending by Execution Primary Research (”what would you cut back if you had to make savings?”) saw Broadband Internet, Fixed-Line Phone Calls, Toiletries and Cosmetics and Mobile Phones as the least likely to be cut back in tough times. Most vulnerable (in order): New furniture or floor coverings, Gambling, Going Out, Electronics, Music, DVDs, Books & Games and Home Improvements.

The implication: that thrifty consumers could be interested in second-hand goods or maintenance products (e.g. “keep that carpet alive for longer …”)  in the most vulnerable categories; or in upgrades, accessories and supporting products in categories such as mobile phones (”you’ll have to pry the handset from my cold, dead hand”).

It’s The Economy, Stupid

If you’re trying to sell stuff, Trade Me is still the place to be. In fact, online auction sites typically blossom in a recession precisely because they’re the ideal place to find a bargain. Just be aware that value is the single most important attribute right now. One last collection of statistics from that July 2009 BigResearch study, this time capturing the parsimonious attitudes of recession-conscious consumers:

• 52% say they’re now considering purchases more carefully
• 49% are more price-conscious
• 47% are (gasp!) sticking to their budgets
• 45% are dining out less
• and 42% are racking up less credit card debt

Finally, just to complete the set (and so you can know what items you should be selling), here’s a list of the Top 20 Items selling most on Trade Me (July 2009) despite the recession:

• Electronics & photography: iPods (67% of listings sold)
• Baby gear: Walkers 62%
• Music & instruments: Concert tickets 59%
• Mobile phones: Telecom network 58%
• Sports: Event tickets 56%
• Baby gear: Bouncers & jolly jumpers 53%
• Home & living: Laundry 53%
• Baby gear: Monitors 52%
• Home & living: Heating & cooling 47%
• Baby gear: Safety 45%
• Electronics & photography: DVD players & VCRs 45%
• Sports: Gym memberships 44%
• Computers: Computer furniture 43%
• Art: Tattoos 42%
• Baby gear: Cots & bassinets 42%
• Home & living: Beds & bedroom furniture 41%
• Mobile phones: Vodafone network 41%
• Health & beauty: Shaving & hair removal 39%
• Baby gear: Sleep aids 38%
• Electronics & photography: GPS 38%

PS We would be remiss if we didn’t sneak in one last plug for our book, TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS. Its subtitle is “How to buy for less and sell more profitably on New Zealand’s most popular auction site” — and that’s what we all need, especially in tough times. See our listings on Trade Me.

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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.

• Check out some of the available Coraline merchandise here.

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.

• Already decades of G.I. Joe merchandise on sale on Trade Me, but if you have something rare, NOW would be the time.

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.

• Good time to promote other Renee Zellweger stuff — posters, previous movies etc

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.

• Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, what’s not to sell?

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.

• Royal memorabilia rocks!

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.

• Time to sell off that Peter Jackson collection

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.

• Anything from Denzel Washington, John Travolta or James Gandolfini (Sopranos)

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.

• Look here for Up merchandise (books, soundtrack)

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.

• Great toys from the folk who bought you AITA (see here to learn more about them)

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.

• Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow. Lots of stuff around for both.

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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And yet, despite the inherent appeal of the items listed on sale, they don’t always sell — at least not right away. In fact, on average only one in four auctions on Trade Me ends in a sale.

Has that ratio changed, especially in these recessionary times?

Not much. If we examine the figures for the most recent month available, June 2009, we find that 23% of auctions closed successfully. In comparison, 22% of auctions in June 2008 were similarly successful; while 24% of June 2007’s auctions resulted in a sale.

Of course, some product categories are more popular than others. If we rank Trade Me’s various sections in terms of popularity, here’s what we find:

• 41% of items listed in Mobile phones sold successfully in June 2009 (was 38% in June 2008)
• 37% Baby gear (was 33%)
• 29% Home & living (27%)
• 27% Electronics & photography (23%)
• 26% Toys & models (26%)
• 25% Sports (25%)
• 25% Building & renovation (24%)
• 23% Gaming (23%)
• 23% Health & beauty (21%)
• 22% Computers (19%)
• 20% Antiques & collectables (20%)
• 20% DVDs & movies (18%)
• 20% Music & instruments (21%)
• 19% Clothing (18%)
• 19% Jewellery & watches (17%)
• 18% Crafts (18%)
• 18% Pottery & glass (17%)
• 17% Art (15%)
• 17% Books (17%)
• 17% Business, farming & industry (24%)

If we drill down even deeper, to Trade Me’s sub-categories, we find much more dramatic results. These were the Top Ten best-selling product types on Trade Me for June 2009:

1. 66% Baby Walkers (59% in June 2008)
2. 66% Telecom mobile phones (64%)
3. 65% iPods (not listed separately in June 2008) 
4. 61% Concert tickets (57%)
5. 59% Baby Monitors (not listed separately last year)
6. 55% Laundry items (47%)
7. 54% Sports event tickets (58%)
8. 52% Heating & cooling (40%)
9. 50% Baby Bouncers & jolly jumpers (44%)
10. 45% Tattoos (not listed separately last year)

And those categories that improved most (in terms of sell-through rate) between June 2008 and June 2009?

• Up 65% GPS devices (were 23%, now 38%)
• Up 61% Trampolines (were 18%, now 29%)
• Up 60% Pottery & ceramics (were 10%, now 16%) 
• Up 58% Baby Car seats (were 19%, now 30%)
• Up 55% Domain names (were 11%, now 17%)

And those that fell furthest?

• Down 40% Crafts: Transfers (were 20%, now 12%)
• Down 40% Music DVDs (were 15%, now 9%)
• Down 50% Flags (were 26%, now 13%)
• Down 50% Businesses for sale (were 8%, now 4%)

And the very worst performer of all?

Carbon credits. This time last year, they enjoyed a sell-through rate of 71%. In June 2009 there were NO sales. Clearly an idea whose time has come – and gone.

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