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

BUSINESS OR HOBBY – DOES IT MATTER?

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

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

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

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

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

OR

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

OR

3. If your business involves dealing in such products

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

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

4. Scale of operations

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

5. Volume transactions

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

6. Commitment of time, money and effort

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

7. Frequency of sales

Regular = business; occasional = possible hobby.

8. Financial results

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

9. Type of activity

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

10. Buttoned down

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

CONGRATULATIONS, IT’S A BUSINESS!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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Effective today, sellers registered for Pay Now can accept payments up to $3,000 (increased from $1,000).

So if you’ve been holding back on bidding for one of our autographed Trade Me Success Secrets books because you couldn’t bid more than $1000 (and pay by credit card) — now you can.

Feel free to bid your heart out (up to $3000).

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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.

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We’ve tweaked our vehicle categories to return more relevant results and hotter auctions to the top of your search results. We now also show the exact dates that classifieds were listed, in order to give buyers more transparency on the age of listings.

For now, we’ll just concern ourselves with the second part of the announcement, the news that Trade Me will now be displaying “the exact dates that classifieds were listed”.

THE BACKGROUND

If you list your vehicle for sale on Trade Me Motors, you’re given the option of listing it as either an auction or a classified listing. If you choose “auction”, as around half of private sellers do, then the normal protocols apply: you choose start price and closing date, season liberally with dazzling description and enticing images and post to Trade Me, there to await the pleasure of the bidders. The end date is displayed (and the listing date can be calculated easily enough based on the 14-day maximum duration of the listing). If the motorised conveyance fails to sell within that time, you can relist it for free (apart from any promotional extras you may choose, which are billed anew with each relisting). If your horseless carriage does sell, the final price may be the same as the starting price — or much higher, if more than one eager bidder is in hot pursuit.

If you choose “classified” (favoured by the vast majority of dealers, as well as the other half of those private sellers), the same protocols apply — except for the price, which remains fixed (unless negotiated otherwise, off-site). Relisting remains free (except for extras).

The main difference between the two options: price. In auctions, the final purchase price is determined by the market; for classified listings, the price is set by the seller on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis.

UNLEVEL PLAYING FIELDS AND THE POWER OF INFORMATION

Until the arrival and widespread adoption of the internet, most retail and commercial transactions were unbalanced. The seller typically knew a whole lot more about the product or service he or she was offering than the buyer,  at least in terms of where to source it and at what cost. As a result, products typically carried a higher profit margin than would be possible in a truly transparent marketplace.

Enter Al Gore’s creation, the Interweb. With the aid of a Google or two, would-be purchasers can quickly establish the going rate for most any product, and use that information to their advantage when negotiating with sellers.

TRADE ME AND TRANSPARENCY

The wide-open market that is Trade Me has long fostered transparency. Looking for a widget? Just search the site and you’ll find all the widget sellers and what prices they’re asking. If you want to know the final prices actually achieved on widgets recently sold, click on the “More Options” link on Trade Me’s search bar and you can prowl amongst up to two months worth of recently-closed widget auctions to identify selling prices.

In the used car market, not typically the most open and sharing of environments, information remains the jealously-guarded treasure of a few. You can search through closed Trade Me Motors auctions to see what sold or didn’t — but (until now) you couldn’t easily identify whether that 1999 Honda Accord was first listed 14 days or 14 months ago.

And, of course, that’s a major competitive advantage when negotiating. If you know that we’ve had that Honda sitting on our forecourt for six months, you’ll have a different view of the pricetag than if you thought it has just been listed for the first time (and other eager buyers are sniffing around).

THE LONG TAIL: MOSTLY DEALERS

We carried out a quick sortie on Trade Me Motors, zeroing in on the Honda category (so our findings are not necessarily representative of TM Motors as a whole — but they probably are).

What we found was that, of the 3593 used cars currently listed under the overall Honda category:

• Around 2000 were listed more than 14 days ago (and thus have been relisted at least once)
• Around 600 have been listed on Trade Me for more than three months
• Around 300 have been up for sale for more than six months
• 60 lucky listings have been up for more than a year
• The single oldest listing we found under Honda on Trade Me Motors was this one, proudly displayed on the site since the 1st of June 2007!

Needless to say, all the old listings we found were placed by dealers. Who else has the patience? Private sellers would long since have flicked their vehicle on some other way, or sold it for spare parts.

DOING THE DEALS

So, next time you’re in the market for a motor, check out the date of first listing. Oh, a word of advice: listing dates shown are ‘day and month’ only (eg ‘Listed Fri, 1 Jun’). Given that a small number of vehicles have been listed for more than 12 months, that “November” listing date could be November 2o08 or earlier. So double-check by reviewing the Listing Number. You’ll find it on the top right hand side of the listing.

If that number is below 1,947,000,000, the listing is from 2008 or earlier.  If it’s below 1,350,000, you’re looking at a gem from 2007 or older. And if that listing number is below 1000, congratulations, you’ve got yourself a collectors’ item from pre-millennial 1999!

PS For sellers: if you want to avoid the ignominy of having your failures so conspicuously displayed on Trade Me Motors, there’s a simple workaround: don’t simply relist your vehicle. Create a whole new listing instead, so that the new creation date takes precedence. Yes, you will have to pay a new listing fee, but that’s a relatively small cost in the context of vehicle prices. And besides — if your old listing was working, you’d have already sold the vehicle. So rework the words and pictures before you relist [you'll find plenty of helpful advice on the subject of effective vehicle listings in Chapter Twelve of Trade Me Success Secrets].

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could this sort of thing happen on Trade Me?

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

Well, anyway, that’s our dream.

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Late last month, Ms Meeker delivered her annual presentation as usual. What has she picked as hot for 2010?

Mobile Internet.

Mary’s mobile internet take away

1. Mobile internet is bigger than you think.
2. iPhone is becoming THE mobile platform.
3. Social media, mobile devices are changing communications and commerce.
4. Mobile internet trends in Japan show how the future will be.
5. Carriers will be crushed by demand.
6. The Walled Gardens collapse.
7. Apple wins, Google maybe wins, Research In Motion withers

View Mary’s presentation on Scribd here.

Why are we telling you this?

To explain why we’ve just launched a mobile version of this site. Access us via your mobile and you’ll automatically be served a mobile-friendlier version.

It may not get much use now, but oh boy, wait till next year.

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Here’s how we describe the moment of creation in Trade Me Success Secrets:

There’s a wonderful company legend that goes something like this: in early 1999, 23-year-old Sam Morgan was looking for a second-hand heater to help him survive a draughty Wellington flat. Being computer-savvy (in fact, he was an IT consultant for Deloitte at the time) Sam turned to the Internet to help with his quest, but couldn’t find what he wanted among New Zealand websites. The closest was the website for Trade & Exchange, but listings on that site were held back until a week after they’d been published in the paper. By the time Sam found an appropriate listing and phoned up, everything had been sold. That experience inspired him to create Trade Me.

Well, times have moved on, and the Trade & Exchange website is a fully-functioning service these days. Here’s what the T&E press release had to say about the impending closure:

As from the end of November, Trade & Exchange plans to close its paper publications in Auckland and Wellington and concentrate solely on its online service.

Managing Director, Peter Whitmore, said that online traffic had been growing and paper sales had been falling for several years now. “It has reached the stage where around ten times more people visit the website each week than purchase a paper. And compared to the papers, they gain access to around 50 times as many listings.”

Launched in early 1981 by Peter and Jill Whitmore, the Auckland Trade & Exchange was the first free ads paper in New Zealand and also one of the earliest in the world. In 1989 the Wellington edition opened and for a period there was also an edition serving the Manawatu, Wanganui and Taranaki areas. All these papers grew from small beginnings to become major classified advertising publications in their markets.

The Trade & Exchange web site. te.co.nz, launched in 1998, was New Zealand’s first major online trading site. Despite the success of Trademe with the auction model, TE has stayed with an open classified approach that allows buyers and sellers to contact each other directly, and gives the opportunity to view goods before a purchase is made. In terms of listing numbers it is now the largest free advertising site in the country.

“If we could keep the papers open we would”, said Whitmore, “because although most people are now online. there is still a dedicated group of readers who use the papers regularly. However, unfortunately circulations have reached a point where the papers are no longer economic to produce.”

It’s always sad when a publication closes. We wish T&E well in their new focus.

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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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