ProfessionalGFX Website Development Business Updates

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Wrapping up projects seems to be the theme with my website design clients lately. I have been very close to finishing up two project this week and then there is an “oh one more thing” email…yet it is never just one more thing. So, knowing when to say “OK, enough is enough. No more revisions can be done at this point” is about where I am at. This is a hard spot to determine what is too much or too little but you need to determine that point, otherwise your clients will walk all over you.

So, right now, I am working on things for two clients. I am looking to wrap them up in the next week to two weeks and get paid. If I can do this, I will be happy! That will also allow for me to start slowly searching for new clients to work with and also try to get referrals from my current clients.

With that all being said, I have been looking up information on outsourcing design work to assistants in India, Canada, and other countries to free up my time with future clients. I have also been recommended the main different services out there that will convert your PSD files to valid code such as HTML, CSS, etc. This may be a good way to go too! I have also been talking with other bloggers and web developers out there such as Ellis Benus who has started using similar services and has had good results.

Besides, this, there is not a whole lot going on at this side of things. I just have not had as much time to focus on this venture as I would like because I know it is the one that can generate the most income for me in the least amount of time. My goal is reach $10,000 worth of income by the new year through web design related tasks (including designing, updating, hosting, etc). To reach this goal would prove the viability of the venture and also the opportunity to get out of the rat race and be on my own.

eBay Project Updates

It has been a pretty long time since the last time that I did some project updates on the different ventures that I am working on, so I thought it was about time that I started putting together some new ones. I’ll be updating you all on my eBay business, my website design and development business, and other side projects. Today, I’ll be touching on the eBay business, Radford Auctions.

Over the past few months, I have really been comtemplating what I wanted to do with this business. When I launched Radford Auctions with my partner back in 2007 it was an opportunity for us to learn about starting a business, expanding on something we knew (eBay), and also making money. We started out with the consignment store mentality where we would sell other peoples items for them. We quickly learned that unless we put some money into the advertising of the business and invested in some software, that we would not be able to do it as effectively as we wanted. Instead, we kept with that idea, but made it a second focus of the business. Our first focus became purchasing inventory and reselling on eBay. I quickly scooped up lots of rock climbing equipment and camping equipment that we sold on eBay seperately.

From there, we expanding into offering brand new products that I purchased from the manufacturers. This worked out very well for us! However, our product line was not as expansive as we wanted so we started looking for other options. Now we are dealing with three different manufacturers of outdoor equipment and looking to add a forth in the next month. This has expanded our opportunities greatly! By now selling more products, we have been able to make a significant amount of more money. Our profits on products went from being a couple dollars to $20+ dollars on each auction. With this strategy, we have also been able to increase our overall sales figures per month and are quickly approaching becoming a Power Seller. I need to have sales of $1000 per month, for three months in a row to achieve the status and then maintain that. Now that I am selling a lot of items that range in values of $50 - $150, this should not be too much of a hurdle to jump over and I am looking for to it!

With the increase in product offering, and the more focused related industry/niche, I have been considering changing the name of my eBay store. I currently operate as Radford Auctions and my username is radfordauctions. However, your store name and username do not have to be the same. I have been thinking of changing my store name to TheGearHouse to coincide with my website - www.thegearhouse.com. This would be a great opportunity because then I can cross promote and sell products directly from my website and the eBay store. I have been working on doing this, but I have been a bit hesitant because of using two differnet names. The other reason I am hesitant to make the switch is because I sell a decent amount of stuff that is not outdoor gear related such as coins/stamps and supplies, jewelry, books, clothing, and more.

Some numbers:

• $900+ in sales in the last 30 days
• $2,000+ in sales in he last 90 days
• Top performing categories: camping/hiking/backpacking, rock climbing - ropes, coins and supplies
• 60 successful listings in the last 60 days (includes store format and auction format)

Do you sell on eBay? I’d love to hear your experiences and stories! If you have any questions about eBay and being a seller, feel free to ask!

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ProfessionalGFX Secures New Website Design Client in Ellicott City, MD

ProfessionalGFX Secures New Website Design Client in Ellicott City, MD

I am happy to announce that my web design business, ProfessionalGFX, has secured a new client in the Ellicott City, MD area. This is a great accomplishment for ProfessionalGFX because this is the first time that I have heard from a potential client that they found my website through the search engines. And the other good news is that apparently out of all the companies that he contacted, I was the quickest to respond – and yet it took me two days to get back to him. So, it sounds like to me, even though there are other companies and businesses in the immediate area that are offering the same services as I, I seem to have the upper hand on them just by being able to respond semi quickly.

The scope of services are going to be pretty basic by outfitting the current website with a completely new design, a couple more pages, and some new images. I will also work in some keywords and a few other SEO strategies. My client is in the industrial chemical cleaning business, so most of his clients are from referrals and not finding him directly on the internet. The business is very face to face as far as interaction goes, so displaying basic information about the business, the industry, and his niches will be enough to get someone interested in picking up the phone – rather than displaying a full line of products or having the opportunity to purchase online.

I am waiting to get the contract and down payment from the client and we should be getting started next week. With luck, I will be able to wrap everything up in the middle of June.

This new client will definitely be a boost to my new method of savings that I wrote about the other day!

As we go along with the process more and move towards wrapping it up, I will be posting more about what different tactics are implemented to help his business out.

If you are looking for a low cost and effective web design service in the Ellicott City, MD, Baltimore, MD or Washington D.C. area, feel free to get in touch with me to discuss your project!

Still time to get your Valentine’s Day gifts in time!

As I announced earlier, I launched a niche product site for Valentine’s Day gifts - Show Your Love Shop (www.showyourloveshop.com). I just wanted to let everyone know that there is still time to be able to get your orders in for products and get them in plenty of time for the holiday.

Also, I have listed some of the exact same products that are on Show Your Love Shop in my eBay store at some amazingly discounted prices. Be sure to check them out! I have already sold a few of the different items through eBay and this is what is left.

All of these items are also available in bulk wholesale prices, so if you may be interested in them that way, please contact me!

What are you selling on eBay?

Alright, so many of you know that I run an eBay business selling different products, some of which we keep in inventory and some that we sell for others. Every once in a while I like to see what other people are selling on eBay and having some success with.

If you visit my store, you will see my current product offering (expanding every day). All of the items listed are good sellers for us and we will continue to offer them for as long as we can.

So, I am curious as to what others are selling on eBay and having success with. I have a friend who is selling football tickets to the Arizona State University games, a friend who is selling car parts, and more. There is such a wide variety of options and opportunities, there are always chances to expand your offerings…and that is what I am looking to do.

If you feel like sharing, I would love to hear what you are selling on eBay.

July Earnings

I haven’t done this before, but thought that I woudl throw the information out there anyway…even though it is not much.

No, no, no, I didn’t make anywhere near John Chow or other similar bloggers, however, I did make more money then previous months so I just wanted to point it out and where it came from.

For July I earned about $55.26. Not too bad I guess for not really doing a whole lot to monetize the blog, although that will be changing over the next few weeks

ReviewMe - $35.00
PayPal- $10.00
Google AdSense- $10.26
Total: $55.26

The ReviewMe payments can in two waves. The first payment was for the campaign reviews I did on the site, which were $5.00 each. These are a lower payout price then your normal blog review price because they are not directed to any certain blog specifically. They are campaigns where you can pick and choose which reviews you would like to do. This got me $10.00. The second payment from ReivewMe was for the affiliates side of the house. I had 107 people click on my affiliate links to ReivewMe but only one of those signed up. That one person got me $25.00 though, so I am happy with that. If all 107 of them signed up that could have meant $2,500+…I think I would have crapped my pants if that happened. So, sign up this time when you click on my ReviewMe links!

The $10.00 from PayPal was for filling out a PayPal survey. This was a survey they asked me to participate in and in return I would get $10 in my account, free money! So for about 5 minutes of my time, it was pretty painless.

And of course we all know how the $10.26 from AdSense works. I didn’t get a check or anything for it, but I am getting closer to reaching the next $100 magic mark.

Hopefully this will continue to rise in the coming months!

On another note, I also brought in good amounts from my eBay business and my web development business. Web development work this summer totaled around $3,500 (total, yet I had expenses like hiring other designers, programmers, and buying scripts). eBay, however, where most of the money was profit, brought in about another $2,000. If I had to guess, since I am not looking at any numbers in front of me, I probably sold about $1,000 worth of camping equipment (based on retail prices) as well as other items.

Launching a new company, anyone else up for it?

My eBay company is currently legally set up as a partnership, but my business partner and I are about to change all of that.

Within the next month we are going to be registering and launching a limited liability company that will act as a holding company or parent company for our other business ventures, such as our eBay company and my web development business.

The reasoning for making this move is the added protection that a LLC offers to its founders and creates more seperation between personal and business assets. This will also allow us to set up our bank account and get things rolling properly, yet still on a bootstrappers budget!

So, the question becomes, who else is launching a company this summer? Leave a comment!

Relaunching Virginia Hiker

About a year ago I started a project called Virginia Hiker which was growing to become a huge resource for outdoor folks looking to get hiking in Virginia. However, a it was abused and not updated for a while and when I would update the site, I would add a couple new trails or a new product review and then it would sit for another couple months before another update.

Well, its time to relaunch it and bring it back to life. When I was having problems with Wordpress and my server transfers of Dorm Room Biz, I was also have trouble with Virginia Hiker. Since getting Wordpress working on both hosting accounts, Virginia Hiker just kind of sat there with nothing on it. I am trying to get the old posts back up there, but if not, I am prepared to start from scratch.

So, I will be using the same theme as Dorm Room Biz, but changed up a little and with different colors. I have been thinking about branding my future sites using the same designs/themes and I really like the way that this Wordpress theme from Solostream customizes and is laid out.

So, keep a look out for more updates coming about Virginia Hiker and if you like to be outdoors and live in Virginia, check it out!

New ProfessionalGFX Design Launched

I just wanted to make a quick note that I released a new version of

ProfessionalGFX, my website development business. I usually try to head to bed around 11 PM each night as I wake up at 6 AM for my internship, but last night I couldnt get to sleep, so I finished the site up with beefing up the portfolio page and then launching it.

I would love to hear your comments and thoughts on the site. The layout is a pretty simple html table layout and thats what I was going for, something simple and easy to maintain (until I want to change it all again).

Let me know what you think as I will be making minor changes over the next couple days.

eBay Sales Taking a Rollercoaster Ride

Over the past month or so, I have not had a ton of time to fully devote to my eBay business and because of that, I know our sales have suffered. However, when I do have a chance to take pictures, write descriptions, and list times, I am usually able to list around 10 items at a time…there just may only be those 10 listed for a week or two before more are listed.

So, as I do have a chance to list some items, the sale go well…surprise surprise. I have been keeping a fairly small inventory of some different camping and backpacking equipment so that I can try and have a steady stream of inventory to be able to list for sale. This has worked out pretty well because as one item of it would sell or an auction would end, I could easily relist it and not really have to worry about it too much. However, my inventory is quickly depleting.

I paid for the inventory on my credit card, so before I purchase more (or much more) I want to have my credit card bill paid off (which means about another $300 to send in). So, I am looking for other things to sell…which is why we originally started the business – to sell items for others. So I have been picking some stuff up from my parents who own a coin and jewelry store in the area and selling things that they have bought as scrap just for their metal values and not to resell. My parents are nice enough to let me keep the money made off of these sales. So I am hoping that within the next two weeks I will have the money to pay off the credit card bill completely, so I can just run it up again with another $200+ charged to it WOOHOO!

Anyway, my rant was just to explain that I am still continuing to sell on eBay and the sales are doing well when I have the time to list items. As I mentioned in my previous post working full time from 8-6 every day does not leave a whole lot of time to work on the eBay business, yet I am trying. I really see the potential for this business to take off…..only if I could focus all my efforts on it, but that will have to wait for now!

Anyway, if your in the needs for some sweet bicycling gear (mountain bike forks, water bottle holders, handle bar tape, etc) or any camping/backpacking gear, check out our eBay store. You may find something you like!