eBay Project Updates

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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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Harper’s Ferry, WV - A great day trip!

Friday I got the chance to head out to Harper’s Ferry, WV with my fiancé for the day. We weren’t really too sure what we would do while we were there (it’s not that big of a town) because we were not sure if we would get some hiking in or not. For those that do not know, the Appalachian Trail runs right through Harper’s Ferry and most hikers consider it the half way point.

You can read about the trip and see the pictures by checking out the post I put up on TheGearHouse.

Looking for a logo designer!

Just a quick note - I am looking for a logo designer that is interested in some quick work. If you are a designer or can make a recommendation, please leave a comment or email me. I have a logo that I put together for TheGearHouse but I want to get something new and fresh created.

This is paid work, but I am on a tight budget! Thanks for any interest!

The Very First Dorm Room Biz Podcast! It is finally here!

This has been a long time coming that is for sure! I mentioned that I wanted to start doing a podcast a long time ago, but now it has finally come true. I just interviewed Paul Scheiter through Skype about his company, Hedgehog Leatherworks, as well as about student entrepreneurship and more.

Please take a listen to the podcast and let me know what you think! I look forward to putting more of these together and hopefully I will be releasing the next one next week or so. I am looking for any feedback that you may be able to provide on the podcast – about the content or the way it is put together (quality of the recording, ways to improve it, etc). So PLEASE leave some comments!

Here are a couple notes to go along with the podcast.

• Total run time: Just over 28 minutes
• Paul’s company: Hedgehog Leatherworks
• I make mention of my website TheGearHouse where this podcast is also going to be posted; the website is at http://www.thegearhouse.com.
• For the interview, we chatted through Skype (http://www.skype.com)
• To record the interview, I used Call Burner (http://www.callburner.com)
• For editing the recording and putting the podcast together, I used Audacity (http://www.audacity.com)

Download the Podcast Here.

Making Some Updates to Dorm Room Biz!

For the past couple days and over the next couple weeks I will slowly be pinpointing different areas of Dorm Room Biz that need to be updated and make small changes on the site to hopefully increase its reach. Here are a few of the things that I will be working on.

• New Header - the current header is a little plain, so I am going to be working on something a little more jazzy but also that brings across the point of Dorm Room Biz – to provide young/student entrepreneurs with advice and ideas. Hopefully I’ll be able to put something together for it soon.
  
  
• Adding Tags to Old Posts – Just recently with the upgrade of Wordpress, I started using tags with the posts that I have written. I know the tags help when people are searching the site so I want to go back through old posts and add some tags to them, even if it is only 1 or 2, so that they can be found through the search. This will take some time, but I have already started working on it and completed about 30 old posts in just a short stint.
  
  
• Condensing the Sidebars – I want to try to condense the sidebars some because they are so long. Now, I know that the page itself is long, so even if you are scrolling to read the content, you are still seeing what is in the sidebars, but I would like to still shorten them up some and possibly even add in some more advertising spots.
  
  
• Finding New Advertisers – I am on the hunt for new advertisers! If you would be interested in taking a test run with Dorm Room Biz to see how your site performs while being advertised here, please get in touch with me. With the installation OIOpublisher, I hope to be able to manage advertisers in an easy format.
  
  
• Getting OIOpublisher Set Up – I purchased the script a little bit back but have not really played with it much. I hope to just sit down one night and do as much as I can with it and get it working with Dorm Room Biz as well as my other site, TheGearHouse where it is currently installed. If anyone has had some experience using it, I would LOVE to hear from you!

I’d love to hear suggestions related to what you think about Dorm Room Biz and what I may be able to do to make it a better user experience for you, so please reach out to me and let me know! Also, be on the lookout for some user polls coming soon!

TheGearHouse.com Official Launch

As many of you know who have been following Dorm Room Biz for a while now, I am an outdoor enthusiast and love to get out onto the trail as often as I can. I have launched a few different outdoor focused websites over the last couple years but I have not been able to focus on them as much as I wanted due to school work and other factors. However, now the time has come, to launch a brand new site that will hopefully become on of my flagship internet properties.
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With that, I would like to announce the official launch of TheGearHouse! TheGearHouse is going to focus on providing information on outdoor gear that hikers, campers, and outdoor addicts like to use. On top of that, we will be providing you with gear reviews, helpful tips, trail reviews, amazing outdoor pictures, a spot to buy the gear we review, utralight gear options, and much more.

What’s the reason for the site?
Well, I simple love the outdoors and getting a chance to go hiking, camping, rock climbing, and any other activity that doesn’t kill me. With graduation quickly approaching (just over a month left) I know I will have some more time to get out outside to do these things and I wanted a place where I could share the experiences, review the gear that I am using, and help others to find useful information. Of course the idea of making a little bit of pocket change on the side from the site is always good as well.

How will I generate income?
The main income generator on the site starting out will be the AdSense ads and the affiliate ads/links. On top of this, however, I hope to grow a nice “gear shop” that will link to outdoor gear that I sell on eBay through Radford Auctions and then with their new affiliate program, I will also be able to drive my traffic to eBay that way to find great gear deals.
I would love to hear your feedback on the website. The site is powered by Wordpress and the theme is based off of Adii’s WP-Polariod theme that he released last year. I spent a good amount of time trying to make sure that I caught everything with the theme, so please let me know if you see anything.

Check out the site and leave a comment with what you think!

Spring Break Is Finally Here!

It has been a bit slow here at Dorm Room Biz because of school working creeping up and ripping my head off. No seriously - my face is gone. Anyway….

Spring break is finally here! I leave tomorrow for a cruise and am super excited. So, to catch up things over the last week or so, here are some updates of what I have been up to and doing.

eBay Business
January and February were pretty decent months for my eBay venture - I did about $500 in sales each month. I don’t know the exact profit right now, but it should turn out pretty decent. I am looking to continue to expanding my product offering through a drop shipper that I am linked with. When I return from my break, I am going to be trying to list at least 5 new items in my eBay store a day so that I can get up to around 150 items just in my store and then continue to list items in the regular auction format. Increasing my product offering the in store will hopefully generate more sales. I have the ability to make a pretty decent profit off of the products offered by the drop shipping company that I use, so if I can start moving them more and more, sales will shoot right up. I also surpassed the 550 mark with positive feedbacks which is a great accomplishment. My ultimate goal is to reach 1200 by the end of 2008. Once I move home from school, I don’t think that will take too long.

ProfessionalGFX Website Development
After finishing up my latest project this week with Main Street Radford, I am going to be taking a break from accepting any new clients for my website development business. Basically, I do not have the time to currently focus on it and I need to be able to focus more energy and time on my last couple months of college. Without taking a new clients, that leaves me with about 6 current clients that I help out every now and then with small things and then also have one project that is going on right now. Look out for some more updates about that later on.

New Outdoor Gear Website Coming Soon!
As many of you know, I am very much into the outdoors and outdoor activities - camping, hiking, rock climbing, canoing, etc. With that, I am going to be relaunching a site I had created a couple years back into a new and better format. The site will be launching when I return from my stint without a constant internet connection this week. Already without much information on it and very little advertising, it is seeing some traffic and some AdSesnce revenue. This site just being active and live is what pushed me over to getting another AdSense check.

Spring Break Cruise!
Like I mentioned, I will be leaving for a week long cruise Saturday and won’t be back until the following Saturday. I am going to probably have my laptop with me on the cruise, yet we will not have any internet unless we use the ships internet cafe. I am going to attempt to write a couple posts in the evenings or something while sailing and try to get on a computer to post them during the week. We depart from Charleston, SC and will be headed to Cozumel, Grand Cayman Islands, and Key West, FL; then back to South Carolina to come back home. I will definitely have a follow up post as well as a bunch of pictures to share when I return!

For all of you other students and entrepreneurs that are going to be going on Spring Break this week, whatever you are doing, be safe and have fun!

Talk to all of you in a week!