Christian Business Blog

Please bear with me. This blogging stuff is all new to me…and I am an old fart you know. I’ll get it eventually though. This is really my second post because my first one was an edit of the “Hello World” generic page and I decided to turn it into an “About Me” page mainly because it was so boring. Well, I’ll try to do better this time.

What I want this blog to be is a place for us to answer the question, “Is it possible for an average person (or even a slob like me) to make a living from home using the computer…and if I can do it…believe me, anyone can.

I thank you for visiting and hope you will join me often. I need all the help I can get.

As I stated in my “About Me” (my unofficial first blog), I am looking at new ways to bring in income. The computer school I’ve been employed at for 8 years is closing. I’m over 50 now and I live in a rural Pennsyvania area where IT jobs are at a minimum and there are way too many applicants for each job.

I’m going to go ahead and post this because I don’t have a clue what I am doing with this “WordPress” software yet and I need to see what it looks like and get it configured properly and all that so as I said please bear with me for a few post.

I have been doing some investigating and I will say, just for starters that I haven’t really found anything that I am that crazy about doing at home yet (except for ebay and I’m running out of stuff around the house to sell).

But if you are interested in answering the phone and taking orders for companies and working on the computer at the same time. I have a good lead for you. It’s not easy and they will test your computer and phone skills but it is a real job and you can do it from home. Actually there are 4 or 5 companies listed on the website I am going to give you to. I don’t know how much they pay but if anyone out there knows or can find out, please let us all know. Thanks! Here is the link:

http://wahm.com/jobs.html

Find the text that says, “Several of the members on the message boards work for one or more of these companies, we don’t necessarily endorse or recommend any of these companies, the links are provided for your convenience and information. Please come to the message boards to talk with people who have direct experience with these companies:”, and check out these links. I had been on this site many times and somehow missed these links.

Actually this site is a wealth of information and I suggest you read everything on it. Remember the golden rule of Work at Home opportunities. If somebody asks you for money…that’s not a job offer. You are working for them. They are suppose to pay you!

Be very careful out there.

I’ll be back soon.

God bless you.

Barry
 

Ok, I’m back. Hey did anyone go to wahm.com and get a job yet. I think that is so cool that I already found a viable option to work at home and make a living. At least I think it is. I don’t really know anyone who is doing it. I went onto a couple of the sites myself and checked out the qualifications. You have to have a high speed internet connection, a place to work where people on the other end of the phone can’t hear the kids crying or the dogs barking and so forth, and a special hands-free headset so you can be working on your computer while you are talking on the phone. I never was very good at that (talking on the phone and working on the computer at the same time). I’d probably have a hard time qualifying for one of those jobs.

I do know one woman who is making a living doing medical transcription work from her home. Actually, she was a student at our school. Her mom was doing transcription work from home when she was going to school and I think she might have helped her daughter get a job. I have looked into the medical transcription field before because my students were always asking me about it. What I learned was that the scammers will tell you what ever you want to hear. The really legit medical transcription companies will tell you that you have to have x years of experience, type 90 word a minute with 0% errors and take a battery of tests before you can work at home. That’s not what we want to hear. The scammers will just say all you have to do is send us x amount of dollars and they will do the rest…right…that’s what we want to hear. You used to see ads in the paper all the time offering “high paying jobs” doing medical billing and such as that. I don’t see them as much anymore. It’s like the ads for “high paying postal jobs” and others. Most of them were scams and people have figured that out now for the most part. But you still see ads like that on the Internet all the time. As I said in the last post, the number one cardinal rule of job hunting in the work at home field is “don’t send anyone any money.” If they are genuinely looking for help, they should be willing to pay you. There are some really good lines out there too so be very careful and of course the old standard saying, “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” But we really want to believe that this is the real one…the once in a lifetime opportunity. I can be so gullible sometimes it’s pathetic.

Gotta go for now. Thanks for visiting.

So until next time…be careful out there.

God bless you.

Barry

Why Christian Biz Blog?

OK…good question. I actually don’t like to use the term “Christian” anymore even referring to my own beliefs. I like to refer to myself as a follower of Jesus. Don’t worry; I’m not going to start preaching. I hope to start another website for that someday. The word Christian has come to mean “a good person”. This is OK, I guess and really fits for what I had in mind when I called this Site “ChristianBizBlog.com”. I wanted to infer that we would talk about making money from home on the Internet with our computers without hurting or taking advantage of anyone else. Unlike a lot of scam artists that I see everyday, who are just setting up websites everywhere and promising people unbelievable riches without any effort. I was approached by one of my friends just the other week about a “Job Opportunity” on the Internet. Now my friend is a very intelligent person and was just trying to help me find work after hearing that our school was closing. He told my that one of the guys at the car dealership he works for had gotten his own website and had made enough money to quit his job. Seem he had sold 28 websites in a month and had made almost $28,000. My friend was one of the “lucky” new website owners. I was pretty sure I knew what was going on but I went to the web address he gave me anyway, just to be nice. Sure enough, it was one of those slick site that show everyone driving a sports car, living in a mansion and sipping margaritas on the beach. Oh how tempting it was for me to plunk down my $997. Even my minister thought it sounded pretty good. Especially when you actually know someone who made so much money from it. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s how it works. You pay $997 for a website. The person you buy your website from is your sponsor. Then you sell websites to other people for $997. You don’t get to keep the money from the first 2 you sell. It goes to your sponsor. So if you can sell 5 websites to 5 friends and each of them sells 2 websites you make over 20 thousand dollars. Sounds pretty good and I know I could have sold at least 5 of them. But what kind of business is that? Certainly not Christian. I question if it is even legal. Oh sure now days they tell you that you are buying software worth thousands of dollars and then reselling it. They do that just to keep it legal but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

I love it. Ebay is great. It’s easy. It’s bringing in money for me. Luckily for me I have accumulated alot of junk over the last 8 or so years that I’ve been working at the computer school.

Actually it’s been a worry of mine as to what I was going to do with all the junk at the school. I can’t take it all home with me…there’s not enough room even if I wanted to take it home, which I don’t. I mean…I can only use so many computer parts.

Actually, I’d like to sell everything and get one or two really good computers for the house since I am now determined to make a living at home with my computer over the Internet. Well, I don’t think ebay is going to be the answer for me in the long run but it sure is helping to pay the bills for now. I’ve sold 8 items so far for over $600 dollars in about 2 weeks. I have another dozen or so items still up for auction and a lot more that I need to list on Ebay. I’m not going to get rich but at least combined with what my wife is bringing in we are going to be able to keep the lights on for a while. I don’t know how long I can keep this going however. The value of the items I’m selling is going down fast.

You really can’t sell computers because they won’t let you advertise the software you have them loaded up with because you aren’t allowed to sell the software to anyone else. So if you take all the software off nobody wants your lousy 2 or 3 year old computer with no software on it. Why would they? All you really have is a bunch of metal junk unless it at least has an operating system on it…hopefully recently reloaded.

I reload mine at least once a year…more if it starts acting up; and with all the spyware on the Internet nowadays… it doesn’t seem to last very long anymore. That’s why I have 2 hard drives on any computer that is important to me any more. I have the primary hard drive loaded with the operating system (Windows XP) and all my programs and I have a second huge hard drive just for storing all my file. That way if my operating system gets corrupted with a virus or spyware I just reload it and keep going. All my important stuff is safe on my second hard drive. My computer runs great, it’s an old compaq with a 900 mhz pentium III loaded up with a gigabyte of memory, a decent video card, and runs like a screaming banshee with an old version of XP professional without the service packs on it. It’s also loaded with Microsoft Office Professional 2003 with FrontPage and Publisher, Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign and so on and so forth. Anyway, without all the software on it, it’s just an old pentium III computer that no one would give $50 for and it would cost $50 just to ship it anywhere. So I guess I better just hang on to it.

The fact of the matter is that I have some relatively new computers that we purchased for the school in the last year that have 2.4 ghz Pentium 4 processors but they are loaded with Windows XP with all the service pack and updates on them. I can’t stand how slow they are compared to my old pentium III.

Maybe I can get a few buck for them on ebay.

At any rate I’ll have to find something else to sell on ebay pretty soon if we’re going to keep paying the bills with it. I’ve been reading something I purchased and downloaded on the Internet here a few days ago that is pretty interesting. It was written by an Ebay Veteran by the name of Chris Bernard. I haven’t finished reading it yet but it had already been worth the money I paid for it. The Ebook is called the Better Sources Guide and Chris’ website is called dropshippingsucks.com. It’s full of good ideas about where to get products to sell on ebay. And as he says, “It’s not what you think…not even close.” Check it out if you think you might be interested in trying ebay…or if you just want some fresh ideas about ebay.

Gotta go for now.

Please leave a comment for me if you have the time.

Thanks and be very careful out there.

Until next time.

God bless you.

Barry

Hello,

I don’t claim to be an expert in every aspect of selling on ebay. In fact, I’ve only been selling on ebay for about a month. But it’s “paying the bills” for me right now. That’s why I have to tell you about it. It’s so easy!

I have been a member of ebay for a couple of years but all I ever did was buy stuff. Actually, my first experience on ebay was probably back in the late ’90s. I paid for a PhotoShop 4 book and never got it. I had to go through a long dispute process and I never really found out what if anything happened to the guy who didn’t send the book to me. I paid for it with a credit card and the credit card company gave me my money back and that’s all I really cared about. I did report it to the “powers that be” at ebay but that was the end of it for me. That experience left a bad taste in my mouth and I didn’t go back to ebay again until a couple of years ago. But that was back in the old days.

I love ebay now. You can find almost anything there and it’s really a pretty safe place to buy stuff now. I just make sure that the seller has a good reputation. Everytime you buy or sell something on ebay now, you get to rate the buyer or seller (depending on which one you are). It might be hard for someone who just wants to open an account on ebay and start selling stuff immediately because everyone who looks at your listings will see that you just joined yesterday and that you have never sold anything to anyone yet.

For example, I currently have a rating of 67 and a 100% positive feedback. It also says that I’ve been a member since November 25, 2005. Most of those 67 transactions are purchases but people won’t know that unless they go into my feedback profile. Before you start selling on ebay you might think about buying a few cheap items just to get a little bit of positive feedback for your reputation. I usually don’t read a seller’s feedback profile unless I see that they have some bad feedback.

Anyway, this blog is about paying the bills. If you have a bunch of junk sitting around the house…in the basement…attic…or whatever, chances are you can bring in some extra money by selling it on ebay. Here’s what you do.

Go to ebay.com and register. It’s easy and it’s free. Then go to paypal.com and register. This is also free but maybe not quite so easy. You need to either put some money in your Paypal account or link it to a credit card or a bank account or both. I did both. Paypal is almost essential if you want to have a successful experience with ebay.

Paypal is great! People trust it and paypal makes it so easy to purchase stuff on ebay. You don’t have to give people your credit card number every time you want to buy something. Also, when you start selling stuff, paypal will keep track of all your transactions automatically when people use paypal to purchase your merchandise. Paypal makes it simple to send invoices and you can even pay for postage and print out your shipping labels from your own computer. I couldn’t believe how easy it was.

Anyway, once you have an ebay account and a paypal account, you are ready to go. Next thing you need is something to sell. Start out with something small so you don’t have a lot of shipping cost. Do some research on ebay. Look and see what others are getting for the item you are selling and price it likewise.

You can list your item for 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. Seven days is the standard and it costs extra to list for 10 days. As a rule the longer you list, the more people will see your item and the better you’re chances of selling at the highest price. You can set a starting bid for your item from .99 and up. I’ve found that most people wait until the last day to bid. They will put your item in their “Watch” list and try to sneak in a low bid at the last minute. However, you can see how many people are watching you item and sometimes it can really get interesting in the final hour. I had one item with a starting bid of $25 and it stayed at that price until the last hour. It ended up selling for over $90. I also had another item that 5 people were watching and I ended up only getting 1 bid and it sold at my opening bid price of $15. You just never know. But that’s what makes it fun and exciting even if it is frustrating sometimes.

You can also put a “Buy it now” price which allows someone to purchase and item without waiting till the end of the auction if they are willing to pay your price. But once someone places a bid on the item, the “Buy it now” price option goes away. Sometimes that’s a good thing. The item I had that sold for over $90 originally had a “Buy it now” price of $50 and at first I was disappointed when someone put a bid in for $25 instead of purchasing it for the “Buy it now” price of $50. But it was worth waiting till the end of the action for the $90.

Listing your item is really pretty much self explanitory. Just log in and click on the sell tab at the top of the page on the right and follow along and read all of the instructions on each page. It might seem just a little confusing the first time but just have fun with it. Start out with something cheap so if you make a mistake it won’t matter too much. Wait until you feel like you know a little bit about what you’re doing before you list your wife’s antique china. 

Very soon, you’ll be listing stuff like it was nothing.

Oh but I have to warn you…it is very addictive.

Like I said in my previous posts…I don’t know what I’m going to do when I run out of junk to sell. Yard sales…here I come…

Hey thanks for visiting and please leave a comment for me.

Thanks and God bless.

Barry 

OK, this is pretty exciting. As I mentioned in my last post, I purchased and downloaded an eBook from the Site “dropshippingsucks.com” and it is full of resource ideas for products to sell on EBay. The first source that Chris talks about is your local dollar store. And I’m here to tell you that is works. Look for something that will make a good appearance on eBay and something possibly unusual. Licensed products also work well like stuff with Spiderman. So far I haven’t found anything at the Dollar Tree that someone wasn’t selling on eBay. You pay a dollar for the item and you have to figure a dollar to ship it. So you have to add a few dollars shipping and handling and that is your profit. It works. I saw an item in the “Dollar Isle” of our grocery store the other day. It was a kid’s toy and I just thought that it would make a good appearance and I advertised it as a great stocking stuffer for Christmas. I put a “buy it now” price of 3.99 and 3.00 shipping and handling. Today I sold it for 3.99 so if it cost around $2 to ship I will profit around $4. Now if I could just sell a hundred of them a day… 

I don’t think the grocery store had more than five of them. 

Oh well…I’ll keep on reading. 

Thanks for visiting and please leave a comment for me. 

God bless you and be very careful out there. 

Barry 

Hello again. Thanks so much for being here. Especially thanks for the comments. It’s nice to know someone is out there.
Please send your comments in even if it’s a negative. I want to hear from you. I will respond to your questions if you have any. If I don’t know the answer, I will do my best to find out.
In my last post, I was discussing one of the ideas in Chris Bernard’s (dropshippingsucks.com) e-book (it’s called “Better Sources” but I call it my “eBay Product Resource Guide”) about his success as an eBay power seller and the ideas he has used and has been willing to share with those of us who are just starting out. This blog is about making money online and although I didn’t intend for it to be exclusively about eBay, that is what I am focusing on at the moment.
For me the problem of bringing in some money to pay the bills is immediate and eBay is the only way I have found so far to accomplish that goal. However, I am reading about many other ways to make money online which I will share with my reader as I find time. My life is pretty complicated right now and I have to delegate my time accordingly. I’m writing this at our church computer as my wife is helping to paint one of the Sunday school rooms. Yesterday my wife and I took the day off to do some Christmas shopping and we found a lot of possible eBay stuff in the clearance aisles to try. 
OK now, in review, last post was about buying stuff from the “dollar” type stores and reselling them on ebay. And here I would like to thank Jack for his input and comment but, Jack, you are getting ahead of me here. Actually I wish, I would have skipped to the “Gift Basket” idea myself…brilliant. But I want to stick to the order that Chris presents in his e-book for now. We’ll get to the gift basket idea soon enough. Of course if you are in a hurry to read the entire e-book (and I don’t blame you), you can purchase it and download it at dropshippingsucks.com. Tell Chris that Barry sent you. I’m not getting anything for recommending this book (at least not yet). I just really think it has a wealth of great information and it well worth the $28 I paid for it. It’s not that big (only 40 pages) and that is one of the features I like best about it. The eBay Product Resource Guide is all business, to the point and concise information unlike a lot of e-books out there that just put a bunch of filler in a document so it doesn’t look like they are ripping you off. Anyway, I think it is a great resource and it has more than paid for itself in my case.
Well guess what? I piddled around and have to go for now. Sorry about that.
I promise that I will get around to the eBay to eBay resource idea on my next post.
Until then…be careful out there and remember the golden rule of making money online:
Don’t send anybody any money for a job!
They are supposed to send you money.
Alright?…Alright!

 Thanks for checking in.
I’ll talk to you again real soon.
God bless you.
Barry

Hello again, 

Sorry to be away for so long. It’s amazing that I am even at the office at all today. It’s is the first day of buck season and that is a bigger holiday than Thanksgiving around these parts. The schools are actually closed today. They take hunting seriously in Pennsylvania. 

I hope everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving Day. I did. I’ve been eating turkey and all the goodies that go with it everyday since Thursday. I don’t ever get tired of Thanksgiving dinner. The leftovers are the best part. 

Anyway, back to the grind, huh? Actually, my “grind” is coming to a halt very soon. I still haven’t found a job. So I am still working on eBay as much as I have time to while closing the school and all. This is the last week that our school will be open. So I will have plenty of time to pursue eBay and all the other ideas I can come up with to make money online. 

After all, that’s the whole idea of this blog…paying the bills by working from home online. Oh wouldn’t it be great not to have to drive in the snow to get to work? 

Ok…I better stop piddling around or I will get interrupted like I did in my last blog and never get to the point of my blog. Yes…there is a point. 

EBay to eBay is the next resource I want to talk about and is also the next one (by no coincidence) that Chris talks about it his “Better Sources” guide which can be purchase on his website, www.dropshippingsucks.com . 

EBay to eBay is just what it sounds like. You buy something on eBay and then you sell it on eBay. Now of course you better find something at a good price if you are going to try to sell it back to someone on eBay. The best way to do this is to find people on eBay who sell in wholesale lots at a great discount. 

You can search on eBay to find these deals. Chris even has links to some of the wholesalers he used and they are still there. He says the trick is to find rather unusual items that not everyone else is selling. Use your imagination and figure out how to present these bargains in such a way that people will see the value of what you have to offer. We are taking advantage of the fact that we are willing to put out the investment to purchase a large quantity in bulk and then be willing to market our items individually or in smaller lot purchases. Again, this is not easy. I’m finding that doing eBay, like any other legit business requires lots of time and work to be successful. But so far, I am enjoying it for the most part. 

You also need to do a lot of research. Make sure that everybody else and their brother is not selling an item at a ridiculously low price before you buy a truckload of them. 

Also, if you are an expert at something, let’s say golf clubs, for instance and you know that you can get more for a certain club than someone is selling it for, you might consider purchasing it and putting it back on auction. Keep in mind that people on eBay are not going to necessarily pay as much as an item is worth. 

Well, guess what? I have to go again. 

Please leave a comment for me. 

Thank you for all the comments I have gotten so far. 

Just a note: 

Sorry, but I can’t, in good conscience publish a comment if it is not really a comment but just a link to your website. I don’t mind linking to your website and if I have time I will probably go check out your website and leave a comment myself. You don’t have to leave a positive comment… I can take some constructive criticism as long as you’re honestly trying to help and are not just being mean, miserable and/or profane. 

I really appreciate the links that some of you have given to this site. 

Until next time…be careful out there! 

God bless you and please check back. 

Barry 

Before you go out and invest all your savings in something you just know is going to sell like hot cakes on eBay…STOP…DON’T DO IT!!! 

Take your time. Think about it. Pray about it. Usually, if it is something that’s really meant to be…it will be there for you when the time is right. Don’t do something rash in a state of confusion. God doesn’t honor that. 

I’ve already made some investments that I wish I had thought more about. 

But luckily I got most of my “hot” items from places where I have 30 days to take them back. Am I brilliant or what? Well, no, not really. When I bought all my stuff, I had nothing but confidence that it was going to sell like ice in the desert on eBay. After all, I had already put over 30 items up for auction and sold every one of them. I must be an expert already…or I must be just a “natural” eBayer…born in me. It’s good to have a positive attitude and all that but eventually we have to take a reality check. 

Things can change suddenly…and for the worse. Before I knew it, I had as many things that didn’t sell as did sell. I now have about twice as many items that didn’t sell as did. 

How many times do you list an item before you say, “Hey, maybe this wasn’t such a great idea”? Well hopefully you don’t have your whole life savings tied up in a truckload of items that won’t sell on eBay.

I don’t…thank goodness. As a matter of fact, I’m doing pretty well. I can take 90% of the junk I bought back to places like “Ollie’s” and “Pier One”. I was surprised to find out that I have 30 days to take back items that were marked for clearance at Pier One. 

Great news! I just wanted to let you know ASAP that it might be wise to experiment with items that you can find at stores like these until you become a little more experienced at figuring out what may or may not be a good seller. 

Got to go for now.

Thanks for visiting and please leave a comment for me.

God bless you. 

And remember…be careful out there!

Well, it’s not really that bad. I’m still doing eBay and I’m making some money too. In fact I just opened up a new store on eBay. But I have come to realize that I am not going to make a living on eBay. At least not the way it’s been going so far. 

I like it. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of work, but I don’t mind working hard at something if I enjoy it. I just wish I was making enough money to pay the bills. 

I’m still looking for that perfect product to sell. I have to admit that I haven’t tried all of the ideas in the Better Resources eBook by Chris Bernard (www.dropshippingsucks.com), but I’ve tried most of them and so far none of them has really worked out. I have found some really great products at really great prices and I am working really hard to track down good deals and write good ad copy and research the lowest prices and on and on. The only problem is that every where I go, someone has already been there and done it. 

You would not believe how many Spiderman toys there are on eBay for example. I found a great deal on some overstocked Spiderman stuff. It was almost free. But there are over 5,000 listings for Spiderman Toys on eBay. I can’t get anyone to even notice my stuff except when the auction is almost over. So I sit around for 6 days waiting for someone to place a bid. On a good auction, I can see that 2 or 3 people are actually watching my item so I’m hopeful. But alas, usually no one even bids at all or someone puts in a starting bid at the last minute and gets it without a fight. When you’re only making a dollar or two on each item, you need to sell a lot of stuff to pay the bills. 

What I need to find is a high priced item at a good deal wholesale. Of course that’s what everyone needs to be really successful on eBay. I’m realizing that I’m not really an expert on anything that is regularly bought and sold on eBay…like watches, golf clubs, or pens. 

PENS! Did you hear about the guy who was an expert on pens? You know…writing instruments. Well he was surfing the Internet and found someone who was selling cases of some kind of pen for hundreds of dollars per pen. He knew immediately that he could sell the pens for at least a couple of hundred more than what he could buy them for…no brainer…right? 

Well, if I would have seen the same pens for sale, I would have said, “Who in their right mind would pay a hundred dollars for a pen?” That’s just not even in my realm of thinking. But this guy was an expert and the rest is history. He made a good living for years on those cases of pens. He is still on eBay; quit his job and started the “White Mountain Trading Company”. He is still selling pens on eBay. Last time I looked, he had one for $7,500. I’m sure it was a bargain too. It’s a different world. 

Go ahead and do a search for “pens” on eBay. Filter the results to show the highest priced pens first. Last time I looked they started at $10,000. Man, I wish I knew more about pens. 

I am working on some other ways to make money though so please come back and tell your friends to check it out too OK? That is if you too are interested in finding a way to work from home and make enough money to pay the bills. TELECOMMUTE! I like that word. I live in PA and it would really be nice not to have to commute very far when the snow and ice starts. It’s so pretty when I can just watch it from my window. 

If you have any ideas about how to make money from home, please leave a comment for us. If you don’t have any ideas…leave a comment anyway. Thanks. 

Well, I gotta go for now. Be back soon with something new. Until then, remember to “Be careful out there”. God bless you. 

Barry