Hi Guys,

Just wanted to drop in and let you know that I will be publishing tommorow a well-known million dollar secret I’ve been holding for a long time that have never been explained in detail on the internet for free and that a rescent guru’s guru is charging $495.00 for a simple system you can learn and expand in your brain in just a short letter.

Yes, one of the marketing guru consultant’s charged $495.00 for a teleconference call with other million dollar entrepreneurs to spill-out their guts. I din’t invest the $495.00 as I’ve been practicing what the surprising email offered me since I started on the internet.

Best of all, you can save $1,000’s of dollars in a week, month or years depending on how aggressive you use this tactic I am going to share with you guys tommorow. I mean, $495.00? The guy deserves much more. I’ve read many of his books, but it seems that I was doing some actions that in the english term…isn’t called JV patnering or JV’s just as I thought. Wonderful term you’ll get to read tommorow.

It will be worth the read, so my suggestions: add yourself to my RSS readers and consider reading the post ASAP. My promise, if you do what I’ll discuss tommorow…you may save up to $500.00 by the end of this year if you are already running a business or have a website or a blog like mine. If you don’t have your wholesale video games store already up and running, even better - as you’ll save more!

Enough said!

Catch you guys tommorow late at night…

Joaquin

P.S- Hint…my CPA will go nuts after I tell him to add this as a business expense, you should get to ask him about our tommorow discussion too!

Previously the discussion was about how to handle shipping while protecting both you and the buyer to your customers when it came to online pruchases with paypal, 2checkout.com and/or any other merchant account that accepts credit cards on the internet.

Now since one of the most popular payment methods online is through paypal.com (now with over 100,000 websites using the service without counting the all eBay buyers who use the payment merchant to process their payments), it’s of priority that you add insurance to packages that to YOU are considered of high financial value, have a limitation/scarcity print when it comes to quantity units available or that are plainly irreplaceable.

When it comes to the most popular shipping method on the USA, (USPS), insurance isn’t covered in any average shipping option with the exception of “Express Mail” packages.

What does that mean with paypal.com, 2checkout.com or the most popular merchant accounts accepting credit cards on the internet when a product is NOT covered with insurance and got lost once in the hand of the postal office, in transit or buyer request insurance as product arrived damaged? YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for your buyers insurance claim. We ship the product, therefore, we as sellers make the claim for insurance reimbursement on behalf of the buyer.

The buyer doesn’t know how much the product cost you (or at least isn’t supposed to know), therefore, since we have receipts of the product(s) purchased either from the manufacturer,supplier, distributor or wholesaler, if you’ve covered the item in question with insurance you submit the claim with receipt of the actual cost of the merchandise in question to the post office agent. If the item cost you $35.50, you should purchase coverage for $35.50 ONLY and not exceed insurance coverage as USPS will only provide you insurance reimbursement for the cost of the product once proper proof of purchase/receipt to USPS agent has been provided.

What does paypal.com do on both Paypal Business account and Premier account? In a nutshell, if you can’t provide at least tracking information you as the seller will be with a lost when it comes to tangible merchandise shipped offline (digital downloads like music, software, eBooks are not covered when it comes to outside of eBay) so insurance is mostly to protect you the seller as Paypal is most likely to provide a reimbursement to the buyer and either leave you with low funds or your account or with a negative amount in your paypal.com account.

What can you do to prevent this? I’ve done two things since my first case back in 2004. Just like you should have an emergency fund for at least 6 month for expenses in your home, have a seperate emergency fund in your paypal.com account or any other merchant account that process your payment. It could easily be done by cutting out a small percentage of payments arriving to your account. Two, consider having insurance on all products that are shipped both domestically in the US or internationally.

When it comes to insurance, I will add insruace to items over $100.00 or more or if they are the last one in stock. Reason why, it doesn’t cost me anything as you and I can add it in the shipping expense to the customer(while still charging a low/reasonable shipping fee) AND because when it comes to shipping with USPS.com I’ve only have only one package lost with “Parcel Post” and only one with “Priority Mail” out of 1,000’s of items shipped in the last 4 years. Delivery success rate is around 99% with USPS so the chances of lost packages or damage in transit when it comes to responsible packaging is very minimum. If the item are CDs, games or products of low monetary value, I will personally disregard insurance. It’s of course up to you when it comes to your income protection with shipped items.

As always your comments and thoughts are welcome.

Happy savings in your Black Friday,

Joaquin

Previously shipping and handling options were adressed and explained when it came to merchandise delivery in yesterday’s post. But there was an important discussion left out in my personal belief from past experience that you should be aware of. This is none other than the importance of tracking your items when it comes to the popular paying method called Paypal on eBay transactions that are of very high value or limited.

When it comes to merchant accounts that accept Visa, Mastercard, AMEX and electronic checks Paypal is indeed one of the most challenging payment gateways for sellers when it comes to recovering funds if a buyer escalates a dispute or a chargeback is issued when it comes to eBay. If you’re an eBay seller and you have sent an item to a customer without some sort of confirmation of delivery, nonetheless tracking, you’re surely going to have challenging situation with paypal when it comes to eBay even if you’re covered in their seller protection policy of up to $1,000 as described by them if a customer who received their item as far delivery confirmation goes confirms. While buyers are covered for most of their purchases, you as the seller must assure yourself of shipping only to the confirmed address in the paypal account, have your address confirmed and verified in order to be protected according to Paypal.

But here is where the interesting part takes place. When it comes to Paypal you must assure yourself of sending merchandise that can be traced and verify with address AND name. Paypal only allows you to have two paypal accounts, a Business and Premier account, Personal and Business or Premier and Personal account. This rules of paypal buyer protection apply only in the Premier and Business account as explained previously to me when challenging situation needed my follow-up. It can be great if you’ve any of these two accounts, but what happens if you shipped an item with delivery confirmation only?

Delivery confirmation when it comes to a chargeback or buyer protection reversal means the benefit of the doubt will usually (IF NOT ALWAYS) to the buyer of the item when it comes to eBay.com! Meaning and I reiterate MEANING, that if the buyers received his item perfectly as described and as usual he can STILL ask for his or her money back and stay with the merchandise he original paid for in the first place. What does this mean in the long run? Long hours of international or long distance calls in your end if this issue (rarely happens, usually around 1% around 1,000 orders) happens. Delivery confirmation as explained in the previous post means item delivered to the address in the recipient label area, that’s it.

Will Paypal give priority to a seller offering items on eBay when it comes to paid funds and lost packages? My answer, be VERY careful how you handle high ticket items or items that you no longer have and were already delivered according to the delivery confirmation ticket number by USPS. If the buyer says I din’t receive the product/product never arrived/empty box without anything in it and escalates the dispute to Paypal the seller will MOST LIKELY have a payment reversal in his/her Paypal account or a negative balance. Be it if it was for $10 or for $600.00!

That’s why it pays to send high ticket items or products that you no longer have in stock with at least tracking information and not with delivery confirmation, especially if you ship internationally consistently. That is, Express Mail, Global Express Mail (for international shipments) as they already have tracking and insurance up to $100 and First Class or Priority Mail with registered mail. Their is proof of who signs the package/item you sent and their is less likely of fraud from a customer perspective. Meaning, less possibilities of a chargeback or reversal from paypal when it comes to eBay transactions. While items that arrive as described to the recipient are usually a successful transaction in your eBay feedback account, their are these advance and expert buyers that know this little dirty tricks when it comes to eBay transactions. When it comes to physical/tangible transactions on eBay, Paypal covers buyers who QUALIFY for protection. Outside of eBay it’s a different story.

Weight your options as far shipping and handling goes. Most of the times you shouldn’t have issues or difficulties when items arrive, which is close to 98.5% of the items as far USPS statistically reports. It’s always good to know facts about how you should handle items of high value or limited items in case you want to assure yourself close to 99% in certainty that everything would go smoothly for both the buyers and your Paypal account. Still Paypal is my number one prefered merchant as I hardly have issues with any of my two accounts.

Be safe and protect yourself when it comes to eBay, it pays to do so! Will be talking about the role “USPS” insurance plays in your eBay transactions from my experience alone once again in my next post. Insurance is surely another great option, so do be sure to read how it plays as a selling point of view.

Joaquin

Shipping USPS is definitely worth it and cost-effective when you want the customer to save more and leave any of the packages immediately on any mail center. The disadvantages with low shipping and handling with services like Media Mail, Parcel Post and First Class is that once the buyers buys he expects to receive the package in as little as 5-7 days.

If its media mail the post office has estimates that packages can arrive between 2-4 weeks have elapse! Here at Puerto Rico I’ve received packages from media mail that have delayed 5 weeks to arrive while I have others through the cheap economic option of media mail arrived in as little as 5 days.

Reality is you never know, especially if it’s overseas and it depends on package volume and in timing. But either way, estimates are from 2-30 business days with media mail.  The broader you explain the more likely your customers will end upgrading to a faster service you may be offering.

Situation being, we all want to save money but when most of us pay we expect to receive our packages fast, especially if your selling in any of the popular auction sites and your feedback rating is 100%. If you’re going to sell accessories, games, guides or even books of the item you can think of for a profit give the customer the option to upgrade to priority mail and express mail.

The great percentage of eBay buyers shop for comfortable convenience and affordability, but there are others that only buy online for comfort reasons and avoid retail stores. Others shop online as many worldwide countries don’t have particular items for sale in their country so they at auction sites and in online stores. It’s not uncommon to have merchandise shipped next day for accessory items that weight less than 14onz.

Another detail to consider at all times is shipping with delivery confirmation or tracking information at least. With priority mail, media mail packages are popular examples of what can be shipped with delivery confirmation. Remember that delivery confirmation is not evidence of receipt! Very important so the nightmare does not occur to you too!

Post mail officers are not obligated to knock on your door when you’re expecting a package with delivery confirmation. In layman terms (as it’s very important before paypal ask you for proof), delivery confirmation is just proof of an envelope or a package being delivered to the address shown on the label.

That’s it, nothing else! But 99% of the time you would not have negative situations with customers complaining, most of the time they will just ask you for some sort of tracking information and that’s it. I highly recommend software like Auctiva for many automatic features that allow you the ease and delivery of customer receipt and order confirmation.

In the other hand do know that tracking information the additional benefit that customers have to sign the package in order to receive the package. Registered mail is a form of tracking and the service of Express Mail already has the benefit of tracking already in the minimum fee.

So you can see on the internet with Express Mail service who actually sign the package and you’ll get evidence of signature receipt by first class mail back to you if you selected registered mail. While Registered Mail and Express Mail delivery are not usually used for items with a cost of $100 or less, do expect to use one of the two shipping options when you are concerned about merchandise delivery or your auction feedback being 98% or higher. I will provide an example of why it’s important to have at least delivery confirmation or tracking information for every package you ship in the next 24hrs.

It is often said that greed is good. It usually is, however, my finding and studies are quite different than traditional thoughts. Most often our thinking often goes; the more we buy, the happier we get and the more satisfied we become. However, through my handful of experiments I have also found that this isn’t as truthful as society beautifully portrays it.

When you work on something that you dislike - worst, that you hate, most of the time spending money consistently and getting in debt may become a habit. That is, to provide parcial pleasure and distraction from something you dislike.

Problem? That often means paying credit cards, loans, mortgages, and many others to reach one of the so-called American Dreams of financially independence a very long journy. Think about it, the average credit card is at 11.99%  of interest rate according to lowcards.com report. If you do an analysis and a little math, that’s usually more than $200.00 in profit anually for a credit card company if owing only $100.00 on the card.

What a great business such industry has? Pay your credit cards minimum fee every month, and you may find getting debt free and financially independent from a job a dream. That was my mistake back in 2003 By 2006, everything changed! Different set of rules, different habits thanks to a guy named Robert Kiyosaki and his Rich Dad Poor Dad book.

From personal experiences in my early 20’s, it was surely difficult to get out of debt with minimum wages in P.R or in other internships in the US! Short term pleasures could very well mean long term expenses if you keep yourself in a low paying job in the states or wherever is that you live. Worst, if you hate what you do there’s a big chance you won’t excel at it.

So start building a business, shops, consults or something that you love doing and that earns you money based on results. Most importantly if you are self-employed and things go smoothly, spending can surely grow in the thousands if you let it. So make yourself some limits and what you’re willing to invest in if you find yourself short in cash.

A tip that has worked marvolously since then, take notes of your spending and have your checks, comissions or Paypal income put in your wallet. Chances are that you’ll get hit by a bus then getting robbed…so need for paranoyia of getting assaulted. Having your money in paper, makes you spend less and makes you even more concious about your spending.

If you love to buy and are a little compulsive about getting everything our advertising god’s invent as the latest solution for our daily ’supposed’ improvements, take notes and ask yourself if you really need what you are buying. How is it going to help me? That usually does it for me.

Most often, writing the item and the price tag in a notepad and then going to eBay may save you $100’s at times.  $20 purchase here, $80 purchase there might actually save you money to start a business and to get closer to financially independence if putting your focus and actions on your PC.

Sure, the planning in paying off debt by a tight deadline schedules must be done. But you should get the picture. A book is “The Total Money Makeover”, I like how he thinks and when you’ve a big mortgage like mine, the Debt Snowball effect shall put your mortgage into a zero balance. For me it will do it soon in my early 30’s. But step #1, uhhh…get rid of the credit cards! I did it and you may get to unconciously bark if someone offers you at the mall.

Seriously!

Here a very good suggestion? What’s neccessary right now? Sell and dump items that are unnecessary if you have cash problems, if you’re more than ok…keep everything….but remember about the dust it creates.

Plan and execute a debt reduction regimen for your own monthly expenses, and jot down everything that you purchase. For example, if your own concern is your mortgage(s), try bringing the pay-off balance to 15-years instead of 30. You’ll grow more concious and increase your response to getting closer to financially independence and getting out of debt that way.

Quick tip: I was personally paying $190.00+ monthly for cable TV. Suggestion, no matter how much money you may have at the current moment, eliminate the fads and/or wrong consistent spending sprees quickly. DishNetwork starts at $25 and even lower in some states, why pay more?

Bring a piece of paper out, start thinking about your expenses and wiping out monthly expenses intelligently without jeoperdizing your family needs. Its smart.  You’ll see how fast you can grow out of debt if you really put your mind into it and if you desire to put the action into it.

It truly is that simple once you’ve made the tough and painful first decision. But this I can promise you, once you get going and start getting momentum - you’ll often find hard to quit being productive and doing good. Plus, the more good you do generally, the better and better a person usually feels.

Get going and fast, PRONTO!

A Friend,

Joaquin

Are you one of the persons that believe that more is better? For many, many years (including myself) the thought that “more” defined in many ways happiness, receiving more satisfaction and in fact enjoying life in improved ways were to play a big role and key in our future.

Interesting enough, here is what having “more” usually means. Having “more” for many people equals, having more money. Having more to spend on ourselves and our loved ones, either for satisfaction or for plainly to spoil ourselves and reward ourselves to feel good and even better.

If we have a good car, we need to have, perhaps, a sexier car next time. Forget the Toyota Corolla, I want a Lexus next time. Tamara has a great line of cloth, she works the 9-5pm traditional life, nothing surprising. After all, it’shealthy to gain experience and meet new people. Her paycheck comes by-weekly. What does she does? She spends 20% of her income in cloth and top of the line outfits to suit the store fashion style and demands to keep the job. She pays her car and after three years of hard work and great overall work she gets promoted to assistant manager. She buys the wanted Lexus!

After a few years Tamara starts to notice she has her young, fine looking and top producing manager as a boss. Tamara ask her in a friendly conversation about the manager’s goals with the company and the manager says; “I’m staying here until this company doesn’t pulls a penny more, it’s good as you know girl!” Tamara smiles and subconciously shouts to herself “bad news!”  I either stay here or start looking for more work to improve and get myself “more” the next time.

Well, Tamara’s life is a regular case here at Puerto Rico and up in the states. Some work their jobs satisfied of their accomplishment, however, others see them as a way of having “more” and as necessary. Most often, when responsabilities of mortgage, bills, loans, cars and all the likes reunite in statements, it turns out that more is actually not better if keeping the routine.

Sure, we can save, save and save. But the more we want more, more and more as an employed person - the more a person has to work in hours. The less amount of vacation he should share and the more overtimes he would need to do in order to break even and have a little some for him or her as reward.

Which leads this for a next discussion. Is getting more better, for your financial independence?

Joaquin

Online marketing, Real Estate, job, passive income, etc, etc…they all surely own the same principle for success. Consistency. I definitely loved the way an olympic gold medal did it. The United States surely have a dream team. The only thing they needed where the results.

Hope you share a similar love for sports the way I do. I mean just “Wow!” Check this out and consider reading all his video while they are still alive on nbcolympics.com. This is the guy I’m talking about…

None other than Michael Phelps. With only 22 years of age. Big history already for him, olympic time.

He clearly said; “Too Look at Him and say I Want To Do This!” We all need a role model to have a better view of what we want, clearly an opinion. But it’s just the simplest way, and then you just move to your plan once you’re secured when applied to business. Michael Phelps started with an incredible amount of training, had a physical advantage and definitely had the consistency.

Boom 8 medals straight. The beauty in consistency and the training are my two greatest influential conclusions. Know I’m hooked with the olympics, enjoy the video and watch more live directly from NBC.

Catch you later…

Joaquin

For the last week it has been quite a pain, but quite interesting to see different set of behavior results. For the last week, I have woken up at around 5:00am to 6:00am. The difference in productivity from just a handful set of changes can be quite interesting in energy and consistency.

Here’s what I have been doing to work on my projects more effectively, it surely should help you fasten a seat belt in your office and put sped in overdrive consistency. While it may different for many, obvious reasons are health, routine and day schedule responsabilities I surely know this routine could surely work if you let it no matter if you are working your business part-time or full-time.

Simple Routine: (Mix it Up Bi-Weekly or Weekly as your likes)

5:00am : TASTY coffee or Tea. Small read of local newspaper.

5:45am: Get yourself into that CAR! Hit the gym for high intensity training; 45-50 minutes.

7:00am: Take a shower and immediate BIG breakfast. (Goodmorning honey! or some immediate connection with a good song on YouTube to keep morning momentum)

7:45am: Have your day goals and schedules printed on a notepad, dashboard or your PDA -which is ever is useful to you. Big bottle of water next to you.

8:00am: WORK! (Have FUN!)

This schedule has been very useful for me, so hopefully you might try it anytime soon to see your results on a period of a week. The first 3 days is just warm up and getting your body accustom to constant minor moods of sleeplessness. Once you do it a fourth day in a row, note the differences that it might produce on you. If you wake up at such time, wake up a bit earlier and consider a different routine with an exercise regimen. No gym, how about your balcony? How about a treadmill at home?

Whatever it can save you time and at least confuse your muscles should do great. It’s working nicely, try it!

Joaquin

As I study more and more competitors, few of my competitors in numerous market use the short term solution for acquiring immediate traffic to their website. The e-commerce industry also calls this phenomenom “Black Hat” marketing. Overall, using black hat marketing can also be assimilated to the use of steroids. Steroids to cheat and beat competitors in search engine rankings.

is it intelligent to use steroids on the internet? You decide. But the reality is that they both have there peculiar positive results. Using the correct legit way of achieving high ranking results on Google, Yahoo and MSN through the honest, ethical and moral way according to tradition is using white hat techniques.

This is the way my commercial sites are all used, including videogamesmystery.com as you may have notice. The interesting situation is when you receive competitors that use black hat techniques to cheat the search engines from your own hard work. It happens, most often the results are short term Google results once you have discovered all their techniques and how they are cheating the search engines to steal traffic from every other commercial site that is competing the right way.

But here is the good part, once you know something is wrong on how your competitor behavior on search queries has been over a period of a few moths, don’t care to report him - study the website. Don’t bother reporting it to Google or Yahoo without knowing how the site is performing under the lazy marketing.

Why? So you may be able to do in other niches. Of course, you’ll have to study quite a few hours and understand a few concepts for getting everything in grasp, however, with websites that you might be able to re-direct traffic to your main central website - you don’t care of losing the website. By then you had received 1,000’s of visitors and sold numerous items.

Here is a technique I used to discover few of this sites. Check regular link exchange directories. Link exchange directories is where most sites exchange links with other website in order to gather search engine popularity. Now, once you have seen how regular link exhanges are install this particular firefox add on:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

Once you have installed it. Substitute the user agent of your browser and set the user agent to Googlebot/2.1 . You’ll be able to see it through googlebot eyes. Surprise, no outgoing links. Only links pointing to it. Furthermore, the site has so many footprints that I am shocked to see Google not responding and banning the website. Sweet? For the owner indeed. Not for all the others that are doing the right things.

On the short term if you know how to eliminate footprints, that is any associated sites in the same server, change your I.P address or have a unique I.P for such site and can fly under the radar under keywords that are not popular..it’s up to you to practice it. However, it’s not the way to earn a living from the internet…there are other ease ways to cloak but are way to expensive. These is the easiest and most cheapest way to get traffic in the short term.

You get to judge if you want to use it for your wholesale niche site or not.

Joaquin

What of the best thing your body can surely have is sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep! When you have slept for the recommended dose of 8 hours, your days are usually better in many ways. At least in my end, waking up at 8:00am will do it. However, if you’re into improving a bit more by the day consider this tips as I surely did them today(Sunday!) and it once again worked marvelously.

Study your sleeping patterns. Over here in island Puerto Rico in my early 20’s I remember going to bet very late at night, very late. It usually means 1:00am to 2:00am. Now can you imagine a morning schedule of waking up at 11:00am? Lucky me? Not so. Here’s what I have found so far, the insights in the learning process have been quite insightful.

Regular business days in Puerto Rico usually start at 8:00am. That’s when morning traffic is still at mid-levels as people are already working. Between 8:00am and around 10:30am the momentum of the day is very slow. People are getting paid by the hour, getting paid to do their work; however, the peak of the day hasn’t started yet.

We could easily know that by studying when the PHONE starts ringing. You start receiving calls to your home about credit card offers, business associates start calling you to check on updates about current project and most importantly your mind is still cozy with it’s own internal environment so bit by bit it can wake up completely and activate itself into its full capacity.

What I have done that has helped me now for the last week is fighting with my brain in order to wake up at 5:00am. The last time I had to do that was on my way to the airport. It can be a bit difficult if you don’t have to wake up early in the morning, however, once you do so you not only enjoy your day more - your energy is usually at its peak. Now, here’s a simple yet basic calculation in words.

If at least in Puerto Rico, people are either on traffic or in combat for full active capacity from 8am to 10:30am. The time when most people are either still in a sleeping comma(i passed through those many times), and when quietness(peace) is present.

What do you think is the best time, to get yourself constant productivity peaks? By my logic, it would be between 8:00am to 10:30am! Hence, if your days productivity is only 2 hours on average I then think it would be suggestible that anyone that finds out they have 2 hours of major productive work per day, work in the most productive priorities between 8:00am to 10:30am. This of course can be adjusted for your priorities and given situation.

What can you do to have a peak through a working day? My findings. Give your mind at least 2 hours before starting ANY type of work in the early morning; which generally means, allowing yourself a space of two early hours of breakfast, reading newsworthy material and/or having a nice conversation with your wife. Purpose of it; the more you know yourself, the more perfection in control you gather for improving workload through the day.

Most importantly, how can you wake up at 5:00am or 6:00am of the morning to enjoy my day and become more productive? Go figure, imagine. It was my third question. Once I knew the “what” and “why”, the “how-to” was supposed to be a bit of a fight. Of course, at least on my end.

Here is what I did and it worked after studying my own patterns. (Telling you a weakness boo for the marketer!) Ok seriously, go to sleep ONLY when you feel like sleeping, in other words when you feel those sleeping hormones can make you sleep once you catch a book and drop t in less than a 3 minute blink. That’s surely the first step.

Then go to sleep consistently no matter how late at night you get into that queen size, king side usual bed of yours. How this will work if you will still be sleepy if you wake early morning and only sleep 2-3 hours the next day? Wake up at the same time the next no matter if you went to bed at 3:00am the last day. The word consistency here means that through days your body will assimilate a pattern through at least 4-5 days of practice and going to bed before 11:00pm will be possible, therefore, 5:00am or 6:00am will become more easier and actively progressive through your given day.

It has worked wonders for me when I have wanted to do it and it could surely could work for you to. Heck, now I know for sure why many guys that aren’t in the bodybuilding industry need to use steroids. The quickest solution is cheating, the most difficult solution is working out a nutritional regimen day and night to acquire yourself a physical shape(in mind and body) that is healthy. Most people aren’t willing to do that, but I am sure that the faster you get on with it, the better.

Joaquin