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Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Interview With Ebay Expert Terry Gibbs
Interview With Terry Gibbs
http://www.news.iwantcollectibles.com
Other sites are listed on
http://www.nalroo.com
******************************
1. Can you tell me about your business background?
I started buying and selling toy trains when I was 14. In my late teens and early 20s I ran a large waterproofing company with operations in 26 states. My dad owned the company and when he retired, I decided I didn’t want to continue with it. I went to college (I’d dropped out of high school when I was 14) and got a degree in economics.
After college, I worked as an analyst for a direct response marketer. While I was there I designed and oversaw testing campaigns alongside some of the world’s top copywriters and marketers. This exposure got me interested in direct marketing.
I ran the train business through all those years, and when eBay started, I started selling trains on eBay. Within a few months I stopped working for others, and did only the trains. For a few years I was a professional toy train layout builder. Many of the layouts I constructed were featured in magazines.
2. As a person on the Internet, how did you get started?
I started selling toy trains on eBay in 1997. By 1999, I was creating my own products to sell alongside my auctions. My first products were screen savers with pictures of my trains. I sold thousands of screen savers. I also produced a guide for Toy train operators. It was a printed source guide listing hundreds of mostly small manufacturers by type of product.
These two products really hammered home to me the idea of leveraging. Creating a product once and selling it over and over again. In the past five years, I have concentrated on creating and selling information products. I currently (Jan 2005) have 33 different books and reports I sell on the web. I still do the trains, but only as a hobby.
3. How long have you been in business online?
I started in 1997.
4. How did you learn what it takes to succeed?
I learned to succeed by failing. Many of my best selling products have been accidents. For example on my third product I put together a package of information about buying toy trains. The goal was to teach other trains collectors and dealers my system for finding used toy trains.
I spent months putting the package together. Interviewed other dealers, compiled all my advertisements, and wrote a manual explaining each technique.
I knew it was a valuable package, but it didn’t sell. I originally tried running ads for a free report and sending the report and sales letter to people who replied. In the first three months I was promoting the package I spent over $10,000 in order to bring in $2,300 in sales.
I was sure the package would sell if I could find a way to get it in front of people.
I decided I needed to create a low cost product I could wrap the sales letter around, so I did a video on how to sell toy trains on eBay. The video was designed as a lead generator, but quickly became a profit center in it’s own right. This was a very profitable accident.
A lot of my learning is from trial and error. Doing something, tracking the results, then seeking to improve the numbers by testing other things.
Currently, I look for projects that will force me to increase my skills.
5. Do you do all of your business online?
I still sell toy trains at shows, but only as an extension of my hobby. I used to do a lot of off line advertising, but currently about 90 percent of my revenue comes from my online activities. I will be doing more offline marketing this spring.
6. What can you tell me about your business in 7 sentences?
My business is designed around my personality and my core strengths. This allows me to stay enthusiastic. I used to do things that just weren’t me. It was a constant struggle to keep going. Money isn’t enough. There has to be quality of life, and a feeling of personal fulfilment. My business suits me.
7. How do YOU get traffic to your website?
Most of my traffic is sent by affiliates. I also get a lot of visitors from my eBay auctions. This is explained at http://www.iwantcollectibles.com/ebay-me.shtml In the past few months I have been concentrating on offline traffic generators. I have done Radio, TV, and other media appearances. This is a growing part of my business.
8. What do you like most, and least, about the Internet?
I like the ability to do my own thing at any time of day. I like the ability to not work, and still have income. I can take a personal day or month, and the money keeps coming in.
My pet peeve is email. Not just because of the constant stream of spam that comes into my inbox, but the total lack of forethought of many emails. I think because it is so easy for people to send email, they don’t think about what they write.
9. Do you have any tips or advice you would like to offer?
Jump in, and start creating your future. Get to know yourself, and play to your strengths. Spend less time seeking advice, and more time working forward. Expect to succeed and plan to fail. Today, a lot of my newer products are just combinations of things that failed in the past. My skills are better and I reuse the work I did before.
One of the things that slowed my income growth was being scattered. I worked on projects geared towards different audiences, and had to duplicate the work for each niche. Now I concentrate on specific markets based on the profits and my plans for the future.
10. What are your goals and aspirations for the future?
I want to write a New York Times Bestseller. That is my plan for later this year, and I’ll have the book published in the spring of 2006. I am moving offline in order to build myself up as a brand. I read Jack Welch’s book about his time at GE. Welch decided early on that GE would only remain in sectors it could dominate. That makes a lot of sense to me.
11. Do you have an all-time favourite book?
Not that lasts. Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” and “Atlas Shrugged” are both on my repeat lists. Other books that seemed important the first time through usually lose their relevance on the second reading. Ursula K. LeGuin’s early books are wonderful – especially “The World For World Is Forest.”
12. Can you tell me a little about YOU, as a real everyday person? (likes, dislikes, hobbies, pet peeves, fave food etc.)
I like to cook, but don’t use recipes. Lately, I have been into soups. I just buy a piece of meat and select other items I think will go well with it. Sometimes it comes out wonderful, sometimes it is disgusting. Lately they have been much better so I am learning.
I collect toy trains made between 1895, and 1942 with an emphasis on the 1910-25 period. During this period trains became associated with Christmas.
The quantities produced increased, while at the same time the number of manufacturers decreased. By looking at the marketing materials, you can tell which companies will fail. Before 1910 electric trains were sold as novelties, rather than toys. By 1920, the novelty makers were gone and the toy makers were huge.
I read old novels by American authors like Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, and others from between 1890 and 1930. It is interesting to compare how they lived with the way we live today.
I hate the telephone even more than email. Do people really think because they want to talk to me, I should drop what I am doing and answer the phone? That’s not going to happen.
* * *
Terry Gibbs teaches collectors and dealers how to buy and sell antiques and collectibles. His website includes articles about antiques collectibles and eBay. http://www.news.iwantcollectibles.com/
Copyright © 2004 Anna-Marie Stewart. All rights reserved. This is one of 20 interviews that you can read today by downloading your free copy of Real Life Marketer Interviews Volume 1. To download, rightclick this link: Volume 1 and choose save file as.
Anna
http://annamarketing.com
Did you find this helpful? please leave a comment.
Thanks
p.s. Have you visited my Real Life Marketers Get-Together forum and posted your free ad yet?
marketing tips marketing online business information online marketing internet marketing
http://www.news.iwantcollectibles.com
Other sites are listed on
http://www.nalroo.com
******************************
1. Can you tell me about your business background?
I started buying and selling toy trains when I was 14. In my late teens and early 20s I ran a large waterproofing company with operations in 26 states. My dad owned the company and when he retired, I decided I didn’t want to continue with it. I went to college (I’d dropped out of high school when I was 14) and got a degree in economics.
After college, I worked as an analyst for a direct response marketer. While I was there I designed and oversaw testing campaigns alongside some of the world’s top copywriters and marketers. This exposure got me interested in direct marketing.
I ran the train business through all those years, and when eBay started, I started selling trains on eBay. Within a few months I stopped working for others, and did only the trains. For a few years I was a professional toy train layout builder. Many of the layouts I constructed were featured in magazines.
2. As a person on the Internet, how did you get started?
I started selling toy trains on eBay in 1997. By 1999, I was creating my own products to sell alongside my auctions. My first products were screen savers with pictures of my trains. I sold thousands of screen savers. I also produced a guide for Toy train operators. It was a printed source guide listing hundreds of mostly small manufacturers by type of product.
These two products really hammered home to me the idea of leveraging. Creating a product once and selling it over and over again. In the past five years, I have concentrated on creating and selling information products. I currently (Jan 2005) have 33 different books and reports I sell on the web. I still do the trains, but only as a hobby.
3. How long have you been in business online?
I started in 1997.
4. How did you learn what it takes to succeed?
I learned to succeed by failing. Many of my best selling products have been accidents. For example on my third product I put together a package of information about buying toy trains. The goal was to teach other trains collectors and dealers my system for finding used toy trains.
I spent months putting the package together. Interviewed other dealers, compiled all my advertisements, and wrote a manual explaining each technique.
I knew it was a valuable package, but it didn’t sell. I originally tried running ads for a free report and sending the report and sales letter to people who replied. In the first three months I was promoting the package I spent over $10,000 in order to bring in $2,300 in sales.
I was sure the package would sell if I could find a way to get it in front of people.
I decided I needed to create a low cost product I could wrap the sales letter around, so I did a video on how to sell toy trains on eBay. The video was designed as a lead generator, but quickly became a profit center in it’s own right. This was a very profitable accident.
A lot of my learning is from trial and error. Doing something, tracking the results, then seeking to improve the numbers by testing other things.
Currently, I look for projects that will force me to increase my skills.
5. Do you do all of your business online?
I still sell toy trains at shows, but only as an extension of my hobby. I used to do a lot of off line advertising, but currently about 90 percent of my revenue comes from my online activities. I will be doing more offline marketing this spring.
6. What can you tell me about your business in 7 sentences?
My business is designed around my personality and my core strengths. This allows me to stay enthusiastic. I used to do things that just weren’t me. It was a constant struggle to keep going. Money isn’t enough. There has to be quality of life, and a feeling of personal fulfilment. My business suits me.
7. How do YOU get traffic to your website?
Most of my traffic is sent by affiliates. I also get a lot of visitors from my eBay auctions. This is explained at http://www.iwantcollectibles.com/ebay-me.shtml In the past few months I have been concentrating on offline traffic generators. I have done Radio, TV, and other media appearances. This is a growing part of my business.
8. What do you like most, and least, about the Internet?
I like the ability to do my own thing at any time of day. I like the ability to not work, and still have income. I can take a personal day or month, and the money keeps coming in.
My pet peeve is email. Not just because of the constant stream of spam that comes into my inbox, but the total lack of forethought of many emails. I think because it is so easy for people to send email, they don’t think about what they write.
9. Do you have any tips or advice you would like to offer?
Jump in, and start creating your future. Get to know yourself, and play to your strengths. Spend less time seeking advice, and more time working forward. Expect to succeed and plan to fail. Today, a lot of my newer products are just combinations of things that failed in the past. My skills are better and I reuse the work I did before.
One of the things that slowed my income growth was being scattered. I worked on projects geared towards different audiences, and had to duplicate the work for each niche. Now I concentrate on specific markets based on the profits and my plans for the future.
10. What are your goals and aspirations for the future?
I want to write a New York Times Bestseller. That is my plan for later this year, and I’ll have the book published in the spring of 2006. I am moving offline in order to build myself up as a brand. I read Jack Welch’s book about his time at GE. Welch decided early on that GE would only remain in sectors it could dominate. That makes a lot of sense to me.
11. Do you have an all-time favourite book?
Not that lasts. Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” and “Atlas Shrugged” are both on my repeat lists. Other books that seemed important the first time through usually lose their relevance on the second reading. Ursula K. LeGuin’s early books are wonderful – especially “The World For World Is Forest.”
12. Can you tell me a little about YOU, as a real everyday person? (likes, dislikes, hobbies, pet peeves, fave food etc.)
I like to cook, but don’t use recipes. Lately, I have been into soups. I just buy a piece of meat and select other items I think will go well with it. Sometimes it comes out wonderful, sometimes it is disgusting. Lately they have been much better so I am learning.
I collect toy trains made between 1895, and 1942 with an emphasis on the 1910-25 period. During this period trains became associated with Christmas.
The quantities produced increased, while at the same time the number of manufacturers decreased. By looking at the marketing materials, you can tell which companies will fail. Before 1910 electric trains were sold as novelties, rather than toys. By 1920, the novelty makers were gone and the toy makers were huge.
I read old novels by American authors like Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, and others from between 1890 and 1930. It is interesting to compare how they lived with the way we live today.
I hate the telephone even more than email. Do people really think because they want to talk to me, I should drop what I am doing and answer the phone? That’s not going to happen.
* * *
Terry Gibbs teaches collectors and dealers how to buy and sell antiques and collectibles. His website includes articles about antiques collectibles and eBay. http://www.news.iwantcollectibles.com/
Copyright © 2004 Anna-Marie Stewart. All rights reserved. This is one of 20 interviews that you can read today by downloading your free copy of Real Life Marketer Interviews Volume 1. To download, rightclick this link: Volume 1 and choose save file as.
Anna
http://annamarketing.com
Did you find this helpful? please leave a comment.
Thanks
p.s. Have you visited my Real Life Marketers Get-Together forum and posted your free ad yet?
marketing tips marketing online business information online marketing internet marketing
All rights are reserved.
