The rookie syndrome

Pre-paid legal plans are fraught with the rookie syndrome: the providers usually resort to employing newly licensed or trainee attorneys in a cost-cutting exercise. Someone who does mostly wills, trusts, and sample contracts is probably not a good fit for a more complex legal issue like the custody of children. In this day of age of increasing specialization, it is better to ask someone with specialized knowledge and years of experience than it is to rely on a novice with a limited professional track-record.

If you go down the traditional way, then there is restricted pool of attorneys you can choose from. Your research will be easier and a lot more comprehensive. You can set up interviews with lawyers, ask for referrals from friends, previous customers or check your local bar association.

You are more likely to get a top-notch lawyer with who to build rapport get competent advice and trust the judgement. In their lifetime, people are most likely to use legal services that fall into four categories: civil defense, civil plaintiffs, criminal defense, and legal help that involves a variety of transactional or business law. Your liability insurances already cover you for the legal pertaining to civil defense.

Your insurer hires the lawyer who will defend you and have every incentive to defend you well since they are the ones who bear your legal costs irrespective of the outcome. In that respect, you already have pre-paid legal coverage in place and a legal plan would not add much to the coverage. Civil plaintiff attorneys in the Unites States work on a “no win no fee” basis.

This means that they will not charge you unless they win you damages in an insurance claim or lawsuit against someone who caused you physical injury. Their contingency fees are calculated as a “commission” on any money won, so there is every incentive for your plaintiff lawyer to defend you and defend you well: the more you win, the more he wins. There is no need to pre-pay for a service where you stand to lose nothing, and where advice is readily available to you from plaintiff lawyers eager to work on your case.

On the rare occasion you need to bring criminal charges if you are involved in a serious accident or defend yourself against criminal charges brought against you, lining up a lawyer to represent you in advance is not the best of decisions. In these situations, client-lawyer rapport is crucial: you need someone whom you trust, build a rapport with, and competent enough to defend you in a court of law. You rarely get the chance to talk to your attorney face-to-face in a pre-paid legal plan, and most of the attorneys in the network do not do criminal defense work.

Transactional and business law is the area where you will most probably find pre-paid legal services most effective. If you frequently need to someone to draft your wills, review simple contracts, and set up advance health-directives or simply want competent legal advice at your disposal, then going pre-paid will save you the trouble of searching for an attorney and paying “a la carte”. Many people believe they need the services of a lawyer, under a pre-paid legal service scheme, to solve a legal problem or resolve an intricate situation.

Often, your lawyer’s most valuable help could be before you get involved in legal trouble. When you sign up for a pre-paid legal plan, you have the right to unlimited toll-free telephone access to your attorney. The sound advice and consultation given to you by your lawyer will help you take the necessary steps to detect and resolve any potential legal problems before they take more dangerous proportions.

Do not shy away

After you receive your referrals, do not shy away from setting up interviews with attorneys in the network. Most do not mind receiving enquiries about what they do and how able they are. Choosing a particular enrolment method can be very important in determining the benefits, costs, and conditions of coverage of your legal plan.

A voluntary enrolment refers to a membership of a legal plan where people voluntarily subscribe to a pre-paid legal service in response to a direct email offer, during an employer’s open enrolment period, or during individual sales representations. In this arrangement, you pay the prepaid charge, get the standard discounts open to all other members of the plan and get the coverage as per the terms and conditions of the plan. In a group plan, all members are automatically included in the plan because of their status as a group.

For instance, many employees enjoy a 100% participation in legal plans sponsored by their employers. They do not have to pay any pre-paid charge or premium, as legal coverage in the workplace is now regarded as an employee fringe-benefit. Some universities also provide legal coverage for their students, financing the plans from their general tuition fees.

The attorney would draft, review, and update your will every other year, make phone calls and write letters on your behalf to negotiate your contracts, and represent you in court. If you are traveling in another state and need any form of legal advice, he will refer you to a competent attorney in that state at no extra cost to you. This all seems great on paper, but the mere thought of paying hundreds of dollars an hour to put an attorney on retainer is enough to persuade most people not to seek legal coverage.

You will be surprised to know that such coverage does indeed exist under an arrangement like your health or insurance plan. Pre-paid legal plans offer you access to all these legal services, for a monthly charge of $10 to $25. If you are employed, you may incur no charge if your employer provides legal services as a fringe benefit.

Pre-paid legal plans are promoted under the promise of cheap legal coverage, an attractive alternative to the high fees charged by regular attorneys and law practices. But under the gloss of accessible legal services for the public, lie several limitations. There is a limit on the scope of the legal services provided.

Most of what is provided on an unlimited basis is phone based: calls to your attorney for advice and consultation on legal matters, or phone calls made on your behalf to third parties. Other benefits bundled in the plan are limited: regular visits to your attorney’s office are restricted to a dozen or so hours per month, the wills you want drafted or sample contracts reviewed will be carried out on two or three copies per year. More complex legal matters involving more time and effort on the part of your attorney are not provided outright.

If you need representation in a court for a lawsuit on the recovery of damages, or a complex lease contract reviewed and approved, then you must pay regular lawyer fees. Some discounts of up to 25% apply, but you could get the same discounts if not better by the simple virtue of simple negotiations and clever comparison shopping. There is also a restriction on your choice of attorney and the quality of legal work provided.

Although you are free to choose your own attorney, client-lawyer relationship and the building of rapport are harder to come by in this scheme.

To minimize the risk

To minimize the risk of poor service and plummeting employer satisfaction, an employer should conduct both requirements analysis amongst its employee base to cover for their difference needs, and a due research to select the most appropriate legal plan to fit those requirements based on experience, integrity, and track record. Group legal plans in the workplace have experienced rapid growth recently because of their usefulness to both employer and employee alike. For the employee, a group legal plan is a cheap way to get legal coverage in much the same way as other traditional benefits.

For as little as $20 per month deducted from payroll, an employee is put in touch with an attorney who can draft his will, buy or refinance a home, adopt a child, and plan an estate. Unlimited legal advice is offered at no cost to the employee. The benefits for the employer include increased efficiency and productivity from their workforce, and reduced administration costs to handle personal matters.

Another very attractive benefit is the very low cost involved in researching and implementing a group legal plan. In fact, such plans cost employers very little in terms of time and investment. Group plans are structured on a voluntary basis, paid for through payroll deductions from the workforce.

Additionally, the carrier handles all the claims, redundant paperwork, and customer service related to the plan. Throughout the course of your legal problems, you will have to make some tough decisions. If you were involved in an accident then you must choose between bringing criminal damages or press with a plaintiff case, if you have a small business and you were involved in a deal, then you must decide whether to sign it or let it pass.

There is no clear-cut answer in many of these dilemmas, and getting the right lawyer is crucial to you. The number one criterion has to do with a lawyer’s legal ability. You need a lawyer who lays the law down for you, present you with options, explain the ramifications of each decision you make, and give you recommendations on the best course of action.

In this day and age of complicated legal matters, many lawyers are increasingly specialized, and you stand to get better information from someone with a practice focus in a particular area of the law than a generalist who deals with a broad spectrum of legal issues. Building rapport is also very important. Your relationship with your lawyer can make or break your case.

You need a lawyer who gives you candid advice and council you can trust, someone with enough perspective to step back from an issue and look at it from all perspectives. Client-lawyer relationships are very limited within a pre-paid legal plan. Because of the preventive nature of most plans, your contact with your lawyer will be limited on many occasions.

You seldom get to talk to your lawyer face-to-face as most of the consultation is done over the phone. And even when you get to talk to them, it is difficult to build rapport when your office consultations are limited to a dozen hours a year. The good news, however, is you still have some options left.

When you sign up for a legal plan, you get to choose your lawyer and there are a few steps you can take to increase the likelihood of getting a good lawyer. First, you need to ask for referrals from previous clients. Ask around about good attorneys in the network.

Once you get a few names, check their educational background, their qualifications, and their professional track record with your state’s bar association.

The comprehensive plan

It is in the realm of more complex legal matters that require more time and effort from your attorney, that the comprehensive plan is more beneficial than a basic access plan. You can have your trust set up, instead of a simple will, and a more complicated business sale contract drawn up as opposed to a simple contract. Legal representation can equally be provided in court for some cases, such as child custody.

Comprehensive prepaid plans are most suitable for people who need business advice, have family trusts, or own real estate properties. It is not uncommon to see the terms “legal plans” and “pre-paid legal services” used interchangeably. While they share a lot of characteristics in common, there are a few differences you should be aware of.

Both terms refer to an arrangement whereby you pay a fixed monthly or yearly fee in exchange for legal services. The idea behind them is to save consumers on high legal fees whilst offering a valuable service. The differences lie in what kind of service is offered and what is covered.

Pre-paid services cover for specific legal services such as free phone consultation and advice, drafting of simple wills and trusts, review of sample contracts and writing of letters on your behalf. Legal services not provided will get charged at regular attorney fees, but you may be eligible for discounts. Legal insurance, by contrast, works much like other insurance plans, like health or car insurance.

Although specific legal services are offered at times, your insurance provider will typically offer a policy that covers for all legal services. The policy will pay on behalf of you, the policy holder, or reimburse all expenses, costs, or fees that you pay for legal services up to the policy limit. For instance, your policy might reimburse any fees incurred in your court judgments or pay your bail money, a service not provided by most pre-paid legal plans.

Your legal insurance is also pegged to other insurance policies you may already have. If you run into legal problems involving your other insurance, then your legal insurance policy will protect you against loss or liability. For instance, if you are involved in a car accident when your auto insurance has already run out and you are subsequently sued for recovery of damages, you will be protected by a legal plan insurance.

The other difference between the two schemes is related to your choice of attorney. In a pre-paid legal service, you get to choose from a restricted number of the attorneys in the network. By contrast, a legal insurance plan provides legal coverage regardless of attorney.

You are free to set up interviews with any number of attorneys and choose the ones you think will provide the best service for your personal legal needs. Finally, pre-paid legal plans are much more accessible to the public. Legal plans are harder to come by as only a limited number of insurance companies offer such arrangements.

A properly developed group legal insurance plan can be the perfect complement to any employer’s work life initiative. Considering that many employees are nowadays increasingly swayed by benefit options when making career decisions, legal insurance is a viable product for many employers. However, there is no single fit-for-all group legal plan for all organizations.

For a start, each organization has a distinct list of requirements when contracting for legal insurance. A requirement built on the premise of reduced administrative costs will require a different set of legal services than requirements built on enhancing a benefits package or protect against liability. Legal plans also vary in what they offer: the quality of their customer service, flexibility of plan design, and finally the experience and professional track record of their panel of attorneys.

Stumbling blocks of pre-paid legal services

One of the stumbling blocks of pre-paid legal services is quality of service. Newly licensed attorneys, phone calls not getting answered, and that ointment on any client-lawyer relationship: fee disputes, typically involving bills made to your credit card to cover for services not included in your contract. This is just a specimen of the many problems people face with their plan providers.

Make sure you select a plan that has clear guidelines as to how to settle dispute when they arise. A company that has a good in-house mechanism to handle complaints will generally assign a senior attorney with the authority to handle customer complaints of and disputes with any attorneys in the network. Secondary sources of resolution may include your state insurance department or bar association.

Check their outlet for complaints against pre-paid services. You will need to do some homework before you select your legal provider. Some good places to start your background research are your state bar association, the Better Business Bureau, and the Consumer Affairs Office.

You have unlimited telephone access to a panel of attorneys regarding any legal matter of interest to you. You can also make brief consultation visits to your lawyer for up to 30 minutes per day at no cost to you. The only condition placed on these two benefits is that you enquire about a different legal matter.

This aspect of coverage provided by legal plans is one of the most beneficial because it promotes preventive law. Preventive law is very much like preventive medicine, it helps in anticipating potential problems and taking the appropriate legal steps so that unnecessary legal problems or risks are avoided. With a simple phone call to your lawyer, you can avoid getting embroiled in a hellish legal situation, and you can even identify legal rights you do not even know you had.

The panel of lawyers will write letters and make phone calls on your behalf to adverse third parties. Such follow-up service may be all it takes to solve many of your legal problems. Simple personal legal documents, such as your insurance policies, sales contracts, and leases will be reviewed.

Any questions of legal nature that you have about the documents will also get answered by your attorney. A will is a written document that regulates how you want your property distributed after your death. Your attorney will draft your will according to your state’s laws so that it is valid when you die.

Your lawyer will also advise you on any provisions you might want to consider, such as appointing a guardian and establishing a trust. Any additional services not covered in the written fee agreement will be at regular fees, either hourly or flat fees with a discount between 20 to 30%. These services generally include family matters such as divorce and the custody of children and court representation such as traffic tickets and lawsuits.

Some of the legal paperwork you need to read carefully, agree on, and sign include the Written fee agreement. This is an agreement that outlines what services are provided in the plan, how much it costs, and the methods of payment.

Grievance procedure details the procedures that will be taken by the provide to resolve any complaints about attorneys or disputes regarding service fees. If you are a member of a pre-paid access plan and are not getting the legal services you think you need, then it is probably time to upgrade to a more comprehensive plan. A comprehensive prepaid legal service plan is designed to cover for most of your legal service needs each year.

Access services, such as legal advice and information by toll-free number and follow-up service, are provided at no cost to you.

Cost containment is another benefit

With less time and resources to be used for personal matters, the company expects to make significant savings on administrative costs. Pre-paid legal services can be a very attractive alternative to hiring a lawyer for many people. You should consider the importance and relative priority of these benefits considering your own legal needs.

Pre-paid legal plans can take the sting out of hiring a lawyer. Lawyers’ fees are prohibitive for most people, you can run bills of thousands of dollars, and this is simply out of reach of most working and middle-class families. With pre-paid plans, what you get charged is more in line with what you pay for your health or home insurance.

Plans start as low as $9 per month and typically do not exceed the $30 mark. There are several very complicated sets of fees lawyers charge: contingency fees, flat fees, statutory fees, and hourly rates. In the case of contingency and statutory fees, you must get into the intricate details of how these fees are computed.

The other two types of fees can be as equally complex. Increasingly, attorneys choose to incorporate any overheads they incur, like secretarial expenses, parking charges, and travel fees into their flat and hourly fees. They can also set a minimum number of billing units, like three tenths of an hour, irrespective of how long it takes them to deal with your problem.

This is just a sample rundown of what might influence the various fees charged by lawyers, other factors and arrangements can apply too. Contrast this with the simplicity in which pre-paid legal services are priced and furnished. The process is simple and straightforward: you sign an agreement to pay a fixed monthly fee and that is about it.

If what you are looking for is not covered, your plan provider will give you a prior notice of a different billing so that you know exactly how much you will be charged. Pre-paid plans offer unlimited phone consultation and advice. This aspect of the service can save you a lot of trouble, money, and time in the future.

Most legal problems you are likely to face in your day-to-day life can be solved if you take the necessary steps in line with the law. With the right advice and consultation with your lawyer, you can detect legal blunders before they occur and hence minimize the risk of litigation and protection. Choosing a pre-paid legal plan is a good way to save money, but choosing a plan you need and a provider you can trust is a different matter.

Legal plans are offered in different models and differ in the specifics of what they cover. While phone consultation and simple drafting and reviewing of simple contracts are included across the board, more elaborated and complicated legal matters are not covered. It is best to review your own legal needs before you choose a legal plan.

Ask which legal services you will need most and then choose a plan that provides the best coverage given those needs. For instance, if you are a business owner, lawsuits, lease, and contract negotiations could be high on your list and you would be looking for a legal plan that provides coverage accordingly. Know what legal coverage you already have, do not pay for coverage twice.

If you have car insurance, then you are covered for liability and medical protection, home insurance covers you for injuries sustained on your property. Your existing insurance policies already cover some of your legal costs and there is no need to pay for that coverage when you select a legal plan.

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater

Opening a new account is like moving to a new town to get away from a few people who are spreading rumors about you. PowerSellers are not going to risk their reputation, after all, this is the power of a reputation. People know you want to keep it, and they know you will go to almost any lengths to do so.

You really will find selling on eBay so much easier, and there is only one way to get a good reputation: make sure you please your customers, every single time. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), Americans have come to view legal assistance as a necessity. Yet, most Americans have not used a lawyer more than once due to the sky-high attorney fees anywhere from $100 to $1,000 per hour and the trepidation involved in the search for legal services.

Prepaid legal insurance might just be the answer you have been looking for. The concept is simple: for a fixed monthly subscription, you get telephone access to advice from a lawyer. You pay a fixed amount in advance each month to defray the cost of legal services furnished in the future.

These services span various areas of the law, anywhere from reviews of simple legal documents and the writing of a simple will to more comprehensive coverage of trials, divorce, bankruptcy, and real estate issues. Pre-paid legal coverage is a very attractive proposition for people who do not have the resources to retain a lawyer on a regular basis whenever they need assistance. You effectively have a network of attorneys you can use as retainer to seek preliminary advice about what the issues are and how the procedures work whenever legal matters arise.

Services not covered by the plan are available to members for a discount on regular hourly rates or flat fees. A fact, however, is that more than half of new subscribers drop out of a prepaid plan after their first year. One reason could be that many members do not require any legal assistance during their first year, so they opt out.

Another reason is the scope of services offered, which are very basic and limited in nature. Most plans have certain caps or maximums as far as benefits provided are concerned, and purport to offer discount on standard attorney fees instead. However, by virtue of simply calling around by yourself you could probably negotiate a lower rate.

Another problem with pre-paid legal plans is the likelihood of getting assigned to a novice attorney. Because of cost considerations, many of the companies behind per-paid services assign trainee or inexperienced attorneys to handle phone consultation and drafting of simple legal documents. You are also less likely to build rapport and understanding, two of the most important attributes of choosing a good attorney, as over 90% of the work is done over the phone.

Employers are on the hunt, researching benefit tools that are low-cost, easily administered, and satisfy their employees’ needs. One such tool is pre-paid group insurance. The first benefit employers expect from legal insurance plans is increased productivity and efficiency.

Today’s employees are interested in a variety of benefits to balance their work with their life requirements. Given that most American household had an issue with law last year that might have led them to hire a lawyer, it is only normal that a legal benefit would increase employees’ morale and efficiency. Having legal benefit as part of a work-benefit package can help the company recruit and retain the best employees.

In this age of work-benefit hysteria, many prospective employment candidates base their career choices on the set of benefit package provided by employers.

When you think about what to sell

There are a few things to consider. The most important of these is to always sell what you know. If you try to sell something that you just do not know anything about then you will never write a good description and sell it for a good price.

You might think you are not especially interested in anything, but if you think about what kind of things you usually buy and which websites you go to most often, you will discover some kind of interest. If all else fails mention it to your friends and family, they will almost certainly able to tell you. Out of the things you know enough about, you should then consider which things you could get for a good enough price to resell, and how suitable they would be for posting.

If you can think of something of that you are knowledgeable about and it is small and light enough for postage to be relatively cheap, then that is great. Do not worry if you think the thing you are selling is too obscure, it is not. There is a market for almost everything on eBay, even things that would not sell once in a year if you stocked them in a shop.

You will probably do even better if you fill a niche than if you sell something common. If you earn enough money, you should be aware that you are going to have to start paying tax, and this will not be done for you. If you decide to sell on eBay on a full-time basis, you should probably register as a business.

There are going to be ups and downs when you sell on eBay. Do not give up if something goes a little wrong in your first few sales. The sellers who are successful on eBay are the ones who enjoy it and stick at it no matter what happens.

Anyone can sell on eBay if they believe in themselves. And if you do decide it is not for you, then the start-up costs are so low that you will not really have lost anything. Your eBay reputation is everything you are on eBay.

Without it, you are nothing. Your reputation is worth as much as every sale you will ever make. Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands does not require any thought or fear, it feels just like buying from a shop.

In fact, a bad reputation will lose you almost all your sales. If someone leaves you negative feedback, you will feel the pain straight away, as that rating will go right at the top of your user page for everyone to see. Your next few items will need to be very cheap things, just to push that negative down the page.

You might have to spend days or even weeks selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback to make anyone deal with you again. It is even worse if you consistently let buyers leave negative feedback. Once you get below 90% positive ratings, you might as well be invisible.

Besides eBay's rules about only having one account, there are far more downsides than that to getting a new account. You literally must start all over again from scratch. You will not be able to use all the different eBay features.

Your existing customers will not be able to find you anymore. Your auctions will finish at a lower price because of your low feedback rating.

If it still has not arrived

You should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one or give them a full refund otherwise. If the item has been damaged in the post, you must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation. If the item does not match the description, take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to make any confusing points extra clear.

Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, while having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold. You should always handle customers' complaints before they complain to eBay.

In fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any complaint. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you, and is downright unnecessary. The higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you.

Trying to make excuses for complaints is not the only thing you need to avoid. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid if you do not want to kill your business before it is even started properly. Some of the jargon is obscure, and you cannot be expected to understand it until someone has told you what it means.

Even the most common jargon is only used relatively rarely. You will find more specific jargon related to whatever you are selling. If you cannot figure one out from your knowledge of the subject, then type the term into a search engine, followed by the word 'eBay'.

The chances are that someone, somewhere will have seen fit to explain it. While it is good to be able to understand others' jargon, avoid using it unless you really need to. Many people on eBay are not experienced buyers and you will lose them if you write a load of gobbledegook all over your auction.

While you can sell most things on eBay, quite a few things are banned. If you try to sell any of those things, then eBay will remove your auction and all bids will be void. Almost everything that is on the list is there because there is law against selling it.

Some of the reasons, though, are a little strange. eBay will remove any items that it believes violate copyright law, but they do not have that many people to monitor the site. You will generally only find that your auction gets removed if someone decides to report you.

And even then, they might not get around to it. Really, buying and selling on eBay can sometimes feel more complicated than it really is, thanks to all the rules surrounding it, not to mention the jargon. If you know what you are doing, the easier you will find it to be found.

Be specific. Where you can, though, leave off the type of item altogether and title using brand and model. There are a few things that you really need to know before you go and throw yourself in at the deep end.

First off, you need to know what it is you are going to sell. You will do far better on eBay if you become a great source for certain kind of products, as people who are interested in those products will come back to you again and again. You will not get any loyalty or real reputation if you just sell rubbish at random.

They do boring business things

Such as keep inventories and budgets. They know what they are going to be selling, how much they buy it for, and how much they expect to sell for. Just like a real shop, there can be hard times sometimes, but their income is stable, and their business can grow slowly.

Do not take long-term risks for short-term gain. Look after your reputation, manage your selling properly, provide good customer service, and the rewards will come to you in due course. One possibility that you might have realized so far is what eBay can do for any other businesses you might have.

Most of the people who make money from eBay do not actually make all that money on eBay. There are all sorts of ways you can use eBay to give your existing businesses a helping hand. If you have any leftover stock or used items from another business you run, sell them on eBay.

You can make this a regular thing, using it to get rid of things that will not sell for the premium you ask for in a shop, or items that are no longer in demand in the town or city where your business is based. You can really make a lot of money this way if you know what you are doing. You will, of course, already be an expert in the items you are selling, as you use them in your business, and you will know that the items are of high enough quality to be sellable.

This is a whole new market for your old inventory. eBay give you an 'About Me' page, where you can write anything you like and link anywhere you like. This means that you can get traffic to your business' website by linking to your website from your About Me page and linking to your About Me page from each auction.

To create an About Me page, just click on 'Community' on the toolbar, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'Create an About Me page'. You then get the option to either enter your own HTML or let eBay guide you through the process. All you need to do is write a little about your website, link to it, and you are done.

You will notice that more people start to come to your site straight away. All the traffic you will get will be targeted because the people who click through were interested in your auction to begin with. This can be a powerful technique, especially if you have already got an e-commerce site.

Now that you have seen how to drive visitors to your website, maybe you would like a little help getting your auction in front of buyers. The customer is always right. If you want to be a successful eBay seller, you should go miles out of your way to make sure every single one of your customers is 100% satisfied, however much time or money it might cost you. A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs.

That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part. There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer.

If the item never arrived, politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still has not arrived.

Listing items in the wrong categories is against eBay's rules

eBay will remove any auctions that are wrongly categorized. They do not often actually do this, but it is not worth the risk. Especially since breaking any rules can cause them to penalize your account, including losing PowerSeller status if you have it.

eBay will suggest categories for you when you sell your item if you type in a few words to describe the item on the category selection page and click 'search'. You can make the best of this feature by typing in exactly what your item is, with brand name and model number (if any), so that eBay can find the best category for you. If that does not work for you, then search yourself for items like yours, and pay attention to which category most of them seem to be in.

You can see the item’s category near the top of its description page. Try different words and see which ones come back with the most results. You can also browse through all the available categories from eBay's front page.

Remember that the more specific the category is, the better. Use as many subcategories as are appropriate. Do not worry about your item as it will still appear in the main category, as well as subcategory, because items listed in subcategories are always listed in every category above.

Take some time to look through all the categories and get familiar with eBay. For a small extra fee, you can list your item in an extra category, to increase the number of potential buyers who will see it. This is not always worth it, though.

Some items only really fit properly in one category and listing them in extra categories is just a waste. Once you know where to list your item, the next step is to write your auction's title. The title is the most important thing about your auction.

The difference between a good title and a bad one can be the difference between $10 and $100. PowerSellers are the people on eBay who have made it. You have probably seen these people around. And to succeed on eBay, you want to think the way they do.

eBay gets to decide who can be a PowerSeller and they have strict requirements. To get in at the minimum PowerSeller level, you must have a feedback rating of at least 98% positive and sell at least $1,000 worth of items every month for three months in a row. There are different levels of PowerSeller: $1,000 is bronze, $3,000 is silver, $10,000 is gold, $25,000 is platinum, and $125,000 is titanium.

If PowerSellers ever fail to meet the required amount of sales, or their feedback falls below 98% positive, then they lose their PowerSeller status. In short, the only people who get to be PowerSellers on eBay are the people who have been successful for a good while and are on track to stay that way. The Shop and the Marketplace are the most important parts of understanding how PowerSellers think.

They do not see what they are doing as being some random bazaar, or a hobby. Instead, they see themselves as a business. If you run a stall in a marketplace, the chances are that you have a general area of business, but you mostly just sell whatever you can get your hands on that week.

This might be fun, and when you have a good week, you will have a really good week. But it is no way to run a real business in the long-term. PowerSellers think far more like shops. They sell the same things again and again, every week, regular stock for regular customers.

Designed from the start

The site had been designed from the start to collect a small fee on each sale, and it was this money that Pierre Omidyar used to pay for AuctionWeb's expansion. The fees quickly added up to more than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his job and work on the site full-time. It was at this point, in 1996, that he added the feedback facilities, to let buyers and sellers rate each other and make buying and selling safer.

In 1997, Omidyar changed AuctionWeb's and his company's name to eBay, which is what people had been calling the site for a long time. Omidyar began to spend a lot of money on advertising and had the eBay logo designed. It was in this year that the one-millionth item was sold.

Then, in 1998, eBay became big business, and the investment in Internet businesses at the time allowed it to bring in senior managers and business strategists, who took in public on the stock market. It started to encourage people to sell more than just collectibles, and quickly became a massive site where you could sell anything, large or small. 1999 saw eBay go worldwide, launching sites in the UK, Australia, and Germany.

eBay bought half.com, an Amazon-like online retailer, in the year 2000. The same year it introduced Buy it Now and bought PayPal, an online payment service, in 2002. Omidyar has now earned an estimated $3 billion from eBay, and still serves as Chairman of the Board. There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world.

For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. Trying to help your buyers find your auctions can be a truly daunting task. Most people only search eBay by title, not by description, and that means that you only have those 55 characters of the title to cover all the possible search terms.

That is not easy. Do not bother with eBay clichés. There are plenty of eBay auction titles that say things like "Super rare camera wow look low price". These are stupid things to put in your title, as no-one is going to search for them.

Think like a buyer. If you were looking for your item, then what exactly would you type into that box? If you think it would help, try searching yourself to find someone else selling your item. What were the first things you thought of typing?

Think like other sellers. Keep an eye on which sellers are doing best with items like yours and try to copy their title styles. If it works for them, it can work for you. Be specific. You should write the item's brand and specific model number in the title, as people will often search only for this information.

Make sure that you also say exactly what the item is. So now that you have written a winning title, you need to start on a great description. A consumer is assumed to have a budget which can be spent on a range of goods and services available on the market.

Under the assumption of rationality, the budget allocation is chosen according to the preference of the consumer, to maximize his utility function. Some people think it is easy to choose the right eBay category, and often it is. Sometimes, though, it might not be quite clear exactly what to go for.

Plenty of people use the category system to find items when they are not looking for something specific. If your item is listed in the wrong category, then these people are not going to find your auction.

Anywhere near that kind of earning potential

There are only few other things you could be doing with your spare time that have anywhere near that kind of earning potential. If you know where to get something reasonably cheaply that you could sell, then you can sell it on eBay. And since you can always get discounts for bulk at wholesale, that is not exactly difficult.

Buy a lot of something in-demand cheaply, sell it on eBay, and you are making money already, with no set-up costs. If you want to dip your toe in the water before you commit to buying anything, then you can just sell things that you have got lying around in the house. Search through that cupboard of stuff you never use, and you will probably find you have got a few hundred dollars' worth of stuff lying around in there.

There is always someone who wants what you are selling, whatever it might be, and since they have come looking for you, you do not even need to do anything to get them to buy it. There are only a few little things you need to learn to get started. Going full-time as an eBay seller is living the dream.

Making a real income, working from home, being your own boss, and all the rest of it. It is the promise of a million scams, and it is finally come true. What they do not tell you in the success stories, though, is that becoming a full-time eBay seller is not for everyone.

You really, really ought to try it part-time before you even consider taking it up full-time, and even then, caution is recommended. Work out how many hours a week you spend doing eBay-related things and divide it by the average amount of profit you make in a week. If you were doing full-time hours, would you earn as much as you earn now?

Think about what you might lose if you give up your job to focus on eBay. If you are in a well-paid job with good promotion prospects, then it is well worth reconsidering. You might get a few years down the line and wish you would stay in your traditional job, as you would probably be the CEO by now.

Unless you are selling a large quantity of small goods, most of what you do on eBay will be waiting for auctions to end, and you can wait at work just as easily as you can at home. This is why whether you would make more money on eBay really depends on what kinds of items you are selling. For low value items, going full-time could be a good move.

For high-value ones, the chances are you will hit the limits of how much money you must invest in inventory long before you hit the limits on your time. eBay was created in September 1995, by a man called Pierre Omidyar, who was living in San Jose. Omidyar wanted his site, then called “AuctionWeb”, to be an online marketplace and wrote the first code for it in one weekend.

It was one of the first websites of its kind in the world. The name “eBay” comes from the domain Omidyar used for his site. Omidyar’s company's name was Echo Bay, and the “eBay AuctionWeb” was originally just one part of Echo Bay's website at ebay.com.

The first thing ever sold on the site was Omidyar's broken laser pointer, which he got $14 for. The site quickly became massively popular, as sellers came to list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work remarkably well and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself.

Always keep an eye

Always keep an eye on how much other items the same as or like yours are selling, and what prices they are being offered at. There is usually little point in starting a fixed price auction for $100 when someone else is selling the item for $90. It is worth taking the time to photograph your items, especially if you have a digital camera.

If you get serious about eBay but do not have a camera, then you will probably want to invest in one at some point. Send a brief email when transactions go through. Something like a simple, "Thank you for buying my item, please let me know when you have sent the payment."

Follow this up with, "Thanks for your payment, I have posted your [item] today." You will be surprised how many problems you will avoid just by communicating this way. Remember that potential buyers can send you email about anything at any time, and not answering these emails will just make them go somewhere else instead of buying from you.

If you are planning to offer international delivery, then it is good to make a list of the charges to different counties and display it on each auction. If you have any special terms and conditions, then you should make sure these are displayed too. Your wrapping should be professional for the best impression.

Use appropriately sized envelopes or parcels, wrap the item in bubble wrap to stop it from getting damaged, and print labels instead of hand-writing addresses. Send out an email a few days after you post an item, saying, "Is everything alright with your purchase? I hope you received it, and it was as you expected." This might sound like giving the customer an opportunity to complain, but you should be trying to help your customers, not take their money and run.

Being a good eBay seller, more than anything else, is about providing genuinely good and honest customer service. That is the only foolproof way to protect your reputation. If you have ever read an article about eBay, you will have seen the kinds of incomes people make.

It is not unusual to hear of people making thousands of dollars per month on eBay. Next time you are on eBay, look at how many PowerSellers there are. Now consider that every single one of one of them must be making at least $1,000 per month, as that is eBay's requirement for becoming a PowerSeller.

Silver PowerSellers make at least $3,000 each month, while Gold PowerSellers make more than $10,000, and the Platinum level is $25,000. The top ranking is the Titanium PowerSeller, and to qualify you must make at least $150,000 in sales every month. The fact that these people exist gives you some idea of the income possibilities.

Most of them never set out to even set up a business on eBay, they simply started selling a few things, and then kept going. There are plenty of people whose full-time job is selling things on eBay, and some of them have been doing it for years now. Once they have bought the stock, everything else is pretty much pure profit for these people.

They do not need to pay for any business premises, staff, or anything else. There are multi-million-dollar businesses making less in actual profit than eBay PowerSellers do. Even if you do not want to quit your job and really go for it, you can still use eBay to make a significant second income.

You can pack up orders during the week and take them down to the post office for delivery each Saturday.

In crowded categories

You might find that this is worth the money. Once you have got some buyers, you want to keep them coming back to you. Over the years, eBay has introduced all sorts of different auction types to give people more options when they buy and sell their things on eBay.

For every seller who does not like the idea that their item might sell for a far lower price than they intend, there is another who wants to shift hundreds of the same item quickly. eBay tries to cater to all tastes. Normal auctions are the bread-and-butter of eBay, the auctions everyone knows. Buyers bid, others outbid them, they bid again, and the winner gets the item. Simple.

Reserve auctions are for sellers who do not want their items to sell for less than a certain price. A concept you will know about if you are familiar with real auctions. They work just like normal auctions on eBay, except that the buyer will be told if their bid does not meet the reserve price you set, and they will need to bid again if they want the item.

If no-one is willing to meet your price, then the auction is cancelled, and you keep the item. Fixed Price ('Buy it Now') auctions can work in one of two ways. You can add a Buy it Now button to a normal auction, meaning that buyers can choose either to bid normally or to simply pay the asking price and avoid the whole bidding process.

Some sellers, though, now cut out the auction process altogether and simply list all their items at fixed price. This lets you avoid all the complications of the auction format and simply list your items for how much you want them to sell for. Recently, eBay added a twist to fixed price auctions: the 'best offer'.

This means that buyers can contact you to negotiate a price, which could be a good way to sell some extra stock at a small discount. The only downside to Reserve and Fixed Price auctions is that you pay a small extra fee to use these formats. In general, it is more worth using Reserve auctions for higher-priced items and Fixed Price auctions for lower-priced ones but remember that you can combine the two formats.

Multiple Item ('Dutch') auctions are auctions where you can sell more than one of a certain item. Dutch auctions can be done by bidding. Buyers bid a price and say how many items they want, and then everyone pays the lowest price that was bid by one of the winning bidders.

If you have trouble getting your head around that, do not worry, everyone else does too. These auctions are very rare. What is more common is when a seller has a lot of one item and lists it using a combination of two auction types: a Multiple Item Fixed Price auction.

This just means that you can just say how many of the item you have and offer them at a fixed price per unit. Buyers can enter how many they want and then just click Buy it Now to get them. Now that you know about the different types of auctions, you should make sure that the items you plan to sell do not violate eBay's listing policies.

Being an eBay seller is a lot of responsibility, and sometimes you might feel like you are not doing everything you should be. Try typing the item’s name into a search engine. You might find out something you did not know.

If someone else is selling the same thing as you, then always try to provide more information about it than they do.

This is the time to throw money at the problem

Buy inventory and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal number of sales each week, increasing it each time. Make it official. Once you have made a few thousand dollars’ worth of sales, you should really register yourself as a business.

Do not worry, it is not expensive or hard to do. A lawyer is the best person to help you through the process. Automate. You will probably find that you are writing the same things again and again in emails or item descriptions.

This is the time to give up on the manual method and turn to automated software that can create listings for you and respond to completed auctions and payments with whatever message you provide. Never give up. Even when it looks like it is all going wrong, do not stop trying until you succeed.

If you keep working at it, then you will almost always find that you make a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate. Once you get into the swing of things, you might start thinking that you should quit your job and take up eBay selling part time. But it is not always as easy as that.

There are all sorts of factors that you need to consider. It is surprisingly easy to kill your eBay business if you are not careful. In all that description writing, you might have missed the vital importance of your item's picture.

A picture with bad lighting or an intrusive background looks amateurish and will not make anyone want to buy from you. You will be surprised how much you can reassure bidders just by creating an About Me page and putting a little bit about yourself and your business on there. You can also have a few special offers there for people who bother to look at the page, and let people subscribe to your mailing list so that you can email them updates.

Signing up at SquareTrade and displaying their logo on your auctions shows that you are committed to have them resolve any disputes that arise. You always see this on PowerSellers auctions, it makes you look more professional. Write terms and conditions, have the “small print” clearly visible on all your auctions, giving details of things like shipping times and prices, your refund policy, and any other business practices you might have.

This helps build confidence with buyers. Show off your feedback, copy and paste a selection of the feedback comments you are most proud of to each item's description page, instead of making bidders go and look for it. If you have 100% positive feedback, be sure to write that on every auction too.

Add “NR” to your titles. If you have extra space in a title, put “NR” (No Reserve) on the end. Bidders prefer auctions that do not have a reserve price, and doing this lets them see that yours do not. Make sure your description focuses on the benefits that your item can give to the customer, not just its features.

This is a classic sales technique. If you have trouble with this, remember “cheap” is a feature, and “save money” is a benefit. If you want more people to respond to your items, then list more items. There is no need to use a Dutch auction, you can just keep two or three auctions going at once for an item you have more than one in stock.

To reach those last few buyers, accept payment methods that many sellers do not. Buy some upgrades. The best upgrade is the most expensive one, which makes your item appear first in search results.

Let eBay choose for you

It is best to just type in what the item is and let eBay choose for you. Next, write a title and description. Include key words you think people will search for in the title box, and all the information you have about the item in the description box. Now set a starting price. $0.01 is the best starting price, as it draws people in to bid who otherwise would not, and items will almost never finish at such a low price.

The next thing to set is the duration of the auction: 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. Longer sales will usually get more bids but will also seem to drag on forever. If you have taken a picture, add it now. Items with pictures always sell for more.

Finally, tick the payment methods you will accept, and where you will post your item to. Submit and you are done. Wait for it to sell. This is just a matter of sitting back and letting eBay do its thing. Buyers will find your item and leave bids on it.

Some bidders might email you with questions about the item, and you should do your best to answer these questions as quickly as you can. If your item does not sell, then you can list it again for free. Collect payment and post it.

eBay will send your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item. Make sure you have the money before you send anything. Once you have got the payment, all you need to do is pack the item for posting, take the buyer's address from the confirmation email eBay sent you, and write it on the parcel.

Put some stamps on, post it, and you are done. Identify your market. Take a while to sit and watch for what sells and what does not out of the items you are interested in. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later.

You will probably see the sweet spots quite quickly, those one or two items that always seem to sell for a good price. Watch the competition. Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and what their strategies are.

Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can move in and beat them at their own game. Find a product. Get hold of a supplier for whatever it is you want to sell and see what the best rates you can get are.

Do not be afraid to ring round quite a few to get the best deal. If the eBay prices you have seen are higher than the suppliers, then you are set. Start small. Do not throw thousands at your idea straight away.

Get started slowly, see what works and what does not, and learn as you go. Remember that it is very cheap to try out even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might just work. Test and repeat. Keep trying different strategies until you find something that works, and then do not be ashamed to keep doing it, again and again.

The chances are that you have just found a good niche. Work out a business plan. A business plan does not need to be anything formal, just a few pages that outline the market opportunity you have spotted, your strategy, strengths, and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget.

This is more for you than it is for anyone else. Invest and expand.

As a Webmaster, you are forever searching for ways to make more money from your website

One of the better ways to do this is to add or link some self-improvement concepts into the contents. Many webmasters have found that there are a few key programs they can add on their sites for which they can honestly expect to make a few extra dollars, a few hundred extra dollars, and in some cases, a few thousand extra dollars every month. The trick to linking income from third-party programs is to carefully select programs that are relevant to your site visitors, while ensuring that the program you promote does not directly compete with your own offerings.

If you are giving something to your visitors that they will find useful, above and beyond your normal offerings that is considered an added-value item, not only will it give your customers something they appreciate, but it will also help them grow closer to you as a business owner. That way, there will appear a link between you and the customers to pave the way for improvement. This is helpful in accelerating the trust level that your customers have with you and your business which can only serve you well over the long term.

By adding this foundation of trust, your visitors will come back to your site and buy from you again because they know that they can trust you to treat them well. On the web, more so than in brick-and-mortar, the trust factor is the most important hurdle that the small business owner must overcome with his potential customers. There are so many scams and rip-offs on the web that an honest soul is especially appreciated.

It is important to select your added-value offerings based on the interests of your website visitors. The closer your offerings are to the needs of your target market, the more successful you will become selling your added-value products. Products and services, which are relevant to the people who already visit your website and do not conflict or compete with your current offerings, are ideally suited to allow you to deliver added-value offerings to your visitors.

These offerings will help you to build the trust level that your visitors have with you. Not to mention that they will also help you add new layers of profitability to your website. In the end, you should always strive to prepare your ezine or website to deliver more dollars.

Target those people who want to have more than just material things in life. Add self-improvement links to what you have already. These added links and information would be your perfect vehicles to take you where you want to go.

It is surprisingly simple to get started posting your very first auction on eBay. Open an eBay seller's account. If you have bought things on eBay, then you already have an account. Just log in with it and click “Sell” in the toolbar at the top of the page.

Then click “Create a seller's account”. If you have never used eBay before, then you will need to open an account first using the “Register” link underneath the toolbar, and then click “Sell” and “Create a seller's account”. The eBay site will then guide you through the process.

For security, this may involve giving card details and bank information. For your first little experiment with eBay, it does not really matter what you sell. Look around the room you are in, there is something in there that you are not all that attached to and could put in the post. Submit your item. Click “Sell”, and you are on your way to listing your item.

The first thing you need to do is choose a category.

MLM is a smart business opportunity sense for anyone wishing to start working at home

It costs next to nothing to get started, you get a proven system like you would if you bought a franchise opportunity, and you can be in profit in months rather than in years. Therefore, if you desire more income while still working a 9 to 5 job, or to build your retirement income, then you should seriously consider working for a home business Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) opportunity. To succeed in MLM, you are going to need a steady supply of fresh-targeted MLM leads that are anxious to get started in this business opportunity.

MLM lead vendors know this little fact too and they can see you coming a mile away. This can pose a problem for all but the super savvy network marketers and people with extraordinary telephone skills. When you purchase MLM leads from a leads vendor, you are buying a list of names and contact details that have been generated in a very generic way to maximize the response rate of the lead generator’s advertising campaign.

These MLM leads are not necessarily generated from the most targeted means of advertising. These leads are not selling them on any specific type of business. When you are using this type of lead you really do not know what type of business they may be interested in.

In the end, you are left to sorting and this can be a time-consuming procedure. Generating your own MLM leads with a website you have control over changes all this. MLM leads that you have generated on your own are usually much more responsive than leads that you would have purchased from a leads vendor.

Most probably they have not been contacted by several different network marketers and their name has not been sold over and over again by some of the leads vendors out there. Leads that you generate are as fresh as you can get, and they are exclusive to you only. One of the most popular reasons for a network marketer to generate their own MLM leads is that you can receive them in real-time.

This is especially powerful for people who are in the higher ticket business opportunities, and they need the highest quality lead they can get. Nothing beats having company specific real-time leads in your inbox waiting to be contacted about your product or opportunity. When you are the lead generator you have full control over the questions you want to ask your prospects.

You can simply qualify or disqualify leads based on the questions they have answered on your lead capture page. It is a wise idea to always run a "Comments or Questions" or "Tell Me about You" space on your lead capture page. Not every single prospect will fill these fields out but when they do it will be the most valuable piece of information you receive next to their name and number.

Anything a prospect is willing to share with you before the initial contact is like an icebreaker. Generating your own MLM leads can save you a lot of money if you spend the time to setup some solid advertising campaigns. Like many leads companies on the web, you would not have the high cost of employees either.

Your cost to generate your own leads will be your advertising costs and any other tools you may be using such as lead capture pages and auto responders. These are just a few reasons you may want to consider generating your own MLM leads for your specific product or opportunity. It could make a difference in how effectively you market your program. Put some additional self-improvement link to your site.

MLM home based business will usually come with a pre-determined marketing plan

Many people suffer through the process of determining the most effective methods for marketing their products, but with a Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) home-based business, you are relieved of that stress. The disadvantage of having your own MLM home based business, though, is your personality. If you have good leadership skills and is a self-starter, then an MLM home based business will pose a little hardship to you.

However, if recruiting and selling gives you hives, then starting and maintaining an MLM home based business may be more of a challenge, since your success depends on your ability to create a downline of recruits. But then, having your own MLM home based business means that you can live out your dream of being your own boss and having flexibility in your work schedule. You do not need any prior experience, and you can rely on your personality to recruit and maintain your downline.

You only must work hard and be consistent in getting downlines. Do your research to make sure your MLM home based business is a legal business. This way, you can truly enjoy the freedom and the profits that the MLM home based business offers.

MLM is a powerful business concept for many reasons but the most obvious is for the type of income it can provide the network marketer. It is so powerful that many Fortune 500 companies have used, some are still using, this business model to build their multimillion-dollar empire. Millionaires have taken notice of MLM as a home-based business opportunity that average people can work into and build wealth.

MLM is a huge, thriving industry despite all the negative publicity it receives in the media from anti-MLM enthusiasts. Many millionaires express how MLM is a wonderful opportunity for anyone interested in building a home-based business without having to work from scratch. Everybody can use extra income every month.

One obvious solution would be is to get a second job. This option may seem to be the best solution but is not. This is because the time you spend on your second job and the money you receive after taxes is not enough.

Of course, you will have to consider your reasons for getting a second job and why you need the extra income to determine if getting a second job is really the right solution for you. However, on the other hand, you can start working on your own part-time home-based business using MLM as your business opportunity. You can get started in the industry for nearly nothing.

This is a big plus. Getting started in network marketing has become so easy that anyone can get started even if you do not have a dime to invest in your start up. The key here is to simply get started then never quit.

Many legitimate MLM home business opportunities will allow you to get started for under $100. You can even find free opportunities with little or no overhead expenses and with great support from other members as well as the parent company. These companies will provide all the tools and system for you.

You simply add your sweat equity, your working commitment, and persistence to the MLM home business opportunity. Remember to choose a well-established company that offers quality consumable products or services with an excellent management team and support to their distributors. Another important key factor is your commitment to the company and its products and services.

Working for a home business MLM opportunity means that you should be a bona-fide user and marketer of the products and services you want to earn extra income from.

Have them bring guests

Have a party that celebrates the holidays but is sponsored by your company. Let it be a fun social with music and games, and then connect with the guest to follow up in January. Go to the library and look in the cross-reference index for your address.

You will notice there are a ton more in that index that are in your neighborhood. Make a copy of the addresses, as they are your neighbors, then send them a Christmas card introducing yourself as their neighborhood representative and wish them a Merry Christmas and Happy new year. Then follow up in January and see if you can set an appointment to chat with them about your Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) products.

Telephone numbers are included on the cross-index reference guides found in your library. You are their neighbor, and that gives you some instant connection with them. The thing is to connect, connect, and connect.

You need to connect to new prospects during the holidays and community functions are a great way to do this. Get out and become a holiday MLM machine. Network and meet people and make new friends and give away something to them as a holiday gift.

Make sure every person you talk to has a gift and your card. And that you have some form of contact information as well. Check your Sunday newspaper for where these events are. Send people you know, and prospect a seasonal card, and include within it an article about success, goal setting, leadership, time management, or any other success-oriented topic.

This will set you apart from the rest. You will be surprised at what might happen to your business. MLM could be a very lucrative home-based business option for you. But you should also know exactly whether what you are getting into is truly an MLM home based business or something else.

It may be a scam waiting to pounce on you. Plus, you need to weigh out the positives and negatives of an MLM home based business before you decide that if it is the right business for you. Making sure you are getting involved in a legitimate MLM home based business is important to save yourself some difficulties later.

An MLM home based business involves the direct selling of products or services through the recommendations or endorsements of independent representatives. If you are the representative, you receive a commission on any sales that came from your endorsements. Understand that most products sold through an MLM home-based business are not necessarily advertised through mainstream media or in stores.

The confusing part of determining if your MLM home based business is genuine can be quite difficult because of there are several pyramid schemes out there that are dangerously like a legitimate MLM home based business concepts. Remember, a pyramid scheme is illegal, and getting involved in one can cause you more trouble than you can possibly imagine. You will need to do your research into the MLM home based business that you are considering so that you are sure that the kind of MLM home based business you are going to run is valid and legal.

Usually if your investment is proportioned to the product or service you are selling, your MLM home based business is valid. There are a few advantages to having an MLM home based business. First, you will be working from home where you can virtually set your own hours, which is probably why you are considering an MLM home based business in the first place.

Also, you will not have to manufacture any products, because you are usually selling things that are already made.

If it is a new concept

That has not been proven in the marketplace, you have no assurance that it will even work. Many of them are here today and gone tomorrow. Make sure the business you intend to deal with has a fixed address, physical location, and established phone number.

Most business opportunities will show you testimonials, but these are often untrustworthy. They could even be completely fabricated. Ask the owner of the business for names of real people you can talk to. Call them on the telephone and ask them to share their experiences with the program.

This will not only provide you with valuable first-hand information about the program, but it will give you a list of advisors who might be willing to help you along the way. In many cases a proven Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) business opportunity with a successful track record will involve some kind of initial investment. You should not assume that a business opportunity that is free to join is a better investment.

Usually a free-to-join business will involve other costs such as marketing and advertising fees. Just keep in mind that nobody gives away opportunities for free. What you must determine is whether a specific MLM business opportunity has a successful track record, is managed by honest people, and offers you a realistic chance of making some money.

These are the things you must weigh against the entry costs. Have a careful look at the numbers and projections provided by the business opportunity. Then talk with actual members who are using the program to determine if they have been able to turn those numbers into reality.

Make sure to get a detailed list of all the fees involved in operating the new business. These things may not seem significant now, but they can easily eat into your profits later. Be clear on who owns the business, and who controls the way it is developed and marketed.

You may want to diversify your product offerings to avoid being at the mercy of a head office. The MLM business opportunity should require low initial investment and have high profit potential both in the short term and in the long term. It should allow you to build a profitable business of your own that will be a source of income far into the future.

Some things you can do for your MLM network marketing success during the holidays. You can get inexpensively small fruit baskets, put your samples or coupons in and decorate it in the colors of your MLM network marketing company. Include an invite to a seminar that they can attend at no cost. Give them out to friends, neighbors, associates, clients, customers, and family.

You will glad you did. Send out with your Christmas cards a CD you recorded especially for that person and wish them happy holidays. Then tell them you would love to chat with them at the start of the year because you want to give them the gift of success.

This is a great way to introduce the concept of MLM network marketing success to these folks. Hold a holiday customer appreciation luncheon or reception. You can do this at your home. Simply invite your best MLM customers to a holiday appreciation event and make them the superstars of that party.

Have small gifts for them and let them know how much you appreciate their business. Then ask them for referrals for the coming year. You will get them from every single person who was at that event. If you have an organization, you could either open your house or someone who has a sizeable home and invite your MLM network marketing distributors to an open house.

Yet they consider themselves as MLM consultants

Make sure that the Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) consultant has some experience in the field, as that alone brings a wealth of knowledge that many do not have. The MLM business can easily double or triple your cash. Provided that you do not fall first in either one of the common mistakes done by error prone MLM business producers and distributors.

Avoid MLM business groups that offer commission-based compensation among distributors. There is a big possibility that it is an illegal pyramid. The act of alluring people or business finders to enter an MLM business group has been an ordinary day-to-day street transaction among business-minded people.

There are those people who will explain first the benefits that you can get from their group. But the reality is that they will just reverse what they had said. It may not always be the case but still, beware. The only assurance you got here is your having a job, but your assurance of getting paid evenly or squarely is diminishing.

Avoid MLM business groups that oblige the new distributors to buy expensive products or any materials that the group offers. This might be another sign of potential danger. It always pays to be nice, but some nice people are sometimes not at all nice.

It is not always the case. The truth behind is that there are pyramid groups that force their newly entered distributors to purchase the expensive products or materials. Fake pyramid groups always have at the back of their minds the amount they could get.

Sometimes it turns to be something from nothing. Quit that group. Do not heed what the pyramid promoter is promising that you can have more money through continued help in recruiting more distributors.

This is another clear sign of your being a victim of illegal MLM business. The bottom line here is work with just compensation. They might just be using you for their personal interest. Some distributors do not give enough time or attention to their MLM business.

This is important. Some people are joining the group half-heartedly. But take note, it will count days or months to build an elevating career in MLM. Some MLM operators take the business reluctantly as if its status will not be able to decline in time.

Each member of the MLM business group must work together to sustain the set objectives of the group. This practice is not just recommended, it is a must to follow. Doing the otherwise will lead the path towards business failure.

You may realize suddenly that you do not have a definite target or objective in your business. It might be a reality that some are born just not as a plan setter. Early from the birth of your MLM business, you should have already realized the reasons why you are driving the business.

Recovery from money problems of the business is not like counting 1, 2, and 3. Setting your business objectives is the keyword. Have a well-established commitment to work and duty. There is no better time to start moving than now.

Product distributors must attend to their respective assignments. One cannot make the MLM business grows by just merely looking at it. Be committed to you work. Have time to pinpoint your MLM business weaknesses so you can catch-up for any committed mistakes.

Any MLM business opportunity worth considering will either have a track record that you can investigate and evaluate, or it will have a clear statement of the plan, the potential, and the up-front costs. Before investing time and money in marketing an MLM business opportunity, it is important to determine how long it has been operating.