36 Burst results for "Ebay"
Telecom Reseller
A highlight from World Data Products Int. (WDPI) achieves ITAD certification, Podcast
"This is Doug Green, and I'm the publisher of Telecom Reseller, and this is a special podcast for the ASCDI, and I'm very pleased to have with us today Neil Vild of WDPI. Neil, thank you for joining us today. Thanks, Doug. Great to be with you. Well, it's really wonderful to be able to do this podcast on behalf of the ASCDI. You're a very long -term, very active member of this association, a very prominent person and company within this industry and within this organization, so it's really a pleasure to have you here today. We're going to be talking about your recent certification, or really certifications, with ITAD and how that changes the game and why that's important to ASCDI members, to the community and to many technology companies, enterprise companies that might be just happy to be listening or watching. So we're going to dive into that in a second, but Neil, first of all, what is WDPI? So WDPI stands for World Data Products Incorporated. We've been in business since 1987 in the Minneapolis suburbs, currently in Plymouth, Minnesota. We started off as an independent hardware reseller, selling brands originally manufactured by companies such as Cisco, HP, Dell, and IBM. We're also an authorized reseller of Dell. Along the way, over those last number of years, we developed an internal repair business, which we can offer to clients as well, where we repair all of those items I mentioned that we can go down to the board level, repair power supplies, other devices such as laptops and Chromebooks. And then about 10 years ago, we acquired a company in the certified tape media business that basically goes out and acquires used tape media, those cartridges that everybody remembers, and we bring those back to our facility, fully eradicate the data and resell them. And that's the business that really got us into ITAT services about 10 years ago. That company, and we still do that, has a team of people that goes onsite and does IT hardware decommissioning, onsite audits, data sanitization, secure transport, and a host of other ITAT related services. So in fact, you guys had really been sort of in the ITAT market already, and this sort of solidifies that position. It does. And we decided to pursue these certifications for a number of reasons. One, our customers started to ask for them, both on the end user side and the wholesale side. We deal direct with end users, we also go through other resellers, and we work with other ITATs as a subcontractor. And as a number of them have been paying more attention to data security and the environment, they've been asking us about these certifications. So one of the reasons we pursued these was to really be responsive to our customer requests. Another is we view it as a differentiator. Those are really confirmation of the standards that we have. Not everybody has that certification out there. More people are getting it, which is great for business and for the environment. And thirdly, it really helped us improve our processes in certain areas and kind of raised the bar. So it was a win -win among all three of those elements. Let's dive a little deeper into ITAT. So first of all, can you explain to me what ITAT is? What does that mean? ITAT, IT Asset Disposition. It's a whole host of offerings and processes where, you know, starting if a company is looking to, you know, upgrade or refresh its data center or close something down, it needs to really find a responsible home for the used equipment, whether that's in a resale environment or in a recycling environment. Part of that involves onsite services, such as I mentioned, you know, data center decommissioning, data sanitization, whether that's onsite or at our site, the commitment to either resell these devices, which could be economically beneficial to the seller and to the purchaser, also making sure that the data is fully eradicated. But then in some cases, the data bearing devices have to be destroyed either logically or physically. And that leads us into working with responsible recyclers who can track these devices, provide certificates that they've been disposed of in an environmentally sound manner. So it's a whole host of services and processes. We don't have the time to go through that. That'd be a several day podcast, Doug, but I know we're a little bit time constrained today. Well, you know, as you can see behind me, it looks like beams of light are coming off my head, I think, but I'm actually reporting live from Las Vegas at the Mobile World Congress. Lots of carriers here, lots of enterprises, lots of interests. You know, this is a good example for this question. Why does it matter to the outside world? Why does ITAD matter to really everybody? Well, it matters, it's the biggest issue is really sustainability and protecting the environment. But there are also other elements within these certifications that are more internally oriented for the welfare of businesses and our employees. You know, if you go down the list, the R2 -V3 is really a phenomenal standard. You know, really stands for responsible recycling and reuse. Some really strict requirements on data sanitization and eradication and data security, which is a real differentiator. Part of these certifications involve several ISO standards, ISO 9001, which is a quality management standard, your world data had been ISO 9001 certified for about the last 10 years. So we renewed that one. ISO 14001 is environmental management. ISO 45001 is employee health and safety. And we're very proud of world data. We've been have a track record of over three years of accident free operation in our facility in Plymouth. And we intend to keep that going, God willing. And then the ASCDI ITED certified certification is also very important where, you know, in addition to the processes and the operational aspects that those other standards focus on, ASCDI adds to it the commitment to a code of ethics, which is unique in the industry. And every ASCDI member has to adhere to that. You know, we have stringent membership requirements for that association. And so as a long time member, as our company, a long time board member and former chairman of ASCDI, I am very proud to see our association going in that direction as well. So, you know, Neil, it sounds like this is also a great opportunity for the channels to go out there and sell a really amazing value added service. It is, Doug, you know, it helps the channel in a number of ways. One, you know, given and also end users in terms of the resale value that we can achieve for the equipment that is, you know, coming through the ITED process, you know, the highest and best use of a piece of equipment is to keep it in use. And, you know, the origin of our business was hardware resale. So our wholesalers or equipment traders know how to maximize the value of that equipment for the client, whether that's an end user client or a wholesaler or another ITED who has the end user relationship. So that is a huge advantage, I think, that World Data can deliver, given our history of being in that resale market. We're not just turning it around and flipping it on eBay or somewhere else. We can really maximize value. So, you know, Neil, it also sounds like, you know, channels should be really alert to this because if you're working with customers and you're in the course of sales and working with them, you're pulling out equipment, you are really not doing them a service if you're disposing of it incorrectly. That's correct. And so by virtue of the processes we've always had, plus now with the new certifications, you know, we're disposing of everything appropriately. You know, items that can be reused will be reused and resold at the maximum value we can get. Items that are no longer suitable for reuse will be recycled in a proper manner. And so, you know, channel partners can trust us as they've trusted us with, you know, other areas of business since 1987 to do the right thing and to uphold, you know, the environmentally sound and business sound practices. Another advantage we can offer is additional resources and feed on the street. You know, some of these ITAT opportunities are, you know, to use a technical term, lumpy. You know, they're not necessarily regular. And if a project comes up where a channel partner needs additional resources, whether that's feed on the street or processing capability, warehousing or logistics, we can offer that through our facility in Plymouth, Minnesota, from a facilities perspective. But we can also send our team, you know, anywhere in the country to help with onsite projects. You know, Neil, with regard to the end users of the enterprises, we're living at a time of great transition, hybrid companies getting rid of whole floors of office space and all the equipment on those floors. Sounds like enterprises need to be alert to this too. They do. And hopefully, you know, with the movement toward ESG and environments, you know, social aspects, governance, I think more enterprises are becoming aware of this. In fact, they're adopting goals along these lines. So we're here to help in terms of achieving those particular goals. And again, it's the right thing for the business. There are certain business objectives that can be met and environmental objectives that can be met. Does – you said when we were preparing for a podcast today that it even has some opportunities for the other ITAT companies. The benefit we could offer to other ITAT companies is, as a subcontractor, we can facilitate your broader reach, the processing capability that we have, the resale capability that we have to maximize value, relationships we have with responsible recycling partners, and also logistics. We have a facility in the upper Midwest that is very convenient to several major cities, can help reduce costs of transportation for this equipment. You know, we can't – if we can ship it via ground versus air, for example, or the closer it is, we can go pick it up with our own people on secure trucks and that sort of things. We can help reduce costs and increase their reach and provide a better service to the end -user enterprise customers that the other ITATs have. So Neil, you were telling me something very interesting that is unique about WTPI amongst the companies in the ASCDI, maybe in the – really most of the ICAT industry as well. Well, we were fortunate, Doug, to actually buy back the company from a private equity investor about 18 months ago. And now we are 100 % owned by nine employees and we're not an ESOP. You know, these ESOPs have different kinds of restrictions. But I think it's unique in our industry that we're a fully employee -owned company of that nature. You know, many times it's founders, founder and spouse, sort of an inner circle of owners. And I'm really proud that we've been able to offer this common equity ownership to a broader range of employees. And it is unique, I believe, in our industry. And certainly our people are very revved up about that. And I'm very happy to see that. Well, Neil, you know, we've talked in our conversation today about enterprises, about channels, about different types of companies. How does everyone do business? How can we learn more about your company and these services? Well, we have our website, which has extensive content on that and contact information. Feel free to email me, neil .ville at wdpi .com. That might be on the screen later, maybe not. But I'm in the ASCDI directory. I'm on LinkedIn. We have a great team of people, too, who I could direct anybody to for particular, more detailed advice on resale, valuation of products and that sort of thing. But certainly please contact us in whatever is easiest method for you out there. And we'd be happy to help. Well, Neil, I really want to thank you for joining me today. This has been really interesting. I hope you get to do one in a few more months and find out how everything's going. Update us on what you guys are doing. But for now, thanks very much. Thank you, Doug. Look forward to that. Appreciate the time. Thanks very much.
CRYPTO 101
Fresh update on "ebay" discussed on CRYPTO 101
"And gamers don't like this. Right. Like I remember like back in the World of Warcraft days, there were people who would be going on Craigslist to sell like a sword they got for 100 bucks and meeting in a parking lot and pulling out laptops and trading the item and handing off cash like in a parking lot or you'd buy World of Warcraft gold on eBay like these things can now be represented in DeFi in block chain markets that are permissionless. And that, I think, is the really big unlock for games and no scamming. I remember when I was a kid, you know, I'd play all those MMORPGs and I remember one time some guy was like, hey, like, you know, I'll give you gold in Guild Wars if you give me your account on RuneScape, but you have to give me your password on RuneScape first. Oh, man, just just send me one Bitcoin. I'll send you a two Bitcoin back. Oh, never. Exactly. I'll never get scammed again because it hurts so bad. And I was like and I realized, you know, I was in seventh grade. I had I trusted people. Right. You just inherently like, oh, yeah, this guy is telling me he's going to do a deal, but, you know, just ripped off this little kid. And so, you know, I you know, it definitely from an early age is like, wow, why is there no, you know, exchange for digital assets? Right. Why is there no exchange that we could go and trade my RuneScape gold for his World of Warcraft account or all that kind of stuff? And I think, you know, on chain and all these block chain networks are going to be able to facilitate that kind of stuff soon. Yeah. And look, the reason that is twofold. One, the technology is hard and to game companies are greedy and they want to make as much money as possible. Right. And selling you the same thing twice is a great way to make a lot of money. So what we're seeing is a lot of the adoption here is coming from new game developers, the same way that the mobile games market was not the existing companies. It was a whole new crop of companies. I think the block chain gaming market is going to largely be built out by people who are like, yeah, I worked at Activision for 10 years and I think there's a better way to do this. And I'm going to start a new company dedicated to trying to do that. I don't think it's going to be moving over a lot of the existing gaming studios, which means the adoption curve is going to be longer. But in the end, I think it's going to be better for gamers like they're going to come around and say like, oh, man, when I own this stuff, it's a much better experience than this old model that I had. Yeah. And a couple of these venture capital funds and hedge funds, they're getting me really bullish on this gaming sector because they're just talking about like the total addressable market. There's hundreds of millions, maybe a billion gamers out there and they're saying the next billion users for crypto are probably going to be that crossover from people coming from gaming and just that natural extension, finding themselves interacting with with block chain and earning, you know, crypto currencies and just, you know, kind of in a, you know, in a back in a roundabout way, just kind of coming into the industry through the game. So I'm pretty excited about it. But I'm also excited about the decentralized physical infrastructure, which is a totally other sector unrelated to gaming, but super important. It's got the deep in sort of acronym going on. And I know Helium is the most prominent one that's built on Solana. But can you kind of give us an overview of maybe this landscape? What is deep in? Why is it important? And maybe who are some key people building on it? Yeah. So the key thesis of decentralized physical infrastructure networks are that direct ownership and decentralization can actually create much better products and services, even if each individual atom in the network is worse at doing what it does. Now, that's like a kind of a heady concept, but. Trucks run one over trains. Why? Trucks are decentralized. Right. Trucks are decentralized infrastructure, in a sense. Right. You can drive a truck to almost any house in the United States. You can get it anywhere in the world. Trains go on tracks and trains are super efficient at moving stuff anywhere in the country. As long as it's on a train line and it's super cheap to do as long as it's on a train line. Right. But that last mile really requires a truck. But nowadays, most goods, even between cities, are not moved by trains. They're moved by trucks. And so this is kind of the analogy for decentralized physical infrastructure networks. So a great example of this is Hive Mapper. Hive Mapper is a system where you can get these dash cams, you put them in your car and it takes photos, about 10 photos a second, and it uploads them. And these photos are like the quality of photos you get off the phone. They're not as good as the Google Street View car that drives around and costs like a million dollars to build. But that car drives down your street maybe once every six years. And Hive Mapper has daily photos of a lot of places all over the world. They've done about 8,000 kilometers, 8 million, sorry, excuse me, they've done 8 million kilometers of road mapping at this point in less than a year. And so that's a great example of where, like, yes, each photo is not necessarily as good as the photos coming off Google Street View. But now with AI and image compilation, you might get 50 photos a month of a street and you can start having AI build together an actual better image than you'd get off Google Street View with much more frequent data. And also, everyone driving cars is now earning revenue for that. Right. Google Maps and Street View is the most expensive consumer facing API on the planet. It's incredibly expensive to be a real estate agent and use Google Street View or something like that. Right. And so you can see a world where Hive Mapper starts to actually have a competitive product here. But instead of, you know, a venture backed company getting all the money, the people who actually map those photos are going to get that money. Right. The network is going to reward those people who participate in it. And that's kind of the great embodiment of what decentralized physical infrastructure networks are all about. Helium is doing this with 5G cell service and that cell service. Right. It's not as good as you get from T-Mobile or Verizon or AT &T most of the time. But it is much cheaper. And eventually that network will be just as compatible and big. And so Helium's actually launched this Helium mobile product, which uses like AT &T as a fallback network when you can't access the Helium network. But most of the time, if you're in one of these launch cities, you're getting Internet from people's houses. They have these 5G network routers set up in their window. And that's how you're accessing the Internet and accessing the cell phone network. It's really incredible to see. Yeah, it sounds like a reoccurring theme here is that cutting out the middleman, you can't only be a profitable thing, but it can also be more beneficial from like a security and a privacy standpoint. And so there's like numerous applications that we can look at deep in and the different ways that it cuts out the middleman. I find it so interesting because, you know, you mentioned Helium, you mentioned Hive Mapper. It makes me wonder, like, what's next? Like, what's going to be the next big application of deep in? And I don't know if you have something that might be on the horizon that's coming that you can maybe tell us about, but I'm curious to get your thoughts, like, what is this next generation of deep in going to look like? So in order to make deep in possible, you needed a network like Solana, where transactions were fast, abundant and cheap. And that's not the characteristics of other blockchains. Right. So that's one of those things that's kind of only possible on Solana nowadays. Right. So what also fits into that category? Well, almost the entire gig economy fits into that category. Right. If you think about it, this is how Uber works. This is how DoorDash works. This is how, you know, any of these courier package services work, anything where there's a centralized company where basically all they're doing is matching and payment fulfillment. You know, blockchains are great at order matching and payments. Right. Those are two things that blockchains can do in their sleep. And so assuming you have a network that can handle enough throughput to be able to, you know, handle all the Uber ride requests or all the DoorDash or Uber Eats requests like we're getting to a place where you can actually start to see that these things might start disrupting some of these big incumbent players. And it will actually end up it'll be like, you know, every time I'm in an Uber, I always ask them, like, what's your experience with Uber or Lyft? And they always complain, oh, they're not paying me enough. They're always taking more than their fair share. It's like, well, guess what? We have a technology that could disintermediate companies like that and have direct peer-to-peer payments. I'm driving you. So you're going to pay me. Right. Like, that's how it works. And why do I have to pay this company? Well, because they're order matching and they're, you know, doing all this stuff. It's like, what if we have a block chain that did exactly what Uber did? You know, it's like, no, you don't need them. It's actually even better than that. Right. Because there's people who drove for Uber for 10 years before the IPO and they didn't get anything when that company went public. Right. If they'd been earning tokens.
The Voicebot Podcast
A highlight from Generative AI News This Week - Cloud Wars and LLMs, NVIDIA Revenue, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Intuit, Zoom, OpenAI, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 350
"This is episode 350 of the Voicebot Podcast. For this week's generative AI news rundown, we have the AI cloud wars, Nvidia's stellar revenue ramp, HubSpot, MailChimp, OpenAI, Telefonica, and more. Hello, Voicebot Nation and my friends from Synthetia. I'm Brett Kinsella, your host of the Voicebot Podcast. This week's generative AI news packs a punch and hopefully sheds some light on how fast this industry is evolving. I'm joined again this week by my colleague, Eric Schwartz, the head writer for Voicebot .ai. Here is the generative AI news rundown. We start out with a breakdown of Nvidia's blowout revenue numbers. This story is pretty interesting when you consider how transformational the last two quarters have been for the company and even bigger expectations for next quarter. Eric and I then walk through Synthetia's analysis of how the cloud wars are influencing and shaping the LM battles raging among the foundation model builders. I think you're going to like that. We also hit on the new Falcon 180B, so that's 180 billion parameter, LLM from TII. The new generative AI features from eBay, HubSpot, Intuit, and Zoom, and we talk about Apple sort of. We have funding stories from Contact AI and Ello, and we finish up with OpenAI's first developer conference, and of course, the generative AI winners and losers of the week. Next up, chips, clouds, LLMs, enterprise apps collide with generative AI and a bit more. Let's get started.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1265. NFTs Are DEAD! ...Again | Mainstream Media vs Creators
"Let's talk about NFTs today and where the market might be heading and what is the future of the non -fungible token. We'll talk about all that for you guys. You don't want to miss this one because I think whether you love NFTs or don't like them, this is gonna shed some light on really what the future is. So stay tuned right here. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back in to Tech Path. All right. Couple of things I want to hit on. A couple of tweets out here. NFTs are officially dead. 95 % are estimated to be literally worthless with pieces from the top collections only worth around five to ten. Roughly 25 million are sat on dead assets thanks to celebrities, endorsements, etc. Now this was coming over from Market Insiders. All right. And I want you to understand that this is process the typical that happens in innovative spaces. I remember, you know, in the era is, you know, when you look at just the birth of the internet. Is the internet dead? Is it a fad? Then the birth of social media. Social media is junk. It'll never be anything. Maybe not. And then, of course, mobile. You know, the iPhone will never make it. The BlackBerry will rule. This has happened so many times. Okay, so right here we have a piece on Market Insider. This was the actual hit piece. Let me kind of zoom down into the things they talked about. Are NFTs dead? The answer is yes. 23 million people hold these worthless assets. Then further in, fewer than 1 % have a price tag above 6k, a far cry from the regular million -dollar deals of two years ago. Don't take this out of context either because I'm kind of, you know, poking fun at this article. Mainly when you go to the actual source of where this actually came from, what they actually said was this. Is that while the situation does look bleak, in our opinion, however, NFTs still have a place in our future as we still maintain that once dust is settled we'll start to see an evolution with the NFTs. NFTs either need to be historically relevant, similar to the original Pokemon cards. So I think just that statement alone, the fact that they even compare this to the original Pokemon, to me, is groundbreaking. And I think they, the researchers, understand Market Insider does what they always do, which is sensationalize this stuff for clicks. The point is, is that we're talking about major movement in the NFT space in a time in which everything feels like it's dead right now. The traditional finance markets, etc. I want to go to this first clip. This might surprise you. Courtyard is a marketplace that tokenizes trading cards. Those cards then are put into an escrow vault powered by Brinks. You can then tokenize your card or collectible or whatever that you have on Courtyard and then sell that as an NFT. Now before you hear what you're saying about NFTs, I don't want to hear it. So they just did this drop here that sold out in seconds, literally bought it. This is a 1999 base set number 10 Mewtwo listed for twelve hundred and ninety five dollars. Now, if you go to like card collector and eBay and all that stuff, you'll see these prices are pretty much the same, maybe slightly more on this because it's the flexibility of oh, you don't actually need to have the physical item. If you want to claim this item, you can go through and you go here and then you say, I actually want this. I want this real card. Like I want to put this card behind me on the wall so everyone can see.
The Plant Movement Podcast
Are You Offering A+ Services?
"Along with products, you also have services and relationships. So for you guys right now, you're cutting, you're mowing the lawn, listening to this, or you're doing some hardscape work, listening to this, or you're a grower and you're out on the field right now. Think about what services you provide right now. And are they A plus? We've heard many people talk about answer the phone. It's that easy. That's the first start. The services you provide guys need to be A plus like you really have to work on it. I know it's tough and you might have a lot of stress on you and you have a lot of things going on, but your service needs to be 100 % if you're a landscaper, make sure you go and you walk to the job after with the person. If you're there right now, you're doing an island. Don't just leave the rock next to the grass. That way, when the maintenance guy comes, now the person's complaining, calling you, telling you that the rock gets thrown everywhere, put a border. Oh, but it's not in the budget. Will he make it fit in the budget? Explain to them why they need that and how it's going to cost them money down the road if they don't do it. Think outside the box. And also with products, let's say you're an irrigation company, buy good sprinkler systems, buy good heads, buy good valves. If you're installing wireless boxes to be able to control different zones and turn on your customer's irrigation at a specific time, buy a good brand. Don't go on eBay and don't buy just whatever brand to try to save money. Look into the future as you're doing this type of stuff, guys, the better products you put in from day one means a happier customer day two, and that will bring nothing but referrals and we all know that the best type of advertising is word of mouth right now you're working. What can you do right now on the ground that can better your customer's experience? Do they have a tree that needs to get trimmed? That's about to touch a power line. Whatever it is, think outside the box, you know, make it happen at the end of the day, if you're doing service, the more services you can provide, the better turnaround it is, not just for the client, but for you as
The Bitboy Crypto Podcast
A highlight from PayPal Launches Stablecoin That Could Change The World! (But There's A Catch...)
"The safest, easiest way to pay just got easier or at least has moved further into the cryptoverse. Online payment behemoth PayPal has launched its own stablecoin, becoming the latest TradFi company to make the attempt. You may remember Meta, the parent company of Facebook, trying to shove their own stablecoin down our throats and subsequently shuttering the project in early 2022. Will PayPal USD, aka PYUSD, succeed where others have failed? We're going to dive into the pros and cons. It's time to discover crypto. If you're new to the cryptoverse, you may be wondering what exactly is a stablecoin. It's a coin for horses. I'm kidding. It's all in the name, baby. A stablecoin is meant to do exactly that, maintain a stable price. Many of them are pegged to the US dollar. It's a way for investors and traders to keep their assets on the blockchain without having to deal with extreme price volatility. Well, at least that's what's supposed to happen with stables as long as they maintain their peg. If you want an example of what happens when a stablecoin loses its peg, take a look at our video on Terra UST. In case you've been living under a rock with all your cash buried in some dragon's lair, PayPal has a veritable monopoly on online payments. Founded in 1998, the company went public in 2002 and was soon taken over by eBay. Fast forward to today, the company has expanded astronomically and subsequently gobbled up would -be competitors like Venmo, Zoom and Zettle and many others. It also boasts 435 million users at time of recording. The original team is actually referred to as the PayPal Mafia. You'll recognize some familiar faces including Elon Musk, Yammer's David O. Sachs, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman and Jawad Karim, who co -founded our own little slice of paradise, YouTube. So my question is, with Elon Musk's historic ties to PayPal, will the PayPal stablecoin become the favored cryptocurrency for X? Unseeding would -be Prince of X, doge? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think. PayPal's stablecoin release also comes a couple months after the announcement that Celsius will use it to distribute payments to its creditors, a decision that has sparked outrage and questions from Celsius's creditors. Raking in fees for millions of bankrupt Celsius isn't a great way to start your stablecoin debut. Now, PayPal has been interested in crypto for a while. They first allowed customers to buy, and hold a short list of cryptocurrencies back in 2020, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Then in 2022, they finally began supporting crypto withdrawals and deposits in and out of PayPal. And PYUSD is their latest attempt to make a name for themselves in the Web3 landscape. They announced its development at the beginning of 2022, but then pulled back citing regulatory issues. Was it you, Gary? But I guess their concerns are no more because there are full steam ahead with their stablecoin pursuits. Okay, enough about lost funds and heartbreak. Why would PayPal want to get into the stablecoin game in the first place? Well, it turns out stablecoins can be quite a lucrative business worth around $120 billion. PYUSD's top competitors Tether and USDC both have remarkable profits this year. Tether is projected to bring in $6 billion, while Circle, the parent company of USDC, has brought in $779 million so far this year. If PayPal can capture even a percentage of this market, they could bring in some serious bank. How do these companies do it? Well, both USDT and USDC maintain their peg by holding cash and investing in US Treasuries. And the yields of these Treasuries have soared to 5 % recently, so they're able to bring in a lot of profit and able to add to their reserves. PayPal intends to follow a similar model with the stablecoin being backed by USD bank deposits, US Treasuries and US Treasure reverse repurchase agreements held in custody by Paxos. You may recognize the name Paxos for managing the soon -to -be -deceased Binance stablecoin BUSD, which Binance has taken off the market due to SEC lawsuit. RIP. PayPal has announced that Paxos will begin issuing monthly reserve reports in September 2023, and these reports will be verified by an external and supposedly impartial accounting firm. Can we just get Kevin an Oscar? Remember, guys, having a public and verifiable proof of reserve is so important, not only for stablecoins, but also for exchanges. Make sure you do your research before you buy or send your crypto places. PYUSD is an ERC -20 token written in Solidity and running on the Ethereum blockchain. You can exchange PYUSD for fiat as well as send it to other PayPal users and buy crypto on PayPal's platform. You can also buy from PayPal's merchants, and PayPal will send PYUSD to make the purchase. There are zero fees to send this stablecoin to other PayPal users, but there are fees for buying cryptocurrencies and withdrawing PayPal USD from the platform. Currently, you can withdraw or deposit PYUSD and it's compatible with Metamask and Coinbase Wallet, soon to be supported by Venmo. A week after PayPal's stablecoin mania hit the media, Ledger, one of the top cold storage wallet solutions, announced that its users would be able to buy crypto with their PayPal accounts. Coinbase has allowed American and Canadian users to buy crypto with their PayPal accounts for a while, but recently, Coinbase partnered with PayPal to bring this option to users in Germany and the UK. This comes in handy since PayPal decided to pause crypto purchases on its own platform in the UK, citing financial regulatory shifts. With all these exchanges supporting PayPal accounts to purchase crypto, it seems like only a matter of time before Ledger and other wallets begin to support PYUSD as well. Currently, you can get your hands on some PYUSD on Coinbase, Kraken, Gate .io and Crypto .com if you don't want to buy it from the PayPal platform. Right now, we're a little less than a month into their release, so are people actually using it? Well, it seems like members of the crypto community have been a bit wary so far. The block reported that smart money is avoiding the coin and smaller investors are as well. And really, can you blame them? Most people are still traumatized from the Terra fiasco. And why would you switch your funds from Tether or USDC when they've stood the test of time? There have also been concerns about PYUSD launching on ETH and associated high fees. And there are real regulatory concerns here in the US. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, was quick to wag the finger at PayPal and yell, Shame! Shame on you! She's mad at business as giant as PayPal would move forward with a stablecoin without federal regulatory framework. She may want to point that finger right back at herself because the Fed is at fault here twofold. One, they allowed PayPal to get this giant. And two, they can't figure out how to actually regulate the space. Probably due to our officials being older than dinosaurs. Look at this! Are you kidding me? Another issue that has some worried is that PYUSD is centralized and has a sordid history of randomly freezing people's accounts. And last year, the company threatened to fine users up to $2500 to posting misinformation. After immense backlash, PayPal retracted the statement saying it was an error. The terms and conditions of PYUSD also state, PayPal can stop supporting the stablecoin at any time without informing holders. All of this has members of the cryptoverse worrying that PayPal would arbitrarily freeze or deduct PYUSD from their accounts just like the big banks are able to do. Well, don't freeze up yourself. Hit that like button and subscribe to the channel to discover more crypto. PayPal freezing accounts is not good. We want control over our funds and the right to privacy. But just for context, Tether and USDC are centralized as well. Tether is held by an international company, and USDC boasts BlackRock, Fidelity, and Coinbase among their investors. So nothing is totally safe. And while it's great PYUSD has added the trove of stablecoin options, the space really needs more decentralized stablecoins. Okay, so now I want to mention a few reasons PYUSD makes me feel bullish for crypto in general. Anytime a TradFi company gets into crypto signals wider adoption. And PayPal could be going after a completely different retail demographic for PYUSD, which would explain the slow adoption. But the coolest thing about PayPal launching a stablecoin is the ability to pay for things IRL without taking funds off the blockchain. You can already use PYUSD to pay millions of merchants through PayPal. This kind of thing has started on a small scale elsewhere, but PayPal is going to majorly increase mass adoption. I don't think we're far away from being able to pay our rent with crypto through Venmo or PayPal. And that kind of thing makes me bullish. It gives me chills up my spine. Guys, I can hear the bull market calling. Can you hear it too? And it says, Wind Moon. That's all for me. Thanks for watching Discover Crypto! Hit that like button on your way out. And we'll see you at the top.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from GARY GENSLER ATTACKS STONER CATS NFTS & RIPPLE XRP WILL FIGHT SEC, HEDERA HBAR STABLECOIN STUDIO!
"Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, I want to start off with the SEC versus NFTs. Stoner Cats agrees to pay a one million dollar fine to settle SEC charges. The Hollywood superstar backed Stoner Cats NFTs has neither admitted nor denied the SEC's allegation that it issued an unregistered security. So once again, folks, we see regulation by enforcement by scumbag regulator Gary Gensler. They're not putting out the clear rules of the road. And we even have two commissioners that dissented from this enforcement action. So we see even folks within the SEC don't agree. But we know Gary Gensler has been running around with a false narrative saying everything in the crypto industry is a security and that it's breaking securities laws. But of course, he's not providing any guidance. And we saw even members of Congress question him. Tell us what is it, which crypto coins and tokens are securities? Is Ethereum a security? Is XRP is a security? He can't answer. Right. So we are dealing with nonsense. And, you know, the challenging part here is that he takes these settlements here because these companies don't have the capital to fight the government, to fight the SEC. You saw Ripple. It's they spent one hundred million dollars to fight the SEC. So many of these companies don't have that type of capital. So they settle just to get the SEC off their back. But unfortunately, you know, Gary adds this to his wins list. Now, the good thing is that Stoner Cats is not some major brand, you know, well -known. The defeat that the SEC took with Grayscale and Ripple and I think soon Coinbase, those are big names and well -known. So they carry more weight when, you know, Gary takes the loss. So let me give you the details here, guys. The U .S. Securities and Exchange has charged and settled with NFT issuer Stoner Cats, too, for allegedly offering an unregistered security. Without denying or admitting to the SEC's allegations, Stoner Cats, too, has agreed to cease and desist from offering the NFTs and pay a one million dollar fine. Stoner Cats, too, also agreed to destroy all NFTs in its possession and issue a notice of order on its website and social media channels, the SEC said. Now Stoner Cats, if you're wondering who is the Hollywood backers, it was issued by actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. They released 10 ,000 NFTs in a highly anticipated drop in July 2021. The drop raised eight million dollars. Now, folks, you see how ridiculous this is, you know? So what does that make any artwork that's put out there on the Web, right? Let's say it's not in NFT format. Let's say it's baseball cards or sports cards. This is just ridiculous. The SEC is completely overreaching here. And don't get me wrong, they have a job to do to monitor these NFT prices and crypto projects because there are bad actors. But clearly they're going after the good actors and they're leaving many bad actors to do their thing. So this really sucks. Now, SEC Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Ueda issued a dissenting opinion Wednesday arguing the Howey test cannot be met. So clearly, clearly the SEC is divided here and we know the entire industry and even members of Congress are not on board with this nonsense. But Congress has to act. The onus is on them to get the rules in place because Gary is just going to continue his nonsense and he's trying to get that Treasury job. So he's just trying to rack up wins here to say, see, look at all the enforcement actions I took. Look at all the capital I got. And he won't give the details to say, hey, these guys were just trying to issue NFTs. He'll say, you know, they're scammers, they're hucksters, they're doing all kinds of bad activity. Right. So that's his narrative. So we got to fight, folks. And this is why we use social media to our advantage, contact your representatives and much more. Here's what Mark Ueda had to say. Analyzing investment contracts in this way carries implications for creators of all kinds. We're to apply these securities laws to physical collectibles in the same way we applied them to NFTs. Artist creativity would wither in the shadow of legal ambiguity. Mark summed it up really well there. This is really, really insane what the SEC is doing. And we got to keep fighting, folks. But scumbag regulator Gary Gensler continues. Now, interestingly enough, yesterday, some folks from Ripple were interviewed by CNBC. And here's the headline from CNBC. Ripple says it will fight the SEC lawsuit all the way through. Ripple said it plans to fight the ongoing lawsuit with the U .S. Securities Exchange Commission all the way through its president, Monica Long, told CNBC. Ripple is among the crypto companies such as Binance and Coinbase, which are being sued by the SEC for violating laws. So Ripple is going to continue fighting. You guys know there's going to be even the proper party at the end of the month of September. And I'm looking forward to that in New York City. I will be attending. I know some people are down on it because the prices are down. But look, if you have to understand the market cycles, right, what's playing out, everything's down. Bitcoin is down. Even a large, large part of the markets out there because of the macroeconomic factors of inflation, rate hikes and much more. So I'm glad to see that Ripple is going to continue fighting and I'm sure they're going to push for some sort of settlement. And we know the SEC is trying to appeal, but, you know, Ripple took the bigger slice of the pie from a victory standpoint where XRP token was intrinsically stated as not being a security. And I think the judge got it right there. It goes back to how we test the orange groves and the oranges that we get at our supermarket or orange trees in general are not securities by themselves, but rather it's the packaging. So that's the key. So the tokens themselves, not securities is just how are they being packaged? And don't get me wrong, NFTs could be, and I say could be in certain circumstances, securities, right? If they're packaged in a certain way. But we know if you just simply issue artwork and NFTs on the blockchain, that does not make them intrinsically a security. But Gary Gensler, we know he doesn't. He's trying to muddy the waters and cause confusion and just saying everything that's issued is a security. We know it's nonsense. Now, moving ahead, Flare, many of you hold the Flare tokens. If you're an XRP holder who participated in the Flare snapshot, you got a distribution of your Flare tokens. You continue to get that. I personally am doing that and I delegate my Flare tokens and I'm earning rewards. I'm doing the same thing for Songbird. You can of course invest in the Flare token if you want. Well, Flare is going to be moving to a staking model and they provided an update here saying we will soon enter phase two of three in Flare's transition to a staking model, opening new opportunities to delegate stake to validators and earn rewards. The date when staking can commence will be announced in the coming weeks. So if you're a Flare token holder, this is great news and I'm looking forward to this. If I can stake and earn more rewards, that'll be great. And you know, I'm not selling any of the earnings I get from delegation because we're in a bear market. I am just delegating, earning more tokens, and then when the bull market comes, I will be looking to take profits as the prices rise. Now speaking of prices rising and selling, a great platform to do so is on Uphold, which is a great platform. I've been using them since 2018. They're one of my go -to exchanges. They have 10 plus million users, 250 plus cryptocurrencies, and they're available in 150 countries. You can also trade precious metals and equities and 37 national currencies. So that's different Fiat currencies, and you can swap easily between precious metals, cryptocurrencies, and these different 37 national currencies. So if you'd like to learn more about Uphold, please visit the link in the description. All right, folks, we got some very big Hedera HBAR news. So recently I interviewed Leemon Beard, who's one of the co -founders of Hedera. They're doing great things. I think this is going to be one of the blockchain projects that can really come out of this speculative crypto bubble and be one of the winners, right? If you look at the speculative bubble of the dot -com boom, you had your Googles, your Ebays, your Amazons, and a few others that came out that did really well. I think Hedera is one of them. And part of their governing council includes Google, Dell, IBM, Boeing, some of the biggest names. And just recently, Hyundai and Kia started building on the Hedera network. So huge news. So they tweeted out, we're excited to announce the Hedera stablecoin studio, the all -in -one stablecoin configuration issuance and management toolkit tailored for Web3 platforms, institutional issuers, enterprises, and payment providers alike. By leveraging Hedera, the network, and in collaboration with our partners, the stablecoin studio delivers a highly performant, seamless, and end -to -end stablecoin solution with proof of reserve, dedicated custodians, and network native KYC slash AML flagging. So this is pretty big. They said with Hedera, predictable fees, high programmability, and robust network of ecosystem partners, stablecoin issuance and management have never been simpler. Everything you need to build and configure stablecoins with ease. So this is a really great feature. Obviously, stablecoins are going to be a big part of the token economy and the ability to have your blockchain utilized for tokenization, whether it be CBDCs, stablecoins, NFTs, tokenization of real -world assets, and much more is going to be key to adoption because that's the future. So Hedera is ahead of the curve in many ways. And if you haven't seen my interview with Lehman Abir, be sure to check it out because we talk about the Hyundai -Kia situation. We talk about Xinhan Bank with their stablecoin on the Hedera blockchain being used to improve cross -border payments. So it's really, really big things happening here. I'm very bullish on HBAR. Now moving ahead, Coinbase, to integrate the Bitcoin Lightning Network in a bid to drive adoption, Coinbase CEO labeled Bitcoin the most important asset Tuesday following an announcement his company would integrate Lightning. Now Coinbase is a little bit late to the game here. There have been other exchanges like OKEx that integrated the Lightning Network. But more and more, I think, platforms are going to leverage the Lightning Network to help boost Bitcoin's ability to scale. Look, I don't think the Lightning Network is even there yet. We know the folks at Lightspark are trying to do something, Jack Mahler's strike, but it's not there. Look, Bitcoin is a great store of value, great hard money, great digital goal. I view it from that standpoint. And that's why I hold it in my portfolio. It has made me money. But for payments, not great. Not great at all. Now there could be great improvements to the Lightning Network where it gets global adoption and people start using it. But we are far from that. And we'll have to see what guys like Jack Dorsey's Cash App, David Marcus's Lightspark, Jack Mahler's strike, and these guys do because they've done it in small increments and small markets. But there's no major global adoption here where people are like, I'm going to go spend some sats. Don't get me wrong, it may be happening in, once again, small scenarios in El Salvador. But what about the rest of the world? People are opting more for stablecoins. So this is something that the folks who are building the Lightning Network have to figure out how to scale this thing and make it easy for people to onboard. So Coinbase looking to make a push here and get more adoption around Bitcoin, and it certainly makes sense. Bitcoin is definitely the brand that's well known. A lot of people come into the market via the Bitcoin asset, and then they usually go to altcoins after that. Now speaking of altcoins, Vitalik Buterin was speaking at Permissionless, the crypto conference in Austin. It's actually held by Blockworks. And he talked a bit about what's in the future for Ethereum. Now, some people listening to this may be very upset at Vitalik, Joe Lubin, Bill Hinman and so forth. And that's fine. You know, I understand I'm not the biggest fans of these folks as well. I do respect Vitalik as a coder and what he has built. I think folks can't ignore that. He did build a great platform. First mover advantage, the EVM is used by many other different blockchains. And there's been a lot of building on Ethereum. You can't deny that regardless if you hate it or you don't hold it. The facts are there from DeFi to NFTs and much more. And a lot of smart contract tech is being used and built around Ethereum. And he made some interesting statements as to what Ethereum is going to target next. So he said DeFi is cool. NFTs are a new primitive, but an extension of something that has a history and using crypto for payments is good, but also familiar. These are individual pieces that are designed to fit it into an ecosystem that's otherwise the same as before, Buterin said. He said what he's excited about is decentralized social, repeatedly name dropping Faircaster, a Twitter like protocol on the OP mainnet with a companion warp cast mobile app that is currently invite only alpha release. Along with Lens developed by Aave founder Stani Kulichov and running on Polygon's proof of stake chain, Faircaster and similar social experiences are using crypto tools to complete with centralized platforms. Let's see how far we can push things in that direction, Buterin said. But where I see the longer term feature here is it really can plug into all the other stuff that we've been doing as a space. So it sounds like he's trying to build like some sort of decentralized social platform that will include the tokenization, the entities, the DeFi and so forth. That makes sense. And as we head into Web3, just as people transition from Web1 to Web2 and even earlier versions of Web2 social platforms like Myspace and Friendster to eventually Facebook, Twitter and so on, we're going to see a transition from the Web2 social platforms into Web3 social platforms, especially as they become more easy to onboard and use. And there's a layer of rewards of tokens. And if people can legitimately earn tokens and get paid for their activity and it's on the block chain, it's verifiable, it's hard to hack and things like that. They will come folks. They will come. People will come, especially as data breaches continue with social platforms mainstream and other platforms as well. So interesting statements here from Vitalik. And I think we want to watch this closely because look, like I said, Ethereum has the adoption, has a lot of developers, has a lot of capital behind a lot of resources. So if there's any token that comes with these social platforms, I'm going to be looking into that and be looking into these platforms and seeing how I can capitalize on it to make a nice return. Well, folks, that's the news. Let me know what you think. Leave your thoughts and comments below. Hit the thumbs up button. Hit the five star rating on the podcast platforms. Don't forget to check out the merchandise store. Link will be in the description where you can buy the podcast branded gear as well as fire Gary Gensler T -shirts and hats and much more. Thank you for your support. And I'll talk to you all later. Bye bye.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from THE HASH: Court Rules SEC Must Review Rejection of Grayscale's Bitcoin ETF Bid, Bitcoin Jumps 5%
"This is the hash podcast. Stay informed with the latest on Bitcoin, ETH, the metaverse, web3, and more. All on the hash for your ears. You're listening to the CoinDesk podcast network. We got some big news today. It's also Taco Tuesday, and since it's going to be our last Taco Tuesday, you better get ready for some actual tacos. That's a major news, but there is also real major news, and I'm starting us off today. Here we go. Let's go over to Grayscale. An appeals court ruled just today that the SEC must review Grayscale's ETF bid after they were previously rejected. It's being seen as a victory in the prospects for getting a spot Bitcoin ETF into the marketplace in the US, and the market is responding enthusiastically. Bitcoin surged on the news, adding quite a bit of value, and now we're seeing some further chatter about what this means for the prospects, again, of the long -awaited Bitcoin spot ETF. This note, Grayscale is a sister company of CoinDesk. They share ownership from Digital Currency Group, but we're going to talk about it. Gloves off, no holds barred anyway. I'm so excited, you guys. This is the absolute best news ever. The fact that we continue to see the SEC take these massive L's is music to my ears. I really, really feel that they have just been so predatory in their actions and wanting to litigate instead of give some sort of guidelines, help these honest entrepreneurs know what they're supposed to be doing and know what they can't do. To me, that's just super problematic behavior. We should want to support entrepreneurs. We should want to guide people in the right direction, and more importantly, we should want to build back the American economy better. I think with all of these massive wins the crypto industry is seeing, things hopefully will get better. All right, Will, you can take it now. This does not mean the ETF is going through now. It just means that the SEC has to go back and review the application again, and they have to give an actual opinion. There's a few lawyers on crypto Twitter talking about this this morning, what does this actually mean? What did the judge actually say? They basically stated that the SEC did not have a good basis for making its past decision, and now they need to go back to the books, relook at the application, and come up with a better decision, whether that means that this is going to be approved or not, we still have to wait. This probably means it's going to be approved because there's a lot of political pressure now on the SEC after a judge took a look at this and said, you know what, guys? You didn't do your homework. You should have let this pass, or you should have put some more thought into why you didn't want this to go through, and you didn't, so we're kicking it back. Go study the books, and maybe we'll get something out of this. Now, of course, what's on the line? A lot of ETFs are out there. A lot of people are lining these things up. I'd say there's about a half dozen plus ETFs that are possible to move forward over the next 180 days or so, and if that opens up, that means a lot of mom and pop retail investors can get into the Bitcoin market for the first time because they probably weren't comfortable touching Bitcoin in other ways. There's lots of different ways to get exposure to Bitcoin. There's lots of different ways of purchasing financial assets, but an ETF itself means that you can put Bitcoin into your 401k, into any sort of trust with a Schwab or Fidelity, something like that. That means that maybe coin go up. Who knows? A little speculation there. It could have some more apathy because the crypto markets right now are not great, but a lot of people in the crypto industry are looking at this and saying like, this could be our salvation from the depths of crypto winter. Jen? So I look at this court ruling in favor of Grayscale and the partial ruling in favor of Ripple, and I think that there's a glimmer of hope, right? I think that these two cases show us that maybe this clarity we're seeking from the SEC, we are not going to get, but some of these decisions are going to be made in the court, and some of them may lead to precedent setting decisions down the line, or they may at least force the SEC's hand so that we can get some more clarity. So good news all around. I want to point to one of the lawyers who have been commenting on this, who has been commenting on this on Twitter this morning, Jake Trevinsky, who's the chief policy officer at the Blockchain Association. He said that it's rare for a federal circuit court to make a decision like this and said that there are two ways that this could possibly go. The SEC could come back and just provide another reason for rejecting it, or they could say their hand was forced by the court, and so they're going to do it, but it's not because they wanted to do it, but they were forced by a judge. And so it will be interesting to see which way they go. I think it's important to note that an ETF has not been approved, but I think it is definitely a step in the right direction. Zach? Yeah, there's a lot of speculation that once one gets approved, several will be approved, right? So we have the BlackRock one, we have a bunch of other ones, I forget all the names, but there's a ton of Bitcoin spot ETF proposals that are sitting for rejection or approval. And I think the ETF watchers out there in the world have said that maybe when one gets over the finish line, others will likely also get over the finish line, such that SEC isn't seen as picking a winner and giving an unfair advantage to one applicant over the others. So I think that's why there is sort of this buoyant sentiment across the space as a whole. This isn't necessarily just a win for Grayscale, it's potentially a win for others such as BlackRock and others in the space who are looking to offer this product to, again, mom and pop investors who want it in their brokerage account and don't want to have to deal with the nonsense of dealing with the crypto itself. So that, I think, is why that sentiment is out there, why the market has reacted pretty positively. Bitcoin's up about 5 % on the news, a nice little surge given that Bitcoin has been pretty flat around 26K for the last little while now. So interesting to see what's going to follow this, but yeah, definitely the SEC may have taken an L on this one while they fight other fights and may rack up dubs on those ones. And I think we'll talk about that in a little bit. Who wants next? Oh, we're talking about that right now, Zach. NFTs. Sure, let's do it. Yeah, they've entered the chat. So the SEC has issued its first enforcement action targeting NFTs. The regulator ordered Impact Theory, an LA -based media company that raked in nearly $30 million from selling tiered NFTs to compensate investors, arguing that the transactions were illegal, unregistered securities, offerings, Impact Theory has agreed to set up a fund to reimburse investors, destroy remaining NFTs, and they will pay a fine of $6 .1 million. Wendy, going to toss this one off to you. What do you make of the SEC's first NFT enforcement action? We all knew that this was coming. The reason why we knew it's coming is when we're talking about NFTs, people like to call them digital assets or digital collectibles, but that's just really skirting around what an NFT actually is. It is a token. It is a little adorable little token that kind of just lives on that blockchain that's just kind of there, just kind of chilling. But it really depends the way that these entities are set up and how they're using the NFTs, because let's face it, when we do talk about collectibles, again, I was an eBay seller, I would go to thrift stores, I would buy used designer vintage goods or things that I saw that were in style that I knew I was going to be able to flip. Because I knew I was going to be able to flip and make money off of them, it kind of makes you think, is this a security? Is this not a security? But in fact, it's just a tangible good. But that's the kind of the way that I view NFTs. I literally view them as collectibles that you can buy and then you hope that they appreciate, but you're not 100 % sure if they're going to appreciate. For this particular lawsuit, I forget exactly how the company went about it. I'm planning on doing a video on my channel about it, YouTube, CryptoIndio, go subscribe. But I do think it's very interesting. I think we're going to see a lot of other NFT projects get hit. And it's very important if you do plan on launching a project, you probably should obtain some sort of legal advice, just so you have some sort of guidance and just have some basic understanding of the law. Because again, you guys were in very, very uncharted territories. Will, what is your thought about these adorable little single tokens that kind of just live on the blockchain? Are they securities? What's going on? What about the tchotchkes, as Zach would say? I like the tchotchkes, depending on if they're penguins or not. No. Okay. So I think this case specifically more refers to how this NFT rollout occurred. I did see some people, including Zach BTC, who's sort of like the on -chain sleuth of the last cycle, talking about how this NFT drop had some dubious parts about it. And that's why they saw this case going forward, right? This is the first one we've seen with an NFT. So there's that. On the other hand, looking at the dissent from Hester Peirce and others at the SEC who were judging on this decision, they thought it was a little odd to come after a single NFT case. Why? For the reasons Wendy just sort of laid out there, right? We have art markets. We have designer bag markets. People sell these things on street corners, so we're not going after them. But the SEC in this case decided to go after it. I think it does fit a longstanding pattern for the SEC that enforcement actions target select groups and select people where they can have easy case wins. And then that sets sort of like a precedent for the rest of the industry, right? They go after the Ripple Labs, they go after this NFT case, they go after a library. They go after the ones where they think they can sort of win. In the case of Ripple Labs, they have a lot of money, so I don't know how it was the best target because that one's been hauled up in court for the better part of three years. The library one was sort of a slam dunk though, right? They like won that and the library didn't have enough money to go back and fight against them. So they've basically been on a social media campaign. And I think with this SEC one here, you know, it's NFT market, they just had to like put up with it. They had to pay disgorgements and let it go. And that's the case. Now for all these NFT creators out there, they have to think about these things a little harder than they were previously. If that's good or bad, I don't know. I don't love the strategy. The SEC has been walking out for the last few years. I think we've all opined on that a lot in this show. But there is something to saying maybe we should have like a little bit more consumer protection with some of these new markets are popping up. Permissionless innovation is great, but that also means that you have permissionless rugging.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from THE HASH: Pepecoin Team Puts Blame on 'Bad Actors'; PayPal's Stablecoin Adoption Outlook
"This is the hash podcast. Stay informed with the latest on Bitcoin, ETH, the metaverse, web3 and more. All on the hash for your ears. You're listening to the Coindesk podcast network. Hey there and welcome to the hash here on Coindesk TV. I'm Zach Seward. That's Jen Sanasi. Wendy Oh. Will Foxley. We're the hash today. We're getting you up to speed on what's going on in the world of crypto and more. And we're going to start off with some PayPal news from Jen. Jen, take it away. All right. PayPal's new stablecoin is off to a slow start. That's according to data from Nansen. The data firm says that few people are using or holding PYUSD token in self -custody wallets. They also said that smart money holders seem to be avoiding the stablecoin so far, saying that Paxis is custody in more than 90 % of supply and exchanges like Kraken and Crypto .com hold just over 7 % of supply. Will, I'm going to pass this one down to you. Are you surprised? There was a big excitement in the industry when this news was announced, but are you surprised to see that maybe not a lot of people are holding onto these stablecoins just yet? I'm not super surprised. I mean, it just launched. So I think we just need to be patient a little bit here. We're also like in the depths of crypto winter. This isn't like a bear market anymore. This is just a total lack of interest apathy all over. So for people not to be picking things up right now, that's not surprising. I hope PayPal looks at these numbers, whoever the product manager for this product looks at it as like, okay, the time will come for this at some point. And they probably baked out into the strategy as well, right? They have a lot of resources to be able to look at the market and look at the past launches these coins. And sometimes they take forever to get adoption. I would suppose that they actually are working with larger companies and doing a B2B model as opposed to a retail model first. And that'll also help them out on the regulatory side, right? Where they're not just like issuing this token out to anyone who has Venmo, who has PayPal and desktop, they're probably going to go work with institutions and larger companies work first to see if this actually works for them. So that's not super surprising to me. Just how the market is right now, Wendy? I am not surprised at all by this. Guys, we're in a bear market. So this makes sense that there's not going to be a whole lot of usage with crypto, especially when we're talking about like Web2 brands. PayPal is a massive Web2 brand that facilitates money to people all over the world. I used to use it for eBay all the time. So I don't understand why people would just jump on the stable coin bandwagon from PayPal when it's just a lot easier to use cash and to use electronic currency in that fashion. So to me, it's no big deal. And yeah. PiUSD I think is very much retail play, right? And we've seen over crypto history that retail excitement happens and then retail excitement goes away, right? The DeFi degens aren't going to be aping into PiUSD to do cool things on chain, right? So I think what we'll see is a slow, steady uptick, possibly, until sort of that next euphoria kicks in. And then I'd be interested to see what happens then, right, when stable coins become a bigger part of the picture at the retail level, at the PayPal customer level, as opposed to those who are familiar and conversant already with things like Tether or things like USDC. So yeah, holding judgment on this one, because I don't think it's necessarily going to be super duper on chain bonanza with PiUSD for the foreseeable future, just given those broader market conditions. But it could be a really interesting sort of retail indicator, or I guess retail index for stable coin usage going forward into that next wave of excitement. And that I think will be the revealing data is still to come, our adventure about what PiUSD means for the market, as it relates to onboarding folks from, again, these highly custodial options into more crazy on chain stuff. That I think could be a really interesting set of data that we'll certainly look at in the future. But Jen, saw your hand. Yeah, no, I agree with all of you. I think it is just a low time in the crypto markets. There's a report on CoinDesk this morning saying that Ethereum has hit its eight month low when it comes to daily transaction fees. So I think this isn't just a stable coin conversation. I think PayPal is going after a very different audience and some of the other stable coins that are out there are going after and it's slow and steady wins the race here. I don't think that they were expecting to see massive, massive mainstream adoption right away, just given what's happening, not only in the markets, but on the regulation side of things, too. And so I can imagine that they're treating this as like a pilot or testing phase. And I expect, and again, this is backed on no insider information, haven't spoken to anyone from PayPal. But I probably expect them to come out with some kind of educational strategy to get that mainstream audience once there is more interest, once we hit the next bull cycle and there's some collaborations and partnerships in the works. So yes, I am also not surprised by this report and I hope that it doesn't shake PayPal, because there's probably a longer strategy here. You guys ready to move to Prime Trust? Let's do it. This is like worse news, but it's still stable coin land news. So Thursday, we got new core filings from CEO Jor La, who spoke about the poor investment in the Terra Luna stable coin. Prime Trust lost $6 million of client funds and $2 million from its own treasury. This, of course, comes after they lost about $80 million total in both fiat and crypto of client money when they had their wallet set up incorrectly. Right now, Prime Trust is going through a receivership process with the state of Nevada. Prime Trust was one of the largest backends for a lot of crypto marketplaces. People use them to build wallet services for exchanges, for receivership and ownership of crypto assets. Now it's starting to fall apart a little bit. This also comes after BitGo tried to purchase Prime Trust, but that fell through again because of a lack of financial security within the firm. Jen, I'm going to throw this story over to you. More bad news at Prime Trust, like there's the legal filings for this one are put up with the best of the best in terms of like bad judgment decision making from companies. What a mess. Now, I have to say, when I read, you know, poor planning, like companies in the bull market had poor planning, they couldn't see what was going to happen in the bear. I am a little bit sympathetic because, you know, there's a lot of demand in the bull market. There's a lot of like mainstream collaborations and partnerships and you need resources to keep up with that. That said, I don't think that happened here. I think that this is just a total mess when I read through this. There's some stuff I want to point to. They said that they were outspending and gave some numbers. So October, the company spent ten point five million dollars but only made three point one million dollars. So they lost seven million dollars in October. And then it's like no one learned anything. They went on to November and spent eleven point one million dollars and lost eight some odd million dollars. And so that is crazy. I feel like that is poor planning. That is not looking at what's happening at your company and readjusting and being flexible. And those are some of the allegations that are made against the executive team here that they were not able to adjust and be flexible. The other crazy thing here is this wallet situation. They lost access to their wallet because I'm just going to tell our audience what happened here super quickly. And I'm going to pass it to Zach because he is nodding along with a big smirk on his face. So Prime Trust moved its wallets over to a system operated by Fireblocks. Then they did not realize that the migration from the legacy wallets to the new system was incomplete and that customers were still sending funds to that wallet. And then it learned the mistakes later when an unidentified customer requested a large amount of ETH and withdrawal and they could not fulfill that. And then it seems like they were converting fiat into ETH to fulfill these requests, which just sounds crazy. But I'm honestly not shocked or surprised, given all the news we've been covering over the last six months to a year. Ah, the case of 98F, that wallet episode. It just reads like, Prime Trust, no good, very bad, horrible day. That whole saga. We knew a little bit, I think, back in June about this mishap that occurred when they were transitioning their system over to Fireblocks, which is another custody provider. And that one just reads like a saga of pain. So yeah, check out the court filing for a full telling of the 98F episode and then think to yourself that, yes, custody and digital assets can be hard even for those professionally entrusted to do so. So I think the custody conversation is very relevant here. I will point out that the Terra Luna collapse continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. So much of the pain in the market really stems from people getting overextended into that ecosystem on the strength or the apparent strength of the promises by Dilkwan and others. And that ended up being sort of a landmine that many a project, including now Prime Trust, stepped on in terms of losing funds and losing the ability to stay solvent. So yeah, Terra definitely part of this story. But I think probably the bigger picture is that custody story, right? We keep going back to this idea of like custody is a set of trade -offs, self -custody has its own trade -offs, having a custodial arrangement with an outside party has another set of trade -offs entirely. But this one to me just represents, again, the difficulty that many people, especially entering the space, face when thinking about this challenges of self -custody because these guys got burned really bad by not being able to access something that was a big part of their business. And they only realized later on that, oops, we don't have the steel engraved things that we need to access this and it just becomes a big, big problem. So the custody angle maybe is the most illustrative here for people themselves, but certainly, yeah, pretty painful telling of that whole episode. But yeah, businesses, man, they remain fascinating to cover because you get these sort of after the fact tellings of all the things that went wrong. Wendy, what do you think? What happens if we ever have a Bitcoin -backed ETF that's from TradFi and they actually have to hold the Bitcoin and somebody loses the keys and that happens? Oh man, that'll be a day. Oh boy. Let's hope that doesn't happen. That's my take. That is a hot take, Will. What happens if... But no, I'm being serious. What happens if the SEC would have stepped in initially and said, hey, if you're going to be custody in these products, if you're going to be acting as a broker or whatever it is, you actually have to have the reserve set to a certain area. Like we have to be able to check to make sure that those reserves are set more transparent. If the SEC would have actually done their job, I feel like we wouldn't have had as many of these problems. Like Japan is a perfect example with the whole Gox situation that any type of crypto exchange or whatever type of services operating there, they have to actually show those proof of reserves. So again, I feel like our public servants have yet let us down again. And it's very sad that they're kind of like the parents that just kind of let you run off into the wild and then get hurt. And then they come down and they just punish you like a million times harder.
The Bitcoin Podcast
A highlight from Shane Mac of XMTP | The Power of Web3 Messaging
"We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it was easy. Welcome to the show, Hashing It Out, Shane from XMTP. I wanted to try and bring you on to learn more about what XMTP is trying to do. So why don't you do the normal thing, give us an introduction, kind of where you come from, what XMTP is, and we'll dive into it. For sure. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you guys. I like this vibe in this basement we're in. It's incredible. XMTP is a secure messaging protocol for Web3. And so our goal is to allow any walled address in the world to be able to communicate with any other walled address. And, you know, we've been working on it a little over a little over like two years. Me personally, I've been in messaging my whole career. And so I was back in the early days when I was like 13 years old, I was on eBay selling baseball bats because I was a baseball player. And I realized that from 10 to 12 to 13, you go through three different bats and your mom buys you three different bats with a different weight limit every year. And I didn't want the old bat. Put it on eBay, sold for 150 bucks, charged people 60 bucks shipping and handling. It's like robbery. And all my friends, mom's bought them bats, no one wanted the old bat. So I started selling them. But really, the ability to connect with strangers, meet people, sell things. And it all led to just communication kind of was one of those just early curiosities I had. And so from that to college, I started building a way for Facebook photos to show up on top of email back in 2005. And so I was trying to make email more human or more social. And back then, it was creepy as fuck, like people like, why are you connecting my Facebook and my LinkedIn and my email? These are different worlds. These are different lives offline and online haven't really happened yet. You didn't really meet people online that you knew offline like that kind of didn't exist. College was a little different. When I saw Facebook, I was like, I know all these people. But, you know, over time, that led to a company called Gist .com, which was the first social CRM to ever take like social data, map it to emails. And we grew to about 100 million people in under two years. And in 2010, Blackberry bought us and I worked on BBM. And really, when I saw Blackberry Messenger, that was the light bulb for me. That really kind of felt like the future. I was like, this is how the future should work. This is how people should interact. This is how brands should interact. You know, the double checkmark, you could see someone read it in a BBM PIN code and then your status was BBM and that's why you bought phones. And I realized how much value people put on, like the status of having a Blackberry Messenger PIN code. And since that day, I think messaging has kind of become something that people really identify with and it drives their behavior. You know, as much as the blue bubble sells iPhones, I think back then it was BBM. And so I worked on messaging for the next 10 years and still working on messaging.
Mint | Where Crypto Meets Creators
A highlight from Web3 Marketing's Next Big Thing: Mass Messaging Across Wallets with Shane Mac
"In this episode, I'm joined by Shane Mack, the CEO and co -founder of XMTP. We had an intimate conversation about Shane's entrepreneurial history, where we took a detailed glimpse into his previous startups, multi -million dollar acquisitions, and his vision for the XMTP protocol. The motivation behind this episode was to capture a core pillar of Web3 growth networks and why communication is the bedrock for any thriving project or company in the ecosystem. Their recent partnership announcement with Coinbase wallets sparked a wave of excitement around wallet -to -wallet communication, especially at Bello. Recently, Bello integrated XMTP, where users can now send mass messages to their NFT collectors, or rather any list of wallets. XMTP is key for Web3 mass adoption, and I couldn't be more excited to capture this moment on Mint. So without further ado, I hope you guys enjoy our conversation. Mr. Shane Mack, welcome to the Mint Podcast. Thank you for being on. How are you doing? Hey, it's great to be here. I'm doing great. How are you? Feeling alive, even more excited to share these next, what, 45 minutes, an hour together to talk about the future of wallet -to -wallet messaging, growth marketing, and where community building lies in Web3. But before we get into all that, Shane, I think a good place to start is to understanding more about your background particularly, more so from the perspective of how did you get into Web3 and even getting to building XMTP? Yeah, it's funny. I go all the way back to when I was 12 years old. When I was in eighth grade, I found eBay, and I was a baseball player. I grew up playing baseball. That's all I did. And between 10, 12, and 13 years old, you actually get three different bats. You get a small barrel with a weight limit, you get a big barrel with a weight limit, and then a big barrel with a lesser weight limit. So you have to get three new bats three years in a row. And I got on eBay, and I found this site, and I was like, I wonder if I could sell this TPC slugger my mom bought me last year. And $179 later at an auction, and $40 shipping and handling because everyone was stealing money on shipping and handling back then. I sold this bat, and I made like $220. I was like, holy shit, I was like, everyone has all these bats. And I ended up having a deal with the UPS driver. They would drop off the triangle boxes at our house every Tuesday and Thursday that fit bats perfectly. It had a bubble wrap, had a little printer machine in my house that would print out all the shipping labels, had a PayPal account in my dad's name because I couldn't even have a credit card. And I would end up asking all my friends if they didn't want their bats anymore that their moms bought them the year before. And everyone's like, I don't want that bat anymore, I'd sell it to you for $20. And I had this entire bat business. And it really just the ability to like talk to anyone in the world and the power of the internet for doing commerce and communication and the messaging feature on eBay, you kind of negotiate, people are always asking you questions, doing customer service. And, you know, I was 13. And to just think back to how I grew up in this tiny town called Bartonville, Illinois. And, you know, I had nine kids in my graduating class. I lived in the middle of corner fields. And the internet really was this like vehicle for opportunity and to meet people that I never thought I could meet. And so I did that for a few years and it ended up being a pretty cool business for being, you know, young and trying things on the internet. And when I got into college, I was at this little college called Western Illinois University. In 2005, I started trying to build, I taught myself how to code a little in college and I started trying to build a script that would pull Facebook photos right when the Facebook dot com launched and LinkedIn photos and put them on top of email addresses. And that really led to me trying to make email more social, but I didn't know it wasn't called social back then. It was just photos from the Facebook and make it more human. I was like trying to see who I was talking to because at the time offline and online didn't really exist. You didn't really meet anyone in the real world who you met online. Online dating was huge stigma. Facebook was kind of new. And so aggregating information about people who you really knew and pulling that together was kind of a foreign concept. And I was just doing it because I was curious about humans and I was just curious about who's this person I'm emailing and what do they look like? And so I was kind of just piecing it together in a simple way that led me in 2007 to meet someone on Twitter who was in Seattle and this guy, TA McCann, he was like asking me about this thing I was building. What are you doing? I started looking what he was building. He was doing a company called mind box and it was about mining your email inbox to find information about anyone you've ever met. And if a year ago I met you, we emailed and then today you had news about you. It would be like, Hey, Shane Adams in the news today. You should follow up and say, you know, Hey, congrats. You're in the news. And at the time, you know, I didn't really know anybody with news about them because in college no one has news about them. I didn't know how business worked. I was like, I don't know. I don't really have news, but I have social data. People are posting stuff on their wall and they have photos and can tag people in photos. And this Twitter thing was kind of happening. And so it was interesting. I started pulling Twitter photos into the little thing to put on top of email and he was like, social data on top of email is the future. And you'll get to know more about who you know in business and you'll have a single identity every around person. And he kind of really saw the future. He was 20 years older than me. And I just was like trying to see a face on top of a Gmail address really. And so we talked for a while. I kept giving him feedback about his product and that ended up being like this relationship that changed my whole life and trajectory. I didn't even know what a startup was. This guy, TA, was like, why don't you come build a startup? Like, well, let's just go build this company. We should go do it. Be like a social CRM. I didn't even know what a CRM was. And we went and built Gist .com, G -I -S -T. It was the first like social CRM ever. And we grew it from zero to a hundred million people in under two years. I think it was one of the fastest growing social products back in the day. And it was that era where, you know, the Twitter founders and Facebook and everyone, they were like, what can you do with this API? What can you do with this social data? See if you can do anything cool with it. Like there was no price. There was no real rules. It was a very like optimistic moment of social media. And I was just so inspired to be able to connect with anyone in the world. And I had met this guy named TA McCann and I, how am I like getting to work with him? I moved to Seattle and long story short, he ended up working for Paul Allen, the founder of Microsoft. That's whose inbox he was mining. And Paul was our first million dollar check. Brad Feld led our little A round. We got acquired by Blackberry for $50 million two years later. And I, you know, those kind of like moments or people you meet from just interactions online always led me to just believe so much in the power of the social internet, the power of messaging, communication, et cetera. And once I got there, Blackberry, I got to see BBM. And when I saw BBM, Blackberry messenger, that really was the moment where it all clicked for me. I was like, messaging is the future. It is how all interactions should happen. The phone should be messaging. The way I talk to businesses should be messaging. And like, why doesn't the world work that way? And, you know, through a lot of reasons, Blackberry messenger died and Blackberry kind of collapsed as the iPhone had a rise. WhatsApp happened. BBM didn't leave the Blackberry platform. And ultimately, WhatsApp, you know, became the messaging platform globally. And iMessage and iPhone became the OS and Android and messages on Android is also a massive application. And so the next 10 years, I was CEO of a company called Assist, which was business messaging. We were the first company to launch businesses being able to talk to customers and do bots and automation on top of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, SMS, et cetera. So the whole messaging wave of the last 10 years. We got acquired in 2019. And I, during that lockup, you know, I had been in San Francisco for over 10 years. And a lot of my friends were working on crypto. I had actually met this guy named Adam Draper on a train ride from San Francisco to Palo Alto in 2011. And Adam told me about Bitcoin. And I have this moment, there's a bunch of tweets about it because we've talked about it online a lot. He tapped me on the shoulder actually. And he said, Hey, is this you? And it was a photo of me and this guy named Jeff Morris on Path, this old social network. There was like a private social network back in 2011. And he's like, is this you? And I was like, yeah, it's me. He goes, that's my buddy Jeff you were with last night. And I didn't even know who Adam was. And I was like, oh, that's cool. It's good to meet you. What are you working on? He's like, I'm starting this new fund. We're investing in Bitcoin companies. And I was like, wow, what's that? What's a Bitcoin? And for the next hour, he told me about how Bitcoin either will be a really nerdy science experiment or something that changes the world. And it wasn't until you have someone like Adam and his conviction and his belief that gives you the belief to just believe in Adam. Like I didn't really know that much, but I was like what he's working on and someone like that. And I think that was the coolest thing about San Francisco is being around people working on the future who truly understand it and believe it. And that moment kind of really opened my eyes and I became more curious about it. Probably five, six years later when the Ethereum movement kind of happened, a lot of my friends I knew and developers I knew started working on top of blockchains. And so I'd always been curious about kind of Web3 and crypto. But I was building a company, so I didn't really have a lot of building or anything in it. And I was focused on how do you do secure messaging and how do you do messaging for consumers and brands and build a platform for that. And then in 2019, when we got acquired, I was talking a lot to Matt and Matt and I lived next to each other in San Francisco for 10 years. And we also grew up living next to each other in tiny towns in Illinois that we didn't know we were we didn't we didn't even know we lived in when we lived there. And we found that out later in SF. And he was like, look at what's happening around DeFi and the Robert Leshner, the founder of Compound Labs, he was like, I have 11 billion dollars in a smart contract.
THE EMBC NETWORK
A highlight from Laughs and Business Insights A Conversation with Eli Halpern, the Comedian Entrepreneur Behind The Golden Cricket Brand.
"And that's it. Thanks for watching! You can support MrFudgeMonkeyz on Patreon. See you next time! Thanks for watching! See you next time! Thanks for watching! See you next time! Thanks for watching! So then that's acting as a flashlight. All right, that works. That works for me. Well, so Eli, your story began a long time ago. As a young child, and by the way, this is not something we hear all the time, that someone begins working for themselves at an age as early as 12. I mean, I wanna learn about that. I wanna know more. I know that we'll get some people intrigued here. And there's the other thing. I mean, some people's like, well, how could you possibly be working at 12? We're in the States, and we don't work at that age that early, and so all these questions, let's kind of bust those myths and get them out of the way, and then let's just make it happen. So what got you into it? And I'm sure you went to school with all that stuff, but that's something that's unique about you. Yeah, yeah, so my entrepreneurial spirit has kind of always persisted. It came to me at a younger age than most. I feel like just because I had a larger awareness for humanity and existence and society, based on the fact that I was just very curious, I asked a lot of questions. As long as I can remember, I have always just looked out at the world and been like, what the hell is going on here? We're all, I remember when I was watching kids play kickball at recess when I started school, and I was just like, we're all just like naked people wearing clothes, and we mowed down all these trees to build the school here. Like I was thinking very intensely about every little situation. So it just led me to eventually just realize that everything kind of revolved around money, and that if I can get some money in my possession, essentially I won't have to listen to anyone. And I was always about freedom. And my parents were, they were parents, they're telling me what to do and stuff, and trying to raise me how they saw fit. I had bigger plans. I looked at people around me, parents, teachers, authority figures who were trying to tell me who to be. And I would just look at all of them thinking, I don't want to be anything like any of you guys. So it was easy for me to really see through a lot of BS and realize that people were telling me things not for my own personal wellbeing or for the best of me, but at my deficit, it would work against me to listen to them and to essentially assimilate, throw my dreams away, graduate from a college and work for someone else, which is what I essentially have been rebelling against in my own personal life since the beginning. It didn't start out as like, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to own a business. It was literally just, I want M &M's. M &M's were my favorite thing at the time, and those cost money. And I just knew that if I had enough M &M's, I'd be happy. And fast forward, fast forward 20 something years, and I can afford so many M &M's now that I don't even want them anymore. Now, I don't even, I try not to eat sugar. There's four other things, that's all. Well, so thank you for that intro. And I want to break some of that stuff down because you've touched on a lot of things that are important to our listeners. And our audiences are diverse. We have parents, we have younger crowds and people that have ambition and vision of their life. But you've touched on a lot of things. First of all, I love the wandering and pondering spirit of yours, whereby you question things. And I think that's something that's lacking in a lot of us. Unfortunately, not everybody has that ability to just question everything and ask why and always try to analyze what's going on. Why is this this way? And when you start asking questions, and technically what you find is like, sometimes answers that don't make sense. And it's the reality of things. I mean, if anybody right now listening to watching starts asking questions about everything that's going on around them, they're going to open their eyes to a point where they'd be like, damn, what the hell do I live? I mean, this is a whole different world that we're in. Because really that's what it is. We have this almost a veil that is upon us. And we are just conditioned to everything that's around us, the way it's been told to us all our lives. And most people will take it for granted. There's no questioning of things. Now, you started that at an early age. And I love the way he's like, why is the school this way? Why people are doing this way? We're all, and you see, asking questions. Now, someone at that age typically doesn't have that in their mind. I mean, and I love what you said about you wanted M &Ms and it revolved around money. Because if you have money, you can buy whatever you want. And at that point, that's what you wanted. And that's a big thing. And by the way, it is a trait that you have that is unique because not everybody has that. And then you said something very interesting that parents, and typically all people around us, listen, I'm a parent, I can tell you. There is a degree of that in all of us where we want our kids to have a certain way of growth and a certain way of future and try to almost guide them. And sometimes to your point, it's not really what they want and not understanding that specifically and not allowing them to be who they were or who they really wanna be, it's a problem, right? But you saw that early on, it didn't make sense that everybody, and I love the concept that everybody has this dynamic that we are almost conditioned to, it's robotic. We are born, you go to school, you're being told that you're gonna finish that school, you're gonna go to the next level, the next level, the next level, go to college, potentially get that master's or at least a bachelor's and hopefully that gets you a good job and then you wanna get more, you need to get more education and so on and so forth. Now we say the word education, I mean, ultimately today, you can have so much knowledge without having to go to school. That's two different things. I mean, being intelligent and intellectual versus being educated in a formal education format, those are two different things, but it's been the system. And then that system is geared towards creating labor employees. And those are the ones that actually do the job. And by the way, any entrepreneur out there somehow uses people to work for them and within their companies, but the concept is there. And everybody, for the most part, is getting that concept from the get -go. That's what you're being told since you're a kid. That's when I was a kid, same thing. My parents were like, you wanna go to school, you wanna do this, you wanna get this, or you can get a good job, and ultimately a good job will result into some money, and then you grew up and stuff. And I kinda bought in that Kool -Aid for a long time. You know what I mean? But you kinda challenged that status quo, and you basically, you were rebellious about it, and you did. And for our people, by the way, there's nothing wrong with going through that system. If that's what you want, if you're okay with it, then that's the system that you gotta go through. I find today, more than ever, people, because of the technology, because the access of knowledge, because of the smartphones and everything that we have available to us, and the platforms and the social and stuff, people can do a lot more things today, differently from what, like 20 years ago, period and out, right? It's just the way it is. So it's creating a whole opportunity for younger folks to do a lot more than, essentially, how it's been traditionally over the last century or so. So I just wanted to clarify that and break that down for our audiences here, because it is a very important piece where someone is already destined to be in the world of business, entrepreneurship, and whether it's a choice or not, how you wanna go about it. I mean, you wanted to go the other route and do stuff. Now, I still am not clear. I mean, did you actually go to school to do the same process, or you actually challenged that whole thing and did it in a different way? I went to college. I was actually trying to major in chemistry. I was pretty much just like, I'm just gonna go here to just say I went to, I like tried it out. And like I knew going in, I was gonna drop out. You went through the motions. I was just like, yeah, yeah. I just, and I started a Amazon store, which is like in the same vein of the eBay. So I've been pretty consistently doing e -commerce type stuff. And ended I up dropping out after like two or three years. And after that, I spent most of my twenties like traveling the world and just trying to understand other perspectives and just see as much as possible and just basically just understand why we're here. And pretty much figured it out. And now I'm just like, all right, I'll just enjoy living while I'm here. Well, hold on, hold on. So you said you figured out why we're here. I mean, that's a big question. I mean, are you able to share with us that enlightenment about why we're here? I mean, at least the way you discovered it, just curious. Cause that's a big question that I think we all are in the search for the answer, right? Like why are we in this world? What's the purpose? And it is a tough question. I mean, it depends what angle you go about it. I mean - Have you heard of the Sumerian tablets? Yes, but I'm not too clear about the details, but yeah. So the Sumerian tablets are the oldest document written on earth. And they essentially tell the creation story of humanity and can be corroborated with other ancient pieces of literature and texts that have been found on like every major continent. And they contain all the major stories in the Bible, like Adam and Eve and like all the old Testament stuff, like the great flood and the tower of Babel. And basically says that humans were created as a slave race for the Anunnaki to mine gold, which kind of is how the world still works today. Like we're all just a bunch of slaves that are trying to collect gold for our higher ups. It's essentially the same thing. Like humanity's just always been like this. It's just, it's a business unlike any other group of living things or animals. Humanity is innately tied to money and an economy and a mathematical algorithm of resources. And I think initially money did represent resources, but now I see money more as representing attention because, well, it can be both for sure. But the amount of money someone has is generally correlated with the amount of attention they have. Like any famous person you see, unless it's their first time going viral for anything ever, there's a good chance that they have at least a million dollars. Like anyone you hear talking, like I don't think this podcast is gonna be getting a hundred thousand plays for this episode, but if it was, we'd both be rich probably. You know what I mean? It's like there's - From your mouth to God's mouth, to Gazys as they say, right? You know, hey, you never know. This is a pretty interesting show. I think it's gonna have its own play. Well, I'm just saying that based on the fact that none of the podcasts I have done have gotten there. sort Not any of explanation for me or you as individuals, but I just think the attention factor translates into money very easily because that's why I'm trying to build up my following and do like branding and stuff. I just had my first clip hit a million views today on Instagram. So that was pretty cool. We need to talk about that, but yeah, we'll catch on that one. Yeah, yeah, that just happened today. So I mean, basically you keep pumping out a million plus views on your clips. That's gonna turn into money somewhere along the way. It's like you create a product or a service, subscribe to my Patreon for my podcast or my business that I'm gonna bring up now. It's called Golden Cricket, where I make cricket protein bars made of actual crickets because crickets are 65 % protein by weight. They contain all nine essential amino acids. They use 2 ,000 times less water to produce than whey protein. They're basically the food of the future. They are high in calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, potassium, and I'm also a standup comedian. So as a comedian, the worst thing you can have in the audience is crickets. So I figure we'll just kill them all and turn them into food. And there's revenge served in every bite. So there's a lot of layers to it. Oh, hold on. I gotta do this. I had to do it. It's crickets, Matty. Sorry. You just had that queued up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, man. Well, yeah. So like, you know, I build my following enough that I can pivot those sales to my product or not sales, pivot those audience members to my product page and convert that into a sale. Or - It's the right way to do it. Or I'm growing my music catalog and my podcast, like all these things. I'm creating a bunch of things that I can funnel people to once I build the audience. Which is, it's a weird thing to be trying to do, just to be consciously thinking about how can I appeal to the maximum number of people on the internet while maintaining my authenticity and integrity. It's a weird mental gymnastic you gotta do with yourself. And then I end up putting out stuff that I don't even like. That's what happened with this clip specifically. I made a stupid joke about being gay. And I was like, I haven't been putting up content much. I should just put one up. And I ran it past a friend. I was like, should I post this one? And they're like, yeah, it's funny. I'm like, ah, really? I don't really like it that much. I posted it. And I think that was three days ago and it's been gaining traction ever since I posted it. And it just crossed a million views like an hour ago. Instagram. Yeah. Ooh. And I've been posting a bunch of videos on YouTube shorts under Octavius Thunder. So if you like me talking now, then I do more of that on my page. But the YouTube shorts, there's something going on in the algorithm right now where it's just bumping people up. And I do these things where I film me talking to my dog and it has like a vine type of recording where you just hold it down and then it records and you let your thumb up, it stops recording. So I can flip the camera around and like have a conversation with my dog with his just like little face after everything I say. So I can make like these stupid jokes and then it'll be his face looking at me like that was a stupid joke. And I think that blueprint right there has made it for a very attractive piece of content that I can just do whenever. And so I'll put like 10, 15 of those a day out. Like minimal, minimal effort. Like I'll press record without even knowing what I'm gonna say. And I'll just make something up and it doesn't matter. And then they'll blow up and I'll gain like around 30 new subscribers a day. I'm up to like 1 ,637 subscribers right now on YouTube. And I've been doing this for like a couple months. Wow, very nice. So yeah, I've been trying to test out the social media virality algorithm for quite some time. And I just now feel like I'm gaining some success with it. So, but it's very up and down as is any success in life. There's one aspect of you don't wanna get too used to the stuff blowing up cause then it doesn't happen. You're like, oh, I suck. But then also like you shouldn't even care about it at all cause it doesn't mean anything if it doesn't turn into money yet. But also that's not true. You still have to care about it cause it's on the way there. So it just really jumbles up your priorities. Cause you've been taught your whole life to not care about likes and stuff, but then it's like, oh, well now it matters now. These are things like views and stuff. If you're running a media based business or you're measuring your marketing analysis, like these are key performance indicators that you would show to venture capitalists. Like these, it's important data that can affect financing.
ToddCast Podcast with Todd Starnes
Liz Peek: Publisher Made 'Woke' Edits to Goosebumps Without Approval
"Stine in the New York Post really upset because apparently even goosebumps has been has been cleansed or sanitized to appease the woke crowd, and they didn't even bother to tell the author. Can you imagine? I mean, what an insult is that? So apparently, even if you're one of the most revered authors in history, which Roald Dahl is and a wordsmith and someone who took every word very carefully, your work is not sacrosanct. And it was reassuring to me that in a heartbeat penguin books came back and said, well, don't worry, don't worry, we're going to still publish the originals. And by the way, on eBay, the original for going for thousands of dollars. So clearly there's an appetite for that. I also thought Todd, the whole thing that happened with Hershey's celebrating international women's day by celebrating a transgender. People really didn't like it for two days, boycott Hershey's trended on Twitter, which really, you know, it takes a lot to have that kind of position on Twitter for two days running. I think a lot of people just thought, wait a minute. This is not a woman. This is not celebrating women. I can tell you better how to celebrate women. And I did in my column, like celebrating mothers, mothers of children with developmental issues, or whatever you want to talk about, that's women, to me. And that's the kind of women we should be celebrating. So I must say, I'm also heartened. By the way, today, I read that there is a county in Pennsylvania, which has reversed its stand on being a sanctuary county. They're not going to do it any longer. And Todd, this brings home the reason the way this is going to change is because average Americans are going to wake up one day to find that their schools are overcrowded with undocumented people that their kids are not safe walking down the block in the afternoon anymore because of progressive views on how to treat criminals
America First with Sebastian Gorka Podcast
Sebastian Reviews All of the Guns From Iconic Film 'Lethal Weapon'
"We found it. We found it on the eBay, the original poster for a lethal weapon much better than the one they actually used. Although in real life, I'm not sure president Trump is a little taller than that, but it looks good. I like it. I like it. I'm the old guy with the 6 shooter with the revolver, but that's fine. It's a three 57. It's a serious gun. And of course, the crazy guy is Chris. He's got the M 9. I'm going to just geek out here. The Chris made this poster it's superb. That is our making movies great again, post. I'm gonna geek out because I'm a gun guy. If it's a movie with guns, we're gonna talk guns. Let's put the first gun up. These are the famous guns. No, no, it's in reverse order, all right? Send it. First I want to know, the next one. All right, this is the first gun that stars in the movie. This is in the Christmas tree scene at the beginning. This is what the bad guy holds to Mel Gibson's head, as he says, should the guy shoot the guy. Iconic, I have three of them. It is the Astra terminator, a semi custom gun from the 80s chopped down from a 6 inch, it is a 44 Magnum snobby revolver and it is delightful. A bit heavy, but it is an iconic weapon from the 80s, always dreamt of having one after I saw a lethal weapon. Now I can actually afford to buy guns like this. The next one, this is the one that really, really, let's show Mel. This is the gun that he just made famous. It's the M 9. It is the service weapon of the United States military until recently. This movie made it very, very famous from beretta from Italy. And then, oh my gosh, maybe my favorite scene in the movie when he's in the desert, waiting for the general to save the girl, Mel is lying there in the sand with perhaps the best sniper rifle ever made. The H and K PSG one. Did you
The Dan Bongino Show
Who Funds the Poynter Institute?
"But CNN says don't sweat it fellas Daddy O no worries Don't look over there because the pointer institute said this is M for ma'am In other words no big deal The pointer institute So if you're a regular listener to the show you're like where have I heard that operation before The pointer institute is one of these oma dyer operations Pierrot medier is a former founder of eBay excuse me He's a big lefty on par with Soros given his funding of all these leftist organizations Alma dyer and his network are big funders to the pointer institute Well Tom Elliott on Twitter notes at the pointer institute for those who don't know is in part funded by the national endowment for democracy Which is basically a front for the U.S. Intel community Oh okay Okay now we're getting somewhere Now we're getting somewhere Now we're lifting up that rock and we're like oh hey look at him it's only there So the pointer institute who funds the pointer institute While a CIA whistleblower he had some ideas about that One of the big fun there's in addition to the omega dire network again big liberal Piero mediran is networked there Again up there on par with George Soros One of the big funders there is he national endowment for democracy How do I know that Because at some point his website The national endowment for democracy
Messages & Methods: Livecast Life 2.0
We went to Scottsdale, Arizona for the She Podcasts Live 2021 Conference! - burst 18
"If you want to stand out in one of these events make sure you put on a piece of clothing. So the first thing that she had was this. I don't know what is that a dragon mascot is no. It's just a smiley face. Winky kind of a winky smiley face our Like it's chuckling. And then she had a king's dies. I don't want to call it a purse. It was a bag. Just seems tote bag a tote bag but it was completely rhinestone covered. And i can't tell you how many people would say oh. Let me take your fijian's seek sequence right. And then she was wearing hass. She brought all these hats with her that she would wear and it literally worked people would come up and introduce
The Mason Minute
Organized Retail Crime (MM #3863)
"The mason minute. With Kevin mason. I've tucked on this before, but it's getting worse and worse from what I understand. Organized retail crime is on the big time uprise. In fact, Walgreens has announced they're going to close some stores in San Francisco because the crime has gotten so bad. The biggest problem of course we have number one, staffing issues. Two, with business being up and down, they don't staff them well enough when they do have the people. So number three that makes it a good time for people who are organized in their crime to come in and just start stealing things. I've seen this happen throughout the years at Walmart's where organized crime rings come in and start stealing stuff just grabbing stuff off the racks and running out the door. Now sure a lot of the drugs are locked up behind the counter, the razor blade isles, they're locked up too, but that doesn't stop people. Because what they're doing is stealing the goods and either selling it on places like Facebook marketplace or selling it on eBay or even opening up Amazon stores and reselling those kinds of things, and right now with the economy right now with the disparity that's going on in our world. We're told it could get worse for both retail and for the retail public, and that's scary.
The Mason Minute
Organized Retail Crime (MM #3863)
"The mason minute. With Kevin mason. I've tucked on this before, but it's getting worse and worse from what I understand. Organized retail crime is on the big time uprise. In fact, Walgreens has announced they're going to close some stores in San Francisco because the crime has gotten so bad. The biggest problem of course we have number one, staffing issues. Two, with business being up and down, they don't staff them well enough when they do have the people. So number three that makes it a good time for people who are organized in their crime to come in and just start stealing things. I've seen this happen throughout the years at Walmart's where organized crime rings come in and start stealing stuff just grabbing stuff off the racks and running out the door. Now sure a lot of the drugs are locked up behind the counter, the razor blade isles, they're locked up too, but that doesn't stop people. Because what they're doing is stealing the goods and either selling it on places like Facebook marketplace or selling it on eBay or even opening up Amazon stores and reselling those kinds of things, and right now with the economy right now with the disparity that's going on in our world. We're told it could get worse for both retail and for the retail public, and that's scary.
Venture Stories
Co-Founder of Yield Guild Games Gabby Dizon on Why He Started YGG
"Everybody welcome to another episode of venture stories by village global on here today joined by few special guests. We've gabby dion of g. G and linda shay of skelter linda gabby welcome to the buck s. Thanks for having me expecting us awesome. I'm here joined by mike. Majko's lucas baio at village. Global team lucas. Welcome awesome so maybe as as an introduction gabby one one you for those unfamiliar. Why don't you introduce what is why did he. And what compelled you to start it. Sure so why did you or you'll games is laid to earn gaming guild. So it's a community of gamers that flavius different. Nfc based games similar to axiom. Senate the the give it self Think of a world of work yield exempt up. The guilt itself owns these assets that if we invest in and then we land out these assets to our blair community around the world so that they can play An ebay games and actually earn some money from them and some historical overview about how this category came to be okay so played. The earn is a pretty new phenomenon. I would say just start the last year of been in the blockchain gaming space since early two thousand eighteen and really experimenting long like what what really could be the use case of blockchain games so there have been a lot of discussion on how players having ju- ownership which means that if i haven't nfc. I really own it. There's interoperability but one of the use cases emerged last year is that you could use these. And if these to play a game and win some currency rewards. So these are these are in game rewards. That could be exchanged for For fiat money And that's helped me started the axiom affinity popular lice this Model and it started gaining traction here in my home country. The philippines last year during the early part of a lapdog when people in their royal philippines started Discovered acting started laying as a way to earn money while they were laid off stuck on It's clearly no knowing dumb and it really just up there
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"Some stuff but it'll be after labor day weekend that i start to listen to this but my goal no by the middle of september. You'll see twelve shirts minimum up on my listening so you can hold onto. that gra. our next question comes from ebay seller nicole who sent the following podcast at ebay dot com. Hello griff and company. My question is regarding keywords. Most of us know the basics like don't repeat words in the title. Maybe you can have a discussion with more advanced. Keyword strategies for example is wrong to use capitals. I know not the whole title but is it okay to use capitals just to highlight the brand name should you use punctuation commas the anchor sand at cetera. All that other stuff and i'm often curious about apostrophe says nicole. I was listening to puzzle called santa's within a pasta bs here. If i wrote it just like that someone type santa or santa's without the apostrophe than here would that listening show up or should i put all the variations in the title. Thanks again nicole. And i believe or user ideas south underscore florida underscored nicole. Thanks nicole we haven't had a good keywords question in quite a while we haven't so let's break this down in order to address all three of your sub questions starting with using all caps in ebay title using initial capital letters. The first letter of each word is capitalised is okay but all caps. Well emai- allows them and they don't change how your item is returned in ebay search. However what about google shopping. Water vowed google shopping in fact ebay listings with all caps in their titles. Even if it's just one word that are sent. In to the daily feed to google shopping by ebay are very likely to be flagged and gus omitted or pulled from google shopping. Ebay will send them of course but google shopping will probably block them. But i like so much about nicole. Question is it gives us an opportunity to talk a little bit about the google rules for shopping and these rules not ebay rules but sellers should know him. Yes we have best practice recommendations of course in some of them match google's at oriel and professional requirements for inclusion in google shopping but not all of them for example using all caps. Yeah so there's no rule at ebay that says don't use all caps but google shopping hates those so exactly how does a seller on ebay learn what is and isn't acceptable for shopping. According to google brian well. There are pages on google's merchant site that outline what is an is isn't acceptable when it comes to many facets of a submitted product including all the nearly one billion of fixed price listings ebay sense to google shopping every day. You can read about their editorial and professional requirements on their google merchant center. Help pages which you can visit at. Https colin ford slash ford slash support dot. Google dot com forward slash merchants. That's with an s. And if you didn't jot that down don't worry because guess where we put all of these links in the transcript for episode one fifty five. We'll also put the very specific link to the google page that deals with this particular topic as for extraneous punctuation. The above caution also holds true. Google shopping does not like it in an actually serves no purpose and it looks really unprofessional. Brother in it certainly doesn't help and search and it can actually hurt. And i still see people doing long bits of punctuation. So it's kind of like ascii art em- place characters that should be actual keyword and it just looks so amateurish and i know people say i think it looks pretty well. Are you on ebay to sell or you on ebay to make pretty pictures. Because sometimes you can't do both and when it comes to titles making pretty pictures out of your titles probably the worst thing you can do for getting sales and the advice for titles has always been remained. Since i started at eve. It's not changed. Keywords space keyword space keyword space keyword space no punctuation no hyphens no commas. Colons keyword space. That's how you do it and kinda start from the position of your buyer. What are the words that buyers gonna use to find that item right. And i can guarantee you. They're not going to be a to'real words like rare wonderful beautiful. The old chestnut favourite look with the to add signs. Yes no one searches on those words. It really is unprofessional. Ended is going to get. You kicked out of google shopping. Yes but i'm shocked griff. You don't search on l. amazon amazon exclamation point. Well it's been a while since. I've actually searched on that and i'm wondering if i go right now to ebay right and i just go into the search box. Let's see if people are still unfortunately using that term. There's currently fifteen thousand people that have look at sign at sign in their listings. How sad i mean. I actually think we should ban this but clenching embarrassing to see sellers on ebay actually using that. You can disagree with me. Please send all email to podcast. Ebay dot com. Probably not gonna say much about it after this and finally griff about apostrophes yeah. They are not considered extraneous bought in specific searches. They can be important. Yeah and Nicole i tested your own examples for santa's here both with and without apostrophes and santa's here with an apostrophe s. and the results are revealing the first to know about ebay search results is that for the lion share of return results a search on a single or plural noun will usually include both the plural am the singular in the results. So i searched using the phrase santa's here with no apostrophe and the results included listings for santa here and also santa's here no apostrophe when i searched on santa's here with the apostrophe s the return listings did not include any with santa's here plural without the apostrophe. I thought that was interesting. I've never tried his and this holds vice versa. By the way. So when i searched on santa's here without the apostrophe the return listings did not include any of them that were santa's apostrophe s. Here what are you gonna do with your title nicole. While if i was listening in item like this i would include both spellings both santa's here no apostrophe and santa's here with the apostrophe and you don't need to repeat word here as you mentioned but if you include both versions of santa's with and without the apostrophe you'll catch buyers who search on either santa's here with the apostrophe or sandra's here without the apostrophe and you're also gonna catch just people that are searching on santa's and santa's with the abbass fee and not even the word maybe not even the word. Here's yeah us both. Some good advice and good research their graph and if you're unsure which keywords to use you're listening in situations where there may be more than one way to spell a keyword try with drifted search using boat and compare the results test and learn testing learn we should print podcast t shirts data on them toasting laramie our logo test and learn. Those were the results by the way of my search test for your terms nicole. Now if anyone does a different search Tried to repeat the same results and they discovered it actually worked differently for another keyword example. Please let us know. Send it to podcast at ebay dot com. This could result. In a we could have a serial discussion about this for the next few episodes. I wanna thank again nicole for that question. We'll be sending you in. All the other previous to sell is a beautiful rare. Wonderful podcast mug that you can look at sign sign at every morning and if you have a question you'd like address on an upcoming episode when i call us at eight eight eight seven two three four six three zero. That's eight eight eight seven two three four six zero leave a question or comment and hey we might just put it on the air and you might just get a mug. And if you're not a call on the phone person you can always email us at podcast at ebay dot com that's podcast at ebay dot com and never forget. Include your shipping address. Just in case we do use it so we don't have to contact you. We can send you by surprise now. Guess what time it is. It's time for your daily podcast to do list. Check the announcement board for up-to-date seller news test and learn for example keywords. That you should put in your title or you could test at thermo printing you just bought and learn how delightfully easy and productive. There i was gonna say something. I just decided not to check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode and you can find any episode transcripts that www dot ebay dot com slash. Podcast just click on any of the episodes and then select the transcript. Tab links mentioned in that episode will be at the top of the transcript and you can actually read the entire transcript than episode underneath that just exceed more. We'd like to again. Thank our guests this week ebay seller lindvall up the queen of aachen and from ebay. Sandy matters ebay for business. Podcast is produced and distributed by lipson. Podcast one one..
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"The kentucky warehouse. You as a seller are officially off the hook for that item. You're not responsible if the buyer opens an item not received case. Ebay will reimburse the buyer from ebays. Coffers not yours. That's an important thing sellers now. Yes but if tracking does not show delivery to kentucky then you as the seller may be responsible for refunding the buyer but and there's always a but there is about. Do not make that call on your own. I informed the buyer that the item seems to be delayed in transit. To the shukan kit center in kentucky you are monitoring the situation exactly communicating back with the buyers really important yet thank the buyer for their patients than you assure them that they're covered if the item goes missing in transit. So they're not thinking. I'm going to be out the item and the money. Just reassure the mets important and if the item tracking never shows delivery to kentucky after a suitable amount of time and what would that be a suitable amount of time. Many days that you know a suitable amount of time i wanna be noncommittal okay. So for example. Let's just say two weeks then. Okay you can say that. Yeah i say let the byron seller determined that. It's a good idea okay. So after a suitable amount of time passes contracting still shows no delivery kentucky. Brian then what does the seller tell the buyer the same thing that the seller would have told the buyer for instances where the shipment does show delivery to kentucky. Okay that means tell the buyer to open an item not received case yes that will start the process but in either case the seller should never immediately refund the buyer. Nah let the process play out that way. If the item arrives in kentucky during the time that the case is in process the seller is out the refund for the item and in cases with sellers required to refund. Global shipping program g. s. p. buyer. The refund process will only charge the seller the amount of the total purchase price that includes the item price in any charge for shipping to kentucky that the seller may have charged the buyer. Exactly any amount over that to cover shipping to the buyers location from kentucky as well as import vat custom or duty fees will be paid by ebay since those fees were never provided to the seller. You'd never paid for those the when the buyer sees the item where they are they see a price that includes all those but that money is never part of the payment to you it goes to ebay were then it's dispersed for vat and covers the shipping portion from kentucky to their location. So that's how it's done. Let's let's summarize first and always you should reassure your buyer that they're not gonna lose out you're monitoring the situation then ask them to wait a little longer a suitable model of time and tell them you're checking on a two and meanwhile do monitor the tracking keep on top of it finally after Again a quote unquote suitable amount of time has passed. No update to the shipments tracking just instruct the buyer to open an item not received case. How's that that sounds good. Okay and one thing. That should be emphasized. I think is like beginning. Part of that is reassuring. The buyer should happen anytime. There's communication or an issue with transit whether it's gsp or not. Yeah i think a lot of buyers need that sort of reassurance that hey you're okay. Don't worry i apologize for the bad situation but we'll make it work to worry. That's all it takes sometimes this little communications. Yup our next question was e mail to podcast at ebay dot com by ebay seller martyred eighty six. He didn't leave a name. Sold issues user. Id and martyred eighty six rights guys. I'm really enjoying the podcast. I've been selling on ebay since february this year. And i'm really having a lot of fun sourcing and selling things. I do a lot of sourcing from online state auctions most to them have a soft close auction. This is where if there's a bit in the last minute of the auction will restart the time usually three minutes left so the buyers that got outbid have a chance to bid again before it sold is something that ebay might someday implement for hot items that might have a lot of bidders. It could end up meeting better prices for sellers. Thanks so much by ebay. Id's martyred eighty-six ring any bells. Brian margaret eighty six. Now the topic the subject at hand the subject said extended bidding brian. That's the subject they now or popcorn bidding or what what. How many other names are there for it. Not going to happen at ebay as one of those names. We'll talk about why and this is actually something that's come up. I mean. I've been at the company not as long as you but a long time and every year i bet the company. I think i've heard this suggestion from at least one seller the only time i ever hear it from a buyer is when they recently lost an item in they said kasha had another chance but that is very rare on the buy side. Traditionally we hear this from sellers and so that's question about popcorn. Bidding it was actually considered martyred eighty six in the past and intesting. Remember we test everything. It was determined that it actually doesn't really result in significant increases in average sold prices and also in testing we discovered that buyers unanimously or almost unanimously. Hated it or did they. They found it confusing and unfair and said that its adoption would result in a decrease in their use of ebay. The upshot of this is that there are no plans to implement this type of popcorn bidding process on ebay and also keep in mind that the end time of any auction is clearly stated for all potential buyers to see exactly we encourage all bidders in an auction format listening to bid their absolute maximum that they are willing to pay to the penny to a penny if a bidder bids their absolute maximum and he or she is subsequently outbid and they complain that they would have submitted one morbid than by definition that buyer. I won't say lied but they lied to themselves because their absolute maximum was not actually their absolute maximum and this is the case. Everyone has plans that they're going to be. I'm only gonna pay one hundred dollars. And i'll say not a penny more not a penny more. It sells for one hundred five and they didn't win it. They say well. I would have paid one hundred and ten and i say well. That's not what you told me earlier. So were you lying to yourselves. And the answer is yes so yeah. Everyone has the same opportunities but their bid before the listing clothes and you should always consider your absolute maximum. I do this. And sometimes i don't win in remember. You can submit that at any time. You can submit the minute. The auction was listed or with one second to go in. You know until the auction ends. There's no way to talk about this without talking about the elephants in the room tools. Yes use tools. Though i do not do i use. And i'm not ashamed because they're perfectly legally z. Snipe because you can put your maximum bid set to go in the last ten to five seconds and that way. I don't have to be around sometimes. That results in me winning the auction. Hey all's fair in lebanon auctions and a lotta times. I don't i'll put in a bid and find out that i was way overbid by several other buyers. So you know you win some you lose them. I still think it's fun. If i lose something i go. Oh gosh darn it's like. I need anything else in this house. I have so much stuff. I'm trying to get rid of so. Yeah it happens both. I'm looking at a whole pile of shirts. That i have to list at some point and brother the hardest thing in the world to list. They are so time consuming. I know they are. Somebody needs to invent a machine where you put the shirt in in a does everything. It measures in. Iran's it it photographs. It wraps it and then it spits it out with a data sheet right on the shirt. You've got this is a piece of cake. Individual pieces of clothing are really really time consuming..
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"Were super that well. That kind of makes that but i got over it because you know what i sell coffee mugs for twenty thirty forty fifty dollars. There's actually what i want to share with you because it blew my mind. I have an item numbers that okay. Yeah i would love to hold it up. But i can't own inventory is not that close. No it's not okay. Here's the item number four. Two seven four eight eight zero one three nine nine. You know how long it's been since we've done an item number over the air on a show. I love that. That's my favorite thank. Was this a sold item. This is sold item. It's an anthropology. Which for those of you. That don't know it's a little bird signature. It doesn't say anthropology. Just a little birdie on the bottom. I paid a buck for this. Put it on a asking price of forty nine ninety nine and someone bought it yesterday for forty to forty nine. Because i run a ten percent off sale all the time. Can you believe that's unbelievable. In and there was a for me it would cost thirteen about twelve ninety five ship to. Yeah so somebody paid sixty bucks for this coffee mug business you are but this is just. I just want to point out that these things that you don't think will sell for a lot of money. It's all perceived value the higher priced at the better value as and coffee mugs. I am buying them now to three dollars. I don't care. I go in and clean a thrift store or clean out mistakes but not just any coffee mug. You've got to be super picky. And i wrote an e book on coffee mugs and it's still really a good a good I know this you didn't know that house for coffee. Mugs are going to get the link from you. Put it in the okay. Yeah i want people to know this. It's a very very good tool. I go through all the genres of what you should look for and what you should look for like golf coffee mugs do not sell. Don't even bother with the gulf A teacher coffee mugs the worst. Oh my god you know how many teacher coffee mugs teachers get an chris. Mugs are really tough. Sell to so like the worst mug. You could try to sell a golfing teachers. Christmas mug spa are by just because it was the worst. It's the worst. You want to stay away from golfing mugs. You wanna away from teachers mugs and then some of the mugs you wanna look for anything really unusual military places you know. The muppets also disney disney. I mean you can get like twenty bucks for those but starbucks starbucks is completely overrated. But what you're really looking for something super unique and unusual and that person that had that coffee mug and they break it. Oh they'll pay fifty bucks to replace it our favorite mug. It's a huge huge part of my business. I think i have about two thousand coffee mugs listed on ebay right now. They're easy to store. They're easy to pack and ship are easy to find. Apparently did not after this podcast. Watch those suddenly disappear off the shelves. There's always there's always coffee. There's always people drinking coffee and then dying in the mug of and you know what's funny griffis back in my grandma's day with her antique store. It was teacups and saucers own. I remember that that was huge. And we had a whole wall in her store just he cups and saucers and they don't want those anymore when you when you buy dinner set teacups and saucers don't sell but if you get a coffee mug in a popular dinner set. Yeah i remember back in the seventies and eighties the victorian based call it bone china these out as a kid grinding bones. It is odd. isn't it. now it's it's it's too fussy. I think for most people. Don't you think yeah but you know another coffee mug to look for are the fine bone china once very. They're beautiful and those sell quite well and they say bone china. It helps sometimes a picture of a boat on it. do you really think it. Israel should go. Look it up you think. Bone china will lynn. I i hope that the season is gonna be okay for you. I hope you find enough. Help can't again. If you're looking for a job in your the ventura area. Just walk into the shop. And say i'm i'm eager and willing. What are you gonna. Do you want me to do exactly that. Love that over lynn. It's always a pleasure to talk to you invoked. We'll check in with you again after the holiday season and see how it went house that that was great. Now anything that has a link to any of the endeavors that windows and she's got got so much you bet your you have your easing still i do and you have your newsletter and you have the e book on coffee and the link tour ebay store will put all that in a transcript for episode. One fifty five limb. Thanks again and we'll talk to you. Get to you got questions we got answers in. We have three great thorny questions to address this week. And i read the first one on. Knock yourself out brian. Our first question comes from a post on ebay business podcast group on facebook william posted. I was notified by ebay than an item ship to their kentucky. Facility for international shipping had not arrived to the purchaser sent out july twelfth. I checked the tracking ebay automatically puts on the item and saw no information. Besides the tracking number entered. I gave me permission to refund. The purchaser then found out from the post office of the item had indeed arrived in kentucky. I wished to get my money back because ebay is responsible for the refund. Can you tell me how to go about this. Did you answer. William's question on the facebook group where i did basically told him to go to the ebay for business facebook page in post a message to them are. They'll handle this. This is an unusual situation. But you know afterwards. I thought williams post would present an opportunity for us to talk about this particular topic which is global shipping items. Not getting to their destination doesn't happen the time but it can happen. These are items go missing and transit like williams which was a temporary situation. Well in his case it was and most shipping delays are in fact if you like williams sellin item that you have shipped to the bay global shipping program we offer for two by its acronym. Gsp and your buyer contacts you to complain or inquire about the shipments whereabouts. The first thing to do is to check the tracking for the that shipment. Which i believe is what william did and if tracking shows that the item was received at the gop warehouse addresses kentucky than informed the buyer that the item is still in transit. And it may be delayed. Ask the buyer to check the tracking the shipment every day. Yeah and if it doesn't show up within a week or so of its scheduled delivery to contact ebay by opening a case for that item. Yeah that's what you let the buyer now and this is important because for global shipping items were tracking shows delivery to.
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"Running on a places to put the stuff though. Yeah you know. Because i do. I use the back There's a backlog tunnel a warehouse in my store and that's where all the ebay stuff is and ripped about sixteen thousand three hundred items now griff and i know and they're all on costco shelves. That was big wire metal shelves back. There we're running out of room because with the new fee structure and everything. It doesn't pay you. It doesn't make sense to take off hold inventory because it doesn't cost you anything anymore. Which is wonderful. The goal is just to load it up and let it ride and i mean i'm selling stuff that was listed in two thousand fifteen. 'cause there's no inventory carrying cost anymore you know. What kind of reminds me of the old days. A lot of our audience may not know this but years and years ago. Iran ebay backward. We were younger than it used to be. Something called the store format listing. It was a special format where the items only showed up in your store but she got them for free right. Gone back to that now open. It's wonderful it really is because you know. My grandma had an antique store. For fifty. Two years and i said grandma. How often do you turn your inventory. She goes maybe once every fifty years a lifetime but now with ebay set up the way it is. We can't carry inventory for fifty years. It doesn't cost you anything. All it does face and you know i really focusing on smaller things flatware coffee mugs dinner where i don't do really big things on ebay on ebay. Could simon shop you do yet because my stores furniture store. So and what was i thinking. Griff opening a furniture store. I actually have to move furniture. I didn't know that was going to happen. You hire people for that don't you. I do. I have a guy there three days a week but those other days. I'm moving stuff better. Explains the biceps. Good work it is. It's a workout five thousand square feet and we found that pavement and it's hard enough. It's concrete floors. The last time we talked. I looked at zillow and i was looking at the market. This is about a year ago about housing prices in ventura. They'd had a big rise for. Oh griff not just kills me that you brought that up because i finally have a down payment. I'm ready to buy a house. And i was hoping to buy the one i've been renting for the last four years and we thought it was about eight hundred thousand. I just checked zillow today or zillow. Re-sent nine fifty. You're just depressed. May would the reason why i brought it up is because there's a lot of real estate activity going on in the whole county overall but in ventura and i would assume these are people looking for furnishings for their homes. How is that impacting. Your business very good. That's very good. That still wanna buy a house but it is. I mean they go up on the market and there's multiple offers and they're gone so yeah. These people are looking for furniture. They're bringing neither furniture. That doesn't fit anymore. So it's it's a good good thing when we started talking just a few minutes ago about getting ready for the holiday season you said. He started ordering from your vendors in january and february. What are the preparations. Do you have to keep in mind during the year before those twelve months before the holiday shopping season. You've got to think about what that front windows gonna look like and put my trees what kind of ornaments are coming in. What kind of gift are people looking for this year and it is. It's a long term kind of strategy last year. I put up my I'll have beautiful. Christmas trees grew. If i put him up last year in september because i was so over cove it and i was just like i wanna just fast forward through everything and put christmas up. I'm not gonna do that this year. Yeah that's that's a little too much good your herbs up too hi. I'm gonna have a floor month. Christmas season here. Remember the whole greek alphabet Variants that we have to get through. So oh you're so right you're so right it's funny though. We're planning our front window right now. We're going to redo it. We're gonna do a whole beechy theme Because of its right we go to the beach through october. I can't wait to do it tomorrow. We have a huge surf poster from lou crush. It's a surfing movie. I remember the movie is very well. Yes yes we're gonna put that in the front window and we got a whole bunch of beechy staff. It's gonna be neat. Can i get a photo of it when it's done absolutely i'd love to share that. Put it on the of our transcripts or Belatedly put it in this transcript when it comes to Operations you know from past years. What kind of business to expect on ebay. Now you have the consignment shop as well. I know there's some overlap in ebay operations in the simon shop itself. What do you have to prepare for in the next few months when it comes to well supplies help. Oh yeah the help it you know. What the hell is the big big issue this year. It's literally impossible to find anyone that wants to work. And i am seeing that with restaurants and all sorts of businesses. I have ads out right now. I'm trying to hire someone to do my instagram. I'm trying to hire more salespeople going into these next few months and i'm not getting any resumes. Nothing when it comes to some of these jobs like doing your instagram or any social media. Do they have to be in your area. Can they be in another area. Well you know. I've i've considered hiring someone in another area. The problem is if i have to take the pictures might as well list at myself but you know how it is. I mean you can only do so much as one person. I'm trying to list one hundred things a week on ebay. I'm running a store on the buyer for the store. I have fifty vendors. I need to place reorders on. I mean i can't possibly do that. What's the solution you're gonna. You're gonna be crazy if you can't get somebody in their day to this. I am going to be crazy. And you know if you look at lind's consignments my instagram account. I haven't posted since christmas. Podcast offered to do the job for you know seriously and so i did just post something the other day but before. That hadn't done anything since christmas. And that's a huge huge free free marketing tool it. I'm really missing out on. You did have people working. There are the gone or do you have no no. I still have a great team. I still have like six seven. People that work for me. But in kevin's yeah but you know. A lot of them are retired older women. That are just doing this for fun. And honestly my team is women in their fifties. And i sent to everybody go. I need some women or men in their twenties thirties and forties. I can't run a furniture. Store with women in their fifties and some of them are in their sixties and seventies the unit in my mind just a lot of potential. It osha issues with broken hips totally except they're all pretty young ahead fifty. I'll send you a picture it's a. It's a great bunch. But i need some younger. I need some younger blood. Don't we all my daughter. Indiana was gonna work for me a couple of days a week while she goes on additions because she graduated from pepperdine fantastic but pepperdine called offered her a fulltime temporary position to run their box office. Slow i know. She couldn't pass that up. They're paying like really good money. Oh darn kids who think they can just go and leave their mothers high dry. They can't do that so i was counting on her. She's gone so. I really need to look for some some younger help. If you have any ideas let me know where you've got form right now. We wanna put a little message out on the podcasts. Where people can go in maybe apply or show up and say hey. I can do some work for you. It's less consignment in ventura. California nineteen seventy five east main street. Everyone wins when they shop at moons. You did it grip. My nine year old nephew came up without run. It's nice to have nephews. What about post holiday. What your business like after holidays and this is something you have to prepare for. The business on ebay is so good. September october november december january. You know ebay is still so strong through january and my store slows down in january. So what i like to do is really focus on business. Once you've got that momentum going in the store and you're kind of cruising that november december cruising. I am hounding an i am putting a ton of stuff on ebay. I just got back from palm desert with a carful. And i go out there once a month and hit all those great thrift stores. I went to some state sales and mow my ebay. Assistant lives out there. Still so i buy all the stuff. She writes it up. Takes the pictures. I bring all the merchandise back here and it's been working really well. We do this once a month. She gets about two hundred three hundred thanks. She gets you list for me. This lump it just from palm desert. Oh yeah i'm i'm looking for flatware sets looking for dinner where sets. I'm looking for crystal sets. I go deep on coffee mugs and t shirts. I was going to bring this up. It's interesting coffee mugs. They used to be twenty five cents to fifty cents. Now you're going to a thrift store. There two bucks.
eCommerce Badassery
"ebay" Discussed on eCommerce Badassery
"On ebay community dot com and like ciller skin there and chat with other sellers about what's working for you. What's not and sellers might find other friends that way like so many sellers have friends from the ebay community boards and then we have our own little podcast ebay for business podcast which is another way to learn kind of what's going on what's happening in the business. What's new by delhi recommend liking the facebook page. Sorta just stay connected on what's new and what's coming up but hopefully nothing too crazy during holiday. 'cause we wanna let those sellers sell answer those buyers during the crazy times. Yeah well and that's good. And i always tell my listeners. When prepping for q four and going through q. Four is don't make any changes to your website after october. Fifteen like nothing. Cut it off because you just don't know what's going to happen right. Awesome so a couple of last things that i always ask all of my guests because i think a lot of bullshit on the internet about how running online ecommerce businesses is really easy. And it's not so. It's a little bit different from what i usually ask. 'cause you're a platform but are there like common mistake. Sellers may or maybe strategies from the ebay perspective. Like things you try to do for sellers. That just didn't really work out the way you thought it was gonna anything to let people know we all struggle sometimes so true on my gosh. I could not agree with that sentiment more. And that's right like you can have great great huge success. Failure ecommerce spot. It's hard work like it's not easy money. That is for sure but you know if you put him time and effort. There's so much opportunity there. So i'll be totally honest like ebay. We've made plenty of mistakes over the recent years. Even you know and it's always so upsetting because we have the best intentions but sometimes your point like don't change the website after october because sometimes there's unintended consequence that you didn't know the times we often update our category structure and our taxonomy again make sure buyers can find the items example is like what will see sometimes as buyers might search for an item and then the different categories are listed on the left side. We always wanna make sure. Those categories are the most up-to-date the most clear the most recently earlier this year. We did that and it kinda messed up sellers listings a little bit and we felt terrible and we did our best like fix that. Resolve it and again. It was one of those things with like. Oh no we had the best intention. We just find a healthier items get found the metaphor. Sometimes there are some downstream implications that we didn't anticipate so even happens to big businesses. But hopefully we're able to fix half for most of the feller and i really like as an individual seller the things to think about as we said it's pretty easy to get started and i do mean that like it's not a huge overhead. There's not a ton of you have to do. But also i would say don't do nothing so like we already talked about. Those photos are super important. Those items with a vix are super important. Invest the time. If you're gonna list well errol. She really won't know if you successful or not. But i think my biggest probably don't do that would be don't just throw up like one image title in my call a good. Is that really tell you. If you have opportunity on ebay. I would say invest the time to make sure your listings are showing up in the way you want them to the buyers.
eCommerce Badassery
"ebay" Discussed on eCommerce Badassery
"You can possibly get one tiny little. I can add to that is on ebay. We do see that like seventy percent of purchases from surf. Because exactly what you just said jessica at that point. They're ready to buy like they're not just watching a show and happened to see an advertisement. They're actually looking to buy something so we know how important searches and join buyers. That right item at the right time and another thing. I meant to mention this couple minutes ago. But i kind of forgot when i'm setting up my listing because i do remember some of this but i had the option to that i could add even more information to my product listing to help me stand out like on the actual listing itself to so like you can add a subtitle for a little price and you can add additional photos and things like that and do you find that most people do at that stuff or that like the base listing kinda. Gets you where you need to go. Yeah that's such a good question. I think the individual sellers love to add it to like you in your boots reminded me for the past couple years. I've done with like dresses. Rico vid of course. But before tobin if i ever went to an event mike you know a decent amount on like acute dress unfortunately social media i'd be like oh man. Everyone i know has seen me where this dress. So i can't repeat it by got into this habit of reselling addresses on ebay. So i would often say like warren ones at an event and then dry plains and blah you know so then they know and in that sense of its digital item if it's used or there's some specific details to share. I think it's really helpful and buyers like this up but if it's more like to using waffle maker the example but like on a waffle maker if the details on the items of exit the product people know. It's probably not necessary but sometimes depending on if they're using a third party that information will be ported in any way and it certainly can't hurt but it's really the.
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"Out. What.
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"The discount is gonna be. It's gonna be good. But i'm gonna leave some room in here so i can make some money but when the buyer looks at it they don't know what your margins are. All they see is. Hey the more of these. I by the less i have to pay. Oh look it's free shipping now. They were bags so they were. They were lightweight. But you can do this with heavier items as well. I gotta tell you. I sold out quickly because i finally sold a single bag. Every buyer bought at least four five one buyer by twenty. And i'm sure it was because of the volume pricing. That's my advice. Bottom line is tick that shipping in the math out of the equation for the buyer. To the extent that's possible and focus instead on providing purchase discounts on the item. Oh by the way. I should mention ed. You did not provide us with a shipping address. If you're listening to this please send it to us at podcast at ebay dot com so we can send you a mug now. Our next question was sent to podcast at ebay. Dot com by seller suzanne. Do you mind reading this one..
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"Oh let's listen hi. My question is about shipping heavy item. We felt plate and when he fell a plate. The first plate can be very heavy. Because you've got to include the blocks to shipping and packing material if you're firefight second plate it's not double. The weight is normally a lot less than that. So when you try and combine shipping. That's okay we can do it afterwards. But a lot of time. Our customers want to know right away. What they're shipping prices are going to be. They don't wanna have to email us. And say hey. How much is it gonna be after. I combined shipping so i wish ebay would make away who that way we can say. I have ten point five zero one place. The box whisky pound. But if i show an additional second-place added weight waited only one more pound right that way. We can calculator shipping better. I really wish we had that option. Thanks that that's a really good question by griffith. Sounds complicated is there. A solution is complicated. And what you're looking for that feature that you're talking about it doesn't exist today. I think it's highly unlikely that the exact thing that you're looking for is ever going to be a feature on ebay but there are existing features that can help you accomplish what you need to accomplish in. The first is combined shipping. There's a pro to combine shipping. It's pretty easy to set up and let you set it up pretty much the way. Just ask but there is an issue with it. It's global so it applies to all your listings not just to the listings for plates. Might not work for you. I'm gonna put the link to that page in the transcript so you could at least read about the second. Is a promotion called shopping discount. Now this is part of our promotion manager set of tools that you'll find in seller hub under the marketing tab. The specific promotion is called shipping..
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"The link to go by it's harder to measure definitely a challenge but we do end up seeing some results that we can at least About those results for example. Our recent focus on sneakers on luxury watches. The success of these has depended in great part to what our marketing strategies and tactics were. Absolutely you know we've just announced for our q. One earnings sneakers had grown by triple digits again for another quarter and that's down to great inventory. Great sellers much improved experience but also getting the message out. We need to tell people that were here. And at that inventory in experience is available in so marketing. Very much part and parcel of that success. And i think it's important to mention here that when there's a buyer outreach for specific focus vertical like sneakers for example we don't just talk to the world at large come and look at sneakers however we actually make that message happen. We alert our sellers. This is what we're doing. You wanna get your inventory ready. Yeah and i think the other thing that's really important is you're hearing us talk a lot about a pretty limited set of vertical sneakers. Watches certified referred. The amazing thing. Is that it's allowing us to get real cut through in different audiences which is great but also what we see is that those buyers don't just by those categories in fact think it's a percent of what sneakers buyers are buying is in other categories. The great news is that we're able to connect with those buyers. Many of them new with a really relevant message introduce ebay get them to convert on a sneakers purchase..
Streams of Income
"ebay" Discussed on Streams of Income
"Ebay shows. You're listening base. Only have so much time. See ryan only gives me like an hour for this. I i would take like nine hours and make you'll a whole bunch of money but ryan. He's chintzy with his time. Yeah vicky just a little boy and a wife and it's like like feed me. Daddy get dressed me daddy. Give some close down. There are always bothering for stuff like does anyone on group do p. o. d. on ebay are there sales for that like fz or amazon merch. There are there are ways to sell e books and all of that you have to go to the classified ad format in order to ship items electronically but yes you can do that. Are you ordering online shipping from home. I do some online arbitrage. They're the most advanced. The most complete online arbitrage for ebay webinar ever recorded in the history of the universe is in this group and so yes i do online arbitrage. I prefer the incredibly high return on investments that you get by buying items in person. The last question of michael. I face problems with item specific sticking i will put them in twenty four hours later most if not all the non required or go on any idea why that is occurring If it is a recent thing tried again ebay did a summer seller a spring seller update and they had some items specific problems. That kind of did some of that. If you find this to have been a case for a long time you need to call their customer sport right away because they can fix that or you. Don't call customer support you contact you look through the help screen and then it will find. Contact us whenever we do that. It'll be an option that says either do an online chat or we will call. You always put the we will call. You always talk to a person and they'll fix it says if you do not have something to post that day. Can you update listen instead in that count for the search engine love no. It doesn't a wish it did. That would make it a lot easier but no so always have something to list. Every single day people in our group they came from a retail arbitrage at ground. And that's a real sexy thing you know you go to walmart you get hundred items list cinema. Fbi in it's so nice and with the way we primarily source. We do retail arbitrage. Was show you how to do all of that in this the ebay way but a lot of our stuff comes from used places garage sales yard sales thrift stores estate sales and people who come from retail arbitrage background. Don't they don't like the thought of this. Oh we make it so easy and so everyone in the group was hesitant a year ago. It's like. I don't know that we wanna would tried this. I don't think we want to mess. We don't know anything about used items and it just seems dirty. We don't wanna do it immediately within a mother to run what they raw complainant. We've got too many things. We can't get it all listed. We too many things so it is far better to list one item seven days in a row then list seven items.
Streams of Income
"ebay" Discussed on Streams of Income
"We would love to because we make money every time we send you a buyer and by the way whenever ebay pays 'em up google affiliate to to send a buyer our way google a. M ebay does not take that out of ourselves price. We get the same amount whether our buyer comes from google or whether a buyer just searches zebic. We get the same income. Well okay google says we would love to take every single ebay listing that you have every single day and we will through it. All up on 'em on google shopping as long as the photos are square. And there's a white background the first picture and its high resolution so as long as you're listings. Have those things then we will. We really want to show your items. Most sellers don't get shown on google at the two thousand nineteen ebay opened the largest Seller ebays large seller conference. They had every year vegas. Hopefully they'll have next year. They from the stage said. Google rejects almost everything we send them because photographs and ebay wasn't happy about because very clearly tells you all photos must be higher resin square use. Your cameras wanted one mode. The first picture must have a white beggar. It's all we ask. What else you do and you photos. Just do that. Because google throws away most of the almost okay i show in the ryan i keep referring to rod. I'll tell you about them. A little bit more Twenty percent of all sales a twenty percent of all my traffic comes from google and ebay has a special new report that says how many items you've gotta fix in order to be seen by google and it's it can be huge so if you sell it if you have a thousand items in your ebay inventory you might have nine hundred eighty that google is rejecting and that report will tell you mine has a big fat zero not one item. I ever sell on ebay as rejected by google and twenty percent of my traffic. I know this because ebay shows me report every day. Twenty percent of all my traffic comes from google. Thank you google whenever i if. I'm selling champion juicer. If it's used. And you search google for us champion juicer. My listing will be. There may be number one often number one often if there's no other good sour i'm the only one google shows now. Google will just like ebay. Ebay has to put some people at the top of the search engine that are bad sellers or else they wouldn't have anything to sell and so google will take a few bad celebrates. Google will take a few photographs on white background. But they don't take very many get ebay told us. Google rejects most things we send them. Google wants that money..
Streams of Income
"ebay" Discussed on Streams of Income
"Is to reward the by box with the best the best seller selling whatever. The buyer wants at that moment in time ebay. Your goal ebay skulk is to just put as many good sellers as high as possible in the search engine. That's all ebay search. Engine best constantly millions or billions of times every week or two amazon ebay says where are the items matched his fire search and were the better sellers and we want to put the better sellers at the top. Because are we want our barstow. A good experience ebay tells us this is what they do. It's not a big secret so you wanna do ebay considers good sellers to do so if you've taken your bundle and just copied the title from amazon to ebay and it didn't sell that's because you weren't looking at ebay for good titles for what's in your bundle. Look at the if it's a multi pack look at other selling multiplex at that point. And you're gonna find one interesting thing. No one will. People use the word multi pack. They used the word. Bundle anybody titles. But everyone just about uses lot l. Ot that is ebay. Talk for bengals or for multiple. You'll always see lt. So if you didn't have the word lt. Some buyers know already searched for a lot if you want something on ebay. I think that originated because of this eighty character limit and used to be sixty worker to limit. I think that's why that term law is just it just uses three characters that means the same thing it can mean a multi pack immune bendel of six things. Lot of six the six lot six pack six lot so us lot so you cannot use amazon bendel in expect. Success on ebay even. If there's success on amazon you might get one. You might get a success difficult title but often you have to look at cops to know what works photographs. I will expand on those in a second condition if the items not new you have to be very specific and explicit on your condition. So if it's got three spot if it's up if it's a tommy hilfiger short men shirt in it's got three spots on. It might come out might not. It's claimed you've watched it but you didn't really spot trade show. Those three spots a lot of bars specifics of man now still by shirts. You may have to price it a little love. It's got three spots but that's okay. Tell the buyer. What drunk if you tell. If you're very explicitly condition the buyer will go. There must not be anything else wrong with his shirt because he told me everything they took the picture or two of. What's wrong with it. So i trust the seller. Maybe it's not what i want in a trust that our. Maybe it's exactly what i want if if you're selling shirt. That's got three slots you probably. You'll have to price that a little bit lower brand new tommy hilfiger show me. Let's be honest but buyers will trust that you've said what you want. You've you've said you've described condition. You do not want your buyers to be surprised on the downside them to be surprised on the upside. I want every buyer to get something ago. Wow i mean. They took he took photographs but his condition was was accurate. But i kind of expected it to be worse than i always want things to be better when they receive it. And that's why. I'm very explicit with condition ebay right explicit conditions. Us room here. The more and i'm telling you the more you tell the more you sell their stuff to say about the conditions. Tell the condition so do it. You make more money you'll get fewer returns when buyers surprised you don't get returned..
Streams of Income
"ebay" Discussed on Streams of Income
"I'm about to teach you everything that i'm about to say as fact it's science. It's not opinion on how to do ebay ebay. It's pretty simple. Start doing what i say. And you start dominating ebay that's just the facts are webinar tonight. Ryan i would like to directed two groups those who have sold some on ebay before but never really got off into a very much. They had enough success to continue selling their or they did not really. They're just it just kind of was more of a hobby and they've they sell once in a while and that's good and i also want to address people who are currently resellers on other platforms. Obviously amazon is the primary one. Walmart is another one other such as facebook marketplace macari all of those places if you sell successfully on posh mark. I'm going to tell you how to sell successfully on ebay in how to bolt your ebay business onto your posh mark clothing business or how. 'bout your ebay business onto your sba business or whatever much had to do it successfully not just gonna show you how to may have sold just about everywhere including amazon fbi for about three and a half years. Amazon merchant fulfilled. I sold for about seven years. Their books primarily a macari facebook marketplace craigslist. Back when it was more of a thing and so forth. And for me ryan my pleasure my personal fulfillment and the financial achievement is dramatically. Easier on ebay. The profit margins are by by far less than the profit. Margins are by far more than the on amazon and buyers on ebay enjoy the community feel that ebay portrays. And isn't that kind of funny though. I mean buyers on amazon. They're buying from that. You know huge. Jeff bezos corporation. And most of the time. They're just fine from resellers. Like you made amazon's just facilitating that thing. But they feel like there's more of a unity more of a one on one field with ebay and ebay sort of got away from that about two thousand twelve and they've spent about five years getting back to it because that seems to make ebay success so people differentiate ebay on a one to one type of. They're dealing with families. They've they've you most odd most items as being sold and that's one of the differentiations and it's my preferred way to make money ebay by far is my preferred way to make money and money. Ryan money's been a motivator for me ever since my great grandfather told me he one time said greg. It's worth spending money on good speakers and ever since i've come to realize that was some sound advice..
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"Booker all my life. The young dow is just been a real creative outlet for me and we love it. We really love. We have rebranded the company. We've got new logos new packaging new slogans new banners everything. However you changed this business since you purchased. What are the things that you have to do to make this business grow. The designs needed some updating and the logo definitely needed a new face left. I worked with a company that that does all that we took the website and completely revised and revamped the website. It is a big commerce store. All of the the backbones was set up but we had to set up all of the shipping software all of our tax sales tax software all kinds of different back in softwares and. I'm sorry. John's got to stop out just for a second week. Got delivery coming in the door. I'm gonna keep this in because that makes it interesting. He casts i now right so there was a lot of the back end technology involved with connecting and getting all of this company up to where we needed it to be. We have a formal inventory system so at any given time a every morning we come in. We print picking tickets. And we'd take those tickets and our inventory is setup on racks and shelves. We can look at orders until exactly where anything is at any second. Tell you how many we have of something and as we sell on one platform this inventory system either documents all the other platforms immediately. That's new company. Had to have all of that said happen integrated with that. There's a lot of initial work. It is it was a lot a lot a lot and we had just thompson. tops tops. A physical inventory that the previous owner had not package tad not done anything with so. We're still have some of that. We're not done. We took all of the existing inventory which was thousands and thousands and thousands of products with because we have a new logo we had to get new packaging and so we're still in the process if we packing but we do plan next year to start. Going to trade shows ourselves as a supplier this time not a buyer which is a new and so we have a whole youth setup with like twenty tables and grids all of that that we will be displaying all of our products going forward next year after covet. How is the business going to be run back at home. If you were out on the road well sheri- cousin can totally run the business herself. She did that when we took our six week. Road trip many years ago. She ran the business herself and does a fantastic job. Her name is alice by the way. I know she's going to be listening to this. Yes sorry was we didn't give you a name and i we're glad you're part of the organization else. Yes we are to do what we do without her for sure. Yeah she does all of our packing and shipping and she knows how to pull up the sites and luck in different things and answer customer questions in that kind of things and even if we're on the road you know we're we're never far away because we have our phones with us in all of that so we we stay connected wherever we are and that's the beauty of e commerce. We can answer customer questions from anywhere you can get right into the business just on your phone. Yeah absolutely you mentioned do inventory software before i'm curious is it a available. Software was something that was custom made for you. Now it's aschenbach s. k u vault ski fault. I'm going to look that up into. I'll put the link to it in our episode. Transcript along with the links to your three stores. So that if someone's interested in this is not an endorsement from mayan. But i'm assuming it would be endorsement from your end right you guys like it. You continue to use it. We love it absolutely. Love it integrates so well with with all the platforms is fantastic before we started using we had everything on a spreadsheet every single sale john would take that sale find the item on the spreadsheet reduced the quantity the quantity sold. And then from that point. You'd have to go to each platform and move the quantity so we couldn't do what we do without this enjoy system none. I know there's lots of out there. This particular one is over louisville kentucky and we went over to their office and talked with people and we visited with another company that used it in saw in progress at their warehouse before we ever signed up with it and there are many different. I think one that most ebay sellers no would be channel adviser but there are many different inventory management systems. I've never heard of skew vault. I'm going to have to check it out next year. You're going to branch out to being a supplier yourself. One other growth plans do you have. We already are a supplier with a prickly pear. Are we have wholesale customers in that. Kinda gives us a little different perspective to from their point of view. We protect our suppliers. And we don't compete against them. As far as price goes but as far as growth goes. I was talking with john this morning. And you had mentioned you know mentioning one of our challenges that i think at this stage of our life. We probably have a five year plan. Maybe not quite five years. That i think that at this time we are kind of trying to downsize and trying to figure out how to sell a company on retirement. We do absolutely second retirement. Yes second wave already had a thirty year career behind us. And we've had our company we've been incorporated ourselves since two thousand five so we've been abuses five sells for sixteen years that makes sense to be thinking about the future that way but i do have a question. If you're thinking about retirement and selling the business what are your plans to do with your days after. You're not running company anymore. Well i my plan. Our plan is to continue with the parasite and to close the other sides of our business. And do it in a down stepping that way. Our daughter-in-law wants to continue on with prickly pear. When we're finished with it so training her and bring her up to speed. And then at some point in time i would love to do another coast to coast and border to border. And come see you graph. It's a deal. I'll five states in this vast country. That i have not visited yet and i wanna get to him before before the incomes will. What are those five states. Washington oregon idaho montana. North dakota and south dakota will they all have amazingly beautiful things to see there so i think you'll be in for a treat believe so. We saw so much when we did the other cross country. That was just amazing. I would like to those five. Of course. I didn't mention why we'll never get to hawaii. It's just a long flight for for both of us In the health conditions that were in. Well there's always a boat but that's your sharon won't row very well if i'm motivator in her that a supply stamps there may be not so given the amount of experience you have. What would be your word of advice to a seller who's considering specific seller. They may be selling on ebay other platforms and they're considering an expansion of their business.
eBay for Business
"ebay" Discussed on eBay for Business
"This week on the ebay for business. Podcast i guess i would just say. Make sure that everybody in your life is is kind of behind you and supporting you and that you sell something that you love because in the end if you have inventory leftover like i do i've got thousands of stamps and things. I'm a stamper. And i love to stamp so once i retire and what doesn't sell to someone else. I'll be able to use it myself. I'm rebecca i'm griffin. This is the ebay for business podcast. You're weekly source and the information check inspiration check. You need to start and run a business on the world's most powerful marketplace this is episode one forty three. Welcome back to the desk rebecca. I am delighted to be here. Graph how are you. I'm okay. I'm okay as you know. We should talk a little bit about why we're going to say in a moment. There's no news this week. And what is the reason for that. Because i'm here. Where recording all of the episodes that. You're gonna listen to in june in the last week of may and because of that. We have no idea what the news will be what week to week. But there is a way for you to stay on top of it and that's to check out the seller news announcement board every morning of every day of every week so that you stay on top of any breaking news that ebay releases and we'll put the link to that in the show notes no news but we have a lot to talk about today. Anyway don't graph yes. It's true this week. We're gonna continue with part two of our solar best listing practices and then we'll meet with to ebay sellers that i've known for a long time sharon and john where they're based in kentucky. We're gonna learn how their businesses evolved over the last ten years from a very small sort of ebay business to wear now. They have two warehouses and then of course. I'll be back to help. Answer this week seller question. Why don't we start with part. Two of some of the best seller best listing practices and tips back in episode. One forty one. We read a bunch of the best of the best of the submissions for the sweepstakes on facebook in we were hosting the answers to the question. What are your best listing practices and we had quite a few of them rebecca. Thanks for coming back to help with the rest on this list. We have some great hints here and so let's go with part. Two of all of the best answers are favorite answers that we've selected real alternate reading each one. Shall i start this time by all means grab so the first of the posts that were selected as by cindy and cindy said i have learned a lot about all the important aspects of listing on ebay over the years good titles accurate descriptions and really photographs member. That was a big part of the tips last month. These are all the key to standing out in a crowd. In addition to all these things. I found that excellence in. Customer service makes a seller standout from the rest honesty integrity and communication or key attracting buyers that i have refined my business practices to reflect those values. Every interaction is a chance to win or lose a buyer and so thinking about every conversation that you have the buyer every action that you take a moment to build your business bit by bit. A lisa says i have several best practices for our listings. They need to be good. Quality photos with distractions. Even the fold of the light he goes on to say using therapy to check out listing titles to get the best results and competitive price and then listing and sending offers daily depends on the workload. I may list three items today and send offers at least twice daily morning and afternoon. Rarely do i work evenings. When do i send offers out than to. Wow she's a busy little be is but you know when we heard this last time to consistency and being active in your listings. Sounds like that's really a winning combination when you think about it. If you have a brick and mortar store you have to show up every day. It can't just decide. I'm going to open it today. And i'm knockin open it tomorrow. It's the same way with selling on ebay. And you probably have to rearrange your items in Restock so even though it's digitally still have to do the same thing. Our next one is the sweepstake winner and i would remind you that the winners are picked by random so all of the posts are put into a box and then somebody picks out. The one by random in linda was the one who won. Linda says lots of good photos again. That's such a common theme detailed description. With all damage listed boy that's important best offers accepted and enlisted. Forget it she says. Auctions are rare for me. She's one of those by it now. People. that's what they like. Interesting all damage listed. I mean i think the story there. The headline there is no surprises. Kind kind of goes back to the customer service piece of it. You want to know that buyers know exactly what they're getting. There's a common theme. I'm sure you picked up on. Which is the the idea of great photos. Not only should they be clear and they should be focused and they should show just the item. You wanna make sure. And i still see people doing this. That your photos are big. And when i say big i mean you know in megabytes or file size because a lot. There's a lot of sellers who think well this film and a camera. And i don't wanna waste it so i had to keep my pictures smaller so i don't waste megabytes. Well that was true for film but it's not true for digital files and in fact there is a although there is a limit a maximum to how big your images could be. It's gonna be really hard to to meet that so the bigger your photo is the better. Our next hint comes from atlanta. And she's got a lot to say here we go. There are many things that make listening person look at it from the perspective of a buyer. I'd lump that if you have a hard time doing so have someone else take a look. Now there's a hint. Have someone else review your listings. Love that it's called proofreading. Everyone needs an editor number one heidel size style. Brand color keywords. You're not include symbols only capitalize the first letter of words. Don't use acronyms. Like n w t which stands for new tax number to make sure specific fields are filled. The only feel that should have does not apply is. Upc all other recommended specifics. That you can't fill out should be left blank. Thank you an a. because people aren't searching for an a in may reduce search results. This is someone who's been listening to the podcast grip. Thank you alanna number. Three photos should be clear and from every angle front back hag cz are also top bottom side to side absolutely number four. Go out your description especially for preowned condition. A buyer wants to know you look at it for flaws make sure to take a corresponding photo for any law and note the photo after the flawed corruption includes size material condition etc in the description. It's easier for a buyer to check and see your description than it is to see the specifics. So don't rely on the specifics to be their source of information for your product. What great advice from atlanta to other sellers. And i can't disagree with word that she said it's also important. Yeah anything atlanta's is the type of person who should consider being selling tutor. Absolutely our next tip is from. Cynthia and cynthia says i work during the week. And i find it hard to take photos list while two jobs. So i do a big photo shoot on the weekend and during the week i list five to eight items a day depending on my work schedule i can do one here one there and they add up each week consistency in your work habits. What's gonna make your business more successful and it makes you more efficient as a seller as well. Roughly says i sell mostly vintage and antique. So include everything in my listing that i look for an auction listings multiple clear photos. No distracting background a size reference. No unnecessary words in the title also free returns for any reason instills confidence and then include as many items specifics as you possibly can use promoted listings include pertinent correct details without overwhelming. Mobile devices would unnecessary information. That's a good one. Yes so many buyers are in mobile now and also make sure that quality items but disclose even the tiniest flaw and list daily to get the algorithms. Them's working for you if you can manage to even be one dollar less than your competitors and or offer interesting and rare items. You have an advantage. You're listening may take a few minutes extra. But i found it's more about quality than quantity and most importantly a hidden spot in your inventory room for your most trusted fifteen year old assistant to take a break oil. I'm glad she's utilizing the children. I mean.
Newsradio 1200 WOAI
"ebay" Discussed on Newsradio 1200 WOAI
"How are you? Oh, say that. No, that's okay. That's fine. I'm okay. I'm really I'm so blessed to be here. I'm happy. Everybody's healthy. And how are you, Claudia? It's okay doing great in my question. First, I have to say I just looked looked how over the years like the listening to you for years and years and years and you have helped so many people and I just really admire that. And I love that about your show. In helping them to get the products they need. And so right now, my question is that I was moving and I found this iPod touch that my husband had gotten, like so many years ago. We never opened it And I thought, Oh, this might be worth a lot of money because it's so old and never been opened. But how Well do you think it is? How well do you think it is? Um, my daughter looked at the thing looked at this code, and she said, it's like seven years old, So it's not as old as I thought, and it does have that It doesn't have a really wide Hug, but it has a smaller one. But still I mean, they've updated since then, I thought Oh, and it has a speaker port. You're so cute. It's like they don't have. The big part has a little one and has a spear. It is in the box, and I'm hoping that Like a new old iPod. Here's what you're hoping Claudia that an old I but classic that sells for $90,000. You're holding in your hot little hand right now. Oh, yeah, I would not be on what would be awesome. Um, s o. Your daughter actually went on to the apple website and because they have Ah, pilot just typing in making you type in the number and touch you what The model is Yeah, all of that off, You know, So So the best way to figure out if you are sitting on a gold mine, uh, like, for example, and iPod shuffle. If it's still in the boxes, where is like $1000? On never opened. Second generation iPod is about $20,000. You know, you may be sitting on something That's where is a couple of $100. The fact that it's still on the box and the fact that it hasn't been used and it still is that factory seal is that I would head over to eBay. Type in iPod touch Whatever generation it is. And if you don't have those details, you're going to need that on. I can send you a link. If you want for apple, where you can type in the number. So a guy like you said, your daughter has details, But this way you have all the details. Yeah, And then you can plug that into eBay and just see how much that might be worth to a collector. And if it's you know, if it's worth more than you know, $10,000 I It's not that I would want of finder's fee or I'm just kidding. He said. You know what if it a little referral feet? No, not at all eyes that I would be curious to see how much you're gonna get for it. We could probably look it up here. You know, as we go to the break in between the next hours, but but really, it's just finding the making model the whole process and then Plugging it into eBay to see exactly what that might be worth that you just found that nobody in your house ever used, which is really unusual when you think about it for somebody that haven't Apple products still in the box that was gifted to them. And they just never ever opened it up. Why? I hope that you have just a treasure sitting there, Claudia, I really do. And thank you so much for your call. Coming right back there is that ups phishing scam email. It's ready.