Listen to (or read) my quick 16 minute 3 second interview with
Marijo Jilek
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Click here to learn how you too can earn extra income from the comfort of your own home with Half.com!
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Click here to learn how you too can earn extra income from the comfort of your own home with Half.com!
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Call Transcript James Jones: First off, what made you start selling on Half.com? Marijo Jilek: It’s not like I knew anything about Half.com, I was trying to sell some things on eBay and it was not working well to say the least. I was really aggravated, I remember it was a winter in February in Wisconsin and I was up late that night and looking at my sales and nothing was happening and I was just really aggravated and I went to turn off – or get out of eBay basically and as I went to push the button I – they had those links all on the left hand side and I saw Half.com and I went “What the heck is that?” and I just hit it. And then I’m looking at it going “Okay this is something like Amazon” and I thought “Well I may as well just try this” and I put in 100 books that night and it took me maybe about – I’d say two hours, I just sat there and played with it and when I went to turn off my computer, I saw I had all these e-mails, these messages in my inbox and I looked and they were sales and I’m like “All this time I have been trying to sell on eBay and I do this for a little while and there’s the money.” It just was – James Jones: Wow. Marijo Jilek: Just ludicrous, that’s all. James Jones: Yeah that kind of surprised me too when I was selling this Benny Hill DVD set – Marijo Jilek: Mm-hmm. James Jones: That they were – there were so many of them on Amazon that were listed at a penny I think – Marijo Jilek: Right. James Jones: So you know there’s too much competition there, I can’t believe that it actually sold and I got the full price that I asked for on Half.com. When I bought this thing – I didn’t do any research ahead of time, I figured that it would be worth something, it was Benny Hill’s DVD set or something – Marijo Jilek: Sure. James Jones: So when I got home and looked it up, they weren’t selling on eBay and they weren’t selling on Amazon and so I thought about “Well I wonder Half.com” so I went on there and listed it on there and it’s been oh probably about a week it sold. So that was pretty cool. Marijo Jilek: It’s great, I know – somebody that was doing some techie work for me, she said “I finally read your e-book and I actually put it on there” and she said “I put it on last night before I went to bed and I had this sale this morning” it was like $4.00 or something. She says “It’s no big whoops but hey I sold,” and I’m like “Yeah, that’s what it’s about.” James Jones: Yeah and it’s about you know it’s a quantity thing you know, just get enough stuff on there. Marijo Jilek: Exactly that’s – you know and basically if you want to make the big bucks you have to put quantity on but otherwise yeah, you can have just money trickling in but you’re gonna wait a while longer. James Jones: Right. Marijo Jilek: That is the system. James Jones: Pretty amazing that people don’t know about Half.com. Marijo Jilek: They don’t and honestly I didn’t either and I had been selling on eBay for quite some time and I just never looked at it and everybody I’ve talked to since then seeing I was selling I kept telling everyone about it, they never heard of it either. So it’s kind of a well kept secret I guess. James Jones: Yeah. Yep, sure is. Can anyone basically do this, as far as selling on Half.com? Marijo Jilek: They can and as long as they have a computer and they can read, I mean for instance I – as I said, I didn’t have any knowledge of this, I am not a techie person, I’m impaired in that area if anything and my mother I was showing her this and she had some cook books and I actually had her enter them and she’s 80 years old and she did just fine but she only put four items in and wanted to know where the money was because I had gotten money, she didn’t have hers but I told her she’d have to wait. There was a 13 year old boy that had e-mailed me and he said for his summer money he was doing this and whereas in my time I had to get a wagon and pull papers over to the junkyard and/or we collected bottles and he was doing this but he had like Nintendo games and things like that that really sell nice and he was doing quite well for himself. I mean even at $300.00 for the month he was making money. Anybody can do it; I got a letter from a 74-year old man that had said, it was an e-mail and he said that he just loves to treasure hunt, he loves to look around and he had so much stuff in his house as far as books and things that he got my e-book and now he can sell it while he has money to pay for his treasure hunting, so yeah anybody – James Jones: Yeah and that’s what I like to do too, I call it treasure hunting and me and my friends go out and we see who can find the item that sells for the most on – used to be on eBay but now I’m gonna add Half.com to the mix. Marijo Jilek: Good, do it on both. You know it’s like you can do it on eBay, Half.com and Amazon, wherever you can put it and then at least you’ve got more traffic, so. James Jones: One thing I really like about Half.com is, and I like this about Amazon too, but it’s very, very easy to list. Marijo Jilek: Right. James Jones: Because you don’t have to put a description up. Marijo Jilek: It’s nothing. James Jones: Basically you just put the condition of the item, and in my case the item was brand new still in shrink wrap, and that’s it. Marijo Jilek: Right. James Jones: It’s already got the stock photo in there, it’s already got the description in there, it’s really cool. Marijo Jilek: Well that was one of the frustrations with listing on eBay, and there’s nothing wrong with eBay, but it was a lot more work; I had to take the picture and then there had to be the big description and just all these other things. There was the listing fees and deciding what to do and if I wanted to save money or not and here there’s just no costs up front like that, you just go in and they’ve got the picture, whatever condition the book is in is either brand new, good, like new, they want you to pick that but there’s just nothing more to it than that. James Jones: One of the things I noticed was that it was – the commission that Half.com took was a lot less than Amazon takes. Marijo Jilek: Right. James Jones: I think Amazon takes around 30%. Marijo Jilek: They do, it’s a lot more. James Jones: For a small priced item and with eBay, eBay’s gonna be I guess around 20% once you add everything up and Half.com for this particular item was right at 15%. Marijo Jilek: Which is fair, they have to make their money too, they make it as – James Jones: Yeah that is. Marijo Jilek: Easy for you as they can, they collect all the monies, they do everything, deposit it into your account, you literally, this is what amazes me, you literally sit down, you enter the title of the book or the ISBN number, either one works and then there are the little boxes, you look what everybody else is selling for, decide what you want to do and you either put it low or you put it high, you enter it and you’re done and there’s nothing more to do with that as far as the work involved, you wait for an e-mail to come. Yes you need to check on it every once in a while, you know competitor prices to see if somebody went lower than you and you really want to sell it so you want to be lower. But that’s all how you want to play it. But yeah, there’s nothing more to it, you just wait and then all of a sudden you open your e-mail the next morning and while you were sleeping there’s the money and its – James Jones: And Marijo you – you know on your sales letter it says that you made $4,000.00 your first month. Marijo Jilek: Right. James Jones: Now, what do you think is realistic for an average person just starting doing this? Marijo Jilek: Realistic, I mean I did do that and it worked for me. Is that realistic or is that something that everybody’s going to do? I can’t say that that’s going to happen for them but all I know is it did for me and it made me excited enough to want to talk about this. I would say now honestly after – it’s been two and a half years, what I’m making now, and I’m not doing much with it, it’s a stream of income for me but I have gone into other areas after this time and I don’t put all my efforts into this like I was at one period and I would say anywhere between – I can make $300.00 a month up to $1,000.00 without touching it; and I’m not going in and checking it and trying to be the lowest price, but I do add product all the time and that’s what makes the difference; I don’t just let it sit and as soon as something sells I see I’ve got 12 sales, I add 12 more things in. On my floor here I’m looking at this, I probably have a good 70 items that I just collected all the time, while I’m out and I’m at somebody’s house I’m like “Hey do you want that?” you know and people – you just gotta ask, it’s not mooching, you just tell them “Hey I sell stuff” and they’re glad to get rid of it. And then they tell somebody else who’s trying to get rid of their stuff; everybody has too much stuff and you just add it in as you sell and on the weekend or whatever, whenever you’ve got time, if you can do it everyday a little bit, that’s what I was doing in the beginning. But for a long time there it was actually over $4,000.00 the first month and because I kept putting those books in religiously every night I was thrilled to get this e-mail in the morning or whenever they were popping in and it really motivated me and then after a couple of months I was probably not doing it as much but I was still making $2,500.00 in a month, that’s nothing to cough at and if it gets down to $500.00 a month I’m happy to receive that, it’s money I didn’t have and I’m not even working much at it. James Jones: Yeah let me ask you, how much, to maintain something like that you know to make say $500.00 to maybe $1,000.00 a month, how much time is involved in that; in listing the stuff, finding the stuff to list and? Marijo Jilek: You know the finding the stuff to list is just no big deal for me; people act like that is the big hard part. Yes, I am a book nut, I had a lot of books but when I realized I had to feed this thing, I had to keep putting product in there, you open your eyes. It’s like getting a new car and then you see your car everywhere that you never saw; suddenly you just see product everywhere. I went into my office and I’m like “Oh these are all these old books we can’t use” but old books on book sites like that are valuable, somebody wants these. And you ask family, you go to Free Cycle, everybody’s got this thing called Free Cycle in their state and you literally sign up for it in your area and you say “I’m looking for books” you get inundated almost with – you could be looking for CD’s, DVD’s, people want to get rid of this but the catch with that is, and I did go to pick up some boxes a couple of times, one person had a bed set that they wanted me to take too, if I was gonna take those boxes, I had to get rid of this box spring and all this and that’s fine but that’s just part of the deal. And in order to be a part of this all they ask back is that you at some point offer something you have that somebody can get from you, whatever it is. James Jones: That’s a great – yeah, that’s a great service. Marijo Jilek: But there’s just a lot of places that you can get it for free and it doesn’t take that much time. I’m not doing it intentionally, like “Okay today I will go out and look for product,” it’s just always on my mind and as far as entering it, it’s like I sit there, I have a laptop, I can watch TV and enter, it’s kind of mindless things, you don’t have to think about it a lot, you look at it and go “Is this new or is this, this is just acceptable right now, there’s a lot of writing in there and highlighting” and people think those won’t sell. Personally, those are some of my favorite books; it’s like you open it and you’re having a conversation with someone else while you’re reading it because you’re looking at all their side notes and what they thought was important. I love it. James Jones: You know what I do when I have a book that’s highlighted like that? In the listing description I will put “Conveniently the former author has conveniently highlighted the important sections for your convenience.” Marijo Jilek: Exactly, I love it, I look for those. And so you can’t boo hoo any book. One thing I was gonna say too, I get a lot of “I don’t want to sell my books,” and I, being a collector of books, I have my library of things I didn’t want to sell either and then I’d go to look at it and it’s like “Wow that book’s going for this, ah geez,” and I came upon this, and I just think this is so important for people to know because if you don’t wanna let go of your book, this is what you do. You go in there and you see what it’s going for, maybe it’s going for $15.00 whatever, and that’s what you would have listed it for; what you do is you list it high, I decided “Well I’m gonna do all of the leg work, I’ll have it all done and there’s this” – there is also a button in Half.com where you can suspend something, you can list it but you’re not ready to sell it and when you are you just unsuspend it. But I went in there and I listed it – if it’s $15.00 I put it for $85.00, I thought “No one’s gonna buy this,” it’s like you don’t really wanna sell your house but if you put an offer up for double or triple the price and somebody really wants your house that bad, I would consider selling it. So I thought if somebody came along and wanted to buy it, fine I’ll just buy another one. You have no idea how many people have done this; I go in and I’m like telling my husband, I’m telling this guy at work that I do a lot of this with, I’m like “Look at this, this thing sold, what person is doing this, are they out of their mind?” And he explained to me its perceived value – James Jones: It is. Marijo Jilek: That they think there’s something more because yours is so much higher. So then you sell it for $85.00, I go in buy one for $5.00 in acceptable or whatever, I’ve got my book and I just made a profit. James Jones: Exactly, that’s a great; I mean that’s like an arbitrage almost – Marijo Jilek: It is. James Jones: You getting them to buy. But you know that stuff like that is things that people are gonna get out of your course that they’re not gonna know about otherwise – Marijo Jilek: Right and I – James Jones: That’s the value that you add is all this experience that you have. Now let me ask you before we finish up here, what is the one bit of advice that you would give someone selling on Half.com? Marijo Jilek: I would tell them they need to put the extra effort in to it. I get packages where I’m kind of disgusted, it’s like they threw it in to a bag and my book is all banged up and they just didn’t bother. It’s like they’re trying to get their money and that’s it and what I do is I put the extra effort in, I like to create things, so this is something that just came natural to me. I would take the book, I wrap it up and I decorate it and I would take in the beginning, you know this isn’t gonna cost you with supplies, if you want to do newspaper or cut up old paper bags. I would take paper bags and wrap it up and I would do literal artwork on it, I’d cut out cats from calendars, again I sit in front of the TV, people are over talking to me, I don’t need to stare at them, I can cut and do things; actually they start helping you. And then you’re just talking doing that but I was decorating these books and then I sent them out like that and I can’t tell you how many e-mails I got back and return customers because they love the way I decorate it and someone said “I can’t believe it, I opened it up and it’s like receiving a gift.” And I swear, I probably have over 100 e-mails that comment on the gift quality and someone, I mean you get to see these – the people out there and someone wrote and said “When I opened it and I saw what you had done it made me smile and I hadn’t smiled in so long.” I mean it makes me emotional every time I think about that, that you are reaching out and you are touching people with your item and you think it doesn’t mean anything, you’re just making $4.00; it means a lot to whoever’s getting it. Somebody can aggravate me or when I open it and I go “Wow, is that cool, they bothered to do this,” and you get the feedback and the e-mails because of it and they come back to you. James Jones: That’s great, you know I just want to tell everybody to order Marijo’s package all you have to do – there’s a link at the bottom of this page, just click on that go to her website and you can read all about it. And I want to thank you for allowing me to interview you about this Marijo, it’s very good information here. Marijo Jilek: I hope everybody gets it and they make a lot of money because I know it works, this isn’t – James Jones: It does work. Marijo Jilek: Yeah it really does, so – James Jones: Yeah I listed literally one product on there and it sold in a week’s time and it was you know – Marijo Jilek: It’s fun to do and I also have on there – if you have any questions you can e-mail me, I love answering the questions, so. James Jones: Okay great, thank you very much – Marijo Jilek: You’re welcome. James Jones: And I’ll talk to you later. Marijo Jilek: Alright, bye. James Jones: Goodbye.
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