A major milestone was made today… a working demo exists of the product.    Let me know if you want to be a tester.

There were many obstacles to over come.   During the next week will be providing source code samples, which I think will help many people start writing their own programs.

Here are some of the things I had to do:

• Make an eBay API call via an HTTPS POST.
• Hook into the Messages menu items.
• Get the raw text of the email message.
• Embed a web browser in the app to walk through the Auth process.
• Make an Icon

I’m sure there will be other areas to explain too.

It looks like we are on schedule though to have the real deal ready by the end of April 2010.

Now that I have the demo version on my phone, there are already many ideas of features to add.     For now though, being able to quickly answer a buyers question directly from the phone, without having to navigate through eBay website, is a big time saver.

You have to setup a web server on your local computer.   Then change the content.xml to load index.html from http://localhost/index.html.

So not all of the pages need to be packaged and deployed… they can be loaded externally.   This lets you quickly modify and test without having to waste time with all the steps.

Next is to setup a better development process and then to test out making some eBay API calls.

I then made a simple Hello World using RIM’s “WidgetTutorial_How-to-set-up-Eclipse-with-Widget-Packager.pdf” documentation.   It was very easy to follow.

Here is the application installed on my real phone.  When it runs it tells me denied because it is not signed.   It was still neat to see the icon show up though.

Here it is running in the simulator.

A widget is pretty much just a set of HTML, JavaScript, and Images that you package up and send to the phone to run. This lets the person use the software without having a live Internet connection. It pretty much the same as building a web site, but since all of the pages are on the phone they load really fast.

They have java classes you can access via the client side scripts to get at the phones features.

There is a BlackBerry Widget SDK which gives you a simulator to test your program without sending it to a real phone.

To make it work on a real phone, the package needs to be signed… which involves paying BlackBerry $20 to get setup.

The next step is to apply for code signing (the $20) and put together a simple Hello World.

For the My Messages app, it should be pretty straight forward to call the eBay API from within the client JavaScript to post the message.

I’m also thinking I should be able to parse the eBay User ID and Transaction from the email message ebay sends to your SMTP mail, which will be received by the phone.

The work flow would be something like…

1. Buyer sends a message to the seller.
2. eBay sends a copy of the message to the seller’s gmail account.
3. Gmail pushes the message to the BlackBerry phone.
4. Seller opens the message on the phone in the normal messages view.
5. While viewing the message, Seller selects Menu/Reply via eBay.
6. Phone slides over to the My Messages/Compose a Message view and the buyers userid is automatically populated.
7. Seller types in the message and presses Menu/Send.
8. Phone displays a Processing images while the post is being made and then Message Sent when completed.

I think it will be very similar to the Facebook app.

Your opinion on the work flow is appreciated.

You have to be careful about pushing too much information to the phone.

Don’t rely on the user to initiate the request for data. Instead, push it to the phone as it become available and only push as much as you need to.

For our My Messages for BlackBerry, we won’t want a “Download New Messages” button. Instead, new message should be pushed when available.

I’ll probably need to setup a server that manages when to push the items to the phone. It’s an added layer of complexity, and an ongoing expense to maintain. That might need to be a premium service.

Maybe for now I just focus on Sending a message through eBay My Messages and let the user get notified via their normal email account.

I just signed up for the developer program, which is free.

If I find this is too difficult I need to come up with a plan B… maybe just switch back to a desktop program, Android, iPhone, or Windows Mobile.

This will allow us to develop a program we can give to users for free and still be able to cover the cost of developing and maintaining the the software.

I have found there to be many alternatives.

AdBrite seems to work well. You do need to supply either your SSN, or Tax ID when enrolling. I used my Tax ID.

You can immediately start creating banners, but after placing them on my website I found a message that says it takes about 3 hours. I will see if it is working in the morning.

Keep following me as I continue to walk you through step by step the process of earning money through software development.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w-CHBqAUec

I want to make an easy way to reply to a buyer’s question via eBay My Messages via the BlackBerry.

The goal is to help people to write there own apps so we can see lots of cool development happening for the eBay platform.

Please send me your ideas for what type of app we should create.

Yeah I know… don’t drive and video blog… I’m a risk taker though and driven to take action immediately. It’s actually much easier than it looks.

Have fun all!

At first I thought this was just another boring Instant Messenger app that consolidates all of the IM services into one.  But then I noticed they have a version for PC, Mac, iPhone, Windows Mobile and realized it was a bit different than the others.

I tried Palringo for a couple days and soon realized how powerful it is and now I use it as my primary IM tool.

Here is what I love about it:

• Facebook chat on my phone
• GPS location of my friends
• Push to Talk
• Photos

Maybe you are helping someone sell on eBay and they are stuck trying to post a new listing?

Remote Assistance is term used for a tool you use to view or take control of a person’s computer without having to drive over there. 

I’ve found two pretty good ways to provide remote assistance.

1. SkyFex.com
2. GotoAssistExpress.com

SkyFex.com
You can use this tool for free for a short period of time.  If you are using it with a customer, you might want to pay the monthly fee for unlimited sessions, I did and it was well worth it.

With SkyFex, you tell the user to visit their website and click the Get Assistance button and then read you the 6 digit connection code.   You plug that number in on you side and bingo you can see their computer and control their mouse.

Pros:  Free, quick and easy.
Cons:  Requires Internet Explorer, which means Windows only.

GotoAssistExpress.com
There is a free trial of this tool available and after that you have to pay for the service.

There are two ways to make the connection.

• Tell the person to go to FastSupport.com using any web browser and you give them a 9 digit code.
• Send the person a URL that contains the 9 digit code. 

I’ve used both methods and they are both a very smooth processes.

The computer needs to have Java installed, which is usually not a problem.

Pros:  Windows and Mac, using any web browser
Cons:  $69.95 per month

Conclusion
If you don’t have a budget for providing remote assistance, just use SkyFex.com.   If your session ends too soon, just start up a new session.   However, if you need a professional setup, then pay the money for GotoAssistExpress.

People start to follow you, for what seems to be only in hope you will follow them in return.  Then as you start to follow more people, you realize that most of the tweets are just half sentence blurbs of nothing with links to website you care nothing about.   It quickly all becomes a bunch of noise with little way to control the content you are seeing.

Then Facebook
Then started using Facebook.   In this place it’s all about Friends and Family keeping in touch with each other.   People’s photos, videos, stories, and what they are doing is all right there in one place.  No more bringing up external blogs to view the content.  And it all popped onto my screen instantly as it was posted by my friends.

I found Facebook hard to use at first and took many days to realize there was toolbar at the bottom of the window.   It tries to be more of an application than just a web site.

Then Facebook changed.   The instant live data disappeared and some how I don’t see what people posted unless someone comments on it.   It started to become more of a task to keep up with friends instead of it all being right there in front of me.

Back to Twitter
So I thought I would give Twitter another go… and less than a day into it I run into all of the reasons I left it, and more.   The number of links in posts are completely insane now.  What to get a virus? Just start clicking on random links that people you hardly know send you.  Twitter is evil.

Plus, it just is not a place to post any type of content or to have a conversation.  If you have something to say, you can’t because of the tiny limit on the number of letters you can type.  So you either have to go post it elsewhere and then link to it, or break each sentence into a separate tweets.   Lame.

Facebook Wins
Content is king and Facebook has it.   I’ll still use Twitter here and there to send out news, but I don’t see it as a productive way to keep up with friends or to build new friendships.   I recommend using Facebook and staying clear of Twitter.

EJ Bantz’s Profile | Create Your Badge

In this video I demonstrate how to use Picnik to crop the photo.

I’m testing another tool for making blogging easier.

This time the tool is Windows Live Writer.

It is a desktop application that lets me make posts to WordPress blogs (and many other blogging services) without having to go directly to those websites to post them.

Here is a test to insert a photo to see where it actually uploads it to.  It is the network crimper that I sell on eBay.

It looks very powerful and I recommend this tool.  It is my new favorite blog posting utility.

Have fun!

I love how it brings everything together into one place.

I can see all my Facebook friends, Twitter followers, YouTube videos, and Picasa photos all right here.

This post was actually created using Flock.  I dragged a photo from my desktop into the post and it automatically uploaded it to my Picasa account to then be shown in the posting.   That is a big time saver instead up manually uploading it inside of Wordpress.

Flock web browser is built using Firefox.  So if you like Firefox, and you use websites like Facebook and Picasa, and you blog, then I think you are going to love Flock.

Thank you everyone for your support in bringing this application to life.

Have fun!

Power Sellers get a discount on their final value fees if they meet certain DSR levels.  At 4.9 DSRs we receive a 20% discount.    When we offer Free Shipping on the listing, eBay doubles the discount to 40%.

In the Video Game category, the final value is 15% of the selling price.   So the the 40% is a nice added bonus every month.

Here is a link to the details. http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200812.shtml#2008-12-18120046

You can reuse the thumbnail that is in your Facebook account because it will be small enough to meet the 80×80 and 6 KB requirements of the phpbb system.

Have fun!

For eBay sellers, you can use this to create nice looking photos of your item you are selling.

You can also use it to make a picture that contains just text.

Grab special attention in your listing
For example, if you are offering a free gift with the purchase, you can make an image with pretty text that says Free Gift.

Avoid Listing Violations
You’re not allow to mention other products that you sell in the description of your listing because it affects search engines that bring buyers to your product.  However, you can put the text inside of an image and add that to your description.

This video show you how to create a photo of a specific size, using Microsoft Paint, and then put text on it using Picnik.

When you send a refund, PayPal gives back the fees they took from the dollar amount of the refund.

In addition, they buyer will not have to pay any fees to receive the refund.

You can only refund the amount that was paid to you.  For example, if the buyer sent you $50.00, you cannot refund $75.00.  You would have to first refund the $50.00 and then send them a payment for the remaining $25.00, of which the buyer my have to pay fees on if they have an upgraded PayPal account.

The two points I remember most were:

1. Use a simple format when reading your description.  Use a short paragraph at the top followed by a bullet items for the product features.  By the way, this is also the format that Amazon uses in their product descriptions.
2. Use graphic images of text for tag lines in the description.  For example, instead of just typing includes a free carry bag, make an image that contains the text in a large font.  This will draw special attention and increase the chance they will actually read it.

She has other fantastic tips and all of the information in the interview and is well worth the time to listen to.

Now I need to take action on this advice and update some of my listings.

Uploading is quick.   The link to upload is right on the home page.  You do not even need to login first or create an account.

Once the file is uploaded to their server, a unique URL is assigned, and the file can then be downloaded 10 times.

If you create a user account on their site, the file can be downloaded more than 10 times.

Normally, I would just send a file using Windows Live Messenger.  However, I’ve recently switch to using Google Talk or Facebook for instant messaging and no longer have user to user file transfers readily available.

• Random searches for completed items on eBay to see what people are buying.
• Looking at the feedback of people that have already purchased from me to see what else they are buying.
• Using Terapeak to find auctions that end above a certain dollar amount and have a certain number of bids.

I try to find products that many people are buying, but not a lot of sellers are selling.  Also, if the few sellers that are offering the product have terrible listings, then that is also a good product to investigate.

The next step is to find a supplier.   I use Alibaba and I also ask my existing suppliers if they know someone that sells the product. I prefer to purchase products directly from the factory.   Then I can define my own requirements for the product and possible have it branded with my own name.    You should order 1 sample and try to sell it just to confirm it is what the buyer wants and the product is correct.  Have it shipped by EMS, UPS, FedEx, or TNT.  If that works well, then order maybe 10, or an even case full, and continue selling it.  If that works, then get a 3 month supply and ship it via Air and contact a local customs broker to clear them through customs.  I can help you find a broker once you get to that point.

Finding a source is usually more time consuming than getting the product idea.   It usually involves staying up late at night chatting with the suppliers, or sending emails back and forth for about a week.  I recommend using online chat when finding a supplier.  It helps to build a good relationship and there is less misunderstand than using email.

I’ve had many products idea that I just could not find a supplier for.  And I’ve had even more product where the price the supplier offers is just not enough to make good money.

Ah yes, the other thing is that you need to decide a head of time your requirements for profit margins.

Set both a minimum dollar you need to profit per item, and a minimum percentage profit per item (after all direct expenses including packing material to ship the item).   This is important to do because when you start sourcing the sales people will put the pressure on you to buy.  You might start to get emotionally invested into selling a product before you find a source and might be tempted to buy it even though the numbers don’t add up.

It is very easy to find products to buy for $1.00 and profit $1.00.  That would give you a 100% return on your money, but is only a $1.00 profit per item and that might end up being too time consuming than it is worth.   It can also be tempting to buy something for $100 and profit $10, but that is only a 10% return.  You end up risking too much money to profit very little.

I usually target product were I can get a 100% profit margin with at least $5 per product.

That is basically my core strategy for buying and selling on eBay.

Let me know how I can help you.

http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/download/

So far I am very impressed.

Scrolling down on a page is very fast and easy.  You just give the page a push with your finger like you do on the iPhone. 

The navigation buttons are very large and are easy to tap with a finger.  There is no need to use a stylus.

Pages render very quickly.

You can have multiple pages open and switching between them is simple and fast.

The text is very large and screen and easy to read.  That was actually the main reason why I was looking for a different browser.  I was finding IE and Opera 8.5 a bit too small hard to read.  This version is much better.

We’ll see how it goes over the next couple weeks and see if I switch back to Internet Explorer.

Version 3 of this Windows Automation tool brings it to the next level.

http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/

With the ability to create forms for input and output, AutoIt could become the standard programming language for the business engineer.  

Traditionally,  Visual Basic 6 has been used to create simple programs.   But since Microsoft has phased out the product and replaced it with the more complicated VB.Net, engineers maybe find AutoIt a naturual fit.

AutoIt is freeware and your program can be compiled to a normal Windows .exe file to run on any computer without needing a framework installed.

Give it a try the next time you need to write a simple program.