It can’t be stressed enough that you will need a safe, convenient place to keep the items you are selling. Remember the pets. I had a collectors WWI picture book, it had a nice leather cover and was in nearly mint condition.  My puppy liked it to; I probably don’t need to explain.   Items sold should be clean (dusted, washed, remove grime), or at least as clean as you can get them, without causing damage.  Nobody wants to receive a dirty item; it’s a good way to upset a buyer.  The only exceptions would be items that are sold as-is, such as old antiques, old books, things that can’t be cleaned without excessive costs or causing damage, then it should always be stated so the buyer knows exactly what they are getting and what state it is in.

            There are always rules on selling items, a few of these general rules are:

• No used underwear (which is kind of gross that this would be sold and bought.  But it is listed on the no sale list from the auction site).
• No claiming authenticity, if it is known that the item is not authentic (repro of a painting, forged signature, etc…).  Claiming authenticity on a fake will cause major issues at every level.  Just don’t do it!
• No selling illegal items (there are list on the auction site).

These are just a few basic examples; auction site will have a long list of forbidden items.  If you are selling an item that is on the no sell list, the auction site will remove that item, you are still responsible for listing fees in most cases.  If you are selling items like coins, stamps, or autographed memorabilia, a statement will pop up at the end of the listing reminding you about authenticity.  It’s still okay to sell this items, it’s just an agreement that the item is authentic and not a fake being sold as authentic.  If you knowingly sell a fake, they also state what will happen, and in most cases it involves being banned from the e-community; which will put a damper on the whole online garage sale thing.

If you are listing multiple items and don’t want to have to type in the same information over and over again, you can select sell a similar item after you have listed one item.  This will allow you to change the item information or even main category, but it will still keep your seller preferences; like refund statement, payment methods etc… in the item description box.  This method saves both time and valuable sanity.  We’ll get to the entire listing process in a second.

Deciding what to charge:

            The purpose of having an online garage sale is to get money not loose it, so you want to make sure you are getting the best price for you junk!  The best advice is to research what other individuals are charging for similar items.  Type in an item description at the auction site and see what it or similar items are going for.  If you think you have a high value item, then search around other on-line auction sites to see what similar items are going for.  Then you can decide what selling format to use and what to place the price at, don’t worry in a couple of chapters you’ll have the format options down.  Once you have been selling for a while, it will be easier to determine a selling price.  When in doubt about a selling price, always take time to research prices for similar items.  You will KICK yourself for selling something for a buck, when you find out a buyer would have easily paid twenty dollars or more for it.  The buyer gets a great deal and you get that little voice reminding you that you ripped yourself off.   I once sold a VHS box set for $45.  I was pretty happy until I found out the average selling price was over $100.

Things to keep in mind when you are pricing an item:

• How much did you pay for it?
• What are similar items being sold for?
• What is the condition?
• What is the age?
• Are you selling it for profit or just to get rid of it?

Remember you will find your own way of setting up an e-selling system, just like you have a system for setting up a traditional garage sale. Once you have your system set up e-selling will be a breeze.

First of all, location, location, location. Those are the first three ways.  Next you need to make sure, that it is in great demand, not something that is going to be just a phase.  Also see how many other businesses of the same are around you.

You want to give the people what they want. A great price and a great product. That is a start. Have a great staff and a great atmosphere for them to come to.  Ask yourself, why should people love to come here? 

Starting a business of my own 15 years ago, I started out with,"Just Haircuts."  It started out as a two person shop and ended up to be a 5 person shop, with only 450sq. feet to work in. It was very tight, yet I call it cozy. The price was $5.00 for a haircut. Unheard of at that time and this time too.

We had lines out the door, people waiting for 2 hours, just to get a $5.00 haircut.  Other shops around me were $12.00 and up.  While we were getting the volume and working nonstop, the other shops were not busy and sitting for most of the day, but getting $12.00 a cut.  They just didn't seem to get the concept.

Some moved on and tried to open their own shops, yet wanting to charge more. They just didn't seem to get the volume that I had. They saw the people and the money and wanted to get greedy, so they had charged more.

Today I moved to a larger shop and incorporated perms and color, still the lowest price in town.  Yes, I did raise my prices for haircuts to $6.00 a cut.  I also figured that some don't like to go into a place with the smell of chemicals, so I opened a barbershop, to please them all.

Give people what they want and they will will feed you. Be greedy and you will be hungry.

1. Product- includes not only the physical unit but also many other factors, including the package, warranty, brand, post sales services and company image
2. Place- also refers to physical distribution or the intermediaries who store, and transport the products to and from the customers after manufacturing the product. It also refers to the venue where the product is sold like department stores, grocery chain and so on.
3. Promotions - includes personal selling, advertising, public relations and sales promotions. The purpose of promotion is to educate, persuade, and to remind the customers about the benefits of the product.
4. Price - this is the monetary value that the customer is willing to give up to obtain the product. A company can either lower their product to boost sales or they can jack up the price to create a distinct image that their product is premium.

Marketing practitioner must design strategies around these four P's to achieve the ultimate goal of marketing which are: to satisfy the needs and wants of the customers; and to satisfy the profit needs of the company. To achieve these, the four elements must be blended or “mix” very well to achieve optimal results. Any mix is only as good as its weakest component. An excellent product with a poor distribution system will likely fail.

A marketing mix to be considered successful must have a competitive advantage over competition. If the mix fails to create that competitive stand, it will not achieve the ultimate objective of satisfying the needs and wants of the customers and creating profit for the company.

In the area of stock market listed companies P/E is calculated by dividing the share price by the earnings per share, or EPS. The resulting figure expresses times to repay. EPS is calculated by dividing the Net Profit After Tax, NPAT, by the number of shares outstanding for the company in question.

As an example, the share price of Brambles Ltd, BXB, is today $7.82 and its EPS are $0.45. The P/E is 7.82/0.45 = 17.37 times or years to repay.

Alternatively, P/E can be calculated from whole, non-per-share figures. To do so you divide the companies' Capitalisation by the NPAT. Capitalisation is the share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding for the company.

An alternative measure of business purchase cost is Price-to-Book or P/B. Book value is the business Equity divided by the number of shares outstanding for the business. Book value is also called Equity per Share.

Still on the BXB example, its P/B is $7.82 divided by $1.18 equalling 6.63 times. This ratio tells you how many times the price represents the equity in the business.

You could get the figures above directly and ready made from an online database of your choice or look them up in the Annual Report you could download from the website of the company in question under corporate.

For Australian users this database powered by AspectHuntley contains all the financial information you need. For United States users, this address contains a lot of tools and useful information. For United Kingdom users, this website is quite informative. 

This is you if you have a brand to promote. You are the source of the brand. Together with your marketing communication agency, you decide on how to position your brand and who you want to reach. Once the brand position and the target audience are decided, you start developing your brand message.

The brand message

The brand message is what your company wants your customers and other stakeholders to perceive. All the information and experience of the brand should be designed into the message. Here's where the 4Ps of marketing; product, price, place (distribution) and promotion play a crucial part in how you design your brand message.

The communication channel

It's all about picking the right media to reach the right target audience. Knowing the habits of the target audience is important in deciding which media channel to communicate the brand message through. For example, if your target audience is car owners, advertising on radio would be a better bet than on a parenting magazine. Media channels include TV, radio, newspaper, magazines, billboards, internet, mailers and product placement on TV shows and movies.

Noise

People are being bombarded by advertisements every day, everywhere. So how do you get your brand message through all this noise and clutter? Well, your message will not be seen and heard if your copy is poorly produced, and has a lack of clarity. Bad timing of the release and clutter from your competitor's messages are also points you need to consider. So remember the lower the noise level, the higher chance of your brand message being seen and heard.

The customer

This is the group you want your brand message to reach and get a positive response. You want your customers to remember your brand, to like it enough to act upon a desire to purchase it. To help you hook the customer, your brand message needs to be simple and relevant. Also allow your customers to ask questions and to interact. This will create positive perception of your brand.

Feedback

You want to hear what your customers think about your product. This is an important key in any marketing communication. Besides gathering information about your customers, you can also generate more leads, provide more information to reinforce their liking for your brand and to be sure you are on the right track in your brand messaging and channel choices.

At the point in time that an agent and home owner agree on the list price, Price is definitely king. If the price range is in line with the comps then you're on your way to a successful sale.

Next, when a property presentation specialist (Stager) and an inspector advises the home owner of any and all condition issues that must be addressed and action is taken by the owner, at that point Condition is King.

Then when the home owner or agent has the home staged to increase the marketability of that home, Property presentation or Staging is at that point the King.

So it would appear to me that there are really three Kings. Three Kings that when working in unison, increases the marketability of a home to move it ahead of the competition. In an effort to have the quickest and most profitable sale for any home with-in its price range, all three Kings have to be in place and in alignment. An absence of any one of the Kings would seem to reduce the speed and profitability of a successful sale.

So why do we attempt to debate who the one and only king really is? Well, I think it's all about marketing the value of what we each provide. If any one of the three, Price, Condition or Presentation is proclaimed the undisputed King, that King becomes all important in the Real Estate world. Being the undisputed King gives us ultimate power in our world and we can then sell the fact that in the absence of me, the King, the kingdom would crumble.

So why three Kings? The price King has always been good enough! People never use to care about anything but the price! Well, as Bob Dylan sang, "The times they are a changing!"

My belief is that homes have historically sold based on these same three factors. But with everything being equal, price was the defining ingredient. As time has passed, experts, professionals if you will in the areas of property presentation and condition have been added to the mix which is re-defining what being competitive means. In the busy world we live in there is a value placed on being able to buy a new home, one that fulfills all of our desires and then instantly we can get back to our hectic lives. A home that does that is ultimately the most competitive. In many arenas this debate has become parallel to a heavy weight boxing match. It's time to unify the title.

Predicting our future, I see the time coming that there will be two ways to dictate the destiny in the successful sell of a home. Either by being lucky or by being good. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than it is to be good, but it's a big risk to count on luck for success. Being good is by accepting that all three Kings play a unified role in the success and that luck is for those lucky few that win lotteries. Do you feel lucky? Well do you?

A full free economy however has never existed. Total price deregulation is simply not possible even in a capitalist government. To impose restrictions on prices is an aspect of a mixed economy. Sometimes governments found it necessary to limit activities of certain market actors to protect the interest of the consumers.

Supply and demand forces are constantly at work in a free market. The quantity of the product supplied is determined by the quantity demanded by the consumer. The quantity demanded by consumer, in turn, is determined by the product's price.

The law of supply is directly proportional to price of the product which means the higher the price, the more supply is needed. The law of demand is inversely proportional to the demand and price which means, the higher the price the less demand.

For the supply and demand curve to be steady, equilibrium in the marketplace must be maintained. Equilibrium means price and quantity will remain where it began. For instance, if the price of a product is below equilibrium, the consumers demand increased sharply. There is an abrupt increase in demand which is more than what the producers are capable of supplying. Shortage of the product, in this instance the soup, occurs. The shortage will then cause the product's price to go up quickly. Producers are forced to increase the price until it is able to produce enough products to meet the consumers' rising demands or the equilibrium is once again reached.

The opposite is also true. If the good is sold above equilibrium, then demand lowers and the producers have to lower the price to eliminate excess inventory until the equilibrium of demand and supply is reached.

In this case, if a price shock occurs drastically changing the supply and demand curves then most probably the desire or demand of the product from those with the purchasing power is greater than the supply or production. Therefore there are more consumers with the desire and capacity to buy chicken soup but the supply is limited or not enough to meet those demands hence the very dramatic increase in price occurs.

A price shock in a market economy will lead to a temporary reduce of the degree of output and consequent increase of the price. Adjustments forces will normally bring back equilibrium by bringing the output rate and the price level back to their former levels.

Now suppose that Governor Davis of California decides that Goldilocks is paying too much for chicken soup and adequate nutrition is a necessity (the reason she is going about eating the soup of the three bears). The current market price of chicken soup is $1.00 per 10 oz. can; the Governor announces a price cap of $0.75 per 10 oz. can. In the usual supply and demand case, this move will greatly affect the equilibrium.

Since the price of the chicken soup is now lower and the demand is still much higher than the actual amount producers are prepared to supply then further shortage of the chicken soup could occur. This could actually be a detriment instead of a solution to the price shock occurrence. The increase to the aggregate demand coupled with the dwindling supply could lead to permanent changes in the price of the chicken soup.

If regulation of chicken soup price is to be imposed then regulation of the amount of chicken soup each household can buy should be imposed too in order to equal demand with supply.

The impact of the household choice in this situation is critical to the goal of attaining market equilibrium of supply and demand. Households may opt to forego buying the chicken soap altogether. They might protest the $1 price as excessive and choose to spend their money on similar but lesser expensive products such as chicken noodles or asparagus soup. Or, more economically, they can make their own chicken soup from scratch. If the suppliers cannot meet the demand for the time being, then the consumers might as well temporarily refrain from buying chicken soup until such time that the original selling price is back.

There are great elasticities of demand and supply enjoyed in the wholesale electric power market. Wholesale electric power market monopolizes the supply of electricity. That means they do not have competitors that could affect their product pricing. It is also difficult if not virtually impossible for consumers to stop or even lessen their demand for electricity. The sales volume therefore will not likely lower as the demand will continue to be the same despite the higher price thus effectively increasing their revenues. This offers the wholesale electric power market a lot of power over product pricing. It is not unusual to find situations where wholesale electricity producers will deliberately hold power off the market to force consumers to pay prices for electricity thus increasing their profits even higher.

Governor Gray Davis` demand for the federal government to impose price caps on wholesale electricity to be able to cope with the rising electricity charges and afford to supply all essential services is reasonable. The temporary price caps at wholesale could effectively soften the increasing fiscal burden on the state government until new plants come on line. The price caps could be set at a level that would yield a strong return to the industry`s investments. Wholesale price caps on electricity could be the best option for the government. In this instance, price regulation could work favorably to attain equilibrium of demand and supply.

Buggatti Veyron 16.4

• Price: $1,192,057
• Origin: France
• 1001 hp
• Estimated Top speed : 407 km/h (253 mph)

Pagani Zonda Roadster F C12S 7.3

• Price: $667,321
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SSC Ultimate Aero

• Price: $654,500
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Leblanc Mirabeau

• Price: $645,084
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Saleen S7 Twin Turbo

• Price: $637,723
• Origin: U.S.
• 550 hp
• Estimated Top speed : 322 km/h (200 mph)

Koenigsegg CCR

• Price: $545,568
• Origin: Sweden
• 806 hp
• Estimated Top speed : 385 km/h (240 mph)

There are steps to negotiating that you should recognize and understand. These steps include knowing what you want, knowing your limits, negotiating the cost & terms and closing the deal. Each of these steps requires that you have insight into your needs and what you want. As you progress through the steps you will become more confident in your abilities.

Know What You Want : If you don't know what you want then you are not likely to get it. Let us say that you need a new air conditioning unit for your business. You go to the dealer and he shows you all types of units. You have no idea what size, how much power, what type of service or how much you should pay. Likewise, if you plan on moving your business location in the next 5 years you might be better off with a used model. That dealer will likely sell you something you don't want. Do your homework and know what you need so you don't get taken advantage of.

Know Your Limits : There is a saying that states, “If you can't walk away you aren't negotiating”. You need to know where your limits are in terms of how much you are willing to pay and the terms of the purchase. If the dealer doesn't want to meet your terms on an equitable level you may need to walk away. What is your best, expected and worst scenario?

Negotiating the Cost & Terms : This is the part where they give you a price, you make a counter offer and this process continues until you come to an understanding. Sometimes you can adjust the prices for different terms. For example, you can reduce the service warranty for a better price, you can pick up the product to save on shipping, etc. Always offer them a little less than the initial price or demand more options.

Closing the Deal : Once you and the dealer have come to terms then go ahead and get it in writing. Putting your agreement in writing helps to keep each everyone honest. For example, you might have saved money by picking up the product instead of having them deliver it. However, they didn't tell you it was 3 hours drive away. Likewise, you reduced your service agreement for other concessions but they didn't tell you there would be a $50 fee every time they came out.

The book value is easy and quick to calculate. With the availability of online finance related websites like Yahoo Finance one can find the balance sheet, assets and share capital of a company. From this information one can find the book value of a stock by subtracting the debt to be paid to debt holders, tax and preferred shareholders? pie from the accounting value of company?s assets. By dividing this value by the total number of outstanding shares, one can get the book value per share.

The book value per share can also be supplemented with the P/E ratio when comparing two companies. Some times the company?s financial are so good that the book value per share is larger than the market price at which it is trading. Then the stock is undervalued. As we know from the world?s famous investor of all time, Warren Buffet, that we need to buy fundamentally sound stocks at the cheapest possible price. Some times reverse can happen. But at any time the share price will be higher than book value per share. But if it is too high and the company?s future growth is not as predictable then it is better to leave the stock.