On the air with Leo Laporte and eBay For Dummies

This week I was lucky enough to visit with Leo Laporte at Twit cottage and broadcast live on Twit.tv. Leo also interviewed me for his weekend, nationally syndicated The Tech Guy radio show.

It always surprises me when I can talk to really smart folks and teach them more about eBay. I guess I've spent so much time buried in ecommerce that I take it for granted. Leo enjoyed a copy of my new book, "eBay For Seniors For Dummies" and I have a feeling we might be seeing some of Leo's awesome collectibles up for sale on eBay soon!

You can listen to the radio segment here.

Los Angeles Breeder's Cup TweetUp November 6

Kentucky Derby Winner MineThatBird and Marsha Collier, originally uploaded by avflox.

To get some photos, the people from the Breeder's cup sponsored a mini event: ""LA Tech Girls Take To Santa Anita For Pre-TweetUp Photo Shoot" to promote a TweetUp planned at Santa Anita Race Track on November 6th. I was lucky enough to be one of the models. I'm pictured here with Kentucky Derby Winner Mine That Bird.

For those in the Los Angeles area, here are the details of an event that you won't want to miss. (I hope I will see you there)!

November 6, 2009 at the 2009 Breeders' Cup World Championships at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, CA. Watch the world's best horses and jockeys compete live for $25.5 million in purses during the first day of the two-day World Championships televised around the world on ESPN. Come socialize and take in a great day of racing.

Tweet-Up will be held in exclusively-designated area - Santa Anita's Seabiscuit Court and will also include access to a designated Tweeter seating area (frontside).

The day will feature:
* 11:15 AM (PT): Betting the Breeders' Cup Handicapping session with Joe Drape (@joedrape) of the New York Times, Ed DeRosa (@EJXD2) of the Thoroughbred Times and Tom Quigley (@Quigleys_Corner) of Horseplayer Magazine
* Q&A with prominent jockeys
* Appearances by ESPN personalities and jockeys from Animal Planet's critically acclaimed reality show "Jockeys" and more

The tweetup will include a buffet, a commemorative Breeders’ Cup giveaway item for all participants of the tweet-up. Someone will win a Nikon Coolpix. And the person who delivers the best tweets onsite will win a trip for two to the 2010 Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs (Kentucky, home of the Kentucky Derby) including airfare and hotel.

Follow @BreedersCup on Twitter for more information
Tickets are available here.
To see more photos from the LA Tech Girls, click here.

Photo by AV Flox

Social Media Marketing? Learn from Successful eBay Sellers

Once you're a participant in social media, you'll quickly get to meet the "experts." They wildly tout their business and online acumen and attempt to sell you their advice. But really? What have they really sold? The proof of any expert is how much they have earned in practice.

eBay was growing in the early days of 1996 (when I started selling). People would come to the site and buy from others on trust. Trust that was displayed in the seller's description, trust that was built on transactions and feedback. People from across the country would send money to absolute strangers and merchandise would be shipped.

Tens of thousands of sellers became "Trust Agents" (thank you Chris Brogan); making a living and building real business through trust and reliability. I put my daughter (see below) through college on my eBay earnings; and I didn't do it by just giving advice. I sold stuff.

eBay's feedback system has been building reputations for honest, trustworthy people who really make money on the internet. A brilliant idea from Pierre Omidyar, eBay's founder. Click here to see his original statement on trust and community from 1995.

Ask any experienced eBay seller how to be successful with social marketing. They know how to do it - they don't just talk about it. Ask my friend John (@ColderICE) Lawson; he's got over 75,000 feedbacks on eBay. That's one heck of a community.

I wrote my first book on eBay in 1999. Today my books are in seven languages and I've sold over a million. People take my advice because I do it; I'm honest and I give solid information. That's one heck of a community based on trust.

We've been doing Social Media since 1996. I have over 6800 feedbacks on eBay. I'm successful and so are they. Ask a long time eBay seller how.


(Yes, That's my daughter @SusanDickman helping ship items when she was in college)

(A Tweet from Pierre Omidyar, Founder of eBay about this post - Thank you)

Monetize: PayPal Open API & Innovate 09 for only $49

The future is calling. PayPal is announcing a new, open platform which will help you monetize your applications and innovations. Check the one minute video below to grasp the possibilities.

On November 3 - 4 in San Francisco at PayPal X Innovate 2009, they will open their payment platform to third-party developers. By releasing new APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), PayPal is enabling the developer community to build new ways to pay and get paid. Twitpay, a Twitter-based payment service, LiveOps, a new on-demand workforce service and Microsoft’s Windows® Azure are some of the first applications.

eBay Inc CEO John Donahoe, as well as PayPal President Scott Thompson and VP of Platform/ Emerging Technology, Osama Bedier will be presenting keynotes.

Visit the conference site and attend for only $49 Paypal will $49 to charity for each signup. Wow, what a deal (your secret code is tc).

The Basics: Using Social Media for Online Sellers

In my years of speaking and writing For Dummies books, I have learned that most of us tend to be shy about admitting we don't know the basic ins and outs of new technologies. It really is OK - didn't your mother tell you there were no stupid questions? (My Mom did). There's a daily barrage of new tech stuff that I have questions about almost every day; believe me I am quick to ask to get answers. We have lives to live and there's no way we can be on top of the latest of everything!

At a recent ecommerce conference, I decided to close my talk with a bit of information on basic best practices of social media for online sellers. Even though many people in the room were already participating on Twitter and Facebook, the information was well received. Probably because we all feel good with the validation of what we think we know is really true.

In this portion of my talk, I give you the basics on how to smartly use Twitter to build your business base. Below the video you'll find a short list of Twitter commands. See you on Twitter!

Twitter Basic Commands
@username = Reply to another Twitter member
D username = Direct Message, a message to the recipient not seen in the public tweetstream
PRT = Partial Retweet or Please Retweet = a plea to other members of Twitter to spead the word and rebroadcast the tweet
RT = Retweet: used before a retweet to credit the orginal post
#followfriday = A list of recommended users to follow on Fridays. One of many themes on Twitter days.
# Hasttags are used to add context to a tweet or make your post easily searchable. A basic descirption of how to use hashtags is posted on Mahalo.

Can Social Media get more fun? Try Whrrl

If you want to share information about yourself, your friends, a product or event, and don't want to do the usual announcement - there's a fun and easy tool.

Using Whrrl, you can take pictures with your iPhone (there's a free app) or MMS enabled cell phone and turn them into a story complete with location, notes and the participants. You can also start and edit stories from the Whrrl website. Telling stories with Whrrl helps you capture and share moments of your life with your friends and family in a whole new way.

My friends, Heather Meeker, AV Flox and I had a lot of fun with a box of cosmetics from e.l.f. We had never used their products and decided to put them to the test by dressing up (and making up) like stars from the past. Take a look at our Whrrl story below. It was a lot of fun - I give Whrrl five stars!

★★★★★

More stories at Look Like a Movie Star with ELF

Powered by Whrrl

Using Twitter to Promote Your eBay Listings

I'm loving Twitter and really enjoying connecting with my readers and friends online. (Follow me @MarshaCollier). Twitter can be a very powerful sales tool - when used appropriately. Watch this one minute video with Kat Simpson @katskloset for a couple of ideas on how to grow your eBay sales through social media. Here are a few more things to keep in mind:

• Don't deluge your Twitter audience with sales messages.
• Be real, be a person and participate in the conversation
• Keep in mind that social media is social, not a broadcast media