I sold 1 Eee PC 900 to Mike in Ireland at the price of £303.03. He paid me £323.02 including the shipping fee. Paypal charged me £11.18 transaction fee. eBay charged me AUD 0.27 gallery fee, AUD 0.18 insertion fee, AUD 14.73 final value fee, total AUD 15.18. I spent HKD 362 to post this EeePC. Thus the profit I made from this laptop is HKD 338.599 (that is AUD 45.3, £21.93). The currency conversion lost is not included in the calculation. The ebay and paypal fees are obviously too high. I only get 34.26% of the profit. However, there is nothing I can do about it.

From Mike's email, There is an useful information about tax for those who reside in Ireland.

Nope they didn't :) This is one of the nice things here in Ireland you get hardly ever taxed and thanks for the EEE its really good fun once you have the full desktop activated.

The next EeePC 900 listing is ending in 1 hour. The price is AUD 600 at the moment. Hope the net profit I make will be higher so I will have no problem in paying the rent next month. Actually I still have to sell a lot of things as soon as possible. The sheer profits I make can hardly pay for my meals.

The bottom line - find more cheaper stuff so the final value fee will not be so high, and sell as many as possible before the landlord visits me next time.

I just realized that I need more traffic. I didn't use Myspace and facebook much. Most of my friends don't "haunt" on it either. An ebay powerseller just referred me to BigCrumbs. Bigcrumbs is a website which rewards eBay buyers and sellers. According to my comprehension, it works similar the loyalty programs. The more you buy, the more points you earn. For sellers, it generates more traffic to your eBay store. Unfortunately, I don't have enough feedbacks to open an eBay store. Menbers may also earn points also earn when the referrals of their referrals shop up to 5 generations away.




Another website which may generate traffic is Squidoo. I haven't figured out what it is all about yet. From a few minutes of observation, it looks like a website which makes you link to your published content and advertise it. You may also earn money from the traffic sent to you. I will do more research on it later. I have also created a page on Squidoo here.

I have posted the listings on ebay 170219131201 and 170218977139 for 2 days and the starting price is 0.99 for all items. But it seems nobody has noticed that I am writing a blog about the auctions.

Nobody has placed a big on my adapter, and only 9 bids on Eee PC 900. But it is alright. It is disappointing that I haven't got any interaction with anybody except this guy.

Dear Seller,
I'm Anthony soto,an accountant based in United State.I am very much interested in your item displayed on eBay and i urgently need to purchase your item as a gift across to my aunt's son in West Africa. Meanwhile, I'm not presently in the state to get the gift to him.So I'll like you to ship the item to West Africa. I want you to use Royal mail 3-7 Days Delivery for the shipping of the item.I am willing to offer you the sum of £450 for the item and including shipping. i will be glad if you kinda end the auction and get back to me with your full name and paypal id so as to send in the funds through paypal to you.
Thanks and God bless.

I have heard about a lot of internet scams operating from Nigeria. They offer a price on eBay or an online trading place to the seller and ask the seller to ship the item to Nigeria. It seems to be one of these scams. However I have requested his personal details to see if he is an authentic buyer. If he does not reply, that means he is trying to scam numerous sellers and does not have time to let go the oblivious easy meats.

What is happening in Nigeria? I really hope it is just a small group of gangsters who are doing the scams and frauds, not a prevalent activity in this country. The expenditure behaviours of travelers overseas is also a key point to blame. Most of them don't do any research and spend money in these poorer countries like nouveau riches. Giving away tips like dirt. It has influenced the children and implanted the impression that all foreigners are wealthy. I have seen countless children who are only 5 or 7 and they can speak more than three languages to ask tourists to give them money. They may need help, but not in such blatant way. I even seen one of the very skillful little baggers taking picture with his camera mobile phone. Most kids in Australia in his age do not even have a phone. I believe he has the potential to be a diplomat in 30 years.

I have found that Asus Eee PC 900 is available in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but the stock supply is limited. There are 4 retailers selling EeePC 900 in Hong Kong but pre-order is required. Withal the stock seems unavailable in the rest of the world recently. Thus I decided to spend my money to get 2 of them. It is a risky idea as I have spent almost all of my money in purchasing these 2 mini laptops. If I can get some return of the risky investment, I will have money to pay 2/3 of the rent for the next month. Otherwise I will be doomed.

I have tested one of the lightweight notebooks. The default user interface did not took my fancy. The UI looks good and intuitive, but I guess I have got used to the style and looks of Gnome. I had these questions in the first a few hours of testing... Where is the command line terminal? What package manager does it use to keep the OS up to date? How can I install other software like on normal Linux operating system? Not long after searching on google, I have found most of the answers. Ctrl-Alt-T brings up the terminal which is vital for my computer using habit. Once I get the terminal, all other problems are not problems anymore.

The coolest thing in this MID like stuff is the multi-touch touchpad, which they call it as FingerGlide. It is useful that I can zoom in and zoom out an photo, a webpage, even an OpenOffice document just like how we do it on iPhone. Another practical use of the FingerGlide is scrolling the screen which makes viewing documents easier. Actually, it would be more enticing if it comes with a multi-touch screen instead of a multi-touch touchpad. However, I am sure it would be expensive if it had a touch screen like this.

The new screen panel design is a big difference from its predecessor - Eee PC 701. It has removed the speakers from the panel and hide it into the body, inasmuchas the size of the LCD screen has increased from 7" to 8.9". The built-in webcam takes clear photo and video, which makes it a powerful UMPC for people to do video conference on Skype. Taking about video conferene, I real want to ask that when Pidgin will support video conference on MSN protocol? I am really eager to use it but I don't feel like to switch to aMSN.

I almost forgot to mention that the biggest selling point of Eee PC 900 is its 20GB SSD (solid state disk). It operates without any noice. You may shake it even chuck it out of the window from the 2nd floor while it is actively reading and writing without damaging the integrity of the data. If you literally chuck it out of the window from the second floor, you may need to pick up the SSD from the debris and plug it into another computer. SSD is able to withstand a high G force shock, however I am not sure if the plastic case can sustain it.

From my review, it is a nice highly portable laptop. I really feel like to keep one, but not until I get enough money to pay the rent. The first thing I would to on my Eee PC would be installing eeebuntu on it. eeebuntu is a variation of Ubuntu Linux which make this little laptop "more like home" to me as I have been using linux desktop for almost 10 years and Ubuntu is my current favourite. I have read the manual included in the box which describes how to install Windows XP on it, and I even heard about some guys have installed Windows Vista on it successfully. After testing this gadget, I believe it has enough power to run Windows Vista (in slow motion perhaps). I might be wrong as I have played a 3D OpenGL game on it and it runs smoothly.

Now it is on eBay 170219131201

my original blog is here http://2adapters.blogspot.com/

My name is Jerry Wang. I am staying in Hong Kong at the moment (about 6 months so far) but I am Australian by nationality. I have messed up my life and now I only have less than 2000 AUD left. I have established a company but I have ran out of capitals to do anything. I have tried to find a job but the paperworks for applying a working visa is daunting the employers. Who would do so many paperworks to hire someone who can't even speak Cantonese here? An employment agent turned me down in the first second when she found I can't speak Cantonese.

I write this blog to record what will happen in my future online trading. I start this round on eBay by selling 2 Swiss Travel Products travel adapters with USB port. I got the adapters from Hong Kong Gifts & Premium Fair. I spent HKD 300 for the two samples. The retail price on their website is € 34.95.

I am not going to focus on money and goods trading. Everything is possible! For example, goods exchange, opportunities derived from the trading, and anything I don't know yet. I will keep recording everything derived from selling the adapters.

Now it is on eBay 170218977139

the original post is here http://2adapters.blogspot.com/2008/05/episode-1-2-adapters.html

I have mentioned that I am in Hong Kong right now. I am going to describe how I end up being here and doing such thing in this post briefly.

When I was back in Australia about 3 years ago, not long before I finished my master's degree in IT. I started a Web 2.0 project which is similar to Myspace + iTune and hoping it will get me some success. That was a new idea in that time, but nobody was interested in joining me. After graduate, I was keep doing this project. Unfortunately I had put too many ideas in this project, thus the project is growing bigger and bigger. It is possible for just 1 man to finish it, but it may take not less than 5 years without any rest. I was supporting this project by working in a 7-11. I don't think I have any chance to compete with those Web 2.0 companies which have enough funds and programmers.

8 months ago, I decided to take a break and flew to Thailand and China. And then I established a trading company in Hong Kong 5 months after backpacking. I have found countless wholesale suppliers even factories who are selling mobile watch phones, video glasses, mini washing machines, and abundant unusual gadgets, even popular electronic products such as iPhone and iPod wannabes. I was thinking I can export these stuff to other countries and Hong Kong is where won't tax me import and export duties, so I started to test the market on eBay.

Mobile phone watches was the best seller before Christmas, and I sold at least 9 of them in 1 day. However SMS Technology Australia, a company which is selling their watch mobile phone in Australia false reported all eBay watch mobile phone sellers infringed their intellectual property. I was one of the victims and my eBay account is suspended. In the past a few months of interrogating with this company and eBay has got me nowhere. Gravin Hutcheson from this company insisted that they own the global patent of watch mobile phone. In fact, there is no such thing as global patent and their patent is still pending. That is, they do not own any intellectual property of any watch mobile phone. Ebay was taking sides in this issue. According to the letter from Kevin Waters in eBay VeRO team, eBay removes the listings without checking the authenticity once a company writes a letter to ask them to do so. I had been wasting 3 months of time in communicating with eBay in the "right" way specified in eBay's terms and conditions for nothing.

In the past a few months I also realized that I was too inexperienced in doing B2B international trading. I had a few inquiries from buyers but I still sold nothing. Now I have read some related articles and have got some experiences in dealing with suppliers, a new problem has emerged. Most of the suppliers set the minimum order quantity too large for me. The money left in my bank account is not enough to buy any stock; I can only buy a few products in sample price. That was not a problem because I could go to the wholesale markets to buy stuff in small quantities until the end of March.

Just a few days of Tibet riots, China has changed the visa rule and my visa just expired a few days after the rule change. There is no multi-entry visa anymore and according to media, it may last until 17th October. If I want to get a visa to China, I will have to book a hotel online and get a return ticket. The worst thing is they will only give me a double entry visa to Shenzhen and it is illegal if I leave Shenzhen to another city. It does not worth if I want to get stuff from the wholesale market. Because I don't have much money left, I can only get a few stuff and come back to Hong Kong. The fees and expenses will be much higher than what I can earn from selling these stuff in 2 trips.

Lucky that most of the suppliers are happy to send the samples and stock to Hong Kong, and I can buy samples from them anytime. However, no real wholesale price as I can't afford the expenses of the MOQ anymore.

Just a few days ago, I was thinking that now I have nothing. The only thing I have got is the supplier contacts. If I start from eBay how far and how fast I can go? Is it possible to buy a house and a car from the 2 adapters sitting in my bag and 1600 AUD left in my bank account? Or maybe I will become a complete loser in no time? Thus I start this blog to record everything related. No matter success or fail, it is an experience for me and a story for others.