eBay winning tips and strategies

Winning quality items on eBay is never easy, but with the following search engine and bidding tips, you can certainly gain an edge.

1) Buy it now: If an item is available in an auction format, I will never buy from "Buy it now" simply because the price from the auction is almost always lower than the “Buy it now”. But I do check out the “Buy it now” price for a new item, in order to get an sense of the maximum and reasonable price of that item. Another place I go to would be the homepage of retail store (ie: Bestbuy or Future Shop for electronics)

2) Number of bids: I normally would set it greater or equal to 1, meaning the search results will ONLY display auction items already been bidded on. What this essentially does is to filter in only the desirable items other people have spent time to research/evaluate and have finalized with a positive action (ie: placing a bid). But of course, the catch is, this item has already drawn interest (and possibly a lot of bidding action) by others. One way to keep the bidding action down is by specifying the upper range, for example number of bids: ranging from 1-5.

3) Best offer: Items with a “Best offer” option may take a deep cut of their listed price. I have once offered 75% of the listed price for a nice trench coat and the seller agreed. Remember to make some outrageous offers initially, you never know how low the seller is willing to accept. And you won't get penalty for an unacceptable price offer, so keep trying.

4) Location: This is also a crucial area. If you don't utilize this, you may end up wasting a lot of time browsing through items that won't deliver to your country/location. I generally start with "Located in (my country)", if lucky, I may find an item in my country and the shipping cost will be in my favor. If not, I can specify "available to (my country)".

5) Sorting: With the search results, I generally do two types of sorting. 1) Sort by "highest price and shipping cost" to pick out my desired items, and 2) sort by "ending soonest" to get a sense of time frame. Another note on shipping cost is that if you want to make money by re-selling an item, the true value of the item must be greater than i) the price you actually pay PLUS ii) the shipping cost PLUS iii) eBay charges PLUS iv) time/labor you spend. Simply logic, but often overlooked.

6) Typo search: Sometimes the listing description may be misspelled with typos, this is a treasure chest hiding in a sunk ship. This happens in once every blue moon, and don't expect extremely valuable items to fall into this category. But if you do feel lucky try this TYPOGENIE.

7) eBay sniper: Last but not least, eBay sniper is a must have. What is it? It's an external (not within eBay page) program that allows users to bid on a desired item without physically being in front of the computer monitor and doing the clicking. In a nut shell, you specify the highest bid you are willing to place on that item, but you won't be bidding right away, the program will bid for you right before the auction ends to minimize the action (thus, minimize the cost).

For example, you have found a 1980's Swiss watch with 8 bids at $100 with 2 more days before it ends, in your mind, you know it's worth $250 and this is what you are willing to spend. You set up your eBay sniper program, and hypothetically, the item is about to end with 19 bids at $175, the program will bid slightly higher than the current bid (ie: $176), and you will be the rightful and happy owner. However, if the highest bid has pushed to $270 or beyond, you will lose the auction since it's higher than your specified cap ($250).

With eBay sniper, you no longer need to stay up till 3am to make sure you are not outbidded, nor you will ever need to refresh the eBay page every 10 min. The FREE eBay sniper of my favorite is called BAYGENIE.

Tips on selling on eBay can be found on this SITE.

Disclaimer: This blog is not affiliated with the BayGenie in any way.

Road to success and happiness: 3Qs mental associations

Most of us repeat the same daily routine under the auto-pilot mode, eventually our brains become over-habituated and under-stimulated. This plague can rob us from reaching the goals and happiness in life. How do we break this boring yet devastating pattern and become a better person to live a more fulfilling life? The one and only solution is by constantly making advanced MENTAL ASSOCIATIONS.

In fact, we made associations since the day we were born. The neurons make linkages between ourselves and internal/external stimuli. Babies cry when they are hungry, feel the tenderness with a teddy bear, and laugh when tickled on the feet. These are all mental associations in the working. However, when we grow older a process called habituation comes in, and we don’t feel the same excitement for events that repeatedly occur. Societal laws or religious doctrines can further contribute to suppressing the creativity of our thoughts so we can avoid being punished psychologically (ie: guilt with sinful thoughts) or legally (ie: breaking the law by acting out an unlawful impulse). Over times, this habit is carved into our brains, fresh, and souls. We still make mental associations, but they are merely the safe, and self-preserving ones that keep our jobs, relationships, and existence slightly above the drowning level. But there is hope. Implementing a single habit in life can sometimes make the greatest difference. As mentioned, we all make mental associations. The keys lay in the quickness, quantity, and quality of these associations, known as 3 Qs:

QUICKNESS
QUANTITY
QUALITY

An apparent illustration is freestyle battle, in which two rappers verbally battling each other by delivering improvised lyrics and rhymes. What distinguishes a winner from a loser? The 3 Qs. The rapper needs to be quick. A constant delivery of lyrics is essential to keep the crowds excited; a slow rapper is an oxymoron. A silent pause of 2-3 seconds almost guarantees a loss. In terms of quantity, rappers tend to speak at rapid rates, why? Because it delivers a greater volume of words (thus ideas and verbal attacks) in the shortest amount of time. And last but not least, a top rapper doesn't just mindlessly and dully fill up the air with nonsense mumble jumble, words they chose must contain authority and specific meanings. JIN, won 7 straight wins in the Freestyle Friday and later be inducted into the hall of fame, have obviously mastered these 3 areas of mental associations.

At this point, you may say "I can care less because I neither want to be a rapper nor enjoy rap music in general." The striking fact is in almost all social settings and advanced careers, the ones who succeed are the ones who have fully implemented the 3 Qs into their mental associations. For example, someone who can hold a conversation constantly and appear to be the smartest, most uplifting, and most interesting guy/gal in the social circle is always the one who can think/talk quickly (Quickness), with the most to say (Quantity), and with the most innovative, interesting, or useful ideas to deliver (Quality). Success in careers for politician, medical doctor, lawyer, chef, teacher, as well as many other areas undoubtedly be tremendously benefited through the mastery of the 3Qs.

I hope I have made my case clear: advanced mental associations is probably the single most significant, yet least recognized, determining factor of one's career and social success, which be translated into happiness. The followings are the tips of improving one's mental association.

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1. Adhere to the plan: Sometimes, it's not easy to change how one thinks altogether after decades of habituation. It's okay to take baby steps, one at a time. As long as we are moving forward, over a long run, a change is guaranteed. Mark your calendar for the next 30 days, you will spend at least 15-30 minutes/day for the practice.

2. Take one object and form as many associations you can. Exhaust your brain.

* Example item: Lemon
Lemon <-> sour taste
Lemon <-> yellow
Lemon <-> iced tea
Lemon <-> salmon
Lemon <-> fruit flies
Lemon <-> home-made power house

* You can also extend the link further:
Lemon <-> yellow <-> music video by Coldplay
Lemon <-> salmon <-> wasabi

* Be creative, remember there is no wrong mental association per se (but of course, there could be an association being wrong with respect to a specific situation and purpose, ie: a wrong clinical diagnosis or saying regrettable things):
The lead single of Coldplay sings the song Yellow live after eating salmon with strong wasabi.

3. Then classify the associations. For example:
Lemon <-> sour taste (basic, typical)
Lemon <-> yellow (basic, typical)
Lemon <-> iced tea (basic, typical)
Lemon <-> salmon (hmmm, more interesting)
Lemon <-> fruit flies (more interesting)
Lemon <-> home-made power house (dinner table topic)
Yellow <-> music video by Coldplay (more interesting)
Salmon <-> wasabi (more interesting)
The lead single of Coldplay drank 2 jars of lemonade before performing the song Yellow live after eating salmon with strong wasabi (quite an amusing imagery)

4. You can start off by writing down all the linkages between objects/abstract concepts on a large piece of paper, but over time, you should mentally construct this roadmap in your mind without any tools.

5. Build up your vocabulary and general knowledge (ie: scientific, historical, or even celebrity facts).

6. HAVE FUN with it, make generating advanced mental associations your SECOND NATURE. A human mind is one of the most fascinating gifts we are all given, if we don't use it, we'll lose it, so don’t take it for granted.

7. Some of the many benefits: 1) You will develop a greater enjoyment in life by having constant new mental stimulation; 2) You will be able to observe things more clearly and more thoroughly; 3) You will think freely and feel more empowered; 4) You can have the ability to keep a conversation going without awkward silences; 5) You can have the option to pick out the high quality thoughts which set you apart in social, work, and other settings.

56 tattoos on the face, yikes!

An eighteen year old Belgium girl Kimberley Vlaminck is suing her tattooist $14,000 for giving her 56 star tattoos covering almost her entire left face while she requested only 3. She said the tattooist Rouslan Toumaniantz spoke only broken English and French, thus misunderstood her true wish. She claimed she felt asleep and did not feel anything during the tattoo session. Toumaniantz defended that she was awake the whole time and 56 stars were exactly what she requested. He also said there was a witness who could provide confirmation. But despite his firm stance, he is willing to pay half of the surgical cost to remove the tattoo due to his high preference for customer satisfaction.

Many questions remain. What was she thinking if she indeed genuinely wanted 56 stars? Was there a special meaning of the number 56? What’s the track record like, did the tattooist make similar “mistakes” to other customers due to miscommunication? Did the tattooist make sure that she was fully awake (rather than being drunk or drug-induced) before and during the tattoo session? Did she pay in full for the price of 56 stars? If so, did she make a scene? Any witness of such commotion? A court case could certainly help answering some of these questions and weighting their validity.

Swine flu now becomes a pandemic, meaning what?

The swine flu (H1N1) viral infection initially emerged in Mexico in April 2009. In early June, the rising figures indicated ~30,000 cases and ~141 related-deaths in 74 countries worldwide. World Health Organization (WHO) director Dr. Margaret Chan declared it as level 6 "pandemic". So should we be worried? According WHO's definition in 2005, a pandemic has to meet three general conditions:

A. The virus infects and causes serious illness in humans.
B. Humans do not have immunity against the virus.
C. The virus spreads easily from person-to-person and survives within humans.

Furthermore, the specific scaling of pandemic is as follows:

Phase 1: Viruses are circulating naturally among domestic and/or wild animals, but it does not have the capacity to infect humans.
Phase 2: During this pandemic phase, viruses are circulating naturally among domestic and/or wild animals AND a few humans are infected from contact with sick animals. No evidence of person to person transmission.
Phase 3: A pandemic alert. the recombination or re-assortment of genes has caused sporadic human cases or infection in small clusters. There is some but limited transmission from person to person.
Phase 4: At this pandemic phase, there is definitely transmission from person to person. Localized communities are affected. A country experiencing this level of activity is supposed to contact the WHO for collaborative investigation and management. This is certainly a large step toward a pandemic. At this point, there is an effort to contain the disease. It does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is imminent.
Phase 5: A phase one step away from a full scale pandemic. This is characterized with rapid transmission of the virus among humans and at least 2 countries in a region are affected. This indicates a pandemic is imminent. All kinds of government programs go into action at this point. Hospitals begin to mobilize. Institutions implement their pandemic plans.
Phase 6: A full scale pandemic. This occurs when the criteria in Phase 5 are met and at least one other country is now affected. There is sustained human to human transmission. In previous pandemics, like the Spanish Flu of 1918, millions lost their lives during this pandemic stage.

It is clear that the criteria address only the geographic spread and the rapidness of between human transmission. Nothing on disease severity. Fortunately, the current swine flu seems to be moderate and causing only mild illness in most patients. "Moving to pandemic Phase 6 does not imply we will see increased deaths or serious cases," said Dr Chan. She also noted that a right balance between complacency and vigilance was essential as pandemic strategies would vary between countries depending on many specific factors. One major concern is that now the swine flu is migrating from northern to southern hemisphere, there may be a chance for the virus to mutate and become more virulent. A take home message? No need to be excessively concerned and stressed out as of now, but do keep a healthy dose of mental alertness regarding the progression of this virus.

Reading exercise - full #1

Passage: The fact that superior service can generate a competitive advantage for a company does not mean that every attempt at improving service will create such an advantage. Investments in service, like those in production and distribution, must be balanced against other types of investments on the basis of direct, tangible benefits such as cost reduction and increased revenues. If a company is already effectively on a par with its competitors because it provides service that avoids a damaging reputation and keeps customers from leaving at an unacceptable rate, then investment in higher service levels may be wasted, since service is a deciding factor for customers only in extreme situations.

This truth was not apparent to managers of one regional bank, which failed to improve its competitive position despite its investment in reducing the time a customer had to wait for a teller. The bank managers did not recognize the level of customer inertia in the consumer banking industry that arises from the inconvenience of switching banks. Nor did they analyze their service improvement to determine whether it would attract new customers by producing a new standard of service that would excite customers or by proving difficult for competitors to copy. The only merit of the improvement was that it could easily be described to customers.

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Strategies during reading:

1. Avoid re-reading
2. Avoid subvocalization
3. Avoid passive reading
4. Pay attention to pivotal words (but, however, nonetheless, etc)
5. James Bond mentality: time urgency, accuracy, and confident
6. Form imagery using creative mental linking

Strategies shortly after reading:

Step 1: First impression (author's tone, choice of word, ease of comprehension)
Step 2: Form a summary from each paragraph
Step 3: Form an overview from the whole passage
Step 4: Evaluate like an university professor

Specific applications of the above strategies:

Step 1: Author speaks in a neutral tone with a light dose of authority like a critic who views the phenomenon in a broader and more objective light.
Step 2: The 1st paragraph says that better service may sometimes not improve gains in a company. The 2nd paragraph exemplifies the concept from the 1st paragraph by demonstrating how a local bank's managers fail to assess the relationship between improved customer service and its effectiveness translated into any real benefit.
Step 3: The link between service quality and resulting benefits needs to be evaluated and should not be presupposed at the face value, in order to avoid wasted resource and efforts.
Step 4: A strength of this passage is the ease to read due to the well-constructed logical flow. It also gives a specific example by showing how improved customer service does not always equate to positive gains.

General rules on answering:

1. Don't go back to the passage unless you ABSOLUTELY have to. Oftentimes, you should be able to make your decision from I) the passage summary, II) information hidden in the question stems, and III) information hidden in the answer choices.
2. Understand the question stem clearly.
3. If time allowed, paraphrase the question (through time, it will become your second nature).
4. After re-phrasing the question in your own words, ask yourself "do I know the answer?" If yes, quickly form an imagined answer; if no, just relax and get the idea from reading the question stems/answer choices themselves.
5. Ask yourself "how confident am I of this imagined answer?" 100% sure > slightly doubtful > 50/50 > highly doubtful.
6. Evaluate the answer choices. Remember to be FLEXIBLE. For example, if you are very confident and find a matching choice immediately then save your time and pick that. But if you are only 50/50, then you might have to weight other choices against it.
7. Don't pick the choice you have absolutely no idea. Some test takers are tempted to pick a choice which they don't understand at all. Don't! It's usually a psychological trap.
8. Pick the LEAST WRONG answer. Quite often, I find myself talking myself into disconfirming all answer choices. But the reading sections in standardized tests such as the MCAT, LSAT, and GMAT are meant to create a sense of cognitive dissonance. Unlike science, people often find them doubting their best answer choice even if it's right. It's a test maker's trick to fool people into wasting more time re-reading and re-analyzing. Don't fall into this trap, don't expect to find a perfect choice, but pick the least wrong choice and move on.

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Practice questions:

1. The primary purpose of the passage is to
(A) contrast possible outcomes of a type of business investment
(B) suggest more careful evaluation of a type of business investment
(C) illustrate various ways in which a type of business investment could fail to enhance revenues
(D) trace the general problems of a company to a certain type of business investment
(E) criticize the way in which managers tend to analyze the costs and benefits of business investments

2. According to the passage, investments in service are comparable to investments in production and distribution in terms of the
(A) tangibility of the benefits that they tend to confer
(B) increased revenues that they ultimately produce
(C) basis on which they need to be weighed
(D) insufficient analysis that managers devote to them
(E) degree of competitive advantage that they are likely to provide

3. The passage suggests which of the following about service provided by the regional bank prior to its investment in enhancing that service?
(A) It enabled the bank to retain customers at an acceptable rate
(B) It threatened to weaken the bank's competitive position with respect to other regional banks
(C) It had already been improved after having caused damage to the bank's reputation in the past.
(D) It was slightly superior to that of the bank's regional competitors.
(E) It needed to be improved to attain parity with the service provided by competing banks.

4. The author uses the word "only" in the last sentence most likely in order to
(A) highlight the oddity of the service improvement
(B) emphasize the relatively low value of the investment in service improvement
(C) distinguish the primary attribute of the service improvement from secondary attributes
(D) single out a certain merit of the service improvement from other merits
(E) point out the limited duration of the actual service improvement

Answers: 1B 2C 3A 4B