Saturday, January 23, 2010

E-Commerce with EBay and PayPal

 

2 days ago, I attended a business presentation by e-Bay and Paypal organised by Matrade. Though it was a business presentation, I would say that it was really a FUN business presentation.

The day started off with guests’ arrival at 9.30am. The venue was at Matrade Building itself. It was my first visit to Matrade. I did not bring along my camera as this is a formal event, not a Blogger session. Me and Angie (my GM) being 2 early arrival got ourselves early bird freebie. It was a set of USBs (phone line, USB mouse, USB hub, USB ear phone etc). It was a really cool and handle gadget set. Love it very much. Thanks PayPal !!

 

Ebat-bookletsDoor gifts - calendar and folders from PayPal

P1210613 eBay folder with presentation notes

Then, we got to know that this was actually a MOU signing and seminar between SME Corp with eBay and Paypal. While waiting for the arrivals of the guests, we were treated with video interviews of successful eBay sellers. These guys and gals are really cool. We have a young entrepreneur from Hong Kong whose passion for remote control cars and toy cars made him started his business from his home to a warehouse of toys and collectibles. He even managed to sell one of the cars he was trading at 800% !! Then, we have another guy from Singapore who sold Indian almond tree leaves to aquarium fishes’ breeders. Hey, we’re talking about dead leaves which are found abundance dropping from Indian almond trees. Who can ever imagined that dead tree leaves can be a hot selling item ?? Apparently, the leaves lower the ph level in the water, enabling fishes to breed better. ( Male Fish  to Female Fish  : Honey, I’m in the mood.. The atmosphere is good, the water taste OK, not too acidic, not too alcaline. Let’s go behind the rocks and make babies )

While waiting for for the VIPs to arrive, eBay lighten up the day and uplift the mood of the guests with Q&As that comes with prizes.

I managed to win myself a PayPal t-shirt during the Q&A session. Yahoo !!

PayPal-shirts  Win 1, free 1

The event started around 10.00am with the arrivals of the VIPs from the respective companies, opening speeches, signing of MOUs and photo sessions. After that, we had presentation by eBay and Paypal, They gave the guests some good insights on their website traffic, how much sales were churned out annually from their sites and some demographics of their site visitors/sellers & buyers. All very informative data. We were all encouraged to open an account with eBay and Paypal. Paypal is one of the most secured payment method on the Net. Your personal data are very safe and monitored round-the-clock by specialists to prevent hackers from stealing the info. UPS, eBay’s official business partner for courier also came up to the stage to present its serivces. We have some Net selling specialists who also talked on their experiences selling on eBay.

The session ended with some exciting moment as all the guests were eligible for a lucky draw session. Know what’s the grand prize ??

Hold your breath and (drum rolls !! ) It’s a

MacBook !! The 2 other prizes are iTouch. I really wanted a new laptop as I have just sold off mine last week. I can make use with a new laptop now. Then, I don’t need to go around hunting for a new laptop.

It was no fairy tale ending here, sob sob!! The grand prize went to a Chinese girl in her 20s. Congrats whoever you are ! Still sulking ….

No body leaves this seminar empty handed. At the end of the day ( around 2pm ) everyone went home with more goodies. We were all given a goodie bag with eBay round collar t-shirt, pens & key chain.

Ebay-shirt a free eBay t-shirt for all the guests of the day

Ebay-collectibles

more goodies from eBay

 

EBay-bag

the bag that stores all the goodies from eBay, yippee !!

Everyone went home smiling, hehe! Yeah right! I think 1 girl will be grinning all her way home.

Next week, we’ll be attending another session organised by SME Corp as well. It’s called “Enhancing Business with Google”. I can’t wait to learn more about this. Maybe I should do some spring cleaning now and see what I can find from under/behind/on top of my cupboards/bed and sell them on eBay. One Man’s Trash can be another Man’s treasure ! haha!

5 comments:

  1. So what did you learn at the workshop?

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  2. Heard that there is a follow-up hands-on workshop to experience the actual process of being a seller? Is that true? You attending?

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  3. Audrey : We learnt about opening account with EBay & Paypal (which I did after the talk), Ebay & PayPal users' trends, some basics on how to sell online.

    Anonymous : Yes, indeed there will be a follow up somewhere in March. The organiser will info the participants. I will be attending as my Boss is looking into selling our products online.

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  4. Audrey : She's one of the guest speaker

    ReplyDelete