Making Money By Helping Internet Illiterate People To Find And Buy Rare (Or Just Any Kind Of) Music Via Internet - Part III
This is continuation of ”Making Money By Helping Internet Illiterate People To Find And Buy Rare (Or Just Any Kind Of) Music Via Internet - Part II“Â
Order of my most recent customer looked like this:
Public Image Ltd.  ”Happy”   1987
World Domination Enterprise    “Let’s Play Domination” 1988
John Cale   ”Caribbean Sunset”     1984
The Wolfgang Press  ”Longtime”      1989
Tortoise       2006
Gun Club         ”Best”
Stranglers      2004
As you can see, at least two items do not contain album title, and one title is rather vague (Gun Club “Best”) - that’s there reference sources come handy (for your perusal, these are listed down the page).
While doing the search, I learned about at least two another income generating opportunities.
1) As it turned out, lots of hard to find titles remains to be unissued on CD - e.g. two items from the list above are not available on CD - that’s
World Domination Enterprise    “Let’s Play Domination” 1988 and
John Cale “Caribbean Sunset”     1984
On the same time, I became aware of a new (to me) service rendered by small German and US firms. Say, if you really need this that World Domination Enterprise    “Let’s Play Domination” on CD, cdBBQ company will make it for you!
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World Domination Enterprises Lets Play Domination CD $61.95
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LP + CDR copy: PRODUCT INC. 33PROD18, EX/EX (M 44022 M-:
Every item for sale at cdBBQ is a vinyl LP or single (this item is an LP) that we will acquire from one of our record dealers. We then create a CDR copy, and send both to you! These are not commercial CDs. A sophisticated noise/hum reduction process is applied to all transfers. Our standard process produces CDs that sound fantastic! We also have noise reduction options available for superior sound quality:
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See this offer here.
Myself, I used to convert some LPs from my collection to CD - so why can’t I do that - for a small fee - for other people, too?!
2) I re-discovered for myself an absolutely great source of obscure CDs - and this is totally, absolutely OFFLINE source. Name’s Amoeba. I got to hear it back in mid 90s, and got few friends coming over to Berkley just to drop by Amoeba and dig for titles
they wouldnt find elsewhere but easily - and cheaply! - were finding at Amoeba. They do have web site at http://www.amoebamusic.com/ and they even have “mail order” section at their website, and it reads you know what?
“Mail Order is a whole other business from what we do now. Amoeba is one of those “destination location” stores that offers locals and visitors alike a fresh batch of new stuff on a daily basis. Our prices reflect our style. We make it easy to find and you do the rest: grab it and buy it. Mail Order is very expensive and labor intensive — something we may
decide to do someday.”
Amoeba has to offer CLEARANCE CDs, too - they have over 25,000 CDs for under $3.00 — IN STOCK AT EACH STORE! Many as low as $1.00! With over 100,000 used CDs in each store and hundreds of thousands of used CDs in backstock, Amoeba offers the largest selection anywhere.
They say: “You’ll find used CDs at Amoeba that you won’t even find NEW at most stores! We even have lots of used CDs in categories like Jazz, Blues, International, Classical and Experimental.” And that’s TRUE, I know that by my own experience.
What’s in here about income generating opportunity?
Look: I do know what Amoebe is hands down best source of obscure titles my customers are after.
Amoeba is OFFLINE. My customers are also OFFLINE and (as I often stress) they do not speak English.
But I’m ONLINE, do speak ENGLISH and can use these two advantages of mine to find businessminded individuals in Berkley, San Fransicso and Hollywood who’d be willing to partner with me on Find-and-Sell-CDs business.
How do I do that? Craigslist.org
Finally, here is a (partial) list of resources I’ve been using to locate a music CD.
“Partial” denotes the fact that often I would use some other niche resources - but the list I outlines here is pretty much good start for anyone wishing to follow in my footsteps:
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Reference sources
(very useful if you dont know exact title - say, you only know a band’s name and year their album was put out):
http://www.trouserpress.com/
http://www.allmusic.com/
http://www.discogs.com/
Electronic MUSIC marketplaces:
GEMM /Global Electronic Market Place/
MusicStack
Eil - collectors resource
Ebay / Music / CDs
(actually, Ebay is not very useful for my particular needs described in this topic - cause I’ve no control over price and
cannot put an item on hold until _my_ customer considers whether he wants it or not at that undetermined price)
Comparison shopping services:
(not very useful in my case - cause they list more-less mainstream stuff - but anyways, give it a chance)
Yahoo Shopping (go for MUSIC)
Online music stores:
Amazon>
Barnes & Noble
Cheap-CDs
Tower Records
CD Universe (they do not ship to Russia
CD Conncection
Insound
Search services:
Google Music Search
(not impressive at all…but give it a try
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Filed under: Success stories - Offline meets Online