Let’s take a look at some of most popular websites and the proper methods for selling things via the Internet in Malaysia.

AUCTIONS

Auctions are a great way to sell things as you sometimes get more than you expect.

• eBay

The most recognisable website for online buying and selling is, of course, eBay. The online auction site has been available in Malaysia since 2004 and has been gaining in popularity over the years.

Registration is free and eBay Malaysia does not charge insertion fees or final value fees. However, the site will charge you if you want to add an extra picture or subtitles for the item you are selling.

• Tip!: It is important to have multiple views of any item, particularly for expensive products where it is best to have high-resolution pictures from different angles to increase the chances of finding an interested buyer.

eBay owns PayPal and it is one of the more popular ways to pay. PayPal allows the buyer to transfer money from his credit card or bank account (note: In Malaysia only credit cards are allowed) to a PayPal account and then send payment to the seller’s PayPal account without exchanging sensitive financial information.

In Malaysia, however, once the money has been transferred to the sellers PayPal account, the money cannot be withdrawn from a bank and can only be credited into your credit card account.

Other payment methods include bank transfers and cash on delivery.

Advanced users hoping to start a side business online may want to consider signing up for an eBay store.This allows users who meet the requirements to create their own customisable eBay page and even gives them the option of selling fixed price items. Setting up a store will incur an extra monthly fee and only users with a fixed number of ratings and verifications will be eligible to rent one.

• Lelong.com.my

Another auction site that is popular amongst the local audience is Lelong.com.my. The site is fashioned much like eBay and even has a similar user rating system.

Established locally, it is a lot more Malaysia-centric as there are options to pay specifically via Maybank2u and shows which state in Malaysia the item is in.

Lelong is also pushing its virtual stores to people who meet its rating requirements. You pay a small yearly sum for your own page and store logo as well as an inventory mechanism provided by the site. Again, this is for advanced users looking to take online selling to the next level.

Lelong also does not charge fees on items sold on its site. You are only charged if you wish to add more than one picture.

• Tip!: The best way to get around paying too much for extra pictures on eBay and Lelong is to take several photos and merge them into one picture as effectively as possible.

FIXED PRICES

There are websites which allow you to sell things at a fixed price to any interested party. The difference here is that you have the prerogative to sell to whomever you please, not necessarily to the highest bidder who may not have hiked the price to a satisfactory level.

• Lowyat.net

Arguably the most popular fixed price website is Lowyat.net. This website deals primarily with electronics such as computers and computer parts, MP3 players, speakers, and essentially anything that requires some form of electric energy to operate.

The site is free to sign up and it is probably the most straight to the point for selling stuff. It is forum based so you can ask questions immediately and a private messaging system for more detailed inquiries.

The site offers trade at no cost at all as there are no charges for extra pictures, (although the quantity is limited) or a final value fee. Reputation as well as amount of items sold will be taken into account in assessing a user’s reliability.

• mySimplifieds.com

A relative newcomer to the realm of online trade is Digi Telecommunication’s mySimplifieds.com.

Launched in February, it hopes to offer Malaysians yet another venue to buy and sell their items. Advertised as a classifieds website, this site allows users to advertise a wide range of products and even extends to property. Many houses, apartments and rooms are up for sale or rent on Digi’s site within months of its launch.

Currently, registration and usage is completely free and it remains to be seen whether that is subject to change. The site offers some interesting services such as a built-in Facebook feature designed to notify your friends about your posting. Also, links to YouTube will be allowed for further product or property demonstration via video.

Lessons from Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple Computers

Steve Jobs is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our generation. His success story is legendary. Put up for adoption at an early age, dropped out of college after 6 months, slept on friends’ floors, returned coke bottles for 5 cent deposits to buy food, then went on to start Apple Computers and Pixar Animation Studios.

1. Do what you love to do. Find your true passion. Do what you love to do a make a difference! The only way to do great work is to love what you do.

2. Be different. Think different. “Better be a pirate than to join the navy.”

3. Do your best. Do your best at every job. No sleep! Success generates more success. So be hungry for it. Hire    good people with passion for excellence.

4. Make SWOT analysis. As soon as you join/start a company, make a list of strengths and weaknesses of yourself and your company on a piece of paper. Don’t hesitate in throwing bad apples out of the company.

5. Be entrepreneurial. Look for the next big thing. Find a set of ideas that need to be quickly and decisively acted upon and jump through that window. Sometimes the first step is the hardest one. Just take it! Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

6. Start small, think big. Don’t worry about too many things at once. Take a handful of simple things to begin with, and then progress to more complex ones. Think about not just tomorrow, but the future. “I want to put a ding in the universe,” reveal Steve Jobs his dream.

7.  Strive to become a market leader. Own and control the primary technology in everything you do. If there’s a better technology available, use it no matter if anyone else is not using it. Be the first, and make it an industry standard.

8. Focus on the outcome. People judge you by your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. Advertise. If they don’t know it, they won’t buy your product. Pay attention to design. “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.” “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

9. Ask for feedback. Ask for feedback from people with diverse backgrounds. Each one will tell you one useful thing. If you’re at the top of the chain, sometimes people won’t give you honest feedback because they’re afraid. In this case, disguise yourself, or get feedback from other sources. Focus on those who will use your product - listen to your customers first.

10. Innovate. Innovation distinguishes a leader from a follower. Delegate, let other top executives do 50% of your routine work to be able to spend 50% your time on the new stuff. Say no to 1,000 things to make sure you don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. Concentrate on really important creations and radical innovation. Hire people who want to make the best things in the world. You need a very product-oriented culture, even in a technology company. Lots of companies have tons of great engineers and smart people. But ultimately, there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together.

11. Learn from failures. Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

12. Learn continually. There’s always “one more thing” to learn! Cross-pollinate ideas with others both within and outside your company. Learn from customers, competitors and partners. If you partner with someone whom you don’t like, learn to like them - praise them and benefit from them. Learn to criticize your enemies openly, but honestly.

Executive Summary by Vadim Kotelnikov

Resolutions are easy to make. The problem is, they’re even easier to break. Nevertheless, making New Year’s resolutions is a must for business owners. In our never-ending quest to make things easier for entrepreneurs, I’ve come up with five resolutions that shouldn’t be that hard to keep and that should help all of us. What follows may not seem like typical New Year’s resolutions. But that’s just as well, since this isn’t going to be a typical year. The sunniest predictions for 2009 say the economy will start to turn around by the third quarter of the year, but that it will still take at least another year before we’re back to where we were. I’m not saying this to sound discouraging; it’s just the reality we must now face.

Resolution #1 is to think smarter. Apply new solutions to old (and new) challenges. Stop doing what you’ve always done and ask yourself, What else you can offer with what you’ve got? “Do more with less” may be a clich?, but it’s a good mantra to adopt in 2009.

Resolution #2 is to be resourceful. There are lots of ways to spend less and achieve the same (or better) results. Audit your business. Check for inefficiencies.

Resolution #3 is about technology. Old hardware sucks time and can literally slow your business down. Outdated software is just inefficient and can easily affect productivity, which of course will likely impact revenues and profits. There are bargains aplenty out there (that’s including Aidan tech services), so it’s actually a good time to upgrade your technology.

Resolution #4. Speak up. Ask for what you want. Nearly every business is in the same dire straits these days, so everyone is negotiating. Don’t buy anything without at least asking for the best price.

Resolution #5 is to open up. Let your employees know how things are going so they can help if you need it. It’s better to tell the truth than to hide it. Uninformed workers are often immobilized by fear of the unknown, so sharing the state of your business keeps everyone focused on what is, rather than what may be.

Let’s make 2009 the year of the small business. Resolve to start a business. Or to grow the one you have. That’s the best way to help the Malaysian and global economies grow.

AidanTech’s sister company, ArdentEdu, has just succesfully registered the ArdentEduKit brand (”ardent edukit“) and tagline (”fun science in a box”).

Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd American president, was also the first US patent commissioner. He spoke of patents as “locomotives that run industry“.

Mark Twain once wrote “a country without a patent office and good patent laws is just a crab and couldn’t travel anyway but sideways or backwards“.

With a patent, an inventor can control the design, manufacture, licensing, distribution and copying of his inventions. Patents can prevent your competitors from practising your invention.

Simply put: The purpose of patents is to keep others from duplicating your invention.

Benefits of a patent
• Marketing. Customers are always looking for the “next new thing”. Patents represent “newness” as “novelty” is the key to successful patent applications. Patents also represent “R&D”, which everyone likes. Patents are also third-party endorsements as they need to be vetted by the unbiased officials in patent offices worldwide. Read rest of story…

There are 2 tools to help the firm to identify and build its core competencies.

• 1st Tool: consists of 4 specific criteria of sustainable competitive advantage that firms can use to determine those capabilities that are core competencies.
• 2nd Tool: is the value chain analysis. Firms use this tools to select the value-creating competencies that should be maintained, upgraded, or developed and those that should be outsourced.

In this article, we will only discuss about the first tool only.

4 Criteria of Sustainable Competitive Advantage 

1. ValuableValuable capabilities allow the firm to exploit opportunities or neutralize threats in its external environment. By effectively using capabilities to exploit opportunities, a firm creates value for customers.

2. RareRare capabilities are capabilitiesthat few, if any, competitors possess. A key question to be answered when evaluating this criterion is, “How many rival firms possess these valuable capabilities?” Capabilities possess by many rivals are unlikely to be sources of competitive advantage for any one of them. Instead, valuable but common (i.e., not rare) resources and capabilities are sources of competitive parity. Competitive advantage results only when firms develop and exploit valuable capabilities that differ from those shared with competitors.  

3. Costly to Imitate Costly-to-imitate capabilities are capabilities that other firms cannot easily develop. Capabilities that are costly to imitate are created because of one reason or a combination of three reasons:

a) Unique historical conditions. As firms evolve, they pick up skills, abilitise and resources that are unique to them, reflecting their particular path through history. A firm with unique and valuable organizational culture that emerged in the early stages of the company’s history may have an imperfectly imitable advantage over firms founded in another historical period - one which less valuable or less competitively useful values and beliefs strongly influenced the developmentof the firm’s culture. An organizational culture is a source of advantage when employees are held together tightly by their belief in it. 

b) Causally ambigous. This occurs when the link between the firm’s capabilities and its competitive advantage is causally ambigous. In these instances, competitors can’t clearly understand how a firm uses its capabilities as the foundation for competitive advantage. As a result, firms are uncertain about the capabilities they should develop to duplicate the benefits of a competitor’s value-creating strategy. 

c) Social complexity. Social complexity means that at least some, and frequently many, of the firm’s capabilities are the product of complex social phenomena. Interpersonal relationships, trust, friendship among managers and between managers and employees, and a firm’s reputation with suppliers and customers are example of social complex capabilities. 

4. NonsubstitutableNonsubstitutable capabilitites are capabilities that do not have strategic equivalents. This final criterion for a capability to be source of competitive advantage is that there must be no strategically equivalent resources that are either not rare or imitable. Two valuable firm resources (or two bundles of firm resources) are strategically equivalent when they each can be separately exploited to implement the same strategies. In general, the strategic value of capabilities increases as they become more difficult to substitute.The more invisible capabilities are, the more difficult it is for firms to find substitutes and the greater the challenge is to competitors trying to imitate a firm’s value-creating strategy. Firmspecific knowledge and trust base working relationships between managers and non-managerial personnel are capabilities that are difficult to identify and for which finding a substitute is challenging. However, causal ambiguity may make it difficult for the firm to learn and may stifle progress, because the firm may not know how to improve processes that are not easily codified and thus are ambiguous.