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View Full Version : ebay: Liberty Garage-Sale for Ron Paul




Yaron Nahari
11-22-2007, 08:45 AM
Liberate your house of Junk you no longer need - Liberate your country of laws you never needed.

The Liberty Garage-Sale has several advantages:

1) A new, pain free way to raise money for Freedom.
2) A great viral news story – People selling their stuff for Ron Paul
3) Customers would become exposed to the Ron Paul Revolution.
4) If you buy something you need – the money goes to Freedom.

Here is how it works:
1) You sell an item on eBay – but instead of cash, request a confirmation of donation equal to the purchase price. You can request payment for shipping separately.
2) You send your sale with a Ron Paul Brochure and Stickers.
3) You request that they also clear their house for Liberty.


HELP! I want to set up a Liberty Garage-Sale website. It should explain the process and allow people to publish what they are putting up for sale. However, I am not a programmer and my site building and graphics skills are close to zero. Is there anyone who can help?

Also, please share any comments, criticism or advice.

P.S.
I saw a similar idea in another posted by someone else but can no longer find the post.

AdoubleR
11-22-2007, 09:37 AM
This is one of the best ideas I heard so far... A lot of people are using Ebay with the RP08 tag already... But giving it it's own website sounds like a good idea... I don't know anything about making a website, but if anyone does, please step up!

MikeStanart
11-22-2007, 09:45 AM
I'm not sure how this would work under E-bay's polices, someone should definetly check it out before we do it.

But of course, great idea!




PS: Welcome to the forum of Liberty!

AdoubleR
11-22-2007, 09:56 AM
I think it would have to be completely outside of Ebay if its technically possible.. If not, Ebay gets their cut too :(

robert4rp08
11-22-2007, 10:36 AM
Just set up an auction site. http://garagesale.ron-paul.us/

I'll customize it tonight/tomorrow/this_weekend

AdoubleR
11-22-2007, 10:39 AM
thanks a million... Robert for VP! LOL... (Who's can anyone else help???)

Yaron Nahari
11-22-2007, 06:03 PM
Just set up an auction site. http://garagesale.ron-paul.us/

I'll customize it tonight/tomorrow/this_weekend


Wow. Amazing work Robert! I will write some text for it. How much do you want?

angelatc
11-22-2007, 06:13 PM
If you're trying to introduce folks to the idea of Ron Paul, then setting up your own site isn't the best way to go about it, I'm afraid.

eBay fees aren't that bad....it's the PayPal charges that eat up the profits.

You can't sell anything and "promise" to send the money to a non-profit. You need to either display letterhead from the organization specifically giving you permission to do that, or join eBay's "missionfish" which is a bigger scam - it takes 20% of the low end sales.

Also, I suspect that if you sell to a person who has already donated $2300, you might be violating FEC rules. Mitt Romney's campaign is encouraging people to do it though, so if the bust comes down shouldn't be the only people in trouble.

RonPaulIsGreat
11-22-2007, 06:34 PM
That's not true. I make a living off of Ebay solely, built my own submission program/lister using there API, and Ebay fees are way higher than PayPal. PayPal fees at the highest are 2.9% plus .30 cents/ transaction. It drops a bit if you do more transactions. Ebay fees. Minimum cost without gallery to list is .20 cents if you start it at .99. IF it sells, then you pay the final value fee of 5.25% for the first 25.00 dollar, then 3.25% up to 1000.00 dollars. That is the MINIMUM charge. In order for Ebay to become cheaper than PayPal you'd have to sell something for well over a 1000.00.
Also, most use gallery .35 cents to the listing fee.

So, even if you sold 100% selling at .99 cent without gallery, as long as the item is well under a thousand bucks you are paying way more to ebay than paypal. On top of it, if you use the PayPal debit card, you get 1% cash back on purchases. Effectively lowering the transaction costs another percent.


Anyway, I did make a post about a RonPaul auction site awhile back. I bought both RonPaulClassifieds.com RonPaulAuctions.com as well. I didn't pursue it because it didn't seem like people thought it was a good pursuit. I do think it would work well though, if the community supported the effort. We have RonPaulForums, RonPaulRadio, why not continue the theme wiht RonPaulAuctions.com

If I can help out or if you get it going I could donate the .com if you wanted it. I program in Coldfusion primarily, I have a dual 3ghz server, with a business class unrestricted line. But I'm useless as far as PHP goes. I could host the images for you to take off the server load or something of that nature, maybe. It's a guaranteed business line so you don't have to worry about outages. I also have it on a power backup. It's reliable.

Anyway, I auction stuff on Ebay everyday, if you get it going I'll put some stuff up there. I plan on donating in the future(16th), if I sold some stuff I'd just donate more, I'm not near the 2300.00 yet.

Thanks.

Oh, If you wanted I could build a section that showed the RonPaul ebay stuff to. For those that want to stick to Ebay. At least it'd be in one convenient location regardless of the platform.

Yaron Nahari
11-22-2007, 10:01 PM
You can't sell anything and "promise" to send the money to a non-profit. You need to either display letterhead from the organization specifically giving you permission to do that, or join eBay's "missionfish" which is a bigger scam - it takes 20% of the low end sales.

However, could we not escape this problem by asking for Donation Confirmation codes instead of cash?


Also, I suspect that if you sell to a person who has already donated $2300, you might be violating FEC rules. Mitt Romney's campaign is encouraging people to do it though, so if the bust comes down shouldn't be the only people in trouble.

Where are the Romney Campain doing this? Can you give a link perhaps?

robert4rp08
11-22-2007, 10:24 PM
If you're trying to introduce folks to the idea of Ron Paul, then setting up your own site isn't the best way to go about it, I'm afraid.

eBay fees aren't that bad....it's the PayPal charges that eat up the profits.

You can't sell anything and "promise" to send the money to a non-profit. You need to either display letterhead from the organization specifically giving you permission to do that, or join eBay's "missionfish" which is a bigger scam - it takes 20% of the low end sales.

Also, I suspect that if you sell to a person who has already donated $2300, you might be violating FEC rules. Mitt Romney's campaign is encouraging people to do it though, so if the bust comes down shouldn't be the only people in trouble.

Just make it like a standard auction then. The seller is selling to raise money for themselves to donate. Problem solved? I think this is safer anyway since anyone can fake a donation confirmation number and essentially receive goods for free.

robert4rp08
11-23-2007, 07:22 AM
*bump*

The site is pretty much setup and ready to go. I added a little description of the concept as a help topic; feel free to send me a better description.

constituent
11-23-2007, 07:56 AM
utse on "shop freedom"

seriously, this is a long-term freedom-agenda plan. please, i need help w/ getting it off of the ground.

i don't know how to form a PAC, which is the main thing, and I don't have the bread to stack sandwiches let alone to spend the 40+ hrs. a week that needs to go into the project over the span of at least a month to work out the vendor credentialing and all of that.

anyway, all help would be much appreciated and if you're really interested in getting this off of the ground in a sure-fire, people ain't getting scammed, jerks aren't spamming their auctions all over every RP site kinda way.

this plan is to do it right, now AND in the future.

robert4rp08
11-23-2007, 09:01 AM
Thinking about this some more... I don't think a new auction site will be very successful for lack of traffic. So how about this:

1. Just stick to using ebay.
2. The SELLER promises to donate winnings to RP campaign. This will avoid the whole donation issue on ebay. Also, this is not explicitely stated in the auction (see #3). An ebayer that just wants to buy your stuff does not have to know what you're doing with the money. Also, this avoids scammers from faking confirmation emails in exchange for free goods.
3. A site is set up where people advertise their Liberty Garage Sale auctions. The site can also have a confirmation/feedback system.

Inflation
11-23-2007, 09:14 AM
To Hell with EBay and their communist, free speech hating policies!

Use Craigslist, it's FREE (as in free speech), FASTER, and COSTS NOTHING.

Jodi
11-23-2007, 09:53 AM
I think it would have to be completely outside of Ebay if its technically possible.. If not, Ebay gets their cut too :(

Or you could use ecrater.com and google checkout. I think google check out is still free.

RonPaulIsGreat
11-23-2007, 03:07 PM
As far as using other sites. The only Point to making a site is so all the Ron Paul supporters could buy stuff they want, and still support other Ron Paul supporters, and Ron Paul through them. If you list on E-crater, it's difficult to find all the Ron Paul Supporters. I mean if I was going to buy a video game, and I knew seller A was a ron Paul supporter, and seller B wasn't. I'd buy from seller A. The RP08 anyone can put in there to, so if that takes off other sellers will mimic it on Ebay, just for sells. God knows a Romney supporter wouldn't be above putting RP08 in the title, just to help his bottom line. LOL.

I think the whole point is to get all the listings together with at least a crude method of verifying Ron Paul supporter status.

As far as verifying people are Real Ron Paul Supporters. Well, one method would be to have a history here(ronpaulforums) or other RonPaul sites, and the admin could e-mail you on RonPaulForums if you wanted to be a Verified Ron Paul Patriot(once checking date joined, and some postings). It's not perfect. Another method would be, and I don't know if this info is available but if they release the donor list at the end of each quarter, you could be verified via Name on Paypal record.

So, there isn't any need for a PAC. Just a crude method for giving known Ron Paul supporters a VERIFIED Ron Paul Icon. That's it really. We don't have to chase the money trail or directly collect any money at all. I actually don't want to collect anything on behalf of Ron Paul, I just want a site full of Ron Paul supporters, I trust them to donate if they can.


So, let's say you are a Ron Paul supporter and you want to sell your old Motorcycle.

First you'd sign up for the auction site. Then you'd send a message to the administrator(auction site) telling him your user name on a Pro Ron Paul site you've been a member of for some time. (Meetup,Facebook, RonPaulForums, etc..). The admin would go there quickly look at your history(few posts, date joined, etc), and then would assign your account, RON PAUL supporter verified, and you'd get a neat little icon, showing you've proved you're a supporter somehow. This would only need to be done for sellers(buyers could to if they wanted to). Sellers typically are outnumbered by buyers 10:1, anyway.

Also, it wouldn't be a requirement to get Ron Paul Verifed if you didn't want, you simply wouldn't get that Icon until you proved it. I'm sure the Verified sellers would do better though.


So, I don't see any reason for a Pac, seeing the auction site doesn't need to collect any money at all(It would just send you to PayPal to pay the seller, that's it), it would just be handling doling out Ron Paul certified Icons. (Trusted Seller equivalent). That's it. Most Ron Paul supporters are going to give as much to the campaign anyway, if they could afford it. And if someone supports Ron Paul, and needs the cash, I wouldn't be offended that they didn't donate it to buy christmas instead.

Anyway, I can also pull Ebay auctions, with the KeyWord RP08, or Ron Paul, and display those on a seperate page, for those that want to stay with ebay. I don't really like that as much though, because I can't verify at all if they really support Ron Paul, without interrogating each seller.

Anyone, working on this, should message me through here, and not my e-mail. I get lots of spam on that and if this get's going I'll just create another e-mail for coordination.


To the guy actually with the auction site, is that set up already to take Paypal? And does that auction script, auto post back upon payment and show payment has been made, without having to manually verify at Paypal? If so then we don't have to worry about the e-mail scammers either(False Paid notices, or False Billings). As PayPal, has a server side post back feature that can auto update the website if it's integrated in that script already.

If not, and that script is just a basic auction script with nothing else added. There are scripts that have more advanced features, and PayPal integration out of the box. www.rainworx.com is the one I was looking at. I believe it has post back capabilities already built in. I also have all the server requirements for it. Unfortunately it costs 800.00 dollars, I could donate to the purchase though, and host it at no cost.

Anyway, I'll play around with the script you have hosted to see if I can garner any info.

Thanks.

OptionsTrader
11-23-2007, 05:18 PM
ebay: Liberty Garage-Sale for Ron Paul

Great idea.