After all, you have come to the conclusion to become a successful seller with your own eBay business, do you?
Below is a simple, ten-step path to eBay enlightenment.
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Step 1: Identify your market.
Out of the items you are interested in, take a while to sit and watch for what items sell and what do not. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later on. You will probably see the ’sweet spots’ quite quickly, i.e. those one or two items that always seem to sell for a good price.
Step 2: Watch the competition.
Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can move in and beat them at their own game.
Step 3: Find a product
Get hold of a supplier for whatever it is you want to sell, and see what the best rates you can get are. Do not be afraid to ring round quite a few to get the best deal (see also dropshipping below). If the eBay prices you have seen are higher than the supplier’s, then you are set.
Step 4: Start small
Please do not throw thousands at your idea straight away – get started slowly, see what works and what does not, and learn as you go. Remember that it is very cheap to try out even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might just work!
Step 5: Test and repeat.
Keep trying different strategies until you find something that works, and then do not be ashamed to keep doing it, ever so often. The chances are that you just have discovered a good niche.
Step 6: Work out a business plan
A business plan does not need to be anything too formal, just a few pages that outline the market opportunity you have spotted, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget. This is more for you than it is for anyone else.
Step 7: Invest and expand
This is the time to throw money at the problem. Buy inventory, and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal number of sales each week, increasing it each time.
Step 8: Make it official
Once you have made a few thousand dollars worth of sales, you should really register yourself as a business. Do not worry, it is not expensive or hard to do. A solicitor might be the best person to help you through the process.
Step 9: Automate
You will probably find that you are writing the same things again and again in emails or item descriptions. This is the time to give up on the manual method and turn to automated software that can create listings for you, and respond to completed auctions and payments with whatever message you provide.
Step 10: Never give up
Even when it looks like it is all going wrong, please do not stop trying until you succeed. If you keep working at it then you will almost always find that you make a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate.
Once you get into the swing of things, you might start thinking that you should quit your job and take up eBay selling part time. But it is not always as easy as it sounds. There are all sorts of factors that you need to consider.
The next posting will weigh up the case for and against taking up eBay full-time.
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If you seriously thinking of earning, not losing BIG money on eBay, I definitely recommend a very successful product how to market eBay(R) auctions
eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches -
as a successful eBay Seller, you will need it!
Take Action – Click Here to Download “eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches”
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Another viable and most recommendable option, when starting up an eBay business, is to make use of the drop shipping concept, which you can read about in the post – eBay and Drop shipping – What Is It All About?
Click here to find out more about drop shipping.
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Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
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It is surprisingly easy to kill your eBay business, if you are not careful. I agree, you can start over from scratch without it costing you anything, but do you really want to?
Anyway, if you want your business to end up dead in the water, here are some simple ways to do it.
Lie about an item
Say it works fine although it sometimes does not work. Say it is in perfect condition when it has a scratch. Your customers will hate you!
Post whenever you feel like it
Make sure to leave your customers hanging around, wondering when their item is going to turn up. This makes sure they buy from someone else next time.
Let items end anytime
Few people will be around to care about your auction if it ends in the middle of the night. Why go to the trouble of working out whether auctions will end at a good time?
Do not bother with emails
Customers are just timewasters anyway. eBay businesses are supposed to run themselves! Never give informed responses to questions about your item.
Sell rubbish
Really, it is just eBay. You can just sell any old tat from the market for a 200% profit. Let quality be someone else’s concern – I mean, really, what do they expect for that price?
Refuse to give discounts
You know what your items cost, you know what your profit margin is going to be, and you are not going to negotiate. Remember that giving customers special deals might make them feel good and come back to you again.
Make your listings ugly
As many colours, flashing lights and animations as possible will really give those customers a headache. Write as much in CAPITALS!!!! as you possibly can. Preferably use big, red capitals. Be sure to use the fonts Impact and Comic Sans. For an extra special touch, see if you can figure out a way to add some music.
Do not take photos
It is such trouble, after all. If buyers are picky enough to actually want to see items before they bid on them, then screw them, that is what I would say.
Write short descriptions
Be as brief as possible, and use lots of mysterious abbreviations. This obviously makes you look very cool. You can even just write the title again in the description box. Think of the effort you’ll save!
Use reserve auctions
Now, this is a fairly controversial final choice, but it really is one of the best ways to scare away your customers. They will see ‘reserve not yet met’, and click that ‘back’ button before you know it. Luckily, they can always bid in a normal auction for the item somewhere else.
Now that you know the ten ways to kill your eBay business, how about we explore what to do if you want to do the opposite, and make a success of it?
The next posting will give you ten steps to successful selling on eBay.
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If you seriously thinking of earning, not losing BIG money on eBay, I definitely recommend a very successful product how to market eBay(R) auctions
eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches -
as a successful eBay Seller, you will need it!
Take Action – Click Here to Download “eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
http://twitter.com/christerfolke
Your eBay reputation is everything you are on eBay. Without it, you are nothing. Your reputation is worth as much as every sale you will ever make.
If you have ever bought anything on eBay (and the chances are you have), then think about your own behaviour. Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands does not require much thought or fear. It feels just like buying from a shop.
A Bad Reputation Will Lose You Sales.
In fact, a bad reputation will make you loose you almost all your sales. If someone leaves you negative feedback, you will feel the pain straight away, as that rating will go right at the top of your user page for everyone to see. Who is going to want to do business with you when they have just read that you “took a month to deliver the item”, or that you had “bad communication and sent a damaged item”? The answer is, that no-one is prepared to do business with you.
Your next few items will need to be very cheap things, just to push that negative down the page. You might have to spend days or even weeks selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback to make anyone deal with you again.
It is even worse if you consistently let buyers leave negative feedback. Once you get below 90% positive ratings, you might as well be invisible.
You Cannot Just Open a New Account.
Besides eBay’s rules about only having one account, there are more downsides than just getting a new account. You literally have to start from scratch all over again.
You will not be able to use all the different eBay features. Your existing customers will not be able to find you any more. Your auctions will finish at a lower price because of your low feedback rating. Opening a new account is like moving to a new town to get away from a few people who are spreading rumours about you. It is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
A Good Reputation Will Get You Sales.
When PowerSellers tell me something, I tend to believe them. They can be selling a pretty unlikely item, but if they guarantee it is what they say it is, then I trust them. After all, they are not going to risk their reputation. This is the power of a reputation. People know you want to keep it, and they know you will go to almost any lengths to do so.
This is true even to the point that I would sooner buy something for $20 from a seller I know I can trust than for $15 from someone with average feedback. It is worth the extra money to make me feel like the seller knows what they are doing has all their systems in place and will get me the item quickly and efficiently.
You really will find selling on eBay so much easier, and there is only way to get a good reputation. Make sure you please your customers every time. However there are customers, which sometimes can be difficult to please.
In the next posting, we ask – is the eBay customer always right?
* * * * *
If you seriously thinking of earning, not losing BIG money on eBay, I definitely recommend a very successful product how to market eBay(R) auctions
eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches -
as a successful eBay Seller, you will need it!
Take Action – Click Here to Download “eBay Fortune , The Definitive Roadmap To Auction Riches”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
http://twitter.com/christerfolke