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.
* * * * *
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”
* * * * *
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
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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.
* * * * *
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
eBay was created in September 1995, by a man called Pierre Omidyar, living in San Jose, California, USA. He wanted his site – at that time called ‘AuctionWeb’ – to be an online marketplace, and wrote the first code for it in one weekend. It was one of the first websites of its kind in the world. The name ‘eBay’ comes from the domain Omidyar used for his site. His company’s name was Echo Bay, and the ‘eBay AuctionWeb’ was originally just one part of Echo Bay’s website at ebay.com. The first thing ever sold on the site was Omidyar’s broken laser pointer, which he got $14 for.
The site quickly became massively popular, as sellers came to list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work remarkably well, and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself. The site had been designed from the start to collect a small fee on each sale, and it was this money that Omidyar used to pay for the expansion of AuctionWeb. The fees quickly added up to more than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his job and work on the site full-time. It was at this point, in 1996, that he added the feedback facilities, to let buyers and sellers rate each other and make buying and selling safer.
In 1997, Omidyar changed AuctionWeb’s – and his company’s – name to ‘eBay’, which is what people already had been calling the site for a long time. He began to spend a lot of money on advertising, and had the eBay logo designed. It was in this year that the one-millionth item was sold (it was a toy version of Big Bird from Sesame Street).
Then, in 1998 – the peak of the dotcom boom – eBay became big business, and the investment in Internet businesses at the time allowed it to bring in senior managers and business strategists, who took in public to the stock market. It began to encourage people to sell more than just collectibles, and quickly became a massive site where you could sell anything, large or small. Unlike many other equivalent sites, though, eBay survived the end of the boom, and is still going strong today.
1999 saw eBay go worldwide, launching sites in the UK, Australia and Germany. eBay bought half.com, an Amazon-like online retailer, in the year 2000 – the same year it introduced Buy it Now – and bought PayPal, an online payment service, in 2002.
Pierre Omidyar has now earned an estimated $3 billion from eBay, and still serves as Chairman of the Board. Oddly enough, he keeps a personal weblog at http://pierre.typepad.com. There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay – that’s a lot of laser pointers.
Now that you know the history of eBay, perhaps you also would like to know how it could work for you? In coming posts, I will give you an idea of the vast possibilities and what products to get in order to become successful with eBay
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Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
My new content from all my web pages is also going there
If you find the information useful, please 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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Are you an eBay seller? If you have been looking for a relatively easy way to make money, there is a good chance that you are. Different individuals use eBay, but many use eBay to make a little bit of extra money or even to financially support themselves and their families. If you are an eBay seller, how is everything currently going? Are you making as much money as you had hoped to make?
If not, please read on, and you will find some tips are outlined below on how you can make sure that your eBay items sell better.
When it comes to buying items on eBay, there are many eBay buyers who are on the lookout for eBay scams. Before purchasing an item, one of the first things that an eBay buyer does is check the feedback of the seller. Doing business with a highly rated and recommended eBay seller reduces or completely eliminates the possibility of getting scammed on eBay. Feedback helps to give you a good reputation, but there is also something else that can help you get a good reputation, and this is an “About Me,” page. This is a page where you are in the position to introduce yourself and give a little bit of background information about yourself and your eBay business.
“About Me,” pages are optional, but there are a number of benefits in having one.
Once an eBay buyer has learned that a seller who has an item that they want/need for sale is a reputable one, they will most likely continue to examine the product being sold. This is where your biggest chance of making a sale comes in.
First, make sure that your products are being sold at a fair price. Keep in mind, when making your auction listings that you are after making a profit, but on the other hand, you do not want to scare off any potential buyers with a too high price. Just making sure that your prices are reasonable is enough to increase your chances of making a sale.
Secondly, make sure that you accurately describe all of your items that are being sold. For instance, if you are selling a lot of or a group of children’s toys, it might be a good idea to take the time to list the names of each toy being sold. Outline the condition in which each toy is in as well. If you are selling toys that require batteries, you should state whether the batteries are included or not. Providing a detailed, accurate description of all of your items will definitely increase your chances of having them be sold
In addition to a detailed description, it is also rather important that you have pictures of your items. eBay allows you to post one free picture, but more can be posted for additional fees. Do not let these additional fees deter you from posting additional pictures, as they are likely to increase the chances of making a sale. In fact, you may want to have a look into free photo sharing websites, such as PhotoBucket, as they allow you to post additional eBay pictures for free. When taking pictures of your eBay items, make sure that you take a number of close-up pictures. Also, make sure that the pictures are easy to see and that the light is good. Having poor pictures or no pictures at all is one of the many reasons why many eBay items end up not being sold.
The methods of payment that you accept may also have an important impact on how well your eBay items will sell. One of the most common forms of payments used, to pay for eBay purchases, is PayPal. The reason why PayPal is so popular is because it enables shoppers to buy items from you, without having to disclose their account numbers. If you do not already accept PayPal, please take a look into doing it. Although most eBay buyers use PayPal, you should also remember that not everyone does. For that reason, you may also want to accept other methods of payment, including money orders or personal checks. The only thing with personal checks is that you should wait until the check is cleared, before shipping the buyer their merchandise, especially with large and expensive purchases.
By implementing the above mentioned eBay seller tips, you may start seeing an increase in your eBay sales, even right away. In all honesty, you need to think of it from a buyer’s perspective.
Look at your auction listings and ask yourself: would I buy what I am selling from a seller like me?
* * * * *
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 an 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?
My new content from all my web pages is also going there
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
Many people who are trying to start an eBay business spend a great deal of time trying to figure out which items are the best to sell on eBay. Many of these people have elaborate systems for determining this information, and many others purchase expensive courses that teach them how to find this information as well. None of that is necessary. Everything you need to know is right in front of you – on the eBay website!
Take a look at any category, and you will see the word ‘hot’ beside some items. These items are not marked as hot sellers randomly – there is a method to all the madness! Items only get marked as hot when there has been more than thirty bids placed on
the item. All you have to do is surf around the eBay website for a while to find an item that will do well.
However, most power sellers will agree that there is more to figuring out which items are best to sell than this. In fact, they claim that it is a science. A great way to start your search for items that might result in a successful future auction is to do research on the auctions that were successful in the past. You can view old listings that have completed at: http://listings.ebay.com .
A new way to determine what items sell best on eBay is ‘eBay Marketplace Research’. Marketplace Research will allow you to view important statistical
information regarding buying trends at eBay. This product contains all of the data one could possibly ever need to determine how well – or how poorly – an item will do in an eBay auction. However, there is a small fee for using the eBay Marketplace Research tools.
Another tool that might be very useful in your quest for finding hot selling items for your eBay auctions is the listing of popular eBay search terms that is found on the site. This list can be found at: http://popular.ebay.com/. This list is divided into
categories, which will make it easier to determine how popular your potential item may be.
Please do not make the mistake of thinking that an item will do poorly, or that it will do well without first doing your homework on the item. Some of the strangest things sell for the highest prices, while items that would sell quickly in any other environment just sit there. Almost any eBay Power Seller will tell you that the key to a successful auction rests in the amount of research you put into the items you hope to sell.
* * * * *
If you seriously thinking of earning 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 an 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?
My new content from all my web pages is also going there
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