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.
* * * * *
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
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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Is the eBay Customer Always Right?
The answer to this question is ‘yes’. In fact, the answer is a BIG fat ‘YES!‘, the biggest yes you have ever heard. Of the course the customer is always right. If you want to be a successful eBay seller, you should go miles out of your way to make sure every single one of your customers is 100% satisfied, no matter how much time or money it might cost you.
A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedbacks, and negative feedbacks are to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell might have been. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.
But What If…
But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer.
Below are a few common situations and how to handle them.
The customer says the item never arrived: Politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still has not arrived. If it still has not arrived, you should assume it was somehow lost in the post and offer him or her to send a replacement if you have one, otherwise give them a full refund. I quite frankly do not care what it will cost you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?
The item has been damaged in the post. You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.
The customer says the item does not match the description. Resist the urge to email back with “yes it does, you just didn’t read the description properly”. Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to straighten out any confusing points in your description.
I am certain that you are starting to detect a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, whilst having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.
You should always handle customers’ complaints before they complain to eBay. In fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.
Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let us presume you were selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a $1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer’s $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week’s profit.
However, it is far better to look at it form a different perspective. If you are not prepared to give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week’s profit, but you will probably lose the next few weeks’ profit as well. Now which option looks better?
I absolutely cannot emphasise enough the importance of really believing that the customer is always right. But trying to make excuses for complaints is not the only thing you have to give up on. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid unless you want to kill your business before it has even started properly.
In the next posting I will show you what it is all about
* * * * *
If you are serious about making serious money on eBay and on the Internet, you must get the book
“The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay”
You want a part of the $24 Billion eBay boom?
What are you waiting for?
Take action now!
The book reveals ways to sell on eBay where your risk of loss is virtually eliminated.
Where you risk almost nothing and your profits can be massive.
In just a few months time this book shot up to be the most popular eBook site on the Internet.
Click here now to download the book!
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
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
If you have ever read an article about eBay, you will have seen the kinds of incomes people make – it is not unusual to hear of people making thousands of dollars per month on eBay.
Next time you are using eBay, take a look at how many PowerSellers there are. You will find quite a few. Now consider that every single one of one of them must be making at least $1,000 per month, as that’s eBay’s requirement for becoming a PowerSeller. Silver PowerSellers make at least $3,000 each month, while Gold PowerSellers make more than $10,000, and the Platinum level is $25,000. The top ranking is Titanium PowerSeller, and to qualify you must make at least $150,000 in sales every month!
The fact that these people exist gives you come idea of the income possibilities here. Most of them never set out to even set up a business on eBay – they simply started selling a few things, and then kept going. There are plenty of people whose full-time job is to sell stuff on eBay and some of them have been doing it for years now. Can you imagine that? Once they have bought the stock, everything else is pretty much pure profit for these people – they do not need to pay for any business premises, staff, or anything else. There are multi-million pound businesses making less in actual profit than eBay PowerSellers do.
Even if you do not want to quit your job and really go for it yet, you can still use eBay to make a significant second income. You can pack up orders during the week and take them down to the post office for delivery each Saturday. There are few other things you could be doing with your spare time that have anywhere near that kind of earning potential.
And what’s more, eBay does not care who you are, where you live, or what you look like. Some PowerSellers are very old others are very young. Some live out in the middle of nowhere where selling on eBay is one of the few alternatives to farming or being very poor. eBay tears down the barriers to earning possibilities that the real world constantly puts up. There is no job interview, no yearly performance reviews and no commuting involved – if you can post things, you can do it.
If you know where to get something reasonably cheap that you believe you could sell, then eBay is the place to sell it on and since you always can get discounts for bulk at a wholesaler, that is not exactly difficult. Buy a job lot of something in-demand cheaply, sell it on eBay, and you will already be making money, with no set-up costs – nada.
If you want to dip your toe in the water before you commit to actually buying anything, then you can just sell things that you have lying around in your house. Search in the cupboard for stuff you never use, and you will probably find you have got a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff just lying around in there! This is what eBay is all about – there is always someone who wants what you are selling, whatever it might be, and since they have come looking for your stuff, you do not even have to do anything to get them to buy it.
Do you then want to get started on eBay? Well, that’s great! There are only a few little things you need to learn to get started. The next posting will give you the low-down.
* * * * *
If you are serious about making serious money on eBay and on the Internet, you must get the book
“The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay”
You want a part of the $24 Billion eBay boom?
What are you waiting for?
Take action now!
The book reveals ways to sell on eBay where your risk of loss is virtually eliminated.
Where you risk almost nothing and your profits can be massive.
In just a few months time this book shot up to be the most popular eBook site on the Internet.
Click here now to download the book!
* * * * *
If you immediately want to roll up your sleeves and start getting your hands dirty, then I fully recommend the following product,
a product having far more pros than cons
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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, 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
Are you interested in becoming an eBay seller or are you a relatively new eBay seller? If that is the case, you may still be in the learning phase regarding the ins and outs of eBay. Selling on eBay is a great way to make additional money or even enough to fully support yourself, but you have to be successful at what you do. Unfortunately, it can take time to fully come to grips with all the ins and outs of eBay, particularly how to become a profitable eBay seller – until now.
Below you will find some useful tips, tips that you not necessarily will find explained on eBay.
All eBay sellers are required to pay fees to list their items for sale on eBay.
You are charged two separate fees
- a listing fee or insertion fee
- a final value fee
For the final value fee, you are charged a percentage of the price that your item was sold for. The insertion fee or listing fee is calculated somewhat differently. Instead of being charged a percentage, you are charged a set amount.
For instance, momentarily, it costs .20 to list an item up to .99 cents and .40 to list an item for sale between $1.00 and $9.99, and the fee scale continues upwards in a similar fashion. Please remember that this is just a sample.
eBay regularly changes their fees; therefore, please do not rely on the aforementioned fee samples.
Although eBay sellers must pay the eBay fees mentioned above, many do not take the time to thoroughly understand those fees. You are advised to inform yourself, as it otherwise may end up costing you money. For instance, many of the price ranges for eBay’s insertion fee scale ends at .99 cents. For you, this is a great opportunity to save money, but you must know how to do so. As stated above, if you list one of your items at $9.99, the sample insertion fee would be only .40 cents. Did you know that if you listed your item for $10.00, your insertion fee could jump up to around .60 cents (+ 50%)! An extra .20 cents just for a penny is pretty expensive, don’t you think, especially if you list a number of eBay auctions that way. Before listing items for sale on eBay again, examine eBay insertion fee sale and see how you can easily save money, sometimes by just shaving a few cents off your asking price.
It has often been said that to be a successful eBay seller, you need to have good product descriptions and clear digital pictures of the item or items that you are to sell. Of course, having a number of pictures in your eBay listings is a great way to increase your chances of making a sale, but it can be expensive doing so. eBay allows sellers to post one picture for free. Additional pictures can be purchased for a small fee, but that small fee can add up over time. With that in mind, many eBay sellers limit the number of pictures they put in their auctions. However, you do not want to do this. Instead, you should examine photo sharing sites. Photo sharing websites, like PhotoBucket is a nice, free way to add more pictures to your eBay auctions. Register with a photo sharing site, like PhotoBucket, follow the instructions and you should be saving money in no time at all.
The aforementioned ways are just a few of the many ways that you can save money on eBay, not lose it. In all honesty, you should do a little bit of research first. Using the Internet is a great way to research selling on eBay, as many other eBay users are prepared to share their money-making secrets with you - free of charge.
* * * * *
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
Are you looking to start buying or selling on eBay?
If you have never used eBay before, you may not necessarily know that it is relatively easy to be a victim of an eBay scam. While eBay is considered a safe place to shop online, there are a number of eBay scams that you should be on the lookout for. If you know what these scams are, before you start shopping on eBay, will help to reduce or completely eliminate your chances of becoming a victim.
Before we start to examine some of the most common eBay scams that you should be on the lookout for, it is important to point out why those scams exist. eBay is considered an online market place or an online auction website. Just about anyone with an Internet connection and an eBay account can start eBay sale auctions. This is what makes it possible for scammers to trap innocent shoppers. While eBay does a lot of work to combat these scams and eliminate the individuals behind them, unfortunately there are some people who manage to slip through the cracks. That is why one should always want to be on the lookout for eBay scams.
When we speak about common scams to be on the lookout for, one of the most common scams involves selling a product that the seller actually does not possess. This type of scam is sometimes difficult to spot, but there are signs that you should look for. When posting an eBay auction, an eBay seller should preferably have pictures of the item or items that they are selling or at least have an accurate description of the object(s) in question. With some items, such as books, CDs, or movies, eBay sellers are given the option of using a stock photo; one that is provided by eBay. All other items should have a genuine photo, taken by the seller. If not, you should refrain from making the purchase, as it may mean that the seller is not even in possession of the item or items that they are trying to sell you.
In addition to selling items that they do not even are in possession of themselves, another common eBay scam involves literally lying about the items that they do have. For instance, there are some eBay sellers, although there are a small number of them, who claim that they have an item, like a car radio, which is in brand new condition, without that being the case. It is not uncommon for some eBay seller to outright lie or somewhat strengthen the truth. Unless you have a watchful eye, you may not find out until it is too late. That is why it is recommended that you not only purchase items from eBay that are accompanied by pictures, but that you also examine the accompanied pictures. You should therefore try to see if something, claimed to be new, really does look new or if it is in “like new” condition.
Another common eBay scam that you should look out for involves those who want your personal information. This type of scam is implemented in two different ways.
First, there are a small number of sellers who tell you that they need your credit card information, when they really shouldn’t. Whether you pay by PayPal, personal check, or money order, you should not give out any personal information to any eBay sellers whatsoever, even if you are buying an item from them. If you are not using PayPal, just send a check or money order to the address given to you; nothing else needs to be done.
The second eBay scam that involves trying to get your personal information is phishing. Phishing scams are increasing in popularity, making it easier to fall victim to one. With phishing scams, a scammer sends out an email that looks like it is coming from eBay. The email is often accompanied with a message stating that something is wrong with your account and that you need to click on the attached link, sign in and fix it. This is a scam. All they are trying to do is get your eBay account information. Once that has been done, they may have access to stored personal account numbers, as well as the ability to use your eBay account to make fraudulent purchases.
The abovementioned eBay scams are just a few of the most common ones that you may run across. Although there are those on eBay who are trying to scam or take advantage of you, the chances of falling victim to a scam on eBay are actually quite low, as long as you proceed with caution.
* * * * *
If you are serious about making real money with eBay and on the Internet, you must get the book
“The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay”
Who else wants a part of the $24 Billion eBay boom…
The book reveals ways to sell on eBay where your risk of loss is virtually eliminated.
Where you risk almost nothing and your profits can be massive.
In just a few months time this book shot up to be the most popular eBook site on the Internet.
Click here now to download the book!
- The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
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
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