Sometimes just a few small tasks make all the difference between making a few dollars profit on eBay and generating a small fortune each month. These ideas will help you make more from your listings.
* Big benefits of using 'Buy It NOW'! The vast majority of PowerSellers sell items on the BUY IT NOW principle, thereby generating constant sales for easily available items, and meaning the same listing can be used time after time, allowing potentially thousands of similar items to be delivered worldwide, often via dropshipping companies. Oftentimes the PowerSeller never even sees items he or she is selling. He or she simply lists items, takes payment, then sends order details and an agreed amount of money to another company – the dropshipping company - which then sends items direct to customers. So all you do is find 100 or 1000 high selling items, list them, sell the items, take payments, fulfill orders, then press a few buttons next week to relist those items again in just a few minutes. Look at the great majority of PowerSellers and you'll see some with many, many thousands of items listed, of which just a handful of listings are auction format. (Did you really think people selling 5,000 plus items create all those listings weekly from scratch?). See the next tip.
* When size does matter and small is usually best. Aim to regularly list similar (tested profitability) best selling items as opposed to continuously listing one-off items (unless you have experience of those one-off items). The benefits of this repeat product business model are many and varied and include: less time spent listing items for sale; all things being equal, regular reliable profits can be expected from relisting the same products for sale every day, week or month; planning is easier for the business man or woman who knows almost exactly what will sell next week and the week after that, as well as roughly how many sales will ensue and what profits are likely; the seller can book holidays and take days off by anticipating sales, fulfillment and delivery demands; he can confidently answer most queries by simply emailing back standard replies from wherever he or she is on holiday; the business can be highly automated, primarily through the push button process and by organising automated responses to buyers and sellers; even stock levels and reordering can be made faster and more efficient by use of standard templates or signature files which save time and energy otherwise spent placing orders by post, fax, email, telephone.
* The magic of PayPal: I strongly recommend you use PayPal for receiving payments and for paying eBay fees. Buyers generally prefer PayPal and will actively avoid non-PayPal sellers. People can pay immediately they receive an invoice or immediately an auction ends, meaning less likelihood of the buyer forgetting to pay later.
* Sell snow to the Eskimos! Some items naturally attract more people in their country of origin, especially collectibles such as books about New York City or 'Arizona' printed souvenir china (they'll attract more interest on eBay.com), and others from Melbourne, Australia (best on eBay.com.au), and Berlin, Germany (ebay.de). In reality, really enthusiastic bidders check the entire eBay marketplace through the 'Search' facility on every eBay page, but you can never be sure, so consider your market for every new listing ('new' meaning untested items).
* Spread your listings to maximise your audience: You can list each item under two categories to ensure a wider target audience. Imagine you own a car that once featured in a well-known television programme, like 'All Creatures Great and Small' or 'Coronation Street'. Do you list it under 'Cars' or 'Television Memorabilia'? The seasoned eBayer might use both categories in one listing. But if it doesn't sell, you've just lost money, more than if you'd chosen just one category. Two categories can work wonders, generating lots of bids and high realisations, but is normally best used with experience. So work at getting the first category right before expanding.
* Advice on using photographs. Most times a gallery picture is essential, especially among high competition items such as clothing, toys, cars. Not always so for one-off and most collectors' items without a picture where enthusiastic collectors will still click through. I venture to suggest that, on occasion, a listing without a picture can generate more visits, purely out of curiosity, especially with a cryptic heading, such as 'Biggest, Fattest HoneyPot on eBay', or where pictures are largely superfluous, as for instance for books, CDs, ebooks where title itself does the selling.
* Keep careful records of successful bidders who have paid and others who haven't. eBay provides a reminder button for your slow-paying bidders. But proceed with caution. Remember why erasers are placed on the end of pencils - because people make mistakes - and the mistake might be yours. Check, check, check everything carefully before sending reminders and always before writing derogatory letters to bidders or reporting them to eBay. See the next tip.
* Use Feedback carefully. It goes without saying, don't give negative feedback to others without making thorough checks first. The other person could have suffered a bereavement, be ill, or in the middle of a two or three day power cut and that's the reason they haven't paid you! Be fair, be nice, do unto others …………………………!
* Hot Foot It for Instant Best-Sellers. Look for hot eBay categories, where most items attract bids, preferably multiple bids. Finding these categories, and their best-selling products, is largely down to research and hard work. When you find your niche, dominate it, have more listings than others in the niche, look for products they don't have, be first with new products. Examples from my own research: keyrings, charms, metal detectors, dog jewellery.
* Counting on Success. Spend time researching other people's listings, especially for products you'd like to sell. The best indicator of a popular product is the number of people actually entering the listing to obtain more information. Visitor numbers can easily be checked from counters displayed at the foot of most listings. But not all eBayers use counters. Note too that low visitor numbers may still indicate a popular product, as for instance products for tiny niche markets with fewer potential buyers but greater intention to buy.
* Look for Ideas in the Strangest of Places. We needed pictures of our new dog design cufflinks and wanted something special, with a luxury feel. We scan most of our products by placing them directly onto the scanner bed but find the scanner lid makes an unattractive backing for most items. We needed something different, colourful, a background to emphasise the quality of these lovely gold plated items. We tried velvet pads from jewellery boxes, plain paper, hankies, nothing worked. Then we tried Marks & Spencers' silk lilac undies, they worked a treat. The lilac looked wonderful against the gold and the silk wrapped delicately around the cufflinks without creasing. Better still, using that background for all of our jewellery lets regular customers spot ours among thousands of competing listings.
Avril Harper is a triple eBay PowerSeller and editor of eBay Confidential and webmaster of http://www.publishingcircles.com. She has produced a free guide - 103 POWERSELLER TIPS - which you can download with other freely distributable reports and ebooks at http://www.toppco.com
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