5 Secrets To Make A Killing on eBay
by: Jason James
Copyright 2005 Auction Resource Network
Secret #1: Find a ‘real’ wholesale
and drop ship company
Do you know what one of the biggest problem is to be successful on
eBay? ‘What should I sell”? I can tell you, I get many emails per
day from eBay sellers, asking me what they can sell. Let me explain
this more in detail.
Let’s take John and David for example. Both are sellers and try to
make money on eBay. Let’s start with John. He mainly gets his items
from garage sales. So, every Saturday morning he gets up very early,
hops into his car and drives around the neighbourhood to check out
the garage sales. So he went last Saturday. John did not buy
anything on the first two garage sales, but on his third garage
sale, he found a little treasure. An old book from 1897 - for a
bargain price of $10. Bingo! John was proud! ‘I can sell this for
huge profit’, he thought and he went home. He took his digital
camera and he made a high quality digital photo. It took quite some
time but finally he was happy with the result. Then he had to upload
this picture to his computer and he spent some time writing the
sales copy. Late Saturday afternoon finally he was finished and
launched this book onto eBay. 7-10 days later his item got sold for
$75!! John is excited. He packs the item, labels it with the buyers
address and then he drives to the nearest post office. Oh no, what a
long line. After 15 min of waiting he could finally post this item
to his customer! Wow, a lot of work for $65 profit? Don’t you think?
Let’s look at David. He usually gets up very late – usually at
Saturday around lunchtime. He is still in his pyjamas and he makes
himself a nice cup of coffee and gets onto the Internet. He logs
into his drop ship account and browses through some hot selling
product. ‘Yes, I can sell that” - A nice laptop for a bargain price
of $550 (wholesale price). But David does not have to pay upfront
for this item, so he just downloads the professional digital photos
offered by his drop ship company to his computer. ”Oh wait”; David
has just discovered that this drop ship company has also a
‘ready-to-use’ auction sales letter available. That’s really cool
…and David copies and pastes the source code of this letter into his
eBay listing and he launches his auction. A Dutch auction, since the
drop ship company announced that they have more than one of this
laptop currently available. Great, David could sell 6 laptops. He
hits the submit button for this Dutch auction of 6 laptops and
enjoys his coffee (which is still hot by the way). After 7-10 days
David has sold all 6 laptops for $830 each. All what David does is
the following: He waits until he gets the payment from his 6
customers in his paypal account, sends the address of the customers
together with 6 x $550 (wholesale price) to his drop sip company via
paypal. He has made pure profit of 6 x $280 = $1,680 in about 25 min
of work – total. That’s why David is a smarter eBay seller than
John. I think the idea is clear …drop shipping can be the answer to
your problem what to sell on eBay and it can saves you a lot of time
too. No packing, posting etc.
Secret #2: Have a professional auction listing
A professional eBay auction site is like your business card. If you
are serious selling on eBay you should show your potential customers
that you are a professional seller and that you are selling high
quality products. Please, don’t just upload a photo and type the
text in the description box. Do your homework and learn some HTML.
Look around there are many professional tutorials and ebooks around
helping you in that matter. It’s definitely worth it. And you’ll be
surprised, because if your auction listing looks nice and
professional potential buyers stay longer on your site and usually
it’s more likely that they place a bid.
Secret #3: The money is in the follow up
“Yes, I’ve heard this before”, you may say. But, this is a very
important aspect of your successful eBay career: Follow up with your
customers. Send them an email ~10 days after they have purchased the
product and ask them how they are going with the product and if
everything is all right. Invite them to have a look at your other
auctions. (You have to be careful though not offending anyone, but
if the products are related and you ask how they went with the
product, that’s fine). I never got complaints by doing that and your
customers are happy to get some “insider tips”. You’ll be amazed how
many customers will buy from you again, since they value you as a
seller. Keep in mind that it is easier to keep an existing customer,
instead of getting a new customer. You could also send them a thank
you gift in form of a downloadable digital information product.
That’s easy for you and they get some valuable information. You’ll
see that your existing customers will be very thankful and they feel
good that they have bought from you and will do again in the future.
Secret #4: Sell internationally
This aspect is often neglected by many eBay sellers: Sell
internationally! First, check with your drop ship company in which
countries they are shipping and how much postage they charge to send
the item overseas. If you have sort out these details, you can go
ahead and list your item internationally. You’ll be surprised how
many more items you are selling when the potential buyers see: Ship
worldwide. Don’t miss this opportunity or you are leaving big bucks
on the table.
Secret #5: Be creative – Be different
How do you think your listing will be stand out from the crowd? Good
question isn’t it. In my 4 years of being an active Power Seller, I
have tried and tested a lot. First have the photo in the gallery; it
just costs a bit more to list but these additional cents are well
spend. A recent study has shown that people almost ignore listing
without a picture in the gallery. So that’s mandatory! The next step
is your title. Do you know that only the title is spidered by eBay
when potential customers are searching for specific products? So,
you have to make sure that your title includes as much keywords as
possible. But be careful here, eBay does not like “keyword
stuffing”. So, be creative and come up with 2-3 different titles for
the same item. Try them all and you’ll see what works best.
About the author:
Jason James is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay
Power Seller of 4 years. His website "The Auction Resource Network"
reveals his inside secrets and sources that help him pocket over
$10,000 a month on eBay. Get your FREE 14 Day "eBay Secrets" eCourse
here: http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com
Circulated by Bandoni Media
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