Sell on eBay BlogSpot

My blog has moved

2006-07-31T11:05:00.000-07:00

I have recently consolidated my two business blogs into one and moved the location to:

http://blog.skipmcgrath.com/

You will continue to see similar topics as I have been covering on here, but with added content pertaining to wholesale trading and other in depth aspects of online businesses.

Since I will now only have one blog, it will be updated every day, so be sure to bookmark it and visit it frequently.

Don't forget to check out my other free resources at www.skipmcgrath.com. Watch for some new publications at www.skipmcgrath.com/products coming soon.

eBay Stores Fees Hike

2006-07-25T03:07:00.000-07:00

On July 20th, eBay announced a fee increase for eBay Stores. The initial reaction from the blogs and message boards was "OUTRAGE," but if you take the time to read the entire announcement, eBay's action is not that unreasonable.

It is important to remember that eBay has costs too. Just as you pay a fee for every listing --eBay has a cost for that listing. Store inventories have grown so large that they now comprise 83% of all listings but those listings represent only 9% of the total gross merchandise sold (GMS) on eBay. That is a pretty staggering statistic.

According to eBay, the time it takes for an average store listing to sell is up to 14 times longer for most products and up to 40 times longer for media products such as DVDs where there are literally millions of items listed.

If you just look at the raw numbers, the fee increase seems pretty steep, but when you examine it in the context of your cost of sales, it's not all that bad. eBay's strategy is to "rebalance" the amount of stores versus core listings. Given the nature of the increase, it should have that effect, as I will definitely be "rebalancing" my listings.

Before we get further into this, here is the new fee schedule:

These Store Inventory format insertion fees take effect Aug. 22, 2006:

Starting Price	New Insertion Fee	Current Fee
$0.01 – 24.99	5¢	2¢
$25.00 – and higher	10¢	2¢

Some Store Inventory format final value fees also will increase, effective Aug. 22, 2006:

Selling Price	New Final Value Fee	Current Fee
$0.01 – 25.00	10%	8%
$25.01 – 100.00	7%	5%
$100.01 – 1,000.00	5% (no change)	5%
$1,000.01 and higher	3% (no change)	3%

Please note that for current listings, the new final value fees will apply only after these listings are renewed.

eBay states that the effect of these increases on the average seller will be about 6% based on back testing of June 2006 sales. I calculated the effect of these new fees on my store activity over the past month. Had these fees been in place, my actual selling expenses would have increased about 9%. Some sellers will see less and some will see more --with those sellers of store items in the $1 to $100 range seeing the most impact.

In my case, since most of my store sales fall in the $100 to $1000 range, I will not experience any change in final value fees which are by far the larger of the two. My listing fees will increase 500% per item (2¢ to 10¢) , but we are only talking about ten cents on items that sell in the $150 to $600 range --hardly something to get upset about.

Part of the fee increase is also a change in how eBay displays search results for items in eBay stores. Currently if a search returns less than 30 items, eBay will display up to 30 store results. Starting next month, if a buyer clicks on the Buy-it-now tab for search results, eBay will display the store results along with the core results.

The strategy of rebalancing their income makes more sense than an across the board fee increase. I had suspected for some time that the rapid growth of eBay Stores would have an adverse fee impact on eBay --I just had no idea how big an impact it was.

So the bottom line for sellers: Relax and take a deep breath. This isn't that big a deal. It would, however, pay to do some analysis of your listings to optimize your sell through rates and control your fees. eBay is offering store sellers free access to eBay Marketplace Research for the next 8 weeks so you can analyze your selling formats and optimize your listing strategy.

For more selling tips and articles, please visit www.skipmcgrath.com.

New Product: How To Create and Sell Information Products on eBay

2006-07-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

Karen and I have run a full-time eBay business for the past 6 + years and for the past 5 years I have written, produced and sold seven different books on and about eBay and internet marketing. I have also created two non-eBay eBooks that are selling very well. I have sold both printed books, eBooks and Audio files. Today, selling information products on eBay (and the internet) is responsible for almost one-half of our income.

When I was brainstorming new products it occurred to me that many of you would like to learn what I have learned over the past five years. Whenever you hear the term "information products" you might think of the many money-making and get-rich-quick programs for sale on eBay and the internet. Although you can do that sort of product, my main focus is on creating information products that people can really use --products that actually help people --and products that you can make money by selling.

In a previous issue I showed you how eBay is now embracing sales of both physical and digitally-delivered information products. These products include not only eBooks, but printed books, CDs and DVDs, original music, photography and art, public domian recordings, and much more. This is a new --and very wide open field that can be very profitable for eBay and internet sellers.

My new system consists of a 130 page printed manual and three CDs with bonus materials. How To Create and Sell Information Products on eBay is $67 + $5.90 shipping and handling. We are in final production as this newsletter goes to press. I expect to start shipping around the 20th of July. So if you order before then, please be patient --it could take a week or more to get the book to you.

As with all of my products, this book comes with a 90-day, no questions asked, money-back guarantee.

Behind The Scenes at eBay Live

2006-06-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

I remember my first eBay Live. It was held in Anaheim, near Disneyland. The entire event fit in a room that was smaller than some of the individual meeting rooms at this year's event. There were about 2000 to 3000 attendees.

This year's event pulled 15,000 people from all over the world. I met sellers from the UK, Australia, Japan, Austria and Germany. The convention floor was so huge, it was a 300 yard walk just to the rest rooms.

The best part of eBay Live for Karen and me was meeting so many readers who stopped by the booth to say hello. I have to apologize to all of you who stopped by to see me and missed me. I was doing a number of seminars and panel discussions and my publisher arranged a number of press interviews including the San Jose Mercury, Washington Post and KTNV-TV in Las Vegas.

It is really hard to meet and spend time with everyone on the convention floor, so next year Karen and I have decided to hold our own evening event at the next eBay Live in Boston. It will be an invitation-only event for my readers only. (I'll let you know the details next May.)

For the best overall news coverage on eBay Live, go to Auctionbytes.com. Ina Steiner and her reporters were everywhere at eBay Live and she has all the news. As I only publish monthly, my thoughts are more big picture -- long term. What does eBay Live mean to you and what happened there that will affect your business in the coming year?

They say "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" but that wouldn't be any fun. If you couldn't be there how would you learn what happened?

One of the most interesting events that happened at eBay Live was the pressure eBay put on the Mandalay Bay Hotel to kick Alibaba out of their event space in the Border Grill.

Alibaba (www.alibaba.com) rented the private meeting space downstairs in the Border Grill located in the hallway between the convention center and the hotel. They put on a great function every day from 10 – 2PM. They gave away great prizes, provided free food and drink and gave several presentations on wholesale sourcing and importing.

Reportedly, eBay contacted the hotel on several occasions and tried to force Alibaba out, and later offered the hotel money to buy them out. One source heard them offer the restaurant manager any amount of money they wanted to shut them down. When Alibaba put signage in the hallway directing people to the event, eBay showed up with hotel security guards and made them remove it.

Why you ask? Well, Alibaba owns TaoBao, which is eBay’s competitor in China. The battle for China’s online auction market has been fierce and bloody with no love lost between the parties –but did eBay need to carry the acrimony over to the US? (Full disclosure – Alibaba purchased Banner space on my web site to advertise their event).

A lot of people who heard and read about eBay’s actions re: Alibaba were perplexed –as this is not the eBay culture we have come to know and expect. I might be able to understand eBay’s actions if Overstock.com was in the same venue, or if Alibaba was promoting TaoBao, but they were promoting their wholesale sourcing search engine service where eBay sellers can find goods to sell on eBay –thereby earning fees for eBay.

eBay is big enough, and should be secure enough in their market, to just ignore Alibaba. Their actions were the only negative in an otherwise excellent and upbeat event.

Anyway, the Alibaba event was a lot of fun. They played a game called Trade or No Trade based on the TV show Deal or No Deal. They even had a Howie Mandel look-alike for the MC. One of the prizes was a Segway Transporter and they also gave away two ATVs, a mountain bike and some great tents. There was nothing at the event that could be considered "anti-eBay." If anything, Alibaba was very supportive of the eBay community, eBay US and helping eBay sellers find product.

As eBay Live went, it was a huge success! The panels and seminars were excellent, there were some great vendor solutions on the exhibit floor and the last-night gala was amazing. Although there was a one-hour wait to get in and a shortage of tables, that didn’t deter the faithful –we just camped out on the floor. At one time there were over 1,000 eBayers sitting on the floor eating and drinking and watching the Vegas showgirls and a band of Elvis impersonators. Huey Lewis was awesome. He sang all of his top hits and had the place rocking!

I had never stayed at the Mandalay Bay before. It is a beautiful hotel with dozens of swimming pools, a wave pool where you can body surf and great restaurants. We watched a lounge act one night by an awesome rock group called Paragon.

Paragon is a symphonic group that plays classic rock. They consist of eight virtuoso musicians who together create a distinct and awe-inspiring sound. Collectively these accomplished musicians have mastered seventeen instruments. In addition to the standard guitar, bass and keyboard, the band includes a cello, viola and a violin. Their lead singer Candice, a hot little blonde from Oklahoma, has a voice as bright and pure as Janis Joplin. Candice and the lead male vocal, Mike, performed probably the best rendition of Me and Bobby McGee I have ever heard.

It seemed that everywhere you looked you saw eBay members walking around with aluminum foil headgear. Apparently this started on the eBay message boards. When I asked what the foil headgear was all about, they explained it was designed to deflect eBay's electronic brainwashing waves.

The PayPal panel discussion became quite heated. There weren't that many people in the room, but those who attended were quite vocal in their complaints. Most of the complaints came from Canadian and overseas sellers who are being charged more than we are in the US. This was the only meeting I attended where I saw real frustration and anger with many sellers complaining loudly about PayPal's policies.

One really good suggestion was for PayPal to send a token to eBay when a refund is issued so buyers don't keep getting notices to pay the seller.

The US Postal Service had one of the largest booths at eBay Live. Whenever you go to these shows you always accumulate a large stock of brochures and catalogs. So the USPS gave everyone a free priority mail box and postage to ship stuff home in so you didn't have to carry it in your luggage. USPS also displayed a new eBay-only shoe box-sized priority mail box just for eBay sellers. You can order them for free at eBay Supplies. I ran into my good buddy, David Hardin (Shoetime on eBay) who will really love all the free boxes. He sells hundreds of pairs of shoes a week on eBay.

Getting your e-book published

2006-06-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought you could write an eBook and sell it on eBay or the web but you didn't know how to go about marketing or delivering it. Check out EZ-Pub. This is a complete, simple solution.

EZ-Pubs is the simple point and click system that makes it a snap for ANYONE to create a professional looking, 6 PAGE ecommerce-enabled website, complete with automated ordering and fulfillment, and fast, friendly customer service after the sale......And the whole process takes just a few minutes to set up then runs on autopilot for you!

You NO LONGER have to be a propeller-head, computer geek to sell your work online. If you're a writer who has been struggling to get your work online, you owe it to yourself to check out EZ-Pubs.

eBay's Stock Price --Will it recover anytime soon?

2006-06-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

If you own or watch eBay's stock you have seen almost 30% of your value erode over the past year. The stock has started to rebound lately, but it keeps getting hammered by the general market malaise. As I write this, the market was down 184 points on the Dow and eBay's stock was off $1.31 after rising the last few days. May is traditionally one of the worst month's for the market. This is coupled with fears of rising interest rates and high oil prices. Eventually these things get priced into the market and the fears ebb. Also, the economy is strong, corporate profits are at record levels and corporations, including eBay, are fat with cash.

So what does the Yahoo deal mean for eBay's long term prospects?

The obvious synergies come form the massive online advertising that eBay brings to the relationship. eBay is currently Goggle’s biggest customer. They will still remain a large customer, but a lot of eBay's money will find its way to Yahoo. For eBay, Yahoo will now use eBay’s PayPal exclusively for third party payments. PayPal will be integrated into Yahoo as seamlessly as it is in eBay. This is a huge deal for eBay and could almost double PayPal's revenues over time.

eBay and Yahoo will also share toolbars that can be downloaded into web browsers. This will allow users to easily switch between eBay's auction and Yahoo’s search engine. As a co-branded toolbar solution it’s a good move for eBay since the Yahoo site has a huge volume of traffic and provides a logical and prominent branding location on the net. This will drive more natural (free) traffic to eBay which benefits both eBay and the sellers.

One of the more interesting aspects of the relationship is between eBay’s Skype and Yahoo’s instant messenger (IM). Yahoo can use Skype’s click-to-call feature to connect customers directly with advertisers. This is an area eBay has targeted as a use for Skype. But eBay has also touted Skype as a way to get into the “cost per click” advertising model that has been the domain of Google and Yahoo. eBay’s ambitions in this area required a partner with a an existing online search model to really be effective. Google is testing similar functionality as cost per click on the VOIP model but Skype is ahead in that game. So this is a long-term winner for eBay.
So far this deal looks to be good for both parties, but I see eBay as getting the most out of this in the short term whereas Yahoo's gains will come over time. This should be good for eBay's stock. So my counsel is to be patient. eBay is an obvious buy at any price near $30 a share. But in this market environment this is a long-term investment --the gains will come but you may have to be patient.

The other rumor affecting eBay's stock price is a pending change in management. The buzz on the eBay campus in San Jose is that Meg will be retiring soon and Bill Cobb, the heir apparent, will take over. Meg has been grooming Bill for this job but it is not clear what he will do differently once he actually takes over. It's not that Meg has done a bad job --she hasn't. But Wall Streets likes this change. When Meg steps down it could add anywhere from 2% to 5% to the current stock price.

Getting The Most Out of eBay Live!

2006-06-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

This will be my fifth time attending eBay Live and the fourth time we have exhibited. I know it's too late to register for this year, but if you are at all serious about running an eBay business you really must try and attend one of these. Next year, will be somewhere on the East Coast or perhaps in Chicago.

If you were waiting for the last minute to register, and have discovered there are no more openings at the convention, the next best thing to attending is to go to our friend's site at www.auctionbytes.com. Ina Steiner along with several of her editors will be posting daily event articles, interviews and news updates on her website. Her husband, David, will be holding things together back at the office and uploading everything onto the site in an easy to follow format.

If you have never been to eBay Live you are in for a treat. The three-day event consists of a giant trade show where vendors display their products and services and where every eBay department is represented. You can actually speak with the various department managers of the various product departments and specialties such as Trading Assistant, Trust & Safety, eBay Stores, eBay Motors and so on.

Besides the show, eBay also puts on a number of seminars and panel discussions. Most of these are repeated so you can attend in case two events conflict. Best of all, at the end of the show you can get a CD of all of the presentations.

Lastly, the parties. eBay puts on some really neat events. One is a big Town Hall type meeting where the execs speak, there is usually a keynote address with entertainment and on the last night a big party with tons of food and cash bars with entertainers, free massages and more. Two years ago eBay started the tradition of having all the employees who attend eBay Live line up outside the last night's gala venue in a long line (over 1000 employees) and applaud the eBay members walking into the party. These folks were standing there clapping and high-fiving everyone who walked in for almost an hour last year.

As for getting the most out of the event, wear comfortable shoes, get to the seminars and panel discussions early as they fill up fast, enter all of the contests and drawings (I have won something every year) and carry plenty of business cards as you will meet a lot of people and make many new contacts that can help you out in the years to come.

You will be collecting a lot of material, so carry a shoulder bag, small backpack or rolling bag to put all your stuff in.

Ride the monorail. Traffic in Las Vegas has become worse than L.A. But all of the major hotels on the strip are connected by a beautiful new monorail system. So just get to the strip and look for the monorail. This is the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to get around in Lost Wages.

Get Registered For eBay Live Now

2006-05-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Karen and I are busy getting ready for this year's eBay Live convention in Las Vegas. If you plan to go I suggest you register now. Although the price break for registering early has passed, you will still save a lot of time in line at the convention if you pre-register because you can just pick up your badge and get in, while others have to stand in lines. The lines moved fairly quickly at the event last year in San Jose, but this promises to be the biggest eBay Live yet.

The event will be held at the Mandalay Bay Hotel from June 13 -15th. Karen and I will be in booth # 933. I hope you will take the time to stop by and say hello.

eBay Live is always a great event from the Meet & Greet the night before to the Gala on the last evening. I will be talking on a couple of panels during the show--so just look for my name in the schedule.

For tips about selling on eBay and your web site visit skipmcgrath.com.

Making Money with Google Adsense

2006-05-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

If you have a web site or are thinking about setting up a web site, then you will want to sign up with Google AdSense. This is a great way to make some extra money on your existing site or do what many people do and actually create specialized web sites just to generate income from AdSense.

Michael Chaney makes over $19,000 a month from AdSense. I interviewed him last week to learn how he does it. This is the transcript of the interview:

Skip: Michael, what made you get started with AdSense?

Michael: I was looking for a way to monetize some of my websites. AdSense is such an easy thing to get started with the eye for it would be a great way to start earning more money without actually putting into much more effort. I think as soon as you see the first earnings coming into your account you get addicted to AdSense. I know is what happened to me and since then I've just spent time working out how to earn more and more each day.

Skip: How much do you make with AdSense?

Michael: Some days I can earn close to $1000 and others it's less than that. But it all comes down to how much time and effort you devote to creating a quality site that people like visiting. AdSense is not what my business is based on by any means - but it is a great way to earn revenue almost on autopilot.

Skip: What is the biggest mistake people making with AdSense?

Michael: Probably the biggest mistake people make is thinking the AdSense earnings are easy to achieve. It is very easy to get started but as I learned it takes a lot of effort to increase your earnings. I got really downhearted whenever I would log in to my account to see that I had only made a few dollars. And that's when I decided to spend months and months of my time learning everything I could about AdSense.

I basically buried myself away and devoured every single piece of AdSense information I could find. I ran thousands of AdSense tests and started to see a dramatic effect on my click through ratio and therefore on my earnings.

This is why I'd decided to record the videos - because I knew that it would help people who were in my position to also increase their earnings. I've read an absolute ton of AdSense e-book's but they take so long to go through and always seem to keep information back.

With AdSense Videos I knew that I had to tell the story exactly as it is and actually show people and lead them by the hand through the exact techniques that I use to generate large earnings from AdSense.

Skip: In your videos you show people how to increase their AdSense earnings - can you give us a taster of this advice?

Michael: I don't want to give away my biggest secrets as you can understand! But some of the more basic things that you can do to increase your revenues include using ads that blend in rather than stand out from your content. Flat out the worst thing you can do with an AdSense ad is make it look like the standard Google ad. What you need to realise is that you will get more clicks if your ad actually appears part of your site rather than something that's just been dropped into the page.

Skip: What would you recommend that someone do right now to increase their AdSense earnings?

Michael: I've created a totally free AdSense minicourse that people can go through to learn some of my techniques. It takes you through the four cornerstone principles that I've used to build up my AdSense empire. You can check it out, as well as all the AdSense Videos, here: Michael Cheney's AdSense Videos

Find Great Products for eBay at Trade Shows

2006-05-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

After consignment selling, trade shows are my favorite place to find merchandise to sell on eBay. This is where you find new items long before they hit the stores. There are trade shows all over the country for all kinds of merchandise. Just last month I was in Salt Lake to attend a trade show for outdoor merchandise, Barbeques, patio furniture, garden accessories and much more. I found several new products that will fit in with my line of firepit barbeques --one of them from a manufacturer who will drop ship.

Wholesale trade shows are closed to the general public and most of them are pretty choosey as to who they let in. The best way to gain entrance is to register online or by telephone. You will need business cards, letterhead, a commercial checking account in the name of your business and a sales tax certificate. You can also register in person, but this usually involves standing in long lines, whereas if you register in advance the show organizers will usually mail your entry badges. Most trade shows are put on by just a few companies, so once you register for one show, you will get invites to other shows put on by the same company and you will not have to re-register each time.

Take plenty of business cards (many exhibitors have drawings for prizes) and a carry bag or rolling bag to hold brochures and catalogs. You can place orders right at the show and even better, a lot of the manufacturers offer show specials such as an extra 10% off if you order at the show. However, you cannot take merchandise away from the show with you, everything must be shipped. Some shows have cash-and-carry exhibits just outside the main hall, where you can buy wholesale goods in small quantities. Last year we bought a dozen really nice antiqued wood footstools a the cash-and-carry room for $10 each. We sold all of them on eBay for over $40 each.

Should You Use Fixed Shipping or Calculated Shipping?

2006-05-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

I have always been a fan of fixed shipping. When you perform a search on eBay, those auctions with fixed shipping show up with the shipping cost next to the item. I have run my auctions both ways. The auctions with the fixed shipping cost always get more hits --sometimes as much as 20% more.

A lot of my sales come from people fairly new to eBay. In my experience a lot of them either don't see, or don't know how to use, the shipping calculator eBay puts in the auction when you elect Calculated Shipping. Invariably when I run an auction with calculated shipping, I get several emails from potential bidders asking me what the shipping cost is.

So how do you calculate a fixed shipping cost with the new zone system? It depends on where in the country you live. I live on the West Coast so I weigh the item, calculate the shipping to the middle of the country (St. Louis) and use it as an average. When a shipment goes to New York or Florida, I lose a little. When it goes to San Francisco or anyplace west of the Mississippi I make a little money. If you live in the middle of the country, just figure out the cost to either coast and you will be OK.

Look Out --Report This Auction Has Arrived

2006-05-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

I have always been a big supporter of eBay's Trust & Safety group, but this is one policy I really hate. I warned you about this last month, but it is finally here. Earlier this year eBay announced its plans to make it easier for members to report possible listing violations.

As of the beginning of April, every eBay listing has a Report This Item link at the bottom of the listing page. Using this link will bypass eBay's normal Contact Us procedure, which is notoriously hard to navigate, and take you directly to a list of reasons why a listing needs to be brought to eBay's attention. This will make it far easier for all of the busybodies with too much time on their hands to cancel auctions. When this policy was being announced I complained in writing to eBay, but never got an answer.

The problem comes from hundreds of insomniac listing vigilantes who stay up all night trolling eBay looking for any auction that violates even the tiniest rule. They get together on message boards and in chat rooms and brag about how many auctions they cancelled. With this new procedure it will be even easier. What eBay doesn't realize it that they will soon be overwhelmed by reports. Understaffed workers will not have adequate time to examine every auction to see if the complaint is real and they will just start pulling the trigger --canceling every auction reported.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of auctions on eBay that should be cancelled, but this is going to hurt thousands of legitimate sellers who occasionally make a mistake or commit a technical violation. If you have ever had an auction cancelled for some stupid reason you know what I mean. If any of you are visiting eBay Live! next month, and feel as I do about this procedure, please visit the Trust and Safety Booth and give them your opinion.

Increase Bids With White Space, Bold Face and Bullets

2006-04-28T21:42:00.000-07:00

How many times have you opened an auction to see lines and lines of description typed one after the other without a break. And to make it worse these people always seem to choose the smallest font size they can find.

There have been tons of studies by online marketing companies to better understand how people read and react to web pages. They actually sit subjects in front of a computer and track their eye movements with a camera and computers.

All of these studies have concluded that people like to scan pages looking for words and images that attract their attention. It is much easier to spot the information they are looking for if you use a series of short paragraphs such as the three you just read.

The idea is to create lots of white space around your text.

Bold facing important words has been shown to be slightly better than using all caps, but both techniques work if used sparingly. The other important factor is bullets. Studies show that lists of features, benefits or specifications set off with bullets or similar symbols, dramatically increases the readership.

Lastly, watch your type size. Ten-point type is the absolute smallest you should use and twelve is preferable. (This page is in twelve-point type). Use no more than fourteen or sixteen-point for headlines. Overly large type turns people off as much as type that is too small. Here are some examples:

10 pt. This is ok, but a little small for some people

12 pt. This is perfect for most people

14 pt. This is good for headlines. It would also be ok to use this font size if your auction description was very short

16 pt. is probably the max I would use in an auction listing and then only for headings.
18 pt. This is way too big for most people

The other thing I noticed from the studies I read is that people prefer their images to be on the
left or right, rather than top and bottom or centered in the text.

For more tips on eBay selling, please visit www.skipmcgrath.com.

Can The Little Guy Still Make Money on eBay?

2006-04-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

I get this question a lot and it has three answers: "Yes," "no" and "maybe." Let's see which one applies to you.

There is no doubt that it is much harder for the individual operating out of their home to make money on eBay today than it was even a couple of years ago. When I started on eBay in 1999, eBay was a license to print money. A little guy (or gal) like your or me could sell almost anything and make money. As far as finding merchandise to sell you could source garage sales or buy surplus and overstocked products from hundreds of dealers. Today, however, many of those same dealers that use to sell to me, are now selling the same items on eBay at the same price they used to sell to me.

There are still some overstock dealers who can supply product, but they are fewer. There is also much more competition on eBay today than in past years. Today there are over 1000 large companies with employees, warehouses and sophisticated distrtibution systems competing for the eBay bidder. In addition to the independent large power sellers there are companies such as Disney, Lands End, Bloomingdales Department Store and many others who either list directly on eBay or have hired companies to sell their merchandise for them under another name.

So what is the little guy to do? There are three basic strategies to succeeding on eBay today. There may be more --but I know these three work, because I have done them and in fact still do them.

The first strategy is to sell used goods including antiques and collectibles. The market for any type of used goods on eBay will always be the purview of the smaller seller. The difficulty of sourcing merchandise makes this a difficult area for large companies. At the higher end of the used market are art, antiques, collectibles and rare books. If you have some knowledge and experience in this field, it is very easy to enter. My wife and I had a small antiques shop before we started selling on eBay, so we knew what was valuable, what the values of items were and where to find them. I can walk into any small town auction in America on any weekend and buy several items that I can turn around and sell on eBay the following week and double my money or more. In fact we still do this occassionally. About a month before I was writing this article, we attended a small town auction in Mt. Vernon, Washington. I bought a box of 1950s vintage advertising tins as a lot for $175.

I broke up the lot and sold the pieces individually on eBay over a 14-day period for over $400 total before eBay and PayPal fees. There were some other advertising pieces selling at the same auction that I did not bid on. They were very clever fakes --repros as they are known in the trade. The point of telling you this is that I could spot them but you might not be able to unless you had the knowledge and experience. The lesson here is that you don't want to go into an area you know nothing about. But if you do have experience in any specific area of art, antiques, collectibles, stamps, coins, or rare books, then this is a perfect --and fairly easy, way to build a profitble eBay business.

You don't have to work in antiques and collectibles. There are plenty of other used goods that sell on eBay. In my book, The Complete eBay Marketing System, I list all sorts of areas of used goods that sell on eBay. They vary from clothing to books, to small appliances, sporting goods and the list goes on. I won't take the time to go into it here --it would make this article too long, but the The Complete eBay Marketing System goes into great detail on how to select used items to sell, how and where to source them and how to sell them.

The next strategy is develop a small specialized niche market. This is in fact what most of the successful eBay sellers do. I often get emails from eBay newbies asking me where they can buy DVDs, plasma TVs, Digital Cameras, iPods and other popular consumer electronic products. I suggest you forget trying to sell any popular mass consumer product. These fields are very crowded, highly competitive and dominated by many large sellers with resources and access to sources that the average person cannot duplicate unless you have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest. Do you really think you can compete on eBay with Best Buy or Circuit City?

A niche is a small specialized product category that a small seller can play in. I currently sell in several niches on eBay. One product I sell is a line of high-priced wood burning firepits. I do have some competitors, but not that many and I think I do a better job of selling them. The price point of $227 is a high average selling price, so I don't have to sell hundreds of items to make money. They are drop shipped direct from the manufacturer so I am not paying a middleman and the market for these products has been steady now for over two years. You can see my firepit auctions by clicking here. After looking at these you can link to my other auctions and see the other niche product categories we sell.

If you go to the Free Articles page on www.SkipMcGrath.com I have a couple of articles about niche marketing that are worth reading if this strategy interests you. In both The Complete eBay Marketing System and The Wholesale Buying System, I cover how and where to find wholesale sources for your niche products.

The last strategy I want to point out is Consignment Selling. I like to call this the perfect eBay business: No upfront investment in products, no inventory, high profits and minimal expenses. Once you qualify you can register as an eBay Trading Assistant and eBay will help you promote your business for free.

Once you know how to sell on eBay, it is pretty easy to find people who have goods to sell. My strategy uses low cost targeted advertising. I spend less than $40 a month and can end up some months with over $10,000 or more worth of merchandise to sell.

The trick to being successful in the eBay consignment business is in learning how to market your services, learning what type of merchandise to sell --and which to reject and how to control your fees. All of this is laid out in my best-selling book, How To Start & Run an eBay Consignment Business, published in early 2006 by McGraw Hill Publishing Co. The book includes all of the advertisements, forms, contracts and resources you need to start and run a profitable eBay consignment business.

So back to the original question: Can the little guy still make money on eBay? The answer is "yes" if you apply some of the strategies and techniques I outlined here and if you take the time to learn the skills you will need. The answer is "maybe" if you try some other techniques or just stumble around trying to learn as you go. And the answer is probably "no" if you try and compete with the big boys unless you have the financial resources and business experience to actually build a large consumer products business.

Cross Promote Your Auctions for Profit

2006-04-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

Cross promoting between all of your auctions and store listings is one of the best ways to increase your eBay sales. When a buyer clicks on one of your auctions, how would you like them to see a moving slide show right at the bottom of your auctions, that presents the gallery photo and title of each item scrolling across their screen? Best of all, this is a free tool.

Slide Player from Slide, Inc., is a new type of web browser for watching live feeds from the web that are constantly up-to-date. As a certified eBay Compatible Application Provider, Slide makes live feeds of eBay Auction and Stores listings available to anyone on the web.

Slide Player is a great sales tool for eBay Sellers. It's a free and effective way to cross-promote all your auction listings. Plus, for sellers who have loyal repeat buyers, Slide Player offers a revolutionary new way to promote your item listings right on buyers computer desktops.

You can easily create Slide feeds that showcase all their Auction and Stores items with just one click by visiting Slide and entering your eBay Seller ID. When you do so, Slide automatically finds all of your items and puts the main image from each listing into a scrolling Slide feed that can be watched using Slide Player on any computer desktop or embedded into any web page, including eBay Auction and Stores Listings. Slide Player shows critical information about each item including current bid and time remaining. Clicking on any image in a Slide Player takes the viewer to the eBay item listing that the image came from.

Slide Player enables eBay sellers, for the first time, to promote their merchandise in a compelling, visual way right on their customers' desktops. Slide Player is a free downloadable application for Mac and Windows computers, so there's no cost to either seller or buyer for this service.

Any eBay seller can offer their buyers a freely downloadable Slide Player that comes pre-loaded with the seller's feed of active Auction and Stores listings. Any buyers who download and watch the seller's feed will be automatically kept up-to-date when new items from that seller are listed and will also be able to keep watch over the current status of all items for sale by that Seller, even when they are not browsing the eBay web site!

Slide also offers easy instructions for sellers to copy-and-paste Slide Players into any auction or Stores listing. Slide Players are compatible with any auction listing management tool and/or the eBay Sell-Your-Item (SYI) form for entering listings. When you put a Slide Player in your auction listings, prospective buyers can see all your items for sale, so you can cross-promote accessories and similar/related items in every auction listing.

Visit Slide today to experience it for yourself.

For other product suggestions, and eBay selling tips, visit www.skipmcgrath.com.

What Should I Sell on eBay?

2006-04-12T04:58:00.000-07:00

"What should I sell on eBay?" is the single most posed question I receive from my newsletter readers and book buyers. Let me say right up front: "There is no way I can answer that question." No one can answer that except you.

Unless you have very deep pockets I can tell you what you probably cannot sell on eBay: Plasma TVs, iPods, the latest model laptops, digital camera and DVD players, Xbox, Gucci shoes, the latest perfume and other hot consumer products. The wholesale distribution of these products are tightly controlled by the manufacturer.

For example, if you want to buy iPods wholesale to resell on eBay, the distributor requires that you have a $200,000 line of credit. Channel will only sell their perfumes to a select few stores. You can buy overstock or surplus famous designer items (Gucci, Prada, Hermes, etc.) through a few outlets, but the latest merchandise is only sold through their stores and a few select upscale retailers.

Lately several supposedly wholesale suppliers and drop ship companies claim to have X-Boxes and iPods at prices where you can make money. Be careful. Several of my readers have sent thousands of dollars to companies for a shipment of X-Boxes that never showed up. Others listed them from drop ship companies that never delivered and never answered emails once the item was sold and paid for. Companies selling iPods via the drop ship channel have such a high price once you add in the shipping and drop ship fees that you can't make any money. Other companies claim to have iPods, but once you pay their $199 membership fee, all of a sudden they are "out of stock."

So back to the original question: What do I sell on eBay? As I said, only you can answer that question, but here are some tips to help you figure out what to sell:

You have probably heard this a dozen times, but sell what you know and love. I have collected Starbucks mugs, bears and cards for quite a while. Last year I started selling and have built up a very nice small - yet profitable niche. Because I know so much about them, I recognize a good value when I see it and can often double or triple my money when I buy a collectible piece. I love my new laptop, but I am just not a computer expert.

If I were a complete computer guy, I could not afford to become a distributor for a computer company, but there are sources of surplus and remanufactured computers. If I really knew computers and the market, I would know which ones were a good value for the price and how I could market and sell them. Not having this knowledge however, would make it very risky for me to buy a pallet load of surplus computers from someone such as Liquidation.com.

Try and find a niche. A niche can be a product, a product category or even how you market a product. The main advantage of selling in a niche is that you really get to know the product, the market, the pricing and the sources and because it is a niche, there is far less competition.

Pick products where you can be assured of making money. Making a small margin on something that sells for over $500 is fine, but if you are only making 10% after expenses on a $50 item, you have to sell a lot of products to make $500 a week. If I am selling anything for under $100 I look for a 35% net margin after cost, shipping, and eBay and PayPal fees.

Research, research, research ! Don't buy anything to resell on eBay until you have thoroughly researched the product, the market and the competition. Make sure the item will sell at a profit. There are lots of research services. In fact Mpire.com just launched a new free service a few weeks ago that is getting rave reviews from sellers.

If you are really stuck, start by selling things from around your home, then move on to selling items you buy at garage sales and thrift stores. As you do this you will see patterns emerging - things that sell well and are easy to buy. If you are patient and try a lot of things this will lead you to a niche. One person who did this found that old fishing gear sold very well and was easy to find cheaply at garage sales. He now has a large eBay business selling vintage and collectible fishing gear such as reels, fly rods, lures and so on. Another woman I know found that jig saw puzzles sold very well. Some went for just a few dollars while others would bring high prices - as much as $50 each. With experience she has now learned which ones to buy that will return huge profits. A few hours spent at garage sales spending less than $20 can often return over $500 in sales.

Information products and taking advantage of eBay's new policy on selling digitally downloaded products may be the most profitable niche on eBay. Recently, I did a great teleseminar with Tim Knox who is an expert on creating and selling information products. His book on creating information products is one of the best on the market. Tim recently wrote a short article that I have posted on my free articles page called How To Create Your Own Info Product. You can either read the article or click here to read about Tim's new book.

For more information about selling on eBay please visit www.skipmcgrath.com.

Get Ready To Have Your Auctions Cancelled by eBay

2006-04-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

eBay now has over 150 official policies designed to regulate the eBay marketplace and to keep eBay a safe place to buy and sell. Many of eBay's policies are designed to promote eBay's best business interests, i.e. "Regulate the eBay marketplace," and the balance are designed to make eBay a safe and fun place to buy and sell. I don't say this as a criticism. eBay has a right to regulate their marketplace and a duty to their stockholders (of which I am one) to make money by keeping people buying on eBay rather than having sellers using eBay as a gateway to drive business to other sites. In a recent announcement by Matt Halprin who runs global policy management, eBay recognized that some of their policies were hard to understand. eBay spent the last several months rewriting the policy pages to make them easier to understand and follow. Now each page includes:

A clear statement of the policy and why eBay has it.
Examples that illustrate what is and isn't allowed.
A list of the possible consequences of violating the policy.

eBay also created a new Policy Hub page where you can more easily access all of the policies. Recognizing that some policies are difficult to understand, eBay created five online tutorials covering:

Each tutorial only take a few minutes to complete and each one walks members through the details they need to know in order to stay in compliance.

eBay also announced new "Enforcement policy violation consequences and mitigation" (Boy, does that sound like it was written by a bureaucrat or what?) eBay changed PowerSeller eligibility requirements to include new thresholds on policy compliance. As a result, several sellers have already been removed or suspended who were repeat violators of eBay's policies from the program.

Frankly, most of these sellers deserved to lose their power seller status, but many were caught up in very minor and innocent technical violations. Often eBay does not warn you that you are in danger of losing your status and give you time to fix the violations before it counts against you. Then if you are suspended or lose your power seller status and you call power seller support to appeal for help, they won't talk to you because you were suspended and are no longer a power seller.

For other sellers, eBay decided punishment or banishment wasn't working so they decided to try the carrot and the stick. Besides suspending accounts eBay has come up with new ways to work with sellers. eBay 's announcement states:

"Restricting repeat policy violators' ability to list items for a period of time – Depending on how often a seller has violated our policies in a 90-day period, they may be required to complete a 15-minute tutorial, or they could be restricted from listing new items for up to 3 days. We think of these consequences as "speed bumps" that can slow accounts down just long enough for them to be educated on the policy. Then they can get back on track.

Retaining eBay fees when canceling a repeat violator's listings for List Practices violations – If a seller repeatedly violates policies in a 90-day period, despite previously having taken a tutorial on those policies, we're going to keep their listing and feature fees on subsequent listing cancellations that violate policy. We feel it is important to instill a financial penalty to protect the level playing field when our other efforts to educate and change behavior have failed. "

The last and most troubling part of the new policy is making it easier for people to report violations. Right now you have to jump through several hoops (pages) to send eBay a message that reports a violation. To make it simpler to report an auction that violates any one of the complex 150 policies, starting in the spring of 2006, every item page will have a Report this Item link at the bottom of the page.

This link will bypass the normal Contact Us process and take you directly to a list of reasons why a listing needs to be reported. If you are someone who is frustrated that it is so hard to report an obvious fraud or phony auction or someone egregiously breaking the rules, this new feature will make it very easy. On the other hand, there are thousands of eBay members with too much time on their hands who spend hours every day searching eBay for violations - both major and minor - and are gleefully reporting them to eBay. These folks even have chat rooms where they place bets and run contests to see how many auctions they can cancel in an hour.

Your only defense is to learn and follow every eBay policy to the letter. With 150 complex policies, and eBay's attitude that a violation no matter how innocent or how minor is a violation to be punished, this new reporting feature will soon begin sucking the fun and a lot of the profit out of selling on eBay. Increased enforcement will in turn frustrate and deter the many small sellers (who originally built eBay) causing them to give up and leave eBay to the major corporations and the Titanium power sellers with deep pockets and dozens of employees.

Don't get me wrong. I support anything reasonable eBay does to prevent fraud and to remove sellers using unethical techniques to get bids and win auctions. Also, I understand eBay's need to protect their marketplace. The problem is the platform and the rules have grown so complex, the number of reports eBay receives have grown so large that Trust & Safety simply cannot look at each report intelligently - electing instead to accept a report, make a cursory glance at the auction and send out a form email written in bureaucratese that no one can understand and terminate the auction. There has got to be a better way !!!

For more information about selling on eBay, please visit http://www.skipmcgrath.com/.

Low Cost Ways to Advertise and Promote Your eBay Auctions

2006-04-03T04:24:00.000-07:00

An existing customer - one who has bought from you before is the easiest person to sell. Keep a record of all of your customers. Use eBay's opt-in email system and your own email list to promote your future sales. A great way to do this is to offer repeat customers an incentive such as free shipping.
Set up an eBay store. It costs far less to list items in an eBay store than in an auction. Drive you repeat customers to your eBay store for immediate purchase rather than telling them about ongoing auctions.
If you work in a specialized niche (and you should) always advertise your niche and where they can buy in your email signatures. Here is an example: "Visit my eBay Store for the latest in HO collectible trains." The words eBay Store should be a clickable hyperlink to your store.
I always place a printed "thank you" note in the package when I ship something. In addition to thanking them, it gives my eBay store link and web site address and has a line about all of the other things I sell. You can also create an electronic PayPal coupon that gives them a discount on their next purchase that you include in the box.
eBay has dozens of specialized discussion groups. If there is a discussion group built around the product or collectible you sell, participate often. eBay does not allow you to advertise an auction directly, but you can "hint" about what you sell and readers can link to your auctions through your username. I don't have room here to explain all the ins and outs of doing this. So, read the discussion group rules very carefully first and you will see there are a lot of ways to get traffic to your listings without violating the rules.
There are also lots of non-eBay discussion groups on various sites including Yahoo where the rules are more relaxed. Another alternative is to start your own discussion group.

For more information about selling on eBay, please visit www.skipmcgrath.com.

Learning How To Say "NO" Can Double Your eBay Consignment Profits

2006-03-28T10:48:00.000-08:00

This is a lesson I learned the hard way. I have been an eBay Trading Assistant (TA) since the beginning of the program almost 4 years ago. On at least three occasions I have accepted merchandise that I was "100% Positive" would sell on eBay, only to be proven wrong.

When you accept goods that either will not sell, or will not sell at a decent price, this costs you money in eBay fees and, more importantly, in time wasted that could be used to make a profit doing something different.

Here is an example. A lady called me one day from the TA listing on eBay and said she had a large collection of Elvis collectibles. My wife, Karen, and I drove about 20 miles to meet with her. When we got there it turned out the "collectibles' were mostly Franklin Mint plates.

I knew Elvis collectibles are always hot on eBay and I was ready to have her sign a contract and take the collection of over 40 plates home to start launching them on eBay. But, I happened to glance over at my wife and she was giving me "the look." (As you may have guessed, I am the impulsive one in the family.) Upon receiving "the look," I told the lady that I would like to take a couple of the plates with me and do some research before deciding if we would take the whole collection. To make a long store short, when I got home and went onto eBay I discovered there are literally tons of these plates for sale in auctions and very-very few of them are worth even what the lady originally paid for them. Had we taken the collection, I would have had all the time and eBay fees to list 40 auctions, pack and ships the goods, and at best I would have made $3 or $4 on each auction as my fee.

The lesson is to follow Ronald Reagan's advice during the Cold War. "Trust - but verify." It's okay to trust your judgment and experience, but it pays to check first to verify there is a market for the goods and they can sell at a price where the commission you will earn is worth your time.

For more tips, articles and publications about eBay selling, please visit my Web site, www.skipmcgrath.com.

Three Ways To Increase Your eBay Business

2006-03-22T05:51:00.000-08:00

Once you have your business established the natural trend is to try and grow it. Top eBay sellers call this scalability. I am not sure if that is a real word or not, but it means is your business designed in such a way that you can scale it larger simply by adding more products and/or more auctions.

More Products: The ability to add more products depends on your product niche. If you are in an extremely narrow niche such as collectible depression glass then you have to find a lot more depression glass to grow your business. This presents two problems. First, it can be difficult to find rare collectibles. Second, if you do, you run the risk of putting too much similar product into the marketplace (eBay) and depressing the prices. You have just become your own competitor. The obvious solution to this problem is to expand into a related niche such as collectible carnival glass.

If you work in a niche that has lots of related products, rather than just getting more of the same products which could possible depress prices by increasing the supply, you would want to expand into related products that the same customer would buy. for example if you carried a line of high-quality dog collars and leashes, you could expand into grooming tools, dog-training books, dog beds, car ramps and car carriers and so on. You don't want to go as far as becoming a general supplier of all dog-related goods or you will be competing with Petco. You would want to find an example of each of these items that has some uniqueness to it such as an original design, or low cost, or very high quality and so on.

The other way to scale your business is to raise your ASPs. There are several ways to do this. You can move up the quality scale to higher-priced items in your niche, or you can start selling sets of things instead of individual items. Back to the dog collar example, you could offer a matching dog collar and leash as a set instead of selling the two products separately.

One woman sells bird seed. No one wants to buy a year's worth of bird seed at one time, so instead of selling single packages, she sells a deal whereby your order enough seed for the spring and summer season and she mails it to you in three separate shipments over the season. She makes one larger sale rather than three small ones and she has the customer's cash up front for the larger sale but she doesn't have to ship 2/3rds of the order until later.

How Much Should I Charge For Consignment Selling Fees?

2006-03-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

I get a lot of email from trading assistants asking about fees. How much should I charge? Should I charge a listing fee? Should I charge the consignor if something doesn't sell? What are my competitors charging?

The answer to the first question is the most important: You must charge enough to make a profit. To understand your profit you should first understand your costs. (This is true for any eBay business –not just the consignment business.) Remember to look at all of your costs, including advertising and marketing –how much are you spending to find goods to consign?

Look at all of your fees: PayPal, eBay, auction management fees, image hosting, and so on. Don't forget your overhead expenses: ISP, email accounts, telephone, computer payments, office supplies. The best way to get a handle on your costs is to use an accounting program such as QuickBooks. QuickBooks can be a little complex to set up, but once it is running it will save you tons of time and allow you to fully understand the cost of doing business.

Should I charge a listing fee? My recommendation is yes. Psychologically speaking, asking the consignor to pay a fee gives the consignor an investment in the successful outcome of the auction. Also it tends to eliminate people who just want to waste your time and it will help filter out goods that probably won't do all that well on eBay. It may also filter out the occasional seller who is just too skeptical, but in the long run your cash flow will be better and customers (consignors) will take you more seriously. An exception to this is when someone gives me something really valuable to sell or a large quantity of merchandise from a retailer or an estate sale. As I want these people coming back to me, I usually don't charge them an up front fee.

Most Trading Assistants charge a sliding scale based on the final value of the auction. The higher the final bid, the lower the fee. In my book, How To Start & Run an eBay Consignment Business I recommend a fee schedule that starts out with a $3.00 listing fee for the first item and $1.00 for each additional item consigned at the same time. This fee is non-refundable. Then, I charge a final value fee of 30% on the first $300, 25% on the amount from $301 - $500, 10% of the value from $501 to $10,000. Anything over $10,000 I negotiate the fee.

I also recommend you charge reserve fees and category or home page feature fees up front unless you are really sure the item you are selling is in demand and will sell for a good price. If so, you can add the fees to your commission, or not, depending on the situation.

There are now over 500 eBay consignment businesses operating out of retail storefronts in various cities around the country and more are being added every week. If you would like to know what others are charging, Ina Steiner of AuctionBytes has compiled a fee comparison of 40 large consignors. Click Here to view the comparison chart.

One more thing on the subject of consignment selling: A question I frequently get is "I live in a small town. Do you think an eBay consignment business will work here?" I live in a town of 11,000 people and there are four eBay consignment sellers operating here including myself. Three of us do very well. One of them is a lady who used to own a consignment store. She does so well, she closed the store and just operates out of her house. We see her at the post office several times a week with armloads of packages to ship.

Take Better eBay Photos - The EZ way

2006-03-14T17:14:00.000-08:00

Digital photography light tents allow anyone to take professional-looking photographs for their auctions or web site

Are you tired of amature-looking photos in your auctions and on your web site? The answer is a portable, table top photo studio used by the pros. This low-cost and simple set up will allow you to take clear, sharp photos without shadows.

Better photos will increase the number of bids on your auctions and increase your final values. This is the answer. The EZ Cube is just the coolest thing I have seen in years to improve your auction photos. Literally anyone can take great photos with this system.

Check out the EZ Cube line here.

Managing a Full-Time Job and an eBay Business

2006-03-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

Working a full-time job and running a profitable eBay business can be a real challenge. Some people seem to handle it with ease while others struggle. I did this for a number of years, and although we were successful, it was difficult at times. Of course, I had an advantage - my wife Karen. The truth be told, she did by far most of the work. If you are married with a spouse that stays at home, this is a significant advantage. Many of you, however, either have no spouse or your spouse also works. This means that you are essentially on your own.

The first question you need to ask yourself is: Are you looking for a hobby or a business? If it is a hobby or a very part-time business whose goal is to make a extra hundred dollars a month or so, then you will have a fairly easy time balancing the hours you spend at work and your eBay business. However, if you are running a business designed to earn $1,000 a month or more, then you have different issues.

Another question to ask yourself is: What are my long-term goals? If your job and your career is important to you, then this must always take first priority. If, on the other hand, you are in a boring or dead-end job, then you need to plan for your success and how and when you will leave your job and do eBay full time (as thousands have done before you).

If keeping your full-time job is your priority, you also need to factor in the type of employment you have and your employer's policies. People who work outside for a living rarely have an opportunity to check a computer during the day. Office employees, however, are usually connected to the web at work. Many employers today have very strict policies about using your computer at work to transact personal business. There is also the issue of simple integrity. Is it fair to your employer to do outside business while you are being paid to work by the company? Some employers don't mind if employees use a computer for personal web surfing during their lunch hour or breaks. If this is the case, then you will be able to check emails and auctions a couple of times a day from your office.

No matter which category you fit into, the simple fact is that you are away from your home computer from 8 to 10 hours a day. How you deal with the realities of this will determine your success. Look at some of the problems you will run into. We all know that many eBay buyers can be impatient. They send an email and expect an immediate answer, but you can only work on emails for a brief time in the morning before you leave for work and after you get home. There is the matter of shipping. How will you get to the post office or UPS store during the hours they are open if you are at work? There is also the matter of time for your job, time for your business and time for your life and family. With this in mind, let's look at some strategies and ideas:

Organization - The very first thing you will have to do is get organized. Taking the time to set up organized structures and systems can be a huge time (and money) saver. You will have to take a lot of photos and you don't want to spend time setting up lights and a tripod every time you want to launch an auction. Set up a permanent or semi-permanent photo set up in your garage or spare room. Next is a shipping station. Again, you want a table set up with all of your tape, boxes and shipping materials handy. If you have a UPS account you can get one of their small thermal printers to print out your shipping labels. Or, if you use the post office there are several computer programs that will calculate postage and print out labels so you can drop your packages at the post office instead of standing in line. You should automate your auctions with software or an on-line auction management system such as Meridian (www.noblespirit.com) or Vendio (www.vendio.com). These systems will save you time launching your auctions, sending out payment request emails and processing payments, posting feedback and keeping track of your inventory, costs and expenses.

Go High Speed - Time is money, and time is also your most valuable commodity when you have very little of it. Any time you can save, will be repaid several times over in profits. DSL and Cable can be a bit expensive, but these high-speed services will save you several hours a month. If DSL costs you an extra $25 a month and saves you only 2 hours, think what you can do with that two hours. For example, if you are using an auction management service, you can launch anywhere from 10 to 30 auctions in that period of time. (If your product has a standard description and you already have images, you can launch many more in this time.) How much do you make on each auction? If you could launch an extra 30 auction a month, would you make more than $25.00? It can also be expensed on your business taxes which is a big plus.

Get your own UPS account - This can be a real time (and money) saver. If you have your own UPS account you can rent a scale and thermal printer and save hours of time shipping each month. If you volume is high enough, you can also get discounts from UPS. These discounts will often offset the cost of shipping materials allowing you to make a small margin on your shipping and handling costs. UPS will not usually pick up packages from a private residence, but once your packages are prepared with the UPS label you can simply drop them at any UPS drop box or UPS store. For example, you can prepare all your shipments in the evening and drop them off at a UPS store in the morning on your way to work.

Let your customers know your situation - People can be a lot more understanding if they know what and who they are dealing with. Most email programs allow you to add an automatic pre-written signature line to all out-going emails. For example, you could add a signature line that said something like:

"Your complete satisfaction is important to me. Please understand that I work a full-time job during the day, so I cannot always respond to you immediately. Please be assured that I will respond to any request you have at the very first chance I get."

Save some time for yourself - Your mental health and your family's happiness is also important to your success. Working a full-time job and coming home and spending 4 hours a night on the computer, or taking photos or shipping goods is very tiring. It is very easy to get sucked into the business and suddenly you turn around and it is 11:30 in the evening, you ate at your computer rather than with the family (who are all now sound asleep) and you have to get up in 6 or 7 hours. Time management is crucial. You must set aside some quality time for yourself and your family. Remember, the goal here is to make some extra money - not to get a divorce. If you are single, be sure to take some time to relax, eat dinner or have a glass of wine and watch your favorite TV show. Set a limit on how much you will work each evening. If you take the time to actually do a schedule, then you will be more likely to follow it. If you have a family, the same is even more true. You simply have to set aside some time each evening to spend with your spouse and/or children. If you don't do these things you will find yourself becoming stressed out and this stress will be reflected in your eBay business and in your job.

eBay has been a phenomenal success as a company and has provided opportunity to thousands of entrepreneurs and home-based businesses. It is not as easy as it seems to start and run a successful eBay business - but it can be done by most people. The secret is nothing more than a modicum of talent and intelligence, hard work, a good plan and paying attention to the details.

Auction Checklist To Increase Sales

2006-03-09T14:50:00.000-08:00

Many people I talk to are making the same basic mistakes which is losing them money in auction sales. This checklist comes from my Complete eBay Marketing System and is a very basic checklist of what every seller should verify before launching an auction.

1. Have I checked spelling and grammar?
2. Is my type readable – is it too large or too small?
3. Did I use short paragraphs?
4. Are my photos clear and not too big to cause slow loading?
5. Have I checked all my fees and options?
6. Did I use the correct duration (number of days)?
7. Does my auction end at a good time and on a good day?
8. Did I include clear shipping information, costs and terms?
9. Is my item description accurate, clear and complete?
10. Did I include information as to size, weight, etc.?
11. Did I mention any flaws?
12. Did I clearly spell out the payment terms?
13. Does my headline communicate what I am selling?
14. Does my headline contain the appropriate key words for item searches?
15. Did I invite bidders to email me with questions?
16. Did I include active links to my eBay Store and About Me Page?
17. Is my About Me page up to date?
18. Did I include a Buy It Now price?

For more in depth tips and techniques, you can download my 99 Tips for eBay Buyers and Sellers free from my Web site.

How to Start and Run an eBay Consignment Business

2006-03-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

What on-line business can you start that has virtually no risk?

What on-line business can you start with little or no investment that can return thousands of dollars per week?

What on-line business can you start with a guaranteed market of 50 million customers?

What on-line business can you start Part-time and quickly grow into a full-time business you can live on?

My name is Skip McGrath. I am an eBay Power Seller and successful web site entrepreneur. Although I have been selling on eBay successfully for over five years, last year I discovered the "perfect" eBay business. I have written it all down in my newest book: How to Start & Run An eBay Consignment Business.

Since eBay launched the Trading Assistant program, over 50,000 eBay sellers have registered as Trading Assistants to help other people sell their goods. EBay consignment businesses have started to spring up all over the United States and some of the first ones are starting to appear in Germany and the UK. There are 35 million users on eBay U.S. and 50 million worldwide…and growing every day. Yet there are still millions of people who know little about eBay or are afraid to try it. Another market is the millions of people who know about eBay, but just don't have the time or inclination to try it.

This is the perfect business.

The biggest problem eBay sellers have is finding merchandise at a low enough price to sell on eBay. With a consignment business, people give you merchandise to sell with no risk on your part. You auction the goods on eBay and pay the consignor (the person who gave you the goods) the proceeds of the sale less your commission and fees. If something doesn't sell, you simply return the item to the consignor.

How To Start & Run an eBay Consignment Business comes with access to a special web page that includes consignment contracts, fee schedules, pre-written advertisements and sales letters that you can download and use to promote your business.

How To Start & Run an eBay Consignment Business is available at your local bookstore and online from Barnes & Noble.com and Amazon.com. You can click on the banners below to order your copy today.

Barnes and Noble

Increase Bids and Final Values with Testimonials

2006-02-20T06:04:00.000-08:00

If you are just starting out it may be a little difficult to get testimonials, but once you have sold a few dozen items on eBay this becomes very easy.

When a potential bidder is reading your auction, you want to communicate your enthusiasm and knowledge of the product you are selling. But adding a testimonial in someone else’s voice and words can really add credibility to your description and therefore your sales message. I have been using testimonials successfully on my Web site for several years, but other than pasting some feedback comments into my auctions, I hadn’t really tried them on eBay.

I recently ran a test where I added two short testimonials and four selected feedback comments to my auction. The results, my final value on the item went up 11% over what I usually average and I sold two more units at the full Buy-It-Now price than I normally average in a week.

How Do I Get Testimonials?

Ask. If someone posts a very nice feedback comment or sends you an email and says they really liked your product or service, send them an email and ask them if you can use their comment – or if they would write a short comment that you can use in your auctions. If you have something that would work as a low-cost giveaway you could offer that to them by way of thanks.
Make sure the testimonial is as specific as possible. A general statement such as “great product” or “great service” is nice, but it doesn’t tell the prospective customer very much. A better statement about the product such as:

“My son absolutely loves your handmade wood toy train set. It has become his favorite toy. After two weeks of hard play all the wheels are still on and it still looks as good as new.”

“Thank you for the great packaging and fast shipping. Your art glass vase has a prominent place on our mantle where I show it off to everyone.”

“Your quilting patterns are great. The illustrations and instructions are clear and easy to follow. This is only my second try at quilting and your system made it so easy.”

The idea is to show a specific benefit that people can relate to.

If someone sends you an email with an unsolicited testimonial, be sure and ask them if you can use their testimonial in your auctions (or on your Web site if you have one). I don’t like to put their exact information because people might bother them, so I usually sign the testimonial with something such as …Harry, a gardener from New Jersey, or Susan, a homemaker from Pittsburgh.

Feedback comments rarely contain specific product benefits, but if you have some great feedback comment about your service you can also use those. Here are a few feedback comments from my recent auctions:

Karen and Skip have a way of making you feel like a VIP with each purchase palmbyte1 (923)

Great people! Helpful, easy to work with and exceptionally knowledgeable xylthryx (8)

Great to do business with. Quick and courteous. Received product as requested itsjustannie (8)

wow...what a wonderful addition to my home...i will by another one soon thanks ixicowgirlixi0dev (28)

More than my money's worth, fast response, I will be back for more auctionleverage (18)

When you get a glowing feedback comment such as these, you can always try emailing the sender and asking if they would write a short testimonial.

For more examples about how I use testimonials, please see the product description for The Complete eBay Marketing System.

Drop Shipper Ripoff Alert

2006-02-17T13:48:00.000-08:00

In my opinion, Zibus.com is a total scam. This company claims to have access to drop ship products from famous name brands. There is no product pricing on the site. You fill out an application and then pay $19.95 to submit the application. After a week they call you back and try to sell you a $5,000 program.

One poor seller, who bit, got access to a drop ship company with product prices that were 20% higher than the items were selling for on eBay. All attempts to get her money back failed.

Another problematic site is netdropshipper.com. This is a site I had recommended in the past. Although not a scam, they have very poor communication, shipping takes forever, they rarely answer emails and in general almost everyone who has dealt with them has been unhappy. I received over 20 complaints from readers about poor or nonexistent service. I tried to contact them on several occasions and they never answered me either. I have removed them from my source lists and recommend you use caution when dealing with them. If you want to learn the ins and outs of dropshipping, check out the Wholesale Buying System

How To Run a Charity Auction on eBay

2006-02-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

In earlier days you could just put up an auction and say it was for a charity and there was no policing or a way to determine if you really gave the money to the charity or not. Today, there are two ways to run a charity auction on eBay. One is by using the eBay Giving Works program operated by Mission Fish and the other is to run your own auction and donate all or part of the proceeds to the charity of your choice. Both have their pro and cons. Let’s take a look at each way:

eBay Giving Works enables you to list your items on eBay and donate part or the entire final sale price to your favorite nonprofit organizations. Unique search and listing features allow you to build your business while supporting causes important to you. To date, eBay sellers have raised more than $40 million for nonprofits through items sold on eBay.

To donate, when you get to the Pictures and Details page of the eBay Sell Your Item form, look for the link that says “donate a percentage of sale.” This will bring up a list of approved nonprofit organizations you can donate to (there is also a link to add a nonprofit if your favorite one is not on the list). If this is your first eBay Giving Works listing, you will be prompted to create a MissionFish account, provide your credit card information to guarantee payment of your donation, and consent to terms in the MissionFish User Agreement. After your item sells, collect payment from the buyer as usual. MissionFish will send you an email notification that includes the exact donation amount due and payment instructions. If you do not fulfill your commitment by the second Monday after your listing ends, MissionFish will charge your credit card. MissionFish then forwards the gift (minus $3.00 and a 2.9% credit card processing cost) to the designated nonprofit on the 20th of the second month after your listing has closed and issues you a tax receipt. If you donated a portion of your proceeds to the charity you will still pay your eBay fees which unfortunately are not tax-deductible. If you donate all of it to the charity, eBay will waive the listing and final value fees.

Beside the processing fee, the other problem occurs when you encounter a non-paying bidder which unfortunately occurs fairly often. You have to go through the whole non-paying bidder process, which 6 times out of 10 will earn you a negative feedback. Once eBay has credited your fees, you can now fill out another form with MissionFish and request a refund from them. If something went wrong with your transaction and you refunded a buyer’s money, MissionFish will still collect the minimum $10 donation.

Admittedly these are small drawbacks, but they do pose challenges to the seller. If you want to understand the program better, read the eBay Giving Works FAQs.

The other method is to run your own auction and donate the proceeds directly to the charity. However, there are some hoops you have to jump through to do this. First of all the organization has to be an IRS certified 501 3 (c) organization. That means they have to have filed their nonprofit status with the IRS and been approved. Second, you need a letter from the organization and you need to scan the actual letter into your item description so eBay can see it. How do you get such a letter? Well this week I just called the local chapter of the Salvation Army and told the lady who answered the phone what I was trying to do and what I needed. She said she couldn’t do it locally, but would have someone from the national office call me. Within 15-minutes I had a call and 15-minutes later a letter of authorization came over my fax machine. It was really pretty simple. I didn’t have a scanner, but I took a good digital photo and used the Supersize option, so eBay could blow the image up large enough to read it and I was good to go.

Running a charity auction is a great way to magnify the power of a donation as we saw after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. However, these charities need help year round, so don't wait for something big-scale to happen on the news to get involved.

Trading Assistant's: Find Merchandise With Garage Sale Scouts

2006-02-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

There are millions of people who are addicted to garage sales. When you advertise your garage sale will start promptly at 8:00 AM and you look out your window at 7:00 AM and see several people standing there, those are the real garage sale junkies. There are also tons of people looking to make a few extra bucks. What if you could find people who have both attributes: They need to make some extra money and they love going to garage sales.

When Karen and I were in the antique business, we always made a point of being in the shop early Monday morning. Because this is when the "pickers" would show up. These were people who went to garage, yard and tag sales over the weekend who had a good eye for value. They would find things that cost just a few dollars that they could sell to us for three or four times that, and that we could also mark up 100% to 200% and sell in our shop.

As a Trading Assistant, your biggest expense in time and money is finding consignors with attractive goods to sell on eBay. Try This: Put a classified ad in your local paper that says something like this:

Make money buying at garage sales. Call 206-555-1212

When these people call, explain that you are an eBay consignment seller looking for merchandise to sell. If they want to work with you, you will teach them what to look for. If they find any of these items at a garage sale, bring them to you. You will put them on eBay and pay them the value less your commission. You explain that your normal commission of items that sell for less than $300 is 40%, but you are only going to charge them 25% as long as they bring you a good volume of merchandise every week.

Now, how do you teach them what to look for. Robbin Tungett has just released an excellent new book, Garage Sale Strategies. If you want to learn what to buy at garage sales that sells on eBay, this is the best work on the subject whether you want to use it for yourself, or to teach your garage sale scouts what to look for.

Remember, if you want to sell it on eBay, you need to know the difference between what items you can buy that will sell for $5 and those that will sell for $50 or more. Robbin's book is excellent --the best I have even seen on the subject.

20 Million Price Tag for Storage Locker Auction Contents

2006-02-04T06:26:00.000-08:00

In my Wholesale Buying System, I talk about storage locker auctions. Basically, after an account is 90 days in arrears, the storage facility will offer the contents at auction. These are usually advertised locally and happen once about a month. The facility owner will cut off the lock in the presence of the potential bidders who can then look inside the locker at the contents. They cannot enter the locker, or open any boxes. Everything is sold "as is" so it's up to you to decide what it is worth based upon what you can see and labels on the boxes (if any).

In Los Angeles, one of these auctions took a turn when the buyer of a particular storage locker contents discovered the previous owner was Paris Hilton. According to the Washington Post, Hilton's publicist said there had been a mix up and payments had not been credited to her storage locker account as they should have been. Either way, one lucky guy is now in the possession of personal diaries and tapes of Paris Hilton. It is unknown how much he paid for the locker contents, but most storage locker auctions go for between $75 and $500.

Because of the nature of the items, he cannot sell them on eBay, but he has enlisted the help of David Hans Schmidt (who has brokered many deals to sell celebrity porn) to sell the diaries and videos. And the starting price? $20 million. Not bad for a storage locker auction.

Why Should I Use Drop Shippers? by Jim Staley, CEO Wholesale Gopher

2006-01-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

I asked Jim Staley to write this article for my readers on the subject of dropshipping merchandise to sell on eBay or your web site. Wholesale Gopher is a search engine where sellers can find wholesale dealers who will work with small and large sellers alike. –Skip McGrath

If the irritations of returns, shipping, receiving, handling and inventory are taking over your online business, switching to dropshippers can be a cost effective, sanity-saving light at the end of the tunnel.

Drop shippers are merely companies (usually wholesalers, distributors or manufacturers) who ship directly to your customer for you, saving you the time, fees and office space of acting as the middle man in a buy-sell arrangement. In a nutshell, this means that you can offer a wide variety of products at your website without carrying any stock in-house.

Ideally, dropshippers receive an email from you whenever one of your customers wants to purchase something. For instance, Mrs. Jones wants to purchase an Italian charm bracelet from your website, and makes an order, using PayPal as her method of payment. The bracelet sells for $37, plus $6 shipping, for a total of $43. Once you receive Mrs. Jones’ order, you email your dropshipper, advising them of the purchase, along with Mrs. Jones’ shipping information. You also include a payment of only $25 to the dropshipper. Since YOUR cost of the bracelet is only $19, and you’ve passed along the shipping costs of $6 to the customer, you’ve just made a $18 profit.

Dropshippers are an excellent alternative for smaller, home-based businesses especially who don’t need or have the space for inventory. Plus, if an item becomes obsolete or out-of-date, you have nothing to worry about since you aren’t carrying any inventory.

Once you’ve found a dropshipper to work with (look at a list of dropshippers here), research the following information closely before entering into an agreement with anyone:

What is the dropshippers’ return policy? If they do not offer a guarantee, warranty or return policy, look elsewhere.
How are you going to pay the dropshipper? Some companies offer direct, monthly billing, but most ask for a credit card payment up front.
What shipping company does the dropshipper use? Do they offer any tracking for their packages? Are there handling fees as well, in addition to their shipping charges?
What is their complaint resolution policy, or do they even have one? What hours is their customer service department available?

Take a close look at their wholesale rates, and make sure that you can offer a decent price for all of the items you plan on selling, while still garnering a healthy profit.

Not all dropshippers are made the same, however. There are a few unscrupulous practices out there that you need to avoid at all costs:

Do not pay for a dropshipping list. You can do your own research for a lot less on your own using the Internet (see Wholesale Gopher’s list of dropshippers here).
Do not pay a monthly fee for the privilege of being a dropshippers’ client. The dropshipper should be able to make money from you as you are with your own customers (by selling items at a higher price than their cost), and not by charging you monthly fees for access to their items, database or other services.
Ask for contact information (an email is fine) from several happy clients that the dropshipper works with for testimonials. Also check with the online Better Business Bureau to make sure there are no negative reports on file.
Don’t be afraid to check the validity of a dropshippers’ statements. If they say they are the only source for product A, then check the Internet yourself to make sure.

Just like any online business, using dropshippers to facilitate easier business transactions isn’t something that will just one day make you millions of dollars. However, if you choose wisely, your dropshippers can save you a tremendous amount of time and energy, putting more profits back into your pocket.

Jim Staley is the is the CEO for WholesaleGopher (http://www.wholesalegopher.com/), one of the most trusted dealer and distributor directories on the Internet, offering visitors wholesale items, import and export goods, surplus and closeouts from true wholesale sources.

Am I Making Any Money On eBay?

2006-01-09T19:41:00.000-08:00

That may sound like a simple question, but you would be surprised to know how many sellers don't have a clue. In the business world the term for measuring the results for your business is called Business Metrics. Metrics are nothing more than key measurements you apply to your business to determine if you are profitable and succeeding in your goals. Let's first look at some key eBay metrics and then we will talk about how you can use them. Don't be afraid of the math.

ASP - This is the Average Selling Price of all your auctions that sold. Do not count those that ended without a successful bidder.

STR - Sell Through Rate. This is the percentage of auctions that ended successfully. If you launched 50 auctions last month and 39 of them closed with a winning bidder or a Buy-it-now sale, then you divide 39 by 50 which will give you your STR of 78%. In general an STR of 60% or better is considered excellent.

GMS - This is your Gross Merchandise Sales. Nothing more than adding up all your sales for the month. Do not include non-paying bidders -only the sales for which you received payment.

FTS Rate - This is your Fees To Sales Rate. FTS is the percentage of your GMS that you spent on eBay Fees. Some sellers also add their PayPal fees to this, but I don't recommend that as you will see later. To calculate FTS simply divide your eBay fees for the month, by your GMS. For example if you collected $9,200 GMS for the month and you incurred $875 in eBay fees, your FTS Rate is 875 / 9,200 = .095 which is 9.5%.

NPB Rate - This is your Non-Paying Bidder rate. It is nothing more than the ratio of how many auctions ended successfully versus how many were not paid for. If you had 115 auctions end successfully and 6 of them were not paid for, you just divide 6 / 115 = .052 which is 5.2%

GM - This stands for Gross Margin. GM is your income for the month, less your direct costs. Your direct costs are the cost of the goods you sold plus your eBay fees. If shipping is a break-even you can ignore it for this calculation. However, shipping & insurance is a cost center for me that I always try to make a little money on. So I include what customers pay me for shipping in my income and the cost of shipping materials and postage in my direct costs.

There are several more metrics that large professional sellers use. Probably the best discussion of eBay metrics and how to use them to grow your business is the book eBay Strategies by Scot Wingo, the founder of Channel Advisor. (Available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble online).

OK - So how do I use all these fancy numbers now that I know them? If you set up an excel spread sheet with the metrics across the top and the month's of the year down the side it will be very easy to spot trends in your metrics. This way you can even graph them if you want to see a visual.

Let's start with ASP. I like to track my ASP because I am lazy and don't like to launch a lot of auctions. The higher my ASP the fewer the number of auctions I have to launch to hit my monthly sales goal. Also if my product mix is stable and my ASPs are falling, that is a warning sign. I may have a new competitor, there could be a large supply of the products I sell hitting eBay, or seasonality is affecting my auctions. When I see this happening I can take several actions. I can have a sale to quickly dump the merchandise, or I might move the goods to a web store where I can get higher prices. The point is that I know something is happening by watching my ASPs.

STR is one of the most important metrics in terms of increasing your profitability. If your STR is 50%, then you are paying two eBay listing fees for each auction that sells. After the cost of goods sold (what you pay for the products you sell), eBay fees are your next largest expense. Anything you can do to increase your STR will usually put money in your pocket.

GMS - I like to track my GMS every month to see if I am on track to reach my goals and I need the GMS figures to do my other ratio calculations.

FTS Rate - This is a biggee. eBay fees can really eat up your profits. My goal is always keep this under 8%, unless I am selling a lot of high-value merchandise, in which case I may accept up to 10%. If your rate is higher than that, start looking hard at the special options you are purchasing and what you can do to increase your STR.

NPB Rate - This is often a factor of the type of merchandise you sell. Because I sell information products in addition to merchandise, I tend to get more NPBs than most. NPBs sometimes leave you negative feedback when you go through the NPB process on eBay to either get paid or to get your fees refunded. If your NPB rate is low and feedback is still a low number, then I recommend usually letting it go and eat the fees. If, however, your NPB rate is significantly affecting your profits, then you should chase them down.

GM - Your Gross Margin is where it all comes together. This is the one calculation that tells you how much money you made at the end of the month. I personally know several eBay sellers who were not tracking this and actually thought they were making money when they were not. One fellow I worked with had a FTS rate of 19%. When we went though all his sales and costs for the month he had made a Gross Margin of $14 on GMS of $2,114.

There is one other metric and that is Net Profit. Your net profit is your GM less other costs such as PayPal fees, monthly ISP fees, computer payments and so on. Most of these fees are either fixed such as your monthly ISP fee and others such as PayPal you can't really do much about, so it is far more important to track your gross margin to see if you are making money.

It is very easy to get these numbers. Just sign up for Sales Reports on your My eBay Page. Some of the ratios such as ASP and GMS are calculated and you just have to copy them onto a spread sheet.

USPS increases rates 5.4% on January 8, 2006

2006-01-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Postal Service has announced a 5.4% increase in rates effective January 8, 2006. You should make sure to adjust your overhead costs (and auction shipping costs) accordingly as these increases do add up. The main domestic increases are as follows:

Flat Rate Priority Mail Envelope $4.05 (20¢ increase)
Flat Rate Priority Mail Box $8.10 (40¢ increase)
Flat Rate Express Mail Envelope $14.40 (75¢ increase)
Express Mail (1/2-2lb weight) $18.80 (95¢ increase)
Delivery Confirmation (priority mail) 50¢ (5¢ increase)
Delivery Confirmation (first class parcel) 60¢ (5¢ increase)

The first class rates are all based upon weight. You can access the full tables here: Domestic, International.

You can now print USPS international labels and customs forms through the eBay/PayPal shipping center (previously restricted to domestic only). This new service is a huge time saver for most eBay sellers who do not want to wait in line for one or two packages when everything else is pre-posted. eBay does not yet have branded international boxes, but I am sure it is only a matter of time before these become available.

EZ Cube makes professional eBay photos a snap

2005-12-26T12:26:00.000-08:00

One way to increase your eBay profits is to take better pictures.

I have recently obtained a distribution deal to sell the highly-regarded EZ Cube Table Top Studios and I have started a new EZ Auction Tools website where I have listed the first few models of the EZ Cube studio I am selling.

If you struggle with your auction photos you should consider using one of these products. I have used the 30" EZ Cube model for the past two years. With this system anyone can take a shadow-free perfect digital auction photo every time. Best of all I am selling them at prices between 10% to 30% lower than the EZ Cube retail website.

The best deal is the Table Top Portrait Kit. Don't let the word "portrait" throw you -it's not for human portraits, but it is a complete kit with lights and professional portrait-type backdrops to give your product photos that professional look.

I really recommend the complete kit because it comes with the special daylight-balanced, low-watt, high-output trumpet bulbs. But if you want to save money, you can buy the Basic Light Tent and some inexpensive clamp lights from ACE Hardware. Your results will still be very good. If you go the clamp light route, you still may want to buy the special daylight-balanced bulbs. They put out a large amount of light, stay cool and you don't have to fiddle with the white balance on your camera. At the moment I am only selling the basic kits, but later I will be adding special kits for photographing jewelry, coins & stamps and glassware. Eventually I plan to add more products and photo accessories.

How to Get a Negative Feedback Removed

2005-12-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

Getting eBay to remove a negative feedback comment is extremely difficult. There are several situations whereby eBay will agree to remove a feedback comment once it is placed but they are very limited. Here is eBay’s policy on feedback removal:

eBay is provided with a valid court order finding that the disputed feedback is slanderous, libelous, defamatory or otherwise illegal.
The feedback comment contains profane, vulgar, obscene, or racist language or adult material. Inflammatory language, such as "fraud, liar, cheater, scam artist, con man" etc. is strongly discouraged but will not be removed.
The feedback comment contains personal identifying information about another member, including real name, address, phone number, or e-mail address.
The feedback makes reference to an eBay, PayPal or law enforcement organization investigation.
The feedback comment contains links or scripts.
Negative feedback intended for another member will be considered for removal only in situations where the member responsible for the mistaken posting informs eBay of the error and has already placed the same feedback for the correct member.
Feedback left by a person ineligible to participate in eBay transactions, according to the eBay User Agreement, at the time of the transaction or the time the feedback was left.
Feedback left by a member who provided eBay with false contact information and could not be contacted. In general, the transaction period is considered to be 90 days from the end of the listing or 30 days from the date the feedback was left, whichever was longer.
Feedback left by a member who bid on or purchased an item solely to have the opportunity to leave negative feedback for the seller, with no intention of completing the transaction.

If you were left feedback by someone under one of these conditions, contact eBay through the Contact Us link on the eBay Feedback Forum Page.

There are two other ways to have feedback removed. The first one is through eBay’s Mutual Feedback Removal process.

Sometimes a member will leave a negative feedback and then later realize the problem was not caused by the seller (such as the post office losing a package) or the seller contacts the member after they have left the feedback and offers to fix the problem (i.e. give the seller a refund, send a replacement item, etc.) If both the buyer and seller agree, then you can apply to eBay under the mutual feedback resolution policy.

After both parties have agreed to withdraw the feedback, eBay will adjust their feedback scores at the same time. eBay will add a note to the feedback comment, saying that the feedback was mutually withdrawn.

Members may initiate a request to mutually withdraw feedback within 30 days of either person leaving feedback or within 90 days of the transaction end date, whichever is later.

Once you contact the other member and agree to the mutual feedback resolution, just go to the eBay Feedback Forum page and click on the link to Mutual Feedback Withdrawal. This will bring up an online form where you enter the item number to start the process.

eBay will send each member an email asking if they agree to withdraw the feedback. When both parties answer in the affirmative eBay will adjust the feedback score.

Sometimes communications between the two members becomes so emotional that you just can’t resolve the issue. There is another way to have feedback removed. This is by using a third party resolution service. Unfortunately this one is not free.

Go to http://www.squaretrade.com/. Square Trade is an eBay partner that offers a SquareTrade seal of approval to sellers that have a good feedback rating. You can put this seal into your auctions. If you are a SquareTrade member, you can apply for their dispute resolution service. There is a $20 fee for the service. But, if SquareTrade resolves the dispute and both parties agree, then they can remove your negative feedback. Upon payment of your $20.00, SquareTrade will contact the other party and attempt to resolve the issue. According to their website they are successful about 70% of the time.

Buy-It-Now Pricing Strategies on eBay

2005-12-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

How does Buy-it-now work on eBay? The eBay auction Buy-it-now price is a price you determine that you are willing to take for the item you are selling at any time during the auction. However, the BIN price disappears once the first bid is placed. Because eBay lists the auctions in the order of their ending time, most auctions on eBay do not attract bids until they have been up a few days. Therefore you BIN price will usually be available for a few days until you get closer to the end of an auction.

Some bidders, who see your item and are interested in it, will often place a low bid just to get rid of the BIN price so they will not lose out to another buyer who may not want to wait for the end of an auction. (When I am buying antiques and collectibles on eBay I do this all the time.)

BIN pricing tends to work best when you are listing your items with the cost-based pricing model. If you list your products at a low starting bid such as 99 cents, you will attract bids quickly thereby killing the BIN price.

BIN pricing has a lot of advantages and really no disadvantages that I can tell. Running a successful eBay business requires you to turn your inventory over quickly and as many times as possible. Every time you turn your inventory over, you have more money to invest in more inventory and this is how you grow your business. If you list all of your items for 7 days and they all sell that is great. But let’s face it, not every item sells. According to eBay only 46% of all auctions result in a conversion (completed sale).

If you are listing your merchandise for seven days and a percentage of it sells within one, two or three days using the BIN feature, then you are increasing your conversion ratio and turning your inventory over more often.

How to set your BIN price: This is easiest when you are selling merchandise you are knowledgeable about and used to selling. You have a good feel for the price/value relationship. In general if you remember the advantage of BIN is faster inventory turn, then you don’t want to set the BIN price at the high end of what your items usually go for. If I had an item that I bought for $10 and my selling prices ranged between $18 and $24 with $19.90 being the average, then I would set my BIN price at the average level. That would attract the most impulse buyers and result in more instant sales.

BIN auctions have another benefit as well. Remember when you do a search on eBay; the items come up in the order of those ending soonest. If you launch a BIN auction with a high starting price at the same time (within a minute or so) of a regular auction with a low starting price bidders will see both auctions in close proximity to each other when they do a search. If someone sees a BIN auction with a starting price of $29 and another auction just above or below it on the search list where the bidding is around $9, they will get a “perception of value” from seeing the BIN auction and that will tend to increase bids on the regular auction. Now as bids on the regular auction get close to the $29 of the BIN auction, impulse buyers will be tempted to buy the BIN item now rather than wait for the auction to end. In other words each auction supports the other one.

How to run a test auction

2005-12-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

So why should you run test auctions? There are two important reasons. One is to test a new product to see if there is any interest in it before committing to a purchase. The second is to test a pricing strategy on a certain product. For example I might run one auction with starting price at my cost and no reserve and another auction at a $0.99 starting price with a reserve. There are other reasons for testing too, such as testing the category featured listing on an expensive item to see if it is worthwhile or testing sub-heads to see if they increase hits, testing the ending day for certain items and so on.

If you are testing a new product you will also want to test it at different starting prices at the same time. In general if I can get more than one sample of a product, I will run two or three test auctions using different price variations. If the category is not clear, I might also run it in different categories. (Don’t use the List In Two Categories feature because you will not know which category is working for you.)

The key to running test auctions is tracking the data. Obviously you need a hit counter in the auction so you can track the number of hits. Now count up the number of bids and calculate a hit-to-bid ratio. Compare this with both your known successful auctions and the other test auctions for the same product. Always test a new product before committing to a large volume purchase. I learned this the hard way.

In my early days on eBay I sold antiques and collectibles. After a couple of years, so many antique dealers were selling on eBay it was driving the prices down and I was always looking for other items to sell. I once ordered 100 sets of garden tools in plastic cases that I got at such a good price I knew I could make money. After 6 weeks I was giving them away at my cost. Had I done some research –which I belatedly did, I would have learned that the better quality more expensive garden tools were selling very well on eBay, while the cheaper ones were not.

Increase your Buy-It-Now auction bids

2005-12-07T08:59:00.000-08:00

I have been asked many times if it is worth offering Buy-It-Now as an option with your auctions. After all, why would someone who doesn't need the item immediately click on the Buy-It-Now (BIN) option on an auction when they could wait and snipe it for a lower price?

The answer is simple- give them an incentive. Of course, they know they will get the item quicker (which around this time of year is critical), but you can sweeten the deal even more by offering free shipping to anyone who uses the BIN feature.

The idea is to generate faster sales and therefore faster inventory turnover with the free shipping incentive. One of the product categories we sell is Starbucks Collectibles –mostly city mugs and bears. In this category I used to average about one BIN sale a week. Since offering the free shipping we have been experiencing BIN sales in the 6 to 8 range per week.

The idea is to set a BIN price at an acceptable level for the product you want to sell, then add an estimated shipping price. I have been actually adding the shipping price plus about $2.00 to see if it still worked –and it does. I use 50 cents of this extra amount to buy the eBay sub-title feature. This is where I advertise my BIN free shipping. I might say something such as: Free U.S. Shipping with your Buy-It-Now purchase. Then in the body of the text I write a short paragraph that reads:

Shipping, handling and insurance are $5.90 to any US destination via Priority Mail. If you use the Buy-It-Now feature to purchase this item I will SHIP IT FOR FREE to any US destination. If you are in Canada or overseas, I will deduct $5.00 from the shipping cost. Please Note: The Buy-It-Now feature DISSAPPEARS once the first bid is placed –so ACT NOW to have this great item sitting in your home within a few days of hitting that Buy-It-Now button.

I also experimented with some pretty high Buy-It-Now prices. On a few auctions I added the shipping plus a $5.00 premium to what I hoped to get for the mug. Several of these were snapped up at the BIN price. If you are too greedy, the items just won’t sell, but this is a great way to snag that impulse buyer. Of course this may have been a pre-Christmas thing. I will see if this still works through January.

There is another benefit to this technique as well. We all know that auctions with early bids tend to attract more bidders. Several bidders see my BIN offer and realize that it disappears once a bid is placed. So they bid at the minimum level to kill the BIN offer for other potential bidders hoping they can get it for less. That is OK too because it gives me an early bid and less chance of the buyer forgetting about it and not sniping as they had intended.

Niche Marketing Strategies on eBay

2005-12-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

In the early days, eBay was predominately used to sell collectibles including sports cards, comics, toys and beanie babies. As eBay expanded, more expensive collectibles and antiques turned up in listings. Within a very short time consumer goods started showing up. At first most of these were used or overstock items and As Seen On TV items. During the first two years almost every eBay seller was essentially working in a narrow product area or a niche.
What denotes a niche market? A category is not a niche. For example, if you sell all kinds of toys, you are a toy vendor. If, however, you only sell action figures, then that is a niche. It used to be if you sold only digital cameras that would be considered a niche, but today the digital camera market on eBay is so large that you would have to sell only one brand of cameras, such as Nikon, to be considered a niche in the camera market.

Benefits of Niche Marketing

There are two primary benefits of niche marketing:

Sourcing
Selling

Let's look at sourcing first. As you spend more time in a market or product category you will learn all the sources of supply for that market. When I was in the antique business, I used to sell a broad line of 18th and 19th century American antiques. However, within that, I used to specialize in the niche of early American woodworking tools. After a couple of years I developed an expertise and a “feel” for the products. I could recognize makers, spot reproductions and I knew what tools were in high demand from collectors that would command high prices. Once I developed the expertise, my profits shot though the roof.

Remember our adage on pricing: You make money when you buy not when you sell. Well I became a very savvy buyer. Also, as word spread that I specialized in old woodworking tools, people with things to sell started seeking me out. At one point I was the largest old tool dealer in our state and I routinely bought tools that I could sell at markups of 200% to 300%.
When you decide to specialize in a niche of any kind the first thing you want to do is become expert in that area. Learn and read everything you can about it. Study the history of the product. Get to know the companies that manufacturer the product and their distributors. The more you know the better you will be able to buy.

The other benefit of niche marketing is selling. The very fact that you are selling in a narrow market segment means you will have less competition and therefore you can command higher margins. The other factor is that people prefer to buy from someone who is knowledgeable. Terry Gibbs is one of the largest and most well-known sellers of antique toys on eBay. People seek him out for his knowledge and his integrity. Everyone knows that when Terry describes a toy in one of his auctions, the description is accurate, he doesn’t sell fakes or reproductions and he stands behind everything he sells.

I get lots of questions from eBay buyers. If you are selling something and you get a question, as an expert or a specialist you will be able to answer the question with authority and detail that will give the bidder instant confidence and more than likely result in a bid.

The other selling advantage of niche marketing is the ability to accurately describe products in your auction descriptions. The added knowledge you have from being a specialist allows you to add more data and “insider” information that someone else can not. A potential bidder looking at your auction will have more confidence and perhaps bid more liberally than otherwise.

Finding The Right Niche

Finding your niche is a matter of research and brainstorming. You may already have a hobby, interest or life and work experience in an area that would make a good sales niche on eBay. This is where you should start. Work is always more fun –and usually more profitable if you are doing something you like. If, for example, you enjoy computers, this is a great area to start your search for a niche. So many people, and many large companies, sell computers on eBay that you would need a large amount of capital to compete in this area. But, the computer field has many sub-categories and there are many niches within these sub-categories. Monitors are a large sub-category, but flat screen monitors could constitute a niche. It takes a lot less capital to buy and build an inventory of flat screen monitors than it does of complete computer systems. You could buy monitors in lots of 100 for what 20 complete computers would cost.

Another area might be all the little accessories such as network hubs, cables and connectors, computer speaker systems and so on.

Perhaps you like travel –specifically you like to travel off the beaten path. Selling in the broad travel category could be daunting, but maybe you could work with a local travel agent and package adventure tours or specialty tours that you could sell on eBay.

Movie DVDs are a very large category crowded with hundreds of sellers. Yet there are several players within the Movie DVD category that have found niches such as old movies, How-To DVDs (i.e. learn to play golf or trick billiard shots, etc., educational DVDs, documentaries, and so on.

The same thing goes for Music CDs and DVDs. Entering the broad music category could be difficult and take a large amount of capital to compete, but one could carve out a nice niche in jazz or folk music or alternative rock.

Almost any broad category on eBay has sub-categories, some of which are small enough to qualify as a niche, and others in which you can find a niche. The key is that the niche you find be active enough to generate large sales and not be crowded by hundreds of other sellers.
If you find a niche that is already dominated by one large seller, don’t let that stop you if you think you have the ability to compete. A little competition is good for everyone, you, your competitor and the customer. Anyone can do something better. By studying your competitor’s auctions and policies, perhaps you can find a way to compete that doesn’t require one of you to fail for the other to succeed.

Once again, start your search in areas that interest you. When you have found several areas that interest you, then you need to start your research. First use the eBay keywords report to see if people are searching the terms or keywords for the items you want to sell. Next use the eBay search engine and the Andale Research tool to determine the viability of the market. I would also use Hammertap’s Deep Analysis program to further drill down into the categories you are interested in.

You may find a very profitable niche, but it is just not deep enough to sustain a large eBay business. It’s no good to totally own a niche if your monthly gross merchandise sales (GMS) is only $2000. You want to look for a niche(s) that will support a minimum of $5,000 a month in GMS. $10,000 to $25,000 is even better.

Sometimes you can combine related niches. Going back to the computer example, you could sell monitors and keyboards. If you go into the automotive area you could sell both performance exhaust systems and air-intake systems. These are two different products from different ends of the vehicle, but performance enthusiasts often buy these two components together to improve the horsepower of their cars.

When you find a potential niche(s), ask your self these questions before deciding to focus on it or before ordering inventory to sell:

Is this niche large enough in terms of potential GMS to run a sustainable business?
Do you have or can you obtain the knowledge and expertise to work this niche?
Does the product area interest you?
Is the competitive situation in this niche manageable?
Do you have a reliable and cost effective source of supply for the goods to supply your niche market?
Are the margins available to you for these products large enough to run a sustainable business?
Can the niche be expanded, or are there complimentary products you can cross-sell and up-sell?

Remember you do not have to totally “own” your niche to be successful, but you will need to be one of the handful of major players to have consistent, predictable and long-term success.

The REAL secret to success on eBay

2005-11-29T10:05:00.000-08:00

I am often asked: "What is the real secret to success on eBay?"

This one is easy. There isn't just one...

Almost all of the information, strategies, techniques and methods used by eBay sellers have been reported, written about and discussed on the eBay message boards, in numerous books, newsletters, TV stories and seminars.

A technique that one power seller considers her "secret to success" is derided by another power seller as a rookie mistake.

I was having lunch one day with four of the largest power sellers on eBay –all were Titanium powersellers. Between them they sold over $35 million a year on eBay. I asked one seller, what was the best way to list an item on eBay? He replied: “I list everything at 99-cents, no-reserve.” One of the other sellers agreed with him partially and the other two disagreed vehemently –kicking off a heated discussion that went on through desert. One person’s secret is seen by others as just another opinion.

I have been a member of PESA, the Professional eBay Seller’s Alliance. I attended their first meeting in New York in 2003 and several meetings since. PESA, originally called the eBay Elite, represents many of the top 500 sellers on eBay. Our members account for over $1 billion in annual Gross Merchandise Sales on eBay. I have had the opportunity to engage in workshops and meetings and long discussions with many of my fellow members and their opinion is the same as mine. There is no one secret to success on eBay. Success comes to those who master the basics and execute them. The other theme you always hear is: "Run your business like a business."

What are the basics of selling on eBay and what does it mean to "run your business like a business?" Let’s take a look:

Set up and organize your business like a professional business –because it is. If you take shortcuts and try to operate on the cheap, you will never be taken seriously. The internet is still a scary place for some folks. Take the time to brand you business –create a look and feel that your customers can relate to and one that creates a sense of confidence.

Invest in Automation early. Whether you use an online system such as Vendio, Mpire or eBay's Selling Manager or offline software such as those made by Blackthorne, Marketbalst, Hammertap or others, you want to automate from the beginning. Automation saves you time and makes your operation appear --and function, more professionally.

When you make some money, don't rush out and spend it. Always reinvest in your business and keep reinvesting in your business.

Time is your most precious resource. Anything you can do to automate functions and get others to perform simple operational tasks will free you to do the management and creative tasks that will build your business.

Every listing is a reflection of you and your business. Each listing should look professional and contain keyword-rich headlines, good photos and item descriptions that are accurate, complete and that SELL!

Establish sales, payment, shipping and return policies that are both friendly and yet support your business model. Don’t be dictatorial. eBay is a community built on trust. If you trust others to do right they usually will. The percentage who don’t are quite small and you should treat it as a cost of doing business.

Build and preserve an excellent feedback reputation. Feedback is the window through which others see you. You can have great products, compelling product descriptions and super photos --but if you have a lousy feedback score, your business will suffer. Great feedback is built by providing great customer service. Treat every customer as you would like to be treated and you will always have a high score.

Follow the rules. A lot of new sellers become frustrated by eBay's complex listing regulations. You can't fight city hall. eBay is like the government. Some of the rules may seem petty and unfair, but it is their platform, their business and they make the rules. eBay has been pretty good over the years of responding to member feedback. If you think a rule is stupid or unworkable, don't push the envelop and don't get into a fight with eBay --you will lose. Instead post your opinion on the message boards. eBay members are on the boards and they look for common threads and opinions from their members. An intelligent post will get read.

eBay is one of the most competitive marketplaces on Earth. Study and stay on top of your competition constantly -and be prepared to react to changes in the marketplace. I study my competitor's auctions at least once a week.

Experiment – Test – Innovate. Experiment with new tools and software when they become available. Test different listing and pricing strategies, new products and sales strategies. Test headlines and optional features. Innovate constantly. Always look for new ways to solve old problems.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. There are plenty of resources for the entrepreneur Amazingly the best source of help is often other eBayers. Your direct competitor may not want to help you, but there are plenty of others who will. A post on the Power Seller Message Board will bring dozens of responses. Once you are a power seller you will have access to the Power Seller Support hotline and email support box. Use it --I have never failed to learn something new when I called power seller support.

Well, maybe there is one secret to success on eBay. If I had to say, it would be: Do it all and do it right!

Understanding Supply & Demand on eBay

2005-10-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

I remember studying supply and demand theory in Economics 101 at UCLA. When the teaching assistant took to the stage in the auditorium and put the supply and demand curve up on the board and explained it, I thought to myself: "It's a good thing I am going to school on the GI Bill. I would hate to be spending my own money for this."

To me the law of supply and demand was obvious. The fewer the supply of something and the more demand for it, the higher the price someone would pay for it. I understood the law intuitively. I couldn't understand why it was being taught in college.

I had learned the law of supply and demand by experience the previous summer. I was lying on the beach and realized I had forgotten my sunblock. Not wanting to get burned I walked over a mile from my spot on the beach to a stall on the boardwalk where I bought a tube of overpriced sunblock. It only took a moment to realize that other people lying on the beach might pay even more if they didn't have to walk a mile.

As a young college kid I didn't have any wholesale connections. So the next day I went to Wal-Mart and bought 25 tubes of the cheapest 15 and 30 SPF sunblock I could find. I walked up and down the beach hawking my sunblock for three times the price I had paid. I sold all 25 tubes within two hours and made over $60.

I made over $3,000 that summer working a couple of hours a day hawking sunblock on the Santa Monica Beach.

This simple, easy-to-understand concept is easily evidenced on eBay today. You can see it in action 24 hours a day. Goods sell at a price that reflects the available supply and the corresponding demand at a specific moment in time. Why is the "time" issue important? On eBay, this has to do with the supply of a specific item at that very moment.

Almost everyone believes that Sunday evening between 6PM and Midnight is the best time to end an auction. This may be true in terms of getting the highest number of eyeballs that will see you auction. If you are selling an item that is in either high demand or low supply, then this may indeed be the best time to end an auction.

However, remember that eBay bargain hunters scan the auctions ending soonest looking for the one with the lowest bid price. If you are selling the same or similar item that is being sold by lots of other sellers, then you would not want your auction to end on Sunday evening when dozens of other sellers are also ending their auctions.

Here is an example. When I was in New Orleans for eBay Live last year, I purchased a dozen of the New Orleans Starbucks mugs because they are very popular on eBay. I listed one ending Sunday evening at 6PM Pacific Time. There were four other New Orleans mugs ending within 6 hours of mine. My mug still went for $21, over twice what I paid. Not bad.

But, I next listed a second mug that ended Saturday at 2PM. When I looked at the auctions on Saturday, mine was the only New Orleans mug and in fact there were very few mugs ending that afternoon. My mug went for $31. Had those bidders scrolled down to the auctions ending Sunday, they would have seen at least two other identical mugs, one of which was also mine. It went Sunday night for $22.50.

When it comes to managing supply, many sellers compete with themselves. The average eBay bidder is a bargain hunter by nature. What does this mean to you the seller when you are sourcing product to sell on eBay? It means you must pay attention to the law of supply and demand. When you are considering the purchase of inventory, the sharp eBay sellers will use research to determine if the product is selling on eBay and the prices it is selling for. They often, however, neglect to research the supply.

It's important to look not only at other seller's prices, but to look at the price trend of a product over the past 30 days. Has the price been holding steady? If so, the supply is probably in equilibrium with the demand. But if prices are falling, look at how many listings there are. Have the number of individual sellers and the number of listings increased over the past 30 days? Are there more Dutch Auctions for the product? (Dutch auctions are a favorite way for eBay sellers to dump inventory quickly.)

Let's say your research shows that 300 units of Tommy Hilfiger polo shirts were listed on eBay in the past month. You calculate the average selling price (ASP) of the shirts to be $35. What is going to happen if you buy a pallet load of 500 shirts and start listing them on eBay? You will have more than doubled the supply. A supply increase of this magnitude could drive the price down to below $25. If you paid over $15 each for the shirts, this is a pretty small margin. Worse yet, as the other competitors see the prices drop, they may start dumping their shirts to get out of unprofitable inventory, thereby accelerating the price decline.

You should always be aware of what your competitors are doing. But, sometimes you have to be careful not to compete with yourself. If you are the cause of too much supply, you can drive prices down all by yourself, lowering yours, and everyone else's margins in the process.
---
Skip McGrath is the author of The Complete eBay Marketing System and How To Start & Run an eBay Consignment Business. He publishes The eBay Seller's News, a monthly newsletter for professional eBay sellers.

Analyzing Your eBay Business

2005-09-12T17:18:00.000-07:00

If you are brand new to selling on eBay, you may find this post somewhat helpful, but it is really directed at those who have been selling for a while and perhaps struggling or maybe you are doing OK and just want to rachet your sales up to the next level.

Here are some steps that every seller can take to analyze their auctions and use the results to improve them. These ideas are based on the success premise of Research - Test - Refine:

1. Headlines: What are your competitiors doing that is different or perhaps better than you? Look at the completed auctions for the competitors in your product category that are getting the highest prices and analyze their auctions. First look at their headlines: Are they clever? Do they contain the same or different keywords than yours? Are they using eBay promotional features such as bold or highlight. If they have a hit counter, are they getting more hits than your auctions for the same product? If so, why do you think that is?

2. Images: Analyze your competitors images. Do they use the same, fewer or more images than you? Are their images at the top, bottom or along the sides of their auction? How does the image quality compare to yours?

3. Item Descriptions: How do your competitors item descriptions compare to yours? Are they longer, shorter, more complete? Do they present all of the specifications and product information before or after the basic product description? Do they do a good job of taling about the benefits of the product. Is the writing style straightforward or do they put a little personality and romance into the description?

4. Pricing: How do the successful competitors in your market price their items? Are they using $1 no reserve or starting their items at a higher price __or do they start low and use a reserve? Do they offer free shipping for BIN or if you buy two items?

5. The Little Things: How do your sales policies compare to your competitors? How do you handle shipping, payment, returns and do you offer any type of a guarantee?

Once you figure out what the most successful competitors are doing in your category, now you need to test those items. Remember, the idea is to Research to find out what others are doing. Test the results of your research to see if they work for you and finally Refine your auctions to include those ideas that testing shows will work for you.

eBay Success Seminar a Success

2005-09-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

Today is sunday, September 11th. Yesterday we held the first in a series of nationwide seminars to teach professional eBay selling techniques. The first one was held at the Alexis Park Villas in Las Vegas. We had 36 attendees --a bit fewer than I hoped for, but a real success nevertheless. Like anything you do for the first time, there were a few glitches. The seminar started at 8:00 AM, but the hotel engineering staff couldn't get the internet connection hooked up until 8:30 --so I had to tap dance for a half an hour. But it worked out Ok. We made up the time during the day and still ended up on time.

One of the questions we asked on the evaluation form was:" Did we deliver everything we promised and was the seminar everything you expected?" I am happy to say that every attendee answered Yes --many with exclamation marks attached. Over 1/2 the attendees remarked that they thought the seminar was too short and it should be a 1&1/2 or 2-day seminar so they could get more information.

As with any presentation you give for the first time, you just can't do enough practice. I got behind my PPT slide animation a few times and at one point was doing the show from the power point author view instead of the slide show. But all in all, I was happy with the results and the participants seemed to be also.

I haven't set the date yet, but the next seminar will be in Seattle, followed by Orange County and then an East Coast location. I am considering extending the time to 2 days as this is what people seem to want.

Next year beginning in March, I will kick off our eBay Boot Camp Series. I will offer a 3-day instense boot camp limited to 25 participants --the first one in Miami, followed by one in San Diego the following week.

We also launched our first new product in two years at the seminar: The eBay Business-in-a-box. This product consists of everything you need to start an eBay Consignment Business: Operations Manual, Software, Photo Studio, Contracts, forms, advertising and more. I still have some fine tuning to do on the product based on customer feedback, but I will be launching it on the www.skipmcgrath.com web site by September 20th. I will update this blog when it is available. Stay tuned.

Skip

Add My Blog To Your My Yahoo Page

2005-08-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

How To Use Audio in Your eBay Auctions

2005-08-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

My regular readers know that I have been a fan of Seller's Voice, the simplest system for placing audio in your auctions. If you click here you can get a special offer for my readers: You can try Seller's Voice for 3-weeks for only $1.00.

Here are some tips for using Seller's Voice:

1. People buy products from other people. Create an audio message on your About Me page that tells your potential bidders about you and your business.

2. Unless you are selling a specific or expensive item it is too much trouble to create a different audio for each auction. I like to create a message for each category of products that I sell. For example if you sold clothing, you could create one message for women, one for men and one for your children's clothes.

3. Don't worry about sounding like a professional speaker. eBay is a friendly place and if you sound like a normal person that is actually better than sounding like a radio advertisement.

4. I like to write my post out first and read it out loud a couple of times before I try and record it. Time how long it takes you to read the script. Try and keep your audio post to 30-45 seconds --one minute max!

5. What do I talk about? You can of course talk about you product if there is something unique or unusual about it or you can stress any benefits. Rremember benefits sell - features describe. You only have a few seconds to get the bidders attention so talk about the benefits first. You can talk about you shipping policies or offer specials such as "if you buy two items I will ship them for the price of one."

6. Use Seller's Voice to drive bidders to your eBay Store. It is much cheapter to list items in your eBay Store. For example, I sell a barbeque-firepit that comes in several different models. I place an auction for the most popular model in an auction and then in my audio I tell them to click on my eBay Store to view all the other models. This saves me a ton of money in listing fees.

If you have found a new use for seller's voice or would like to share any tips or techniques, just post them here.

You can read more about using audio in your auctions on my web site.

Cheers - Skip

Professional eBay Seller's Seminar in Las Vegas

2005-08-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

First Time Ever! This Exciting New Seminar will be held at the Alexis Park Hotel on Saturday, September 10th from 8 AM to 5 PM.

I’ve seen companies charge anywhere from $1,000 to $1,999 for a one-day seminar with less information than what I’ll be giving you here. I’m charging HALF that for this first seminar, only $999, plus $100 for a spouse or guest. However, for my readers and students, the first 25 can attend for only $499…75% OFF! And you can bring your spouse or guest FREE. The seminar will be limited to 50 participants. Only the first 25 will get this special price.

You will receive a complete Notebook with ALL of the new material. This is not available for sale… ONLY attendees will receive it! And, you will receive $1250 in Bonuses, just for attending! Not to mention door prizes of equipment and services you can use in your eBay business!

Oh, and 100% of your tuition can be applied towards any future training event…take advantage of this Bonus and it’ll be like getting to come for Free!

There are three requirements to attend this seminar and get this special rate:

1. This is not a beginner's seminar! You must already be familiar with the basics of selling on eBay.

2. I will be video taping the seminar so you will need to sign a release that will allow me to use the tape in my marketing and promotional efforts. Don't worry, we won't use anything that embarrasses anyone --so feel free to ask any --and I mean any, questions you want.

3. You agree to fill out a detailed critique of the seminar that I can use to develop and improve my future events.

Don’t miss this first-time-ever Professional Seminar September 10th … at this once-in-a-lifetime price!

Click Here to read more about the seminar, and get your reservation in at your Exclusive 75% Discount Rate!

How To Prevent Fraud When Sourcing Wholesale

2005-08-13T23:09:00.000-07:00

How To Prevent Fraud When Sourcing Wholesale

I received the kind of email I really hate to get from one of my readers this week. He had taken my advice to try the Alibaba search engine to source some products from overseas. He answered an opportunity to purchase Apple iPod and was taken to the cleaners to the tune of $2,000.

Alibaba, and other sites, list hundreds of sales opportunities --mostly from Asia, but also from other countries around the world. The problem that any web site like this has is determining just who is a legitimate supplier. This issue is not just limited to Alibaba --eBay has the same problem as well. eBay is pretty good at shutting bogus suppliers down when they learn of them --but unfortunately some still get through. Every time this happens, some one like my reader gets stung.

What to look out for?

There is an old saying: "If something seems too good to be true --it probably is." If you see a plasma TV that normally sells for $3,000 being offered on eBay or any other auction or search web site for $1,500, it is unlikely this is the real deal. (Even a large company such as Best Buy would pay around $2,500 wholesale for a $3,000 TV). Usually when you inquire about buying the product the seller says that you must send a money order or certified check and then he will ship the product.

That should be your first warning. Legitimate sellers understand that there are procedures for handing international transactions that are designed to protect both the buyer and the seller. If you are at all concerned that you will not receive something you paid for there are four things you can do:

Pay by credit card. If you don't receive the goods, you can file a charge-back request with your credit card company.

Use PayPal to a confirmed address only (Make sure the little PayPal shield is shown on their auctions or when you go to pay, the payment page says you are shipping to a confirmed address).

Use a bank-to-bank wire transfer process whereby the seller's bank does not release the funds until you confirm the goods have arrived, or the seller can prove with a positive delivery signature that you received the goods.

Most small community banks do not offer this facility. You will have to contact a large bank such as Citybank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.) Some banks refer to this service as a Letter-of-credit while other banks have their own names for it. Just ask for the International Payments Department and they will explain the various options and fees to you.

Use eBay's Escrow service (Note: There are several phony Escrow companies out there. Do not agree to use any escrow service except those you can link to from eBay at this page.

Do not under any circumstances send a Western Union money order or Cashiers Check to anyone for an expensive purchase unless you know the seller to be legitimate, and have an already established relationship with the seller.

You also want to check out the seller. Do they have any references? If they are listed on Alibaba or Global Sources or any of the other popular sites, how long have they been listed?

Alibaba and Global sources both have a qualified listing. These are companies that have to meet certain standards. On Alibaba it's called a Gold Supplier and on Global Sources certain sellers are listed as Gold Web sites. If someone is not listed as a Gold supplier --it doesn't mean that you shouldn't deal with them --but if you are new to importing you might want to limit your dealings with these suppliers until you get some more experience.

If the seller is on eBay, the first thing I would look at is their feedback and how long they have been on eBay. You might see a seller that has 20 or 30 feedbacks but when you look closer they were all generated from buying --not selling and the seller has only been on eBay a few weeks.

When you look at the feedback of someone selling a very expensive item, they should have several positive feedback comments from people who have bought and paid for the same or similar items. I read about one buyer who bought a complete home theater system including a projection TV for over $3,000. He sent a certified check to the seller (as did several other people). The seller promptly cashed the checks and disappeared. Almost all of the buyers were eBay newbies except one who had over 200 feedbacks. The seller's 100% feedback rating came almost exclusively from buying sports cards for around $1 each.

You can learn more about wholesale sourcing for eBay sellers with the Wholesale Buying System by Skip McGrath.

Sategies for The eBay Summer Slowdown

2005-08-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

Sategies for The eBay Summer Slowdown

This summer's slowdown is not as bad as past years, but it is here nevertheless. Everyone terms to think of the summer slowdown as involving only fewer buyers as people go on vacation and enjoy the summer evenings outside instead of sitting in front of their computers. But the slowdown also involves sellers --they go on vacation too as we did last week. This is a silver lining of sorts, because fewer sellers mean less competition. eBay will not release figures, but a source inside eBay tells me that listings are off as much as 10-15% during July and August.

There are several things you can do to keep your sales up in the summer:

This first one is fairly obvious and depending on what you sell may not be practical, but if you sell things that people buy in the summer this will automatically improve your sales. One product we have been very successful with is our fire pit barbeques. They have done well since we began selling them, but sales really took off in June whereas our other products have been a little slower.

Offer special promotions such as free shipping with buy-it-now, free shipping if you buy two or more, a paypal coupon for 10% off on any of my other auctions, and so on.

Pull down auctions for slow-moving items and run more auctions for items you are selling. This may not improve your overall sales, but it will make your existing sales more profitable because you are not spending on eBay fees for items that don't sell. You don't have to kill your slow-moving items --just move them into your eBay Store where fees are less. Also the savings on fees can allow you to reduce your prices a bit and that could help your overall sales.

This last tip is not practical for full-time eBay sellers, but if you are a part-time or marginal seller pay close attention to your business metrics (See Article #5 in last month's issue). I normally look at my metrics monthly --but if I see business slowing down I start watching them weekly. If you aren't making any money, just put everything into your eBay store or pull your auctions down and take a vacation yourself. eBay will still be here when you get back.

The other thing you want to do is use the summer to get ready for the season when it picks up after Labor Day. Now is the time to be doing your product research and ordering your new merchandise for the fall. When your products arrive, get your photos taken, descriptions written and get everything ready to go. When things are slow is also a good time to step back and take stock of your business, clean up and organize your files and your office, try out new software and systems that will make you more productive and any thing else that you have wanted to do but have been putting off. Investing in the time to do this now will make you more productive and profitable when you are busy and don't have time to do these things later.

Click Here to read about The Complete eBay Marketing System for eBay Sellers.