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