>> 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.
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