Monday 16 August 2010

Making Your Listing Stand Out on eBay

Using Promotional Tools on eBay

If you’re serious about using eBay to make money through their auctions, or even if you’re selling just one high ticket item, you should take advantage of the promotional tools that are available to you.

The promotional tools available on eBay will help get your listing noticed, giving you a much better chance of selling your product. It’s in eBay’s own interest to help you out as much as possible, because if the sellers aren’t selling then eBay doesn’t make any money!

Many of the promotional tools supplied by eBay are free (and so they should be!) but some are not. The ‘Bold’ and ‘Highlighting’ tools are not free, but having said that they are not that expensive. Sometimes just having your listing in Bold or Highlighted can make all the difference to whether the item sells or not. Check out some listings in your category for yourself, which ones stand out? Which ones would you click on? It’s really a question of choice.

The tools available on eBay are:

1. Product Finder

2. Gallery

3. Bold

4. Highlight

5. Border

6. Gift Services Listings

7. Subtitles

8. Featured Home page

9. Featured Plus

10. Featured Gallery

11. Keywords

12. Co-op Advertising

13. Optimized Listings

Always check first to see if the tool you want is free, most are, but not all. Even the ones they charge for are generally only a few cents so sometimes it really is worth it.

Monday 3 May 2010

Learning How To Use eBay

eBay Courses – Are They Worth It?


There are a number of eBay courses available on the internet today. These books and courses are designed to help you get the most from using eBay, and ultimately to help you be a success and earn a lot of money.

However, not all these books and courses are worth the money asked for them. Some of them are full of information that was perhaps useful when it was written, while others are just full of junk and written by someone who is only after making a quick buck. Here are a few tips to help you decide which, if any, you should spend your hard earned cash on.

1. When was the book written.

Before you purchase any book, find out when it was written. As eBay changes so quickly something written only 2 or 3 years ago can become out of date before you know it. It may be that the original copy was written a year or two ago, but the author issues an update on regular intervals, so this is ok.

2. eBay Courses.

As with the eBay books, see if you can find out when the course was put together. If it was some while ago, has it been updated, or is it all now out of date. Some courses come in DVD form and some in PDF form, so make sure you can have access to any updates that come along in the future.

If in any doubt, or you wish to find out what books or courses are recommended, ask the experts. Talk to other eBay sellers - especially the more successfull ones - and find out what they recommend. There is a wealth of information out there - you just have to sort the good from the bad and the indifferent. Try not to waste your good money on something that won't do you any good.



To start you off in your search for really good, useful information, have a look at the following link which has been written by an eBay PowerSeller. Although the original book was written a couple of years ago, she regularly updates it if anything new comes along. It goes through exactly what you need to do to get set up for selling on eBay, what products to look for, how to put them on a list for auction, what to do when you actually sell, and how to make sure you get your payments and feedback.

'The £2,500 a Week eBay PowerSeller's Secrets' by Amanda O'Brien is packed full of very usefull tips and tricks and is a must read for anyone considering the world of eBay as a source of income. Have a look at the link and see what you think. Amanda has used eBay for some time now to earn her living, and she is passing on her knowledge to you. She made mistakes in the early days, as we all do, but now you don't have to make those mistakes yourself as she tells you how to avoid them.

Grab your copy of 'The £2,500 a Week eBay PowerSeller's Secrets' today and save yourself a whole lot of time and money.







Sunday 4 April 2010

How to be a Success on eBay

10 Steps to Successful Selling on eBay.


So you want to be a successful seller with your own eBay business, do you? Here's a simple, ten-step path to eBay enlightenment.


Step 1: Identify your market. Sit and watch eBay and see what sells and what doesn't out of the items you're interested in. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later on. You'll probably see the 'sweet spots' quite quickly - those one or two items that always seem to sell for a good price.

Step 2: Watch the competition. Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can move in and beat them at their own game.


Step 3: Get a product: Find a supplier for whatever product it is you want to sell, and see what the best rates you can get are - don't be afraid to ring round quite a few to get the best deal. If the eBay prices you've seen are higher than the supplier's, then you're set.

Step 4: Start off in a small way: Don't throw thousands at your idea straight away - get started slowly. See what works and what doesn't, and learn as you go. Remember that it's very cheap to try out even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might just work!

Step 5: Test and test again. Keep trying different strategies until you find something that works, and then don't be ashamed to keep doing it, again and again. The chances are that you've just found a good niche.


Step 6: Work out a business plan: A business plan doesn't need to be anything formal, just a few pages that outline the market opportunity you've spotted, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses and a brief budget. This is more for you than it is for anyone else.


Step 7: Invest and expand: This is the time to spend some money on your inventory, and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal of so many sales each week, increasing it each time.

Step 8: Make it official: Once you've made a few thousand dollars of sales, you should really register yourself as a business. Don't worry, it's not expensive or hard to do - a lawyer is the best person to help you through the process.

Step 9: Automate: You'll probably find that you're writing the same things again and again in emails or item descriptions. This is the time to give up on the manual method and turn to automated software that can create listings for you, and respond to completed auctions and payments with whatever message you provide.


Step 10: Never give up: Even when it looks like it's all going wrong, don't stop trying until you succeed. If you keep working at it then you'll almost always find that you make a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate.


Once you get into the swing of things, you might start thinking that you should quit your day job and take up eBay full time. It's not always as easy as that - there are all sorts of factors that you need to consider.



If you are serious about doing eBay in a more professional way, you could do a lot worse than follow the way Amanda O’Brien did it. From very humble beginnings she has risen to be an eBay PowerSeller with weekly earnings in excess of $3,650 (£2,500).


Get the story of how she did it from her book ‘£2,500 a week eBay PowerSeller Secrets’ where she explains in great detail everything you need to know about setting up on eBay. All the secrets.

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Sunday 21 March 2010

Do You Have a Reputation on eBay?

So What's Your eBay Reputation Really Worth?


Your eBay reputation is everything you are on eBay - without it, you're nothing. Your reputation is worth as much as every sale you will ever make.


If you've ever bought anything on eBay (and the chances are you have), then think about your own behaviour. Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands doesn't require any thought or fear - it feels just like buying from a shop.

A Bad Reputation Will Lose You Sales.

In fact, a bad reputation will lose you almost all your sales. If someone leaves you negative feedback, you will feel the pain straight away, as that rating will go right at the top of your user page for everyone to see. Who's going to want to do business with you when they've just read that you "took a month to deliver the item", or that you had "bad communication and sent a damaged item"? The answer is no-one.


Your next few items will need to be very cheap things, just to push that negative down the page. You might have to spend days or even weeks selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback to make anyone deal with you again.

It's even worse if you consistently let buyers leave negative feedback - once you get below 90% positive ratings, you might as well be invisible.

You Can't Just Open a New Account.

Besides eBay's rules about only having one account, there are far more downsides than that to getting a new account. You literally have to start all over again from scratch.


You won't be able to use all the different eBay features. Your existing customers won't be able to find you any more. Your auctions will finish at a lower price because of your low feedback rating. Opening a new account is like moving to a new town to get away from a few people who are spreading rumours about you: it's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

A Good Reputation Will Get You Sales.

When a PowerSeller tells me something, I tend to believe them. They can be selling a pretty unlikely item, but if they guarantee it is what they say it is, then I trust them - they're not going to risk their reputation, after all. This is the power of a reputation: people know you want to keep it, and they know you'll go to almost any lengths to do so.


This is true even to the point that I would sooner buy something for $20 from a seller I know I can trust than for $15 from someone with average feedback. It's worth the extra money to feel like the seller knows what they're doing, has all their systems in place and will get me the item quickly and efficiently.

You really will find selling on eBay so much easier, and there's only way to get a good reputation: make sure you please your customers every time. But some customers can be, well, just a little difficult to please.


To help build your own reputation, why not take a look at how a real eBay Powerseller goes about her business? Amanda O’Brien is a very successful eBay Powerseller and has released her book ‘£2,500 a week Secrets of a PowerSeller’ showing you ALL her secrets to how she achieves this. If you’re serious about eBay GO HERE to see how she does it.


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Tuesday 26 January 2010

Haven't You Forgotten Something?

Selling on eBay – Have You Remembered to Pay your Fees?


If you've just started selling on eBay you're probably still finding your way around, and coming to terms with the ins and outs of how eBay works. Don't worry, there are people out there who have been selling on eBay for years who haven't mastered it all yet!


As you may know, eBay is the biggest open marketplace in the world, and as such it needs some sense of order to survive. Most of the rules and regulations are simple and straightforward, common sense in a way, and so are easy to understand and will help most people to achieve their goal of selling or buying on eBay.


One of the most important things to remember if you are selling on eBay is to pay your eBay Fees on time! It's such a simple thing to remember, but you would be amazed at how many people 'forget', or don't think it important enough, and have to be reminded. Many others wonder why it is so important.


Like all business's both large and small, eBay runs on a 'cash flow' basis. Without some sort of control over income and expenditure these businesses would struggle to survive. When you consider that eBay are dealing with literally millions of customers on a daily basis, it is easy to see that without control they could find themselves in deep do-dah.


There is usually a 'grace' period of a few days after the fees are due, but if you're serious about selling on eBay then don't go over this period. The first thing eBay will do if you ignore the deadline is to suspend your eBay account! You really don't want that to happen as you won't be able to carry out any further business until they say so.


You may, for example, have some auctions still running in which case they could well be cancelled, incurring additional costs to you and you don't need that do you? Not when there are so many different ways to make sure your eBay fees are always paid on time.


Did you know when you first set up your free eBay account you were given several options regarding the payment of fees? You could, for example, opt for having all your eBay fees deducted from your credit card, or make arrangements to pay by other means. If you aren't sure about any of this, then eBay will offer assistance through their help desk.


If you do decide to ignore all the advice and make your own arrangements, just make sure you never forget, or your fledgling business could come to an abrupt halt! Normally, if no prior arrangement is made such as mentioned, then eBay will invoice you when the fees are due. If this happens, pay up straight away, but why take the chance? What if the invoice doesn't reach you? What if you've gone on holiday or been taken ill? Is it worth taking the chance?


For more advice and tips on everything to do with eBay, including starting from scratch, why not take a look at a specialist book such as '£2,500 a week PowerSeller Secrets' by Amanda O'Brien. She shows you exactly how she managed to go from nothing to £2,500 a week selling on eBay. She tells you about all the mistakes she's made, so you don't have to make the same ones! That's kind isn't it?