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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