Archive for May, 2007
by: Sydney Johnston
eBay users are accustomed to only two “standard” formats for sales on eBay: either the ‘regular’ auction which involves bidding and waiting; and the Buy It Now, which is an instant purchase.But there are three other formats that are less well known.
1. Live Auctions Before eBay, the traditional auction included live bodies in chairs and an auctioneer up front (talking so fast he was frequently unintelligible). Any buyer can still participate in these live auctions via eBay. Live auctions are a hybrid - a buyer is ’sort of’ present in a live setting yet is at
home using an Internet connection. The products for sale are usually expensive and unusual.
There are such items as expensive and unique coins, Asian art, native American artifacts, incredible jewelry, costly furniture, memorabilia from major sports stars and even history. Today, for instance, there are documents signed by John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, James Madison and Ulysses Grant (he confides that he was strenuously opposed to the “wicked” war with
If you choose to participate in a live auction, be certain that you register first because you can’t just drop in on a whim. You can find all the details here:http://www.ebayliveauctions.com 2. Private Auctions Private auctions are similar to the typical auction that we’re all familiar with except for one detail – the identities of the bidders are kept secret. Only the seller has access to the names. Why would anyone create a private auction? It’s usually for one of three reasons:
- The item is quite expensive and buyers might be uncomfortable having others know they can afford such merchandise. Their concern about their financial status is most likely misplaced because it is quite possible to distance yourself from eBay contact information, but much of selling is about perception.
- The buyers might be embarrassed by the nature of the
merchandise. - Some sellers habitually use private auctions to make it
harder for their competition to snoop on them.
3. Restricted Access AuctionsThis is usually for sales of “adult” items. The main purpose is to prevent children from seeing this kind of merchandise, and is similar to having covers on racy magazines at store checkouts.To bid on these items, the buyer must:
- Be 18 years old
- Must have supplied credit card information to eBay. The theory is that no one under 18 can get a credit card and therefore cannot get into these sections.
- Agree that he is voluntarily accessing restricted access auctions
In addition, restricted auctions are excluded from the Featured pages. So if you are a seller using this format, your listing will be harder to find.Even though they are less well known, these three formats for auctions on eBay still account for tens of millions of dollars in sales each year. If they suit your business model, you might consider them.
About the Author Learn how to sell on eBay with 16 hours of online instruction taught by a 10 year eBay veteran. Own an eBay business instead of an eBay hobby.
By Stuart Lisonbee
In my article, “The Value of Drop Shipping,” I sing the praises of drop shipping in helping you reduce costs both in time and money and more efficiently ship product. You can maximize the power of drop shipping by embracing the following four drop shipping best practices:
- Choose your drop shipper wisely
- Focus on margins as a dollar amount
- Research products carefully
In the following sections, I explain each of these practices in greater detail.
Choose the Best Drop Shipper
With drop shipping you lose some control over inventory and shipping. To minimize the risk of being unable to fill a customer’s order, choose a drop shipper who offers the following… Read More
By Stuart Lisonbee
Focusing on the features of a product or service rather than how it benefits the consumer is considered by many marketing experts to be a mortal sin. Features merely tell the consumer what a product or service is or does. Benefits sell the product or service. Benefits convince prospective customers that your product can improve their lives. Let’s look at a couple examples:
Product: Car engine
Feature: Powerful 250 hp V6 engine
Benefit: Climb hills without losing speed and irritating other drivers
Product: Video card
Feature: The most powerful graphics processor
Benefit: Never again get fragged by your friends due to low frame rates
These examples reveal the contrast between feature and benefit… Read More
Being a seller is a lot of responsibility, and sometimes you might feel like you’re not doing everything you should be. This simple checklist will help you keep on top of things.
Have you found out everything you possibly could about your items? Try typing their names into a search engine – you might find out something you didn’t know. If someone else is selling the same thing as you, then always try to provide more information about it than they do.
Do you monitor the competition? Always keep an eye on how much other items the same as or similar to yours are selling, and what prices they’re being offered at. There’s usually little point in starting a fixed price auction for $100 when someone else is selling the item for $90.
Have you got pictures of the items? It’s worth taking the time to photograph your items, especially if you have a digital camera. If you get serious about eBay but don’t have a camera, then you will probably want to invest in one at some point.
Are you emailing your sellers? It’s worth sending a brief email when transactions go through: something like a simple “Thank you for buying my item, please let me know when you have sent the payment”. Follow this up with “Thanks for your payment, I have posted your [item name] today”. You will be surprised how many problems you will avoid just by communicating this way.
Also, are you checking your emails? Remember that potential buyers can send you email about anything at any time, and not answering these emails will just make them go somewhere else instead of buying from you.
Do your item description pages have everything that buyers need to know? If you’re planning to offer international delivery, then it’s good to make a list of the charges to different counties and display it on each auction. If you have any special terms and conditions (for example, if you will give a refund on any item as long as it hasn’t been opened), then you should make sure these are displayed too.
Have you been wrapping your items correctly? Your wrapping should be professional for the best impression: use appropriately sized envelopes or parcels, wrap the item in bubble wrap to stop it from getting damaged, and print labels instead of hand-writing addresses. Oh, and always use first class post – don’t be cheap.
Do you follow up? It is worth sending out an email a few days after you post an item, saying “Is everything alright with your purchase? I hope you received it and it was as you expected.” This might sound like giving the customer an opportunity to complain, but you should be trying to help your customers, not take their money and run.
Being a really good eBay seller, more than anything else, is about providing genuinely good and honest customer service. That’s the only foolproof way to protect your reputation. Of course, you might be wondering by now whether it’s really worth all the hassle to get a good reputation on eBay. Won’t people buy from you anyway, and couldn’t you just open a new account if it really comes down to that? Our next email will set you straight.
Over the years, eBay has introduced all sorts of different auction types, in an effort to give people more options when they buy and sell their things on eBay.
For every seller who doesn’t like the idea that their item might sell for a far lower price than they intend, there’s another who wants to shift hundreds of the same item quickly. eBay tries to cater to all tastes. This post gives you an overview of the different kinds of auctions and their advantages for you.
Normal Auctions.
These are the bread-and-butter of eBay, the auctions everyone knows: buyers bid, others outbid them, they bid again, and the winner gets the item. Simple.
So what’s a PowerSeller? PowerSellers are the people on eBay who’ve made it, recognisable by the little ‘PowerSeller’ badge next to their name. You’ve probably seen these people around – and to succeed on eBay, you want to think the way they do.
How to People Get the Right to Call Themselves PowerSellers?
eBay gets to decide who can be a PowerSeller and who can’t, and they have strict requirements. To get in at the minimum PowerSeller level, you must have a feedback rating of at least 100 (minimum 98% positive) and sell at least $1,000 worth of items every month for three months in a row. There are different levels of PowerSeller membership as you sell items of greater value: $1,000 total is bronze, $3,000 is silver, $10,000 is gold, $25,000 is platinum and $125,000 is titanium.
If PowerSellers ever fail to meet the required amount of sales, or their feedback falls below 98% positive, then they lose their PowerSeller status. In short, the only people who get to be PowerSellers on eBay are the people who have been successful for a good while, and are on track to stay that way.
The Shop and the Marketplace.
This is the most important part of understanding how PowerSellers think. They don’t see what they’re doing as being some random bazaar, or a hobby – instead, they see themselves as a business.
Put it like this. If you run a stall in a marketplace, the chances are that you have a general area of business, but you mostly just sell whatever you can get your hands on that week. If your dodgy buddy got his hands of a job lot of something at a discount, then that’s what you’ll be selling. This might be fun – and when you have a good week, you’ll have a really good week – but it’s no way to run a real business in the long-term.
PowerSellers think far more like shops. They sell the same things again and again, every week – regular stock for regular customers. They do ‘boring’ business things like keep inventories and budgets. They know what they’re going to be selling, how much they buy it for and how much they expect to sell for. Just like a real shop, there can be hard times sometimes, but their income is stable and their business can grow slowly.
The best advice I can give you on thinking like a PowerSeller is this: don’t take long-term risks for short-term gain. Look after your reputation, manage your selling properly, provide good customer service and the rewards will come to you in due course. And you’ll get a little badge next to your name that makes people trust you more!
One possibility that you might have realised so far is what eBay can do for any other businesses you might have. Remember, millions of people visit eBay every day – why keep everything separate when you’re starting to tap into that kind of power? The next email will show you a few ways you can use eBay to grow your other businesses.
Do you have trouble sometimes understanding when people talk about eBay? Don’t worry, some of the jargon is really obscure, and you can’t be expected to understand it until someone’s told you what it means. Here’s a little list of some of the most useful lingo to know, but you don’t need to memorise it – even the most common jargon is only used relatively rarely.
Words.
Bid: telling eBay’s system the maximum price you are prepared to pay for an item.
Dutch: an auction where more than one of an item is available.
Feedback: positive or negative comments left about other users on eBay.
Mint: in perfect condition.
Non-paying bidder: a bidder who wins an auction but does not then go on to buy the item.
PayPal: an electronic payment method accepted by most sellers.
Rare: used and abused on eBay, now entirely meaningless.
Reserve: the minimum price the seller will accept for the item.
Shill bid: a fake bid placed by a seller trying to drive up their auction’s price.
Snail Mail: the post, which is obviously very slow compared to email.
Sniping: bidding at the last second to win the item before anyone else can outbid you.
ABBREVIATIONS:
AUD: Australian Dollar. Currency.
BIN: Buy it Now. A fixed price auction.
BNWT: Brand New With Tags. An item that has never been used and still has its original tags.
BW: Black and White. Used for films, photos etc.
CONUS: Continental United States. Generally used by sellers who don’t want to post things to Alaska or Hawaii.
EUR: Euro. Currency.
FC: First Class. Type of postage.
GBP: Great British Pounds. Currency.
HTF: Hard To Find. Not quite as abused as ‘rare’, but getting there.
NIB: New in Box. Never opened, still in its original box.
NR: No Reserve. An item where the seller has not set a reserve price.
OB: Original Box. An item that has its original box (but might have been opened).
PM: Priority Mail.
PP: Parcel Post.
SH: Shipping and Handling. The fees the buyer will pay you for postage.
USD: United States Dollars. Currency.
VGC: Very Good Condition. Not mint, but close.
The chances are that you’ll find more specific jargon related to whatever you’re selling, but it’d be an impossible task to cover it all here. If you can’t figure one out from your knowledge of the subject, then type the term into a search engine, followed by the word ‘ebay’. The chances are that someone, somewhere will have seen fit to explain it.
While it’s good to be able to understand others’ jargon, avoid using it unless you really need to (for example, if you run out of space in an item’s title). Many people on eBay are not experienced buyers and you will lose them if you write a load of gobbledegook all over your auction.
By now, you’re well prepared for eBay life, and you’re probably ready to get started with that first auction. In the next email, we’ll show you how to dive in and get started.
A key factor in your success as a retail merchant is your ability to pick a product that’s in high demand and then set a price that customers are willing to pay for that item. By employing savvy online research strategies, you can quickly determine what’s hot, what’s not, and the prices that people have actually paid for the products or similar products you’re planning to sell.
In this article, you discover some cheap and easy research strategies that can help you select potentially profitable products and set prices that are inline with your market.
Remember: Never compete on price alone. This often causes a price war that drives down prices for all retailers, including you. Combine a reasonable price with effective marketing.
Checking the going rate on eBay
An important part of doing proper research on eBay is finding out what’s selling and for how much. The simplest way to do this is… Read More
Introduction
Of all the questions we receive here at Doba, the question of what to sell is far and away the most frequently asked. Many of our customers ask us to tell them exactly which products to sell. Though we may give an example here or there, we generally shy away from telling people exactly what products we think will sell well.
Why? Because what sells well is whatever is in high demand and low supply, and in retail, the supply and demand changes as often as the tides.
Instead of telling you which products to sell, we would rather empower you to discover products on your own—products that you can most effectively market. To achieve that goal, this tutorial presents four articles that reveal basic research principles and techniques:
- This opening article, “Principles of Product Research,” introduces the guiding principles of effective product research and selection.
- “Online Auction Research” reveals techniques for finding products that may sell well on eBay and other online auctions.
- “Website Research” presents techniques and tools for researching products to sell on your webstore.
- “Alternate Sales Venues” suggests other sales venues to consider during your research.
By Stuart Lisonbee
Years ago you could use eBay to drive traffic to your webstore. Then eBay introduced policies that discouraged sellers from linking eBay listings to off-eBay sites, so customers couldn’t leave eBay to purchase an item elsewhere. For eBay, it was a smart move—to make a profit, eBay needed customers to buy on eBay, so eBay could collect its final-value fees.
Despite eBay’s policy changes, you can employ several strategies to drive eBay traffic to your webstore. I like to call it mining for traffic. Why drive traffic from eBay to your webstore? Three good reasons:
- Higher profit margins: The average customer is willing to pay more for an item on your webstore than on eBay. By selling the items from your webstore, you can increase your markups—and your net profit.
- Reduced competition: When a person searches for an item you sell on eBay, eBay returns a list of items from hundreds or even thousands of your competitors. By driving traffic to your webstore, you virtually eliminate the clamor of the competition.
- Increased potential for repeat business: Developing long-term relationships with customers is the key to retail success. By steering customers to your webstore, you significantly improve your chances of building customer loyalty.
Now that you know why driving eBay traffic to your webstore is so beneficial, in the following sections I reveal some tips and tricks for doing just that… Read More