Make Ebay Work 4 U
DID YOU KNOW?
Ebay is the fourth most visited site on the net and has well over 100 million members worldwide! This is a major benefit as it allows you to market your products world wide if you want! We found out the long way on how to set up our Ebay Store so because of that we decided to start up our own website that could help others set up their own professional looking EBAY LISTINGS/STORES.
Want to get up at a reasonable time and work from home? No more crazy early starts? Well read on further and find out how you can become a successful EBAYER.
ABOUT MYSELF
Before I go on any further I'll tell you alittle bit about us! We decided to start our EBAY Business up around 4 years ago now. My husband fell ill and couldn't work in his trained industry so he put it to me, after watching how much I bought off EBAY, "we can do it lets try". So we did. First off we started with just selling unwanted or unused items around the house. These were things I would usually just pass on down to family or friends so I couldn't believe that I made money on all these things. One was a baby changed table that I had had for all three children(think it would of been about 8 years old!) and I think I sold if for about $50.00 less then what I bought it for so not bad considering it had been through my three children (I had also lent it out to friends as well). After the excitement of selling these things we started on our venture to become successful on EBAY.
START BY SELLING UNWANTED ITEMS AROUND HOME
People don't tend to give out information freely on finding wholesalers and suppliers of stock you can resell because it's all competition for them. We had to do alot of research and alot of TRIAL and ERROR. We found a great site for WHOLESALERS, DROPSHIPPERS, LIQUIDATION STOCK and more here.
ORGANISATION
You really have to be organised and have reliable computer and internet. I laugh now when I think back to the time we actually paid a lady to come and show us how to do the simple things like search for products and find out what they are going for on EBAY etc.. Our computer was a second hand one which was on its way out and we must of been on the slowest dial up ever! Something that should of only taken an hour or so to show us took so much more longer because we had UNRELIABLE computer and software.
RESEARCH
Ok so one of the main things you really need to do before you jump straight in (like we did!) is research! Hopefully our site will lessen the research time down a bit with the links we provide but you really have to find what you want to sell and see what it's selling for on EBAY now and what it has sold for recently and see how many people are selling the same product. If there are alot of people selling the one product the competition is going to be hard unless of course you get your product at such a good price that you can undercut everyone else. If you can do that than go for it! If you go to salehoo you can find just about any product you want here BUT if you don't they are more than will to find what you are after. You do have to pay a membership at salehoo but it is a one off and once you pay it you have access to thousands of suppliers and just about everything you can think of. From ELECTRONICS to CLOTHING salehoo really is worth joining. We were not fortunate to have access to this site from the word go but when we found the site it was so worth that little bit of money we had to spend to become a member of salehoo. What is also fantastic about salehoo is that you get training along the way should you need it. It saves people so much time and money. Finding something that you enjoy or have a knowledg in is always a great way to go.
PRESENTATION
Presenting your product listings is very important! Take the time to describe your items well if selling clothes put measurements on the listing. It saves you alot of time down the track because I can tell you now if you put a listing on without measurements you are bound to get so many emails asking about measurments! If you have them on there already it saves you having to reply to these unnecessary questions. Use a template to make your store look more professional. Auctiva.com is a great site with free auction tools for EBAY SELLERS. Another great site with templates for your listings is Xample.net. There are more free sites that can help with your listing looking more professional on my links page.
There are ways to save money on listings such as using a free host such as photobucket.com. You do have to use html codes but there is so much help on EBAY FORUMS that can point you in the right way. One person that helped me out alot with EBAY LISTINGS at no cost is shipscript you can check out the site here .
TRIAL AND ERROR DON'T BUY ALOT TO START WITH!
Testing products out first is a high priority! If you buy too much of the one item and it doesn't sell you end up with alot of stock you have to give as Birthday presents or gifts to family members! We sold surfwear on EBAY and thought it was just fantastic when we got a huge box of RIPCUL shorts so cheap! It was whilst the first 50 sold nicely but when we were left with just the one style and only certain sizes we were left with them all. You need to have VARIETY in both styles and sizing. That's where salehoo really comes in handy because you have so many different products to choose from and on top of that alot of the wholesalers have low or no minimum orders. You can choose from big brand names such as SONY, PANASONIC,NIKE and loads more at salehoo. Whatever you decide to sell you will find a lead through salehoo .
FEEDBACK
Feedback is another very important factor with EBAY. A good reputation with EBAYS FEEDBACK system will bring more traffic to your store/listing. We sent our items express and the buyers love the fact that they can get their items deliverd the next day and straight to the front door! Our feedback sky rocketed with the majority commenting on the speedy delivery. Communication is a must! If you recieve an email answer it ASAP someone elses product is only a mouseclick away and if you don't answer they will go elsewhere. Packaging is very important if you don't do it properly they may leave not so good feedback.
VARIETY OF PAYMENT METHODS
Variety of Payment Methods will tend to bring in more buyers. Not everyone will have a paypal account or access to internet banking so with offering more payment methods you are then in return opening the door to more customers!
TERMS
Make sure you terms are very clear and simple in your listings. Make sure you do terms for description,postage, payment and refunds.
WEBSITE
Once you are up and running and you have alot of stock consider a website. You don't have to pay for one there are loads of free webbuilding sites around that you can do yourself. Having said that there are also alot of great low cost webhosts around.
Check out our links page for links to some great sites that can help with your ebay listings.
We would like to thankyou for checking out our website and we hope you have a great success with your EBAY BUSINESS. Should we be of any help please email us at any time we are only more than happy to help you when we can.
LAST UPDATED 11.50AM 23RD MARCH 2009.
