By Jason
James
Find a ‘real’ wholesale and drop
ship company - 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jason James
is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay Power Seller of
4 years. His website "The Auction Resource Network" reveals his
inside secrets and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 a month
on eBay. Get your FREE 14 Day "eBay Secrets" eCourse here:
http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com