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Categories - Copywriting - Shopping - Free Online Business Help - Telecommunications
Services
Articles: Online Business - eBay Joint
Ventures
By Sydney Johnston
eBay is THE most popular home
business in the USA, but it's not without its problems. Many have
tried to succeed but have failed due to confusion over what products
to sell, giant numbers of competitors, copy and picture theft from
other sellers and eBay and Paypal that eat into
profits.
One way to avoid this swamp,
though, is to do a Joint Venture with established eBay sellers. This
allows a JV partner to build her own mailing list and sell products
off eBay.
There are multiple advantages
to this way of doing business on
eBay:
1. The biggest uncertainty for
would-be eBay sellers is what products to sell. Sometimes vendors
risk large sums of money on untried products, only to lose their
investment, become sour and give up. With a Joint Venture there is
no risk except for a few hours of
time.
2. Since there are no auctions
listed on eBay, no one can steal copy or pictures from JV sellers -
because there is nothing to copy. In effect, we become invisible -
no one even knows we exist and this hidden aspect has many
advantages.
3. eBay JVs are usually done
with a digital product that can be instantly downloaded. This is
great for any entrepreneur because inexpensive autoresponders mean
that her entire business is handled via autopilot. Contrast this
with the usual way of doing business on eBay which involves mailing
dozens, hundreds or even thousands of
boxes.
4. eBay and Paypal have lots of
rules. It's easy to break some unwittingly, and even the most honest
seller does so from time to time. A JV merchant isn't answerable to
eBay, however, but only to her
customers.
5. A JV seller never directly
lists on eBay, thus avoiding eBay and Paypal
fees.
6. Successful Powersellers have
large numbers of customers and there are lots of administrative
details involved. Implementing a sales system can cost time and
money because without attention to detail packages won't be mailed
in a timely fashion, payments won't be accurate, items will be sent
to the wrong buyers, and so on. A JV partner eliminates all of that
because all transactions can be funneled through a hands-off
system.
7. eBay selling lives or dies
through the 'feedback' system. Negative feedback can kill sales
instantly and lack of feedback causes buyers to hesitite and choose
other sellers. Feedback is totally irrelevant to a Joint Venture
seller because she is using the reputation of carefully chosen other
sellers. She knows in advance that their feedback is high quality or
she doesn't do deals with
them.
8. Inexperienced sellers
sometimes drag wiser merchants into price wars. In a panic over
sales, they foolishly slash prices, beginning a chain reaction that
results in bare bones bids that allow no one to make any money. A
Joint Venture seller floats serenely above such hiccups in the
marketplace.
9. Best of all, a JV seller
doesn't settle for a one time sale. She concentrates her efforts on
a mailing list of happy customers that she can sell to again and
again and again. In this way, not only is she ensuring repeate
profits, but she gets paid for creating this list, rather than
having to pay someone else for
names.
With its 147,000,000 registered
users, eBay is the best source of targeted, Net-savvy buyers on the
web. By putting together Joint Venture deals with established
sellers, anyone can add large numbers of qualified buyers to their
database efficiently and
inexpensively.
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