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.
Secret #2: 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.
Secret #3: 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.
Secret #4: 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.
Secret #5: 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.
About the author:
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
