5 Hidden Resources For eBay Users

February 24, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Business

Ebay
Jason James asked:

Many thousands of people making a living both buying & selling on eBay. Currently ranked as the 37 biggest site on the net (according to Alexa figures) eBay shows no signs of slowing down, even fortune 500 companies are opening eBay shops to sell surplus & unwanted stock. The following are five resources that I use personally & encourage you to use them to increase your eBay profits with ease.

Reports show that over 90% of searches on eBay are done using the search facility. What users do not know about eBays search factility is that by default it only searches the item titles - not the descriptions of the items. Remember this fact as it will show the significance of some of the resources listed below.

1) FatFingers

How professional a seller are you? Do you check your listings before submitting them or even does someone else proof read them for you? With millions of listings on eBays networks of sites at any one time, a small proportion of these listings contain errors - & a misspelt word is about the biggest error you can make.

Imagine your selling a Sony Television for example. What if you misspell the item as Sony Televisoin. Anyone who searches for the term “Sony Television” simply isn’t going to be presented with your item. Only those eBayers who search manually though the category will find your items. Needless to say that if people can’t find your item, they’re unable to bid on them.

FatFingers is a service you can use to find all misspelt variations of a term. Why would you need such a service?

Well obviously if an item has low visibility on eBay it’s also likely to have zero or few bids enabling you to snap yourself up a bargain. I’ve known people use this service to make a full time living, purely buying items cheaply and relisting them without errors.

Details at: http://www.fatfingers.com

2) eBay Pulse

Back to the search facility eBay pulse shows you the top 10 searched keywords in every category. It’s a real gem of a service, obviously by looking at the most widely used search terms you can see what eBayers are after. And if your selling in this category, by inserting some of these keywords within your title your items will be seen by more users.

The only thing to watch out with this service is make sure the keywords are relevant to your item, IF NOT DON’T USE THEM. How many times have you saw listings such as “SONY PANASONIC LG WIDESCREEN DIGITAL TELEVISION GUIDE”, - listings such as these are well thought out to earn high visibility from the way users search. Anyone searching for the items with any of the keywords will uncover your listings.

While it may lead to a high number of views, firstly fellow users will get annoyed if they find your item completely unrevealed to what they searched for, Secondly keyword spamming as it is known, is against eBay policy and will lead to your item being pulled. I use pulse daily with all my listings but make sure it’s relevant to your item first.

Details at: http://pulse.ebay.com

3) Keyword-Pro

Keyword-Pro is a commercial subscription service which is similar to eBay pulse. However, the main difference is Keyword-Pro offers a much more in depth list of relevant keywords. It lists the top 50 keywords for every category for both eBay.co.uk & eBay.com. This is a great addition, especially if any of the terms found in eBay pulse are not relevant to your item.

Keyword-Pro is available as both a web service or as a small program that downloads the list onto your P.C. It’s data is updated weekly to keep you informed of the latest search terms.

Details at: Trading-Web-Solutions.com/keywords

4) Selling Manager

When you first open a selling account on eBay, options listed under the sell tab of eBay are enough to get you by. However, you can upgrade to a more in depth service known as Selling Manager. As eBay describes the service “eBay Selling Manager is our online sales management tool for medium to high volume sellers”. It allows you to track every eBay sale, customise your feedback comments, print shipping labels & much more. It saves me about four hours a week tracking orders and watching my sales.

Selling Manager is FREE on eBay.co.uk & has a small monthly charge of on eBay.com (after one a month trial free). Once I moved over to Selling Manager, there’s simply no way I would go back.

Details at: Click on services once you’ve logged into your eBay account.

5) Hot Item Finder

Performing a market analysis is one of the most important ways to maximize your net revenue once you have listed enough auctions to collate plenty of raw data. “Hot Item Finder” software program is an unbelievable product to conduct this eBay research. You can extract and analyze licensed eBay data and statistics to virtually ensure your auction success by seeing what has sold, for how much, how many bids it got, etc. Visit the website here: http://www.hotitemfinder.com/auctionresourcenetwork

I hope you find these services useful & time saving in your goal for a successful home business on eBay. Remember, your most important resource is your time when your starting or building up an online business & if you discover any site, person or opportunity that can save you time give it the attention & serious consideration it deserves. Every top Internet marketers constantly educate themselves by purchasing & reviewing almost every new product released. The way I look at it, if an ebook costs $197 and the information within the ebook saves me this or allows me to make an additional $197 it’s well worth it - once you can do it once you’ll be able to repeat the exercise over and over again making repeated profits. If you discover a precious eBay related resource let me know & I’ll consider revising this list for future editions.

Good luck with your eBay selling.

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Are You a Newbie on eBay?

January 20, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Business

Ebay
Marian Krajcovic asked:

You’ve probably heard about how much money can be made on eBay. With dreams of quick riches and easy money, you are probably ready to jump in with both feet - right now! The best thing you can do if you are serious about making money with eBay, however, is to slow down. In fact, just stop for a minute. Don’t rush straight in. Take your time, and do it right.

eBay has over 100 million members and growing. Think about that number for just a minute or two. When you get your eBay business set up, that is how big your customer base will be - instantly. 100 million people - 100 million people who are just waiting for you to get set up and running so that they can throw money at you! Well, not quite. It is true that there are over 100 million members, but at this point, they don’t know that you exist. In fact, no matter how well you do on eBay, most of them will never know that you exist. 100 million is a very large number.

The most successful eBay sellers started out as buyers (now they’re powersellers) - and you should too. This will give you a sense of how everything works. It will also show you how things are from the buyer’s side of the fence.

Let’s call this period of time ‘consumer research.’ You are literally studying how eBay works, from a customer’s point of view. You may not realize this, but this eBay buyer experience will actually make you a much better seller - right from the very start.

Really pay attention to the customer service you receive from the buyer. Think about how you want to be treated as a buyer, and take notes. Take your time during this process. Interact with the sellers. Get involved in hot auctions to see what they are like. In your spare time, start making notes about the hot items that you see. These notes will come in handy later.

eBay works just like any other businesses. You have to determine what people want to buy before you can hope to be successful. There are very specific items that sell really well on eBay - you just have to figure out what those items are. There are many resources for finding out this information. Start with the lessons that eBay offers to their sellers. Strongly consider attending the eBay University as well. This is the next step in the process. After you have had the eBay buyer experience, it is time to learn how to be an eBay seller.

Read all of the information eBay provides for you at the site, it’s very useful.

The information is free and you will learn a great deal from it. Take full advantage of this - before you start setting up your first auction or your eBay store! By reading through all of the resources, you will avoid making numerous mistakes that so many before you have made. This is another step towards building a successful eBay business. Once you’ve made it through the learning process, you should know everything you need to know to get started with a money making eBay business of your very own.

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eBay Business - 5 Hot Tips When Writing your eBay Auction

January 12, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Business

Ebay
Jason James asked:

Of course you got into EBay to have fun, right? Of course you did, but business is still business and if you want to stay in the EBay business then you are going to have to tighten up ship a little bit. I’m not talking about taking the fun out of your EBay business but rather treat it a little more customer friendly.

I don’t care what an EBay business is selling, in order for it to become successful then it takes repetitive quality customer service combined with merchandise that people want to buy.

Ok, so you’ve got the product part down pat, but you are probably thinking “How can I provide fantastic customer service over the computer?” Well that is what we are going to talk about in today’s article - conveying the image of success in your EBay business through your email, your ads, and your auctions.

Believe it or not your entire EBay business image rests in the way you communicate through your emails and your ads. It’s the only thing that your prospective customers have to go on. That information tells your customers whether the EBay business is legitimate or if it is trying to hustle them. It tells them whether you have an EBay business that is trying to sneak away with hidden fees or if you are honest.

So what if you do not have the most outstanding products to sell. Why? Because good, clean, honest customer service conveyed through your auctions is what counts in the end. Sure you have to have the product they are looking for but what is going to separate your EBay business from the rest is the way you connect with the people whom are viewing your ads.

The first thing that you have to consider with your EBay business is that most everyone who is shopping and bidding on EBay views all sellers as individual people as opposed to a ‘business’. Yes I realize that there are indeed many businesses that sell on EBay but even still, that is the psychological perception of the shopper.

So what does this have to do with you and your EBay business? Well taking this information into account should tell you that you need to play off of the “home seller” image as much as possible with your EBay business. People like to support other people whom are trying to make a living. Even though your EBay business is actually a business, do not display that image. Rather, come off as an individual working hard trying to make a living on his or her own with a small EBay business.

I have a question for you; what is the very first thing that the buyer sees after clicking on the title of your auction?

They scroll down through the description! That my friend, is where your EBay business either fails or succeeds. And below I’m going to share with you a few nifty trade secrets that will explode your EBay business sales into new horizons when you implement them into writing your EBay business auction.

1. For starters make sure that your description is not full of pointless dribble. Nobody likes to finally find a title of a product they want, click on the EBay business link, and then get slammed in the face with page after page after page of verbiage that puts them to sleep. Keep it short but concise! Your EBay business is counting on it.

2. Write a true description. Do not fluff it with unnecessary wordage and sentences. List down everything you know about your item, all of the facts, every valuable point. Try to imagine any questions that your customer might have and answer them in the description. People want to know everything they can before contacting your EBay business. So take care of them!

3. Be nice. Yes, be nice, be friendly, be easygoing in your auction description. Shoppers want to feel relaxed and trusting of your auction style. Write your information as if you were exchanging a conversation with your prospects. Let your EBay business show that you can communicate with literally anyone.

4. Take advantage of the “My EBay page”. Every EBay business has the chance to put friendly personality to their profile to show their customers that they are people too who care about them. Shine through by keeping this page updated. Your EBay business will thank you for it in the long run.

5. Who likes too many rules? You know what I mean! Do you like it when you see an EBay business list down a ton of rules and regulations in their auction? I certainly don’t and in fact it turns me off to any EBay business that seems so uptight. Of course you have to have rules but keep it light. Don’t come off so firm.

6. Last but not least keep your typeface size to an average size. There are many different people viewing your EBay business and some people may still be looking from an 800×600 display so be careful not to design your auctions higher like 1024×768 or else you just might be causing someone to click off of your EBay business auction due to the need to scroll and scroll to find the details.

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The rules of linking from your Ebay auctions

January 6, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Business

Ebay
Jason James asked:

Because ebay is such a busy place of merchandise sales with many various ebay stores and markets selling thousands of items, there must be a few rules that are set in place to insure that everyone is playing fair. Ebay auctions are a gift for us to make easy money without having the overhead or the stress of running other types of businesses so it is ideal that we all adhere to their policies.

Very few other issues will get ebay sellers arguing about the rules no more than the rules on linking to and from your ebay auctions. Ebay has some very firm rules when it comes to liking and it would be wise of you to follow them to insure that your ebay auctions stay online and profitable.

Below are the following links that you may use in your ebay auction description:

1. On your ebay auction, you may have one link to an additional web page for information. This web page is to be used exclusively for further information about whatever ebay item that you are selling from you ebay auction.

2. Your ebay auction may have links to more photo images of the merchandise that you are selling on ebay.

3. If you want your customer to click on a link from your ebay auction that opens up to separate window to send you an email, then that is ok. In fact this little ebay auction email window may increase inquiries of your ebay selling item.

4. Ebay auction links that connects to your other ebay auctions or any of your other ebay auctions stores is also permissible.

5. You may have one link that links to your ebay About Me page. This is in addition to the link next to your user ID that ebay provides for your ebay auction.

6. Ebay authorizes you to have links to your vendors’ websites that help you with your auctions. Ebay considers any type of listing services, payment providers, and software programs to be 3rd party vendors.

In addition to the above Ebay linking rules that are authorized for your Ebay auctions there are also links that are not allowed with ebay.

1. You cannot have any links that link to other websites that offers to sell, trade, or purchase merchandise outside of Ebay. This should be obvious but many new sellers to Ebay auctions break this rule.

2. Links to any other websites that encourages ebay bidders to place their bids outside of ebay are not authorized in your ebay auctions

3. Your ebay auction cannot have links that link to outside websites that offers to sell merchandise that is considered illegal at ebay. 4. Links that connect to websites that solicit ebay user Ids and passwords is also unauthorized to have within your ebay auction.

When it comes to linking from your About Me page the ebay rules are pretty much the same overall with your ebay auction. Because ebay gives you this page to self promote your business, then linking to your website from it is allowed.

On the other hand, you need to be sure that the link does connect to other trading sites or to website businesses that sell the same product or merchandise at the same price or lower price than what is advertised on ebay.

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