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Posts Tagged ‘Thousand Dollars’

10 Steps to Successful Selling on Ebay

July 7th, 2012 4 comments

Step 1: Identify your market. Take a while to sit and watch for what sells and what doesn’t out of the items you’re interested in. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later on. You’ll probably see the ‘sweet spots’ quite quickly – those one or two items that always seem to sell for a good price.

 

 Step 2: Watch the competition. Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can move in and beat them at their own game.

 

 Step 3: Find a product: Get hold of a supplier for whatever it is you want to sell, and see what the best rates you can get are – don’t be afraid to ring round quite a few to get the best deal. If the eBay prices you’ve seen are higher than the supplier’s, then you’re set.

 

 Step 4: Start small: Don’t throw thousands at your idea straight away – get started slowly, see what works and what doesn’t, and learn as you go. Remember that it’s very cheap to try out even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might just work!

 

 Step 5: Test and repeat. Keep trying different strategies until you find something that works, and then don’t be ashamed to keep doing it, again and again. The chances are that you’ve just found a good niche.

 

 Step 6: Work out a business plan: A business plan doesn’t need to be anything formal, just a few pages that outline the market opportunity you’ve spotted, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget. This is more for you than it is for anyone else.

 

Step 7: Invest and expand: This is the time to throw money at the problem. Buy inventory, and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal number of sales each week, increasing it each time.

 

Step 8: Make it official: Once you’ve made a few thousand dollars worth of sales, you should really register yourself as a business. Don’t worry, it’s not expensive or hard to do – a lawyer is the best person to help you through the process.

 

Step 9: Automate: You’ll probably find that you’re writing the same things again and again in emails or item descriptions. This is the time to give up on the manual method and turn to automated software that can create listings for you, and respond to completed auctions and payments with whatever message you provide.

 

Step 10: Never give up: Even when it looks like it’s all going wrong, don’t stop trying until you succeed. If you keep working at it then you’ll almost always find that you make a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate.

 

 

 

Peter R

Why An Ebay Seller Needs To Keep A Close Watch On Profits, Not Sales Volume

January 21st, 2012 No comments

One mistake that business owners make is that they focus on overall revenue instead of profits. While this thinking is flawed in any business, it can be especially dangerous in an eBay business.

Part of the problem is that this type of thinking is promoted by eBay. For example, you need to reach a certain level of sales volume to qualify for eBay Powerseller programs.

Sellers will also frequently sell products even if they’re not making money on them just so that they can build up their feedback.

I’m here to tell you that if your primary focus isn’t on the amount of profit your eBay business is making then you won’t have an eBay business for very long. It’s not true that if you have enough gross revenue that there will be some net revenue around. Trust me; it’s possible to have a lot of overall sales without making any money.

I remember back when I was more active with selling on eBay that I had a lot of months where I sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise every month, but when I actually sat down and crunched the numbers, I’d actually LOST money for the month. Then there were times where I sold only a few thousand dollars worth of items, but over half the revenue was profit. Can you guess which method I ultimately stayed with?

When I first started my eBay business, I’ll admit that I had this flawed thinking that as long as I got my sales volume up, I’d make more money. What I found was that the more stuff I sold, the more time it took up to fulfill the orders, more packing materials I had to keep on hand, and the more fees I had to pay eBay. The added cost of all these items wasn’t necessarily added into my acquisition costs.

The flaw in my thinking was looking at how much the item would cost me and then looking to see how much it sold for. If the selling price was higher than cost, even just a little bit, I’d buy it.

Eventually I got wiser (probably because I had to in order to stay in business) and started to focus on what items I could purchase and sell for a nice profit. While my sales volume definitely dipped, I made more money, and actually had more time to pursue other business interests.

So if you’d like your eBay business to still be open this time next year, then make sure you’re focusing on the right numbers – the bottom line, not the top.

Gary Ruplinger
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/why-an-ebay-seller-needs-to-keep-a-close-watch-on-profits-not-sales-volume-145345.html

Cost Of Selling On Ebay

November 7th, 2011 No comments

Acquiring excellent merchandise to sell is the crucial to continuing achievement. Keeping a pipeline of low expense, rapid moving items to sell is also a have to. Quite often it takes weeks of looking to acquire a load of excellent electronics or computer system equipment that you can sell web based at double your expense. Im confident you agree that this is a exceptionally high quality rate of return. The situation is that you might possibly have to outlay a few thousand dollars to order the inventory. If you are new to web based selling and would like to choose up high excellent, convenient to ship merchandise for pennies, read on.

Did you know that 95% of books that have been published are no longer in print What does that mean to you as an web based seller It signifies that you do not have to compete with regular booksellers. I have observed books that would not catch anyones eye fetch more than $80.This is considering it is an out of print book even even though it could possibly be only a couple of years old.

Revenue Producing Tip

Books, audio book cassettes, and VHS tapes exceptionally quite often are the last items to be picked more than at rummage sales or thrift shops but I have located them to be the lowest expense, most lucrative items to sell web based. Most can be picked up for subsequent to absolutely nothing, in particular if you are shopping the last day of the rummage sale or at closeouts at thrift shops. Some vendors basically give the books away to clear space.

With a partner last Fall, I set up a devoted division just for selling the above items. We are averaging more than $14,000/month in book sales on Amazon and eBay. Our inventory expense to order these books has never ever been way more than a couple of hundred dollars for a full truckload.

Why would I share this secret It operates! There is no way we could acquire all of the books on the market.

To Acquire the market place value for a book, tape or DVD, basically enter the ISBN quantity into the Amazon or eBay search Box.

You might possibly Ask What does ISBN stand for International Common Book Quantity.Exactly where can I find the ISBN quantity It is situated on the back cover of most books, it might possibly also be located on the initially page inside the book.

Selling your Books, tapes and DVDs is convenient and very lucrative, with low expense sources for these items in abundance.