Online Auction

If you are thinking about selling on eBay or improving your selling skills then you might consider some eBay coaching.

This type of coaching could really give you an edge above the rest of the sellers by providing you with information and training that they may not be aware of.

It is important to get a competitive edge and with so much competition and everyone doing everything that they can to earn a little bit of extra money.

There are more and more sellers on eBay all the time and so you really need to be able to rise above the competition.

There are more buyers on there too of course, but with the economic climate as it is at the moment, everyone is hunting for a bargain.

It may be that with some eBay business coaching you can learn how to sell lots of products, make a good profit but also attract the most buyers that you possibly can.

There are many different tricks that you can try to make your listings stand out and features that eBay has that you can pay for to highlight your listings.

If you do decide to go ahead with eBay business coaching try to find out what the coaches eBay ID is and look into how much they have sold and how successful they seem to be.

That will help you to decide whether they look like they have the experience to help you. Read as much as you can about them and see if you can talk to any past students of theirs in order that you can find out what the eBay business coaching has done to help their eBay selling.

One important thing to remember is that you should be able to feel that you can trust your coach because you will need to take his advice and carry out all of the tips that he gives you.

It is a waste of your money to employ a coach if you do not put into practice the advice that he gives you.

It can be quite difficult to do this, you may not want to change the way that you are doing things or risk losing the customers that you do have.

But you need to remember that the coach is trying to help you and if you want to make more profits then you may need to accept that the way that you are doing things is not necessary a good way and you need to be prepared to change in order to make full use of your eBay coaching.

If you are thinking of starting a new business you may be tempted by starting an eBay home business, but there are quite a few things that you need to consider first.

It may seem like an easy business option as it does mean that you do not have to go through all of the hassle of setting up a website of your own or marketing yourself.

This is a fantastic advantage for anyone who does not have a lot of start up capital as the only investment that needs to be made is in stock and packaging materials.

However, you do need to consider the fact that there are a lot of other people running eBay home businesses and so there is an awful lot of competition.

Some people are selling their old second hand stuff and other people are dealers in new or second hand items.

There are many experienced sellers, big companies and inexperienced individuals all running their own eBay businesses.

You will need to think about how you are going to compete with these established businesses.

What can you do to make yourself stand out?…

These sellers will have loyal customers, established markets and good feedback levels and you will need to do your best to start competing with them almost immediately in order for your business to succeed.

It is therefore well worth studying other eBay businesses to find out how they work and what they do, what they sell and how much for and how they keep their customers coming back.

You should be able to do this by looking at the eBay site and looking at the listings, feedback levels and identifying the big sellers.

Look at the types of things they are selling, the prices they are charging and how they format their listings.

You may also find some valuable information by looking at the eBay forums. This research may also help you to start deciding what items you want to sell.

It can be tempting to try a big range of products to see which sells the best. However, if you want to be known for selling a particular thing and want to start building up your reputation as quickly as possible then it is a good idea to start selling what you intend to continue selling.

Therefore, it is well worth doing some research before hand to find out what type of items you should sell. This should give you some good ideas on how to run your business successfully on eBay.

Writing a business plan is important for every business. It is the key to the business, identifying what you want to do, what you predict your profits to be and sorting out your customer service.

You may think that if you are writing a business plan for your eBay business that you will have to write something quite different.

However, an eBay business plan is really very much the same, if not a little simpler. For example your eBay business plan, like any business plan should include information on product selection, inventory management, and purchasing, pricing, order processing and customer service.

Product selection will be pretty much the same as with any other business except that eBay does not allow few products, this is not likely to limit your choice too much.

Inventory management can be done with software as it would be done in any other business but you could use eBay’s specially designed software if you wish to.

Purchasing will be the same as with any other business.

Pricing may be slightly different as you have the option with eBay to auction items as well as selling them at a fixed price.

If you auction items then you will not be able to determine the prices but you may be able to predict them and you can certainly calculate what your minimum selling price will be as this will be your starting price for your auction.

Order processing and fulfilment should be quite simple. You will need to comply with eBay’s guidelines as to timescales but as with any other business you will want to ship items as soon as you can.

Customer service is probably the last main area that you will need to include in your business plan for your eBay business.

This is very important as there is likely to be a lot of competition on eBay and the better a service you can provide, the more likely you are to get repeat business.

This is the same in any other business. So you can use a template for any business plan to help you set up your business plan, which will help to make the process a great deal easier.

If you are still concerned about writing a business plan for your eBay business venture, you will find that there are lots of information online about it.

There are so many sellers on eBay now… that a whole lot of people will have written eBay business plans and you are sure to find the information that you need.

If you are looking for an eBay business opportunity then you may wonder where to start. eBay is such a large website and there are so many options for selling on there that it may be difficult knowing which one to go into.

However, it can be quite simple to reduce this a little. Firstly you need to think about where your area of knowledge is.

It is silly to start selling something that you know nothing about. You are likely to have an interest or knowledge about at least one of the main areas of items you can sell on eBay and this will be a good place to start when deciding on an opportunity to start your eBay business.

You will now need to consider how much room you have for storing stock. If you do not have much room then you have several options.

You can either just keep a small amount of stock in at a time, but that does mean that you will not be able to have very much for sale at a time and so you will reduce the amount of potential customers that you can get.

You could sell something that does not take up a lot of space, then you will be able to keep more in stock than if it was something bigger.

The last option for your eBay business opportunity would be to use a drop shipping company. This is a company which will keep items in stock for you and ship them out for you too… meaning that you will not have to worry about keeping the stock in your own house.

As mentioned before, whatever you decide to do for your eBay business opportunity you will be better off doing something which you know a lot about or at least have an interest in.

This means that you are more likely to know where to source the stock, what the market is like and what is likely to bring you the highest prices and best profits.

It is important to do some research, even if you know quite a lot about the items. The market will change frequently and within eBay it may be different to the market in general depending on who is selling what and when.

Constantly monitor what is selling and how much for so that you know what to expect from the products that you are selling.

It is certainly well worth having a go at an opportunity to start an eBay business, but it is important to do a lot of research first before you start.

Here are the most important ways to make short eBay listings very effective.

1) Capture Attention. Effective advertising captures the attention of qualified buyers. Every ad in any medium has to first capture the attention of interested and qualified prospects. To get attention means interrupting your prospects searches in order to direct them to your specific item listing.

eBay is the worlds largest inventory of products and that inventory changes on a daily basis. Buyers just don’t know what sellers will be serving up next and so they tend to check in on a regular basis so they don’t miss out on that one special item they’d just love to have.

So off those eager buyers go to eBay to see what might be available. Most will use the Search function while others will wade through a bunch of listing titles in their favorite category. Regardless of the search method used, buyers are served up a long list of titles. Some are accompanied by Gallery Images, while others are not.

But that’s all any seller has to capture the attention of interested prospects. It’s just one line of text, just 55 characters and perhaps a single thumbnail image. That’s it. And this either pulls prospects in or sends them along to continue their treasure hunt. In one brief line you need to attract qualified, interested and action-oriented people and as many of them as you can each time out.

2) Build Interest. Once you’ve stopped potential buyers in their tracks and temporarily interrupted the noise competing for their attention, you’ve got to make their attention stick. Interest them or you lose them. Nobody’s got a spare moment anymore. Grab them instantly or they’re gone for good.

You’ve aroused curiosity and piqued interest with a strong title. Now it’s time to strengthen that interest and squash any doubts. The first thing potential buyers want when they click through is verification. Is the item really what they hoped? You can begin to address this by expanding on your title straight away.

3) Describe major benefits and key features. It’s not just what your item is but what it does. Benefits address the true value of an item from the buyer’s perspective. It’s the emotional payoff that far exceeds the actual cost. Paint a picture of what could be theirs.

But don’t just cover the benefits. Many items are sold on eBay because the specific features offered are exactly what the buyer was searching for.

Features are easy to include. All you have to do is examine the product and list such details as brand name, model number, size, where it was made, color, year of manufacture, materials used, condition, and anything else you can think of that might be relevant to a single prospect. Most sellers do an acceptable job of listing an item’s features, but they fail to add any sales sizzle by graphically communicating the glorious benefits that make an item appear to be worth much more than the cost.

eBay traders rely on their feedback reputation as much as they rely on their goods. Feedback amounts to the comments that both buyers and sellers leave on the transaction. The better your feedback reputation the more people will trust you as a buyer and seller.

Straightforward enough, you say. But some unscrupulous sellers manipulate their feedback to gain their buyer’s trust. Once they have that trust, they start ripping off buyers.

How Do They Do It?

Feedback Fraud -

A seller sets up multiple eBay accounts.  He then buys and sells items between his identities, making sure to leave positive feedback to make himself look trustworthy.

Purchasing Feedback -

eBay has cracked down on this. However, a simple search shows that it still goes on. A buyer purchases a low price item, say under £1, in return for positive feedback to build up their rating. These £1 friends help schew the true feedback status.

Stealing Feedback -

An unscrupulous dealer may hijack an account. After he does so, he can use its good reputation to scam unsuspecting buyers. This usually occurs after someone has been tricked into entering their password at a counterfeit eBay site.  The link to the phony eBay

site usually arrives in a phishing e-mail.

How To Avoid Being Scammed -

An important thing to in any eBay transaction is to check the other party’s feedback. Try and avoid a seller who has a large negative, or even neutral, feedback rating. Be especially careful if your purchase is an expensive item.

Things to Look Out For -

* Check the IDs leaving feedback.  If there are many from the same ID, alarm bells should ring that the seller might be purchasing feedback.

* What items are the feedback for? A hard sell of Very low-priced items and a sudden change to the seller promoting expensive laptops, you should be suspicious. Check by clicking on the item link – it will show you the auction and winning bid prices within the last couple of months. Pay attention to both.

* Is the feedback for buying or selling? If it’s all been for buying items and suddenly the person is selling, be careful.  Watch out for novice sellers and treat them as a seller with zero feedback.

* Look for the Buy Safe seal. It means that the seller has been vetted and approved by an independent company called Buy Safe. But some legitimate sellers don’t even use this.

What To Do If You’re Scammed -

You should report the incident to eBay, and also to Paypal, if need be. This offers you some recourse, and means you can file an insurance claim through them. Online auctions are like car boot sales.  It’s a case of caveat emptor, buyer beware.

eBay suspends accounts where feedback manipulation is obvious. They have stated, however, that it’s a grey area. SquareTrade is a mediation service that tries to resolve buyer/seller problems.  But if it’s a scam that has caused the problem, they may not be able to assist.

eBay states that only 0.01% of the transactions on its site are scams.  They do their best to police them. And certainly, the vast majority of people experience no problems.

Remember to do your homework before bidding on an item, especially an expensive one.

Emily Banks/Freelance Writer.  Why not visit Buzzed Up?  Submit Your Articles For Free!

A successful eBay business can start from your bedroom. Unlike traditional business, location is not everything when you start an eBay business. The world is your market place. Even if you are in China or in Timbuktu or in any of the first world countries, it will not hinder you from having a successful business on eBay.

But, be mindful! The eBay business model is founded on trust and consistency. Even when buyers do not deal with you face to face, there is still something that we call “personality” in eBay. This personality is all about your reputation as a seller. Since, they could not see your store and the product immediately people will rely on the feedback given by your previous buyers. It is always wise to consistently deliver superb customer service, even after sales.

So, how do you start selling in eBay. The first thing you need to do is to decide what to sell on your first eBay home based business. Always choose something that you like most. It will always be difficult to sell something you do not know much about. If you are the kind of person who loves shoes, then that might as well be the best choice. Since you love shoes, it will be easy for you to describe the fit, the feel and the comfort that it will bring to your feet. As we always hear, put your feet on your customer’s shoes.

Finally, to get your business going, you need a lot of positive feed backs. The fastest way to get many feed backs in eBay is to get as many customers at the shortest possible time. This can only be done if you can sell your products at a cheaper cost. It is always beneficial to source out your products from manufacturers. Many manufacturers are willing to pack their product at your specification and may even label it under your brand name at cheaper prices. In my experience, they can even ship it for you!

You don’t have to be a financial guru or a brilliant business-person to learn how to start an eBay business. The first few steps are basic. It is the special few who actually follow up on those steps who turn them into a viable business: you can be one of them too.

Step One: Register an account!

It does sound a little silly, but the first step you should take is to do it. Don’t stand on the sidelines worrying about whether or not this is the right choice. Registering an account is free, so all it costs are a few minutes of your time.

Step Two: Research, research, research!

eBay was created in 1995. That’s a long time for people to sell items and make their fortunes. If you want to join them, you need to research your competition. What are they selling? What tactics are they using? What price ranges are they setting, and do they allow negotiation? Are there just descriptions, or do they include photos as well? Once you know what your competitors are doing, you can make informed decisions about your own tactics.

Step Three: Choose Your Categories Wisely!

Once you have an account, and once you know how you’re going to approach your sales, you have to figure out the best way to get your products in front of the customers. They want to buy something: they wouldn’t be on eBay otherwise! If you don’t choose the appropriate category for your products, they won’t be able to find you. Try to find the logical places for your product to be found. You might enlist the help of friends and family for this market research as well. Ask them where they would look.

Learning how to start an eBay business is simple. Applying the steps now that you know them is less so. Be one of those dedicated eBay business owners by getting started today. Don’t put your future off any longer.

Before you can really start to make money on eBay, you have to understand the eBay business model. Here are a few key points about that model to help you take your first step on the path to financial stability – and beyond that, financial growth:

* eBay makes money in its basic model twice: once when the seller places the items on the site, and again when the items are actually sold;

* Those two fees are increased with upsell in order to increase the visibility of the items posted – enhancements include bolded text, larger fonts, and featured status on the list of search results; and

* It’s important to note that the second fee, the final value fee, is charged regardless of the money and items changing hands between buyer and seller. Once an agreement is reached, eBay gets its cut.

Everything else on eBay is free. The accounts (both buyer and seller), the searching, everything. This is important because it tells you where you need to focus in order to make the eBay business model work for and with you. If you can align your efforts, it will do most of the heavy lifting. Advertising, customer base, and built-in payment processing are just a few of the benefits that eBay brings to the table.

As a person-to-person marketplace which earns money on the posting and agreement to trade items, eBay wants to facilitate those agreements. It will help you be one of the “persons” in that equation: all you have to do is let it work.

When deciding what to sell on eBay, it is always best to sell the most popular products that are being searched for by buyers. The problem with selling popular products is that the competition is often fierce, as many sellers compete for buyers.

In order to sell in the most popular niches, it will be necessary to find ways to beat out the competition. Here are a few ways to do just that:

Give great customer service. If you want to compete in the hot, popular niches, a good way to beat out competition is to treat customers so good that you really blow people away with customer service.  By going above and beyond with your service, people will return to buy from you again and again even if your prices are slightly higher than the competition.

Ship quickly. Buyers who win an auction usually want it immediately. The fastest shipping is always superior to cheap but slow shipping, or even free shipping. Customers are usually willing to pay a reasonable amount for quick delivery. This is one of the best ways to beat out the competition. Charge reasonable shipping fees, and ship it as quickly as possible. When possible, give customers tracking information so they can track packages.

Offer a money-back guarantee. Some people believe they will lose money by offering refunds to their customers, and many sellers post an “All Sales Final” notice in all their listings. Offering a money-back guarantee is a good way to get an edge on competition because it sends a message to buyers that you are ethical seller who wants to please customers. By offering a money-back guarantee to customers, you will be ahead of many Sellers who put “All Sales Final” in their listings.

The truth is that few buyers ask for a refund, even if they are dissatisfied. If someone asks for a refund, and is given the refund promptly, that person will remember you as a reputable seller. Your reputation is worth much more than one sale.

You can compete with the big sellers and even beat out the competition by giving outstanding customer service, shipping quickly, and offering money-back guarantees.
Even though the competition is stiff, it is more profitable to sell popular products in hot niches on eBay.