Online Auction

If you are looking for eBay dropshippers then you may have already discovered that you can search using a search engine and find a whole list of companies as well as a lot of information about dropshipping in general.

This can be a good way to start but you will find that you get a whole host of companies listed.

It can be hard to know which companies will be the best to use and it can even be a problem telling real dropship companies from companies which are not actually dropship companies but just claim to be and are not manufacturers or wholesalers but just have a whole lot of products that they want to get rid of.

Make sure that you search for wholesalers or manufacturers that act as eBay dropshipping companies.

If you do not do that, you may end up using a company which just have products which they have had trouble selling in the past and they want to sell them wherever they can.

You will then end up wasting money on listing items on eBay which you will not be able to sell.

You can find lists of eBay dropshippers online and also find companies which claim to be the very best.

Not all companies can be the best, so you will need to decide yourself on whether you think that the company seems to be the best one for you.

Make sure hat you decide on the criteria that you want a dropship company to fulfill before looking in more detail at any of the ones that you have found.

This should help to more easily guide your decision as to which to choose.

If you want more information about how to choose a good dropshipper, where to find them etc. then you will probably find some good information in the community section of eBay.

You will find that there might be some eBay groups which specifically discuss drop shipping, which could be a great help in choosing a company as well as knowing where to look for them in the first place.

The discussion boards may also be a great source of useful information for you as well as other more general forums which have sections on eBay dropshipping or just on dropshipping or eBay which could also be very useful.

You may find that you can buy ebooks on eBay dropshippers as well and other people may be selling lists.

It is a good idea to try to get this information for free if you can, before you spend money on this type of product.

Lots of people, when they are selling online can make big eBay dropshipping profits.

It is a great way of selling as it can take out the hassle of storing stock and sending out the items.

This is attractive to people who do not have a lot of storage space or who do not want to worry about packaging and posting out items.

However, the eBay dropship profits will not be as high as if you were selling the items directly. The dropship company will charge for the services that they are providing and so you will have to consider this and make sure that you think it is worth the drop in profits.

Of course you will be saved a lot of time and effort and it is possible that you may have not even had the option of selling on eBay if you didn’t use a dropship company.

If you are looking to make good profits from eBay dropshipping then you will need to start by choosing a company which do not charge too much money for their services.

This means that you will not be giving such a big cut of your profits to them. However, you do need to make sure that the company does provide a good quality service – it will be no good having a good profit if the items that are sent out are not good quality or do not get packaged well.

This would defeat the object of using a drop shipper as you would not only be spending a lot of time dealing with customer complaints, but you would be unlikely to get any repeat business and would not build up a good reputation as an eBay seller.

It is a good idea to make sure that you use a company with a good reputation, in order to avoid this happening and if they are quite cheap, then this will help you as well.

Therefore it is important to consider your long term eBay dropship profits as well as how well you are likely to do in the short term.

Consider your long term sales goals, profit goals and customer service goals and make sure that the dropship company that you choose fits in with those goals.

It is certainly well worth doing a lot of research and thinking very hard about your eBay dropship profits before you decide whether dropshipping is the right option for you and whether the company that you want to use will be the best to provide the service that you require.

eBay description writing tips are something which are extremely useful when you are selling on eBay.

It can make a huge difference to your listing if you have an attractive title and a good description for your item.

However, what is attractive to you may not be attractive to potential customers looking at your listings.

So when you are writing the title and description put yourself in the position of a potential customer.

Imagine what information you would like to know about the product and make sure that you include it in the description, making sure that you put the most important information near the top or highlighted in some way.

Does the item appeal to men or women and is it for business or pleasure, thinking about these things will start to influence how you phrase the description.

Look at other similar products for eBay writing description tips. Think carefully about whether you think the description that your competitors are using is the best that they can do.

Does it include enough information or possibly too much. Does it put the key information first or highlight it so that it can easily be found.

Is there any evidence that customers have asked questions or that the listing has been revised due to important information being left out.

Look at the key points of the listing and decide whether these are things which you need to highlight in your description.

It is also worth while looking on the Internet for eBay description writing tips.

You will find that eBay has a part of its help section which explains about writing descriptions and you may find some basic help there.

You may also find some help in the groups and forums and possibly other parts of the community section of the eBay website.

You will also find that if you search, in a search engine you will find a lot of websites with useful information on eBay description writing tips.

You will probably find that your biggest problem is somehow collaborating all of the eBay description writing tips and deciding which ones you are going to apply to your listing and which ones you are not.

Of course it is always worth experimenting and trying different descriptions until you find one which seems to work for you and your customers.

Do not make too many changes at once as you will not know which change has been the one that has led to the successful sales. You will also need to trial each description several times as it could just be a coincidence that it is successful.

If you do not like the idea of dealing with stock, customers and post offices but you still want to make money from eBay then it could be worth starting an eBay consignment home business.

An eBay consignment business means that you sell items on behalf of someone else. You set up the auctions or listings and manage any customer queries, invoices and feedback for an agreed fee.

But you do not have the hassle of buying stock, sorting stock, packaging items and dispatching them.

However, you do have to be careful. You need to make sure that after selling the product through the eBay consignment home business that you have enough money to not only give the person whose items you are selling a decent profit, but to have a good income for yourself.

This means that when you set up your eBay consignment home business you have to be careful to make sure that you choose products to sell that have a high profit margin.

Make sure that you discuss thoroughly with the people whose products you are listing, to establish whether you take a fixed salary, a cut of the final selling price or both.

It is wise to have something in writing to make sure that you are guaranteed that you will be paid.

Of course, before you do this you need to find someone to sell items for.

Where do you look?…

You can start your eBay consignment business by setting yourself up as an eBay affiliate seller and then you can advertise your services on eBay and get some experience of doing it.

It would be best if you can find a large company to work with who have a never ending supply of stock so that you can make a really good and continuous income from the work.

However, you will need to build up your reputation and your eBay consignment business in order to be able to attract this type of company to work with you.

It could be a useful start to approach companies who already sell on eBay to see whether they would like you to help to reduce the burden of eBay by listing for them.

You may find that there are shops in your local town which would be willing for you to help them out too.

Try setting up a website and advertising yourself, dropping leaflets in local shops or taking out an advert in a trade journal relevant to the type of items that you would like to sell.

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!