Article - 5 Secrets To Make A Killing on eBay

5 Secrets To Make A Killing on eBay
Copyright 2005 Auction Resource Network

Secret #1: Find a 'real' wholesale and drop ship company

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.

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.

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