Saturday, March 18, 2006
One Stop Web Support Newsletter #26 on Its Way
Jeff
Is it two weeks already? The latest issue of One Stop Web Support Newsletter is scheduled to arrive early Sunday morning, March 19. This newsletter contains:
- Article—How to Profit With Pay-Per-Click Advertising
- Review of "Perry Marshall's Definitive Guide to Google AdWords"
- Review of "Hot Item Finder" for eBay
- Special guest article by Derek Gehl—Test for Success: Learn the Top 12 Things to Test on Your Web Site (And How You Can Increase Sales by More Than 400%!), Part 2
- Success quote by Robert Louis Stevenson
Jeff
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Making Money With an eBay Business
I'm back! After more time than I expected taking a son back to college and digging out from under 20" of snowstorms in four days, I've gotten back to blogging.
We'll start back where I left off, with ways to earn money online. We last looked at marketing other people's affiliate products. We'll move now to another business model that frequently pops into new business owners' heads: selling on eBay.
eBay, and other auction sites, are popular with new business owners because they're so easy to start. You set up an account with eBay and start selling. That's it.
Or at least that's the way it seems when you're on the outside looking in.
You can't just put anything up on eBay and expect hoards of people to bid on it. You need to learn what you're doing and what's going to sell.
Although it doesn't sound as exciting as rushing out and finding a hot product to sell, the best way to start is by selling what you have at home. Find quality things that you no longer need and pass them on through eBay. It will give you something to work with while you experiment with setting up listings. And it will prepare you for when you're ready to start selling a regular line of products, either of your own or somebody else's.
Do your research before you even try to sell. The biggest mistake I see people make on eBay is committing themselves to a product line before they even know whether they can sell it. I sell products dropshipped by a manufacturer and I sell them strictly out of my eBay store.
Why just from my eBay store? Because so many new sellers start each week, blindly listing the exact same products and selling exactly none of them.
Why don't their listings sell? The products are good, but there are so many new sellers listing them each week that the supply far outstrips the demand.
So the new sellers list a bunch of auctions, fail miserably and never come back, only to be replaced by the next week's group of people who have not researched those products.
ALWAYS research what you'd like to sell. I frequently find new product lines that I consider adding but ultimately dismiss them because of too much competition or selling prices that are too low to make a profit.
There's no reason not to do research on eBay. Just search for the product the way that a bidder might. Check out the listings and see how much competition you have for that product or similar ones. Then look in the navigation bar on the left for the box marked Completed Listings. Click on the box and then click on the Show Items button.
That will let you see all of the items that sold during the past month. You can see exactly how many sold and the prices they sold for. If you feel you can sell the products and make a profit doing so, only then is the time to commit to that product.
Next time we'll look at how to find products to sell on eBay.
Jeff
I'm back! After more time than I expected taking a son back to college and digging out from under 20" of snowstorms in four days, I've gotten back to blogging.
We'll start back where I left off, with ways to earn money online. We last looked at marketing other people's affiliate products. We'll move now to another business model that frequently pops into new business owners' heads: selling on eBay.
eBay, and other auction sites, are popular with new business owners because they're so easy to start. You set up an account with eBay and start selling. That's it.
Or at least that's the way it seems when you're on the outside looking in.
You can't just put anything up on eBay and expect hoards of people to bid on it. You need to learn what you're doing and what's going to sell.
Although it doesn't sound as exciting as rushing out and finding a hot product to sell, the best way to start is by selling what you have at home. Find quality things that you no longer need and pass them on through eBay. It will give you something to work with while you experiment with setting up listings. And it will prepare you for when you're ready to start selling a regular line of products, either of your own or somebody else's.
Do your research before you even try to sell. The biggest mistake I see people make on eBay is committing themselves to a product line before they even know whether they can sell it. I sell products dropshipped by a manufacturer and I sell them strictly out of my eBay store.
Why just from my eBay store? Because so many new sellers start each week, blindly listing the exact same products and selling exactly none of them.
Why don't their listings sell? The products are good, but there are so many new sellers listing them each week that the supply far outstrips the demand.
So the new sellers list a bunch of auctions, fail miserably and never come back, only to be replaced by the next week's group of people who have not researched those products.
ALWAYS research what you'd like to sell. I frequently find new product lines that I consider adding but ultimately dismiss them because of too much competition or selling prices that are too low to make a profit.
There's no reason not to do research on eBay. Just search for the product the way that a bidder might. Check out the listings and see how much competition you have for that product or similar ones. Then look in the navigation bar on the left for the box marked Completed Listings. Click on the box and then click on the Show Items button.
That will let you see all of the items that sold during the past month. You can see exactly how many sold and the prices they sold for. If you feel you can sell the products and make a profit doing so, only then is the time to commit to that product.
Next time we'll look at how to find products to sell on eBay.
Jeff
© 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Jeff Baas, One Stop Web Support
