Tip #1: Before selling anything on eBay it is important to study the additional eBay costs so that you'll know how much you need to make to make a profit. Some of the extra costs include: (1) listing fees, (2) final value fees, (3) image hosting fees (can be optional),(4) fees for extras such as bold type, extra space for your listing, larger picture size (optional), (5) "Buy it Now" fees (optional), (6) fixed price fees (optional), (7) PayPal or other payment processor fees.
Tip #2: When figuring eBay handling costs, consider this: Let's say you're buying items for $3, and selling them for $5 + $1.50 shipping. Rounding the shipping to $2 would make you an extra 40 cents on each sale. Considering you're currently only making $2 profit, that's a percentage profit increase of 25%! You see, this extra amount will be far more important to you than it is to the buyer, because it's on the margin. For you, it's extra profit for nothing, and for the buyer, it's too small an amount to bother caring about.
Tip #3:The principle means of positioning your keywords and phrases is accomplished through your site's content. This would include all the words, phrases, and text used to inform visitors and potential customers about your products, business, news, and anything else that could be of interest to your targeted customer population. In other words, the content comprises the articles, product descriptions, advertising, blog posts, RSS feeds and anything else you publish on your site. This allows you to show case specific key words so that it catches both the attention of the search engines and the human visitors you want to draw to your ecommerce site. The art of "show casing" specific words and phrases is the practice crafting content so that it both addresses the needs of your targeted audience and also acts as search engine bait through skilled use of the language and choice of words.
Tip #4: On eBay the price of most goods are either at or below wholesale. For you, this means that if you purchase your items in small lots or single units from a wholesaler, it will be difficult for you to compete with other sellers and make a profit unless there is very little or no competition and your item is popular. This fact makes it especially difficult to make a profit selling mass market consumer electronics because the competition is so fierce and profit margin so narrow. However, popular consumer items that may be too expensive when purchased through wholesale distributors may work very well in a retail environment, such as on your independently hosted ecommerce site. When you purchase a laptop or an iPhone at wholesale price for resale, you are retailing that item. If you try to retail an item on eBay, where most popular consumer goods are selling at or below wholesale prices, it will be very difficult to make a profit.
Tip #5: There may come a time when you need to revise your auction after you have started it. In that case, it is not always necessary to cancel. For listings that have more than 12 hours left to run and haven't received any bids, you can revise almost everything. You can remove the Buy it Now price or Reserve price, change the duration of the listing, or add listing upgrades. If the listing already has one or more bids, then you can still add upgrades, or add to the description. You add more pictures too, if you want to. Once the listing gets into its last 12 hours, however, what you can do becomes far more limited, even if it has no bids: you can only really add to the description. It's a very bad idea, by the way, to cancel one listing and ask bidders to bid on another listing for the same item instead. The chances are they'll be annoyed with you, and won't bother.
Tip #6: Do take the time to determine the specific products you want to sell and that there is a demand for them. You can offer thousands of products if you like, but you must know which ones are truly in demand and wanted by your shoppers. These products will be the traffic magnets drawing customers to your site. Here are a few research hints: Use Google Insights, Technorati, and eBay to assess customer interest. Social networking sites can be very useful in helping determine the temperature of desire for your products.
Tip #2: When figuring eBay handling costs, consider this: Let's say you're buying items for $3, and selling them for $5 + $1.50 shipping. Rounding the shipping to $2 would make you an extra 40 cents on each sale. Considering you're currently only making $2 profit, that's a percentage profit increase of 25%! You see, this extra amount will be far more important to you than it is to the buyer, because it's on the margin. For you, it's extra profit for nothing, and for the buyer, it's too small an amount to bother caring about.
Tip #3:The principle means of positioning your keywords and phrases is accomplished through your site's content. This would include all the words, phrases, and text used to inform visitors and potential customers about your products, business, news, and anything else that could be of interest to your targeted customer population. In other words, the content comprises the articles, product descriptions, advertising, blog posts, RSS feeds and anything else you publish on your site. This allows you to show case specific key words so that it catches both the attention of the search engines and the human visitors you want to draw to your ecommerce site. The art of "show casing" specific words and phrases is the practice crafting content so that it both addresses the needs of your targeted audience and also acts as search engine bait through skilled use of the language and choice of words.
Tip #4: On eBay the price of most goods are either at or below wholesale. For you, this means that if you purchase your items in small lots or single units from a wholesaler, it will be difficult for you to compete with other sellers and make a profit unless there is very little or no competition and your item is popular. This fact makes it especially difficult to make a profit selling mass market consumer electronics because the competition is so fierce and profit margin so narrow. However, popular consumer items that may be too expensive when purchased through wholesale distributors may work very well in a retail environment, such as on your independently hosted ecommerce site. When you purchase a laptop or an iPhone at wholesale price for resale, you are retailing that item. If you try to retail an item on eBay, where most popular consumer goods are selling at or below wholesale prices, it will be very difficult to make a profit.
Tip #5: There may come a time when you need to revise your auction after you have started it. In that case, it is not always necessary to cancel. For listings that have more than 12 hours left to run and haven't received any bids, you can revise almost everything. You can remove the Buy it Now price or Reserve price, change the duration of the listing, or add listing upgrades. If the listing already has one or more bids, then you can still add upgrades, or add to the description. You add more pictures too, if you want to. Once the listing gets into its last 12 hours, however, what you can do becomes far more limited, even if it has no bids: you can only really add to the description. It's a very bad idea, by the way, to cancel one listing and ask bidders to bid on another listing for the same item instead. The chances are they'll be annoyed with you, and won't bother.
Tip #6: Do take the time to determine the specific products you want to sell and that there is a demand for them. You can offer thousands of products if you like, but you must know which ones are truly in demand and wanted by your shoppers. These products will be the traffic magnets drawing customers to your site. Here are a few research hints: Use Google Insights, Technorati, and eBay to assess customer interest. Social networking sites can be very useful in helping determine the temperature of desire for your products.
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