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I will introduce you to a world that you have never experienced before. Well, you might have heard of it in the media, but you might not have actually ever seen the potential of it. Now for the first time, you will have an outstanding opportunity to actually make money from a phenomenon, which millions of people have been enjoying on a daily basis. Many more people have been using online ebay online auction market to make a part time and a full time income from it. See, what makes online ebay online auctionamazing, is not that it is not a web site that is simply visited by millions and millions of people, but that it is a resource that any businessperson can use whether they have a one-person operation or a business with a thousand employees. internet ebay online auctionis a meeting point for thousands and thousands of different parties with many types of ebay brand name products and services who can instantly connect with other people who need their ebay brand name products and services and since we all know in business, one of the challenging parts is setting the correct price and marketing our services in a correct way. Well, what internet ebay online auctionlets do, it lets us instantly determine at what price our ebay brand name products will sell best and how to market our ebay brand name products.

You see internet ebay online auctionis an ebay online auction and an ebay online auction operates by allowing people to set the online ebay bid at the price that they are willing to pay and the highest person with the highest online ebay bid, he or she, will win the item. Now, you might wonder, I also mentioned that it helps people market properly, so how can ebay online auction marketplacehelp someone to market his or her item properly? Well, once you list an item you will attract different peoples attentions, who will look at the product and will start emailing you and you can see from their inquiries and based on the price that the online ebay online ebay bidding has reached if you are doing a good job of actually marketing the product or not. If you are not doing a good job on marketing the product, you will know right away since you will see that you are not getting the price that you feel that your product should go for or you might have realized that the product or service that you are trying to actually sell does not really have a market. You see, internet marketplacecan help you in many ways, it can help you find the best price to sell your product at, it can also help you to find which the best ebay brand name products that sell are, and third it can actually help you to learn how to sell the product. You can also take a lot of the guesswork out of business by observing other peoples ebay online auctions and seeing how other people sell their ebay brand name products and services and see what the best price is that you should be selling your product for.

There are many more facets on making money on online ebay online auction market. Before we go on into the book, I would like to remind you that what makes e-commerce ebay online auctionespecially lucrative for people, is that you do not need to have high capital to start and you do not need to have any sort of education or advanced degree. All you need to have is ambition, motivation and to have some creativity which you can actually learn from the ebay online auction process. So with that in mind, I invite you to start chapter one and I hope that this book helps you allot within all your endeavors on online ebay online auction market.

Chapter 1

Many people wonder why now is the best time to start an online ebay online auction market business and I will tell you that in a very concise and short statement. The best time is now, simply because there is plenty of money to be made. All you need to do to start an internet marketplacebusiness and to succeed is to find the right ebay brand name merchandise to sell, learn how to properly describe it, which means knowing how to market the ebay brand name merchandise, and simply being able to buy it cheap enough so that when you sell it, you will be able to make a good profit. Now, there are many opportunities to find cheap ebay brand name merchandise on a daily basis and even many more opportunities to sell that ebay brand name merchandise. As we mentioned in the introduction to this book, internet marketplaceis a meeting place that connects millions of people in one place. You will have an opportunity to be able to sell almost any type of ebay brand name merchandise or service that you can imagine. Think of it, for every product there is a buyer and for every seller there is his counter part waiting for him.

Through online ebay online auction market, you will be able to discover millions of possibilities to sell your ebay brand name products and services. For instance, if you discover a special closeout at a going out of business sale or if you go to an ebay online auction and find a really cheap price on a good line of ebay brand name merchandise you can sell it on online ebay online auction market. Once you learn how to properly describe the items, once you learn how to take pictures of the items, and once you learn to list items correctly, then you will be able to find a good buyer for those ebay brand name products. For a product that you bought at an ebay online auction, where there were no interested buyers, you might find an interested buyer located on the other side of the country. For example, you might go to an ebay online auction at an ice cream store. That ice cream store might have some really good machinery to make chocolate soft ice cream, but in this case, the ebay online auction you attended could have been located in some small suburb out in your local city where there were no interested buyers for that particular type of machine. Now that does not mean that there is not an interested buyer for that machine, it just means that there is no one in that area that wants that machine. However, there could be a small store on the other side of the country that might desperately want that machine and might be considering purchasing the same machine for the full wholesale price. Now, if you can offer them that same machine for a fraction of the price they were already planning to pay, then you will have an easy time selling that machine. Therefore, two elements go into successfully doing business. One is being able to locate the ebay brand name merchandise at a very good price and the other one is knowing how to market that ebay brand name merchandise so people see the value of the item that you have and people see a reason for buying it from you.

There are many opportunities to make money on online ebay online auction market. Those opportunities are presenting themselves now in the changing economy. Think about every time you hear of a business opening or a business closing; every opening or closing of a business presents an opportunity for you. On one hand, there is a lot of ebay brand name merchandise available and on the other hand, there will be many businesses that will need ebay brand name merchandise. What internet marketplaceallows you to do is to reach out to all those businesses looking for ebay brand name merchandise. You will be able reach out to all those businesses that need to get rid of their ebay brand name merchandise. Many successful ebay online auction marketplacesellers constantly advertise that they are able to liquidate ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction market. If they find a small business that is going out of business, they let them know, “Hey look, I can sell your ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction marketso you have no need to try to liquidate, have a going out of business sale or have to spend the time meeting with different buyers who might or might not be interested.” You could offer them a decent price to take all their ebay brand name merchandise and sell it at once.

You could also make it even easier for yourself by taking their ebay brand name merchandise on consignment. Consignment is where you take the ebay brand name merchandise, you do not pay up front for it, you make an agreement that you have a certain, specified amount of time to be able to sell that ebay brand name merchandise and once you sell that ebay brand name merchandise you will split the proceeds. Most consignment sales are done where a person can receive anywhere from fifteen percent to fifty percent of the proceeds, depending on the final price of the ebay brand name merchandise. If someone were selling a million dollars worth of inventory then it would be fair to the seller to keep fifteen percent of the proceeds. If on the other hand you are selling five thousand dollars or less of ebay brand name merchandise, then I could see why a seller would insist on keeping fifty percent of the proceeds for the work that he has done. He has put in a lot of work, energy and time; he has had to research the product, discover the best ways to sell that product, he had to go through the time of answering emails and phone calls and for all that work he is entitled to receive a fair amount of the proceeds.

Now, there are many types of situations were you can make money using an online ebay online auction market business. Remember, e-commerce ebay online auctionnow is experiencing a tremendous amount of popularity and for the foreseeable future; ebay online auctiononly seems to be growing. The best time to get into any business segment is when it is strong and continuing to grow. This way you could learn internet ebay online auctionnow, you could learn how to make money now and you could learn how to run your business properly, then as online ebay online auctionexpands and attracts more and more users, you will have engrained yourself in, you will have learned how to sell and you will be ready to sell. Think about it this way, every type of business just as everything in life has a learning curve to it. It takes a certain amount of time to learn how to properly work in a certain medium and how to get the most that you can out of that medium.

It is not a matter of just waking up one day and deciding that you are going to do business in a certain market or field and that you are going to be very successful. No of course, you will make some mistakes at the beginning! You have to learn some things through trial and error, but eventually, God willing, you will be able to succeed and achieve your goal.

So it is the same with online ebay online auction market. You want to position yourself early in the business so you will be able to learn the ropes and little by little, you will learn what mistakes to avoid, what things you need to do in order to be successful, you will learn your own tips and strategies that will enable you to succeed. You want to start now, this way. As more and more people join internet marketplaceand are looking for ebay brand name merchandise you will be positioned in a way that you will know how to sell the ebay brand name merchandise instead of waiting for the future and then having to learn later on how to start selling to those people. You could now get the early stages out of the way, learn how to sell and develop your skills.

Remember, start small and start learning how to run your business with a very small amount of money up front. Meaning, you do not want to put in a large investment only to discover that you made a mistake and cannot sell the ebay brand name merchandise that you are sitting on. Instead, you want to start very small, you could actually list quite a few items on online ebay online auctionand test it out for yourself. Buy ten or twenty dollars worth of ebay brand name merchandise; go to a garage sale, buy some nice looking pieces, buy an old painting, buy a few collectables, go to a used book store and get some used books, negotiate a good price with the owner so that you can develop your buying and negotiating skills, you could even buy used C.D.’s. Then you put that ebay brand name merchandise up on online ebay online auction market, you write nice descriptions, take nice pictures of it, and then you will see what it takes to successfully sell that ebay brand name merchandise and you can try your ebay online auctions through different approaches.

Make sure to always give your contact information so that online ebay bidders can contact you. Once you have put that ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction market, you will discover through actually putting what you are learning into practice and you will be able to see what it takes to make money by running these ebay online auctions.

Once you actually see exactly what you need to do, what steps you need to take to make money on online ebay online auction market, then you can invest more money into your business and you can contact a wholesaler to buy a larger amount of ebay brand name merchandise. You could even then go to ebay online auctions and to going out of business sales and you could spend more money on ebay brand name merchandise because then you will know what ebay brand name merchandise actually sells on internet ebay online auctionand you will know how to sell that ebay brand name merchandise.

Think about it, what better time is there to start a business, of course we all want to make money, but is not the best time to start a business when you do not desperately need that money? If you currently have another source of income and you can start your business on the side, develop it at your own pace where you feel no pressure and you are not rushed to make money from it right away, then you are in an advantageous position. In a sense, you will be able to develop a second job without having to fully immerse yourself in that job. You will not have to jump into the ocean without first having to test the waters.

Many people who start franchises, restaurants, retail stores, or other types of businesses are taking a very big chance because they will never know how the business will work out until they actually open up their doors to the public. If the business does not work out, they are in big trouble because they have already spent ten or twenty thousand dollars trying out the business. At that point, it will be too late to simply lock up the doors and try another business. While they cannot take that option and they cannot simply close their business if their business is not working out, they will never be able to recover the thousands of dollars they spent on their business.

On the other hand, when you look at your e-commerce ebay online auctionbusiness, you can simply start the business with a very small amount of money, you will have plenty of time to test the business, you can grow it as you go along, and you will always be able to keep your current income.

In fact, many people spend their evenings working on their ebay online auction marketplacebusiness. They still have their full time jobs, they might be at school full time, they might have an actual full time business, and they might even have a retail store or restaurant. At night they come home, they take pictures of the ebay brand name merchandise they plan to put up on ebay online auction, write nice descriptions for that ebay online auction, they put up all the items on ebay online auction marketplaceand then they spend the rest of their evenings answering emails or returning phone calls and receiving the payments for their ebay brand name merchandise. They spend their weekends mailing out the ebay brand name merchandise. They could actually drop the items off at UPS during their lunch break, they could go to the post office during their lunch break or they could spend one day a week taking care of all their shipping in many instances.

You could actually even have the shipping done straight from your house by having UPS come pick up the ebay brand name merchandise directly from your house. UPS charges a small charge, which is quite insignificant when you are actually running your business and you look at the cost in terms of the proceeds that your business is returning. You could even take it one step further, if you make online ebay online auction marketyour main business or if you realize that it is already growing to a point where you are suddenly at a large volume of shipments.

Whether you are sending out one package a day or a hundred, you could set up a UPS account that has a daily pick up option. That means that there will be a UPS truck stopping by your house once a day at a set time, dropping off packages to you and picking up packages from you. What you do is print out the label for UPS, using UPS software that UPS gives you. You print out those labels, put them on the box and you have the boxes ready at a set time. It could be early morning or late afternoon. UPS will come to you and pick up those boxes, and then you could return to your regular routine.

internet ebay online auctionhas many advantages that other businesses do not have, you do not have to meet customers face to face, you do not have to do any personal selling, and you do not have to stand by, waiting to answer customer inquiries. You could reply to people’s emails on your own time and at your own convenience. You could answer phone calls at your own convenience.

A store does not have that option; they have to be open when customers want to shop. Otherwise, they would not make any sales. Therefore, there are many reasons why to start an online ebay online auction market business. There will be many reasons that will be personal to you. Perhaps you want to leave the current job your in, maybe you are not happy with the level of income you have, or maybe you are a student who wants additional money to spend without having to take another job or having to get a part time job. I know of people who are retiree’s who use online ebay online auction marketto supplement their social security income. Again, there are many reasons why to make money with online ebay online auction marketand as you can see from reading articles in your local newspapers and magazines or even on the television, you will see many times people’s success stories, where they are making money on online ebay online auction market, on the news.

Before we end this chapter, let me leave you off with one more story. I recently spoke to an individual who has seven employees and sells a quarter of a million dollars of ebay brand name merchandise in a year. He specializes in selling computers that come off leases. Let us say there is a bank that has twenty machines and after three years of leasing the equipment they are done with the machines. Now the bank plans to buy brand new computers, they do not need those computers any more so they return them to the leasing company. Now the leasing company has no use for those computers. They are in the business of leasing ebay brand name merchandise not of holding or stocking ebay brand name merchandise and, for sure, they are not in the business of selling used computers because their customers, such as the bank, who previously used the computers, are looking for brand new ebay brand name merchandise.

Therefore, the individual that I met goes ahead and he purchases all the computers he can get his hands on from the leasing company. He makes sure, of course, that he can get a good price so he has a decent margin to make money.

Remember, he is working on volume, so he is more concerned with making a small profit per item by selling many pieces, than a higher profit by selling a few pieces at a more expensive price. If I could make a suggestion, that would be the route that I would suggest you take, especially in the beginning of your business.

Now, the individual who sells a quarter of a million dollars in computers does it all on online ebay online auction market. He has a small office, located in the Northeast, specifically Massachusetts, and he does quite well at his business. Therefore, with this individual, who started from scratch and has seven employees and from looking at his ebay online auctions, I can see that he does quite well.

Think of how happy you would be if you could develop a business from scratch simply on online ebay online auction market. This individual never has to cold call, never has to go on sales calls and meet at peoples offices, never has to make any presentations; he simply buys the computers, which I am sure he does over the phone and might even be able to do it by email. He has the computers sent to his warehouse, then he has his workers pack up the computers, take pictures of the computers, write up descriptions. He puts up all the ebay online auctions on online ebay online auction market, he answers emails and answers calls through out the ebay online auction process, and then when he receives the payment from the online ebay bidders, he sends out these computers and this business is doing a quarter of a million dollars!

Let us assume that his profit margin is only 20%, which is $50,000 after all of his expenses. More realistically, since these leasing companies have no use for these computers, even though the computer might have a retail value of five hundred dollars, but the leasing company does not have the time or the capabilities to sell each computer to the retail market.

So, since they essentially got most of their money back already by leasing the computer to the bank, they will be happy to get rid of a five hundred dollar computer for fifty dollars. Therefore, in the case of the man who sells the computers on online ebay online auction market, his profit margin might even be as high as 90%. That means that $250,000 is returning approximately $220,000 a year, which is a lot of money!

Keep in mind that this individual started from scratch and that there are many other great stories. There are individuals who sell packing supplies on online ebay online auction marketfor all the other online ebay online auction marketsellers who need to pack up their ebay brand name merchandise in boxes and send it out. They need to buy their packing supplies from somewhere. So, where else to buy them from, but directly from online ebay online auction marketwhere they make their own sales?

As you can see, there are many opportunities to make money on online ebay online auction marketand I believe that now is the best time especially if you are trying to develop a business into new areas or are looking to start a business. People are becoming more used to buying ebay brand name merchandise, buying ebay brand name products or even paying for services directly on the internet and online ebay online auction marketis even better than a web site because online ebay online auction markethas a built in market of millions of people who come to visit their website every day looking for ebay brand name merchandise, looking for ebay brand name products, and looking for services. Why not engrain yourself in online ebay online auction marketand become one of the sellers? Who would not take advantage of this great market?

With that, I will close this chapter. I invite you to spend some time before you continue into the next chapter deciding what types of business you think would do well on online ebay online auction marketand how you could see yourself succeeding on online ebay online auction market.

In the next chapter, we will discuss how to determine what the best type of business for you to start on online ebay online auction marketis. Before we do that and before I give you my ideas and suggestions on how you can decide what the best business in your personal situation would be you need to do some critical thinking.

I do encourage you to analyze some of the things in your life that are motivating you to start a business because I believe that this thought process will also enable you to decide what type of business that you will be most successful at. By type of business, I do not mean where to sell or how to sell because I think we can both agree that online ebay online auction marketis a very promising marketplace and is a very lucrative situation for you depending, of course, on your own situation and your own abilities. I am referring to the type of business you want to develop on online ebay online auction market, whether it is a retail business, wholesale business, antique business, collectibles business, or a service business. So with that, let us end the chapter, let us do some thinking of our own, let us make some decisions, and let’s get ready for chapter two.

Chapter 2

Many people ask me, “What are the best ebay brand name products to sell on online ebay online auction market? Should I sell collectibles? Should I sell antiques? Should I sell clothing? Should I sell books? Should I sell music?” That is of course a good question. The answer to that question is extremely valuable because if you could know exactly what to sell on online ebay online auction marketthen, of course, you would already be half way there. Then all you would just need to do is find that product and start selling it and if the answer to that question were really that simple, there would be many more successful people on online ebay online auction market. Now, while the answer really is not that difficult to solve, we will very shortly come up with some suggestions and maybe a few good solid answers to that question.

I want to remind you that there really is no right or wrong answer. You see, when you walk out on to your street and go to your nearest shopping mall you walk in on the ground floor, then you go to the second floor and the third floor, you will see hundreds of different types of stores. Moreover, if you look through the phone book, you will see thousands of different retail businesses, hundreds of different wholesale businesses, manufacturing businesses; you will even see within professions many subcategories that exist within those professions.

What I am trying to say from is there are many different routes you could take to make money on online ebay online auction market. It would be very short-sighted to try to figure out only one business because in all actuality there are many ways to make money on online ebay online auction market, but of course, if you want to succeed you need to start somewhere; you need to start from step one. While you might end up branching out into other businesses you need to start from one point. If you make things too complicated from the beginning, you will end up having nothing.

As we know, if someone tries to chase after too many opportunities, they will end up conquering none of those opportunities. On the other hand, if an individual focuses on one opportunity, learns how to master that opportunity, learns what he will need to do to achieve his goals, and puts all of his energy into that goal he will be able to succeed. It is the same with online ebay online auction market. At some point in your business you will want to expand, you will want to add more lines to your product and you will want to include other services, which you did not include before. I strongly recommend, especially at the beginning, you only decide to focus on only one line and even on only one product within that line.

For example, if you wanted to sell socks on online ebay online auction market, I recommend that you decide if you are going to sell dress socks or sports socks and within sports socks or dress socks you have to decide if you will be selling woman’s or men’s socks. Then within those two categories, you can decide if you will be selling boy’s socks or girl’s socks. Alternatively, you could even decide to sell diabetic socks or you could decide to sell socks, such as dress socks for weddings. Whatever the category is, you need to be very, very specific and decide to only focus on the one product. Once you decide on what product that it is that you want to sell, then you can research that market fully. You need to research everything about that market, “Who are the retailers selling it of if the wholesalers are selling it? Who are the customers that buy that item? What are the prices those customers expect to pay for the item? What is the most they will pay for the item?” and “What is the least they will pay for the item?” By least, I mean, of course, everybody would love to save money and pay as little as possible, but there is a price that people are used to paying and if they see the price for too low, surprisingly, they will not buy the item because they assume there is something wrong with it.

If you are seeing a good, solid suit priced at a hundred and fifty dollars and you saw a store selling a similar suit for only fifty dollars, I bet you would be very, very hesitant to buy that suit because you would assume there was something wrong with it even though the suit would be one hundred percent fine. However, if you saw the suit priced, instead of the regular price at one hundred dollars, if you saw it priced at $89, you might assume that they are having a good sale on the suit. On the other hand, instead of increasing the price of an item, you can sell even more of the same item. Let me give you an idea. Let us say there is a customer looking for a tuxedo for his sons wedding. Now, that customer knows that his sons wedding, hopefully, will only happen once. We know that today, many times, it happens more then once, but let us not get off on that topic. Therefore, this customer is looking for a tuxedo for his sons wedding. He is sees the tuxedos and sees one tuxedo priced at two hundred dollars, but then there is another tuxedo all the way to left corner and its price is three hundred dollars. The first thing that father will say to himself is, “There is got to be a reason why this tuxedo is priced so much higher then the other tuxedos!” Then he will go ask the salesperson, “How is this tuxedo made? Is it a better quality? Is the design nicer? Is this brand name a better brand name?”

Think about it, he wants to make sure for this great event in his life, in his sons life that he will be dressed the best way he can be and he will be willing to spend more money for that. Sometimes, by finding the highest price, your customers will be willing to pay and by charging that price, you will be showing your customers that the item you are selling is distinguished from the rest of the items and it deserves to be sold and to be bought for that high price. You will end up selling more then the other items that sell for less because they could be seen as lesser value.

Let us get back to the topic we were discussing. Now we know that we need to focus on one product. We also know that once we find that product, we will want to research it fully, we will want to order catalogues provided by people who sell that product, contact wholesalers, we will want to contact retailers who sell that item, we will actually want to meet customers who buy and use that item. So more importantly now, how do we decide what item to sell? I mean, even if you look at socks, there are hundreds of different socks that you can buy. There are so many different designs and different manufacturers; there are so many countries you can get socks from. You do want to make sure that you are making the right decision with those items. So how can you know if the item you have decided to sell is going to be a good item or not? Even if you have the item, how do you know if people will actually buy it or not?

Remember at the beginning of the book we mentioned that we do not want to take a big chance at the beginning. We do not want to make a mistake in the beginning of our business and cut our selves short. We will have nothing, we will get discouraged and we will not continue. Instead, we want to take a slower approach and we want to make sure at the beginning we have the best odds at being successful. How can you decide what product will sell well on online ebay online auction marketand how can you decide what product you should try selling on online ebay online auction market? Guess what? You want to pick a product that you are intimately familiar with as of now. That is right; you want to pick a product or service, if you decide to offer a service on online ebay online auction marketthat you actively use, that you are very familiar with, something you could almost consider yourself an expert.

Let me give you some ideas, if you are a mother of young children, you might want to sell ebay brand name products your children use. If you take your kids to Toy’s R Us, maybe on a weekly or monthly basis, you will know exactly which toys your kids are interested in playing with. Then you could go ahead, purchase those toys on a wholesale basis, and offer them on online ebay online auction market. You will have a very good chance of becoming successful because you will know exactly which toys kids like to play with and the prices their parents can be expected to pay or if you can offer those ebay brand name products at a cheaper price then they pay for them at the store, then you have a good chance at selling them. Alternatively, let us say you are someone who enjoys fishing and you have been fishing for the last fifteen years. You know every tackle, every bait, the best rods to use; you know everything about fishing. You have had a subscription to a fishing magazine for the last four or five years, you watch the fishing channel, you love talking about fishing stories with your friends, you go on boat rides at least once a month and you know what? You are an expert in fishing area. You need to then go ahead and find one product within the ebay brand name products that a fisherman would use, take that product and market it on online ebay online auction market.

You find out who the wholesalers are and you decide if you want to buy it from the wholesaler or if you want to buy it from the manufacturer. Maybe you want to go to the retail store and buy their slow moving ebay brand name merchandise. By marketing it properly, you could sell it to a customer on the other side of the country who actually might need that ebay brand name merchandise. You could even set up a joint venture, that we will discuss later, that allows you to gather with the manufacturer, the wholesaler, the distributor, or the retailer to sell their ebay brand name merchandise. You could even contact a friend of yours, a colleague, an associate or a relative who enjoys fishing with you, and even offer to help them sell their fishing equipment that they no longer use. Maybe they have upgraded their fishing equipment or maybe they have decided to take a break from fishing for a while. You could help them sell their equipment, their rods, their bait, their tackles, whatever they use for fishing. You could offer to sell it for them and you keep a commission on the sales. See, there are many, many ways to obtain ebay brand name merchandise. You might actually decide to implement every method for getting ebay brand name merchandise, this way, you will always have a constant flow of ebay brand name merchandise and then you could continue to sell it.

You build up your customer base; your customer base will know what to expect from you, what you offer, and they will always be checking your ebay online auctions, looking for ebay brand name merchandise. Again, that is another reason to focus on only one specific product line. You want people on online ebay online auction marketto know that your ebay online auctions are for a certain product or service. If they know you offer a certain product or service, they will always keep returning to your ebay online auctions to see what it is that you are offering this week. For instance, if you happen to love books from the early nineteen hundreds, and you discover that there is a seller on online ebay online auction marketwho, every single week, offered twenty new books that he located at estate sales or garage sales and he offered these books from the early nineteen hundreds on ebay online auctions on online ebay online auction marketevery week. Would you not love to follow every single one of his ebay online auctions and have the opportunity to win one of those books? Of course, you would! Same way here, if you love hard to find movies and there was a seller who was able to somehow to get those movies and he always offered those movies on online ebay online auction market. You would follow every one of his ebay online auctions until you were able to win one of the movies that he offered.

See, online ebay online auction marketallows online ebay bidders who are the people who are actually looking at buying the ebay brand name merchandise and it allows them to sign up for a free service that allows them to keep track of different ebay online auctions by sellers. So they can be updated every time when a certain seller offers ebay brand name merchandise the same way. On the other hand, you can also always contact the people who are looking for that type of ebay brand name merchandise by allowing online ebay bidders to sign up for an emailing list and then you can contact them. Of course, this has to be done according to the online ebay online auction marketrules and you have to have the permission of the people you send emails. What you need to do in order to develop the following: in order for people to want to come to you and buy from you and in order for people to know what you will be offering, you want to be very specific and specialize in one product just so you develop a name for yourself. Once you develop a name for yourself, you are reputation will grow. People will know that you offer quality ebay brand name merchandise, of course, always make sure to offer top of the line ebay brand name merchandise so people will look forward to buying from you and they will be excited buying from you.

Think about it, if once a week you put up an ebay online auction for a great item, and every week people will see the feedback that you receive from the top online ebay bidder. Remember there is only one winner for that item, only one top online ebay bidder who buys that item from you. In addition, feedback is information; it is a posting of the seller and the buyer who took part in the transaction. If I had bought something from your ebay online auction, I would post feedback on your name, it would say how I felt about the transaction and you would do the same under my name. Now I can read your feed back and you can read my feedback and see what comments we posted about each other. I could write that you did a great job in delivering the book, you packed it beautifully, you used shrink-wrap and used a nice box, and it arrived on time. Then you could post a message regarding me on my account, of course, I appear as the buyer, and you could say that this buyer did a great job with paying on time, I received the payment immediately and it was a pleasure dealing with you. Now other people will then want to work with us because they will see the good feedback that was received from other people. If you want to receive good feedback from people and you want other people to use that feedback, then you will benefit from offering ebay brand name merchandise that the people who are looking at your account will be interested.

If you want to sell an expensive watch, in order to sell that expensive watch to other people who are looking your ebay online auction, they will need to feel comfortable. Two things, ‘A’ you offer good ebay brand name merchandise and “B’ that you really do know what you are doing when it comes to selling watches. They do not want to make a mistake on spending money on a watch that is worthless, they want to make sure that the seller knows what he is doing and offering good ebay brand name merchandise. So if the potential buyers see, before they online ebay bid on your ebay online auction, that you have run many ebay online auctions for the same item. They will say to them selves, “You know, this seller, since he is focusing on watches, since he has a lot of experience selling watches and since he is sold a lot of watches, he really knows a lot about watches.” What will also happen is all of the people who will buy watches from you, if they are satisfied with the experience, they will post positive feed back regarding the transaction. Then with potential online ebay bidders, they will go to your account, they will be able to click on your name, they will read the feedback about all of your other transactions. They will say, “This person really sells really nice watches, he does a good job, and I’d like to try to buy a watch from him because I trust him based on the feedback he is been given and I know he has experience selling watches because I see how many ebay online auctions he runs for watches.” They might even look at all the other ebay online auctions you are running at that time, if all the other ebay online auctions are also for watches, then they will be more certain that you do know what you are doing, that you specialize in watches, and that you are knowledgeable in that area.

In order to take advantage of all of this, you must specialize in one specific product line and so that people will get used to you and people will know this is what you sell and that you are familiar with the product. Not only that, but by specializing in that product you are showing people that you are their best source for obtaining this product at a very, very good price and obtaining a product of very high quality. Where would you rather buy a leather jacket at, a store that specializes in leather jackets or a store that specializes in odds and ends in clothes? Of course, you would rather buy a leather jacket that specializes in leather jackets because they are the experts in the field. By selling those leather jackets exclusively, they will be investigating which are the best leather jackets, at what price to offer them, who are the best manufacturers to obtain the jackets from, and what is the best leather available on the market. Nevertheless, a store that is only specializing in odds and ends, they really have not taken the time to investigate what the best ebay brand name products are. Therefore, if people just see that you just sell a wide array of ebay brand name products, with no specialization, they will just assume you are buying whatever you can get for cheap and trying to sell it for a profit. No, you want to be seen as somebody who exclusively deals with that item and who has spent a great deal of time making sure he has obtained the best possible ebay brand name merchandise for his customers, and who are your customers? They are every single person on online ebay online auction marketwho have bought from you, who is considering buying from you, and is following your ebay online auctions. In addition, if you develop a good following within that product line, you might actually attract a wholesale account. A wholesale account is someone who sees that ebay online auction that you have for an item on online ebay online auction market, will contact you, and will seek to buy a larger quantity from you.

So, in order to be able to decide what to sell on online ebay online auction market, you want to make sure that you will be able to become an expert and you do not want to wait a long time to become an expert because you will make a lot of mistakes along the way and just loose a lot of valuable time. Just select a product that you are an expert of now. Believe me when I tell you, everyone is an expert at something! It might not seem like a big deal to you, what you know about, but there is someone out there who prizes information that you know. They would love to be able to benefit from what you have to give them.

If you are a teacher and you know what the best schoolbooks to use for kids who are struggling with a certain subject, then you could actually go ahead, buy those books, and wholesale them on online ebay online auction market. As you market the product, let people know you are a teacher and that you are familiar with this product. If you are an electrician, you will know the best parts that you will need for electrical appliances or for wiring in homes. If you are a car mechanic, you will know what the best car parts to use if a corroborator breaks down or if someone is having trouble with his or her air conditioner.

For instance, maybe you are a cook who enjoys cooking a nice dinner for the family. Or maybe you do not have any hobbies, except like I mentioned, cooking for the family, like getting people together, you like putting together a fancy recipe. Guess what? You could write up your personal recipes and ebay online auction them off on online ebay online auction market. There are thousands of people out there, if not millions, who love to cook and who does not love to eat? Therefore, for every person who loves to eat, there has to be somebody who is going to cook for those people. If you have developed some really good recipes, and could constantly develop more recipes for people, then you could ebay online auction off those recipes. You could even go ahead, buy the raw ingredients, and ebay online auction them off on online ebay online auction market. Of course, it would have to be according to the rules and you would have to look into laws and regulations that would apply to you. You could even, actually make things less complicated, if you are a person who loves to cook, why not you ebay online auction off the best pots that you use in your cooking process. You would not ebay online auction off you personal pots, but what you would do is you would see what pots you use in the kitchen and contact the manufacturers or wholesalers of those pots, forks or spoons. You would go ahead and buy their ebay brand name merchandise, describe it on online ebay online auction market, tell people what you used your pots for, what the best foods they are to be useful, to be prepared for and can even include free recipes as a bonus, then ebay online auction off those cooking utensils.

You everybody has an expert inside of them. Sometimes it is hard to see within ourselves and realize what we have to offer to other people. Once we closely examine ourselves we will all see that have something no matter our level of experience or level of education or what we currently do, but we all have something that could truly benefit somebody else. We all know something, we have some stories that have been passed down, we some collections, we have gone through some events; we have had some experience that other people find extremely valuable. If you are somebody who, maybe you love playing board games, then why not find the best board games out there and ebay online auction them off on online ebay online auction market? As you see, there are many opportunities.

Now, maybe if you are someone with a more professional background or maybe you have a more advanced degree, you could focus more on that. I know of people who specialize in dealing with exotic relics, or people who deal with gems, people who deal with diamonds, they go ahead and buy the best possible diamonds they can find on the market for a very good price that people outside of that business, of that market, would not know. People like myself; I would never know where to get jewelry at or below wholesale price, those people can because they have been in the jewelry business for the past 25 years, they know exactly where to go, then now how to circumvent the major wholesalers and they know how to buy that jewelry directly from the source. Then they ebay online auction it off on online ebay online auction marketand they are able to deliver jewelry at wholesale prices, saving people up to 90% off retail price in many situations. Moreover, the people who then go ahead and online ebay bid on those ebay online auctions for the jewelry and win those items, those people are extremely happy and satisfied with what they received.

Therefore, no matter whom you are, no matter what stage in life you are, no matter what age, everyone has something to offer someone else. Everyone is familiar with one specific product, everyone has come to develop a hobby or everyone has something that they enjoy whether it is travel, art, music, movies. Everybody has developed a job or a business that they can use, that they can apply and make money on online ebay online auction market. So whether you decide to focus on a religious area, social area or business area, make sure, and I cannot repeat this enough, make sure that it is something from the beginning that you know well in and out, because guess what? People will definitely notice it whether you know what you are talking about or not. If you are not familiar with what you are ebay online auctioning off, people get discouraged very, very soon. If people who look at your ebay online auction description and say to them selves, “This person really knows what he is talking about!” They will feel very encouraged to buy the item, because they will say, “I am buying from an expert, I am buying from someone who has done their research who will make sure to offer me what they are truly representing and will make sure to deliver something that I truly needed. How do I know that? Because obviously this person is familiar with this area, has investigated this area, has used ebay brand name products or services in this area and now knows exactly what I will need since I am also in this area and we both share the same similar interests.” So make sure the product or service that you offer is a product or service that can clearly demonstrate to people that you are an expert in and you will be able to help them extract the best benefits of using this product or service. In addition, you will show them applications, that they on their own, may not have conceived before, if you can do that or if you can learn to do that, then I can show you great ways to start making money on online ebay online auction market. Now with that, let us get ready for chapter three.

Chapter 3

Before you can start any business, you need to have the correct tools to start your business. Among the tools that an online ebay online auction market business owner needs, are some tools found among all types of businesses. Such as a notebook, simple record keeping tools, a pen, a pencil, a ledger, you could use a software program to keep track of your business expenses, your revenues. You could use a good program to keep track of your customers. What’s more important you also need to have a system that will allow you to stay organized. Being organized on online ebay online auction marketis extremely important, because at all times you are going to be buying many different ebay brand name products and you are going to be selling many things. You want to make sure that you are keeping track of the sources where you buy ebay brand name merchandise from, the people who you are selling to.

You want to keep track of your ebay online auctions in progress and when you complete the sales, if you do not stay on top of the buyers of your ebay online auctions, it is going to be hard to ensure that you always collect your payment. Not because people are looking not to pay you, but think about it, everybody has a very busy life and even if someone won your ebay online auction and intends to pay for the item they won for you, and they are very excited about buying it, they still might forget to buy it. You know, they are going to busy with their own life and unless you remind them, which online ebay online auction marketgives you tools to remind them to pay for the ebay online auction, they might forget. So you want to make sure that you are very organized and that you have a system set up to always contact people who have won your ebay online auction.

You also want to have a system that allows you to keep track of leads. By leads, I mean people, who respond to your ebay online auctions. Let us say you put up an ebay online auction for a box of comic books and you had five or six people email you with questions regarding your ebay online auction. Therefore, you want to have a record of all the emails addresses of those people and if you can, you want to get their contact information so in the future you could always contact them when you have an ebay online auction for them. If you do not do this, what will happen is you will have to always rely on your actual ebay online auctions to generate revenue. Instead, if you are able to keep track of all the other people every time you run an ebay online auction, when you get new ebay brand name merchandise, you will be able to send an email or call up all the other people who sent you inquiries and you will be able to send to them.

So for instance, where you put up an ebay online auction for a box of comic books, you received five or six people who sent an inquiry regarding those comic books. You could go ahead and you could send, the next time you have, let us say you buy for instance, ten boxes of comic books from a comic book collector and he is been collecting these books since the 1960’s and you know that the comics you bought are going to appeal to all types of comic book collectors. So you look back on your records and see look, every time you ran an ebay online auction you received an average of five or six inquiries from different people. Now, if you have ran five or six ebay online auctions in the past for comic books, at this point you might have thirty different inquiries from people, you send an email to each of those thirty people letting them know that you just bought a collection of ten comic books.

You let them know that you are willing to sell them one box of comic books for a certain price and if they are willing to take all ten boxes of comic books, you will sell them for a much cheaper price. You could even take this a step further and what you can do is, the people who contacted you, when they contacted you, I am sure that they were asking for specific types of comic books and based on their questions you will be able to tell what type of comic books they are looking for. What you could always do, you could always email people, and I strongly recommend that when you email people, or however you contact them whether it is calling them on the phone or maybe meeting them in person or sending them those emails, you want to find out from them exactly what type of comic books they are looking for.

Whether you are selling them comic books, baseball cards, clothing, you could even be ebay online auctioning off cars, you always want to know the leads that you have. The people who have sent you inquiries regarding the ebay brand name products you are ebay online auctioning, you want to know what it is that they are exactly interested in and what it is that they are looking for. What I mean by that is, on one hand what it is that they are interested in so you know when you have ebay brand name merchandise, you right away think to show them the ebay brand name merchandise. On the other hand, you also want to know within the genre that they are looking for; you want to know exactly what it is that they want. For instance, if someone is looking for a used car, you want to know if they are looking at for business purposes or residential purposes. If someone is looking for old records, you want to know are they looking for classical music, rock music, pop music, country music and then even within those groups you want to develop as many sub-categories as you can. When you receive ebay brand name merchandise, you can right away contact those people and you might not even have to ebay online auction the item off on online ebay online auction marketbecause you might find a buyer much quicker and then you will not have to pay the listing fees and you will not have to give online ebay online auction marketa percentage of the sale. As we will see later on, what online ebay online auction marketdoes is they charge you two ways. One, when you list the item and you put it up for sale, they charge you and when you actually sell the item, they keep a small percentage of what the final price is. They will keep track on your account how much you owe them and then you can pay by credit card or by check.

Now back to the topic about keeping track of your leads, which will of course take us back to the tools that you need for your online ebay online auction market business. Keeping track of your leads is very important because these are the people who are going to be your customers and the lifeblood of any business is the customer. You will want a program that allows you to keep track of all your leads in two different ways. You will want to have people who just sent you emails and you will want a list of people who actually purchased from you. The people that have purchased form you, if they are happy form you, and this is the reason why it is extremely important to always keep your customers happy. They are going to be the ones who are going to want to buy form you and they are going to be the ones comfortable buying from you because they have already done business with you.

The people who have sent you inquiries, they are going to be a little harder to sell because the only exposure they have had to you is by seeing your ebay online auction or maybe an advertisement or maybe hearing from someone else about an ebay online auction that you ran. Now, what do I recommend? I recommend two things. I recommend you have a notebook with you and have a separate notebook for every category of ebay brand name merchandise that you ebay online auction off. Have a notebook for comic book sales, a notebook for baseball card sales, have a notebook for records, and have a notebook for clothing, or for whatever product you specialize in or the ebay brand name products you later on will choose to specialize. You want to make sure that you are able to be organized and in order to very clear-headed, I recommend you have different notebooks.

Now, besides having those notebooks you should also keep your records on a computer. Now, you might wonder why you should not just keep all those records on a computer. The reason is because on a computer, the only time you will have access to those records is when you are by your computer or if you go to another computer, you take a disk with you. That is not always practical. Sometimes you will be doing business somewhere else, you will want to have an easy way to look up your customer base, and that is why if you have that notebook, you carry around that notebook, it will be very easy to look up your customers. Why is it also important to have a list of all the customers who bought from you on online ebay online auction marketand all the sales leads that you have through online ebay online auction market?

Let us say you go to an ebay online auction, you go to a going out of business sale, or you meet with someone, a wholesaler or liquidator who is offering you a special deal on ebay brand name merchandise. You have never actually sold that type of ebay brand name merchandise before or maybe you have sold that type of ebay brand name merchandise, but you want to make sure that there is still a demand for that ebay brand name merchandise. So what do you do before you buy the ebay brand name merchandise? You open up your notebook, you look through your customer list, you look through the people who have inquired about your ebay online auctions, you call them, and you say to them, “Is this the type of ebay brand name merchandise you are interested in? Is this the type of item, that if I put up for ebay online auction or if I sold you directly, you would be interested in buying?”

Now, what can you also do at the time, since this could be ebay brand name merchandise that you are not familiar with and do not know what the going rate for this ebay brand name merchandise is, you could ask your customers at what price they would be willing to buy this ebay brand name merchandise at. If they, for example, they say they are willing to pay for old, quartz watches ten dollars a piece. Then you know that since you want to keep for yourself, at least, a fifty percent profit margin, you want to be able to double your money, the most you would pay the wholesaler or liquidator for those watches is five dollars. The same can be applied any time you find ebay brand name merchandise. Whether it is going to a garage or whether it is going to an estate sale, you want to have a list of people you can call right away to find out if the ebay brand name merchandise you are looking at is worth purchasing. In order to do this, you do not have to always have your customer base, why do I say that? Because, after awhile you will become familiar with what it is that people buy and at what prices they buy it. Therefore, you will be able to make your decisions without having to consult your customers every time.

You know what another reason why it is very important to keep your customer base? Because an online ebay online auction market business is similar to any other business, in the respect that the customer base is an asset and if you have a list of customers you will be able to sell that asset base to someone one day. You might actually one day want to sell your online ebay online auction market business. I have seen sellers on online ebay online auction market, selling their business and they have done very well. There was one seller I believe that got around $12,000 dollars for his online ebay online auction market business. Now that is not small change! Especially after he sells his business, he sells his customer list, he can move on and do other businesses, and if there is not a compete agreement; he can start his own business. You need to have a method for keeping track of all your customers, all the inquiries and you also want to have a list, the same way you are keeping track of your customers, of all the people you can buy ebay brand name merchandise. This way when you run out of ebay brand name merchandise, you can contact these people and you can ensure that you can always have a substantial amount of ebay brand name merchandise available for your customers.

Another thing you need and you do not even need to have it at home, but is a computer. Especially if you are going to start working from your house, you will probably want to be able to save costs at the beginning. One of the biggest costs associated with an online ebay online auction market business is a computer, right? You want to have a computer to keep track of your sales on online ebay online auction market, you want to be able to look at your sales, and you want to be able to respond to emails. Now, if you are very short on funds or you simply just do not want to spend a lot of money with your new online ebay online auction market business until you see how the business goes see if you will make money or not, you still want to make sure to always to keep track of your expenses and minimize your expenses when possible. Therefore, if you are just starting your business out and you are just ebay online auctioning off a few items at a time you do not need to have a computer at home. What you can do is, you can have a tape, you could go to the office, you could go to a library and when you go to that library, you could use their computer; you could go anywhere where there is a public computer. If you currently have a job and your employer allows it, you could spend a few minutes using your office computer to run your online ebay online auction market business. Especially if at the beginning you are just going to have a few items up for ebay online auction, then it is not going to take much time. Buying a computer for $1,000, $2,000 is an expense, especially in these times. Now, remember an online ebay online auction market business, you should always consult with a professional with this, with a lawyer or an accountant, an online ebay online auction market business, like any business, lets you deduct your expenses off your taxes. That computer should be tax-deductible expense.

At some point, you do want to have a computer. Whether it is at your home office or your regular office. This way you can always keep track of your ebay online auctions and as the volume of your business increases. You will be able to rapidly respond to people’s emails, you will be able to check your ebay online auctions. One thing that happens is when you are getting near the end of the ebay online auction, you will always want to be there right by the computer to ensure that if there are and inquiries you answer them right away and if there is any other information you need to post in your ebay online auctions, then you can do it. Moreover, you will not be able to have a computer if you are always depending on a public computer at a library. You always want to ensure that you have access to a computer, whether it is having a computer in your work or your home or wherever your office might be. Second, you will want to have a good connection to the internet. Having good access to the internet is essential because online ebay online auction marketis an online market place and many of the communications you will be doing with your customers is through email. So in order to be following them, you to make sure that you always log on. Now, if your funds allow and it is available in your area, I recommend that you get a DSL connection or you get a cable modem connection. Both of those connections will allow you very quick internet access, they will also allow you to upload your pictures very quickly and they will let you navigate through online ebay online auction marketwith ease and with speed which is essential to be running this business in a serious fashion.

Mentioning pictures takes us to the next tool that you need for an online ebay online auction market business. You also need to have a digital camera. A digital camera will allow you to take pictures of the ebay brand name merchandise and instantly upload those pictures to your computer. I even recommend a digital camera over a scanner. You see, what a scanner allows you to do, it just allows you to put something on the scanner and the scanner makes a color photocopy, but it does not really allow you to take a picture especially when you need to see 3-D qualities of an item. A digital camera, like any other camera, allows you to take a good picture of the item you have for sale and what it also allows you to do; you can take pictures from multiple angles and put all those pictures on your ebay online auction description.

Now, when you think about a digital camera, I am sure that you realize there are many types of digital cameras. First, there are pixel levels; the pixel level will be the quality of the actual picture. How many dots, what the resolution is, it will take into account also the defined quality of the picture. Therefore, you want to have a digital camera at least a pixel level three. You could get a pixel one, two to go all the way up to five. Number 3 should be sufficient, but of course, the higher you go from there, the clearer you are picture will be. There have been studies done on online ebay online auction marketthat the better the quality the picture is, the more people will be attracted to the ebay online auction, and hopefully the higher the online ebay bids will become. It is essential to have pictures up at all times in your ebay online auction. Even if it is an item that people are intimately familiar with, such as a VCR or a television, people still like to see what it is that they are online ebay online ebay bidding on before they actually go ahead and they place their online ebay bid. So make sure that you get yourself a good digital camera. Most digital cameras come with a UBS connection wire that connects your digital camera to your computer, which lets you upload the pictures. Once you have the pictures up, you want to make sure that you have software that is usually included with the purchase of the digital camera. You want to make sure that you have software that allows you to edit the pictures because you will want to crop the pictures. Cropping the pictures means cutting out anything from the picture that is not essential besides the actual item. You will want to be able to cut out the background. If you take your picture, let us say, on your desk and on the desk was a book or notebook or a picture or maybe there was something in the background, you just want to eliminate, you want to be able to use software to edit the picture and get rid of it.

Now, once you have a good digital camera, the next step is to make sure you have an area where you can always work. You want to have an area that is organized, where you can store the ebay brand name merchandise. You will want to have one area of the storage for the ebay brand name merchandise that is waiting to be sold, meaning items that are waiting to be taking pictures of, items you have not processed yet. You will want to have the area where you have everything set aside. Then you will have another area that actually is your working area. Where you take pictures of the items, you sit down, you write a good description of the item while you are looking at the item, this way it is fresh in your mind and you can think of the attributes that will make that item exciting for people.

Next, you take one area within your storage area, or wherever you might work, and you put the items that have already been listed up on online ebay online auction marketfor sale and you have those items up for sale and you have those items ready to be shipped. You want to have another area where you actually do the packing for your items. Meaning, that once someone has online ebay bid on those items, they have purchased it and sent you the payment, you have received it, and now you are ready to send the items out. You will want to have a good area where it is clean. Where you can package your items, have your boxes ready, your packing supplies and also you will want to have a corner where you can put the your items that UPS is going to come pick up, if you decide to send through UPS or whether you are taking the items to the post office. This way everything is organized.

You see, one of the downfalls of many people who run online ebay online auction market businesses is, and I will have to admit at the beginning of my online ebay online auction market business I had many challenges associated with this area, is that once people send you the payment, you want to be able to send out their ebay brand name merchandise in a very efficient manor. This way, everything is shipped and your customers get the ebay brand name merchandise they purchased from you in a timely manor. One of the things I had a challenge with, was as my business grew, I was getting so disorganized, I had so much ebay brand name merchandise around that it was hard to keep track of what needed to be sent out when and to whom. I developed a system that allowed me to do so and I strongly recommend that from the beginning, before your business spirals out of control, that you do have an organization setup, you basically have a chart that where the items will be corresponding to what stage of the process those items are on. Those are the items you will need.

You will want to have a phone; you will want to have a number where people can call you up. I always list my phone number on all my ebay online auctions. This way if people decide not to call me, if they want to email me or maybe if they do not even want to email me at all, maybe all their questions are answered in the ebay online auction description. By giving, people my phone number; I am letting them know that I am accessible to them and if they have any questions they can contact me. They do not have to be worried that after they send their payment that I will simply disappear and they will have no way to contact me. This way I give them my phone number and sometimes people feel more comfortable speaking to a person before they place their online ebay bid just to make sure they know whom they are dealing with. This way I give people my phone number. People call me up, especially during the last two hours of the ebay online auction. People call me up and they ask any questions that they have. That is what I recommend; that you always have a phone number that people can reach you.

If you are operating your business from home, at some point I recommend, when it becomes affordable, is a separate phone line for your business. Otherwise, it will not sound too professional if a customer calls you up and one of your kids answers the phone. Or maybe one day you are tired and forgot that you listed this phone number as your business phone number and you pick up the phone and you might not be in the best of moods and the next thing you know, you blow a sale away. You always want to be in a situation where you have the ability to communicate efficiently. Customers, especially by being able to let them call you, by being able to get on the internet quickly, by being able to answer their emails, you might also want to have a fax machine. Sometimes, it does happen rarely, but you will want to be able to fax a more lengthy description of the item you have for sale. Maybe you have met a supplier who wants to offer you ebay brand name merchandise, you will also want to allow him or her to send a fax of what ebay brand name merchandise they have available. That concludes this chapter. I hope this chapter was helpful to you and now we will move on to the next chapter, which is learning how to locate the ebay brand name merchandise you have decided to buy and sell.

Chapter 4

Now, in this chapter we are going to discuss on of the most essential aspects to your online ebay online auction market business. This aspect is the ability for you to find the best locations to get your ebay brand name merchandise. By that, I mean we are going to discuss methods for acquiring a steady source and supply of ebay brand name merchandise; it is not enough to just have a good source of ebay brand name merchandise. You need to make sure that source is steady and that whether it is one source or a combination of sources. You are always able to have a constant flow of ebay brand name merchandise coming in so you have what you need to sell on your online ebay online auction market business. Especially, if at any time your source of ebay brand name merchandise is disrupted. You do not have the ability to put up new ebay brand name merchandise for sale, two things will happen. One, you will disrupt the flow of making money; your revenues will be halted until you have more ebay brand name merchandise to sell. Secondly, you might loose a lot of your customers and potential customers to your competition. Because you will not have more ebay brand name merchandise to sell. You always want to be able to ensure that your sources of ebay brand name merchandise are good solid sources. Now, many sources that we are going to discuss are going to be sources that are not steady by nature and of course, by their nature because of what type of the source that they are, they are going to rare and will only happen once in awhile. Those sources are still good sources as long as you do not rely on them exclusively. Meaning, you are going to learn to locate those sources, but you will always keep in mind that underneath those sources, you will have to have your regular venues for obtaining ebay brand name merchandise.

Ok, so let us start out by selecting one category. Now, your category might be different because you could select to sell something else on online ebay online auction market, but we are going to select one category, that is a general category, which no matter what, no matter what it is you are selling, you will be able to apply what we’re going to do with this category. You can apply to your own category. So let us think about books. Let us look at new books. Books are an item that always seems to be a demand for and I am sure there will always be a demand for in the future. It is an interesting item because there are always new books coming to the market. There always a wide plethora of books available, there are different genres, there are different categories, there are soft covered books, and there are hard covered books; so there are many types of books you could choose from. Books, like many ebay brand name products, are easy to find because there are specific manufacturers, which they are called publishers who produce the books and there are wholesalers who put out those books, there are distributors who help get the books to the stores, and then the retailers who carry the books. There are many ways you could find books, you could start from scratch; you could actually just walk into a bookstore, wait until they have a good sale on books, go into their discounted rack, buy those books and put them up for sale. Now, you are not going to have a very wide profit margin if you do it that way, but you will be able to find books that way.

The next step is, you contact the wholesaler and find out from them what the minimum purchase you have to make is, you set up a wholesale account, and you buy books from a wholesaler. You make sure to develop a good relationship with that wholesaler. A good relationship is essential. This way that wholesaler will remember you when they have a special inventory or a special price on the inventory, they will call you up, and they will offer it to you. If you become a good customer of theirs the wholesaler will keep you mind when they, themselves receive a good supply of ebay brand name merchandise from the publishers or their own sources.

Now, you can also use what is called close out brokers. A close out broker is somebody who is always on the lookout for ebay brand name merchandise based on a request that has been given to them. So, if you are looking for non-fiction books, dealing with cooking, you can call a close out broker and say to him, “I am looking for a thousand hard cover or soft cover books, dealing with cooking, the most I can pay for these books are a dollar a piece including shipping or maybe a dollar twenty five including shipping. I need these books by this date and the books must be in this condition.” The close out broker will then go ahead and contact all of his sources, all of his contacts and look for that ebay brand name merchandise for you. I would label a closeout broker as somebody who is not a steady source because a closeout broker, while he or she will work very hard to find the ebay brand name merchandise for you, they might come up dry and not be able to find the ebay brand name merchandise you need. This is still a good source to always have, this way, when they are able to obtain ebay brand name merchandise at a special, discounted rate you could jump on that opportunity and you could buy that ebay brand name merchandise.

So you have a wholesaler who you can always rely on for a steady source of ebay brand name merchandise, probably at a fifty percent discount to the retail price, you have a closeout broker who might find you ebay brand name merchandise at up to fifty percent off the regular wholesale price which would be great savings and another source you should consider are ebay online auctions. Ebay online auctions are great because at ebay online auctions even if that great ebay brand name merchandise, the ebay online auctioneer might not have attracted the right online ebay bidders for his ebay online auction. I have gone to many ebay online auctions where I saw great ebay brand name merchandise going for next to nothing. Sometimes the ebay brand name merchandise went for pennies on the dollar. I saw one time, at an ebay online auction, small bottles of champagne that retailed for $4.99 a piece, they were sold at the ebay online auction for twenty five cents a piece. There is plenty of room to make money. At ebay online auctions, if you know what you are doing and you have to make sure that the ebay brand name merchandise you are buying is in good condition, so when you sell it, the people who buy the ebay brand name merchandise from you, your customers, will be happy with it. Ebay online auctions are also great sources for ebay brand name merchandise because you can go to an ebay online auction, first, you will never know what you will find, but if you do find the ebay brand name merchandise that you want, by the nature of an ebay online auction and as long as you are careful with what you online ebay bid, you could pay a very low price. Also at an ebay online auction, you are setting the price of the ebay online auction because you are deciding what the most that you are willing to online ebay bid is for that item.

Another source is garage sales. When you go to a garage sale, you will mostly be dealing with used ebay brand name merchandise, but in many instances, you will find ebay brand name merchandise that is new simply because the person having the garage sale could have received that ebay brand name merchandise as a gift and he or she does not have a use for that ebay brand name merchandise and they will sell it. At a garage sale, it is very customary to find books among other items for literally $0.25 apiece. I mean, if you could buy items for $0.25 apiece and resell them for $3, $4, $5 or $20 apiece, you will have a lot of room to make money. Think about going to a garage sale and finding art. You could find paintings for $1 apiece, turn around, and sell those paintings on online ebay online auction marketfor up to three, four hundred dollars. Garage sales are also a great source.

Now an estate sale is similar to a garage sale in the sense that the ebay brand name merchandise that is being sold belonged to a consumer, to a private individual as opposed to a business and now that individual does not have use for that ebay brand name merchandise and the ebay brand name merchandise is being sold at a very cheap price. Now the difference between an estate sale and a garage sale is that an estate sale is run by a professional. It is similar to an ebay online auction in the respect that there is an ebay online auctioneer running it except, he is not an ebay online auctioneer, but this person who is running the estate sale is in business to conduct estate sales. So usually what he or she will do, the person running the estate sale, they will investigate what the retail price of that item is and they will say to themselves, “What will most people be willing to pay for this price? And they will look to sell at that price.” You see at a garage sale you could get ebay brand name merchandise a lot cheaper because the person who is doing the sale, he or she has not investigated the value of the item and he or she probably just does not even care what the item is actually worth. They are just looking to raise some money. Maybe they want some extra money to go on vacation and maybe the figure they will just throw out ebay brand name merchandise anyways.

At an estate sale, the person is investigating the ebay brand name merchandise that they have for sale because their intention is they want to make money and not just for the person they are conducting the estate sale on behalf of but they also want to make money for themselves. Either, what they have done, is purchase the entire estate and now they are selling or they have actually gone ahead and made an arrangement where they are getting a commission based on what their total sales are. So, of course, they will try to get as much as possible. Now, even though at an estate sale the people who are running the estate sales are more savvy and they know the value of the ebay brand name merchandise, it is still great to go. In many instances the people running the estate sale were not able to determine the value of the item or maybe to them in their market, their locale market, that item does not have much value, but the market you are selling to might give that item more value.

Let me give you an idea, lets say with the example of books. You sell old Victorian books; you sell old English books from the early 1800’s. Now, if somebody is conducting an estate sale in a small town in Okalahoma, in that town per say, while people might love books, there might not be a specific market for English books from the 1800’s. Since you have developed a business selling ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction market, you might know, first of all you will have a following for those books. There will be plenty of people coming to you looking to purchase those books from you and you might just know, by essence of your business, that as soon as you put up an item such as a book from the early 1800’s from England, that you will attract a lot of online ebay bidders for that item. While the person running the estate sale has no way to reach those customers that, you could reach. Therefore, he will be willing to sell the book for a very cheap price. The same applies to many different types of items. And also, even if the person conducting that estate sale knows the value of that item, he is not a retailer who has opportunity to sell that item and to let that item sit on a shelf and let people six or seven days a week to look at their ebay brand name merchandise until he actually sells it. He only has that one day to sell the item. He knows if he does not list that item at the estate sale for a very, very good price he is not going to be able to sell it, he is not going to be able to attract any interested buyers. Once an estate sale closes at five, six, seven o’ clock at night, it is over, he does not have any more opportunity to make money with that ebay brand name merchandise.

Estate sales are great because when you go there, first of all, the ebay brand name merchandise at estate sales is generally nicer than at garage sales because the person running the estate sale will not conduct the sale unless he can make money. The only way for him to make money is if there is ebay brand name merchandise there that people will be willing to buy and hopefully the ebay brand name merchandise is more expensive and this way he gets more money. Therefore, when you go to that estate sale, you could usually count on finding higher caliber ebay brand name merchandise then if you simply go to garage sale. Now when you go to a garage sale on the other hand, the ebay brand name merchandise is very, very cheap and it is a lot cheaper then at an estate sale. So there are pro’s and con’s to each one. Either way, whether you go to a garage sale or to an estate sale, keep in mind that as the buyer you have the ability and the right to negotiate the price. You can always bargain and bargaining is important because as a businessperson your profit margin is the difference between what you are selling the ebay brand name merchandise for and what you are buying it at. Unless you have a wide enough margin, you are not going to be making a lot of money. You go to the estate sale, even if the person running the estate sale portrays the estate sale as a type of sale where there are no bargains, he wants to make it seem very upscale or he might want to make seem that the prices are written in stone. I am telling you from someone who has experience going to estate sales and garage sales that prices are always negotiable and the pressure to sell is on the person conducting the estate sale because the money that comes in from the sale, not all the money belongs to him, only a certain percentage.

With a garage sale, you also have bargaining power because the person conducting the garage sale, once again, what are the items at the garage sale? He does not want to keep them, so as long as you offer him a reasonable price, even if it is a very cheap price, he will take it. I have gone to garage sales, where I have gotten ebay brand name merchandise for less then I even planned to buy it for. What happened is I inquired to the person running the sale, how much the item was and then the person, thinking he was going to have a hard time selling it, or maybe he wanted to encourage me to purchase the item, offered me a very good price. I went to a garage sale in New Jersey and I found an antique model boat. Well, it might not have been so antique; it was from the early 1960’s. So I do not want to make any of you readers who were born then feel like I am calling you old, but as I am sure you are aware, to many collectors a boat from the 1960’s, especially a nice model boat, it looked like a big pirate ship and every piece was crafted to perfection. That boat had a lot of value. Now, I went ahead and asked that person at the garage sale how much they wanted for the item, they said they wanted five dollars and I said ok, let me think about it. I really was not that interested in the item, but you know what? I was thinking about buying it and when I decided to buy it, at that point, it was already twenty minutes later and I wanted to make sure that I remembered the price so I asked the person how much is the boat? The person misunderstood my questions and thought I was negotiating, that I was not interested in the prior price, so the person dropped the price to a $1.50. I ended purchasing this boat for $1.50 and you would be surprised to know that the boat has a value of over $150.

As you can tell, there are many opportunities to make money. If you spend your Sundays going to garage sales and every Sunday you find an average of ten items, which in turn gives you a $20 to $30 profit per item, you are talking an extra $200-$300 a week in your pocket. Now, a garage sale, I would not consider a garage sale or an estate sale a steady source of ebay brand name merchandise because you will never know what you will find and there could be rainy weekends and people will not conduct estate sales or garage sales because they know people will not come out. Now, garage or estate sales are a good source of ebay brand name merchandise if it is accumulative. If it is some extra on the side that you will not rely on. Let us say you have a good relationship with a wholesaler, you are purchasing your ebay brand name merchandise from a wholesaler or, as we will discuss soon, from a manufacturer or from an importer. You have them as a good source of ebay brand name merchandise and then besides that you have these additional sources of ebay brand name merchandise such as garage sales, estate sales, ebay online auctions, going out of business sales, liquidations, maybe special sales that a store wants to get rid of a certain type of ebay brand name merchandise.

Now, as far as I mentioned importers, importers are great because what they do is they bring ebay brand name merchandise, at very cheap prices from overseas, where the manufacturing costs for those items are very low. Those importers are in the business of working on volume, so if you can purchase in volume, you will be able to save a lot compared to the wholesale price as compared to when you buy the same or similar ebay brand name merchandise from a wholesaler who is obtaining the ebay brand name merchandise from a factory here in the United States. Manufacturers work similar to wholesalers. Manufacturers are in the business to selling to wholesalers. The reason they sell to wholesalers as opposed to directly to retailers is that they know the wholesalers can take a larger volume from them and that there will be less hassle then having to locate many small retailers who only take a small stock at a time. If you can tell the manufacturer either that you will now, at the present, a large volume of ebay brand name merchandise or if you can tell the manufacturer that as your business grows, you will be taking a lot more ebay brand name merchandise form him. You might be able to set up a good relationship with that manufacturer.

You have many opportunities o find good sources of ebay brand name merchandise. If you make a list of them now, we have covered manufacturers, wholesalers, liquidators, ebay online auctioneers, garage sales, estate sales, even retail stores who might want to liquidate some of their ebay brand name merchandise. I actually hear of one couple who makes over $150,000 a year on online ebay online auction market, they gross around $250,000, and their whole online ebay online auction market business consists of selling used C.D.’s. By used C.D.’s, I am referring to music C.D.’s such as different music as Guns N’ Roses, U2, The Police, country C.D.’s, classical music C.D.’s, even Spanish C.D.’s. They go to used music C.D. stores and they tell the owners of the C.D. stores that if they have any C.D.’s that are selling slowly; they are willing to buy those C.D.’s for $1 each. They buy those C.D.’s for $1 each and then they resell them of an average; they make $2-$3 a C.D. Of course they have their expenses, they have their shipping expenses, they have employees, who work out of their own house packaging C.D.’s, mailing out those C.D.’s, writing up the description of those C.D.’s, but this couple is simply getting their ebay brand name merchandise by going to used C.D. stores.

There are many options for getting your ebay brand name merchandise. You could even produce your own ebay brand name merchandise. If you are a manufacturer, you could sell your ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction market. On the other hand, if you are a painter or an artisan or maybe you know great recipes, or you are a good writer you could write your own book, you could make paintings, drawings. You could put all that ebay brand name merchandise up for sale and put it on online ebay online auction marketand this way your cost is diminished because the only cost involved is that are entailed to producing the ebay brand name merchandise that you, yourself, make. There are many ways to obtain ebay brand name merchandise for your business and to conclude, make sure that whatever ebay brand name merchandise you are selling, you always will have easy access to obtain that ebay brand name merchandise.

Before we move on from this chapter, I want to remind you of another method of obtaining ebay brand name merchandise. You can actually set up a relationship with a store, where you go ahead and you help that store sell their ebay brand name merchandise. The way you do this, you contact a store in your area and tell them you will help them sell their slow moving ebay brand name merchandise on a commission basis. For instance, you contact ten different stores that sell books or let us use paintings for this example and you tell those ten stores, hey look, let me sell all those paintings you have that you are not able to sell. I will list them on online ebay online auction market, take pictures of them, answer the inquiries, take the sales calls that are produced from the add and I will do all of the dirty work. I will pack up the painting and then we’ll split the proceeds either 50/50, 60/40; however you decide to do it.

There are many ways to find ebay brand name merchandise and developing joint ventures is very good. You could develop joint ventures with manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, liquidators, and ebay online auctioneers to always help them sell their ebay brand name merchandise that, they themselves, are having a hard time or that they would just like to find a different outlet to sell. It does not even have to be ebay brand name merchandise that they are having a hard time selling, it could be ebay brand name merchandise which sells very well and this would be giving them an additional outlet. Meaning, if they were able to sell through the current outlets that they have now, if they were able to sell, let us say, a thousand units. Now through online ebay online auction marketyou will be able to help them sell additional two or three hundred units and, of course, you will have more revenue because you will be able to sell more ebay brand name merchandise and the best part to you is that you will never have to pay for that ebay brand name merchandise because you are selling it on a consignment basis.

In addition, with that, you should have plenty of ideas come to mind. You should start thinking about different things that you could do in order to succeed with your business. Think about maybe calling wholesalers who sell a product that you are familiar with and help them sell their ebay brand name merchandise and the best part, think about it, what a difference to your business if you actually do not have to spend any money purchasing ebay brand name merchandise. You will never be in trouble if you cannot sell ebay brand name merchandise because you will not have any cost assertion with ebay brand name merchandise. It will not be like if you have sunk a lot of money into ebay brand name merchandise and have to recover the money from the inventory.

On the other hand, a retail business or even a wholesaler who purchased the inventory is in a much more challenging situation, because if they do not constantly sell their ebay brand name merchandise, then not only cannot they pay their overhead for their business. Which you, of course, will also have overhead, but it should not be a lot of cost like a wholesaler or a manufacturer or a retailer, but they also need to recover the money they have actually spent buying inventory. If you could avoid that cost, then you are way ahead of the game. You could spend money that otherwise, you would spend purchasing inventory, you could spend it for advertising costs, marketing costs. You could buy a great digital camera, a great computer; you could use it to purchase yourself a good internet connection. If there does come a time where there is a great close out or a great liquidation on ebay brand name merchandise, since you have saved a lot of money by not having to purchase ebay brand name merchandise from these wholesalers, you could afford to spend that money to make a bulk purchase. For instance, I once found a great price on a trunk load of ebay brand name merchandise, it was actually children’s socks and I was able to purchase that ebay brand name merchandise since I did not have money tied up in another inventory at the time.

If you set up these growing ventures with people, where you sell their ebay brand name merchandise with them and splitting the money with them, then you will not have to be concerned about tying up your money because you will have those funds ready when an opportunity presents itself or when you go ahead and make an opportunity for yourself.

Chapter 5

While you can make a lot of money when you build a substantial business on selling ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction market, you can also sell your services. By services, you can sell what you do on online ebay online auction marketand what do I mean by that? Every person has a special skill or talent which other people would be willing to pay for. For instance, a plumber that is good at fixing leaks or installing new pipes, his service is in demand of every homeowner who has a running leak or a runny faucet or is having problems with any pipes in his home or commercial building. An artist who loves painting for hobby, his service is in demand that people who might want a painting, a portrait painting, or a painting of their house or just a painting to put up on the wall. There are many different types of services that people can provide. There are professionals’ services, like what an attorney would provide, like a doctor or an accountant and there are other services that such as a handyman service. There are services such as getting counseling advice or business advice. You might had an experience setting up a business, in that, you could help other people set up a business on their own. You might have undertaken a large project on remodeling a house or fixing your automobile, you can supply that knowledge to other people who would be willing to pay.

online ebay online auction marketallows you to sell your services and how do you sell your service on online ebay online auction market? Well, first, when you write your ebay online auction description, you make it very clear in the title what service you are offering and in the description, you let people know two things. The first thing you let people know is what it is that you are actually offering, what service you are offering. Let us say that you are offering someone your consulting time, through your consulting time, you are going to teach them how they can go ahead and how they can learn how they can run their business on online ebay online auction market. So the person who is actually reading the ebay online auction, initially they would have two questions. First question is they would want to know exactly what’s included in your consulting; are you going to be helping them find ebay brand name merchandise, are you going to be helping them list ebay brand name merchandise, are you going to help them decide what cameras they need to take digital pictures? Secondly, another important question that they are going to ask, what is your expertise; why is it they should pay you money in order to obtain knowledge, information, and help from you?

You need to be able to demonstrate that you are an expert. In order to demonstrate that you are an expert in your ebay online auction description, you have to list some of your qualifications, you will have to list some of your experiences, very similarly to a resume, to whom you would submit a resume. What you need to do, is you need to be able to show people that project you undertook or that job experience that you have is enough and is broad enough that it could pass the topics and the areas that people are going to want to know from you. At the same time, you specialize enough so you will be able to help him with their detailed questions and you will be able to offer them grasp, especially with the finer points. Therefore, when you do offer your service to people and are paid for your service, you need to always make sure that they can see the value of what you are offering and that they recognize you as an expert.

Now, some other ways that you can be recognized as an expert is by listing your educational experience, whether it was undergraduate experience, whether you have an advanced degree; whether you went to graduate school or maybe you have an MBA, any other award you might have received in the field, any qualifications, any special licenses you have. You are offering people advice on a personal project, such as remodeling a home, fixing the engine of your car, or advice on how to paint the interior of your home or maybe advice on how to organize a wedding or family occasion. You need to show people very concrete samples of what you did. I would include pictures in the ebay online auction description of the actual project that you worked on. What you could also do is give people references of people that you dealt with through the completion of your project. When you undertook this project, whether it is actually your day-to-day work, your business, a sideline business, a part time business, or whether it is a hobby that you have, you want to offer names and numbers of other people that were involved in the business or hobby with you. This way, they can contact any amount, or even if they do not contact anyone for questions, they will feel assured when they know that there are other people involved and that there are other people who you have dealt with.

Usually, if someone is going to pretend they are an expert in the field, they are not going to as far as to list the people who they have dealt with because they will be afraid that someone will actually investigate, look into it and find out that they have made up what they are portraying to be true. Whenever people see that you are presenting such information as your degrees, your type of business or hobbies that you are involved with, concrete examples of what you have done, that will lend a lot of credibility to your ebay online auction. Especially if you can list dates, periods of time when you worked on the project, can give names of people who were your suppliers, vendors, people you sold to or people you bought from or associates who were involved in the project with you. What you will want to do also, you want to list always a phone number in your ebay online auction so people can call you up.

Now I want to warn you of, is when people call you up. While you are going to be very excited that they are calling you and you are going to want to sell them, you are going to want to convince them that they should online ebay bid on your ebay online auction and use your service, you might be tempted into overselling. By overselling, I mean, you might end up, in order to prove the value of your ebay online auction, the service that you are selling, you might end up giving them too much information. You might actually go ahead and supply them with that advice that you are trying to ebay online auction off. Imagine that you are ebay online auctioning off an hour of consulting on how to write a book. When people call you on the phone, if in order to convince them to online ebay bid on your ebay online auction, you end up sharing with them your tips for writing a book in a very efficient and quick manor, then you will have nothing else to offer these people because they will have already received their information. Even though you have more information to offer, but they will feel that they have everything they need to know, they are not going to online ebay bid on your ebay online auction, and you will have lost your business.

What can you say when people call you on the phone? You can give them general ideas, meaning, let us say that you are very good at writing very quickly. One of your tips for writing is not to look at the computer screen while you type. Instead of telling people that advice, even though you might have another hundred tips, but you do not want them to feel that you have given away the most lucrative part of your advice. You can tell them, “I have developed strategies to write in a very quick manor without having to resort towards being engrossed in the actual writing as you are doing it.” Now, when you say something like that you are vague, you have not given them any information that they can use as soon as they get off the phone with you, but at the same time you have given them an idea of the direction your consulting advise is going to give to them. In addition, what you should do when people call you up, is to be careful giving out your sources. If you are giving someone consulting advice on how to start a business or where to obtain ebay brand name merchandise, do not tell them where you obtain your ebay brand name merchandise and do not be specific enough so they can do their own research and find the sources of your ebay brand name merchandise. You can tell them that you are an expert at locating distressed inventory, which the sellers no longer need; therefore, you are able to get it at a very cheap price. So now instead of actually telling the people that you get your own ebay brand name merchandise from liquidators or from business that are going out of business, you have given them an idea on what kind of ebay brand name merchandise you are going to find and not connected them with your sources.

For example, an online entrepreneur had a few successful web sites that among the ebay brand name products that he sold were e-Books. Now an e-Book is a downloadable file, which contains the text of an entire book, people who visit the web site, and purchase the e-Book then they download information straight to their book. This individual, on his ebay online auction description, offered to the highest online ebay bidder of his ebay online auction that he would spend a month with him on the phone, once a week to speak for at least an hour and they could email as much as they wanted to each other. The person who would win his ebay online auction could send as many questions as he had and he would teach him everything that he knew about how to set up a web site to sell e-Books. He would teach the high online ebay bidder how to advertise it, how to market it, what prices to charge, how to draw visitors to your site, how to lend legitimacy to your site. So now he was very clear with what he was going to offer people, people understood what it was that he was offering, and people were able to see that he was an expert in the field. How did he do that? On the ebay online auction description, he listed the addresses of five of his web sites. Someone reading the ebay online auction description could go ahead, visit the web sites, and see that this person was conducting business the way that he claimed to be conducting business. Then if a visitor, someone that visited his ebay online auction description, was interested in selling e-Books then they would feel that this person is an authority in the field and is somebody who can teach them to sell e-Books as well.

If you sent this individual an email, while he would offer you general information, he never actually gave people advice that they could take and actually start using that advice to make money-selling e-books before they actually won the ebay online auction. He would state things such as, “I will show you how to sell e-books sufficiently”, “I will show you how to increase the sales of books you are currently doing now”, “I will show you how to pick a title for your book that outsells the current title that you have for your e-books sell”, and “I will show you how to write an e-book.” To give you some motivation to start offering your services on online ebay online auction market, the ebay online auction won for over $500.

So this individual had no cost, except his time, the only time that he had to spend actively, the time he exclusively devoted to the project, the ebay online auction, was four hours a month he spent discussing the individuals project on the phone. Meaning, the person who bought the ebay online auction, the highest online ebay bidder who won the ebay online auction, he had the right to call this individual at preset times, once a week for an hour. For four hours of talking on phone, he received over $500 for his consulting advice and that comes out to $125 an hour. Unless you are making over $125 an hour, I think that is a very good reason to become excited. You would be surprised at what people are willing to offer money for all types of information and all types of advice. That does not mean it has to be a business, some people might want advice on how to get into a graduate school, how to get into a good college, some people might want advice on who to pursue a certain type of career. Maybe someone needs career advice and if you have a lot of experience maybe you are a head hunter, maybe you worked in human resources at a company, then you could teach people how they can find for themselves what kind of a job they want, maybe you could teach them how to find the job that they want. Maybe you are someone who worked in a specific industry for a long time; you could help people excel succeed in that industry.

For example, you are a banker and you have been working at banks for the last twenty-five years. Then you will have a lot of advice to offer as far as how you get a job at a banking sector, the best jobs in the banking sector, which jobs are going to offer the most promise and which areas will have the most growth in the near future and the long term. You see, regardless of your background, you could be a college student, you could be a high school student, you could be a senior citizen; there are many areas of interest that you have that match with other people’s areas of interest. There is plenty of advice and plenty of life experiences, even if you are very young, that other people could benefit from.

So what I would suggest is that you spend some time, maybe now or tonight, sitting down and writing down all the different areas of information that you could be considered an expert on or even make a list of things that you are knowledgeable about. It could so mundane as playing a certain sport to having a passion for a certain language or being a cone sour at a certain type of art. Whatever your area is of interest, whatever your areas of experience are, write them down. Then you could decide to ebay online auction off your experience to people. You could list, on an online ebay online auction marketebay online auction, what your advice is, why it is that people will to want receive this advice from you, what makes you an expert in this area; what it is that you are going to be offering people. Then you could go ahead and allow people to online ebay bid for the right to receive that information from you.

I think as a side note, if you want to make any of your ebay online auctions successful, even when you are selling a physical item such as a computer or a painting, always include free advice and free consulting along with your ebay online auction. What I mean by that, if you are ebay online auctioning off a brand new computer, let people know in your ebay online auction description that you are going to be more then happy to talk with them through the process of setting up the computer. And if they have any questions they can email and you will even suggest different software’s, printers, and what they call peripheral devices they can use to get the most out of their computer experience. Even if you are offering a painting in your ebay online auction, you should give advice such as the best way to frame the painting, what are the best frames, where to put the painting in the house.

See, any time you give someone free advice, it makes the person feel comfortable that you really are in it for more then just that one sale. It makes them realize that you really do want to help them, you care for them, you do not just look at them as a customer but you look at them as a friend; as someone you want to help and someone you want to make happy. You see, people are used a person of that nature, and that merchandising in this age where we have tremendous department stores the size of a football field, people forget that we still have a need inside of us for personal communication and what people call a personal touch. People want to know that there is someone on the other end who is going to be there to help them through the process. If you could offer people that personal touch in your ebay online auctions with your ebay online auction for service or you are ebay online auctioning off a physical product, people will be happy to do business with you as opposed to your competitors who do not go that extra mile to help them.

Chapter 6

One of the phenomena that take’s place on online ebay online auction marketis the intense competition that exists. Similar to any other market, except what makes the competition fiercer in many instances on online ebay online auction market, is that it is extremely easy for people to see your competition. Instead of people having to drive to the other side of town or walk a few blocks to find one of your competitors, on online ebay online auction market, all they have to do is click a mouse on to look at complete listings of a certain product and they will be able to see every ebay online auction that mentions that product. So for instance, if you as a buyer were on online ebay online auction marketlooking for basketballs, all you would have to do is put in the word "basketball" in the search and you could see all of the listings that come up with the word basketball. You could continue refining and narrowing down your search until you found what it is that you wanted, but in almost all instances there will always be competition and there will always be other sellers offering the same product or services that you are offering.

One of the most important goal’s you have to accomplish on online ebay online auction marketis being able to stand out form your competitor. If you cannot stand out form your competition, not only will you be lost among all the other sellers, people are not going to have any reason to buy form you and even if they buy from you, they might not pay as much when they realize how many other people are selling the same product or service. On the other hand, if you can distinguish yourself from the other sellers who are selling the same or similar product, people will be willing to buy from you and thy might even be willing to spend more money then they would have otherwise. Think about it, if you went to look for a very generic product at a store and that product was priced at your local super market much higher then at another super market, you would probably go to that other super market if you had the time. Now, if it is a hard to find item, such as a new watch from a special company, which is only producing watches in a very limited quantity, you will be willing to buy that watch, even if it costs more then other watches from less known brands or do not have the same reputation as this exclusive company. Therefore, what you want to do is apply that same strategy as that an exclusive company that an exclusive brand uses when you market your own items on online ebay online auction market.

The first thing you want to create for yourself is a brand name. By a brand name I mean, you want a falling word where people know that you are a provider of quality ebay brand name merchandise or services on online ebay online auction market. You want people to know that they can always find special offerings from you and that when you do offer those special offerings, you give them free bonuses, as I mentioned before; the extra consulting, or you can five them extra items that supplement the ebay brand name merchandise that you are offering for ebay online auction. For instance, if you are offering a printer on online ebay online auction market, you might want to include as a free bonus a ream of paper. This way, the person is excited because he or she knows when they receive this printer; they will also have paper, which they are ready to use. Another way to distinguish your self from the competition is by not offering any single items, but also ebay online auctioning off bundles of related ebay brand name products. In the example of a computer printer, what you can do is to offer together with a box of paper, together with a cartridge of black ink and color ink. You could also offer tips on how to best use the printer. So you see, you want to always be able to distinguish yourself from the competition. You want to give people a reason to online ebay bid from you even though there are other people who are selling the same item.

Another way to make sure to distinguish yourself is to offer very good customer service; timely responses to any questions that people have, by answering emails promptly and by giving as much project information as you have in the ebay online auction description. Another thing that is very important, even when people are selling the same item as you and even when people are very familiar with the item already, is to include a few good picture of the item. You would be surprised on how many people prefer online ebay bid on an ebay online auction, when there are other people selling the same item on their ebay online auction, but when that ebay online auction has very clear, colorful, and bright pictures of the item being offered. I have seen two ebay online auctions for the exact same item at the exact same time. The ebay online auction with the better description, more extensive description of the item, the ebay online auctioneer provided more detailed information and had brighter pictures, more colorful pictures; that ebay online auction attracted much higher online ebay bidders then the other ebay online auction. Since you make your money by obtaining a final high winning online ebay bid for you ebay online auction, you want to do whatever you can to encourage online ebay bidders to be drawn to your ebay online auction as opposed to another ebay online auction.

To summarize, you want to have an extensive description of your item; you want to give a lot of detailed information. You want to have very clear, bright pictures. You want to offer free bonuses that are related to the product you are offering; you would not want to offer a record if you are ebay online auctioning a VCR and visa versa, you do not want to offer someone an extra movie if your ebay online auctioning a record player. Another strategy that we mentioned is bundling your product and that can be done in many ways. If you are ebay online auctioning off a toy, you might want to find similar toys or toys that fit in to that category and ebay online auction them together. A parent is going to look for toys on online ebay online auction marketand the parent sees twenty different ebay online auctions going on for the same G. I. Joe figure, that parent since he is probably buying that toy for his child or it could even be a grandchild or a niece or nephew. What you want to do is encourage that parent to purchase the toy from your ebay online auction. So how do you do that? If a parent is going to buy that present for someone, then he is excited to make the recipient of the present very happy. So the more that you can offer the parent, who will be giving this item on to someone else, that will encourage the parent to purchase from you. If you can offer the parent a few toys in that ebay online auction, that parent might say to them selves, “Do you know what? I do need to buy toys for the other children” or “I would love to be able to offer this child an even bigger present then I originally planed. So you know what? Let me go ahead and online ebay bid on this ebay online auction.”

One thing that people always love is people are attracted to collections. If you could offer them a collection of toys, books, baseball cards, or post cards, the fact that they are both received in a bundle and that bundle is a collection will excite them. They will know that they are receiving an assortment of ebay brand name products within a certain category that appeals to them whether it appeals to them because it is a present for someone or whether they, themselves, want to enjoy it. Either way, they will be receiving a variety of items all related and they are also items that make that person happy. You could apply this principal even if you are offering that is not being collected or is not being given as a present. What do I mean by that? Let us look at ebay online auctioning off clothing.

Now clothing, I think you will agree with me, is the farthest thing away from collectible toys or collectible baseball cards, so how can you take the idea of offering collections and applying it to clothing? Well, here’s what you can do. If you ebay online auctioning off used clothing or new clothing, you could assemble a group of clothing that are complimentary to each other; you could put together a suit, two dress shirts, a belt, dress socks, three neckties and you could offer that as a ready to wear wardrobe for the winning online ebay bidder. Now think about the person looking at your ebay online auction. When he is looking at ebay online auctions from all the other sellers, he will say to himself, “Look, I see that there are hundred different sellers offering suits at their ebay online auctions. I see another hundred sellers offering neck ties, and I see another hundred sellers offering belts, and shoes, and socks and fancy shirts and everything that someone could think of for their wardrobe.”

Then they see one seller offering in his or her ebay online auction an entire ready-to-wear-wardrobe. The person looking at that ebay online auction will become very excited because not only will be able to instantly receive complete wardrobe if he is a winning online ebay bidder, but also think about how much money he will save by not having to purchase those items through various ebay online auctions. Now, why would it be cheaper? Because, usually, the minimum online ebay bid is based on the item being offered. Now if someone is offering a dress shirt and the online ebay online ebay bidding starts at $3, the online ebay online ebay bidding may escalate to $6 or $7 before the ebay online auctions over. If that shirt is combined with a group of clothing, the ebay online auction will probably also start at those minimum online ebay bids. Which would mean that even though the price would climb as online ebay bidders start online ebay online ebay bidding, but what would not happen is it would not become a cumulative effect, meaning, if someone were looking at five ebay online auctions for five different pieces of clothing each of those ebay online auctions is starting at the minimum online ebay bid? Even if the ebay online auction only attracts four or five online ebay bidders to the ebay online auction, but the price starts building and then the winning online ebay bidders would have to purchase each one of those ebay online auctions separately. Instead in this situation, where he is online ebay online ebay bidding on an entire wardrobe, the minimum online ebay bid, even if the minimum online ebay bid is higher, but all the online ebay bidders are only focused on one ebay online auction, meaning that the final price on a per piece basis is lower.

Another reason a online ebay bidder would be attracted to an ebay online auction, whether it is an entire wardrobe or any other type of ebay online auction, is because being able to online ebay bid on only one ebay online auction and then hopefully the ability to buy that ebay online auction, he will save a lot of money on the shipping. Think about much shipping and handling would cost if you purchased ten different ebay online auctions as opposed to only one ebay online auction. Since most shipping, whether it is done by UPS or the US Postal Service starts with a minimum price and then becomes cheaper as incrementally the weight grows. What will happen is that if someone had to purchase from different sellers the base shipping would be in each of those five ebay online auctions. Especially if there is a handling fee, from there on out, as the weight increases, as it adds up, and the shipping would be the same, but since he has to pay the base shipping fee for each one of those ebay online auctions. That actual money put out of his pocket is high.

On the other hand, if the person purchases the ebay online auction, purchases one ebay online auction which he receives the entire wardrobe or and entire group of items, the base shipping is the same and he or she might actually receive a discount to boo because if the total weight is substantial, UPS or the Postal Service could have a discounted rate. There are many advantages for the winning online ebay bidder to want to focus on the ebay online auctions with the entire wardrobe or an entire group of baseball cards or a group of books or a collection of comic books. The reason that you might be very interested in also offering a group of items, as a seller, is because you might want to be able to charge less on the handling fee, which is a legitimate charge to cover your time preparing the ebay online auction and shipping it out. If you do not mind foregoing some of the handling fee, in order to sell this ebay online auction is one, because you will attract more online ebay bidders interested in purchasing a group of item that are complementary to each other and the final online ebay bid might be a lot higher then if you split up the ebay online auction to five different lots.

Even though you are giving up the handling fee, that final online ebay bid, I believe, will compensate you for what you would not gain as far as handling charges. Especially if you look at my ebay online auctions, I never charge any handling fees and I would recommend you to do the same. You need to concentrate on making sure that the final online ebay bid, that the higher online ebay bid, is substantially enough that compensates you both for your time and still gives you a decent profit from the ebay online auctions being ebay online auctioned off. Finally, what will also help you is by setting up this process, this ebay online auction, where people know that they could always obtain large lots or groups from you. People will always look forward to what other groups of items you offer because people love, especially in this day and age, saving money. They can make all of their purchases in one ebay online auction as opposed to splitting up to five or six ebay online auctions. If they can buy everything from you at one time instead of having to go to local department stores to make all of their purchases, they will become very excited to buy from you and they will keep your ebay online auctions on the list and they will always track your ebay online auctions. It is good to remind them to ensure to focus on your ebay online auctions when you do have them.

However, the better factor, that you know that you have a good reputation from these group items, these collections of items and they will be inclined to online ebay bid on your ebay online auctions. That is a very good way to be able to distinguish yourself from other sellers, by always offering groups of items that are complementary to each other. By offering collections, free bonuses, quality service, free consulting, giving people advice, tips and strategies and how to get the best efficient use out of either the service or the ebay brand name merchandise that you are offering. I would also recommend not charging handling fees in order to show people up front that there are not going to be any hidden costs and that you are only charging the actual cost of the shipping.

Chapter 7

Many sellers on and off online ebay online auction marketmake one of the most lethal mistakes that can be made in business. This mistake, which can be disastrous in any business whether small or large, is competing based on price. By competing based on price I mean that what many people do in business in order to differentiate themselves from competitors to gain a larger market share of the market. In order to be able to sell more, they start competing based on the price. What they do, I am sure you have seen many gas stations do and as you have seen many stores do, they keep lowering their price until they are cheaper then their competitor, which hardly ever lasts long because then the competitors will rush to match their prices. What these sellers will do, is they will always lower their prices to try to be the cheapest in the market. They hope that while their prices are lower for that period of time, they will do a lot of business, they will make money and they are looking to make money based on volume because they are foregoing many of their profits.

The reason this idea, this strategy is very misguided, is because you could never compete in price, there will always be somebody cheaper then you and there might always be somebody who is willing to take a loss in order to gain market share. By that I mean, if they bought an item for $1, but they have enough reserves in their bank account to whether a loss in their business for two or three months, that might actually sell that item that cost them $1, for $0.90. The reason they do this is to drive their competitors out of business and then in the future they will be the only players in the market. They also do this to gain a reputation that people know that they can buy items cheap from them. Once your customers get used to buying from them, they could always raise the prices and hope that the customers will continue buying from them. The reason that this is always a big mistake and somebody should always avoid this is that, as we mentioned, it will be very hard to compete in price. Especially, if you always offer your item at a very cheap price, people will start perceiving it as inferior quality or they will just decide that there is something wrong with item and they are not going to want to buy from you. People want to know that sources of ebay brand name merchandise are good steady sources. Meaning, that if they are going to buy from you, if they are going to commit themselves to a relationship where there obtaining that item from you, they want to know that you are going to be there in the future.

If you offer a very, very low price it might tell them that “A” you are not going to be in business for long. Maybe you are actually going out of business now, that is why you are blowing your inventory or maybe why you are offering your services for such a cheap price, and they will not know if you are going to be there in the future. If your competitors are offering their price at a cheap, but more reasonable price that makes sense at what the rest of the market place is charging, then your potential customers decide to buy form this individual because they figure since this individual is offering a more reasonable price, he is more secure in the market. He is offering a better quality product and he is going to be here for the long term. What you will want to do is, always be able to distinguish your product, as we have mentioned in the past, in order to make sure that you are not forced into competing based on price. If you see that there are a lot of people selling the same product or if most of the market is used to buying a generic product, then you want to seek out a product within that category, that is either branded or carries a designer name. Such as Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Levi’s, Calvin Klein or you might want to introduce a product with unique features that the ebay brand name products from the competitors do not have.

If you are introducing a VCR to the market place where other people are selling VCR’s, you might want to sell a VCR with special features that are not available in other models. When you offer your VCR, you might want to include a booklet that will teach even the most inexperience person when it comes to programming VCR’s and I think that can be said for most of us. You might want to offer a booklet to them that will allow anyone to program that VCR within 5 minutes. Even though the VCR you are offering is similar to the other VCR’s or it might even be the same VCR, when people see that you are offering this booklet that will teach you something that 95% of the people out there do not know how to do. Then they will be willing to buy from you and they will actually be willing to pay a little more because you are offering them a benefit that they directly need and that is directly related to the VCR that they are purchasing from you.

Another way, as we mentioned before, to distinguish yourself is when you sell an item and in order to having to compete on price, is by obtaining an exclusive product from a manufacturer or distributor. For instance, if you know of a manufacturer or you can find a manufacturer that produces a very exclusive chocolate, you can contact this manufacturer of chocolate and say that you would like to be his exclusive online distributor of chocolates. If he already has a website, then you could offer to be his exclusive online online ebay online auction marketdistributor of chocolate. Tell him that the reason it is worthwhile to him as a manufacturer or distributor to set up this exclusive arrangement with you is in order another venue to sell his ebay brand name merchandise, you will become a good, long term customer who will be buying a lot from him as time increases. You could also let him know that the more people that his product, his chocolate, is exposed to, even more brand recognition his chocolate will have in the general market place. Meaning, somebody buys the chocolate from you on online ebay online auction marketand he or she enjoys it, then the next time he or she walks into a retail store, they will ask for the same chocolate. That will help him, because the stores will send inquiries to the manufacturer looking to set up a wholesale account, to look into purchasing chocolate from him. You are offering this manufacturer of chocolate two benefits. One, the purchases you will be making directly to him in order to resell the chocolate on online ebay online auction market. You will also be offering him increased brand recognition in the market place.

Another example of an exclusive product is a shoe made in Italy, a shoe that is not widely available in the United States, or is not even available at all. You could contact different manufacturers overseas or you could contact importers and ask them to obtain for you a special product that might not be expensive at all. The item might only retail for $1, but if the item is exclusive enough and if the item, for instance, is a novelty item, people can get excited and might want to buy that item from you on online ebay online auction marketand then you will not have to compete based on price because you are the only one offering the novelty item.

There are many manufacturers out there, distributors, wholesalers and importers, who have exclusive relationships with a source of ebay brand name merchandise and they, themselves, are acting as the middlemen and are always looking for a market place through which they can sell their product. If you can set up an exclusive distributorship with them and have the exclusive right to sell on online ebay online auction marketthen you can be assured that you will not have any competition on online ebay online auction market. What if you asked me, “If that same product is being sold in retail stores locally in my area, how would I still gain by having that product only being sold on online ebay online auction market?” You sure would because, especially, in rural communities, they might not have access to that product, they might not have a store near them that carries that item. Secondly, even if there is a store near them that carries the exact same item you are offering them the convenience of being able to purchase the item online and having it shipped directly to their home or office. Which raises an important point, whenever you conduct an ebay online auction always make sure to offer people, to ask them, whether they want the item that they have purchased sent to their office or their home.

Amongst all the other items they offer exclusively on online ebay online auction market, of course as long as it is permitting to the rules on online ebay online auction market, would be artwork from an artist who might be well known. He might not have the technological knowledge or he might not be familiar with the internet and he might not be selling his artwork on online ebay online auction market. You should contact this artist, form a very good relationship with them, be very upfront and honest, and offer weekly and monthly reports of the progress of the ebay online auctions in which you are selling his artwork. Then you could go ahead and list the paintings of this artist and since you will be the only source for this artist’s paintings or artwork or sculptures online, you will have a market place that needs to buy from you if they want to purchase the artwork. Now, in order to make sure the artwork does sell, you need to do what we discussed in the earlier chapter and provide as much information as you can about the artist and about the paintings being offered. You also want to have really nice looking pictures that will show people the beauty of the artwork being offered.

What else can you offer on an exclusive basis, that you could distinguish yourself from your competitors? Well, you could contact toy manufacturers and ask them if they have any lines that have not been moving lately. For instance, there is a toy manufacturer located in Arkansas and most of the toy manufacturers’ lines are located in Arkansas. It just happens to be that a certain horse and buggy toy model that they made has not been selling well. You can ask that manufacturer and have the exclusive right to sell that toy horse and buggy on online ebay online auction market. The reason that manufacturer would be more then happy to give you that exclusive license to offer the item on online ebay online auction marketbecause no one in the stores are buying it and he has another outlet to sell that item. Once you can demonstrate that you can sell his ebay brand name merchandise sufficiently and quickly, he will be inclined to give you exclusive rights to his other ebay brand name products. Now you might want to know, if an item is not selling well in Arkansas, then why would it sell on online ebay online auction market? You see, Arkansas is a large state, there are many people there, and you would think that if no one wants a certain toy there in that entire state that there is no market for it, but you have to remember that same toy might be appealing to people who live in other states. With the example of the horse and buggy, that toy may be appealing to an adult who grew up on a farm. Now that person is now living in New York or could be living in New Jersey or could be living in Washington D.C. and he might be excited to purchase the toy either as a collectors item for himself or to give it to his children or his grandchildren. You see you have to remember that even if a certain product is not popular in a certain area, there could be a demand for it in other places.

What I would suggest is that you make your self a list of manufacturers; you can do this by going online. First, decide what you want to offer on online ebay online auction market, what kind of product you want to offer, and then look for manufacturers that produce that item, you could also contact wholesalers, distributors, importers that work with the items that you want to sell. Contact them and let them know what it is that you want to do, how you plan on selling it and do not worry about people stealing your idea and selling it themselves on online ebay online auction marketbecause most people are not familiar with online ebay online auction marketand do not know the full potential that online ebay online auction markethas to offer. Therefore, even if you tell them you are going to sell the item on online ebay online auction market, they might not be inclined to copy you because they might not see the potential that exists on online ebay online auction market. Once you have exclusive rights on online ebay online auction market, make sure that you get it in writing so if your sales start taking off, you do not want them to take the exclusive deal away from you and start selling the item themselves. Another reason why this idea of selling exclusive items distinguishes yourself from competitors is ‘A’, you never have to compete based on price and ‘B’, when you sell these exclusive items you will build a very good reputation for offering items that you competitors do not. You will be offering items that no one else in the market place offer and you will have a following of people who look forward to seeing what other exclusive items you will be offering in the future. So remember, never compete based on price, otherwise you will catch yourself in a cycle of never ending competition. Now there are times you will want to compete based on price or when you are forced to compete based on price. Those instances are usually when you are offering a generic product that is easily copied by anyone or that is being offered by many people. In order to be able to distinguish yourself, even thought to some extent you will still have to compete based on price, is to use the tools and strategies that we mentioned before to differentiate as much as possible from your nearest competitor.

Chapter 8

A stumbling block that many entrepreneurs come across when they are starting their business is determining what the true market value of their ebay brand name products and services are. When they are ready to sell their ebay brand name products or services, they do not know in many instances what the going market price is or if they are offering a unique product or their product is differentiated from their competitors, they do not know what the right price to charge is. What I recommend in those instances is always to test a market. What online ebay online auction marketallows you to do, is put up a single item or put up your service in a very limited basis. Put, of course, as much information as possible and let the market place determine the correct price is for that ebay brand name merchandise. What will then happen is as the ebay online auction progresses and you see people send you emails and people call you up and you contact people, you will be able to see what the fair market value of the product or service that you are offering is.

What you do not want to do is set a very high opening online ebay bid, by that I mean the lowest price that someone could online ebay bid on your item because then, if you have overestimated the value of your service or product, people will not online ebay bid on the item they will simply ignore your ebay online auction. On the other hand, if you are not excited enough, you do not see the value of what you are offering, other people will not pick up on it and they will not be excited to online ebay bid on your ebay online auction whether it is for a product or service. People want to see excitement; they want to see the reason why they should be excited to purchase the product or service. If you believe in what it is that you are offering, people will notice your excitement, people will see what it is that you want to offer them and also then they will be encourage. What you can always do, if you see that you have an item is not attracting any online ebay bids, you can always change the item you are offering. You can always modify the item, you could offer an item with different features or a service more geared towards a market place, but what you should not do is get caught as we mentioned in a price competition game and you should not undersell your product; do not lower the value of your product.

It is very important to always remember that people’s perception is very closely related to the price that the product is being sold at, especially when it comes to a service. People want to know that the service that you are offering, that they are receiving is of professional value. That is why the some of the most successful lawyers are the lawyers who charge the most. You could say that they charge the most because they are very successful. However, I am willing to say that there are many lawyers who are very successful, who are very intelligent, who know a lot about the field and have many years of practice and they still do not make as much money as the lawyers who charge more, simply because they are charging more. See both lawyers might have the same twenty clients who give them consistent work through the year, but the lawyer who is convinced his clients that value of his services are worth 20% more then the other lawyer, that lawyer will simply make more money with the same amount of clients. Now, I am not asking you to double your price compared to what your nearest competitor charges, but what I am advising you to do is go ahead and to market your ebay brand name products and sell your ebay brand name products or services at the value that they are worth or at the value that you feel they are worth. Be confident in yourself and other people will notice the confidence that you have. The best part about knowing the true market value of the ebay brand name products and services that you are offering because you can now go ahead and contact potential buyers and let them know what you are offering and circumvent the entire ebay online auction process by allowing to purchase your product or service by directly from you.

You see this way, when you contact people who are in the market for what it is that you are offering you will be able to be confident when you insist on the price that you are asking. You see, people will always try to negotiate with you on the price that you are asking. People will always try to negotiate with you based on price, they will always say, “No, you are charging too much or I could get it cheaper somewhere else or your product or your service is not worth the money you are asking for.” If you have already tested out the market on online ebay online auction market, then you already know what the going market rate is for your product or service. Then you will have no problem letting those potential buyers know that since what you are offering is of high quality and people are happy, they have been satisfied with their experience using your product or service that they too will enjoy using your product or service and they should pay the price that you are asking. When you can show people what it is that people are willing to pay on online ebay online auction market, they will see the value and they will be encouraged to and agree to pay the price that you want them to.

I know many people who make the mistake of allowing them selves to be beaten down on the price, while there are plenty of other buyers who will be happy to pay the price that they are offering. If a buyer really needs what you are offering, if they want the product or the service, then as long as you offer them a fair price, even if it is not the cheapest price and they believe in the quality of what it is that you are offering. Then at the end, they will be happy to buy at that price. You see, you can only go through with this if you are able to show people that you are knowledgeable about the price and you will not become nervous when people ask for a lower price and either jump to offer them the lower price or completely withdraw from the negotiation to offer what it is that you are offering. If you do know that this is the true price, this is the price that I need to insist on in order to make money on online ebay online auction market; and that is one of your goals. You will always want to be able to charge the most that the market will bear for what it is that you are offering.

What happens also many times is that a market price of an item in a certain area is cheaper then it is in other areas. What online ebay online auction marketallows you to do is to focus on selling to those areas where the people will pay the most for your product. What do I mean by that? Let us say you are set up in the business of selling leather briefcases and you are based out in Texas and in Texas, there really is not much of a demand for leather briefcases. You know people either do not use briefcases or they would rather carry small attaché’s or small sports bags, but for whatever reason, they do not use briefcases. If you focus on selling to Texas, the people who will buy a leather briefcase from you will know that they have advantage on their side. They know that since there are very few buyers for that item and they will offer you a very cheap price or you will just have to sell it for a very cheap price because nobody really wants the briefcase and the only way they will buy it is if they are getting a great bargain.

Now that same leather briefcase might sell extremely well in Colorado and unless you offer a leather briefcase in Colorado, you will never know that they are willing to buy them, that they are willing pay a decent amount of money for the leather brief case. If you put up an ebay online auction on online ebay online auction marketfor a leather briefcase, the way that you will know the buyers are in Colorado are interested in the product because you will see where most of your online ebay bidders come from and you will see where the highest online ebay bidder is. Now, if you see the highest online ebay bidder is based in New Mexico and you see after a few ebay online auctions that most of those online ebay bidders in your ebay online auctions for those leather briefcases are located in New Mexico or Arizona, then you know that the market for your ebay brand name merchandise is in those two states or that area of the country. Then you could refocus you business, your whole strategy in selling to consumers in those states. You could start contacting stores in those states, you could start advertising through the mail, and you could put advertisements in magazines or local newspapers in those states. You will save yourself a lot of time and aggravation by being able to focus your product to places where there are actually buyers for your item and where people will be willing to pay the most. By paying the most, I mean that in those areas is that type of consumer who will be willing to pay more then another consumer.

As part of my business, I wholesale adult and children’s socks. I discovered that while in New York, the stores did want children’s socks and they were happy to buy them in order to resell them, of course because then they had another opportunity to make money in their stores, they would pay a lot less then what similar stores located right across the border right in New Jersey. When I realized that, I decided to refocus my sales efforts to selling to stores in New Jersey and to selling to stores in other areas of the country because while every store wants to have children’s socks to sell to parents who need socks for their children, not every store will be willing to pay the same price. You see, in New York, there is an intense amount of competition from wholesalers who are always calling on $0.99 stores, discount stores, clothing stores to sell them their ebay brand name products, but as you get farther away from New York and farther away from large metropolitan areas, there is less competition on every level. There are less retail stores and fewer wholesalers.

Now the reason there are less wholesalers in rural areas is that there are not enough stores to support more then one or two wholesalers. If you are based in your area and can use the internet and you could use UPS or the U.S. Postal Service to ship boxes out to rural areas, then you do not have to rely on the exclusive business from those from those few small stores in that exclusive area. What I mean by that is that even though a wholesaler in Oklahoma might only have fifty or sixty $0.99 stores to sell to and you are located out in another small town in California what you can do using online ebay online auction marketis develop sales and sales leads both in that small town and also in your home town in California. What will happen is you will have an advantage over the local wholesalers because you will be able to offer a decent price, good ebay brand name merchandise, and you will not have to rely on those few stores in the local area. Once you discover how much easier it is to sell to places outside of large metropolitan areas, you will also become very excited and want to develop other business lines that will supplement what you are currently selling. You will be able to focus on those stores in those rural areas and you will be able to make a decent living.

You see, while if you live in a metropolitan area, even though you will be facing an intense amount of competition, you will still have a large market to sell to. Let us say for example, you have a hundred different wholesalers and a thousand different stores, while even though it will not be split up evenly, the number of stores outnumbers the number of wholesalers, but every wholesaler has the potential to have a decent amount of customers before he looses customers to the next wholesaler. While even though in reality, the few large wholesalers will have 80% of the market place themselves and the smaller wholesalers will have to grasp for the small stores at which, for whatever reason do not buy from the large wholesalers, but there still is enough business for everyone. If you are located in a small area, if you are a small wholesaler and located in a rural area where there are not many stores you have a very large challenge. Your challenge is that even though you might be the only one supplying ebay brand name merchandise to this area, there just are not enough stores for you to grow your business. Moreover, to turn your business into a successful business that will allow you to retire.

What online ebay online auction marketdoes, it allows you to reach out to the national market place, regardless of where you are whether you are out in a small town in Nebraska or if you are selling an item in an area that no longer desires it. Let us say you are located in a hot state, maybe you are in Georgia and now when you are in Georgia, you are carrying now a winter product. Why do you have that winter product? You got a good deal at an ebay online auction, you bought as an overstock, there was a business in another area that went out of business and you bought their remaining inventory. Now you have that ebay brand name merchandise that does not sell well in Georgia. So what do we do? You go ahead and use online ebay online auction marketto start selling that item to stores in other areas where consumers in those areas need that ebay brand name merchandise. Let us say you are a store that carries both summer and winter items and now you are during your summer season. So, what do you do with your winter ebay brand name merchandise? You would probably just set it aside in your basement or store it in a storage facility and wait until the next season when you can start selling it. If you use online ebay online auction market, then you could sell winter ebay brand name merchandise through out the year and summer ebay brand name merchandise through out the year because there will always be areas of the world and country that will be cold and hot.

You could decide to sell overseas, there are many lucrative opportunities by using online ebay online auction marketto sell overseas. You could take the winter ebay brand name merchandise and sell it to areas in Alaska where it is mostly cold, you could sell it to Russia, and you could sell it to European countries during their extended winter season. If you have summer ebay brand name merchandise, you can take that ebay brand name merchandise and sell it to countries in the Middle East, you could see it to Southern states, and you could sell it to Latin America. You see, there are always opportunities out there for the ebay brand name merchandise that you want to sell or for the services that you want to offer. The challenge is to find those opportunities and to be able to match yourself with what you have to offer and what people need. When you fulfill those needs that is when you will start making money with your online ebay online auction market business.

Chapter 9

Writing a winning ebay online auction description is extremely important for your ebay online auctions. You see, while many people can put up items on online ebay online auction marketfor sale and many people can write a basic ebay online auction description, most people forget about the true value of the written word. The written word fills people imagination and excites people, it lights the fire that will drive a person to make his decisions. The written work can be said to very often to be more important then the actual visual images. When you write words, you appeal not just to people’s desire for the facts, for information, but you appeal to their emotions and you can guide them and show them how this product will fulfill those emotions that they have.

You see, people do not buy exercise equipment to get in shape. They buy the exercise equipment to enjoy the benefits of being in better shape, they will feel healthier, and they will look younger, have more energy. So when you write your ebay online auction description, let us say for exercise equipment, you would want to stress the benefits of getting in shape as opposed to only relying on listing the actual details of the machinery. You want to be able to list both factual information and you also want to be able to have what people call a sales pitch, where you are selling the item on the benefits it provides on an emotional basis or on a physical basis. See, people do not buy items; people buy solutions to their problems. They look for benefits, they look for fulfillment, you need to make it very clear through your ebay online auction description what it is what you are offering, and how what you are offering helps them.

When you write your ebay online auction description, make sure that you use words that are not hard to understand. Many customers out there do not have a high degree of education and you do not want to turn them away by using words in the description or by writing in a way that they will not understand or that will make them confused. Now, I am not putting anyone down. You do not have to have a high education or you do not even have to have a very high vocabulary in order to succeed in business or in general of life. However, since there are people out there who do not have a very high vocabulary; make sure that when you write your ebay online auction description that you are able to appeal to them as well. You want to make sure that they can understand what it is that you are selling and that they can understand the benefits of what it is that you are offering. When you write your ebay online auction description, always make it clear who you are, why people should buy from you, why people should specifically buy the product your offering, why you are the best source for that product, what the features are for the product or service that you are offering, what the benefits are for what they will receive.

You should also state some of the benefits other people have received and more importantly, if you can use testimonials provided either by the manufacturer or by the other uses of the product that use the product directly from you. Then you will do a very good job of convincing people to buy form the product or service from you. See, people want to know what other peoples experiences were with what you are offering. This way, they can also feel comfortable to know that if they purchase this product or service they will also be able to benefit. People always like to know that there is a third party verifying what you are saying. By third party, they want to know that someone besides yourself, someone besides the seller of the product or service, has benefited from the use of it or can verify that the product is of high quality and does offer the benefits that are being stated in the description.

Consumer Reports developed a multimillion-dollar business by becoming a third party verifier for many consumer items, ranging from televisions to appliances to automobiles. Whenever you can use a third party to verify what it is that you are stating or to verify the value and the benefits what it is that you are offering, you will be way ahead of your competition and you will be turning many potential online ebay bidders into actual online ebay bidders. How can you obtain third party verification? One way to do it is by asking for testimonials from your present customers and from past customers. You could even go to friends or relatives and ask them to try the product in exchange for either giving them a free sample or as a favor if they are happy with what it is that you have given them or shown them. Ask them for permission to write down their comments and post their comments on online ebay online auction market. Now if those testimonials are not legitimate you could get in trouble and you should never do it. Even if those testimonials are legitimate, but they are not serious testimonials, people will be able to see that from the comments that people have given.

If you have given someone, for instance, a book to read and the person cannot stop raving about the book like it is the greatest thing that is happened since sliced bread, people will see through that testimonial. On the other hand, if you give the book to the same friend or relative who gave you that testimonial and they take an honest look at the book and they write the reasons why they liked the book and what they feel about the book. Then people will say that even though this person might be a relative or friend of the author of the book or the seller of the book, but from the testimonial can see that the person’s true opinion has been stated. It would be even better if you could get testimonials from businesses or organizations that have benefited from the use of the product or service. People like to see that well-known businesses, organizations have also used what it is that you are offering, and they are putting their reputation, so to speak, on the line endorsing what it is that you are offering. If you could have a true endorsement from a company or well-known spokesperson such as a politician, a movie star or a musician then you will attract many more online ebay bidders who will be interested in using your item for two reasons. One reason is because they will know that someone they respect, someone they look up to, someone they might know well of, has used and benefited from the product and secondly, they will want to use a product that is associated with that famous person or entity.

Imagine how many people would love to wear the same clothes as that a famous movie star wears! Think about how many sneakers that Nike is able to sell every year because those sneakers are worn by famous basketball players. If you would like to piggyback on Nike’s success, you could offer the same sneakers that Nike sells at retail stores by selling them on online ebay online auction market. If you could offer these sneakers at a discount to what the retail stores charge, you can let people know in your ebay online auction description that these sneakers are worn by a certain famous basketball player; you will have people interested in buying the sneakers from you.

If you are selling artwork and you let people know who some of the other buyers of this artwork are, they will also want to buy the artwork if one of the buyers mentioned is well known collector, if she is a very famous business woman, if he is a famous politician. Another great endorsement to have could be written by a fellow artist in field who approves of the art done by this artist or a famous writer who compares another novelist writings to his own. I am sure you have seen on every paper back book a listing on the back of the book of other writers who enjoy the book. You will usually find two or three testimonials of other well-known writers who also enjoy this writer’s book. Even if you might not be familiar with the writer of the book, but since the book has been endorsed by other well-known writers, you will take the chance. You will say to yourself, “Since I do enjoy this persons writing style and he is comparing himself or he approves of this persons writing style, chances are I will enjoy the book.” You always want to use endorsements when possible.

A good way to get, I would not call it a testimonial, but if you had some extra comments that could help sell the product or service, is by contacting the manufacturer and having them a special paragraph giving people information on why they would benefit from using this product. See, even though the information is coming from the same source, when they see something that is written in a fresh style, which seems to be tailor made for them then people will respond differently. You are not asking for a sales pitch from the manufacturer, or wholesaler or distributor, you are asking for some extra input on what benefits that people can obtain by using this product or service. So while there are many ways to write an ebay online auction description, always make sure that you can have endorsements, testimonials, and a very effective ebay online auction description with a detailed, step-by-step guideline of why it is that this product is a quality product and offers benefits. Make sure to list all of the benefits and go into descriptive detail about the benefits offered and how these benefits fulfill the need of buyer. Make sure to write from an emotional point of view where you are appealing to the person’s emotions and true reason for purchasing the product. If you can do all of this, you should have a very effective ebay online auction description that will help you sell your ebay brand name products at the price you are looking for.

Chapter 10

Have you ever been in a situation where you have bought ebay brand name merchandise, which you just cannot sell? Have you ever made a mistake to purchase a product that would sell for a much higher price then it is actually selling? You are facing the same dilemma that 90% of retailers face at some point in their business. There are ways to sell some of your ebay brand name merchandise. While it will require imagination on your part, it can be done and when done properly, you can actually make more money then if you had sold your ebay brand name merchandise through your original planned method. The basic premise to sell slow moving ebay brand name merchandise is to take the ebay brand name merchandise and make a list of all the true benefits that ebay brand name merchandise or service will provide for the end user.

If you have fitness equipment, think of every benefit that fitness equipment can provide for the end user. It can make him feel happier when he exercises, it can give him something to do during his down time, it can help him get in shape, lose weight, get fit better, develop better stamina. What else can exercise equipment do for an end user? Well, it can help him open up a gym; it can help him set up physical rehabilitation or needs a way to slowly get back into shape. So when a summer camp can use it to provide the staff or the campers with another activity. A company could use the fitness equipment to keep their employees in shape, which would provide a benefit that the employees can use. A non-profit organization could use the fitness equipment to conduct a raffle for the equipment and use the proceeds of the raffle to raise funds. You see, there are many uses for items besides the original intended use for that item.

When you have slow moving ebay brand name merchandise, ask yourself who else can benefit from using this ebay brand name merchandise, from using this item, or from using your service. If you are selling a service on behalf of someone else, think about what all of the uses are of that service. What this process will allow you to do is to open up new channels for the ebay brand name merchandise that you are offering. While in the past, you might have only focused on one, two or three types of customers to sell the ebay brand name merchandise that you have or the ebay brand name merchandise that you specialize in, after you go through this thought process, you will have a lot more customers and a lot more outlets who you can sell your ebay brand name merchandise to. When you look at the example of the fitness equipment, you have discovered now that there are actually many more types of customers that could be interested in your ebay brand name merchandise. You will be able to write ebay online auction descriptions matching those customers and the needs of those customers and you will be able to sell the ebay brand name merchandise even though it was slow moving in the first place. If you have some toys, which are now out of style in your area, well maybe you could sell those toys to daycare centers that are always looking for a cheap source of toys, which they put out for the children to use. If you have blank tapes, for example, you could sell those blank tapes to the student market who might want to record lectures given by their professors. You could take the same blank tapes and provide them for people who are in the business of public speaking that want to record themselves to be able to analyze what their speeches sound like to the public and then they have a good way to be able to practice and to better their abilities for public speaking.

When you go through this whole entire process and you are able to develop new outlets to sell ebay brand name merchandise, it will allow you to constantly be able to sell to these new outlets. As soon as this ebay brand name merchandise starts moving and you are able to sell it, you will be able to replenish that same type of ebay brand name merchandise that was slow moving and sell it now that you have developed new outlets for it. Even though you might of never have wanted to reorder that ebay brand name merchandise because you could not wait to finally get rid of it and you would be happy if could cover your original cost for that ebay brand name merchandise.

Now that you have discovered an effective way to sell that slow moving ebay brand name merchandise at a profit, you could turn around and buy more of it. In many instances, the reason why people have slow moving ebay brand name merchandise is that they got a very good deal on it, the reason they got a good deal is that the person selling that ebay brand name merchandise knew that there really are not really, as many customers for that ebay brand name merchandise as there are for other types of ebay brand name merchandise. Let us say, you bought a large lot of pink shoe polish. Well, there really are not too many people who need pink shoe polish, but you know who might need it? Professional ballet dancers who wear pink shoes, maybe members of a circus troop could use that shoe polish. There are people who do need that shoe polish; they might even need other colors. Once you develop a market, unless you find customers who do need that pink shoe polish, you could turn around and buy more of it at that same discounted price because you could remind the person selling the shoe polish that there really are not too many customers for it.

One of the large secrets to business success is to find ebay brand name merchandise at a price that is very low because the ebay brand name merchandise does not have many customers and taking that ebay brand name merchandise and rethinking the process of selling it, reevaluating whom else can benefit from that ebay brand name merchandise and then gearing your marketing strategy to that market. How do you use online ebay online auction marketto do this? When you write the title, the ebay online auction description and when you select which category to include that ebay brand name merchandise, you will be reaching out to other types of customers who might use that ebay brand name merchandise. Now it is not enough just to list that ebay brand name merchandise in a different category, but you also have to show the people looking in that category why your ebay brand name merchandise is appropriate for them.

Let us say you have a box of old advertisements from the 1920’s. At first glance, you might think there is not much use for a box of old advertisements from the 1920’s. Do you know what the first thing I would do? I would go to the antique section on online ebay online auction market, look under advertising and sell those advertisements, but let us say that even though people do like to buy old advertisements for their antique appeal or their collectible appeal, but no one wants specifically those advertisements. So what can you do now? Think of who else could benefit from using those advertisements. I could think of someone who could definitely use it. How about an advertising agency that is always looking for new ideas? While an advertiser form the 1920’s is not exactly new, but it can be new to someone who is never seen that add and can either copy that add or obtain ideas from that add, take those ideas and then go ahead and use them for his new advertising strategy. Who else can use those advertisements from the 1920’s? Well, how about an antique store? They could put up the ads on the wall and give the store more of an antique look. What about a restaurant? The restaurant could definitely add some flavor to the decorations by putting advertisements form the 1920’s. How would you reach a restaurant owner through online ebay online auction market? You could go to the restaurant section, list your item there under supplies. Explain in your ebay online auction description how great it would be for a restaurant owner to be able to put up these ads from the 1920’s on his walls and explain whom much the customers would love to eat in a restaurant and be able to check out these interesting, original ads that have never been repeated since the 1920’s. Every restaurant owner knows that the longer he can keep his customers sitting at the table the more food and drinks they will order and the more business he will have. Therefore, the key is always to look at the product from a different angle and try to squeeze out more possibilities for selling that item. Let us through out what could seem to be an extremely hard product to sell.

Why do not we try to sell, you and me, let us come up with ideas now on how to sell clown shoes. Now, how many clowns are out there, well, maybe a thousand, two thousand? I figure it would be safe to say that those clowns are already buying their shoes from certain sources or maybe the circuses themselves are purchasing the shoes for the clowns. So, of course you could try to sell your clown shoes to the circuses, maybe to the suppliers of the circuses, you could sell it to the clowns directly, but let us say you have already exhausted that market or that the professional clowns do not specifically need those types of circus shoes you are offering. So to whom could you offer the circus shoes? How about actors in plays, if an actor is going to have a role as a clown then he will need clown shoes and he might not know where to find clown shoes. How about schools that put on productions? What about a non-profit organization that is going to be putting on a party and have one it is members dress up as a clown? What about a festival? What about a flee market that wants to have a clown to entertain customers? What about a store that wants to have an in store promotion for children who wants to have a clown give out balloons or to entertain the kids? As you can see there are many uses for those clown shoes, it is just a matter of thinking how to properly market your product.

There is always a way to market slow moving ebay brand name merchandise. There really is not such a thing as slow moving ebay brand name merchandise; what there is, is an inability to discover who needs the product and an inability to market to those customers. Sometimes, even if you know who can benefit from your product, you do not know how to reach those people. They will not know you have the product in the first place and, secondly, if you do not know how to explain to those people how they can benefit from the ebay brand name products that you are offering, they will not see the value and they will not use your product. If you can reach people, and online ebay online auction marketallows you to reach millions and millions of people, especially when you allow international online ebay bidders to purchase your items. When you develop the skills to write an add based on an emotional basis and show what emotions are fulfilled and what needs fulfilled through the acquisition of what you are offering, then you will have a very good chance of always selling the ebay brand name merchandise and the services to the market.

Chapter 11

An online ebay online auction marketebay online auction has a lot of potential and unless you know how to release the true potential of your online ebay online auction marketebay online auction, you will be missing out on a lot of business that could be yours. You see there are many benefits besides the obvious benefit of selling the item or service that you are advertising. There are many more ways to make money that are not apparent, but once examine at what an ebay online auction can do for you and if you look underneath the surface, you will see many more opportunities. One opportunity that I like to refer to as a back-end sale, is when someone wins your ebay online auction, give him or her the opportunity to purchase more ebay brand name merchandise from you. By that I mean, let them know that you have more of the same ebay brand name merchandise available and if they’d like more units then they purchased by being the top online ebay bidder at the ebay online auction and that you have that ebay brand name merchandise available for them.

For instance, let us if somebody bought through your ebay online auction a pair of shoes, when the ebay online auction is done let them know that besides that pair of shoes that they purchased from you, you can give them more shoes. Now if you are ebay online auctioning off a collectable or a very hard to find item, you do not want to tell that person that you have a lot more copies or a lot more units of the same thing because then they will regret that they paid so much if the item really is not that rare. So if you are ebay online auctioning off a comic book from 1965, let us say it is an original Spider Man, it was the first issue that Spider Man ever appeared in. You do not want to let the top online ebay bidder know that you have another five of the same comic books because he will not see the value in what he just purchased. Even though in actuality it is a very valuable item, but when you are ebay online auctioning off an item that is mass-produced and more widely available, you can let the winning online ebay bidder know that you have more of the same items and that you could offer him additional units at a discounted price. For instance, if somebody through an ebay online auction wins from you a pack of 100 batteries, you could offer that winner an additional 20 batteries at a discounted price. This way, besides the original sale that is done through the ebay online auction, you can also make more money by selling him more batteries and this can be done with any product or service. If, for instance, you ebay online auctioned off the preparation of a tax return, you can offer that person an additional year of tax preparation at a discounted price if they pre-pay now. This way you have made more money through the same ebay online auction.

Another way to do a back-end sale and to make money is to offer someone a similar product. For instance, somebody online ebay bid on a subscription for one-year magazine to Forbes, once they win that ebay online auction and pay for that one year subscription to Forbes, you could also offer them a one year subscription to Business Week, a one year subscription to Entrepreneur, a year subscription to Inc., or any other business magazine that you have access to. This way, you are making more money from the same sales. Studies have shown someone who purchases, while they have done their purchase, they are 50% more likely to make another purchase from the same seller as long as the ebay brand name merchandise is offered to them within a very short period of time within the time they made their original purchase. So if you can show them another item for sale immediately after the ebay online auction is completed. After they have paid for the item, you have a very good chance to turn them into a buyer who will purchase more items from you. There are many ways to obtain additional revenue.

Now I am going to show you another way. Another way is to look through the list of all the high online ebay bidders for your ebay online auction. By high online ebay bidders, I mean, maybe the top two or three online ebay bidders for the item that you ebay online auctioned off. Now, you want to contact the non-wining top online ebay bidders. So look at the top three or four online ebay bidders and contact all the online ebay bidders who have not won the item from you and offer them the same or similar product at the price that the top online ebay bidder won it the item for. Many times even thought they were not willing to online ebay bid that much for the item, maybe the top online ebay bid for the item was $100, even if the second highest online ebay bidder did not online ebay bid $100 for the item, when he is approached with a second chance to purchase the item, he might be willing to purchase that item. online ebay online auction marketallows you to send a second chance offer to that online ebay bidder or any online ebay bidder that the seller desires. When you send a second chance offer, what happens is the online ebay bidder can purchase the item at his top online ebay bid. But if you want them to spend more money, then contact them directly, send them an email, and then you could either sell them the item for the price that you want or compromise and sell them the item for more then they actually online ebay bid, but less then what the actual top online ebay bidder online ebay bid on the item. Now you would do this when you have more then the same item and you could also do this in any situation when you want to move volume. This way, you are opening up more opportunities to sell ebay brand name merchandise. Now, if you are having a very easy time selling the ebay brand name merchandise you might not want to contact any of the other online ebay bidders because they might end up paying less because otherwise they know they can just wait for the next ebay online auction. The flip side of that is, if you can sell the item very easily through the ebay online auction process, then do not contact any of the online ebay bidders and just wait for the next ebay online auction, make another ebay online auction, write a good item description, and just wait for another top online ebay bidder to buy the item from you. If you do have a very large quantity of items of the same thing, then I would recommend contacting the online ebay bidders.

Another way to make money from your ebay online auctions is to keep a list of every inquiry of every person who called or emailed regarding the ebay online auction and contact them after the sale is completed and offer to sell them the same or similar items in your possession. Even though they might pay less then what the top online ebay bidder paid, remember that online ebay online auction markettakes a small percentage of the sale as a fee. So if you sold the online ebay bidder an item for $100, let us say you sold them a rare record player, online ebay online auction marketwill take approximately 3% of the final price. They will take that and charge that to your fee. You are actually in effect only making $97 instead of $100. If you sell a similar record player to a person that sent you an inquiry for even $97 or $95 dollars because you do not have to give online ebay online auction market3% of the sale. You do not have pay a listing fee and you will not do not have to wait the time that it takes to go through the ebay online auction process, to receive payment to wait to actually wait to mail out the product. There are many ways to make money through your online ebay online auction marketebay online auction.

Another way is to always offer additional ebay brand name products or services within the same ebay online auction. You could list in your ebay online auction that you have large quantities available at discounted prices. Therefore, when a person looks at your ebay online auctions, they are looking at an ebay online auction for books, they are looking at a collection or small group of a hundred books, and you let them know that you have larger quantities available. Then if there is an interested book buyer, maybe perhaps that he has a large store or he is a wholesaler and he is looking at buying in quantities of a thousand or more. You could let him know that you have larger quantities, he can contact you, and you can make a deal directly, through which he can purchase books from you.

You can also offer consulting services in your ebay online auction. You could let people know that you are available to consult on a personal one-on-one basis for whatever it is that you are involved in whether if it is the book business, the art business, the clothing business, or the antique business. You could also offer them consulting on selling on online ebay online auction marketregardless what product it is that they are selling, but by selling on online ebay online auction marketand demonstrating that you are a successful online ebay online auction marketseller, people will want your advice, people will want to gain from your experience on online ebay online auction marketand people might be happy to pay you to learn from you. You should always list in all of your ebay online auctions your available for consulting and you are available to teach people how to set up their online ebay online auction market businesses.

Chapter 12

If you are familiar with online ebay online auction market, if you have spent any time looking through online ebay online auction marketyou will notice a new feature that online ebay online auction markethas added this past year. That feature is the buy-it-now option. The buy-it-now option allows you to set an option on your ebay online auction that will allow people viewing the ebay online auction to instantly purchase the item you have for ebay online auction instead of waiting for the entire ebay online auction process and other online ebay bidders to come on board and also just waiting three or four days for the ebay online auction to be completed. It allows the buyer or the potential buyer who is looking at your ebay online auction to go to the ebay online auction, then to online ebay bid on the ebay online auction and actually purchase the ebay online auction instantly, the actual item put up for ebay online auction with his online ebay bid.

For instance, if you have a watch up for sale on an ebay online auction and you set a seven day time period on the ebay online auction. Now, in those seven days, anyone could come into the ebay online auction and online ebay bid. If you have a feeling that the ebay online auction is going to end at a certain price, you could use the buy-it-now feature for that price. If you believe that the final ebay online auction price will be around $10 or, for an expensive watch, the final online ebay bid will be around $75, you can set the buy-it-now feature for $75. Meaning, that if anyone wants that watch and they are willing to pay $75 now on the spot before the ebay online auction is finalized. You can go ahead and give that option and the online ebay bidder can go ahead pay $75 by clinking on the link that says “buy-it-now”. Instantly a PayPal or credit card page will open up and he can enter his information then or he can agree to send payment through the methods that you allow, whether it is a money order, a check, a cashier’s check, a U.S. Postal money order or PayPal; you decide. Now, a buy-it-now feature has many options, has many benefits.

One strong benefit is allows a online ebay bidder that is interested in the item; it allows that online ebay bidder to purchase the item then. Why is it a good feature to use for the seller? Hey, you have an interested online ebay bidder and that online ebay bidder definitely wants that watch, but you know what? Over the course of the next five or six days, until the ebay online auction is finally done, that online ebay bidder might lose interest or he might not just loose interest, the online ebay bidder might have other things going on in his life and he could forget about the ebay online auction. So, while he is definitely interested in winning that ebay online auction and he might put in a online ebay bid at the time, he might forget about the ebay online auction when it actually comes near to completion. So let us say that online ebay bidder is willing to online ebay bid as high as $75 and currently the price of that ebay online auction is $15. He might put in a online ebay bid for $20, even though he might be willing to go as high as $75. However, four days later, when the ebay online auction is finally completed, if he or she might not be near their computer. Then what will happen is that, even though they are willing to purchase that item, but since they were not by their computer for whatever reason, they will not be able to place a online ebay bid for your ebay online auction. Maybe they have an errand to make, maybe the ebay online auction ends late at night or early in the morning or they cannot pull away from their work, or from the task that they are currently doing, then you might ask, so why does not the person in the first place, place a online ebay bid for $75? Well you see the reason is that person might not want to buy it for $75 if they feel that they have a chance for buying it for the $20 online ebay bid or they just might be interested in following the ebay online auction until it closes or lastly, the person just might not have thought of that option. They might say to themselves, yes I am willing to pay spend $75 for that watch, but if the ebay online auction is simply going now for $20 why should spend more? But if you give the buy it now feature for $75, you are telling the online ebay bidder you know that chances are you are going to get $75 for the watch or the watch will go beyond that buy-it-now price of $75.

Once a online ebay bidder sees that you have a buy-it-now feature for $75, his assumption will be, and his assumption should be correct, what you are willing to do is accept less then what you expect it to go if someone agrees to buy it now. You need to make sure that his assumption will be correct by analyzing what it is that you have for sale, so what his assumption will be is that the item will go beyond $75 and therefore, Why would the online ebay bidder expect you to do this? The online ebay bidder might say that this individual does not want to wait a full seven days for the ebay online auction tend and then to make arrangements to receive payment, but the seller is willing to take less then he actually expects the ebay online auction to end at as long as he receives payment now. Therefore, the buy-it-now feature, the buy-it-now option, makes sense to the online ebay bidder because they say to them selves, “Look you know what? The seller is willing to accept less, but he is getting his money now.” And the flip side to that also is means to a online ebay bidder that is looking at your ebay online auction that if he has a buy-it-now feature for $75, that means when the ebay online auction is completed after seven days, the actual ebay online auction price, the final online ebay online ebay bidding price, the final winning online ebay bid will be higher then $75.

You see, a buy-it-now feature is a good solution to the problem of an interested online ebay bidder simply being away from the computer when the ebay online auction is done. You see if that interested online ebay bidder will be leaving and will not be by the ebay online auction at the time when it ends, you are actually giving him an option to purchase the item now at the price that he is willing to spend. Now, the question is as a winning online ebay bidder, if the winning online ebay bidder will end up buying it for $75 or more, then question is why as a seller would you be interested in having the item up for sale with a buy-it-now option, which might be less then final winning online ebay bid? One reason, as we stated in the past, is if you want to end the sale early and you want to have your money now instead of waiting seven days, then you could use a buy-it-now feature that allows any online ebay bidder before the ebay online auction is done. Then the winning online ebay bidder would gain because he is able to buy the item without having to wait for the sale to end and you, as the seller, would gain, because you also would not have wait for the entire ebay online auction to end before you receive your money.

The reason why I would never recommend to have a buy-it-now feature on one of your ebay online auctions, unless we deal with one specific situation, is because you will be eliminating what could be a much more profitable ebay online auction. You see, if you let an ebay online auction run its natural course, you will have many new online ebay bidders coming on board as it nears its completion, including the last day, the last twelve-hour period and the last one-hour period. You would be surprised on how many more online ebay bidders will come on board and many more online ebay bids that it will produce. Think of how competitive the online ebay online ebay bidding will be for an item that is desirable during the last hour of its completion. Therefore, you want to make sure that you can allow people to come on board during the last twelve hours and last hour. If you use a buy-it-now-feature, you will not allow many of those online ebay bidders who will wait until the last minute to online ebay bid and to come on board.

The reason many wait for the last minute is that they want to avoid building up the price. If you online ebay bid for an item of $10 and I online ebay bid on the item for $15, then the lowest possible online ebay bid that someone else can place is now $15.50. However, if you and I had waited until the last minute to online ebay bid, then the lowest online ebay bid would still be $10 because no one was able to online ebay bid higher then that because there has not been a online ebay bid yet for $10. Well, they can place their online ebay bid, but as long as you do not place a online ebay bid for $10 or $15, you have not increased the base for which the next online ebay online ebay bidding level would start. Even though there are many people who will wait, everything will continue compounding and building itself up on the next online ebay bid as long as there is plenty of time left through which more and more online ebay bidders can come on board in. Now, all the last minute online ebay bidders can substantially push up the price of an ebay online auction up because it is not just one or two online ebay bidders. In many instances, but sometimes there can be ten or fifteen online ebay bidders waiting with the same strategy to online ebay bid at the last minute in hopes of acquiring the item without having to face much of the competition they would face otherwise.

Sometimes, also by waiting for the last minute to online ebay bid for an item, what happens is the online ebay bidders are hoping to send a signal to people that this is not an item worth online ebay online ebay bidding on and that is why the current price is so low. Meaning, the highest price that has been online ebay bid is so low because no one is interested and then by sending people the signal that this is not an item worth online ebay online ebay bidding on, hopefully they will discourage people and then they can come in at the last minute and purchase the item with a very low online ebay bid. Either way, what you do see is that there are many online ebay bidders who wait until the last day, until the last twelve hours and then until the last hour before placing their online ebay bid. A buy-it-now feature eliminates this process.

Now there is a time when you want to use a buy-it-now feature, that time is when the item is a very commonly available item that you are hoping to sell simply on being able to offer it at a very low price. If the item is being offered for $30 in most retail outlets and most online ebay online auction marketsellers are selling it with a minimum starting online ebay bid of $15 and you are looking to sell that item at $10. Let us suppose that at $10 you can still make your money from your purchase cost. Then you would want to use a buy-it-now feature and allow people to purchase the item at $10. This way when all the online ebay bidders see that the item is being sold elsewhere for $20 or $30 and they see that they can purchase it from you for $10, then they would be inclined to use the buy-it-now feature because they will be able to purchase the item quickly, without having to wait.

In that situation you do not mind because even if the item goes up to $20, you will already be facing competition from all of the other online ebay online auction marketsellers and if you can establish for yourself a good profit, then why not allow someone to buy it instantly? This way you can make yourself a good profit and if you have a lot of units of the same item, such as in a situation where you might have a hundred DVD players that originally retail for $200 and are sold on online ebay online auction marketfor $150. If you purchased those DVD players at a cost of $50 a piece, you might be very happy to offer a buy-it-now feature for $100. This way, people will become excited when they see your price and they will decide to buy it right away without waiting for the ebay online auction to end because you are already offering such a good price. They might not want to take the chance of loosing the opportunity to purchase a DVD player, which normally retails for $200, at $100. You do not mind selling it quickly without having to wait for the ebay online auction process to end, even though you might have actually received more then $100 because since you have a hundred units, you will be making your money in volume. If you sell a hundred units using the buy-it-now feature over the course of a month or the course of two months and make a $50 profit on each unit, you will be making $5,000. So even though you could have made maybe $6,000 or $7,000 by waiting over a three or four-month period, you now have $5,000 which you can reinvest in your business, or take out the profits enjoy the profits and reinvest the rest of the money in your business.

So you see, you always have to make a decision, are you looking for volume or are you looking to make your money per piece? If you are looking to make your money on volume, where you have many of the same items and you are willing to sell the item for a very low price. Moreover, that price will still give you a good profit, but is much lower then what the other sellers are offering the same item for; then it could be a good situation to use the buy-it-now feature.

Chapter 13

Writing an important headline is extremely important for your online ebay online auction marketebay online auction. You see the first thing that someone sees when he or she look at your ebay online auction description is the headline. They look at that headline even before they have an opportunity to see the description. You see, there is no way for them to skip the headline and look at the description as if they could do in an advertisement in a newspaper. Even when someone goes to a website, he or she could quickly brows through the website without looking at the headline that comes before the text on website.

You see, the reason that takes place is when you go to online ebay online auction marketand you look at all the listings on online ebay online auction market, you will notice the way the listings are displayed are displayed as a list by their headlines. Meaning, if you go to a certain category and you type in the word “tents”, for instance, you will see a listing of all the different ebay online auctions that have the word “tent” in them. If you look at a category, even if you look at a category, such as old baseball cards and you look at all the listings for old baseball cards, you will see a listing of ebay online auctions, but how are the ebay online auctions listed? By headlines, meaning, when you scroll down to the end of the page, you click on a certain category, and then you look at that category you will see through out the category the listings are set up according to the names, the headlines that are given. So instead of someone actually being able to see instantly a small short summery of what the item is and then deciding on based on that short summery whether the should online ebay bid on the item or not. The only thing that you can see when you examine the categories is actually the headline.

Now, online ebay online auction marketalso allow you to put a gallery picture, where you can see a small picture of the item along side of the headline, but those pictures are usually so small that what really attracts the attention of a online ebay bidder to your listing is the headline that you use. The headline will also be the first thing people see once they click on your listing. Therefore, the importance of the headline is extremely important, especially when there is a category that has a lot of competition; pretty much any item now on online ebay online auction markethas a lot of competition. When there is a lot of competition, you need to do whatever you can to make your item stand out. While having a picture, like we mentioned before, next to the headline is very important and it also helps, still the biggest selling point to get someone to take the first step and to click on your listing and then to look at your ebay online auction, is having a very strong and powerful headline.

So what kind of headline will get someone to come to your ebay online auction? Well, for starters, the headline has to be captivating. By captivating, I mean, is has to be exciting, it has to draw someone’s attention. The best way to draw someone’s attention is by appealing to people curiosity. You want people to be so curious what it is that you are offering that they will not wait to go to your listing. Meaning, I do not want people to look at other peoples listings and then say, “OK, once I have gone through the other listings, I will get through to this persons listings and once I arrive to Donny Lowy’s listing, then I will have a chance to look at his ebay online auction.” No, what I want is, I want to make my headline so exciting that people will have almost no choice, but to click on my ebay online auction first and examine my listing. Once I have them on my ebay online auction, then I have a good chance of them having them online ebay bid and what I want, not only do I want their online ebay bid, I want them to concentrate on my ebay online auction because I want them so excited about my ebay online auction that they will ignore other peoples ebay online auctions.

You see, if people get to my ebay online auction and they are not so excited, they will leave and go to someone else’s ebay online auction. But if I have given them such a good headline that it draws them in and keeps them excited and encourages to online ebay bid on my ebay online auction, what I will do is diminish the chances of them even wanting to look at someone else’s ebay online auction and I will have them exclusively devoted towards online ebay online ebay bidding on my ebay online auctions. So how can you make a headline powerful and how can you make the headline get people so curious that they are going to want to click on it? Well, you need to use words that elicit the emotions that you want. If you want someone to be curious, you could have the word secret in your headline. When you have the word secret, people will want to know what is so secret.

Another way that you can get people curious and excited at the same time, you use the word amazing, you could use the word new, people will want to know what’s new and if it is new then it must be something good, it must be something interesting. How about this for a headline, “AMAZING & NEW DISCOVERY WILL HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT!” Is that great? It is something “NEW”, so people have not tried before, it is “AMAZING”, so it must work wonders and you could even use phrase “AMAZING SECRET DISCOVERY” or “NEWAMAZING SECRET DISCOVERY”. Anything to get people excited, curious, anything that will show people it will be fulfilling in emotion. Let us say you are ebay online auctioning off a used car, a 1989 Lincoln Cadillac. While a used car, I would not say it is amazing, and I would not even say that it is so exciting and there is probably not much to be curious about, but what if your headline said, “DISCOVER THE SECRET REASON PEOPLE LOVE OLD CADILLACS!” Then in your ebay online auction description, you give reasons why people love Cadillac’s; give reasons such as why Cadillac enthusiasts are devoted towards the brand. Therefore, what you are doing then is giving people reason to be excited, you are making people curious about the car you are offering and you will draw them in. I once read of a master marketer who wrote a sixteen page sales letter, did not have any pictures included in the sales letter, he did not use any testimonials and he used his sales letter to sell $1,600 golf clubs. Now if you can sell $1,600 golf clubs without having to use any pictures or any testimonials and simply using a simple letter then you could definitely do the same with online ebay online auction market.

What is another way to make your headline very exciting and appealing? Well use the word “free” in it. When you use the word “free”, everyone wants something for free, you draw people in. You can put this in your headline, “FREE BONUS INCLUDED IN THIS Ebay online auction” or “BETTER THEN FREE”. People will be drawn into the ebay online auction because they will want to know what could be better then free. Now remember, you do not want to mislead the people, you always want to make sure that your headline is based on the reality of what it is that you are offering. However, if you can take that reality and make it sound exciting enough for people to want to try it out, then you will be doing a really good job and you will have people coming to your ebay online auction and looking forward to seeing what other types of ebay online auctions you have.

online ebay online auction marketalso allows you to set your headline in bold. You could have the whole headline in bold and you could highlight it as well. online ebay online auction markethas found that having your ebay online auction in bold and highlighted can help the actual number of visitors who come to your ebay online auction increase and they have actually found that average ebay online auction that used a bold and highlighted headline received higher online ebay bids then a similar ebay online auction that did not have those two features. I recommend that your headline should be set in bold and should be highlighted. Together it costs about $6 to have those features set up. If your ebay online auction is something where your profit will be at a minimum over $10 then I would suggest that you do spend the $6 extra. This way, if you know you are going to be making $10, so you have $6 to cover your cost out of the $10 profit and at the same time, you can increase that $10 profit to at least to perhaps $15 or $20 by attracting more online ebay bidders to your ebay online auction. You see the more online ebay bidders you have at your ebay online auction, the higher your price will go. Anything you can do, including the headline, to make your ebay online auction that much more interesting will draw online ebay bidders in and will, hopefully give you a much higher final winning online ebay bid, which result in more money in your pocket.

Chapter 14

When you go through the listing process on online ebay online auction market, you will notice that one of the options you are allowed to select from is the how long you want the ebay online auction to run. You can select the ebay online auction to run for a three-day period, a five-day period, or a seven-day period and for an additional $0.10 charge, you could have your ebay online auction running for ten days. Meaning, that when you submit all the options for the listings, there are different listing fees and there is an extra $0.10 if you want you ebay online auction to run for ten days. Otherwise, you can select to run the ebay online auction for three days, for five days, seven days, or ten days. So the question is how long should you have your ebay online auction run?

One of the biggest questions when it comes to having an ebay online auction on online ebay online auction marketis whether by having a shorter ebay online auction you put more pressure and more competition on the online ebay bidders and produce a higher online ebay bid. Or on the other hand, by having a longer ebay online auction do you allow more time for new online ebay bidders to come in and push up the price as their online ebay bids become added to the online ebay bids that are already placed by the people who have been following the ebay online auction. Now the simple way out would be just to have a compromise, to say let us not make it a three day ebay online auction, let us not make it a ten day ebay online auction, perhaps one time make it a five day ebay online auction another time make it a seven day ebay online auction. The reason that solution is not good is because a three-day ebay online auction produces very different results for different ebay brand name products then a seven-day ebay online auction would for other ebay brand name products.

You see if you have an ebay online auction that is taking place due to an event and that you are looking to capitalize on something that happening in the media or something that is happening in life now. That makes what you are offering very exciting. Then you might want to make a very, very short ebay online auction, meaning you want to make a three day ebay online auction and have a buy-it-now feature, this way people who are excited about what’s going on in the media and want to partake in the fad or craze for a certain collectible can jump on the opportunity and win your ebay online auction. If, on the other hand, you have something up for sale that which is not directly related to a current event, then you are not as constrained by the time.

So let us say, for instance, they made an Elvis Presley movie and a lot of people who otherwise would not have collected Elvis Presley now are really excited. They are looking to buy up all types of Elvis Presley collectibles in the hope that once the movie comes out the value of all Elvis Presley collectibles will sky rocket in value. Now you want to capitalize on that anticipation and the increase in price is for collectibles that is already taking place due to the rush of new collectors and new investors looking to make money off those collectibles. So what would you do in that situation? You would probably want to have an ebay online auction for a very, very short period of time, this way, while the craze is taking place, while the fad is taking place, and there is a lot of excitement and there is a lot of desire and interest to purchase Elvis Presley collectibles. What you would want is to have a very short ebay online auction, so while the craze is taking place, the people will come on board, look at your ebay online auction, online ebay bid it up, and hopefully buy it.

If on the other hand, let us say you are ebay online auctioning off a collectible, which there always seems to be a steady demand, let us say you find an antique. You found an old chest set from the early 1800’s, now that chest set will appeal to two groups. One group will be antique collectors and the other will be people who are chest enthusiasts who would love to have a chest set from the early 1800’s. Now an item like that, you want to give it as much time as possible to attract the attention from different online ebay bidders and you also want that the people that are online ebay online ebay bidding for the ebay online auction to have plenty of time to compete against each other. Therefore, you should make it a ten-day ebay online auction. See the difference is by the Elvis Presley collectible, if you make the ebay online auction too long, there is a chance that in a few days, the pent up desire for Elvis Presley collectibles could dissipate and you will be left holding on to that collectible without having been able to sell it for a decent price.

If you have an item that there is a steady amount of interest and it is not dependant on an event that is taking place, then you have more time to ebay online auction off that item. Another example would be if you are ebay online auctioning off a used care and the mileage of the car is not going to be changing anymore because you are not driving it. Then you want to give that ebay online auction as much time to run so that people could find the ebay online auction, people could online ebay bid on the ebay online auction, and the competition for that item, the used car, will build. Now, on the other hand, you have maybe a bottle of wine and the bottle of wine is champagne and the champagne, as I have been told, is best served when it is eighteen years old and if it is getting close to its nineteenth birthday, then you want to make the ebay online auction as short as possible. This way you do not take any chance of getting close to that nineteenth birthday. Especially, and this does happen sometimes, the high online ebay bidder drops out and actually does not pay for the ebay online auction and you are forced to re-list the item, then you are going to be under a lot of pressure due to the time and due to the time that is running out.

Another example is if you are ebay online auctioning off vitamins and the vitamins have an expiration date coming up in another two weeks; so the vitamins are still good for the next two weeks and someone who uses them can enjoy them for the next two weeks until the expiration date until their expiration date comes to be. Now, since you have a very limited amount of time, you want to make it a very short ebay online auction. You want people will say to themselves, “It is a three day ebay online auction and even after waiting two or three days to have it delivered, I can still use these vitamins for the next week and a half. It is worthwhile for me to purchase these vitamins at a highly discounted price even though the expiration date is coming soon.”

Another item where you would want to have a ten-day ebay online auction or if possible, if ever online ebay online auction marketallows you to have is an even longer ebay online auction period. You would want it if you were ebay online auctioning off a business. You see, if you are ebay online auctioning off a business, the business will be there; it is not disappearing. The interest for a business is not based on a fad, it is based on people’s interest to be in business and to make more money then they are currently making. Therefore, with a business, you will want to give it time to attract as many online ebay bidders as possible. You will want time to draw in as many people as possible and you will want to give people time as the ebay online auction is taking place. You do not want them to feel pressured in the sense that they should feel that they have the opportunity to call you up to discuss the business with you, to research the business and then place their online ebay bid. If it is a three-day ebay online auction there is no way that people will be able to feel that they have done all the research that they need before the ebay online auction is finalized. Many people will become, I would not say discouraged, but they might become turned off at being forced to make a decision in such a short period of time over what could be an expense of thousands and thousands of dollars. So they would hesitate to even online ebay bid in that ebay online auction, they might just ignore the ebay online auction.

Although, if you give people a ten ebay online auction, then during that ten-day window of opportunity they can call you up, they call the reference that you have given and then they can decide if this really for them. Now, according to that logic, you might say that it really does not pay to ebay online auction off a business at all on online ebay online auction market. I mean why put something up for ebay online auction where people might become unmotivated to want to online ebay bid in the ebay online auction due to the time constraints that they have. You see, the reason I still think that online ebay online auction marketis a perfect place to ebay online auction a business is because when you make something an ebay online auction people know that at some point time will run out and they will not be able to purchase the business, in this case, again. They know that they have to make a decision and they have to make it now. If it is for them, they know that if they do not act on the opportunity and online ebay bid and try to win this business then they will have missed out on a good opportunity. Ten days is a good amount of time to investigate it.

See when a business is sold through a business broker or through more commonly accepted methods, what happens is that people have months and months to negotiate, to research a business and if a better deal comes up, they will switch to the next deal. They will investigate that deal, and if that deal does not pan out, then they will return to your business, which is for sale, and they will spend a lot of time negotiating and looking around. They can actually even use the fact that there might not be other people interested in your business as a negotiating tactic, but if you go ahead and set a ten ebay online auction and people know that if they do not make their decision in ten days, they will have missed out for good on the opportunity to have this business. This will also force them to make a decision and will put more leverage on your side. Because even if people call you up and try to negotiate, you could tell them that there are other online ebay bidders who are interested and if in ten days that they do not put in a online ebay bid, too bad. I will simply have to sell the business to someone else. Therefore, in an item such as a business, I would recommend that you go ahead and select a ten-day ebay online auction period so you allow people to investigate the ebay online auction and at the same time, it forces people to act on it and make their decision soon. Especially if you are going to go ahead and ebay online auction off a large ticket item, such as a business or a car, then you can definitely afford to spend an extra $0.10 to extend the duration of the ebay online auction.

Chapter 15

Learning how to run an ebay online auction on online ebay online auction marketand learning what you can do to make your ebay online auction appealing and successful is half of the battle. Like the old cartoon says, “There is another half to the battle and that half to the battle is knowing what mistakes to avoid.” You need to know that, especially when you run a business, what are the biggest mistakes that seller do to turn off online ebay bidders. Some of the biggest mistakes that people do to turn off online ebay bidders are high handling fees, high shipping costs, high opening online ebay bids, low feedback or negative feedback, poor quality pictures, bad grammar, and very vague ebay online auction descriptions. So let us go into each one.

First, I am sure that you realize that people, when they are coming to look at an ebay online auction, they are really just looking at the ebay online auction as any advertisement they would see in a newspaper, in a magazine, on T.V., or the radio. They realize that the person looking to sell is most probably engaged in a business and because that person is engaged in a business, on one hand, their defenses are up so they are going to be more careful, more worry over what it is that they are purchasing from you, the transaction they are going to enter from you. On the other hand, since they know you are in business, they expect certain standards from you. If you do not meet those standards, they will not see you as a legitimate businessperson and they might not want to conduct business with you. If you want to make sure that you are able to have customers and that you are able to have a long-term relationship with those customers and have them as repeat buyers, which are the life-blood of any business, and then you need to make sure to avoid the worst mistakes that online ebay online auction marketsellers do.

So let us look at the first mistake; high handling fees. A high handling fee is a fee that sellers charge people for putting together their ebay online auction and sending it out. You see the reason why buyers do not like to see that handling fee is because while they do realize that it is going to take some effort on your part to actually pack your belongings and to mail them out or to pack your ebay brand name merchandise and to ship it out to them. They realize that is part of doing business. When they work on their jobs or when they run their own businesses, they do not charge for many services. For example, if they are a wholesaler and they are delivering socks to a store, they do not charge the store a delivery charge, they just simply pack up the socks into a van, deliver the socks to the vendor, and then charge the storeowner for the socks. Their money is made from the profit of the socks. online ebay online auction marketonline ebay bidders, or buyers on online ebay online auction market, have also come to the conclusion that they do not mind a seller making money off of the items that he is selling, but their profit should be restricted to the actual cost of the item minus or plus what is paid for. Therefore, if an item costs the seller $10 and the online ebay online ebay bidding goes up to $25 and then the buyer realizes that he will have to pay for shipping and handling, he might find it very insulting that on top of profit that you made he has to pay for an additional handling charge. While it might look fair on your part, since the customer is king, especially on an online ebay online auction market business, you need to make sure to keep your customer happy, especially if you want the customer to come back and make a second or third purchase from you. So avoid at all costs handling fees. If you find that it is just not worthwhile to sell ebay brand name merchandise without charging a handling fee, then you should look at selling a different type of product that gives you a higher profit margin.

The next big mistake is high shipping costs, now a shipping cost can be avoided. Shipping costs is just part of doing business and buyers realize that, but buyers can become extremely suspicious if they see a very high shipping cost that does not reflect the reality based on what they have paid in other situations. Remember, chances are that the buyer has already bought similar items from other sellers and if those other sellers charge for shipping $25 and you are looking to charge $50, that buyer will become very, very suspicious and might not even complete the transaction with you even if later on you offer to lower the shipping. What I suggest from the beginning is always find out the cheapest way to ship out the ebay brand name merchandise, make sure you find the cheapest way to ship out the ebay brand name merchandise and if the buyer balks at such a high shipping cost, if your profit allows it, subsidize the shipping. Offer to pay some money towards the shipping. This way the person who is bought the ebay brand name merchandise from you will feel happy that you have actually gone a step further, subsidize the shipping, and made it cheaper for him. Now you can look at the amount of shipping out of your own pocket just as a business expense. You could say to yourself, “OK, the cost now for the item I sold for $50 is no longer $10; it is now $15 because I have to put $5 towards the shipping.” I think it is worth it because what you have done now is you have secured yourself a good, loyal customer who is always going to remember how you took care of him by paying for some of the shipping. At the same time, you still have the sale; you still have the profit that you make, minus the additional cost of the shipping that you paid for.

Another mistake that people make that needs to be avoided is allowing them selves to receive negative feedback. The feed back system allows sellers and buyers to look at each other’s feedback and to see how other members of online ebay online auction markethave rated this person when they have conducted transactions with this individual. They can see if the seller or buyer has received negative feedback saying the other person was unsatisfied with the transaction. A neutral saying that the person was not thrilled with the transaction but he is still not happy enough with the person to give the person a positive feedback, and then a positive feedback is where the person is actually happy that they conducted the transaction with the other online ebay online auction marketmember. The way to avoid having negative feedback is by making sure to always engage in a legitimate and honest transaction and to go ahead and do your best to resolve any situations before the buyer or seller gives you a negative feedback. If one of the parties you are dealing with is not happy, ask what it is that you can do to make it up to him or her and see what it is you can do to make them happy. Many times all it takes to make the other party comfortable is just expressing yourself with sincerity, to communicate properly and to let the person know that you are willing to work with him or her, that you are willing to do whatever it takes to make them happy. That communication by itself can help you receive positive feedback in a situation where instead, you could have received negative feedback and, of course, your communications and your sentiments have to be backed by action. You have to make sure that you will be delivering something positive for the seller or buyer as the situation might be.

Low feedback could also be a problem. Low feedback arises even when you have only received positive feedback, but you have only received a few feedbacks. If you only have two or three feedbacks in your profile history, people might be very weary to do business with you, whether you are looking to buy or sell because they just simply do not know enough about you to trust you. The way to cure this situation where you have low feedback, what you can do is you can engage in as many transactions as a buyer, complete the transactions, pay for the transactions and then ask the seller to leave you positive feedback. You can buy a lot faster then you can sell. If you buy five items and complete the transaction, you are happy with what you have done and the seller is happy with you, then you can receive five positive feedbacks, where in the past you would have had to wait a long time before you sold five different items and received positive feedback form those buyers. Another thing you can do while you have low feedback, if you do not want to buy anything or if you have already bought ebay brand name merchandise and still want to increase your appearance, is in your ebay online auction description, give over a lot of information about yourself. About what it is that you do, you could put testimonials in the ebay online auction description and what you could also do is you can also let people know that you have references available upon request. This way, people will feel comfortable knowing that there are people who you did business with, who are very happy, and if they need to contact them, they can contact them.

Having poor quality pictures can be a discouragement to online ebay bidders. Having a poor quality picture can sometimes be worse then not having a picture at all. If you do not have a picture in your ebay online auction description, they still might online ebay bid on the item and you still might receive a decent online ebay bid. It is not that bad because people can use their imagination and if it is a product that they are familiar with or a product that they do not need to see a picture for it still might sell. Of course having a good quality picture is the best and will always work in your favor, but if you can only have access to a poor digital camera or have a bad quality picture, avoid the situation of having a poor quality picture and turning off online ebay bidders. Instead, do not have a picture at all. Now, not having a picture is not the best substitute for having a poor quality picture. Your goal really should be to have a good quality picture. How do you do that? You go ahead and purchase yourself a good digital camera or at the beginning get a friend or a professional photographer take pictures for you.

Now one thing we mentioned that turns online ebay bidders away on online ebay online auction marketis having a bad ebay online auction description. By bad ebay online auction description I mean that you are ebay online auction description is vague, so people just do not know what it is that you are selling or do not clearly understand why they should purchase it from you. If it is vague enough, people will even become suspicious that you are trying to hide information or, God foronline ebay bid, you are trying to mislead them. Another mistake that people make, which does happen very often and is really no fault at the seller, is using bad grammar while you are describing your ebay online auction. People will just simply say that this is not professional, this person does not seem educated, and they will not online ebay bid on your ebay online auction. Even if it is something they really want, but if they see bad grammar in the ebay online auction description or they do not see an ebay online auction description that has not been written that well, they will say to themselves that probably the ebay brand name merchandise is just at the same quality as the ebay online auction description, right? They will relate both of them because they are both being produced by the same person. The same person writing the ebay online auction description is the same person who will be selling them the ebay brand name merchandise. You do not want to turn them off by having bad grammar and leaving them to believe that the quality of your business is as poor as the grammar or style of your ebay online auction description.

That can be resolved easily by having a friend, a relative, a teacher, a college student, an editor proof read your ebay online auction before you put it up on online ebay online auction marketand always getting a second opinion never hurts. Having a second opinion allows you to have the clarity of mind and allows you to know beyond a reasonable doubt whether you have done a good job on writing a good solid ebay online auction description. In addition, when you show that ebay online auction description to someone else, you will also know besides the question about whether the grammars good or not, you will also know if you have written the ebay online auction in a way that is appealing to people. If you show the ebay online auction description to a friend of yours who loves fishing and he reads the ebay online auction description and says, “Well, your grammar’s great, but I just really would not want to buy what’s being offered in this ebay online auction.” Then, you could say to yourself, either the ebay brand name merchandise is either of poor quality, which is good to know because the next time you could sell something else. Or if you know the ebay brand name merchandise is really good and it is being offered at a very cheap price then you know that the ebay online auction description, although the grammar may be correct, it is still, the ebay online auction description does not live up to the product that you are trying to sell. It always helps to have a second opinion and hopefully a second opinion done by someone who has a very good grasp on the English language. Luckily, if you can avoid these mistakes, you will be on your way to setting up a successful online ebay online auction market business that can produce good revenues for you and your family. Remember, it is not always knowing what you need to do, but also knowing what not to do in order to be successful.

Chapter 16

One of the integral parts to running an online ebay online auction market business is society is learning to shift the ebay brand name merchandise to be sold to online ebay online auction marketbuyers. When you sell ebay brand name merchandise, there are many things you want to take into account. One thing that we previously mentioned in a past chapter is the cost of the shipping. Since the cost of the shipping is a major part of the cost of the entire price, which the buyer will be paying you, you want to make sure that the shipping can be as cheap as possible. This way, potential online ebay bidders will not get discouraged by high a shipping cost and will online ebay bid on your items. Also, if a online ebay bidder consider purchasing more then one item from you, if the shipping is cheap enough he will not mind buying more items and buying more ebay brand name merchandise from you because the shipping will not add up to be a great expense. You see, keeping the shipping cost helps just from an economical point of view from the seller’s point of view also, because it encourages the online ebay bidders to purchase your items and more of your items.

Another thing to remember, a buyer might not actually be that concerned with the shipping cost, per say. By that I mean, that he is not so concerned with what the shipping will cost him as compared to the total amount, meaning the potential buyer is approaching the ebay online auction with the desire to buy ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction market. When he looks at that ebay online auction, he is looking at an ebay online auction for a compact C.D. player, and he wants to buy that Aiwa compact C.D. player that retails for $350 in the store, the buyer might set for himself a budget of $100. That $100 that he is willing to spend will include the shipping. If the shipping that you charge or the shipping expense from the shipping company or your method of shipping is $30, it will allow the potential online ebay bidder to spend up to $70 for the item. Since you make your money from the sale of the item and not from the shipping and you want to make sure that the shipping will cost as cheap as possible, this way the buyer will be willing to spend more money from his budget toward the cost of the item. So if the item per say has a shipping charge of only$20 instead of $30, that online ebay bidder who is willing to spend a total of $100, will now be giving you $80 instead of only $70 and $30, which would have gone for the shipping.

Now, in order to keep the cost of your shipping down, there are few things you can do before we actually discuss how you should ship the item. One thing what you will need to do is use packing supplies. One of the most used supplies is a simple cardboard box. There are many sizes and dimensions of cardboard boxes and the prices can range anywhere from $0.50 a box all the way to $2 a box. Keeping the cost of the box down is very important because in many items you will be working with a very little margin, especially if you will become a high volume online ebay online auction marketseller, then saving $1 a box or $1 per shipment will add up very quickly. Sometimes within a shipment, I can send out fifteen, twenty, or thirty boxes at a time. If I can save $1 off the cost of each cardboard box, I will be making an extra $20 or $30 per sale. An extra $20 or $30 per sale may not sound like a lot, but if you are doing ten ebay online auctions a week and you can save an extra $200 to $300, which means putting in your pocket an extra $200 to $300, then you will be coming out ahead of the game. If you pass on that savings to your buyers, which I recommend, the buyer will be able to spend more money on the ebay online auction itself. You will have a happier buyer because you will have helped them save money, which will lead to that buyer becoming a repeat buyer and hopefully you will be able to do a good deal of business with him or her.

Now, another way to keep the cost of the shipping down, which is much overlooked, and it is actually quite simple. Is you can approach stores and ask them if they have any boxes that they have received from shipments that they were going to throw away. Instead of throwing them away, would it be possible for them to set them aside every week and allow you to pick up the boxes at the end of the week. This way they will not have to deal with the hassle of flattening out the boxes, bundling them up and disposing them through the correct recycling method. Instead, all they have to do is set aside the boxes. If you consider how many boxes a large super market goes through on a daily basis, you will realize that setting up a relationship with the super market or a large retailer or even with a few retailers can save you money over the course of a year by helping you eliminate the cost of having to purchase cardboard boxes.

Another expense is all the tape you will need to seal the boxes, of course you will want to use professional graded tape, which is excepted by the postal office and by UPS, depending on which one you do your shipping with but you wan to make sure that you have the greatest quality tape. That tape usually cannot be bought at a store and it is recommended that if you can find it at a local packing store, you would probably want to look for a supplier of packing supplies and purchase it from them. When you purchase packing supplies, whether they are cardboard boxes, whether it is bubble filling, whether it is Scotch tape, whether it is any type of supply; labels which you use for your shipping. You should compare prices online because online there is an intense amount of competition and there are many providers of packing supplies who will be competing for your business.

One way to keep your costs down is if you see a cheaper price somewhere else, you could mention it to your current supplier and have them lower the price in order to keep your business. Very often, I have mentioned, prices that suppliers had to another supplier and let the suppliers fight it out amongst each other and offer me a cheaper price. This way I have been able to bring a bill from $100 to $70 simply by mentioning that another supplier had a cheaper price. Another thing you can do, which can help you with your cash flow, is ask for credit from your supplier. The way you do this is you ask them, from the beginning, if he could allow you to pay your bill thirty days after you receive the ebay brand name merchandise. Some suppliers will instantly, without you asking, extend you a $100 credit and even give you sixty days to pay your bill. This way, you purchase the packing supplies, you send out the ebay brand name merchandise, of course you have already been paid for your ebay online auction before hand, and now you have sixty days when instead of using some of the money you received now from the buyer of the ebay brand name merchandise, in order to send it out to your supplier of packaging supplies. You could take that money and reinvest it in ebay brand name merchandise, and then only sixty days later with the next proceeds of your next sale then go ahead and pay for your supplies. You are always staying ahead of the game by having extra money, which having extra money that you do not have to use to pay for your supplies right away. There are many ways to keep your costs down and to even give yourself credit in order to extend the cash that you have available for your business and any cash that you save while running your business and any credit that you obtain allows you to spend that money in order to buy more ebay brand name merchandise. The more ebay brand name merchandise you have, the more you can sell, the more money you can make, and so on; you will be able to continue to grow your business.

So now, the next question is how should you ship your ebay brand name merchandise? Well, there are many ways to ship your ebay brand name merchandise. One way is to simply go to the postal office, ask them how much it costs to send out the ebay brand name merchandise, to have an estimate ready, and give the estimate out to potential online ebay bidders who ask you how much it will cost to ship out the ebay brand name merchandise. Once you receive payment from the winning online ebay bidder, you go to the postal office, send out the box, and pay them and you move on to your next ebay online auction. Another method is to have the shipping done with UPS. You could go to a UPS center, have the ebay brand name merchandise packed properly, have a label put on which UPS can give you, you have the label placed on the box and you send it out from the UPS center. Alternatively, for an additional $4 you can have UPS come to your location, whether it is to your house or business, pick up the ebay brand name merchandise, and deliver for you. That is very convenient, especially if you sending out boxes very often, or if you just do not have the time to go to the post office or to UPS to send out the packages.

If you have a job where you do not have time during the day to go to an UPS center, then it might be ideal to let UPS come pick up the boxes from you. You could set up a morning or evening pick up from UPS, I believe an evening pick up time has a small additional charge, but it is worth it. If you have a full time job and the only way for you to send out your ebay brand name merchandise is by UPS picking it up in during the evening, what would you rather do? Not have that extra expense or not have your extra money coming in from your online ebay online auction market business? I think you would agree with me that it is worth having to spend a little extra money on UPS if it will enable you to make money with your online ebay online auction market business, even while holding a full-time or part time job. Remember that UPS does not send out to any military bases or to P.O. Boxes. If you are going to be shipping to P.O. Boxes, you would have to use the post office. You can tell the potential online ebay bidders that if you will be delivering to P.O. Boxes, you will have to use the post office instead of UPS and then there would be an extra $5 handling charge for having to go to the post office and spend the time going there while you could be running your business. If you feel that $5 is too high to the total price of the item that you are selling, well then you could charge a $2 or a $3 handling fee, which is reasonable since most companies charge at least a handling fee of $4.95. As I mentioned earlier, you want to stay away from handling fees because once you have a handling fee then people might feel taken advantage of, especially when they could purchase the item somewhere else without a handling fee maybe at a price near what you are charging. Avoid all handling fees unless you can give the online ebay bidder a very legitimate reason why there is a handling fee. I think anybody could understand that if you have to take time out of your busy day to go to a post office and stand in line for half an hour to mail out a package that you will only make a few dollars from. I think it would be reasonable to ask for a handling fee. When you send out your ebay brand name merchandise, always make sure that it is packed to the specifications of the shipper, whether it is UPS or the postal office. This way, if you run into any problems where the package is damaged during transportation, you will be able to claim the insurance.

In order to claim insurance on your item, you will have to pay for insurance at the postal office or through UPS; you will have pay for insurance over the initial $100 of insurance that you automatically receive on the box. In order to claim insurance on the box you will have show the postal office or UPS the receipt for the cost of your goods. If you do not have a receipt, it might not be worthwhile to insure the ebay brand name merchandise because they simply will not pay for the ebay brand name merchandise that is been lost unless you can show them a receipt for the value of the ebay brand name merchandise. You always want to insure it just so you at least have a fighting chance to recover some of the money and maybe even if you do not have a receipt you could show UPS or the postal office what cost typically is by showing them a catalog or by showing them receipts for similar ebay brand name merchandise. This strategy is not guaranteed to work, but it will give you a fighting chance when you do not have a receipt.

When you send out your ebay brand name merchandise with UPS, it will also give you the added protection of having the buyer sign for the ebay brand name merchandise to show people that he has or she has received the ebay brand name merchandise and they can dispute later if they have received the ebay brand name merchandise. The postal service will not automatically ask for a signature from the receiver. Therefore, what you want to do is, if you send out from the postal office, you should charge an extra $1.50 to have a guaranteed signature. Meaning this way, when the postal office delivers, they will ask from the recipient a signature and you will be assured that the person did receive the ebay brand name merchandise and that the correct person did receive the ebay brand name merchandise. This way the person can dispute later that someone else received their ebay brand name merchandise instead of them. If through fraud, someone does pretend to be them, then you will be protect by the postal office or UPS because it is their responsibility to deliver the ebay brand name merchandise to the correct person as long as you have done everything to ensure that the ebay brand name merchandise is sent to the right person. Meaning you have provided the correct address, you have provided the correct spelling of the persons first and last name.

Shipping is job within itself, many large online ebay online auction marketsellers work; spend a lot of time, actually working on the shipping. What they do as their business grows; they even go ahead and move on to hiring a full or part time person to help them with the shipping for their online ebay online auction market business. I know of one firm, which does up to $6,000 to $7,000 a month in business on online ebay online auction marketand you would be shocked to hear what their profit margin is and I will even tell you now, between you and me now, it is sometimes as high as 80% on the ebay brand name merchandise they are sending out. Do the math and you will see that they are making a lot money; they could easily make up to $4,000 profit a week. They have a full time person doing to the listings, there is a second person who separates the ebay brand name merchandise, describes what kind of ebay brand name merchandise they have. They have a third person taking pictures of the items and putting their pictures online. They have a fourth person devoted exclusively to shipping out their ebay brand name merchandise. They have a fifth person devoted exclusively towards purchasing the ebay brand name merchandise, towards looking for good deals and negotiating. They even have another person who exclusively works on selling the ebay brand name merchandise, dealing with questions from online ebay online auction marketonline ebay bidders, and working on selling them additional ebay brand name merchandise, once they have purchased ebay brand name merchandise.

As we mentioned, you want to have a list of all of your online ebay online auction marketcustomers so you can try to sell them more ebay brand name merchandise in the future similar to the ebay brand name merchandise that they have already bought from you. As you see, there are many options that you have when it comes to shipping. Another option that I mentioned is you could actually go to a Mailbox Plus center, you could go to any of these private shipping centers and for a small fee above what UPS charges to ship the ebay brand name merchandise, they will pack up the ebay brand name merchandise for you and ship it out. That is a great option for somebody who is starting an online ebay online auction market business and does not have the time to spend packing the ebay brand name merchandise up, does not want first go buy packing supplies and then having to spend the time learning how to use the supplies. Which really is not that difficult, but it does take time out of your day to sort out the boxes, to decide which is the best box to use, which is the best tape to use, and how to use the tape to seal the box correctly. The sellers who use these centers are saving a lot of time by simply having to drop off the ebay brand name merchandise, leaving, paying for the cost of sending out the ebay brand name merchandise and never having to be concerned with it until it arrives again by the buyer of the ebay brand name merchandise.

You should always consider your options when it comes to shipping and give yourself the right to take the easy way out when you need to. By the easy way out, I mean is be willing to pay someone else to do the grunt work; be willing to pay someone, whether it is a high school kid, a college student or a retiree, for some of the work. Pay him to have the ebay brand name merchandise shipped for you, pay him to have the ebay brand name merchandise taken to the post office, to have someone to wait for UPS to pick up ebay brand name merchandise. You see, there is no reason why you cannot find someone else; there are many people who are looking for work and would be happy to make an extra $50 or $100 a week if you can give them work. Even as your business grows, you might even decide to hire a part-time person or even a full-time employee to help you with your online ebay online auction market business. So make sure you use the resources that you have at your disposal and always remember that there is an entire business sector set up just to help online ebay online auction marketsellers conduct their business.

Chapter 17

What is the best price to start an ebay online auction? Starting an ebay online auction on online ebay online auction marketrequires many of the things that we have mentioned including often being able to determine at price to start an ebay online auction. You see, what people see when they come to your ebay online auction is they see the opening online ebay bid. The opening online ebay bid is one of the major elements to what will attract potential online ebay bidders to your ebay online auction. The reason that they are attracted to your ebay online auction based on the online ebay bid is because then it becomes more realistic in their mind whether they will be able to purchase that item, if it is worth purchasing and they could become excited depending upon the price that they see.

Of course, if the online ebay bid is very, very low, if you start it your ebay online auction at $1 a online ebay bid or even below $1 a online ebay bid, people will become very excited that they might say to themselves that they will be able to purchase the ebay online auction for a very, very cheap price. If people see an ebay online auction for a $1,000 item, starting at $1, they will be inclined to go ahead and try to purchase that item at $1. If they see $1,000 worth of ebay brand name merchandise being offered at the starting online ebay bid of $1, the price of the online ebay online ebay bidding will escalate very quickly because think about how many people would be willing to online ebay bid up to $100 to purchase a $1,000 worth of ebay brand name merchandise. You will have many people who are willing to online ebay bid that much because they will want to have this lifetime opportunity. In order to have those people wanting to online ebay bid, you have to, of course, show them a very good picture of what they are getting. Make sure that they see the high value of the ebay brand name merchandise that you are offering or of the service that you are offering and have a very low online ebay bid that will incline them to wanting to online ebay bid on your ebay online auction.

You might think that the solution is always to start the ebay online auction with a very low opening online ebay bid. The reason you do not want to do this is that if you have a very low opening online ebay bid, you will also take away some of the perceived value of the item that you are offering. If you have $1,000 worth of ebay brand name merchandise and you start the online ebay online ebay bidding at a dollar, some people will be turned off because they will say, “you know what? There has got to be to something wrong with this ebay brand name merchandise or this ebay brand name merchandise is really not worth the value of how it is being portrayed to be worth and I do not even want it for $1, I do not want it for $10.” For example, if you saw a $500 suit being offered with an opening online ebay bid of $1, you might say to yourself, “You know what? There has got to be holes in the suit, the suit must be irregular, it must be low quality.” If you do not see too many other online ebay bidders interested in that suit, you will say that other people much have come to the same conclusion and you will simply stay away from that suit, you will not even online ebay bid $10 for that suit because if it is garbage you will not want it for any price. There is a very delicate balance between discovering what the proper online ebay bid is for the item; having a low enough opening online ebay bid that people will be interested in online ebay online ebay bidding on your item. At the same time having a high enough opening online ebay bid that reflects to some extent the value of item even at a huge discount so that people will see the perceived value and will want to online ebay bid on your item.

So if you have, let us say you have a collection of antique furniture and this collection of antique furniture has a value of over $10,000. I think it would be reasonable for people to expect to buy this ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction market, let us say at 80% discount, even a 90% discount, but they would not expect to be able to see that ebay brand name merchandise at a $1 or $5 because then they would conclude that it is simply junk. I mean, why would an online ebay online auction marketseller who has $10,000 worth of ebay brand name merchandise take a chance on selling it on online ebay online auction marketfor $100, when he could probably go to an antique show, he could probably contact an antique dealer and get at least $1,000 for it. There would be nothing wrong, in order to be able to attract a lot of attention to your ebay online auction, to start the opening online ebay bid at $100. This way the online ebay bid is high enough that people say to them selves, “Look, you know what? If the opening online ebay bid is $100, this ebay brand name merchandise must have some value to it, otherwise nobody would even consider online ebay online ebay bidding for that opening price of $100 and the seller would not consider listing the item for an opening online ebay bid of $100.”

One strong strategy that is worth using is actually setting the opening online ebay bid substantially higher because what happens then is you will elicit a lot of interest from people who wonder why is this ebay brand name merchandise being ebay online auctioned off with such a high opening online ebay bid? They will say to them selves, “You know what? This ebay brand name merchandise must really have some value to it.” Even if they do not purchase the ebay brand name merchandise directly from online ebay online auction marketand if they do not place a online ebay bid for the ebay brand name merchandise because the opening online ebay bid is too high. What will happen is they will go ahead and they will contact you, they will send you an email or they will call you up and they will try to find out why it is that you are offering that ebay brand name merchandise with such a high opening online ebay bid. When you explain to them that this antique furniture is worth $10,000 and has a wholesale value of at least $5,000, you could even arrange a private deal and sell them the ebay brand name merchandise for $3,000/$4,000. You make your money, you let them make money if they want to sell it at the wholesale value and if they are a collector, they could sell the ebay brand name merchandise for $10,000. You are giving people an opportunity.

If you do have valuable ebay brand name merchandise, remember, people will judge the value of that ebay brand name merchandise or they will judge the actual ebay brand name merchandise by the price that you are looking to get for it. One way to ensure that, even if you have a low opening online ebay bid, that you will get the value that you are looking for the ebay brand name merchandise is using a reserve. We’ll go further into discussing using a reserve in a future chapter, but at this point you should keep in mind that you always have the option of having a reserve on your ebay online auction if you decide to start with a very low opening online ebay bid. Remember, having a very low opening online ebay bid is very good, especially when the value of the ebay brand name merchandise is very clear because you will have many people excited to get it early. All those low opening online ebay bids for $1 or $5, $10, $20 are good for you because it means that the next online ebay bid will have to start at a higher price. Even if you have some people who are just looking for a real bargain, who are not really interested in the ebay brand name merchandise, but they will online ebay bid up to $100 for $1,000 worth of ebay brand name merchandise, it is good for you because then when the serious online ebay bidders come on board they will have to start their online ebay online ebay bidding for at least over $100.

If you are ebay online auctioning off ebay brand name merchandise, which clearly has a very high value, let us say you are ebay online auctioning off a brand new Hummer, which retails for $45,000. It is very clear to everyone that if it is a brand new car, with a brand new guarantee and it is being sold off by an established dealer, that the ebay brand name merchandise, in this case the hummer, is worth $45,000. Therefore, if you put up an opening online ebay bid of $1, it will not take away from the perceived value. What will happen is you will have a lot of people get excited about the ebay online auction, you will have a lot of people come in, drawn in to online ebay bid on the ebay online auction and then you will also have many serious people come in looking to online ebay bid on the Hummer. Now, even the people who online ebay bid $1 or $100 for that hummer, what will happen is, once you draw them in, once you get them to online ebay bid once, if they are still interested in the Hummer, they will continue to online ebay online ebay bidding all the way up to the price that they are willing to pay. You have that many more online ebay bidders competing for the same item by having a very low opening online ebay bid that will draw in people for the item that you are ebay online auctioning.

Chapter 18

Now let us discuss the option of using a reserve on your ebay online auction. Before we can evaluate on the appropriateness of using a reserve on your ebay online auction, we must learn what a reserve is. A reserve is an option that online ebay online auction marketallow you to use. What the reserve does, it says that unless the high online ebay bidder for an ebay online auction online ebay bids a certain amount, the high online ebay bidder will not be considered the winning online ebay bidder of that ebay online auction, the ebay brand name merchandise will not be sold to him and you will not have to pay a fee based on the final value of that ebay online auction. By using your reserve, you are ensuring that the ebay brand name merchandise does not sell below the price you want it to be sold for. If you have for instance a Hummer that you are ebay online auctioning off for $45,000, you want to make sure that the ebay online auction is not actually sold off to a online ebay bidder who is only online ebay online ebay bidding $100 or $1,000 for that Hummer.

If you have ebay brand name merchandise that costs you $100, you might want to make sure that the ebay brand name merchandise does not sell below what your cost is for it. Even if you are willing to ebay online auction off the ebay brand name merchandise at a loss, you might have decided what the biggest loss that you are willing to take for that ebay brand name merchandise is. Therefore, if you are only willing to take a $50 loss on ebay brand name merchandise you would set your reserve for $50. That is an advantage on using a reserve. The problem with a reserve is that it will discourage many online ebay bidders from coming into the ebay online auction. If they do not know what the reserve is they might assume that the reserve is a lot higher then it actually is and they will not bother online ebay online ebay bidding because no matter what they will not be able to purchase that ebay online auction for the price that they are willing to pay.

If they see you ebay online auctioning off an expensive Persian rug, which retails for $500, and the most they are willing to online ebay bid is $200 and they see a reserve, they might say to them selves, “You know what? The reserve is probably around $500, since I will not be able to win it because I am only willing to online ebay bid as much as $200, then I am not going to bother to online ebay bid on the ebay online auction. On the other hand, if the reserve is not there then that person who might be willing to online ebay bid more then what your reserve is, he will online ebay bid on the ebay online auction. One strategy that online ebay online auction marketsellers take to circumvent this obstacle is they actually list in the ebay online auction description what the reserve is. They will write, “My reserve price is $300 for this $500 Persian rug.” This way online ebay bidders who are considering online ebay online ebay bidding on the ebay online auction know what the reserve is and they can decide for themselves, “Well, will my online ebay bid be higher then the ebay online auction, am I that interested in the ebay online auction, or will my reserve be less and I am really not that interested in the ebay online auction?” You need to decide form the beginning what is more important for you. Is it more important for you to ebay online auction off this item for the exact price that you are looking for and use a reserve, but still discourage some of the potential online ebay bidders? Or do you want to go ahead and not use your reserve and take a chance that the online ebay online ebay bidding might come in for a little less then you actually wanted it to come in for? Nevertheless, you will also have the opportunity of attracting more online ebay bidders and hopefully selling the ebay brand name merchandise for a much higher price then you could have sold otherwise.

I would recommend, if you could do a good job of writing a good headline, writing a good ebay online auction description, taking a good, digital picture, and having good ebay brand name merchandise to sell, that you do not use your reserve. If you really have something of value and something that would cost people a lot more to purchase offline or even from other online ebay online auction marketsellers, then I would not recommend using a reserve so people will be encouraged to online ebay bid on your ebay online auction. You will have a lot of the bargain online ebay bidders coming at the beginning, setting a level price for the ebay online auction and then you will have many other online ebay online auction marketonline ebay bidders coming in at a higher price, they will compete with each other and they will not become discouraged because of a reserve price. Unless you need to use a reserve price because you are ebay online auctioning an item that is so expensive that you cannot take a chance on a loss or you just need to make sure that you will be able to make a profit no matter what, then you need to make sure to use a reserve.

Chapter 19

Learning how to increase the profits from your ebay online auction, when the ebay online auction is over, is extremely important for a successful online ebay online auction market business. The firm that I mentioned that was making an average of $6,000 a week ebay online auctioning off on online ebay online auction marketmakes an additional $2,000 to $3,000 by using this following method. What they do is when the ebay online auction is over, they contact a list of the highest online ebay bidders, and they will contact the two or three top online ebay bidders and offer to sell them the same ebay brand name merchandise that they have, if they have additional units of it, at their online ebay bid. What they will do is first try to offer the ebay brand name merchandise at the highest online ebay bid, if the person does not want it at the highest online ebay bid, then they will offer it to them at the highest online ebay bid that the second and the third and the fourth highest online ebay bidders were willing to pay. When they contact those people, many times, some of those high online ebay bidders, since they did place a online ebay bid in that ebay brand name merchandise in the first place, and they placed a pretty high online ebay bid because their online ebay bid was the second, the third in the running for the ebay online auction, then they will be willing to purchase the ebay brand name merchandise again.

Another way to also to keep an option to make more money when the ebay online auction is over is by contacting all the people who sent you an email and all the online ebay bidders and offer them similar types of ebay brand name merchandise to what they online ebay bid on. This way, even if you do not have an additional copy of the same ebay brand name merchandise that they online ebay bid on from before, at the price that you sold the ebay brand name merchandise for, you can go ahead and offer them other ebay brand name merchandise that is complimentary. So, for instance, let us say I put up an ebay online auction for a comic book from 1960 and it is a Superman No. 241. Well, I only have one copy of it, but when the ebay online auction is over, I can contact the other top online ebay bidders because I know they are also interested in Superman comic books from the 1960’s. I can offer each one of them another Superman comic book from the 1960’s and hopefully since they placed a online ebay bid for the item in the first place, they will also be interested in having a slightly different comic book from the 1960’s, featuring Superman. This strategy is almost guaranteed to work as long as the comic book that you are offering was not special by itself. By special I mean that there was not a reason why specifically wanted that comic book as opposed to another comic book.

Let us say you are offering a music tape, featuring the greatest hits of Guns N’ Roses. Now, even if you only have one tape featuring the greatest hits of Guns N’ Roses, you might have another Guns N’ Roses album that you could offer the second highest online ebay bidder and you might have another Guns N’ Roses album that you could offer the third highest online ebay bidder; so you could make more money from the same ebay online auction. What the key is to when you have an ebay online auction is to set up an ebay online auction for an item for which you have additional units, so that you could always try to sell more units to the second, the third, and the fourth highest online ebay bidders.

You want to have more units, you see, so you can give the option to the highest online ebay bidder to buy more of the same unit. You also want to have similar units before the ebay online auction starts so you can offer the similar units to the second, the third, and the fourth highest online ebay bidder and you can also offer the highest online ebay bidder similar units of what he has online ebay bid on. You see, if the highest online ebay bidder bought that Superman comic book from the 1960’s, then chances are that he will want other Superman comic books from the 1960’s. There have been instances where somebody’s purchased a lot of comic books from me and they said to me that they would really like the option to purchase other lots, right now, of some more comic books. I ended up sending them out two or three lots of comic books, instead of just that one lot that they purchased. What I could do is offer to the highest online ebay bidder another type of comic book or another lot that is similar to what it is they are purchasing. So you always want to have similar ebay brand name merchandise to be able to offer to the highest online ebay bidder and the other online ebay bidders who online ebay bid on your ebay online auction, you also want to have other types of ebay brand name merchandise that is complementary to the highest online ebay bidder and the highest online ebay bidders will have the option of purchasing that ebay brand name merchandise. You see there are many ways to make money when the ebay online auction is over.

Another way to make money is to ask the high online ebay bidder as many questions as to what type of ebay brand name merchandise they are interested in. Besides what they actually bought from you, they might have other interests and other needs. Somebody who bought from me a Superman comic book form the 1960’s might also be interested in books, non-fiction books form the 1960’s. He might be interested in records, you know what? He might have other interests that have nothing to do with comic books at all. He might be looking for a brand new sofa for his living room and if I can locate a brand new sofa for his living room, I can make an additional profit by selling him that sofa.

You always want to ask as many questions as possible from your high online ebay bidders to find out what kind of other ebay brand name merchandise they are looking for and what other services can they use. Therefore, if you are doing a service ebay online auction, then you also want to know what other kind of service that they can use and what they could utilize for their ebay online auction. One other method for making money after the ebay online auction is over does not come from directly from selling to the highest online ebay bidder or the highest online ebay bidders, but the way you make money this way, you ask them if they have any ebay brand name merchandise that they no longer use or no longer want to have and you could buy it from them. You see, the collector or the dealer who purchased the Superman comic book from the 1960’s, might have other comic books that he or she is no longer interested in having and might be willing to sell those comic books to me at a good price because they want to spend that money now on other comic books. I take those comic books, those other comic books from the 1960’s, and I sell them to the other highest online ebay bidders or I sell them to future online ebay bidders through future ebay online auctions. Alternatively, at this point, if you already have a list of fifty or sixty people who have purchased items from you, or books from you, or computers from you, or C.D.’s from your ebay online auctions, you can take the new ebay brand name merchandise that you bought, now from this high online ebay bidder, and sell it to your list of other online ebay bidders. Again, there are many ways for you to make money from your ebay online auctions as long as you are creative and as long as you consider all of your ebay online auctions.

Remember, every buyer is also a source of ebay brand name merchandise and every source of ebay brand name merchandise is also a source of sales. By that I mean, let us say you have a source where you buy your ebay brand name merchandise from, let us say you have a source where you buy your socks from, but you know what? This person you buy your socks from, he also sells underwear and he also sells t-shirts, but the only thing you are interested in buying from him is socks because that is what your business is; it is selling socks on online ebay online auction market. What you can do is when you find a really good deal on men’s underwear or women’s underwear, you could go ahead and purchase the underwear at a really good price, contact your supplier of socks and offer to the supplier, the underwear that you bought at a very, very reduced price. If this person now has bought ebay brand name merchandise from you on online ebay online auction marketor has sold to you more ebay brand name merchandise to you through online ebay online auction market, you always have an option or an opportunity to continue to make money once your ebay online auction is done. Also remember that in every ebay online auction always offer people consulting services. If somebody’s a comic book collector, offer for a fee to help him find other comic books or offer for a fee to help into the comic book business on online ebay online auction marketor off online ebay online auction market. You could market your expertise and your expertise is proven once you have interacted with a buyer or seller on online ebay online auction market. You always have an option to enhance your revenues by offering your services on online ebay online auction marketand you could also offer unrelated services and consulting on online ebay online auction market. You could list, in your “About You” page or on your store on online ebay online auction market, online ebay online auction marketallows you to set up a store where you can sell your ebay brand name merchandise or your services directly, you could list on that online ebay online auction marketpage or in the online ebay online auction marketstore; you could list all the other types of services and ebay brand name products that you offer. You could place in your ebay online auction description that you have other types of services that you could offer that seller or buyer, whichever the case may be.

Chapter 20

If you have spent any time going to thrift shops or small clothing stores. You will become familiar with the term consignment sales. Consignment sales is a process where the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise gives ebay brand name merchandise for sale to a seller and the seller will sell the ebay brand name merchandise and once the sale is completed the seller of the ebay brand name merchandise will keep a commission and will give the rest of the proceeds of the sale to the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise. This provides a benefit both to the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise and to the seller. The owner of the ebay brand name merchandise now has an outlet, which will be working on selling his or her ebay brand name merchandise. The owner of the ebay brand name merchandise does not have to concern him or herself paying for ebay brand name merchandise, then having to find a way to pay advertising and then locating buyers, spending time meeting with the buyers, spending time showing the ebay brand name merchandise, having to research the market for the ebay brand name merchandise, and then actually having to worry about collecting payment for the ebay brand name merchandise.

In a consignment sale the seller gains because the seller does not have to risk any money by investing in inventory. The seller of the ebay brand name merchandise does not have to go ahead and purchase ebay brand name merchandise, which might not sell well or might not even sell for as much money as the seller intended to. So let us say the seller of the ebay brand name merchandise has a $200 VCR. If the seller had to first go to the wholesaler and spend $100 to buy the VCR and then the ebay brand name merchandise never sold, then the seller would be out of $100 and which he spent for the item for his ebay online auction. If on the other hand, if the seller never had to in the first place buy that ebay brand name merchandise for $100, then you know what? Any money he made on it would profit and even if the VCR never sold or did not sell for as high as the seller thought it would sell. Well, if it does not sell at all, the seller could always return it to the owner, or whoever gave him the VCR, but chances are the person who owns the VCR is not going to want to take it back because he is given it to the seller because he has no other way of selling it. Therefore, the seller can actually keep the ebay brand name merchandise for as long as he needs to until he can sell it.

If the ebay brand name merchandise sells for less then the seller thought it was going to sell for, well it is not a problem because the seller still makes some money since he is collecting a percentage of the revenue that came in from the sale of the VCR. Usually, this type of activity comes from when the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise is having a very difficult time selling the ebay brand name merchandise and is willing to give up proceeds and take a chance of not receiving the amount of money that he wanted to receive. This is because otherwise the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise might feel that he might just not make any money on it at all and otherwise it would just sit in his warehouse for months, if not years. Now as an online ebay online auction marketseller, you can take advantage of this great business method by contacting owners of slow moving ebay brand name merchandise and offering to sell it for them on a consignment basis. When you sell it on consignment, you set up an agreement where you can keep anywhere form 5%-50% of the proceeds from the sale of the ebay brand name merchandise.

Consignment sales work very well with clothing, electronics, or any ebay brand name merchandise that could be properly ebay online auctioned off. In order to set up a good consignment sale with someone, you need to make sure that you have a good relationship, that you are trustworthy, that you perceive yourself as a professional. The person giving you the ebay brand name merchandise is happy to give you the ebay brand name merchandise as long as you are going to attempt to sell it and as long as he or she feels that you will do a good job of selling the ebay brand name merchandise. They will not give you the ebay brand name merchandise just for you to simply hold on to it and they definitely will not give you the ebay brand name merchandise if they feel that you might lose it, damage it or even, at worst, steal the ebay brand name merchandise. You always want to make sure to portray yourself very professionally if you want to be a successful consignment seller. You always want to be able to show people that you have a track record of running successful consignment sales.

If you have never run a consignment sale before and you need to have at least one consignment sale to attract more consignment sales, then you might the following strategy. You can take the ebay brand name merchandise from the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise, agree to sell and keep a very low percentage, this way the incentive for the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise is that once the sale is completed, he or she will still be receiving a majority of the proceeds, as much as 95% of the proceeds. Why would you want to do this, why would you want to basically give away all your profits? Because if you start out small with that owner of the ebay brand name merchandise, the owner of that ebay brand name merchandise might entrust you with more ebay brand name merchandise in the future, then you could go ahead then and sell at a decent profit. So sometimes it is worthwhile making a small profit or not even making a profit at the beginning in hopes of capturing a steady stream of larger profits in the future. Now when you do a consignment sale you have another option that is very good if you do not have a lot of storage space. You could make an agreement to have the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise to still store the ebay brand name merchandise at his or her location and agree you will pick up the ebay brand name merchandise once the sale is done. The owner of the ebay brand name merchandise will actually very comfortable with this arraignment because the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise will not have to worry about theft, loss, any accidents taking place because he or she is still in control of the ebay brand name merchandise since they have possession of the ebay brand name merchandise.

You could take this a step further and also offer this arraignment to the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise and tell the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise that you would actually like to do the packing and the shipping from the location. You could even pay to have him or her to pack up the ebay brand name merchandise and you could either reimburse them for the cost of the shipping. Now I do not mean the actually cost of the shipping because that you could tell the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise that the buyer will be paying for. You could reimburse them for the cost of having the ebay brand name merchandise packed and the time packing and setting the ebay brand name merchandise up so it can be picked up by UPS or taking it to the post office. You could reimburse them that cost and bill in that cost with the sale while the ebay online auction takes place. Now you could also make a compromise if it is worthwhile to give up some of the profits in order save the hassle of having to pack and ship out the supplies. By telling the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise instead of taking your usual fee of 40% of the proceeds of the sale, that you will only take 30% or 35% if the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise agrees to pack up all of the ebay brand name merchandise and have it ready for UPS or packing up the ebay brand name merchandise and taking it to UPS. Remember, the buyer will always be paying for the cost of shipping; otherwise no owner of ebay brand name merchandise will want to do it because they simply will not make any money if they have to give up both the time it will take them to pack up the ebay brand name merchandise and the cost of the ebay brand name merchandise and sending out the ebay brand name merchandise.

So who can you conduct a consignment arraignment with? Well, you could walk into a store in your local neighborhood, you could go into a clothing store and say, “Hey look, we’re now approaching winter and you still have some summer overstock left over. Why do not you let me sell your summer overstock? I could sell it to places around the country where they still need summer clothing and instead of you have to mark down your clothing by 50% or more, I will try to sell the clothing for as close to the retail price as possible, but I would like 25% of the proceeds.” The owner of the store gains, because instead of having to mark down the ebay brand name merchandise by 50%, loosing 50% of the retail value, this way they will only be losing 25% or 30% of the retail value because you will only be taking as part of your consignment sale 25% or 30% of the value of the ebay brand name merchandise. Now, to be fair to the owner of the clothing store, based on your past studies, what it is the ebay brand name merchandise actually goes for and for what price; you have actually been able to sell the ebay brand name merchandise for. So you want to make sure that everything is stated up front and, in order to encourage the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise to want to take place in this consignment arraignment, go ahead and show him what similar ebay brand name merchandise has been sold for and what have sold some similar ebay brand name merchandise for.

I would not divulge my outlet for sales. I would not let the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise know that you will be selling the ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction marketunless there would be a specific restriction on selling the ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction market. Otherwise you do not need to provide this information on online ebay online auction market, since you might encourage the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise to try to sell the ebay brand name merchandise the same way that you will be selling it. The only thing that you should let the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise know is that you have an arraignment through which you could sell ebay brand name merchandise through out the country at a decent price as long as you could charge below the retail price. This way, someone who otherwise might have taken a loss on the ebay brand name merchandise now will be able to recoup their initial investment and might even be able to make a profit when you take into account the cost of the ebay brand name merchandise and your fee, which you will be taking for conducting this consignment sale.

You could also set up a consignment sale with a bookseller; sell their overstock, sell their books that are not moving. With a $0.99 store that has ebay brand name merchandise that they bought and is not selling well in their area, you could contact wholesaler, liquidators, closeout brokers, manufacturers and set up these arraignments. When you have a consignment arraignment set up, always make sure to have it in writing. If you do not have it in writing, you are going to find it very difficult to continue this relationship, especially if the ebay brand name merchandise is in the possession of the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise, you always want to make sure to protect yourself by having everything in writing. Also, even if the owner of the ebay brand name merchandise and the seller of the ebay brand name merchandise, you actually as an online ebay online auction marketseller might want to consign out to another seller and have him move your ebay brand name merchandise. What you will want to do is have everything in writing so later there are no disputes and the easiest way to resolve any of these situations is always by consulting the written agreement and just seeing what the written agreement would stipulate in the given situation. Consignment sales are a great way to make money and I highly recommend it for online ebay online auction marketsellers who are looking for a great way to make money without having to spend any money on having to purchase any inventory. Imagine what could be greater for running a business where your only cost is the advertising fee, which on online ebay online auction marketis simply the listing fee, which is quite small for most ebay online auctions.

Chapter 21

In business, there are many opportunities to buy good quality ebay brand name merchandise at a very good price. In many businesses baulk at the opportunity to buy the ebay brand name merchandise only because they are unsure how the ebay brand name merchandise will fair in their market. You see, even though the ebay brand name merchandise might look very good and they might be able to get it at a very good price and they might even be able to make a very good profit with the ebay brand name merchandise. The reason they are not sure whether they should buy it or not is there is always a chance that in the given market they will not be able to sell the ebay brand name merchandise. So they want to be careful before they buy the ebay brand name merchandise and they would love to have a way to forecast the future to know if it is really worthwhile or not. They could have their money invested in the ebay brand name merchandise that they know will sell well, but the reason the business will not take a chance on all types of ebay brand name merchandise, even when they can get it at a very good deal, is because if the ebay brand name merchandise does end up selling very well, they could stand to make a substantial profit. For sure, a businesses biggest fear is actually buying ebay brand name merchandise that will not sell at all and they will not even be able to recoup their investment, they will not even be able to recoup half of their investment, they might end up having to take a total loss on their investment. So as an owner of a small business, whether you have an online ebay online auction market business, a retail business or a wholesale business, you want to be very careful as far as inventory you buy because any money you tie into your ebay brand name merchandise, first of all it is your money.

As we know today, money is not that easy to come by and you want to grow your business and in order to grow your business, you want to be as careful as you can that you are going to be purchasing good quality ebay brand name merchandise. So how do you ensure you will be able to purchase good quality ebay brand name merchandise? Well, the best way to do it is to always test out the ebay brand name merchandise. If you have a small retail store, you could take a few samples, put them out in your store and see how customers react. The challenge with that is if you take a few pieces of ebay brand name merchandise and put them in a store or if a wholesaler shows a few pieces of ebay brand name merchandise to a few of his customers it is still not a good way to get a good reading on whether the ebay brand name merchandise will sell well or not. The reason that is true is because the ebay brand name merchandise you are looking to sell has to have a wide appeal. If you go to one or two stores or if you put the ebay brand name merchandise on the counter in your store, even if some people react positively to that ebay brand name merchandise, there is no way to tell what the general consensus will be for that ebay brand name merchandise and you cannot live off of one or two customers. Therefore, you need to make sure that there is a wide appeal for that ebay brand name merchandise.

On the other hand, let us say nobody is interested in the ebay brand name merchandise, let us say you put a few pieces of units of what you purchased, let us say you got a great deal on these pens and you have a thousand of these pens for sale. Now, you only five or six pens up for ebay online auction, so you put these pens up for sale and you put a few for sale on your counter in the store and not one single customer wants them or you are a wholesaler and not a single store, not one of your retail accounts is interested in those pens. You see the reason that is still not a good gauge as far as whether the pens are a good product or not is because you have only gone to a very small, limited number of potential customers. If you went to went to a lot of customers to be able to see if the ebay brand name merchandise was good or not, you would then get a good reading. However, you see if you are a wholesaler it is very hard to go to many customers because you have a very limited amount of time and you are still dealing with your normal ebay brand name products, your dealing with your regular business and your time is very tied up; your time is very restricted.

online ebay online auction markettakes the whole situation and turns it up side down because what online ebay online auction marketallows you to do is take one sample of the item you want to sell and you put it up on an ebay online auction for sale and you can see how many visitors your ebay online auction receives, you can see how many people checked out your ebay online auction. The way you can do that is online ebay online auction marketallows you to put a counter for free on your ebay online auction page and that counter will keep track of all the hits the ebay online auction receives. So when you put it very clearly on your headline what it is that you are selling, the only reason people will come to your ebay online auction is if they are interested in the item that you have put up for sale. In the case where you have the opportunity to buy a thousand pens at a few pennies a pen. A few thousand pen at a few pennies a pen, is not going to add up to much money, but let us say you have the opportunity to buy 50,000 pens. I once saw 50,000 quality pens being sold for about $0.02 a pen, now that is a great opportunity because a pen can retail at a $0.99 store for $1 each or two for $1. You have a good opportunity to make money there if you buy those pens.

When you go on online ebay online auction market, you make a very clear headline of what it is that you put up for sale. You could see how many people come to visit your ebay online auction page and you will know how many people are interested in buying those pens. Of course, you do not want to sell one pen at a time, so let us say you sell the pens in groups of a hundred or fifty, this way students, office managers, small businesses, wholesalers, and retailers will all be good, ideal customers for those pens. Now if you see that you put the ebay online auction and you get four or five hundred hits to your site, then you know that you have a very good product which people are interested in. Even if you receive only a hundred or two hundred visitors, but that is already a good start because you know that there is an interest in those pens. Then you also want to look at how many online ebay bidders you receive, what the highest online ebay bid is for, and what people are willing to online ebay bid for those pens.

What you could do to take this a step further is, if you want to try to sell the entire group of pens that you are going to be buying, you could put up an ebay online auction for 50,000 pens and see what the highest online ebay bid is. If the highest online ebay bid is $1,000 for 50,000, which comes out to about $0.02 a pen, what you would do in that situations is you would just make sure to buy the pens for under $0.02 and you would have guaranteed profit. Because you already have a high online ebay bidder willing to pay $0.02 a pen and you already know that he is going to take 50,000 pens and even better, if can wait and first receive the money from him, then go ahead and act on the deal, buy the pens and sell them and make a good profit. What if instead of selling the 50,000 pens for $0.02 each, what if you ended up sell them for $0.05 or $0.06 each? That would be a really good amount of money. You could even put up 10,000 pens for sale, so you have those pens sell and once you know how those pens sell then you can make a decision on buying an entire lot of 50,000 pens and then continue selling the rest pens in 10,000 lots. A small store or even a wholesaler, using the standard business method that they go by, does not have the opportunity to gage instantly or with three to seven days what the demand is for a certain product. How can you know how many ebay brand name products will be able to sell and how much money he should pay for that product by knowing how much money he will be getting for the product? However, with your online ebay online auction market business, you can instantly how much money you will be making by selling the ebay brand name merchandise, you will know how much you can pay for the ebay brand name merchandise and you will know if there is a demand for the ebay brand name merchandise.

Let us say in the situation where you buy the 50,000 pens and you test out on online ebay online auction marketand you know that there is a given market for those pens, and then you do not even have to try to sell on online ebay online auction marketall 50,000 pens at once. What you can do, is out of those 50,000 pens, you take five hundred pens and you ebay online auction them off on online ebay online auction marketbefore you actually go ahead and purchase the pens. If you can already see that there is a good demand for even five hundred pens. You see what price that people are willing to pay for those five hundred pens, then you could ask yourself whether based on the number of hits that the ebay online auction received, the number of online ebay bids that it received, the highest online ebay bid, and what the online ebay bids were from the top three, four online ebay bidders. You can see if there is a good demand for those pens and if it is worthwhile to buy those pens because even if you spend six months selling 50,000 pens, you know by having an ebay online auction for five hundred pens each every three days or five days it does not matter if the profit is worthwhile. Let us say you sell five hundred pens for $50, so you are making now $0.10 a pen. If you buy those pens for a penny each, you are total cost will for the pens will be $500, right? At $0.10 pen that would be $5,000 and $0.01 a pen would be $500. Now let us say you average out selling those pens for $0.10 each or let us say even, let us be more conservative, and you sell the pens for $0.05 each and it takes you three months to sell all the pens. Well, at $0.05 each, you have 50,000 pens; $0.10 a pen would give you $5,000, $0.05 a pen would give you $2,500, your profit is on those pens is $2,500. Therefore, it is definitely worth going in on that transaction, but if you did not know what the proceeds could be for that ebay online auction, you would be very, very weary to buy those pens. I would no recommend just wasting $500 just because you want to take a chance and just because you believe that the pens might sell well.

So you see, online ebay online auction marketallows you to go in, without having to be blind and you are able to actually have an educated guess before hand and I would even call it more then an educated guess because you will know whether you can buy the ebay brand name merchandise or not. There are many situations where you could use online ebay online auction marketto take a lot of the guesswork out of business. Now, when I said in the past example, when I said these pens will cost you $500 and you are profit will be $2,500, I am sorry, you are profit will actually be $2,000, it might not sound like a great deal of money, but keep in mind that is not the only product you are selling on online ebay online auction market. What if over the course of three months you had ten similar transactions, each transaction giving you an average profit of $2,000, that is $20,000 in three months, divided that three, you are talking up to close to $7,000 of profits per month. So you see, a lot of times, even if one transaction might not seem to yield such a vast profit, as long as you keep moving and you keep listing many ebay online auctions on online ebay online auction market, all of the profits will start adding up.

I once bought a truckload worth of ebay brand name merchandise because I had already investigated what the market would be for those items. Even though, as I mentioned with example of the pens, it did take me a few months to sell the ebay brand name merchandise, I was confident that once I would sell all of the ebay brand name merchandise, I would be sitting on a decent profit. That truckload of ebay brand name merchandise was only one of the many items that I was selling on online ebay online auction market. As long as you always test out the ebay brand name products that you will be selling, you will be a long way in the process of eliminating the risk of holding on to ebay brand name merchandise that does not sell well or does not sell period. The key point that we see from this chapter is to always test out the demand of the product before you actually purchase the product. Additionally, when you have an opportunity to invest a lot of money in ebay brand name merchandise, do not hesitate, do not be worried that you are spending a lot money as long as you have taken various factors into consideration, including testing out the market and seeing if there is a demand for the item.

Chapter 22

One of the big controversies on online ebay online auction marketis whether sellers should sell to international online ebay bidders. International online ebay bidders, they refer to online ebay bidders from Canada, which is not such a big issue, but they are mostly referring to the problem of selling to international online ebay bidders due to the high frequency of fraud that online ebay online auction marketsellers experience after they receive payment and they send out the ebay brand name merchandise. The dilemma is basically, once the ebay brand name merchandise is sent out, there is no way, of course, to bring the ebay brand name merchandise back and if the buyer is based overseas it would be very hard to any legal recourse to try to recover the ebay brand name merchandise. One of the problems with international online ebay bidders is that there are many instances there is a lot of fraud that takes place with credit cards. You see many online ebay bidders will buy an item with a stolen credit card and will have it shipped internationally and then they could dispute the charge, similar of what could be done in the United States, but if someone disputes a charge over here, there is a legal recourse; there are steps that you can take to recover the ebay brand name merchandise. If the same situation takes place overseas, you might never be able to find the person again and you would have to go through an entire legal system that you are not familiar with, the legal costs could easily be thousands of dollars while working overseas and you are going to be simply out of your ebay brand name merchandise.

So how can you go ahead and try to do business with international online ebay bidders? Well, there are ways you can do it. Before you decide if you do want to deal with international online ebay bidders, keep in mind the high cost of shipping of the ebay brand name merchandise that you will be sending out. That might discourage many online ebay bidders who are based overseas. What you do not want to happen, after the ebay online auction is completed and the international online ebay bidder sees how much is shipping is going to cost them, is for them to decide not to complete the ebay online auction. You will be out of the time that you spent listing the ebay online auction, the time you were waiting for the ebay online auction to end, you will have to re-list the item now and you will have lost that listing fee that you had to pay online ebay online auction market. You will also loose the money that it will cost you, a second time, to list the ebay brand name merchandise. As you can see there are many considerations you have to take into account.

In order to address the first concern, the concern about the high cost of shipping, let the international online ebay bidders know, right away, off hand, up front how much shipping will cost. Let them know that they must contact you as soon as they place their online ebay bid or before they place a online ebay bid; that would be ideal, regarding the cost of the shipping. You can tell them that the only way an international online ebay bidder can online ebay bid on my ebay online auction is if he has first, received a call from me for the cost of the shipping and if on top of that quote, if the international online ebay bidder has acknowledged receiving the shipping quote. Also, make it very clear to international online ebay bidders that they only form of payment you will accept will be from a money order, a money order that is recognized, coming from a legitimate bank, from American Express or Western Union or Money Gram or another form of accepted payment. Let the international online ebay bidder know that if they send you a personal check, you will have to hold it for a minimum of three weeks, to make sure that it clears and even three weeks in many situations might not be enough.

I have heard of a situation where after two months of someone receiving and cashing a check, the bank discovered that it was a fraudulent check and the funds were removed from the person’s bank account. Dealing with international online ebay bidder is a very dangerous situation because if you do not do it correctly, you could be out on the listing fees and on the ebay brand name merchandise that you sent out to the winning online ebay bidder. On the other hand, it is also very lucrative because, if done properly, you will increase your market place to all of the online ebay online auction marketmembers who are located in Canada and to overseas. Think about how many more millions and millions of potential customers you will have by being able to sell ebay brand name merchandise, not to only the online ebay online auction marketmembers in the United States, but also to the online ebay online auction marketmembers in Canada, France, Poland, Hungary, Israel, China, and Japan. You are opening up a market of 100,000,000 people, at least, of people who have access to a computer and can online ebay bid on online ebay online auction market. online ebay online auction markethas 60,000,000 members in the U.S. alone. Think about how many more they have overseas and how many more people who just browse online ebay online auction marketboth in the United States and overseas and if they see something they like, they will become a registered user just to online ebay bid on your ebay brand name merchandise because they will be interested in your item. If you have something of quality to offer on online ebay online auction marketand you strongly believe that there is a strong market for that ebay brand name merchandise overseas, then I strongly recommend you set up a system where you can sell to international online ebay bidders so that you can capture money that they are willing to spend on online ebay online auction market.

So what kind of ebay brand name merchandise will sell well to international online ebay bidders? Amongst some of the ebay brand name merchandise that sells very well are any American brands. You see, people overseas, and I can attest to that because I grew up in Mexico, they love American brands, they love Levi’s, they love Tommy Hilfiger, they love Calvin Klein, they love any brand that screams out, “This is an American brand!” They love any product that is besides clothing that is American, they love American music, they love American movies, they love American collectibles, they even love pictures of American tourist destinations; a painting of the Statue of Liberty could go really well. Remember, anything that says strongly American on it or covey’s the United States will sell very well overseas. As long as you protect yourself well, you can make a lot money on selling American brand ebay brand name products.

Another item that sells well overseas is collectibles. Collectibles such as comic books, such as antiques, post cards sell very well overseas. There are many items that are not in supply in other countries such as English books. People will use English books for their educational value. People will use English books to brush up on their English skills. Maybe they are setting up an English library overseas and if you go to garage sales, if you go to used books stores and you buy English books, then you will have a very good market overseas. A book that might only cost you $0.10 or $0.20 here in the United States, might be sold overseas in France, Russia, and Africa for $0.30 or $0.40 a book because there are many people there who’d love to learn English. Maybe their someday planning on immigrating to the United States and they want to be better prepared to do business, to work in the United States. They want to give their children a basic understanding of the English language and they will be happy to buy anything that will help them learn the language. There are many ebay brand name products, which I have mentioned, which can be sold very well on online ebay online auction marketto both international online ebay bidders and domestic online ebay bidders. You always have to be careful. The same as you have to be careful with international online ebay bidders; you also have to be careful with domestic online ebay bidders, to be ensure that you are always protected as a seller and that you are only receiving ebay brand name merchandise once you are sure that you have the funds that have been paid for, for the ebay brand name merchandise.

Chapter 23

There is a method to allowing an online ebay online auction marketonline ebay bidder who is not too sure about buying ebay brand name merchandise from you. Due to the fact that he does not know you or is not familiar with you. Maybe you are just a new online ebay online auction marketseller and he is not that comfortable sending you money, you could also have a low or negative feedback, or it could be a situation where the item that is being ebay online auctioned off on online ebay online auction marketis a very expensive item. Someone might not feel comfortable sending off $1,000 or more for ebay brand name merchandise that they have never bought before and from a seller who they are not familiar with.

So how do you solve this problem? You see the problem is more of a trust problem then a financial problem. The person is willing to spend the money; the person has committed himself to purchasing the ebay online auction from you, but now, he is reluctant because he has not dealt with you before. The problem could even arise where the person does not want to place a online ebay bid in the first place because they want to see how high the price of the ebay online auction is going. They might not feel comfortable committing themselves to sending money to someone where they are not familiar with the person and they might even receive the ebay brand name merchandise and it is not what is has been described. Imagine spending $1,000 on a piano and the piano arrives and it does not even work or worse, it is not the same piano as described in the ebay online auction. Therefore, it is understandable why people would be hesitant to send money to someone when they have never dealt with before and even if they have dealt with the person before, but they are spending a lot of money in this transaction. The best method for calming people’s fears and for making people more comfortable to send you money is by letting people in the ebay online auction know that they can use an escrow service. An escrow service is a third party that will hold the funds until the buyer has received the ebay brand name merchandise and approved of the ebay brand name merchandise.

The way an escrow would basically work is, if Larry purchases on online ebay online auction marketa used piano from Frank, what would happen is Larry would send the funds to an escrow service, the escrow service would confirm with Frank, that they have received the funds. They would let Frank know how much money they have received, how they have received the money; if the funds are cleared. Once the funds have been cleared then Frank would send out the ebay brand name merchandise, in this case the used piano, to Larry, Larry would then let the escrow service know that he is happy with the used piano that he has received. Then the escrow service would release the funds to Frank, who sold the used piano. So you see, while an escrow service is good, there are certain reasons why, as a seller, that you would not want the escrow service.

Let us say for instance, in this situation, Larry said, “No, you know what? I am really not happy with the piano. You know what? The piano really did not meet my exact specifications, it is a good piano, but it is not they way is was described in the ebay online auction.” He might simply be upset with his purchase and he tells the escrow service that the piano he received is a piece of junk. Now, the escrow service will not release the money to Frank, Frank has already sent out the piano, he is out of his ebay brand name merchandise, he spent the money listing the piano, he is paid for the shipping because he has not received the money; reimbursed for the shipping yet and Frank is in a very tough situation. The buyer in this situation might call you up and say, “Look, the money is in an escrow service and I really do not need this ebay brand name merchandise, I do not even want the ebay brand name merchandise at this point.” He could tell you straight out that he is going to refuse to accept the ebay brand name merchandise unless you offer him a better deal. Even though that would be unscrupulous on the buyer’s part, but there are buyers who could do that. So why put yourself in what could be a very unfortunate situation and give the buyer the upper hand.

What I would recommend and you do not want to give the buyer an option to use the fact that the money is in an escrow account as leverage to extract a better deal from you, is to ask for some of the money up front. Instead, you should not use an escrow service, unless you have received your cost for the item up front and allow the rest of the price of the item to be sent to an escrow account. You do not have to tell the breakdown or explain the breakdown to the buyer, but what you can tell the buyer is, “Look, I am willing to use an escrow account for this $1,000 item as long as you send me $300 or $400 upfront and the rest we could put in an escrow account.” If the buyer is honest, he will understand that you for $300 or $400, he is not taking such a big risk compared to the value he will be receiving because worst comes to worst, he will still be receiving this $1,000 piano for only $300. That fee that you are charging to have up front, the fee that you want or the money that you want besides will be going into an escrow account should also cover the cost of shipping. This way, at worst, you will not have lost any money. Even if the buyer when he receives the ebay brand name merchandise says that he is not happy with what he has received; the most that you stand to loose is your profit on the item because the buyer will have already paid you your cost for the ebay brand name merchandise plus the cost of the shipping.

When is there a really good time to use an escrow account? If the buyer of the ebay brand name merchandise is willing to travel to you and pick up the ebay brand name merchandise from you and you do not have to send out to anyone, in that case, I do not see any reason why you should not use an escrow account. If someone will be traveling to you, they are showing a serious commitment on their part. So you do know that they are not looking to rip you off, they are not looking to take advantage of you and you could see that the fact that they are coming to look at the ebay brand name merchandise, that they do want it and they are hoping that the ebay brand name merchandise will be good. Now, let us say, that they do come to your warehouse, they come to your garage and they look at the ebay brand name merchandise and say, “You know what? We’re really not happy with this ebay brand name merchandise.” So there is no problem, they do not have to take their ebay brand name merchandise with them, you call up the escrow account and the escrow account will simply return their money to them. Make it very clear in the ebay online auction description that even if the money’s in an escrow account, just because you are not happy with the ebay brand name merchandise does not mean the escrow account could just give them their money back.

The only time the escrow service will give them their money back, and you should set up an agreement that will stipulate this clearly, is if the ebay brand name merchandise is not described as according to the way that it is. Not by saying that it is red and it is really fire engine red, while instead its dragon red. You want it to be a situation where the ebay brand name merchandise would be considered to be described properly. Where you called it red, but instead of it being the color red, maybe it was the color yellow; even a color dark orange that I would not say that is a good enough reason to not let the sale go through. Anyways, someone is interested in the item and they are a serious online ebay bidder, as long as you have not misrepresented it on purpose and as long as the tone of the color or the actual color has not changed the value of the item, then the buyer should still be happy with the ebay brand name merchandise that he is being offered. So using an escrow account is good because it will help you solicit online ebay bids from online ebay bidders how would otherwise not have online ebay bid and will also allow online ebay bidders to feel more comfortable and then they will end up online ebay online ebay bidding a lot more for the ebay brand name merchandise that they originally planned and you will be making more money.

Another good time to use an escrow service is when you are selling an item, that we mentioned will be picked up, but also and item that does not need to be delivered such as when you are providing a service. Now, with a service you have to be very careful because you do not want them to dispute that you have not provided the service. What you can do is receive the money, put it in an escrow account and agree that once you commence the service that you will be providing, then the money has to be transferred from the escrow account to you. This way, the buyer of the service will be able to see that you are serious, that you are providing the service that you said you would be providing and at that point, will feel comfortable knowing that they have paid you for your service.

Another good time to use an escrow service is when you sell a business. If you sell a business and the person wants to know that you have portrayed the business the way that it is and that business is producing the revenues or profits that you claim that it is producing, you want to allow that online ebay bidder to use an escrow service. Then that online ebay bidder knows that you are not trying to misrepresent anything because if you did, they could take their money back. Even in a situation where someone bought the business, but they turned out to be a fraudulent buyer, then they requested their money back even though the business was actually performing the way it was performing, then you have not lost that much because you could actually take back possession of the business. If he renigs on the deal, so you have lost out on the listing fee on the business and your time, but it is not the end of the world because you could go ahead and take possession of the business again and sell the business to another online ebay bidder. An escrow account does allow you both as a buyer and seller to protect yourself and it also opens up opportunities to make more money as long as you realize what the downside is to accepting an escrow account.

Chapter 24

Setting up a return policy for your business is important. Like in any type of business, where there is a buyer and seller, the buyer of the ebay brand name merchandise or the service wants to have some sort of guarantee that he will be receiving what it is that is being offered. If you want to take this principle and apply it to the fullest extent, what you would do is you would offer a full thirty-day guarantee return policy on the ebay brand name merchandise being offered. By law, anytime that someone purchases something by mail, there has to be a return policy.

Now what you can do on online ebay online auction market, since online ebay online auction marketis an ebay online auction, you could set up an as-is final ebay online auction where the person has the right to come inspect the ebay brand name merchandise from you. That way there will be no problem with disputing the ebay brand name merchandise later, the reason there is no problem is because the person buying the ebay brand name merchandise had every right to first come in, inspect the ebay brand name merchandise and make sure that the ebay brand name merchandise met his specifications and the buyer of the ebay brand name merchandise knows what it is that he is receiving. You see, even making it as an as-is ebay online auction, a final ebay online auction is setting up a return policy; that is your return policy. Simply, there are no returns and you are giving the person the right to come in and inspect the ebay brand name merchandise. If you were selling an item that you do not mind if it is a return, such as a VCR or a T.V., as long as it is in the original packaging and it has not been opened period. Then in that situation, you could offer a return policy that will encourage online ebay bidders to online ebay bid on your item and encourage them to spend more money on the item because they know that if the item is not what it was portrayed to be they could always return it.

The down side of allowing people to return the ebay brand name merchandise is that they can damage the ebay brand name merchandise that they purchased from you. They could use up the ebay brand name merchandise or even send you similar ebay brand name merchandise, but not of the same quality. That happens in many instances with many comic books; that is why I do not allow people to return ebay brand name merchandise with comic books. I allow them to come inspect the ebay brand name merchandise, check out the ebay brand name merchandise and decide for themselves whether the ebay brand name merchandise meets their specifications and only then online ebay bid on the ebay brand name merchandise. They do not have to come inspect it if they feel comfortable based on my feedback, based on the pictures, based on the ebay online auction description, but they should always realize that once they purchase the ebay brand name merchandise they will not be able to return the ebay brand name merchandise.

Now, you see what happens with comic books, let us say someone buys a very high-grade comic book or a painting, not even a painting because a painting is harder to duplicate, but let us say they purchased a baseball card in mint condition. Now that baseball card purchased in mint condition is a great baseball card and a very hard to find card in that condition. They buy the card and they are very happy. You know what they do once they receive the card? They call me up and say they are not really happy with the condition of this card and they send it back to me and I say that is fine, ok, send the card back to me and I will refund your money. When I actually receive the baseball card I notice that they have not sent me the same baseball card back. What they did is they purchased the same baseball card or they might have already had the same baseball card in their collection, but at a poor condition. Then they send that baseball card to me, I have to refund them their money, they keep the mint baseball card, and now I am sitting with a worthless baseball card or a baseball card that is worth a lot less money because it is not in good condition. Now, there are a very, very small, small number of people who will ever engage in that type of fraud. Nevertheless, you still want to protect yourself because your profit margin sometimes might be very small where if you are taken advantage of during one ebay online auction, it might take you many more ebay online auctions before you can recoup on your loss of that ebay online auction. So to be very honest and clear, I what I would do always is always tell people that they are always more then welcome to come inspect the ebay brand name merchandise, you could even come pick up the ebay brand name merchandise yourself, after the ebay online auctions is completed, but all sales are final. So why do I allow people to come pick up the ebay brand name merchandise themselves? Because they know that if they are going to meet the seller face to face and if they are going to be picking up the ebay brand name merchandise from the seller directly, the seller would not engage in any fraud because he will have to face the buyer when they actually come to pick up the ebay brand name merchandise. So always make sure that you have a good solid return policy that will not hurt your business, but make sure that at the same time your return policy is fair and it is a return policy that will encourage online ebay bidders to online ebay bid at your ebay online auction and to buy your ebay online auction.

Chapter 25

Besides selling to online ebay bidders on online ebay online auction market, there is another way to make money. The other way to make money on online ebay online auction marketis not to just focusing on the online ebay online auction marketbuyers, but on focusing on the online ebay online auction marketsellers. There are many opportunities to make money by selling to people who are looking to set up business on online ebay online auction market. There are many methods and we will try to analyze a few of them step by step. The first way to do it is, as we have mentioned through out the book, is by having any ebay online auctions set up where you are providing information in your consulting services for other people who want to sell on online ebay online auction market. The way you do it is by having ebay online auctions set up specifically where you list your expertise, what you have sold on online ebay online auction market, what you do know about selling on online ebay online auction market, and what it is that you are looking to help people sell on online ebay online auction market. If you have been able to successfully sell ebay brand name merchandise such as furniture, you could use that expertise to help people sell their ebay brand name merchandise, more specifically furniture, on online ebay online auction market. You could also make it very clear to people that besides knowing how to sell furniture, you can apply the same skills that you developed while selling furniture to help them sell their own ebay brand name merchandise.

Another way to sell to online ebay online auction marketsellers is by showing them ways to sell on online ebay online auction marketwithout just having to give the information, without just having to get into your consulting advice. What do I mean by that? You can write books, such as the book I have produced now, or other books that they have on online ebay online auction marketto help people learn how to sell on online ebay online auction market. I have seen many books on online ebay online auction marketby many authors and some of them are pretty good showing people how to make money by selling on online ebay online auction market. People need information, just like people need books on how to invest, how to garden, how to cook, how to have better relationships, people also need and would enjoy reading books on furthering their online ebay online auction market business. So if you want to be able to benefit from your online ebay online auction market business, what do you need to do? You need to have information that people will be willing to buy in order to further their own business on online ebay online auction market.

One method to making money by selling to online ebay online auction marketsellers is by selling online ebay online auction marketsellers packing supplies. Every online ebay online auction marketseller who is selling ebay brand name merchandise that needs to be shipped needs packing supplies. If you can obtain packing supplies at a very good price or even obtain the packing supplies for free, as we mentioned by getting them from supermarkets or stores who no longer need the boxes, you can turn around and sell this ebay brand name merchandise to online ebay online auction marketsellers. You could make yourself a good profit if you are getting the ebay brand name merchandise for free then 100% of the sale if profit, but even if you have to pay for the ebay brand name merchandise and you get the ebay brand name merchandise for a very good price, you could walk away with at least a 50% profit margin on the ebay brand name merchandiser that you are selling. Look at it another way, you are making a 100% mark-up on the ebay brand name merchandise that you are selling and that ebay brand name merchandise is the packing supplies. How else can you make money by selling to online ebay online auction marketsellers? Well, if you buy a large lot of ebay brand name merchandise, you could turn around and sell that ebay brand name merchandise to other online ebay online auction marketsellers with the intention of allowing them to resell the ebay brand name merchandise.

So, for example, let us say you found a case of 100 pairs of sneakers. Now, these sneakers are brand new Nike sneakers, which retail for $95 at the store and you pay for them $25 a pair. You might have gone to an ebay online auction; you might have bought them from a store that is going out of business. You have now these 100 pairs of sneakers, all in their original boxes. You could turn around and sell them to online ebay online auction marketsellers who are in the business of reselling ebay brand name merchandise and, specifically, online ebay online auction marketsellers who sell sneakers on online ebay online auction market. Tell them you will offer them these $95 retail sneakers for $60 or $65 a pair. They still can make a decent amount of money, even if they offer the brand new sneakers at a $10 or $15 discount compared to the full retail price and since you only paid $25 a pair, you can make a $40 profit per pair. If you sell 100 pairs to these resellers, then you would be making $4,000 on the entire lot. Let us say you want to sell them very quickly so you can mark up the sneakers by $10 or $15 compared to what you paid for them and you will still be making a good deal amount of money while allowing people who are in the business of selling on online ebay online auction marketto make a good amount of money also. Remember, that you are not just making money from the first sale that you are doing to those online ebay online auction marketsellers, but you are also making money from the future sales that you will make to these online ebay online auction marketresellers or online ebay online auction marketsellers.

Once you develop a relationship with them and they know that you are a good source for quality ebay brand name merchandise at a very good price. There are many ways to make money by selling ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction marketat a very good price when you gear that ebay brand name merchandise to online ebay online auction marketsellers. You can then make it your business to contact ebay online auctioneers, liquidators and look for ebay brand name merchandise that online ebay online auction marketsellers would be interested in having. How can you know what ebay brand name merchandise online ebay online auction marketsellers would be interested in having? Well, you go on online ebay online auction market, you look at the ebay online auctions that are taking place, and you see what the ebay brand name merchandise that is generally being sold is and what ebay brand name merchandise is being sold the most. This way you know that that ebay brand name merchandise sells well, that online ebay online auction marketsellers who sell it are succeeding in with that ebay brand name merchandise. You know that if they are succeeding with that ebay brand name merchandise they will need more of that ebay brand name merchandise. You could contact the online ebay online auction marketsellers before you purchase the ebay brand name merchandise and offer it to them. Tell them what price that you have it available for and then you can see whether they would be interested in buying this ebay brand name merchandise from you at the price that you are willing to offer it at. You also would know what price you need to buy it at so you could know how much of a profit you can make when you sell it at the price that they are willing to pay for it. There are many ways to make money by gearing up your business towards online ebay online auction marketsellers. I strongly recommend that as a part of your business, even if you are going to be focusing on the retail aspect of the business, but that you investigate ways to make money to online ebay online auction marketsellers.

Chapter 26

Having an ebay online auction on online ebay online auction marketis a great way to sell ebay brand name merchandise because you can attract a great number of buyers to your ebay online auction. You could have a lot of online ebay bidders checking out your ebay online auction and if some of them are interested in what you are offering and then some of those interested people online ebay bid on your ebay online auction, then you will have a good chance of selling your ebay brand name merchandise for a decent price. You might actually end up making a good amount of money conducting your business. However, selling on online ebay online auction marketis similar to selling in any market place. The more people who see your ebay brand name merchandise will represent the bigger chance that your ebay brand name merchandise will be sold and also will represent the more money your money could be sold for. In any business situation the equation of supply and demand is true. On online ebay online auction market, the more of a demand there is compared to the supply, the higher the prices will be for the ebay brand name merchandise, which is the supply.

On online ebay online auction market, while there are millions and millions of registered users on online ebay online auction marketand there are estimated at 60,000,000 members on online ebay online auction market. Even though many of those people are looking for the ebay brand name products that you are selling and the services that you will be offering, unless they are looking at your ebay online auction at the time that you are running it, they will not online ebay bid. Now while that may seem rather obvious, think about what it really means. Even if there is a store out in California that desperately needs shoelaces because shoelaces sell very well in their market and they can locate them at a desperate price and you might have an entire box of shoelaces being ebay online auctioned off at online ebay online auction market. Those shoelaces might have only cost you a penny each and that store in California, which is a registered online ebay online auction marketmember, might be willing to spend up to $0.10 a shoelace. Even though you have this box of shoelaces that cost you $50, let us say you have 5,000 shoelaces, that store in California will be more than happy to pay $500 for that box of shoelaces. Unless they see you ebay online auction, they will never online ebay bid on it.

So how can you be sure that they will look at your ebay online auction? Let me even take it a step further, there can be many more stores that could use those shoelaces and they might all be online ebay online auction marketmembers, but they just might not be looking at your ebay online auction. The reason they might not be looking at your ebay online auction is because, maybe that week, they might not be looking at ebay online auctions per say. They might be very busy attending a trade show, they might be busy dealing with customers, they might be on vacation, they might be on holiday or they just might not have done their diligence on online ebay online auction marketand might not have searched that week because they did not expect to find anything that they need on online ebay online auction marketthat week. So instead, they did not look online and they were concentrating on other venues to obtain the shoelaces they need. But if there is a way for you to draw their attention to you online ebay online auction marketebay online auction, then you will have a very good chance of selling the shoelaces for the full price of $0.10 a shoelace, maybe even more, maybe for $0.20 or $.025 a piece, but given the interested parties who are online ebay online auction marketmembers, are focusing on your ebay online auction.

That now, we have only touched upon people who are online ebay online auction marketmembers. What about all of the people who are not members of online ebay online auction market? I am sure you want to have their business also. What if there is another shoe store in New Jersey that could use shoelaces, but they have never considered purchasing shoelaces on online ebay online auction market? They might not even know that there are shoelaces that are offered on online ebay online auction market. What about a small store in Texas? What about a major buyer for a large retail chain? He might never have even thought to look on online ebay online auction marketbecause he might have assumed that online ebay online auction market, as most people assume, is only a business to consumer market plays, where consumer-to-consumer market plays, but not business to business market plays. Even though online ebay online auction market’s spending millions and millions of dollars developing their business-to-business section and their business-to-business marketplace, most people in the business-to-business market place are not aware of the services and the ebay brand name products that can be found on online ebay online auction market. If you have seen one of online ebay online auction market’s advertisements, you will see that there is a vice president for a technological company who obtained a $100,000 worth of brand new software and hardware that he needed for his company for only 15% of its cost or $15,000. Therefore, if people’s attentions are drawn to online ebay online auction marketand they see the amazing savings that are offered on online ebay online auction market, even very hard and difficult people will be happy to buy ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction marketas long as the price is right. Remember, you do not have to deal with any of the one-on-one negotiating when you sell ebay brand name merchandise through online ebay online auction market, so it is definitely a great way to sell ebay brand name merchandise, even to the business consumer.

Now, even to retail consumers, people who are just buying the ebay brand name merchandise to use it themselves, so to speak, the end user. The end user also needs ebay brand name merchandise, he might know to look for it on online ebay online auction marketor even if he has an account and he is used to looking for that certain type of ebay brand name merchandise. Take for instance a collector of art, who loves checking out online ebay online auction marketevery week to see what the latest paintings are that are being offered for sale. That collector has become accustomed to finding, on online ebay online auction market, some great finds from some obscure artist who have beautiful art. Since those artists are overlooked, the art can be found for very, very reasonable prices. It is special art that he can show off to his friends and to his colleagues; it is definitely art that is not available in the general market place. Now, that collector, even though he checks online ebay online auction marketevery week, he might not check online ebay online auction marketon the specific day that your ebay online auction started or the ebay online auction ended and might just miss your ebay online auction all together. What about someone who loves to build models always looks for different model kits to put together? However, just that week, he is away from his computer or that week he is not in the mood to search on online ebay online auction marketand misses your great ebay online auction for a brand new model that can be put together in no time at all and it is for a beautiful boat from the 1800’s. Now that person who love building models would have been more then happy to online ebay bid on your boat and might have even wanted to buy it except since he was not in the mood to look at ebay online auctions that week, he simply will miss that ebay online auction.

Now, every person who misses your ebay online auction is one less online ebay bidder and one less online ebay bidder means less money in your pocket because when his or her online ebay bid is not placed, the next online ebay bid does not have to be as high as it would have been if his online ebay bid had been placed, right? If someone places a online ebay bid for $5, the next online ebay bid has to be, let us say, $5.50, but if the online ebay bid for $5 has not been placed, then the next online ebay bid could still be for $5. The more online ebay bidders you attract, the more people you focus on your ebay online auction will mean the more online ebay bids you will receive, the higher the online ebay bids will be and the higher the final sale price will be for the item.

So, how do you draw people’s attentions to your ebay online auctions? Now that you know the importance of having as many eyes looking at your ebay online auction, you will want to know how to have those people focused on your ebay online auction. One way to do it is to build an email contact list of all your previous customers and all the people who have sent you inquiries regarding your ebay online auctions. You will want to have the list broken down into sections, depending on what the inquiry or customer regarded. If you run ebay online auctions for antique books and you run ebay online auctions for movies, you will want to have a separate list for the sales and the inquiries that resulted from your ebay online auctions for comedies from the 1980’s and also from antique books from the early 1800’s. Once you have that email list, every time you have an ebay online auction, you will want to send out an email letting them know, through a friendly reminder, that you have put up a new item for ebay online auction on online ebay online auction marketand let them know why you think this item might interest them. This way, they will see it as a personal contact and they will be glad that you took the time out to contact them to let them know about the ebay online auction that you are listing. If the ebay online auction simply seems like just an advertisement, then people will be turned off and might request to be taken off your list. Especially if it just seems like an advertisement and if it is not something that they are interested in, they will simply ignore your emails from now on.

If they perceive your email as a reminder from someone who enjoys doing business with them about something exciting that they might they might personally enjoy, even if it is not something they specifically want at that time, they will look forward to your next email because they will know that your emails are really meant to help them. Now, when your customers and the people who sent you inquiries receive an email updating them regarding an ebay online auction of something that interests them, they will check out the ebay online auction out of curiosity, they will want to know what it is that you are offering. If then you are offering something that is valuable to them, something that they have enjoyed in the past, and then they will go ahead and place a online ebay bid. They will start contacting you. They will start entering discussions with you regarding what you have up for sale, even if they do not purchase the item you have up for sale in your ebay online auction, they might purchase other items that you have in your inventory once you have alerted them to that product that it is that you are offering. As you can see, there are many ways to draw people’s attention and there are many ways to draw people’s attention.

For instance, let us say someone has a wedding a certain week and he is too busy to look on online ebay online auction marketbecause he does not have the time or the patients to follow ebay online auctions. If you send him an email and give him a special reason why he should the online ebay online auction marketebay online auctions that week, then he will do it. Even if the wedding is three days from now and he or she is occupied twenty-four hours a day, if you let them know that is extremely special and that they can only obtain it now through this lifetime opportunity. It could be a rare antique that you came across at an estate sale somewhere in the South and now you have put it up for sale and people up in the North would love to have that old antique that is only available in the Southern states; it is no longer even available and 80% of those states. Even if that wedding is coming up, the collector or antique lover will take their time and check out your ebay online auction, even if they place one online ebay bid on the ebay online auction, they might, since they are very busy, might place a higher online ebay bid then they would have otherwise. The reason that they would place a higher online ebay bid is because they know that they will not be able to constantly keep up with the ebay online auction and they know that the price of the ebay online auction could quickly escalate in value. Therefore, what they will do, in order not to miss the opportunity to purchase that antique, they will set the highest online ebay bid that they can afford and then they will walk away and they will hope that they will win their ebay online auction.

Another advantage of contacting people and having them focusing on the ebay online auction is the example of those stores. Let us say one of those stores want to purchase from you and now weeks, months have gone by and you have not had any contact with those stores because you have not had anything to offer them. So, by putting an email out to them, letting them know, alerting them to what you are offering this week, even though it is been months from now, but if you send out that email and that store happens to need what you are offering them, they are going to be very aggressive in securing the ebay brand name merchandise. Meaning, if you send them an email just at the right time for something that they happen to need really badly, they are not going to be so concerned for exactly what they will pay for it, they are going to be more concerned with buying the ebay brand name merchandise so they can resell it and make money.

Let us say the shoelaces retail for $0.30 a pair and you put them up on online ebay online auction marketfor your cost and you know that any online ebay bids above your cost is going to mean a profit to you. That store is going to pay a lot more then what you expect them to pay, they might even pay for more then the wholesale price because they need those shoelaces and they cannot get them from their current wholesaler. But that store would have never of know that you had that ebay online auction up for the shoelaces unless you put up an email and sent it out to them and they were alerted and they focused in on your ebay online auction. More then that, they might be so eager to buy those shoelaces from you that they might contact you directly and ask you to buy them from you directly. Meaning, they might contact you and say, “Hey look, you have this ebay online auction out for shoelaces. We do not know how high the price will go, but we’re willing to pay as much as $0.30 a pair, can we make a deal now?” You end the ebay online auction early, you send them the shoelaces, and you make a good deal of money. If you bought the entire box of five thousand shoelaces for a penny each, the total cost of the shoelaces was $50 and if you could sell the five thousand shoelaces for $0.30 pair, now you are taking about $1,500 in your pocket. There is definitely a lot of room to make money on online ebay online auction market, but what you need to do is bring people’s attention to the ebay online auctions that you are running.

Another way to conduct business on online ebay online auction marketand, which will lead you to bring people to your ebay online auctions, is by picking up the phone, making a list of all the different types on consumers and business that would be interested in what you are offering and you could start contacting them. Make sure that if you are calling up consumers, you check the do not call up list and you follow all the laws and regulations that pertain towards telemarketing. The same would apply when you call businesses. So now with the example of where you have shoelaces up for sale on online ebay online auction market, you could open up the phone book and you can call all the shoe stores and all the sneaker stores in you area and let them know about what you are offering on online ebay online auction market. If you call a hundred stores that carry shoelaces and only four or five of those stores are interested in purchasing your shoelaces that is still enough customers to give you a good profit. If three or four of those stores start competing against each other to purchase your shoelaces and they drive up the price to $0.15 or $0.20 a pair, you have still made about fifteen times your money. It definitely pays to bring people’s attention to your ebay online auctions.

How can you find a list of stores or businesses that focus in on the ebay brand name merchandise that you are selling? Well, one way to do it is by going through the phone book, you could actually even do it online, you could go to superpages.com, you could go to yellowpages.com; there are many websites that allow you to search listings of businesses. You put in the state that you are looking for, you select a city, you do not even have to select a city, you can do it by state only, you could put in the key word for the category that the business falls under or you could search by the name of the business.

Let us say you are selling sneakers, you do not know the name of the business, and you are not sure exactly what category a certain type of a sneaker store would fall under. You might have these exclusive, special sneakers that are only available from a certain country that you imported in and now you want to be able to sell those sneakers and you are not exactly sure which store would be your best customer base for those sneakers. So what do you do? You put in for the name of the business “sneakers” then you obtain a listing of every store in that state that has the name sneakers and it is business name. You might find sneaker wholesalers this way, sneaker retailers; you might find distributors of sneakers. Now that you have that entire list, you can pick up the phone and start calling them and letting them know about your ebay online auction. When you find a store who is interested in checking out the ebay online auction or even a store that just wants to look at pictures of the sneakers, and is considering buying the sneakers directly from you, you ask them for their email address, email them either pictures of the sneakers or email them a link to the ebay online auction that you have up for the sneakers. This way, you will present the sneakers to them in a professional manor because they will see the pictures and they will be able to follow the ebay online auction on online ebay online auction market.

Many retailers and distributors might not feel comfortable online ebay online ebay bidding on online ebay online auction marketfor ebay brand name merchandise; they might feel more comfortable buying the ebay brand name merchandise directly without having to compete with many other buyers for obvious reasons. They do not want the price to be driven up; they want to be able to get a good deal without having to worry about missing out on this deal when someone else purchases the ebay brand name merchandise. You could use that to your advantage. You could put up a hundred sneakers up on online ebay online auction marketfor an ebay online auction. Maybe you want to sell all of the sneakers one shot. What you can do is when someone contacts you and inquiries about buying the ebay brand name merchandise directly from you, you do not have to tell them that you have another hundred sneakers available; you do not even have to tell them that you have another thousand sneakers available. You can set up a deal with them and say to them, “Look, the sizes of sneakers I have on online ebay online auction market, I might have some extra sneakers available, how many would you like to take?”, then you negotiate the price, the quantity and you make your money by making an additional sale. The reason you would do not want to let them know how many pieces you have is because if they know that you have too much of a quantity they might you are in a rush to sell them or they might think that you feel pressured to sell your ebay brand name merchandise because you are holding so much of it. Never let people know how many units you have. This way you could also use it to your advantage by telling them this is a product that is extremely hard to find and that it is a product that is not mass-produced. Therefore, if you want it, you need to buy it from you and me need to pay me the price that I am asking or otherwise you just will not be able to buy through another outlet; there will not be another seller who will be offering the same ebay brand name merchandise that you are offering.

Another way that works very well, when you are ebay online auctioning off an item with a very high-ticket value or an item that you believe that can increase in price to a very high level as the online ebay online ebay bidding increases, the way to promote that type of an item would be through a press release. You could send out a press release through either PR News or Business Wire. There is a small charge to send out the press release online, with a very limited circulation; that costs around a $100. To send out a press release with a national circulation, and costs roughly $600. If you were ebay online auctioning off a house that you think would appeal to a large number of people due to the fact that a celebrity or a sports figure once lived in that house, you might want to strongly consider sending out a full press release with a full national circulation. Even if the press release costs you $600, you might be able to attract so many online ebay bidders to your ebay online auction that you will make money off the price of house and above the cost of that press release.

I once saw an ebay online auction on online ebay online auction marketgo for a house that which Kirk Cobain lived in. The price of that house, even though in that same neighborhood the average house was sold for roughly $60,000 and the two entrepreneurs who bought that house paid $60,000. As they alerted the mass media that this was the residence of Kirk Cobain while he was growing up, the online ebay online ebay bidding for this house shot up to over $350,000 because there were people out there who were so excited to have the opportunity to own the house where Kirk Cobain grew up. They were so excited that they rushed and online ebay bid up the price beyond its actual value based on the neighborhood. They were not concerned with the intrinsic value of the house was; they were more concerned with being able to have the house where this musician that they greatly admired lived in. If you have something of value that you believe will be appealing to people on a national scale based on its attachment to a celebrity, based notoriety it might have, then you want to be able to bring as much exposure to that item or to that service as possible.

Maybe you are ebay online auctioning off the right to have dinner with a famous politician. Let us say you are ebay online auctioning off this right for a fund raiser for the politicians chauffeurs or you are doing it to raise money for charity, you want let everybody know that this is a lifetime opportunity to have dinner with this famous politician. Those two hours of the politician’s time, while that time is valuable, but if you were just selling it to a very limited audience, people might be willing to pay for the time. Even if they are willing to pay for the time, they might only pay $100 or $200 for the right to sit down to have a two-hour dinner. However, if you reach out to a national audience, there could be so many people who admire that politician, are so curious to meet the politician and have so many questions for the politician and would love to share their ideas with the politician that the online ebay online ebay bidding for that ebay online auction could be in the thousands of dollars.

I once saw online ebay online ebay bidding for the right to have dinner with Warren Buffet go over $11,000 on a per person basis. The total price for the ebay online auction was over $80,000 for the right for eight people to sit down and to have dinner with Warren Buffet. You see, there is a lot of potential in online ebay online auction market, especially when you can market your ebay online auction properly and alert the people who are interested in that ebay online auction, to your ebay online auction. Remember, you want to focus on both online ebay online auction marketmembers and on members who are not active. You also want to focus on people who have no connection to online ebay online auction marketbecause once you alert them to what it is that you are offering, they could become excited about what it is that you are offering and they will have a strong incentive to check out your ebay online auction. When they otherwise would not have online ebay bid on you ebay online auction, they will online ebay bid on the ebay online auction.

An innovative method to use is to actually advertise your ebay online auction through regular media outlets, you could advertise your ebay online auction on the radio, you could advertise your ebay online auction in the newspaper, you advertise it on cable TV, you could get spots that are not during prime-time where you could obtain the time for a very cheap price, advertise the ebay online auction. Make sure that you are advertising the ebay online auction at least one to two weeks before that ebay online auction runs and if people are excited enough about what you are offering, they will mark it down on their calendar and then they will check out your ebay online auction. When you advertise in the mass media, through an email newsletter, through the radio, through TV, through a banner campaign, through a mail order campaign, or through direct mail when you actually mail out letters, what you want to do is you want to have people respond to you. You want to have people call you up, you want to have people give you their email addresses and you want people to give you their phone numbers. This way you can contact them when it is time for the ebay online auction or to remind them of this great ebay online auction that you are having, and then the people will know about your ebay online auction and hopefully will online ebay bid on your ebay online auction. The method through which you contact people is up to you as long as you are reaching as many people as possible who are interested in what it is that you are offering and as long as the medium through which you advertise to reach people still reaches the niche that you want to reach. You would not want to advertise an ebay online auction for a fishing rod in a vegetarian web site. On the other hand, you would not want to advertise a television on an email list that is geared towards book lovers. You want to make sure that the item that you are offering and the advertising medium that you are using complement each other and are able to reach the market that will be receptive to the ebay brand name merchandise or the services that you are offering on online ebay online auction market.

I remember seeing a press release by a company that conducted a million dollar ebay online auction on online ebay online auction market. They put out that press release even though the ebay online auction had already finished because they wanted people to know that if they were interested in collectible coins that they should know that their company was the best place to get those coins. This way, people will check for future ebay online auctions to see what other coins they had in the future. Another reason why they had also sent out that press release was so that if anyone were planning to sell their coins, they would contact this company and perhaps set a consignment sale allowing them to sell their coins on online ebay online auction marketbecause obviously, if they sold a million dollars worth of coins on online ebay online auction market, they know what they are doing. Now, when they sell these coins for them on online ebay online auction market, they can go ahead and make money as both a seller, the person who sent out the press release, and the people who contacts them and now gives them their coins to sell, will also make money because then they will be able to sell their coins. You always want to keep people apprised of your ebay online auctions before they happen and after they happen. The reason you want to keep them apprised before they happen, of course, is so that they should focus on your ebay online auction and they should online ebay bid on your ebay online auction. The reason you want to apprise people after the ebay online auction is completed is so if they have any ebay brand name merchandise that they want to sell that is similar to the ebay brand name merchandise you have sold, they can sell it to you. Also, when people read about your ebay online auction, they will be excited about what they read and in the future, they will stay in touch with you and your business to keep track of what ebay online auctions you have that pertain to the areas that they are interested.

Chapter 27

At this point in the online ebay online auction marketbook, you have received more then enough information to start an online ebay online auction market business and to have a very good chance to becoming quite successful at it. If you plug in the information that you have learned in this book, you can in no time finding yourself developing a full time income. You could actually replace your full time or part time income in a very short period of time. There are many people who support themselves full time or part time from the income that they receive on online ebay online auction market. There are even individuals that make a six-figure income on online ebay online auction marketand there are businesses that reach in the millions of dollars with the revenue exclusively derived from their online ebay online auction market business. Now, if you would like to be one of those people, it is not enough to know how to run an online ebay online auction market business, you do not just have to know what to do, but you also have to know what to sell. See, while you might have all of the sales skills, you might have all the sales tools that you need to make money on online ebay online auction market, in order to actually develop your online ebay online auction market business and start making money with it, well you are going to have to have something to sell, whether it is a service or a product. I am sure that we can both agree that without having the actual assets to deliver, whether it is a service or a product, you are not going to be able to generate any income.

In order for you to be successful and to have something to sell to make money, you must know what it is that sells well on online ebay online auction market. Therefore, we will devote this chapter to what the hottest selling ebay brand name ebay brand name products are on online ebay online auction market. The hottest ebay brand name ebay brand name products that sell on online ebay online auction marketare the same hot ebay brand name ebay brand name products that sell off online ebay online auction market. You have to wonder why it is that people go to online ebay online auction market. If you want to figure out what it is that sells really well on online ebay online auction market, you have to first try to figure out who the average customer on online ebay online auction marketis. Who the customer is and what it is that he or she is looking for and why a customer would feel compelled to shop on online ebay online auction marketas opposed to any other online web site or even for that matter, any offline retailer. See, there is a reason why people shop on online ebay online auction market. There is a reason why a consumer would spend the time following ebay online auctions on online ebay online auction market, would spend the time looking through all the different ebay online auctions on online ebay online auction marketand would then spend the time actually online ebay online ebay bidding on the online ebay online auction marketebay online auction, responding with a seller on online ebay online auction market, and then determining if the item that is being offered is for the buyer. As you can see that whatever it is you are offering on online ebay online auction markethas to be appealing enough that someone would shop on online ebay online auction market, purchase your item with the risks that the buyer will be taking. As opposed to simply buying that product or a similar product on another online web site or through an offline channel, such as a retail outlet, an outlet, a mall, a shopping mall, a large retailer, a large department store. There are many reasons why somebody would buy from you on online ebay online auction marketand it is up to you why it is that they are shopping for that selected product.

Let me give you some ideas. The reason someone would shop on online ebay online auction marketis that to some extent, that item not being offered through the buyers local retail channels, other online web sites, or the product is special enough that even if the product is being offered somewhere else, the person is excited to buy it at the price that you are offering it for. Therefore, he would rather purchase that option on online ebay online auction marketinstead of purchasing the option through another online web site or through another retail channel. If the product is being offered at such a good deal on online ebay online auction market, at such a good price, people will want to buy it on online ebay online auction marketas opposed to another online web site. If the item is an exclusive product or it is being offered at a very, very cheap price as compared to a retail outlet, then that consumer would rather purchase that product on online ebay online auction market.

Let us say the consumer is located in a rural town in Arkansas and he does not have access to a large shopping mall, such as you might have access to if you live in Philadelphia. Now, that consumer living in the rural town in Arkansas, he would be willing to purchase ebay brand name ebay brand name products that would be found in that local shopping mall where you live. See, the reason he would be willing to purchase them and even at a similar price that they would charge at a regular department store; it is just because he does not have much of a choice. He might not want to drive thirty minutes to go find that product at a local mall when he could just order the product through online ebay online auction market, wait for the product to arrive and he will have the product delivered straight to his home. Let us say he is in no rush to buy for himself a brand new stereo. Let us say he does not mind if he has a stereo this week or next week and the only other alternative for him is to drive to Wal-Mart, but to get to Wal-Mart, it is going to take him at least forty-five minutes by car. So, that buyer would much rather place his order on online ebay online auction market, meaning online ebay bid for the item, hopefully win the item and just wait for it to arrive; he does not have to take any time out of his busy schedule to obtain the product and then the product would arrive directly to his home or to his work place. So, what would make that item a hot item for that person? Well, what would make it hot is that it would be easily accessible; it would be a convenient item to order, arrive directly to his residence or his business place, would be offered at a much better price then it would at any local store, would be offered cheaper then on another online web site. So you see, in order for a product to be hot for a buyer, it does not have to be a hot product per say, but what is has to be, it has to be hot, personally for that buyer.

What other items sell very well on online ebay online auction market? Well, at the same reason a VCR or a stereo could sell well for consumers who are based in rural areas. Collectibles sell really well for the same reason on online ebay online auction market. You see a collectible is a product that cannot be easily bought or located through retail channels or online websites. Let us say you are selling a box of vintage basketball cards on online ebay online auction market. Someone who is considering buying those cards does not have that many more options because he cannot just go online and find those vintage basketball cards that easily. He also cannot walk into his local basketball card shop, even if there is such a thing, and purchase those cards. Therefore, if you offer those cards at a good price, at a decent price and they are exciting enough for that person to buy to those cards, he will be willing to spend on the cards, he will be excited to spend money on the cards, and he will buy those cards. Whatever it is that you are selling, on online ebay online auction market, it has to be appealing enough. What makes an item appealing? When the item is hard to obtain. When you cannot simply go to a local store and find that item. That is the reason collectibles do so well on online ebay online auction market. Simply because the collectible that is being offered is exclusive to the degree that it cannot be found anywhere else and even if that collectible could be found in other locations, the further a person is away from a metropolitan center, the less of a chance there is that person will be able to find that collectible.

You see, while they baseball card shows and comic book shows and record shows and antique shows in most city areas and most metropolitan centers, the farther away from those metropolitan areas, the harder it is to find those types of shows. Even if they have an antique show in a rural area, the might not have the same selection as antique show in a metropolitan area. If you could offer good ebay brand name merchandise that would normally that would be found in an antique show or at a baseball card show on online ebay online auction market, then you will have many potential online ebay bidders who will be excited to purchase the ebay brand name ebay brand name products from you on online ebay online auction market. The key is to make sure that what it is that you are offering is something which will be very appealing to a online ebay bidder on online ebay online auction marketbecause he does not have easy access to it, you are offering it cheaper then your competitors and the price is a good price and the item is a very hard to find item.

There are other ways to determine what is hot on online ebay online auction market. You could go on online ebay online auction marketand see what are the ebay brand name ebay brand name products that are selling the most, what are the most listings for a given product, and you could actually search for yourself. Go on online ebay online auction market, look at different product categories and see which items with in the categories are receiving the highest online ebay bids. If there is an item that is receiving a high online ebay bid consistently, then you know that it is a hot selling product and a product that you should be focusing on. Now, let us say you are in a situation where you are having a very hard time finding hot ebay brand name ebay brand name products on online ebay online auction market. Let us say you are looking at online ebay online auction marketand you are just overwhelmed, it is seems that in every category there are ebay brand name ebay brand name products that sell and it seems in every category there are ebay brand name ebay brand name products that do not sell. That is very likely to happen and that would give you the correct answer or idea to what is a hot selling product. What else you can do in order to determine if the product you want to sell is a hot product, well, you can go to trade shows and see what the ebay brand name ebay brand name products that are selling very well are. Usually whatever sells very well online will also sell very well offline. You want to find out what ebay brand name ebay brand name products are selling well at trade shows, what ebay brand name ebay brand name products are selling well at different stores and you could even go around, do your research online, and find out what are the hottest ebay brand name ebay brand name products that go. If you know anyone in retail ask them, what is selling really, really well this season?

Once you locate what the item is, then find a source for the ebay brand name merchandise and start selling it on online ebay online auction market. Do not stock too much up on the product because if you stock up too much on that product and then the fad changes and that product is no longer hot, you will be left holding a large inventory of an item that no longer sells. So how can you be certain that the product sells well? There really is no way besides going on online ebay online auction marketand seeing what is selling well, but remember one thing, people are the same all over. If something is selling well offline it will also sell well online, if you can provide the product under the same circumstances as you are offering offline. By that, I mean if there is a product offline that is doing very well because people can gain access to it very quickly and can receive a high quality item, then you want to be in the same situation when you sell the ebay brand name merchandise online. You want to make sure that the people receiving the ebay brand name merchandise online will also be able to receive the same ebay brand name merchandise in a very efficient and quick manor. So you see, in order to know what you need to sell on online ebay online auction market, you need to investigate what is selling well on online ebay online auction marketand off online ebay online auction marketand once you know what that product is, you will already be on your way to developing a system where you have hot selling ebay brand name ebay brand name products.

A good way to have a constant stream of hot selling ebay brand name ebay brand name products is to put your name out there and be in touch with wholesalers, brokers, sales representatives from companies, and always ask them to give you a list of what the hottest selling ebay brand name ebay brand name products are and tell them you are interested in buying those ebay brand name ebay brand name products. If you want to be able to buy those ebay brand name ebay brand name products, your name needs to be known. You need to have sales agents, sales representatives, manufacturers’ reps, wholesalers, retailers, discounters, liquidators, you want them to all know that you are always actively in the market, ready to buy any hot selling ebay brand name merchandise and if they have that ebay brand name merchandise for you, you will buy it without hesitation. If you can develop a reputation for someone who can buy in large volumes and is always eager to buy ebay brand name merchandise, you will have many offers coming your way. The same way that I am sure that Wal-Mart receives thousands of offers for ebay brand name ebay brand name products everyday. If you develop a good reputation as a solid buyer who is looking for ebay brand name merchandise, you will have offers from many different sellers whether they are liquidators, wholesalers, or manufacturers, for hot selling ebay brand name merchandise. So, remember, you always need to be on lookout for the next fad.

To determine what ebay brand name merchandise will sell well by fad is by turning on MTV. Watch MTV, see what it is that people are buying. Go to your local supermarket, see which isles are always running out of ebay brand name merchandise, and see what ebay brand name merchandise is offered in those isles and then you will you know what ebay brand name merchandise sells well. Remember you could always open up a local newspaper, see what ebay brand name merchandise is selling well in your area, and then say to yourself if it is selling well in your area then I am sure there are other areas around the world that would be interested in having the same ebay brand name merchandise. If lawnmowers do really well in your area during the summer, I think it would be a safe bet that lawnmowers to do very well in similar areas during the summer. If in your area, people love to ski, all you need to do is stock up on ski supplies and find other areas where people also love to ski. Then you put up that ebay brand name merchandise on online ebay online auction market, you put up the skiing supplies up on online ebay online auction marketand then hopefully those buyers will buy that ebay brand name merchandise from you, provided that you are offering good quality ebay brand name merchandise and that the price is priced reasonably. If you want to develop a good solid online ebay online auction market business and you want to build that business, you need to make sure that you are always in touch with pop culture. You need to see what is it that people on the street enjoy buying now and then you need to gear yourself up so you can obtain that ebay brand name merchandise and get ready to sell that ebay brand name merchandise. If you are able to do this, you will have a very easy time always finding a good stream of hot selling ebay brand name ebay brand name products and, especially, you want to be able to find those hot selling ebay brand name ebay brand name products before your competition finds the ebay brand name merchandise. Once your competition finds the same ebay brand name merchandise, you will be competing based on price and while you can always differentiate yourself based on service, but once your competition is offering the same ebay brand name merchandise, you will not have that extra edge of having hot selling ebay brand name merchandise that your competition does not have. So in order to make yourself a leader in the field, you want to always be able to jump on the hot fad while it is occurring. Act very quickly, have that hot selling ebay brand name merchandise before you competition has it and then start selling it as quickly as possible, this way you can be the first player in the market with the hot ebay brand name merchandise that you are introducing or you are selling on online ebay online auction market.

Chapter 28

When you run your online ebay online auction market business, you are going to encounter many aspects of the business world that you find in both in the online world and the offline world. One important aspect to know how to deal with is learning what to do when a dispute arises. While most of the time there will not be any disputes arise, but you should be prepared when a dispute arises. Among the types of disputes that are common on online ebay online auction market, is a buyer being unhappy with a description of an item, a seller being unhappy with the amount of payment that he actually receives or the delay of payment. The seller can also be unhappy with the correspondence from the buyer or the buyer could also be unhappy with the correspondence from the seller, maybe the buyer has waited too long to receive his ebay brand name merchandise and he expected to receive the ebay brand name merchandise a lot sooner. You see, there are many things that could take place in a transaction that will enrage the buyer and the seller.

Now, your job a seller is to diffuse the tension when a dispute starts. You want to try to resolve things as soon as possible. The reason you want to resolve the situation is not even so much as to satisfy that buyer, even though you should have as a priority the desire to satisfy the buyer, but what you also want to make sure is that you do not receive any negative feedback. If the person you are doing business with puts negative feedback on your account and other people who want to do business with you will first check out your account and they see that you have negative feedback. They are going to be very weary of doing business with you and many people who would have otherwise of online ebay bid on your ebay online auction, will not online ebay bid on your ebay online auction when they see that you have negative feedback. Therefore, your job as an online ebay online auction marketseller is to do whatever you need to do to ensure that you do not receive any negative feedback.

In many situations where someone is upset with your ebay online auction, you still want to try to resolve things as diplomatically as possible to ensure, that you are left with positive feedback. Even if you are 100% in the right and it is very frustrating to try to deal with that buyer who and I will agree with you in many situations, is that his demands or her demands are really not that realistic. This will help you with future sales. For instance, when you are trying to send something out as soon as possible and you have indicated that before hand, that it will take two or three days for the item to be sent out. Then UPS or the postal office will take additional four or five days to deliver the ebay brand name merchandise to the buyer, in a situation like that where the buyer is still unhappy that he did not receive the ebay brand name merchandise as soon as he wanted it to be delivered to him. So the first thing to do is to explain the situation very patiently, to apologize for the delay and to let the buyer know what it is that took time to have the ebay brand name merchandise delivered. You see, instead of accusing the buyer of being unreasonable and instead of telling the buyer straight out that it was not in your control. That you did your part and that is just the way life is; it takes four to five days for the ebay brand name merchandise to be delivered. While giving over that information and arguing from that point of view, you would be correct, you would have done your part and there really is nothing legally or ethically the buyer could hold over you. Since you are in business to make money and you are in business for the long term, you might even want to have more business from this buyer and from future buyers that this person could refer to you. So it is your obligation, it is your responsibility; it is on your shoulders to go ahead to what you need to do to resolve this situation the best way possible. In order to be able to take care of this situation, you need to take that extra step.

One of the things you could always do is tell the buyer, “Hey look, even though I did my best with the shipping, I still realize that you are unhappy with the time period that it took to have your ebay brand name merchandise to be delivered. What I am willing to do the next time you place an order, I am willing to give you an extra bonus that will compensate for the delay in sending this order.” If the buyer is reasonable and 99% of the buyers are reasonable, the buyer will be happy that you are taking out the time and putting in the effort to make sure that he is happy with the transaction, especially when you offer to send him a free bonus in the next transaction. Then in that situation, the buyer should have no complaints and should be more then happy to give you positive feedback since he knows that you really are trying to make him happy. By offering to send him an extra bonus with his next order, you are giving him an extra incentive to be satisfied and to give you positive feedback.

Let us say that the buyer is so upset that for some reason he does not want to place another order with you until this situation is 100% resolved. Then in that situation, you could start out by offering to send the buyer a free bonus now, as long as the buyer is willing to pay the cost of the shipping. So what you do is select a bonus that is an item that really did not cost you much or you might have even got it for free, offer to send that item out to the buyer and just have them, as a fair compromise, pay for the cost of the shipping. If the buyer is still reluctant to pay for the cost of the shipping and you feel that if you really go out of your way to satisfy this buyer that he will give you positive feedback. What you can do is send him the free bonus and pay for the shipping yourself, out of your own pocket. Do it for the reason that not because this person it going to reorder from you because at this point, it really does not seem like this buyer is a serious buyer who is going to want to reorder from you no matter what you do, but you are doing this just to salvage your reputation. By your reputation I mean, is you are doing this so this upset buyer should be satisfied and should turn around and give you positive feedback, which will help you in your future business endeavors on online ebay online auction market.

While you are trying to set up your business in a way that all buyers that you interact with will be happy, it is not always likely to happen. You will always have some buyers for one reason or another that will be unhappy. Let us say there is a buyer on online ebay online auction marketwho just feels that the ebay brand name merchandise that you sent was misrepresented. Then take the approach you did before and offer to send the buyer additional ebay brand name merchandise that he or she will be happy with as long as they pay for the cost of shipping. Remind them that, in fact, you did not misrepresent the ebay brand name merchandise, you are not legally bound to send them more ebay brand name merchandise, but you are willing to only because you want to make them happy. You did it because you want to have their future business. The only thing that you ask of them is they cover the cost of the shipping for the ebay brand name merchandise. If they are not willing to do that, depending on how much you want their business in the future and how much it means to you to have positive feedback, you could keep negotiating down. Meaning you keep extending them more benefits and more options, meaning you will pay for the cost of shipping; they do not have to pay for the cost, they should split the cost half way with you. You could always keep adding in more benefits and more features until you resolve the situation. While you do want to resolve the situation, you also do not want to lose money on the deal you made with them. There are no advantages to going out of your way to satisfy this buyer if you are giving up all of the profits that you made with this transaction. You also have to realize that people understand that on online ebay online auction marketthat from time to time, you receive negative feedback. As long as you respond to the negative feedback on your profile with a good reason why you do not deserve that negative feedback, most people will understand. If you are still very concerned with your ebay online auction descriptions or any of your ebay online auction descriptions, you could let people know why you received that negative feedback or you could address the reason why you received negative the feedback. Let us say for instance, you go the negative feedback because the ebay brand name merchandise you sent out was not packed properly.

So what you would do in that situation is you would go ahead and list in all of your ebay online auction descriptions that you are now using a new innovative packing method that helps the ebay brand name merchandise arrive in top condition. This way, even if some reads a negative feedback and sees that in the past you sent out the ebay brand name merchandise without it being packed properly, they would see that you have actually resolved this issue and the ebay brand name merchandise that you are sending out now is packed properly. Then people will not have an issue with you and people will happy to deal with you. Therefore, the key is to make sure that you are able to supply people with a mechanism to resolve the disputes. See, if you resolve the disputes that arise or you offer a people a way to resolve the disputes; people will not be so upset when issues arise. If people feel that they can contact you and there is an open communication process, then even if they are not happy with the ebay brand name merchandise that they receive, the first thing they will do is contact you to resolve the situation. What they will not do is they will not rush to give you negative feedback and they will not rush to complain to online ebay online auction marketabout your business dealings because they know that you are an individual that is honest and sincere and you are willing to resolve a situation. Always remember to keep a balance to wanting to resolve the situation and making sure that you still make money with your ebay online auction. While you do want to make money with the ebay online auction, you also need to make sure that in the future you have more business from this individual and from other online ebay online auction marketbuyers.

For instance, I once conducted business with an individual and he was not that thrilled with the variety of ebay brand name merchandise that he received. Since this individual placed a very large order, I offered to this individual in his next order three boxes of ebay brand name merchandise free. This way he could be ensured that the next time he ordered, he would receive a better variety of ebay brand name merchandise. I said to him, “That if this is an issue from this time, I can make sure to resolve that next time we do business together, by giving you a better variety of ebay brand name merchandise. What I can also do, I can also go ahead and I could give you three boxes for free now to make up for the lack of ebay brand name merchandise that you feel you received during the last time that you did business with me.” I was able to resolve the situation and this person felt that I was being honest and addressing the issue, he was satisfied and instead of just walking away as an angry buyer, he then turned around and purchased ebay brand name merchandise from me again. We both came out ahead because in the next transaction this individual paid less for the shipping because I had paid for some of the shipping out of my own pocket, he received three boxes of free ebay brand name merchandise and received a good variety of good ebay brand name merchandise making him a happy customer. For me it was worthwhile, even though in the next transaction, I made a very small amount of money, but I had him as a long-term customer and I was able to receive positive feedback. Which helped me in future sales and I was able, from experience, to know what it was that I needed to do to ensure that future buyers of ebay brand name merchandise from me was satisfied and happy with what it is that I was giving them.

If you do receive negative feed back, let us say it is too late and you have received negative feedback, so what you want to do at that point is, like we mentioned, you want to show people that you are resolving that situation, you want to respond to the negative feedback in your profile. What you should not do, which I made a mistake one time, is if someone gives you negative feedback, do not rush to put negative feedback on his or her profile. If you put negative feedback on their profile, all it will seem like is that you two, you both to an extent have a legitimate reason to be upset at each other, but people like to stay away from arguments. Therefore, if you are involved with an argument with someone else, people will just say, “You know what? I am really not sure who is right and who is wrong, but I really do not want anything to do with the either the buyer or the seller because it is questionable the way the way conducting their business.” However, if you stay above the fray and do not respond with negative feedback and show people that you really did try to resolve that situation. Then even the negative feedback will be to your credit because people will say look at what a good individual this person is, he received negative feedback, but since he really wanted to resolve this in a business like and diplomatic fashion, he did not go ahead and give the other person, the other party to the transaction negative feedback. You see, by abstaining from giving negative feedback, even when it is well deserved, you are putting yourself on a higher rung that will encourage other online ebay online auction marketbuyers to want to do business with you. So, in all situations, make sure that you are able to come out ahead and you look clean and that whatever it is you are doing is honest and if there is a situation that arises, try to find the proper way to resolve the situation.

In many situations, even when you know you are 100% in the right, realize what the value of having a good reputation and work with the other party to ensure that they are happy. You maintain your intact relationship and even if it will cost you some extra money now, keep in mind that if you develop your online ebay online auction market business properly, it could turn into a six-figure income if not higher. I know when you are just starting out a business that every dollar counts and you might be very reluctant to give up any of your profits to satisfy a buyer especially when you know that you are right and the buyer is in the wrong. So make sure that you have your eyes out on the big picture and that you do not mind giving up some of the profits now in the desire and in the hope of having a lot more business in the future. Remember if you want to build a six-figure income on online ebay online auction market, in order to do that, you are going to have to have a very clean slate. If you have more then one or two negative feedbacks, you are going to have a very hard time building your business to the extent to start making serious money for yourself. You do not want to be held back by those negative feedbacks. Therefore, the lesson you should learn from this chapter is to always have your focus on the future. Always think about only what it is you need out of the future and to resolve any situations as soon as possible, as fast as possible, just so you can move forward and set your aims high and take that step closer to becoming a successful online ebay online auction market business person.

Chapter 29

Once an ebay online auction has been completed on online ebay online auction market, the top online ebay bidder will want to know how to pay you. Deciding on what methods of payment you will be accepting will be the major factor that will influence your success on online ebay online auction market. You see, besides the actual ebay online auction and besides your reputation on online ebay online auction market, your success will also be dependent on how much revenue you receive and what percentage of that revenue you will keep. For example, depending on how someone pays you, you will be receiving either 100% of that payment or you will be receiving that payment minus a small percentage. That percentage could be a user fee, it could be a commission, or it could be such as a credit card would charge.

Let us say someone pays you with a credit card and your credit card keeps a 2% processing fee per transaction; then you will only be receiving 98% of the revenue. Based on that, you might decide that you only will accept money orders, personal checks, bank checks, cashiers checks, or business checks because this way, you can keep 100% of the revenue that you will be receiving for your ebay online auction. Now, the downside with that is that some people might not feel so comfortable sending you payment where they might not have any recourse if the ebay online auction is not good. Let us say for example, someone buys a guitar from you, they send you the money, they send you a check, of course you wait the six to seven days for the check to clear, the check clears, you send them the guitar. Their going to be worried the whole time that if they do not like the guitar for some season or you do not even send the guitar to them, that they might not receive the ebay brand name merchandise and they will not have any way to collect the money that sent you. People are very concerned with losing the money they are spending on ebay online auctions. So you want to be very careful and you want to make sure that people feel comfortable doing business with you and that they trust you. The way you can make feel that they can trust you is by showing them that you yourself are also taking a chance and by taking a chance, I mean, you are giving them an option to reclaim the funds that they are sending you if the need arises.

One way that could be done is if someone pays you with a credit card. If someone pays with a credit card they know that if the situation where fraud arises, they can contact the credit card company and have the payment to you voided. The charge will not be on their statement and the money is taken out of your bank account or your credit card account, as you may have your account set up. Now, also accepting a credit card for an online ebay online auction marketseller is that once you do send that guitar out and it is a great guitar and it is in great working condition. If the buyer is not interested in paying for that guitar, he could dispute the charge and if he successfully disputes the charge, then you are out of your guitar and you are out of the money you received for that guitar. If for any fraudulent reason, that credit card is not good, is not valid, or the credit card is being used by someone who is not authorized for use, the owner of that credit card disputes the charge, you will also be out of your money and you will also be out of the guitar. You want to find a way where you could accept payment, but you are also protecting yourself.

So, how can you do that? Is there a way to do that besides accepting a money order or a check? Yes there is. The way you could offer security for both your self and for the buyer is by using PayPal. PayPal is an online electronic banking system that allows people to send and receive money by email. You set up an account; you could deposit money into your account and then send money directly from your account to other people or you could also send people money by adding a credit card to the account. When you send money from your account to someone else’s account, the money will be taken out of your credit card, it will be charged to your credit card and then the recipient will receive the money. You could also send an electronic check. An electronic check what it is, is you will have money in your bank account, your bank account will be linked to PayPal and then where your request that PayPal should send money to a recipient. PayPal will withdraw that money from your bank account and over the course of three to four days will send the money to the person who you would like to receive that money.

The way that PayPal prevents fraud is by validating the user. If someone is a confirmed user and have given a confirmed address, PayPal knows that the credit card that they are using belongs to this person and they have gone ahead done what they need to do to validate that the person who is using this account really works at a certain address. Now, how do they ensure that when you actually send the ebay brand name merchandise out that it is going to the person who owns that credit card? Because you can only send the ebay brand name merchandise to the confirmed address, the confirmed address is the address that matches up to the ownership of the credit card and to the ownership of that PayPal account. You can send the ebay brand name merchandise to whatever address you want, but you will no longer be protected by PayPal if you send it to an unconfirmed address. The type of protection that PayPal gives you is if the person who purchases the ebay brand name merchandise using the credit card has the ebay brand name merchandise delivered to their confirmed address, if that individual disputes the purchase and says he never made the purchase, someone else used his credit card fraudulently. PayPal will not take the money out of your account, they will still let you keep the funds that you received from the buyer and they will take either the loss on themselves or they will pursue, they will try to resolve it.

The downside about using PayPal is that PayPal charges a percentage as a transaction fee from any money you receive in your account. If a seller receives money through PayPal, when the money actually shows up in the sellers PayPal account, it will be there minus a small transaction fee. The transaction fee can range anywhere from 1% to 2.55% and in addition there could be a $1 or $0.50 charge per transaction. Now, this transaction fee can change from time to time, it will probably change depending on what competition PayPal has in the future or what competition does not exist in the future. PayPal, like any other business, wants to stay competitive and the transaction fees that they charge will be dependant on the market place. The 2.55% transaction fee might not seem like a large price to pay to receive money through PayPal and in many instances it is worth it, to receive money through PayPal, even if you have to give 2.5 % of every transaction. The reason that its worth it is because many buyers who, otherwise, would not online ebay bid on your ebay online auction, would not feel comfortable sending you money, will now be willing to purchase ebay brand name merchandise from you, they will be willing to online ebay bid on your ebay online auctions because they know they have the safety of using PayPal.

How are they protected by using PayPal? Because if they send you money and you never send out the ebay brand name merchandise at all, they can always contact PayPal and then have the funds returned to their account. You want to be able to make sure that the online ebay bidders who see your ebay online auctions feel very comfortable and acknowledge that you are a trustworthy individual and that you have set up your account and your transaction in a way that allows them and yourself to be protected. While you do want to offer this protection to encourage the online ebay bidders join your ebay online auction and to purchase items from you, you also want to try to minimize that fee. Especially when you compare that fee, that 2.55% fee, with not having to pay any fee at all for the money you receive, such as if you receive the money with a check or with a money order, then it in that situation you would not be giving up any of that percentage. When you take 2.55% and multiply that by fifty ebay online auctions that you will be doing on online ebay online auction market, you will realize that fifty times 2.55% is already over 100%. Meaning, that for every fifty or forty-five ebay online auctions you will be running on online ebay online auction market, you will be actually giving away one ebay online auction free because every time you receive $100, you will be loosing $2.55, you multiply that by forty ebay online auctions, and you are out $100. Which, really you did receive, but because PayPal kept on deducting $2.55 from every transaction, you are eventually out $100. In addition to that, online ebay online auction markettakes about a 3% fee from the end of every transaction.

Let us say you sell an item for $100, online ebay online auction market, on average, will charge you a $3 fee at the end of an ebay online auction, based on a percentage of what it is that you sold. When you combine the 3% that online ebay online auction marketcharges with the 2.55% that PayPal charges, you are out now 5.5% of every transaction that you conduct on online ebay online auction market. Now, it is not the end of the world because if you are working on at least a 50% profit margin or a 100% mark-up, 5% of every transaction is not a very high price to pay when you look at the fact that you are receiving a lot benefits from using online ebay online auction marketand using PayPal. If you do not use online ebay online auction marketyou save the 3%, but then you do not get any of the business that you would be receiving by doing business on online ebay online auction market. You could say to yourself, “Hey look, if you do not use PayPal, you do not have to give up that 2.55%, but then on the other hand, you just will not receive any of the additional business that you would have received by letting the sellers and the buyers who use PayPal when they conduct business with you.” It is to your advantage to use both PayPal and online ebay online auction market.

Here’s a strategy that I have developed in order to both offer buyers the security and confidence of using PayPal, but at the same time, I receive my funds, 90% of the time, without having to give up any of the revenues to PayPal. How do I do this? On every ebay online auction, I allow people to pay with PayPal, I tell people; very clearly, I state on the ebay online auction that if they are a PayPal member, if they have a confirmed address and they are a verified user, I am more then happy to except their payments through PayPal. On the other hand, I let them know that I would prefer if they pay with a money order or a personal check. In order to encourage them to pay me with a personal check or a money order as opposed to PayPal, is I either offer them a slight discount, if they pay with a money order or personal check or I give them an extra bonus.

Now you might ask, “But if you are giving them a slight discount when they are paying with a money order, then does not act the same as if they had just paid you with PayPal and you lost the 2.5%?” Well, you see the difference is, that when I offer them the discount, I do not offer a 2.5% discount, I offer them a 2% discount because what that does is, it allows me to still save a .5% on every transaction, that I otherwise would have had to pay to PayPal. You see, PayPal, which is owned by online ebay online auction market, will charge me 2.55% of any funds that I receive through them. If I receive my funds through a check or a money order and I only give up 2% of my funds, then I am still .5% ahead. Now, that .5% does add up because it means that for every $100, I save $0.50. Now, $0.50 does not seem like a lot, but if you are conducting $10,000 worth of transactions on a monthly basis, then that .5% comes out to an extra $50. You should you have that $50. Especially if you look at $50 throughout the course of the year, that is an extra $600 in your pocket. Moreover, if you are conducting a business as some of the large online ebay online auction market businesses are, where they are running millions of dollars worth of ebay online auctions a year, then that .5% becomes worth thousands of thousands of dollars. This strategy can work.

When you accept a money order or a personal check, you do not even have to offer people that 2% discount. You do not even have to offer them a 1% discount because once you do show them that you are honest and you explain to them why you would rather receive the money through a money order or a check, they will realize that you are not trying to defraud them. Why? Because you are offering them the PayPal option and then if you make it very clear to them that if the reason you would rather receive your funds with a money order or a check is so that you can avoid that percentage that PayPal deducts, then most people will understand that. Most people will understand that since they are anyways sending you out the full $100, then you want to receive the full $100 and because PayPal deducts the percentage fee from all of the funds that you receive, they will also eat in to the money that came in to cover the cost of shipping. You see, if someone sent you $100 for the ebay brand name merchandise and another $100 for the cost of shipping, well, PayPal does not care why someone is sending you money, they will deduct the 2.55% from the both $100s. You are actually out of $2.55 for the shipping costs and you will have to put money out of your own pocket to cover that $2.55 for the shipping. Once again, $2.55 does not sound like a lot, but if you are conducting a hundred transactions or more a month, then you are talking about $255 a month, then through out the course of the year, that is $3,000. Therefore, you do want to try to eliminate all of your costs and you want to manage your expenses when you have an opportunity to do so.

Another option is you could give people free bonuses if they agree to send you a money order or send you a check. You want to make sure that those free bonuses, including the shipping cost of those free bonuses, does not add up to the 2.55% or the 2% discount that you would have given them otherwise, then it is not worthwhile to give them those extra bonuses. What you can do, you can say to yourself that you planned to give them a free bonus anyways and you had already figured the cost of sending someone a free bonus into the sale price of the ebay online auction. If you did that and you were already going to send them a fee bonus, then you might as well try to let them know that the free bonus is being sent to them in appreciation of them not paying you with PayPal as well. This way people will understand that you are also doing something for them, that you are going out of your way for them and most people will reciprocate, and they will try to meet your needs by going ahead and paying through the method that you are requesting.

One method of receiving your money, but there is fee that is deducted for that, is by receiving by wire transfer. A wire transfer is safe to the extent that it is document in who is receiving it and who is sending it out, but once the money is been sent out, it is very hard to ever retrieve the money and it might not actually be possible. You do want to be careful and I would not recommend listing on your ebay online auction that you accept wire transfers because most people who do not understand what a wire transfers is. They associate it with an offshore bank account or some other unscrupulous business dealing and they will be very hesitant to do business with you if they see that option over there. Even at the same time, you might offer the PayPal option and a check option, but I would still recommend staying away, including a wire transfer on your ebay online auction.

So, these are the methods that you should be using, there are other methods such as Billpoint, online ebay online auction marketowns their own credit card processing method, there are many other third party providers, there is a company called XOOM, what they will do is they will allow you to send a money order through their online system. Therefore, always keep in mind what are the benefits of offering each option is and the cost of offering each option is. When you offer an option, think of what it will do as far as increasing the amount of online ebay bids and increasing the amount of business you will receive and compare that to the cost that you will be giving up through commissions and transaction fees that you will have to give to those processing providers.

Chapter 30

So now that you have received a solid education on how to run an online ebay online auction market business. I would not be surprised if the biggest question on your mind now is, “But can you take this information, implement it, utilize it, and set yourself up a business that can give you a full time income?” I would strongly suggest that the answer is a solid “yes” with one condition and that condition is that if you decide to dedicate yourself and put the effort in, then you are going to need to set up an online ebay online auction market business. You see, setting up an online ebay online auction market business requires the same amount of effort as setting up any type of business. It might not require the same type of financial investment as opening up a McDonalds or opening up a gas station, but it does require the same mental effort and the same perseverance and persistence that you would need in any type of business. It is going to take many hours of trying out different strategies, of trying out different tips that we have suggested in this chapter, you are going to have to try out different methods that we have covered, until you find the exact system that works for you.

Moreover, once you have that system, you are going to have to continuously refine your as the market place changes. Even as different ebay brand name ebay brand name products become popular and other ebay brand name ebay brand name products loose out, you are going to have to monitor your business to make sure that you do have the right ebay brand name merchandise that fits in with what people want today. You are going to have to make sure that you move out the ebay brand name merchandise that is starting to become slow moving ebay brand name merchandise since you do not want to have anything that you cannot sell. While conducting your business, you are also going to becomes familiar with the term “service providers”, that are going to enable you to succeed with your business. You will find ebay online auction management software, there is software that online ebay online auction marketprovides and other technological providers have, that allows you to put up many different ebay online auctions at once. It allows you to put up to a hundred to five hundred ebay online auctions at once with the press of a key. Let us say you are putting up thirty ebay online auctions for thirty different ebay brand name ebay brand name products. This way every time you put those ebay online auctions back up, instead of having to retype all of the ebay online auctions and having to retype the headlines for those ebay online auctions, you could with the click of the button instantly submit all thirty ebay online auctions and have them up at once.

As your business progresses, you will also discover different payment methods. Like we covered, you will use PayPal, you might use XOOM, you might use Billpoint, and you might decide to use an escrow account. You see, there are many different items and many different technologies and different strategies that you will only be learning of as you become immersed in your business. Now, once you start utilizing all of the researches that you have, you will be able to gain more of a marketer and you will be able to produce more revenue. Now, that I mention revenue, the next question on your mind might be, “But is it really possible for me to make money on online ebay online auction market?” After all, the reason you are starting an online ebay online auction market business is to make money with it.

To answer that, let us go over some examples of people who are actually making real money on online ebay online auction market. I recently read an article in Entrepreneur Magazine of an individual who sells pool tables to people. He used to have billiards and on the side, he is selling a few pool tables a month to different people who wanted to have pool tables at home. He tried, just by chance, he figured let me try ebay online auctioning off a pool table on online ebay online auction market. Over the course of a month, he ebay online auctioned off two or three pool tables and he said to himself that there seems to be a business over here. Within three months, he closed his shop, he exclusively devoted his business towards selling pool tables on online ebay online auction market, and online ebay online auction marketbecame his only outlet for selling pool tables. He expects to gross this year $15,000,000. I know of a computer liquidator that sells $250,000 worth of computers every year on online ebay online auction market. There is a woman who sells fancy clothing, which you would normally find in an upscale shop or small boutique located in an exclusive area, she has over $500,000 worth of sales a year with a profit margin of over 50%. There are individuals who support themselves full time by selling packing supplies on online ebay online auction marketfor other online ebay online auction marketsellers. I know of an individual that has a business exclusively selling refurbished electronics on online ebay online auction market. This individual sells in any given month $5,000 to $10,000 worth of refurbished electronics. Therefore, you see, there are people who are not only supporting themselves from online ebay online auction market, but are earning over six figures or seven figures on online ebay online auction market.

As long as you can devote yourself to your business and your persistence and you learn everything there is to know about your business, not only will you be making money with what it is that you currently do on online ebay online auction market, but also you will be exposed to new opportunities. You always need to be flexible with your business, so as a new area becomes popular or as you find new ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise, you could quickly adapt and include that ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise or that service into your present online ebay online auction market business so you can expand your revenue level and you could make more money. What I would advise you is not to grow too quickly because many businesses whether they are online or offline, face very tough times due to having too much growth. By too much growth, they take too much on themselves; they either purchase too much inventory, which they might have, a hard time selling, they take on too many financial obligations, which they cannot cover.

Let us say, for instance, the store is starting to do well and they say to themselves, “Look you know, if we’re currently making $50,000 a year with one shop, let us open up a second store and we’ll double our revenue.” Then they are not very careful with the second store. They did not pick as good of a location like they did with the first store and then instead of making any money with the second store, they actually loose money, and then the profits from the first store are needed to cover the lease and the other business expenses for the second store. The same thing could happen on your online ebay online auction market business. Let us say your business is slowly growing and you say to yourself, “You know what? I could easily afford to higher a third or a fourth employee to help with my business.” Now you higher those employees, you have to pay them a salary, but then it turns out that your business is not high enough to support their salaries. Therefore, their salaries will be coming out of the profits from the rest of your business and it might even have to come out of your pocket if the business starts slowing down.

Some people rent a small warehouse for their online ebay online auction market business before they really need that space. What I would suggest is if you could start out by working from you basement, from your garage, or even your spare bedroom, you do that until you have no choice but to expand and even when you do need additional storage space, first check in your neighborhood if someone has a garage for rent. I have seen many garages for rent for $150 a month. That is a lot cheaper then anything you will find at any storage facility. Your next option could be a storage facility, where you could rent a 10 x 10 feet space or 20 x 20 feet space for three to four hundred dollars a month and depending on your area, it might be a little less or a little more. If your business is really taking off, where you need to have plenty of space to store the ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise, to pack the ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise out, to ship out the ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise, to take pictures of the ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise, then you could decide to rent a small warehouse space. Many times instead of warehouse space, you could find a small store somewhere in the neighborhood, where there is not a lot of traffic and the landlord is just happy to have the store rented and you might be more comfortable renting that small store, you will have plenty of light coming in from the window on the street level. You do not have to have the store opened up for public business, but it might give you very comfortable and spacious space to work in while you run your online ebay online auction market business. So remember, while you want to grow out your business, you want to do it step by step so you do not overburden yourself with any financial constraints that your business might not be able to afford. However, you do want to grow out your business; you do want to grow it aggressively because the goal is there, the possibility of earning thousands of dollars, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars and even more is a very strong possibility while you run an online ebay online auction market business.

Conclusions End

Remember that if you have a store, online ebay online auction marketis also a great way to supplement the type of business your store has. If you have a store and decide to ebay online auction off some of the ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise that you carry, you could use it to ebay online auction off the slow moving ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise and bring in some additional revenue, freeing up the money you had invested in that ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise. Then you will be able to expand your business by reinvesting that money that you received for that slow moving ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise into faster moving ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise. You could also just order from your wholesaler extra ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise and use that extra ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise to specifically ebay online auction off on online ebay online auction marketand generate income that way.

Another way to also to allow online ebay online auction marketto help you grow your store business is by listing in your ebay online auction description that you have a store. Give the address of the store, give the location of the store and then people can come to the store and once they are at the store they might buy the ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise that you looking to ebay online auction, they might buy other additional ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise. You see, let us say you are ebay online auctioning off a piano and people see your ebay online auction and they see that you actually have a store so people who are interested in that piano or people who are interested in other types of pianos will want to come to your store to see what it is that you carry.

In addition, in all of your correspondence, when people send you inquiries and you respond to those inquiries or people actually purchase the ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise from you, you should always let them know about your store and if you are a wholesaler or manufacturer, let them know that you wholesale or a manufacturer. No matter what size the ebay online auction is for, whether it was for one unit or a thousand units, it is always important to let people know what it is that you are business is because you will never know what else they could buy from you and you do not know whom else they could refer to you. Even if they are not in the market to purchase a large quantity of the ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise that you sell, they might know someone who is looking for that ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise at a quantity that would make you very happy.

So let us say you are a manufacturer of certain ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise and you go ahead and put that ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise up for sale on online ebay online auction market. Now, you might have to say to yourself, “Look you know what? I just put an ebay online auction for a few pieced of ceramics and someone who buys those three, four pieces of ceramics, there is no way that they could order a hundred pieces from me because they are just an end user.” Nevertheless, that end user might own an arts and crafts store or that end user might know someone else who owns a store that would love to carry your ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise. Let us say that end user shops at a ceramics store and he might mention to the owner that he bought some beautiful pieces on online ebay online auction marketand that owner of the store will now want to contact you to buy that ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise from you. Therefore, it is always very important in all of your correspondence and on your ebay online auctions on online ebay online auction marketto always have people know what other options they have to purchase ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise from you or what other ebay brand name ebay brand name merchandise that you carry and what your business is. This way, you will be able to increase your business and take a step closer to letting your ebay online auction market business become your full time business.

If you are ready to start your own ebay online auction market business visit www.closeoutexplosion.com

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