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My Best Kept Secrets For Making Big Money On Ebay
Specialize. Become an expert in one area and know what you're selling. It will save you
time when writing your descriptions and listing items for sale. (If you don't know anything about the item you're
selling you're looking at research time on the net or going to the library to do research on the item your selling-
it will slow you down. Look at the charts at the end of this report to see how many listing you will need to send
to eBay each day to meet your $100,000+ a year income goal)
Save
every listing you make. If you followed my advice above, and
you're specializing in one area all you have to do is adjust your description, take a new picture and list the
item.
Continually
develop new sources for purchasing the collectible items you're
selling. Local auctions, estate sales and ads wanted in the local shopper or newspaper work for me. (One caution:
eBay has become such a popular place to sell collectibles that local auctions are not always good for bargains
anymore. EBay sellers are attending them in record numbers. Be very selective when bidding locally. PS - Keep reading
for a way to actually make money on this trend!)
List,
list, list!!! And when you think you've listed enough - LIST
SOME MORE!
Use
counters on your auctions to see what's popular. Counters will
only give you the number of 'hits' on the page (and not the number of UNIQUE visitors) but it does tell you how
enthusiastic and interested people are in your item. If you've had an item up for auction for 3 days and your counter
reads "4", it tells me the item is probably a loser. On the other hand if it reads "144" then
you have a winner on your hands and all you need to do is find more of those to list and sell. It's good marketing
data to have.
Provide
excellent, clear, focused photographs (jpg's) of your items.
Always have at least 3 - one general frontal pic, one close-up (or more depending on how many highlights you want
to show), and one of the back of the item. If you don't have a digital camera- get one. Prices have come way down
and it's an essential selling tool. Very few people will take a risk and bid on an item they can't see- no matter
how well your written description is.
Use
a low-minimum bid rather than a reserve auction format. If the
very lowest price you will accept on your item is $50 (and, at that price you have a profit margin built in), list
it with NO RESERVE for $50. If it doesn't sell, at least you know it won't sell at that price and when you go to
buy a similar item you won't be tempted to pay as much. I have good results when I do this. It shows potential
bidders I'm a serious about selling the item because one, single bid could take it. I use a reserve only when I'm
testing the market- to see if there is interest and if it actually makes my reserve. About once a week I use a
"99 cent" NO RESERVE auction to generate traffic to my other auctions. Usually it's a very popular, but
low-priced item that I can afford to loose a few dollars on if it sells below what I expected. On the plus side
it builds traffic for my other auction items, it generates a good amount of competition among bidders and sometimes
I even make a killing :-)
Use
5, 7 or 10 day auctions. 3 day auctions might be useful in some
cases, but I've gotten best results using a 5, 7 or 10 auction linked to my low-minimum bid. For example: On items
I'm auctioning for a $5 to $25 minimum bid I'll use a 5 day auction; on items between $25 to $100 I'll use a 7
day auction; and on items over $100 I'll use a 10 day auction. I end up selling a higher percentage of my listings
using this strategy. |
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Entire Contents © Copyright 2001 by David Vallieres. All rights reserved. |