EZ Money-Maker #3: "Open For Business: The eBay Shoppe"
Strategy: To open a retail shop on eBay selling gifts, tools and other consumer items
Timing: The best time to use this strategy is when you have a catalog to follow up with prospects, or you have an 'exclusive' item you're selling
Why take on the huge investment in bricks and mortar when you can sell on eBay for almost no investment at all?
You can realistically and with high probability set up a 'retail' shop on eBay today and make a better living than most owners of a 'bricks and mortar" storefront.
If you already own a bricks and mortar storefront- adding eBay to you marketing strategy should be a piece of cake. Get a part-time college Internet junky to do your listings for you and designate one of your part-time clerks to fill orders.
Just be sure to segregate your eBay inventory from your retail store display inventory. Why? Because, if you auction something on eBay it goes to the highest bidder. Right? So, if you put it in your store's display case and someone walks in off the street and buys it how will you fulfill your eBay customer? Oh, your supplier…what if they are out-of-stock? Trust me, you want to keep your reputation on eBay spotless as spotless can be. If you can't ship ASAP, don't put it up for auction.
You may not think this works. Let me tell you about a small family-owned gift store right here in my area.
They've been around for many years (I think about 50). Their eBay User ID is mcharrisgifts and you can view their listings by going to 'Seller Search" on the eBay site. They do a very nice business. They also link every eBay listing to their web site: http://www.mcharrisgifts.com/
They sell gift items. How common is that, but…they are doing it and they are making money at it, I guarantee.
All of the above strategies for listing, being organized, etc. apply here. So what are the secrets specific to making really BIG money with a virtual storefront on eBay?"SECRETS FOR RETAIL SUCCESS ON eBay"
Create high quality listings. Don't go overboard, but definitely add some attractive graphics and bells and whistles - tastefully done, of course. Show you're professional- and please use a SPELL CHECKER.
Always, always, always link every listing you have on eBay to your home page…where of course, you sell exactly the same things you're selling on eBay- but in greater variety, or at better prices, etc...
Capture the name, address telephone number and email address of every single winning bidder on your auctions. Put them in a database or set up an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of them. Once in a while send them a coupon for $5 off the next auction they win. It works for me. People would come back to my auctions and bid on other things I have listed rather than throw out 5 bucks. Or send them a flyer with your 'specials'- you get the idea. (Remember your goal is to build long-term relationships through COMMITMENT to your customers. If you have something you think they would really like, tell them about it!
Create listings once, save them and at the completion of the auction put up another listing with a click of a key-stroke. Computers were built to help organize and automate mundane tasks. Let your computer make money for you.
List, list, list and when you think you've listed all you can…LIST SOME MORE!!
The spreadsheet below shows you how many listings you have to put on eBay each month and each day in order to meet your goal of a six-figure income:
You can see from the spreadsheet that for me to make my six-figure income goal, with this as my only working eBay strategy, I would have to list 32 to 64 items per day at an average low-minimum bid of around $67.
Let see how the numbers change if we can teak our listings so that a higher percentage of listings are sold and if we can squeeze some additional profits as well:
My assumptions for both of these spreadsheets are:
(1) 50%-70% of items are sold at or above low-minimum bid; (2) there is a 25% -50% profit margin, after eBay expenses, built into each listing; (3) there are approximately 22 working days in a month in which you can list items; (4) if your Low-Minimum bid is between $35 and $99 you'll get your highest number sold on new items (I'm not talking about antiques or collectibles); (5) the maximum number of listings you can put up on eBay during a working day is between 32 to 64 (if you're completely automated!).
You'll notice something very interesting when we can increase the percentage of listings sold and increase our profit margin on each item sold…we don't have to list nearly as much per day. With 50% of listings selling and a 25% margin and an average low-minimum bid in the high 60's, we had to list 32 to 64 items per day to meet our goal.
When we tweaked our system so we shoot for 70% successfully closed and raised our profit margins to 50% we are able to lower our minimum bid to an average of $47 (making it potentially more attractive to bidders) and we only had to list 14 to 32 auctions per day to meet our six-figure income goal!
Don't think a 100% markup is difficult to do or that closing 70% of your auctions successfully is difficult either.
There are many items that can be sold at 200 to 300% mark-ups or more and still be able to close 70% successfully.
I sell used books. I can find books for .50 to $5 in used bookstores and out-of-the-way places that I can sell for $10 to $100 each on eBay. That's a markup of up to 2000%. I do it every day, it's very easy.
Entire Contents © Copyright 2001 by David Vallieres. All rights reserved.