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How
to get Started on EBAY
EBAY is a 70 billion
dollar a year industry giant. The really interesting
situation is that they are dependent on entrepreneurs,
like you, to make that business figure grow. In 2005,
the number of people making money from working on EBAY
increased by 68%. Over 724,000 million people either
make a full time or a supplemental income from working
EBAY. And another 1.5 million say that EBAY gives them
additional income throughout the year. EBAY, Inc. 2005
offers these figures.
What is interesting is that there are
many ways to get started working EBAY for an extra income.
The main thing is to get a plan and work the plan. Gather
up some income products from around your home, your
relatives, garage sales, thrift stores, salvation army,
big lots, consignment shops, etc. Invest a set amount,
say $200. Make sure that you get items that are useful
or entertaining and that provide a quick turn over.
The way to do that is to think about your own buying
habits. Would you purchase this item if you saw it advertised,
does it appeal to a mass market, is it a niche product
people might be willing to purchase? What you want are
items that you can pick up for very little money and
that you can put up on EBAY for a small price and, thereby,
create an immediate cash flow. At first, you will want
to return almost all your profits back into purchasing
some more items to sell. You will do this until you
have a comfortable amount of money invested in your
business and then you will have set up your own profit
stream.
To get your items ready to market what
you need to do is to take a quality digital photo of
the item from different angles. For smaller items, you
should use a whiteboard backdrop to get the maximum
amount of light with few reflections. For larger items,
outside shots work well, just have the sun behind your
back when taking the picture. You also need to write
up a very good description of your item and do not try
to hide any imperfections. Point out the usefulness
and benefits as well. A description that is fair and
honest will result in much better comments received
in EBAY feedback. I will explain this more in a later
paragraph.
You can open a starting seller's EBAY
store for just $15.95 a month and have about five pages
to sell your items. You also receive a free month when
you start your store, so you can get a feel for how
it all works. You will have to pay EBAY for their sale
fees which amount to an insertion fee and a selling
fee. I will attempt to explain each in an example format.
The insertion fees differ based on the
listing price, but for example, you will pay a fee of
$.60 for an item listed from $10.00 to $24.99 and when
that item sells, you will also pay 5.25% of the selling
price. If that price is $24.99, then you would pay $1.32,
so it has a cost of $1.92 to sell this item. Since you
have several items to sell, you will want to know the
following qualifications. The insertion fee for multiple
items, dutch auctions, and fixed price items is based
on the opening value of your listed items. The opening
value is the starting price or fixed item price multiplied
by the number of items you list. The maximum insertion
price from EBAY is $4.80.
The final value fee charged by EBAY
is determined by taking the multiple items or dutch
auctions final value fee of the lowest successful bid
item and multiplying it by the number of items sold.
The final value fee charged by EBAY for a multiple value
fixed price listing is calculated on per item sold,
based on the final sale price of the item.
A EBAY Store is a very effective way
to display your items, drive traffic to a website, or
to display a couple of your best items in EBAY auctions
and get people to visit your other items through your
store listing on your auction websites.
After you sell an item, you will be
eligible for "feedback." This is where the
buyer makes comments about your service, your responsiveness
to email questions, and general comments about how it
was interact with you as a seller of EBAY items. You
want this to be 100% or as close as possible to it.
If there is a dispute on any item, you will try to work
it out and make sure that the buyer is satisfied within
your own selling descriptions. You have a right to have
your terms met, but you also have to satisfy the buyer
as much as possible. You want return customers and you
want others that will check your feedback section to
be sure to find good comments about your service. This
enables those who have not conducted business with you
to know your track record and feel more confident that
they will have a good buying experience with your company
or store. Another thing that happens is that you should
return the feedback to the buyers account so that they
also have the good notations on their membership listing
as a buyer. For instance, "buyer pays promptly,
buyer is easy to deal with, buyer is welcome back to
your store," etc.
If you have any qualms about listing
or do not know how to list, there are actually places
you can take your EBAY items and have them do the marketing,
listing, and selling for you. However, if you really
want to make this a good source of income, I suggest
learning to do the listings yourself and capitalize
on more profits. But the key thing is to GET STARTED.
EBAY will only continue to grow as more
and more people make money with them, so why not capitalize
on this easy to do program. Go where the people are
looking to buy...that is EBAY right now!
1howto.com
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