subject: How to be successful selling on ebay? [print this page] How to be successful selling on ebay? How to be successful selling on ebay?
How to be successful selling on ebay?
So you want to be a hit with your own eBay business. Here is a simple 10-step plan.
Step 1: Identify your market:Take a moment to sit back and see what sells and what doesn't from the products you have found. Market research data you collect will be useful for you at a later date. You will most likely see the Hot items fairly quickly - one or two items that always seem to sell at a good price.
Step 2: Watch the competition:Before investing your money, see what other sellers in the category are selling, and what are their plan of action is. Pay special attention to any weaknesses their auctions might have, because this is where you go and beat them at their own game.
Step 3: Find a product:Find a supplier with a product you want to sell, and try achieve the best rates you can for that product - do not be afraid to call around a few suppliers to get the best deal. If the eBay prices you've seen are more than the suppliers prices, then you're ready.
Stage 4: Start small:Do not throw thousands of dollars at your idea immediately - start slowly, see what works and what doesn't, and learn as you go. Remember try very inexpensive products, try even the craziest ideas for eBay, and who knows, it might just work!
Step 5: Test and repeat:Keep trying different ideas until you find something that works and then do not be ashamed to do it again and again. You've probably just found a good niche.
Step 6: Develop a business plan:To develop a plan it doesn't have to be anything formal, a few pages describing the market opportunity you've spotted, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the plan and a small budget. It's more for you than anybody else.
Step 7: Invest and expand:Time to start investing money into your business, buy stock, and begin to spend more time on your business. Set a goal for the number of sales you want to achieve each week, increasing all of the time.
Step 8: Making it official:Once you've made a couple of thousand dollars in sales, you should really register yourself as a business. Do not worry, it's inexpensive and is not difficult to do - a lawyer is the best person to help you in the process. You will also need a vat or tax number, depending which country you are trading from, these can be obtained online via your countries online government website.
Step 9: Time to Automate your business:You'll probably find that you write the same things over and over again in emails or item descriptions. It's time to leave the manual method and turn to automated software that can create listings for you, and respond to completed auctions and payments with the message that you provide.
Step 10: Never give up:Even if everything seems to go wrong, do not stop trying until successful. If you enjoy working on it, then you will almost always find that you are making a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate.
When you get into the swing of things, you will start thinking that you must stop working and selling on eBay part time. But it is not always as easy as that - there are a number of factors you should consider.
How to decide if ebay is for you? Answer these five questions?
Being an ebay full-time seller is to live a dream: making a real income working at home, your own boss and the rest of it. It is the promise of a million scams, and it has finally come true - at least for some.What they do not tell you, is the stories of success, however, become a full time eBay seller is not everything. You really, really should try it on a part time basis before you consider taking it up full-time and even then, caution is advised. Before you go jumping from the frying pan into the fire, here is a list of questions to ask.
How much earnings do I make on eBay?Work on how many hours per week you are doing things related to eBay (be honest), and share it with the average amount of profit you make per week. If you were doing all the same time in hours, would you earn what you earn now in your job?
Does my job have good prospects?Consider what you might miss if you give your work to focus on eBay. If you've a well paid job with a good career prospects,then again a few years ahead you may have wished you stayed in your normal job, you may have been promoted or the Director of the company by now,
Can you really make money?Unless you sell a lot of small items, most of what you do on eBay will be waiting for auctions to end - and you can expect to work as easily in your job as you can do at home. Therefore, if you want to earn more money on eBay it really depends on what type of items are sold - the low value items, going full time would be a good thing. For those high-value, you will most likely reach the limits of the amount of money you invest in stock long before you reach your time limits.
Is working at Home A good place to be?Apart from anything else, you can see that the dream of home work is more of a nightmare in reality. People can start counting on you to have things to be done during the day. If you have a wife and children they may regret that you are at home, you won't having anything to do with them for much of the day. Indulge yourself in one of these things and stopping work for a while will make your profits fall.
Will I survive if everything goes wrong?Ultimately, would you be able to cope if you had one or two months, when you sold literally nothing? Or would you be desperately looking around for a job and cursing the day you ever discovered eBay? This is the real test.
If you went through all of these questions, then I think you are ready for the eBay life - and even if you did not, you'd be surprised how much you can get doing part-time.
