Starting Low and Ending High in eBay Online Auctions - By T Ginn

It is the often said that £0.99 no reserve auction are the best way to encourage bids and lead to higher prices. In fact Auctioning4u eBay Drop Off Shop lists most of its items using this pricing strategy. However up to now this theory was more anecdotal than based on actual data.

A recent paper by Gillian Ku of London Business School, Starting Low but Ending High: A Reversal of the Anchoring effect in Auctions has investigated the effect of starting price on the final value of online auctions and discovered that it is indeed the case that low starting prices increase ending price. Ku et al have discovered that three effects of lower starting prices lead to higher ending prices:

* Lower starting prices reduce barriers to entry, which increases bids and generates higher prices

* Lower starting prices entice bidders to invest time and energy, increasing their commitment to the auction

* The extra bids generated by lower starting prices infer value in the item, encouraging more traffic

These findings are at odds with previous research on negotiations which finds that ending prices were highly related to starting price. In the more social environment of auctions (especially online auctions such as eBay), this trend is reversed. Ku performed six studies to investigate the effect of starting price on ending price, several of which were related to eBay (these are studies 2, 3 and 5 detailed below).
Study 2: Starting low and ending high on eBay

The results of eBay online auctions were analysed to establish the relationship between staring and ending prices. For this study, two types of auctions were identified:

* Independent value auctions. These are highly individual auctions where the price is difficult to predict e.g. collectibles

* Common value auctions. Auctions of common items where there is a market price.

For the independent value auctions they choose to analyse Tabriz Persian rugs and for the common value auctions Nikon digital cameras. The following results were found for both types of auction

* Lowers starting price auctions were more likely to be successful

* Lowers starting prices auction results in more bids and more unique bidders.

* Lower staring prices resulted in higher ending prices

Study 3: Escallation of Commitment on eBay

This study set out to investigate the effect of escalation of commitment on prices rises. Is it the case that once the bidder has placed a bid they have invested time and are more likely to bid again?

Ku et al focused their attention on a particular eBay seller, Browncow, who sells Hawaiian shirts starting at $9.99 and $24.99. Analysing the results of 89 auction produced the following conclusions

* Low staring prices bring bidders into the auction early

* Low starting prices encourage bidders to accumulate sunk costs into the auction. Low starting price winners have spend more time in the auction and make more bids than low starting price losers or bidders in high starting price auctions.

Study 4 Inferring value from Traffic and Current Prices

Test subjects were asked to judge the proper value of an mocked-up eBay item (holiday package) with which they were presented. It was found that the number of bids which the items had lead to higher valuations.
Study 5 Starting Low and Ending Low on eBay

This study found that for auctions where there were less bids, the starting price did have an effect on ending price. By comparing the outcome of similar items where there were misspellings in the titles, it was found that this created a barrier to auction traffic, reducing final prices
Lessons from research

The results of this research will not come as much of a surprise to eBayers, but it is nevertheless interesting to have analysis to back up commonly quoted conceptions. I think that the following lessons can be drawn from the paper:

* £0.99 NR auctions work well for popular items with plenty of search traffic and lead to higher prices

* Less popular items (rare) are not suitable for this kind of auction strategy.

I think that the results of this research are most relevant to individual sellers, selling in low volumes with using simple sales strategies. When selling in large volumes, the market prices will drop if too many items are listed and it is therefore necessary to increase starting prices or use fixed price auctions to compensate.
Comments on the Research

There are many factors affecting the ending prices of "eBay Online Auctions" such as starting time, ending time, seller feedback, postal rate etc. There is no indication in this paper that these factors have been taken into account.

The paper talks about auction traffic, referring to the number of bids on an item. I think that another interesting study would be to compare the number of views of an auction with starting price to establish if there is a relationship.

Trevor Ginn is head of consulting at Auctioning4u eBay Drop Off Shop ( http://www.auctioning4u.co.uk ).
Just bring us your Stuff and we'll sell it on eBay, No sale No fee.

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Using Your eBay Store Categories - By Jason Griffith

Few things are more frustrating than visiting an eBay store and be presented only with a mile long list of items that one has to scroll through. It is very difficult to find items in a long list if you are looking for a particular type or genre of item.

What many eBay store owners do not seem to realize is that eBay buyers are not desperate to find and buy their particular items. There are so many auctions going on at any particular point in time, that the browser Back button is probably the most used function when browsing or searching for items.

The default sort order for the listing display in an eBay store is listing end time, with those auctions ending soonest displayed at the top. There are other listing sort orders available as well, but unfortunately none of those are necessarily very well suited for a store inventory display.

The primary means at your disposal to make it easier for an eBay buyer to find what he or she is looking for are the categories.

Think of the categories as virtual aisles in your store. You need to use those virtual aisles in your store to guide the buyer through the merchandise on offer.

The easier you make it for the buyer to find the desired item, the better the chances that the person will buy your item and not someone else's.

You know your merchandise best and know how you can slice and dice the types of merchandise into meaningful categories. However, do not limit a particular item to only one category. With an eBay store, you can list an item in two different store categories free of charge. Make full use of it.

An eBay buyer might miss an item while browsing one category but notice it in the second category. This is synonymous to putting cans of the same cream in both the dairy section and in the baking section of a groceries store.

You cannot predict all the uses that a buyer will have in mind for your merchandise, but you can at least cover off the most obvious ones. When a buyer visits your eBay store and sees the categories, they will first think of what they want to use the item for and see if there is a matching category.

You can have up to 300 different categories in your eBay store. Make full use of it to help your buyer easily find the item (or even similar item) they want to buy.

Generally, a person visits your store wanting to buy something, i.e., with money in hand. It is a great loss when they leave your store because they couldn’t find your item that is hidden amongst tens or hundreds of other items.

Jason Griffith writes eBay Store reviews for BestAuctionStores.com, a site dedicated to providing eBay Buyers with the ability to review and rate eBay stores.

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Why You Need Multiple Ebay Accounts - By Phil Morgan

Many people are unaware that ebay will allow you to have more than one account. All you need to do is set each one up under a different email address.

Why would this be to your advantage? There are four reasons I’ll suggest; the first two are “offensive” business strategies, the second two are “defensive” business protections.

1. To keep your niches separate One of the many advantages of niche marketing is that you are perceived as a “specialist” or “expert” in a particular field. This gives customers confidence to buy.

On the other hand, if you only have a single line of products and sales begin to slow, you may regret having all your eggs in one basket.

Many successful ebayers like to have two or three different niches. By using a different account name for each niche you are able to keep it nice and simple for your customers. They don’t have to wade through a page of listings of another line you sell in order to get to the products that they’re interested in. In addition, their perception of you as a specialist is reinforced. You’re the “go to” guy or gal for what they want.

Are you an ebay Store owner? Having separate accounts gives you the additional option of opening a Store for each niche. You can build your own ebay “empire” of stores.

2. To advertise multiple domains There’s a very simple little (perfectly legal) “trick” that many ebay sellers employ to get some free advertising for themselves. When choosing a user ID on ebay, they align it with their off-ebay web site. So, for example, they might use **explodingbiz.com** or www_explodingbiz_com (ebay will not allow you to use the regular http address line as is, but these alternatives are suggestive enough that people get the message easily).

By having multiple accounts you can advertise and get a little extra exposure for several domain names that you own.

3. To protect your positive feedback rating Most ebayers work very hard at building a good feedback rating. The goal, of course, is a high number of transactions and 100% positive comments from customers.

It’s frustrating when you work very hard to build that feedback only to have your score reduced by just one or two unreasonable customers. I’ve even heard stories of sabotage by a competitor who buys your cheapest line item just to return it and leave a negative. I believe that’s very rare, but it’s a possibility.

You can always appeal to ebay to have negative feedback reviewed (although they will never remove the actual comments), but having multiple accounts with a growing positive feedback score means that if, for some reason, one rating should be compromised you can consider switching over to do business under another account that you own.

One strategy that is particularly worth considering is setting up a separate ebay account just for buying. If you have a very bad experience with another seller on ebay, you might feel the need in good conscience to leave a negative comment in order to warn others. After all, that’s a big part of the reason why the feedback system was established. The problem is that most sellers wait until you’ve left feedback before they respond with feedback for you. Inevitably, if you have to leave a negative, you can be quite sure you’re going to receive “revenge” feedback.

Keeping a separate account just for buying on ebay means that anything like that can be kept away from your selling accounts where a negative will hurt you far more.

4. To insure against a misunderstanding with ebay ebay reserves the right to “suspend” or “terminate” your account at any time if they suspect you are not abiding by their rules.

All of ebay’s rules have been set up with two purposes. Firstly, to protect everybody who uses the site (which we all appreciate), and secondly to look after their own business interests (which we all understand).

The problem is that the application of these many rules is not always entirely consistent. ebay is notorious for “interpreting” their rules in changing ways. And let’s face it, it’s their site and they can do what they like.

I’ve heard some horror stories about sellers unintentionally breaking one of ebays rules and finding themselves shut down. After discussions to sort out the misunderstanding between the two parties, the accounts are often reinstated, but it takes time.

If you’re trading on ebay as a hobby that might be only a minor inconvenience, but if it’s your livelihood you could be “out of business” for days or even weeks until you can get it sorted out.

Again, having multiple accounts can save your bacon! It might allow you to keep trading while you’re in negotiations to clear your good name.

So, there we have it. Four good reasons to maintain multiple ebay accounts.

Some suggestions for setting up your additional accounts. We’ve already talked about how a good feedback score is coveted among ebay sellers. There’s no question that it increases sales. So one reason a seller may be hesitant to list items under a brand new account they’re trying to establish is that, without their good rating they might not get as many bids and therefore they might not realize as good a selling price. They’re all the way back at the starting gate again!

Well, I suggest several things that should help.

· Begin by using the new account to buy some things on ebay, and gain some positive feedback that way.

· List a bunch of very cheap items for sale – buyers are less nervous if they’re spending just a dollar or two on baseball cards or e-books than if they were buying larger items.

· Add a line in every one of your listings that lets bidders know that you have an established feedback rating under another account name. Say something like, “I am not a newbie on ebay. You can see the very positive feedback score I have (over 1200 transactions and counting!) under the user ID mymainaccount.”

By employing these few techniques it shouldn’t be too long before your new secondary account is established in its own right.

What’s stopping you? Go sign up for that additional account today!

About the Author:

Copyright 2007 Philip A. Morgan. All rights reserved.
Phil and his wife Alli are internet marketers who enjoy teaching others how to profit.

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With a Drop Ship Catalog Evaluate Different Products Quickly - Make More Money Faster - By Alan Kirchain

Having resolved to set out at having a sideline business on the internet, finding a drop ship catalog could make the hunt for new merchandise and articles to sell easier. Ascertain how to petition a wholesaler or product sourcing company for the selective information your looking for. By doing this you will recognize that your merchandise origination is a lot simpler . That means you can spend more time boosting your personal online industry and concentrate on getting fresh people as customers.

Exhibit a Highly Professional Company Image As a web site owner, building up integrity is a consequence that comes with the job. Clients want to feel comfortable with the internet site that they are making a online purchase from. Pursuing the credibility factor is an in progress process and it demands constant attention.

When building an arrangement with a supplier or product sourcing company, projecting out the believability of your company is just as important. Product sourcing companies have a tremendous desire to work with small to medium-size businesses, they just want to be sure, that when you ask them for wholesale pricing and selective information that your business organization is legitimate.

Your company information will get you Your Drop Ship Catalogs With Less Questions So what do providers require in most cases, to hand over a dropship catalog. Right up front, some merchandise sourcing companies may allow you to ask for info online, so check their from the beginning. Be ready, to be stright up about what you're looking for. An assortment of drop shippers and product warehouses inventory several items and probably will offer catalogs for other goods. Being clear will let them aid you and expedite your merchandise hunting more promptly.

Wholesale providers will demand that you provide them with regular business paper work. They will need your company contact information as well as but not restricted to the following:

1.) What type of products your looking for.

2.) Your e-mail address.

3.) If your using a laptop or pc to log in on the web, a username and password to access their site.

4.) A explanation of your business enterprise.

5.) A head contact person (First and Last Name)

6.) Title of contact person, Company name, Address.

7.) Business license including a reseller's license if mandatory.

8.) Business telephone number.

9.) Country your doing business in.

10.) Web site address.

Once the wholesaler has confirmed your company name, they will be more than pleased to start forwarding you a drop shipping catalog to help you publicize your personal web industry.

Finally, the purchasing and selling of articles online, expects that you're projecting a level of reliability to the people as well as the suppliers. Furnish them with what they are searching for, and they will get you a drop ship catalog ASAP.

Smart people, locate real drop shippers and manufactures with just the click
of a mouse, this means that you can locate that hot selling product with
lightning fast precision, and have it selling today making you money fast.
Discover your money making products and
drop shipping wholesale company
right now at http://www.wholesaleanddropshipdirect.com

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Here's a Simple Strategy For Making Money on eBay - By James Penn

Many eBay sellers and marketers make out that only a select proportion of the population are able to make any money on eBay because according to them it’s very difficult. Of course they tell you this because they don’t want you to know the easy methods of squeezing cash from eBay because with this method the more people that are doing it, the less the profits for each.

Today however, in this article, I will reveal the simple strategy to make a killing on eBay in as little time as possible and using the least amount of effort.

Right, we know information products are HUGE sellers on eBay. Thousands of different eBooks are sold everyday in hundreds of different niches. Many people search eBay looking only for information on a certain subject. Why not take advantage of these people?

Millions of people would be prepared to pay for information if they thought it could improve their life. Topics such as weight loss, money making, money saving, being happier, developing confidence, eliminating conditions and diseases could all improve a persons life dramatically.

Choose a topic that could improve a persons life and write a short report that could help them do this. Things like:

How to lose 10 lbs in 10 days

How to make $1000 in 24 hours

How to eliminate anxiety easily

All you would have to do is write a report about 8 pages in length and start selling it on eBay for $5 or more. You can write the report by compiling free information from the internet and completely re-writing it. It would only take about 3 hours to complete the report.

Then you just need to write a sales letter explaining how by reading the report the person could significantly improve their life. Let them imagine the feeling of making $1000, or losing 10 lbs, or being free from anxiety. They’ll then crave this feeling and invest in your report.

As long as you provide a quality product and target an audience who are desperate to improve an aspect of their life, then you can make a killing by developing short reports after short reports and selling them on eBay. Once you have one product created and selling, then get another one going. There are an endless amount of products to create. You could have your own library of products selling copies every single day on auto-pilot.

Now get going and start creating your products.

James Penn is an experienced eBay seller & has assisted many eBay sellers to help them make money on eBay in 2007 and for many years to come. Discover many of his other eBay selling tips that will help explode your eBay sales & grab a selection of free eBay eBooks by signing up to his free eBay newsletter.

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What's The Biggest Baddest And Most Profitable Item To Sell On Ebay? - By Tony Elliot

The answer is that the biggest and baddest "item" to sell on eBay is less of an actual item and more of an idea and an extremely profitable one it is at that.
Let's get to it…
You won't be trawling the net for long before you hear the one about how you should make your money by selling something you are deeply passionate about.
Well, whatever.
Not that it's totally defunct as an idea mind you, I mean if there's money in your passion that's good but if there's no market on eBay or anywhere else for your collection of turn-of-the-century toe nail clippers or whatever i.e. it doesn't cut the monetary mustard, then what?
Let's forget the "passion" thing shall we?

Far better to adopt a professional attitude and approach and that means selling anything that can take a generous mark up and turns a healthy profit - and I do mean anything – so long as it's legal and doesn't offend your personal sensibilities that is!
And funnily enough the "item" that racks up the baddest profits isn't what you might think…
Ok let me demonstrate how the item in question can easily shoot your income into the stratosphere and pile up the profits.
First, let's pretend that you start of your eBay career in the way most sellers do.
You contact some wholesalers and source some branded goods of the sort your research suggest is likely to turn a decent profit and you put them up for auction.
Low and behold you are right, they literally fly out and when all your eBay fees are taken into account you show a nice fat healthy return, hooray!
Chalk one up for the newbie!

It's not going to last of course.
Because it won't be long before all your "me too" competitors see you racking up the sales and come piling in for a piece of the action.
It's the eBay equivalent of a land grab.
Before you know it, the territory's been carved up and you are suddenly left out in the cold counting some pretty meager profits, your dreams of internet riches laid waste.
It's a disaster for you but it's nothing new on eBay! So how do you avoid a repetition?
Simple, you get yourself an ace in the hole.
Here is what you do long before the carve up commences…
Do you know that the second you sourced your first item to sell on eBay, set up your first auction, made your first sale and pocketed your first profits you automatically created a second "shadow" business?
Every seller does but few realize it.

It's the most profitable business on planet Earth and here is how you put it into action with effortless ease…
Get yourself an audio recording device - a simple audio cassette recorder will do.
You are going to record in step by step detail and in very simple terms exactly what you did to succeed and profit from your auctions.
At the end of this process what have you got?
What you have is a product and the biggest, baddest and most profitable item to sell on eBay. It's a how to guide about how to set up and run an internet auction for profit by someone who's actually done it.
It's exclusive, brand new, in demand and unique. Only you are allowed to sell it and you can do so at a premium price in the most hectic and profitable market on the planet, the one that tells people how to make money!

Apart from your time and the price of the cassette, it cost next to nothing to produce - hence the huge profits - and can now be sold on eBay for a minimum of $27.
In fact I'd even go for $47 or more especially if you decide to give buyers of your new product a month (say) of email support and hand-holding.
Put your recording in written form i.e. have it transcribed, give it a good title and you can sell it as a special report available for instant electronic download - eBay now makes it easy to do.
As well, it's possible to automate the entire selling and download process, i.e. you are now looking at an automated income stream.
Welcome to the vast and hugely profitable world of information publishing, a superior and professional way of generating a reliable and professional income.

Now what's the biggest item to sell on ebay again?

Tony Elliot is the "Accidental Publisher" and online marketer who's run a number of successful businesses from home including a car rental and a contract cleaning concern. He entered publishing "accidentally" when he wrote a Contract Cleaning From Home how to guide and was surprised when it sold!

If you've found this article informative and interesting and would like some FREE info about how to set up your auction for automated long term income the way the pros do click here http://www.squidoo.com/how_to_make_money_selling_on_eBay_Too

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Seven Wholesaling and Drop Shipping Precautions for New E Business Owners - By Alan Kirchain

When you first decide that you want to get started in the wholesale and drop shipping of real products on the internet, via an auction site or your own website there are several things to consider in order to make your enterprise more successful and ultimately give you less headaches when first getting started.

It’s important to remember that most real wholesale companies do not advertise on the internet.

Why?

Because they don’t need to in order to turn a profit.

You see, real wholesalers deal with the manufacturer directly in such high volumes, that pursuing small to medium sized businesses is not efficient use of there energy or advertising budget. Interestingly enough, it’s not that they don’t want to work with small business, they just don't have the proper resources for the most part to invest seeking out the smaller companies.

This fortunately works to your favor, when we are able to actually get the wholesale supplier that we need.

The bottom line is that when you’re ready to contact a supplier you should keep these following guidelines in mind to protect yourself from a lot of unnecessary heartache and wasted time and money.

1. Get familiar with the policies and products of the wholesaler. Do they offer quality merchandise and are they reliable. How long does fulfillment take after you send in your order? Reliability is a huge key to running a successful wholesale and or drop shipping business.

2. Sometimes it may be possible for you to receive sample items from the wholesaler. Usually this can be done with a simple request. Be prepared to spend a little capital though if you’re just getting started and have not established a relationship with them yet. Certainly you want to make sure that what your selling is a quality product and worth the money for your customer.

3. Find out from the drop shipper how exactly they go about packaging there merchandise. Remember you want your business to be as headache free as possible. Constantly dealing with damaged or broken merchandise will really cramp your style.

4. Anytime a source wants you to pay a fee in order to do business with them it should raise the red flags and sound the horns. Chances are that if they require a fee to purchase from them they probably are not the true wholesaler. I would recommend finding an alternative source.

5. Will the shipper deal with problems on any level. What is there policy when merchandise is returned back to them? Ironing this out from the start is a wise decision, it’s bound to happen so having an agreement and understanding of how problems are handled will make this portion of your business easier.

6. Generally if your selling products that will be shipped within the country your shipping from, your costs should be nominal. One thing to consider is that products that may be shipped internationally should be more of a high ticket item. This is helpful because the increased shipping cost is off set by the higher price of the goods.

7. When setting up your business you will definitely need to get all of the proper documentation. Most true wholesale and drop shipping companies will only deal with you provided you can supply proof that you are indeed a legal business entity. Additionally, this type of business should more than likely be registered and documented in your local government. Drop shipping companies usually require a Tax ID number, wholesalers may want a state resale number as well.

In closing setting up this type of business still represents an easy way to make a profit and start your own business. Despite some of the pitfalls outlined, with proper planning and good judgment these issues can be easily avoided when starting a wholesaling and drop shipping business.

Smart people, locate real drop shippers and manufactures with just the click
of a mouse, this means that you could locate that hot selling product with
lightning fast precision and have it selling today making you money fast.
Discover your money making products and
drop ship wholesalers
right now at
http://www.wholesaleanddropshipdirect.com

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Buy at Wholesale and Drop Ship to Customers Without a Warehouse - By Alan Kirchain

If you've thought about opening a business for yourself, and want to take advantage of that lifestyle so many people strive for, you'll see that as you read through this article you can start you own endeavor and do it without even having products of your own to sell and only a small amount of money up front.

Honestly, who hasn't dreamed about owning there own mail order business. You know the one where you just go out to the mail box and pick up the checks. Until recently, that was really just a pipe dream and a great marketing pitch for many biz-op companies. But today that opportunity is real and probably as easy as it's ever going to get. It has become particularly easy with the advent of the internet and the ability to auction merchandise from your home.

What I'm talking about is purchasing wholesale and then drop shipping to customers without storing inventory. This can provide an easy way for people to quit their regular day job, if they work at it systematically. You can do it without having to put up a lot of money in upfront capital and basically do it from your home computer and desk area.

Drop shippers can send products and merchandise to your customers without you ever having to touch the products. This allows you to offer real products to customers and not have to worry about warehousing and inventory.

There are many different ways you can set up a great drop shipping business. The simplest way is to start an auction on one of the big auction web sites. You can sell products via the auction and ship them to your customers and it will appear as if they came direclty from your distribution warehouse.

This works by you providing the drop shipper with the customer information. They then take care of the fulfillment and follow through with the shipping process. The best part is that they will affix your company information to the package including logos and slogans if you request, and then provide them the material to do so.

When your customer gets there merchandise it appears that your warehouse sent them the products and they have no clue that it came from a drop ship resource.

Besides the obvious benefits this allows you to spend more time on setting up new promotions via auction or regular website, rather than focusing on packaging, and shipping chores. Way more productive and profitable to your bottom line.

Establishing a rapport with several wholesale drop shipping companies will be a key to your success. At first most companies will want you to pre pay in some fashion for products that get shipped. This usually can be done using a credit or debit card.

Getting your merchandise to your customers in a timely fashion should be a primary goal. Ultimately, you should be able to establish a credit line with your suppliers and be billed on terms. This way you will be able to add a new dimension to your business providing even quicker service, thus allowing you to reap more profits.

One central component to a profitable drop shipping business is finding real wholesale suppliers. It’s important to remember that lots of companies claim to be wholesalers and promote themselves as being such. Unfortunately many are not. They are actually middlemen and profit by selling you merchandise above the true wholesale cost.

Finding true wholesalers can be a tedious and painstaking task. Be sure and take your time when researching wholesalers so that you are dealing with the closest point to the manufacturer.

Getting started in a wholesale business and then drop shipping the merchandise can be profitable without a huge financial risk. Do your homework and find out what the best margins are for your particular products. The beauty of this is that you can sell your product without actually purchasing it and then warehousing it tying up precious funds that can be used in different ways.

The wholesale drop shipping business is fun and exciting. It allows you to profit in many cases prior to actually having any capital expenditures of the wholesale merchandise. If your thinking of starting a home based business a wholesale and drop shipping is a good business model to cut your teeth with.

If you would like to discover how smart people locate real drop shippers and manufactures with just the click of a
mouse, visit http://www.wholesaleanddropshipdirect.com You can also get additional info on Drop Shipping Wholesale Company

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Allowing A Part Time Ebay Hobby To Become A Full Time Income - By Mark Kenny

Even as a full time employee, hopefully you should still be able to set aside time to earn additional income on Ebay. Entrepreneurs, work at home parents, and others looking to become self employed often use Ebay to test the waters before they make the leap from employee to self-employed.

It's never easy to find time in the day, to develop additional methods of making money. However if you have just a spare sixty minutes to devote towards eBay it is possible to earn a full time income.

Consider the following scenario and you will see why. There are 60 minutes in every hour and let’s say that you average listing one auction every 6 minutes. That is 10 auctions per hour and, if your sales average $10 each, that is equal to $100.00 per day. If you list auctions 5 days a week, that’s $500.00. If you choose to list every day, that’s $700.00 per week. Of course, prices vary as auctions are unpredictable but this is a very minimal amount of time to invest with a terrific return potential. Prices may be higher or lower but, for one hour of time spent every day, there is really no way to go wrong.

If you purchase items from a dropshipper, manufacturer or distributor, you may be able to use their photos in your auctions. Most dropshippers also allow you to copy and paste their descriptions over to your Ebay listings. This method, when allowed will save you a lot of time in photographing & uploading images. All you will need to do is simply upload the photo and insert the description into the auction template provided by eBay.

If you plan to sell the same type of items, such as jewelry, you can save yourself a lot of time by writing a paragraph detailing shipping cost, delivery options, payment requirements and timelines. Save this paragraph into a text document and copy and paste it into each auction. The only thing that you will need to write is a brief description of the item. Anything that you can do to save time will help you to increase the number of auctions you can list per hour and, therefore, increase your revenue potential.

As hopefully you'll see, Ebay offers a lot of ways to minimise the time you spend online doing the same repeative tasks. As you sell more products, you'll bring more exposure to your listings and bring in further sales. A long term presence on Ebay really will make the difference between a fly by night seller, or a serious seller. Thousands of Ebay users make a full time living on the site. Will you become one of them?

Written by Mark Kenny. Join http://www.AuctionCUT.com - the online auctions and ebay forum. Come and disuss your eBay or online auction goals, with Mark and other members. AuctionCUT offers adrevenue sharing for members and an exclusive dropshipping report.

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Getting the Word Out on Your eBay Store - By Jason Griffith

Your eBay store is a nice little useless piece of virtual real estate if there are no visitors to the store. Needless to say, it also does not generate the income you want or thought it would generate, which was the primary reason why you had put up the store in the first place and continue to pay the store fees every month.

Having your store listed in the eBay stores category pages has its uses. However, realistically, your store is probably tucked away on page two hundred, never to be found because no eBay buyer has the patience to wade through all those screens.

Sure, you can pay a pretty penny to have your store listing bumped up to a more readily findable position.

However, there is a way to attract a lot of targeted attention to your eBay store that will cost you absolutely nothing.

It is called press releases.

There are services on the web that send out press releases to hundreds of news services and also email the press releases to thousands of journalists who opted in to receive press releases for a particular industry or niche.

Two of the more popular press release sites are pr.com and prweb.com. There is a host of others as well. Just do a search for "free press release" and you will see.

Now, please do not put out a press release that says, "Woohoo, there is yet another store on eBay that sells DVDs, or clothing, or whatever." Nobody will take any notice of such a press release.

You either need to find something newsworthy about your eBay store, or intentionally create an event that is newsworthy.

Perhaps you've decided to broaden the line of whatever you are selling, perhaps you are offering a seasonal discount, or perhaps you decided to offer free shipping on all your items.

Better yet, perhaps your eBay store has been reviewed by BestAuctionStores.com, where I contribute eBay store reviews. That is a one-time newsworthy event in the life of your store's history, if you have ever wanted to find one.

The press release sites are very helpful in terms of guidance and advice on how to write a press release, if you have never done one before. You could employ an advertising agency to craft the press release for you, but if your store is not yet profitable, I wouldn't advise spending extra money on the press release.

Just get the word out on your store. Sometimes you will make a boo-boo and put out a press release that is really not that newsworthy, but who cares. Nobody is going to break your fingers over it.

The key is, don't put out a press release about your eBay store, put out a press release about an event related to your store. You might get visitors and buyers from sources you didn't even know existed.

Jason Griffith writes eBay Store reviews for BestAuctionStores.com, a site dedicated to providing eBay Buyers with the ability to review and rate eBay stores.

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Using eBay Search to Your Advantage - By Darren Gibson

It is relatively easy to find what you’re looking for on eBay if you know what you’re doing and follow a few simple rules.

1: Make Your Search Specific:

If you are searching for an original pressing of the Beatles’ Revolver album, you’ll get much further searching for ‘Beatles revolver original vinyl’ than you will searching for ‘beatles’ or ‘revolver’. There will be fewer results, but the ones you do get will be far more relevant to what you are actually looking for.

If you place words between quotation marks ("") then the only results shown will be ones that have all of the words between the quote marks. For example, searching for “Lord of the Dance” won’t give you any results that say, for example “Lord Charles Dance”.

If you want to exclude certain words, then put a minus (-), followed by any words that you don’t want to appear in your search results enclosed in brackets. For example: “Doctor Who” –(poster, photo) will find items related to Doctor Who but not posters or photos.

2: Use Incorrect Spelling:

It’s a sad fact that many of the sellers on eBay do not know how to spell. Whatever you’re looking for, try thinking of a few common misspellings – the chances are that fewer people will find these items, and so they will be cheaper. You can also find a useful eBay misspelling tool at www.thousands-of-bargains.com , where you can enter a single search term and it will automatically retrieve listings from eBay which include multiple misspelled variations.

3: Use Word Variations:

Get yourself a thesaurus (or use an online one) and try to search for all the different words that someone might use to describe your item, for example searching for both ‘TV’ and ‘television’, or for ‘phone’, ‘mobile’ and ‘cellphone’. Where you can, though, leave off the type of item altogether and search by things like brand and model. If you want to search for variations of the same words at once, just put them in brackets, hence the TV example above could become ‘(TV,television)’, which would find items containing either word.

4: Do “Wildcard” Searches:

Not many people realise the true power of eBay’s search engine – a few symbols here and there can make all the difference.

If you place an asterisk (*) into a search phrase you are effectively saying ‘anything can go here’. For example, if you wanted to search for a classic car from the1920s, you could search for ‘car 192*’. 192* will show results from any year in the 1920s.

5: Use Categories:

Whenever you search, you’ll notice a list of categories at the side of your search results. If you just searched for the name of a book because you want to buy that book, you should click the ‘Books’ category to just look at results in that category. Why bother looking through a load of results which are not relevant to you?

Finally, browse around a little. After you’ve found the category that the items you like seem to be in, why not click ‘Browse’ and look a little deeper into the entire category? You could be pleasantly surprised by what you find. Happy hunting!

Darren Gibson has over five years experience on eBay

Bag yourself a bargain using this cool eBay misspelling search tool

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Five Tips for Revamping Your eBay Storefront - By Jason Griffith

When one reviews eBay stores, like I do, you get one overall impression - most eBay stores look the same. Most people seem to simply stick with the defaults when they set up their eBay store and leave it like that until the cows come home.

Now, there's not much wrong with the default eBay store settings. It's clean and functional. However, consider what it tells the eBay buyer, who has the ability to browse many stores that sell the same or similar items as your store.

Amongst the masses of stores, an eBay store with the default storefront settings firstly tells the eBay buyer that the store owner did not want to put in any extra effort into his/her store. That's Strike One in the perception of the eBay shopper.

Secondly, a default storefront does not provide the eBay surfer with a mental or emotional "hook" to remember your store or make it stand out from amongst the rest. The eBayer might decide, "I want to browse a few more stores to check their items and prices." By the time they are two or three stores away from your vanilla eBay store, they have completely forgotten about it.

Here are some tips you can consider to make your eBay storefront look different from the rest.

1) Design a pleasing and striking logo and place that on all your store pages. With the logo, you are branding your store with something unique.

2) Pick a color scheme that compliments the items or products you sell and also ensure that the color scheme compliments the logo you designed.

3) Pick matching colors for the different page elements, and make sure that the text is easily readable on the background, because clashing colors have the effect of putting people off.

4) Purchase a commercial eBay storefront template and install it on your eBay store pages, which will immediately make it different from all the stores that picked the default eBay store layout.

5) Go all the way and have a custom store layout designed for you by professional web designers, which will ensure that your eBay store looks exactly the way you desire and is completely unique.

Making a success with your eBay store depends on many different factors and the look and feel of your storefront is in the top half of the list of factors.

Demonstrate to the eBay buyer that you are taking your business very seriously and that you are prepared to put extra effort into your eBay store. That will make more people linger a little longer on your store pages or have them return to it from browsing other stores, giving your items more time to catch their eye and cause them to click on that Buy It Now link.

Jason Griffith writes eBay Store reviews for BestAuctionStores.com, a site dedicated to providing eBay Buyers with the ability to review and rate eBay stores.

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