SolveYourProblem
Article Series:
Start
An eBay Business
Successfully
Sell on eBay: 10 Simple Steps
by Jeff Cohen
So you want to be a successful seller with
your own eBay business, do you? Here’s a simple, ten-step path
to eBay enlightenment.
Step
1: Identify your market. Take a while to sit and watch
for what sells and what doesn’t out of the items you’re interested
in. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful
to you later on. You’ll probably see the ‘sweet spots’ quite
quickly – those one or two items that always seem to sell for
a good price.
Step
2: Watch the competition. Before you invest any money,
see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and
what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws
their auctions might have, because this is where you can move
in and beat them at their own game.
Step
3: Find a product. Get hold of a supplier for whatever
it is you want to sell, and see what the best rates you can
get are – don’t be afraid to ring round quite a few to get
the best deal. If the eBay prices you’ve seen are higher than
the supplier’s, then you’re set.
Step
4: Start small. Don’t throw thousands at your idea straight
away – get started slowly, see what works and what doesn’t,
and learn as you go. Remember that it’s very cheap to try out
even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might
just work!
Step
5: Test and repeat. Keep trying different strategies
until you find something that works, and then don’t be ashamed
to keep doing it, again and again. The chances are that you’ve
just found a good niche.
Step
6: Work out a business plan. A business plan doesn’t
need to be anything formal, just a few pages that outline the
market opportunity you’ve spotted, your strategy, strengths
and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget. This is more
for you than it is for anyone else.
Step
7: Invest and expand. This is the time to throw money at
the problem. Buy inventory, and start spending more time
on your business. Set a goal number of sales each week, increasing
it each time.
Step
8: Make it official. Once you’ve made a few thousand dollars
worth of sales, you should really register yourself
as a business. Don’t worry, it’s not expensive or hard to do
– a lawyer is the best person to help you through the process.
Step
9: Automate. You’ll probably find that you’re writing the
same things again and again in emails or item descriptions.
This is the time to give up on the manual method and turn to
automated software that can create listings for you, and respond
to completed auctions and payments with whatever message you
provide.
Step
10: Never give up. Even when it looks like it’s all going
wrong, don’t stop trying until you succeed. If you keep working
at it then you’ll almost always find that you make a real breakthrough
just when things are starting to look desperate.
Once you get into the swing of things, you might start thinking
that you should quit your job and take up eBay selling part
time. But it’s not always as easy as that – there are all sorts
of factors that you need to consider.
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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