Anyone can sell anything on eBay.  Open an account, list your product, and wait for the bids to start coming in.  While it is true that anyone can sell, to be successful, you need all of the little tricks of the trade.  Thousands and thousands of people are making a full or part-time living just by selling on eBay. And its popularity is still increasing. Take your time and learn all you can about this method of making money online.

When you first get started, it can be a little unnerving.  The best option is to begin by looking around your own home.  Think of items that you would sell in a garage sale.  But instead of pricing each item and lugging it outside hoping for a nice sunny day, you can advertise them on eBay. By starting with items you no longer want, you can make mistakes and learn without spending a lot of money and with no regrets.

Although there are several other quality auction websites, eBay is by far the most popular and most successful.  You could use all the other sites as well,  but by spreading yourself too thin you risk getting things mixed up.  In reality, it’s better to use eBay and focus your attention and efforts on this one site.  You can always try the others once you know better what you’re doing.

First, navigate through each section of eBay to familiarize yourself with all the different pages.  You will find a site map and help files, which are very useful tools.  It will take a little time to get used to the site but before long you’ll get the hang of it.  As you start selling, navigating will become much easier.

Technorati Tags: eBay, selling on eBay, learning about eBay

Well, the eBay workshop for today was cancelled at Momiji due to lack of interest. I had mixed feelings about making the trip into Toronto, so that was fine.

I am wondering if anyone would be interested in participating in a free teleseminar? I would choose a time and date and give you a phone number to call in. The call would also be recorded so anyone not available could listen in later on your computer. Note that long distance charges apply (that’s how the conference company makes their money).

We can talk about eBay, making money online, selling information products, blogging, whatever you like. Please comment and let me know if you’re interested.

Update: I’ll ask about this again in the fall.

I’ve created a short audio clip for you to listen to. Just click the little arrow under this paragraph to listen. It gives a little more information about the upcoming Momiji workshop. Any questions you want to make sure we cover? Please comment and let me know and I’ll be sure to include them. See you then!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I found this excellent video about finding good niche markets to sell your eBay products.
Hope you find it helpful.

Here are ten steps you can take to start a real business on eBay:

Step 1: Identify your market.

Take a look at the completed listings and watch for what sells and what doesn’t from the items you’re interested in. Pay attention to photos, titles, descriptions, starting prices, and shipping rates. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later on.

Step 2: Watch the competition.

Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are selling, and what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can improve. When reading their content, ask yourself “does this make me want to bid? Why or why not?”

Step 3: Find a product.

Once you’ve run out of things to sell around the house, find a supplier for whatever it is you want to sell, and get the best price you can find – don’t be afraid to check out quite a few to get the best deal. If the eBay prices you’ve seen are higher than the supplier’s, then it’s a promising product. Other options are to create your own products, including information cd’s (my favourite), or to sell things for other people.

Step 4: Start small.

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 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 what you intend to sell, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the plan, and a brief budget. This is more for you than it is for anyone else, but it will keep you on track with your new business.

Step 7: Invest and expand.

Buy inventory and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal number of sales each week, increasing it each time. You could even open an eBay store if you have enough inventory.

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 - many government agencies have been set up to help you through the process, or you can consult a lawyer.

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. Many of these automated tools can be found by talking to other sellers on the eBay forum.

Step 10: Never give up.

Even when it looks like it’s all going wrong, don’t stop trying. Many times the only thing that keeps us from being successful is that we give up too easily. If one type of product doesn’t sell, try another one. Try ending your auctions on different days and at different times. If everyone else is listing a product a certain way, try listing yours the opposite so it will stand out in the crowd. The beauty of selling on eBay is that you can change your product line without it costing you too much. You could never have that flexibility with an offline store.

Technorati Tags: eBay, selling, eBay business

It’s surprisingly simple to get started posting your very first auction on eBay. Here’s what you need to do.

Step 1: Open an eBay seller’s account. If you’ve bought things on eBay, then you already have an account – just log in with it and click ‘Sell’ in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click ‘Create a seller’s account’. If you’ve never used eBay before, then you’ll need to open an account first using the ‘register’ link underneath the toolbar, and then click ‘Sell’ and ‘Create a seller’s account’. The eBay site will then guide you through the process. For security, this may involve giving card details and bank information.

Step 2: Decide what to sell. For your first little experiment with eBay, it doesn’t really matter what you sell. Take a look around the room you’re in - find something that you’re not all that attached to and could sell. Small books and CDs are ideal first items.

Step 3: Submit your item. Click ‘Sell’, and you’re on your way to listing your item. The first thing you need to do is choose a category – it’s best to just type in what the item is and let eBay choose for you. Next, write a title and description. Include key words you think people will search for in the title box, and all the information you have about the item in the description box.

Now set a starting price. Under $1 is the best starting price, as it draws people in to bid who otherwise wouldn’t, and items will almost never finish at such a low price. The next thing to set is the duration of the auction: 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. This is up to you: longer sales will usually get more bids, but if you’re sure of the demand, choose a shorter time period.  If you’ve taken a picture, add it now – items with pictures always sell for more. Finally, tick the payment methods you will accept (PayPal is best for now), and where you will post to (limit yourself to your own country to begin with). Submit and you’re done!

Step 4: Wait for it to sell. This is just a matter of sitting back and letting eBay do its thing – buyers will find your item and leave bids on it. Some bidders might email you with questions about the item, and you should do your best to answer these questions as quickly as you can.

** Remember that if your item doesn’t sell then you can list it again for free. If you do, try listing on a different day or a different time. **

Step 5: Collect payment and mail the item. eBay will sent your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item. Make sure you have the money before you send anything. Once you’ve got the payment, all you need to do is securly pack the item for posting (make sure to use some bubble wrap), take the buyer’s address from the confirmation email eBay sent you, and write it on the parcel. Put some stamps on, mail it, and you’re done! Oh, one more thing, give your buyer positive feedback as soon as you receive payment and encourage them to do the same for you once the item is received.

Technorati Tags: selling on eBay, posting an auction, sell and ship

First, you need to know what it is you’re going to sell: what’s your speciality? You’ll do far better on eBay if you become a great source for a certain kind of products, as people who are interested in those products will come back to you again and again. You won’t get any loyalty or real reputation if you just sell anything and everything.

When you think about what to sell, there are a few things to consider. The most important of these is to always sell what you know. If you try to sell something that you just don’t know anything about then you’ll never write a good description and sell it for a good price because you won’t really know how much it’s worth.

You might think you’re not especially interested in anything, but if you think about what kind of things you usually buy and which websites you go to most often, you’ll discover some kind of interest.

Out of the things you know enough about, you should then consider which things you could actually get cheaply enough to resell, and how suitable they would be for mailing. You want to sell items that are small and light enough for shipping to be relatively inexpensive,

On eBay, there’s a market for almost everything, even things that wouldn’t normally sell in a regular store. Start by selling things that you’ve got lying around in the house. Search through your cupboards and try listing some of the things you never use anymore. This is the power of eBay: there is always someone who wants what you’re selling, whatever it might be, and they’ve come looking to buy, they aren’t just doing research.

Once you’ve had a taste of eBay and its ease of use for a seller, I’ll tell you all about my favourite items to sell – information products on cd.

Technorati Tags: eBay, selling on eBay, what to sell

Next time you’re on eBay, take a look at how many PowerSellers there are: you’ll find quite a few. Now consider that every single one of one of them must be making at least $1,000 per month, as that’s eBay’s requirement for becoming a PowerSeller.

PowerSellers sell the same things again and again, every week – regular stock for regular customers. They  keep inventories and budgets. They know what they’re going to be selling, how much they buy it for and how much they expect to sell for. Just like a real store, they have slow periods, but their income is stable and their business slowly grows.

•  Silver PowerSellers make at least $3,000 each month
• Gold PowerSellers make more than $10,000
• Platinum Powersellers make more than $25,000
• Titanium PowerSellers make at least $150,000 in sales every month!

To achieve the minimum PowerSeller level, you must have a feedback rating of at least 100 (minimum 98% positive) and sell at least $1,000 worth of items every month for three months in a row. If PowerSellers fail to meet the required amount of sales, or their feedback falls below 98% positive, they can lose their PowerSeller status.

The fact that these people exist gives you come idea of the income possibilities here. Most of them never set out to even set up a business on eBay – they simply started selling a few things, and then kept going. There are plenty of people whose full-time job is selling things on eBay, and some of them have been doing it for years now.

Can you imagine that? Once they’ve bought the stock, everything else is pretty much pure profit for these people – they don’t need to pay for any business premises, staff, or anything else. There are multi-million dollar businesses making less in actual profit than many eBay PowerSellers do.

Even if you don’t want to quit your job, you can still use eBay to make a significant second income. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like: some PowerSellers are very old, or very young. There’s no job interview and no commuting involved – if you can use a computer and mail out your items, then you can do it.

Learning the best ways to post an auction and gaining positive feedback will take a bit of time. Don’t give up if something goes a little wrong in your first few sales: the sellers who are successful on eBay are the ones who enjoy it, and stick at it whatever happens.

Once you become a successful eBay seller with a regular income, you’re going to have to start paying tax – this won’t be done for you. If you decide to sell on eBay on a full-time basis, you should probably register as a business. And check the tax requirements where you live, so that you know when paying the taxman should begin.

And one last tip – have fun.

Technorati Tags: power sellers, eBay, selling on eBay

To sell on eBay, you need three things: something people would want to buy (notice I didn’t just say “something to sell”), an eBay sellers account, and a Paypal account to collect money.

If you sell what you know about, you can spot bargains and will have a much better idea of the value and any other important information. You will also enjoy selling more if you really know your merchandise.

Start by researching some of the completed listings on eBay. You can find out which items sold and which didn’t, how much they sold for, how much the listing started at and when it was listed. Study the successful listings, looking at the keywords used in their titles, the descriptions and photos, even their payment and shipping details.

When you register on eBay, create a seller ID that relates to your products if possible. For example, if I were selling mainly small items, it could be carolscollectibles or something like that. And don’t be concerned that you will limit yourself that way. eBay allows you to have more than one account, as long as you have a different email address for each.

The final step is being able to collect your money. Although accepting cheques is an option, always wait until the cheque has cleared before you send the item. Since most eBay buyers want their purchases right away, Paypal is usually the preferred payment method. When signing up with Paypal, you will need a premier account so that you can also accept credit cards.

There you have it. A business of your own without the expenses that come with setting up your own shop. And if there isn’t much demand for a product, you can easily try selling something else without losing your investment. No wonder eBay is still popular with so many people.

Technorati Tags: eBay, selling, research, Paypal

I received my Momiji calendar today with the new course offerings for 2009. For anyone reading this blog who isn’t a past student, Momiji is a Japanese Cultural Centre and Seniors Housing complex in Toronto.

I was pleased to see that Frank, the older gentleman who teaches most of the computer classes there, is offering classes about Blogging. I taught that course a couple of years ago there and the demand wasn’t as high as I would have liked. I guess most people then didn’t even know what a blog was.

For those of you in the Momiji area, I encourage you to sign up for Frank’s Blogging course. I’ve heard he’s a very good teacher and creating a blog of your own is a lot of fun. If you do, be sure to let me know the web address of your new blog so I can go and check it out.

All the best to you and have a healthy and happy 2009.
Carol