10 Steps to a Real eBay Business

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

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