New eBay Sales Opportunities with Your Existing Resources

In this week I would like to share some regular strategies which keep my product sources growing all the time in a reliable and trustable manner.

You may remember that few weeks ago we talked about approaching some local shop owners and suggesting a solution to sell their items as an additional revenue stream. Also, we mentioned that you could offer the same solution to some online sellers who didn't know how to get into the eBay marketplace.

However, some of you may be a bit skeptical to work with people you don't know at all, right? How can you ensure that they are 100% trustable?

Have you ever thought about that there are actually a lot of people you can trust? They are your friends, people you may have known for years. You can always start a business partnership with your friends without the need to build up a trust from zero.

But this is something you may have not thought of, isn't it? You probably meet with your good friends once a week, having dinners or drinks, chatting for fun or nothing. How can you possibly think of business opportunities good for both sides?

This is kind of my habit now. You may see if it applies to you, too. I am not talking about that you have to talk about business and money as the only discussion topic with your friends. But you can always think of benefits that you may bring to your friends if you can do some sales for them with the existing resources they have.

Some time ago I talked to Stephy who liked to do some handmade jewelries for herself and for freinds as gifts of different occasions. Then an idea came up to my mind: why not selling these special things in eBay? As these are all her own handmade items, she doesn't need to keep a big stock. What I need to do is to make pictures of all styles she can do, then I can start selling any time. She doesn't need to create new stock until I get sales for her. The mode of business is actually build to order. She does not have much cost to spend. But it could be a new stream of revenue to her. Both of us are happy.

Another day when I chat with another friend, Paula, who moved to Japan some time ago, we noticed that there were a lot of funny or innovative items which the trends always started from Japan, e.g. Hello Kitty gifts with can be found in local Japanese stores only. Hello Kitty fans from around the world always love to collect them even it may cost a lot. Then Paula may simply get some pictures of those items and I can then start selling in eBay. She only gets down to the store and buy the items back and send to the customer for me when I get her an order. This is also a simple and low-cost opportunity to both of us.

Opportunities are around your life all the time. Can you think of something else?

Stay Closed with the Market Demand for Growing Your eBay Business

If you have followed my advice and started selling some of your own customized items in eBay, you should have got some positive results already. But in order to keep your business growing, you need to stay closed with the market trend and demand. You cannot just stick to the same old items without any change with the market and expect you can sustain for long.

There are no fixed rules how to know what's hot in the market. As long as you stay closed with the market yourself, you will know what's hot to sell.

One of my ways to know the trend is to take a look at the Yahoo home page. See what's in the "Today's Top Searches". E.g. at the time of this writing, this is the top 10:

1. The Girls Next Door
2. Sondra Locke
3. Jennifer Lopez
4. Dinner Recipes
5. 2010 Mazda 3
6. NASCAR
7. Neil Patrick Harris
8. Free Ecards
9. Income Tax Credits
10. Health Insurance

Just click and take a look. Or modify your searches as "The Girls Next Door Mousepad", "NASCAR Clocks", etc.. You may find some items related to these searches, e.g.:

http://www.plushliving.net/mousepads.html
http://www.buydirectusa.com/shop/nascar-clocks/index.shtml

See if there are something similar you can create for your own sales.

Another way to know what's hot in the market is to read the news. Pay attention to the top news, events, people, etc. One simple example is Barack Obama over the past few months. You don't have to do a professional research before you know how crazy the items were sold as long as it was related to him. Again, do some searches like "Obama Gifts", "Barack Obama Items", etc.. See what people are selling and see how you could follow the tread quickly:

http://barackobamagifts.com/index.htm
http://www.democratnationalcommittee.com/candidates/barack_obama.htm

The third way I do the most is to see what hot movies are coming up which people are talking about a lot. For example, one of the movies people are talking about a lot is the "Angels and Demons" by Tom Hanks coming up in a few months. Most people will be attracted by the concept of Ambigram as it may be the first time they hear about it. On the early teaser poster from the movie, there was no Tom Hanks. You can only see Ambigram displaying in the background, indicating that Ambigrams will be playing a critical role in this blockbuster movie.

So you know what to do, don't you? Try to search "Ambigram Items", "Ambigram Gifts" in Yahoo or Google and see if you can start selling something for the coming demand:

http://www.giftamax.com/Market/SearchResult.aspx?key=ambigram
http://www.wowgiftmart.com/ambigram.html

So these are some simple strategies that I'm using all the time. Spend some time every week for little researches. That should definitely help your business grow a lot.

Hidden Secrets for More Sales in eBay

In fact, you don't need to read this section before you can start your eBay business. With all details in previous few articles, you have got all you need to know to start selling. But to help you further, I'd like to get you some more hints which could help you get more sales

Auctiva

It's a 3rd party eBay solution that I think really useful. And the best thing is: it's free of charge.

There are several things Auctiva can help you sell better. Just let you know some:
- Free template making your eBay listing more professional even you don't know any HTML. Also similar service in eBay, but not free.
- Multiple pictures can be posted in each listing. And hosting all your pictures in their service without any charge. But in eBay, multiple pictures require extra fee.
- You can schedule your listings to be posted at your preferred time. Again, eBay charges you extra fee to do so.

There’re also a lot more benefits you can get from Auctiva. You may check it out in their site.


Try Understanding More of your Suppliers

While you're preparing your items to sell in eBay, I'll suggest you to order a few items from your suppliers (e.g. Giftamax introduced in our few articles previously). Even you don't need to keep any stocks when you're working with this supplier. But to have a look at the final products yourself will definitely help you understand more of products.

Compare between the sample images and the real products and see if they are really good as you expect. See how the package is done and so you can know how to answer related queries from your future customers. Evaluate the transit time and see if it's within the acceptable level.

It'll help much on your future business.


Little Tricks to Speed Up Your Sales

eBay is a marketplace based on trust. As you can imagine, if you start selling with zero or just a few feedbacks, customers would tend to move away to other sellers. So how to turn it around more quickly at the beginning? Try to be a buyer first.

You can also earn feedbacks as a buyer. If you can start with 10+ or 20+ feedbacks when you start selling, people would have much more confidence to buy from you for sure. Therefore, try to find something you need. Buy it in eBay instead of anywhere else.

If you start by doing some purchases first, there are several benefits:
- Earn feedback
- Get the items you want at a good price with lots of choices in eBay
- Understand the buying process. Then you know what process your future customers will go through. That can help your communication with them much.


eBay Basic Store

If you're serious to build a profitable business in eBay, there're no reasons you don't subscribe to their Basic Store. A lot of benefits you can enjoy by paying a small fee. Just name some of them:

- You can post Store Inventory Listings, much lower listing fee and longer duration.
- Free Selling Manager (original price $4.99 per month). With selling manager, it makes your life much easier, e.g. sending bulk notice to customers, leaving feedback in bulk, monitor sales performance with simple graphs and statistics, categorized tasks for your easy follow up, etc.

A lot more benefits not mentioned here. You can take a look at eBay.com and find out more.

How to Make Money from Items Owned by Other Local Shops?

Last time we talked about that you could possibly offer a solution of additional revenue to owners of local shops in your area, and at the same time help yourself setting up your eBay business. Some of you may have already got the answer and started working. For other who are still confused what it's about, don't worry. Let's go it over in more detail below.

The solution you can offer to the local shop owners is: selling online on behalf of them. You're not going to buy in bulk or wholesale from them, or you'll just spend too much cost before selling anything. It's not what we want when setting up a small business.

What you should offer them is: while they have been investing a lot in their shops, they should make use of their existing resources (stock, product variety, etc) to make some additional income on top of their core sales. During this vulnerable economy, it's always no harm to set up as many sales channels as possible in order to sustain.

So this is the plan: if your targeted shop owner has the pictures and product details in hand already, ask him to send you. If he doesn't, get your own digital camera and do it yourself. Then you can post the items in eBay and promote for him as if you are his sales representitive. Whenever you've sold an item, inform the shop owner and ask him to send to your customer directly. There shouldn't be any detail of his shop in the package and therefore, the final customer only knows it's a package from you. If you can prepare a simple invoice or delivery order for putting in the package, it'll definitely make your service more professional.

Of course, you should get to an agreement with the shop owner how much discount off the retail price he can offer you, or in other words, how much commission he's willing to pay for your sales effort. Besides, an agreement about how to settle the payment with the shop owner is also needed for a smooth operations in future.

E.g. an item with a retail price $100, the discounted price in your agreement could be $65, shipping & handling costs $10. Then your cost is $75 for this item. If you sell at $100 in eBay, after deducting your Paypal and eBay cost, probably you can still make $10 net profit. So can you see? Without investing in any stock, you've started your business in eBay.

And for the shop owner, he may have earned less based on the discount he's offered. But don't forget it's just an additional revenue for him. He has nothing to lose. If you don't make any sales, he doesn't need to worry anything as there's no cost for him. Can you think of any reason that he should reject this solution you offer?

To keep your business running, you never need to touch the real items. It's the job of the shop owner. All you need to do is to keep a closed communication (probably thru email) on every single order. So in this way, you can work with a lot of shop owners at the same time by staying closed with your PC. You can keep expanding the scale until you think you've earned enough and you can't manage more.

What do you think?

How to Find Good Items to Sell in eBay?

One of the most common questions that I heard from people who want to start a business in eBay is: How to find good items to sell in eBay?

I understand the frustration to find a starting point when you know nothing about sourcing at the beginning. When I firstly wanted to start an eBay business, I had this frustration, too. Is it possible for an ordinary person like you and me to sell in eBay? Is it only those big retailers who can invest huge amount and buy in wholesale dominating the who retail market?

Not very long after my first frustration, I found my way. In fact, the answer was just all around. I saw it every day, i.e. the retail shops I bought from every day.

Have you ever thought of approaching those retail shops (mainly those small ones probably operating by 1 or 2 owners. Don't bother thinking about the big chain stores) and offer a solution to the shop owners that you can bring in revenue for them? It's not talking about a one-time sale by yourself, but a continous revenue added on their existing business without any additional investment required.

Imagine you're a shop owner and you're offered with such a good thing, how can you reject? Of course, there're always skeptical or narrow-minded people who are not willing to explore new things. But according to my experience, over 80% of people will be interested to discuss further and know more.

But what exactly can you offer to these shop owners and in return helping yourself to start an eBay business? Just spend some time to think it over first. I'm going to unveil more of my strategy in the next article these few days.