Building Loyalty, Trust and Credibility

The key to make money selling on eBay is creating a niche and a following of customers that come to your account every week to see what you are selling. To get to this stage, you need to establish loyalty, trust and credibility, and you do this by always providing excellent products within your niche, top service, and over delivering to your customers. When they buy something, add a little something extra.

Be totally honest with them as well – eg if a product is second hand, even though it looks new, tell them that.

Creating a following will mean your customers check into your account to see what’s new, instead of using the search engine to find what they want, because they would prefer to deal with you.

Make sure your product is competitively priced, so check on what other eBay sellers are charging for it, or what it is selling for elsewhere on the net.

Put into place some quality control measures to ensure the product lives up to the customer’s expectations. Purchase the product yourself and test it out.

Double-Check Your Title

Double check the title of your eBay auction item to see that your item title has no spelling errors before you post it. Buyers mainly use the search engine to locate their item of interest.

Search can pick up items placed in the wrong category. But search won't pick up misspelled words.

If your spelling is incorrect, you'll lose all buyers using the search function. This will kill your auction like a doornail.

The good news is, if you catch misspelling before the first bid, you can always go back and revise it.

How To Find Your Niche

Choose one, or a few things you have a passion for, or an interest, or some knowledge. This could be a hobby, or something you are interested in, or something related to your work. Make a list of these.

For each one, make a list of keywords or phrases you think people would type into a search engine to find it.

Then go to http://www.free-web-site-marketing.com/keywords.html and use some of the keyword research tools reviewed. The best tool there for products is Market Research Wizard. Some of the others will give you demand for your keyword, some also give suggestions containing your keyword so you can refine your niche further by drilling down. Some are free and on the page to use.

Keyword research is essential if you want to make money selling on ebay, because you'll be able to supply what people are looking for.

Make Money selling on eBay - What to Sell, How to Sell

The biggest question people have when starting an Ebay business is what to sell. We will get to that in a minute.

First, here are some general guidelines to help you know how to sell:

1. Make sure you have a quality picture of the product: The last thing I want to see when I trying to decide to buy something is a blurry picture or one that doesn’t show the product well. You can sometimes raise the price of a product by taking an appealing photo of it.

2. Write an good description: When writing a product description use words to build value but don’t over do it.

3. Build up positive feedback: If you don’t have enough good feedback you won’t make a lot of money. Concentrate on smaller items that you can deliver quickly and that are in great condition and then you can move on to bigger items.

What to Sell:
Once you build up some positive feedback and reviews you can move on to selling stuff that will make you money. Just some beginning tips for what to sell: Sell something that will need to be replenished - such as vitamins, energy drinks, protein shakes, etc…. That way you can create an income stream that builds with time and more customers instead of just selling one time items. You should also plan on building a main website separate from Ebay so that you can maintain a list of customers. You can sell them your products and also cross sell them new items. This is a strategy that uses Ebay an alternate source of leads for your main website.

Another good strategy to get started is to find a product you think will do well and then see how popular that item is by using a keyword analyzer tool* : http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ You can use this tool to see how many times a keyword is typed into a search engine each month. Once you find out how many times it is searched for each month, you then need to see how many websites there are out there about this keyword or product. If the keyword is searched for a lot and there are only a few websites pertaining to it, then you will have a good chance of being successful with that product and make good money. Be creative when searching for what to sell and you should be able to come up with something that will sell.

After you are making a decent amount of money, you can then teach others how to do the same and charge consulting fees or mentor fees. A lot more money can be made from this than selling products on Ebay. Begin to sell your services on Ebay and use the items as just a way to gain new clients. If you have any experiences with Ebay and making money this way, share it with the people here. Helping others helps you.

Article by Kent Hamilton - founder of http://www.moneygenius.net shares his making money tips for Free to help others get started. Lots of useful information. He has been developing and promoting websites for over 10 years.

* Keyword research tip - Click here for keyword research tools and software reviews. Some of these include tools that give you both demand (no. of searches) and supply (no. of websites containing that term)

eBay Stores

Once you have found your niche, and have lots of things to sell, open your own eBay store. It costs significantly less to list your items, and you can customize your pages.

You now need a minimum of 5 positive feedbacks before you can open a store, so sell or buy some items first. Make sure you conduct these transactions well – you don’t want any negative feedbacks at this tender stage.

It’s OK to have one negative feedback as long as you have, say 200 positive feedbacks. People will just think it was a person who didn’t read the item description properly, or that some people are never satisfied. 199 people were happy after all.

But it’s a different matter entirely when you receive 4 postive feedbacks, and 1 negative. Not a good proportion at all. So make sure every feedback will be positive.

Learn more about eBay stores at http://www.ebay-auction-secrets.com/ebay.html

Find Your Niche

Selling on an eBay auction is just like the Internet or any other real world business.

In order to be successful you need to pick a niche and stick with it.
When you're starting out selling it's ok to sell a little bit of everything - but when you get serious, sit down and decide where you're corner of the market is.

Experimenting with different sorts of products is fine, in order to help you pick your niche. It also will get your positive feedbacks started.

When you've worked the system for a little while, and become familiar with everything, it will all become much easier to make money selling on eBay.

Harness the Power of Search Engines

Using search engines with an eBay auction is a potent combo.

The whole point of eBay is that they bring you the traffic, you simply pay them for it. If you have a good bid pulling salesletter you make money.

Using search engines adds to the amount of traffic you normally would get, giving you a greater chance to make money selling on eBay.

The problem is that it’s somewhat intimidating, especially if you’re new to intermediate when it comes to auctions and search engines.

Few people use them with auctions because those that know how to use search engines don’t sell their goods with auctions, but their own website. Skirting normal fees, competition and advertising.

At this point I’m going to recommend some good starting points for your research and experimentation with search engines.

To start off, you could have a read of my free SEO (search engine optimization) Tutorial, you can get it at www.free-web-site-marketing.com/seo.html

Create Your My eBay Page

eBay gives you a 'My eBay' page for free - and it is very important to utilise this if you want to make money selling on eBay. Don't overlook the significance of it- you can use these to give buyer important information and much more…

In your business on the web your ‘My eBay’ page and/or website is the center for all your promotional activities.

Have a nice 'My eBay' page set up with your USP (unique selling position) and a simple picture of you.

Include your contact info and a well thought out sales message that encourages them to visit your auctions and/of website, wherever you product is being offered.

Persuade the reader to scroll down the page (where they will see your feedback and current auctions). You'll receive a jump in credibility- something you can never have too much of.

You also get a little icon beside your user I.D. that bidders will see when they visit your auction. People click these things to find out about YOU.

Let me stress: Your “My eBay” page is an important sales letter.

Perhaps the most important one you can make in your auction business. Your auctions come and go- it doesn’t make much sense to promote a link that disappears after 7 days.

Your "My eBay" link is the one you're going to promote.

Most people waste their “My eBay” page. It is the equivalent to the first page of a website, so it needs to say something that grasps the readers attention and leads them where you want them to go.

A finely tuned "My eBay" page is the rallying point for all your external auction marketing.

Best Times to Make Money Selling on eBay

Best Times To List an eBay Auction For the Best Overall Results...

Of all the times for you to submit your ad, Saturday and Sunday mornings between 6:00 am and 9:00 am have been the best for me. But when you end depends on what you sell and the type of auctions you run.

Traffic is highest on eBay during weekend mornings. In fact, traffic is particularly heavy throughout the whole weekend.

My own reason for choosing mornings will become very clear a little later in this Chapter. Since a main strategy of mine always focuses around getting 30 bids on my auctions as quickly as possible, I like to get my best exposure at the first of an auction.

What's the reason I want 30 bids quick? Extra free exposure. If any of your auctions go over 30 bids your auction gets special free exposure on the site. That translates into an enormous traffic boost. I'm sure you've seen the little blowtorch beside an item.

That's what you want- it means your auction is on fire. The faster you get 30 bids the longer your auction burns bright.

To bring you up to speed here- your natural listing exposure in the search engines and category listings are best on the first and last day. And two categories people always browse are "Just started", "Ending Today", and "Going, Going, Gone".

If you track your auctions with counters at honesty, you will always notice a spike in hits on the first and last days.

When listing you can always choose to have your best exposure on the first day of the auction or the last. If you start in primetime, your last day with be strong.

If you start in the morning, your first day will. But I only recommend doing this on the weekend holiday's where noone is working. By the way, people do a good deal of bidding on holidays- because they are not at work :)

If you are selling one item or less than 30 items, use the primetime strategy of listing. This simply means stop and start your auctions in the evening.

If you have auctions ending in primetime, you might want to avoid ending them on Tuesday or Friday night... two days that have been traditionally off for me.

Do you always start and end your auctions at the best times? To be on the safe side, always have auctions start and stop when traffic is the heaviest- In primetime and on the weekends.

I've seen people end an auction at 3 in the morning... not good. They just threw away a chance at having their best traffic...

So make a habit of beginning and ending auctions during primetime.

A couple of other things to factor into this:

Remember your target audience- homemakers bid during the day. It's the same with someone who is retired. Get the picture?

When you hear about all the different best times to list, this is why- different people browse at different times. If you're ideal customer were an 18 year old interested in comics, maybe you could end your auction at 2 in the morning and get better results :)

Test your results. Find out what works best for what you sell.

Also- if you want your item to show up during primetime, remember there is 2-3 hour posting delay, so post 2-3 hours early. For instance, if you want your auction to end at 10PM EST, then start your auction at 7PM.

You'll also want to watch out for events that affect traffic habits as whole. Like the SuperBowl Sunday. Don't be like me and try to end a mass of auctions on that day. Not unless you don't want any bids at the end of your auction.

Keep in mind that there are up months and down months. August is typically slow for most - the colder months on the other hand... out of sight. You definitely want to be selling during those times.

October to April are the best months to make money selling on eBay

Keeping Track of Your Ebay Auctions

If you list less than 5-10 auctions at a time, you can probably keep track of them with the old pen-and-paper method, or with a simple spreadsheet.

If you choose this method, follow these steps for keeping track of the auctions : use a separate sheet of paper for each auction you list.

Write down the item number, URL, listing date, listing price, and category, along with any other comments or pertinent information.

When the auction ends, write down the ending date, the sell price (if any) and the buyer's contact information. Index the auctions by auction number for quick reference in a file.

This method works well for fewer than 10 auctions online each week. If you have more than that, you must use a database system of some kind, I highly recommend the many tools and software at Auction Resource Network

Selling the merchandise is only half the battle to make money selling on Ebay - you MUST keep track of your sales or you will quickly find yourself lost and confused.