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- Jul 26, 2007
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I met a guy the other night who had been selling things for a living on ebay for ten years. He supported himself comfortably enough to where he could follow his real passion which was playing drums in a band. Point being is that i is still possible to make good money selling things on ebay--even in this day and age of Amazon Prime! He explained that he chose his niche after he placed a bunch of different items on ebay up for sale, and one item proved to be far more popular than the rest, so he decided to sell more of that item. He gave some good pointers that I'm happy to pass along:
- Test your demand first. Place some items up and see which ones get the most interest. Focus on selling those items. Keep adding new items and keep testing. Adjust accordingly.
- Find a reliable distributor/wholesaler. This really beats having to hunt down items each week at garage sales or close out stores.
- Focus on selling items that are consistent in appearance. A "For Sale" sign or an iphone5 would be an example of this. This way you are only having to take pictures once, write one description, etc. Seems that the biggest time suck for most sellers is hunting down items and then photographing them as well as writing the descriptions. With his way, you only do that once, and then you can keep reposting the same pics and description.
- Beef up your feedback score. He recommended that new sellers really focus on getting as much good feedback as possible. He said that a good way to do this is to start buying everything you need on ebay in order to get the feedback.
- Packaging. The other benefit to selling the same item over and over is that you know exactly what materials you'll need for shipping. I can imagine that would be super handy!
- Shipping. He said that ebay is putting a lot of pressure on sellers to offer free shipping in order to compete with Amazon prime. So factor this in to your total sales price.
- If ebay starts recommending you make changes, make them. Don't want for them to make them "law" or you will be scrambling to make all necessary changes.
- Change your ebay name to reflect what you are selling. So instead of Simon1234 make it DiscountSignsInc.
Hope that helps. Keep in mind that just because this store didn't work out, doesn't mean that the ebay idea won't work out. Keep us posted.
- Test your demand first. Place some items up and see which ones get the most interest. Focus on selling those items. Keep adding new items and keep testing. Adjust accordingly.
- Find a reliable distributor/wholesaler. This really beats having to hunt down items each week at garage sales or close out stores.
- Focus on selling items that are consistent in appearance. A "For Sale" sign or an iphone5 would be an example of this. This way you are only having to take pictures once, write one description, etc. Seems that the biggest time suck for most sellers is hunting down items and then photographing them as well as writing the descriptions. With his way, you only do that once, and then you can keep reposting the same pics and description.
- Beef up your feedback score. He recommended that new sellers really focus on getting as much good feedback as possible. He said that a good way to do this is to start buying everything you need on ebay in order to get the feedback.
- Packaging. The other benefit to selling the same item over and over is that you know exactly what materials you'll need for shipping. I can imagine that would be super handy!
- Shipping. He said that ebay is putting a lot of pressure on sellers to offer free shipping in order to compete with Amazon prime. So factor this in to your total sales price.
- If ebay starts recommending you make changes, make them. Don't want for them to make them "law" or you will be scrambling to make all necessary changes.
- Change your ebay name to reflect what you are selling. So instead of Simon1234 make it DiscountSignsInc.
Hope that helps. Keep in mind that just because this store didn't work out, doesn't mean that the ebay idea won't work out. Keep us posted.
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