eBay can be a fun and lucrative part or full time job. With the right tools and a lot of hard work you can be very successful selling products on eBay or other online auctions. I learned through mistakes. so I compiled a list of do’s and don’ts so that you’ll have an easier time getting set up and going with your eBay business.

Do research your item. Learn about the market and make sure it is hot before you buy a bunch of inventory. eBay has tools available for you to research products; you can find these in the seller section of their website. Remember that even though something sells well this month, it might not sell as well next month. Current research is the key; always keep your finger on the pulse of the online shopper.

Don’t rush your auction title. This is such an important step. People are going to find your auctions through its title. A title is not a sentence; it is a combination of words that describe your auction. Make sure you spend some time thinking about what you are selling. What title words would make you look at the auction? Use words that create curiosity and interest. Also make sure that all of your words are spelled correctly. When you misspell words describing your auction, no one sees it.

Do give an accurate, thorough description. When you are writing your description, take your time. Make sure you capture the attention of the bidder; your goal is not only to sell this item, but to create a repeat customer. Make sure you include these things:

• Provide content and care information
• Describe the item accurately
• Describe any and all flaws
• Note measurements and size
• Always list shipping and handling charges

Make sure that you are very clear in your description. Clearly state what you expect from the winning bidder and what they can expect from you. Stating these things upfront will save you trouble in the future.

Don’t underprice your item. Make sure that your starting price is enough that you will be happy to sell the item at that price. If you underprice your item, people might think that it is junk. If you overprice your item and people can find it for less, they will not bid. It is a fine line and practice makes perfect. Again with pricing, research will be your most valuable tool.

Follow the do’s and don’s when you are selling on eBay and you will enjoy greater success. Remember that it takes a lot of time and hard work to create any successful business; work at it daily and you can see great results!

Joy Fredrickson publishes the Work at Home Business Reviews site.

Today one of the biggest challenges that you will face is to get targeted traffic to your website. This is what makes eBay so lucrative. It allows you to advertise in a marketplace where there are already a lot of highly targeted visitors that are ready to buy. Here are the steps you need to take to succeed with eBay.

1. Familiarize yourself with eBay and find hot markets.

This is a really important step that you need to do before you start selling. Read all the relevant documentation as it will explain to you how to get going.

Once you have done this you need to find hot markets with constant demand for the products you are selling. The best way that I’ve found to do this is to purchase a third party application that will allow you to analyze eBay statistics. This is a really important step to seeing what is popular and how you can add your own unique angle.

2. Develop a good feedback rating.

As the famous sales trainer Jeoffrey Gitomer once said, people only buy from other people that they like, know and trust. When you first start out you need to establish your reputation. I suggest that you first start out with smaller ticket items. Offer good customer service and over time people will leave you with good feedback. This will increase your sales as people prefer doing business with other people they can trust.

3. Sell high ticket items.

It is much easier to make five sales of a $1,000 each than to sell 100 items that cost $50. Once you have established a good feedback rating, I suggest that you sell high ticket items to boost your profits.

Start selling on eBay »

Mark Abrahams is a full-time Internet marketer who has helped others to earn a living online. Visit his site, Secret Affiliate Tips, to know more about the magical marketing techniques that heloped him quit his day job.

There are so many ways to make money online, and one of the easiest is to get an affiliate Web store (no inventory to keep). If done right, this can be a very profitable business.

The logical step to do when starting an online business is to turn to eBay. I personally started selling on eBay, but unless you have a lot of money to invest and storage space, it is a very hard way to earn money. But by browsing around, I came across affiliate marketing, and with that I learned about building niche store websites that feed directly off eBay.

Even though it seems easy at first, it actually is not. Setting up the site is very easy, but the hard work comes when promoting that site. And that is the job of the affiliate marketer.

I promote my sites the free way, and that is where the hard work comes in! A website without promotion is nothing. Also, a website not associated with the proper search engine keywords is going to be very hard to promote.

To be a successful affiliate marketer, you need to really work it. If you are not willing to pay for traffic then you have to have around 20 hours a week to spend on this business. The more time you have, the more money you can make.

But if you are totally new to this, there is a learning curve you need to go through. You need to learn about SEO, keywords, site optimization and promotion. The cost of doing business is very low. The profits can be large, but only if you set it up right!

Out of every 100 visitors you get to your website, you will get 1-3 sales. But only if the traffic to your site is targeted traffic. With an affiliate Web store, yes, there is no inventory to keep, but you have to know exactly which products to promote to make money and you have to know how to promote it.

Ivana Bosnjak publishes the eBay Affiliate Training site where you can learn more about eBay affiliate marketing, keyword research, niche store software and website promotion.

Check out Build a Niche Store Software now! »

If you do not have a lot of money to invest into selling on eBay, the second best is to become an eBay affiliate marketer. This is not easy at first, but this business can be a well worth it. It requires work, but it’s probably the easiest way to make money off eBay.

Here are 4 basic steps to eBay affiliate marketing profits.

Step 1. You need a smaller niche,. And you need more than one store to promote. Large sites by established affiliate marketers are very hard to compete against; the small niche markets are where we can earn money.

Step 2. The second thing you need is a software to build your eBay affiliate websites. Almost all very successful eBay affiliate marketers make their money from niche stores and small markets. You’ll of course want good software that does not cost a lot (Build A Niche Store software, for example, only costs a one-time $97).

Step 3. You have to understand that the easy part is actually building the sites; the harder work is in keyword research and promoting those sites. Keywords seem easy at first, but they are a lot more complicated, trying to get your ads and links to rank higher for the specific keywords that are very specific and at the last leg of a purchasing cycle.

Step 4. Promote your sites. Interestingly, your promotion activities help you rank higher for the keywords and drive a lot more traffic through to your sites. Targeted traffic is what is going to make you money. If you are not going to invest money into traffic, you will pay for it with your time. To make a success of this business, you really need to work at it at least 20 hours per week.

Making money off eBay has never been easier; it just takes a little time and effort to make it work.

Ivana Bosnjak publishes the eBay Affiliate Training site where you can learn more about eBay affiliate marketing, keyword research, niche store software and website promotion.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Build A Niche Store Software
• eBay
• eBay Stores

Seems that the IRS wants Congress to require eBay and other auction sites to identify sellers. For taxation purposes of course.

Hasn’t happened yet, and don’t know if it will or won’t go through.

Read “Selling stuff online…” »

Grossly overbid.

If in your mind winning is the only thing that defines a successful auction bid, then by all means, grossly overbid away (hit my auctions while you’re at it!). Chances are slim to none that you’ll lose any of the auctions you participate in… unless, of course, you go head-to-head against another grossly overbidding nutcase.

Repeat after me: It’s not about winning… it’s about winning it at the price you want.

Before you bid, set a Drop Dead Price. That’s what I call it anyway, the highest price you’ll go to acquire the item. If bidding exceeds that limit, forget about it and move on.

Be strong. We’re not talking about something priceless here. How do we know that? You set a drop dead price! (If, for whatever reason, the item is indeed priceless and something you just gotta have, well, you’re on your own.)

Granted, being strong is tough when you’re monitoring and participating in an auction live. So don’t. Snipe instead.

Well, OK, you do have to pay VistaPrint (the printer) for shipping and processing. But unlike some of the unbelievable s/h price gougers you sometimes see on eBay, VistaPrint is reasonable… just around 5 smackers for 250 cards last time I checked. And yeah, the backs of their “free” cards have a VistaPrint logo and ad blurb (pretty subtle and not bad at all, though, I can tell you that).

But still, that’s $5 you say. You can indeed get those laser and inkjet “business card” sheets and just print what you need. Do the math: That costs substantially more. Not even counting the time you put into it (if you haven’t figured it out yet, your time is valuable).

No big deal? Well, here’s something I learned through the years: You’re more likely to actually do something if it’s dirt easy to do. As effortless as grabbing a card from a stack sitting on your desk and throwing it into a package.

It’s that easy, no-brainer benefit, actually, that makes this deal smart. At only around 2 cents a pop, I use these cards everywhere. Not just in shipments. I use them as bookmarks. Scratch notes I hand out (“Hey Eldon, what’s the phone number of that doctor you play golf with? I want him to look at this weird thing on my left…”). Whatever and wherever.

Still, you say, that’s a waste of 2 cents. Really? Well, I had to wean myself of that kind of thinking too when I realized how many thousands of cards I just trashed over the years every time I needed to get new cards to reflect a change (new job, address, phone, email, website, logo, etc.) Trashed. Admit it. So have you. Each one of those thousands represents a missed opportunity.

Well, if you want to save a couple of pennies, that’s up to you. I like to live dangerously.

I prefer using business cards since they’re smaller, easier to carry around everywhere, and more flexible, useful for just about every application. If you prefer, VistaPrint also offers free note cards, invitations and note pads, if you prefer a larger marketing message. Worth a look, don’t you think?

Fact is, images sell on eBay. Data to back that up? None off-hand, although I’ve seen stats out there and I’m just too lazy to dig it up.

What I do have is anecdotal evidence: Some of my best eBay deals were wins from listings with no images. True, the descriptions were basic text and sparse, and the sellers were obvious newbies (or just lazy… it’s common, I should know), but still, an image or two would likely have brought bidding up a tad. Instead, I’ve faced no competition whatsoever at these non-image listings more often than you think, even where the pageview counters at the bottom show that there has been enough interest to garner at least a few preliminary bids.

If you’re one of those holdouts still pulling out a film camera at parties and making everyone wait days to see prints instead of just pushing a few buttons to email copies free to everyone the day after, well, maybe the promise of having a viable eBay business operation is just the nudge you need to go get yourself a digital camera.

It just plain makes sense.

Good news: For eBay-quality images (to be viewed on the computer screen, in other words), you don’t even need the latest and greatest — you can no doubt save lots of money getting an older model digital camera specifically for taking eBay product shots. They’ll more than do, as you’ll soon see in future posts on this topic where I’ll show you that decent eBay product images can be easily produced with even some of the earliest digital cameras (like those that came out in the mid- to late-90s, and I kid you not!).

But, if you’re thinking of shelling out bucks anyway, you may want to look into the new stuff and using it obviously for more than just eBay product shots. A lot of the latest tech wizardry, such as my latest workhorse’s “Image Stabilization” feature, make it super easy to produce good eBay photos with minimum effort… and quickly.

Check out digital cameras on eBay

There’s the storage issue, of course. But even more important, there’s the time thing, which frankly is probably the small business person’s single biggest profit and opportunity killer. In my experience, prepping old shipping material (such as peeling or scraping off revealing labels from boxes) actually triples or even quadruples the time it takes to package and ship an item.

Got better things to do with my time.

Sure, if you’ve got more time than cash, go ahead — save, store, prep and scrape away. But I’m telling you, when your operation’s solid and steady enough, look into getting the shipping supplies you need fresh and spend whatever time that actually frees up on more productive (profitable!) activities.

Having said that, there is something I use regularly in my packages that I never purchase: filler. Besides the fact that I don’t often deal in breakables that require special filler packing, I’ve literally got an endless supply of professional (unlike some of the really weird packing material some folks have used), flexible, usually sufficiently shock absorbing, and easily disposable (even biodegradable!) filler material… and chances are so do you: the shredded paper from my paper shredder.

Thanks to identity theft, paper shredders are now de rigueur machines for the home. And I know I’ll never run out of free paper to shred; it’s called junk mail. I can’t remember a single day when I didn’t have a small stack of it to feed through the old workhorse shredder. In fact, there’s so much of it, I always have more shredded filler than I need. Finally, something good and useful from junk mail.

Besides the usually small shredder waste receptacle, I’ve found it sufficient to keep an extra medium-sized box of shreds handy. Anything more than that gets trashed.

Get the best paper shredder you can get… unless you like handing over easy-to-piece together paper strips of your financials and other private information to your customers.

Check out Paper Shredders on Ebay

Maybe you should. I don’t see it too often, at least not in the product categories I like to frequent. But I do see it practiced every now and then. I did it — still do on occasion, whenever I feel like it. More than anything else, I think, it’s a good way to get your operation rolling, helping get your name and presence out there, your feedback growing, and even better, establish your rep as a legit business op among serious suppliers. Without spending a dime on inventory.

The basic idea: eBay promote specific products from affiliate programs you like. Your net goal is to make the price of the item less the affiliate program commission from the sale plus any eBay fees you’ll incur from the transaction. Why would bidders be interested? They’ll have a chance to get the product at below retail.

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell!

Of course, there’s quite a bit more to it — details details details — and things to think about and plan for, not to mention gotchas and other issues to wrestle with, etc. I’ll cover these in future posts on this topic. Stay tuned!

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