eBay Buying should be fun!

Did You Know:

eBay users worldwide trade more than US$1,820 worth of goods on the site every second.

- At any given time, there are approximately 104 million listings worldwide.

- Approximately 6.5 million listings are added per day.

- There are 233 million registered eBay members worldwide

- 82.9 million people were active users on eBay marketplaces in Q1 2007.

- Whilst eBay may be better known for its auction format, fixed price merchandise accounted for over 1/3 of total sales on eBay.

Without a doubt, many individuals just like you, cash in daily on eBay big time. And we’re not talking about used goods, collectibles, and online auctions.

The fastest growing categories on eBay are brand new items going at a fixed price!

What eBay Can Do For Your Business!

If you don’t give eBay a chance, you could be missing out on a lot of extra money.

But be warned, eBay works very differently. Not knowing what to do may waste you a lot of time and effort. But for insiders, eBay is sure to make you a lot of money with very little effort.

Starting now, and going to continue in the next couple of weeks, I’m going to give you advice on how to sell on Ebay. The advice I’m going to give you comes from what I have learnt and experienced over the last year.

Your key ingredient is to collect Positive Feedback A.S.A.P

One of the key ingredients that keeps eBay safe is the feedback system. On eBay, every potential buyer closely examines a seller’s feedback rating before making a purchase.

Your goal is to look good on the system, as soon as possible!

The feedback screen provides three key statistics that every buyer looks for:

·First, you can see how many ratings this seller has accumulated. ·Second, you see what percentage of the ratings have been positive. ·Third, you can see how active the seller has been in the last month.

If you are a new eBay seller, you have a lot of catching up to do, and this is how you can get good feedback, fast:

Start with Low Prices

Don’t worry too much about maximizing your revenues or profits at the beginning. Break into the marketplace first. Look at it as an investment to establish your presence and reputation on eBay.

If you want to get positive feedback fast, and establish a name for yourself on the eBay marketplace, undercut the competition.

Lower your prices and offer them a bargain that is too good to miss out on! This way it won’t take you months before you ramp up your business on eBay. If you offer digital downloads, following this strategy is even easier because it costs you much less to provide the product.

Example:

You start your eBay business, and have a great digital product. You check out your competitors and after a little resurge you figured out that the product can be sold for $15(this is the price other players are selling a similar product for). So you start selling at $2.

Like I mentioned before, don’t worry too much about maximizing your revenues or profits in the beginning.

As you get more and more good feedback, you eventually raise your price to $15, Now you are at the same level as the other players.

Another simple thing that you can do is to start buying products. You start looking around for products that cost you between $0,01 and $0,99. When you are buying things you get feedback to. This is even a easer way to collect positive feedback.

People can see your feedback score and how it is built up - did you get your feedback from buying or selling thinks.

You have a perfect Feedback score and that is what your customers are looking at. Your customers now see a person who is reliable, and that’s all they can go on!

If you look at the whole picture of selling on eBay, this is one detail.

So in the next couple of weeks I’m going to share with you other important details to, details that are going to help you to make a living on eBay and to make a living online.

Over the last few years the number of people using eBay has grown rapidly. While many eBay users are just buying and selling for some extra cash or as a hobby, there are many people out there taking it to a new level and running their own full-time business.

These people are making their eBay home business a main source of income and have figured out all eBay’s marketing strategies in order to be productive.

There are many reasons to start an eBay home business, but whatever the reason, it is sure to be successful.

Why start an eBay home business? Out of all worldwide businesses, 64% said that the Internet has had a good impact on their sales. Also, having an online business can greatly increase geographical sales by reaching customers all over the world, which otherwise, would never have been possible. 73% of business owners have also managed to cut their administrative costs by putting their business online.

An eBay home business can give you the flexibility to start work when you want and finish when you want. Working from home, you can be your own boss and decision making is entirely down to you and no-one else.

Starting an eBay home business is relatively easy and a little market research will go a long way in determining your success.

Selling junk that people don’t want will get you nowhere and you’ll most probably be doomed for failure… even before you begin, but researching into what products are’ Hot’ and what your buyers are actually looking for, will most definitely have the opposite effect and your eBay shop visitor’s will be screaming out to buy your products.

‘eBay Seller Central’ http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral offer an excellent resource in getting you up to speed with every aspect of the eBay marketplace. This also includes ratios on what products are selling well and products that are not.

You should also consider using third party eBay market research tools such as Terapeak or HammerTap in your marketplace research.

The bottom line is supply and demand; you must find the products that are in demand and then supply that specific market.

A recent ‘AC Nelson’ poll showed that nearly 53% of online shoppers plan to buy even more in the next year. A large part of this shopping is done on eBay. After all, it is the Internet’s No.1 shopping and auction website. If that’s not a good reason to start an eBay home business, then I don’t know what is.

With over 160 million registered eBay shoppers and over 100,000 of them on eBay each day, an eBay home business definitely has the potential to be successful and make the user a lucrative income.

eBay also offer excellent e-commerce advice and helpful tips to get you started at: http://pages.ebay.com/merchantsolutions/ecommerceresources/ and can put you in good stead throughout the duration of your new business venture.

Thinking of what to sell on eBay with your new home business needn’t be difficult.

Do you have a specific hobby that would interest others or do you know enough about a subject that would perhaps class you as an expert in that field? If so, create and information product that would pertain to that specific hobby for example:

Cycling - “A guide to Bicycle trips in Europe.” Bicycle spare parts are also becoming harder to find. Creating a market for this specific niche could be potentially profitable.

Cookery - “101 Delicious recipes for Diabetics.” You may have been a chef or cook and you’re looking to create an additional revenue stream using the knowledge you possess.

Recently, eBay has disallowed the sales of digital products on auctions. You can still sell information products with classified ads or you can sell a CD with your product(s) on it as a regular auction listing.

Google is a fabulous resource for market research and by simply typing into their search query box whatever interests you, would return thousands, if not millions of topics to give you ideas and inspiration to get your eBay home business started.

Providing your customers with a service or a product that cures a problem, can provide your new eBay business with profitable sales for many years to come.

I just finished reading an article posted over at MSN entitled “Should eBay’s Meg Whitman resign?” and want to say a few positive words in defense of eBay.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get all the whining about eBay. To read some of the comments posted by readers of that article you would think eBay had paid a hit man to kill their dear old Aunt Matilda. What drives an eBay seller’s frustration level to these heights?

I think much of the buyer and seller frustration with eBay is self-inflicted. The attitude you take with you into any relationship, be it a marriage, friendship or even a business partnership, in large part determines the quality of that relationship.

Here’s what I mean. I simply cannot afford to hate eBay!

So I don’t think HATE EBAY THOUGHTS all day. I am in a business partnership with eBay for Pete’s sake! If everyday when the opportunity clock rang I jumped out of bed, started ringing my hands and thinking to myself…oh no…how can I possibly make it on eBay, eBay is so mean to me, and eBay has such lousy customer service, and I just hate their feedback system, and…look what everybody else is saying about eBay it MUST be true, someone even took the time to write an article on an important web site. Yea right, a professional writer getting paid to write an article they know will pull your strings or they get fired. Here’s the comment I love the most from forum posters.

EBay is just out to make a profit, they don’t CARE about me.

This kind of reader comment is just too much for me and sends me straight to the bathroom for a Kleenex.

EBay out to make a profit, ya think?

Two years ago, I knew zippo about selling on eBay and today I am sitting here in my pajamas, while I write this article, able to decide how I want to spend my energy today. I am the major part of this equation but another huge variable of this same equation that allows me this kind of personal freedom is EBAY.

So HERE…HERE to eBay! I won’t be throwing any stones your way.

I think eBay’s customer service is terrific! PayPal’s is even better! And when I need help I can find it. I probably paid over $15,000 in eBay and PayPal fees in 2007 and they were worth every penny. In fact, call me crazy but I think their fees are a bargain when I take the time to think what it would cost me in time and money to drive my own traffic to my own website. In fact I would go as far to say eBay makes it too easy for me and has acted as my own personal King Status Quo III.

I’m going to let you in a little secret…it goes something like this. If you’re focused on the negative you will SEE the negative, If you’re focused on the positive you will SEE the positive. I fell into this trap with my opinions of Internet Marketers. It was so easy for me to see the negative with all the Hipster…Dufuss’s out there trying to sell get-rich-quick crap online I started seeing all the faults of even the best intended Internet Marketers.

EVERYONE has faults, even a mega-successful enterprise like eBay. The only question I carry with myself throughout my day is, “how can I use all of the tremendous tools and traffic eBay spends millions of dollars on to my advantage?”

Now I don’t get paid to stir up readers, but if I have stirred up any pro or con eBay juices inside your head, go ahead and let it out. I can take it. Just keep it clean. This is just my take on how I feel about eBay.

If you are an eBay buyer, seller or would simply like to learn more about ebay then you are invited to visit

The MSRD Inc Forum. This forum is fairly unique as it allows registered users to post messages about the items they have up for sale or auction on eBay complete with the link to their eBay page. The message can even include images of the items and best of all it is free. The MSRD Inc Forum also features an Open Forum , a General eBay Forum and a forum style Article Directory.

As I am sure you are aware not every item listed on eBay actually sells. The eBay search function is very good at helping people find what they are looking for but some eBay pages always seem to get more traffic than others. One good reason for this is that some eBay stores and pages have links to them from other websites. All the search engine optimization gurus will tell you that is a good thing and they are right. Plus your eBay store gets traffic from the link itself provided the other website actually gets traffic and that is the goal at The MSRD Inc Forum.

If you have items up for sale or auction on eBay you can register as a user at The MSRD Inc Forum for free and start posting messages right away. In the eBay Stores and Sellers Free Ad Forum you can post ads for your eBay items and stores with text descriptions, images and the link to your eBay page. When you register as a user you get a signature file where you can also put the link to your eBay store and it will appear under all your post in all the MSRD Inc Forums.

Posting an ad for your eBay auction on any site does not do you a lot of good unless that site gets traffic.

That is the function of the MSRD Inc forum style Article Directory which appears below the main eBay forum under the category MSRD Inc Article Directory. The article directory is simply a series of 26 forums in alphabetical order. Such a directory can be filled up with articles on every subject from A to Z. With enough keyword and key phrase text article content and enough incoming links it could produce what can only be called non targeted general interest search engine traffic. The search engine optimization gurus will tell you that you are better off finding a niche and focusing on just one subject and nobody will disagree. However, this forums main theme is eBay and people will be posting messages about items up for sale and auction on eBay. These items will of course include merchandise of every description from A to Z. That being so non targeted general interest A to Z type search engine traffic is what this site actually needs.

If you are an eBay buyer visiting the MSRD Inc Forum can help you find more information about merchandise listed on eBay. Including descriptions and even images posted in the eBay Stores and Sellers Free Ad Forum by the sellers themselves. Buyers can also find more information about any subject from A to Z in the MSRD Inc Article Directory and therefore any kind of merchandise from A to Z. Some of the articles in the directory may have been written by authors who are also eBay buyers and sellers. If you have anything to say that is related to eBay please feel free to post it in the General eBay Forum.

If you are an article author yourself then you are invited to register and post your articles in the directory. It works pretty much the same way as any other article directory and it is free.

Shoes fore sale by MSFIRECRACKER on ebay. call 786.443.5646. NOW, HEAR ME ROAR!!!!!!!!!!

As with most phenomena of the Internet heyday it’s no longer possible to make a fortune just by selling any old thing on eBay. However, there are still opportunities aplenty for the hard working, savvy eBay seller. In order to have a happy ending though you need to have a good beginning and that’s what we’re here to do: Start at the very beginning. Explore eBay and decide if being an e-commerce tycoon is really the ticket for you.
Never even visited eBay? There then is your first step. Go to eBay.com and have a look around. eBay realizes that buyers and sellers are its lifeblood so the eBay website is very user friendly. You don’t have to register to browse and at this point you probably shouldn’t. Registering requires choosing a user I.D. which will follow you forever. You will want to choose it and use it carefully.
For now just get the feel of the site. eBay is enormous and it’s entirely true almost anything a person could want can be found there. It may be that you already have a store and want to use eBay to increase your sales or even to become your sole outlet. Or, you may be new to the whole process and have only the vaguest idea of what you want to sell. Either way, now is the time to scope out the competition.
eBay sellers are a very sophisticated lot. Many of them make use of cutting edge software to list literally hundreds of products a day. They may also have separate eBay stores and even traditional brick-and-mortar locations. Anyone who becomes part of eBay today will need to have skills in lots of areas not just have something to sell. A successful eBay merchant needs to be computer literate, able to write copy that sells and give excellent customer service. All of this must be done while also taking care of the primary business: Selling product.
After spending time perusing the website and doing a quick study of its diverse content, stop by the eBay Learning Center. Be sure and pay strict attention to the feedback system which rates all eBay sellers and buyers. Maintaining a sterling reputation is imperative for being a winner on eBay.
Now you have probably spend an afternoon on eBay and you haven’t even registered yet; that’s exactly as it should be, too. eBay is not a sign up and get rich quick scheme. Before making a commitment of your time or an investment of your money you have some hard thinking to do.
Do you have a product for which there appears to be a market?
If so, is that market saturated?
Are you comfortable with the technological skills which significant sales on eBay will require?
Are you willing to spend the hours and capital needed to get your eBay venture off the ground?
If the answers to all these questions are yes, then congratulations: You are now ready to register on eBay and make a purchase.

eBay is the #1 auction site on the internet. eBay is the fifth most visited site on the Internet. Now, eBay jumped on the blog bandwagon. They have opened a brand new section of their site called eBay blogs. This area allows a registered eBay user to sign up for, and maintain an eBay blog.

Blogs are here to stay. So, if you’re serious about growing your eBay business then you should definitely consider signing up for, and creating your very own eBay blog. eBay has done a great job of making the process simple and easy so that almost anyone can navigate through the steps and easily set up their own blog. You do not have to have any programming experience or special html knowledge. Just visit the following url: http://blogs.ebay.com/ and click on the large button that says “Start Blogging”.

What Are Blogs?

In the simplest of terms, a blog is basically an online journal. Blogs provide a place where you can easily write news and information about yourself and your auction sales on a daily basis. The word blog is a combination of web and log combined together to make the word blog. Blogs are a hot internet craze because they allow anyone to easily publish their own thoughts and content online – instantly.

Blogs are also wonderful for creating a ton of extra traffic and visitors to your auction listings. If you frequently post great content to your blog it will quickly be picked up by the search engines which will create more visitors to your blog and your auction listings for free.

What Should You Blog About?

In this day and age, it’s hard to imagine being an eBay seller and not immediately see the benefit of having a blog. It provides an easy way to interact with your customers. You can provide updated information about your auctions, the products you sell and general info about your business. Once you get used to blogging, you should consider making posts to your blog on a daily basis.

To get the most from your blog you want to think about writing content that is useful to your customers. eBay sellers should use their blog to provide more information about what they sell. For example, a seller who specializes in model cars might take some time to write a few articles or create posts about “tips for building model cars”. Another seller who sells wedding related goods might write blog posts about “effective wedding planning on a shoestring budget”. The point is this: you want to make the content useful to your customers so they will come back often. The more you write good quality content and inform your customers, the more they will want to purchase products from you. Another benefit is that you can quickly establish yourself as an authority on the subject.

If you’re not sure what content to post in your blogs, simply do a google search for your subject and see what comes up. Use this information to create your product content. Caution: stay away from having a blog with very little useful content and a lot of sales ads for your auctions. It’s good to occasionally write a blog post to promote a new item you have up for auction, but if that is all you do then you’ll get very few repeat visitors to your blog. eBay is a very community oriented platform and the more community friendly information you provide, the more potential you have for repeat customers to come back to your blog… and hopefully visit your eBay auction listings.

How do you Promote Your Blog?

Like any other site on the internet, your blog will have its own unique url or website address. You will want to make sure that you keep this hand and start promoting your blog. There are a variety of ways that you can promote a blog. Some of these would include submitting your website to major search engines, and blog/website directories. You can easily further promote your blog by taking the content or articles that you write on the blog and submitting them to some of the major article directories. You can also create your own domain name and then forward it to your blog, so that you have a link that is easy for people to remember. In the past, I have used http://www.highfivedomains to secure my url’s for blog promotion.

What about Blog Comments?

Another great way to promote your blog and build traffic to it is to comment on other people’s blog. As a general rule, you should only post to other related blogs and post meaningful comments. If you start leaving a bunch of random comments that have nothing to do with the blog, or the blog post in general, then people will see this as “blog spam” also known as “splog content”.

Does eBay have Blog Tags?

Another useful feature that eBay has included is blog tags. When you first set up your blog, there are some important fields to fill out including the selection of the tags that people will use to find your blog. These tags are basically keywords that people might use to search for your blog. If we continue with “wedding” example above, a seller of wedding related items would want to use common wedding keywords in their tags section. This could include tags like wedding, invitations, cake toppers, and wedding planning. Now, when another eBay user searches for wedding related blogs this blog will show up in the listing and again bring some free traffic to the blog.

In the not too distance future, eBay blogs will be commonplace. It is now that you have the opportunity to set yourself apart from your competition by setting up your blog - and using your blog to get free traffic to your eBay listings!