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.

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.

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.