Down Town Music NY

eBay’s being spoken about everywhere these days. At work’ school’ down the pub… everyone’s getting into eBay’ looking for those bargains and trying to save themselves some money. Not a day goes by without eBay getting some kind of press publicity.

Although people are increasingly turning to eBay for bargains’ the majority of users are only buying and do not open a selling account. Lets be honest’ I expect you’ve used eBay in the past and I’m sure if your reading this that you’ve even sold items on it. It’s not hard is it?

There are three specific reasons why I believe eBay is the greatest opportunity online to make extra cash or even build up your sales to make a full time online career.

Everyone’s Equal.

On eBay everyone’s equal. All users no matter what your status’ bank balance or feedback is – everyone gets exactly the same opportunity to sell their item’ starting with a blank description form.

It’s your call how you describe your item and it stands the same chance of being seen as the next persons. If your selling an ebook’ you could do it on eBay or though your own website. With eBay you pay exactly the same fee as your competitors. Selling though your own website your can use Pay-Per-Click campaigns to advertise your site & your competitors can outbid and out manoeuvre you easily. I know which one I’d choose to make the task easier.

Targeted Traffic

eBay lets users take away all the hard work by allowing customers to search for you. Normally online it’s the other way around with you advertising your product’ building links to your website’ starting joint ventures’ etc just to get the correct type of visitors to your site. I could go on but you hopefully you get the idea.

Getting visitors to your own website to purchase items isn’t easy. It can also be costly & timely if your new to net marketing. But by selling on eBay you can forget about it all because users actually search for you. They simply type what their looking for and up springs a list of results including your item.

User friendly

eBay is easy to use and guides you though the selling process. With help at every point’ it’s hard to go wrong. And if you do it’s easy to correct it your mistake. With communities and forums across the net’ you don’t have to look hard to find someone to help you. Plus there are hundreds of eBooks written on the subject.

So now you know why I rate eBay so highly. Start selling today and make the most of your experience online.

Mark Kenny is an online entrepreneur who specialises in developing turnkey websites including a new eBay Trading Assistants website.

You can see this at: http://www.Trading-Web-Solutions.com/taebay.htm

I just received an interesting email from eBay and it got me thinking… Do you sell tires by mail? Maybe you should ‘eBay’ (yes it’s now a verb as well as a noun)

I know’ if you’re in the retail business ? you have a shop’ staff’ overhead and all that a physical location requires. But what would you say if I mentioned that [at the time of writing this] eBay had concluded over 8’275 auctions for tires and tire related products in the last 90 days. That’s about 91 transactions per day. And that number doesn’t include other completed auto part auctions which totalled 1’581’529 ? that’s 17’573 auto-part auctions per day.

A Retail Sales Dream

Now I’m not suggesting that eBay is the sales answer to your retail dreams’ and some of those auctions never resulted in a sale ? but a lot did. Those are online adverts that cost pennies to post and resulted in a great deal of traffic and visibility for your product.

Here’s a little known fact ? I’m a registered eBay Trading Assistant. What this means is that amongst all the other things I do’ I am ‘qualified’ to show people how to best sell things on eBay.

An Online Garage Sale

Now this all started a few years back’ I had some junk to get rid of’ and just for fun I decided to see what this eBay thing was. Well’ let’s say that a garage sale is never likely to happen again in my household’ and I cleared out all the things I never figured I could. I was hooked.

And here’s the neat part. Being The Practical Marketeer?’ I wondered how I could use this to my advantage ? and here’s what I learned.

If you have a website then you should sell on eBay ? and not for the reasons you’d normally think. The main reason is search engine rankings.

Purple Widgets

While I was active on eBay’ my adverts and auctions were consistently being indexed by the Google? Search Engine ? I was always showing up in the top 10 searches for the items I was selling. If I was selling purple widgets’ and someone went onto the Internet and typed ‘purple widgets’ thanks to eBay I’d show up ? usually in position 3 for some reason.

Web Traffic For As Little As $0.30

Now pause for a moment?think about this. For as little as $0.30 (the base price of an eBay advert) you can post an advert on eBay and within a few seconds’ hundreds’ maybe thousands of people will see your advert.

eBay lets you link back to a page on your own website for more information ? trying to cut eBay out of the deal by offering your products on the referred page is not allowed. They frown on that practise and the eBay police ? yes’ there are people who police eBay ? will shut down your account.

But if you play by the rules and post adverts for products and services you’d normally sell in your store ? and you offer them online for either the same price or less’ you’ll get exposure. And lot’s of it if you do it right.

A Virtual Retail Store For Pennies!

You might think what’s the point of someone 700 miles away seeing my advert ? they’ll never become a client. You’re probably right about them not driving over to pick up their purchase ? however ‘eBayers’ are used to paying for shipping and handling’ so you would mail out your products.

So for pennies you get a virtual retail store’ you’ll get good search engine rankings’ you’ll get web traffic’ and you can even expand your business operations by adding a mail order department (that’ll impress the bank manager!)

So’ as the title of this article so aptly asked… Do You Sell Tires By Mail? Maybe You Should eBay…

AUTHOR BIO: James Burchill is a freelance marketing consultant and author. He’s also the editor and associate publisher for two of the automotive aftermarket industry’s leading print publications and he’s the publisher of http://www.CorrectLink.com – a new Internet publication for the automotive aftermarket in Canada.

In between all that’ James helps people ‘Sell more stuff’ and make more money!’ and publishes a series of informational and Internet products about advertising and marketing. His main website is http://www.JamesBurchill.com

After I started selling on eBay’ I was approached by friends without computers who wanted me to sell their items for them. They had heard stories about the outrageous prices items some ebay auctions brought. They knew I could get more money for them on eBay than they could get selling the items themselves. An added incentive to them was I did all the work. All they had to do is say “I don’t want this anymore’ sell it for me;” and within a few weeks I converted their castoffs into cash.

I was already selling on eBay’ and I had developed a system for listing and dealing with sales that allowed me to list lots of items in a short time. The chance to make a few dollars without any investment was too much to pass up. I made some good money doing this and because I didn’t have to tie up my money buying inventory I was able to use it to grow my train business.

Consignment Selling Is The Perfect Way To Start Your Own eBay Business.

There are no set up fees or investments. You won’t need to risk your own money buying items to resell. You don’t need a detailed knowledge of antiques and collectibles. You only need to know how to find the right category’ write an adequate description and take some high quality photos.

Selling on consignment allows you to learn about antiques and collectibles without risking your own money. By selling other people’s items you learn the value of items in the most practical way. By handling them and selling them. No matter how many price guides you read’ and antique shows you attend’ you will never get the feel for items until you sell them.

When you sell on consignment’ you provide a service that makes your clients additional money. When most people sell something’ they sell to a dealer who needs to mark up the item to make a profit. This is not what happens on eBay.

On eBay the END USER is the buyer and will always pay more than a dealer would. Even after paying a consignment fee’ the seller makes more money.

This is the true benefit of eBay consignment selling. Finding the END USER. Before eBay this was a difficult and daunting process. With eBay’ a simple listing placed in the correct category’ with a good description and some high quality photos’ is enough to get a few END USERS to fight over the item.

Things You Need To Succeed With Consignment Sales:

1. You need to take possession of the items. When you sell items on consignment you risk your eBay name and reputation. You take these risks when you sell your own items’ but you are in complete control of your actions. In order to lower your risks you need to get complete control of the items you are going to be selling. This prevents sellers from changing their minds’ and allows you to ship the items as soon as you receive payment.

2. You should always have a written contract. One of my friends was sued by a consignor who felt the commission was too high. The consignor agreed to pay 20 percent of the selling price’ then when the item sold for $8500′ got upset about paying $1700 to someone for doing 30 minutes of work. While my friend won in court’ it would never have gotten to court if he had a written contract.

3. You’ll also need to perfect ways to get items. At first your friends and co-workers will provide you with a good stream of salable items. After a while this stream will dwindle and you will need to go out and find consignors. This is not as difficult as it may seem. Remember’ by consigning with you’ the seller gets more money than they would otherwise.

Terry Gibbs is a collector/dealer of old toys and trains’ and teaches others how to buy and sell antiques and collectibles. Gibbs is the author of two best selling eBay books “The Auction Revolution’” and “The Complete Guide To eBay Consignment Sales.” He has also written numerous other books about buying and selling antiques and collectibles. Learn more at his website: http://www.news.iwantcollectibles.com

http://www.iwantcollectibles.com/consign5.html

Copyright 2005 IWantCollectibles LLC used with permission.