I’m not going to lie to you. After you’ve dug up all the things around your house to sell, finding things to hock on Ebay is not easy. Actually, it is the toughest part of this whole business and the one thing that either makes people drop out of not even start in the first place. But I have to tell you, and I can’t stress this enough, if you don’t have the intestinal fortitude to get through this part then you’re not going to cut it for selling on Ebay. That’s just the cold hard facts. So if this is something that you REALLY want to do, then suck it up and go out there and find things to sell. How?

You simply have to know where to look. What that comes down to is finding a good supplier. They’re out there. You just have to find them. In some cases, if you want to sell certain items that you feel are very hot, you might have to think outside of the box to get your hands on them. Nobody is just going to send a package to your door. You have to go out and get your hands dirty.

One killer way of getting your hands on great products is to go right to the people selling them on Ebay. The powersellers usually have a ton of product and will be more than happy to sell you some at slightly more than wholesale. So while you may not make as much as with a product you bought at wholesale, you can still make a profit.

For example, let’s say that there is this product that you can get for wholesale for $10 a piece and sell for $15 a piece. Buying and selling 100 of these, you would make a net profit of $500. Now, let’s say that a powerseller is willing to sell you these 100 items for $12 a piece. If you still turned around and sold them for $15 a piece you’d still make a net profit of $300. This is not as much as you would have made, but without making this deal, you’d be out the $300 you did make. This is called thinking outside the box and getting creative. It’s just one of the many ways you can do this. Yes, you can even go to your competition and make money. They probably, as a powerseller, had 1000 of these items, so selling them at $12 a piece still made them $200, or maybe more as you don’t really know if they had to pay the $10 wholesale price. If they purchased enough product, they might have gotten it for $9 a piece. That’s the beauty of wholesaling. Believe it or not, there are always people higher and lower in the food chain than you are.

In our next installment, we’re going to continue with a couple of terms, OPP and OPM, which is Other People’s Products and Other People’s Money. These are important concepts to understand if you are going to be a successful Ebay seller.

See you next time.

Buying Too Much – This is one of the most common mistakes that people make. They are so anxious to get their Ebay business off the ground quickly, and they’re so optimistic about making tons of money, they buy more product than they could possibly sell. And if the product they bought has no market, they are out an awful lot of money. So start conservatively. Once you see that you’re making a few sales, you can always buy more.

Don’t Guess – This is another big problem. Lots of people will see the next new hot item come out and figure that they can sell it on Ebay for X number of dollars. They do no research on this whatsoever. Not only don’t they know if the item will sell for X number of dollars, they don’t even know if the item will sell at all. So don’t guess. Base your game plan on research.

Taking It Seriously – This is actually a problem with all home businesses. Some people treat selling on Ebay as a hobby. Well, if you treat it like a hobby, you’re going to get a hobby income, if you get any income at all. Plus, if you don’t treat this business seriously, you can find yourself in a lot of trouble beyond just the amount of money we make.

Fraud – This is something so many people try to get away with. I can’t even count the number of items selling on Ebay that claim to be an original whatever. There is more fraud going on at Ebay than you can possibly imagine. Do NOT stoop to that level. Make sure everything you sell is authentic, or if it is a knockoff, be up front about it an tell people that it is not an original.

Separate Accounts – Whatever accounts you have right now, get a separate bank and PayPal account specifically for selling on Ebay. The reason is because you’re going to be doing a lot of business and you want to be able to keep accurate records for tax purposes and just for keeping in contact with your customers should there be any problems like disputed charges. Having separate accounts makes doing this a lot easier.

Get A Digital Camera – You are going to be taking a lot of photos so invest in a good digital camera. The better your photos are, the more sales you will make. Yes, they are THAT important.

Set Up A Home Office – You want a place to work where you’re not disturbed. If you live alone, this isn’t as important. But if you have a bunch of screaming kids in the house, a home office is a must.

Get A Partner – This isn’t a must, but it’s a suggestion. If you get a partner, you can divide the work between the two of you. As you do more business, this will become very important.

In our next installment, we’re going to cover just what to sell and where to get the stuff from. This is where it gets exciting.

See you then.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. The reason that Ebay works is because the number of people who are willing to do what is necessary to succeed on Ebay is relatively small. So if you have what it takes and don’t mind hard work, this just may be for you.

While this series is not going to make you what they call a powerseller overnight, it will provide you with the foundation that you will need should you want to take your Ebay selling to the next level. There are people making $10,000 a week and more selling on Ebay. There is no reason you can’t be one of them.

Okay the first thing you have to do is get registered with Ebay if you haven’t already done that. Simply go to ebay.com to get started. After you register, go through the members area so you know your way around. Ebay can be a virtual maze, so make sure you know where everything is.

The next thing we’re going to do is start small. Yeah, I know, you want to go contact a drop shipper and sell millions of dollars worth of product in a minute. Do yourself a favor. Look around your house first and see if there is anything laying around that you can sell. That’s how most people start and that’s how I want you to start in order to get your feet wet.

After you do that, read this entire series. You’re probably wondering why I’m having you get items to sell before you even know what to do with them. I’ll tell you why in plain English.

Many people, after they learn how to do something, feel that it’s something that they can’t do. It’s just human nature. We’re so afraid of failing. This way, having already put in all that time to find articles to sell, you’re going to be more likely to follow through because you don’t want all that hard work to go to waste. That’s also human nature. Once we start something, no matter how hard or even futile, we just can’t seem to stop, even when we realize how impossible what we’re trying to do is. Well, Ebay isn’t close to being impossible. It’s really very easy.

You’re going to have to take photos of all the things that you are planning to sell. Photos are big with Ebay sales. No photo basically means no sale, no matter what it is.

In our next installment of this series, we’re going to pick up with some things that you should and shouldn’t do. This will be a checklist of some of my personal hot topics. Ignore them at your own risk.

See you next time.

Start an Ebay business.

Start an Ebay business.

Make no mistake about it. Selling on Ebay is a real rush. There power trip of being totally in control of everything is far beyond the rush you get from selling an affiliate product where you have no control over the commission structure, website or anything. With Ebay, you make or break it on every level.

However, with that kind of rush comes a great deal of responsibility. There’s nobody to lean on when you’re selling on Ebay. You are your own boss and everything falls on your shoulders. There’s no Clickbank to turn to for refunds. All refunds come out of your pocket and if there are enough customer complaints, you can be shut down in an instant. So you better make sure that you run a tight ship.

So, you want to sell on Ebay. Okay, if that’s the case, you better have a solid game plan. I don’t mean just what products you’re going to sell. I mean how you’re going to advertise, how you’re going to price, where you’re going to get the products from and a lot more. Everything will have to be in place and ready to go before you even place your first Ebay ad. Just one thing not taken care of and the whole operation falls apart.

If you’re really efficient and a quick worker, you can probably get an Ebay campaign going, depending on how complex it is, in about a week. Some take a month or longer to put together. My particular campaign, when I first started, was simple and took me a week. If I knew what I was doing back then, it probably wouldn’t have taken me as long, but everybody starts out somewhere.

One word of caution before you even venture into this territory. You’re going to have to be very careful about regulations. Ebay has a ton of them as does PayPal. They’re not going to care about your email to them that says “I didn’t know.” That’s why Ebay and PayPal have all these terms of service. They expect people to read them, even though they may take a year and a day to do so.

Having said that, it is not the purpose of this tutorial to teach you Ebay and PayPal regulations. That I am leaving in YOUR hands. This tutorial is simply to help you set up a business for the purpose of selling on Ebay.

In our next installment, we’ll get to the actual instruction itself.

See you then.

Ebay Internet Business

One of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your auctions or virtual storefront is by creating a free blog that will allow you to easily communicate with your clients as well create new online relationships. In order to maximize your readership and reach as many people as possible the blog shouldn’t specifically be about your Ebay auctions. Instead focus the topic of your blog on the types of products you are selling. Then you can write blog posts that will attract your target market and advertise the products you have for sale on the blog.

You should also create a mailing list for your Ebay Internet business. There are simple programs online that will allow you to create monthly or weekly newsletters that can be emailed to your customers. The option to sign up for your newsletter, should be on your blog as well as your auctions. Use your newsletters to communicate important information like any sales or specials you may be having or even when new items are listed. You should also include some tidbits, facts, or short articles that would be of interest to your target market. This way they will be more encouraged to read the email when it comes.

There are many ways to drive traffic to auction pages or virtual store, but the important thing is the quality of the traffic your are getting. You can have thousands of people visit a web page, but it doesn’t matter if they aren’t people who have an interest in what you are selling. With a few marketing skills, your Ebay Internet business will easily be a success!